Abstract

Castañeda offers a linguistically anchored approach to ontology entitled empirical semantico-syntactical structuralism. The entry to phenomenological ontology, or primary ontology, is natural language semantico-syntactical contrasts within given idiolects. The order of ontological inquiry, whose analogy with scientific method is stressed, is the following: 1) Proto-philosophy involves collecting and exegesizing empirical and semantico-syntactical data. 2) Sym-philosophy consists of hypothesizing connections between such data, proposing a theory concerning a given pattern, testing a theory by deduction concerning its ad hoc validity, establishing its fecundity by testing against new data, and replicating the entire process in an attempt to embed the theory in a more comprehensive one. 3) Dia-philosophy involves studying partial isomorphisms and structural constants between theories which constitute the most basic structure of the world and experience. 4) Meta-philosophy, illustrated by the present work, and whose presuppositions address the relation between thinking and symbolism, concerns philosophical method. The fewer such presuppositions the more encompassing and fundamental the ontology.