respect to every subject matter; this is one sense in which the features to which they
pertain are topic-neutral. Because these disciplines are topic-neutral, they are both
aptly labeledanalyticsciences.^67 Finally, these sciences both have afundamental
subject matter and are thereby genuinely unified sciences rather than mere hodge-
podges of necessary truths concerning gerrymandered features.^68
Formal ontology studies those features of objects (or entities) that objects havequa
objects, that is, in virtue of being objects. Butto be an objectjust isto be: formal
ontology purportedly studies entities as such rather than a specific subclass of
entities. But by my lightsbeing an objectdoes not rank very highly on the naturalness
scale, since it is defined in terms ofbeing, which does not rank particularly highly on
the naturalness scale.Being an objectis at best an analogous property, but as will
emerge in chapter 5, it might not even be that.
There are accordingly two concerns about formal ontology so construed. First, if
non-fundamental features lack essences in the strict sense, there is no essence ofbeing
an objectto be the object of an intuition that is purportedly the evidential basis of
formal ontology. Whether non-fundamental things have essences in the strict sense
will be discussed in section 9.2. Second, formal ontology so construed purports to
study the fundamental features that objects have in virtue of being objects. But I do
not see how a fundamental feature of an object could be hadin virtue ofa non-
fundamental feature of that object. Sincebeing an objectis not fundamental, no
fundamental feature can be had in virtue of it.
Given the meta-ontology I accept, the pursuit of formal ontology so construed is a
doomed project. This does not mean that there is no viable project that deserves to be
called“formal ontology.”For example, we could entertain the possibility offormal
ontology, which is the putative discipline that describes the perfectly natural topic-
neutral features that are applicable to objects of any ontological category. I have no
in-principle objection to such a science, at least on the assumption that ontological
categories are fundamental modes of being. But two reservations are worth men-
tioning. First, formal ontology will not be a universal science, since there are entities,
such as holes and shadows, that do not enjoy fundamental modes of being and hence
are not within the scope of this discipline.^69 Second, we cannot look tobeing an object
in order to assess from the top down, as it were, whether there are such fundamental,
topic-neutral features. Perhaps there are, but each putative example of a fundamental
topic-neutral feature must be assessed on its own merits.
point for their investigation: from“any actually present object that comes before our senses”all the truths
of ontology may be discerned; see Watkins (2009: 139).
(^67) See Husserl’s Third Logical Investigation (in Husserl 2005b) for his reconstruction of the analytic/
synthetic distinction. 68
For further discussion of Husserl’s notion of formal ontology, see Bell (1999: 93–101) and Smith
(1998). 69
Such entities will be the focus of chapter 5.