A Rational Cosmology: The Natures and Tasks of Ontology and Cosmology

This is Essay III of Mr. Stolyarov's series, "A Rational Cosmology," which seeks to present objective, absolute, rationally grounded views of terms such as universe, matter, volume, space, time, motion, sound, light, forces, fields, and even the higher-order concepts of life, consciousness, and volition. See the index of all the essays in "A Rational Cosmology" here.

The branch of philosophy that deals with existence at its most fundamental level is termed metaphysics. The branch of metaphysics that concerns the nature of what exists is termed ontology.

Ontology makes the distinction between entities, the things that exist, and qualities, the attributes that these things have. The philosopher Reginald Firehammer states three fundamental ontological corollaries to the axiom of identity in his essay, "Perception." The ontological corollaries answer the question: "What is an entity?"

The first corollary of identity: Anything that exists must have some qualities.

The second corollary of identity: Anything that exists must be different in some way from everything else that exists and have some quality or combination of qualities no other existent has.

The third corollary of identity: Anything that exists must have some relationship to everything else that exists.

A quality, on the other hand, is not a thing or an entity in its own right. Rather, it cannot conceivably exist except as an attribute of the entities that exhibit it. For example, there is no such thing as "the color red." The color red cannot be imagined to exist outside of those things which are red: red paint, red letters, red furniture, red vegetables, etc. There cannot be a "pure quality" apart from the entities that possess it.