|Book Symposium|

What is ontology? There seem to be two versions in play in Geoffrey Lloyd’s book, what we can call strong and weak ontology. Lloyd is often talking about what I am calling the weak form: “ontologies are... comprehensive accounts of whatever there is ” (Lloyd 2012: 39). Thus he refers to a “picture ” the Greeks held, and remarks that where Jesuits saw things, Chinese saw events (ibid.: 23). Such expressions treat ontology as a perception; the language of visuality suggests a world that different people share, but view in various manners: if Jesuits see something one way, Chinese another, they nonetheless seem to be looking in the same direction. Moreover, “the Chinese spoke not of elements but of phases.” Thus we have a view manifested in words. Notice the double mediation: it’s a verbal representation of an idea about the world. In all these cases, ontology turns out to be, or at least our access to it is by way of, a set of propositions or assertions. Lloyd’s ancient Greek and Chinese examples are weak ontology; that is they are theories or interpretations of reality. A representation has the structure of what Brentano (1973) called “intentionality”: it is about something. This “aboutness