The Environment and Its Ontological Status Cover Image

The Environment and Its Ontological Status
The Environment and Its Ontological Status

Author(s): Salvatore Italia
Subject(s): Environmental interactions, Ontology
Published by: Filozofický ústav SAV
Keywords: Affordances; environment; niche construction; natural selection; realism;

Summary/Abstract: Is reality a ‘Ready-Made World’ or an entity constructed by individuals and social activity? The concept of the environment seems to be the boundary that clearly shows how we can simultaneously adhere to our apparently contradictory intuitions— that is, those about the external and autonomous features of reality independent of human intervention, and those about its undeniably constructed character. The environment, then, seems to be a concept that shows how non-epistemic and epistemic notions of reality (i.e. respectively seeing reality as independent from and dependent on us) can be understood cohesively.

  • Issue Year: 23/2016
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 488-502
  • Page Count: 15
  • Language: English