ABSTRACT
Ontological relativity is a widely held view when it is taken to follow from an analysis of language, especially reference. The general idea of ontological relativity is that we cannot tell, ultimately, what we are talking about. We might say that the metaphysics of the world is unknown and that we describe the world in language using categories that are human constructions. The thesis of ontological relativity is that there are alternative constructions, descriptions, or models that work equally well for describing the world. However, few philosophers seem to embrace a metaphysical thesis of ontological relativity, instead holding at most that alternative descriptions of reality are possible, rather than that there are multiple worlds. The views of Carnap, Quine, Goodman and Putnam on ontological relativity will be considered here, as well as the related idea of structuralism in philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science.
