Onder, Orhan: The ontology of the digital twin: a contemporary case for metaontological analysis

_Synthese_ 207 (5):201. 2026For decades, metaontological debates have been structured around paradigmatic examples: Sherlock Holmes for fictional objects and the number 7 for abstract objects. These examples, while useful, are philosophically “safe” and historically entrenched. However, 21st-century technology creates entities that defy these clean categorizations. In this paper, I argue that the digital twin—a dynamic virtual model of a physical system—serves as a useful contemporary test case