Download or read book Ontological Categories written by Javier Cumpa and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores crucial ontological categories that are designed to classify all existents. The contributors discuss three major categories: substance ontologies, trope ontologies and fact ontologies. In addition, they address the central problems of the theory categories in the classical, phenomenological and analytical tradition.
Download or read book Ontological Categories written by Javier Cumpa and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is about ontological categories. The categories of an ontology are designed to classify all existents. They are crucial and characterize an ontology.
Download or read book The Four Category Ontology written by E. J. Lowe and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: E. J. Lowe sets out and defends his theory of what there is. His four-category ontology is a metaphysical system that recognizes two fundamental categorial distinctions which cut across each other to generate four fundamental ontological categories. The distinctions are between the particular and the universal and between the substantial and the non-substantial. The four categories thus generated are substantial particulars, non-substantial particulars, substantial universals andnon-substantial universals. Non-substantial universals include properties and relations, conceived as universals. Non-substantial particulars include property-instances and relation-instances, otherwise known as non-relational and relational tropes or modes. Substantial particulars include propertiedindividuals, the paradigm examples of which are persisting, concrete objects. Substantial universals are otherwise known as substantial kinds and include as paradigm examples natural kinds of persisting objects.This ontology has a lengthy pedigree, many commentators attributing it to Aristotle on the basis of certain passages in his apparently early work, the Categories. At various times during the history of Western philosophy, it has been revived or rediscovered, but it has never found universal favour, perhaps on account of its apparent lack of parsimony as well as its commitment to universals. In pursuit of ontological economy, metaphysicians have generally preferred to recognize fewerthan four fundamental ontological categories. However, Occam's razor stipulates only that we should not multiply entities beyond necessity; Lowe argues that the four-category ontology has an explanatory power unrivalled by more parsimonious systems, and that this counts decisively in its favour. He shows thatit provides a powerful explanatory framework for a unified account of causation, dispositions, natural laws, natural necessity and many other related matters, such as the semantics of counterfactual conditionals and the character of the truthmaking relation. As such, it constitutes a thoroughgoing metaphysical foundation for natural science.
Download or read book On Determining What There is written by Paul Symington and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Generally, categories are understood to express the most general features of reality. Yet, since categories have this special status, obtaining a correct list of them is difficult. This question is addressed by examining how Thomas Aquinas establishes the list of categories through a technique of identifying diversity in how predicates are per se related to their subjects. A sophisticated critique by Duns Scotus of this position is also examined, a rejection which is fundamentally grounded in the idea that no real distinction can be made from a logical one. It is argued Aquinas's approach can be rehabilitated in that real distinctions are possible when specifically considering per se modes of predication. This discussion between Aquinas and Scotus bears fruit in a contemporary context insofar as it bears upon, strengthens, and seeks to correct E. J. Lowe's four-category ontology view regarding the identity and relation of the categories.
Download or read book Ontological Categories written by Jan Westerhoff and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2005-11-10 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of an ontological category is central to metaphysics. Metaphysicians argue about which category an object should be assigned to, whether one category can be reduced to another one, or whether there might be different equally adequate systems of categorization. Answers to these questions presuppose a clear understanding of what precisely an ontological category is, an issue which is rarely addressed; Jan Westerhoff presents the first in-depth analysis both of the use made of ontological categories in the metaphysical literature, and of various attempts at defining them. He also develops a new theory of ontological categories which implies that there will be no unique system, and that the ontological category an object belongs to is not an essential property of that object. Systems of ontological categories are structures imposed on the world, rather than reflections of a deep metaphysical reality already present. All metaphysicians should find Westerhoff's book highly stimulating.
Download or read book A Realistic Theory of Categories written by Roderick M. Chisholm and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-08-28 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book can be viewed as a summation of Roderick Chisholm's views on an enormous range of topics in metaphysics and epistemology.
Download or read book Aristotle on Ontological Priority in the Categories written by Ana Laura Edelhoff and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-19 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main objective of this Element is to reconstruct Aristotle's view on the nature of ontological priority in the Categories. Over the last three decades, investigations into ontological dependence and priority have become a major concern in contemporary metaphysics. Many see Aristotle as the originator of these discussions and, as a consequence, there is considerable interest in his own account of ontological dependence. In light of the renewed interest in Aristotelian metaphysics, it will be worthwhile - both historically and systematically - to return to Aristotle himself and to see how he himself conceived of ontological priority (what he calls 'priority in substance' [proteron kata ousian] or 'priority in nature' [proteron tēi phusei]), which is to be understood as a form of asymmetric ontological dependence.
Download or read book Ontological Investigations written by Ingvar Johansson and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is devoted to problems within analytic metaphysics. It defends an ontology and theory of categories inspired by Aristotle, but revised in such a way as to be compatible with modern science. The ontology of both natural and social reality is addressed, starting out from the view that universals exist but only in the spatiotemporal world (immanent realism). In attempting to bring Aristotle's ontology up-to-date, the author relies very much on the thinking of Edmund Husserl, conceiving the cement of the universe as Husserlian relations of existential dependence and regarding intentionality as a non-reducible category in the ontology of mind. The work is thoroughly realistic in spirit, but large parts of it should nonetheless be of interest to conceptualists and nominalists, too.
Download or read book Artefact Kinds written by Maarten Franssen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-10-04 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is concerned with two intimately related topics of metaphysics: the identity of entities and the foundations of classification. What it adds to previous discussions of these topics is that it addresses them with respect to human-made entities, that is, artefacts. As the chapters in the book show, questions of identity and classification require other treatments and lead to other answers for artefacts than for natural entities. These answers are of interest to philosophers not only for their clarification of artefacts as a category of things but also for the new light they may shed on these issue with respect to to natural entities. This volume is structured in three parts. The contributions in Part I address basic ontological and metaphysical questions in relation to artefact kinds: How should we conceive of artefact kinds? Are they real kinds? How are identity conditions for artefacts and artefact kinds related? The contributions in Part II address meta-ontological questions: What, exactly, should an ontological account of artefact kinds provide us with? What scope can it aim for? Which ways of approaching the ontology of artefact kinds are there, how promising are they, and how should we assess this? In Part III, the essays offer engineering practice rather than theoretical philosophy as a point of reference. The issues addressed here include: How do engineers classify technical artefacts and on what grounds? What makes specific classes of technical artefacts candidates for ontologically real kinds, and by which criteria?
Download or read book Idea and Ontology written by Marc A. Hight and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A wide-ranging study of the 'way of ideas' and its metaphysics, culminating in a bold reinterpretation of Berkeley."
Download or read book Ontological Categories written by Jan Westerhoff and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book New Ways of Ontology written by Nicolai Hartmann and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary philosophy has reasserted the belief that philosophy has practical tasks. This turn reflects an understanding that the life of the individual and the community is not molded merely by personal needs and fortunes but also by the strength of dominant ideas. For Nicolai Hartmann, ideas are spiritual powers belonging to the realm of thought, but thought has its own strict discipline and critique of events. In his view, theory must include within its scope problems of the contemporary world and cooperation in work that needs doing. New Ways of Ontology stands in opposition to the tradition of Heidegger. With deep appreciation of the history of philosophical controversy, Hartmann divides mistakes of the old ontology into those related to its method and those concerning its content. Hartmann finds a common mistake behind methodological approaches inspired by late German romanticism in attempts to develop a complete systematic account of the categories of being—not only of the ideal, but of real being. The main task of New Ways of Ontology is to reveal and analyze interdependences and interconnections. The divisions of being and becoming, of the separation of existence and essence, as well as the old view that the real and the ideal exclude each other, require revision. For Hartmann, whose ideas take us close to modern social science research, ontology is the neutral category that includes subject and object, and gets beyond old realism and modern idealism alike.
Download or read book Necessary Beings written by Bob Hale and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-09-19 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bob Hale presents a broadly Fregean approach to metaphysics, according to which ontology and modality are mutually dependent upon one another. He argues that facts about what kinds of things exist depend on facts about what is possible. Modal facts are fundamental, and have their basis in the essences of things—not in meanings or concepts.
Download or read book From an Ontological Point of View written by John Heil and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-05 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is the world hierarchically arranged, incorporating 'levels' of reality? What is the nature of objects and properties? What does 'realism' about ordinary objects or states of mind demand? When an assertion is true, what makes it true? Are natural properties best regarded as qualities or powers or some combination of these? What are colours? What explains the 'projective' character of intentionality? What is the nature of consciousness, and what relation do conscious experiences bearto material states and processes?From an Ontological Point of View endeavours to provide answers to such questions through an examination of ground-floor issues in ontology. The result is an account of the fundamental constituents of the world around us and an application of this account to problems dominating recent work in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics.The book, written in an accessible, non-technical style, is intended for non-specialists as well as seasoned metaphysicians.
Download or read book Fundamentals of Ontological Commitment written by Paolo Valore and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-01-15 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scientific literature on particular themes in ontology is extremely abundant, but it is often very hard for freshmen or sophomores to find a red thread between the various proposals. This text is an opinionated introduction, a preliminary text to research in ontology from the so called standard approach to ontological commitment, that is from the particular point of view that connects ontological questions to quantificational questions. It offers a survey of this viewpoint in ontology together with their possible applications through a broad array of examples and open problems and, at the same time, essential references to the classics of philosophy, so as to allow non-specialists to understand the terms and analysis procedures characterizing the discipline. Its result is a wide-ranging overview of the issued tackled by ontology, with a particular focus on the most relevant problems of contemporary debate (categorial taxonomies, nonexistent objects, case studies of ontological debates in specific fields of knowledge).
Download or read book The Fragmentation of Being written by Kris McDaniel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-28 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Fragmentation of Being offers answers to some of the most fundamental questions in ontology. There are many kinds of beings but are there also many kinds of being? The world contains a variety of objects, each of which, let us provisionally assume, exists, but do some objects exist in different ways? Do some objects enjoy more being or existence than other objects? Are there different ways in which one object might enjoy more being than another? Most contemporary metaphysicians would answer "no" to each of these questions. So widespread is this consensus that the questions this book addressed are rarely even raised let alone explicitly answered. But Kris McDaniel carefully examines a wide range of reasons for answering each of these questions with a "yes". In doing so, he connects these questions with many important metaphysical topics, including substance and accident, time and persistence, the nature of ontological categories, possibility and necessity, presence and absence, persons and value, ground and consequence, and essence and accident. In addition to discussing contemporary problems and theories, McDaniel also discusses the ontological views of many important figures in the history of philosophy, including Aquinas, Aristotle, Descartes, Heidegger, Husserl, Kant, Leibniz, Meinong, and many more.
Download or read book Ontological Categories written by Katarina Perovic and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
