Ontological Categories

Intuitivamente, la realidad está formada por entidades y hechos existentes y concretos. Sin embargo, nuestro lenguaje y pensamiento versa también sobre hechos meramente posibles, sobre cosas inexistentes y entidades abstractas. ¿Cómo es esto posible? ¿Significa ello que cuando hablamos y pensamos de estas otras cosas no hablamos de nada real? ¿o mas bien la realidad está mas poblada de lo que pensábamos y hay diferentes maneras de formar parte de la realidad además de la de existir de manera positiva y (...) concreta? En este libro trataremos de arrojar luz a estas y otras preguntas similares, poniendo atención a las estrategias argumentativas generales que suelen esgrimirse en esta rama de la filosofía. (shrink)

Arguments for a theory about the nature of the ontological categories, the relations that determine them and their epistemic role in the construction of different kinds of limited, but true knowledge of reality in itself.

In this talk, I propose a new account of ontological form, formal ontological relations, modes of being and hence of specifying the subject matter of metaphysics.

The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction that is generally taken to have semantic content. There are three approaches to what such such a semantic mass-count distinction may consist in: 1. an object-based approach, 2. an extension-based approach, and 3. a grammar-based approach.The paper adopts the grammar-based approach on which count categories convey a notion of unity at a level of 'grammaticized individuation', to use Rothstein's (2017) terms. It argues that verbs with respect to their Davidsonian argument position display the (...) diagnostics of mass rather than count. This is predicted by the grammar-based approach, but not object- or extension-based approaches. The paper accounts for the mass diagnostics of verbs in terms of semantic selection. (shrink)

What the Sorites has to tell us is a simple truth regarding our categories. It appears to saddle us with something other than a simple truth—something worse, a contradiction or a problem or a paradox—only when we insist on viewing it through a discrete logic of categories. Discrete categories and discrete logic are for robots. We aren’t robots, and the simple truth is that we don’t handle categories in the way any discrete logic would demand. For us non-robots, what the (...) Sorites has to offer is a straightforward truth regarding how incapable robots and their logic are of handling categories like ours. (shrink)

Nominalizations of modal predicates have received little, if any, attention in the semantic or philosophical literature. This paper will argue that nominalizations of modal predicates require recognizing a novel ontological category of modal objects and it will outline a new semantics of modals based on modal objects.

ABSTRACT: I argue that Sellars’s metaconceptual theory of the categories exemplifies and extends a long line of nominalistic thinking about the nature of the categories from Ockham and Kant to the Tractatus and Carnap, and that this theory is far more central than has generally been realized to each of Sellars’s most famous and enduring philosophical conceptions: the myth of the given, the logical space of reasons, and resolving the ostensible clash between the manifest and scientific images of the human (...) being in the world. Sellars’s distinctive contribution to this longstanding (if currently on the defensive) metaconceptual approach to the nature of ontological categories was to interpret and reconstruct it in terms of his own ‘meaning as use’ or norm-governed inferential role semantics. With these resources Sellars sought to preserve the genuine insights in the ‘realist’ or broadly platonic traditions while simultaneously defending the idea that in the end, as he puts it, “a naturalistic ontology must be a nominalistic ontology” (1980a NAO IV §129). (shrink)

Pantheists are often accused of lacking a sufficient account of the unity of the cosmos and its supposed priority over its many parts. I argue that complex theists, those who think that God has ontologically distinct parts or attributes, face the same problems. Current proposals for the metaphysics of complex theism do not offer any greater unity or ontological independence than pantheism, since they are modeled on priority monism. I then discuss whether the formal distinction of John Duns Scotus offers (...) a way forward for complex theists. I show that only those classical theists who affirm divine simplicity are better off with respect to aseity and unity than pantheists. Only proponents of divine simplicity can fairly claim to have found a fully independent ultimate being. (shrink)

In this paper we introduce some logical and philosophical refinements to OntoClean, first by developing some formal constraints on identity criteria, secondly by specifying a kind of identity criteria, two level identity criteria, whose role is to explain an identity among some entities referring to some other, more basic, entities. Using such refinement we add a formal constraint to the stock of OntoClean meta-constraints (OC+). We, then, observe that two level identity criteria have an intuitive reading in terms of dependence (...) of a kind of entities on some other entities, possibly specified in terms of a grounding relation. Are identity criteria grounding principles? In the second part of the paper we discuss this option. (shrink)

The aim of this thesis is to propose a deflationary approach towards the ontological analysis of physical theories. Such an approach sustains that the development of ontologies for physical theories must be neutral relatively to the debate between realists and anti-realists in philosophy of physics. Mainly, our attention will be oriented towards what we called "quantum domain", which includes the non-relativistic Quantum Mechanics and variants of the Quantum Field Theory. This meta-ontological approach consists in an attempt to provide a methodology (...) for the development of specific ontologies for physical theories. With this aim we suggest the separation between physical phenomena and physical theories on one side, and physical theories and ontologies on the other side. This separation intends to endorse the idea that physical theories can provide all the informative contents required for the development of the ontologies associated with them. The result is a defense of the idea that physical theories can positively contribute for the constitution of the ontologies in physics. Additionally, we present a critical analysis of four different ontological approaches to QM and QFT. Each one of these interpretations deals with a different ontological category (tropes, events and processes). At the end of the thesis we will analyze the concepts of interaction and commutation in QFT in order to exemplify the main lines of the deflationary approach suggested here. (shrink)

We aim to compile some means for a rational reconstruction of a named part of the start-over of Baruch (Benedictus) de Spinoza's metaphysics in 'de deo' (which is 'pars prima' of the 'ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata' ) in terms of 1st order model theory. In so far, as our approach will be judged successful, it may, besides providing some help in understanding Spinoza, also contribute to the discussion of some or other philosophical evergreen, e.g. 'ontological commitment'. For this text we (...) assume the reader familiar with 'de deo' as well as with some basic concepts and results of 1st order model theory. Before we start reconstruction, we will first revisit shortly the concept of 'attributum' (definitio IV) in it's setting in 'de deo' , next scan for formalizable aspects of 'in suo genere finita' ('de deo', definitio II), subsequently list the model theoretic constructs we will make use of. Then we begin reconstruction by stating "coordinative definitions" for the notions of 'attribute (of a substance)', 'modus (as conceived via an attribute)' and 'substance (as conceived via an attribute)', reasoning shortly for each of them. The "coordinative definitions", we will arrive at, must not be understood as literal translations of Spinoza's concepts - of course, there can't be such a thing as a literal translation - they are meant as formal analoga of these concepts, mapping some logical structure. But even with this caveat they may seem strange to the reader at this stage of discussion. Additional justification for them then should be found in our endeavour, to map some argumentation of Spinoza's proofs of some of his propositions from this starting point. (shrink)

Here, I lay the foundations of a high-level ontology of particulars whose structuring principles differ radically from the 'continuant' vs. 'occurrent' distinction traditionally adopted in applied ontology. These principles are derived from a new analysis of the ontology of “occurring” or “happening” entities. Firstly, my analysis integrates recent work on the ontology of processes, which brings them closer to objects in their mode of existence and persistence by assimilating them to continuant particulars. Secondly, my analysis distinguishes clearly between processes and (...) events, in order to make the latter abstract objects of thought (alongside propositions). Lastly, I open my ontological inventory to properties and facts, the existence of which is commonly admitted. By giving specific roles to these primitives, the framework allows one to account for static and dynamic aspects of the physical world and for the way that subjects conceive its history: facts account for the life of substances (physical objects and processes), whereas events enable cognitive subjects to account for the life story of substances. (shrink)

In this thesis I argue against unrestricted mereological hybridism, the view that there are absolutely no constraints on wholes having parts from many different logical or ontological categories, an exemplar of which I take to be ‘mixed fusions’. These are composite entities which have parts from at least two different categories – the membered (as in classes) and the non-membered (as in individuals). As a result, mixed fusions can also be understood to represent a variety of cross-category summation such as (...) the abstract with the concrete, the physical with the non-physical, and the possible with the impossible, just to name a few. -/- Proposed by David Lewis (1991) alongside his defence of classical mereology (the major theory of parthood which permits such transcategorial composites through its principle of unrestricted composition) it is my contention that mixed fusions are an under-examined consequence of indiscriminate mereological fusion which harbour a multitude of complications. In my attempt to discern their substantive character, throughout this thesis I make a case study of mixed fusions and uncover several problematic consequences which I think follow from their most plausible assessment. -/- These include: (1) that mixed fusions’ probable membership relations may lead to dubious foundational loops in the mereological Universe, or (2) otherwise that mixed fusions oblige an implausible ontological priority of the mereological Universe as a whole; (3) that mixed fusions contradict the reductive account of set theory they are proposed within, by plausibly being seen to have the same members as their class parts, and (4) that mixed fusions therefore confound a mereological thesis of Composition as Identity, which some (including Lewis) use to support classical mereology – a consequence which is potentially self-defeating; (5) that mixed fusions as sums of abstract and concrete entities both subvert Lewis’s (1986) system of modal realism, while (6) also undermining less expansive theories of possible worlds; and finally, (7) that even where some of the foregoing is resisted, it remains implausible that mixed fusions are ontologically innocent, because their supposed distinction from their parts in this case ensures that they need to be counted as additional entities in one’s ontology. -/- To be clear, I do not advance a theory of mereological hybrid nihilism in the sense of denying all cases of transcategorial composition. (I only cover a few select instances of mereological hybridism via mixed fusions after all.) Rather, I deny that mereological hybridism is plausible in full generality, by demonstrating that any cases of it are at least limited by the constraints that I identify. This in turn vindicates a call for a restriction on parthood theories and composition principles which allow certain types of categorially mixed entities – including restricting classical mereology with its principle of unrestricted composition. -/- Although theories of parthood like the standard classical mereology are not ordinarily developed for the sake of mereological hybrids like mixed fusions, these and other transcategorial composites are still among the logical consequences of such parthood systems operating with sufficient generality. The significance of my thesis, then, comes from showcasing how some of these kinds of entities do not conform to the systems in which they are included as required, and hence I argue for the rejection of unrestricted mereological hybridism as well as any mereological principles which support it. (shrink)

Ethnobotanical research provides ample justification for comparing diverse biological nomenclatures and exploring ways that retain alternative naming practices. However, how (and whether) comparison of nomenclatures is possible remains a subject of discussion. The comparison of diverse nomenclatural practices introduces a suite of epistemic and ontological difficulties and considerations. Different nomenclatures may depend on whether the communities using them rely on formalized naming conventions; cultural or spiritual valuations; or worldviews. Because of this, some argue that the different naming practices may not (...) be comparable if the ontological commitments employed differ. Comparisons between different nomenclatures cannot assume that either the naming practices or the object to which these names are intended to apply identifies some universally agreed upon object of interest. Investigating this suite of philosophical problems, I explore the role grey nomenclatures play in classification. ‘Grey nomenclatures’ are defined as those that employ names that are either intentionally or accidentally non-Linnaean. The classification of the lichen thallus (a symbiont) has been classified outside the Linnaean system by botanists relying on the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN). But, I argue, the use of grey names is not isolated and does not occur exclusively within institutionalized naming practices. I suggest, ‘grey names’ also aptly describe nomenclatures employed by indigenous communities such as the Samí of Northern Finmark, the Sherpa of Nepal, and the Okanagan First Nations. I pay particular attention to how naming practices are employed in these communities; what ontological commitments they hold; for what purposes are these names used; and what anchors the community’s nomenclatural practices. Exploring the history of lichen naming and early ethnolichenological research, I then investigate the stakes that must be considered for any attempt to preserve, retain, integrate, or compare the knowledge contained in both academically formalized grey names and indigenous nomenclatures in a way that preserves their source-specific informational content. (shrink)

Natural languages generally distinguishes among different existence predicates for different types of entities, such as English 'exist', 'occur', and 'obtain'. The paper gives an in-depth discussion and analysis of a range of existence predicates in natural language within the general project of descriptive metaphysics, or more specifically ‘natural language ontology’.

There are several passages in the Metaphysics where Aristotle explains ontological priority in terms of ontological dependence, but there are others where he seems to adopt a teleological conception of ontological priority. It is sometimes maintained that the latter priority too must be construed in terms of the former, or that the priorities in question are not both endorsed (or simultaneously endorsed) by Aristotle. The goal of this paper is to show otherwise; I argue that what is at issue are (...) two distinct priorities that Aristotle simultaneously endorses. (shrink)

This dialogue presents a substantive account of the nature and aim of ontology.Export citation.

The Parmenides poses the question for what entities there are Forms, and the criticism of Forms it contains is commonly supposed to document an ontological reorientation in Plato. According to this reading, Forms no longer express the excellence of a given entity and a Socratic, ethical perspective on life, but come to resemble concepts, or what concepts designate, and are meant to explain nature as a whole. Plato’s conception of dialectic, it is further suggested, consequently changes into a value-neutral method (...) directed at tracing the interrelation of such Forms, an outlook supposedly documented in certain passages on method from the Sophist and the Statesman as well. -/- The article urges that this reading is untenable. For in the Parmenides the question for what entities one should posit Forms is left open, and the passages on method from the Sophist and Statesman neither encourage a non-normative ontology nor a value-neutral method of inquiry. What the three dialogues encourage us to do is rather to set common opinions about the relative worth and value of things aside when conducting ontological inquiries; and this attitude, the article concludes, demonstrates a close kinship, rather than a significant difference, between Plato’s Socrates and his Eleatic philosophers. (shrink)

It has been a common assumption that words are substances that instantiate or have properties. In this paper, I question the assumption that our ontology of words requires posting substances by outlining a bundle theory of words, wherein words are bundles of various sorts of properties (such as semantic, phonetic, orthographic, and grammatical properties). I argue that this view can better account for certain phenomena than substance theories, is ontologically more parsimonious, and coheres with claims in linguistics.

The natural name theory, recently discussed by Johnson (2018), is proposed as an explanation of pure quotation where the quoted term(s) refers to a linguistic object such as in the sentence ‘In the above, ‘bank’ is ambiguous’. After outlining the theory, I raise a problem for the natural name theory. I argue that positing a resemblance relation between the name and the linguistic object it names does not allow us to rule out cases where the natural name fails to resemble (...) the linguistic object it names. I argue that to avoid this problem, we can combine the natural name theory with a type-realist metaphysics of language, and hold that the name is natural because the name is an instance of the kind that it names. I conclude by reflecting on the importance of the metaphysics of language for questions in the philosophy of language. (shrink)

The conception that the world can be represented as a system of levels of being can be traced back to the beginnings of European philosophy and has lost little of its plausibility in the meantime. One of the important modern conceptions of levels was developed by Nicolai Hartmann. It exhibits remarkable similarities and contrasts with the classification of the real developed by Werner Heisenberg in his paper Ordnung der Wirklichkeit (Order of Reality). In my contribution I will introduce these two (...) conceptions of levels and compare their salient features. I will discuss them as variants of a scientific worldview that attempts to forge a link to the perspective of the lifeworld. Then I will go on to argue that the shortcomings of these conceptions can be remedied by extending them with the level of the very small and that of the very large. The introduction of these ontologically fundamental levels is based on scientific knowledge that for the most part eludes he intuitively representable character of lifeworld experience. Historical changes in science and the lifeworld could lead to the notion that reality can be represented as a system of levels being challenged in future. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a unified causal account of natural kinds. Using as a starting point the widely held view that natural kind terms or predicates are projectible, I argue that the ontological bases of their projectibility are the causal properties and relations associated with the natural kinds themselves. Natural kinds are not just concatenations of properties but ordered hierarchies of properties, whose instances are related to one another as causes and effects in recurrent causal processes. The resulting account (...) of natural kinds as clusters of core causal properties that give rise to clusters of derivative properties enables us to distinguish genuine natural kinds from non-natural kinds. For instance, it enables us to say why some of the purely conventional categories derived from the social domain do not correspond to natural kinds, though other social categories may. (shrink)

Meta-metaphysics concerns the nature and methodology of metaphysics and metaphysical inquiry. The emergence of meta-metaphysics as a systematic area of study is relatively recent, going back to the late 1990s. But the issues pursued in meta-metaphysics are certainly not novel: an age old question about the nature of metaphysics is whether it is possible to obtain knowledge about metaphysical matters in the first place, and if it is, how this knowledge is obtained.

According to standard trope nominalism, there are simple tropes that do not have parts or multiply distinct aspects. Douglas Ehring’s reductio ad absurdum against this standard view concludes that there are no simple tropes. In this paper, we provide a response to Ehring defending the standard view. Ehring’s argument may be refuted by (1) distinguishing the ontological form of tropes from their contribution to the ontological content of the world, and (2) construing tropes as having primitive identity. At the same (...) time, standard trope nominalism is elaborated on by distinguishing between ontological form and content, for which there are also independent reasons. (shrink)

The aim of natural language ontology is to uncover the ontological categories and structures that are implicit in the use of natural language, that is, that a speaker accepts when using a language. This article aims to clarify what exactly the subject matter of natural language ontology is, what sorts of linguistic data it should take into account, how natural language ontology relates to other branches of metaphysics, in what ways natural language ontology is important, and what may be distinctive (...) of the ontological categories and structures reflected in natural language. (shrink)

Aristotle’s philosophy is considered with respect to one central concept of his philosophy, viz. opposition. Far from being a mere side-effect of syllogistic, it is argued in the present paper that opposition helps to articulate ontology and logic through an account of what can be or cannot be in a systematic and structural way. The paper is divided into three main parts. In Section I, the notion of Being is scrutinized through Aristotle’s theory of categories. In Section II, the notion (...) of Non-Being is connected to Aristotle’s theory of oppositions. In Section III, the notion of essence is revisited in order to bring about a holist theory of meaning by individuating through opposite properties. In conclusion, the legacy of Aristotle is depicted as balanced between a powerful reflection around Being and a restrictive ontology of substance. (shrink)

Title in English translation: Metametaphysics - with and without Categories. A comment paper on An Introduction to Metametaphysics by Tuomas Tahko. Ehdotan artikkelissa uutta olevan ja sen muodon välistä erottelua. Erottelun avulla voidaan antaa täsmällinen käsitys ontologisen kategorian käsitteestä ja metafysiikan tutkimuskohteesta. Argumentoin myös, että metafysiikan epistemologiaa ja semantiikkaa sekä metafyysistä selitttämistä pitää lähestyä kategorianäkökulmasta. Artikkeli on kommentti Tuomas Tahkon oppikirjaan An Introduction to Metametaphysics.

[A comment paper on Tuomas Tahko's book An Introduction to Metametaphysics (CUP, 2016).] Pyrin tässä artikkelissa selvittämään, missä määrin Tuomas Tahkon kirjan An Introduction to Metametaphysics luvussa 9 esittämä käsitys tieteen ja metafysiikan suhteesta tuo selvyyttä metafysiikan luonteeseen itsenäisenä tutkimusalana. Analyyttinen metafysiikka on joutunut viimeisten viidentoista vuoden aikana kasvavan kritiikin kohteeksi. James Ladymanin (2012) mukaan viime aikoina suosittu käsitys metafyysisen teorian valinnasta teoreettisten hyveiden perusteella kohtaa niin sanotun vahvan globaalin alimääräytyneisyyden ongelman. Tahko pyrkii vastaamaan näihin huoliin esittämällä synteesiin E.J. Lowen (...) metafysiikkakäsityksen ja Laurie Paulin (2002) esittämien ideoiden välillä. Argumentoin, että Tahkon vastaus on sikäli puutteellinen, että se jättää avoimeksi kysymyksen parhaan ontologisen kategoriajärjestelmän valinnasta. Teen ehdotuksia siitä, miten voimme välttää alimääräytyneisyyshuolen myös tässä tapauksessa. (shrink)

Discussions over whether these natural kinds exist, what is the nature of their existence, and whether natural kinds are themselves natural kinds aim to not only characterize the kinds of things that exist in the world, but also what can knowledge of these categories provide. Although philosophically critical, much of the past discussions of natural kinds have often answered these questions in a way that is unresponsive to, or has actively avoided, discussions of the empirical use of natural kinds and (...) what I dub “activities of natural kinding” and “natural kinding practices”. The natural kinds of a particular discipline are those entities, events, mechanisms, processes, relationships, and concepts that delimit investigation within it—but we might reasonably ask: How are these natural kinds discovered?, How are they made?, Are they revisable?, and Where do they come from? A turn to natural kinding practices reveals a new set of questions open for investigation: How do natural kinds explain through practice?, What are natural kinding practices and classifications and why should we care?, What is the nature of natural kinds viewed as a set of activities?, and How do practice approaches to natural kinds shape and reconfigure scientific disciplines? Natural kinds have traditionally been discussed in terms of how they classify the contents of the world. The metaphysical project has been one which identifies essences, laws, sameness relations, fundamental properties, and clusters of family resemblances and how these map out the ontological space of the world. But actually how this is done has been less important in the discussion than the resultant categories that are produced. I aim to rectify these omissions and suggest a new metaphysical project investigating kinds in practice. (shrink)

This paper addresses the ontological status of the ontological categories as defended within E.J. Lowe’s four-category ontology (kinds, objects, properties/relations, and modes). I consider the arguments in Griffith (2015. “Do Ontological Categories Exist?” Metaphysica 16 (1):25–35) against Lowe’s claim that ontological categories do not exist, and argue that Griffith’s objections to Lowe do not work once we fully take advantage of ontological resources available within Lowe’s four-category ontology. I then argue that the claim that ontological categories do not exist has (...) no undesirable consequences for Lowe’s brand of realism. (shrink)

The Controversy over the Existence of the World (henceforth Controversy) is the magnum opus of Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden. Despite the renewed interest for Ingarden’s pioneering ontological work whithin analytic philosophy, little attention has been dedicated to Controversy's main goal, clearly indicated by the very title of the book: finding a solution to the centuries-old philosophical controversy about the ontological status of the external world. -/- There are at least three reasons for this relative indifference. First, even at the time (...) when the book was published, the Controversy was no longer seen as a serious polemical topic, whether it was disqualified as an archaic metaphysical pseudo-problem, or taken to be the last remnant of an antiscientific approach to philosophy culminating in idealism and relativism. Second, Ingarden’s reasoning on the matter is highly complex, at times misleading, and even occasionally faulty. Finally, his analysis is not only incomplete – Controversy being unachieved – but also arguably aporetic. -/- One may wonder, then, why it is still worth excavating this mammoth treatise to study an issue apparently no longer relevant to contemporary philosophy. Aside from historical and exegetical purposes, which are of course very interesting in their own right, Ingarden’s treatment of the Controversy remains one of the most detailed and ambitious ontological undertakings of the twentieth century. Not only does it lay out an incredibly detailed map of possible solutions to the Controversy, but it also tries to show why the latter is a genuine and fundamental problem that owes its hasty disqualification to various oversimplifications over the course of the history of philosophy. -/- In this chapter, I first give an overview of Ingarden’s method, which relies mainly on a combinatorial analysis. Then, I summarize his examination of possible solutions to the Controversy, and determine which ones can be ruled out on ontological grounds. Finally, I explain why this ambitious project ultimately leads to a theoretical impasse, leaving Ingarden unable to come up with a definitive solution to the Controversy – regardless of the fact that the book is unachieved. I argue that his analysis of the problem yields a more modest but nonetheless valuable result. (shrink)

The Metametaphysics of Categories: Replies to Hakkarainen and Keinänen (in Finnish). Part of a book symposium on my An Introduction to Metametaphysics.

Samuel Alexander was one of the first realists of the twentieth century to defend a theory of categories. He thought that the categories are genuinely real and grounded in the intrinsic nature of Space-Time. I present his reduction of the categories in terms of Space-Time, articulate his account of categorial structure and completeness, and offer an interpretation of what he thought the nature of the categories really were. I then argue that his theory of categories has some advantages over competing (...) theories of his day, and finally draw some important lessons that we can learn from his realist yet reductionist theory of categories. (shrink)

In his “Farewell to Substance: A Differentiated Leave-Taking”, Peter Simons reaches the provocative conclusion that the concept of substance, as it is employed by metaphysicians, has become obsolete, since in the end there may be nothing at all which answers to it. No harm is done, Simons allows, if we continue to retain an everyday notion of substance, as long as we are aware of the limitations of this practice: there is no reason in general to expect that what is (...) salient from our specifically human point of view will retain a special place in light of our most considered scientific and metaphysical theories of the world. In this paper, I argue that, contrary to Simons’ pessimistic outlook, the concept of substance continues to retain its importance for metaphysics. Among the primary explanatory roles played by the concept of substance in metaphysics is its use in designating certain kinds of entities as occupying a privileged position relative to a particular ontology. But disputes over substancehood can also target the criteria themselves relative to which an ontologically privileged position is awarded to certain taxonomic categories. In these uses, we see the concept of substance employed in an absolute, a relational and a comparative sense, to designate items as substances simpliciter, as the substances of something else, or as more or less deserving of substance status. (shrink)

The accepted narrative treats John Stuart Mill’s Kinds as the historical prototype for our natural kinds, but Mill actually employs two separate notions: Kinds and natural groups. Considering these, along with the accounts of Mill’s nineteenth-century interlocutors, forces us to recognize two distinct questions. First, what marks a natural kind as worthy of inclusion in taxonomy? Second, what exists in the world that makes a category meet that criterion? Mill’s two notions offer separate answers to the two questions: natural groups (...) for taxonomy and Kinds for ontology. This distinction is ignored in many contemporary debates about natural kinds and is obscured by the standard narrative that treats our natural kinds just as a development of Mill’s Kinds. (shrink)

Changes in an upper level ontology have obvious conse-quences for the domain ontologies that use it at lower levels. It is therefore crucial to document the changes made between successive versions of ontologies of this kind. We describe and apply a method for tracking, explaining and measuring changes between successive versions of upper level ontologies such as the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). The proposed change-tracking method extends earlier work on Realism-Based Ontology Versioning (RBOV) and Evolutionary Terminology Auditing (ETA). We describe (...) here the application of this evaluation method to changes between BFO 1.0, BFO 1.1, and BFO 2.0. We discuss the issues raised by this application and describe the extensions which we added to the original evaluation schema in order to account for changes in an ontology of this type. Our results show that BFO has undergone eight types of changes that can be systematically explained by the extended evaluation schema. Finally, we discuss problematic cases, possible pitfalls and certain limits of our study that we propose to address in future work. (shrink)

Naturalism about natural kinds is the view that they are none other than the kinds discoverable by science. This thesis is in tension with what is perhaps the dominant contemporary view of natural kinds: essentialism. According to essentialism, natural kinds constitute a small subset of our scientific categories, namely those definable in terms of intrinsic, microphysical properties, which are possessed necessarily rather than contingently by their bearers. Though essentialism may appear compatible with naturalism, and is indeed sometimes qualified with the (...) epithet “scientific,” it has become increasingly clear in recent years that only a minority of categories posited by science satisfy those conditions. I will not try to argue against essentialism directly in this chapter. Instead, I will attempt to articulate an alternative, naturalist conception of natural kinds, according to which the mark of natural kinds is their discoverability by science, not just basic science but the special sciences and even the social sciences. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider particular attempts by E. J. Lowe and Michael Gorman at providing an independence criterion of substancehood and argue that the stipulative exclusion of non-particulars and proper parts (or constituents) from such accounts raises difficult issues for their proponents. The results of the present discussion seem to indicate that, at least for the case of composite entities, a unity criterion of substancehood might have at least as much, and perhaps more, to offer than an independence criterion (...) and therefore ought to be explored further by neo-Aristotelians in search of a defensible notion of substancehood. I indicated briefly how such a unity criterion might be used by neo-Aristotelians to support the inclusion of hylomorphic compounds in the category of substance, given the traditional role of form as the principle of unity within the compound. (shrink)

Book review of 'The Universe As We Find It' (2012, OUP). By John Heil.

When, for example, we say of something that it ‘is an object’, or ‘is an event’, or ‘is a property’, we are engaging in categorial predication: we are assigning something to a certain ontological category. Ontological categorization is clearly a type of classification, but it differs radically from the types of classification that are involved in the taxonomic practices of empirical sciences, as when a physicist says of a certain particle that it ‘is an electron’, or when a zoologist says (...) of a certain animal that it ‘is a mammal’, or when a meteorologist says of a certain weather‐phenomenon that it ‘is a hurricane’. Classifications of the latter types presuppose that the items being classified have already been assigned to appropriate ontological categories, such as the categories of object, species, or event. What do categorial predications mean? How are their truth‐conditions to be determined, and how can those truth‐conditions be known to be satisfied? Do they have truthmakers? Questions like these are amongst those addressed in the present paper. (shrink)

This article considers the significance of Kant’s schematized categories in the Critique of Pure Reason for contemporary metaphysics. I present Kant’s understanding of the schematism and how it functions within his critique of the limits of pure reason. Then I argue that, although the true role of the schemata is a relatively late development in Kant’s thought, it is nevertheless a core notion, and the central task of the first Critique can be sufficiently articulated in the language of the schematism. (...) A surprising result of Kant’s doctrine of the schematism is that a limited form of metaphysics is possible even within the parameters set out in the first Critique. To show this, I offer contrasting examples of legitimate and illegitimate forays into metaphysics in light of the condition of the schematized categories. (shrink)

This paper examines the phenomenon of ‘interactive kinds’ first identified by Ian Hacking. An interactive kind is one that is created or significantly modified once a concept of it has been formulated and acted upon in certain ways. Interactive kinds may also ‘loop back’ to influence our concepts and classifications. According to Hacking, interactive kinds are found exclusively in the human domain. After providing a general account of interactive kinds and outlining their philosophical significance, I argue that they are not (...) confined to the human realm, but that they can also occur elsewhere. Hence, I conclude by arguing that interactive kinds pose a challenge to scientific realism about kinds by making it difficult to make a distinction between real and non-real kinds. (shrink)

The task of this chapter is to investigate and assess Grossmann’s view of the ontological status of categories. It has two dimensions. Because Grossmann does not offer a full discussion of the ontology of categories, we first need to present an interpretation of his view. Our point of departure is Grossmann’s claim that a category is a fundamental property of being (which implies that he holds view 3 above). Our second task is to assess the adequacy of his view. We (...) do this by raising some problems with Grossmann’s account, offering as an alternative view a version of 4 above, and defending it against what we construe as Grossmann’s possible counter-arguments. We argue that the best way to view categories themselves is as ontologically neutral insofar as this opens the way for particular categories to be linguistic entities, mental acts, or properties of extra-mental things. This requires, in turn, a qualified defense of two views rejected by Grossmann—common natures and modes of being. (shrink)

Many existing biomedical vocabulary standards rest on incomplete, inconsistent or confused accounts of basic terms pertaining to diseases, diagnoses, and clinical phenotypes. Here we outline what we believe to be a logically and biologically coherent framework for the representation of such entities and of the relations between them. We defend a view of disease as involving in every case some physical basis within the organism that bears a disposition toward the execution of pathological processes. We present our view in the (...) form of a list of terms and definitions designed to provide a consistent starting point for the representation of both disease and diagnosis in information systems in the future. (shrink)

Numerous research groups are now utilizing Basic Formal Ontology as an upper-level framework to assist in the organization and integration of biomedical information. This paper provides elucidation of the three existing BFO subcategories of realizable entity, namely function, role, and disposition. It proposes one further sub-category of tendency, and considers the merits of recognizing two sub-categories of function for domain ontologies, namely, artifactual and biological function. The motivation is to help advance the coherent ontological treatment of functions, roles, and dispositions, (...) to help provide the potential for more detailed classification, and to shed light on BFO’s general make-up and use. (shrink)

This article defends strong formal ontological conception of ontological categories against Lewis's "deflanationary" conception. Here, it sides with E.J. Lowe (1998) among others. However, the paper argues against Lowe's conception of metaphysics as an a priori science. Different category systems are compared and the best system is selected on the basis of its ability to accommodate our the best a posteriori conceptions of reality.