Abstract
In this paper I wish to describe four ontologies, all of which are derivable from one basic principle. I shall suggest that ordinarily we employ, in somewhat mixed fashion, terms that designate entities recognized by each of these ontologies. I shall further suggest that one must therefore realize that the ontology presupposed, or implied, by one group of ordinarily used terms may be very different from the ontology presupposed, or implied, by another group of such terms. Yet my thesis is not essentially concerned with ordinary-language analysis. My main claim is that each one of these ontologies is complete and self-sufficient and that it need not be used in conjunction with any other. Our reason for ordinarily using all of these ontologies (though some of them are used much more frequently than others) is not that any of them is, in itself, deficient or faulty. The reasons are pragmatic and historical, and have to do with naturalness, ease and simplicity of expression rather than with essential adequacy.
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Notes
Wilfrid Sellars, `Time and the World Order’ in Herbert Feigl and Grover Maxwel (eds.) Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. III (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962), pp. 527–618.
Bernard Mayo, `Objects, Events and Complementarity,’ Philosophical Review, LXX, (July 1961): 340–361.
Terms from thing-languages are not automatically transferable into process-or event-languages. `Being fond of’ or `sitting on’ are relations that take place between two things, and one cannot expect them to obtain in an ontology of events or processes. Rather, the corresponding process-terms `being-fond-of*’ and `sitting on*’ may be learned, e.g., ostensively, at occasions similar to those at which `being fond of’ and `sitting on’ are learned in our society.
C. H. Langford, `The Institutional Use of The,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, X, 1 (September 1949): 115–120.
The most detailed and meticulous examination of the logic of types 1 know of is to be found in John B. Bacon’s unpublished dissertation (Yale University, 1965) Being and Existence. Bacon also investigates the view that types are genuine singular entities. However, after a long examination he finds the idea untenable, and reaches the conclusion that “Institutional phrases cannot be names; types cannot be objects” (p. 240). His main argument is the antinomy that, if Man is an object, “you would be 1, since we both embody Man. In fact, each thing would be everything else, since all would betoken the Thing. In particular, Xis X” (p. 239). This argument, however, is based upon a category mistake. `Zemach’ and `Bacon’ are names of things, and “Zemach is Bacon” is a false statement in the language of the ontology 11. The closest one can get to this, in the language of types, is “Man is here, and Man is there.” Now it is true that Man is there blond (in the language of CTs, Bacon is blond) and here black (again, in the language of things, Zemach is black). But the fact that Man is blond here and is not blond there is no more contradictory, or puzzling, than the fact that Bacon is blond now, but may not be blond ten years from now. “Bacon is blond and is identical with something not blond” is puzzling only if one fails to recognize the language of things here used and misconstrues it as a statement about events. On this (mis-) interpretation, the statement made would be that X (Bacon’s blond stage) is identical with X (Bacon’s nonblond stage), which is a flagrant contradiction. Bacon’s mistake is, then, his failing to realize that the language of types is an alternative to, rather than an extension of, the language of things. The incongruities that can be discovered between the two languages do not discredit one or the other. They only demonstrate that terms of two different ontologies cannot always be simply juxtaposed without either of them being translated or reinterpreted in terms of the other ontology.
Again one may find in Bacon, op. cit., a most helpful discussion of the relation between niasses and types. Bacon’s conclusion is that niasses can, indeed, be regarded as types.
Most lately in Word and Object (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT press, 1960), pp. 90–110. Earlier in `Speaking of Objects,’ in J. A. Fodor and J. J. Katz (eds.), The Structure of Language (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964), pp. 446–459, and in his own From a Log:.-al Point of View (New York: Harper Row, 1963), pp. 65–79.
This formulation is not precise. It will be corrected and amplified later on.
P.F. Strawson, Individuals (London; Methuen, 1959), pp. 202–213.
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Zemach, E.M. (1970). Four Ontologies. In: Pelletier, F.J. (eds) Mass Terms: Some Philosophical Problems. Synthese Language Library, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4110-5_6
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