Abstract
In order to set forth what I take to be the most fundamental ontological categories, I will present four dichotomies — four ways of dividing things into exclusive and exhaustive subsets. In each case one of the subsets will be characterized positively and the other negatively. I will also attempt, so far as possible, to characterize the subsets in positive terms.
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Notes
In holding that states and events are contingent things, I depart in a fundmental way from the view of events as abstract objects that I attempted to defend in Person and Object (LaSalle, IL: The Open Court Publishing Co., 1976); see Chapter IV. In arriving at the present view, I have been especially influenced by the work of Jaegwon Kim. See especially his “Events as Property Exemplifications,” in M. Brand and D. Walton, eds., Action Theory (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1976), pp. 159–77.
Bolzano applies the concept this way: “Everything that there is of one or the other of the following two types: either it is an entity which is of another thing [an etwas Anderem] or it exists, as one is accustomed to saying, in itself [fur sich].” Bernard Bolzano, Athanasia oder Gründefü r die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (Sulzbach: J.G.V. Seidelschen Buchhandlung, 1838), p. 21.
The distinction between beginnings and processes was clearly set forth by Roman Ingarden. But Ingarden, conceding that he was using terms somewhat arbitrarily, restricted “events” (“Ereignisse”) to what are here called “beginnings,” suggesting that processes (“Vorgänge”) are not properly called “events.” See Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1964), Vol. I, pp. 191ff.
We will not say that there are also “endings”; for “endings” may be reduced to beginnings. Instead of saying “a is ceasing to be,” we may say: “There exists a y which is beginning to be such that a does not exist.” I have discussed the relevant issues in On Metaphysics (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press; 1989), see the essay “Coming Into Being and Passing Away: Can the Metaphysician Help?”, pp. 49–61.
See C.J. Ducasse, Truth, Knowledge and Causation (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), p. 5.
I have discussed these points in detail in “Events Without Times: An Essay on Ontology,” forthcoming in Nous.
Compare my “Boundaries as Independent Particulars,” Grazer Philosophische Studien, Vol. XX (1983), pp. 87–95. This conception of boundaries comes from Brentano. Suarez had raised the question whether God might continuously destroy the parts of a cone with the result that at some moment only the point of the cone would remain in existence. The above definition presupposes that this is not possible, but the definition is readily modified to accommodate such a possibility. We have only to replace clause (2) by: “every constituent of x is necessarily such that either it is a constituent or it is coming into being or passing away.”
See page 249 of Russell’s “Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Types,” American Journal of Mathematics, Vol. XXX (1908), pp. 222–62. This material is included in A.N. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, Principia Mathematica, Vol. I (Cambridge: The University Press, 1935), pp. 71ff., and 187ff. See the discussion of Russell’s definition in R. Carnap, Meaning and Necessity (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1946), pp. 147–51.
Concerning this question, see Kevin Mulligan, Peter M. Simons and Barry Smith, “Truth-makers,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 44 (1984), pp. 287–321.
For example, see. W.V. Quine, Mathematical Logic (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1940), p. 198. See also Quine’s Word and Object (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966), pp. 257–9.
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Chisholm, R.M. (1992). The Basic Ontological Categories. In: Mulligan, K. (eds) Language, Truth and Ontology. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 51. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2602-1_1
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