Showing papers on "Upper ontology published in 1972"
TL;DR: In this paper, it was shown that there is no paradox of predication in ontology, and that instead of contradiction what results is a highly instructive ontological oddity with instructive lessons of its own relative to the ontological framework within which it occurs.
Abstract: Russell's supposed paradox of predication has occasionally been cited as a source for lessons in ontology. So, for example, Grossmann in [6] has argued that one of the lessons of Russell's paradox is that there are no complex properties. A recent reevaluation of the supposed paradox, however, has led me to the conclusion that there is no paradox (cf. [3]). And of course where there is no paradox, there are no lessons of paradox. There may, however, be lessons of non-paradox, especially if instead of contradiction what results is a highly instructive ontological oddity. In what follows I shall briefly review the considerations that led me to conclude that there is no paradox but instead only this ontological oddity with instructive lessons of its own, relative of course to the ontological framework within which it occurs. I shall then briefly consider several ways of responding to this oddity, where each response presupposes an alternative ontological framework relative to which the response accounts for the oddity by either showing it to rest on an ontological error, as with Grossmann's response, or by mitigating its effect through what purports to be a deeper or wider framework than the original one in which the oddity occurs.
17 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the relation between substance and the remaining categories in the Categories of Being has been investigated in the context of the Orgctnon, a treatise written by the same author in the early stages of his philosophical development.
Abstract: ANY ATTEMPT TO INTERPRET the text of Aristotle's Categories in isolation from the larger context of his thought would be singularly unrewarding. The ideas sketched out there are no more than the skeleton of a doctrine whose significance, while it may have been evident to Aristotle's philosophical contemporaries, is distressingly remote to us. To make matters worse, Aristotle nowhere tells us him aim in writing that treatise as he frequently does in his other works. So we are driven to his fuller accounts of philosophical doctrine for help in understanding the Categories. Unfortunate perhaps but, nonetheless, unavoidable. Yet there is an attendant danger in reading the Categories freely in the light of later works such as the Metaphysics. It is altogether too easy to find in that early text the more sophisticated ideas of a maturer period of Aristotle's philosophical development and hence unwittingly to incorporate into our procedure the assumption, dubious at best, that Aristotle's views remained virtually unchanged throughout his philosophical career. Thus there would seem to be prima facie reason for raising some questions of a rather special sort about the body of the Categories as such---about what can be said of Aristotle's notion of categories of being without going beyond that work (or at least the Orgctnon) for support. One question in particular deserves attention, because it strikes at the very center of the theory expounded in the Categories. Granted that Aristotle attached a privileged status to the category of substance--a status importantly not enjoyed by the other nine categories--we want to know what he conceived that special status to be. Our question concerns the relation between substance and the remaining categories. Aristotle had some important things to say on this subject in later works, x but how much of that was originally central to the theory of categories cannot be uncovered by his subsequent remarks. Very little can be said about the philosophical significance of the early doctrine of categories until we understand precisely how Aristotle ordered the category of substance in relation to the nine
7 citations
4 citations
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01 Jan 1972
TL;DR: The Resemblance Theorist offers his theory as a means of avoiding the need for universals, but Russell argues that he is in fact committed to granting the existence of at least one universal, namely resemblance itself.
Abstract: We have seen that according to the theories of some philosophers there are universals, whereas according to the theories of others there are not. Furthermore, we have seen that it can be a controversial question whether a given theory implies the existence of universals or not. The Resemblance Theorist offers his theory as a means of avoiding the need for universals, but as we have seen, Russell argues that he is in fact committed to granting the existence of at least one universal, namely resemblance itself.