A Realistic Theory of Categories: An Essay on Ontology 0521554268, 0521556163

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Roderick Chisholm has been for many years one of the most important and influential philosophers contributing to meta­ physics, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. This book can be viewed as a summation of his views on an enormous range of topics in metaphysics and epistemology. Yet it is written in the terse, lucid, unpretentious style that has become a hall­ mark of Chisholm's work. The book is a treatise designed to defend an original, non­ Aristotelian theory of categories. Chisholm argues that there are necessary things and contingent things, necessary things being things that are not capable of coming into being or pass­ ing away. He defends the argument from design and thus includes the category of necessary substance (God). Further contentions of the essay are that attributes are also necessary beings, that there are no such entities as "times," and that hu­ man beings are contingent substances but may not be mate­ rial substances.

A REALISTIC THEORY OF CATEGORIES

A Realistic Theory of Categories An Essay on Ontology RODERICK M. CHISHOLM Brown University

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UNIVERSITY PRESS

Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 lRP 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA IO Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1996 First published 1996 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chisholm, Roderick M. A realistic theory of categories : an essay on ontology / Roderick M. Chisholm. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-521-55426-8. - ISBN 0-521-55616-3 (pbk.) 1. Ontology. 2. Categories (Philosophy) 3. Realism. I. Title. B945.C463R42 1996 111 - dc20 95-39427 CIP A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-521-55426-8 hardback ISBN 0-521-55616-3 paperback

Dedicated to my wife Eleanor

CONTENTS

page ix

Acknowledgments Part One:

The Realistic Background

1 Introduction 2 The Nature of Attributes 3 The Existence of Attributes 4 Propositions as Reducible to Attributes 5 The Intentional Structure of Attributes 6 The Primacy of the Intentional Part Two:

3 11 19 23 29 35

The Basic Categories

7 The Ontology of the Theory of Classes 8 The Nature of Relations 9 Times and the Temporal 10 States and Events 11 Spatial Entities and Material Substance 12 Persons and Their Bodies: Some Unanswered Questions

vii

45 51 55 71 85 99

Contents Part Three: 13 14 15

Appearances Intentionalia Fictitious Objects Part Four:

16

Homeless Objects 109 115 121

Application to Philosophical Theology

Necessary Substance

127

Notes Index

133 145

viii

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