Category: Predication
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The Ramsey Problem and the Problem of the Intrinsically Unpropertied Particular
What exactly is the distinction between a universal and a particular? Universals are often said to be repeatable entities, ones-over-many or ones-in-many. Particulars, then, are unrepeatable entities. Now suppose the following: there are universals; there are particulars; particulars instantiate universals; first-order facts are instantiations of universals by particulars. One and the same universal, F-ness, is…
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Being is Said in Many Ways: On the Uses of ‘Is’
Chad reports: In the opening pages of More Kinds of Being: A Further Study of Individuation, Identity, and the Logic of Sortal Terms (Blackwell, 2009), E. J. Lowe distinguishes five uses of ‘is’ as a copula: 1. The ‘is’ of attribution, as in ‘Socrates is wise’ and ‘Grass is green’.2. The ‘is’ of identity, as…
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Against Ostrich Nominalism
As magnificent a subject as philosophy is, grappling as it does with the ultimate concerns of human existence, and thus surpassing in nobility any other human pursuit, it is also miserable in that nothing goes uncontested, and nothing ever gets established to the satisfaction of all competent practitioners. (This is true of other disciplines as well,…
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A Question About Predication and Identity
Chad M. sent me a paper of his in which he illustrates the distinction between the 'is' of predication and the 'is' of identity using the following examples: 1. Joseph Ratzinger is [the] Pope and 2. Water is H2O where the first sentence is proposed as an example of a predication and the second as…
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Stanislav Sousedik’s “Towards a Thomistic Theory of Predication”
Enough of politics, back to some hard-core technical philosophy. If nothing else, the latter offers exquisite escapist pleasures not unlike those of chess. Of course I don't believe that technical philosophy is escapist; my point is a conditional one: if it is, its pleasures suffice to justify it as a form of recuperation from this all-too-oppressive world of…
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Still Trying to Understand Van Inwagen’s Half-Way Fregeanism about Existence
In section 53 of The Foundations of Arithmetic, Gottlob Frege famously maintains that . . . existence is analogous to number. Affirmation of existence is in fact nothing but denial of the number nought. Because existence is a property of concepts the ontological argument for the existence of God breaks down. (65) Frege is here advancing…
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My Argument That ‘Exist(s)’ is not Univocal Revisited: No ‘Is’ of Predication?
On August 11th I wrote: Suppose we acquiesce for the space of this post in QuineSpeak. Then 'Horses exist' says no more and no less than that 'Something is a horse.' And 'Harry exists' says no more and no less than that 'Something is Harry.' But the 'is' does not have the same sense in…
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David Brightly’s Weblog and a Punctilio Anent Predication and Inclusion
The unduly modest David Brightly has begun a weblog entitled tillyandlola, "scribblings of no consequence." In a recent post he criticizes my analysis of the invalidity of the argument: Man is a species; Socrates is a man; ergo, Socrates is a species. I claimed that the argument equivocates on 'is.' In the major premise, 'is'…
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Transitivity of Predication?
I dedicate this post to London Ed, who likes sophisms and scholastic arcana. Consider these two syllogistic arguments: A1. Man is an animal; Socrates is a man; ergo, Socrates is an animal.A2. Man is a species; Socrates is a man; ergo, Socrates is a species. The first argument is valid. On one way of accounting for its…
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Another Round with Hennessey on Accidental Predication
Having had my say about what is known in the trade as Occam's Razor, and having secured some welcome agreement with the proprietor of Beyond Necessity in the combox of the aforelinked post, I am now ready to address the meat of Richard Hennessey's response to my three-post critique of what I took to be…
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Accidental Sameness and its Logical Properties
I should thank Richard Hennessey for motivating me to address a topic I haven't until these last few days discussed in these pages, namely, that of accidental sameness. Let us adopt for the time being a broadly Aristotelian ontology with its standard nomenclature of substance and accident, act and potency, form and matter, etc. Within such a…
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Accidental Sameness: Defending Hennessey Against My Objection
Yesterday I made an objection to Richard Hennessey's neo-Aristotelian theory of accidental predication. But this morning I realized that he has one or more plausible responses. By the way, this post has, besides its philosophical purpose, a metaphilosophical one. I will be adding support to my claim lately bruited that philosophy — the genuine article…
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Comments on Richard Hennessey’s Neo-Aristotelian Theory of Predication
Richard Hennessey of Gnosis and Noesis sketches a neo-Aristotelian theory of predication in Another Aristotelian Basis for a Neo-Aristotelian Anti-Realism in the Theory of Universals. Drawing as he does upon my discussion in Scholastic Realism and Predication, he has asked me to comment on his post. I will do so with pleasure. I first want to…
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Two Questions About the Bundle Theory Answered
On the bundle-of-universals theory of ordinary concrete particulars, such a particular is a bundle of its properties and its properties are universals. This theory will appeal to those who, for various ontological and epistemological reasons, resist substratum theories and think of properties as universals. Empiricists like Bertrand Russell, for example. Powerful objections can be brought…