Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

If we are to make sense of the world, we have to recognize from the outset that it is a highly differentiated and structured whole. Toward this end many philosophers, beginning with Aristotle, have made use of the concept of a category. It is not the aim of this essay to give a comprehensive treatment of this topic, something that would not be possible in the limited space available. Instead, the attempt will be made to bring into bold relief the categorial structure of ordinary language, which will be found to be that of a substance-property sort. It then will be argued that the concept of a substance, along with that of an abstract property or universal, is not acceptable. An effort will be made to create a new language that will not be committed to a substance-property ontology or any sort of dualism between the concrete and the abstract, that is, between items that are locatable within the spatial and/or temporal world and those that are not. Philosophers are in agreement that categories are fundamental classifications that frame the way in which we think and talk about the world. But philosophers disagree as to how to understand the phrase, “our ways of thinking and talking about the world.” If one takes the clause “about the world” as having priority in the order of understanding and explanation, that is, as being that clause which determines how the other clause “our ways ... log in or subscribe to read full text