New answers tagged ontology
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How do we know something is a "category mistake"?
I'm not surprised that you are struggling to apply the term "category mistake".
I think it is most helpful to focus on Ryle's use of the term. It is, as you say, how the term was introduced ...
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Sets vs 'association'
[W]hat is an expression? Is it simply a set and arrangement of symbols or is it a 'meaning' that can be understood from seeing the set of symbols? Is it in a way both?
It's both. The symbols are ...
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What do we explictly refer to in mathematical expressios
Your friend is wrong if he considers an 'instance' of a number to mean the same thing as an instance of a water molecule, say. The molecule has properties that an abstract number does not posses. In ...
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How do we know something is a "category mistake"?
The SEP's article on category mistakes opens with a few good examples:
Category mistakes are sentences such as ‘The number two is blue’, ‘The theory of relativity is eating breakfast’, or ‘Green ...
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How do we know something is a "category mistake"?
A friend and I are arguing over queer theory. I have given the example below of a category error - though I am open to correction. I only read philosophy as an undergrad.
"One of the most ...
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Ontology over time
I don't know what "the same treatment" means, but on my reading list is The Ontology of Time (GB) by Oaklander which is repeatedly cited in WP in philosophically minded articles. L. Nathan ...
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Accepted
Ontic structural realism: what's the difference between 'structures are all there is' and 'all there is are structures'?
Okay, so if one examines the abstract, he spells out the position, however, one has to be familiar with some basic ontology to make sense of that abstract. Let's see if I can't do that for you.
Ontic ...
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Ontic structural realism: what's the difference between 'structures are all there is' and 'all there is are structures'?
Some cash-outs:
"Structure is all there is": out of the many things that we say exist, things primarily identified in terms of being structures are the only things that "actually" ...
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Drawing a distinction between a 'type', the set of it's tokens
Lot's of questions, eh?
If we take an abstract 'type' like 'man', this type sort of defines the required characteristics to be 'a man', however what is the difference between the type 'man' and the ...
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Accepted
Traditionally in philosophy, anything that can be said to be is a being
Traditionally in philosophy, anything that can be said to be is a being
No. Philosophers made the distinction between things that really exist by opposition to things which only seem to us to exist, ...
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Traditionally in philosophy, anything that can be said to be is a being
Your question amounts to just semantics. Classifying something as a being is an invention made by humans. There is no correct answer here since humans mean different things even with the same word in ...
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Traditionally in philosophy, anything that can be said to be is a being
Being belong not to the thing, but to thyself. You can say that the table is existing, but it is existing inside thy being - inside thy mind.
But what are things? The tables and the chairs, but ...
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Is there a quantitative model of change?
Suppose you start from the perspective of physics. An object is a collection of particles related to each other in a particular way. You can in principle count all the particles of different types- so ...
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Accepted
Is there a quantitative model of change?
This is the precise answer to that question, I had exactly the same problem. Here are some ideas, from my next book:
First, let's consider change from a thermodynamic perspective.
A gas that is in a ...
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How can we denote objects that no longer exist?
When we think rationally (which for the sake of this answer I'll equate to talking or writing), we manipulate or inspect objects. We assign predicates to them and explore their relations.
But these ...
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How can we denote objects that no longer exist?
How you denote objects fully depends of the context in which you are speaking:
Normal, everyday language: we can do whatsoever we wish with no recourse to formal logic or even common sense (whatever ...
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How can we denote objects that no longer exist?
how can Socrates, not being an object, be an element of my domain of discourse when a set is defined as a 'collection of objects'?
Simple. Let x be the set of Socrates that exist. Since x is empty ...
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How can we denote objects that no longer exist?
Object it is something, that exist somewhere else. If you don't have object here - it mean minus-stance of object existence here, non-existence(here). Objects usually are not unique, objects have ...
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How can we denote objects that no longer exist?
Existence cannot be a property of an object, because "being a property of X" supposes that X already exists. The object Socrates did exist (essentially) in some period of time and no longer ...
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How can we denote objects that no longer exist?
The SEP article on quantification goes over this topic:
Even if there is no change in the domain of quantification, you may nevertheless think that existence is only temporary. Socrates did not exist ...
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