DOCSLIB.ORG

[0.94]Matching a Trope Ontology to the Basic Formal Ontology

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
[0.94]Matching a Trope Ontology to the Basic Formal Ontology philosophies Article Matching a Trope Ontology to the Basic Formal Ontology Richard de Rozario The Hunt Lab for Intelligence Research, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia; [email protected] Received: 19 May 2019; Accepted: 15 July 2019; Published: 18 July 2019 Abstract: Applied ontology, at the foundational level, is as much philosophy as engineering and as such provides a different aspect of contemporary natural philosophy. A prominent foundational ontology in this field is the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). It is important for lesser known ontologies, like the trope ontology of interest here, to match to BFO because BFO acts like the glue between many disparate ontologies. Moreover, such matchings provide philosophical insight into ontologies. As such, the core research question here is how we can match a trope ontology to BFO (which is based on universals) and what insights such a matching provides for foundational ontology. This article provides a logical matching, starting with BFO’s top entities (continuants and occurrences) and identifies key ontological issues that arise, such as whether universals and mereological sums are equivalent. This article concludes with general observations about the matching, including that matching to universals is generally straightforward, but not so much the matching between relations. In particular, the treatment of occurrences as causal chains is different in the trope ontology,compared to BFO’s use of time arguments. Keywords: ontology; BFO; tropes; applied philosophy 1. Introduction The field of applied ontology came to prominence in the 1990s [1,2], driven by knowledge engineering issues. In order to achieve coherent and shareable knowledge bases, engineers and scientists sought answers to questions in essence like “what is the meaning of a physical quantity?” [3] or “what exactly constitutes a gene?” [4]. The similarity to questions raised in philosophical ontology was readily apparent [5], opening up the possibility of joint engineering and philosophical ontology research. Arguably, applied ontology is not merely the application of philosophy to other disciplines like engineering. Rather, the discipline also informs philosophy itself—at the very least by raising new questions about the existence of things, but hopefully also by novel approaches and answers to those questions. As such, applied ontology is one pathway in the journey of reconstituting a natural philosophy, in the sense of Dodig-Crnkovic and Schroeder’s connected conceptual engineering [6]. The interaction with philosophical ontology is especially visible at the foundational ontology level. Foundational ontologies1 deal with fundamental aspects of our world, such as “material objects”, “events”, “being part of” and so forth. They underpin ontologies of particular domains such as biomedicine or information systems [2,7] (pp. 115–139). Currently, one of the most prominent foundational ontologies is the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) [8]. BFO is a realist ontology, based on a relatively small set of universals and relations2. That is, BFO asserts that the (real) universe can be carved up into universals such as objects, processes, 1 Also called “upper ontologies”. 2 BFO includes relations (as per the specification), but these are as yet not included in the bfo.owl file. The discussion here refers to the specification. Philosophies 2019, 4, 40; doi:10.3390/philosophies4030040 www.mdpi.com/journal/philosophies Philosophies 2019, 4, 40 2 of 12 boundaries and qualities. By “universals”, BFO means “ ::: what all members of a natural class or natural kind such as a cell, or organism, or lipid, or heart have in common ::: not only in the realm of natural objects such as enzymes and chromosomes, but also in the realm of material artifacts such as flasks and syringes, and also in the realm of information artifacts such as currency notes and scientific publications” [9] (p. 13). BFO has been successful in supporting engineering and scientific research in areas such as genetics, information systems and defence [10]. In previous work on the ontology of competitive intelligence [11], I developed a core ontology based on particularized relations, or tropes, which are fundamentally different from the universals that BFO is based on (discussed in detail below). It is beyond the scope of this article to review the arguments for and against tropes (of which there are many flavors), suffice it to say that tropes are prominent in ontological theory that addresses the nature and quantity of properties (like being “a chair” or “being red”) [12]. At the applied level, tropes as particularized relations provide a way to connect causes to the structural relations that define entities, providing a seamless foundation for both entities and causality [11]. From either perspective, universals vs. tropes is a core ontological commitment. The previous work compared the trope ontology to several other ontologies, but not BFO. Given the prominence of BFO, it is important for lesser known ontologies such as the trope ontology to provide at least some comparison, but preferably a “matching” to BFO. This is important because foundational ontologies often act as the “glue” to connect disparate domain ontologies and, if a matching is possible, it would link the trope ontology to the wider world of ontologies based on BFO. Moreover, given the subject matter of foundational ontologies, discussion of such matchings informs philosophical ontology—albeit with a constructive, rather than critical emphasis. Matching is commonly defined as “the process of finding relationships or correspondences between entities of different ontologies” [13] (p. 39). I include in this looking for points of similarity, where terms in one ontology can be coherently defined in terms of another. As such, “matching” reflects a perspectivist stance towards ontology. That is, it recognizes that different ontologies may reflect different aspects or viewpoints of reality (including perhaps some level of denial of that reality). In summary, this article examines how the trope ontology was matched to BFO and what ontological insights we might obtain from such a matching. The next section will briefly outline the trope ontology and the remaining sections will match core terms of the trope ontology to BFO. In the conclusion, I will provide some general observations about the results of the matching and the relationship between the two ontologies. 2. The Trope Ontology Given the relative obscurity of the trope ontology, I will provide a brief overview here. For more detail, see my previous research [11]. The trope ontology is grounded in a view that relations between entities are real and exist primarily as individual relations, rather than universal relations. For example, when John stands next to Jane, it is not just John and Jane who exist, but also the relation of John’s standing next to Jane. If John is also standing next to Jake, then that “standing next to” has a distinct existence from the “standing next to” of John and Jane. Moreover, these individual “standing next to” relations cannot exist without the entities that they bind. This strong dependence of relations on their relata supports calling such entity/relation constructions “tropes”, although it represents only one view of tropes [12]. Philosophically, I have defended tropes by following Armstrong’s reasoning [14] towards particularized universals, but rejecting Armstrong’s argument that “states of affairs” are needed to bind relations to objects [11] (pp. 29–30). In this way, particularized relations (tropes) become an alternative theory that underpins relational realism. At the applied level, this results in individually identifiable relations, which provide a very convenient way to implement change and causal relations (discussed below). Methodologically, I try to adhere to parsimony and minimize the different kinds of relations that are admitted into the ontology, if for no other reason than the effort required to carefully examine Philosophies 2019, 4, 40 3 of 12 each relation for coherence in the ontology. On the other hand, one typically tries to choose relations that are as expressive as possible—i.e., relations with which one can say or represent as much as possible. So, the key principle of parsimonious expressiveness (or “say the most with the least”) guides much of the work in the trope ontology. As such, the trope ontology is based on two main kinds of relations: mereological parthood and a primitive causality relation that ranges over the parthood relations. The semantics and formal properties of these relations are as follows. The two primitive relations are represented with a simple predicate schema: p(N, part, X, Y), (1) p(M, cause, A, B), (2) Here, N and M represent unique identifiers for each relation, typically constructed as a list of numerals3. The second argument in the predicate is the kind of relation (e.g., part or cause) and the remaining arguments represent the entities that the relation binds. A small digression is needed on the meaning of “kind of relation” in the context of trope theory. At first glance, it seems that “kind” introduces universals again. For instance, each individual parthood relation seems to instantiate a universal parthood. Might this not undermine the supposed “fundamental difference” (asserted in the introduction) between the trope ontology and a universal-based ontology like BFO? The short answer is “no”, for the following reasons. Firstly, these are not the universals
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Survey of Top-Level Ontologies to Inform the Ontological Choices for a Foundation Data Model
    A survey of Top-Level Ontologies To inform the ontological choices for a Foundation Data Model Version 1 Contents 1 Introduction and Purpose 3 F.13 FrameNet 92 2 Approach and contents 4 F.14 GFO – General Formal Ontology 94 2.1 Collect candidate top-level ontologies 4 F.15 gist 95 2.2 Develop assessment framework 4 F.16 HQDM – High Quality Data Models 97 2.3 Assessment of candidate top-level ontologies F.17 IDEAS – International Defence Enterprise against the framework 5 Architecture Specification 99 2.4 Terminological note 5 F.18 IEC 62541 100 3 Assessment framework – development basis 6 F.19 IEC 63088 100 3.1 General ontological requirements 6 F.20 ISO 12006-3 101 3.2 Overarching ontological architecture F.21 ISO 15926-2 102 framework 8 F.22 KKO: KBpedia Knowledge Ontology 103 4 Ontological commitment overview 11 F.23 KR Ontology – Knowledge Representation 4.1 General choices 11 Ontology 105 4.2 Formal structure – horizontal and vertical 14 F.24 MarineTLO: A Top-Level 4.3 Universal commitments 33 Ontology for the Marine Domain 106 5 Assessment Framework Results 37 F. 25 MIMOSA CCOM – (Common Conceptual 5.1 General choices 37 Object Model) 108 5.2 Formal structure: vertical aspects 38 F.26 OWL – Web Ontology Language 110 5.3 Formal structure: horizontal aspects 42 F.27 ProtOn – PROTo ONtology 111 5.4 Universal commitments 44 F.28 Schema.org 112 6 Summary 46 F.29 SENSUS 113 Appendix A F.30 SKOS 113 Pathway requirements for a Foundation Data F.31 SUMO 115 Model 48 F.32 TMRM/TMDM – Topic Map Reference/Data Appendix B Models 116 ISO IEC 21838-1:2019
    [Show full text]
  • RN and Russell's Regress
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2001, 79 (3), pp. 395-408. RESEMBLANCE NOMINALISM AND RUSSELL’S REGRESS Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra University of Edinburgh In a famous passage Bertrand Russell argued that any attempt, like that of Resemblance Nominalism, to get rid of universals in favour of resemblances fails [20, p. 48]. More precisely, Russell thought that no resemblance theory could avoid postulating a universal of resemblance without falling into a vicious infinite regress. And he added that admitting a universal of resemblance made it pointless to avoid other universals. In this paper I shall defend Resemblance Nominalism, a theory which gets rid of universals in terms of resemblances, from both of Russell’s points by arguing (a) Resemblance Nominalism can avoid the postulation of a universal of resemblance without falling into a vicious infinite regress (§V) and (b) even if Resemblance Nominalism had to admit a universal of resemblance, this would not make it pointless to avoid the postulation of other universals (§VI). But before doing so I shall briefly introduce Resemblance Nominalism (§I) and Russell’s regress (§II), and then I shall consider some failed arguments and strategies against the regress (§§III−IV). I. Resemblance Nominalism. Resemblance Nominalism is a solution to the Problem of Universals. I have argued elsewhere that the Problem of Universals, strictly understood, is what I call the Many over One, rather than the traditional One over Many [17, pp. 269-70]. The Many over One is the problem of explaining how a single particular can have a multiplicity of properties [17, pp. 269-70]. Thus solutions to the Problem of Universals account for what it is for any thing or particular a to have properties F, G, H etc.
    [Show full text]
  • Framework for Formal Ontology Barry Smith and Kevin Mulligan
    Framework for Formal Ontology Barry Smith and Kevin Mulligan NOTICE: THIS MATERIAL M/\Y BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT LAW (TITLE 17, u.s. CODE) ABSTRACT. The discussions which follow rest on a distinction, or object-relations in the world; nor does it concern itself rust expounded by Husser!, between formal logic and formal specifically with sentences about such objects. It deals, ontology. The former concerns itself with (formal) meaning-struc­ rather, with sentences in general (including, for example, tures; the latter with formal structures amongst objects and their the sentences of mathematics),2 and where it is applied to parts. The paper attempts to show how, when formal ontological considerations are brought into play, contemporary extensionalist sentences about objects it can take no account of any theories of part and whole, and above all the mereology of Lesniew­ formal or material object·structures which may be ex­ ski, can be generalised to embrace not only relations between con­ hibited amongst the objects pictured. Its attentions are crete objects and object-pieces, but also relations between what we directed, rather, to the relations which obtain between shall call dependent parts or moments. A two-dimensional formal sentences purely in virtue of what we can call their logical language is canvassed for the resultant ontological theory, a language which owes more to the tradition of Euler, Boole and Venn than to complexity (for example the deducibility-relations which the quantifier-centred languages which have predominated amongst obtain between any sentence of the form A & Band analytic philosophers since the time of Frege and Russell.
    [Show full text]
  • STUMPF, HUSSERL and INGARDEN of the Application of the Formal Meaningful Categories
    Formal Ontology FORMAL ONTOLOGY AS AN OPERATIVE TOOL of theory, categories that must be referred to as the objectual domain, which is determined by the ontological categories. In this way, we IN THE THORIES OF THE OBJECTS OF THE must take into account that, for Husserl, ontological categories are LIFE‐WORLD: formal insofar as they are completely freed from any material domain STUMPF, HUSSERL AND INGARDEN of the application of the formal meaningful categories. Therefore, formal ontology, as developed in the third Logical Investigation, is the corresponding “objective correlate of the concept of a possible theory, 1 Horacio Banega (University of Buenos Aires and National Universi‐ deinite only in respect of form.” 2 ty of Quilmes) Volume XXI of Husserliana provides insight into the theoretical source of Husserlian formal ontology.3 In particular, it strives to deine the theory of manifolds or the debate over the effective nature of what will later be called “set theory.” Thus, what in § of Prolegomena is It is accepted that certain mereological concepts and phenomenolog‐ ical conceptualisations presented in Carl Stumpf’s U ber den psy‐ called a “Theory of Manifolds” (Mannigfaltigkeitslehre) is what Husserl chologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung and Tonpsychologie played an important role in the development of the Husserlian formal 1 Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchunghen. Zweiter Band, Untersuchungen zur ontology. In the third Logical Investigation, which displays the for‐ Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis. Husserliana XIX/ and XIX/, (ed.) U. mal relations between part and whole and among parts that make Panzer (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, ), hereafter referred to as Hua XIX/ out a whole, one of the main concepts of contemporary formal ontol‐ and Hua XIX/; tr.
    [Show full text]
  • The Problem of Universals in Contemporary Philosophy∗ Scuola Normale Superiore [Pisa - July 5, 2010]
    93 Reportage 7 novembre 2010 International conference on Ontology The problem of universals in contemporary philosophy∗ Scuola Normale Superiore [Pisa - July 5, 2010] Gianmarco Brunialti Masera Overview The three-day conference opened in the afternoon of July, 5 and, after taking a quick look at the programme and the names of the important thinkers standing out on it, one could have expected to find a crowded audience room. Actually that was not quite the case. What I could afford to follow and am going to write about here is only the first day of the conference. The debate started right on time, after a short introduction given by Gabriele Galluzzo, both organizer of the conference and member of the scientific board. I would ac- tually like to underline the word debate: each speech (about 40 minutes) was immediately followed by a short discussion of the issues introduced by the proponent. Unfortunately, de- spite of the accurate and punctual speeches, the little time dedicated to each is what most penalized the conference, in my opinion: this inevitably obliged both the speakers and the audience to be plunged in medias res, without standing too much on ceremonies. I take this to be ‘penalizing’, considering the debate on universals is a very wide one and composed by an incredibly great number of positions which can sometimes start from oppo- site sides and some other times depart at some specific middle point of one single theory of properties and relations. Moreover, most (if not all) of them entail a certain number of other metaphysical themes from which the specific problematics of universals cannot be cut off.
    [Show full text]
  • Nuclear Bundles of Tropes and Ontological Dependence
    Nuclear Bundles of Tropes and Ontological Dependence JOSÉ TOMÁS ALVARADO OST DEFENDERS OF TROPE METAPHYSICS have maintained that particular objects should be reduced to bundles of tropes. Part of the attraction M of a trope metaphysic is the work that tropes can do for understanding the nature of both particulars and universals. On one hand, what we call ‘universals’ can be conceived as resemblance classes of tropes. On the other hand, particular objects are nothing but pluralities of tropes satisfying certain conditions (cf. for example, Williams 1953a, 1953b; Campbell 1981, 1990; Maurin 2002; Ehring 2011). But, what are exactly those conditions that make a plurality of tropes a particular object? It has not been easy to fill in the details of a trope theory of objects and, then, it is not surprising that a variety of different proposals have been put to the fore. Some have said that objects can be understood as mereological fusions of compresent tropes. Some have said that objects can be understood as pluralities of tropes that happen to be «co– instantiated». Some have said that «co–instantiation» is just a primitive fundamental ontological fact. Some have said that it is a relational trope, albeit an especial one. For example, a relational trope that is essentially a relation between the tropes that compose an object, although the related tropes are independent from each other (cf. Maurin 2002, pp. 164–166). For others the co–instantiation trope is a relational trope that happens to relate all the tropes composing an object, including itself (cf. Ehring 2011, pp.
    [Show full text]
  • What Is Philosophy.Pdf
    I N T R O D U C T I O N What Is Philosophy? CHAPTER 1 The Task of Philosophy CHAPTER OBJECTIVES Reflection—thinking things over—. [is] the beginning of philosophy.1 In this chapter we will address the following questions: N What Does “Philosophy” Mean? N Why Do We Need Philosophy? N What Are the Traditional Branches of Philosophy? N Is There a Basic Method of Philo- sophical Thinking? N How May Philosophy Be Used? N Is Philosophy of Education Useful? N What Is Happening in Philosophy Today? The Meanings Each of us has a philos- “having” and “doing”—cannot be treated en- ophy, even though we tirely independent of each other, for if we did of Philosophy may not be aware of not have a philosophy in the formal, personal it. We all have some sense, then we could not do a philosophy in the ideas concerning physical objects, our fellow critical, reflective sense. persons, the meaning of life, death, God, right Having a philosophy, however, is not suffi- and wrong, beauty and ugliness, and the like. Of cient for doing philosophy. A genuine philo- course, these ideas are acquired in a variety sophical attitude is searching and critical; it is of ways, and they may be vague and confused. open-minded and tolerant—willing to look at all We are continuously engaged, especially during sides of an issue without prejudice. To philoso- the early years of our lives, in acquiring views phize is not merely to read and know philoso- and attitudes from our family, from friends, and phy; there are skills of argumentation to be mas- from various other individuals and groups.
    [Show full text]
  • An Introduction to Philosophy
    An Introduction to Philosophy W. Russ Payne Bellevue College Copyright (cc by nc 4.0) 2015 W. Russ Payne Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document with attribution under the terms of Creative Commons: Attribution Noncommercial 4.0 International or any later version of this license. A copy of the license is found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ 1 Contents Introduction ………………………………………………. 3 Chapter 1: What Philosophy Is ………………………….. 5 Chapter 2: How to do Philosophy ………………….……. 11 Chapter 3: Ancient Philosophy ………………….………. 23 Chapter 4: Rationalism ………….………………….……. 38 Chapter 5: Empiricism …………………………………… 50 Chapter 6: Philosophy of Science ………………….…..… 58 Chapter 7: Philosophy of Mind …………………….……. 72 Chapter 8: Love and Happiness …………………….……. 79 Chapter 9: Meta Ethics …………………………………… 94 Chapter 10: Right Action ……………………...…………. 108 Chapter 11: Social Justice …………………………...…… 120 2 Introduction The goal of this text is to present philosophy to newcomers as a living discipline with historical roots. While a few early chapters are historically organized, my goal in the historical chapters is to trace a developmental progression of thought that introduces basic philosophical methods and frames issues that remain relevant today. Later chapters are topically organized. These include philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, areas where philosophy has shown dramatic recent progress. This text concludes with four chapters on ethics, broadly construed. I cover traditional theories of right action in the third of these. Students are first invited first to think about what is good for themselves and their relationships in a chapter of love and happiness. Next a few meta-ethical issues are considered; namely, whether they are moral truths and if so what makes them so.
    [Show full text]
  • The Discipline and the Tool
    Ontology: The Discipline and the Tool Doug Mayhew1,2, Dirk Siebert1 1 Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science, University of Leipzig, 04107 Leipzig, Härtelstraße 16-18, Germany doug.mayhew, [email protected] 2 Department of Philosophy, University at Buffalo, New York, USA Abstract. The fields of philosophy and informatics entertain two somewhat dif- ferent conceptions of ontology. Philosophical ontology is a branch of metaphys- ics dating back at least to the time of Plato and Aristotle. Ontology in informat- ics has its origins in the artificial intelligence research of the eighties and nineties. This means that the fields of philosophy and informatics entertain two somewhat different conceptions of ontology and the present paper discusses the relationship between these two conceptions. Differences and similarities are pointed out and variations in methodological approaches are also discussed. Ef- forts to combine the ontological methodologies and resources of the two fields are surveyed, and actual and potential benefits and drawbacks of such collabo- rations are examined. Different Concepts The fields of philosophy and informatics entertain two somewhat different concep- tions of ontology, with correspondingly different notions of what ontology is for. First, we have the age-old conception of ontology as a philosophical discipline. Se- cond, we have the relatively new conception of ontology as an information organiza- tion tool, a notion of ontology adapted from the philosophical conception by artificial intelligence researchers and then adopted by the applications-oriented field of infor- matics. (The philosophical conception was recognized in informatics as early as the late sixties in data modeling research [1].) The two conceptions have their characteris- tic differences, which show up primarily in what each field thinks ontology is for.
    [Show full text]
  • Mereology Then and Now
    Logic and Logical Philosophy Volume 24 (2015), 409–427 DOI: 10.12775/LLP.2015.024 Rafał Gruszczyński Achille C. Varzi MEREOLOGY THEN AND NOW Abstract. This paper offers a critical reconstruction of the motivations that led to the development of mereology as we know it today, along with a brief description of some questions that define current research in the field. Keywords: mereology; parthood; formal ontology; foundations of mathe- matics 1. Introduction Understood as a general theory of parts and wholes, mereology has a long history that can be traced back to the early days of philosophy. As a formal theory of the part-whole relation or rather, as a theory of the relations of part to whole and of part to part within a whole it is relatively recent and came to us mainly through the writings of Edmund Husserl and Stanisław Leśniewski. The former were part of a larger project aimed at the development of a general framework for formal ontology; the latter were inspired by a desire to provide a nominalistically acceptable alternative to set theory as a foundation for mathematics. (The name itself, ‘mereology’ after the Greek word ‘µρoς’, ‘part’ was coined by Leśniewski [31].) As it turns out, both sorts of motivation failed to quite live up to expectations. Yet mereology survived as a theory in its own right and continued to flourish, often in unexpected ways. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that today mereology is a central and powerful area of research in philosophy and philosophical logic. It may be helpful, therefore, to take stock and reconsider its origins.
    [Show full text]
  • Toward the Use of Upper Level Ontologies
    Toward the use of upper level ontologies for semantically interoperable systems: an emergency management use case Linda Elmhadhbi, Mohamed Hedi Karray, Bernard Archimède To cite this version: Linda Elmhadhbi, Mohamed Hedi Karray, Bernard Archimède. Toward the use of upper level ontolo- gies for semantically interoperable systems: an emergency management use case. 9th Conference on Interoperability for Enterprise Systems and Applications I-ESA2018 Conference, Mar 2018, Berlin, Germany. pp.1-10. hal-02359706 HAL Id: hal-02359706 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02359706 Submitted on 12 Nov 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Open Archive Toulouse Archive Ouverte (OATAO ) OATAO is an open access repository that collects the wor of some Toulouse researchers and ma es it freely available over the web where possible. This is an author's version published in: http://oatao.univ-toulouse.fr/22794 Official URL : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13693-2 To cite this version: Elmhadhbi, Linda and Karray, Mohamed Hedi and Archimède, Bernard Toward the use of upper level ontologies for semantically interoperable systems: an emergency management use case. ( In Press: 2018) In: 9th Conference on Interoperability for Enterprise Systems and Applications I-ESA2018 Conference, 23 March 2018 - 19 March 2018 (Berlin, Germany).
    [Show full text]
  • Predication and the Problem of Universals Catherine Legg
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Research Commons@Waikato Philosophical Papers Vol. 30, No. 2 (July 2001): 117-143 Predication and the Problem of Universals Catherine Legg Abstract: This paper contrasts the scholastic realists of David Armstrong and Charles Peirce. It is argued that the so-called 'problem of universals' is not a problem in pure ontology (concerning whether universals exist) as Armstrong construes it to be. Rather, it extends to issues concerning which predicates should be applied where, issues which Armstrong sets aside under the label of 'semantics', and which from a Peircean perspective encompass even the fundamentals of scientific methodology. It is argued that Peir ce's scholastic realism not only presents a more nuanced ontology (distinguishing the existent front the real) but also provides more of a sense of why realism should be a position worth fighting for. ... a realist is simply one who knows no more recondite reality than that which is represented in a true representation. C.S. Peirce Like many other philosophical problems, the grandly-named 'Problem of Universals' is difficult to define without begging the question that it raises. Laurence Goldstein, however, provides a helpful hands-off denotation of the problem by noting that it proceeds from what he calls The Trivial Obseruation:2 The observation is the seemingly incontrovertible claim that, 'sometimes some things have something in common'. The 1 Philosophical Writings of Peirce, ed. Justus Buehler (New York: Dover Publications, 1955), 248. 2 Laurence Goldstein, 'Scientific Scotism – The Emperor's New Trousers or Has Armstrong Made Some Real Strides?', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol 61, No.
    [Show full text]