Predication And Ontology In Aristotles Organon

In the Categories, Aristotle recognizes two relations that an entity can bear to a subject: it can either inhere in or be said-of a subject. In this dissertation, I offer an interpretation of the natures of these relations and their relata. I also examine Aristotle's views about predication, the nature of truthmakers, and ontological priority. At Categories 1a24-25, Aristotle offers a definition of inherence which, on the most natural reading, holds that a nonsubstance can inhere in a substance only if it cannot exist without that substance. An entity that inheres in a particular substance must be a nonsubstantial particular which is numerically distinct from any entity that inheres in a distinct substance. This reading of 1a24-25, however, is inconsistent with the most natural reading of Aristotle's claim 2a34ff that the universal color must inhere in a particular body. To render Aristotle's claims consistent, we must reinterpret either 1a24-25 or 2a34ff. In chapters 2-6, I show that various attempts to reinterpret these passages are not successful. I argue that Aristotle's claims really are inconsistent. In chapters 7-10, I consider what might have led Aristotle to this inconsistency. I conclude that Aristotle's error results from a confusion about the nature of the said-of relation. In chapter 7, I argue that Aristotle regards the said-of relation as a whole-part relation holding between universals and particulars, but is confused about whether the said-of relation is purely extensional. In chapter 8, I argue that the same confusion infects some of Aristotle's views about kath' hauto and katholou predication in the De Interpretatione and Analytics. In chapter 9, I examine Aristotle's views about ontological priority relations between particulars and universals. I note that none of the types of priority defined in the Categories will secure Aristotle's view that particulars are prior to universals. I reconstruct a view with the desired result from Aristotle's discussion of one thing's being a "cause of being" for another. I conclude in chapter 10 that Aristotelian primary substances are prior to all other entities in that they alone are nonrelational entities. (Abstract)

One of the earliest and most influential treatises on the subject of this volume is Aristotle's Categories. Aristotle's title is a form of the Greek verb for speaking against or submitting an accusation in a legal proceeding. By the time of Aristotle, it also meant: to signify or to predicate. Surprisingly, the "predicates" Aristotle talks about include not only bits of language, but also such nonlinguistic items as the color white in a body and the knowledge of grammar in a man's soul. (Categories I/ii) Equally surprising are such details as Aristotle's use of the terms 'homonymy' and 'synonymy' in connection with things talked about rather than words used to talk about them. Judging from the evidence in the Organon, the Metaphysics, and elsewhere, Aristotle was both aware of and able to mark the distinction between using and men tioning words; and so we must conclude that in the Categories, he was not greatly concerned with it. For our purposes, however, it is best to treat the term 'predication' as if it were ambiguous and introduce some jargon to disambiguate it. Code, Modrak, and other authors of the essays which follow use the terms 'linguistic predication' and 'metaphysical predication' for this.

This book develops a new interpretation of Aristotle's Metaphysics. By exploring the significance of the long ignored distinction between being with regard to categories and being with regard to potentiality and actuality, the author presents that Aristotle's science of being has two distinct aspects: an investigation of the basic constituents of reality in terms of categories, predication, and definition, and an investigation which deals with change, process, and order of the world.

One of the earliest and most influential treatises on the subject of this volume is Aristotle's Categories. Aristotle's title is a form of the Greek verb for speaking against or submitting an accusation in a legal proceeding. By the time of Aristotle, it also meant: to signify or to predicate. Surprisingly, the "predicates" Aristotle talks about include not only bits of language, but also such nonlinguistic items as the color white in a body and the knowledge of grammar in a man's soul. (Categories I/ii) Equally surprising are such details as Aristotle's use of the terms 'homonymy' and 'synonymy' in connection with things talked about rather than words used to talk about them. Judging from the evidence in the Organon, the Metaphysics, and elsewhere, Aristotle was both aware of and able to mark the distinction between using and men tioning words; and so we must conclude that in the Categories, he was not greatly concerned with it. For our purposes, however, it is best to treat the term 'predication' as if it were ambiguous and introduce some jargon to disambiguate it. Code, Modrak, and other authors of the essays which follow use the terms 'linguistic predication' and 'metaphysical predication' for this.

This study intends to show that the ascription of many shortcomings or obscurities to Aristotle is due to the persistent misinterpetation of key notions in his works, including anachronistic perceptions of statement making. In the first volume Aristotle's semantics is culled from the Organon. The second volume presents Aristotle's ontology of the sublunar world, and pays special attention to his strategy of argument in light of his semantic views. The reconstruction of the semantic models that come forward as genuinely Aristotelian can give a new impetus to the study of Aristotelian philosophic and semantic thought.