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.This does not meanthat there are no different  kinds , or sorts, of being, but only that in such aframework being is a genus, and that the different kinds of being all fall withinthat genus.In a formal ontology for nominalism, for example, there will beno ontological category corresponding to any grammatical category other thanthat of objectual terms (logical subjects), and in particular there will be no on-tological category or mode of being corresponding to the grammatical categoryof predicate expressions.Only objectual variables, i.e., the category of variableshaving objectual terms as their substituends, will have semantic-ontological sig-nificance in such a formal ontology.Predicate variables, and quantifiers bindingsuch, if admitted at all, must then be given only a substitutional and not asemantic interpretation, which means that certain constraints must be imposedon the logic of the predicate quantifiers in such a formal ontology.Most nominalists in fact eschew even such a substitutional interpretationof predicate quantifiers and describe their ontology only in terms of first-orderlogic where there is but one type of boundable variable, i.e., where, as in W.V.O.Quine s phrase:to be = to be the value of a bound objectual variable.It should be noted, however, that, unlike traditional nominalists, some con-temporary nominalists (e.g., Nelson Goodman), take abstract objects (e.g.,qualia) as well as concrete objects to fall under their supposedly univocal sense17Cf.Husserl 1900, Volume 2, Investigation III, and Barry Smith 1982.18Cf.Brentano, 1933.1.5.UNIVOCAL VERSUS MULTIPLE SENSES OF BEING 13of being.19 This means that although there is but one ontological category ofbeing in such an ontology, there may still be different  kinds of being.Thatis, in such a system being is a genus, which is not at all the same as beingmultivalent.Nominalism: being is univocal; i.e., being is a genus.Being is also univocal in some forms of realism (regarding universals).Thiswould appear to be the case, for example, in the ultra-realism of certain earlyscholastic philosophers for whom the realm of being is the realm only of univer-sals (as in the teachings of John Scottus Eriugena and Remigius of Auxerre).It is certainly univocal in the case of certain contemporary forms of logical real-ism, where properties, relations, concrete objects, and perhaps states of affairsas well, are different kinds, as opposed to, categories of being.A formal ontologyfor such realists is developed today much as it is in nominalism, namely, as anaxiomatic first-order logic with primitive predicates standing for certain basicontological notions.Indeed, except perhaps for the distinction between an in-tensional and an extensional logic, there is little to distinguish realists who takebeing to be univocal from such nominalists as Goodman who include abstractobjects as values of their objectual variables and who describe such objectsaxiomatically (e.g., in terms of a mereological relation of overlap, or of part-to-whole).20 This is particularly true of those realists who, in effect, replace theextensional membership relation of an axiomatic set theory by an intensionalrelation of exemplification, and, dropping the axiom of extensionality, call theresult a theory of properties.21Logical realism: being is univocal (i.e., being is a genus) if predication isbased on a relation of:1.membership (set theory), or2.exemplification (in first-order logic), or3.part-to-whole (mereology).Formal ontology, in other words, for both the nominalist and that kind ofrealist who takes being to be univocal and who has abstract as well as concreteobjects as values of their object variables, i.e., for whom being is a genus, is reallyno different from an applied theory of first-order logic.That is, it is no differentfrom a first-order logic to which primitive  nonlogical (descriptive?) constantsand axioms are added and taken as describing certain basic ontological notions.In such a framework, it would seem, the dividing line between the logical and thenonlogical, or between pure formal ontology and its applications, has becomesomewhat blurred, if not entirely arbitrary.19Cf.Goodman 1956, p.17.20See also Goodman and Quine 1947.21Cf., Bealer 1982.14 CHAPTER 1.FORMAL ONTOLOGY AND CONCEPTUAL REALISM1.6 Predication and Preeminent BeingBeginning with Aristotle, the standard assumption in the history of ontologyhas been that being is not a genus, i.e., that there are different senses of being,and that the principal method of ontology is categorial analysis.This raises theproblem of how the different categories of being fit together, and of whetherone of the senses or category of being is preeminent and the others somehowdependent on that sense or category of being.The different categorial analysesthat have been proposed as a resolution of this problem have all turned in oneway or another on a theory of predication, i.e., on how the different categoriesfit together in the nexus of predication, and they have differed from one anotherprimarily on whether the analysis of the fundamental forms of predication is tobe directed upon the structure of reality or the structure of thought.In formalontology, the resolution of this problem involves the construction of a formaltheory of predication.Aristotle s categorial analysis, for example, is directed upon the structure ofthe natural world and not upon the structure of thought, and the preeminentmode of being is that of concrete individual things, or primary substances.Aristotle s realism regarding species, genera, and universals is a form of naturalrealism, it should be emphasized, and not of logical realism.Also, unlike logicalrealism, Aristotle s realism is a moderate realism, though, as we indicate below,a modal moderate realism is better suited to a modern form of Aristotelianessentialism." Moderate realism = the ontological thesis that universals exist only inrebus, i.e., in things in the world [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]