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1093 lines
112 KiB
HTML
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<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
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<title>Ontology</title>
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<meta name="generator" content="LibreOffice 4.2.8.2 (Linux)">
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<meta name="author" content="Amr Gharbeia">
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<body lang="en-GB" text="#99ccff" link="#0000ff" dir="ltr" style="background: transparent">
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<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#ff0000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US"><b>O<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OddOOntology_up" align="right" hspace="5" width="100" height="40" border="0">ntology.
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</b></span></font></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US">The
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second assumption of ontological philosophy is about ontology.
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Ontology is, literally, the study of the nature of being (or
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existence), and what we shall assume is that ontology is a kind of
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explanation. </span></font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Ontological
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philosophy takes ontology to be a kind of explanation in which the
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causes are basic substances (along with their basic relationships to
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one another), and the effects are what is found in the world, or all
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the phenomena. Given the existence of certain kinds of basic
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substances and basic relationships, it explains the things found in
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the world by showing how their existence is constituted by such
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substances and relations among them. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">If
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ontology is a valid kind of explanation, an adequate ontology should
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explain everything found in the world, for it is a theory about the
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nature of existence and what we mean by "the world" is
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everything that exists. To assume that ontology is a valid kind of
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explanation is to assume, therefore, that everything found in the
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world can be explained by showing how its existence is constituted by
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basic substances, given how they exist together as a world —
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including all the objects in the world, all their properties, all
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their relations to one another, and every way that they can change.
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It holds, in other words, that nothing exists, ultimately, but the
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basic substances. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
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other way of doing philosophy is based on epistemology, and for
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epistemological philosophy, ontology is something quite different.
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Ontology is simply a thesis about what exists. Epistemologists base
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their claims about certain truths being necessary relative to our
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ordinary ways of knowing on a theory about how we know. Thus, they
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find themselves committed to the existence of entities of all the
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kinds that are known, including the entities presupposed by their
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foundation as well as all the additional entities entailed by their
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conclusions (assuming that they succeed in defending those
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conclusion). Since it is committed to the reality of <i>additional
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</i>entities of some kind, its ontology is called "realism."
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It is the belief in the "reality" of those additional
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entities. But since, as it turns out, they never fit together
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intelligibly with the entities constituting the epistemological
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foundation, realism is a form of ontological (or metaphysical)
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dualism that engenders skepticism. Hence, realists have always had to
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do battle with so-called anti-realists, who accept only the entities
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presupposed by their epistemological foundation. To mark how this
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view of ontology differs from ontological philosophy, let us call it
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"ontology as realism."</font></font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font color="#800000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>O<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OddOAsEx_up" align="right" hspace="5" width="104" height="30" border="0">ntology
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as a form of explanation.</b></font></font> For ontological
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philosophy, ontology is explanatory. We <i>assume </i>that a certain
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kind of explanation is valid, which is to believe that there are
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causes and effects of certain kinds. In this case, the causes are the
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basic substances and their basic relationship to one another, and
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their effects are what they can constitute, which includes, if
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adequate, everything that can be found in the world, including all
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the objects, their properties and relations, and how they change over
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time. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>O<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OddOCauses_up" align="right" hspace="5" width="72" height="33" border="0">ntological
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causes.</b></font> To see how such effects are produced
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ontologically, let us consider, first, the nature of the causes, both
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the substances and their relations, and, then, their effects. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>S<img src="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAFsAAAAaCAMAAADv7NBiAAAAwFBMVEX////38PDw8PDv4ODt3Lzo2Ljn0NDdza/fwMDMvaHXsLDMmZm1qJDHkJC/gICYjXm3cHCBeGavYGBwaFmmUFCeQEBlXlBfWEtZU0eZMzOOICA7Ny+GEBAzMzN+AAAgICBmAABmAAAIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABWwZXbAAABp0lEQVR4nO2TYU8DIQyGQSZWkA4RpiCi8f7/f7TlFg+zJd6i98X4fhhH23vytr2J3Wo9T6Sn9fU7sRNrdfU6TS9Xq8vFNbHbWr1N72+ri5u4uYR9mcTthuy7Ddn7Ddn3G7IfBnbx6POQzOVn7MPCDtKik3ZJAn6pjeZC9uPClpF+slicA9bUrZd+IPBzSnNBPZ4p9SOnOkZP2G70K1IDrYD7ADqgIf3TqDfNzw1Mj/Fdk6es6EqvowSlyhl2khIwj2xVW1U+idKqKd23plQ9pqjFwl2ibspTWIUmQms2nWHTRBEE1IXNjTioStlQjjPJES2n5hLCdlcCSQDNSLN8DQO79GCRfmHjPOUarCJHzAZlMAxsGNhIpqPTwp6yg+zb0L77zQzgNxUm2+0zO4l6TM3s+S6zDFwSi6FrFKfsplVI0ehKW3MO+i4BQddCa3C0MC+x0iP1ED9bs8rxZxuERZCZEIjKnWG3YAA8m08YKpYWUuI+aSboefkeS/WUCpFSPC4KZuzrLxzvG8Nz8/51/bP/GHsrEfv65vZuf/9wePxW0/R9zaDDB4ng0y7/cSyHAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" name="OddOSub_up" align="right" hspace="5" width="91" height="26" border="0">ubstances.</b></i>
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Substances are one part of every ontological cause, and in order to
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explain how they help produce effects, we must consider both the
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nature of substance itself and a relevant difference among the kinds
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of basic substances that may be postulated by an ontology. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>N<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OddONature_up" align="right" hspace="5" width="49" height="21" border="0">ature
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of substance.</i> Substance, we shall assume, has a nature that
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includes to two basic aspects. For something to be a substance, it
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must not only have a certain determinate nature, but must also be
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self-subsistent. That is, a substance must have, as a substance, both
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an <i>essential aspect </i>and an <i>existential aspect</i> to its
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nature. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>E<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OddOEssence_up" align="right" hspace="5" width="60" height="21" border="0">ssential
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aspect of substance.</i> A substance must have an <i>essential aspect
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</i>to its nature as substance, because in order to exist at all, it
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must exist in a determinate way. It is not possible for anything to
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exist without existing in a determinate way; indeterminate existence
|
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would be tantamount to nothing existing. The essential aspect of a
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substance includes all its kind-differentiating properties that do
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not change as time passes. </font></font></font>
|
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">To
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assume that substance as substance has essential properties is not to
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assume that properties exist in addition to the substances that have
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them. We can and shall assume that properties are simply aspects of
|
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the substances themselves. Thus, essential properties are simply </span></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US"><i>how
|
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</i></span></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">substances
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exist, implying that substances can exist in different ways, as in
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substances being of different kinds. Beings like us can think about
|
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aspects of substances and distinguish their aspects from one another,
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and when we do, we are thinking about their properties. But
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ontological philosophy cannot answer questions about how rational
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beings have the ability to think about the aspects of substances as
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distinct from the substances themselves until it has explained the
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nature of what exist and the existence of beings in the world, like
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us, who can think at all. (See, for example, </span></font></font><a href="/F:/Philosophy/Existentialism/The%20Wholeness%20Of%20the%20World/www.twow.net/Lo/L/LoOtkCbGeRRS10AbstractObjects.htm" target="Lo"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="Arial, sans-serif"><span lang="en-US"><u>Change:AbstractObjects</u></span></font></font></a><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">,
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or for a briefer statement of the entire theory about the nature of
|
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reason, </span></font></font><a href="/F:/Philosophy/Existentialism/The%20Wholeness%20Of%20the%20World/www.twow.net/Lo/L/LoOtjR14.htm" target="Lo"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="Arial, sans-serif"><span lang="en-US"><u>Relations:
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Ontological theory of mathematical knowledge.</u></span></font></font></a><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">)</span></font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">We will
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take up the kinds of basic substances after explaining the nature of
|
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substance as substance.</font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>E<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OddOExist_up" align="right" hspace="5" width="59" height="21" border="0">xistential
|
||
aspect of substance.</i> Substances also have an <i>existential
|
||
aspect </i>to their nature as substance. They must, because, in an
|
||
ontological explanation of the world, it is the existence of
|
||
substances (in certain relations) that explains the existence of what
|
||
is found in the world. Substances are, in other words,
|
||
self-subsistent. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">Existence
|
||
is, therefore, a property of substance as substance, just as having
|
||
an essential aspect is. But in both cases, these aspects of
|
||
substances have to do with their having aspects. The essential aspect
|
||
is that they have an aspect of the kind we will call their "essential
|
||
nature," and the existential aspect is that what has such an
|
||
essential aspect exists independently of the rational being who know
|
||
about them. That there are aspects of substances that have to with
|
||
their having aspects is no more puzzling than that they have aspects
|
||
at all and is answered in the same way, as we shall see, by the
|
||
ontological explanation of the nature of reason. (See </span></font></font><a href="/F:/Philosophy/Existentialism/The%20Wholeness%20Of%20the%20World/www.twow.net/Lo/LoOtkCbGeRRS09.htm" target="Lo"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="Arial, sans-serif"><span lang="en-US"><u>Stage
|
||
9, Rational Spiritual Animals</u></span></font></font></a><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">,
|
||
under </span></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Arial, sans-serif"><span lang="en-US">Reproductive
|
||
Global Regularities</span></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">
|
||
under </span></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Arial, sans-serif"><span lang="en-US">Change</span></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">.)</span></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">There
|
||
are, however, two aspects to the existential aspect of the nature of
|
||
substance as substance: particularity and temporality.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Arial, sans-serif">P<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OddOPart_up" align="right" hspace="5" width="74" height="21" border="0">articularity.</font>
|
||
First, substances are self-subsistent in the sense each substance has
|
||
an existence that cannot be reduced to the existence of any other
|
||
substance or substances in the world. Each substance exists on its
|
||
own. That is not to say that substances must be able to exist even if
|
||
all the other substances were to drop out of existence. (For example,
|
||
it may not be possible for material substances, given their essential
|
||
nature, to exist without having spatial relations to other material
|
||
substances.) It is merely to say that there is something in the world
|
||
whose existence would not be accounted for if only all the other
|
||
substances in the world were assumed to exist. In short, each
|
||
particular substance has an existence that is <i>distinct </i>from
|
||
every other substance in the world. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">We
|
||
must accept that substances are related to one another in one way, at
|
||
least, since we are assuming that there is more than one substance in
|
||
the world. By "the world," we mean everything that exists,
|
||
and thus, if there is more than one substance in the world, the world
|
||
is a <i>whole </i>composed of parts. Since every substance is, by
|
||
virtue of the existential aspect of its nature as a substance,
|
||
something that exists, each substance is a "particular"
|
||
substance in the further sense of "being <i>part of </i>the
|
||
world." Each substance has a relationship to the world as a
|
||
whole, and since it has an existence that is distinct from every
|
||
other substance in the world, it also has a relationship to the other
|
||
substances as a different part of one and the same world with them.
|
||
In other words, when we postulate basic substances, we assume that
|
||
they are parts of one and the same world. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">There is
|
||
another relationship that all substances have, namely, being
|
||
identical to themselves. Relationships, like properties, are not
|
||
something in addition to what has them, but merely an aspect of the
|
||
substances that have them. And we continue to put off discussing how
|
||
beings like us know about relationships until we explain the nature
|
||
of reason ontologically. Although identity is a relationship, it is a
|
||
relationship that something has to itself, and thus, it may be
|
||
considered another aspect of each substance taken separately, like
|
||
its properties. That is, each substance is identical to itself. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">By the way,
|
||
this is to assign ontological meaning to each of three basic senses
|
||
of "is." "Is" can be used to say that something
|
||
exists, and in that sense it refers to the property of existence, or
|
||
the existential aspect of substance as substance. "Is" can
|
||
also be used as a copula, to attach a predicate to a grammatical
|
||
subject. In this case, it is referring to the relationship between a
|
||
substance and some aspect of it, either a property that characterizes
|
||
its essential nature or one that characterizes a changeable aspect of
|
||
it (such as the roundness of a piece of wet clay). Finally, "is"
|
||
can be used to assert identity. When identity is asserted of two
|
||
substances, it says that the two substances have the same relation to
|
||
one another as each has to itself, that is, that they are identical.
|
||
But when identity is asserted of aspects of substances, that is, of
|
||
properties, it has a different meaning, because different substances
|
||
can have the same aspects and be of the same kind under each aspect.
|
||
For example, all substances have the existential aspect, and "being"
|
||
is the same property in each case. Likewise, substances of the same
|
||
kind have the same essential properties. It will be possible to keep
|
||
track of which properties are identical and which are different,
|
||
because one thing an ontology provides by explaining everything in
|
||
the world is an inventory of all the aspects of substances. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Arial, sans-serif">T<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OddOTemp_up" align="right" hspace="5" width="74" height="22" border="0">emporality.</font>
|
||
Second, we assume that substances are self-subsistent in a temporal
|
||
sense. Substances do not go out of existence over time, nor do they
|
||
come into existence. Thus, a substance that exists at one moment must
|
||
have existed at the previous moment. And it will continue to exist
|
||
the next moment. Thus, if a substance exists at all, it exists at
|
||
every moment in the history of world. It is permanent. The substances
|
||
that exist at any one moment are the same substances that exist at
|
||
every other moment in the history of the world.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">This
|
||
is a strong assumption to make about the nature of substance as
|
||
substance, and it is not one that has always been made, even by
|
||
naturalists. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">According
|
||
to Aristotle, for example, substances come into existence and go out
|
||
of existence over time in a process of generation and corruption,
|
||
though he did assume that they also had "material causes,"
|
||
or matter, that endures through change. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">Other
|
||
naturalistic ontologists do not postulate substances at all, but only
|
||
"tropes," or properties considered as particular entities.
|
||
Though tropes are supposed to explain everything in the world, they
|
||
are not substances in our since, for they are supposed to come into
|
||
existence and go out of existence at determinate locations in space
|
||
from moment to moment. See </span></font></font><a href="/F:/Philosophy/Existentialism/The%20Wholeness%20Of%20the%20World/www.twow.net/ObjText/#Williams"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US"><u>Williams.</u></span></font></font></a><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">
|
||
</span></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Though
|
||
ontological philosophy makes this strong assumption about the
|
||
temporal aspect of the existential aspect of substance as substance,
|
||
there is an issue about the temporal aspect that we will leave open
|
||
for the time being. To hold that substances never come into existence
|
||
nor ever go out of existence over time is to presuppose that they are
|
||
in time. That is, time is built into the nature of substance, as part
|
||
of the existential aspect of the nature of substance as substance.
|
||
But there are two different views about the nature of time and how it
|
||
is related to existence. One is the "endurance" theory and
|
||
the other is the "perdurance" theory. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font face="Arial, sans-serif"><i>Endurance
|
||
theory of time.</i></font> The first view holds that substances
|
||
<i>endure </i>through time. This theory assumes that existence itself
|
||
is in time. That is, only the present exists. The past and the future
|
||
do not exist. Thus, for a substance to exist at all is for it to
|
||
exist at the present moment. This view is also called "presentism."
|
||
But since substances never come into existence, every substance must
|
||
have existed at every past moment in the history of the world. And
|
||
since they never go out of existence, every substance will still
|
||
exist at every future moment in the world’s career. In other words,
|
||
substances are identical through time: each substances that exists
|
||
now is identical to some substance that existed or will exist at
|
||
every other moment in the history of the world. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Since
|
||
endurance theory assumes that the past and the future do not exist,
|
||
they must explain the sense in which statements about the past and
|
||
the future are true. It holds that such statements are true of
|
||
substances that exist now, though the properties being ascribed to
|
||
them have to do either with what has happened or with what will
|
||
happen to them. That is, the aspects of substances which exist now
|
||
include the states they had in the past and the states they will have
|
||
in the future. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font face="Arial, sans-serif"><i>Perdurance
|
||
theory of time.</i></font> The other view is that substances <i>perdure
|
||
</i>across time (or over time). Instead of assuming that existence is
|
||
in time, this theory holds that time is a relation that holds among
|
||
parts of substances. On this view, the past and the future exist in
|
||
the same sense as the present. Though perdurance theorists can agree
|
||
that substances never come into existence nor go out of existence
|
||
over time, what they mean is that each substance is made up of a
|
||
continuous series of moments stretching all the way back and all the
|
||
way forward in the temporal dimension. Thus, instead of seeing
|
||
substances as identical through time, they see substances as
|
||
involving a part-whole relation: each substance is a whole whose
|
||
parts include its state at every moment in its history. Thus,
|
||
corresponding to the part of each substance that exists at any one
|
||
moment, there is another part at every other moment in the history of
|
||
the world.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #cccccc; border-top: 6.75pt double #000000; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #000000; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">T<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="HistCmt" align="right" hspace="5" width="149" height="22" border="0">he
|
||
distinction between the endurance and perdurance theories about the
|
||
existential aspects of substance as substance can be traced to
|
||
</span></font></font><a href="/F:/Philosophy/Existentialism/The%20Wholeness%20Of%20the%20World/www.twow.net/ObjText/#McTaggart"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US"><u>McTaggart</u></span></font></font></a><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">,
|
||
who argued around the turn of the twentieth century that it is
|
||
self-contradictory to hold that only the present exists. But
|
||
recently, it has been resurrected by analytic philosophers defending
|
||
the so-called "tenseless theory of time," as opposed to the
|
||
"tensed theory of time". (The tenseless theory holds that
|
||
statements about the past, present and future can all be translated,
|
||
without any loss of content, into sentences about the relations of
|
||
moments in time that hold eternally, whereas the tensed theory
|
||
insists that some content is lost, namely, what they imply about
|
||
which moment is actually present, that is, not just present relative
|
||
to some particular time of utterance. See </span></font></font><a href="/F:/Philosophy/Existentialism/The%20Wholeness%20Of%20the%20World/www.twow.net/ObjText/#OaklanderSmith"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US"><u>Oaklander
|
||
and Smith</u></span></font></font></a><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">.)
|
||
And even more recently, the perdurance theory has been defended,
|
||
albeit without admitting it, as what is called "four-dimensionalism"
|
||
against "three dimensionalism." (See </span></font></font><a href="/F:/Philosophy/Existentialism/The%20Wholeness%20Of%20the%20World/www.twow.net/ObjText/#Sider"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US"><u>Sider</u></span></font></font></a><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">.)
|
||
But the reason I leave the issue open here is because a similar view
|
||
is currently accepted by naturalists who are trying to be realists
|
||
about the notion of spacetime introduced by Einstein’s special and
|
||
general theories of relativity. Spacetime taken ontologically entails
|
||
the perdurance theory. </span></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Since
|
||
purdurance theory assumes that all moments in the history of the
|
||
world are ontologically equivalent, it holds that statements about
|
||
the past and the future are true in exactly the same sense as
|
||
statements about the present. There is no need to hold that
|
||
statements about the past and the future are really about substances
|
||
that exist now.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Whatever
|
||
the relationship between time and existence, the temporal aspect of
|
||
the existential aspect of substance involves a relationship between
|
||
moments in time. Everyone agrees that moments occur in a continuous
|
||
series, though endurance theorists think of time as flowing from the
|
||
past into the future, and perdurance theorists think of time as just
|
||
an order about the moments that all exist. But since endurance
|
||
theorists take existence itself to be in time, they take time to be
|
||
as ontologically basic as existence and substance, and thus, they
|
||
take temporal relations to be a measure of the separation between
|
||
different moments in the existence of a substance that is identical
|
||
over time. Perdurance theorists, on the other hand, take all the
|
||
moments in the history of a substance to exist in the same way, and
|
||
thus they explain time, in effect, as how these moments exist
|
||
together as a substance in the world. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
|
||
difference between these theories can be seen in what they imply
|
||
about change. In a world where substance is permanent, what changes
|
||
are the properties or relations of substances, or aspects of them.
|
||
Endurance theory holds that change involves properties or relations
|
||
coming into existence or going out of existence over time, because if
|
||
the future and the past do not exist, there is no "place"
|
||
for them to come from or to go to. On the other hand, perdurance
|
||
theory holds that properties and relations never come into existence
|
||
and never go out of existence, because if the future exists, the
|
||
properties and relations already exist before the change takes place.
|
||
And if the past exists, the properties and relations continue to
|
||
exist after the change is long over.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>K<img src="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAADAAAAAVCAMAAAA3vZ0wAAAAYFBMVEX////38PDv4ODg4ODn0NDMzMzfwMDXsLDOoovMmZnHkJC/gIC3cHCvYGCtZlekXlCYU0eeQECKRjyZMzN/PDNjQDd2MyyOICBtKiSGEBB+AAA/AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADeI/IfAAAArElEQVR4nN3PwQ7CIBAEUERcpBQVV0Wm/f/vlG2MEi3GXjuHppnJK0Wp+ezGcduYsCgrAynJg8G52qeyAbwHgmZ0XO1S/gC9KR8sJ0TEScUkIMXcAE7LQhGKPFkk0znt4a3XcRZsnOYnKFDBBcB52I6rm9TAgkUIkEVe5D9zTzq0Lh1NfgMpqJyQEagFEEx+gewMWV8qMjwH/stKwNLsD8fT+XK7f2YYvirJ9QFsp1Fxs0k0WgAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==" name="OddOKinds_up" align="right" hspace="5" width="48" height="21" border="0">inds
|
||
of substances.</i> The substances that an ontology postulates are the
|
||
causes by which it explains the world. But in order to explain
|
||
completely what is found in the world, those substances must be the
|
||
most elementary substances that constitute the existence of things in
|
||
the world. Let us call such ultimate parts of the world "basic
|
||
substances." </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">All
|
||
substances have, as substances, the same kind of existential aspect,
|
||
but the essential aspects of their natures may be different. Thus,
|
||
there may be different kinds of basic substances making up the world.
|
||
But it is important to recognize at the outset that the essential
|
||
natures that distinguish kinds of basic substances from one another
|
||
may be either temporally simple or temporally complex. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">We
|
||
are assuming that the properties that characterize basic substances
|
||
are simply aspects of them. The properties that characterize the
|
||
essential nature of a substance are aspects of the essential aspect
|
||
of their nature as substance, and they distinguish one kind of basic
|
||
substance from another. Such essential properties do not change over
|
||
time. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>Temporally
|
||
simple.</i> Now, a substance that exhibits its full nature at each
|
||
moment is a simple substance. That is, a substance will be said to
|
||
have a "temporally simple essential nature" insofar as its
|
||
essential properties are aspects of it that exist complete at each
|
||
moment in the history of its existence. The contrast to complex
|
||
substances will make this clear.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>Temporally
|
||
complex.</i> The essential nature of a substance may also be defined
|
||
by how its properties change over time. Properties that can change
|
||
over time are contingent (or "accidents"), but if
|
||
contingent properties always change in the same way, the way in which
|
||
they change may be an essential property. For example, the properties
|
||
a substance exhibits at one moment may depend on the properties it
|
||
had the previous moment (together with its relations to other
|
||
substances), and since the regularity about how they change would be
|
||
a property that the substance has at every moment, it would be an
|
||
essential property of the substance. But its essential nature would
|
||
be dispositional. Insofar as the essential aspect of the nature of a
|
||
substance is defined by a regularity about how its contingent
|
||
properties (or relations) change over time, it will be said to have a
|
||
"temporally complex essential nature."</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>R<a href="11.html"><img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OddORelation_up" align="right" hspace="5" width="90" height="24" border="0"></a>elations.</b></i>
|
||
Substances are only one part of every ontological cause. The other
|
||
part is the relationship that holds among the basic substances.
|
||
Relations are necessary for ontological explanation, because
|
||
substances have nontrivial ontological effects only by working
|
||
together, that is, by combining with one another in some way to
|
||
constitute the existence of things found in the world. What makes
|
||
ontological explanation explanatory is that substances can work
|
||
together in different ways to produce different effects.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">We
|
||
must assume, therefore, that there is more than one substance in the
|
||
world. Though it is conceivable that the world is made up of a single
|
||
substance, nothing in such a world could be <i>explained
|
||
</i>ontologically, in our sense, for everything found in such a world
|
||
would be the same as what is assumed by the ontology in postulating
|
||
that single substance.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<br><br>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #cccccc; border-top: 6.75pt double #000000; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #000000; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">S<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="HistCmt" align="right" hspace="5" width="149" height="22" border="0">pinoza
|
||
was not, therefore, giving an ontological explanation of the world in
|
||
our sense, because according to his <i>Ethics</i>, he assumed that a
|
||
single substance makes up the entire world.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">If
|
||
there is more than one substance in the world, they must have, as we
|
||
have noted, at least one basic relationship to one another, for they
|
||
are parts of the same world. Since their combination causes the world
|
||
to exist, that relationship together with the substances might be
|
||
said to explain the world. But if having such a relationship did
|
||
account for everything in the world, it would be trivial, for nothing
|
||
that is contained in any one of the ontological causes is really
|
||
explained. It is merely assumed. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Finally,
|
||
if the substances in the world had no further relationship to one
|
||
another, beyond being different parts of the same world, they could
|
||
not combine to constitute anything, except for the world as a whole.
|
||
Though each substance might be said to cause itself ontologically
|
||
(because it would still constitute its own existence), that would
|
||
explain nothing, for its existence is precisely what is assumed in
|
||
postulating the substance. It too would be trivial. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>N<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OddONature_up" align="right" hspace="5" width="49" height="21" border="0">ature
|
||
of relations.</i> We must assume, therefore, that basic substances
|
||
have relationships of some kind to one another (beyond simply being
|
||
parts of the same world). That is not to assume that relationships
|
||
are something that exist in addition to the substances that have
|
||
them. We can and will assume that the basic relationships are simply
|
||
how basic substances exist together as a world. For example, bits of
|
||
matter may be assumed to have spatial relations to one another as how
|
||
they exist together as a world; or bits of matter may be assumed to
|
||
exist together with space as a substance by coinciding with some part
|
||
of space or other; and parts of space may be assumed to exist
|
||
together as a world by having unchanging geometrical relations to one
|
||
another. Such basic relationship are like properties, which, as we
|
||
have assumed, are simply aspects of substances. But instead of being
|
||
aspects of substances taken separately, the relationships we are
|
||
assuming are aspects of the world, or how substances exist together
|
||
as a world. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The basic
|
||
relationships among substances being postulated as part of the
|
||
ontological causes to be used in explaining everything in the world
|
||
should be distinguished from the two relations, already mentioned,
|
||
which substances have to themselves or among their parts: the
|
||
identity relation and temporal relations. We are considering the
|
||
relationships that an ontology must postulate along with substances
|
||
in order to explain things ontologically, whereas the identity
|
||
relation and temporal relations are aspects of how each substance
|
||
exists on its own and do not depend on how they exist together as a
|
||
world.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Since
|
||
naturalism is the belief that what exists is just what is in space
|
||
and time, one kind of basic relationship that any naturalism will
|
||
require among substances is spatial. It is hard to see how any
|
||
substance could be in space and time without having spatial relations
|
||
to other substances. By spatial relations, I mean the distances that
|
||
can hold between substances in three independent dimensions, and I
|
||
assume that such distances are continuously variable. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">Though
|
||
spatial relations are found in the natural world, that does not mean
|
||
that a naturalistic ontology must assume that having spatial
|
||
relations is how substances exist together as a world. There is
|
||
another way of existing together that would entail their having
|
||
spatial relations: if space is a substance, bits of matter could have
|
||
spatial relations by coinciding with parts of space. The real nature
|
||
of spatial relations is another issue that we will leave open for the
|
||
time being, until we are in a better position to decide what to
|
||
believe. (See Space under </span></font></font><a href="/F:/Philosophy/Existentialism/The%20Wholeness%20Of%20the%20World/www.twow.net/Lo/LoOtfS.htm" target="Lo"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="Arial, sans-serif"><span lang="en-US"><u>Spatiomaterialism</u></span></font></font></a><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">.)</span></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>K<img src="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAADAAAAAVCAMAAAA3vZ0wAAAAYFBMVEX////38PDv4ODg4ODn0NDMzMzfwMDXsLDOoovMmZnHkJC/gIC3cHCvYGCtZlekXlCYU0eeQECKRjyZMzN/PDNjQDd2MyyOICBtKiSGEBB+AAA/AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADeI/IfAAAArElEQVR4nN3PwQ7CIBAEUERcpBQVV0Wm/f/vlG2MEi3GXjuHppnJK0Wp+ezGcduYsCgrAynJg8G52qeyAbwHgmZ0XO1S/gC9KR8sJ0TEScUkIMXcAE7LQhGKPFkk0znt4a3XcRZsnOYnKFDBBcB52I6rm9TAgkUIkEVe5D9zTzq0Lh1NfgMpqJyQEagFEEx+gewMWV8qMjwH/stKwNLsD8fT+XK7f2YYvirJ9QFsp1Fxs0k0WgAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==" name="OddOKinds_up" align="right" hspace="5" width="48" height="21" border="0">inds
|
||
of relations.</i> As in the case of substances, there is an important
|
||
difference to be recognized between kinds of basic relations that
|
||
might be assumed to hold among the substances postulated. Though such
|
||
basic relationships are just how the basic substances exist together
|
||
as a world, they can, like the essential aspects of substances, be
|
||
either temporally simple or temporally complex. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>Temporally
|
||
simple.</i> Relations that exhibit their full nature at the moment
|
||
that the substances exist together in that way are temporally simple.
|
||
That is, relations are "temporally simple" to the extent
|
||
that they are how substances exist together at a single moment in the
|
||
history of the world. In a world constituted by space and matter, for
|
||
example, the basic relationship between the two basic substances
|
||
would be simple in this sense, for it would be true at every moment
|
||
that each bit of matter coincides with some part of space or another.
|
||
</font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i>Temporally
|
||
complex.</i> The relations that exist fully at any one moment may,
|
||
however, change the next moment. That is, some relations may go out
|
||
of existence over time and other relations come into existence. Such
|
||
relations would be contingent, and the only way to define the basic
|
||
relations by which substances exist together as a world may be the
|
||
way in which contingent relations change over time. If change in
|
||
contingent relations were regular, the way that substances exist
|
||
together as a world might be defined by how their contingent
|
||
relations change, for that would be a relationship that does not
|
||
change over time. That is, the relations among substances might be
|
||
dispositional. To the extent that the relationship by which
|
||
substances exist together as a world have a nature that is defined by
|
||
how contingent relations change over time, it will be said to be a
|
||
"temporally complex relation."</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">For
|
||
example, an ontology may assume that the way that substances exist
|
||
together as a world is by having spatial relations. Particular
|
||
spatial relations change over time, for example, as objects move, and
|
||
the possibility of such change could be built into the the meaning of
|
||
"having spatial relations." "Having spatial relations"
|
||
might accordingly be defined as meaning that substances have spatial
|
||
relations of some kind or other at each moment, but that they can
|
||
change from one moment to the next as long as they are all
|
||
geometrically consistent as a whole. "Having spatial relations"
|
||
would then be a temporally complex relation among substances, and the
|
||
substances themselves could have a relatively simple, inert nature. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">It is
|
||
possible to hold that spatial relations are temporally simple without
|
||
postulating space as a substance. The change in spatial relations
|
||
could be explained by the temporally complex essential natures of the
|
||
substances, such as material substances defined as substances that
|
||
move and interact according to the basic laws of physics. That is,
|
||
everything that happens in the world, including all the spatial
|
||
relations that come to exist, might be explained as what is required
|
||
because material objects obey the laws of physics. What must be
|
||
assumed is that those material objects had certain spatial relations
|
||
at the beginning, say at the Big Bang or when God created the world.
|
||
The spatial relations assumed by such an ontology could be temporally
|
||
simple, for they could all exist fully at a single moment, at the
|
||
very beginning. (It might be mentioned, however, that this view would
|
||
not even be possible, given the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of
|
||
quantum mechanics, unless there is a so-called hidden variable that
|
||
makes the indeterminism of quantum theory a mere appearance of the
|
||
incompleteness of its explanation.) </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>O<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OddOEffects_up" align="right" hspace="5" width="71" height="33" border="0">ntological
|
||
effects.</b></font> Ontological explanations use substances as causes
|
||
to explain things in the world as their effects. Such causes produce
|
||
their effects by constituting the things being explained. Since there
|
||
are relations among substances, different effects can be produced
|
||
when basic substances are combined in different ways. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">It
|
||
should be emphasized, however, that insofar as the phenomenon being
|
||
explained is the same as the substance that constitutes it, the
|
||
explanation is trivial and, thus, not a genuine explanation at all.
|
||
The <i>explanatory power </i>of ontology comes from showing how the
|
||
substances cited as ontological causes <i>work together </i>so that
|
||
jointly they constitute what is being explained. Thus, even if the
|
||
existence of some object is explained by showing how it is
|
||
constituted by the combination of various particular substances, the
|
||
object's properties are still not explained if they are simply the
|
||
essential properties of the basic substances constituting it. For
|
||
example, it does not explain why something is moving in a certain
|
||
direction to say that all its parts are moving that way. The
|
||
"explanation" in ontological explanations comes from
|
||
showing how ontological causes work together to produce something
|
||
that may seem different from them. Anything that is entailed by the
|
||
essential natures of substances taken separately is not explained,
|
||
but just assumed. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">What
|
||
is explained by ontological causes includes both the objects found in
|
||
space and how they change over time.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>O<img src="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAD0AAAAYCAMAAAB+3QVeAAAAYFBMVEX////38PDv4ODo2Ljn0NDdza/fwMDMvaHXsLDMmZm1qJDHkJC/gICYjXm3cHCBeGavYGBwaFmmUFCeQEBlXlBfWEuZMzOOICCGEBB+AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA/fDbfAAABMElEQVR4nNWS25KDIAyGA6WpltRSoojv/6KbUNGts60z9WpzwZ+BfJADAAfsBDB9bXA+RF8O0ddD9O0QfV/psaNuVCeNz42q7+nHQnvTUmu8eEjzTtiGj/aV7itNLsuaLSmdeXk2cV6VSzBzpYdKm1gkGqGdRdOWHJIVV/JRBWL5IBwNujl4obkWADyhzZJEp7Ss4oaibEaNQrm36z7QWrxHoRlIDJEhL1EdyP4m8wzpWZ7Ela7RSlOodxdNhFCa9KvutinSaL0ojrRPume07T5mLTTbqHTL+ha/0tlh4OD0UnRI6EoOAVpCk6Yg47QuJ/CjN15ONz2fptBgUyYcmCnMc5cvFDRLUe1zlJITUdxO7A9z9PZol45gd3/qp7d37X/TB2yA0/lyvd0f/fCF9T93VG8YrKSmXwAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==" name="OddOObjects_up" align="right" hspace="5" width="61" height="24" border="0">bjects.</b></i>
|
||
The existence of particular objects can be explained by the
|
||
substances constituting them. Substances have, as substances, an
|
||
existential aspect to their nature, that is, they are
|
||
self-subsistent, and the relations by which they exist together as a
|
||
world permit them to work together in constituting objects. How they
|
||
do so depends on the specific ontology.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Likewise
|
||
the natures of objects found in the world, or their properties, can
|
||
be explained by the substances constituting them because of the
|
||
essential aspects of their natures as substances, that is, their
|
||
essential properties, and the relations by which they exist together
|
||
as a world permit substances to be combined in different ways. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Thus,
|
||
it is possible to explain a diversity of things in the world. Things
|
||
may be different in kind because they are constituted by different
|
||
kinds of basic substances combined in the same way, or because they
|
||
are constituted of the same kinds of basic substances combined in
|
||
different ways, or because of some combination of both factors.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<br><br>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #cccccc; border-top: 6.75pt double #000000; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #000000; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">I<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="HistCmt" align="right" hspace="5" width="149" height="22" border="0">f
|
||
only out of respect for the Pre-Socratic philosophers, it should be
|
||
noted that the attempt to explain the world ontologically was first
|
||
attempted about 600 BC, before epistemological philosophy began.
|
||
These first philosophers were naturalists looking for the "first
|
||
principle" (or <i>arche</i>) by which to explain the natural
|
||
world, and they assumed that it must be a "stuff" of some
|
||
kind that constitutes the existence of everything in the world.
|
||
Thales thought it was water. His student, Anaximander, insisted it
|
||
was an inchoate stuff ("apeiron") without properties of its
|
||
own. And Anaximander's student, Anaximines, argued for it being air.
|
||
Though these so-called "Ionian" Pre-Socratics disagreed
|
||
about its essential nature, they all agreed that the world is
|
||
constituted by only one basic kind of material substance. Their
|
||
ontologies were forms of monistic materialism. Spatial relations were
|
||
taken for granted.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #cccccc; border-top: 6.75pt double #000000; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #000000; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">As
|
||
the Pre-Socratics soon discovered, however, none of these ontologies
|
||
offered an adequate explanation of the natural world, for they could
|
||
explain neither the diversity of the objects in nature nor the change
|
||
that occurs in them. The only properties postulated by any of them
|
||
were those that characterize the essential nature of the single kind
|
||
of material substance making up the world, and that left unexplained
|
||
all the properties that distinguish one kind of object from other
|
||
kinds, not to mention how such properties could come or go from
|
||
existence as time passes. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #cccccc; border-top: 6.75pt double #000000; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #000000; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Parmenides
|
||
can be read as making this point. What Parmenides was referring to by
|
||
his famous dictum. "What is, must be, and what is not, must not
|
||
be," was a basic aspect of the nature of substance (the temporal
|
||
aspect of its existential aspect). Substance cannot go out of
|
||
existence, nor can it come into existence. But since Parmenides
|
||
agreed that the "first principle" for explaining the world
|
||
is a single kind of substance (with a temporally simple essential
|
||
nature), he argued that there cannot be any real change or diversity
|
||
in the world. Thus, he insisted that change and diversity are an
|
||
illusion. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #cccccc; border-top: 6.75pt double #000000; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #000000; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Heraclitus
|
||
drew the opposite conclusion from the assumption that there is only
|
||
one first principle for explaining the natural world. But he took, as
|
||
the first principle, change and diversity itself. That was, in
|
||
effect, to deny that there is any such thing as substance underlying
|
||
change or diversity. Since the essential natures of substances are
|
||
defined by their properties, to take the change of properties as
|
||
basic was to deny that properties are aspects of substances, for
|
||
otherwise substances would have to be coming into and going out of
|
||
existence as time passes. Though Heraclitus did assume that change
|
||
and diversity are guided in a regular way by <i>Logos</i> (which is
|
||
something like laws of nature), this is to read Heraclitus' famous
|
||
claim that you cannot step in the same river twice as saying that
|
||
what exists in the natural world is nothing but properties that
|
||
change over time. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #cccccc; border-top: 6.75pt double #000000; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #000000; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Between
|
||
them, therefore, Heraclitus and Parmenides posed a dilemma for any
|
||
explanatory ontology that would postulate only one basic principle to
|
||
explain the world: either the first principle is a material substance
|
||
of some kind and there is no change nor diversity, or else change and
|
||
diversity themselves are the first principle, and there is no
|
||
substance. The former fails to explain the natural world, and the
|
||
latter abandons ontological explanation altogether.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #cccccc; border-top: 6.75pt double #000000; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #000000; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Pre-Socratic
|
||
philosophy was a process of posing hypotheses, criticizing them, and
|
||
posing new hypotheses, and it discovered two ways of solving this
|
||
dilemma. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #cccccc; border-top: 6.75pt double #000000; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #000000; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Pluralists
|
||
held that the world is constituted by more than one kind of material
|
||
substance. That made it possible to explain diversity and change by
|
||
the mixture and separation of different kinds of material substances
|
||
each with a simple essential nature. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #cccccc; border-top: 6.75pt double #000000; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #000000; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Empedocles
|
||
postulated four basic substances, earth, air, fire, and water, and he
|
||
explained the diversity and change of things in the world by their
|
||
mixture and separation (according to the forces of "love"
|
||
and "strife"). Anaxagoras gave the same kind of
|
||
explanation, except that he postulated infinitely many different
|
||
basic substances (or "seeds," as he called them). In both
|
||
cases, the essential natures of the basic substances were defined in
|
||
terms of their qualitative properties, such as hot and cold, wet and
|
||
dry, and their mixture was supposed to account for all the other
|
||
sensible qualities of objects. (It was probably the limited range of
|
||
objects that could be explained by only four basic substances that
|
||
led Anaxagoras to insist on infinitely many "seeds.") </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #cccccc; border-top: 6.75pt double #000000; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #000000; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
other solution to this dilemma was offered by the atomists, Leucippus
|
||
and Democritus. They are said to have explained diversity and change
|
||
"quantitatively", rather than "qualitatively,"
|
||
because they took spatial relations into account. They assumed that
|
||
the material substances are atoms whose natures differ from one
|
||
another only by their size and shape, and they explained the
|
||
differences in kinds of objects not only by the shapes and sizes of
|
||
their constituent atoms, but also by the spatial relations that hold
|
||
among them. That forced the ancient atomists to believe, however,
|
||
that the sensible qualities that objects seem to have are actually
|
||
subjective, a view that was not generally accepted until the
|
||
beginning of the modern era. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>C<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OddOChange_up" align="right" hspace="5" width="60" height="24" border="0">hange.</b></i>
|
||
In order to <i>explain </i>change, an ontology must not only assume
|
||
that substances have a temporal aspect to their existential nature,
|
||
but also that they can be combined in different ways at different
|
||
times. In that case, as time passes, an object may change because
|
||
some of the kinds of basic substances constituting it are exchanged,
|
||
or because the relations by which the same basic substances are
|
||
related in constituting it change, or because of some combination of
|
||
such factors. But that is to assume that, in addition to having
|
||
relations, the relations among basic substances are capable of change
|
||
over time.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<br><br>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #cccccc; border-top: 6.75pt double #000000; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #000000; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">T<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="HistCmt" align="right" hspace="5" width="149" height="22" border="0">his
|
||
is clearly what Empedocles was assuming in holding that the objects
|
||
perceived in nature change because of the mixture and separation of
|
||
elements, such as earth, air, fire and water. He took it for granted
|
||
that they can move, explaining one kind of change by assuming the
|
||
possibility of another, namely, motion.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #cccccc; border-top: 6.75pt double #000000; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #000000; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
atomists, however, believed that it was necessary to explain how
|
||
motion itself is possible. That is why they postulated the void as
|
||
well as all the atoms. They are traditionally understood as having
|
||
argued that bits of matter would not be able to move, if there were
|
||
no void, because there would always be other bits of matter in the
|
||
way. But if there were a void as well as the atoms, atoms would be
|
||
able to move without obstruction, at least, until they collided with
|
||
other atoms. However, since the void exists only where atoms do not
|
||
exist, the void can be understood as a very subtle kind of material
|
||
substances that atoms can displace more easily than other atoms. On
|
||
that interpretation, atoms move through the void like fish through
|
||
water, displacing a fluid-like substance which offers no resistance.
|
||
We will return to their explanation of the possibility of change.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">There
|
||
is, it should be emphasized, no ontological explanation of change, if
|
||
the change being explained is the same kind of change that the
|
||
substances undergoing that change are postulated as having as part of
|
||
their essential nature. Whether we are explaining objects and their
|
||
properties or change in them, when cause and effect are the same,
|
||
there is no ontological explanation, but only ontological assumption.
|
||
</font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Explanatory
|
||
ontology is, in sum, the attempt to <i>reduce </i>everything in the
|
||
world to the various kinds of basic substances constituting them and
|
||
the relations by which those substances exist together as a world.
|
||
But that is explanatory only to the extent that the substances and
|
||
their relations are more elementary than what they explain and
|
||
produce those effects by how they are combined. But if it were
|
||
successful, an ontological explanation of the world would be a simple
|
||
and complete explanation of the world, for it would show how
|
||
everything in the world is identical to certain basic kinds of
|
||
substances and certain basic kinds of relations among them.
|
||
Everything in the world would be explained in the same way.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<br><br>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #66ccff; border-top: 6.75pt double #000080; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #808080; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font color="#800000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>O<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OddOAsReal_up" align="right" hspace="5" width="99" height="28" border="0"><img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="EpistCmt" align="right" width="202" height="20" border="0">ntology
|
||
as realism.</b></font></font> For traditional, epistemological
|
||
philosophy, ontology is realism (or, more precisely, its ontology is
|
||
determined by the position it takes on realism). The foundation of
|
||
epistemological philosophy is a theory about how we know (or a theory
|
||
about the nature of reason) which is based on reflecting on our
|
||
mental processes. From this foundation, it attempts to justify
|
||
certain conclusions about the world, which would be necessary
|
||
relative to our ordinary ways of knowing about it. Thus, success
|
||
generally means that it is committed to the existence of certain
|
||
entities beyond those assumed at the beginning. "Realism"
|
||
is the name for belief in their reality. But realism is usually a
|
||
form of dualism. Epistemologists are already committed to the
|
||
existence of the subject whose way of knowing is the foundation for
|
||
their epistemological argument, and realism commits them to the
|
||
existence of entities of a fundamentally different kind. Hence, they
|
||
wind up defending some form of ontological dualism, and that
|
||
typically leads to anti-realism, since the two kinds of substances do
|
||
not fit together intelligibly as a world. This pattern can be found
|
||
in every era of the history of Western philosophy. I will suggest
|
||
how, very briefly, in order to make clear what I mean.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #66ccff; border-top: 6.75pt double #000080; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #808080; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>A<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OddOAncient_up" align="right" hspace="5" vspace="15" width="25" height="137" border="0">ncient.</b></font>
|
||
Reflecting on the difference between the objects of perception and
|
||
the objects that seem to be present to us in reasoning about kinds of
|
||
things, Plato argued that, in addition to all the visible objects in
|
||
the realm of Becoming, there is a realm of Being where such objects
|
||
of rational intuition exist as unchanging Forms. He called the latter
|
||
realm "Being" because the Forms were supposed to be
|
||
permanent and unchanging. It was supposed to be outside space and
|
||
time, beyond the natural world of changing, visible objects. Thus,
|
||
his realism committed him to believing in the existence of both Being
|
||
and Becoming, and since they are so fundamentally different in their
|
||
natures, his ontology is clearly a kind of dualism.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #66ccff; border-top: 6.75pt double #000080; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #808080; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Plato’s
|
||
was a very problematic dualism, because it is hard to explain how
|
||
entities that are not supposed to be in space and time are related to
|
||
visible objects which are, much less to show how such Forms could
|
||
cause visible objects to have the natures they seem to have. That
|
||
makes it easy to be skeptical about the transcendent realm of Being,
|
||
and naturalists are already inclined to be anti-realists about
|
||
abstract entities of any kind, because they assume that everything is
|
||
located in space.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #66ccff; border-top: 6.75pt double #000080; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #808080; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Aristotle
|
||
tried to avoid these problems by postulating, instead, substances in
|
||
the natural world that are compounds of two elements, matter and
|
||
form. This was not, however, to abandon Plato’s epistemological
|
||
foundation, for Aristotle continued to assume that the "material
|
||
cause" is an object of perception and that the "formal
|
||
cause" is an object of rational intuition. Though essential
|
||
forms were located in space, they had to have a peculiar nature to
|
||
play their role, because each had to be located in many different
|
||
particular substances at the same time and yet be one and the same
|
||
thing. That earned them the name "universals." Though
|
||
Aristotle could claim to be a naturalist, he was still a realist
|
||
about essential forms as something beyond what is known by
|
||
perception. That landed him with his own ontological dualism because,
|
||
even though neither matter nor form can exist without the other, the
|
||
existence of one is distinct from and cannot be reduced to the
|
||
existence of the other. Realism about universals invited a type of
|
||
skepticism called "nominalism."</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #66ccff; border-top: 6.75pt double #000080; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #808080; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">Attempts
|
||
to avoid matter-from dualism characterize Aristotle’s later work on
|
||
the nature of substance as substance. Though there is much dispute
|
||
about it, Aristotle seems to argue in </span></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US"><i>Metaphysics,
|
||
Books VII </i></span></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">and
|
||
</span></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US"><i>VIII</i></span></font></font><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">,
|
||
that substances are basically just essential forms. He apparently
|
||
reduces the material cause to the fact that forms exist only as
|
||
particular substances despite being entities that exist as many
|
||
different particular instances of the same form (that is, as
|
||
universals). That position seems to reduce matter to a principle of
|
||
individuation. This later notion of essential form and matter is
|
||
closer to the distinction between essence and existence assumed here
|
||
(see </span></font></font><a href="/F:/Philosophy/Existentialism/The%20Wholeness%20Of%20the%20World/www.twow.net/ObjText/#04"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="Arial, sans-serif"><font size="1" style="font-size: 7pt"><span lang="en-US"><u>Substances</u></span></font></font></font></a><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">
|
||
above). In any case, Aristotle's conception of being as being (that
|
||
is, substance as substance) poses so many problems that many
|
||
traditional philosophers have been inclined to avoid ontology
|
||
altogether.</span></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #66ccff; border-top: 6.75pt double #000080; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #808080; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>M<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OddOMed_up" align="right" hspace="5" vspace="15" width="23" height="136" border="0">edieval.</b></font>
|
||
In the Medieval period, realism took the form of belief in the
|
||
existence of God, rather than a realm of Being, outside space and
|
||
time. Theists believed that it was possible to prove the existence of
|
||
God on the basis of what can be observed in the natural world. For
|
||
example, they argued from the natural belief that every event has a
|
||
cause to the existence of God as the first cause, or cause of nature
|
||
as a whole. And they argued from natural teleology to God, both as
|
||
the designer of the natural order and as the ultimate final cause of
|
||
natural things. Realism about God, or theism, committed them,
|
||
therefore, to believing in the existence of God as well as nature.
|
||
After Augustine, this ontological dualism was modeled on Plato’s,
|
||
and it was no less problematic. The fundamental difference in their
|
||
natures makes it difficult to explain how God and the natural world
|
||
are related as parts of a single world. It was ultimately left as a
|
||
mystery that could not be fathomed by finite rational minds. Denial
|
||
of this kind of realism is generally considered atheism, though mere
|
||
skepticism about it is often distinguished as agnosticism.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #66ccff; border-top: 6.75pt double #000080; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #808080; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>M<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OddOMod_up" align="right" hspace="5" vspace="15" width="26" height="138" border="0">odern.</b></font>
|
||
With the rise of modern science, it was recognized that our
|
||
perceptual experience of the natural world is something distinct from
|
||
the natural world itself (as the ancient atomists first held), and
|
||
the foundation of epistemological philosophy shifted from reflection
|
||
on how we know in which we are living bodies in the natural world to
|
||
reflection on how we know in which we are minds where ideas have an
|
||
appearance. Mind is the epistemological foundation from which
|
||
Descartes tried to prove the existence of the body and the external
|
||
world of which it is part. The success of Cartesian philosophy would
|
||
entail realism about the natural world, and thus ontological dualism.
|
||
But mind and body are substances with such radically different
|
||
natures that it is, once again, a very problematic ontology, namely,
|
||
mind-body dualism. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #66ccff; border-top: 6.75pt double #000080; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #808080; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">There
|
||
were, of course, skeptics about its success, notably, the British
|
||
Empiricists, and they are interesting for their views about
|
||
substance. Locke argued that realism about material objects involves
|
||
belief in a substratum, or substance as nothing but a support of the
|
||
properties that perception reveals objects to have. Since that was to
|
||
believe that substances have no properties of their own, it was, in
|
||
effect, to reduce substance as substance to its existential aspect,
|
||
and thus, Locke could plausibly hold that substratum is an incoherent
|
||
idea. But even the existential aspect was denied by Berkeley and
|
||
Hume. They accepted the "bundle theory" of substances, that
|
||
is, the view that substances are just the bundle of properties that
|
||
we seem to perceive in them. In any case, since the foundation of
|
||
modern philosophy was mind, they were implicitly committed to one
|
||
kind of substance, and the only ontological position open to skeptics
|
||
was idealism of some kind or other, though only Berkeley embraced it
|
||
explicitly. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #66ccff; border-top: 6.75pt double #000080; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #808080; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Later
|
||
attempts to justify science from the epistemological foundation of
|
||
modern philosophy led to other forms of realism, though they were not
|
||
called that. Kant tired to avoid the problems of Cartesian philosophy
|
||
by holding that space and time are merely forms of intuition in the
|
||
mind. But since he continued to believed that there are things in
|
||
themselves, he was implicitly committed to entities that are not in
|
||
space and time. That landed him with the same kind of problematic
|
||
ontological dualism as Plato, and like Augustine, he simply denied
|
||
that it is possible to explain the relationship between the natural
|
||
world and the things in themselves which are outside time and space. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #66ccff; border-top: 6.75pt double #000080; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #808080; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>C<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OddOContemp_up" align="right" hspace="5" width="27" height="137" border="0">ontemporary.</b></font>
|
||
Early in the twentieth century, developments in logic by Russell and
|
||
Frege offered a new foundation for epistemological philosophy.
|
||
Reflecting on our use of language, so-called Anglo-American analytic
|
||
philosophy took as their epistemological foundation what we all know
|
||
about the meanings and references of the terms and sentences we use.
|
||
This foundation has been used in various way, leading to different
|
||
forms of realism. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #66ccff; border-top: 6.75pt double #000080; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #808080; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Analytic
|
||
philosophy was able to reformulate empiricism as a justification of
|
||
science at the expense of modern metaphysics. Logical positivists
|
||
took the observation of objects in the natural world as the
|
||
epistemological foundation of science, and they tried to show how
|
||
scientific conclusions were supported by it. Though their original
|
||
purpose was to show that whatever is not based on observation is
|
||
meaningless metaphysics, it was soon noticed that even theories in
|
||
physics mention unobservable entities, such as electrons, quarks, and
|
||
force fields. Thus, those who believed in their existence came to
|
||
called "realists about theoretical entities." </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #66ccff; border-top: 6.75pt double #000080; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #808080; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US">More
|
||
recently, the recognition that such unobservable entities are not
|
||
very different from the observable objects on which science bases its
|
||
theories has led to calling the defenders of science "scientific
|
||
realists." Scientific realism is taken to involve a commitment
|
||
to the existence of both the observable and unobservable objects
|
||
recognized by science. Or in the words of Wilfred </span></font></font></font><a href="/F:/Philosophy/Existentialism/The%20Wholeness%20Of%20the%20World/www.twow.net/ObjText/#Sellars63"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US"><u>Sellars</u></span></font></font></font></a><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US">,
|
||
"science is the measure of all things, of what is that it is,
|
||
and of what is not that it is not" (p. 173). But disputes still
|
||
rage in the professional literature about the significance of calling
|
||
it "realism." </span></font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #66ccff; border-top: 6.75pt double #000080; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #808080; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US">Most
|
||
recently, philosophers of science have tried to avoid problems about
|
||
realism by simply abandoning traditional epistemology all together.
|
||
They often call themselves "naturalized epistemologists,"
|
||
for they hold that the only foundation for justifying science is
|
||
science itself (that is, the conclusions that science draws about how
|
||
we know). Though they say that they believe that philosophy is
|
||
continuous with science, to ontological philosophy, they seem to be
|
||
giving up philosophy altogether in favor of being cheerleaders for
|
||
science. See </span></font></font></font><a href="/F:/Philosophy/Existentialism/The%20Wholeness%20Of%20the%20World/www.twow.net/ObjText/#Kitcher"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US"><u>Kitcher</u></span></font></font></font></a><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US">
|
||
and </span></font></font></font><a href="/F:/Philosophy/Existentialism/The%20Wholeness%20Of%20the%20World/www.twow.net/ObjText/#Kitcher"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US"><u>Rosenberg</u></span></font></font></font></a><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><span lang="en-US">.</span></font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #66ccff; border-top: 6.75pt double #000080; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #808080; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Giving
|
||
up epistemological philosophy does not necessarily mean, however,
|
||
taking up ontological philosophy. The habit of epistemology makes it
|
||
seem that ontology is purely descriptive. The job of ontology seems
|
||
to be just to discover the kinds of entities to which one is
|
||
committed by holding certain beliefs to be true. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #66ccff; border-top: 6.75pt double #000080; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #808080; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">With regard
|
||
to natural science, for example, ontology is just realism about the
|
||
conclusions of science.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #66ccff; border-top: 6.75pt double #000080; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #808080; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">In the
|
||
philosophy of mathematics, realism is defended by so-called
|
||
Platonists, who hold that numbers and other mathematical entities
|
||
exist independently of the subjects who know about them (in
|
||
opposition to logicists, who argue that mathematics can be reduced to
|
||
logical truth, and to constructivists, who argue that mathematical
|
||
objects are simply constructs of the imagination). </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #66ccff; border-top: 6.75pt double #000080; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #808080; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">Even
|
||
language is taken as a foundation for descriptive ontology. </span></font></font><a href="/F:/Philosophy/Existentialism/The%20Wholeness%20Of%20the%20World/www.twow.net/ObjText/#Quine53On"><font color="#0000ff"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US"><u>Quine</u></span></font></font></a><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span lang="en-US">
|
||
(1953, 1960) has argued that talk of classes implies the existence of
|
||
at least that one kind of abstract entity. Some analytic philosophers
|
||
now argue that to believe in the truth of descriptive statements is
|
||
to be committed to the existence of properties as well as the
|
||
substances that have them, or what might be called substance-property
|
||
dualism. </span></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; background: #66ccff; border-top: 6.75pt double #000080; border-bottom: 6.75pt double #808080; border-left: 6.75pt double #808080; border-right: 6.75pt double #808080; padding: 0.28cm 0.46cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Scientific
|
||
realism leads some analytic philosophers of science to take laws of
|
||
nature to be real, which entails a dualism of laws and the objects
|
||
that that obey them. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" dir="rtl" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">In
|
||
any case, realism is not explanatory ontology, but just ontology as
|
||
realism. It does not use the entities it postulates to explain
|
||
anything beyond the phenomena on which their existence was defended.
|
||
That leaves plenty of room for philosophical argument, because
|
||
descriptive ontologists generally take a skeptical attitude and
|
||
are inclined to deny the existence of any kinds of entities whose
|
||
existence is not forced on them by their epistemological foundation.
|
||
But that is a different issue entirely from explanatory ontology.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
</body>
|
||
</html> |