Theory of categories
In ontology, the theory of categories concerns itself with the categories of being: the highest genera or kinds of entities according to Amie Thomasson.[1] To investigate the categories of being, or simply categories, is to determine the most fundamental and the broadest classes of entities.[2] A distinction between such categories, in making the categories or applying them, is called an ontological distinction. Various systems of categories have been proposed, they often include categories for substances, properties, relations, states of affairs or events.[3][4] A representative question within the theory of categories might articulate itself, for example, in a query like, "Are universals prior to particulars?"
Not to be confused with Category theory.Primary categories: Substance, Relation, Quantity and Quality
Secondary categories: Place, Time, Situation, Condition, Action, Passion
[7]
Being was differentiated from Nothing by containing with it the concept of the "", an initial internal division that can be compared with Kant's category of disjunction. Stace called the category of Being the sphere of common sense containing concepts such as consciousness, sensation, quantity, quality and measure.
other
. The "other" separates itself from the "one" by a kind of motion, reflected in Hegel's first synthesis of "becoming". For Stace this category represented the sphere of science containing within it firstly, the thing, its form and properties; secondly, cause, effect and reciprocity, and thirdly, the principles of classification, identity and difference.
Essence
. Having passed over into the "Other" there is an almost neoplatonic return into a higher unity that in embracing the "one" and the "other" enables them to be considered together through their inherent qualities. This according to Stace is the sphere of philosophy proper where we find not only the three types of logical proposition: disjunctive, hypothetical, and categorical but also the three transcendental concepts of beauty, goodness and truth.[48]
Notion
Firstness (): "The first is predominant in feeling ... we must think of a quality without parts, e.g. the colour of magenta ... When I say it is a quality I do not mean that it "inheres" in a subject ... The whole content of consciousness is made up of qualities of feeling, as truly as the whole of space is made up of points, or the whole of time by instants".
Quality
Secondness (Reaction): "This is present even in such a rudimentary fragment of experience as a simple feeling ... an action and reaction between our soul and the stimulus ... The idea of second is predominant in the ideas of causation and of statical force ... the real is active; we acknowledge it by calling it the actual".
Thirdness (): "Thirdness is essentially of a general nature ... ideas in which thirdness predominate [include] the idea of a sign or representation ... Every genuine triadic relation involves meaning ... the idea of meaning is irreducible to those of quality and reaction ... synthetical consciousness is the consciousness of a third or medium".[63]
Meaning
1956–1965. The Dramatic Universe. London, Hodder & Stoughton.
John G. Bennett
1992. New Foundations of Ontology. Madison: Uni. of Wisconsin Press.
Gustav Bergmann
Browning, Douglas, 1990. Ontology and the Practical Arena. Pennsylvania State Uni.
Butchvarov, Panayot, 1979. Being qua Being: A Theory of Identity, Existence, and Predication. Indiana Uni. Press.
1996. A Realistic Theory of Categories. Cambridge Uni. Press.
Roderick Chisholm
1951. Ontology. The Johns Hopkins Press (reprinted 1968, Greenwood Press, Publishers, New York).
Feibleman, James Kern
Grossmann, Reinhardt, 1983. The Categorial Structure of the World. Indiana Uni. Press.
Grossmann, Reinhardt, 1992. The Existence of the World: An Introduction to Ontology. Routledge.
and Koskinen, Heikki J., 2012. Categories of Being: Essays on Metaphysics and Logic. New York: Oxford University Press.
Haaparanta, Leila
Hoffman, J., and Rosenkrantz, G. S.,1994. Substance among other Categories. Cambridge Uni. Press.
1962. Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Boyce Gibson, W. R., trans. Collier.
Edmund Husserl
------, 2000. Logical Investigations, 2nd ed. Findlay, J. N., trans. Routledge.
Johansson, Ingvar, 1989. Ontological Investigations. Routledge, 2nd ed. Ontos Verlag 2004.
2009. Essays on Being, Oxford University Press.
Kahn, Charles H.
1998. Critique of Pure Reason. Guyer, Paul, and Wood, A. W., trans. Cambridge Uni. Press.
Immanuel Kant
1992, 1998. The Essential Peirce, vols. 1,2. Houser, Nathan et al., eds. Indiana Uni. Press.
Charles Sanders Peirce
1949. The Concept of Mind. Uni. of Chicago Press.
Gilbert Ryle
1974, "Toward a Theory of the Categories" in Essays in Philosophy and Its History. Reidel.
Wilfrid Sellars
2003. "Ontology" in Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and Information. Blackwell.
Barry Smith
Aristotle's at MIT.
Categories
"" – Amie Thomasson.
Ontological Categories and How to Use Them
"" – E. J. Lowe.
Recent Advances in Metaphysics
– Raul Corazzon.