Talk:Ontology/Archive 2

difference of opinion about 'broad' and 'specific'

This edit expresses an opinion different from that of this one.

This difference draws attention to problems in the lead. I think that the second of the two opinions, preferring "broadly", has little to recommend it against the first.

I see the main problem in the first sentence, "Ontology is the philosophical study of being". I guess that this one may be dear to some editors, though I also recognise that I cannot read their minds. It was introduced here.

I regret that it seems undesirable to some editors to accept the concomitant of the word 'real', that ontology is about 'things', whether or not the word applies to a particular item of discourse. The Latin origin of 'real' is in res, a noun that means, amongst others things, 'things'. It is a concern of ontology to debate such sentences as 'X is not a thing, it is just a name'. A large concern of ontology is as to the reality or unreality of things, however those words are read.

I also regret that some editors seem not to want to say upfront that 'existence' usually refers, whether explicitly or implicitly, to some universe of discourse. Some writers prefer to use the more recent term 'domain of discourse', but I think the older one is better.

If the first sentence or two of the lead are recast, I guess that will give reason to recast the last one "Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, ontology often deals with questions concerning what entities exist or may be said to exist and how such entities may be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences."

I think it would be good to undo the edit that split the first sentence into two.

I don't want to start an unhappy round of edit upon edit, so I am here asking for some opinions.Chjoaygame (talk) 07:35, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Your wild attack on my simple edit from every possible direction is a sign of insanity. I was just correcting the obvious misuse of a single word. Please calm down. Eleuther (talk) 19:19, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

!Chjoaygame (talk) 03:07, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

My comments are not a wild attack. They intend to draw attention to various defects in the lead. As for the exact word change, it is open to various interpretations, and its merit is not obvious.Chjoaygame (talk) 06:29, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Reasons for undos

I have undone several edits.

This one adds redundant words and removes useful ones.

This one adds information that is not directly about ontology. Ontogeny is not ontology.

This one is redundant after the undoing of the previous one.Chjoaygame (talk) 06:24, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

I support your revert, —PaleoNeonate – 08:36, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you.Chjoaygame (talk) 12:00, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

reasons for undo

I have undone this edit for the following reasons.

The undone edit is not about ontology as such. It is about a form of psychotherapy or coaching or counselling. The form happens to use the word 'ontological', but that does not make it about ontology as a branch of philosophy, the latter being the topic of this article.

Moreover, it is not evident that the undone edit was not a promotion.Chjoaygame (talk) 23:36, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

added content to "Types"-section

I added new subsections to the "Types"-section: "Flat vs ordered vs sorted", "Thing ontologies vs fact ontologies", "Constituent ontologies vs blob theories". I think they are needed in this article because these topics are part of the contemporary discourse on ontology, they help to elucidate various past developments/discussions in ontology and they were not properly mentioned/described here so far.

In the previous version the "Types"-section contained only the types "upper ontology", "domain ontology", "interface ontology" and "process ontology". As far as I know, this division is mainly relevant for ontologies in information science but not for ontology at large. So I moved the content to the subsection "Information science".Phlsph7 (talk) 04:32, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

The new material is admirable and valuable. But, considering its scope and generality, it based on too narrow a selection of reliable sources, with inadequate context. Considering the work in its preparation, I am not here and now undoing it, with a demand for a broader, though still concise, base of sources and context for its restoration, but it seemed reasonable to have done so. I guess that Editor Phlsph7 has powers needed for supplying such a base. May I suggest he exercise them?Chjoaygame (talk) 00:01, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback. I take it that your criticism is directed mainly at "Constituent ontologies vs blob theories"-subsection and to some extend at the "Flat vs ordered vs sorted"-subsection. I followed your suggestion and added more references with corresponding reformulations where necessary. Please let me know you if you see other ways how these subsections in their current form could be improved.Phlsph7 (talk) 07:13, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

cleaned up the lead

I have cleaned up the lead.

The former lead was more or less loaded with redundancy. In general, a dictionary is the proper source for the lead of a Wikipedia article. Wikipedia defines its own topics, based on a variety of sources. Moreover, the meaning of a word is not to be settled or dominated by its etymology.Chjoaygame (talk) 07:14, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

I think it was a good change. I was missing the idea of fundamentality (i.e. that entities may form hierarchies in which non-fundamental entities depend on the fundamental ones) which was present in the previous version. I reformulated it in order to include it.Phlsph7 (talk) 14:44, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

I would prefer to wikilink to taxonomy, which I ought to have done first up, than to spell it out in the lead. I wouldn't be surprised if some regular denizens have their objections. Let's see.Chjoaygame (talk) 23:41, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

I think your clause on taxonomy was fine. I changed this part not because of this term but in order to connect it a little to the question of fundamentality. A good place to mention/explain it would be in the section on sorted ontologies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Phlsph7 (talk • contribs) 04:51, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

removed some content

I've removed the subsection "Hindu philosophy" because it didn't mention anything contentful about Hindu ontology. I hope someone can re-add it with more content.

I've also removed the subsection "Ontological and epistemological certainty" because it touched ontology only tangentially by mentioning the ontological argument, which is already covered in more detail in its own subsection.Phlsph7 (talk) 13:50, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia should offer material about Indian philosophy, though such is not an easy topic. I think the grounds offered for the undone removal are inadequate.

I think that Descartes' doctrine  of the certainty of the existence of the philosopher's mind should be stated in Wikipedia. Perhaps it is already covered in some other section of the article. This is not primarily about the ontological argument.

I don't know if the 'self' versus 'other' doctrine is treated elsewhere in the article.Chjoaygame (talk) 16:27, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Ah, I overlooked this post at first. I expanded the section "Hindu philosophy", I hope that solves this issue. As I see it, the section "Ontological and epistemological certainty" belongs primarily to epistemology and theology, while the split-off section "Doctrine of 'self' versus 'other'" belongs to psychology. Epistemology, theology and psychology come with certain ontological commitments, which is why they are not fully off-topic. The question is whether this tie to ontology is sufficient to justify their inclusion in this article. I think the sections should be either removed or their relevance to ontology should be made more prominent. I don't consider it a serious issue, so I won't press the point further. Phlsph7 (talk) 05:14, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

I think that a primary aspect of Descartes' thoughts about certainty is that it rests on and is entangled with the fundamental ontological difference between res extensa and res cogitans. I think that, in a way, for philosophy, that difference is of most notable importance; it is practically the paradigm of modern ontological thinking. I don't exactly know why Descartes is said to be the father of modern philosophy, but my instinct tells me that the reason is his discussion of that difference. It should appear in the article. Indeed, I think it deserves more systematic statement, perhaps in a more suitable section of the article.Chjoaygame (talk) 09:47, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

In agreement with your comment on the section Doctrine of 'self' versus 'other', I have removed it.Chjoaygame (talk) 09:52, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

I think the change in the section on Decartes is a definite improvement. Ideally, it would be linked to substance dualism. So it's not just the person that has material parts and mental parts, but that the whole world is composed of only these 2 types of things. And the epistemological difference between the 2 is that we can only know about (some) mental parts with absolute certainty. But I'm not sure how the cogito can get us all the way there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Phlsph7 (talk • contribs) 11:50, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

This is a topic of great difficulty. I think it involves questions to which we have not even hints of useful answers. (There really are questions that may seem anwerable, but are not easily answerable. For example https://www.telleyz.com/unique-factorization-and-its-difficulties-ii-data-structures-math-foundations-199/. The number z is large.) Yes, as far as I can see, Descartes' position can be classified as substance dualism.

Yes, "it's not just the person that has material parts and mental parts, but the whole world that is composed of only these 2 types of things." And yes, the cogito seems not to get us all the way there. I haven't studied the history. I think that the 'primary and secondary quality' idea preceded Descartes and must have helped. Did that come partly from Galileo? I seem to have echoes of other sources?Chjoaygame (talk) 22:12, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

comments on extensive new content

A basket of new content has been supplied, so far ending with this edit. The new material is not quite according to the style or policy of Wikipedia. It largely reports what particular authors have written for themselves. This is not reporting what a standard textbook says about those authors. It is more along the lines of the Wikipedia editor's original research on the particular authors. It blurs or crosses the line between report on a particular author and report on a topic that is considered by several authors. This  is bad for Wikipedia. Another way of saying this is that it relies too much on a loose or even wrong interpretation of the reliable source doctrine. The style of the new material gives me the impression of entries in a notebook for the Wikipedia editor more than of an encyclopaedic report on a topic. I don't want to dampen the enthusiasm of the editor who posted the new material, but I do want to defend what I see as Wikipedia style or policy.

My take on this new material is also that it belongs to the 'guess how I think about it' school  of philosophy. In other words, it tends to rely on somewhat arbitrary lines of thinking of particular philosophers who happen to interest the editor, rather than setting out topics considered by many philosophers.

My criticism is not easy to convert into specific edits, especially since the new material is extensive. I am not a learned enough scholar to give a thorough and academically defensible criticism. I will, however, make stab or two at it.

Bertrand Russell (page 222 of his History of Western Philosophy, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1946) said that he didn't understand Aristotle's "categories". My take on that is that he unintentionally took 'category' as meaning 'class of object' or 'fundamental class of object'. Yes, 'category' is indeed often apparently given such a meaning. But I think that's not Aristotle's meaning. I think Aristotle meant 'kind of statement that can be made about objects', or 'class of predicate', something quite different. Perhaps I am mistaken. Perhaps more on this later.

As for the following "The existence of an entity constitutes the fact that this entity is there, that it exists. Essence, on the other hand, constitutes what this entity is like, what its characteristics are.". I think this tends towards unexplained tautology, with little specific meaning to someone who hasn't already been taught what it intends. I would like to offer something a little more. What does 'there' mean? I think it refers to a place in some universe of discourse, some world of reference. I guess that it may intend to refer to some unspecified but still highly or even uniquely preferred (by a particular philosopher or author) universe of discourse, even to the 'actual world'? As for 'what this entity is like'. I think that is loose talk. For me, the traditional term 'essence' really means 'definition', referring specifically to 'identifying characteristics', not loosely to perhaps accidental characteristics. In other words, again it is about a viewpoint as distinct from a topic.

The article seems to be drifting towards a compendium of views of particular writers. This is not the proper expression of the reliable source principle. Wikipedia should be structured on topics, not on unrelated authors.

For the moment, that's enough.Chjoaygame (talk) 17:53, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Your main criticism seems to be that the subsection on Hartmann only reflects my personal opinion but is at odds with Hartmann's own view and the views of his other interpreters.

I don't think that what Russel wrote about Aristotle is relevant here. The question is not whether Hartmann interpreted Aristotle correctly but whether the section presents Hartmann's view on Aristotle correctly. I think it does. For example, see Hartmann's Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, page 38-39.

I'm not sure that it's possible to give a good, non-tautological explanation of what "existence" means. The German term is "Dasein", being there. This is why I used the "there".

I agree with you that the term "essence" is problematic here. It is an unhappy translation from the German "Sosein". Unfortunately, the other alternative translations are also unhappy. This translation is not just my personal interpretation but is used by other authors as well, for example see the references for Spiegelberg and Bochenski.

If you want to make you point clearly that this interpretation of Hartmann is wrong or misguided, it might be best to point out where it differs from Hartmann's own views or where it is not supported by any sources. But I think the points you have raised so far haven't done that.

By the way, you didn't revert my edit on Hartmann but the edit afterwards that removed 2 subsections.Phlsph7 (talk) 18:20, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. I am sorry to feel that your post seems testy or irritated. I hope you may reread my post more sympathetically. I am not out to micro-edit your posts, but, rather, to suggest overall Wikipedia style strategy for framing them. Again, the style of the new material gives me the impression of entries in a personal notebook for the editor more than of a Wikipedia encyclopaedic report on a topic.

I intended to undo the edit that I undid, with my reasons as stated above.

My comments on Hartmann were not intended to cover an undoing. My point is not that your post on Hartmann was inaccurate. My point is that it is bad Wikipedia style to build a post in an article such as this one on the basis of the views of a single author, when it is more fitting to post on a topic. My point is not that the section unduly reflects your personal opinion on how to read Hartmann, but that it is Wikipedia style to build a post in such articles as this one on a topic, with reference to several authors who have contributed to the topic. My concern is not whether your post correctly represents Hartmann's views. My point is that a post should, in general, not be based on the views of a single author. Yes, there are exceptions to this, especially for a post on an author of great scholarship, when he is writing on the basis of a conspectus of many other scholars. The choice of a single author as basis for a post in an article such as this can too easily approach original research.

As for my comments on Russell and Aristotle, I think they are relevant, but I don't want to post too much detail on that.Chjoaygame (talk) 19:57, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback. It's quite common in texts on the history of philosophy to cover the content in an author-by-author fashion. Many articles on Wikipedia also follow this approach, including some of the other sections in this article. If your concern is that Hartmann's views are too idiosyncratic to be noteworthy, I suggest you have a look at the sections on recent publications on Hartmann at https://nicolaihartmannsociety.org.

The style, as opposed to the content, of this section doesn't strike me as falling into the category of "personal notebook entries". But I'm also here to learn. If you could substantiate your claims and it turns out that you have a point then I would work on improving my style.Phlsph7 (talk) 04:28, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments.

My comment "The article seems to be drifting towards a compendium of views of particular writers" was not directed specifically or pointedly towards your contributions. It was a general comment intending to bring attention to what seems to me to be a drift in the article, in an undesirable direction. True, the comment was made in the context of your post, but again, I think your post just happens to exemplify what my comment was about; I wasn't thinking pointedly. A significant part of the article needs to be revised along the lines I am talking about, from being organised around single authors' works to being organised by topic. My 'personal notebook' comment was another way of expressing my concern about 'single author' versus 'topic' organisation.

Yes, indeed many "texts on the history of philosophy cover the content in an author-by-author fashion". But I think that is not the way for Wikipedia to go. Wikipedia is not a text in the usual sense. It is a sort of encyclopaedia with its own style.

No, I am not saying that Hartmann's views are too idiosyncratic to be noteworthy.Chjoaygame (talk) 06:04, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

I think you have a point that the different sections of an article should be more closely related to each other than is currently the case in this article. This applies also to my contributions, as you've rightly pointed out. I think this can be done in an author-by-author fashion, in a topic-centered approach or in a mixed approach. The difficulty with the history-section is that there are still too many gaps to properly spell out how the different sections are connected to each other. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:33, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Every Wikipedia article is a work in progress.Chjoaygame (talk) 09:57, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Revert on lead-section & changes to section

I've undone the revert made by the user Snowded, which removed the summary in the lead section and removed material from the section "Flat vs sorted vs ordered". The justification given for this revert covers neither the changes to the section "Flat vs sorted vs ordered" nor to the part of the summary in the lead of the history section. It only concerns the 2nd paragraph of the lead. It is true that I took the terminology from Schaffer's work. But the relevant distinctions are drawn by various authors under different names, as explained in the 1st paragraph of the section "Flat vs sorted vs ordered". I open to using a different terminology if there are good suggestions. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:16, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

I am not quite clear in my mind as to exactly which revision you have restored, but it looks to me as if you have gone back to revision 990968105, not to revision 991123022 as indicated in your edit cover note. But I may well be mistaken; I am not too fussed about it; perhaps I need to look again.

I think it would have been better to seek a talk page comment from Editor Snowded and me and perhaps others before getting too deep into a round of preemptive undos. I hope Editor Snowded will comment here as soon as is convenient for him.

My view is that the added material is good, but is too heavy with detailed concepts to be put in the lead. It is not that I have objections to the content of the added material. It is that I think it is not suitable for the lead. The lead is a summary, not an exposition. The lead could stand more material, but it should be added parsimoniously and cautiously.Chjoaygame (talk) 08:01, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

It should be identical now to revision 991123022. Try to compare the current version to 991123022, it doesn't show a difference for me.

"I think it would have been better to seek a talk page comment from Editor Snowded and me and perhaps others before getting too deep into a round of preemptive undos." note taken

I agree with you that having a more accessible summary of the article in the lead section would be better. But this might mean giving even more space to the "Types"-section in the lead than it already has. I think the more serious problem with the lead is that it still remains silent on most parts of the article. From Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section: "The lead should identify the topic and summarize the body of the article with appropriate weight". Adding summaries of other sections to the lead might at least partially solve this problem by taking the emphasis away from the "Types"-section-summary. One problem is that various parts of the article are difficult to summarize. This may be due to what you mentioned in our last exchange about this article being a "compendium of views". But removing everything but the 1st paragraph from the lead-section goes against the guideline above. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:56, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes, the lead is light on and could be fuller. But much better light on than overloaded. Difficult to add to the lead of this article. Let's hope Editor Snowded will comment.Chjoaygame (talk) 09:04, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

As for terminology, to replace 'ordered', how do 'ranked' and 'hierarchical' sound to you?Chjoaygame (talk) 09:07, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

• I think "hierarchical" would be a good replacement for "ordered". The term "sorted" could be replaced by "policategorical". But several authors use the term "flat" so I would stick with it. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:19, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

I would be inclined to the spelling 'polycategorical', after 'polysyllabic' and many other words in the OED. You could offer both 'flat' and 'polycategorical'; they both have merit.Chjoaygame (talk) 10:48, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

I think you are right, I checked the reference to Inwagen & Paul, both use the spelling 'polycategorical'. I made the change to User:Phlsph7/OntologyPhlsph7 (talk) 11:00, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

• THe lede should obviously reflect the article but moving one persons theory into the lede, per my edit summary is odd to say the least. The place to draft and agree text is here if you have a dispute not in the article itself. So please respect wikipedia process here -----Snowded ^TALK 09:10, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

• It's not one person's theory, it's one person's terminology. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:19, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

I stand corrected :-) Whatever the same point applies. You might want to set up a sandbox and invite other editors in as the best way forward -----Snowded ^TALK 10:03, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

I copied the content to User:Phlsph7/Ontology and removed the terms "sorted" and "ordered" from the lead. I hope this has solved the issue discussed here. Please let me know. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:37, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

• Dear Editor Snowded, thank you for your formal request that I respect wikipedia process here. If you had looked a little more closely, perhaps you would have noticed that I did my editing in two steps with the aim of making it easier for other editors to see what I had done, because the chain of edits was getting complicated. It seems that my aim was off.

I see that you have simply undone both Editor Phlsph7's edit and my attempt at compromise. I was, however, hoping for some more substantial comment from you. I agree with your clearing of the lead, undoing Editor Phlsph7's most recent edit, which added again to the lead. But I don't agree with your complete deletion of Editor Phlsph7's added material.

Dear Editor Phlsph7, it seems that Editor Snowded doesn't want your addition to be put in the lead, and that I agree with him on that. I now propose restoration of your addition to the place where I thought it better. I suppose that you could do that better than I would. I don't see that we need to resort to a sandbox for it.Chjoaygame (talk) 10:55, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

There are some major issues here - we are meant to use reliable third party sources not write essays based on our own perception of the field, or privaleging one author's categories. There also needs to be a clear understanding that if something is disputed then you WAIT for consensus on the talk page before restoring disputed material. I have other things to do for the moment but I will attempt to edit the whole thing later (basically using Honderich's Ocford Companion as a base - if that doesn't provide a way forwards then I will revert to an earlier stable version while we resolve this. -----Snowded ^TALK 11:14, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

I followed the suggestion by editor Chjoaygame and restored the revision 991123022 but removed the 2nd paragraph of the lead, which, as I understand it, is the main source of the dispute here. My criticism of this version is that lacks a summary of the section "Types". Phlsph7 (talk) 11:21, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

It is generally a good idea not to make assumptions. You also mixed changes to the lede with changes in the main section - separate edits would be easier. Whever there is just too much synthesis of primary sources going on here. You should really self-revert -----Snowded ^TALK 11:24, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

I think that the present first paragraph of the lead does contain a brief summary of the section "Types". It reads “It includes the questions of how entities are grouped into basic categories and which of these entities exist on the most fundamental level.” For the present, I think that is enough on that topic in the lead. Parsimony is a prime virtue in the lead.Chjoaygame (talk) 11:43, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

addition to the lead

Since we are getting a bit testy here, I think I am best to say here that I think the new material in the lead is unsuitable for the lead, and I favour deleting it. It is historical, a bit discursive, and not really a summary of the article. The material that I propose be deleted from the lead is

Ontological questions were already present in pre-Socratic philosophy in the form of a dispute between monism and pluralism. Eleatic monism, as defended by Parmenides, holds that the only thing that exists is the One: an unchanging, all-encompassing and static entity without any parts. This view was challenged by various other pre-Socratics, for example by Anaxagoras, who replaced the reality of being (unique and unchanging) with that of becoming, or by Democritus, who held that everything is composed of a multiplicity of indivisible atoms.

I have no objection to that material appearing somewhere in the body of the article, if it is not already there.Chjoaygame (talk) 11:32, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm not getting testy I just want material to reflect third party sources and at the moment it doesn't -----Snowded ^TALK 11:41, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree that third party sources are preferable.Chjoaygame (talk) 11:46, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

This paragraph was intended as a first step of summarizing the history-section. I agree that it's not perfect standing alone like this by itself. Phlsph7 (talk) 11:54, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Third party sources re not just preferable, they are essential to making statements about a field and I repeat an earlier point - an article is not a sandpit. Back to this later -----Snowded ^TALK 12:11, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

I have deleted the paragraph.Chjoaygame (talk) 13:41, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Many an article does not include a summary of its history section in the lead.Chjoaygame (talk) 13:46, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Hinduism Subsection has no use value

There is vast heterogeneity in ontological philosophical traditions in Hinduism, ranging from non-dualism, to dualism, to qualified dualism and much more. This subsection is terribly reductionist, though as the instructions tell me, I assume good faith! I just wonder why this section is so bland, and why it reads as a primitive version of more sophisticated ontological thought by the Greeks, when in fact the emergence of vedic ontology either predates or is contemporaneous withe Greek traditions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thelovingllama (talk • contribs) 21:13, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Glad to see an editor who cares about this. I would be glad to be educated on this topic.

Yes, the section could well be expanded. It should be done with good regard for Wikipedia principles and policy. I would be uncomfortable with the idea of an editor who was feeling righteous indignation. A neutral approach is needed.

This is an English language Wikipedia. Many English speakers come from an intellectual tradition that is largely based in Greek tradition. They think in such terms. At a guess, quite likely mistaken, I get the impression that Editor Thelovingllama may come from that tradition? In my slight and crude studies of this topic, I have gained the impression that a lot of deep and real scholarship is needed to relate accurately the Hindu and Greek traditions. Yes, Sanskrit and Greek have a common linguistic past. From my primitive ignorance, I guess that they have an importantly common philosophical and historical past.

Consequently, much care, scholarship, and circumspection are needed to make this into a good Wikipedia section. Editors were best well versed in both philosophical and historical traditions, including familiarity with Sanskrit, ancient Greek, and English. Eventually, the needs of readers from the Greek tradition must guide the writing of the article. English speaking readers from the Hindu tradition are likely to already know most of what will appear in the article.

For a very difficult, subtle, and important topic such as this, I think that two, three, or more, diversely and thoroughly researched and well established reliable sources are needed for every sentence, preferably with each reference containing direct quotes from the respective source, because it may be difficult for readers to access sources in order to verify for themselves. Sentences in the article should be short and simple. Slick quotes assembled superficially and summarily are to be thoroughly avoided.

Bon voyage.Chjoaygame (talk) 01:00, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

I think this section has "use value" in the sense that what it says is correct and relevant, as far as I know. But I agree with you that it is rather one-sided, since it only talks about Samkhya philosophy, which is just one of the 6 traditional astika schools. But being one-sided may be better than being totally absent. Adding a few more paragraphs on other Hindu perspectives on ontology would be a good addition to this section. Phlsph7 (talk) 03:49, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Alright, I've made a small start. It might be good to expand the new sentences on Yoga philosophy and Advaita Vedanta. And so far this section is still silent on qualified dualism. Phlsph7 (talk) 05:21, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

The topic is very difficult. I will make a few partly jumbled comments that may say more about my ignorance than about the topic, but my ignorance is perhaps shared with some readers, so that it may be useful to articulate it, for guidance as to what readers can grasp.

I seem to remember some ten or so different meanings of the English word 'consciousness'. It is not fully clear to me which of them apply here. I would generally see 'consciousness' as indelibly belonging to individual persons. My hazy impression from the past is that 'purusha' is inclined to the impersonal; "Hinduism refers to Purusha as the soul of the universe, the universal spirit present everywhere, in everything and everyone, all the times" (from the article Purusha). Perhaps this could be clarified.

It is not evident to me that Descartes' mind/body dualism is not a form of substance dualism. Perhaps that could be made clearer.

Generally, I incline to avoid copying from or trusting other Wikipedia articles. They are not reliable sources, even if they seem to be reliably sourced. In general, I think one's default assessment of them should be that they are nonsense. One's investigations and comparisons of reliable sources may help.

Though the words 'consciousness' and 'mind' have different meanings, it may be useful to articulate them.

I seem to remember that 'advaita' means 'non-dualism' rather than 'monism', though I don't recall  what is the distinction.Chjoaygame (talk) 08:38, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Let's say there are 3 things: (1) pure consciousness, (2) the contents of consciousness (thoughts, emotions,...) and (3) regular matter. It might be helpful to picture pure consciousness as a box into which all kinds of contents are added and later removed. Decartes thinks that the important ontological gap is between (2) & (3) while for Samkhya it's between (1) & (2). I think both dualisms are substance dualisms. Mind is often identified with (2) in Indian philosophy. The term buddhi is used, it is part of prakrti. You are right to point out that these issues concerning consciousness and mind should be stated clearer in the text. I'll see if I can do something about it.

Purusa has different meanings in different schools of hinduism. In Samkhya, there are many purusas, one for each person.

see quotes from [1]:

• "It [purusa] is pure consciousness: it enjoys and witnesses Prakṛti’s activities, but does not cause them"
• "An important difference between schools of Indian philosophy that recognize mokṣa(liberation) as an end is the accepted number of souls. In Buddhism there is no separate soul to be liberated. In Advaita Vedānta, there is one common world-soul, and individuality is a function of the material world only. Sāṅkhya adduces three arguments to prove that there is a separate puruṣa for each individual"

You are right, Advaita means non-dualism. Advaita Vedanta is committed to a certain form of non-dualism: monism. But also any pluralism with more than 2 categories is non-dualistic, though this is usually not important in Indian philosophy as far as I know.

I agree with you that it's not a good idea to blindly copy from other wiki articles. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:33, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for those thoughts.Chjoaygame (talk) 18:13, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Phlsph7 your paragraph above on Descartes and Samkhya us all original research or synthesis. To "do something about it" you would need to use a reliable source which made that comparison and even then to demonstrat that it represented the balance of sources - it is not one that you as an editor can make -----Snowded ^TALK 07:01, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

I added 2 references for the comparison. Schweizer describes the 2 dualisms as "intimately related". I didn't think that this comparison is a very contestable issue, otherwise I would have added the references earlier. Please let me know if you think that the problem still persists. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:42, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

History section

The whole section is so incomplete and unbalanced I am dubious about its value. Expandeding it, not by adding thinkers, but by bloating individual entries is the wrong way to go. That said the whole article reads like a hotch potch of individual ideosyncracies of a limited number of editors. The use of third party sourcing seems unknown ....-----Snowded ^TALK 06:56, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree with you that the history section is in a bad shape. I think the problem is not so much with what is there but with what is missing: the gaps between the different sections are just too big. Which additions do you think would be most needed? I was thinking about Descartes, Heidegger, Carnap & Quine. Wolff might also be relevant. But that would still leave the section a little sparse on medieval & modern philosophy. Or do you have different idea on how to proceed? Phlsph7 (talk) 07:58, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

I think most of the sources are 3rd party sources, i.e. independent. Do mean a lack of tertiary sources, i.e. encyclopedias and textbooks? Phlsph7 (talk) 09:22, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

There needs to be a third party source which says what is significant in the history, it is not us selecting what we think is significant then sourcing that. Also if I look at that list, the edits on the Hindu section and earlier issues, there is a very strong danger of this becoming a parallel article to Philosophy. We need to address the subject itself - Weissman's Social Ontology would be an example, also DeLanda and Boghossian who address this subject specifically while other major figures in philosophy do it by implication -----Snowded ^TALK 10:10, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Most of the items in the history section are about the most general categories of being or about what exists on the most fundamental level. Both these subjects fall within the domain of ontology. This applies also to the Hinduism-section: are all things either conscious things or material things (Samkhya/Yoga dualism)? Are all things just illusory aspects belonging to underlying all-encompassing entity (Advaita Vedanta monism)?

But you are right to point out that this relation to ontology is not always stated explicitly in the text. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:41, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

And I repeat we are not here to write essays on the subject but to reflect sources -----Snowded ^TALK 11:27, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

names policy

This edit has changed the name 'Avicenna'  to 'Ibn Sina'.

It is far beyond my competence to know if this is to a correct name in some language that I guess might be Arabic. I don't know Wikipedia policy on such matters. The English language has its own renderings of words and names from other languages. For me, a native English speaker, Germany is 'Germany', though its German name is 'Deutschland', I believe. I regret that I was not taught German when I was a schoolboy.Chjoaygame (talk) 05:22, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure about naming policies either. I did a short google search: 'Ibn Sina' gets a few more results than 'Avicenna'. Entries in encyclopedias are divided as to which one is the main title. It seems to me that either choice is fine. Phlsph7 (talk) 06:11, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps both could be shown? I would feel safer if I knew if there is a Wikipedia policy on the matter.

This Wikipedia is an English language thing.Chjoaygame (talk) 07:12, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Moving forwards

My gemeral impression is that this article is, to quote Tolkein "a tale that has grown in the telling". There is little or no third party sourcing to establish the definition and the main subject areas. Large parts of it are mini-essays based on primary sourcing. I suggest we take a couple of the standard dictionaries or enclyopedias of Philosophy as a starting point and get the core contends agreed and roughluy structured. -----Snowded ^TALK 09:26, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

• I don't agree with your assessment of current sourcing. But I agree that there are important omissions, one of them being a good overview over the field.Phlsph7 (talk) 09:55, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

• I don't like the idea of trying too hard to lay down the agreed core contents, and I don't like the idea of using a couple of standard encyclopaedias, and even less, standard dictionaries. I feel Wikipedia has a degree of fluidity that is hard to eradicate. I agree that we need secondary/'third party' sourcing, though it seems we may also agree that such is not always too easy to find.Chjoaygame (talk) 11:30, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

issues with section "Flat vs polycategorical vs hierarchical"

Dear User:Snowded, could you please specify which claims lack proper justification from your point of view? Phlsph7 (talk) 11:42, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

It is well beyond me to deal with the details of this matter.

But perhaps it may or may not be useful if I say how I see WP:SYNTH. It means that Wikipedia policy requires that entries come unalloyed from reliable sources. An editor is required to refrain from himself making inferences. Particularly emphasising as in the following artificial example.

Reliable source A says '$x=a$'. Reliable source B says '$x=b$'. It is not admissible for an editor, on this basis, to say '$a=b\,$'.

If this comment of mine is otiose, redundant, or otherwise off beam, please ignore it.

My own view on this is that Wikipedia should not entirely abandon common sense, whatever that might be. For example, I think that a source that talks nonsense is not a Wikipedia reliable source, no matter how many others talk the same nonsense. Sometimes it is very difficult to find a reliable source that simply states some commonsensical fact. For myself, if common sense is needed to make a sound statement that cannot be explicitly and exactly sourced, but is essential to make the article make sense or be comprehensible, I am inclined to make it, and wait for it to be removed, though I think such an inclination is technically deprecated.Chjoaygame (talk) 13:08, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

I've found the article WP:SYNTHNOT more useful in explaining the difference between what synthesis is and isn't than WP:SYNTH. I think at its core it's a form of original research based on sources but going beyond them in a significant way that goes beyond common sense or established opinion in the field. But otherwise, as you were saying, there is some liberty on the side of the editor in interpreting the sources, summarizing them etc. One example in the article mentioned is that numerical summarization is not synthesis. I guess something similar applies to your example above. If it's synthesis then "you should be able to explain what new thesis is being introduced and why it's not verified by the sources". Phlsph7 (talk) 13:48, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

• Ok.Chjoaygame (talk) 14:04, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

• The whole section is one editor's synthesis of primary sources. You need to find a third party (not a primary) source that makes that distinction and establishes the importance. We need third party sourcing to estabvlish the significance of the various entries in the history section as well. To be frank the whole article is littered with well meaning synthesis of proimary sources. The third party sources I checked when this last came up did not talk about that distinction which means there would have been a case to delete itbut I tagged it as an alternative to give space for a source to be found. -----Snowded ^TALK 17:48, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

• Dear Editor Snowded, it is good to have your comment. Yes, we need third party sources. They can be hard to find.

On a bit of a tangent, dear Editors, here is a fallacy that I recently had difficulty identifying and formulating in its natural context.

$a$ is a solution of the equation $E(x)\,$. All solutions of the equation $E(x)$ are also solutions of the equation $E'(x)\,$. $b$ is a solution of the equation $E'(x)\,$. Therefore $b$ is a solution of the equation $E(x)\,$.

In more general terms,

$a\in E\,$, and $E\subset E'\,$, and $b\in E'$. Therefore $b\in E$.

Obvious when written out like that. But, when in natural camouflage, still perhaps a trap for young players.Chjoaygame (talk) 21:23, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

• As I understand it, your main quarrel is with the distinction "Flat vs polycategorical vs hierarchical". Schaffer uses the terms "flat vs sorted vs ordered" but explains the distinction in §1 of his paper. The only synthesis I can see is that he doesn't explicitly call flat ontologies monocategorical, although he treats them as such. So if you insist, this problem could easily be solved by removing this word from the sentence: "Jonathan Schaffer provides an overview of these positions by distinguishing between flat ontologies (monocategorical non-hierarchical), sorted ontologies (polycategorical non-hierarchical) and ordered ontologies (polycategorical hierarchical)". Do you see other cases of synthesis? Phlsph7 (talk) 04:48, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

• When you wrote "your", whom were you addressing? I have no quarrel. I was just loosely and unpointedly, you might even say 'idly', commenting. I am not trying to get you to do anything in particular, nor saying anything particular about synthesis. I said that the details were beyond me. In particular, I didn't have a problem with the distinction "Flat vs polycategorical vs hierarchical".

But now that you challenge, yes, I will make a specific comment. I am not familiar with the literature and details of the topic.

My favourite, as you know, is Alfred North Whitehead. One might say that his ontology/cosmology is monocategorical by intention or construction? "The final facts are all alike, actual entities." "There is no going behind actual entities to find anything more real." An actual entity is an occasion of experience or action, fully identified by its unique focal spacetime region, where and when it happens. I suppose one could call that a 'flat' ontology? On the other hand, he talks of 'abstractions'. Anything real that is not an actual entity is an abstraction, partaking of reality just insofar as it is derived from actual entities. The abstractions are ordered or hierarchical in the sense that the simplest are 'nexūs' of two actual entities, etc., and that nexūs are associated in 'societies', etc.. Extreme abstractions are 'eternal objects', such as numbers, that are timeless and placeless. The ultimately extreme abstraction of the ordinary actual world is 'creativity', a sort of basic 'stuff' of which the ordinary actual world is 'constituted'. I think there is a plethora of alternative names or concepts the might do instead of 'creativity', ad lib.. Do the abstractions exist? Not actually, but yes, conceptually. Do they make that ontology hierarchical? My favourite secondary/'third party' source is Ivor Leclerc (1958), Whitehead's Metaphysics: an Introductory Exposition, George Allen and Unwin, London. Another source is Sherburne, D.W. (1966), A Key to Whitehead's Process and Reality, University of Chicago Press, Chicago IL; this is far more a selection and rearrangement of Whitehead's text than an exposition of it.

I think it would probably help to say that 'flat' means 'monocategorical'. Whitehead's is flat in that it makes all actual entities alike, as 'final facts', all of one and the same ontological kind. It is monocategorical in that it is not polycategorical, that would distinguish, for example, res extensae versus res cogitantes'.Chjoaygame (talk) 08:21, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, the "you" was directed at Snowded. I'm not too familiar with Whitehead but it sounds to me like a hierarchical ontology. There are certain entities that exist on the most fundamental level: actual entities. There are other entities which depend on actual entities but are not themselves actual entities: abstractions. These abstractions are real but not fundamental. Existence & reality are usually (but not always) seen as equivalent. So you could say there are 2 (or more?) categories, one fundamental, the other dependent. For example, Aristotle is often said to have a hierarchical ontology since his substances have independent existence while properties depend for their existence on them. See Meta-ontology#Neo-Aristotelian_approach. But as I said, I'm not aware of the details and the details may matter here. For a different opinion, see [2]. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Phlsph7 (talk • contribs) 08:54, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

No need to be sorry. Thanks for your thoughts. Whitehead's distinction 'actual entity' vs 'abstraction' could perhaps be read either way, as 'monocategorical' or 'hierarchical'? Whitehead quotes Plato's 'really real', one might say, the only strictly and fully real things, for the actual entities, and one might say that 'abstractions' can be relatively or derivatively or dependently 'real'. One mathematician who much interests me thinks that the 'real numbers' of mathematical texts are "fairy tales", mathematicians' pipe dreams! I don't remember Whitehead talking about or showing interest in the metaphysics of such entities as the god Mars, or our friends James Bond and Dr No. Quoting from your reference abstract: "mental states and physical states as simultaneously occurring characters of natural events". I think Whitehead wouldn't be too keen to talk of 'states' like that; he talks of the 'physical pole' and the 'mental pole' as 'counterparts'. For myself, I talk of 'aspects', thinking of them as in a sense 'joint' rather than 'simultaneous'; my philosophy teacher always asked what did I mean by 'aspect'? 'State' sounds too static, not 'processive' enough for my liking. I guess contrarily, I like to think of the 'state of thermodynamic equilibrium' as in a sense a 'process that lasts for ever', macroscopically 'unchanging' while microscopically 'ever changing'.Chjoaygame (talk) 11:15, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Some philosophers distinguish between ontological and ideological commitments, see for example [3]. If you say that abstracta don't belong to ontology but to the ideology then you could have a Whiteheadian flat ontology. Personally I'm a little skeptical concerning this distinction. I think the basic question is: do properties or aspects have an ontological status of their own? Do we treat them as entities? If yes, then we have to ask whether this status is as fundamental or as dependent entities. Phlsph7 (talk) 11:46, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Ok.Chjoaygame (talk) 12:13, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

• They can be hard to find which is why Wikipedia often lags the field - we are writing an encylopedia here not an essay based on the views of active editors. Even with that wording there has to be some evidence that the positions are significant - so if the distinction is not made in reliable third party sources then it needs to be deleted. To be honest most of the article is synthesis -----Snowded ^TALK 07:13, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

I will implement the change and remove the "synthesis"-template but feel free to re-add it if you spot another synthesis. As for the significance of this distinction, I was considering splitting this section into two sections: one for "flat vs hierarchical", another for "monocategorical vs polycategorical". I think this would solve the problem. But this is a rather big change that involves rewriting several parts and writing new ones as well so I'm not sure yet when I'll tackle this.

As a general note, I value your input but I often find it difficult to relate it to concrete changes since your critiques are many times rather vague and wide-sweeping. This gives me the impression of a generally dismissive attitude on your side though I don't know if that impression is justified. I think we might be able to work together in a less adversarial and more productive manner if you could be more specific about which claims and which source you are talking about. It might well be the case that a long section is full of synthesized claims or mostly lacks 3rd party sources. But it would be much more helpful for fixing the text if the most severe cases were specifically pointed out. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:49, 27 December 2020 (UT

When a whole section (and most of the article) is based on primary sources with no third party material to indicate importance it is difficult to be other than sweeping in judgement. It is not adversarial to ask you to follow wikipedia conventions on sourcing. The change you propose does not address the issue as to why that particular perspective deserves that degree of prominance. So I will resinstate it. I know its difficiult but Wikipedia is not about what individual editors think is relevant, or their research or the value of their summaries. I'll repeat an important point - if there is no reliable third party source to support the inclusion of the material then it should be deleted. -----Snowded ^TALK 09:15, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

The first paragraph has 6 reliable sources for the distinction, two of them encyclopedia entries. I think that should suffice. Phlsph7 (talk) 15:20, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

What is a thing?

This

• "What is a thing?"

was removed in a swathe of removals of 'unsourced' material. Is its source considered 'primary'? Perhaps Isham isn't a philosophical source at all? I well accept that many physicists are remarkable for their gross philosophical incompetence, outstandingly so in the area that Isham is writing about.

The quoted text starts as follows:

4.1 What is a Thing?

An exposition of any area of physics will inevitably contain terms that form part of the general scientific background of the age and culture within which they are employed. The meaningfulness and applicability of such terms is usually deemed to be 'obvious', and therefore not worthy of further explication. But from time to time new concepts arise that challenge this pre-established order of truths and necessitate a radical reappraisal of the foundations of the subject. In twentieth-century physics, the two major examples of such a paradigm shift are the theory of relativity and quantum theory. The former caused a major reassessment of the concepts of space and time; the latter challenges our ideas of existence itself.

I agree that references were needed for the other items, but I would prefer that an editor would put some time into finding them, or replacing items with sourced elements.

As for 'what is a thing'? I rather like that question for this article. Editor Phlsph7 tells me that reality and existence are often closely linked, and I agree for this article. As I guess present company knows, the Latin word res, usually translated as 'thing', is the source of the English word 'real', and I think this is important for us.

I will have a little look for more philosophical sourcing.Chjoaygame (talk) 12:08, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps it is beneath the dignity of professors of philosophy to ask what is a thing? It didn't seem to feature as such in two philosophical dictionaries that I first consulted. Yet I think (vicious original researcher that I am) that philosophers often enough use the word 'thing' to refer to entities that may or may not exist, the topic of our article. For example, I found Judith A. Jones writing "Aristotle [lighted] upon a fairly abstract list of the types of features things tend to have." She is talking about reality. Again, I found David H. Sanford writing "Just from observing its sensible qualities, we cannot figure out a thing’s causal capacities." He was talking about causality, a touchstone of reality. Sanford also observes that "Socrates goes on to ask whether all the gods love pious things because they are pious, or whether things are pious because all the gods love them." Some say that the gods don't exist, but it seems that Socrates assumes that pious things exist? Next, I found Amie L. Thomasson writing "Any theory of fictional discourse will have import for whether or not we should accept that there are fictional entities we sometimes refer to, and if so, what sorts of thing they are and what is literally true of them." Do I serve any purpose by continuing?

What would be needed to constitute a reliable source here?

It is my feeling that, to render ontology in ordinary language for the layman, one can hardly do better than to ask what is a thing?Chjoaygame (talk) 13:15, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

If you feel like a challenge, you could try Heidegger's essay "The thing": [4]

But for an analytic perspective, try this one: [5]

In case you are specifically interested in ordinary objects: [6] Phlsph7 (talk) 14:00, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. I haven't yet followed your links, but will do so.

In advance, I will be looking for the broadest interpretations of the word, much broader than, for example, Aristotelian 'substance'. Indeed, pretty much anything.Chjoaygame (talk) 14:58, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Heidegger seems to start with a 'thing' as pretty close to an Aristotelian 'substance'. "Near to us are what we usually call things. But what is a thing? Man has so far given no more thought to the thing as a thing than he has to nearness. The jug is a thing." He goes to a more general meaning, more what I am looking for: "Because the word thing as used in Western metaphysics denotes that which is at all and is something in some way or other, the meaning of the name "thing" varies with the interpretation of that which is—of entities. Kant talks about things in the same way as Meister Eckhart and means by this term something that is." Will our meticulous colleagues regard this essay as a reliable source?

For our purposes, I think that it just as useful to consider the proposition 'that $X$ is a non-existent thing' as it is to consider 'that $X$ is an existent thing'. My point is that such consideration will help the ordinary Wikipedia reader. Chjoaygame (talk) 15:36, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

The first-indicated Stanford Encyclopedia entry: "Although they differ on which English word to assign to that category (i.e., ‘thing’, ‘term’, or ‘individual’, ‘something’), Lowe, Russell, Strawson, and Tugendhat all accept a fully general category under which all items fall and suppose that some word picks out that category." That suits me.Chjoaygame (talk) 15:43, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

The second-indicated Stanford Encyclopedia entry is too technical for our purpose.Chjoaygame (talk) 15:55, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

In its article on 'Metaphysics', the Stanford Encyclopedia says "metaphysics was the “science” that studied “being as such” or “the first causes of things” or “things that do not change”." I couldn't find in the encyclopedia an article entitled 'Thing'.Chjoaygame (talk) 16:06, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

open to suggestions

This edit contains the sentence

Contingent beings are actual but not necessary: they could have failed to exist. It has been suggested that this distinction is the highest division of being.

I would be cautious about that. We are in tiger country here.

I think there are many contingent abstractions and fictions. I would be unhappy to say that 'some contingent beings actually exist and are fully real'. Yes, it seems true to me that 'some contingent beings are not necessary'. I am not so sure that 'every contingent being is unnecessary'. I think that in some sense 'numbers are contingent, but are also necessary'. But, sad to say, I don't feel too sure of that. I hesitate to ask an editor to look at this [h.t.t.p.s://youtu.be/H84VyZCOCew YouTube by UNSW mathematician, Norman Wildberger], but I think it would help to do so. I find that the proper link is blocked by Wikipedia, I guess for good reason. I am posting it with extraneous dots in the character part-string 'h.t.t.p.s' . I am hoping it will work if you just remove the extraneous dots just from that part-string. I have spent some time thinking about Wildberger's views, that he has been expounding in his many excellent YouTubes, and I think there is a lot going for them. Many others wouldn't. I think that these questions have significance for physics, statistical mechanics in particular, and so for philosophy.

I think it true to say 'no actual being is contingent'. Perhaps the words 'contingent' and 'actual' need definition or elaboration here.

I much agree that modality is profoundly important for ontology, as indicated or suggested by "It has been suggested that this distinction is the highest division of being."

I think the above-quoted sentence from the edit, itself, could be made safer or more defensible by being given an explicit modality. In many ordinary situations, the modality of a sentence is left tacit. But I think that an explicit expression of modality would likely help here.

In a way, things 'exist' or 'don't exist' in some 'world' or 'universe of discourse'.

Open to suggestions.Chjoaygame (talk) 08:41, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

I tried it and it worked for me.Chjoaygame (talk) 08:47, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Just to remove any doubt, I don't suggest for even a moment that the mathematicians' 'real numbers' are in any ordinary sense 'actually real', or even just loosely 'real'.Chjoaygame (talk) 09:22, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing up the issue, I think you are partially right. In logic, contingent means possible but not necessary. So that should include propositions that are possibly true but actually false. So we have to remove the part about being "actual". But I think you are wrong about necessity: contingency is usually contrasted with necessity, from [7]: "It is commonly accepted that there are two sorts of existent entities: those that exist but could have failed to exist, and those that could not have failed to exist. Entities of the first sort are contingent beings; entities of the second sort are necessary beings." Phlsph7 (talk) 10:05, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Quoting: "In logic, contingent means possible but not necessary." I think that 'contingent' is more nearly rendered by 'dependent' and 'derivative' than by 'possible but not necessary'. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that 'possible but not necessary' is a strained or specialised interpretation of the word, though I guess perhaps useful for some specialised philosophical context? It may be that 'possible but not necessary' is a character than can be usefully attributed to 'contingency' in some contexts, but I think it doesn't pass muster as a general definition. In general, I think contingency is a relationship, as in '$A$ is contingent on $B$'; often enough, the $B$ is left vague or tacit. For full clarity, I think that 'possible but not necessary' needs a complement such as 'in such and such a world'.Chjoaygame (talk) 13:48, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

In many ordinary context, the definition as "possible but not necessary" may not be very helpful to elucidate the meaning of the expression. I think your explanations capture the meaning of "contingent" in natural language. But then on this interpretation it wouldn't make much sense to contrast contingency with necessity and discuss it as one of the highest division of being. You could join the ordinary language philosophers and try to analyze the problem of this division as being based on a linguistic confusion that is to be dissolved rather than solved. Phlsph7 (talk) 15:01, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Wow! Shocking! I have an even more out-there idea! What if I look up the word contingency in the dictionary? Ohh!

Doing just that, I find in the OED that it seems I only partly (or contingently!!??) know the meaning of the word!!

I guessed it came from the Latin that more or less means 'touching' or 'in contact', and I was puzzled about how that fits with my idea of 'dependent', but I dismissed it. Partly or contingently wrong again!

The OED says (abbreviated; for brevity I am leaving out a fair bit.)

A. adj. $\mathrm {I}$ from the literal sense, in contact

1a. in contact, tangential

1b. having contact

$\mathrm {II}$ from the sense 'to happen'

2a. of uncertain occurrence or incidence

2b. incidental (to)

3. happening

4. not fixed by necessity or fate, fortuitous

5. not determined by necessity

6. at the mercy of accidents

7. full quote here; "Metaphoric. a. Not of the nature of necessary truth; true only under existing conditions. contingent matter (in Logic): the subject matter of a proposition which is not necessarily or universally true."

b. "That does not exist of itself, but in dependence on something else."

c. Non-essential

8. "Dependent for its occurrence or character on or upon some prior occurrence or condition."

9. "Law. Dependent on a pre-contemplated probability; provisionally able to exist or take effect; conditional."

10. contingent force

B n.

1. a thing coming by chance

2. a thing that may or may not happen

3. an accessory which may or may not be present

4. a thing contingent or dependent on the existence or occurrence or something else.

5.a. 'The proportion that falls upon a division'

b. The proportion of troops furnished by each of several contracting powers.

c. This item is complicated and not easy to summarise, and I think marginally relevant for us.

Draft partial entry March 2006 (I would object to that use of the form 'partial', even to the editors of the OED!!!)

contingent fee n. Law (a) an estate for which inheritance is contingent on other factors; cf. sense A.9 ( obsolete)

Draft partial entry February 2007

contingent liability n. a potential financial liability; (Accounting) a future financial liability which may only arise in specific circumstances or is difficult to quantify, but must be accounted for.

Perhaps some errors and omissions in the above.

Overall, I am forming the ideas that 'contingent' is not too easy to interpret and that, for that reason, we should use it only for some specific and compelling reason, or that we should use it with plenty of padding around it.

Here is a cut-and-paste of the section in edit format.

                             Modality

Modality concerns the concepts of possibility, actuality and necessity. In contemporary discourse, these concepts are often defined in terms of possible worlds. A possible world is a complete way how things could have been. The actual world is one possible world among others: things could have been different than they actually are. A proposition is possibly true if there is at least one possible world in which it is true; it is necessarily true if it is true in all possible worlds. Actualists and possibilists disagree on the ontological status of possible worlds. Actualists hold that reality is at its core actual and that possible worlds should be understood in terms of actual entities, for example, as fictions or as sets of sentences. Possibilists, on the other hand, assign to possible worlds the same fundamental ontological status as to the actual world. This is a form of modal realism, holding that reality has irreducibly modal features. Another important issue in this field concerns the distinction between contingent and necessary beings. Contingent beings are beings whose existence is possible but not necessary. Necessary beings, on the other hand, couldn't have failed to exist. It has been suggested that this distinction is the highest division of being.

Here is a sort of suggestion for modification:

                             Modality

A sentence can be intended in various ways or modes. For example, one may say 'What can I do for you?' meaning either 'please guide me about your needs' or else 'I am sick of your importunate demands'. The speaker may guide the listener by some indication of his intended meaning. This example is not great, and should be replaced by a better one.

In contemporary philosophy, especially in ontology, some of the modes of intention are possibility, actuality, and necessity. These concepts are often defined in terms of possible worlds. A possible world is a complete way how things could have been. The actual world is a uniquely distinguished world, alongside others in which things could have been different than they actually are. A proposition is possibly true if there is at least one possible world in which it is true; it is necessarily true if it is true in all possible worlds. Actualists and possibilists disagree on the ontological status of possible worlds. Actualists hold that reality is at its core actual and that possible worlds should be understood in terms of actual entities, for example, as fictions or as sets of sentences. Possibilists, on the other hand, assign to possible worlds the same fundamental ontological status as to the actual world. This is a form of modal realism, holding that reality has irreducibly modal features. Another philosophical approach says that beings are either contingent or necessary. In these terms, contingent beings have existence that is possible but not necessary. Necessary beings, on the other hand, couldn't have failed to exist. Here I think some remark is needed, to either criticise the lack of, or to supply, some such complement as 'in such and such a world or universe of discourse'. Thinking it over, I am not convinced that these contingent/necessary people actually deserve a mention at all. As they are presented here, on my reading, they don't seem very interested in real cosmological ontology; they seem to be interested in mere logical ontology, word games. Just because they advertise their doctrine as revealing "the highest division of being", that doesn't oblige us to give them a mention; I incline to omit them, unless you find that they can do better than just distingish logical necessity from lack of logical necessity, which, as it appears so far, is not of much ontological interest. Logic is necessary for all philosophy, but in itself it generally doesn't tell much about real cosmology/ontology. It has been suggested that this distinction is the highest division of being.

references

Just some suggestions.Chjoaygame (talk) 17:03, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

The term "modality", like the term "contingency", has various meanings both in natural language and in philosophy. Your first example seems to concern linguistic modality. But linguistic modality is not a central issue for ontology. Within philosophy and logic there is a distinction between de dicto and de re modality. Roughly, de dicto modality concerns how propositions have their truth value and de re modality concerns how entities exist or how they have their properties. The definition you give when you talk about "modes of intention" seems to concern de dicto modality. But to me it seems that de re modality is a more central concern to ontology. We could introduce the distinction and discuss both, but I think that would go too much into detail. If we want to include linguistic modality or de dicto modality then that inclusion should be based on sources that say that it's important for ontology. I think the sources cited so far don't support it, unlike what they have to say about the distinction between contingent and necessary entities. Your edits are rather long so I'm not sure that I have covered all the points you raised. Please raise them if I haven't. Phlsph7 (talk) 03:46, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Now looking at the article Contingency (philosophy), I would be inclined not to Wikilink to it here. It is about logic, and I think it may be more of a distraction than a help for many readers of the present article. In general, one should be cautious or dubious about making Wikilinks. This doesn't go against my feeling that we might well omit the contingent/necessary school of quasi-ontologists.Chjoaygame (talk) 23:53, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Agreed, I've removed the link. Phlsph7 (talk) 03:51, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

That's why I reject the kind of authoritarian Wikilawyering approach that tries to practically dictate that the Wikipedia must be a dead copy from some encyclopaedia or dictionary. My view is that no source can be considered reliable if it talks nonsense, no matter how many other sources agree with it. We can restrict ourselves to reliable sources, but ultimately, the decision about what is a reliable source relies on our common sense and on fairly moderated logic.

Quoting:

"It is commonly accepted that there are two sorts of existent entities: those that exist but could have failed to exist, and those that could not have failed to exist. Entities of the first sort are contingent beings; entities of the second sort are necessary beings."

I think those sentences lack adequate modal explicitness, and by themselves, unmoded, are nonsense, no matter how authoritative may be the Stanford professors.

You write: "In logic, contingent means possible but not necessary." You wisely make your mode explicit, "In logic". But logic isn't all that Wikipedia is about. If we restricted it to pure logic, none of it would stand. I think this is a case when your mode "In logic" acts to say that such isn't what Wikipedia needs. What passes for logic today might not pass for it tomorrow.

I am not saying that we ought to act in disregard of the doctrines of reliable sourcing and no synthesis. I am saying that we should avoid writing nonsense. I think with care, diligence, and ingenuity, one can pass between that Scylla and that Charybdis, though one may often enough be blocked by a Wikilawyer.Chjoaygame (talk) 10:29, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

From what I can tell, the contrast between contingent and necessary seems to be relatively standard. For example, see the source by Sandkühler and the reference to [8] I just added. But of course, that doesn't mean that everyone agrees. I rewrote the first sentence from the quote, have a look if the new formulation solves the problem. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:39, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

I guess my concern is that Wikipedia is not a textbook. Your edits are right from the viewpoint of an expert or professional in philosophy, who uses the routine conventions of academic philosophy. But I am inclined to make generous concession to the fact that I think most experts and professionals in philosophy are well aware that Wikipedia is full of tricks and traps for young players, and don't consult it or let their students use it as a source. I think that most readers of Wikipedia are what a professor might think of as 'laymen'. For their benefit, I think it is important, while still being careful to be accurate, also to keenly prefer ordinary language over academic terms of art.Chjoaygame (talk) 11:28, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

You may have a point here. I feel that it's often a compromise between being concise and being easy to understand. Many of the ideas in these sections could be explained in a more layman-accessible style, but at the cost of significantly increasing the amount of text. But then again ontology is a highly abstract discipline, so the goal of making the content fully layman-accessible may be set too high. A more realistic goal may be that the layman gets the general ideas after reading the sections.

I think that "academic terms of art" are not the problem as long as they are either explained in the text or their meaning is close enough to what one would expect from the perspective of ordinary language. But it's often easy to overlook this point if the writer is too familiar with these terms. So please make me aware if this catches you eye. It would be also helpful for me if you or someone else could point out which passages are particularly difficult to understand so I get an idea about where the problem lies. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:16, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

The topic is abstract, but I think important. Hard to judge, know, or predict the proper degree of layman accessibility. Sometimes editors are more numerous than at other times. They seem a bit unusally few at present.Chjoaygame (talk) 13:19, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Just to show what a fusspot I am, I will say that I object to your wording "partially right". I was taught at school that such wording suggested that I am partial or biased. I was taught at school that plain English would say that I might be 'partly right'. I am not here saying that I was or was not partly right in my comment above.Chjoaygame (talk) 10:34, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Could I make up for that by saying that you are "fully right" about being a fusspot? Phlsph7 (talk) 10:43, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Quite. Or, as a politician would say, absolutely!!Chjoaygame (talk) 11:15, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

thrown

I have to admit that I am a bit thrown when I go to read your citations. Actually more than a bit thrown. More like worried.

To me, this reference seems improper.

I am not keen on Wikilawyering and I haven't gone into the Wikipolicy details on the topic. Nevertheless, I am very unhappy to see a German language one-size-fits-all encyclopaedic reference such as this one. Three reasons. (1) no specific page numbers in a huge document; particularly worrying when it is used in a one-size-fits-all way like this. (2) non-English language; particularly worrying when it is used in a one-size-fits-all way like this. (3) I don't like to see Wikipedia rely on other encyclopaedias. Perhaps hard to justify my feeling here. Just don't like it; particularly worrying when it is used in a one-size-fits-all way like this.

For me, this reference is worrying for two reasons. (1) To me, this reference seems to lack genuine encyclopaedic character; it feels to me more like partisan propaganda. (2) To me, it feels like a gloss on Thomas Aquinas; I don't know how that measures up as a reliable source.

For me, this reference is more worrying, for the same reasons, only more so.

I twice commented above that the 'necessity/non-necessity aka necessity/contingency' story as presented lacks proper modality cover. Things are necessary or non-necessary in some world. The pointy end of any ontological statement is just that. In philosophy, the burden of a modal cover is 'what world are we talking about?' That's why I use the term 'cosmology'.

I get the feeling that you haven't yet looked at the YouTube by Norman Wildberger that I suggested. I think he says something that is worth a philosopher's time. Not the whole topic; not any of the details; just to know that the question is worth serious consideration; I would describe it as sobering. If you don't like to watch it, please let me know so that I may try to summarise it for you; I would much prefer it if you watched it. I'd be interested in your comment.

It is surprising to me that there seems to be so little editorial interest in this page. I am used to a few more usual suspects showing themselves.

I won't carry on further just now.Chjoaygame (talk) 05:22, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

I agree that English-language sources are to be preferred. The reason I used this one is that I found it particularly comprehensive. Maybe this has to do with the fact that historically the Germans were especially active in Ontology. But I think that shouldn't be too much of a problem since the majority of the sources here are English. "Borchert" also gives a good overview over various of the topics discussed here. I'll see if I can do something about including the section-name in the reference. Most of the topics discussed in this section so far are from "4.2 Ontologische Grundbegriffe" in "Sandkühler".

The video you posted is a little long but I would watch for a few minutes. Should I start from the beginning? I'm a little busy, I'll respond to the other points later. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Phlsph7 (talk • contribs) 07:13, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

As for references, I think it almost mandatory to give such details as page numbers and optionally also section name. There are plenty that don't even try to do so, a defect that I find deplorable.

I continue to be worried by the lack of modal cover for the contingency/necessity story.

I don't want to waste your time watching a YouTube. The point can be put briefly: mathematicians have not yet solved elementary problems that much worried Euclid; things are not as simple as they may seem; I think these problems are important today. I have to admit that, for me, some of the details are very interesting; in particular, for example, Wildberger shines a light that shows me why affine and Euclidean geometries are interestingly different. For you, perhaps I may put it more briefly: in philosophy, trust no one. Whitehead: "There remains the final reflection, how shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly". 09:29, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Added one more source for contingent vs necessary. To me this seems to be more an issue of technical vocabulary, I don't see much reason for controversy here to be honest.

I made a quick search on "modal cover" but didn't find much. Do you have a source that we might consider? On the basic form of possible worlds theory, possible just means true in at least one world and necessary means true in all worlds. If a proposition is possibly/necessarily true in one world then it is possibly/necessarily true in all worlds. I think there are more advanced version where this is not true anymore. Maybe that is what you mean with modal cover. Do you think this is important for the article?

I tend to agree with Whitehead's quote. Our knowledge in general matters like ontology or concerning the nature of things is in many ways less secure than our knowledge of simple everyday affairs or our scientific knowledge. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:24, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

I didn't use the customary language here. What I am referring to is as follows. I might consider the sentence 'James Bond's apartment is at 222 Baker Street.' By a 'modal cover' I mean use of a prefixed phrase such as 'in the movie Skyfall ', so as to make up a satisfactory assertion 'In the movie Skyfall, James Bond's apartment is at 222 Baker Street.' This might run me into problems when I say 'In the world of modern fiction, Sherlock Holmes lives next door to James Bond.' (Presumably, 222 and 221b are not next door, they are across the street.)

Perhaps the language I am looking for is such as 'the phrase "in the movie Skyfall" is a modal quantifier'?

In the present case, I am saying that 'a contingent being possibly exists' is purely logical syntax, semantically deficient. It doesn't say what world defines its possibility or necessity. In other words, the sentence 'contingent beings, though possible, can fail to exist, while necessary beings cannot fail to exist' is analytic. It says nothing about what actually exists; it has no ontological substance. The article is about ontology. I think that to bring 'a contingent being possibly exists' into ontological significance, a modal quantifier is needed. I am saying that I think claims about 'all possible worlds' are like those of pseudo-physicists, and even of reputed physicists, who think that because Clausius wrote of the 'entropy of the universe', they can use the second law of thermodynamics to talk about the eventual fate of the ordinary or actual physical universe, whatever that might mean. Delusions of grandeur, I say! In the literature, they are two a penny. For me, such are not reliable sources. In my view, reliable sources on thermodynamics are careful to say that they don't know about the 'entropy of the universe'. The relevance of my notice of Norman Wildberger is that he does a good job of doubting the generally accepted or supposed 'continuum' of 'real numbers' that is used in modern mathematics.

In view of the sentence "It has been suggested that this distinction is the highest division of being," a grandiose claim, I think this matters a lot.Chjoaygame (talk) 18:36, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Maybe you are right that it would be more accurate or less grandiose to use "modal covers". But if our sources don't use them then we are on the safe side by following their lead. I think your "modal covers" are more commonly referred to as "fiction operators". see [9] & [10] Phlsph7 (talk) 03:31, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, now I remember. The term I had far in the back of my mind is 'modal operator'. I was avoiding being technical. I learnt some of this stuff from a couple of books by Rod Girle, and the more hard core of it from Hintikka's Knowledge and Belief (1962). I am a fan of Hintikka. I actually heard him give a couple of talks. I can attest that he really existed in the actual ordinary world, though I don't know whether he ever lived in an apartment at 221a Baker Street (I guess not). But I have to say that it worries me that he seems to accept the axiom of choice as obvious, while Wildberger seems to think it's an idle fancy. For now, I can only retreat to Whitehead's view on finality of statement.

As for following the lead of sources, my view is that we get to dictate our sources. If we think they are reliable, we may choose to post them, if we think they are nonsense, we have a duty to omit them, or post the views of reliable sources who show that they are notable nonsense. I think it unsafe or simply mistaken to post stuff that we think is nonsense, no matter how encyclopaedically, third-party, and widely it might be sourced by uncritical editors. There is a lot of rubbish in Wikipedia, posted by editors with clout. Even the most usually reliable sources can talk nonsense on some matters, while making good sense on others.

I think that deciding about what exists on the basis of whether something is contingent or necessary reveals more about the decider than about the existence of the something.Chjoaygame (talk) 05:51, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

What is 'possible' or 'necessary' depends on the world that the 'possibility' or 'necessity' belongs to. In the ordinary actual world, we don't know now in a verifiable way what will happen tomorrow. Consequently, we don't know what will be possible or necessary the day after tomorrow. In this case, to say what is 'possible' is to express a guess or an opinion, unless our definition of 'possible' is divorced from reality. Is it 'possible' that the moon is made of green cheese? That depends on how 'possible' is defined. Is it 'possible' that a stray moon-sized body will fly past us and carry the moon away with it? What does it mean to ask such a question? The hard part is to define what 'possible' means. To base an ontological claim on 'possibility', without specification of the world that the 'possibility' belongs to, is to put the cart before the horse, or to build castles in the air. That the contingent/necessary distinction is "the highest division of being" is more a rationalistic conceit than a rational conception. It is the actual world that decides what is really or actually possible. Is there a defensible distinction between a real and an actual possibility or necessity? I think it is in general unsafe to base ontological claims on possibility/necessity, and I think that a source that doesn't question doing so is unreliable.Chjoaygame (talk) 22:49, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Ockham

The Cambridge Companion to Ockham (1999), edited by Paul Vincent Spade, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521582445, in a chapter by the editor, tells me on page 100 that “One might deny the reality of universals, as Ockham did ...” This isn't explicitly saying absolutely that universals don't exist. It just saying that whatever existence they might have is not 'real' existence.

On page 101, I read “Finally, and perhaps most important, I will argue that Ockham’s rejection of certain kinds of entities is less sweeping than has been portrayed; there is a sense in which he remains committed to them after all.” How many genuine nominalists exist or have existed?

On page 104, I read “But Ockham does not reject all abstract nominalizations; he allows, for example, that whitenesses are real things and, moreover, things really distinct from the white things they belong to. Again, ‘humanity’ signifies real humanities, although here the concrete and the abstract nouns do not signify distinct things; the humanities just are the humans themselves.” This is not relying on independence of existents, but merely on their distinctness, a word that is used twice here. So I doubt that independence is logically essential to existence, thinking that distinctness might give a fair claim to it.

On page 108, I read "What Ockham does is not to deny all reality to such orderings and other truth-relevant factors; instead, he merely denies they are “things.”" What is a "thing"? A "thing" is grist for an ontologist's mill.

William of Ockham, so far as I know, didn't advertise himself as an adherent of nominalism. I don't know that he ever actually used the word. Nominalism is, in a sense, an invention of scholars. They may offer neat definitions of nominalism, while a hard-line nominalist would say that there is no reality underlying the term 'nominalism', without denying his own existence, while at least implicitly admitting the occurrence of nominalistic thinking.

I think our job is not to give a slick or terse one-size-fits-all scholarly definition of nominalism, or of any other -ism. I think it is to tell the reader about the thinking of important ontologists, in the present case, of those inclined to categorematic parsimony.

That will do for that book.Chjoaygame (talk) 16:42, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Looking at William Ockham on Metaphysics: the Science of Being and God (2013), by Jenny E. Pelletier, Brill, Leiden and London, ISBN 978-90-04-23015-6. The nearest I can find in it to a concise definition of 'nominalism' is on page 277: "Ockham’s rejection of universal essences or common natures, his insistence that all beings are absolutely particular, and his prevailing enthusiasm for a parsimonious ontology."

On page 6, Pelletier draws attention to "Ockham’s repeated and conspicuous claims that all concepts arise from our experience of concrete singulars and that we are very much capable of knowing when and how reality accords with the “concepts which one forms of it.”"

On page 10, Pelletier tells us “My aim is to show that in Ockham we see a historical yet no less compelling example of how a logically rigorous nominalist and committed Christian theologian approaches the science of metaphysics.” Evidently, she thinks that Ockham is a nominalist.

On page 84, I read “The alternative theory that Ockham finally endorses is that concepts are real and subjectively existing intellective acts.” This doesn't quite explicitly say that Ockham is a nominalist. The term 'subjective' here needs explication. On page 95, Pelletier tells us

The early fictum theory holds that concepts have a peculiar kind of existence that Ockham variously describes as objective being (esse obiective), the being of being known (esse cognitum), or intentional being (esse intentionale). Objective being stands in contrast to subjective being, which is the kind of being that real beings, substances and their accidents, enjoy.[22] Here, Ockham’s understanding of objective and subjective is opposite to what we think of now: objective being is associated with the non-real and purely mental while subjective being characterizes what is real and non-mental. On the early theory, concepts merely have objective being; they are the non-real thought-objects of real things and qualify as a species of what Ockham calls ficta. Other species of ficta include figments (figmenta): impossible objects that can never exist, e.g. chimeras and square circles; possible objects that can exist but do not, e.g. creatures in the divine mind before creation; imaginary objects, e.g. golden mountains; and logical objects, e.g. propositions and syllogisms.[23] All ficta are thought-objects that are produced by acts of cognition, even those that are concepts of real things.

I am not bursting to report all the thoughts of Pelletier to our readers. Chjoaygame (talk) 17:49, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Afternote. Copying from above: "In this context, terms such as 'subjective', 'subject', 'objective', and 'object' deserve careful attention." Though I am not bursting to report all the thoughts of Pelletier, I now see that it is remarkable how a good job she does of pointing out the practical inversion of meanings of 'objective' and 'subjective'. This will be a handy bit of knowledge, helping to unscramble some puzzles, well worth remembering. In the past, I have tried and failed to work this out using the OED. Time to look again at the OED. Chjoaygame (talk) 01:43, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

It seems to me that Ockham distinguished between real and non-real existences. This seems to me not very far from Descartes' distinction between res extensae and res cogitantes. Chjoaygame (talk) 17:49, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

In one of the sources cited in the universals-section it says that Ockham is more a conceptualist than a nominalist, I don't remember which source. But Ockham is treated as a nominalist here: [11]. The difference between conceptualism and nominalism is explained here: [12]. But the properties-section talks about nominalism, not about Ockham. So it's not so important how he should be categorized.Phlsph7 (talk) 04:03, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

This seems to give priority to what I consider to be a mental illness (or is it a kind of self-advertisement?) endemic to academia, that I call '-ism-ism'. Perhaps one might say that in doing so, I seem to be showing my colours as a nominalist! I think we ought to talk about philosophy rather than about its -isms. The heart of nominalism is a reaching for categorematic parsimony; I think it would be better to expound the idea of categorematic parsimony or somesuch in the article. Chjoaygame (talk) 06:27, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

As I see it, the history-section is "about the thinking of important ontologists". It still lacks an entry on Ockham, but I won't get to that in the near future. The overview-section, on the other hand, is about a general overview of the field and not so much about what specific ontologists thought. Phlsph7 (talk) 04:03, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

That is how the history section is currently structured. A good alternative would be to structure it about the evolution of philosophical concepts.Chjoaygame (talk) 06:27, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

'Substances' in philosophy

A few comments. I am not clued up enough to try to post. But I commend the following to you.

A 'substance' is precisely a fundamental entity in an ontology of the actual ordinary world. In my view, that is the proper philosophical usage and definition. The philosophical use of the word 'substance' is entirely traditional and technical and is practically independent of the definition of a pure substance that we learnt in chemistry at school, and of the present-day ordinary language use of the word. I think this needs to be said clearly, unambiguously, unequivocally, and explicitly in the article. It will be hard for the novice to get the message if it is not expressed so.

For me, there are several stages in the historical development of the philosophical notion of 'substance'. (1) Plato: the forms. (2) Aristotle: enduring living objects such as Socrates, and enduring physical objects such as stones. (3) Leibniz: the (windowless) monads (coordinated by God). (4) Kant: the noumena. (5) the (all-window) processes of Whitehead (coordinated by their successions of relation in singular causation).Chjoaygame (talk) 14:03, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Good that you point this out, the notion of chemical substance could easily mislead the reader. I'll clarify it once I have the time. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:02, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

I suppose that considerable scholarship would be needed to check the following, but here is my understanding. For Aristotle, it was not substances that persisted through change. No, it was matter (ὕλη - literally 'wood'). What changed was form (μορφή - literally 'shape' or 'appearance'). The Aristotelian doctrine is sometimes called 'hylomorphism', that a substance is a conjunction of matter and form. It was well after Aristotle's time that 'substance' acquired its present-day meaning of 'a variety of matter'. I have no precise idea of when the modern meaning arose. I will have a look at the OED, which perhaps may give some hints. Ok. At a glance, the first cited use of 'substance' in English meaning 'a variety of matter' is dated 1390, a long time ago. But I think that the article should make the difference clear and explicit. It would be seriously misleading to leave any confusion or vagueness about this in the article. I don't know the history of such change in usage in philosophy. I think it hasn't changed, but I may be mistaken.Chjoaygame (talk) 16:45, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Reading this,

I find this:

Given its current role as a rival to the dominant substance-geared paradigm of Western metaphysics, process philosophy has the overarching task of establishing the following three claims:

• (Claim 1) The basic assumptions of the ‘substance paradigm’ (i.e., a metaphysics based on static entities such as substances, objects, states of affairs, or instantaneous stages) are dispensable theoretical presuppositions rather than laws of thought.

• (Claim 2) Process-based theories perform just as well or better than substance-based theories in application to the familiar philosophical topics identified within the substance paradigm.

• (Claim 3) There are other important philosophical topics that can only be addressed within a process metaphysics.

Philosophy is a many-splendoured thing. For me, a 'substance' is precisely a fundamental entity in an ontology of the actual ordinary world. In my view, that is the proper philosophical usage and definition.

My comment on the above quote is that process philosophy takes process as substance. I think that 'substance' is so time-honoured a term that it shouldn't be regarded as locked into a particular doctrine such as that substance is static. In other words, I don't like the above-expressed idea of "the ‘substance paradigm’ (i.e., a metaphysics based on static entities ...". I see that as an abuse of the term 'substance'. I think that process is an example of well-conceived 'substance'. I would like to change "So-called process philosophy or process ontology ascribes ontological primacy to changes and processes as opposed to the emphasis on static being in the traditionally dominant substance metaphysics," into 'So-called process philosophy or process ontology ascribes ontological primacy to changes and processes as opposed to the emphasis on static being of traditionally dominant metaphysics.' Just omit the words 'the' and 'substance', and change 'in' to 'of'.Chjoaygame (talk) 09:36, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Not everyone agrees on the exact definition of substance. In our section it's defined as particular, independent and able to undergo changes. These feature and more are mentioned in "Borchert2" and in "Robinson". Things that are able to undergo changes are also called continuants and are contrasted with occurrents/events, see here: [13]. According to this definition, events can't be substances since events are changes and can't themselves undergo changes. But events can still be fundamental entities.

As for the change you propose, I would tend to leave it as it is but I don't feel very strongly about this. Feel free to change it if you are convinced that it's an improvement. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:33, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

I think it important to make it clear that 'independent' here is short for 'ontologically independent', a tightly defined term of art. I think that Bucephalus was the horse of Alexander. I suppose that Alexander watered and fed Bucephalus before he went for dinner. For me, that's important, and a reason to clarify the entry.

Yes, I agree that processes mediate change, but, taken as logically atomic, do not themselves undergo change. Aristotle specifically invented the concept of matter just for the sake of providing a substrate the could undergo change of form. I think it a backward step to elide his concept of 'matter', and use his concept of 'substance' for this purpose.

You write: "Not everyone agrees on the exact definition of substance." I agree. I think that the article should say that. Notions of 'substance' are various.

I favour looking widely and generously for a definition of 'substance', rather than locking it into a particular authority or two. I think that the term 'substance' is too valuable, important, and long-traditional, for us to risk seeing it perhaps consigned to obsolescence by concepts such as 'states of affairs' or 'events'. I think 'substance' works well as a cover for all notions of fundamental existent in the actual ordinary world. Is there a better candidate for that? If you think my broad definition is not supportable by adequate reliable sourcing, I think it would be better not to impose any particular definition.Chjoaygame (talk) 06:19, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Which mention of "independent" do you think should be changed to "ontologically independent"?

As for the definition of "substance", we are not imposing one particular view in the substance-section because the claims are qualified: "among the most common features ascribed to substances..." or "Another defining feature often attributed to substances...". Phlsph7 (talk) 08:20, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

changes

I'm not 100% happy about the part of undergoing changes since various sources mention this as part of the definition, not just as an accidental feature. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:24, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

I just had a look through some of the sources, the following 4 sources mention being able to undergo a change as a defining feature of substances: Kim, Borchert2, Robinson, Sandkühler2. I suggest that we either restore the previous version or we find a new formulation that includes that this feature is commonly ascribed to substances as part of their definition. Phlsph7 (talk) 04:26, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

You are right about that. I too have had a look at a few books that talk about substances. I have made an edit that I hope you may find ok. I now see that I must abandon my idea of using 'substance' as a general term for 'underlying primary entity of an ontology'. That's how it started with Aristotle, but it has accreted so many barnacles that I guess it wouldn't be wise to try to scrape them off.Chjoaygame (talk) 08:32, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

I think like this it captures the main idea and it is more concise than the original formulation. I made a small change to clarify the talk of "before, during & after". Phlsph7 (talk) 09:08, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Ok.14:34, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

archiving the talk page

This page is getting very long, it might be a good idea to archive it. I would give it a try with User:ClueBot_III unless there are objections. Or if someone has experience with this then they may go ahead. Phlsph7 (talk) 04:57, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

No objection. Perhaps leave in place something like the past year or so?Chjoaygame (talk) 05:26, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

I added the template. It's taken from User:ClueBot_III#Example:_Numbered_archives_(with_archive_box), I just changed the age value. It might take a few days before something happens. Phlsph7 (talk) 04:04, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

prolix discussion

all by themselves Thank you for your reply. Yes, what you say is fair. I have made some edits that I hope will be acceptible. If you don't like them, I would be glad if you would undo them one by one, not as a block.Chjoaygame (talk) 09:34, 11 January 2021 (UTC) I think the changes are fine for most part. I reverted from "exist in and for themselves" to "exist all by themselves". The idea is that of being able to exist alone (by oneself). Hegel & Sartre talk of being in and for itself but with a different meaning. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:24, 11 January 2021 (UTC) "All by themselves" is a wording that I think has been taken from Descartes. I think it is practically nonsensical. Yes, sources that are usually reliable use it. But my view is that when a source talks nonsense, it disqualifies itself from reliability on the point in question. I propose to you that in ordinary language, in the actual ordinary world, nothing is all by itself. Descartes went too far there. I think this is not effectively countered by "The idea is that of being able to exist alone (by oneself). Hegel & Sartre talk of being in and for itself but with a different meaning." As I understand Hegel, he is referring to 'being' as a conceivable existent in some real world? That may make sense to him, but I think to not many ordinary persons. Yes, in a sense Leibniz's monads existed all by themselves. But not quite; they were coordinated by God. If something is all by itself in its world, then in ordinary thinking, it is the only thing in its world. I want 'in and of' or 'in and for' instead of 'all by'.Chjoaygame (talk) 10:46, 11 January 2021 (UTC) Yes, nothing actually exists by itself, but substances can exist by themselves. Assuming that apples are substances, there exists a possible world containing nothing but an apple. But there exists no possible world containing nothing but the surface of an apple. The source for this is "Sandkühler2": "Ganz grob gesagt versteht man unter existenzieller oder ontologischer (im Gegensatz z. B. zu logischer) Unabhängigkeit die Fähigkeit, ›alleine zu existieren‹". "Alleine zu existieren" means "to exist alone".Phlsph7 (talk) 11:11, 11 January 2021 (UTC) I think that it is essential to a substance that it actually exist. In other words, something that doesn't actually exist is not a substance. By 'actually exist', I mean 'exist in the actual ordinary world'; for example, Bucephalus, the horse of Alexander, was a substance. So I can't admit that one can say cold "Assuming that apples are substances", and then speculate about possible worlds in which they might exist. For existence in general, one needs some prior specification of which world is hosting it, and specifically, I think that, by definition, the only world that hosts the existences of substances is the actual ordinary world. So, for me, it would be nonsense to admit a possible world in which an apple is not merely the one and only existent, but is also a substance. In the words that you quote, I don't see one that can be rightly translated as 'substance'.Chjoaygame (talk) 23:04, 13 January 2021 (UTC) The position you state seems to be committed to Actualism. A possibilist might contend that possible substances are substances that don't have actual existence. As for the apple-example: one popular way to analyze dispositions and abilities is in terms of possible worlds. For example, an actual piece of wood is able to burn even if it never does in the actual world because there is a possible world in which this piece of wood burns. Phlsph7 (talk) 03:58, 14 January 2021 (UTC) I think that the term 'substance' belongs to a default assumption of 'actualism' (though of course I don't like using that term). A 'possibilist' might not have much use for the term 'substance'.Chjoaygame (talk) 10:52, 15 January 2021 (UTC) 'Possiblism', as I understand it, refers to possible entities in general, not necessarily to possible substances. To propose 'possible substances' I think one ought to give explicit notice that one is considering conceptual existence as distinct from the default of real existence that belongs naturally and specifically to the notion of substance.Chjoaygame (talk) 05:57, 16 January 2021 (UTC) Do you have a source for the "in and for themselves" so I can check the context? Phlsph7 (talk) 11:11, 11 January 2021 (UTC) Just a fragmentary sketch for an answer for the moment. The OED cites Wyclif in c1380; "the thing in itself beareth witness". A source with bibliographic details that defeat me for the moment, dated c1420: "of itself so long a process". Hall 1628: "that which is perfect in itself." Herbert 1665: "No creature that dies of itself is good to eat."Chjoaygame (talk) 08:48, 12 January 2021 (UTC) We would need something that ties this expression to ontological independence. Phlsph7 (talk) 13:50, 12 January 2021 (UTC) Another fragment, on the history of this article. This edit, dated 21 March 2010, posted some new material about Aristotle, though not in the section headed 'Aristotle'. The new material was posted in the section headed 'Overview'. For Aristotle there are four different ontological dimensions: i) according to the various categories or modes of addressing a being as such, ii) according to its truth or falsity (e.g. fake gold, counterfeit money), iii) whether it exists in and of itself or simply 'comes along' by accident iv) according to its potency, movement (energy) or finished presence. Over the years, various matter about Aristotle has come and gone. What currently remains in the section about him is Aristotle In his Categories, Aristotle (384–322 BCE) identifies ten possible kinds of things that may be the subject or the predicate of a proposition. For Aristotle there are four different ontological dimensions: according to the various categories or ways of addressing a being as such according to its truth or falsity (e.g. fake gold, counterfeit money) whether it exists in and of itself or simply 'comes along' by accident according to its potency, movement (energy) or finished presence (Metaphysics Book Theta). Having traced this information, I am just noting it here. No particular agenda intended.Chjoaygame (talk) 23:04, 13 January 2021 (UTC) Another fragment. In Substance: its Nature and Existence, Hoffman & Rosenkrantz (1997), Routledge, ISBN 0-415-11250-8 develop an analysis that they say is new. They write on page ix The main idea behind our analysis of substance is a traditional one: it is that a substance satisfies an independence condition which could not be satisfied by an insubstantial entity. Our new analysis of substance in terms of independence incorporates the insight of Aristotle that the independence of substance is to be understood in terms of the relation of the category of Substance to the other categories, and the insight of Descartes and Spinoza that there can be a substance that is independent of any other substance. On page 43, they write As we have seen, an important view in the history of metaphysics is that an individual substance is something which could exist all by itself or which in some sense is “independent.” In this chapter, we develop a new analysis of the notion of an individual substance in terms of independence and defend its adequacy. They quote Descartes as writing "all by itself" in this context. Thus we turn to Descartes. Here is one of his statements of his independence theory of individual substance: The answer is that the notion of substance is just this—that it can exist all by itself, that is without the aid of any other substance.[27] This analysis of individual substance seems to suffer from the fatal flaw of vicious conceptual circularity, since the notion of substance appears in the definiens of that analysis. However, Descartes also provided the following definition: By substance, we can understand nothing other than a thing which exists in such a way as to depend on no other thing for its existence.[28] Checking their reference [27] "Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 2:[...]p. 159.", I find on page 159 in the text that they cite "The answer is that the notion of a substance is just this — that it can exist by itself, that is without the aid of any other substance." It seems to me that Hoffman & Rosenkrantz are possibilists in the sense that they mean that Descartes might have meant 'can exist all by itself' when he was translated as "can exist by itself". An interjection. I think it reasonable to ask for the origin of the "all" that Hoffman & Rosenkrantz have inserted into their cited source.Chjoaygame (talk) 10:44, 15 January 2021 (UTC) Checking what Descartes wrote, I find Nempe haec ipsa est notio substantiae, quod per se, hoc est absque ope ullius alterius substantiae possit existere; nec ullus unquam qui duas substantias per duos diversos conceptus percepit, non judicavit illas esse realiter distinctas. As I read it, the critical words are "quod per se". Part of the difficulties of philosophy are the ignorances and stupidities of Aristotle and Descartes, that they didn't know that they ought to have been writing in English. I guess we have to put up with that. In English, per se is in ordinary usage. The OED writes "9.I.9 {per se}. a.I.9.a By or in itself (himself, herself, themselves); intrinsically, essentially; without reference to anything (or any one) else." So I think as follows. In the section 'Ontological dependence', the words 'can exist all by themselves' are unsafe. Currently, they are supported only by a general reference to a multi-volume encyclopaedia written in German. It will be hard to exhaustively determine how this might be dealt with. Approximating, my first preference is to replace them with 'can exist in and of themselves'. Next, I would like 'can exist in themselves'; next 'can exist of themselves'; next, very reluctantly, 'can exist by themselves'. I would like to draw attention to the wording used about Aristotle "it exists in and of itself". That will do for the moment.Chjoaygame (talk) 06:24, 14 January 2021 (UTC) I had a look at some of the other sources: From "Kim": The ontological primacy of substances arises chiefly from their independence, or ability to subsist alone. From "Borchert2": Independence. Any substance could be the only thing in existence. From "Borchert2": If one takes the independence of substances in a logical, rather than a causal sense, a substance is anything that, in principle, could stand alone. It seems that the only support for "in and of themselves" comes from an old revision of this article on what Aristotle said, while there are numerous reliable and more recent sources for "by themselves". I suggest we go for your reluctant proposal and remove the "all" from the expression. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:16, 14 January 2021 (UTC) I am concerned that what we post makes good sense, and to avoid nonsense. This calls for judgment in choosing sources. Apologetic interjection. Perhaps you may choose to regard this immediately present paragraph in grey font as nonsense, or as triviality. Perhaps it may nevertheless make it possible for you to 'understand' my mentality. I am sure there is nothing in this paragraph that will come as even a slight surprise to you; it will, I suppose, be obvious to you. I would be comfortable using a distinction between 'real existence' and 'conceptual existence'. I am happy to talk about the 'conceptual existence' of 'conceptually possible worlds' such as those that are inhabited by just one apple, 'conceptually existing' 'all alone', or not, as you please. That particular example world, in my thinking, does not 'really exist'. It is a philosopher's fiction. Doubtless there is a countless diversity of such 'conceptually possible worlds'. By default, unless I signal it somehow, I can be expected to be talking about the 'actual real or ordinary world', and about abstractions from it, and about fictions that are based on it. James Bond is such a fiction; he doesn't deal in apples that are all alone. It is sometimes thought that some people are confused about which world they live in; perchance I am such a one? Norman Wildberger thinks that the usually so-called 'real numbers' of mathematical orthodoxy are conceptual confusions. I don't know whether you are in favour of signalling when you are not talking about my default world.Chjoaygame (talk) 19:23, 14 January 2021 (UTC) Quoting: "From "Kim": The ontological primacy of substances arises chiefly from their independence, or ability to subsist alone." This is from page 587, by Peter Simons. As for Simons himself, as a potential source. On page 117 of his book Parts: a Study in Ontology (1987), Oxford University Press, Oxford UK, I find "According to the conceptual scheme inherent in our everyday thinking, one of the fundamental classes of object to be found in the world is that of things or substances, material objects extended in three spatial dimensions and enduring in time without being extended in time. Such material objects, of which material bodies like organisms provide a paradigmatic example, are contrasted with the events, states, and processes in which they are involved, which are in general both spatially and temporally extended." I think he is pointing to our default reading of substance; he doesn't seem to be concerned with other possible worlds. On page 310, I find "We return at the end of this chapter to the idea of an absolutely independent object, a concept which has also gone under the title of ‘substance’." Apparently, for him, being absolutely independent is not part of the essence of a substance. I can't succinctly summarise the material at the end of the chapter, but I can quote from it: "It may be also that the absolutely independent object we are looking for is not an individual at all, but a plurality." The quote from page 587 of Kim talks of subsistence, not of existence. It seems to see 'independence' and 'ability to subsist alone' as practically synonymous. The word that might be relevant here is 'alone', but that is not explicitly one of the words here being discussed. Simons cites Aristotle, Husserl, and Strawson. Looking at one translation of Husserl, by Findlay (1970), I find the translator saying I have translated unselbständig by 'non-independent', since the English word 'dependent' has less negativity and more relativity than unselbständig. Sometimes I have also had traffic with 'self-sufficient' for selbständig, instead of 'independent'. For myself, I am not persuaded that 'independent' is a uniquely best translation of selbständig. I think it might better be translated by 'self-standing', or by 'self-sufficient'. In this, I am focusing on the ontological kind of independence. The word 'subsist' comes from the Latin subsisto, 'I stand still'. The word 'substance' comes from the Latin substo, 'I stand or am under'. I think this gives more colour to 'self-standing' than to 'independent'. In the translator's mind, 'non-independent' seems to be different from 'dependent. but 'dependent' is the word used mostly in our present context. I would say that this casts doubt on 'dependent' for us. In the Findlay text, I find Husserl translated in §41: (a) 'Abstract' contents are non-independent contents, 'concrete' contents are independent. We think of this difference as objectively determined, perhaps, as follows: concrete contents are by their nature such as to be capable of existing in and for themselves, whereas abstract contents are only possible in or attached to concrete contents. I think that "capable of existing in and for themselves" is in favour of such renderings as 'in and of themselves' or 'in and for themselves'. Simons occasionally criticises the translation of Findlay. At one point says that he thinks that it is misleading. Simons prefers his own: ‘A part is everything that an object “has” in a real sense, in the sense of something actually making it up, the object, that is, in itself, in abstraction from all contexts into which it is woven’. Findlay's translation reads Everything is a part that is an object's real possession, not only in the sense of being a real thing, but also in the sense of being something really in something, that truly helps to make it up: an object in itself, considered in abstraction from all contexts to which it is tied, is likewise a part. I think that "the object, that is, in itself" and "an object in itself" are in favour of such renderings as 'in and of themselves' or 'in and for themselves'. Quoting: "From "Borchert2": Independence. Any substance could be the only thing in existence." This might seem defensible to a "possibilist", but I think that such a 'possibilist' would not pass muster in an ordinary person's mind. Substance is primarily about existence in the actual ordinary world, not in some artificially hypothesised world. Quoting" "From "Borchert2": If one takes the independence of substances in a logical, rather than a causal sense, a substance is anything that, in principle, could stand alone." Here we are considering ontological, not simply logical, 'independence'. And again, the word that might be relevant here is 'alone', but that is not explicitly one of the words here being discussed. Enough for now.Chjoaygame (talk) 15:09, 14 January 2021 (UTC) Here, Amie Thomasson writes The ancient Greek term ‘kategoria’ described what could be said against someone in a court of law, and indeed Aristotle uses what can be said of or in a subject as a route to distinguishing categories. This is relevant to Aristotle's distinction between primary and secondary substance. It has a clang with what I am suggesting, but it doesn't go directly to the term 'ontological dependence'.Chjoaygame (talk) 09:16, 15 January 2021 (UTC) It now occurs to me to articulate perhaps a reason why I find 'all by themselves' troublesome in itself. 'By' is a proposition of relation. Its ordinary language usage is as in ‹A is by B›. I am proposing that, in ordinary language, ‹A is all by itself› is close to ‹A is by A›, which is close to syntactic impropriety.Chjoaygame (talk) 10:37, 15 January 2021 (UTC) To my ears the expression is rather ordinary. Have a look at the examples here or here. The word "by" can have various meanings depending on how it is used. Phlsph7 (talk) 13:02, 15 January 2021 (UTC) Fair enough. But the dog was 'in the car', with no dog or person for company, but still confined by the car. The door opened with respect to its frame, and though one might expect it to have been opened by someone, such someones were elsewhere in that world. The older people were living, presumably somewhere, somehow, neglected by others who by implication might help them. The children were in each others' company. These were not claims of ontological aloneness.Chjoaygame (talk) 13:52, 15 January 2021 (UTC) Here is someone who talks about something that exists 'of itself'. I suppose that, having created the actual ordinary world and its substances, however, God is not alone.Chjoaygame (talk) 15:40, 15 January 2021 (UTC) You are right, this is very close to our meaning. It seems that it includes both ontological and causal independence. We could add a sentence to the substance section, e.g. something like: ...If 'ontological independence' is defined as including causal independence then only self-caused entities, like Spinoza's God, can be substances. The term "aseity" is used in a closely related sense in theology to refer to God's attribute whereby He possesses His existence of or from Himself. With a specifically ontological definition of 'independence', many everyday objects like books or cats may qualify as substances... This way we could have both discussed expressions in the text. My only concern with this modification would be that the term "aseity" seems to include various other features. But this should be fine if we refer to it as a "closely related sense". Thank you for that comment. I am inclined to think that, as you say, undue complication would be occasioned by introducing the ideas around 'aseity', a term which was new to me.Chjoaygame (talk) 17:35, 15 January 2021 (UTC) citation I have posted what seems to me to be the source of the words 'all by themselves', as follows. Ontologically independent entities, on the other hand, can exist all by themselves. Perhaps you will verify that for me?Chjoaygame (talk) 20:45, 15 January 2021 (UTC) The quote is correct. I added the entry-name to clarify which entry is meant. Phlsph7 (talk) 03:37, 16 January 2021 (UTC) Thank you.Chjoaygame (talk) 04:37, 16 January 2021 (UTC) reasoning This post is a step in laying a foundation for an argument. A finite set of vectors belonging to a vector space is said to be 'linearly independent' just when it has no member that can be expressed as a linear combination of the others. The relevance here is that, sometimes, the idea of 'independence' refers not to an item in itself, but to a specified set of which it is a member. In a coming post, I will try to consider a distinction between dependence, as between different levels in an ontological hierarchy, and inseparability, as between items belonging to one and the same level. This idea may perhaps be derived from Phil Corkum (2008), Phronesis 53: 65-92, Aristotle on Ontological Dependence.Chjoaygame (talk) 05:33, 16 January 2021 (UTC) Having read some more, and having now read this article by Tahko & Lowe, I now see that the term 'ontological dependence' is subject to so many diversities of interpretation, that I no longer with to pursue it. If it is ok with you, I will shortly collapse practically the whole of this part of this talk page discussion on this topic.Chjoaygame (talk) 17:44, 17 January 2021 (UTC) Sounds good to me. Phlsph7 (talk) 04:01, 18 January 2021 (UTC) explanation Hi User:Chjoaygame, I undid your 1st edit (revision 999086964) and 2nd edit (revision 999084869) for the following reasons: 1st edit: Distinctness is usually contrasted with identity not with dependence. So two things that are not identical are distinct. But this leaves it open whether these things are dependent or independent entities. Also: we have to be careful when introducing new terminology that may not be supported by the sources. Ontological dependence is technical term that is used by many and found in the cited sources.Phlsph7 (talk) 13:19, 8 January 2021 (UTC) Requiring substances to be independent may be supported by the cited sources, and may suit Leibniz's monads. But it rules out too many other possibilities for my liking. For example, a mother and her baby, at least for me, and I guess in many views, have distinct existence, but it would strain ordinary language to say that they are independent. I guess we need other, more accomodating, sources. 'Dependence' might be a technical term in philosophy, but in Wikipedia I think the reader should be given fair notice of that. We should exercise judgment in choosing our sources.Chjoaygame (talk) 14:09, 8 January 2021 (UTC) Ontological dependence is already explained in its own section. We could add a self-link from the substance-section to the dependence-section. Phlsph7 (talk) 14:20, 8 January 2021 (UTC) 2nd edit: It's commonly accepted that universals do not exist as substances since substances are particulars. This is not characteristic of the nominalist position.Phlsph7 (talk) 13:19, 8 January 2021 (UTC) I think that when they deny that universals exist, the nominalists speak from a historically special philosophical context, that cannot be supposed to be understood by the average reader. Nowadays, most people already have some vague idea of the nominalist position, though it was, I suppose, shocking in the days when it was first proposed, and when some philosophers, I suppose, assigned real existence to Platonic forms. If there is no world of abstract objects in which universals exist, then it verges on nonsense for nominalists or anyone else to talk about them at all. What the nominalists mean is that universals have no substantial existence. To report bluntly a denial of the existence of universals, for a naïve reader, who doesn't know the historical context, comes close to making nominalists look stupid, too close for my liking. I think it important to be always clear that things only 'exist' in some 'world' or 'universe of discourse', not absolutely. Unmodified talk of absolute existence ignores one of the main lessons of ontology. I don't like Wikipedia to ignore the average reader, and to talk in highly technical language in a more or less introductory article such as this one. If highly technical language and highly technical and specialised sources are to be used, again I think the average reader deserves some notice of it. Again, we should exercise judgment in choosing sources. Wikipedia is not a textbook.Chjoaygame (talk) 14:09, 8 January 2021 (UTC) The standard definition of nominalism seems to be that there are no universals or that there are only particulars. There is not much we as wikipedia editors can do about that. We can try to explain it in simpler language but we have to be careful that message is not lost in the process. Phlsph7 (talk) 14:33, 8 January 2021 (UTC) I think that my edits offered useful elements or ingredients of improvement for the section. If they don't fit some criteria of admissibility, I still think their import should appear in the article, with suitable revision for admissibility.Chjoaygame (talk) 14:26, 8 January 2021 (UTC) Sounds good to me. As I understand it, your main motivation was to make the text more accessible to the average reader. Maybe we could start by figuring out what's wrong with the current version. Your edits suggest that the problem is with the treatment of independence in the substance-section and of nominalism in the properties-section. Is that correct? Phlsph7 (talk) 14:43, 8 January 2021 (UTC) Yes.Chjoaygame (talk) 14:45, 8 January 2021 (UTC) I think we should be critical and judicious, circumspective, perspective, and eclectic in our choice of sources. On important matters, I often find it very hard to get a single source that well summarizes or expresses the situation. Each source may be in a sense reliable as far as it goes, but most sources have a point of view. An encyclopaedia doesn't necessarily solve this problem. The rule against synthesis shouldn't mission-creep into a rule against intelligent reporting.Chjoaygame (talk) 14:56, 8 January 2021 (UTC) I would be fine with the following changes suggested by you: original: Being independent, substances can play the role of fundamental entities in the ontological hierarchy. your suggestion: Consequently, they are suitable as fundamental entities in the ontological hierarchy. original: A substances can survive a change of accidental properties but it cannot lose its essential properties, which constitute its nature. your suggestion: A substance can survive a change of its accidental attributes, but not of its essence, which defines it. Apart from that we could link the first occurrence of "ontologically independent" in the "substance" section to the section "ontological dependence". In the section "properties" we could wiki-link to nominalism. This would address the issue of accessibility to some degree. Would that work out for you? Phlsph7 (talk) 16:11, 8 January 2021 (UTC) The comments on Aristotle could be used in the history section if you can find sources for them. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:30, 8 January 2021 (UTC) I continue to worry about ontological dependence. As usual, I tend to distrust Wikilinking. I prefer to avoid it unless one has specific reason. One can't keep track of unpredictable and perhaps wild changes in the linked articles, unless one has fair influence in their maintenance. It seems to me that three words are relevant here: independent, distinct, and separable. An obvious meaning of 'ontologically dependent' is 'related through different rank in a common branch of an ontological hierarchy'. Then 'ontologically independent' might mean 'belonging to different branches of an ontological hierarchy'. In general, this is not the kind of 'independence' that is a criterion for existence. As you say, distinctness is relevant to identity. But identity is important for ontology. I like the mantra 'a thing is what it is, and not something else'. And I like Hintikka's view that a handy criterion of whether a thing exists is whether it can be found. To find a thing, one needs to be able to identify it, but I think one doesn't necessarily need to know its rank in an ontological hierarchy, though knowing that might help one find it. I am not too clear about differences between distinctness and separability. I haven't investigated sources on the status of distinctness and independence in ontology, but my instinct tells me that I would much doubt a source that demanded independence as a criterion for existence. Cause-and-effect dependence/independence makes good sense only for distinct entities. I prefer to think of distinct identity, rather than independence, as a criterion of existence. Mutually ontologically independent entities can exist separately, but independently all by themselves only if they are pairwise independent of all other entities; verification of such would generally require infinitely many possibly subtle and tricky tests of dependence.Chjoaygame (talk) 19:40, 8 January 2021 (UTC) Some theories state that only fundamental entities have existence. That would lead us in the direction of a flat ontology. But I think the more common view is that there is a difference between existence and independence, as you say. So there are some entities that exist but that depend for their existence on something else, that couldn't exist by themselves. Phlsph7 (talk) 03:57, 9 January 2021 (UTC) Hard to keep up. Doing it bit by bit. We agree that "there are some entities that exist but that depend for their existence on something else." I have just followed up this reference. The relevant entry is by Joshua Hoffman and Gary S. Rosenkrantz. Relevant is section $\mathrm {IV-An\,Analysis\,of\,Sustantiality}$ on pages 89–94. This reads as an original essay or argument. The authors conclude "It appears that A provides a logically necessary and sufficient analysis of the concept of substance in terms of a kind of ontological independence." The formula A is an original concoction of a special technical term, referring not to ordinary language independence in general, but, rather, to a "kind of ontological independence". The section is not a third-party analysis or report of primary sources. I would say that it does pass muster as a suitable reliable source. I would say it is a good example of why encyclopaedias and such compendia as that Companion should be looked upon with caution. By the way, Hoffman & Rosenkrantz on page 87 say "In the later Metaphysics, Aristotle defends his hylomorphic account of substance, according to which a substance is a combination of form and matter." There will be other sources for this. More on Aristotle: Aristotle’s term “primary ousia” has often been translated as substance (or as primary substance) a practice which has caused considerable confusion. This translation can be misleading, since although one ordinary meaning of “substance” is an individual thing, e.g., an inanimate material object or living organism, this is not what Aristotle means by “primary ousia”. A more accurate and less misleading translation of “primary ousia” is primary being (or fundamental entity, or basic entity). Instead of "has often been translated", I would incline to say 'has traditionally been translated'. I think their example, "one ordinary meaning of “substance” is an individual thing", is eccentric or worse.Chjoaygame (talk) 05:59, 9 January 2021 (UTC) The publisher is well-known and both the editors and the authors are experts in their field. This indicates that we can treat it as a reliable source. But I can look for a 2nd source if one of the claims supported by this one seems problematic. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:59, 9 January 2021 (UTC) I am not a Wikilawyer, and I have no intention of trying to Wikilawyer. I guess there are experts and experts. Would I dare to say more? My policy is to read the literature till I find what seems reliable. Sometimes that isn't too easy.Chjoaygame (talk) 12:54, 9 January 2021 (UTC) I have now had a look at the book on the topic by Hoffman & Rosenkrantz (1997), Substance: its Nature and Existence, Routledge, London and New York NY. I think they are a touch eccentric.Chjoaygame (talk) 13:16, 12 January 2021 (UTC) In this context, terms such as 'subjective', 'subject', 'objective', and 'object' deserve careful attention. They can be tricky. 'Substance' is related to 'subject'. This has sorted out something that has previously mystified me. Why is the 'subject' of a sentence the agent of the sentence's principal verb when that is in the active voice? Now I have perhaps an idea. What mattered more to Aristotle was predicate. The subject was the target of the predication, more than the agent of the action. The verb that Aristotle was most interested in for this purpose was the verb 'to be'. In this case, it is not too obvious or prominent that the entity that 'is' is an agent. In the present context, Aristotle was interested in sentences such as 'Socrates is wise' more than in such sentences as 'Socrates is walking for the sake of his health.' In this particular example, the verb has no object. Usually, the verb 'to be' takes a complement, not an object. Probably relevant here is that Greek had the middle voice, which English doesn't.Chjoaygame (talk) 18:14, 17 January 2021 (UTC)