Category of being: Encyclopedia - Category of being

Category of being

In metaphysics (in particular, ontology), the different kinds or ways of being are called categories of being or simply categories. According to the Aristotelian tradition, a being is anything that can be said to be in the various senses of this word. Hence, to investigate the categories of being is to determine the most fundamental senses in which things can be said to be. A category, more precisely, is any of the broadest classes of things - 'thing' here meaning anything whatever that can be discussed and cannot be reduced to any other class.

It is hoped, moreover, that a full account of the categories would be exhaustive. Sometimes ontological category schemes have included nonexistent or even impossible objects; Meinong, who thought we can talk unobjectionably about nonexistent objects such as the golden mountain, was an ontologist.

For example, what it means to take the category physical object seriously as a category of being is to assert that the concept of physical objecthood cannot be reduced to or explicated in any other terms - not, for example, in terms of bundles of properties. In this way, as it turns out, very many controversies of ontology can be understood as controversies about exactly which categories should be regarded as the (fundamental, irreducible, primitive) categories.

Category of being - Aristotle's Categories

Category came into use with Aristotle; one of his treatises is called the Categories, discussing Substance, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Place, Time, Posture, State, Action, and Passion. Aristotle's particular list of categories is widely rejected nowadays, however, in part because the Aristotelian notion of substance has been widely rejected. Aristotle's notion of substance is often rejected because of misunderstanding of his real meaning, which is that which exists of itself, not in another. With this understanding, to then deny that substance exists is to say that everything exists in another, which in turn means nothing can exist. But things do exist, therefore one must admit there is at least one substance. (Unless we allow either an infinite nesting of things, or a circle of nesting--the second option is rather strange, but the first option is the sort of situation imagined when it is suggested that matter might be infinitely divisible)

Category of being - Categories of being

Philosophers have many differing views on what the fundamental categories of being are. In no particular order, here are at least some items that have been regarded as categories of being by someone or other:

Category of being - Physical objects

Physical objects are beings; certainly they are said to be in the simple sense that they exist all around us. So a house is a being, a person's body is a being, a tree is a being, a cloud is a being, and so on. They are beings because, and in the sense that, they are physical objects. One might also call them bodies, or physical particulars, or concrete things, or maybe substances (but bear in mind the word 'substance' has some special philosophical meanings).

Category of being - Minds

Minds -- those "parts" of us that think and perceive -- are considered beings by some philosophers. Each of us, according to common sense anyway, "has" a mind. Of course, philosophers rarely just assume that minds occupy a different category of beings from physical objects. Some, like René Descartes, have thought that this is so (this view is known as dualism, and functionalism also considers the mind as distinct from the body), while others have thought that concepts of the mental can be reduced to physical concepts (this is the view of physicalism or materialism). Still others maintain though "mind" is a noun, it is not necessarily the "name of a thing" distinct within the whole person. In this view the relationship between mental properties and physical properties is one of supervenience – similar to how "banks" supervene upon certain buildings. See Philosophy of mind.

Category of being - Classes

We can talk about all human beings, and the planets, and all engines as belonging to classes. Within the class of human beings are all of the human beings, or the extension of the term 'human being'. In the class of planets would be Mercury, Venus, the Earth, and all the other planets that there might be in the universe. Classes, in addition to each of their members, are often taken to be beings. Surely we can say that in some sense, the class of planets is, or has being. Classes are usually taken to be abstract objects, like sets; 'class' is often regarded as equivalent, or nearly equivalent, in meaning to 'set'.

Category of being - Properties

The redness of a red apple, or more to the point, the redness all red things share, is a property. One could also call it an attribute of the apple. Very roughly put, a property is just a quality that describes an object. This will not do as a definition of the word 'property' because, like 'attribute', 'quality' is a near-synonym of 'property'. But these synonyms can at least help us to get a fix on the concept we are talking about. Whenever one talks about the size, color, weight, composition, and so forth, of an object, one talks about the object's properties. Some - though this is a point of severe contention in the problem of universals - believe that properties are beings; the redness of all apples is something that is.

Category of being - Relations

An apple sitting on a table is in a relation to the table it sits on. So we can say that there is a relation between the apple and the table: namely, the relation of sitting-on. So, some say, we can say that that relation has being. For another example, the Washington Monument is taller than the White House. Being-taller-than is a relation between the two buildings. We can say that that relation has being as well. This, too, is a point of contention in the problem of universals.

Properties, relations, and classes are supposed to be abstract, rather than concrete. Many philosophers say that properties and relations have an abstract existence, and that physical objects have a concrete existence. That, perhaps, is the paradigm case of a difference in ways in which items can be said to be, or to have being.

See also

• Modal logic

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