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CATEGORIAL PREDICATION
Author(s) -
Lowe E. J.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
ratio
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-9329
pISSN - 0034-0006
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9329.2012.00552.x
Subject(s) - categorization , object (grammar) , event (particle physics) , epistemology , phenomenon , property (philosophy) , proposition , philosophy , linguistics , physics , quantum mechanics
When, for example, we say of something that it ‘is an object’, or ‘is an event’, or ‘is a property’, we are engaging in categorial predication : we are assigning something to a certain ontological category . Ontological categorization is clearly a type of classification, but it differs radically from the types of classification that are involved in the taxonomic practices of empirical sciences, as when a physicist says of a certain particle that it ‘is an electron’, or when a zoologist says of a certain animal that it ‘is a mammal’, or when a meteorologist says of a certain weather‐phenomenon that it ‘is a hurricane’. Classifications of the latter types presuppose that the items being classified have already been assigned to appropriate ontological categories, such as the categories of object , species , or event . What do categorial predications mean ? How are their truth‐conditions to be determined, and how can those truth‐conditions be known to be satisfied? Do they have truthmakers ? Questions like these are amongst those addressed in the present paper.