How Things Are: Studies in Predication and the History of Philosophy and Science (Philosophical Studies Series, 29)

One of the earliest and most influential treatises on the subject of this volume is Aristotle's Categories. Aristotle's title is a form of the Greek verb for speaking against or submitting an accusation in a legal proceeding. By the time of Aristotle, it also meant: to signify or to predicate. Surprisingly, the'predicates'Aristotle talks about include not only bits of language, but also such nonlinguistic items as the color white in a body and the knowledge of grammar in a man's soul. (Categories I/ii) Equally surprising are such details as Aristotle's use of the terms'homonymy'and'synonymy'in connection with things talked about rather than words used to talk about them. Judging from the evidence in the Organon, the Metaphysics, and elsewhere, Aristotle was both aware of and able to mark the distinction between using and men­ tioning words; and so we must conclude that in the Categories, he was not greatly concerned with it. For our purposes, however, it is best to treat the term'predication'as if it were ambiguous and introduce some jargon to disambiguate it. Code, Modrak, and other authors of the essays which follow use the terms'linguistic predication'and'metaphysical predication'for this. Title ......Page 3 Copyright ......Page 4 Dedication ......Page 5 Contents ......Page 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......Page 9 JAMES BOGEN / Introduction ......Page 11 ROBERT G. TURNBULL / Zeno's Stricture and Predication in Plato, Aristotle, and PIotinus ......Page 31 FRANK A. LEWIS / Form and Predication in Aristotle's Metaphysics ......Page 69 D. K. MODRAK / Forms and Compounds ......Page 95 ALAN CODE / On the Origins of Some Aristotelian Theses About Predication ......Page 111 FRANK A. LEWIS / Plato's Third Man Argument and the 'Platonism' of Aristotle ......Page 143 MARILYN McCORD ADAMS / Things versus 'Hows', or Ockham on Predication and Ontology ......Page 185 CALVIN NORMORE / Buridan's Ontology ......Page 199 JAMES E. McGUIRE / Phenomenalism, Relations, and Monadic Representation: Leibniz on Predicate Levels ......Page 215 ROBERT M. ADAMS / Predication, Truth, and Transworld Identity in Leibniz ......Page 245 WILFRID SELLARS / Towards a Theory of Predication ......Page 295 ALAN CODE / On the Origins of Some Aristotelian Theses About Predication: Appendix on 'The Third Man Argument' ......Page 333 NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS ......Page 337 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......Page 339 INDEX OF LABELED EXPRESSIONS ......Page 347 NAME INDEX ......Page 349 SUBJECT INDEX ......Page 353 One of the earliest and most influential treatises on the subject of this volume is Aristotle's Categories. Aristotle's title is a form of the Greek verb for speaking against or submitting an accusation in a legal proceeding. By the time of Aristotle, it also to signify or to predicate. Surprisingly, the "predicates" Aristotle talks about include not only bits of language, but also such nonlinguistic items as the color white in a body and the knowledge of grammar in a man's soul. (Categories I/ii) Equally surprising are such details as Aristotle's use of the terms 'homonymy' and 'synonymy' in connection with things talked about rather than words used to talk about them. Judging from the evidence in the Organon, the Metaphysics, and elsewhere, Aristotle was both aware of and able to mark the distinction between using and men tioning words; and so we must conclude that in the Categories, he was not greatly concerned with it. For our purposes, however, it is best to treat the term 'predication' as if it were ambiguous and introduce some jargon to disambiguate it. Code, Modrak, and other authors of the essays which follow use the terms 'linguistic predication' and 'metaphysical predication' for this. Edited By James Bogen And James E. Mcguire. Papers From A Conference Sponsored By Pitzer College In 1981. Includes Indexes. Bibliography: P. 329-336.