A Realistic Theory of Categories
An Essay on Ontology

This book can be viewed as a summation of Roderick Chisholm's views on an enormous range of topics in metaphysics and epistemology.

Roderick M. Chisholm (Author)

9780521556163, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 August 1996

160 pages
21.5 x 13.9 x 1.4 cm, 0.215 kg

"This important book should be read by all who have a serious interest in metaphysics, epistemology, or philosophy of mind. Chisholm's ontological theory is essentially one of great strength and integrity. It is a most impressive and instructive example of how systematic philosophy grounded in formal ontology can be pursued profitably." Gary S. Rosenkrantz, The Philosophical Review

Roderick Chisholm has been for many years one of the most important and influential philosophers contributing to metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. This book can be viewed as a summation of his views on an enormous range of topics in metaphysics and epistemology. Yet it is written in the terse, lucid, unpretentious style that has become a hallmark of Chisholm's work. The book is an original treatise designed to defend an original, non-Aristotelian theory of categories. Chisholm argues that there are necessary things and contingent things; necessary things being things that are not capable of coming into being or passing away. He defends the argument from design, and thus includes the category of necessary substance (God). Further contentions of the essay are that attributes are also necessary beings, but not necessary substances, and that human beings are contingent substances but may not be material substances.

Part I. the Realistic Background: 1. Introduciton
2. The nature of attributes
3. The existence of attributes
4. Propositions as reducible to attributes
5. The intentional structure of attributes
6. The primacy of the intentional
Part II. The Basic Categories: 7. The ontology of the theory of classes
8. The nature of relations
9. Times and the temporal
10. States and events
11. Spatial entities and material substances
12. Persons and their bodies
Part III. Homeless Objects: 13. Appearances
14. Intentionalia
15. Fictitious objects
Part IV. Application to Philosophical Theology: 16. Necessary substance.

Subject Areas: Philosophy: metaphysics & ontology [HPJ]