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Full Idea
It can be said that whatever we truthfully distinguish or compare is also distinguished or made alike by nature, although nature has distinctions and comparisons which are unknown to us and which may be better than ours.
Gist of Idea
Our true divisions of nature match reality, but are probably incomplete
Source
Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 3.06)
Book Ref
Leibniz,Gottfried: 'New Essays on Human Understanding', ed/tr. Remnant/Bennett [CUP 1996], p.309
A Reaction
This seems to me to be correct, though it is more like the credo of the sensible realist than it is like any sort of argument.
| 16116 | Aristotle derived categories as answers to basic questions about nature, size, quality, location etc. [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| 16655 | Different genera are delimited by modes of predication, which rest on modes of being [Aquinas] |
| 12989 | Our true divisions of nature match reality, but are probably incomplete [Leibniz] |
| 21754 | Our concepts and categories disclose the world, because we are part of the world [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 21755 | For Hegel, categories shift their form in the course of history [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 16462 | The quest for ultimate categories is the quest for a simple clear pattern of notation [Quine] |
| 16185 | Causality indicates which properties are real [Cartwright,N] |
| 18512 | Ontology aims to give the fundamental categories of being [Heil] |
| 13739 | Maybe categories are just the different ways that things depend on basic substances [Schaffer,J] |
| 17728 | The concepts we have to use for categorising are ones which map the real world well [Jenkins] |
| 18921 | Individuals are arranged in inclusion categories that match our semantics [Engelbretsen] |