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Single Idea 13739

[filed under theme 7. Existence / E. Categories / 4. Category Realism ]

Full Idea

Maybe the categories are determined by the different grounding relations, ..so that categories just are the ways things depend on substances. ...Categories are places in the dependence ordering.

Gist of Idea

Maybe categories are just the different ways that things depend on basic substances

Source

Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 1.3)

Book Ref

'Metametaphysics', ed/tr. Chalmers/Manley/Wasserman [OUP 2009], p.355


The 11 ideas with the same theme [belief that our categories can or do map reality]:

Aristotle derived categories as answers to basic questions about nature, size, quality, location etc. [Aristotle, by Gill,ML]
Different genera are delimited by modes of predication, which rest on modes of being [Aquinas]
Our true divisions of nature match reality, but are probably incomplete [Leibniz]
Our concepts and categories disclose the world, because we are part of the world [Hegel, by Houlgate]
For Hegel, categories shift their form in the course of history [Hegel, by Houlgate]
The quest for ultimate categories is the quest for a simple clear pattern of notation [Quine]
Causality indicates which properties are real [Cartwright,N]
Ontology aims to give the fundamental categories of being [Heil]
Maybe categories are just the different ways that things depend on basic substances [Schaffer,J]
The concepts we have to use for categorising are ones which map the real world well [Jenkins]
Individuals are arranged in inclusion categories that match our semantics [Engelbretsen]