On the Elements of Ontology: Attribute Instances and Structure

Description

Central to Elements is an assay of the attributional union properties and relations have with their subjects, a topic historically left metaphorical. The work critiques eight Aristotelian assumptions concerning attribute dependence and ‘inherence’, per se subjects (‘substances’), attributes as agent-organizers, and unity-by-a-shared-one. Groups of these assumptions are seen to yield contradiction, vicious regress, or other problems. This analysis, joined with insights from an assay of ubiquitous structure, motivate ten theses explicating attribution and its primary ontic status. The theses detail: attributes proper as individuated instances, structure as instance-generated facts and their two forms of composition, the conditioning role and universal nature of instances’ component intensions, the primacy of attribute instances for generating all forms of composition and complex entities, and identity and indiscernibility criteria for the latter. Principal is the insight that attribution is intension-determined combinatorial agency. It is its systematizing implications that provide solutions to classic problems, e.g., Composition, Individuation, and Universals, and in net generate a comprehensive one-category structuralist ontology. Contents Preface 1. Overview: Attribution, Structure, and the Five Forms of Composition 1.1 The Overarching Thesis: Ubiquity of Structure and Ontic Primacy of Attribution 1.2 Previewing Attributes as Structuring Intensioned-Combinators 1.3 Intension Universals and the Five Types of Unification 1.4 On the Emergence of Attributes and Wholes 1.5 On the Fictive Nature of Unifier-less Wholes: Formalized Sums and Sets 1.6 The Proposed Holism via Attribute Instances as the ‘Primary Beings’ 2. Instance vs. Classic Ontology: Individuation and Adherence 2.1 Classic Aristotelian/Common-Sense Assumptions 2.2 The Classic Assumptions in Aristotle’s Metaphysics 2.3 The Dependence Contradiction and Individuation Regress 2.4 The Alternative of Absolutely Bare Particulars and Their Incoherence 2.5 The Alternative of Near-Bare Particulars and Their Error 2.6 The Specious Inherence Model of Attribution and Property-Reduction of Relations 3. Instance vs. Classic Ontology: Intensions and Unification 3.1 Further Problems Via the Classic Assumptions, E.g., Bradley’s Regress 3.2 Implying the Alternatives of Relation Elimination or Substance Monism 3.3 Denying Attribute Dependence: Bundle Theories 3.4 Hume and the Denial of the ‘Inseparability’ of Attributes 4. Atomic Structures: Facts and Their Natures 4.1 Structural Unity via Attribution; Facts as Atomic Structures 4.2 On Intensions and Their Prescribed Foundations 4.3 Assaying Attributes as Intensioned Combinators 4.4 The Individuation of Attributes 4.5 Attribute Intensions as Universals 4.6 The Simple ‘Continuous Composition’ of Attribute Instances 4.7 Summary 5. Complex Structures and Ontic Atoms 5.1 Complex Structures by Inter-Attribute and Emergent Composition 5.2 Attribute Instances as ‘Primary Beings’ 5.3 The Identity and Indiscernibility of Structured Entities 5.4 Answering the Problem of Composition 5.5 Some Implications: On Dispositions, Causation, and Change 5.6 Conclusion: The Route to Realist Instance Structuralism References Index