Showing posts with label Categories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Categories. Show all posts

Monday, April 6, 2009

The Categories

*clears throat*, "Harvey" (translator) here. Just thought I'd do a quick post on Aristotle's ten categories.

In the Categories (a section of his works on Logic - Aristotle is the father of Logic), Aristotle lays out ten categories (or predicaments) of being which are a metaphysical identity card of sorts of man. They are secondary attributes of the subject or first substance (eg Count Sneaky).

1) Second substance: the intelligibility or quiddity of Count Sneaky (man)
2) quality: Count Sneaky has visible qualities (brown hair, brown eyes) and invisible qualities (intelligence, artistic sense, virtues...)
3) quantity: Count sneaky is x feet tall
4) relation: CS is as tall or taller than "Harvey"
5) action: CS is reading
6) passion: CS is happy
7) time: any physical movement implies time and place
8) place: CS is in Twitterville (or somewhere else)
9) position: CS is sitting
10) state: CS is holding the phone

From another realistic thinker (GD): "the ten categories will always remain imo one of the signs of Aristotle's superior intelligence.

It is probable that this list proceeds from the sole and pure intuition of the Philospher, after having meditated on the being of things. It is the fruit of an absolute vision of intelligence, no doubt at the term of a long inductive observation of beings and things, where each time (10 times) a trigger mechanism was produced in his intuitive intelligence, distinct from and prior to reason. In this manner, it can be said the "Categories" are the doorway to reasoning."

The categories have a quiddity, ie their own "form" and intelligibility. They express the modalities of being but are relative to substance (what unites first substance - CS - and second subtance - man.)

My substance is my soul but substance is not soul, else all that would be would live. :-)

Dear readers, do not ponder over this too long and hard, else you will get a headache, but as we will be speaking of substance (the source of all determinations) and categories, I thought it useful to lay this out. ;-)