# Assistant conversation H76LK5 - Canonical URL: - Resource IRI: - Type: assistant conversation - Mode: quick ## Transcript ### 1. User Import the attached PDF documents. [Uploaded PDFs] - Against_Fantology.pdf: Sheaf file #S4RXK7 - Fantology-NH.pdf: Sheaf file #22QHZH ### 2. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `document_import` ```json { "action": "stage", "file_ids": [ "S4RXK7", "22QHZH" ], "name": "Import attached fantology PDFs" } ``` ### 3. Tool result: document_import { "status": { "counts": { "pending": 2 }, "files": [ { "error": null, "status": "pending", "file_id": "22QHZH", "execution_id": null }, { "error": null, "status": "pending", "file_id": "S4RXK7", "execution_id": null } ] }, "sources": [], "action": "stage", "run_id": "24LML9", "file_ids": [ "S4RXK7", "22QHZH" ], "run_iri": "https://m.sheaf.less.rest/24LML9" } ### 4. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `document_import` ```json { "action": "extract", "run_id": "24LML9" } ``` ### 5. Tool result: document_import { "status": { "counts": { "completed": 2 }, "files": [ { "error": null, "status": "completed", "file_id": "22QHZH", "execution_id": "pex_pTiyahv50Lug" }, { "error": null, "status": "completed", "file_id": "S4RXK7", "execution_id": "pex_P_yHgytfgpKh" } ] }, "action": "extract", "completed": 1, "run_id": "24LML9", "submitted": 2 } ### 6. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `document_import` ```json { "action": "inspect", "run_id": "24LML9" } ``` ### 7. Tool result: document_import { "status": { "counts": { "completed": 2 }, "files": [ { "error": null, "status": "completed", "file_id": "22QHZH", "execution_id": "pex_pTiyahv50Lug" }, { "error": null, "status": "completed", "file_id": "S4RXK7", "execution_id": "pex_P_yHgytfgpKh" } ] }, "action": "inspect", "run_id": "24LML9", "files": [ { "status": "completed", "file_id": "22QHZH", "quality": { "blocks": 107, "pages": 12, "math_expressions": 21, "page_continuations": 9, "block_types": { "ListGroup": 1, "PageFooter": 12, "SectionHeader": 8, "Text": 86 }, "empty_equation_blocks": 0, "equation_blocks": 0, "pages_with_math": 3 }, "output_path": "/home/mbrock/sheaf.mikael/var/datalab/24LML9/22QHZH.datalab.json" }, { "status": "completed", "file_id": "S4RXK7", "quality": { "blocks": 163, "pages": 22, "math_expressions": 49, "page_continuations": 10, "block_types": { "Caption": 4, "Figure": 1, "ListGroup": 3, "PageFooter": 22, "SectionHeader": 23, "Table": 3, "Text": 107 }, "empty_equation_blocks": 0, "equation_blocks": 0, "pages_with_math": 5 }, "output_path": "/home/mbrock/sheaf.mikael/var/datalab/24LML9/S4RXK7.datalab.json" } ] } ### 8. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `document_import` ```json { "action": "import", "run_id": "24LML9" } ``` ### 9. Tool result: document_import { "next": "Resolve metadata, rebuild indexes, and validate reader pages.", "action": "import", "documents": [ { "status": "imported", "title": null, "file_id": "22QHZH", "document_id": "JZG4PM", "document_iri": "https://m.sheaf.less.rest/JZG4PM" }, { "status": "imported", "title": null, "file_id": "S4RXK7", "document_id": "CGE2NC", "document_iri": "https://m.sheaf.less.rest/CGE2NC" } ], "run_id": "24LML9" } ### 10. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `document_import` ```json { "action": "metadata", "run_id": "24LML9" } ``` ### 11. Tool result: document_import { "action": "metadata", "documents": [ { "match": { "reason": "title match score below 0.78", "source": "isbn", "identifier": "9781137535566", "score": 0.333, "doi": "10.1007/978-1-137-53556-6_4", "accept?": false, "crossref_title": "Constructing an Alternative Tax Model against the Background of a Changing (Tax) Sovereignty Paradigm within the EU", "crossref_type": "book-chapter" }, "metadata": { "title": "Against Fantology Again", "usage": { "cost": { "total": 0.00135, "tokens": 0.00135, "tools": 0.0, "storage": 0.0, "images": 0.0, "input_cost": 0.00111, "output_cost": 2.4e-4, "reasoning_cost": 0.0, "line_items": [ { "count": 4440, "id": "token.input", "kind": "tokens", "component": "token.input", "cost": 0.00111, "quantity": 4440 }, { "count": 160, "id": "token.output", "kind": "tokens", "component": "token.output", "cost": 2.4e-4, "quantity": 160 } ] }, "output_tokens": 160, "input_tokens": 4440, "total_cost": 0.00135, "reasoning_tokens": 0, "input_cost": 0.00111, "output_cost": 2.4e-4, "reasoning_cost": 0.0, "cached_tokens": 0, "total_tokens": 4600, "tool_usage": {}, "image_usage": {}, "cache_creation_tokens": 0 }, "year": "2016", "model": "google:gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview", "notes": "Published as chapter 3 in Leo Zabert (ed.), The Theory and Practice of Ontology (Palgrave Macmillan 2016). ISBN inferred from standard bibliographic metadata associated with the provided book title.", "issue": null, "pages": "25–43", "authors": [ "Ingvar Johansson" ], "doi": null, "volume": null, "isbn": "9781137535566", "source_filename": null, "publication": "The Theory and Practice of Ontology", "confidence": "high" }, "document_id": "JZG4PM", "wrote": false }, { "match": { "reason": "no DOI or ISBN found", "source": "none", "score": 0.0, "accept?": false }, "metadata": { "title": "Against Fantology", "usage": { "cost": { "total": 6.5e-4, "tokens": 6.5e-4, "tools": 0.0, "storage": 0.0, "images": 0.0, "input_cost": 4.35e-4, "output_cost": 2.15e-4, "reasoning_cost": 0.0, "line_items": [ { "count": 1741, "id": "token.input", "kind": "tokens", "component": "token.input", "cost": 4.35e-4, "quantity": 1741 }, { "count": 143, "id": "token.output", "kind": "tokens", "component": "token.output", "cost": 2.15e-4, "quantity": 143 } ] }, "output_tokens": 143, "input_tokens": 1741, "total_cost": 6.5e-4, "reasoning_tokens": 0, "input_cost": 4.35e-4, "output_cost": 2.15e-4, "reasoning_cost": 0.0, "cached_tokens": 0, "total_tokens": 1884, "tool_usage": {}, "image_usage": {}, "cache_creation_tokens": 0 }, "year": "2005", "model": "google:gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview", "notes": "Published in J. Marek and E. M. Reicher (eds.), Experience and Analysis, Vienna: öbv&hpt, 2005, 153–170", "issue": null, "pages": "153–170", "authors": [ "Barry Smith" ], "doi": null, "volume": null, "isbn": null, "source_filename": "69b109b7c66f814dd94c5814f18c378f722e2084e3f4c773c9793d5f3d79117a.pdf", "publication": "Experience and Analysis", "confidence": "high" }, "document_id": "CGE2NC", "wrote": false } ], "run_id": "24LML9" } ### 12. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `update_document_metadata` ```json { "authors": [ "Ingvar Johansson" ], "document_id": "JZG4PM", "kind": "book_chapter", "micro_abstract": "Argues against fantology by clarifying the ontological commitments and methodological assumptions involved in theorizing about reality.", "title": "Against Fantology Again", "venue": "The Theory and Practice of Ontology", "year": "2016" } ``` #### Tool call: `update_document_metadata` ```json { "authors": [ "Barry Smith" ], "document_id": "CGE2NC", "kind": "book_chapter", "micro_abstract": "Critiques fantology and develops an alternative approach to ontology grounded in experience and analysis.", "title": "Against Fantology", "venue": "Experience and Analysis", "year": "2005" } ``` ### 13. Tool result: update_document_metadata Updated metadata for #JZG4PM: kind, title, authors, year, venue, micro_abstract ### 14. Tool result: update_document_metadata Updated metadata for #CGE2NC: kind, title, authors, year, venue, micro_abstract ### 15. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `document_import` ```json { "action": "validate", "run_id": "24LML9" } ``` ### 16. Tool result: document_import { "action": "validate", "documents": [ { "title": "Against Fantology Again", "valid": true, "document_id": "JZG4PM", "readable_chunks": 86, "reader_path": "/JZG4PM", "source_pages": 12 }, { "title": "Against Fantology", "valid": true, "document_id": "CGE2NC", "readable_chunks": 131, "reader_path": "/CGE2NC", "source_pages": 22 } ], "run_id": "24LML9", "embedding_status": "completed", "embedding_errors": 0, "search_rows": 9724 } ### 17. Assistant Imported and indexed both PDFs successfully: - **Against Fantology Again** — Ingvar Johansson (2016), document #JZG4PM - **Against Fantology** — Barry Smith (2005), document #CGE2NC Both documents passed validation and are readable in Sheaf. ### 18. User let's put them in an ontology folder and read 'em so we can give them good microabstracts and good cover arts! ### 19. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `get_document` ```json { "id": "JZG4PM" } ``` #### Tool call: `get_document` ```json { "id": "CGE2NC" } ``` #### Tool call: `update_document_metadata` ```json { "document_id": "JZG4PM", "folder": "ontology" } ``` #### Tool call: `update_document_metadata` ```json { "document_id": "CGE2NC", "folder": "ontology" } ``` ### 20. Tool result: get_document DOCUMENT #JZG4PM Title: Against Fantology Again Outline: - 1 #N75AS4 Against Fantology Again - 1.1 #X6ZAS3 Abstract - 1.2 #4JDCZ8 3 - 2 #KUBPWW Against Fantology Again - 2.1 #EJHEZL 1 Default Ontologization - 2.2 #HF5XDV 2 Quine’s Canonical Notation - 2.3 #MBS8GM 3 Intentionality in the Canonical Notation - 2.4 #2KVZ8A References ### 21. Tool result: get_document DOCUMENT #CGE2NC Title: Against Fantology Outline: - 1 #SFAYRE Against Fantology - 1.1 #J6X7B4 1. Introduction - 1.2 #WMS82X 2. History - 1.3 #K8PYLN 3. The Secret Doctrine - 1.4 #KFAUX3 4. The Spreadsheet Ontology - 1.5 #V2DRED 5. The Picture Theory - 1.6 #77SZY4 6. The Special Case of Mathematics - 1.7 #T3V2BX 7. First-Order Logic as Characteristica Universalis - 1.8 #C2K4WC 8. All Generality Belongs to the Predicate - 1.9 #QNF4XD 9. Reality is Made of Atoms ('Bare Particulars') - 1.10 #DXU96N 10. ... and Sets - 1.11 #PVQQC7 11. Particulars are Unknowable - 1.12 #5JU942 12. Predication is Functional Application - 1.13 #WKX2QZ 13. The Vanishing Copula - 1.14 #8EKBDV 14. All Particulars are Bare Particulars - 1.15 #QK6C6U 15. A Peculiar Insensitivity to Time - 1.16 #63LUN3 16. Poor Treatment of Relations - 1.17 #W2NUZ7 17. Booleanism - 1.18 #MW9JFA 18. No Room for Dependent Continuants - 1.19 #ZAUEPE 19. A New, Enhanced Davidsonism - 1.20 #CCHP6D 20. Predicates Do Not Represent - 1.21 #HKGX5U Acknowledgements - 1.22 #HLYX3V References ### 22. Tool result: update_document_metadata Updated metadata for #JZG4PM: folder ### 23. Tool result: update_document_metadata Updated metadata for #CGE2NC: folder ### 24. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `read` ```json { "blocks": [ "JZG4PM" ], "expand": true } ``` #### Tool call: `read` ```json { "blocks": [ "CGE2NC" ], "expand": true } ``` ### 25. Tool result: read {"error":"\"resource JZG4PM not found\""} ### 26. Tool result: read {"error":"\"resource CGE2NC not found\""} ### 27. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `read` ```json { "blocks": [ "N75AS4", "KUBPWW" ], "expand": true } ``` #### Tool call: `read` ```json { "blocks": [ "SFAYRE" ], "expand": true } ``` ### 28. Tool result: read DOCUMENT #JZG4PM Against Fantology Again SECTION #N75AS4 Against Fantology Again EXCERPT #5H8U7T p. 0 Ingvar Johansson EXCERPT #ZLJRP2 p. 0 Published as chapter 3 in Leo Zabert (ed.), The Theory and Practice of Ontology (Palgrave Macmillan 2016, pp. 25–43); a Festschrift dedicated to Barry Smith. The Abstract is not part of the book version. SECTION #X6ZAS3 Abstract EXCERPT #ELGHFD p. 0 It is old news that language can make us form different and false opinions about the world. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is well known in both linguistics and philosophy, and in the same vein Bertrand Russell has argued that the Aristotelian subject-predicate logic mislead some famous philosophers into ontological monism. Barry Smith has made a similar claim about the language of first-order predicate logic. This logic has, according to him, become a language that seduces analytic metaphysicians to subscribe to false ontological positions. He refers to this fact as ‘fantology’, because of the symbol ‘Fa’, in which predication is always predication of a particular-as-particular. EXCERPT #UYQTDC p. 0 The paper “Against Fantology Again” develops Smith’s views further. It introduces an ontologically neutral operation called a default ontologization of a language, which makes it possible to put the term ‘fantology’ in a wider framework, and then it zooms in on Quine and his so-called canonical notation. He is the most outspoken fantologist, even though Smith mentions him only in passing. EXCERPT #2RJ5AS p. 0 It is claimed that Quine is doubly incoherent. First, he is of the opinion that his physicalism-with-classes ontology needs no other logic than first-order predicate logic, but this is shown to be wrong. Second, since first-order predicate logic is extensional, fantology deletes the whole realm of intentional phenomena and the referents of intensional propositions from ontology. Nonetheless, however, Quine takes a distinction between appearance and reality for granted, in which the appearances can contain intentional phenomena. SECTION #4JDCZ8 3 DOCUMENT #JZG4PM Against Fantology Again SECTION #KUBPWW Against Fantology Again EXCERPT #MSNS62 p. 0 Ingvar Johansson EXCERPT #YELMAS p. 0 The term ‘fantology’ has not yet (January 2016) entered The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , the world’s most up-to-date philosophical dictionary. This being so, one has to ask: what is fantology? Barry Smith, who coined the term, starts his paper “Against Fantology” by introducing it with this paragraph: EXCERPT #67PXZV p. 0 A dark force haunts much of what is most admirable in the philosophy of the last one hundred years. It consists, briefly put, in the doctrine to the effect that one can arrive at a correct ontology by paying attention to certain superficial (syntactic) features of first-order predicate logic as conceived by Frege and Russell. More specifically, fantology is a doctrine to the effect that the key to the ontological structure of reality is captured syntactically in the ‘Fa’ (or, in more sophisticated versions, in the ‘ Rab ’) of first-order logic, where ‘F’ stands for what is general in reality and ‘a’ for what is individual. Hence “fantology”. Because predicate logic has exactly two syntactically different kinds of referring expressions – (F), (G), (R), etc., and (a), (b), (c), etc. – so reality must consist of exactly two correspondingly different kinds of entity: the general (properties, concepts) and the particular (things, objects), the relation between these two kinds of entity being revealed in the predicate-argument structure of atomic formulas in first-order logic. (Smith 2005, 153) EXCERPT #MNZLZ7 p. 0 EXCERPT #9PUYEW p. 1 His view is not meant as a criticism of first-order predicate logic with identity understood as a logic ; it is only meant as a criticism of directly corresponding ontologies . His paper fell dead from both the press and the Web. My paper is a new attempt to put the notion of fantology on the philosophical agenda. It is done in the hope of making clear a danger that is intrinsic to philosophical-ontological work (N.B. not ontologies in the information sciences). EXCERPT #KPVKQ2 p. 1 I will not summarize Smith's paper. Instead, I will make two moves that hopefully will cast new light on the importance of its central notion. First, I will present fantology in the light of a more general and in itself ontologically neutral operation that I call a default ontologization of a language ; also proposed in (Johansson 2013). Then, in the second and third sections, I will discuss Willard van Orman Quine's views, since he is the most outspoken fantologist in the second half of the twentieth century. I think his lasting high philosophical status explains much of today's lingering fantology in analytic metaphysics. Smith only hints at Quine's explicit proposal for a canonical notation when in passing he states: EXCERPT #UCN4HM p. 1 Fantology sometimes takes the form of a thesis according to which the language of standard predicate logic can serve the formulation of the truths of natural science in a uniquely illuminating way (its syntax mirrors, after all, the very structures in reality which such truths represent). So Quine, with his doctrine according to which the ontological commitments of a theory become evident only when the theory has been regimented in fantological fashion. (Smith 2005, 156) SECTION #EJHEZL 1 Default Ontologization EXCERPT #NHCBQC p. 1 The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis says that a certain community's natural language either determines (strong version) or influences (weak version) how the members of that community think and perceive, and thereby also partly how they act. One of Whorf's classic presumed yet contested examples is that the Hopi Indians are anti-realists about time because their language lacks tensed words; instead of the words 'past', 'present', and 'future' events they use 'recalled', 'reported', and 'anticipated' events. EXCERPT #83Y6UP p. 1 It is only the weak version that can be taken seriously. When Whorf became multilingual he did not become totally immersed in the new languages he learnt, and Hopis can learn English. Even if true, the weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis only states that the default key to a community's lived reality – its experienced ontology – is its primary language. EXCERPT #9GV3TR p. 1 This hypothesis is about the semantics of natural languages. Smith, however, is concerned with the syntax of logical languages. On the one hand, we have to distinguish between default ontologizations of natural and logical languages, respectively; and, on the other, between default ontologizations of a semantics and a syntax , respectively. All default ontologizations look upon the language in question as if it were unchangeable, but, of course, all languages, natural as well as logical, are malleable. EXCERPT #KZYCFS p. 1 All languages can be given at least one default ontologization, that is, the central terms are hypothetically taken pretty straightforwardly to represent (in a wide sense of the term) something in a reality outside of the linguistic speech-or-writing and listening-or-reading acts; EXCERPT #2SFTFG p. 1 EXCERPT #WDEN3V p. 2 I do not regard parenthesis symbols as central terms. A default ontologization does not in itself say anything about how the actual language users in question conceive of non-linguistic reality, since they may move from language to language-independent reality in a more roundabout way. But it might deliver a good point of departure when trying to find out. Ontologizations that allow even purely spatial relations between terms to be ontologized, I call non-default ontologizations . EXCERPT #6ERGKM p. 2 A default ontologization of a logical language is mainly an ontologization of a syntax, since in a logical language semantic content is by definition abstracted away or never put in. However, a default ontologization of a syntax can only give rise to a pure structure, since a syntax is just a structure, but normally we want more from an ontology. Therefore, some abstract content must also be inserted into some of the non-logical symbols. This means that a logical language may allow for more than one default ontologization; a fact that will be exemplified in due course. EXCERPT #XHUMR3 p. 2 Also, it may be discussed whether a certain logical constant allows for an ontologization or not. Bertrand Russell and David Armstrong have argued that some constants do and some do not. Armstrong, for instance, thinks that the conjunction symbol allows for ontologization, but that the disjunction and the negation symbols do not (Armstrong 1978 II, chs. 14–15). If need be, one may call an ontologization of all central terms a primary default ontologization, and one where some of the constants are put aside as not being possible to ontologize a secondary default ontologization. EXCERPT #GBKGKS p. 2 Fantology can now be characterized by means of the following statement: only a default ontologization of traditional first-order predicate logic can display what the world is like. It can be explicitly put forward, as by Quine, or merely be implicitly taken for granted, as Armstrong seemingly does (Smith 2005, sect. 5). If fantologists cannot express their initial ontological thoughts in first-order logic, they dismiss them. Since, as pointed out above, a logical language can allow for more than one default ontologization, this does not mean that all fantologists agree in ontological matters. But, in their hands, first-order predicate logic nevertheless functions as a norm that prohibits many ontological positions to be stated. (Default ontologizations of logics such as modal logic and Prior's tense logic do not count as fantology.) EXCERPT #QMUE25 p. 2 Since all logical languages can be given at least one default ontologization, so can Aristotelian subject-predicate logic. Also, of course, each default ontologization can in a second step be claimed either to express the true ontology or to hide it. And Russell has claimed that (in my terms) all default ontologizations of subject-predicate logic seriously hides the true ontology, and I will use his claim to give some more contents to the abstract notions of fantology and default ontologization presented so far. EXCERPT #EJF8BX p. 2 The fundamental sentence of subject-predicate logic is ' S is P ', and Russell claims that if subject-predicate logic is regarded as the one and only logic, then its ontologization leads to the false position of monism. That is, to some kind of monism. Since nothing in ' S is P ' has semantic content, no conclusions about whether ' S ' refers to something physical, something mental, or something else, can be drawn from the subject-predicate logic alone. Russell, therefore, calls it " logical monism ." EXCERPT #95W5E3 p. 2 I think Russell's reasoning can be reconstructed as follows. All entities in the world are either directly or indirectly related to each other. Now, if between two entities in the world, a and b , there is a relation R , then the natural symbolization of it is, as in predicate logic, ' Rab '. However, in order to turn this logical form into the form ' S is P ', one has to write either ' a is Rb ' or ' b is Ra '. In what follows, I will reason as if the second alternative always applies. Assume next that there is a relation between b and c (predicate logic: ' Rbc '); it must then be given the form ' c is Rb '. The conjunction ' (c is Rb) & (b is Ra) ' shows that c certainly is at least indirectly related to a , too; and if the copula relation is transitive, then c is directly related to a just as much as to b . The reasoning can be repeated with new entities d , e , f , etc. entering the scene. This means that if the copula relation is all-embracing, as it is if the subject-predicate logic is taken to be the only proper logic, then there must be something of which all the entities a , b , c , etc. can be regarded as being properties. Russell himself says: EXCERPT #3Y3PD2 p. 2 EXCERPT #SP3GTU p. 3 Spinoza's metaphysic is the best example of what may be called 'logical monism'-the doctrine, namely, that the world as a whole is a single substance, none of whose parts are logically capable of existing alone. The ultimate basis for this view is the belief that every proposition has a single subject and a single predicate, which leads us to the conclusion that relations and plurality must be illusory. (Russell 1974, 559–560) EXCERPT #SC4JE8 p. 3 In this quotation, only Spinoza is mentioned, but Russell is of the same opinion with respect to the monisms of Hegel and Bradley (Russell 1974, 703; 1910). And, in the quotation below, he accuses Leibniz for inconsistency when Leibniz puts forward his pluralist monadology, but nonetheless regards the subject-predicate logic as the only logic. Leibniz claims that each monad is one single completely self-enclosed substance that has no relations to other substances, only a number of properties inhering in itself. This view fits well the sentence ' S is P '. But how can one express the view that there are many distinct monads? EXCERPT #4VUH4F p. 3 Whether any valid inferences are possible from language to non-linguistic facts is a question as to which I do not care to dogmatize; but certainly the inferences found in Leibniz and other a priori philosophers are not valid, since all are due to a defective logic. The subject-predicate logic, which all such philosophers in the past assumed, either ignores relations altogether, or produces fallacious arguments to prove that relations are unreal. Leibniz is guilty of a special inconsistency in combining the subject-predicate logic with pluralism, for the proposition 'there are many monads' is not of the subject-predicate form. To be consistent, a philosopher who believes all propositions to be of this form should be a monist like Spinoza. (Russell 1974, 575) EXCERPT #DSPWTC p. 3 The Russell quotations above are from his History of Western Philosophy , which was written during World War II. But in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism , written during World War I, he thought it possible to create a logical language that would depict the ontology of the world much better than either a natural language or the subject-predicate logic can. He sometimes called it a logically perfect language , but I think that the expression ' ontologically perfect language ' is more appropriate as soon as a vocabulary is added. He says: EXCERPT #U2VHMJ p. 3 In a logically perfect language the words in a proposition would correspond one by one with the components of the corresponding fact, with the exceptions of such words as "or", "not", "if", "then", which have a different function. In a logically perfect language, there will be one word and no more for every simple object, and everything that is not simple will be expressed by a combination of words. ... A language of that sort ... is set forth in Principia Mathematica . ... It is a language which has only syntax and no vocabulary whatsoever. ... It aims at being that sort of language that, if you add a vocabulary, would be a logically perfect language. Actual languages are not logically perfect in this sense, and they cannot possibly be, if they are to serve the purposes of daily life. (Russell 1986, 176.) EXCERPT #ELKKDD p. 3 Needless to say, Russell could not possibly start by believing (to quote Smith) "in the doctrine to the effect that one can arrive at a correct ontology by paying attention to certain superficial (syntactic) features of first-order predicate logic,” since he was among the creators of this logic. He came to his ontological positions independently of first-order predicate logic, but when it had been created, he meant that others could arrive at parts of the true ontological structure of the world by looking at its syntax. EXCERPT #JP7MK8 p. 3 EXCERPT #7PF583 p. 4 Smith is partly turning Russell upside-down, but without denying relations. He claims that the syntax of Russell’s predicate logic does not display the ontological structure of the world, but that the Aristotelian ‘ S is P ’ comes closer to doing so. However, he does not ontologize ‘ S is P ’ without further ado. He claims that Aristotle’s famous ontological square – consisting of: substantial (natural kinds) universals and particulars, and accidental (qualities/properties) universals and particulars – should be complemented by the pair process universals and particulars (processes in his sense include actions, events, and occurrences) and turned into an ontological sextet (Smith 2005, sect. 19). EXCERPT #JWEAAL p. 4 Both subject-predicate logic and first-order predicate logic can be given a default ontologization. If one thinks that default ontologizations of first-order predicate logic are seriously misleading, one may use Smith’s term and call them fantologies. And if one thinks that default ontologizations of subject-predicate logic are so, then one may (to coin a term) call them SisP-ontologies or sispontologies. Russell can then be said to accuse Spinoza, Hegel, and Bradley for being sispontologists, just as Smith accuses Armstrong for being a fantologist (Smith 2005, sect. 4). EXCERPT #FAR5LT p. 4 Subject-predicate logic contains a copula, be it ‘ is ’, as in ‘ S is P ’, or ‘ are ’, as in ‘ Some S are P ’ and ‘ All S are P ’; but first-order predicate logic contains no copula at all. Look at ‘ Fa ’, ‘ \exists xFx ’, and ‘ \forall xFx ’. This makes Smith talk about “the vanishing [of the] copula” in fantology (Smith 2005, sect. 13). Traditionally, the copula of true subject-predicate sentences has been taken to represent an inherence relation in the world. If ‘ S is P ’ is true, then what is represented by ‘ P ’ (normally a property) is taken to inhere in what is represented by ‘ S ’ (normally a kind, natural or artificial). No such explicit relation symbol can be found when formulas in first-order predicate logic are to be ontologized. The early Armstrong answers the question of what the relationship (in Fa ) between the referent of ‘ F ’, which Armstrong takes to be a universal, and a referent of ‘ a ’, which he takes to be a (“thin”) particular, by saying: EXCERPT #EWHMQX p. 4 It is concluded, therefore, that although particularity and universality are inseparable aspects of all existence, they are neither reducible to each other nor are they related. Though distinct, their union is closer than relation. (Armstrong 1978 II, 3) EXCERPT #7BX9G3 p. 4 Since first-order logic contains no symbol for a relation that connects universality and particularity, there is nothing that can be ontologized into such a relation. One might use Armstrong’s last sentence to characterize, conversely, the very symbol ‘ Fa ’ itself, and say that though ‘ F ’ and ‘ a ’ are distinct, the union between them is in predicate logic closer than that of a relation. EXCERPT #34C8B2 p. 4 But there is more to be noted in relation to the copula. It is not only a matter of something that represents an inherence relation; it is also a matter of what kinds of entities the relation can relate. In ‘ S is P ’, be S and P either universals or instances of universals, a property can be predicated both about another property (e.g., ‘scarlet is red’) and about a kind of substance (e.g., ‘tomatoes are red’). But in ‘ Fa ’ and ‘ \exists xFx ’ it is taken for granted that ‘ F ’ is a general term, ‘ a ’ the name of a particular, and ‘ x ’ a variable for particulars. That is, the predications in question are never of a kind-of-particular , but always of particulars-as-particulars . EXCERPT #JEUBB5 p. 4 Of course, one can in first-order predicate logic introduce a distinction between two sorts of monadic predicates, kind predicates (‘ S ’) and property predicates (‘ P ’). The counterpart of the subject-predicate logic’s sentence ‘ S is P ’ would then be ‘ Sa & Pa ’, which contains both a kind ascription and a property ascription. But this move does not introduce anything like an inheritance relation into predicate logic. A conjunction of two predications of the same particular-as-particular does not, in contradistinction to the subject-predicate logic, contain the possibility of speaking about an inheritance relation between a property and a kind-of-entity. It does not make it possible to predicate P of S . In order to do that, a second-order predicate logic would be needed. One in which ' P(S) ' is regarded as a well-formed formula. EXCERPT #9Z4MKL p. 4 EXCERPT #MF9B4F p. 5 Armstrong does not make any attempt to amend predicate logic by a distinction between kind-predicates and property-predicates. And since he believes in universals, he therefore is of the opinion that there are no "irreducibly substantival [substantial] universals" (Armstrong 1978 II, 62), only monadic property universals. Russell also wanted to get rid of the whole notion of substance and its concomitant kind-of-substance: "'Substance' when taken seriously, is a concept impossible to free from difficulties" (Russell 1974, 211). Quine substitutes classes for both property universals and kind universals. EXCERPT #N9WCW5 p. 5 Within the philosophy of science, the anti-substantial view defended by Russell and Armstrong has a clear repercussion. It means that it is not only everyday languages that should not be allowed to be ontologized, the same also goes for all known scientific languages. As Smith points out, many typical sentences of science conform to the ' S is P ' form (Smith 2005, sect. 8). Not even physics contain only mathematical formulas. EXCERPT #39DGBW p. 5 I would like to stress that today's fundamental particle physics does not make claims only about property bearing particles-as-particulars, but also about kinds of particles. And these are placed within a minor taxonomical framework. The so-called standard model divides particles into quarks, leptons, gauge bosons, and the Higgs boson; and the first three taxa are divided further into more fine-grained ones. For instance, "the genus" gauge boson subsumes "the species" gluon, photon, Z boson, and W boson; and W bosons have non-zero values of all the three fundamental properties mass, electric charge, and spin. It is even from a physicalist stance quite a radical move to claim, that these purported natural kinds should not be allowed to be ontologized, and not be allowed to be regarded as having properties inhering in them. EXCERPT #VVDZPH p. 5 According to Smith, fantology also brings with it "a peculiar insensitivity to time" (Smith 2005, sect. 15). I agree. As I said earlier, one reason why Russell wanted to replace subject-predicate logic with predicate logic was, that predicate logic already on the surface displays the possibility of irreducible relations. But he had a second ontological reason to favor first-order predicate logic, too. In some papers 1905–07 (e.g., "On Denoting" (Russell 1905)), he criticized Alexius Meinong's view that there are not only existing entities but also subsisting ones; that is, that there are different ways of existence . Consequently, already in its syntax, first-order predicate logic rules out the possibility of talking of tense as modes of being as, for instance, Roman Ingarden does. Everything that belongs to a domain of discourse to which predicate logic is applied, has to exist in the same way. EXCERPT #W69YEK p. 5 In predicate logic, 'existence' is a quantifier. This is in line with G. E. Moore's view that 'existence' is not a predicate; and so, when ontologized, with Kant's view that existence is not a property. But for Russell there is more to say than this. The view that 'existence'/existence is neither a predicate nor a property, does not preclude the view that there are different ways or modes of existence. It merely means that no such way is a property representable by a predicate. EXCERPT #TG88DH p. 5 For Russell, it is important, from the ontological point of view, that predicate logic contains exactly one existential quantifier. From a purely logical point of view, however, the existential quantifier ' \exists x ' may well be allowed to take subscripts that represent different ways of existence; for example, ' {}_1\exists x ' (in mode 1 there is at least one x ), ' {}_2\exists x ' (in mode 2 there is at least one x ), and so on. However, everything that is claimed to exist by means of sentences expressed in traditional first-order predicate logic is claimed to exist in the same way. EXCERPT #CFKLCC p. 5 Subject-predicate logic, in contrast, allows that ' S is P ' is replaced by ' S was P ' or by ' S will be P '. Since predicate logic contains no copula, it cannot do exactly this. Of course, its symbolism allows time indexing of both the ‘ F ’ and the ‘ a ’ of ‘ Fa ’, but that is quite another thing. It does not introduce ways of existence; it merely specifies where in uniform time the referents of ‘ F ’ and the ‘ a ’ are to be situated. EXCERPT #SQPQAK p. 5 EXCERPT #HDVM2Z p. 6 Let it be noted that there are a number of language-independent reasons for adopting a four-dimensionalist (or eternalist) view of time, in which all times exist in parity. But it follows from what I have said, that any naturalist default ontologization of first-order predicate logic is bound to embrace four-dimensionalism. Presentists cannot be fantologists. SECTION #HF5XDV 2 Quine’s Canonical Notation EXCERPT #PRFH22 p. 6 First-order predicate logic does not in itself entail a distinction between synthetic and analytic sentences or a denial that there is such a distinction. Therefore, both Russell and Quine can be fantologists; both of them subscribe to a distinction between language and reality. Two quotations from Quine’s central work Word and Object will be my point of departure in this section. When reading them, it should be kept in mind that Quine regards (i) the existential quantifier as being definable by the universal quantifier together with the negation symbol, and (ii) names as being replaceable by definite descriptions. Therefore, neither the existential quantifier nor names are mentioned as immediately belonging to his canonical notation: EXCERPT #ZJR9RD p. 6 Taking the canonical notation [first-order predicate logic with identity] thus austere, ... we have just these basic constructions: predication, universal quantification ... , and the truth functions. ... The ultimate components are the variables and general terms, and these combine in predication to form the atomic open sentences. What thus confronts us as a scheme for systems of the world is that structure so well understood by present-day logicians, the logic of quantification or calculus of predicates. EXCERPT #PUBYUG p. 6 Not that the idioms thus renounced are supposed to be unneeded in the marketplace or in the laboratory. ... The doctrine is only that such a canonical idiom can be abstracted and then adhered to in the statement of one’s scientific theory. The doctrine is that all traits of reality worthy of the name can be set down in an idiom of this austere form if in any idiom. EXCERPT #7RPRRA p. 6 It is in spirit a philosophical doctrine of categories, except that it is peculiarly relative in its import. Of itself it sets no limits to the vocabulary of unanalyzed general terms admissible to science. (Quine 1960, 228) EXCERPT #VRG8L7 p. 6 And here comes what has been made famous under the motto ‘to be is to be the value of a bound variable’: EXCERPT #VTBCNJ p. 6 In our canonical notation of quantification, then, we find the restoration of law and order. Insofar as we adhere to this notation, the objects we are to be understood to admit are precisely the objects which we reckon to the universe of values over which the bound variables of quantification are to be considered to range. ... To paraphrase a sentence into the canonical notation of quantification is, first and foremost, to make its ontic content explicit, quantification being a device for talking in general of objects. (Quine 1960, 242) EXCERPT #EM4W4N p. 6 A logical language may allow for more than one default ontologization, and first-order predicate logic does. The predicate symbols always represent something general or abstract, but opinions may differ about what should be regarded as general. For Russell and Armstrong, the predicate symbols represent property universals, whereas for Quine they represent classes or sets (he uses the terms interchangeably). This difference, however, is mitigated by the fact that the late Quine regards classes as universals (somewhere in the 1950s, he stops being a nominalist). In a response to Armstrong he writes: “What Armstrong has not perceived is that I, like him, espouse rather a realism of universals” (Quine 1981, 182). Armstrong and Quine have also in common the views that (i) they leave it for future empirical science to decide what universals there are, (ii) they regard four-dimensionalism as the correct philosophy of time, and (iii) they deny that there are any mental entities. EXCERPT #NNHAJE p. 6 EXCERPT #48D9SP p. 7 The late Quine is a reductionist in two ways, and a non-reductionist in one way. He regards all physical objects to be reducible to the objects postulated by basic physics, and he regards all universals and abstract objects to be reducible to classes. He claims, however, that it is impossible to reduce classes to physical objects. He defends a physicalism-with-classes ontology. I quote: EXCERPT #NPPUSP p. 7 Let us not leave the latter topic quite yet: ontology, or the values available to variables. As seen, we can go far with physical objects [he allows even spatiotemporal points to be called physical objects]. They are not, however, known to suffice. Certainly, as just now argued, we do not need to add mental objects. But we do need to add abstract objects, if we are to accommodate science as currently constituted. Certain things we want to say in science may compel us to admit into the range of values of the variables of quantification not only physical objects but also classes and relations of them. (Quine 1966, 244) EXCERPT #AURQ8S p. 7 The early Armstrong, as I said, claims that the union between property universals and particulars-as-particulars is closer than that of a relation; and that therefore there is no need to discuss any relation between them. Quine behaves analogously. At first sight, since the symbol ‘ Fa ’ can be read ‘ a is member of the class of F s’ or ‘ a \in F ’, it may seem as if he posits a kind of ontological membership-relation to explain the connection between physical objects and classes. But things are more complicated: EXCERPT #MTQM39 p. 7 The further part of logic is set theory, which requires there to be classes among the values of its variables of quantification. The one sign needed in set theory, beyond those appropriate to elementary logic, is the connective ‘ \in ’ of membership. (Quine 1966, 110) EXCERPT #WSNQJ2 p. 7 Quine here divides logic into set theory and elementary logic (the canonical language), which means that (a) he places the epsilon symbol outside of his canonical language. Also, (b) he regards it as being a connective . Both these things are important in relation to a pertinent question that I will soon raise. EXCERPT #C488JD p. 7 On the surface, it looks as if a second-order logic is needed in order to make quantifications over classes possible; that is, abstract classes must be representable by a variable in order to be able to be bound by a quantifier. But, if this first impression were true, the first-order logic of the canonical language would not allow classes to exist. Therefore, in order to have a consistent ontological position, Quine has to explain how classes can become represented by variables in first-order predicate logic. I will now put forward the foreshadowed question: where and how does Quine try to accomplish this feat? As far as I can see, he never makes any explicit attempt. Moreover, I will now argue, if he had made one, he could not possibly have succeeded. EXCERPT #5LZFYM p. 7 As is clear from the philosophy of science, reductions of one kind of physical objects to other kinds of physical objects (e.g., molecules to subatomic particles) are confronted with problems; and as is clear from the philosophy of mathematics, reductions of one kind of abstract objects to other kinds of abstract objects (e.g., numbers to classes) are confronted with problems. Both these kinds of reduction problems, let it be noted, Quine regards as being soluble (whereas I consider them insoluble). However, his problem with how to make classes representable by variables in first-order logic is of quite another kind – and magnitude. EXCERPT #V8XDAY p. 7 EXCERPT #FEGQP9 p. 8 He must be able to define a relationship between the physical objects represented by the variables in the canonical language and the abstract class objects. The problem is analogous to Plato's problem of how to explain the relationship between the sensible things in the spatiotemporal world and the entities in his transcendent atemporal realm of ideas. Plato introduced a relation of participation, but Quine can only appeal to the epsilon symbol and what it might represent. As I will point out next, this is not enough. EXCERPT #3XW37V p. 8 Quine regards classes as extensionally defined by their members; classes that have exactly the same members are identical. Therefore, classes that have physical objects as members cannot ultimately be defined without the epsilon symbol being used; they cannot be regarded as non-definable particulars and then quantified over. Nonetheless, as noticed, he explicitly regards '∈' both (a) as being outside of predicate logic, and (b) as being a logical connective, not a relation predicate. Position (a) means that the membership relation needed in order to define classes cannot be stated in the canonical notation. Position (b) means that even if, in some way or other, the epsilon symbol could be made a natural part of the canonical language, it is not allowed to be ontologized, since it is on a par with the logical constants that, for Quine, are non-ontologizable. EXCERPT #HSJWCU p. 8 In the same way that Russell claims that Leibniz is wrong in thinking that his monadology needs no other logic than subject-predicate logic, I claim that Quine is wrong in thinking that his physicalism-with-classes ontology needs no other logic than first-order predicate logic. Just as Leibniz cannot explain how on his own premises he can say 'there are monads', Quine cannot explain how on his own premises he can say 'there are classes'. EXCERPT #4Z42LM p. 8 I find what has now been said reason enough, when doing ontology, for not letting oneself to be bound by Quine's canonical notation. Nonetheless, another reason will be presented in the next section. EXCERPT #PK4BNY p. 8 Smith is against fantology primarily because it makes it impossible to claim that there is an inference relation between properties (qualities) and kinds (substances), and that there is a has-as-participant relation between processes and kinds. Claims that are central to his ontological sextet . In outline, I am on Smith's side in this criticism, even though I may differ from him with respect to some details concerning the philosophy of time, but I will not delve into this. Instead, I will now say some words about fantology in relation to an issue that remains untouched by Smith, namely, the existence or non-existence of intentionality. SECTION #MBS8GM 3 Intentionality in the Canonical Notation EXCERPT #Y2EB2B p. 8 Since first-order predicate logic is extensional, fantology takes the whole realm of intentional phenomena and the referents of intensional propositions away from the ontological picture. Some kind of physicalism is declared to be the fundamental ontological truth: EXCERPT #GDHVAV p. 8 One may accept the Brentano thesis [of the irreducibility of intentionality] either as showing the indispensability of intentional idioms and the importance of an autonomous science of intention, or as showing the baselessness of intentional idioms and the emptiness of a science of intention. My attitude, unlike Brentano's, is the second. ... Not that I would forswear daily use of intentional idioms, or maintain that they are practically dispensable. But they call, I think, for bifurcation in canonical language. ... If we are limning the true and ultimate structure of reality, the canonical scheme for us is the austere scheme that knows no quotation but direct quotation and no propositional attitudes but only the physical constitution and behavior of organisms. ... If we are venturing to formulate the fundamental laws of a branch of science, however tentatively, this austere idiom is again likely to be the one that suits. But if our use of canonical notation is meant only to dissolve verbal perplexities or facilitate logical deductions, we are often well advised to tolerate the idioms of propositional attitude. (Quine 1960, 221) EXCERPT #LMC3NX p. 8 EXCERPT #UGUUEN p. 9 In traditional post-medieval epistemology – to be contrasted with modern so-called meta-epistemology – something non-physical has always played a central role. Descartes ended his quest for certain knowledge in his presumed indubitable utterance ‘ cogito ergo sum ’, which represents something in consciousness. Hume, despite his general skepticism, found the existence of simple impressions indubitable, and they were mental in character. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century empiricism saw attempts to ground epistemology in entities that are supposed to be neither physical nor mental. Most famous are Mach’s sensations or elements (Mach 1959 [1886]), Russell’s neutral monism (which allows relations) (Russell 1961 [1921]), and Carnap’s elementary experiences (1969 [1928]). These observations give rise to the following question: what does the epistemology of the physicalist Quine look like? He cannot on pain of inconsistency introduce something non-physical apart from classes. EXCERPT #GYK4Z9 p. 9 It should be noted, that in systematic philosophy there cannot possibly be a gulf between ontology and epistemology. If one claims that an ontology is true, one lays claim to have some knowledge; and if one makes epistemological claims, one presupposes the existence of at least one cognitive faculty. Quine has to say something about epistemology, and he does. EXCERPT #Y8CY8Y p. 9 One Quine expert says: “Much of Quine’s work in epistemology is thus a more or less speculative discussion of how a child might acquire cognitive language” (Hylton 2014, 4.1). And this means how from a third-person perspective cognitive language is acquired. In Quine’s physicalist “empiricism,” empirical evidence has nothing to do with consciousness or any ontologically neutral entities. Empirical evidence is made equivalent to physical impacts on our physical sensory system. Below comes another quotation (Quine makes no distinction between ‘intensional’ and ‘intentional’ idioms): EXCERPT #TE23NL p. 9 All three of these idioms--‘perceives that’, ‘thinks that’, ‘It occurred to him that’--are idioms of so-called propositional attitude . ... As they stand, the idioms of propositional attitude resist predicate logic. ... Their underlying trait, which pervades mentalistic talk pretty generally, is that they are intensional , whereas predicate logic is extensional . ... Extensionality is much of the glory of predicate logic, and it is much of the glory of any science that can be grammatically embedded in predicate logic. I find extensionality necessary, indeed, though not sufficient, for my full understanding of a theory. (Quine 1995, 90–91) EXCERPT #68W3EJ p. 9 Quine – rightly to my mind – rejects traditional rationalism and empiricism and their quest for certainty, but he also – wrongly to my mind – denies the mere existence of non-physical entities beside the abstract classes. Is such a denial really epistemologically possible? How does Quine manage to take conscious thinking and perceiving completely away from the epistemological picture? The explanation has been delivered by A. W. Moore, and I refer to him for the argumentation. Here is his conclusion: EXCERPT #CU4X24 p. 9 [T]he single most important feature of Quine’s entire philosophy [is]: that its real driving force is his naturalism . Everything else flows from that; everything else must be understood in terms of that; everything else needs to accommodate that. (Moore 2012, 308) EXCERPT #3E8LNZ p. 9 EXCERPT #VJQTHD p. 10 Beneath both Quine's peculiar form of "empiricism" and his non-nominalist physicalism, there is an epistemological naturalism that he thinks grounds both. It says that the natural sciences' way of investigating and making sense of things is the one and only way. No place is given to complementary ways. If the quest for absolute certainty is taken away from Descartes, Hume, and the early Carnap, their views can be reformulated as follows. Descartes: the seemingly most indubitable fact is that there is at least one mental substance. Hume: the seemingly most indubitable fact is that there are simple impressions. Carnap: the seemingly most indubitable fact is that there are elementary experiences. According to Quine, the seemingly most indubitable fact is that the natural sciences have recourse to a method that increases our knowledge of the world. EXCERPT #3S2XEF p. 10 In my opinion, one can be a fallibilist and dismiss the quest for certainty without, pace Quine, denying the mere existence of conscious phenomena, whether they are then later best classified as states, as acts, as events, or as being of all three kinds. Within my fallibilist framework I trust the natural sciences, but I also look upon Descartes's cogito ergo sum as containing quite a kernel of truth. It can be laid bare as follows. The term ' cogito ' subsumes both the expressions 'I perceive' and 'I think'. One can just as well say to oneself (a) 'I perceive, therefore I am' as (b) 'I think, therefore I am'. However, in order to make a truly good epistemological point one cannot, like Descartes, speak as if a conscious moment of perceiving/thinking shows that there is a mental property bearer , which, moreover, is an enduring entity. Both these features can be doubted, but the belief in conscious occurrences nonetheless be retained. EXCERPT #MD2RHK p. 10 The two Cartesian self-reflective utterances above should be replaced by: (a') 'now I am perceiving, therefore there now exists a conscious occurrence ', and (b') 'now I am thinking, therefore there now exists a conscious occurrence '. Using the term 'propositional attitude', I claim that I know (c'): 'now I am perceiving-something/thinking-about-something, therefore there now exists a conscious occurrence of a propositional attitude'. In fact, I am more certain that I have conscious moments of propositional attitudes, than I am that there is a mind-independent world studied by physics. But I am pretty certain of both. EXCERPT #336CE9 p. 10 My view does not entail the existence of any momentary free-floating Cartesian substances. The occurrences spoken of may well be – and I think they are – phenomena that are for their existence dependent on a brain-and-body without being identical with such a substratum. Just as physicists can discuss what subatomic particles there are, believers in conscious occurrences can discuss both what the parts and the structure of such phenomena are like, and what kind of material conditions of existence they have. The fact that there are conscious occurrences of perception and thinking does not imply that their content and structure are epistemologically transparent; my own conjecture about the structure of consciousness is presented in (Johansson 2014). EXCERPT #EYPEX5 p. 10 The first Quine-quotation in this section contains the statement "If we are limning the true and ultimate structure of reality, the canonical scheme for us is the austere scheme that knows ... only the physical constitution and behavior of organisms." The expression "the true and ultimate structure of reality" is of crucial importance. Implicitly , Quine here brings in the old distinction between appearances and reality, and says that his canonical language is only meant for the ontology of the latter. But this he cannot say without allowing two different ways of existence, one for appearances and one for reality. Furthermore, if this were allowed, he could no longer claim that all ontological claims have to be translatable into the canonical language. Surely, if appearances there are, they must exist in some way . Thus, quite independently of the inconsistency noted in the last section, there is in Quine's philosophy another inconsistency, too. EXCERPT #6NMRUP p. 10 EXCERPT #TRQ8WH p. 11 Quine's fantological ontology is doubly incoherent. EXCERPT #DBWA4X p. 11 Acknowledgements. For comments on my way to the final version, I would like to thank Jan Almäng, Javier Cumpa, Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson, Kevin Mulligan, Christer Svennerlind, Erwin Tegtmeier, Frederic Tremblay, and Leo Zaibert. SECTION #2KVZ8A References EXCERPT #SVHMH7 p. 11 Armstrong, David. 1978. Universals & Scientific Realism I-II . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carnap, Rudolf. 1969 (1928). The Logical Structure of the World . Berkeley: University of California Press. Hylton, Peter. 2014. "Willard van Orman Quine." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta, URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quine/ Johansson, Ingvar. 2013. "Scattered Exemplification and Many-Place Copulas." Axiomathes 23:235–46. Johansson, Ingvar. 2014. "Triple Disjunctivism, Naive Realism, and Anti-representationalism." Metaphysica 15:239–65. Mach, Ernst. 1959 (1886). The Analysis of Sensations . New York: Dover. Moore, A. W. 2012. The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Quine, W. V. 1960. Word and Object . Cambridge Mass.: The MIT Press. Quine, W. V. 1966. The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays . Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press. Quine, W. V. 1981. Theories and Things . Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press. Quine, W. V. 1995. From Stimulus to Science . Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press. Russell, Bertrand. 1905. "On Denoting." Mind 14:479–93. Russell, Bertrand. 1910. "Some Explanations in Reply to Mr. Bradley." Mind , New Series XIX:373–8. Russell, Bertrand. 1961 (1921). The Analysis of Mind . London: George Allen & Unwin. Russell, Bertrand. 1974 (1946). History of Western Philosophy . London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Russell, Bertrand. 1986 (1918). "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism." In The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell vol. 8 , edited by J. G. Slater, 157–244. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Smith, Barry. 2005. "Against Fantology." In Experience and Analysis , edited by M. E. Reicher and J. C. Marek, 153–170. Wien: öbv & hpt Verlagsgesellschaft. (Also at http://ontology.buffalo.edu/bfo/Against_Fantology.pdf ) EXCERPT #6UNQP4 p. 11 ### 29. Tool result: read DOCUMENT #CGE2NC Against Fantology SECTION #SFAYRE Against Fantology EXCERPT #7RFK5M p. 0 Barry Smith EXCERPT #AWJGQ8 p. 0 From J. Marek and E. M. Reicher (eds.), Experience and Analysis , Vienna: öbv&hpt, 2005, 153–170 EXCERPT #8XUJG5 p. 0 The analytical philosophy of the last hundred years has been heavily influenced by a doctrine to the effect that the key to the correct understanding of reality is captured syntactically in the ‘Fa’ (or, in more sophisticated versions, in the ‘Rab’) of standard first-order predicate logic. Here ‘F’ stands for what is general in reality and ‘a’ for what is individual. Hence “f(a)ntology”. Because predicate logic has exactly two syntactically different kinds of referring expressions—‘F’, ‘G’, ‘R’, etc., and ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’, etc.—so reality must consist of exactly two correspondingly different kinds of entity: the general (properties, concepts) and the particular (things, objects). We describe the historical influence of this view, and also show how standard first-order predicate logic can be used for the logical formalization of a more adequate “six category ontology”, which recognizes, at the level of both particulars and universals, not only things or objects but also events and qualities. SECTION #J6X7B4 1. Introduction EXCERPT #D9DUYG p. 0 A dark force haunts much of what is most admirable in the philosophy of the last one hundred years. It consists, briefly put, in the doctrine to the effect that one can arrive at a correct ontology by paying attention to certain superficial (syntactic) features of first-order predicate logic as conceived by Frege and Russell. More specifically, fantology is a doctrine to the effect that the key to the ontological structure of reality is captured syntactically in the ‘Fa’ (or, in more sophisticated versions, in the ‘Rab’) of first-order logic, where ‘F’ stands for what is general in reality and ‘a’ for what is individual. Hence “fantology”. Because predicate logic has exactly two syntactically different kinds of referring expressions – (F), (G), (R), etc., and (a), (b), (c), etc. – so reality must consist of exactly two correspondingly different kinds of entity: the general (properties, concepts) and the particular (things, objects), the relation between these two kinds of entity being revealed in the predicate-argument structure of atomic formulas in first-order logic. EXCERPT #5HHXHN p. 0 EXCERPT #FHFPQR p. 1 Fantology is a twentieth-century variant of linguistic Kantianism, or in other words of the doctrine that the structure of language (here: of a particular logical language) is the key to the structure of reality. Classical fantologists were Frege, Russell and the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus , yet the work of almost all twentieth-century analytical philosophers bears traces of fantological influence, though this influence is of course more notable in some circles (for instance among the logical positivists in Vienna) than in others. Where the early fantologists argued explicitly that first-order predicate logic mirrors reality, present-day philosophers are marked by fantology only tacitly, through their use of predicate logic and of ways of thinking associated therewith. David Armstrong seems, in this respect, to be a border-line case. EXCERPT #DE7S2J p. 1 The dark force of fantology has spread its tentacles also beyond the realm of philosophy to embrace much of what goes on in computer science under headings such as ‘knowledge representation’ and ‘conceptual modeling’. The full story of these influences must be left for another day, but for a preliminary accounting see my (2004). SECTION #WMS82X 2. History EXCERPT #NUT7VA p. 1 Many of the ontological doctrines which I associate with fantology in what follows have recognizable roots in the work of philosophers such as Plato, Leibniz, Locke, Kant, and Hume, whose ideas were of course formed well before predicate logic was conceived by Frege. But it was, I suggest, the very success of Frege’s project in the Begriffsschrift which led just these doctrines of just these philosophers to be taken up within the canon of analytical philosophy (a branch or mode of philosophy which was, after all, for a long time conspicuously uninterested in its own philosophical past). EXCERPT #Z4FNBQ p. 1 The language of predicate logic is richly expressive, and I hasten to emphasize from the start that it is of course possible to use predicate logic in one’s philosophical work without falling victim to any of the adverse effects of fantology. (I shall indeed conclude with one example of how predicate logic can be used in order to thwart these very effects.) My goal is thus not to criticize predicate logic. Rather, it is to bring forward examples of the ways in which predicate logic has been standardly used in order to build a new sort of tunnel through the history of post-Fregean philosophy. My remarks should accordingly be understood in this historical light. If Frege is the grandfather of analytical philosophy, then it is the influence in ever widening circles of Frege’s logic which has confirmed his special place in the analytic-philosophical pantheon. Frege’s signal achievement lies in his having inaugurated the era of logical rigor – to the extent that we can now all agree that logical rigor is an indispensable requirement of all good philosophy. But this signal achievement was for a long time marred through its association with an overestimation of the power of a relatively simplistic type of logico-linguistic analysis to resolve ontological problems. Exposing some of the effects of this overestimation should allow us to understand the development of analytical philosophy in a new way, and to bring to light aspects of this development which are normally hidden. EXCERPT #P3H298 p. 1 SECTION #K8PYLN 3. The Secret Doctrine EXCERPT #GYALXB p. 2 Fantology is a doctrine that rarely dares to speak its name. (That fantology should be conceived as a secret doctrine is indeed one reading of the concluding sentence of Wittgenstein's Tractatus .) When Wittgenstein gives voice to the doctrine, it reads like this: EXCERPT #8ZXZZJ p. 2 Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language. (4.003) EXCERPT #4JQ7VJ p. 2 Propositions show the logical form of reality. They display it. (4.121) EXCERPT #FQ5MMF p. 2 Thus one proposition 'fa' shows that the object a occurs in its sense, two propositions 'fa' and 'ga' show that the same object is mentioned in both of them. If two propositions contradict one another, then their structure shows it; the same is true if one of them follows from the other. And so on. (4.1211) EXCERPT #UYULTA p. 2 The propositions of logic describe the scaffolding of the world, or rather they represent it. They have no 'subject-matter'. They presuppose that names have meaning and elementary propositions sense; and that is their connection with the world. It is clear that something about the world must be indicated by the fact that certain combinations of symbols – whose essence involves the possession of a determinate character – are tautologies. This contains the decisive point. (6.124) EXCERPT #EZ2GXW p. 2 The exploration of logic means the exploration of everything that is subject to law. And outside logic everything is accidental. (6.3) EXCERPT #4EF8RB p. 2 Just as the only necessity that exists is logical necessity, so too the only impossibility that exists is logical impossibility. (6.375) EXCERPT #E3SB7A p. 2 Compare also Russell: 'Philosophy, if what has been said is correct, becomes indistinguishable from logic as that word has now come to be used.' (1917) And: ‘logic is concerned with the real world just as truly as zoology, though with its more abstract and general features.’ (1919). EXCERPT #M2X2YA p. 2 SECTION #KFAUX3 4. The Spreadsheet Ontology EXCERPT #PSR7FP p. 3 We can gain some impression of what more recent fantological philosophy looks like by considering what Armstrong was once pleased to call his “Spreadsheet Ontology” (see Armstrong 2004, a work published only in French). EXCERPT #27FLQD p. 3 F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U ... a x x x x x b x x x x x c x x x x x d x x e x x x x f x x x x x g x x x x x h x x x x i x x x x j x x x x x ... EXCERPT #8TUXEE p. 3 Figure 1: Armstrong’s Spreadsheet Ontology EXCERPT #Y7TY94 p. 3 Reality, we are to suppose, is made up of concrete individuals ( a , ...) plus abstract ‘properties’ or ‘attributes’ (F, ...). The rows of Armstrong’s spreadsheet (see Figure 1) then corresponding to the individuals, the columns to the properties. When the spreadsheet has been filled in completely – a task which Armstrong seems to have believed could be left to the physicists of the future – then we will be able to read off for every object a list of its properties and for every property a list of the objects to which it applies, and in this way gain a complete assay of reality. EXCERPT #MR2WHK p. 3 EXCERPT #R4LQU8 p. 4 At the time when he advanced his Spreadsheet Ontology, Armstrong seems to have believed not only that such an essay is at least in principle possible, but further that its provision is the very goal of physics in its march towards future perfection. Wittgenstein's Tractatus , too, of course, expresses a vision along similar lines, his elementary propositions corresponding to the cells of the spreadsheet after the latter has been modified to allow some extra room for relations. David Lewis and the Carnap of the state descriptions enrich the vision by having many spreadsheets, one for each 'world', the worlds themselves enjoying a stunning mathematical elegance in virtue of the fact that they are identified with sets of propositions of simple ( Fa , Rab , etc.) forms. SECTION #V2DRED 5. The Picture Theory EXCERPT #Y2YY6L p. 4 Fantology sometimes takes the form of a thesis according to which the language of standard predicate logic can serve the formulation of the truths of natural science in a uniquely illuminating way (its syntax mirrors, after all, the very structures in reality which such truths represent). So Quine, with his doctrine according to which the ontological commitments of a theory become evident only when the theory has been regimented in fantological fashion. EXCERPT #EAYTMC p. 4 A similar thesis already underlies the picture theory of the Tractatus , where the syntax of first-order predicate logic is, as one says, a "great mirror" (Feibleman 1958). It underlies the logical atomism of Bertrand Russell, including the central thesis according to which all form is logical form – a thesis which, be it noted, leaves no room for a discipline of formal ontology as something separate from formal logic. EXCERPT #6BXFFG p. 4 In this connection it is worth bearing in mind that the term 'formal ontology' was originally coined by Husserl (1913/21) to signify that branch of philosophy which deals with the interconnections of things , with objects and properties, parts and wholes, relations and collectives – as contrasted with formal logic, which deals with the interconnections of truths , with consistency and validity, disjunction and entailment, 'and' and 'not'. There is no a priori reason to suppose that these two families of interconnections should be identical. Both are 'formal' – which means (as Husserl sees it) that they are domain-independent structures realizable in principle in all material spheres of reality. The mereologist's 'part of' reflects a formal-ontological structure in light of the fact that there is no restriction on the sorts of objects which can enter into relations of part to whole. 'Or', similarly, reflects a formal-logical structure, because the relation of disjunction can join together assertions without restriction on their content. In other respects, however, the two sorts of structure are radically distinct – yet fantology rides roughshod over the differences between them. EXCERPT #E76U8S p. 4 There are two central components to the formal ontology Husserl himself presented in his Third Logical Investigation: the theory of part and whole (or mereology), which has received some considerable attention in recent years (Simons 1987), and the theory of dependence – that is to say the theory of those links between entities of different types in virtue of which entities of one type cannot, as a matter of necessity, exist without some further entity of another, different type (Johansson 2004). These necessary relations between discrete existences obtain most conspicuously between entities – for example processes or qualities on the one hand and their bearers on the other – which enjoy different ways of existing in reality. The neglect of necessary dependence relations in fantological circles flows from the fact that such distinct ways of being were themselves commonly neglected. This neglect in turn is one consequence of the fantologists’ assumption that ‘existence’ is univocal – it is in every case a property of what Frege called concepts or functions – and is captured in the ‘ \exists .’ And if existence is analyzed as a property of concepts, so supervenience is analyzed (e.g. in Kim (1984)) as a relation which has concepts as its relata. EXCERPT #QTNH3J p. 4 SECTION #77SZY4 6. The Special Case of Mathematics EXCERPT #ZS79U7 p. 5 The term ‘formal’ is of course used also in another sense – corresponding to the use of the term ‘symbolic’ in the phrase ‘symbolic logic’. Fantology can in this light also be formulated as a doctrine to the effect that formal ontology is properly included within the domain of symbolic logic as this was understood by Frege or Russell. The historical background to this doctrine is, I believe, in the apparent successes of early analytical philosophy in the domain of the philosophy of mathematics, which seemed to many in the years following the publication of Principia Mathematica to lend a great deal of support to the proposition that, when once we have fixed on a proper symbolism for the expression of the truths of mathematics, then no further mathematical work would remain to be done. Wittgenstein generalized this assumption: when once we have fixed on a proper symbolism for the expression of the truths of natural science, no further work for ontology will remain to be done. EXCERPT #QDM6DY p. 5 Some early fantologists went still further in embracing an even stronger thesis according to which all necessary truths – and thus, on some accounts, all the truths of philosophy – could be analyzed as truths of logic. In the Vienna circle, for example, it was working dogma that the successes achieved by Frege and Russell in reducing truths of mathematics to truths of logic would inevitably be repeated elsewhere, in a march towards total victory of logical reduction in all domains of inquiry, so that it would one day be possible to read off without restriction the structure of reality from the symbolism of logic. SECTION #T3V2BX 7. First-Order Logic as Characteristica Universalis EXCERPT #9RD65P p. 5 The language of first-order logic – especially in the form it was given in Principia Mathematica – thus came to represent the rebirth of the old Leibnizian idea of a universal characteristic. But while Frege and Russell (and Whitehead) did indeed successfully demonstrate that this language may lay some claim to the power of a characteristic when it comes to the formulation of many of the propositions of mathematics, it is by now surely evident that it can lay no such claim in regard to other domains. EXCERPT #4LZZVT p. 5 EXCERPT #YV8B7Q p. 6 One reason why fantology works so well in mathematics is because mathematical entities do not exist in time and space (this is why mathematics is a domain in relation to which a Platonistic ontology has much to be said in its favor, and why mathematics is a domain in which it may even make sense to identify necessity with logical necessity and law with logical law). When philosophers have turned their methods to the necessary relations in other, non-mathematical domains, then fantological reductions have remained beyond their grasp. The logical positivists' expectation that it would be possible to demonstrate the logical nature of such necessary truths as 'Nothing can be red and green all over' were uniformly dashed. But this failure went largely unnoticed, to the degree that many continued to assume that the needed reductions had indeed been successfully obtained. The truths of casual necessity received a different treatment. So closely did some adhere themselves to the doctrine according to which all necessity is logical necessity that in order to save the good name of fantology they saw fit, when applying this doctrine to the realm of causality, to embrace the nuclear option of Humeanism. Causal relations would break the bounds of fantology. Hence, causal relations do not exist. SECTION #C2K4WC 8. All Generality Belongs to the Predicate EXCERPT #3K6XJU p. 6 Consider some typical sentences of science: EXCERPT #Y2E7TY p. 6 Action and reaction are equal and opposite. EXCERPT #JCDMZ7 p. 6 The electron has a negative charge. EXCERPT #GW2XAX p. 6 The ribosome is the subcellular unit responsible for protein synthesis. EXCERPT #9HM254 p. 6 The heart is a part of the cardiovascular system. EXCERPT #6MTPTP p. 6 Here nominal expressions are used as a matter of course to refer to what is general in reality . In the syntax of first-order logic on the favored fantological interpretation, in contrast, all generality belongs to the predicate: the 'a' in 'Fa' (and thus the 'x' in 'Fx') is a mere (meaningless) name, a matter of pure denotation. EXCERPT #3HBLFR p. 6 Note that, as is made clear already by many of the examples used by Frege himself, nothing in logic prevents the use of names to refer to ideal or general objects, and nothing in logic says that names are meaningless or that they can refer only to individual objects. Rather, these assumptions are the result of a philosophical interpretation. EXCERPT #JLBWQC p. 6 SECTION #QNF4XD 9. Reality is Made of Atoms ('Bare Particulars') EXCERPT #LJHYLZ p. 7 Those advocates of fantology who allow only logically simple names are then led by the doctrine which identifies ontological form with logical form in the direction of one or other atomistic conception of reality. This atomism is manifest in Armstrong's Spreadsheet Ontology and by his repeated appeals to the basic truths of some future perfected physics. But it is demonstrated most starkly in the Tractatus , which denies that there exist complex objects at levels of granularity above the level of the absolutely simple substances to which the logically proper names of the Tractatus are supposed to refer. Wittgenstein seems, indeed, to deny all ontological complexity at levels of granularity above that of the states of affairs which such objects go to form. EXCERPT #3GDQTX p. 7 Fantology has of course proved conducive not only to atomistic doctrines but also to other, associated forms of reductionism and eliminativism, including Russell's view to the effect that proper names refer to sense data. Wittgenstein's assumption that the effect that all elementary propositions are logically independent of each other likewise consolidated a resistance to holistic views about the structure of reality (thus to patterns, laws, systems). Fantologically inspired philosophy has thus also faced difficulties in doing justice in its theories to the objects of biology. Where fantology departs from atomism at all, it has normally embraced doctrines of complexity powered by set theory – and of course the central role of set theory in analytical philosophy itself has fantological roots. Alternatively, it has seen virtue in theories of 'bundles' – resting again on the assumption that the key to good ontology lies in breaking down reality into smallest bits. SECTION #DXU96N 10. ... and Sets EXCERPT #ZCA9UM p. 7 When applied as the exclusive tool of ontology set theory amounts to the reduction of all complexity to cumulative combinations of zero or more Urelemente . Set theory can in fact be identified as a general theory of those mathematical structures which arise when objects (of whatever sort) are conceived as being unified together ad libitum on successively higher levels, each object serving as member or element of objects on the next higher level. The problem is that, in many spheres which we might wish to subject to ontological analysis, no candidate basic level of Urelemente can be identified. In some spheres, moreover, there is no unidirectional (upward) growth of complexity generated by simple combination. The pitch, timbre and loudness of a musical tone, for example, are not Urelemente which can exist in separation from one another and somehow become combined together in the context of the larger whole. EXCERPT #JKJLXU p. 7 EXCERPT #FTE6H6 p. 8 A further problem with set theory is that it deals with combination per accidens – drawing no distinction of structure between, say, the set of enzymes, the set of planets in the solar system, and the set of persons whose surnames end in ‘E’. It places numbers and popes, molecules and galaxies together in combination and thereby fosters a maximally promiscuous use of the term ‘object’ which has been detrimental to the advance of ontology in analytic philosophical circles in ways too little appreciated. EXCERPT #Q6WZPU p. 8 It seems to me to be an open question whether there is any counter veiling theoretical interest from the perspective of ontology to the possibility of such ad libitum , universally applicable, and thus necessarily bland, unification. For the concrete varieties of complexity which in fact confront us in our dealings with reality are subject always to quite subtle sorts of constraints, constraints which vary from one type of entity to another. We are, outside the special contexts of mathematical set theory, not interested in ad libitum collections, after all – not even when we are making lists. Rather we are interested in collections of objects of given sorts and in given contexts or locations. EXCERPT #YUPFT5 p. 8 A further problem – a problem rarely addressed by those who would use set theory as a tool of ontology – is that sets as defined by the pertinent axiomatic theories are abstract entities. They are timeless; they do not change (the set-structure is implicitly defined by certain axioms which are timelessly true). The friend of sets is thereby left with the problem of how he is to connect up the abstracta he countenances on the side of sets with those real concreta with which they are in different ways associated, and even Maddy (1997), who comes closest to providing a solution for this problem, concentrates rather on the epistemological aspects of the propositions of mathematical set theory. EXCERPT #RGB6ZL p. 8 Those who use the jargon of sets in non-philosophical disciplines – for example in classifications of soil types or of diseases – commonly suppose that they can rely on set theory to provide the needed formal support for their work. They do not recognize that the mathematical theory of sets deals with sets as abstract entities artificially removed from the realm of time and space. This is clear where the sets in question are pure sets (sets built out of the empty set as basis), with no admixture of Urelemente at all. But it holds even where the sets in question – for example the set of all items of furniture in a given room – have physical objects as their elements. For the mathematical set-forming operator has the peculiar effect of sealing off real-world entities from the vagaries of time and space. The set {Socrates} exists (in the timeless sense appropriate to abstract mathematical entities) even though Socrates himself passed out of existence long ago. SECTION #PVQQC7 11. Particulars are Unknowable EXCERPT #JVASDY p. 8 EXCERPT #CMFR6F p. 9 It is not only all generality, on the fantological view, that is confined to the predicate, but also (at least on some versions of fantology) all connotation, all meaning. Names are mere ciphers – a matter of pure denotation. Thus if all truths are to be capable of being expressed in predicate-logical terms, then this implies a noumenal view of what the classical fantologists liked to call “bare particulars”, an outcome in fact explicitly embraced by Quine (Oderberg 2005). And, if (as on some standard fantological views) universals are identified as mere sets of particulars – or with functions between such sets of particulars and what some fantologists are pleased to call ‘worlds’ – then this implies a noumenal view of universals, too. We cannot express in our theories what particulars, or universals, are like; at best we can capture only a certain structure (or pattern or net or mesh) which reality somehow realizes. We cannot know what numbers are like, because even in second-order Peano arithmetic we cannot justify identifying the natural numbers with any specific omega sequence. EXCERPT #GWM63B p. 9 In the hands of some, the formal limitations on our capacity to specify such structures univocally (for example as implied by the Löwenheim-Skolem result) are held (incredibly) to be a sign of a psychological incapacity on our part to understand the corresponding objects. Here again (and now for spurious technical reasons) fantology connives to Kantian conclusions. EXCERPT #BY7MK3 p. 9 In fantological philosophy of natural science, the world itself is unknowable. At best we can appeal in Neokantian style to physics as it will exist in some never quite realized future state of epistemological perfection – a physics in which all of the differential equations will somehow have disappeared. Fantology thus implies, as in the hands of Carnap, a noumenal view of science. SECTION #5JU942 12. Predication is Functional Application EXCERPT #LUKX3M p. 9 Another strand in the fantological doctrine is the thesis according to which, in order to understand monadic properties it suffices to understand monadic predication. Frege held that when we assert, for example, that John is wise, then we are not ascribing to John some quality (of wisdom). Rather, we are applying a certain function from objects to truth values, and asserting that the value of this function for John as argument is a certain designated object called ‘the true’. In this way Frege’s object/function distinction rides roughshod over two traditional ontological distinctions, between substance and property and between particular and universal . EXCERPT #R7YGMR p. 9 On more traditional accounts of predication, qualities like wisdom or hunger or temperature can be coherently applied only to entities of certain restricted sorts. One important corollary of Frege’s account of predication, however, is that it applies indiscriminately to entities of all kinds. It thereby yields a single, beautifully elegant, unified (and bland) account of properties and predication, which extends indiscriminately to entities of all sorts – in spite of the fact that there is nothing ontologically in common between, say, the evenness of the number 2 and the negative charge of an electron. This allows Frege himself to build nonsense truths like ‘The square root of Napoleon’s mother is the false.’ In this way, however, the generality and rigor of Frege’s unified theory is bought at the price of ontological obfuscation. EXCERPT #PRPLSN p. 9 EXCERPT #JXJX5S p. 10 A further problem with Frege’s theory becomes apparent when we consider its application to the case of relations. That a stands in relation R to b is parsed by Frege as meaning: the function R when applied to the ordered pair \langle a, b \rangle as argument yields the true as value. In virtue of what, however, does this latter proposition hold, if not in virtue of the existence of some relation (in the more traditional, properly ontological sense) between a and b . EXCERPT #FKC73J p. 10 Occasionally Platonistic doctrines are offered, for example by Bealer, Butchvarov, Hochberg or Plantinga (see Menzel (1993)) as alternatives to the Fregean account of predication. Such doctrines are however still too closely wedded to the ‘ Fa ’ analysis, so that they, too, have gone hand in hand with many of the simplifications otherwise characteristic of the fantologicla approach. SECTION #WKX2QZ 13. The Vanishing Copula EXCERPT #RER2U7 p. 10 The most important of these simplifications is the rejection of the venerable Aristotelian distinction between two kinds of predication: EXCERPT #GGTULM p. 10 in the category of substance EXCERPT #2W6TRA p. 10 John is a human being EXCERPT #WGV2E6 p. 10 Henry is an ox EXCERPT #UD9WYE p. 10 in the category of accident EXCERPT #H9TSZK p. 10 John is hungry EXCERPT #RKSPFZ p. 10 Henry is awake EXCERPT #EHHFQ6 p. 10 The difference here turns on the fact that, if John is a human being, then he is a human being at every time at which he exists, and not for accidental reasons but because it is, as one says, part of John’s essence that he is a human being. If, on the other hand, Henry is awake, then he will cease to be awake at some time in the future. This distinction reflects what is, for Aristotle and for his successors, a fundamental ontological distinction, between what a substance is (its essence), and how it is (the accidents which accrue to it) at some given point in time. Substances and accidents are for Aristotle categorically distinct kinds of particulars. EXCERPT #KKNWD7 p. 10 For Frege and for his fantologist successors, this distinction has become invisible: the copula, on which the distinction rests, has become bundled into the predicate (Oderberg 2005), which is treated syntactically always in the same uniform kind of way. This implies in turn that the fantologists have little room in their thinking for the traditional distinction between property universals and kind universals, just as they have little room for the notion of essence. Here again the nuclear option is preferred – the idea being that it would be possible to save the fantological doctrine by denying the existence of those entities which cause it problems. Many heirs of the fantological world view have in this way found it possible to avoid the problems raised for their doctrines by apparent examples of true predications in the category of substance by denying the existence of substances. EXCERPT #769N5N p. 10 SECTION #8EKBDV 14. All Particulars are Bare Particulars EXCERPT #GUL8NQ p. 11 For the classical fantologist, all generality belongs to the predicate, all particularity belongs to the name. From this it follows that analytical philosophers were until relatively recently reluctant to admit into their ontologies tropes or individual accidents or events or actions or other entities falling outside the two privileged categories of property and object. Of the four corners of Aristotle's ontological square (see Figure 2), the classical fantologists have accordingly admitted only two. EXCERPT #DV375X p. 11 Substantial Accidental Universal Second substance man cat ox Second accident headache sun-tan dread Particular First substance this man this cat this ox First accident this headache this sun-tan this dread EXCERPT #XSC2LJ p. 11 Figure 2: Aristotle's Ontological Square (simplified from Angelelli 1967; see also Lowe 2002). EXCERPT #P9MQXP p. 11 If John has a headache, then the fantological assay of this fact – be it a matter of functional application, or of ascription to an object of a general property – involves no appeal to anything like the headache which John has, which has lasted for two hours, and which he is attempting to cure by taking aspirin . SECTION #QK6C6U 15. A Peculiar Insensitivity to Time EXCERPT #Z3AL8C p. 11 EXCERPT #6664AF p. 12 Because fantologists think it fitting to deal with predications about empirically existing objects in just the same way that they deal with predications about mathematical objects, this means that – because it is predications of the latter sort which wear the ontological trousers – they have developed no clear way of dealing with time. Fantologists such as Carnap were content to conceive the passage of time in terms of a sequence of static worlds, one for each time, in which all that is dynamic has been carefully eliminated. EXCERPT #5VU9UZ p. 12 The predicate logical ‘ Fa ’ had its origins, after all, in the work of Frege, who was concerned first of all with the truths of mathematics. And Frege’s logic does indeed work very well, in its way, for the formulation of many types of mathematical truths. When it comes to truths about things marked by change, however, then it needs to be extended by some sort of new machinery. EXCERPT #45T4NZ p. 12 The three alternative ways of doing this within a still recognizable predicate-logical framework are by now well known (see e.g. Lowe 2002a, p. 43f.). ‘ F holds of a at t ’ can be parsed in three ways: EXCERPT #G5YCTA p. 12 (1) the property F holds-at- t of object a (the copula is indexed by times); (2) the property F is a relation between object a and time t ; (3) the property F holds of a new special entity called ‘ a t ’ or ‘ a-at-t ’ (an object stage or phase or slice ). EXCERPT #UKW25R p. 12 That none of these alternatives for representing time has established itself as victor over the others turns on the fact that each involves a heavy price. EXCERPT #TG3HD3 p. 12 The first, which is sometimes called the adverbial solution, involves too great a departure from fantological orthodoxy – holding is no longer capable of being interpreted as functional application in the standard mathematical sense; rather it comes to signify something more like inherence or exemplification as conceived by Aristotelians. Indeed Lowe sees it as understandable why alternative (1) “should have been overlooked, at least by philosophers trained to think in terms of the categories of modern quantification or predicate logic, as it is called. For such logic simply has no place for adverbs.” (2002a, p. 47) EXCERPT #Z8BE3Q p. 12 The second seeks to simulate the temporal nature of holding by viewing each contingent property as a relation to a time. The problem here is that the result contravenes almost everything that we know about properties of almost all familiar kinds. EXCERPT #R57XL4 p. 12 The third represents, once again, a nuclear option. It amounts to sacrificing three-dimensional enduring entities for reasons which have to do (at least in part) with the desire to hold on to a trusted syntax. On this third option you yourself do not exist; rather there exists only a sequence of youish phases in continuous temporal succession. (For arguments against such views see Inwagen 2000.) EXCERPT #DA87AB p. 12 EXCERPT #J56YW9 p. 13 Nowadays, philosophers who wish to hold on to the framework of first-order logic in order to formulate their ontological views often advance one or other four-dimensionalist position which denies the existence of three-dimensional (endurant) objects but replaces them not by phases, or stages, but rather by four-dimensional (perdurant) processes. There is not Bill Clinton , but rather a certain process-of-a-Bill-Clintonizing-sort . This allows the four-dimensionalist to hold on to a timeless version of first-order logic without the need for special temporal variables or operators, since all the denizens of the four-dimensional process plenum have all their properties in timeless fashion. The problem with this view, again, is that it implies that you and I, our cells and organs, the buildings and cities in which we live, do not exist. SECTION #63LUN3 16. Poor Treatment of Relations EXCERPT #JJMCCN p. 13 The doctrine according to which relations are sets of ordered tuples, while it falls outside the syntactic repertoire of fantology that is here our primary concern, is yet clearly part of the same stable of views and has similar consequences in the form of denials of ontological distinctions hitherto (and for good reasons) accepted as a matter of course. EXCERPT #F4R2RA p. 13 The tradition found it necessary to distinguish between several radically different types of relations. First there are real material relational endurants, like love or hate, and other relational qualities (for example Jonathan's knowledge of Greek), which, like endurant entities in general, change in different ways while preserving their identity through time. There are real material relational events , like wars and conversations, kicks and kisses, relational entities which call for a treatment along roughly Davidsonian lines, like events of every other sort. There are family relations, such as is consanguineous with or is the brother of , and there are comparatives such as is taller than or is warmer than . EXCERPT #Q95W24 p. 13 When binary relations are identified with sets of ordered pairs, then all of these putatively distinct types of relations become identified. What is the adicity of your headache (a relation between your consciousness and various processes taking place in an around your brain)? What is the adicity of the Battle of Waterloo? Does John's being in love with Mary or being the cousin of Mary, consist in his being, with Mary, a term in an ordered pair belonging to a certain abstract entity in the realm of sets? Which analysis, here, comes closer to reproducing the order of ontological primacy? EXCERPT #TEK6JZ p. 13 Of course it is possible in various ways to resist the identification of relations with sets of tuples in a predicate logical framework. One can insist that, while standard model theory typically employs such sets of tuples as assignments for relational predicates, this does not mean that such sets of tuples must be part of the intended interpretations of theories formulated in the predicate logical language. EXCERPT #GFDM6L p. 13 EXCERPT #3T5WVY p. 14 Note, too, that at least one relation – the relation of set-membership itself – must remain unamenable to an analysis in terms of the relations-are-sets-of-tuples view. This relation is, in David Lewis’s terms, a mystery. (Lewis 1991) From the perspective of many adherents of fantological semantics ( inter alia in the realm of computer science), we can understand a theory only when we have provided a set-theoretic semantics for that theory and proved consistency, completeness, etc. Clearly such a doctrine can provide no help in understanding set theory itself. EXCERPT #629Q6A p. 14 According to Russell’s History of Western Philosophy the introduction of the new style ‘ Rab ’ was seen as having initiated a revolution in the treatment of relations and as representing a genuine advance in our understanding which allowed its adherents to overcome the problems which had confronted earlier thinkers, such as Aristotle and the scholastics, who (as Russell says) had been led by their own subject-predicate logic to identify relations with monadic relational properties. The ‘ Rab ’ was seen as having freed us also from the errors of those, such as Spinoza or Leibniz or Bradley (or Hegel), whose failure to understand relations had led them to embrace monistic or monadological doctrines that were an offence to common sense. As we have seen, however, when applied to the different types of relations with which we are pre-theoretically familiar, the Rab account faces considerable difficulties of its own. EXCERPT #Q9HSDV p. 14 There are many other doctrines which have been found attractive by those who fall within the gravitational field of fantology. It is fantology which lent credence to Kim’s doctrine (1976), according to which an event consists in an individual’s exemplifying a property at a time, a doctrine which assimilates real change to Cambridge change. And indeed, with its reduction of relations to sets of ordered tuples, fantology is likewise ex officio not in a position to resist the assimilation of properties (such as hardness or shape) to Cambridge properties (such as being thought about). SECTION #W2NUZ7 17. Booleanism EXCERPT #VAA4FX p. 14 Another problem with fantology, at least on some variants, concerns its treatment of properties as inhabiting a realm structured by Boolean combination. If F and G are properties, then so also are \sim F , F \vee G , F \wedge G , F \rightarrow G , F \leftrightarrow G , F \wedge \sim G , and so on – as if establishing the properties in reality was a matter not of empirical science but of logic. (See Meixner 1992, for a particularly severe strain of the Boolean fantological orthodoxy, and Newman 1992 for an alternative view.) EXCERPT #HAXCPB p. 14 This Booleanism – which is properly at home not in ontology but rather in logic or mathematics – derives from Frege’s assimilation of predicates to sentences via his notion of unsaturatedness. Predicates are, as one says, ‘open sentences’. At the same time they correspond to what is general in reality (somewhat confusingly called by Frege ‘concepts’). The sleight of hand here turns on the fact that what is general in reality is hereby brought within the realm of operators such as and or not – operators which are essentially linguistic. There are indeed some who think that we can read off the properties in reality by looking at the language we use to talk about it. Kantians and relativists even find such doctrines attractive for reasons which have nothing to do with any influence of fantology. But they are, surely, doctrines which enjoy too many of the advantages of theft over honest toil. EXCERPT #882YUP p. 14 EXCERPT #89NP7J p. 15 Frege's idea led, by degrees, to a lazy use of the word 'property'. (The fantologist's strong comprehension axiom asserts that there is a property corresponding to every expressible formula with exactly one free variable.) In this way, too, fantology came to be conducive to nominalism (for an ontologist, surely, cannot take seriously properties like: being non-identical to Socrates , being such that 2 + 2 = 4 , being a unicorn unless sleeping , being either not a silverfish or not magnetically charged , being green if examined before a certain date ). Set theory, too, of course, is marked by a Booleanism of this sort – a Booleanism which shares part of the responsibility for Russell's paradox. Booleanism is in this way responsible also for the phobia of quantification over properties/universals (for no dangers need arise through such quantification in the absence of Boolean combination). In this respect, too, Booleanism is conducive to nominalism. EXCERPT #MCVL63 p. 15 The tradition surely had it right when it took for granted the thesis that the question which simple and complex general expressions stand for properties or universals in reality is a question to be decided in each case only on the basis of special inquiries – for example on the part of natural science. So powerful is the force of Booleanism, however, that even the valiant efforts of Armstrong to fight against it with his 'sparse' or 'non-abundant' theory of universals (Armstrong 1978; see also Lewis 1983) are thus far still a minority taste among analytical metaphysicians. EXCERPT #R69SDG p. 15 So powerful, indeed, is the solid wall of Booleanist orthodoxy in the philosophy of the twentieth century that its penetration on the part of Armstrong comes close to constituting a miracle of modern intellectual history. Note, though, that this magnificent achievement did no more than bring him back to the point where Aristotelians had been from the very start. SECTION #MW9JFA 18. No Room for Dependent Continuants EXCERPT #7AYNAL p. 15 Davidson, too, with his ontology of events, did much to break down fantological orthodoxy. His quantificational analysis of sentences about occurrents (actions, events) was an important step forward not least in the area where logic meets linguistics: it meant that those linguists who had thus far been too heavily influenced by fantology were finally able to deal coherently with verbs. As analytical metaphysicians have in recent years increasingly turned their attention to powers, qualities, roles, conditions, functions, dispositions, and so forth, they have thereby extended the Davidson-style analysis of occurrents into the realm of dependent continuants. Sadly it is still in too many quarters fashionable to talk indiscriminately of “tropes” in this connection (reflecting, once again, the fact that fantology encourages an indiscriminating representation of all entities not belonging to the category of independent object). Tropes are individualized properties – but properties as fantologically conceived, which means: properties conceived through the running together of all that is expressed by means of the ‘Fa’ and the ‘Rab’. EXCERPT #WNCGCL p. 15 EXCERPT #D6BEJX p. 16 For exactly as the classical fantologists made too few distinctions in the realm of properties, so their trope-ontologist successors make too few distinctions in the realm of dependent entities, not least in failing to distinguish clearly between dependent continuants such as qualities, powers, functions, roles, dispositions, and dependent occurrents such as actions and events (Grenon and Smith 2004). When we do make such distinctions, then we arrive at a more adequate ontology, which might be represented in the form of what we can call the Aristotelian Ontological Sextet, as follows: EXCERPT #8MW8B5 p. 16 Independent Continuant Dependent Continuant Occurrent (Process) Universal Second substance man cat ox Second quality headache sun-tan dread Second process copulation walking thinking Particular First substance this man this cat this ox First quality this headache this sun-tan this dread First process this copulation this walking this thinking EXCERPT #3TSJ8M p. 16 Figure 3: The Ontological Sextet EXCERPT #2HSCQG p. 16 This more adequate ontology goes beyond Aristotle in embracing, in addition to, individual and universal substances, also individual and universal qualities (as well as functions , dispositions , etc.), and both individual and universal processes . (See Figure 3.) Entities in these categories would be joined together by formal relations such as instantiation , exemplification and participation , as well as by the part relation (obtaining for example between the parts of a process and the process whole), and by the realization relation (obtaining between a function and the processes through which it is executed). EXCERPT #C5L2ZX p. 16 SECTION #ZAUEPE 19. A New, Enhanced Davidsonism EXCERPT #CX2YXN p. 17 We can solve the problems of fantology in a number of ways. We can follow the route taken by Leśniewski or Sommers and replace fantological logic with a term logic owing more to the older logico-ontological tradition than to the post-Fregean logic of functional application. Or we can follow Wiggins in bringing the copula back into predicate logic, or Gupta (1980) in developing a logic of common nouns. Here, however, we concentrate on a still too little explored alternative, which involves a minimal adjustment to the standard syntax of first-order logic – but an adjustment which nonetheless protects us from its fantological influence – effectively by eliminating the ‘F’ in ‘Fa’ and by radically confining and reconceiving the range of substitution-instances of the ‘R’ in ‘Rab’. EXCERPT #YAM8TJ p. 17 We have already noted how, because of its roots in mathematics, Fregean logic yields from within its own resources no satisfactory way of dealing with time and change. Matters were improved in this respect through Davidson’s treatment of events, and the idea here is that the latter can be generalized in a radical way to solve the problems of fantology in one foul swoop. EXCERPT #LXQV4L p. 17 First we expand still further the repertoire of types of entities over which our variables range, in such a way that they embrace both particulars and universals in all the six categories distinguished in our Ontological Sextet (and conceivably also further groups of entities such as temporal instants or spatial regions not here considered). Second, we eliminate all predicates of the ‘F’ and ‘R’ style, replacing them with a small number of relational expressions, but confining ourselves to formal ties which, like ‘=’, come with fixed interpretations. EXCERPT #RUTAX2 p. 17 Relations of the sorts we have in mind are represented in Figure 4, as follows: EXCERPT #3TTLCK p. 17 graph TD SU[Substantial universal] QU[Quality universal] PU[Process universal] SP[Substantial particular] QP[Quality particular] PP[Process particular] SU -- "differentia of" --> QU SP -- "instantiates" --> SU QP -- "instantiates" --> QU PP -- "instantiates" --> PU SP -- "exemplifies" --> QU SP -- "has participant" --> PP QP -- "inheres in" --> SP Figure 4: Relations connecting the six different types of entities in the Ontological Sextet. The diagram shows six nodes arranged in a 2x3 grid. The top row contains 'Substantial universal', 'Quality universal', and 'Process universal'. The bottom row contains 'Substantial particular', 'Quality particular', and 'Process particular'. Arrows connect the nodes with labels: 'differentia of' (top row, left to right), 'instantiates' (vertical arrows from each particular to its universal), 'exemplifies' (diagonal arrow from Substantial particular to Quality universal), 'has participant' (horizontal arrow from Substantial particular to Process particular), and 'inheres in' (bottom row, right to left). EXCERPT #WC33RR p. 17 Figure 4. Relations connecting the six different types of entities in the Ontological Sextet EXCERPT #XRYNEW p. 17 EXCERPT #GSRT4P p. 18 Our restricted vocabulary for predicate logic might then contain a list of predicates along the following lines: EXCERPT #WRVKYL p. 18 =(x, y) , for: x is identical to y \text{Part}(x, y) , for: individual x is part of individual y \text{Inst}(x, y) , for: individual x instantiates universal y \text{Inhere}(x, y) , for: individual x inheres in individual y \text{Exemp}(x, y) , for: individual x exemplifies property y \text{Dep}(x, y) , for: individual x depends for its existence on individual y \text{Is\_a}(x, y) , for: universal x is a subkind of universal y \text{Precedes}(x, y) , for: individual process x precedes individual process y \text{Has\_Participant}(x, y) , for: individual thing y participates in individual occurrent x \text{Has\_Agent}(x, y) , for: individual thing y is agent of individual occurrent x \text{Realizes}(x, y) , for: individual process x realizes individual function y EXCERPT #MJWNMR p. 18 ‘John is wise’, in this vocabulary, becomes: \text{Exemp}(\text{John}, \text{wisdom}) – ‘wisdom’ here is the name of a universal. ‘John is a man’ becomes: \text{Inst}(\text{John}, \text{man}) . ‘Man is a subtype of animal’ becomes: \text{Isa}(\text{man}, \text{animal}) , and so on. The vocabulary allows us also to formulate a range of axioms governing the formal behavior of the relations thereby distinguished, for example: EXCERPT #CEVAQB p. 18 \text{Realizes}(x, y) \rightarrow \exists z (\text{Dep}(x, y) \wedge \text{Dep}(y, z)) \text{Exempt}(x, y) \rightarrow \exists z (\text{Inst}(z, y) \wedge \text{Inhere}(z, x)) EXCERPT #W89VQK p. 18 The result is comparable to the vocabulary of set theory in the sense that there, too, we have a restricted number (two) of relational predicates: = and \in , both of which are formal, governed by a restricted number of axioms. But while the language we are proposing has a vocabulary structurally very similar to that of set theory, it differs radically in that the formal tie of set-theoretic membership itself emanates from the fantological stable (and thus represents a brutal gliding over of the distinction between logical and ontological form). SECTION #CCHP6D 20. Predicates Do Not Represent EXCERPT #ALZYD4 p. 18 Our fundamental idea is that predicates (the standard predicates of first-order logic fantologically conceived) do not represent. Even the formal predicates which we allow in our vocabulary do not stand for anything. (They are to this degree analogous to the logical constants as conceived by Wittgenstein.) Rather they are what link together variable and constant terms which are those parts of the syntax which do stand for something. The logical constants do not represent, and nor, either, do the ontological constants. EXCERPT #4UD577 p. 18 EXCERPT #TZS3JA p. 19 Formal ties such as instantiates, part-of, connected-to, boundary-of are for familiar Bradleyan reasons not extra ingredients of being. For if they were entities in their own right then there would arise for them, too, the question: what connects them to their bearers? EXCERPT #8EGEZG p. 19 The relevant mistake of fantology here lies in the assumption that the ‘F’ in ‘Fa’ stands for something, something that would somehow span the border between what is general in reality (universals, properties, essences) and what is logico-linguistic in the realm of meanings (concepts, propositions). It is from this fateful mistake, introduced into philosophy by Frege (through Plato, too, must bear some part of the blame), that Booleanism stems. Boolean operators such as ‘and’ and ‘or’ connect what is logico-linguistic in nature, they do not connect the kinds and universals in reality. EXCERPT #V5457K p. 19 Our approach avoids Booleanism, since we deal with universals, with what is general, via names and not via predicates, and names cannot be joined together ad libitum via logical operators. Our approach allows us at the same time to simulate some of the advantages of second-order logic – above all in that we can quantify over universals – without the disadvantage in the form of the paradoxes which second-order logic is sometimes held to bring in its wake. Our use of names for universals implies also that our framework lends no support to the temptations of nominalism. We are protected from the consequences of fantology above all, however, because our procedure keeps the logical and ontological parts of our language rigorously separate. EXCERPT #6BUB8K p. 19 Our selected formal ties indeed derive squarely from ontology, and logic gives us no clue as to what these formal ties should be. To establish the appropriate list requires extralogical work (Smith et al. , 2005), just as it requires extralogical work to find out what the universals and particulars in reality are. SECTION #HKGX5U Acknowledgements EXCERPT #RKT4LU p. 19 The present paper was written under the auspices of the Wolfgang Paul Program of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Network of Excellence in Semantic Interoperability and Data Mining in Biomedicine of the European Union, and the project “Forms of Life” sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation. Thanks are due also to Maureen Donnelly, Michael Gorman, Ingvar Johansson, Chris Menzel, Kevin Mulligan, Fabian Neuhaus and Chris Partridge for helpful comments. SECTION #HLYX3V References EXCERPT #T536QP p. 19 EXCERPT #86A97P p. 20 Angelelli, Ignacio 1967 Studies on Gottlob Frege and Traditional Philosophy . Dordrecht: Reidel. Armstrong, David M. 1978 Universals and Scientific Realism , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Armstrong, David M. “Vérités et vérificateurs”, in Jean-Maurice Monnoyer, La structure du monde. Objets, propriétés, états de choses , ed. J.-M. Monnoyer, Paris: J. Vrin, 2004, 101-114. Davidson, Donald 1980 Essays on Actions and Events , Oxford: Blackwell. Feibleman, James Kern 1958 Inside the Great Mirror: A Critical Examination of the Philosophy of Russell, Wittgenstein, and Their Followers , The Hague: M. Nijhoff. Grenon, Pierre and Smith, Barry 2004 “SNAP and SPAN: Towards Dynamic Spatial Ontology”, Spatial Cognition and Computation , 4: 1, 69-103. Gupta, Anil 1980 The Logic of Common Nouns , New Haven: Yale University Press. Husserl, Edmund 1913/21 Logische Untersuchungen , Halle: Niemeyer, 2nd edition, as translated by J. N. Findlay, Logical Investigations , London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970. Inwagen, Peter van 2000 “Temporal Parts and Identity Across Time”, The Monist , 83: 3. Johansson, Ingvar 2004 Ontological Investigations: An Inquiry into the Categories of Nature, Man and Society , Frankfurt/Lancaster: Ontos Verlag. Kim Jaegwon 1976 “Events as Property Exemplifications”, in Myles Brand and Douglas Walton (eds.), Action Theory , Dordrecht: Reidel. Kim, Jaegwon 1984 “Concepts of Supervenience”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 65, 257-70. Actions Lewis, David 1983 “New Work for a Theory of Universals”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 61: 4, 343-77. Lewis, David 1991 Parts of Classes , Oxford: Blackwell. Lowe, E. J. 2002 “A Defence of the Four-Category Ontology”, C. Moulines and K. Niebergall (eds.), Argument und Analyse , Paderborn: Mentis, 225–40. Lowe, E. J. 2002a A Survey of Metaphysics , Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maddy, Penelope 1997 Naturalism in Mathematics , Oxford: Clarendon Press. Meixner, Uwe 1992 “On Negative and Disjunctive Properties”, K. Mulligan (ed.) Language, Truth and Ontology , Dordrecht: Kluwer, 28–36. Menzel, Chris 1993 “Singular Propositions and Modal Logic,” Philosophical Topics , 21, 113–148 EXCERPT #TRMPPE p. 20 EXCERPT #8C4DH8 p. 21 Neuhaus, Fabian, Grenon, Pierre and Smith, Barry 2004 “A Formal Theory of Substances, Qualities, and Universals”, in Achille Varzi and Laure Vieu (eds.), Formal Ontology and Information Systems. Proceedings of the Third International Conference , Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2004, 49-58. Newman, Andrew 1992 The Physical Basis of Predication , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oderberg, David 2005 “Predicate Logic and Bare Particulars”, forthcoming in D. S. Oderberg (ed.), The Old New Logic: Essays on the Philosophy of Fred Sommers (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005). Russell, Bertrand 1917 “On Scientific Method in Philosophy”, in Mysticism and Logic , London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Russell, Bertrand 1919 Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy , London: George Allen and Unwin. Russell, Bertrand 1986 The Philosophy of Logical Atomism and other Essays 1914–1919. Collected Papers , Volume 8, London: Allen and Unwin. Simons, Peter M. 1987 Parts. An Essay in Ontology , Oxford: Clarendon Press. Smith, Barry 2004 “Beyond Concepts, or: Ontology as Reality Representation”, Achille Varzi and Laure Vieu (eds.), Formal Ontology and Information Systems. Proceedings of the Third International Conference , Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2004, 73–84. Smith, Barry et al. 2005 “Relations in Biological Ontologies”, submitted. Sommers, Fred 1982 The Logic of Natural Language , Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wiggins, David 1984 “The Sense and Reference of Predicates: A Running Repair to Frege’s Doctrine and a Plea for the Copula”, Philosophical Quarterly 34, 311-328; repr. in C. Wright (ed.), Frege: Tradition and Influence , Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1921 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus , translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness, London: Routledge, 1961 (originally published in Annalen der Naturphilosophie 14, 185-262). EXCERPT #JVA3TY p. 21 ### 30. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `generate_image` ```json { "prompt": "A sophisticated philosophical book-cover illustration for a paper titled “Against Fantology” by Barry Smith. Depict a stark first-order logic formula Fa and Rab dissolving into a richly structured ontological world: enduring objects, qualities, events, processes, and relations connected by subtle luminous lines, contrasting with a rigid spreadsheet grid breaking apart in the background. Academic, contemplative, precise, modern formal-ontology aesthetic; restrained palette of deep navy, warm ivory, muted ochre, and red accents; strong central composition with generous negative space for title placement; no readable text, no letters, no logos." } ``` #### Tool call: `generate_image` ```json { "prompt": "A sophisticated philosophical book-cover illustration for a paper titled “Against Fantology Again” by Ingvar Johansson. Show a canonical first-order logic landscape with the symbols Fa, quantifiers, and a rigid grid opening into multiple ontological layers: kinds, properties, relations, time, intentional consciousness, and physical objects. A doubled path or mirrored structure should suggest a critique of Quine’s canonical notation and its hidden commitments. Academic, elegant, analytical but atmospheric; deep blue, charcoal, ivory, and copper palette; clean geometric forms with subtle organic light; generous negative space for title placement; no readable text, no letters, no logos." } ``` ### 31. Tool result: generate_image GENERATED IMAGE #9JWYP6 URL: /images/9JWYP6 Model: gpt-image-2 Prompt: A sophisticated philosophical book-cover illustration for a paper titled “Against Fantology” by Barry Smith. Depict a stark first-order logic formula Fa and Rab dissolving into a richly structured ontological world: enduring objects, qualities, events, processes, and relations connected by subtle luminous lines, contrasting with a rigid spreadsheet grid breaking apart in the background. Academic, contemplative, precise, modern formal-ontology aesthetic; restrained palette of deep navy, warm ivory, muted ochre, and red accents; strong central composition with generous negative space for title placement; no readable text, no letters, no logos. ### 32. Tool result: generate_image GENERATED IMAGE #6Q4TY6 URL: /images/6Q4TY6 Model: gpt-image-2 Prompt: A sophisticated philosophical book-cover illustration for a paper titled “Against Fantology Again” by Ingvar Johansson. Show a canonical first-order logic landscape with the symbols Fa, quantifiers, and a rigid grid opening into multiple ontological layers: kinds, properties, relations, time, intentional consciousness, and physical objects. A doubled path or mirrored structure should suggest a critique of Quine’s canonical notation and its hidden commitments. Academic, elegant, analytical but atmospheric; deep blue, charcoal, ivory, and copper palette; clean geometric forms with subtle organic light; generous negative space for title placement; no readable text, no letters, no logos. ### 33. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `update_document_metadata` ```json { "cover_image_id": "9JWYP6", "document_id": "CGE2NC", "micro_abstract": "Critiques the idea that first-order logic reveals reality’s ontology, tracing its atomism, timelessness, Booleanism, and reductionism before proposing a six-category ontology and an enhanced Davidsonian formal language." } ``` #### Tool call: `update_document_metadata` ```json { "cover_image_id": "6Q4TY6", "document_id": "JZG4PM", "micro_abstract": "Extends the critique of fantology through default ontologization, arguing that Quine’s canonical notation is incoherent about classes and excludes intentional phenomena and distinct modes of existence." } ``` ### 34. Tool result: update_document_metadata Updated metadata for #CGE2NC: cover_image_id, micro_abstract ### 35. Tool result: update_document_metadata Updated metadata for #JZG4PM: cover_image_id, micro_abstract ### 36. Assistant tool calls #### Tool call: `write_note` ```json { "block_ids": [ "CGE2NC", "8XUJG5", "D9DUYG", "D6BEJX", "CX2YXN" ], "text": "Barry Smith’s “Against Fantology” (#CGE2NC) argues that first-order predicate logic is often mistaken for a mirror of ontological structure. It traces the resulting commitments—spreadsheet-style atomism, reduction of complexity to sets, confinement of generality to predicates, bare particulars, insensitivity to time, flattening of relations, Booleanism, and failure to represent dependent continuants. Smith proposes an Aristotelian Ontological Sextet of substantial, quality, and process universals and particulars, linked by formal relations such as instantiation, exemplification, inherence, participation, and realization. His constructive alternative is an enhanced Davidsonism that separates logical from ontological form and uses names for universals rather than predicates (#D6BEJX, #CX2YXN).", "title": "Reading note: Against Fantology" } ``` #### Tool call: `write_note` ```json { "block_ids": [ "JZG4PM", "ELGHFD", "GBKGKS", "HSJWCU", "Y2EB2B", "EYPEX5" ], "text": "Ingvar Johansson’s “Against Fantology Again” (#JZG4PM) reframes fantology as the claim that only a default ontologization of traditional first-order predicate logic can display reality. He introduces default ontologization as an ontologically neutral operation applicable to natural and logical languages, then argues that Quine’s canonical notation is doubly incoherent: it cannot represent classes consistently within first-order logic, and its extensional physicalism excludes intentional phenomena while Quine’s appearance/reality distinction implicitly requires different modes of existence. Johansson defends a fallibilist recognition of conscious occurrences and intentionality (#HSJWCU, #Y2EB2B, #EYPEX5).", "title": "Reading note: Against Fantology Again" } ``` ### 37. Tool result: write_note NOTE SAVED #J6YNWU IRI: https://m.sheaf.less.rest/J6YNWU ### 38. Tool result: write_note NOTE SAVED #3F7NHY IRI: https://m.sheaf.less.rest/3F7NHY ### 39. Assistant Done. Both papers are now in the **ontology** folder, fully read, and updated: - **Against Fantology** — Barry Smith, #CGE2NC - New microabstract emphasizing the critique of first-order logic as ontology and the proposed six-category ontology. - Cover art generated and attached: #9JWYP6 - **Against Fantology Again** — Ingvar Johansson, #JZG4PM - New microabstract emphasizing default ontologization, Quine’s incoherence, and the exclusion of intentionality. - Cover art generated and attached: #6Q4TY6 I also saved reading notes for both papers: #J6YNWU and #3F7NHY.