Abstract
Exemplification can be found in ontologies from the ancient world, such as those of Plato and Aristotle, and more recent ontologies, in particular those that take what exists to be determined by the empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance. This study examines some of the ways in which exemplification takes different forms in these different ontologies. Exemplification has also been criticized as an ontological category. This paper examines a number of these criticisms, to see the extent to which they are viable.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Homer (1999, p. 12).
It is almost always a man in Homer, a “he” and not a “she,” and so we should so speak that human virtue is represented by the virtue of a man; we can therefore use the simple “he” and not worry about the more complicated “he or she.” But at the same time we should remember that Homer makes clear that we also find human virtue and, indeed, pre-eminence in human virtue in Penelope.
This is not entirely fair to Anaxagoras; see Wilson (2009, p. 20ff).
Recall from Herodotus the inscription that later Greeks were to place at the site of the battle:
“Stranger, announce to the Spartans that here
We lie, having fulfilled their laws.”
‘Laws’ could be ‘orders’; but ‘orders’ conveys the suggestion that an element of arbitrariness is possible, whereas it is clear that the orders were made in conformity to the laws, and so understood they too have the force of laws.
According to Plato, Aristotle tells us, sensible entities participate (methexis) in the forms (Ideas), but he means by “participation” what is meant by “imitation.” As Aristotle explains in the Metaphysics:
Things of this other sort, then, he called Ideas, and sensible things, he said, were apart from these, and were all called after these; for the multitude of things which have the same name as the Form exist by participation in it. Only the name ‘participation’ was new; for the Pythagoreans say that things exist by imitation of numbers, and Plato says they exist by participation, changing the name. (Meta. 987b)
The position of the Republic concerning the education the young is that the poets (read: Homer) are to be excluded from the Ideal City because the present images, e.g., of Achilles, which the young are seduced by the beauty of the poetry to imitate. Better, Plato argues, to imitate the ideal form of justice. Forms are like images created by the poets: they are entities that are to be imitated.
Grupp (2003).
Seneca the philosopher was ordered by Nero to commit suicide.
Cato the Younger, of Utica, who had been educated under the guidance of Antipater of Tyre, a Stoic philosopher, refused to accept the triumph of Caesar over the Republic and his becoming de facto the ruler of Rome; and when Caesar defeated the last of the Republicans at the Battle of Thapsus, then, with the stern righteousness demanded by the Republic, he refused to grant to Caesar the right to pardon him, and committed suicide. He stabbed himself, but in doing so knocked over an abacus. The noise alerted his servants who summoned a physician who attempted to bandage the wound. Cato, upon awakening, thrust him away, tore off the bandages, and expired. Lucan wrote his epitaph, “Victrix causa deis placuit sed victa Catoni” (“The conquering cause pleased the gods, but the conquered cause pleased Cato”, Lucan 1.128). Plutarch reports that Caesar commented that “Cato, I grudge you your death, as you would have grudged me the preservation of your life.” He is said to have died reading the Phaedo. There is a famous painting of his suicide by Luca Giordano in the gallery at Nice.
See Wilson (2001, p. 122 f).
Compare Grossmann (1963b).
See Spencer (1902, p. 294).
More recently, properties as individualized properties has been defended by Sellars (1963b); see in particular his “Naming and Saying.” For criticism of Sellars, see Hochberg (1984a), “Mapping, Meaning and Metaphysics”; to which Sellars (1977) replied in his “Mapping, Meaning and Metaphysics”; to which Hochberg (1984c) further replied in his “Sellars and Goodman on Predicates, Properties and Truth.”
For a systematic critique of Sellars’ metaphysics, see Wilson (2007b), “Acquaintance, Ontology and Knowledge.”.
Aristotelian natures or forms are each common to several individual substances. For example, humanity, as an active form, is common to Socrates, Alcibiades, and even Stephen Harper. That makes the form as natura naturata, a set of sensible properties, a universal. What individuates it into each individual? Some argue that sensible properties are not universals but instead are tropes, each a particular in itself. So, the humanity that we observe in Socrates in our sense experience, though indistinguishable from the humanity that we observe in Alcibiades, is in fact different from the latter humanity: sensible properties are as individual as the individuals they characterize. That solves the problem of individuation. But it won’t do, for the reasons given by Mill.
There are three other possible solutions for the Aristotelian. One is the supposition that there is some sort of entity, not given in sense, that is purely individual; “prime matter” it was often called. However, while not given in sense, they are supposed to individuate properties that are given in sense. That makes the supposition of such an entity hard to defend. It does not seem acceptable.
Another solution is to hold that, besides the properties determined by the form, the “essential” characteristics, there are other, “accidental” characteristics. Substances which share a common form or nature, as Socrates and Alcibiades share the form humanity, while not differeing in their essential properties, will always differ in their accidental characteristics, as Socrates is snub-nosed while Alcibiades is hawk-nosed. This seems the most reasonable solution, but it does have its own problems. It does seem to presuppose the Identity of Indiscernibles, which many find unacceptable.
Yet another solution is to adopt the position of the empiricist, that what individuate the individuals given in sense is the sensible element in the individual we can refer to as its extension, as James called it, or area. Of this element, we will have more to say below. However, even if it works for the empiricist, it still creates problems for the Aristotelian metaphysics: the natura naturata of the Aristotelian is not quite the same, in ontological terms, as the individual things the empiricist takes to be given in sense. But this is not the point to explore these issues, interesting as they may be.
James (1890, Ch. xx, p. 134).
It can be argued that this element is that sort of individuating entity that some have called a “bare particular.” Bergmann is one; see his (1964b) “Synthetic A Priori,” p. 288ff. See also Wilson (2007d), “Effability, Ontology and Method.”
This entity, unlike the other elements, the properties proper, in a bundle, is supposed to be in itself “bare”—leading many ontologists to dismiss it as analogous to one of Locke’s substances, something “I know not what.” However, as James makes clear, we do know it: it is given in sense. But bareness is probably not a fair characterization; it can be argued that the other elements in the bundle, the properties proper, are equally bare. See Wilson (2004a).
See Grossmann (1963a).
References
Allaire EB et al (eds) (1963) Essays in ontology. Nijhoff, The Hague
Bergmann G (1964a) Logic and reality. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison
Bergmann G (1964b) Synthetic a priori. In: Bergmann G (1964a) Logic and reality. pp 272–391
Bergmann G (1967) Realism. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison
Goodman N (1951) The structure of appearance. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Grossmann R (1963a) Sensory intuition and the dogma of localization. In: Allaire EB et al (eds) (1963) Essays in ontology. pp 50–63
Grossmann R (1963b) Conceptualism. In: Allaire EB et al (eds) (1963) Essays in ontology. Nijhoff, The Hague, pp 40–49
Grupp J (2003) The impossibility of an exemplification tie between particulars and universals. Metaphysica 4:27–38. The same paper appeared in Dialogue 43:491–498 (2002) Page references are to the former
Hausman A (1967) Goodman’s ontology. In: Hausman A, Wilson F (eds) (1967) Carnap and Goodman. Nijhoff, The Hague, pp 1–95
Hausman A, Wilson F (1967) Carnap and Goodman. Nijhoff, The Hague
Hochberg H (1984a) Mapping, meaning and metaphysics. In: Hochberg H (1984b) Logic, ontology and language. Philosophia Verlag, Munich, pp 157–184
Hochberg H (1984b) Logic, ontology and language. Philosophia Verlag, Munich
Hochberg H (1984c) Sellars and Goodman on predicates, properties and truth. In: Hochberg H (1984b) Logic, ontology and language. pp 185–195
Hochberg H, Mulligan K (eds) (2004) Relations and predicates. Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt
Homer I (1999) trans: Murray AT, rev: Wyatt WF, 2 vol, 2nd edn. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Loeb Classical Library)
James W (1890) The principles of psychology, 2 vol. Henry Holt & Co., New York; Dover edition reprint (Dover, New York, 1950), page references are to the latter
Langlet B, Monnoyer JM (eds) (2009) Gustav Bergmann: phenomenological realism and dialectical ontology. Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt, pp 17–68
Mill JS (1978) System of logic, 8th edn. (vols 7 and 8 of his collected works, Robson J (ed) [University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1978], originally published, Longmans Green, London, 1872)
Plato P (1977) trans: Grube GMA. Hackett, Indianapolis
Sellars W (1963a) Naming and saying. In: Sellars W (1963b) Science, perception and reality. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, pp 225–246
Sellars W (1963b) Science, perception and reality. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London
Sellars W (1977) Mapping, meaning and metaphysics. Midwest Stud Philos 2:219–220
Spencer H (1902) Principles of psychology, vol 2. D. Appleton and Co., New York
Turnbull RG (1963) Aristotle’s debt to the ‘natural philosophy’ of the Phaedo. Philos Q 8:131–143
Vlastos G (1969) Reasons and causes in the Phaedo. Philos Rev 78:291–325
Wilson F (1999) Logic and the philosophy of science in early modern thought: seven studies. University of Toronto Press, Toronto
Wilson F (2001) Socrates, Lucretius, Camus: two philosophical traditions on death. Edwin Mellon Press, Lewiston
Wilson F (2004a) Bareness, as in ‘bare particular’: its ubiquity. In: Hochberg H, Mulligan K (eds) (2004) Relations and predicates. Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt, pp 81–112; reprinted in Wilson F (2007b) Acquaintance, ontology and knowledge, pp 329–363
Wilson F (2004b) Socrates’ argument for immortality: Socrates, Maritain, Grant and the ontology of morals. Maritain Stud 20:3–26
Wilson F (2007a) Acquaintance, ontology and knowledge. Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt
Wilson F (2007b) Acquaintance, ontology and knowledge. In: Wilson F (2007a) Acquaintance, ontology and knowledge. pp 1–108
Wilson F (2007c) Universals, particulars, and tropes: the role of a principle of acquaintance in ontology. In: Wilson F (2007a) Acquaintance, ontology and knowledge. pp 363–398
Wilson F (2007d) Effability, ontology and method. In: Wilson F (2007a) Acquaintance, ontology and knowledge. pp 537–608
Wilson F (2009) Bergmann’s hidden Aristotelianism. In: Bruno L, Monnoyer JM (eds) (2009) Gustav Bergmann: phenomenological realism and dialectical ontology. pp 17–68
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wilson, F. Exemplification, Then and Now. Axiomathes 23, 269–289 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-011-9170-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-011-9170-z