Grice and the Four-Category Ontology

Speranza

E. J. Lowe (University of Oxford, &c) is the creator of the 'four-category ontology', that relates to some aspects of H. P. Grice's work.

Lowe proposes the following schema:

entities
|
__________|__________
|                      |
|                      | 
universals             particulars
|                      |
______|______         ______|______ 
|              |        |              |
|              |        |             | 
properties   relations     |             | 
|             | 
|             | 
objects         tropes
|
___________|__________ 
|                       |
|                       | 
abstract objects       concrete objects 
|                       |
______|______           ______|______ 
|              |         |              |
|              |         |              |
sets    propositions    masses      organisms

Lowe goes on to list, again in a schematic form, the distinguishing  features of the four different ontological systems:  
____________________________________________
|               |               |               |
|    objects   |  universals   |    tropes     |
_______|______________|______________|______________| 
|        |               |               |               |
|   1    |      R        |     E/R       |      F        |
|_______|______________|______________|______________| 
|        |               |               |               |
|   2    |      F        |      F        |      E        |
|_______|______________|______________|______________|
|        |               |               |               |
|   3    |      F        |     E/R       |      F        |
|_______|______________|______________|______________| 
|        |               |               |               |
|   4    |      F        |      F        |      F        |
|_______|­______________|______________|______________|


Four ontological systems

"F" stands for "fundamental" 
"R" stands for "reduced"
"E" stands for  "eliminated"

Lowe writes:

"We should gravitate  towards the fourth system of ontology identified earlier, the system which  acknowledges three distinct ontological categories as being fundamental and  indispensable — the category of objects, or individual substances; the category  of universals; and the category of tropes,
or, as I shall henceforth prefer to  call them, modes. It is then but a short  step to my own variant of this system,  which distinguishes between two fundamental categories of universal, one whose  instances are objects and the other whose instances are modes."

Lowe continues, importantly, in a Griceian vein:

"This distinction  is mirrored in language by the distinction between sortal and adjectival general  terms — that is, between such general terms as

'planet'

and

 'flower'

on the one hand and such general terms as

 'red'

and

'round'

on the other."

Lowe goes on: "The former denote kinds of object, while the latter denote properties of  objects.".

"The four-category ontology ...provides, I believe, a uniquely satisfactory metaphysical foundation for natural science."

"The figure that I draw below helps to highlight the main structural  features of the four-category ontology."

"In this diagram we use the term 'attribute' to denote the category of  property-universals and, for simplicity of presentation, we are ignoring (as Geary does not) relational  universals.


Kinds          characterised  by            Attributes                     
                            
instantiated by       exemplified  by        instantiated  by              
                              
Objects          characterised  by              Modes





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