Markku Keinänen

Ontologiset kategoriateoriat pyrkivät vastaamaan metafysiikan klassiseen ongelmaan: kysymykseen siitä, mihin eri kategorioihin oliot eli entiteetit jakaantuvat. Olioilla tarkoitetaan tässä mitä tahansa, joka on olemassa. Olevan kategoriat eli ontologiset kategoriat (lyhyesti kategoriat) ovat alustavasti olioiden hyvin yleisiä lajeja. Jäsenyys olioiden kategoriassa ei niinkään kerro sitä, mitä piirteitä oliolla on, vaan sen olemisen tavan ¬– miten se esimerkiksi on tai voi olla maailman rakenneosa. Esimerkkejä mahdollisista kategorioista ovat konkreettiset partikulaariset yksilöoliot (substanssit), ominaisuudet, relaatiot, prosessit, tapahtumat ja joukot. 1. Mitä ovat ontologiset kategoriateoriat 2. Uusaristoteelinen realismi 3. Russellilainen realismi 4. Universaalikimpputeoriat 5. Nominalismi: substanssi-modus-teoriat 6. Trooppiteoriat 7. Jyrkkä nominalismi 8. Tapahtuma- ja prosessiontologiat 9. Ontologisten kategorioiden tutkimus Suomessa 10. Suositeltavaa jatkolukemista 11. Lähteet

Although the importance, both historically and systematically, of the seventeenth century distinction between primary and secondary qualities is commonly recognised, there is no consensus on its exact nature. Apparently, one of the main difficulties in its interpretation is to tell the constitutive from the argumentative elements. In this paper, we focus on the primary-secondary quality distinctions drawn by Boyle and Locke. We criticise, more specifically, MacIntosh’s analysis of them. On the one hand, MacIntosh attributes too many different primary-secondary quality distinctions to Boyle and Locke. On the other hand, he forbears to attribute a particular primary-secondary quality distinction to them, which, at least in the case of Boyle, differs genuinely from his main distinction between the mechanical affections of matter and all of matter’s other qualities.

A specific variety of formal causation is dispositional essentialism. This chapter argues that dispositional essentialism is incompatible with any trope bundle theory committed to the primitive identity of tropes, such as Keith Campbell’s account and the authors’ own Strong Nuclear Theory. Dispositional essentialism would render at least some tropes identity-dependent on other tropes, while all tropes must be considered identity-independent existents in these trope theories. Furthermore, dispositional essentialism relies on the problematic notion of dispositional essence, and it remains unclear whether dispositional essentialism gains any ontological economy in comparison with the views taking laws of nature as primitive. Finally, the chapter outlines an alternative view based on Deborah Smith’s non-recombinational quidditism. According to it, tropes as determinate particular natures necessarily play certain nomological roles. It is argued that this might be completed with a new conception of tropes as parts of causal processes, which further clarifies the necessary connection between tropes and certain nomological roles.

In this chapter, we provide an opinionated introduction to contemporary trope bundle theories of substance. We assess different trope bundle theories on the grounds of their two main aims: to provide an adequate account of substances or objects by means of tropes and a reductive analysis of inherence, that is, object's having tropes as their properties. Our discussion begins by a presentation of Donald C. Williams’ and Keith Campbell's paradigmatic trope theories, which maintain that tropes are independent existents. After highlighting the central problems of paradigmatic trope theories, we discuss two more recent developments of trope bundle theory that also take non-relational tropes as independent existents, Anna-Sofia Maurin's and Douglas Ehring's independence theories. Finally, we present two alternative trope bundle theories, according to which tropes are dependent existents, dependence theories, namely, Arda Denkel's Saturation theory and our Strong Nuclear Theory (SNT). Although the latter two theories introduce existential dependencies among tropes, we argue that dependence theories provide a more satisfactory account of substances dividing into natural kinds than independence theories.