Reduction and Elimination in Philosophy and the Sciences

Ding-Ontology of Aristotle vs. Sachverhalt-Ontology of
Wittgenstein
Serguei L. Katrechko, Moscow, Russia
In the history of philosophy, we can distinguish three
possible types of ontology 1 . The first claims that the world
‘is made up’ of things that are considered its initial
elements. In the Antiquity, the ontology of things tendering
to nominalism was presented by Aristotle and Democritus,
and their concepts, despite the differences, belong to the
same type of ontology. They differ only on a scale of
‘thing-ism’, the former postulating that the world consists of
things, the latter considering that the world is built up of
atomic ‘bricks’, or particles, regarded as micro–things, that,
in their term, make up ordinary things that we are used to.
And it is the ontology of things that has been an
overwhelming ontology of contemporary natural science.
The second and the third types of ontology are
based on predicate interpretation of being, and postulate a
non-object character of the world. If we take the classical
approach to structure a sentence (resp. the world) as 'S is
P’ the ontology of things is accented on ’S is— ’, with ‘S is’
representing an inseparably linked complex, and S — the
essence of the thing which acts as a substance for
predicates of the thing (resp. grammatically S acts as the
subject of the sentence). Predicate ontology is the one of
the ‘— is Pх’ type where ‘things’ (resp. subjects of the
sentence) become secondary formations, and are
determined not by the essence but by their predicates.
Accordingly, esse is being related here not with the subject
but with the prior–predicate ‘is’ (resp. link–verb of the
sentence), and produces as transcendental condition for
the rest ‘real’ predicates of the thing (P1, P2, P3…).
We can also mark out two subtypes in the predicate
ontology. The first one presents being as property (resp.
unary P 1
n predicate), with property interpreted as ‘— is P 1
n’
inseparably linked predicative complex. It is the property of
things that is considered prior in ontology while things,
being secondary, act as ‘intersections’ of properties
(bundle theory of substance). For instance, the table is
something that is made of wood, right–angled, yellow, and
used for writing. Here, something is predetermined by its
properties (as unary predicates). Plato’s ontology has
been the first and forming theory of the type so, this type of
ontology can be named Platonic ontology. It’s possible to
demonstrate that such interpretation of Plato’s idealism
does not sound like idealism at all. Priority of Plato’s ‘world
of ideas’ might be understood as a mere acceptance of
priority of properties (predicative complex ’is P 1
n’) in
respect of thing (S–subject). Furthermore, similar concepts
are more realistic as compared to both, Aristotelian
ontology and natural ontology of contemporary natural
science presuming virtual existence of matter (as
universal), for we experience not ‘disguised’ (latent)
Aristotelian essence and not hypothetic matter postulated
by up-to-date physics (e.g. dark matter in astronomy) but
1 The term ‘ontology’ will be used here in two related but a bit different meanings.
The initial meaning of the word is concerned with the doctrine (teaching)
of "being qua being" (Aristotle, metaphysica generalis). The second one
studies how the universe is made up, i.e. what ontological commitments we
accept (metaphysica specialis). Further on, we’ll speak of concrete ontology
(the second meaning) which depends on the general understanding of existence.
real properties of objects that we can discover objectively,
through perception or by means of instruments.
It’s worth noting, that Aristotelian and Platonic
ontology do not reject but, rather, enrich each other. These
are two different approaches to the world defining its
diverse sections, and each of two has the right to be
(similar to corpuscular wave dualism in physics). They
produce two necessary (transcendental) conditions of
being of objects. The first one postulates the presence of
single self-identical essence as an indispensable ‘sublayer’
(sub–stance) for property of thing, while the second one
dictates the necessity ‘to partake’ things into the world of
ideas which terminates the possibility to take into
possession this or that set of properties.
Explication of the second predicate ontology was
made much later on. It interprets being as relation (n–ary
predicate P k
n.), with Tractatus being one of its variations
pronouncing that the world is the totality of facts, not of
things (prop. 1.1). Here, facts act as something different
from things, as a sort of relation between things or
‘combinations of things’ (prop. 2.01). Hence, under
Tractatus, it is relation that is believed to be prior while
object is defined through a set of relations it could become
a constituent part of, and, according to Wittgenstein, the
possibility of that must be already written into the object
itself (prop. 2.011–2.0121).
This proposition differs from Aristotelian ontology
considering essence prior to relation that may be added to
it as random (accidental) characteristic: ‘that which is per
se, i.e. substance, is prior in nature to the relative for the
latter is like an off-shoot and accident of being’ (Aristotle,
Nicomachean Ethics, 1096а20; Boethius, On the Trinity,
§ 5). Challenging such an underestimation of ‘relation’
category Plato, in anticipation to Tractatus speculations,
could have argued that ‘anything which possesses any
sort of power to affect another, or to be affected by
another… had real existence’ (Plato, Sophist, 247e), i.e.
really exists only that which is able to interact. Then, one
more transcendental condition is being revealed, that is
relations (interactions) deprived of which not a thing could
exist (resp. esse acts here as grounds for any ‘real’
relations) 2 . We can register things into ontology status of
being provided that all three transcendental condition are
observed.
Thus, we can separate three types of ontology: the
ontology of things, attributes and relations. Each of them is
correlated with a particular type of language. In the
ontology of things the key structure belongs to the noun.
Esse interpreted as property, the key position goes to the
adjective. With esse conceived as relations, separate
words (nours, verbs or adjective) give way to the whole
sentence structure, expressing the facts of relationship
between objects. For instance, the sentence ‘The stone is
falling’ which purportedly postulates existence in the world
of Aristotelian ‘initial entities’ (here: stones) able to act, will
2 To put it more precisely, had an object ever existed, since it never becomes
a constituent part of any relation, we couldn’t have learnt about it since learning
is also a relation between an object and a subject.
169