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Concept
Theory of categories
Summary
In ontology, the theory of categories concerns itself with the categories of being: the highest genera or kinds of entities according to Amie Thomasson. To investigate the categories of being, or simply categories, is to determine the most fundamental and the broadest classes of entities. A distinction between such categories, in making the categories or applying them, is called an ontological distinction. Various systems of categories have been proposed, they often include categories for substances, properties, relations, states of affairs or events. A representative question within the theory of categories might articulate itself, for example, in a query like, "Are universals prior to particulars?"
The process of abstraction required to discover the number and names of the categories of being has been undertaken by many philosophers since Aristotle and involves the careful inspection of each concept to ensure that there is no higher category or categories under which that concept could be subsumed. The scholars of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries developed Aristotle's ideas. For example, Gilbert of Poitiers divides Aristotle's ten categories into two sets, primary and secondary, according to whether they inhere in the subject or not:
Primary categories: Substance, Relation, Quantity and Quality
Secondary categories: Place, Time, Situation, Condition, Action, Passion
Furthermore, following Porphyry’s likening of the classificatory hierarchy to a tree, they concluded that the major classes could be subdivided to form subclasses, for example, Substance could be divided into Genus and Species, and Quality could be subdivided into Property and Accident, depending on whether the property was necessary or contingent. An alternative line of development was taken by Plotinus in the second century who by a process of abstraction reduced Aristotle's list of ten categories to five: Substance, Relation, Quantity, Motion and Quality.
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