Organon F
Volume 26, May 2019, Issue 2, Pages 186–206
ISSN 2585-7150 (online) ISSN 1335-0668 (print)
Research Article
Categories and the Language of Metaphysics
Mirco Sambrotta
https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2019.26201
The purpose of this paper is to better understand what ontologists are doing when they ask questions about the categories of the world. I will take Cumpa’s attempts to find out the fundamental structure of the world as a case-study. In one of his latest paper (Cumpa 2014), he conceives the classical ontological question about the existence of the fundamental categories of the world (what are the fundamental categories of the world?) as a question about the category able to unify the two Sellarsian images of the world: the manifest and scientific images, considered as two different languages. According to him, the only category with such an explanatory power is the category of ‘facts’ (or ‘state of affairs’): the fundamental category of what he calls ‘the metaphysical language.’ I will argue that if Cumpa takes the latter to be a broader language or framework, in Carnap’s terms, common to both the ordinary and the scientific ones, then his proposal turns out to be rather problematic (as they are ultimately ‘incommensurable’). On the other hand, if he understands it as external to both of them, then his solution ends up being meaningless and devoid of any cognitive content, with at best a practical character and/or an expressive function.
Categorial ontology; sortalism; ontological disputes; scientific image; manifest image.
Author
Mirco Sambrotta
Affiliation
University of Granada
Address
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities, University of Granada, Campus de la Cartuja, 18011 Granada, Spain
Received
9 May 2018
Accepted
2 October 2018
Published online
14 March 2019
Publishers
Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences
APA
Sambrotta, M. (2019). Categories and the Language of Metaphysics. Organon F, 26(2), 186–206. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2019.26201
Chicago
Sambrotta, Mirco. 2019. "Categories and the Language of Metaphysics." Organon F 26 (2): 186–206. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2019.26201
Harvard
Sambrotta, M. (2019). Categories and the Language of Metaphysics. Organon F, 26(2), pp. 186–206. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2019.26201
© Mirco Sambrotta
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