A Realistic Theory of Categories: An Essay on Ontology by Roderick Chisholm

by Roderick M. Chisholm

Roderick Chisholm has been for many years one of the most important and influential philosophers contributing to metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. This book can be viewed as a summation of his views on an enormous range of topics in metaphysics and epistemology. Yet it is written in the terse, lucid, unpretentious style that has become a hallmark of Chisholm's work. The book is a treatise designed to defend an original, non-Aristotelian theory of categories. Chisholm argues that there are necessary things and contingent things, necessary things being things that are not capable of coming into being or passing away. He defends the argument from design and thus includes the category of necessary substance (God). Further contentions of the essay are that attributes are also necessary beings, that there are no such entities as "times," and that human beings are contingent substances but may not be material substances.

Genres: Philosophy, Metaphysics

Paperback

First published August 28, 1996

About the author

Roderick Milton Chisholm was an American philosopher known for his work on epistemology, metaphysics, free will, value theory, and the philosophy of perception. He was often called "the philosopher's philosopher.

Chisholm graduated from Brown University in 1938 and received his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1942 under Clarence Irving Lewis and Donald C. Williams. He was drafted into the United States Army in July 1942 and did basic training at Fort McClellan in Alabama. Chisholm administered psychological tests in Boston and New Haven. In 1943 he married Eleanor Parker, whom he had met as an undergraduate at Brown. He spent his academic career at Brown University and served as president of the Metaphysical Society of America in 1973.

Chisholm trained many distinguished philosophers, including Selmer Bringsjord, Fred Feldman, Keith Lehrer, James Francis Ross, Richard Taylor, and Dean Zimmerman. He also had a significant influence on many colleagues, including Jaegwon Kim and Ernest Sosa.

Reviews

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the sections on necessary things and contingent things, which lead to the category of necessary substance, which more or less presupposes a deity. I also liked the chapter on intentionalia, or the use of imagination to include categories of fiction.

[Jimm Wetherbee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps the philosopher Roderick Chisholm will be best know for such locutions as “being appeared to redly.” This would be unfortunate since he was backed into the phrase, abandoned the epistemological stance that spawned it, there was so much more that he did in his long career, and because many of his thought experiments continue to be used by philosophers (libertarians still have to deal with the Adam/Noah problem Chisholm brought up in the mid nineteen-sixties, and if you think you know what the center of your consciousness is, you may reconsider after meeting Smith and Jones and the split-brain transplants). It was a pleasure then to come across something of Chisholm’s that dealt with neither epistemology nor mereology but metaphysics.

Chisholm’s theory of categories is contained in a brief but tightly packed work. So what are categories? The started with Aristotle and was an attempt to describe any given thing. Aristotle’s drew up ten categories that included items such as place, state, time, quantity, etc. Over the centuries philosophers would make changes to the list, but generally agreed that the categories applied to the thing described. That is to say a thing was a certain size or shape or position and so on. That came to a screeching halt with Kant who not only drew up a completely different list but argued that categories did not apply to the object described but to mind describing the object insofar as that mind is experiencing the object. After Kant it has been fashionable to dispose of categories altogether. Chisholm not only presents a categorical ontology for the things themselves rather the mind, but this is a decidedly Platonic ontology. Unlike Aristotle, the categories do not exit as descriptions of common-sense physical objects but have an independent existence.

What is also notable about Chisholm’s scheme is its hierarchical nature. Most schemes before Kant would put all categories on par with each other, simply being different aspects of a given subject. Kant has a semi-hierarchical scheme of twelve categories arranged under the headings quantity, quality, relation, and modality. Even today among those who treat categories as real there is a split between those who take a more linear approach and those of a more hierarchical frame of mind.

Chisholm does not actually argue for his realistic conception of categories, let alone its structure, in his Realistic Theory of Categories. That was done in his previous book On Metaphysics. What Chisholm does do is to argue for the contents of his scheme and why certain items (such as times and places) don’t appear. For instance, times are subsumed under events, which does provide for a more economical ontology. That he has presented an economical almost elegant ontology is not to be denied, but is it too parred back? The reader may wish to direct her attention to some of recent schemes as found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and see whether some of the more extensive schemes can be subsumed in Chisholm’s without inciting any Procrustean damage.

The last two sections of Chisholm’s book look at objects that seem to exist only in the mind (appearances, intentions, and fictions) which always have been a subject of philosophical debate and for the past few centuries have been outright contentious and Chisholm’s attempt to make sense of the notion of a necessary substance–or more plainly, God. In six pages, Chisholm reviews atemporality (he doesn’t care for it) and the argument from design (he seems happy with at least some version of the argument). The speed of delivery is breath-taking, but this very last section has the feel of an outline of a work the author wanted to time to explore more thoroughly.argument). The speed of delivery is breath-taking, but this very last section has the feel of an outline of a work the author wanted to time to explore more thoroughly.as the feel of an outline of a work the author wanted to time to explore more thoroughly.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is provocative and very succinct. Unfortunately, it is often sparse and short of fulfilling. It is enough to whet your appetite, but not enough to sate it.