Abstract
This paper argues that ontological category systems (OCS) should be assessed against explicit target criteria. To compare the highly diverse OCS, we focus on the epistemic issue of the category problem, not on the ontological one, and examine the system architecture at the bicategorical level. From existing systems we extract mutual exclusiveness, exhaustiveness, and generalness, and add a neglected criterion: recursiveness – the requirement that, at the most general level, the categories also categorize themselves, thereby conceptually closing the system. On this basis we motivate the most defensible number of categories and re-evaluate the traditional divide between universals and particulars in a slightly revised form. The resulting framework clarifies how OCS can remain maximally general while retaining classificatory power and shows why systems that exceed two top-level categories trade generalness for individuation without clear gain.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- The Broad Escape from Narrow Fictionalism
- Ontological Category Systems: Notes on the Foundations of their Epistemic Architectures
- Explanatory Structures: Modal Realism and Other Necessitarian Systems
- On Individuating Contingently Non-Concrete Objects
- Noneism – Neither Meinongianism nor Allism
- Real Enough: The Metaphysics of Epistemic Structural Realism
- How Thick is Now? The Prospects of Thick Presentism
- Fictional Characters as Transworld Individuals
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- The Broad Escape from Narrow Fictionalism
- Ontological Category Systems: Notes on the Foundations of their Epistemic Architectures
- Explanatory Structures: Modal Realism and Other Necessitarian Systems
- On Individuating Contingently Non-Concrete Objects
- Noneism – Neither Meinongianism nor Allism
- Real Enough: The Metaphysics of Epistemic Structural Realism
- How Thick is Now? The Prospects of Thick Presentism
- Fictional Characters as Transworld Individuals