Nino Cocchiarella Formal Ontology and conceptual realism

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.Indeed, even today there may yet be some transuranic elements, and naturalproperties of such, that, as a matter of contingent fact, will never be realized innature by any objects at all, but which, nevertheless, as a matter of a naturalor causal possibility, could be realized by atoms that are generated, e.g., in asupernova, or in a very high energy accelerator.The being of such a naturalproperty or relation does not consist of its being a property of some transuranicatom at the moment of the Big Bang, nor even, for that matter, of its beingin re at some time or other in the history of the universe.Instead, its beingconsists of its being part of nature s causal matrix right from the beginning oftime, and therefore of its possibly being realized in nature, i.e., of its possiblybeing in re.The being of a natural property or relation is its possiblybeing in re, i.e., its being realizable in nature as a matterof a natural or causal possibility.278 CHAPTER 12.THE LOGIC OF NATURAL KINDSNow one obvious consequence of this view of natural properties and relationsis that they are not intensional objects, nor are they objects of any kind at all.This is so because if natural properties and relations were objects, then, in orderto be even when they are not in things, they would have to be abstract objects.How could they be, in other words, when they are not in things, unless their be-ing is that of an abstract object in a Platonic realm of forms, in which case theywould have a mode of being that transcended the natural world and nature scausal matrix.But natural properties and relations do not exist independentlyof the world and its causal matrix, even though they are not contained withinthe space-time causal manifold the way concrete objects are.Natural proper-ties and relations cannot be objects, in other words, and therefore their modeof being as possibly being in re must have a different explanation.As universalsthat correspond to concepts as unsaturated cognitive capacities, the most plau-sible explanation is that they too have an unsaturated nature, albeit one thatis only analogous to, and not the same as, the unsaturated predicative natureof concepts.As components of the nexus of predication in reality, which we can compre-hend only by analogy with the nexus of predication in thought, natural proper-ties and relations are unsaturated causally determinate structures that becomesaturated in the states of affairs that obtain in nature, and that otherwise ex-ist only within nature s causal matrix.Thus, even though natural propertiesand relations do not exist in a double way, one in nature and the other in theintellect, nevertheless, they have a mode of being as unsaturated causal struc-tures that is analogous to that of concepts as unsaturated cognitive capacities,and hence their unsaturatedness must be understood by analogy with the un-saturated nature of concepts.In terms of the theory of logical forms of a formalontology, where predicates signify both kinds of universals, this means that bothkinds of universals are values of predicate variables, albeit variables bound bydifferent quantifiers, namely "n and "n in the case of natural properties andrelations, and " and " in the case of predicable concepts.Finally, we should note that just as predicable concepts do not exist inde-pendently of the general capacity humans have for language and thought, so toonatural properties and relations do not exist independently of nature s causalmatrix.That is why, just as the laws of compositionality for concept-formationof predicable concepts, as characterized by the comprehension principle, (CP" ),�can be said to characterize the logical structure of the intellect as the basis of thehuman capacity for language and thought, so too the laws of nature regardingthe causal connections between natural properties and relations, especially asdetermined by natural kinds, can be said to characterize the causal structure ofthe world.Thus, just as concepts have their being within the matrix of thoughtand concept-formation, so too natural properties and relations have their beingwithin the matrix of the laws of nature.12.3.MODAL MODERATE REALISM 27912.3 Modal Moderate RealismWhat is needed in the formal ontology of natural realism is a modal logic fora causal or natural necessity, or a causal or natural possibility.By a naturalpossibility we mean what is possible in nature, i.e., what is not precluded by thelaws of nature.A natural necessity therefore is what must be so because of thelaws of nature.This suggests that S5 is the appropriate modal logic for naturalnecessity; or to express the matter in model-theoretic terms, that the possibleworlds in the multiverse that have same laws of nature constitute an equivalenceclass.5 Different equivalence classes of the possible worlds in the multiverse willthen represent different causal matrices as determined by the laws of nature thatare invariant across the worlds in those equivalence classes.As is well-known,necessity, when interpreted as invariance over each equivalence class of a setof equivalence classes of models ( possible worlds ) i.e., where each modelin any one such equivalence class is accessible from every other model in thatequivalence class results in a completeness theorem for S5 modal logic.6 Oneversion of such a multiverse is the concordance model discussed in chapter three,�6.1, where the relation of accessibility is universal, and hence where there isbut one equivalence class of possible worlds.By a causal possibility, on the other hand, we mean what can be broughtabout in nature through causal mechanisms of whatever natural sort, physical,biological, etc.A causal necessity then is what must be so because of its causalground, i.e., what caused it to be so.This suggests that S4 is the appropriatemodal logic to adopt, because whereas causal relations are transitive they arenot also symmetric, and, as is well-known, S4 is the modal logic characterizedby a transitive accessibility relation between possible worlds [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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