Categories and cosmology

1. Analysis of language—since Aristotle thinks predication is necessary for intelligibility, he asks about kinds of predicates and arrives at… quality, quantity, relation, place, time, etc

2. Logic—what kinds of terms must exist for syllogisms to work—substance, quantity, quality, relation.

3. Metaphysics—what else must exist from substance as primary (which he held)—accidents, states, activities, passivities.

Aristotle—his best known system

The doctrine of the categories (also part of his metaphysics): categories are the fundamental, indivisible concepts of thought: the most fundamental and universal predicates that can be affirmed of anything, not mere forms of thought or language but also predicates of reality…

Ten questions and ten categories—

1. What? Substance (e.g., man)

2. How large, how much? Quantity (e.g., four foot, five people)

3. What are its characteristics or properties? Quality (e.g., loud, white).

4. What are its relations? Relation (e.g., double, faster)

5. Where is it? Place (e.g., here, on Earth)

6. When does it occur? Point in time (e.g., today)

7. What is its configuration? Posture (e.g., is standing)

8. What is its state or condition? State (e.g., has shoes on).

9. What it does? Action (e.g., crushes, burns)

10. What is done to it? Passion (e.g., is crushed)

Kant

Kant—the idea

For Kant, bare reality is not apprehended. Rather, in an interpretation of Kant, reality-as-experienced (as conceived, where conception is understood to include perception), is reality-as-best-understood, especially where ‘as-experienced’ includes reality-as-experienced. Kant, in the interpretation, then analyses reality-as-experienced / as-best-understood, into the forms of space and time (which he thought rendered necessary by Euclidean Geometry and Newtonian Mechanics), and the forms of fact, i.e., judgment in propositional form. For the forms of judgment he appeals to Aristotle’s fact as subject-predicate or subject-judgment, and his forms of judgment to yield a system of categories as follows.

Kant—the system

JUDGMENTS	CATEGORIES
I. Quantity	I. Of Quantity
1. Universal	1. Unity
2. Particular	2. Plurality
3. Singular	3. Totality
II. Quality	II. Of Quality
4. Affirmative	4. Reality
5. Negative	5. Negation
6. Infinite	6. Limitation
III. Relation	III. Of Relation
7. Categorical	7. Inherence and Subsistence (substance and accident)
8. Hypothetical	8. Causality and Dependence (cause and effect)
9. Disjunctive	9. Community (reciprocity)
IV. Modality	IV. Of Modality
10. Problematic	10. Possibility—Impossibility
11. Assertive	11. Existence—Nonexistence
12. Apodictic	12. Necessity—Contingency

Husserl

Husserl distinguished categories of meanings from categories of objects; he drew out connections between the two kinds – which can be seen as a synthesis of Aristotle’s and Kant’s approaches.

He also distinguished formal categories (formalized—i.e., emptied of content—from syntactical groups of terms, with ‘objects in general’ at the highest level then a next highest level, e.g., entity, state of affairs, property, relation, number etc) from material categories according to their nature and arrived at by generalization of content (nature, culture, and consciousness).

Husserl reserves the word ‘categories’ for the formal categories (above) and calls the three highest level material classes ‘regions’.

In Husserl’s work, the formal and the material constitute two independent ‘dimensions’.

Husserl, Aristotle, and Kant – an essence for this work

Note that I say ‘an’ rather than ‘the’ essence.

In thus extending and combining Aristotelian and Kantian thinking, Husserl arrives at a tentative synthesis of the two approaches and the layers within.

This has in-principle anticipation in the development of TM, and will be explicit in what follows.

Extension by Roman Ingarden

Ingarden recognized a third dimension—existential categories—“those describing an entity’s mode of being”: real (spatiotemporal being), ideal (abstract), absolute (completely independent, atemporal), and purely intentional (consciousness dependent).

Modern systems

The Stanford Encyclopedia article takes up a range of modern systems, that combine various modes of difference, and one with just one category (at the top) and concludes that reasons for skepticism regarding a true categorial system (in fact or in possibility) remains.

Category differences

“Category differences” are taken up in the table below.

Introduction to categories and cosmology

Origins – dimensions and categories

In using TM to negotiate paths for and from worlds, I found that it would be effective to recognize levels of inclusivity and abstraction, dimensions or aspects of being or description at each level, and paradigms or dynamics of behavior at the levels.

It became apparent that the dimensions were similar to what, in metaphysics, are called categories and are seen as (i) as with Aristotle, from a realist perspective, the highest genera or kinds of being (perhaps the highest kinds, just under being, if we see being as a kind), or (ii) as with Kant, from an idealist or conceptualist point of view, the highest forms that constitute a judgment of fact.

So, since there is a history of reflection on categories, it seemed effective to join the study of categories to my study of dimensions.

However, despite similarities, there were also differences between dimensions and categories.

Categories in history of metaphysics vs this work

Plan – the table – (i) how to do (ii) hidden material.

Aspect	Categories in history of metaphysics	The categorial system (dimensions) in this work
What categories are	A common conception is that categories are highest level genera of existence (being) or understanding, just under the level of being itself. In fact, levels of genera are at least implicitly admitted in some systems. One of the aims of categories is to provide at the highest level (just below being) of the forms of what can be said about beings. Thus a demand that is often made that the systems be complete and occasionally that, if they are to be categories of the real, they should perfectly capture the real. Some systems aim at completeness and articulation.	The same, extended up and down to multiple levels, justified and integrated from TM. The level of being itself may be included for, as we have seen, it too has articulation as the concept-object. Being and understanding are integrated via beings as concept-objects, integrated with experience (and agency and action) and derived from analysis, thereof. Interaction among the levels renders improved effectiveness and articulation individually and of the system. The levels are associated with laws, dynamics, or patterns, which explicitly enables explanation and prediction.
Comment	The significance of categories in the received narrower sense – the level just under being itself – is not minimized, for the narrower categories are but an aspect of metaphysical study.	In integrating the levels (i) value, epistemology, and dynamics are incorporated, (ii) the power of metaphysics is enhanced, and (iii) philosophy and knowledge are given unification.
Open vs closed (Openness is in the sense that the categories are definite and known)	Open for Aristotle because his metaphysics is open. Closed for Kant because he chooses a given system of kinds of judgment (Aristotle’s) as the basis of the categories. Knowledge as open in what it is vs closed parallels the case for categories—it is open for Aristotle but closed for Kant (Kant was in error, in part because he held geometry and dynamics to have been determined by Euclid and Newton, respectively).	At the level of being, closed in principle, but open as long as we are limited beings; open at the level of our world, insofar as the world is not determinate and the meaning of knowledge and our capacity for it is limited. Knowledge as open vs closed parallels the above—knowledge and its disciplines are both closed and open… closed in that knowledge is part of the world but open in that explicit self-reference of world / knowledge is limited for limited beings. This is relevant not just to knowledge but also its inherent or ‘organic’ and symbolic expression, e.g., language. Open in that knowledge expressed in discrete symbolic terms may point to but fail to capture the entirety of (i) inherent knowledge (innate and acquired) (ii) the universe. Note that this incompleteness points to possible to probable needs for devolution and re-evolution (destruction and creation) of organism, knowledge, and worlds.
Language and logic an aspect	No, insofar as categories are at least in part derivative from language and logic. But, then, there is of course, reflection back onto language, logic (and metaphysics) in philosophy, east and west. Further, in formulating some systems, e.g., as in Aristotle, there is interaction between metaphysics and the categories.	Yes, as seen in earlier development. Logic is given new interpretations including one of logic as a grammar of compound assertions or facts. Which is an aspect of fusion of language, logic, and metaphysics.
Dynamic, law, or paradigm part of systems	No, for dynamic may follow or be in addition to the categories.	Yes, as noted above. What are different layers in received metaphysics are integrated here.
Level of abstraction	Putatively and generally, a level just under being itself that is pure, i.e., free of distortion. Being itself is typically not seen as a kind and therefore not a categorial level. In fact, many categorial systems are mixed.	Multiple levels from pure to pragmatic. Specifically, (i) a level above being – relational or experiential being and nonbeing (perhaps with being as a sub-level) (ii) an intermediate level of form and formation (e.g., of worlds) and (iii) worlds, especially our world (iv) sub-levels may be entertained. The higher is a realm of pure grammar and logic (but via IM / TM, also realist); the lower are expressions of the higher, and so satisfy any logic or grammar of the higher. Lower levels are ‘our world’ (the lowest) and ‘form and formation’ (intermediate). Details are given later. The dynamic of the lower levels are as in or as suggested by ordinary experience and as refined in science and reason. As closer to ordinary experience, the lower provides (suggests) provide analogy for the higher, to go beyond analogy will require justification, which where it is given, is typically in the form of – (i) the analogical case must hold for some realms (ii) such realms are realms of dominant meaningful significance but other realms do have instrumental significance.
Interaction among the levels	No interaction in that the categories are regarded as at the same (highest) level. However in some systems, e.g., Aristotle’s, the categories are not all at a given level of abstraction or inclusivity.	Yes, (i) lower levels cannot fail to exemplify logic, which is the ‘dynamic’ at the level of being-as-being, (ii) the laws or paradigms of our world serve as analogy for higher levels, where they must obtain with significance (significant cases) though not with necessity (i.e., not in all cases).
Alternative approaches, e.g., given putative limits of human knowledge—“Category Differences”	From skepticism about the possibility of systems, in the twentieth century, some analytic philosophers focused on avoiding errors due to categorial conflation, e.g., thinking that having mental activity implies that mind is a separate substance or thing.	Though we have not explicitly taken up conflation of different semantic categories, some categorial errors have been avoided. Examples include (i) from as-if substance to universal substance and from form to particular substance (ii) from concept – relation – object as a unity to mind – relation – matter as objective of being (iii) content and method as essentially distinct (iv) temporal distinction among beings (or worlds or beings-and-words) as absolute (v) limits of our experience as absolute limits (and the related trivial but frequent fallacy of conflation of possibility and necessity) (vi) conflation of levels of description as absolute (this needs to be worked out).
Sources	Western thought, ancient through contemporary. Aristotle for kinds of being, interactively with language, logic, and metaphysics. Kant forms of judgment regarding fact, pure concepts of understanding, derived general kinds of attribute that objects may have.	Western science and philosophy. Eastern thought, especially Advaita Vedanta with its reflections on Brahman. I find that world thought – Asian, African, Western and more – is rife with Brahman like ideas, however my source is Indian thought, which is not limited to Advaita Vedanta. Real metaphysics (TM) as in this work, which reveals the highest level as pure perfection while the entire system (also) has a value based pragmatic perfection.
What categories are for—i.e., what we do and hope to do with them?	Establish ways to describe or conceptualize the world and secondarily understanding and action in the world. Action is explicit with some systems, e.g., that of Hegel.	Realist and conceptual description, explanation, and prediction (so far as it emerges). Integrated with the metaphysical system, TM, which, with foundation, are developed in this work. ‘Categorial metaphysics’ is / as scientific metaphysics with logic / logics as high level paradigm(s) supplemented by Whitehead style rational-speculative metaphysics. Applied to and integrated with cosmology and realization in a broad sense, which rounds out the categories.
Role of experience	Suppressed in realist systems, experience is explicitly present with Kant.	The universe is relational, with the kind of relation being the same as that of experience and all relation being experiential in an extended sense. That experience includes feeling (emotion), cognition, and agency and intersects value and ethics is significant.
Role of agency	Explicitly present with Plotinus, Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, Whitehead, and Heidegger.	Explicitly present as most significant; without experience, the universe (being) has no meaning (as in the meaning of life / significance); without agency the universe is listless. However, agency and experience need not be assumed—they must emerge. Thus, while agency is of crucial significance, it need not be assumed, for it arises out of nothingness (it must do so); however intelligence and agency make the universe ‘more efficient and more significant).
Role of value	No, for object and value are separable at this level (unless value or imperative is taken as categorial). However, the significance of value to knowledge – and vice versa, at least instrumentally, go back to early philosophy, west and east.	Yes, which renders TM perfect in a value sense, which is pragmatic. The integration of value and knowledge – and thus of the philosophical and scientific disciplines – is not just instrumental: it is intrinsic.
Role of cognition	Conceptual (in a limited sense that excludes perception). In standard treatments, perception may be treated prior to the categories.	Conceptual and perceptual (i.e., conceptual in the sense that includes perception).
How to generate a system of categories (i)—general	High level appeal to language, logic, and metaphysical knowledge. Many thinkers hold method and content to merge, at least in process.	As for the received approach categories supplemented by analysis of perception and conception at an elementary level. Also supplemented and integrated via various considerations above, especially TM. From reflection on what we want to do with categories, what we (have decided that we) want is a ‘Categorial metaphysics’, a system of a range of levels of abstraction of being / beings and their patterns which enable understanding, summarization in terms – especially – of patterns, and so of prediction (inter- and extra-polation). Fundamentally, method and content are one.
How to generate the categories (ii)—questions to ask	What are the categories and how can they be generated? With Aristotle and Kant, there is appeal to language, logic, and metaphysical thought.	The first questions to ask are not about listing the categories, but what they are in principle – the concept sharpened by placing it in systematic context, in which analogy with science, ordinary experience, language, and reason may be relevant, which suggests a more principled and inclusive approach emerges, from / to which further details may be extracted / added. The concept of the categories is further refined by asking we intend / do with them.
How to generate the categories (iii)—the levels, their order of consideration and interactions	There is interaction among the Aristotelian levels, but it is rather ad hoc. Some modern systems have tree like structure.	To begin, each level is developed abstractly. While it is perhaps natural to place the most inclusive / abstract level at the ‘top’, to place the lowest level at the top is especially instructive. Both orders of placement are useful, here we begin at the ‘bottom’— iii. Low-level – our world and cosmos – basis: elementary experience and ordinary language > sameness-difference > identity > property > quality, extension (quantity, space-time-being implicit) Analysis of experience > analysis as relation shows that there is no mode of being beyond the experiential (with a being in abstraction being prior) > subject-relation-object is exhaustive of as-if substance By extending the subject-relation-object to primitive being, the universe is effectively experiential. Form, mechanism, causation, (residual) indeterminism-with-selection are among the paradigms for laws. Provides for higher levels by analogy, which from TM obtains at the higher for the significant population of objects in the universe. ii. Intermediate level – formation of worlds – (a) pure transient (b) incremental with selection for near symmetry and stability is both explanatory and more probable and its recognition is enhanced by evolution of higher level experience (named ‘consciousness’). Supplements the higher level by showing mere transients to be of lesser significance but incremental transient with selection of essential significance (for experiential beings). Source of lower level ‘worlds’ which inherit both form and transient (formlessness). i. High level-(experiential) being and nonbeing, Being itself is a (possible) sub-level. The most general being / existent / object is a concept-object. The most general law / paradigm is that of necessary logic. Is inherited by—applies at—lower levels.

In developing an effective account toward the purposes of knowing and realizing the ultimate in, for, and from our world, the word ‘categories’ will be used in an extended sense to embrace the dimensions. The system that follows is designed to reflect the extended sense.

Summary—what categories are in this work

Whereas the received concept of categories is, roughly, the forms of what can be said about being and beings

Experience, categories, and cosmology

Why experience and cosmology are in the title will emerge in this section.

Comment 1.Alternate title—Cognition, categories and cosmology (one aim for this being that we ought not regard perception and free-conception as entirely distinct—i.e., do we need categories as such in the sense of Aristotle / Kant?)

Plan

1. Rational and scientific metaphysics?

a. Special metaphysics.

b. Hypothetical / speculative / scientific metaphysics.

c. Rational metaphysics.

d. Real metaphysics.

2. Review “generating” and skeletal view of what comes next

3. Main issues and outline

4. Summarize history (+ backup)

5. Import + fair (Jhang > cats > topics > paths)

Generating the categories

General

All that was said in the table.

Approach from above logic > down

Approach from the middle > co-implications both up and down

Approach from below ordinary experience (difference, language, and logic) > up

Targeted – the fundamental questions and aims

What are categories (how adequate are the historical approaches to the question of categories in the context of metaphysics as knowledge of the universe) and most importantly What do and should we want to do with categories, i.e., what would their function be?

That is, do we want a categorial metaphysics or a categorial soup (Aristotle) / formula (Kant etc)?

How shall we generate them—from systems of metaphysics and reflection upon the immediately above and other issues raised?

Do we want a delineation of the categorial metaphysics? Or do we want a basic set derived from the principles of generation?

Generating

All levels and their mutual implications

Multiple levels: experiential being and nonbeing > being (classical) > intermediate – form and formation, e.g., of worlds and other kinds of being, e.g., taxa of life > our world.

Integral with TM, thus possessed of TM’s perfection, and integral with TM, rather than “one more aspect of metaphysics.

Integrated and embraced via experiential agency.

The fundamental existent is the concept-relation-object.

“Fact-value” integrated; but no loss of precision at high level while no compromise at lower levels, given value and process.

High to low levels mutually informing (i) the high conditions lower while (ii) the low provide paradigms for the higher by analogy which begin as suggestive but their occurrence justified by TM but their prevalence is argued from considerations of likelihood. In their discovery, the low – our world – is a place of beginning, and thus the entire process is “P”, i.e., cyclic without being circular.

The outcome is a categorial (“scientific”) metaphysics that joins rational metaphysics with hypothetical (“speculative”) metaphysics at lower levels, bound together by value (ethics, aesthetics); the rational metaphysics is perfect in the sense of faithfulness of concept to object, the lower levels may be imprecise, and the whole is pragmatically perfect with regard to the ultimate value of realization.

High level – experiential being and nonbeing

The level: being and nonbeing.

Fundamental existent: a being as a concept-relation-object, which includes beings that are nonexistent in the sense that there is contingently or necessarily no object (but note that with abstraction, contra Heidegger, being is a being).

An included level: being as it pertains to beings in the abstract, i.e., as seen from “nowhere”, which is semantically allowable in that at this highest level, concept and object are decoupled (while at lower levels, the decoupling is rough even if adaptive).

Metaphysics: IM (value decouple-able from metaphysics in that ultimate realization is given, and the coupling enters regarding questions of effective and quality shared living in the world – itself and toward the ultimate)

Fundamental dynamic(s): from IM, logic as that which determines which concepts can have objects (inclusive of particular logics, which correspond to forms of symbolic expression, and (perhaps, abstraction from) forms of intuition-in-the-sense-of-Kant).

Fundamental form: as for the fundamental existent, the concept-object, of which some forms are

i. The ‘bare’ concept-object form (or atomic fact, i.e., atomic in the sense that the form has no structure, either at all, or that is relevant to the deliberations being considered),

ii. The previous case in which the form of the object is the subject-predicate (the uses of ‘subject’ in #’s i and ii are distinct),

iii. Other forms arising in logics (including non-symbolic logics),

iv. Not strictly a logical form as the term ‘logic’ is used in this chapter on categories—the varieties of forms in the lower levels, which are the logical, with further a-logical form, e.g., the forms of science, especially, symmetry, stability, and formation.

Fundamental ethic: from IM, acceptance and modulation of experiential process (cognition, feeling – especially pleasure and pain, choice, agency…) on the way to peak being (it is implicit that at our level, the process is shared, and that this is one source of ethics at our level).

Intermediate – form and formation

Fundamental existent / process – form and formation (of cosmoses, worlds, and beings).

1. Base level – begin with a primitive element or elements…

2. Paradigms

a. Single or a few steps / pure / transient formation of near symmetric, stable forms (ssf)—as allowed and required by IM.

a. Incremental variation and selection; origin of mechanism and causation (fp as cause of causation) with indeterminism for worlds; origin of physics

Can pure mechanism be given an incremental formulation (e.g., path integral)?

b. Formation by incremental variation and select from ssf to ssf… dominates #a (probably).

c. Selection for significance by experiential beings > dominates significant population.

3. Is there a logic of the forms / formation?

4. Examples

a. Most inclusive base level – the void as primitive (see high level above)

b. Intermediate base level for cosmos formation – proto cosmos and evolution of cosmoses

c. Base level for life in our world – physical, chemical, and geological elements with cosmological and solar input.

Low – (our) world / cosmos with its forms including process

Do this – being, predication and other forms of judgment; sameness-difference, identity, size, duration, quality (intensive – extensive).

Fundamental existent – world / our world

Preliminary or given—sameness, difference, elementary language with grammar, logic as the grammar of compound facts / propositions, refinement > formal languages and logic

Fundamental dynamic—sameness, difference > change > identity > extension, duration of beings, property (shape, quality)

Paradigms—(science), causation, mechanism, indeterminism (variation and selection for near symmetry and stability); value (ethics – what / who is the object or objects, fact and value interact with possible identity, aesthetics)

Add some cats in the style of Aristotle > fill out

The essence of Aristotle is the being and its predicates.

Here, there is no substance but as-if substances (in part a descriptive issue), and the other predicates can be seen as having origin in the low level of our world.

Now add divisions or modes—physical etc as below

Worlds (our world)

1. Physical level

2. Complexity, reproduction, and life

3. Mind or psyche and universal

i. Place of being, meaning, and value (though not source),

ii. U-map.

4. Society

a. Culture

b. Technology

Categories and cosmology

Categories and cosmology

Contents

categories and cosmology

Add some cats in the style of Aristotle > fill out