Vitaliy Dolgorukov Made a Report in the RAS Institute of Philosophy

On October 9, Vitaliy Dolgorukov, the Deputy Head of the Laboratory, made a report “The Ontological Square and Type-Theoretic Semantics”

Abstract:

The ontological square is the name of the theory which is attributed to the works of Aristotle (especially, the second part of the treatise Categories). This theory makes a distinction between four kinds of things: substantial universals (“A man”), substantial particulars (“Socrates”), accidental universals (“The wisdom”), accidental particulars (“The wisdom of Socrates”).

Barry Smith in his article “Against Fantology” tries to demonstrate that “the ontological square” cannot be described in the framework of standard first-order predicate logic. In addition, B. Smith blamed G. Frege, the father of contemporary logic, of being the author of "Fantology". For Smith, fantology is a theory that represents the ontological structure of reality as including properties ("F") objects ("a") and unique ontological relation – the relation of having property by object ("Fa"). B. Smith suggests that predicate logic should have more relations to express necessary distinctions of the ontological square.

The report is dedicated to another variant of formalization of things postulated by the ontological square. The concerned variant is based on modern Type-Theoretic Semantics. Moreover, prospects of the usage of the theory of justification for the principle of compositionality are explored.