Abstract
Here is a recipe for ontology. First divide the expressions of one’s language into those which purport to pick things out and those which don’t. Then see whether some of those which purport to pick things out can be defined in terms of others. Finally admit into your ontology whatever an undefinable term purports to pick out. This scheme expresses (though vaguely and incompletely) one of the central intuitions behind many ontological programmes. What is admitted by an ontologist operating within this framework will depend, of course, upon how he or she divides expressions, on what resources of definition are available, and, perhaps, on pressures from other theories. What I hope to do in this paper is to show the influence of the intuition behind this sketch on the work of the fourteenth century Parisian master Jean Buridan.
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© 1985 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Normore, C. (1985). Buridan’s Ontology. In: Bogen, J., McGuire, J.E. (eds) How Things Are. Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, vol 29. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5199-0_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5199-0_8
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