Sortální termíny a problém identity

• Authors: Daniel Heider

Title variants

EN

Sortal terms and the problem of identity

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

The article deals with sortal terms and the problem of identity and argues that they both are one of the most important sources for Aristotelianism in the contemporary analytical metaphysics. The criteria and the use of sortal terms show that they should be sharply distinguished from other types of terms (attributive terms, mass terms, dummy sortals). The semantical and syntactical classification enable us to select special class of semantically non-complex sortals terms, which are lifetime and basic. Those can be labelled as the legitime descendents of Aristotle´s secondary substances. The main function of sortal terms, which also stands at the beginning of the very discussion of sortal terms in analytical philosophy (P. T. Geach, D. Wiggins), is to complete and to govern the identity statement of the form a is the same F (sortal term) as b. Those sortals not only denote kinds but also connote criteria of identity which determine the persistence-conditions of instances of this or that sort. It is just those criteria identity and sortally-determined theory of reference of singular terms that are the main tools for arguing against Geachian non-aristotelian The Irreducibility Thesis and The Thesis of Relative Identity. In the final part of the article the author shows that the reference of identity statement to sortal terms should be espoused by the means of the concept of meaningfulness of an identity statement. As the conclusion, the main points of the aristotelian Thesis of the Sortal Dependency of Identity and the Sortal Expandability Thesis are formulated.

Discipline

• PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Filosofický časopis (Philosophical Journal)
• Year: 2005
• Volume: 53
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 167-194
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Daniel Heider

• Filosofický časopis, redakce, Filosofický ústav AV ČR, v.v.i., Jilská 1, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic