Substance, name and thing in aristotle’s «computer» ontology

Abstract

In this article, we will discuss the elements of classical and nonclassical ontological systems in Aristotle’s doctrine of the substance, categories and language. It is amazing that the classic heritage of ancient philosophical thought include ontological models similar to the contemporary analytic philosophy. Aristotle was the first to speculate on the substance in terms of language categories. It is the transition from the subject individual to a logical entity and then to a part of speech. The nature of knowledge is based on a single representation of the universal. According to Aristotle, only a plurality of randomly designated unique individual things exists. However, the species and genera build some logical relations between them. Therefore, the language updating of the knowledge of the world is possible only with respect to species and genera, i.e., a logical structure as thing in itself (not described) does not have any features but exists independently in the reality. On the one hand, Aristotle supports the classical nominalistic ontology (the material world is a complexity of things existing in the reality of single non-attributive objects). On the other hand, Aristotle’s ontology is a complex of objects believed existing by a statement. That is, the objects can be from imaginary or impossible worlds, but the language descriptions credit them with the function of propositional value. In both cases, language is just a method of consistent description.