Aristotle’s view of categories is not a merely linguistic one. His four-fold division of existents and referring to the features of being in the subject and being told in terms of the subject alongside each other indicate his ontological view of categories. In his eyes, More
Aristotle’s view of categories is not a merely linguistic one. His four-fold division of existents and referring to the features of being in the subject and being told in terms of the subject alongside each other indicate his ontological view of categories. In his eyes, they are the windows linking subject and object to each other. He poses the issue of categories to bring thought and reality together. Therefore, the goal of the laws of Aristotelian logic, in addition to analyzing the forms of thinking, is to explain the knowledge of reality as it is reflected in the human mind. The discussion of categories in Aristotle’s logical works functions as a window to the entrance of essentialism in logic and the dominance of Aristotelian metaphysics on his logic. This aspect weakens Aristotle’s logic in presenting and analyzing many propositions and syllogisms and makes the semantic aspect of this logic more prominent in comparison to its formal aspect.
The theory of categories existed in logic books before Ibn Sina. In several cases in the book of categories of al-Shifa, he mentions that there is no place for the discussion of categories in logic and puts it aside in the logic section of al-Isharat. Unlike Aristotle, Ibn Sina’s heedlessness of categories can reveal formalization in logic and its deviation from Aristotle’s essentialism and semanticism.
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