Ontological Categories
The chapter advances a preliminary account of categories of what there is. We find ourselves surrounded by objects that interact in various ways. Refining this idea points to three seemingly indispensable categories: substance, property, relation. Properties are ways particular substances are. Substance and property are correlative categories: every substance must be some way or other and every way must be a way some substance is. The possibility that relations are ‘founded’ is introduced and explicated by reference to truthmaking: truthmakers for relational truths could turn out to be nonrelational features of the universe. In the same vein, truthmakers for truths invoking traditionally important categories including universal, attribute, and modality might be fully particular propertied substances.
