Why are statements unable to receive contraries over time?

<p>In <em>Categories</em> chapter 5 [4a10-4b19], Aristotle sets out to defend the claim that primary substances are the only individual existents which admit of receiving contrary attributes over time. To perform this task, he considers whether a statement may also admit of receivi...

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Bibliografske podrobnosti
Glavni avtor: Buongiorno, A
Drugi avtorji: Peramatzis, M
Format: Thesis
Jezik:English
Izdano: 2019
Teme:
Opis
Izvleček:<p>In <em>Categories</em> chapter 5 [4a10-4b19], Aristotle sets out to defend the claim that primary substances are the only individual existents which admit of receiving contrary attributes over time. To perform this task, he considers whether a statement may also admit of receiving contraries. It is the contention of this study that Aristotle disqualifies simple present-tensed statements from admitting of receiving contraries <em>in their own right</em>, by only allowing for the same statement to admit of receiving contrary attributes over time in an incidental sense. Aristotle’s chosen strategy for defending this stance consists in a progressive refinement of the realist account of truth-making which he lays out in Cat.12. This leads up to his endorsement of a deflationary version of this account, which accommodates temporalist assumptions. Upon the interpretation of this deflationary account of truth-making which is here proposed, a statement which admits of being true and false at different times may not enjoy the attribute <em>true</em> or its contrary, <em>false</em>, in itself, but only in relation to an actual entity <em>other than itself</em> and, thus, incidentally. As a result, a statement may only incidentally come and cease to be true and false over time. Since a statement cannot change from <em>being-true</em> to <em>being-false</em> (or vice-versa) in a genuine sense, but an individual existent only admits of receiving contraries by being able to change, a statement may not receive contrary attributes over time in a genuine sense. Thus, a statement which admits of being true and false at different times is not, strictly speaking, able to receive contraries.</p>