"All philosophy is linguistic criticism" (Wittgenstein, Tractatus 4.0031).
"The problem of philosophy is not truth, but language" (Martin Heidegger).
"Philosophy must be grounded in language" (Nietzsche).
"The philosophy of language is the first philosophy" (Michael Dummet).
The Traditional Philosophical Categories
The most important traditional philosophical categories are those of Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Hegel. Recall that they are the following:
Plato, 5 categories: Being, Equality, Alterity, Rest and Motion.
Aristotle, 10 categories:
No.
Category
Examples
1
Substance
man, horse, tree.
2
Quantity
3 cubits in length.
3
Quality
White, hot, curved, sweet.
4
Ratio
Double, half, greater.
5
Place
at the lyceum, in the marketplace.
6
Time
yesterday, today.
7
Position
sitting, standing, lying down.
8
State (or habit)
clothed, footwear, armed.
9
Action
walking, climbing, talking.
10
Passion
to be assaulted, to be burned, to be thrown.
Kant, 12 categories, organized into 4 groups of 3 each:
Group
Categories.
Quantity
Unity Plurality Wholeness
Quality
Reality Negation Limitation
Relationship
Substance and Accident
Causality and Dependence
Mutual Action (between agent and patient).
Modality
Possibility - Impossibility
Existence - Non-Existence
Necessity Contingency.
Hegel, 9 categories organized into 3 groups:
Categories of Being
Quality
Quantity
Measurement
Categories of Essence
Fundament
Phenomenon
Reality
Categories of the Concept
Objective Knowledge
Subjective Knowledge
Idea
The Philosophical Categories of MENTAL
In general, traditional philosophical categories are rather ambiguous. In contrast, the philosophical categories of MENTAL have concrete semantics. Nevertheless, certain correspondences (albeit fuzzy) can be established between the two. Thus, MENTAL's table of primitives evokes certain parallels or resonances with philosophical categories, in particular with the categories of Plato (P), Aristotle (A), Kant (K) and Hegel (H):
No.
Primitive MENTAL
Categories Philosophical Categories
1
Generalization
---
2
Particularization Qualitative
Quality (A, H)
Particularization Qualitative
Situation (A)
3
Grouping
Unity (K)
4
Distribución
---
5
Sustitución
---
6
Equivalence
Equality (P)
Contrary Equiv. Equiv.
Alterity (P)
7
Evaluación
---
8
Addition and subtraction
Quantity (A, H)
9
Condition
Causality (K), Constraint (K)
Equivalence Conditional
Mutual Action (K)
10
Hierarchical Access
---
11
Execution
Action (A)
12
Stop Process
Rest (P)
Continue Process
Movement (P)
Remarks:
Aristotle.
The symbols (letters, digits and special characters) can be made to correspond to the Aristotelian category "Substance" and to the Platonic category "Being".
The category "relation" is generic. In MENTAL every expression is a relation between instances of categories.
The category "place" can be interpreted in MENTAL as "abstract space". Similarly, the category "time" can be interpreted as "abstract time". Place and time cannot refer to the physical world, but to an abstract world.
Kant.
The category "negation" can be interpreted in MENTAL in a generic sense as "conrary" or "dual", as a meta-category.
The categories of " Non-Existence", "Existence" and "Totality" correspond to the meta-expressions θ, α and Ω, respectively.
The category "plurality" is in MENTAL a derived property.
The category "necessity" can be interpreted in MENTAL as: 1) the primitives themselves, which are necessary; 2) an aspect of the primitive "generalization" when a condition is used.
The category "possibility" can be interpreted in MENTAL as the expressive and combinatorial capacity of the primitives. Impossibility is what is beyond the primitives.
Hegel.
The category "foundation" is the set of semantic primitives.
The categories "objective knowledge" and "subjective knowledge" refer to the objective (the phenomenon) and the subjective (the idea). The category "reality" is the union of both. In MENTAL objective and subjective knowledge are expressed by the same primitives.
MENTAL integrates the various interpretations of the categories, including:
The linguistic interpretation (the grammatical categories common to all natural languages).
The epistemological interpretation (the categories of understanding).
The ontological interpretation (the supreme genera of things). This is the traditional interpretation.
The categories of MENTAL are primary archetypes and manifest in all planes of reality, both internal and external.
Philosophy of Language, Analytic Philosophy, and Philosophical Language
Linguistics studies the structure and functionality of language. Philosophy of language, on the other hand, studies the phenomenon of language in general, the essential and transcendental aspects, the deep and abstract issues present in all languages, such as meaning, truth, intention, reference, necessity, possibility, and so on. It also raises numerous questions, such as the following:
What is the nature of meaning? What does it mean "mean"? The issue of meaning is one of the major topics in philosophy of language.
What are the kinds of meanings that can be true or false?
What is the relation between truth and meaning?
What is the relationship between language and reality?
From "where" do words come when we speak?
Is it possible to think without language? Is thought a kind of language?
Is there an internal language common to all human beings?
What is the relationship between language and mind, thought, knowledge and consciousness?
How does language relate to the mind of the sender and the receiver?
Is man's language a reflection of a universal language or of nature, or a reflection of some philosophical categories or universal principles?
Is it possible to create or discover a philosophical language that connects us with the deep aspects of reality?
Is there an ideal and perfect way to represent the expressions of ordinary language?
Philosophy of language is based on the analysis of language in which philosophical problems are posed in an attempt to clarify them. Although book III of Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" (1690) and Mill's "A System of Logic" (1843) can be considered as antecedents, it is considered that the philosophy of language was born in 1892, with Frege's work "On Sense and Reference". In this work, Frege raised issues such as: the meaning of referenced expressions, the truth value of a proposition, the structure of propositions, etc. Frege was a logician interested in the logical foundation of mathematics. So the philosophy of language arises with a logician, it does not arise from a philosopher interested in language nor from a linguist with philosophical concerns.
A philosophical language is a language based on philosophical categories. MENTAL is a philosophical language based on philosophical categories, primal archetypes or universal semantic primitives.
