- This pseudo-Paper is intended as the mechanism to record time spent on the Note 'Sortals1' during my Thesis research, as from 2011.
- For the actual time recorded, click on "Paper Statistics" above.
Write-up2 (as at 06/07/2023 00:43:12): Sortals
Plug Note3
- Thesis Text:
- Using Howard Robinson’s terminology ("Robinson (Howard) - Dualism (Stanford)"), the Ultimate Sort of a thing is that property4 without which the thing ceases to exist.
- However, an individual falling under a Phase Sortal5 can lose the property that defines the phase without ceasing to exist.
- Ultimate Sorts are presumably the same as Baker6’s Primary Kinds7, though I can’t remember if she has an analogue of a Phase Sortal.
- The standard example is of a Human Being8 (as the Ultimate Sort) and Child (as a Phase Sortal).
- So, is personhood9 an attribute of a human being, like “childhood”, that a human being can either possess or lack, or are persons ontologically10 separate from “their” human beings?
- Wiggins11 argues that we can’t talk of the persistence conditions12 of anything until we know what sort it is.
- Olson13 claims that it’s futile to talk of the persistence conditions of persons14 per se – if human beings, God and angels are all persons – since their persistence conditions (assuming the existence of God and angels, for the sake of the argument) are completely different. This lack of a common set of persistence conditions would indicate that Person15 is not an Ultimate Sort.
Further Remarks:
- I discuss the sorts that we may fall under in the Note on “What are We16”.
References
- Relevant Works cited above:
- "Robinson (Howard) - Dualism (Stanford)", 2003-11, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read
- For a Page of Links17 to this Note, Click here.
- Works on this topic that I’ve actually read18, include the following:-
- General:
- "Baillie (James) - Identity, Survival, and Sortal Concepts", 1990, Internal PDF Link
- "Baillie (James) - What Am I?", 1993, Write-Up Note19, Footnote20
- "Baur (Michael) - Review of 'Kinds of Being: A Study of Individuation, Identity and the Logic of Sortal Terms' by E. J. Lowe", 1992, Internal PDF Link
- "Burke (Michael) - Preserving the Principle of One Object to a Place: A Novel Account of the Relations Amongst Objects, Sorts, Sortals, and Persistence Conditions", 1997, Internal PDF Link
- "Hirsch (Eli) - Sortals", 1982
- "Noonan (Harold) - Review of 'Kinds of Being: A Study of Individuation, Identity and the Logic of Sortal Terms' by E. J. Lowe", 1991, Internal PDF Link
- "Olson (Eric) - Persistence", 1999
- "Robinson (Howard) - Dualism (Stanford)", 2003-11, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link
- "Simons (Peter) - Review of 'Kinds of Being: A Study of Individuation, Identity and the Logic of Sortal Terms' by E. J. Lowe", 1992, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
- "Wilson (Jack) - Beyond Horses and Oak Trees: A New Theory of Individuation for Living Entities", 1999, Annotations
- "Wilson (Jack) - Identity and Sortals: Why Relative Identity Is Self-Contradictory", 1999, Annotations
- A further reading list might start with:-
- General:
- "Ackermann (Robert) - Sortal Predicates and Confirmation", 1969, No Abstract, Internal PDF Link
- "Baldwin (Thomas) - Reviews: Sameness and Substance by David Wiggins; Objects and Identity by Harold Noonan", 1982, Internal PDF Link
- "Bennett (Daniel) - Essential Properties", 1969, Internal PDF Link
- "Bennett (Karen) - Spatio-Temporal Coincidence and the Grounding Problem", 2004, Annotations, Internal PDF Link, Read = 15%
- "Berglund (Stefan) - Identity and Reduction", 1995
- "Braddon-Mitchell (David) & Miller (Kristie) - Talking about a Universalist World", 2006, Internal PDF Link, Read = 3%
- "Brennan (Andrew) - Stages, Sortals, and Possible Worlds", 1988
- "Burke (Michael) - Dion, Theon, and the many-thinkers problem", 2004, Internal PDF Link
- "Campbell (John) - Sortals and the Binding Problem", 2006
- "Carter (William) - On Contingent Identity and Temporal Worms", 1982, Internal PDF Link
- "Cocchiarella (Nino) - On the Logic of Natural Kinds", 1976, Internal PDF Link
- "Feldman (Fred) - Sortal Predicates", 1973, Internal PDF Link, Read = 25%
- "Griffin (Nicholas) - Sortals", 1977
- "Hawley (Katherine) - Sheer Coincidence?", 2001
- "Hughes (Christopher) - Is a Thing Just the Sum of Its Parts", 1986, Internal PDF Link, Read = 11%
- "Linnebo (Oystein) - To Be Is to Be an F", 2005, Internal PDF Link
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Individuals, Sorts, and Instantiation", 2009
- "Lowe (E.J.) - Kinds of Being: Study of Individuation, Identity and the Logic of Sortal Terms", 1989, Book
- "Lowe (E.J.) - More Kinds of Being: A Further Study of Individuation, Identity and the Logic of Sortal Terms", 2015, Book, Read = 3%, Footnote21
- "Mackie (Penelope) - Sortal Concepts and Essential Properties", 1994, Internal PDF Link, Read = 5%
- "Noonan (Harold) - On the Notion of a Sortal Concept", 1978, No Abstract, Internal PDF Link
- "Noonan (Harold) - Sortal Concepts and Identity", 1978, No Abstract, Internal PDF Link
- "Noonan (Harold) - Sortal Concepts and Identity", 1980, Internal PDF Link, Read = 11%
- "Oderberg (David) - Coincidence Under a Sortal", 1996, Internal PDF Link
- "Rapp (Christof) - Runggaldier on the Cohabitation of Material Objects", 1998, No Abstract, Internal PDF Link
- "Runggaldier (Edmund) - Sortal Continuity of Material Things", 1998, Internal PDF Link, Read = 11%
- "Shoemaker (Sydney) - Realization, Micro-Realization, and Coincidence", 2003, Internal PDF Link
- "Smart (Brian) - Personal Identity in an Organized Parcel", 1973, Internal PDF Link
- "Stevenson (Leslie) - A formal theory of sortal quantification", 1975, Internal PDF Link
- "Stone (Jim) - Why Sortal Essentialism Cannot Solve Chrysippus's Puzzle", 2002, Internal PDF Link
- "Ujvari (Marta) - Cambridge Change and Sortal Essentialism", 2004, Internal PDF Link
- "Wallace (John R.) - Sortal Predicates and Quantification", 1965, No Abstract, Internal PDF Link
- "Wiggins (David) - Sameness and Substance Renewed", 2001, Book, Read = 16%, Footnote22
- "Wiggins (David) - Sortal Concepts: A Reply to Xu", 2016, Read = 22%
- "Wiggins (David) - Sortal Concepts: and the Characteristic Activity or Function or Purpose of their Compliants", 2001
- Pregnancy23:
- "Gomez-Lobo (Alfonso) - Sortals and Human Beginnings", 2004, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read = 5%
- For a list of Works that have been considered, but have missed the cut for inclusion in this Section of my Thesis, see the following:-
- Read: No items to list.
- Further Reading: No items to list.
- This is mostly a place-holder24.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 2:
- This is the write-up as it was when this Abstract was last output, with text as at the timestamp indicated (06/07/2023 00:43:12).
- Link to Latest Write-Up Note.
Footnote 20: Footnote 21: Footnote 22:
- No need to read Wiggins’s earlier work in detail?
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026