![]() This theory of course entails that the qualities of the bread and wine are real entities distinct from their substances.” But the accidents of the bread and wine remain (without inhering in the newly present body and blood of Christ, or in any other substance). ![]() That theory holds that at the moment of consecration the bread and wine of the sacrament cease to exist and are replaced by the body and blood of Christ. Ockham does not explicitly address this question, but it is tempting to suppose the answer lies in the doctrine of the Eucharist interpreted according to the theory of transubstantiation. None of the richness of the world would be lost, only the illusion that we need distinct entities for all the different claims we want to make about things. Substances would be qualified, quantified, related in different ways, would variously act and be acted upon, and so on, but there would be only substances. In that case, we would end up with a single ontological category: ![]() Why is it not just as legitimate to say things are really ‘qualified’ but there are no qualities – things are really white or red, hot or cold, although there is no whiteness or redness, no heat or cold as a distinct accidental entity in the category of quality? If other categories can be eliminated without denying any of the ways things really are, why not quality too? “He allows individual qualities, for example there are as many whitenesses as there are white things (although there is no universal whiteness). Ockham ‘eliminates’ all the Aristotelian categories in this way – except for substance and quality.” Things really act, but there are no actions things are really related without relations (except for the few exceptional cases required by theology). “Ockham is prepared to say things really act or are acted on, are really related to one another, and so on, but he does not think the truth of these statements requires us to postulate real entities in the categories of action, passion, or relation. ![]() The following OntoUML diagram presents the main classes of Ockham’s ontology: Likewise, if both are black, or hot, they are similar without anything else added.“ Thus, from the very fact that Socrates is white and Plato is white, Socrates is similar to Plato and conversely. His primary claim is that all our scientific absolute and connotative terms signify nothing but singular substances or qualities.įor example, in Summa of Logic, he presents his razor eliminating the relational entity “similarity” in the following way: “for the truth of ‘Socrates is similar to Plato’, it is required that Socrates have some quality and that Plato have a quality of the same species.His ontology consists of individual substances, individual accidents in the category of quality and a minimal number of relations necessary to explain some theological concepts.William Ockham (1285-1349 AD) in the works Summa of Logic and the Quodlibets uses his “razor” (see ) on Aristotle’s ten categories (substance quantity quality relatives somewhere sometime being in a position having acting and being acted upon, see ), reducing them to a number of only three:
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