Ontological taxonomy

Having just come up with half of it, I present here a roughly comprehensive division of reality into genera and species.

Tree diagram of the ontology.

First, all things fall under the supreme genus (genus generalissimum), which I call being, and which is defined by intelligibility, i.e., the possibility of being understood by a universal concept. Logically speaking, some appearances fall under non-being, such as defects and vices, etc., but that is only to say that they cannot be understood through a given concept, so that, intelligibly, they are nothing.

What is intelligible can either be imagined by itself, or can only be imagined as part of a whole that includes other things, like how color cannot be imagined without surface. The former are called substances, and the latter accidents.

Substances

Substances, considered as collections of appearances, are either understood to be capable of containing the efficient cause of their motions, or not. If so, they are called living, or animate. If not, then non-living, inanimate.

Animate substances, if they can also contain the formal cause of their motions, are called sensitive, and if not, insensitive. The latter were called plants by Porphyry, but the name seems improper nowadays.

If a sensitive substance, or animal, can also contain the final cause of its motions, then it is rational; if not, irrational.

If a rational substance, by nature, always contains the final cause of its motions, then it is an incorruptible, or immortal, god; if not, then it is a human being, or man. So, the definition of a human being comes out to be, a rational, mortal animal. For ethical purposes, I have found it fitting to consider other features of human beings as we experience them; see the anthropology.

Accidents

Accidents, being defined by not being imaginable by themselves, are divided according to the reason they are not so imaginable.

If they cannot be imagined by themselves because they are proper sensibles, i.e., the proper object of one of the senses – such as color of sight, sound of hearing, and so on – then they are qualities.

They might not be imaginable by themselves because they are common sensibles, i.e., objects common to multiple senses, such as size, figure, etc. As Kant showed in the Transcendental Aesthetic, all such common sensibles reduce to the two pure forms of sense, viz., space and time.

Time, since it has only one dimension, constitutes a species by itself, which is the category called when by Aristotle.

Accidents belonging to the form of space may be divided into size, or quantity; the relative position of a subject, which may be called location, or where; and the relative position of the parts of a subject, which is posture.

An accident might not be imaginable by itself because it is a motion. If it is the beginning of a motion which ends in another substance, then it is an action; if it is the ending of a motion which comes from another substance, then it is a passion; if it is a motion which is already past, but still predicated of the substance, then it is a relation.[*]

Finally, an accident might actually be imaginable by itself, but in fact always imagined as part of another substance, due to an arbitrary convenience, or habit of mind. This tends to be the case with a person’s clothes, for instance; such accidents constitute the category called habiliment, or having.

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[*] Some relations given by Aristotle, such as double and half, really fall under quantity, since no quantity is truly absolute, but they all require comparison. Some relations given by other authors, however, such as parenthood and filiation, are really past motions, and fall under this category.↩