Properties as Individuals in Formal Ontology
Nino B. Cocchiarella · Noûs · 1972
Russell's supposed paradox of predication has occasionally been cited as a source for lessons in ontology. So, for example, Grossmann in [6] has argued that one of the lessons of Russell's paradox is that there are no complex properties. A recent reevaluation of the supposed paradox, however, has led me to the conclusion that there is no paradox (cf. [3]). And of course where there is no paradox, there are no lessons of paradox. There may, however, be lessons of non-paradox, especially if instead of contradiction what results is a highly instructive ontological oddity. In what follows I shall briefly review the considerations that led me to conclude that there is no paradox but instead only this ontological oddity with instructive lessons of its own, relative of course to the ontological framework within which it occurs. I shall then briefly consider several ways of responding to this oddity, where each response presupposes an alternative ontological framework relative to which the response accounts for the oddity by either showing it to rest on an ontological error, as with Grossmann's response, or by mitigating its effect through what purports to be a deeper or wider framework than the original one in which the oddity occurs.