Concept predications and hierarchies in Aristotelian Organon: A philosophical ontology presented in terms of a software ontology

Abstract

Based on the two distinct Aristotelian fundamental predications, namely the essential predication being said of a subject and the accidental predication is in/ existing in a subject, I attempt to shed light on the several types of predication relations met in the Aristotelian Organon and to construct an overall conceptual map including the various relations mentioned in the Aristotelian text. This scheme includes [1] the implicit category tree of classified concepts in terms of genera and species, where a subject-member of a lower class conveys the feature-member of an upper class, as the lower class is a subset of the upper class, [2] ideas predicated of ideas, where the predicate-idea is contained as a feature in the subject-idea. The ideal software environment for the representation of hierarchical trees and custom-defined relationships is the Protégé OWL (Ontology Web Language) equipped with powerful visual tools for the display and extraction of the entire or partial diagrams.

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