Topics Philosophy

Question Hi! I've read some philosophy stuff and I came to notice some kind of a "family resemblance" among some pairs of philosophical terms. You work with dichotomies such as type/token, concept/referents, set/members, whole/parts, object/appearances, property/instantiation, description/satisfaction... Well, you'll know many more of those than I do. My question is: do you have a general name for all those dichotomies? Thank you!

Accepted:
May 17, 2009

Comments

Apart from the fact that we have pairs each time, I'm not sure I see any other pattern here (even a "family resemblance").

But one thing is clear, the pairs are certainly not all "dichotomies" -- for a dichotomy divides things into two non-overlapping kinds. And while, if we believe Frege, objects ("referents") and concepts are different quite kinds of things, sets and their members can of course be the same kind of thing (since a set can have other sets as its members). Again, while we might suppose physical objects and their appearances are different kinds of things, wholes and their parts needn't be.