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The notion of a formal ontological relation is introduced and illustrated. Distinctions are drawn between various types of ontological dependence relations. The hierarchical character of systems of ontological categories is examined, together with the ontological status of such categories themselves. It is argued that neither ontological categories nor formal ontological relations, such as instantiation and characterization, should be regarded as elements of being, that is, as entities in their own right. A distinction is drawn between form and content in ontology, paralleling but distinct from a similar distinction commonly made in logic.

The distinction between properties and predicates, and how best to draw the distinction between universals and particulars are discussed. The notion that properties are most aptly characterized as ‘ways of being’ is defended. The need to distinguish between the formal ontological relations of instantiation and characterization is emphasized, as well as the need to distinguish both from that of exemplification. The advantages of immanent realism concerning universals over both transcendent realism and pure trope theory are explained, and two different notions of immanence are compared.

An account of temporal supervenience requires an account of temporal predication: a semantic account of the language in which facts about ordinary time are stated. For the detenser, the problem of temporal predication is essentially the task of giving an account of the semantic function of the modifier ‘at t’ in ‘a is F at t’. In the project of explaining temporal supervenience, an account of temporal predication functions as an analysis of ordinary temporal facts, which is required to build an explanatory bridge from these temporal facts to their spatiotemporal supervenience base. This chapter discusses various accounts of temporal predication that share the common feature that temporal supervenience cannot be explained on the basis of them, because these accounts allow no plausible explanatory link between the facts of persistence and change and any facts about spacetime.

Apart from formal operations, the interpretation of probability must be considered to use probability for statistical induction. The objective interpretation relates probability to long-term relative frequency, but even here there are diverse viewpoints such as those of von-Mises-Reichenbach, Fisher-Russell, and Kolmogorov-Cramer-Neyman. Further, under this interpretation, different solutions have been proposed for the instantiation problem. Subjective interpretation, which attaches probability to uncertain propositions, has an impersonal version due to Keynes-Jeffreys and a personal one due to Ramsey-deFinnetti. Although the axiomatics are common for the standard interpretations, evaluations are different and principles like independence, coherence, and exchangeability have varying importance for different types of probability. For certain statistical applications, approximate evaluation of probability also assumes importance.

This chapter investigates the properties of the Modern Hebrew (henceforth Hebrew) singular in its different indefinite and definite instantiations. It is here that much of this variation is best illustrated. The investigation of the singular will further serve as a springboard to discussing the properties of Hebrew cardinal determiners in general, the status of specifier cardinals vs. head cardinals, and the interaction, in Hebrew, between the assignment of range to _d and to _#.

Despite being polar opposites conceptually, the two most fundamental grammatical classes—noun and verb—show extensive parallelism. One similarity is that both divide into two major subclasses: count vs. mass for nouns, perfective vs. imperfective for verbs. Allowing for the intrinsic conceptual difference between nouns and verbs, these oppositions are precisely the same. The essential feature of count nouns and perfective verbs is that the profiled thing or process is construed as being bounded within the immediate scope in a particular cognitive domain: the domain of instantiation, characterized as the domain where instances of a type are primarily conceived as residing and are distinguished from one another by their locations. For nouns, the domain of instantiation varies, although space is prototypical; for verbs, the relevant domain is always time. Correlated with bounding are other distinguishing properties: internal heterogeneity (for count and perfective) vs. homogeneity (for mass and imperfective); contractibility (the property of masses and imperfectives whereby any subpart of an instance is itself an instance of its type); and expansibility (whereby combining two mass or imperfective instances yields a single, larger instance). Count vs. mass and perfective vs. imperfective are not rigid lexical distinctions, but are malleable owing to alternate construals as well as systematic patterns of extension. The conceptual characterization of perfective and imperfective verbs explains their contrasting behavior with respect to the English progressive and present tense.

Grounding is the grammaticized means of relating the thing profiled by a nominal, or the process profiled by a finite clause, to the ground (the speech event and its participants). As narrowly defined, grounding elements make very fundamental specifications of a basically epistemic nature. Moreover, they construe the ground subjectively—leaving it implicit as the offstage locus of conception—with the profiled entity being the focused, onstage object of conception. Whereas a lexical noun or verb merely names a type of thing or process, a full nominal or finite clause designates and grounds an instance of the type. An instance differs from a type by being thought of as having a particular location in the domain of instantiation, one that distinguishes it from other instances. The profiled instance is not necessarily an actual individual, but may also be a virtual (or fictive) entity confined to a special mental space. A nominal referent is generally identified through a combination of description, which selects a set of eligible candidates, and grounding, which directs attention to a member of this set. Two basic grounding strategies are deixis (abstract pointing) and quantification. The deictic grounding elements—demonstratives and the definite article—are definite: they single out the intended referent independently of the content of the clause containing the nominal. By contrast, with indefinite grounding elements the referent is initially virtual, pending its identification by means of the clausal content (in the case of indefinite articles), or is necessarily virtual (in the case of quantifiers). Clausal grounding is less concerned with identification than with existence, i.e. whether or not an event occurs. For English the basic grounding elements are tense and the modals. The tense opposition present vs. past is a special case of the more schematic value of immediate vs. non-immediate (with respect to the ground). The absence of a modal indicates that the speaker accepts the profiled occurrence as part of the speaker's conception of reality. The presence of a modal indicates that it does not yet have this status, but is still a target for realization. The choice of modal registers the impetus for speaker control, which occurs on either of two levels: effective vs. epistemic control (corresponding to root vs. epistemic modals).

This chapter offers an analysis of heads, arguments and adjuncts in terms of the symbolic relation between the syntactic unit and the semantic structure of the construction. The various syntactic tests proposed to identify syntactic heads are invalid or do not match, since they are manifestations of different phenomena. The chapter turns to semantic definitions, and revises the Cognitive Grammar definition to profile equivalence (the denotation of the head is equivalent to that of the construction as a whole). This definition does not differentiate between lexical and functional heads, but the grammaticalization and fusion of functional elements to the lexical heads implies a further condition that defines the lexical profile equivalent as the head. The argument-adjunct distinction behaves differently for form and meaning. Semantically, it is gradient, in terms of valence. Syntactically, the difference corresponds to whether the null instantiation of the unit is free (adjunct) or definite (argument).

This chapter deals with Nāgārjuna’s arguments concerning motion. Nāgārjuna’s two main arguments against motion (the property-absence argument and the property-duplication argument) are analyzed. The chapter argues that these were not meant to function as arguments establishing a particular view of the structure of time and space but are argument-templates concerned with properties and their instantiation. The prominent place of the investigation of motion in Nāgārjuna’s main work is to be explained by the fact that he regards ordinary motion as a sample case of the motion of the subject in transmigratory existence.

This chapter examines whether there are other essential truths about instantiation that can be extracted by analysis. It wants to know, that is, whether this most primitive of primitives can be subjected to analytic investigation. This is therefore a study in analytic metaphysics of the most blatant and unrepentant kind: What is the metaphysics of instantiation as revealed by a priori investigation of its conceptually revealed essence? It seeks to exemplify the general methodology advocated in this book in this particular case. The aim is to discover the nature of this aspect of the real by analyzing our concepts of it—thus engaging in the very kind of philosophy defended earlier.

While this chapter and Achinstein agree that an account of evidence should be objective, not subjective, and empirical, not a priori, Achinstein has argued that we may reach conflicting assessments of evidence. There are cases where little has been done to rule out threats of error to H—as severity requires—that Achinstein construes as good evidence for H. Conversely, data x may fail to count as evidence for H, according to Achinstein's epistemic probabilist, even where H has passed a severe test by dint of x. We may call this the “highly probed vs. highly probable” conflict. This chapter argues, based on Achinstein's most recent installment to this debate, that the severity account is more in sync with the Achinstein's goals and the special features of his brand of Bayesianism. This chapter also considers how Achinstein's defense of Mill's account of induction gives further grounds for viewing his objective epistemologist as a severe tester.

This chapter begins the discussion by defining object and event, since both are presupposed by the concepts of cause and intention. While an object is an item that is extended in time and space, and whose parts move together, an event is an object that instantiates a change, either in state, location, or both. The chapter first presents a discussion on cause. Two kinds of cause are distinguished: natural and arbitrary. While natural causality concerns the relation between a special, highly restricted set of events, arbitrary causality concerns the relation between events that are in no way special. These are explained further as well as the sense of causality and its genesis. The latter part of this chapter focuses its attention on intention, comparison of human and chimpanzee theory of mind, and instantiation and attribution of mental states.

This chapter argues that if the force of rules lie in the phenomenon of entrenchment generalization then it becomes necessary to locate the sources of entrenchment. It analyses the relationship among rules, rule-formulations, and meaning, and the relationship between an instantiation and its background justification. The chapter concludes that the meaning of a rule’s actual or potential formulation is more central to understanding its power than is commonly supposed and rule-based decision making exists when the instantiation is entrenched.

This chapter examines the correlation between the noun phrase and the verb phrase by focusing on the morphological and semantic properties of Case and agreement in a number of languages including Finnish, Scots Gaelic, and Eastern Armenian. Drawing on unpublished work of Jean-Roger Vergnaud, it argues that nominal and verbal phrases constitute a fixed set of primitive elements having a root, a category feature, and functional features of aspect and reference. The former functional feature is associated with an interpretation denoting “boundedness” while the latter is associated with an interpretation concerning “instantiation.” The chapter also discusses functional projections in the determiner phrase, checking relations and structural case, subjects, and Case marking in Eastern Armenian and Finnish.

This chapter elaborates on the relationship between an artwork and its “medium”—a relation of “working through.” For the most part, however, rather than leading to an investigation of the way in which the artwork works, the relation between the objectivity of the work and the work itself has often been treated as a question about the kind of thing an artwork is. Some have argued that a work cannot be identical with its material or objective instantiations, since any one of those instantiations of the work can be destroyed without the work ceasing to exist, while the existence of a different reading or performance of the work need not imply the existence of a different work. This approach tends toward an understanding that concerns the conditions of identity for artworks and their individuation.

This chapter has two main aims: to propose a new way of characterizing the problem of personal identity and to show that the metaphysical picture that underlies the author’s proposal has important implications for the 3D-4D debate. The discussion starts by spelling out several of the old ways of characterizing the problem of personal identity and pointing out what is wrong with each of them. Some metaphysical principles concerning property instantiations are also presented. This chapter shows that the author’s proposal avoids the difficulties facing the old ways. If the problem of personal identity is formulated in such a way as the author suggests in his proposal, then each of these problems can be handled fairly easily. Finally, the chapter shows an additional benefit to adopting the author’s proposal, namely, that several other important problems facing anyone who endorses a 3D view of persistence can all be resolved in a relatively straightforward manner.

This chapter applies dynamic field theory to word learning. The use of one-dimensional neural fields to represent labels and the combination of these with a feature dimension are introduced. These label-feature fields keep a record of prior feature-label associations via the memory trace mechanism. Using a robotic instantiation, the chapter show how individual features of objects, represented in multiple feature-label fields, can be bound via a shared label dimension. The result is a dynamic field model that can 1) learn robust novel label-object mappings after only a few presentations of the label and/or the object, 2) demonstrate emergent categories, 3) fill in missing information, and 4) distinguish between two different objects that share a value on one feature dimension but not others. An expanded version of this model includes two feature-label and two feature-space fields, which enable the model to overcome referential ambiguity by binding names to objects across a shared spatial dimension. This model can capture multiple word-learning behaviors, thus pointing to a critical innovation of this work—the integration of timescales.