The Review of Metaphysics

Volume 69, Issue 4, June 2016

Owen Goldin
Pages 687-707

Aristotle, the Pythagoreans, and Structural Realism

Aristotle’s main objection to Pythagorean number ontology is that it posits as a basic subject what can exist only as inherent in a subject. The author then shows how contemporary structural realists posit an ontology much like that of Aristotle’s Pythagoreans. Both take the objects of knowledge to be structure, not the subject of structure. He discusses both how pancomputationalists such as Edward Fredkin approach the Pythagorean account insofar as on their account all reality can in principle be expressed as one (very big) number, made up of discrete units, and even more moderate varieties of structural realism, like that of Floridi, share with pancomputationalism the aspect of “Pythagorean” ontology that Aristotle finds so objectionable: positing structure or form with no substrate. He concludes by arguing that Aristotle himself is drawn to something close or (identical) to a structural realist ontology in Metaphysics 7.3.

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