An ontological priority is an existential type of
relationship, between two or more things, that occurs whenever a thing
exists only because another thing exists; moreover, that existential relationship only becomes an ontological priority when at least one thing exists before (prior) another thing (posterior). Whereas if both things came to exist at the same time or bear no meaningful relationship (even if one came before the other), then an ontological priority cannot be said to occur. With
modal reasoning in mind, two of Aristotle's five ontological-priority formulations have it so that if the prior-existing thing were not to exist, then it would be
impossible for the posterior-existing thing to exist (in the same way that five is the sum of two plus two is false in all possible worlds). These would be among the strongest forms of reasoning in philosophy and logic, since they carry the same
certainty as
analytic truths, and the denial of any one of them would result in an
impossibility. A "thing" can be a physical object/
particular, idea/
universal, or a tone/
quality and can share an ontological/existential before-after relationship with any of the aforesaid three types of entities. But according to Aristotle, ideas/universals and tones/properties/qualities
cannot exist without a particular/physical object; this means that it is impossible, according to Aristotle, for any universal or quality to be ontological prior to any physical object (see his fifth formulation in the subsection below), which was made clear in his arguments against
Melissus, and his mentor,
Parmenides, among others, in his first book of Physics (e.g., 185a29–b5), as well as other books throughout his Physics and Metaphysics. If one suspected that the aforementioned
trichotomy (
viz., particulars, universals, and qualities) bears similarities to the type-token-tone framework of
C. S. Peirce, a theorist who was not born until about 2,161 years after Aristotle's time, one would be correct. Aristotle's implicit understanding of this trichotomy is already quite evident by his first book of Physics, for example; he makes references and distinctions between the three abundantly. But these similarities between Peirce's trichotomy and Aristotle's implicit one may or may not coincidental. However, "trichotomy" is not the best description for it, since they are interrelated and, in all cases imaginable, inseparable; for example, the property of being a rational or thinking thing and the idea of bipedalism are inseparable from a particular man. (It is true that some persons lose the capacity for thought or the ability to walk, but these are two of many examples of particulars and ideas that are
integrated with things, which helps understanding the perspective of how ontological priorities work.) For this reason, "triadic" would be a better term, since the three types of ontological phenomena are not mutually exclusive or an either/or. But triadic is a term that must be used with caution to avoid confusion with other ideas that also go by "triadic." In Aristotle's terminology, this triadic relationship would have much to do with what he calls
substance,
essence, and
accidental attributes, among other things, and according to Aristotle, universals (which are similar to his mentor Plato's
Forms/Ideas) cannot be prior to substance, and accidental features (which are qualities, tones, or properties), such as the quality of whiteness (the example Aristotle uses many times against Melissus and Parmenides), cannot exist without substance either. Bear in mind that C.S. Peirce was influenced by Aristotle and was well-aware of Aristotle's use of particulars, universals, and qualities.
Aristotle's Five Formulations of Ontological Priorities There are five ways, Aristotle states, that something is ontologically prior to something else, namely, time, reciprocity/non-reciprocity (or prior by nature), order, "esteem," and "truth-maker." (The last two are nicknames for the sake of keeping the two distinct from the other three Aristotle named.) The first of Aristotle's five formulations of priority is
time (which is the second easiest to understand in terms of its simplicity); for when one thinks about "priority," it is usually to do with the timewise sense in terms of "before" and "after" or Aristotle's prior and posterior. An example of a timewise ontological priority would be that of a father and son: Aristotle would say that the father is ontologically prior to the son because the father came to exist
temporally before the son.
Reciprocity and non-reciprocity of implied existence (or prior by
nature) are the second of Aristotle's formulations and are among the more difficult/complex of them all; the example Aristotle gives of a reciprocal/non-reciprocal ontological priority is through the example of numbers: In Aristotle's second-formulation example, the existence of two
implies (or "reciprocates the implication of") one's existence (and cannot fail to do so, unlike other formulations of the ontological priority, such as the fourth a little further below, "esteem"). But one
does not reciprocate (hence, Aristotle's use of "non-reciprocate") the existence of two. Two cannot exist without one because two is two by virtue of being two units of one; whereas,
by its own nature, one does not need two to exist because one is one unit, not two. Using the same reasoning between two and three, two would, then, become ontologically prior to three because three units reciprocally imply the existence of two units, but two does not reciprocate three (because it does not have three units), and so on. (If formulated properly, the second formulation is among the strongest forms of reasoning in philosophy.)
Order is Aristotle's third formulation of the ontological priority and is somewhat more or as complex as the previous one; a better way to understand this is the organization of something, be it science, speech, etc. Aristotle gives the example of grammar, wherein "the elements are prior to the syllables" (14b1–5). Alternatively, one may think of the similarities between this formulation and the
correspondence theory of truth. As a word of caution:
these ideas are not the same, but they have remarkable parallels. Furthermore, the Tarski truth-maker formula and the correspondence theory of truth roughly represent half of Aristotle's formulation; the other half goes above and beyond the truth-making and extends into ontology and the cause of a thing's existence, which is what makes it an ontological priority in the first place. Before going further, the fifth formulation, dubbed "truth-maker" for naming convenience, is the most complex of them all and is a variation of the second of Aristotle's formulations (reciprocity and non-reciprocity or by nature). But although its certainty is not as high as the second and third formulations, it is stronger than the fourth formulation and either on par with the first, i.e., priority by time, or slightly weaker in terms of certainty. Whatever problems the correspondence theory of truth and Tarski's formula have, the fifth formulation is likewise affected by their problems. Aristotle gives the example of his fifth formulation of a man and a proposition about him: In this example, Aristotle, makes it clear that
a physical object referenced by a statement cannot be posterior to it; this is related (but not quite equivalent) to Aristotle's belief, against Plato's
substantive and independently existing Forms/Ideas, that the only reality universals have is with their instantiations in particulars. For example, suppose the universal of bipedality (bipedalism) is instantiated in one thing and that thing is the only man who exists; if that man would be destroyed or lose that accidental feature of his being (i.e., being able to walk on two legs), then the universal would cease to be, at least, until another the universal is instantiated once more. This example illustrates Aristotle's belief that physical objects are ontologically prior to non-physical objects, as with his example of a man being prior to a statement about him. Thus, the statement "There is a man in this house" is true only if there is a man in the house. But the said statement cannot make it so that a man appears out of nowhere in the house so that the statement makes itself true, which is why Aristotle's fifth formulation treats physical objects and other elements that are decisive of
bivalent propositions' truth values as their
truth-maker, similar to Tarski's formula that "
x makes it true that
p": the man makes "there is a man" true. But it is worth noting, once again, Aristotle does not explicitly call them "truth-makers"; he strongly emphasizes that particulars determine the truth and falsity of statements, and not the other way around. An example of "other elements" can be a number in "Eight is a number," which is evidently not a statement about a particular but has a non-physical thing as its truth-maker, and this is an area that Aristotle makes no mention or distinctions of, regarding the difference between particulars from ideas/universals and properties/qualities/tones as truth-makers. Last, Aristotle explained that this formulation, which was dubbed "truth-maker" for clarity, is an expansion, or is a variation, of the second formulation of reciprocity and non-reciprocity of implied existence (or by nature); this is to say that, in Aristotle's man-statement example, "For there being a man reciprocates as to implication of existence with the true statement about it [him]" (14b10–15). But the statement itself is non-reciprocal in that respect; it cannot reciprocally imply the existence of a man on its own. That is, the statement "there is a man" does not necessarily mean a man exists, whereas a man implies the existence of the statement "there is a man." The similarities between the correspondence theory of truth and Aristotle's fifth formula is that both involve "matching" a statement with a truth-maker, a "correspondence, hence the theory's name; however, where the two ideas differ is that Aristotle holds truth-makers to be ontologically prior (in the fifth sense) to statements. Although formulation four is quite controversial, for the presumption (i.e., "thought") that persons are prior or posterior to each other is determined in part "by nature" (not to be confused with formulation two) is often exemplified in
racism, formulation five is quite controversial in philosophy because it leaves open-ended questions with respect to
anti-realism or
scepticism, depending on whether statements are
existentially caused by truth-makers (hence, anti-realism with respect to language) or whether statements are only caused to be true
per se, thus, opening up the door as to whether the correspondence between "there is a man" and the physical man was dreamt, imagined, hallucinated, mistaken, etc., hence, the problem of
realism-scepticism. == Contemporary Models of Ontological Priority ==