Abstract

Chisholm's concluding "table of categories" offers a device to report the book's contents. Entity, the overarching category, subdivides into the contingent and the necessary. The contingent is what can come to be and pass away. The necessary is what is not contingent. Subdivisions of the contingent are states and individuals. States, like the being-warm of a stone, exist only of something else. Individuals are contingents that are not states. Individuals divide into boundaries and substances. Boundaries are constituents that necessarily are constituents. Substance is a contingent individual that is not a boundary. These last two definitions allow Chisholm to understand a part as a substance, since a part is simply a constituent that is not a boundary. Chisholm acknowledges without explanation that in contrast to Aristotle's hylomorphic substances, his conception of substance allows for parts that are actual substances.