Talk:Class (philosophy)

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nice link to natural kinds — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.17.64.90 (talk • contribs) 05:35, 20 February 2004 (UTC)

this article is quite unclear and in need of rewriting. it distinguishing between classes, types, and natural kinds based solely on linguistic convention, and that is strange. Nortexoid 05:29, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This article is fairly unclear, but in order to edit or re-write it a lot of explanation of Venn Diagramms and Predicate Logic would be in order. I don't have enough experience with Wikipedia to recommend expanding, deleting or merging it - but introducing those two topics of Logic would go a long way towards improving the article--Sam 03:59, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Universals and Classes

I don’t get why classes aren’t considered universals.

The ambiguity between classes, types, kinds, and universals is a serious problem for philosophy. However, the term class is most often used to denote a group of things, or in other words, to class something is to organize a set in a certain way. Universals aren't used in this manner, most often becuase the term universal is used as a property (see predicate logic).--Sam 03:59, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Sentence structure

The sentence structure is almost impossible in many sentences, f.ex.:

One might well think they are not actually different categories of being, but typically while both are treated as abstract objects classes are not usually treated as universals, whereas types usually are).

Is not comprehensible without already knowing the background and the facts. F.ex. does the phrase "One might well think" apply to the whole sentence or just the rest of the phrase up to next comma? The phrase "while both are treated as abstract objects" is in fact one interspersed subclause that references outside the sentence – to "classes differ from types" – which is an unnecessarily far distance dependency. Interspersed subclauses are mostly acceptable if being a content clause specifying a noun, but weirdies like the one in the text preferrably should be separate clauses, referred to in the running sentence by short noun phrased "that fact" or "this".

To untangle this messy language, reduction to single independent sentences is recommended. Those sentences should then be ordered sequentially so that all references, pronouns and short noun phrases, refer backwards, not forwards. Then the clauses can be rationalized by making subclauses, where this removes tedious nagging repetitions of the noun phrases used in the text. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 11:16, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Interpreting the contents of the article in computer science terms: a class is a set of item, while a type is an imaginary "prototypic exemplar" serving as a "pattern" for identification. According to philosophical language usage, that is. Ordinary language users rather regard type as now equivalent to "class", then as the set of "typical" qualities of that class. Philosophical language also use to confuse the set of items, a prototypical item and the set of qualities shared by all member items. Therefore the debate whether classes are "universals" or not. According to computer science, one should never confuse an item with the qualities of that item, making that debate moot. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 11:42, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

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