This section argues in support of a tripartite ontology: the ontological genus Something includes not only bodies and incorporeals, but also a third class of entities that are neither corporeal nor incorporeal. These entities are products of thought that do not correspond to anything in the physical world, including idealized limits, mathematical entities, and creatures of fiction. For example, there are no geometrical (i.e. perfect) cones or pyramids in the physical world; nor are there any minutes or seconds in the world, or Fahrenheits, nor centaurs and giants. These entities are idealized in the sense that there are no such things or divisions in the world, but they are not therefore ideal in any Meinongian or Platonic sense that puts them in a separate realm. Rather, they are products of thought, and this remains a physicalist program that grounds its entities in body. To be Something that subsists according to thought (kat’ epinoian) is to be a social construct, something that is invented and takes on a public life of its own through the words and drawings that depict it, becoming Something about which we can say true and false things. For example, because we have invented and depicted them as we have, it is true that centaurs are half horse, false that pyramids have five sides, and true that there are sixty seconds in a minute. Thus what is neither corporeal nor incorporeal is Something in a univocal sense, according to thought (kat’ epinoian), underwriting the posit of a tripartite ontology. Chapter 13 takes up the case of limits (both geometrical limits and the limits of the continuum), and Chapter 14 of creatures of fiction, as attested in Seneca’s Epistle 58.
The Unity of Stoic Metaphysics: Everything is Something
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