Metaphysics

Ibn Sina (Avicenna 980-1037 AD) presents his metaphysical framework in the treatise Ilāhiyyāt of Kitāb al-Šifā’ (known in English as the Metaphysics of the Book of the Healing or the Book of the Cure), in which:

Existence is separated being (a thing), the latter is named quiddity (or essence). We can comprehend the quiddity of a thing without knowing anything about its existence.
Things can be material singulars – sensibles, externals to the human, and concepts in the human mind. The corresponding mental and external existence is on the par for Ibn Sina.
A thing is a composition of existence and quiddity.
The necessary existent is it’s own existence, and as such is necessary; all the other things are contingent.

as presented in the OntoUML diagram below:

Class	Description	Relations
Necessary Existent	“the Necessary Existent has no essence or no quiddity that differs from existence (anniyya) and is therefore beyond essence. The first attribute of the Principle is ‘that It is and that It is existent’ (inn wa-mawǧūd): existence is not what It ‘has’: It simply is […] absolutely necessary and simply coincides with, or more exactly, is Its own existence… The Necessary Existent has no cause. It has relations in so far as it is existent. […] the ‘thing’ in question is only necessary existence, it has no quiddity (or no quiddity beyond its existence) and is not, properly speaking, a “thing” (Bertolacci 2012a): in this case, in fact, what is revealed is the existence of the Necessary Principle, which is pure existence on condition of not and can therefore be conceived beyond essence and thingness.” [3] Necessary Existent is also referred asFirst Principle.	is its own Existence
Existence	Existence (al-mawǧūd) can be: mental, external, and the existence of the Necessarry Existent. Existence and being (a thing) are distinct. “Avicenna posits a distinction between the being of the thing and its existence. Clearly, then, the fundamental and primary character of being does not imply simplicity: to exist means to be a given entity in the world or—as Avicenna also uses it—a ‘thing’. The existence of something must thus be distinguished from its being what it is.” [3]
Mental Existence	“everything that is conceived of or simply mentally represented exists and hence has at least a mental existence (which means either intellectual or imaginary or estimative). Indeed, the existent as such is immaterial and only non-existence in the absolute sense does (obviously) not exist, since it cannot be either conceived or discussed” (Lizzini, 2019)	descendant of Existence; characterizes Concept
External Existence	External existence (fī l-ʿayān) is existence in concrete material singulars.	descendant of Existence; characterizes MaterialSingular
Quiddity	Quiddity (māhiyya), essence or thingness is independent of existence, and necessarily accompanies the thing, be it particular or universal. “the quiddity or essence of a thing is not in its turn a thing” with its own mental existence so that, once added to (real) existence, it could become a real thing… What Avicenna states by distinguishing quiddity and existence is that quiddity does not coincide with its existence: neither with its mental existence, which is related but does not correspond to universality, nor with its concrete existence (fī l-ʿayān), which implies individuality… The indifference of quiddity to any kind of existence and determination truly establishes the correspondence between reality and knowledge: it is exactly because quiddity is in itself neither real nor mental that it can be present both in reality and in the mind, accompanied by the determinations of either individuality or universality: in concrete reality there is x in its particular existence, while in the mind there is x with its possible multiple predication. In this respect, the consideration of quiddity in itself—which corresponds to the thing in itself as expressed by its definition—transcends both levels of existence (external and mental) and in one passage is equated to the “divine existence” (wuǧūd ilāhī) of something that depends on God’s providence.” [3] E.g. “horseness” (which is common in the concept of the horse, and in Tucker, the horse).	is shared part of the Thing, Concept and MaterialSingular
Thing	“In every thing the distinction between what the thing is and the fact that it is is inevitable. Existence can consequently be said to be external to essence, so that an existing thing, whose essence or quiddity is possible, can be said to be composed of essence and existence. […] In order to ask what a thing is, one cannot avoid referring to being, which is exactly what allows us to conceive all things, whether they are sensible, imaginary or intelligible, as existent. [3]	Has Existence
Concept	Concept is the understood quiddity of things.	Exclusive part of Mind
Universal	Universal is the concept in the mind related to a material singular: “the one concept is related by the mind to many, and in this way it is universal”. [3] “And the soul itself also conceptualizes another universal which unites this form with another one in this soul or in another soul; but all of them, insofar as they are in the soul, have a single definition.” [5] E.g: “horse”	MentalExistence and Quiddity are parts of it
FictionalBeing	“the natures or quiddities of even such fictional beings as phoenixes and unicorns do indeed exist, although they have only a mental, and not a concrete, mode of existence” [4]	Is subkind of Concept
MaterialSingular	Material singulars are are concrete, external things. E.g. horses like: Lilly, Tucker, Spirit	Is descendant of Thing
Human	A human person	Subkind of MaterialSingular
Mind	A human mind	exclusive part of Human; subkind of MaterialSingular
Modality	Modality “explains the relation that what exists has to its own existence: an existent [thing] can be either necessary in itself (ḍarūrī; wāǧib: it is then also necessarily one) or possible (mumkin, contingency) in itself” [3] – this is the case of every existent with the exception of the Necessary Existent.
Necessity	Necessity	characterizes NecessaryExistent; descendant of Modality
Contingency	Contingency or Possibility characterizes the Thing: it is possible for the quiddity of the thing to gain existence and also not.	characterizes Thing; descendant of Modality

Sources

All citations from: Lizzini, Olga, “Ibn Sina’s Metaphysics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
Raja Bahlul, “Avicenna and the Problem of Universals”, Philosophy & Theology 21

First published: 01/08/2019
Updated: 01/01/2021 added Human, Mind, Concept, FictionalBeing

Description/Packag	Description	Relations
Predicables (Universals)	Porphyry “proceeds not by talking about the ten Aristotelian categories directly, but instead by discussing five words or notions that he says are important for a clear understanding of the Categories. These five notions are: genus, difference, species, property and accident. They came to be known as the five “predicables” — praedicabilia, not to be confused with the predicaments, which are the ten Aristotelian categories. Although there is considerable doubt about it, people sometimes say that Porphyry’s list of five predicables is based on a similar list of four items that Aristotle presents in his Topics I.4 101b23–25, and again in more detail in Topics I.5 101b37–102b26. There Aristotle discusses: definition, property, genus and accident. Porphyry’s list differs from Aristotle’s by adding difference, which Aristotle doesn’t have on his list, and by substituting species for definition.”
Genus	“The genus is the part of the real definition that answers the broad question What is it? What is man? Man is an animal. Now in Latin, the interrogative pronoun ‘What?’ is ‘quid’. And so the genus of a thing is said to be predicated “in quid” of that thing. The phrase ‘in quid’ is a kind of horribly abbreviated way of saying “with respect to what the thing is,” or “in a way that answers the question ‘What is it’” — or in effect, “in a way that gives you the genus.”	is in a recursive association with itself; each level splits the superior level in 2 or more, based on the attributes marked in Difference
Difference	“On the other hand, the difference is the part of the real definition that answers the question What kind of a _ is it?, where the pause is filled in with the genus. What is man? Man is an animal. What kind of animal? A rational one. In Latin, the interrogative pronoun ‘What kind of?’ or ‘What manner of?’ is ‘quale’. And so the difference of a thing is said to be predicated of it not in quid, but rather in quale.”	defines Species;
Species	“Man is a most specific species. Below man there are only individual men, not yet lower species. What this means, of course, is that the differences among individual men are not essential differences but accidental ones. If they were essential differences, then we would have lower species after all.”	relates to itself recursively
Property	“In Aristotle and in Porphyry, and in medieval metaphysical discussions generally, the word ‘property’ means, first of all, something that is not essential to a thing (genus, difference and species are the essential predicables), but that nevertheless belongs to it and to it alone. (So exclusive ownership is only part of the story.) Now we’re not talking primarily about individuals here. In fact, Porphyry has very little to say about individuals at all in the Isagoge. We’re talking at the level of genera and species. And when we say something is a property of a certain species, we mean that it belongs to exactly the things in that species, and to nothing else. So we say, for instance, that it is a property of the species man to be risible — that is, to have the ability to laugh.”	characterizes Species
Accident	“the differences among individuals are accidental ones, not essential ones. […] Accident is what comes and goes without the destruction of the substrate.”	characterizes Individual
Individual	“Below man [as species] there are only individual men, not yet lower species. What this means, of course, is that the differences among individual men are not essential differences but accidental ones.”	subkind of Species

Description/Packag

Description

Relations

Predicables (Universals)

Porphyry “proceeds not by talking about the ten Aristotelian categories directly, but instead by discussing five words or notions that he says are important for a clear understanding of the Categories. These five notions are: genus, difference, species, property and accident.
They came to be known as the five “predicables” — praedicabilia, not to be confused with the predicaments, which are the ten Aristotelian categories.
Although there is considerable doubt about it, people sometimes say that Porphyry’s list of five predicables is based on a similar list of four items that Aristotle presents in his Topics I.4 101b23–25, and again in more detail in Topics I.5 101b37–102b26. There Aristotle discusses: definition, property, genus and accident.
Porphyry’s list differs from Aristotle’s by adding difference, which Aristotle doesn’t have on his list, and by substituting species for definition.”

Genus

“The genus is the part of the real definition that answers the broad question What is it? What is man? Man is an animal. Now in Latin, the interrogative pronoun ‘What?’ is ‘quid’. And so the genus of a thing is said to be predicated “in quid” of that thing. The phrase ‘in quid’ is a kind of horribly abbreviated way of saying “with respect to what the thing is,” or “in a way that answers the question ‘What is it’” — or in effect, “in a way that gives you the genus.”

is in a recursive association with itself; each level splits the superior level in 2 or more, based on the attributes marked in Difference

Difference

“On the other hand, the difference is the part of the real definition that answers the question What kind of a _ is it?, where the pause is filled in with the genus. What is man? Man is an animal. What kind of animal? A rational one. In Latin, the interrogative pronoun ‘What kind of?’ or ‘What manner of?’ is ‘quale’. And so the difference of a thing is said to be predicated of it not in quid, but rather in quale.”

defines Species;

Species

“Man is a most specific species. Below man there are only individual men, not yet lower species. What this means, of course, is that the differences among individual men are not essential differences but accidental ones. If they were essential differences, then we would have lower species after all.”

relates to itself recursively

Property

“In Aristotle and in Porphyry, and in medieval metaphysical discussions generally, the word ‘property’ means, first of all, something that is not essential to a thing (genus, difference and species are the essential predicables), but that nevertheless belongs to it and to it alone. (So exclusive ownership is only part of the story.) Now we’re not talking primarily about individuals here. In fact, Porphyry has very little to say about individuals at all in the Isagoge. We’re talking at the level of genera and species. And when we say something is a property of a certain species, we mean that it belongs to exactly the things in that species, and to nothing else. So we say, for instance, that it is a property of the species man to be risible — that is, to have the ability to laugh.”

characterizes Species

Accident

“the differences among individuals are accidental ones, not essential ones. […] Accident is what comes and goes without the destruction of the
substrate.”

characterizes Individual

Individual

“Below man [as species] there are only individual men, not yet lower species. What this means, of course, is that the differences among individual men are not essential differences but accidental ones.”

subkind of Species

Philosophy Models

Notes on philosophy presented in OntoUML, UML, OWL/BFO, OWL/GUFO diagrams and codes

[3.3.1] Ibn Sina’s Metaphysics

[2.5] Porphyry on Universals

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