Entity

This article is about the broad concept of an entity. For other uses, see Entity (disambiguation).

An entity is something that exists as itself. It does not need to be of material existence. In particular, abstractions and legal fictions are usually regarded as entities. In general, there is also no presumption that an entity is animate, or present. The verb tense of this form is to 'entitize' - meaning to convert into an entity; to perceive as tangible or alive.

The term is broad in scope and may refer to animals; natural features such as mountains; inanimate objects such as tables; numbers or sets as symbols written on a paper; human contrivances such as laws, corporations and academic disciplines; or supernatural beings such as gods and spirits.

The adjectival form is entitative.

Definition

An entity is something that exists, such as a material object or living being. Entities are often regarded as having separate or independent existence, each with its own identity and distinct from other entities. In its broadest sense, the concept encompasses all identifiable items. This can include inanimate everyday objects, people, events, places, ideas, relations, facts, universal entities such as the color red, abstract objects such as the number 7, and collective entities such as sets. Accordingly, the concept entity is often treated as the broadest category of being, covering everything that is or could be. Some definitions provide narrower characterizations that require additional conditions, for example, that entities are stable, have clear boundaries, are indivisible, or serve as distinct objects that can be counted.

Entities contrast with nonentities, although it is controversial to what this concept applies. Suggested examples of nonentities include voids, emptiness, nothingness, and absences, such as holes or shadows. Similarly, philosophers debate whether nonexistent objects, such as the winged horse Pegasus, should be regarded as entities. Another set of challenges comes from parts or aspects of reality that are not clearly identifiable, for example because they lack exact boundaries or cannot be precisely distinguished from other entities. The terms reification and hypostatization can denote the practice of treating a nonentity as if it were an entity.

The English word entity has its roots in the Latin term ens, meaning 'being'. It gave rise to the Latin word entitas and was subsequently adopted into French as the term entité. The French word was borrowed into English in the 16th century, with the earliest known use in 1596 in a work by Thomas Bell.

Related concepts

The terms object, thing, and being are commonly used as synonyms of entity. However, they carry distinct connotations and are sometimes used differently.

An object is something toward which thought, perception, or intention is directed. In a broad sense, objects encompass all items apprehended, imagined, or referred to, including not only physical objects but also fictional ones without real counterparts, such as unicorns. In a narrower sense, the term is sometimes limited to material entities that can be perceived by the senses. A common distinction contrasts objects with subjects. It holds that while objects are grasped in consciousness, they do not possess it: an object is an it that can appear in someone's consciousness, whereas a subject is a self that acts as a center of consciousness.

Understood broadly, a thing is any item whose existence is acknowledged, including but not limited to material bodies. In this regard, the word thing is the broadest countable noun, reflecting the slogan "everything is a thing". However, the term is also used in more restricted ways to denote an individual entity in contrast to the properties it has or the relations it bears to other things. In this sense, a car is a thing, whereas its shape, color, and weight are features or aspects rather than things in their own right. In everyday discourse, the term thing is often used for inanimate objects, such as rocks or chairs, contrasting with living creatures, such as humans and other animals.

When used as a countable noun, the expression a being overlaps with that of an entity, denoting something that exists. However, being is also used as an uncountable noun, referring to the fact that something is, to existence as such, or to the totality of reality. The distinction between being and beings played a central role in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, who termed it the ontological difference. He argued that being constitutes the background context that makes all individual beings intelligible, insisting that being is not itself an individual being. Traditionally, being is contrasted with becoming. In this sense, being denotes stable or permanent aspects of reality, whereas becoming covers changes and processes.

Types

Many types of entities are discussed in the academic discourse. Different classifications may overlap, and it is controversial whether all proposed categories represent genuine entities.

Particular and universal

Particulars are individual entities: they are unique and non-repeatable. They contrast with universals, which are general and repeatable entities. For example, the philosopher Socrates, the Great Pyramid of Giza, and the planet Mars are particular entities, whereas the color blue, the shape of a square, and the property of being a flower are universal entities. A key difference is that each particular exists as an individual instance, whereas universals can have multiple instances and be present in several locations at the same time. Universals can express repeatable aspects of particulars. For example, the particulars Mars and Jupiter are both characterized by the universal of being a planet. According to a common view, particulars instantiate universals but are not themselves instantiated by anything else.

Universals are frequently understood in terms of properties and relations. A property is an entity that expresses a quality or feature of another entity. For example, the property being-tall is a feature of the Empire State Building. A relation is an entity that expresses how several things stand to each other. For instance, the relation being-taller-than is an entity that characterizes how the Empire State Building stands to the White House. Although properties are typically treated as universal entities that can have multiple instances, an alternative approach treats them as particulars, called tropes, regarding each individual instance as a separate entity.

Various metaphysical debates address the reality of universals, asking whether they exist as genuine entities. Platonic realists assert that universals can exist independently of particulars, while moderate realists hold that they exist only when instantiated by particulars. Conceptualists maintain that universals exist only in the minds of individuals as conceptual entities but not in mind-independent reality, whereas nominalists deny that universals in either form are real.

Concrete and abstract

Concrete entities are things that exist in space and time. They can undergo changes, causally interact with other entities, and be perceived or measured, either directly or indirectly. They contrast with abstract entities, which have no physical location or temporal duration. Accordingly, abstract entities do not undergo changes, do not causally interact with other entities, and are not accessible to sensory perception. For example, a tree, a house, and an earthquake are concrete entities, whereas the number 7, the empty set, and the proposition "snow is white" are abstract entities.

Concrete entities can be distinguished by the field of inquiry that studies them, including physical, biological, psychological, and social entities, such as a rock, a bird, an idea, and a financial institution, respectively. According to one view, the different domains belong to distinct levels of reality. This outlook suggests that higher-level entities emerge from lower-level entities, depend on them, and show new forms of organization, as in the claim that mental states emerge from physical brains.

While the existence of concrete entities is widely accepted, it is controversial whether abstract entities are genuine constituents of reality. Proponents argue that abstract entities are indispensable to scientific descriptions of the world and that many domains of discourse refer to them as if they were distinct entities. Opponents question in what sense entities outside spacetime and without causal relationships could exist, and how humans, who are themselves concrete entities, could know about them.

Independent and dependent

Independent entities exist on their own without relying on other entities. They contrast with dependent entities, which require other entities or are grounded in them. Philosophical discussions concern whether there are dependent entities in addition to independent ones, and which entities fall under each category. For example, one view identifies independent entities with substances, conceived as particulars that underlie and support properties and relations. On this view, substantial entities such as a tomato are independent, whereas their features are dependent, such as the idea that the redness of a tomato depends on the tomato because it inheres in the tomato. A different suggestion holds that macroscopic objects encountered in everyday life, such as chairs, are dependent on the microscopic objects, such as the elementary particles that constitute them.

The contrast between independent and dependent entities overlaps with that between major and minor entities. Major entities are regarded as having a more substantial or robust existence, such as material objects and events. They contrast with minor entities, which are considered subordinate in some sense, such as surfaces, holes, and shadows. For example, the surface of an apple has one spatial dimension less than the apple and cannot exist without the apple, making it less substantial. Similarly, a hole in a cheese or a shadow cast by a person is regarded as less robust since it involves an absence of matter or light rather than a positive physical presence. Absences are also called negative entities, and it is controversial whether they should be regarded as genuine but dependent entities or as nonentities.

Possible, actual, and necessary

Possible entities, or possibilia, are things that could exist. For example, Santa Claus, understood as a jolly, white-bearded inhabitant of the North Pole, is a possible entity. Actual entities are entities that actually exist, such as King Charles III. In the broadest sense, every actual entity is also a possible entity since actual existence implies possible existence. However, the term possible entity is often used more narrowly to refer to merely possible entities, which lack actual existence. Necessary entities are actual entities that not only exist but could not have failed to exist, making their existence inevitable. It is controversial whether there are any necessary entities and, if so, which entities qualify as necessary. Suggested examples include abstract entities and God. Actual entities that are not necessary are called contingent entities: they exist but could have failed to exist.

The distinction between possible, actual, and necessary entities is often discussed in terms of possible worlds—ways how things could have been. According to this view, an entity is possible if it exists in at least one possible world, actual if it exists in the actual world, and necessary if it exists in all possible worlds.

Various metaphysical theories address the reality of possible entities. Actualism is the view that only actual entities are genuine objects. According to this view, there are no non-actual possible entities, for example, because statements about possible entities are analyzed as claims about actual things, such as actual fictions or ideas. Possibilism, by contrast, regards non-actual possible entities as genuine entities, as real as actual ones. Some discussions also address the reality or non-reality of impossible entities, which are proposed entities that could not exist because they have contradictory features, such as a round square.

Others

The contrast between observable and unobservable entities pertains to the empirical sciences. Observable entities are things that humans can directly perceive under the right circumstances, such as cats and traffic lights. They contrast with unobservable or theoretical entities, such as electrons and wave functions, which cannot be directly perceived. Scientists often posit unobservable entities in their theories to explain why observable phenomena occur or how they behave. It is controversial whether unobservable entities should be regarded as genuine constituents of reality. Scientific realism holds that the best scientific theories provide an accurate description of reality and are either exactly or at least approximately true. Entity realism, a specific form of scientific realism, holds that only certain unobservable entities are real: those with which scientists can causally interact to produce effects through experimental manipulation. Instrumentalism is a different view that opposes scientific realism. It holds that scientific theories are tools for making predictions about observable reality without commitments to the existence of unobservable entities.

Fictional entities are things that are represented in works of fiction. For example, the hobbit Frodo is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings; a flying carpet is a fictional object in the folktales One Thousand and One Nights; and Tatooine is a fictional place in the Star Wars saga. Fictional entities are closely related to intentional objects—entities towards which mental states, such as thoughts or perceptions, are directed. For instance, when a person thinks about Bigfoot then Bigfoot is the intentional object of the thought. Similarly, conceptual entities are mental constructions apprehended by reason and manipulated in cognitive processes, such as the mental representation of a total additional velocity introduced by a physicist to analyze how the motion of a body changes.

Facts are entities that express what is the case, often understood as correlates of true statements. They are typically analyzed as complex entities with an internal structure reflecting the objects, properties, and relations they involve. According to this view, the fact "the Moon is round" is made up of the object the Moon and the property roundness. Events are entities that occur in time, such as the first Moon landing.

In philosophy

Main article: Ontology

Ontology is the study of concepts of existence, and of recognition of entities. The words ontic and entity are derived respectively from the ancient Greek and Latin present participles that mean "being".

In an ontic inquiry... one asks about the properties or the physical relations and structures peculiar to some entity – in the pen's case, for example, we might make the following ontic observations about it: it is black, full of blue ink, and sitting on top of my desk.

In law, politics, economics, accounting

Main articles: Legal person and Polity

In law, a legal entity is an entity that is capable of bearing legal rights and obligations, such as a natural person or an artificial person (e.g. business entity or a corporate entity).

In politics, entity is used as term for territorial divisions of some countries (e.g. Bosnia and Herzegovina).

In economics, economic entity is one of the assumptions made in generally accepted accounting principles. Almost any type of organization or unit in society can be an economic entity.

In accounting, the entity concept is the concept that a business or an organization and its owners are treated as two separate parties.

In medicine

Main article: Medicine

In medicine, a disease entity is an illness due to a particular definite cause or to a specific pathological process. While a disease entity is not defined by a syndrome, it may or may not be manifest in one or more particular syndromes.

In computer science

Further information: Entity–relationship model and Entity–control–boundary

In computer science, an entity is an object that has an identity, which is independent of the changes of its attributes. It represents long-lived information relevant for the users and is usually stored in a database.

See also

• Digital identity
• Elementary entity
• Entity–relationship model
• Entity–control–boundary
• Entity realism, a form of scientific realism
• Entitativity
• Everything
• Html entity
• Non-physical entity
• Object (philosophy)
• Circular reference

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External links

• Media related to Entities at Wikimedia Commons
• Quotations related to Entity at Wikiquote