Abstract

Concepts from the philosophy of science such as the concepts of theoreticity and empirical content have been initially applied primarily in the field of scientific theories. In the following paper, while focussing on several exemplary cases, I shall investigate whether or not such categories can also be meaningfully applied to philosophical theories. Plato's metaphysics of forms stands in the foreground, and, for this philosophical theory, such an application appears to be meaningful. Having established this, we may further explore the question of the relative empirical content of Platonism as compared, say, with Aristotle's property-essentialism. The result of such an investigation is the following. Beginning with a supply of essences of properties, one can create a superstructure which would satisfy the central requirements of the metaphysics of forms ; to such an extent, Platonism, as compared to Aristotelianism, shows no surplus in content , or, to put it another way, Aristotle was not so far from Platonism as he himself believed