In this paper I show that a novel ontic reading of explanation, intending to capture the de re essential features of individuals, can support the qualitative view of individual essences. It is argued further that the putative harmful consequences of the Leibniz Principle and its converse for the qualitative view can be avoided, provided that individual essences are not construed in the style of the naïve bundle theory with set-theoretical identity- conditions. Adopting either the more sophisticated two-tier BT or, alternatively, (...) the neo-Aristotelian position of taking essences as natures in the Aristotelian sense, can help to evade these main charges against the qualitative view. The functional parallels with the alternative haecceitistic view of individuation and individual essence will also be considered. (shrink)

In recent metaphysics, the questions of whether fictional entities exist, what their nature is, and how to explain truths of statements such as “Sherlock Holmes lives at 221B Baker Street” and “Holmes was created by Arthur Conan Doyle” have been subject to much debate. The main aim of my thesis is to wrestle with key proponents of the abstractionist view that fictional entities are abstract objects that exist (van Inwagen 1977, 2018, Thomasson 1999 and Salmon 1998) as well as Walton’s (...) (1990) pretense view, which denies the existence of such entities. In the process, I propose modifications to these views to deal with problems they face and show how the modifications better account for the philosophical data. -/- Key abstractionists (van Inwagen 1977, Thomasson 1999) make a strict distinction between discourse within fiction, in which statements about literary characters cannot be literally true, and discourse about fiction, as it occurs in literary criticism, where statements about fictional characters can be literally true. Fictional objects are postulated to account for the truth of the latter. This runs into trouble because statements thought to be literally true are not literal. (Yagisawa 2001, Friend 2002) I provide a uniform analysis to account for the truth of statements involving fictional characters by appealing to a presupposition involving a metaphor in both contexts. The presupposition is that there is an x such that x is fictional; x is likened to a real person; and x is and ought to be treated/counted as a real person for all relevant intents and purposes. -/- More generally, I adopt Everett and Schroeder’s (2015) realist view that fictional characters are ideas constituted by mental representations. This, to me, better accounts for how fictional characters are created within the world’s causal nexus (unlike non-spatiotemporal entities in abstractionism), among other things. One key challenge they face is to explain how ideas can possess properties such as being a detective. I present a fine-grained version of their view, according to which the mental representations constituting fictional entities encode mind-dependent properties. Moreover, I explain how reference to such representations is possible, using Bencivenga’s (1983) Neo-Kantian view of reference and Karttunen’s (1976) view on discourse referents. Finally, I suggest that the identity of fictional characters is interest-relative. The constant, and sometimes radical, change of properties that, fictional characters can undergo is taken to be a consequence of the fact that unified mental representations are bundles of simpler mental representations. As change occurs, simpler representations are replaced by others. -/- A key theme that runs through the thesis is that neither fictionality nor pretense is relevant to the semantics of fictional sentences—a claim bolstered by Matravers’ (2014) arguments. Whether or not my account works, this claim, as well as the new philosophical data I bring up, are some of the challenges I pose to the heart of established views. (shrink)

Some claim that Composition as Identity (CI) entails Mereological Essentialism (ME). If this is right, then we have an effective modus tollens against CI: ME is clearly false, so CI is, too. Rather than deny the conditional, I will argue that a CI theorist should embrace ME. I endorse a theory of modal parts such that ordinary objects are spatially, temporally, and modally extended. Accepting modal parts is certainly beneficial to CI theorists, but it also provides elegant solutions to the (...) traditional puzzles of constitution, making it a competitive move in its own right. (shrink)

The bundle theory is a theory about the internal constitution of individuals. It asserts that individuals are entirely composed of universals. Typically, bundle theorists augment their theory with a constitutional approach to individuation entailing the thesis ‘identity of constituents is a sufficient ground for numerical identity’ (CIT). But then the bundle theory runs afoul of Black’s duplication case—a world containing two indiscernible spheres. Here I propose and defend a new version of the bundle theory that denies ‘CIT’, and which instead (...) conjoins it with a structural diversity thesis , according to which being separated by distance is a sufficient ground for numerical diversity. This version accommodates Black’s world as well as the three-spheres world —a world containing three indiscernible spheres, arranged as the vertices of an equilateral triangle. In this paper, I also criticize Rodriguez-Pereyra’s alternative attempt to defend the bundle theory against Black’s case and the case of the three-spheres world. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Peter Schulte’s “Grounding Nominalism” (Schulte, 2018), understood as the claim that first-order properties and relations are grounded in the concrete particulars which instantiate them. While Schulte offered reasons to think that this view is consistent, along with answers to a number of objections, a more straightforward argument for GN is still needed. I take on this task here, by discussing and defending what I call the “argument from abstraction”. The latter, I suggest, offers more grounds (...) to Grounding Nominalism. (shrink)

In 1952, two well-known characters called ‘A’ and ‘B’ met for the first time to argue about the Identity of Indiscernibles (Black, 1952). A argued that the principle is true, and B that it is false. By all accounts A took a bit of a beating and came out worst-off. Forty-three years later John O’Leary-Hawthorne offered a response on behalf of A that looked as if it would work so long as A was willing to accept the universal-bundle theory of (...) substance (Hawthorne, 1995). In 1997, A and B met again (Zimmerman, 1997). A took Hawthorne’s advice and revealed himself as a universal-bundle theorist. But B was well-prepared, and once more A took a beating. Since then Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (2004) has put the boot in, offering further criticism of A’s position. In recent years A has been rather quiet, leaving B to reign as the undisputed champion. However, it turns out that A is down, but not out. And now it’s time for A’s revenge. (shrink)

The purpose of the present paper is to consider the traditional interpretive problems of quantum mechanics from the viewpoint of a modal ontology of properties. In particular, we will try to delineate a quantum ontology that (i) is modal, because describes the structure of the realm of possibility, and (ii) lacks the ontological category of individual. The final goal is to supply an adequate account of quantum non-individuality on the basis of this ontology.

According to the traditional bundle theory, particulars are bundles of compresent universals. I think we should reject the bundle theory for a variety of reasons. But I will argue for the thesis at the core of the bundle theory: that all the facts about particulars are grounded in facts about universals. I begin by showing how to meet the main objection to this thesis (which is also the main objection to the bundle theory): that it is inconsistent with the possibility (...) of distinct qualitative indiscernibles. Here, the key idea appeals to a non-standard theory of haecceities as non-well-founded properties of a certain sort. I will then defend this theory from a number of objections, and finally argue that we should accept it on the basis of considerations of parsimony about the fundamental. (shrink)

The central aim of this paper is to use a particular view about how the laws of nature govern the evolution of our universe in order to develop and evaluate the two main competing options in the metaphysics of persistence, namely endurantism and perdurantism. We begin by motivating the view that our laws of nature dictate not only qualitative facts about the future, but also which objects will instantiate which qualitative properties. We then show that both traditional doctrines in the (...) metaphysics of persistence must take on surprising further commitments in order to vindicate our universe being law-governed in this strong sense. For example, we argue that endurantists should adopt a particular version of monism, and that perdurantists should adopt a qualitativist doctrine that dispenses with all individuals at the fundamental level. (shrink)

If natural kinds were defined on the basis of fixed and immutable essences, then – with the end of essentialism in life sciences – their end, at least for those kinds confined to the living realm, would ensue as well (1-2). If appropriately revised and adapted, however, natural kinds may still play an important theoretical role, not only for the sake of philosophical speculation, but also in accomodating scientific practices and in providing an adequate rendering of human reasoning. The proposal (...) outlined in this paper moves from the historical and disjunctive solutions of Millikan and Boyd, but it departs from them in that it offers a conventionalist interpretation of natural kinds. The bulk of the theory is presented through the case study of the distinction between sexes and genders (3). A few remarks on how to further the proposal are offered in the final section (4). (shrink)

One of the key questions in the contemporary analytic ontology concerns the relation between the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles (PII) and the Bundle Theory (BT). The majority of authors believe that BT implies PII. Therefore, it is widely believed that the world violating PII presented by Max Black (1952. “The Identity of Indiscernibles.” Mind 61 (242): 153–64) is also devastating for BT. However, this has been questioned by Rodriguez-Pereyra (2004. “The Bundle Theory is Compatible with Distinct but Indiscernible Particulars.” (...) Analysis 64 (1): 72–81), who formulated an interpretation of BT with instances. Recently Robert (2019. “Can the Realist Bundle Theory Account for the Numerical Difference between Qualitavely Non-discernible Concrete Particulars?” Theorema 38 (1): 25–39) argued that this version of BT is not a constituent ontology and, therefore, Rodriguez-Pereyra’s solution comes at a price of excluding bundle theory from the domain of constituent ontologies, and, in this sense, it fails. I question Robert’s point by claiming that his account of constituent ontologies is too demanding. In particular, I show that the instance version of BT is compatible with the constrains defining constituent ontologies in general, and therefore Rodriguez-Pereyra’s argument is correct. (shrink)

In his "Two concepts of possible worlds", Peter Van Inwagen explores two kinds of views about the nature of possible worlds : abstractionism and concretism. The latter is the view defended by David Lewis who claims that possible worlds are concrete spatio-temporal universes, very much like our own, causally and spatio-temporally disconnected from each other. The former is the view of the majority who claims that possible worlds are some kind of abstract objects – such as propositions, properties, states of (...) affairs, or sets of numbers. In this paper, I will develop this view in an 'extreme abstractionist' way, appealing to a 'modal bundle theory', and I will try to show that it is preferable to the standard abstractionist ones. Finally, I will compare this kind of abstractionism to concretism, only to find that the difference between the two is minimal. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore several versions of the bundle theory and the substratum theory and compare them, with the surprising result that it seems to be true that they are equivalent (in a sense of 'equivalent' to be specified). In order to see whether this is correct or not, I go through several steps : first, I examine different versions of the bundle theory with tropes and compare them to the substratum theory with tropes by going through various standard (...) objections and arguing for a tu quoque in all cases. Emphasizing the theoretical role of the substratum and of the relation of compresence, I defend the claim that these views are equivalent for all theoretical purposes. I then examine two different versions of the bundle theory with universals, and show that one of them is, here again, equivalent to the substratum theory with universals, by examining how both views face the famous objection from Identity of Indiscernibles in a completely parallel way. It is only the second, quite extreme and puzzling, version of the bundle theory with universals that is not be equivalent to any other view; and the diagnosis of why this is so will show just how unpalatable the view is. Similarly, only a not-so-palatable version of the substratum theory is genuinely different from the other views; and here again it's precisely what makes it different that makes it less appealing. (shrink)

Several metaphysical debates have typically been modeled as oppositions between a relationist approach and a substantivalist approach. Such debates include the Bundle Theory and the Substratum Theory about ordinary material objects, the Bundle (Humean) Theory and the Substance (Cartesian) Theory of the Self, and Relationism and Substantivalism about time. In all three debates, the substantivalist side typically insists that in order to provide a good treatment of the subject-matter of the theory (time, Self, material objects), it is necessary to postulate (...) the existence of a certain kind of substance, while the other side, the relationist one, characteristically feels that this is an unnecessary expense and that one can get the job done in an ontologically cheaper way just with inter-related properties or events. In this paper I shall defend the view that there is much less of a disagreement between relational ontologies and substantival ontologies than it is usually thought. I believe that, when carefully examined, the two sides of the debate are not that different from each other, in all three cases of pairs of views mentioned above. As we will see, both the relational side and the substantival side work in the same way, suffer from and answer the same objections, and are structurally extremely similar. It will be an important question – one that I shall discuss in detail, and that is indeed the main point of interest for me in this paper – whether this means that the two sides of the debate are somehow 'equivalent' or not, and what 'equivalent' could mean. (shrink)

In this article, I defend Lewisian modal realism against objections arising from the possibility of ‘Island Universes’ and other similar cases. The problem comes from Lewis’ claim that possible worlds are spatio-temporally isolated. I suggest a modification of Lewisian modal realism in order to avoid this family of objections. This modification may sound quite radical since it amounts to abandoning the very notion of a possible world, but as radical as it may sound it in fact remains well in the (...) spirit of Lewis’ original view. (shrink)

This paper presents the view that tropes can change, and so are not individuated by their determinate qualitative characters. On the view I have in mind, a trope is at any given time fully determinate, but can change qualitatively within the bounds set by a determinable essence. A charge trope, for example, must at any time have some exact intensity, but can survive changes in intensity. My argument, roughly, is this: Objects can change, and tropes are the parts of objects (...) that change (in a special sense of ‘part’), so tropes can change too. After some preliminaries, I present the argument carefully and discuss the operant notions. I then discuss each premise in turn. I respond to the charge that the view isn't realist, and to objections based on identity‐conditions for tropes. I describe both substratum‐ and bundle‐theoretic versions of the view, and finally, show what the view buys us. (shrink)

Objects partially resemble when they are alike in some way but not entirely alike. Partial resemblance, then, involves similarity in a respect. It has been observed that talk of “respects” appears to be thinly‐veiled talk of properties. So some theorists take similarity in a respect to require property realism. I will go a step further and argue that similarity in intrinsic respects (partial intrinsic resemblance) requires properties to be immanent in objects. For a property to be immanent in an object (...) is roughly for it to be wholly present in that object. (So understood, immanence does not imply repeatability, and thus tropes count as immanent.) If two objects are intrinsically similar in one way but not another, there must be a difference between the two ways. And if the similarity is between the objects as they are in themselves, then this difference, too, must be within the objects. Partial intrinsic resemblance thus requires internal structure. Without it, there can be no distinctions between ways in which things are intrinsically alike and ways in which they aren't. I will argue, further, that distinctions between properties that transcend objects fail to account for the possibility of partial intrinsic resemblance. (shrink)

One feature of language is that we are able to make mistakes in our use of language. Amongst other sorts of mistakes, we can misspeak, misspell, missign, or misunderstand. Given this, it seems that our metaphysics of words should be flexible enough to accommodate such mistakes. It has been argued that a nominalist account of words cannot accommodate the phenomenon of misspelling. I sketch a nominalist trope-bundle view of words that can.

A critical survey of the main metaphysical theories concerning the nature of material objects (substratum theories, bundle theories, substance theories, stuff theories) and their identity conditions, both synchronic (monist vs. pluralist theories) and diachronic (three-dimensionalism, four-dimensionalism, sequentialism).

Universalism (the thesis that distinct objects always compose a further object) has come under much scrutiny in recent years. What has been largely ignored is its role in the metaphysics of classes. Not only does universalism provide ways to deal with classes in a metaphysically pleasing fashion, its success on these grounds has been offered as a motivation for believing it. This paper argues that such treatments of classes can be achieved without universalism, examining theories from Goodman and Quine, Armstrong (...) and Lewis. In the case of each theory, universalism is drafted in to ensure that there are enough material objects to play a particular role. I argue that, for each theory, there's a better theory that ditches universalism and instead uses an alternative principle of composition demanding that the unrestricted composition of entities other than material objects (respectively: regions, states of affairs and singletons) play that role instead. I conclude that (1) non-universalists can consider accepting such theories of classes and (2) we should ignore any alleged motivation for universalism on the basis of dealing with classes. (shrink)

Is the world internally connected by a web of necessary connections or is everything loose and independent? Followers of David Hume accept the latter by upholding Hume’s Dictum, according to which there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. Roughly put, anything can coexist with anything else, and anything can fail to coexist with anything else. Hume put it like this: “There is no object which implies the existence of any other if we consider these objects in themselves.” Since Hume’s (...) day, Hume’s Dictum has played a major role in philosophy, especially in contemporary metaphysics. In ruling out necessary connections, Hume’s Dictum implies that causal relations and the laws of nature are contingent. It makes other demands on our metaphysics of science as well; for example, it places restrictions on our metaphysics of counterfactuals, dispositions, and explanation. The principle has applications in other areas too. Hume’s Dictum places constraints on our theories of abstract objects and moral properties. For example, Hume’s Dictum rules out the view that moral properties are distinct from, but necessarily connected to, non-moral properties. While Hume’s Dictum is a prominent principle in metaphysics, few Humeans have defended the principle at length. It is assumed more often than it is argued for. As a result, Hume’s Dictum no longer enjoys the reputation it once did. It’s common to hear complaints about the lack of arguments in support of Hume’s Dictum. Moreover, philosophers are increasingly willing to defend views that are at odds with Hume’s Dictum. A striking example of this is the recent explosion of interest in views that take causal relations and the laws of nature to be necessary. Humeans can no longer afford to be complacent. An extended defense of Hume’s Dictum is called for, and that’s what this dissertation aims to offer. This dissertation has three parts. In the first part, I lay out some preliminaries and offer a precise formulation of Hume’s Dictum. In the second part, I develop three arguments in favor of Hume’s Dictum. In the final part, I defend Hume’s Dictum against objections. (shrink)

Our aim in this paper is to bring to light two sources of tension for Christian theists who endorse the principle of unrestricted composition, that necessarily, for any objects, the xs, there exists an object, y, such that the xs compose y. In Value, we argue that a composite object made of wholly valuable parts is at least as valuable as its most valuable part, and so the mereological sum of God and a wholly valuable part would be at least (...) as valuable as God; but Christian theism arguably demands that no concrete object other than God can be as valuable as God. And in Creation, we argue that the conjunction of theism and unrestricted composition, together with the claim that every concrete entity that is numerically distinct from God is created by God, implies that God is created by God. We conclude by examining the prospects of restricting the thesis of unrestricted composition to the domain of material or spatiotemporal objects as a way to sidestep the above arguments against the conjunction of Christian theism and unrestricted composition. (shrink)

In The Principles of Mathematics, Russell writes: Whatever may be an object of thought, or may occur in any true or false proposition, or can be counted as one, I call a term. This, then, is the widest word in the philosophical vocabulary. I shall use as synonymous with it the words unit, individual and entity. The first two emphasize the fact that every term is one, while the third is derived from the fact that every term has being, i.e. (...) is in some sense. A man, a moment, a number, a class, a relation, a chimera, or anything else that can be mentioned, is sure to be a term'. Now in this remark, a certain extremely general, topic-neutral use of ‘object’ is singled out, a use in which the expression is treated as equivalent to (equally neutral) uses of ‘term’, ‘entity’, ‘unit’, ‘individual’, and ‘thing’. In addition, a claim is made to the effect that the content of the expression, with its emphasis on one, is such as to be adequate to comprehend the sum-total of existence, to include whatever there may be. The paper addresses the question of what this claim means, and whether it might be true. (shrink)

The main problem of this study is David Hume’s (1711-76) view on Metaphysical Realism (there are mind-independent, external, and continuous entities). This specific problem is part of two more general questions in Hume scholarship: his attitude to scepticism and the relation between naturalism and skepticism in his thinking. A novel interpretation of these problems is defended in this work. The chief thesis is that Hume is both a sceptic and a Metaphysical Realist. His philosophical attitude is to suspend his judgment (...) on Metaphysical Realism, whereas as a common man he firmly believes in the existence of mind-independent, external, and continuous entities. Therefore Hume does not have any one position; accordingly, a form of “no one Hume” interpretation (Richard Popkin, Robert J. Fogelin, Donald L.M. Baxter) is argued for in the book. The key point in this distinction is the temporal difference between Hume’s philosophical and everyday views. It is introduced in order to avoid attributing a conscious contradiction to him (a problem which has not attracted enough attention in the literature). The method of the work is modelled on Peter Millican’s work on Hume and induction. The approach to the main problem is to study the two “profound” arguments against the senses that Hume presents in the Section 12 of An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748). These arguments are first reconstructed in detail resulting in Millican-type diagrams of them and then Hume’s endorsement of them is established on the basis of the diagrams. The first profound argument concludes that Metaphysical Realism and thus any Realistic theory of perception is unjustified as well as the existence of God and the soul. The second argument goes further having first conceptual conclusion: the very notions of Real entitity, material substance, and bodies are completely out of the reach of the faculty of understanding. Therefore they ought to be rejected according to Hume. This is a consequence of the consistent use of the Humean faculty of reason: idea-analysis and inductive inference. The second profound argument thus concludes that believing in Metaphysical Realism is inconsistent with the rational attitude that is to refrain from this belief. Hence, if we attributed both of them to Hume, we would end up with a great philosopher who embraces a manifest contradiction. The study is finished by arguing that this sceptical and Metaphysically Realistic interpretation concurs well with (1) Hume’s professed Academical philosophy and (2) project of the science of human nature. (1) According to Hume, Academical philosophy is in the first place diffidence, modesty, and uncertainty including suspension on certain issues. Secondly, it is restriction of the range of topics for which experience can provide a standard of truth. This kind of empiricist epistemological realism is coherent with the sceptical attitude on Metaphysical Realism because the latter does not rule out inter-subjective consensus on what we experience. (2) Suspension of judgment on Metaphysical Realism coheres with the mind-dependency of the objects of Hume’s science of human nature: the understanding, passions, morals, aesthetics, politics, and the human culture in all of its manifestations. Although the study takes the first Enquiry to be Hume’s authorised word on the understanding, his juvenile work A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) is argued to support this “no one Hume” interpretation. Hume’s other works are also discussed when needed. (shrink)

The issues I explore in this paper are best introduced by the table with which it begins. The left-hand entry in each row gives expression to a kind objectivity; the right-hand entry affirms the existence of a special kind of object. When philosophers believe in any of the entities on the right, it is typically because they think them necessary to ground the facts on the left. By the same token, when philosophers deny any of the facts on the left, (...) it is often because they cannot bring themselves to believe in the associated kind of object on the right. My project is to explore the extent to which it is possible to have the objectivity without the objects—for example, absolute motion without substantival space, objective predication without universals, objective synonymy without propositions, and objective modality without possible worlds. Each of these combinations would have been congenial to A.N. Prior. (shrink)

The hole argument purports to show that all spacetime theories of a certain form are indeterministic, including the General Theory of Relativity. The argument has given rise to an industry of searching for a metaphysics of spacetime that delivers the right modal implications to rescue determinism. In this paper, I first argue that certain prominent extant replies to the hole argument—namely, those that appeal to an essentialist doctrine about spacetime—fail to deliver the requisite modal implications. As part of my argument, (...) I show that threats to determinism of the sort brought out by the hole argument are more general than has heretofore been recognized. I then use these results to propose a novel essentialist doctrine about spacetime that successfully rescues determinism, what I call sufficiency metric essentialism. However, I go on to argue that once we realize what an essentialist doctrine about spacetime must look like in order to address the hole argument, we should reject all such doctrines, because they can't fulfill their ambition of improving on standard modal replies to the argument. I close by suggesting some lessons for future work on spacetime and the metaphysics of physics more broadly, and also drawing some general morals for contemporary metaphysics, in particular about (i) whether essence can be used to articulate a precise structuralist doctrine, and (ii) the relationship between essence and modality. (shrink)

The consensus among spacetime substantivalists is to respond to Leibniz's classic shift arguments, and their contemporary incarnation in the form of the hole argument, by pruning the allegedly problematic metaphysical possibilities that generate these arguments. Some substantivalists do so by directly appealing to a modal doctrine akin to anti-haecceitism. Other substantivalists do so by appealing to an underlying hyperintensional doctrine that implies some such modal doctrine. My first aim in this paper is to pose a challenge for all extant forms (...) of this consensus position. My second aim is to show what form substantivalism must take in order to uphold the consensus while addressing this challenge. The result is a novel "plenitudinous" substantivalist view, which predicts that certain modal facts about spacetime are vague or indeterminate. I then argue against this view on independent grounds, concluding that substantivalists should reject the consensus position. The paper also discusses the way forward for substantivalists in light of this conclusion. (shrink)

It is widely accepted within contemporary philosophy of perception that the content of visual states cannot be characterized simply as a list of represented features. This is because such characterization leads to the so-called, “Many Properties problem”, i.e. it does not allow us to explain how the visual system is able to distinguish between scenes containing different arrangements of the same features. The usual solution to the Many Properties problem is to characterize some elements of content as subjects, to which (...) features are attributed by a predication-like relation. In this paper, I reconsider this solution and claim that the Many Properties problem can be solved without invoking the notion of “subject”. What is more, I argue that an alternative approach has stronger justification given the empirical data concerning human vision. (shrink)

In ‘Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence’ E. J. Lowe defends “serious essentialism”. Serious essentialism is the position that (a) everything has an essence, (b) essences are not themselves things, and (c) essences are the ground for metaphysical necessity and possi- bility. Lowe’s defence of serious essentialism is both metaphysical and epistemological. In what follows I use Lowe’s discussion as a point of departure for, first, adding some considerations for the plausi- bility of essentialismand, second, somework onmodal epistemology.

In ‘Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence’ E. J. Lowe defends “serious essentialism”. Serious essentialism is the position that everything has an essence, essences are not themselves things, and essences are the ground for metaphysical necessity and possibility. Lowe's defence of serious essentialism is both metaphysical and epistemological. In what follows I use Lowe's discussion as a point of departure for, first, adding some considerations for the plausibility of essentialism and, second, some work on modal epistemology.

Suppose that all non-qualitative facts are grounded in qualitative facts. I argue that this view naturally comes with a picture in which trans-world identity is indeterminate. But this in turn leads to either pervasive indeterminacy in the non-qualitative, or else contingency in what facts about modality and possible worlds are determinate.

David Lewis holds that a single possible world can provide more than one way things could be. But what are possible worlds good for if they come apart from ways things could be? We can make sense of this if we go in for a metaphysical understanding of what the world is. The world does not include everything that is the case—only the genuine facts. Understood this way, Lewis's “cheap haecceitism” amounts to a kind of metaphysical anti-haecceitism: it says there (...) aren't any genuine facts about individuals over and above their qualitative roles. (shrink)

In the Timaeus, Plato’s Timaeus offers an account of the sensible world in terms of “images” of forms. Often, images are taken to be particulars: either objects or particular property instances (tropes). Contrary to this trend, I argue that images are general characteristics which are immanent in the receptacle, or bundles of such characteristics. Thus, the entire sensible world can be analysed in terms of immanent general characteristics, the receptacle, and forms. Hence, for Timaeus, fundamentally, there are no sensible particulars. (...) I end by arguing that my interpretation is compatible with Timaeus’ construction of sensible entities from triangles. (shrink)

Rom Harré thinks that the Emergence–Reduction debate, conceived as a vertical problem, is partly ill posed. Even if he doesn’t wholly reject the traditional definition of an emergent property as a property of a collection but not of its components, his point is that this definition doesn’t exhaust all the dimensions of emergence. According to Harré there is another kind (or dimension) of emergence, which we may call—somewhat paradoxically—“horizontal emergence”: two properties of a substance are horizontally emergent relative to each (...) other if they cannot be displayed in the same conditions. Contrary to vertical emergence, horizontal emergence is a symmetrical relation. Harré endorses horizontal emergentism. I argue that this position faces a principled difficulty: it makes it impossible to bind different horizontally emergent discourses in an interesting way. Physics and biology for example become “island” discourses, each speaking of a distinct kind of entities. The only way to ensure that two different discourses can relate to the same entity is to reintroduce verticality into the picture. (shrink)

Whether objects have a substance or not has always been the focus of philosophers. Substratum theory is one of the well-known theories in contemporary analytical metaphysics. It tries to analyze the structure of an object based on the two components of substance and properties. This theory, by introducing the essence of objects as substratum, introduces properties in an empirical approach and provides an explanation of concrete objects or things. Contrarily, a collection of theories from an ontological point of view, with (...) the denial of substratum, considers concrete things to be merely composed of properties and explains the clustering process of the same. This article, while explaining these two theories and judging their claims against each other, implicitly tries to show that modern physics not only needs philosophy to explain the ontological structure of concrete objects, but to go this science beyond the level of properties and phenomena it requires philosophy using specialized concepts to present a picture of the world around. (shrink)

Are concrete objects in some sense made up of the properties they exemplify? A distinguished tradition holds they are. I begin by defending the distinction: there is a real and not just semantic distinction between asserting and denying that concrete objects have their properties as parts. I then argue in favor of the view that concrete objects are not made up of their parts. First, this view has less ontological baggage than its opponent. Next, the supposed advantages of the alternative (...) view—its superiority in understanding persistence, exemplification, or the possibility of diverse duplicates—dissipate under analysis. (shrink)

The paper deals with Aristotle’s concept of corruption. First, it reconstructs Aristotle’s debate with the pre-Socratics and then it focuses on the candidates for entity that can perish: form, matter, and substance. The text argues against the widely accepted thesis according to which substance is a corruptio simpliciter without further ado. The paper intensely relies upon ancient and medieval commentators of Aristotle. Finally, special attention is devoted to the dimension of time and the problem of actuality.

According to strong pluralism, objects distinct by virtue of their modal properties can coincide. The most common objection towards such view invokes the so-called Grounding Problem according to which the strong pluralist needs to explain what the grounds are for supposed modal differences between the coincidents. As recognized in the literature, the failure to provide an answer to the Grounding Problem critically undermines the plausibility of strong pluralism. Moreover, there are strong reasons to believe that strong pluralists cannot provide an (...) explanation of the Grounding Problem. In this paper, we argue that strong pluralism can be motivated independently of the successful answer to the Grounding Problem. In order to achieve that aim, we provide a haecceitistic interpretation of strong pluralism according to which strong pluralism should be read as a position committed to the existence of primitive individuals, i.e., the individuals that have their criteria of individuation independently of their qualitative profiles. That said, we do not aim at defending haecceitism. Instead, our aim is rather modest: we want to provide a new way for the strong pluralist to supplement his view to make it more watertight. (shrink)

I offer a mereological bundle of universals theory of material objects. The theory says that objects are identical to fusions of immanent universals at regions of space. Immanent universals are in the objects that instantiate them, and they can be wholly located at many regions of space. The version of the bundle theory I offer explains these characteristics of immanent universals, and it captures the instantiation relation in terms of the part-whole relation. The version of the theory I offer is (...) simpler and more unified than other mereological bundle theories. Yet, it is not as encompassing as other versions. For I suppose throughout that space is a particular substance, but not a bundle of properties. (shrink)

Of all the problems attending the sense-datum theory, arguably the deepest is that it draws a veil of appearances over the external world. Today, the sense-datum theory is widely regarded as an overreaction to the problem of hallucination. Instead of accounting for hallucination in terms of intentional relations to sense data, it is often thought that we should account for it in terms of intentional relations to properties. In this paper, however, I argue that in the versions that might address (...) the problem of hallucination, this newer account is guilty of a vice similar to sense-datum theory’s: it draws a veil of abtracta over the concrete world. (shrink)

We argue that if one wishes to be a realist, one should adopt a Neo-Aristotelian ontology involving tropes instead of a Russellian ontology of property universals and objects. Either Russellian realists should adopt the relata-specific relational tropes of instantiation instead of facts, or convert to Neo-Aristotelian realism with monadic tropes. Regarding Neo-Aristotelian realism, we have two novel points why it fares better than Russellian realism. Instantiation of property universals by tropes and characterization or inherence between tropes and objects are more (...) transparent ontological notions than relational inherence, which is assumed in Russellian realism with the relational tropes of instantiation. Neo-Aristotelian realism makes better sense about abstract universals, which are a more viable option than concrete universals. (shrink)