The treatise attempts to approach and deal with some of the most fundamental problems facing anyone who wishes to uphold some version of the so-called theory of tropes. Three assumptions serve as a basis for the investigation: tropes exist, only tropes exist, and a one-category trope-theory along these lines should be developed so that the tropes it postulates are able to serve as truth-makers for all kinds of atomic propositions. Provided that these assumptions are accepted, it is found that the (...) trope-theorist will have to deal with two important problems. First, some atomic propositions seem to require universal truth-makers. Second, some atomic propositions seem to require concrete truth-makers. As tropes are abstract particulars, it follows that the trope-theorist, in order to fulfil assumption, must provide an account of exactly how he or she could construct universality and concreteness from his or her basic stock of tropes. In the treatise such constructions are attempted and some basic problems with such constructions are revealed. Although these problems are serious enough it is argued that it is nevertheless possible to deal with these basic issues while staying squarely within the boundaries of a one-category trope-ontology. (shrink)

There is a general form of an argument which I call the ‘argument from vagueness’ which attempts to show that objects persist by perduring, via the claim that vagueness is never ontological in nature and thus that composition is unrestricted. I argue that even if we grant that vagueness is always the result of semantic indeterminacy rather than ontological vagueness, and thus also grant that composition is unrestricted, it does not follow that objects persist by perduring. Unrestricted mereological composition lacks (...) the power to ensure that there exist instantaneous objects that wholly overlap persisting objects at times, and thus lacks the power to ensure that there exists anything that could be called a temporal part. Even if we grant that such instantaneous objects exist, however, I argue that it does not follow that objects perdure. To show this I briefly outline a coherent version of three dimensionalism that grants just such an assumption. Thus considerations pertaining to the nature of vagueness need not lead us inevitably to accept perdurantism. (shrink)

Excerpt from The New Realism: Coöperative Studies in Philosophy On July 21, 1910, we published a brief article entitled 'The Program and First Platform of Six Realists,' in which we indicated the direction philosophical inquiry ought to take. We there asserted that advance would be facilitated by cooperative investigations; and the drafting of the platform was a first attempt to confirm this belief. The present volume continues, on a larger scale, the work there inaugurated; and we hope it will be (...) followed by other collections of studies. The introductory essay voices our common opinions. The other essays do so only in part. It has seemed best to publish them without laboring for complete unanimity, inasmuch as their agreements quite overshadow their differences. They have been written after prolonged conferences. A few important debatable topics are briefly discussed by dissenting members in the Appendix. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

My main thesis is that the necessary and its necessity are factual, or matters of fact, in the sense that they are realities on the same ontic plane or planes with any other beings there may be, physical, phenomenal, or Platonically transcendent, and are no more creatures of thought and speech than dogs and gravity are; if I think they are all physical actualities, this is only because I think everything is. I have a second thesis, however, which is that (...) the realities objectively characterized by necessity are "facts" in the more special sense in which we say it is a fact that the earth is round but not that the earth is a fact or that roundness is a fact. It is fashionable to declare that necessity and contingency pertain only to statements, judgments, or "propositions"; and though the popularity of this is due, I am afraid, to what is false in it, namely, its subjectivism, its philosophic force is due to a covert truth, that necessity can qualify nothing short of the states of affairs which make statements or judgments necessarily true. Any shifts that can avoid the admission of facts in general as first-class members of the universe can provide for what I shall say of necessary facts, but meanwhile the worth of the category will be so proving itself that I cannot foresee abandoning it, and it is all I shall be meaning hereinafter by the word "facts.". (shrink)

Metaphysics is the thoroughly empirical science. Every item of experience must be evidence for or against any hypothesis of speculative cosmology, and every experienced object must be an exemplar and test case for the categories of analytic ontology. Technically, therefore, one example ought for our present theme to be as good as another. The more dignified examples, however, are darkened with a patina of tradition and partisanship, while some frivolous ones are peculiarly perspicuous. Let us therefore imagine three lollipops, made (...) by a candy man who buys sticks from a big supplier and molds candy knobs on them. Lollipop No. 1 has a red round peppermint head, No. 2 a brown round chocolate head, No. 3 a red square peppermint head. The circumstance here which mainly provokes theories of subsistence and inherence is similarity with difference: each lollipop is partially similar to each other and partially different from it. If we can give a good account of this circumstance in this affair we shall have the instrument to expose the anatomy of everything, from an electron or an apple to archangels and the World All. (shrink)