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)

Constituent ontologies maintain that the properties of an object are either parts or something very much like parts of that object. Recently, such a view has been criticized as leading to a bizarre and problematic form of substance dualism and implying the existence of impossible objects. After briefly presenting constituent and relational ontologies, I respond to both objections, arguing that constituent ontology does not yield either of these two consequences and so is not shown to be an unacceptable ontological framework.

Bare particularism is a constituent ontology according to which substances—concrete, particular objects like people, tables, and tomatoes—are complex entities constituted by their properties and their bare particulars. Yet, aside from this description, much about bare particularism is fundamentally unclear. In this paper, I attempt to clarify this muddle by elucidating the key metaphysical commitments underpinning any plausible formulation of the position. So the aim here is primarily catechismal rather than evangelical—I don’t intend to convert anyone to bare particularism, but, by (...) looking at a series of questions, to instead specify what, if one is a bare particularist, one is committed to. Along the way, I address three major objections: a classic objection about whether bare particulars have properties, a new objection raised by Bailey, and an understanding objection that questions some of the position’s resources. (shrink)

Bare particulars have received a fair amount of bad press. Many find such entities to be obviously incoherent and dismiss them without much consideration. Proponents of bare particulars, on their part, have not done enough to clearly motivate and characterize bare particulars, thus leaving them open to misinterpretations. With this paper, I try to remedy this situation. I put forward a much-needed positive case for bare particulars through the four problems that they can be seen to solve—The Problem of Individuation, (...) The Problem of Change, The Problem of Having a Property, and The Problem of Subtraction. I then distinguish and characterize three possible types of bare particulars—genuinely bare, constitutively bare, and thinly clothed—and consider how each of these cope with some classical and recent objections to bare particulars. I argue that the most troubling objections do not come from familiar quarters, but from examining how well such entities address all four of the ontological problems outlined. I ultimately conclude that the best contenders among the three types of bare particulars are the constitutively bare variety, but argue that, if they are to earn their keep, they must either share or turn over their individuating role to the ordinary particulars that they constitute. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I would like to bring into the light the almost unexplored Sellars’s theory of particulars. Second, I would like to show its surprising degree of compatibility with the thesis supported by some contemporary tropists, Tropes, Universals and the Philosophy of Mind, Ontos Verlag, 2008; Moltmann, Mind 113:1–41, 2004 and Moltmann, Noûs 47:346–370, 2013). It is difficult to establish whether Sellars possessed an own theory of tropes, developed independently by the classical form it (...) took in Williams 1953, but as a matter of fact the peculiar features of his “complex particulars” model it is very much like Williams’s theory. So much so that to all intents and purposes it represents a tropes variation. One of its strengths is that it is not part of a constituent ontology, since it is essentially developed from a linguistic and phenomenological point of view. It is for these reasons that this theory manages to avoid some of the classic objections to tropes and it shows to be compatible with the argument of Jonathan Lowe’s “proper visibility” as well as with Friederike Moltmann’s exquisitely linguistic interpretation of tropes. (shrink)

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)

According to the identity version of spacetime supersubstantivalism, material objects are numerically identical to spacetime regions. While the view has been commended for its parsimony and concordance with physics, it has not properly been assessed in light of the metaphysics of properties. The present essay fills this void by discerning several subspecies of identity supersubstantivalism, corresponding to various property ontologies. Finding them all wanting, the essay develops and defends a novel brand of supersubstantivalism based on the trope ontology. On this (...) view, here dubbed ‘supertropestantivalism’, regions are pluralities of geometrically and topologically alike tropes, some of which bundle together as material objects. The resulting picture is not itself an identity version of supersubstantivalism, but it retains the originally attractive features of the identity version while avoiding the shortcomings of competing ontologies. (shrink)

All parts of mereologically ‘gunky’ entities have proper parts. All parts relevant to mereologically ‘junky’ entities *are* proper parts. This essay explores the application of gunk and junk beyond the standard category of material object. One such application yields what is here dubbed ‘deep’ gunk and junk: a material entity x all of whose intrinsic elements from any fundamental ontological category C either have proper parts from C that also are intrinsic elements of x, or are proper parts of entities (...) from C that also are intrinsic elements of x. In addition to being independently interesting, these mereological structures pose a challenge to the bare particular ontology of substance. For bare particulars standardly are assumed to be mereologically simple, yet a deep gunky or junky entity requires any associated bare particulars to be complex. The essay closes by examining the bare particular theorist’s prospects for answering this challenge. (shrink)

This paper argues that, assuming properties exist and must be located in spacetime, the prevailing view that they are exactly located where their instances are is false. Instead a property is singularly located at just one region, namely the union of its instance's locations. This bears not just on issues in the metaphysics of properties, but also on the debate over whether multi-location is conceivable and/or possible.

There is a widespread consensus within analytic metaphysics that the abstract versus concrete distinction, if valid at all, must be thought of as exhaustive and exclusive. I present four arguments designed to cast doubt on this consensus.

The four principal competing substance ontologies are substratum theory, bundle theory, primitive substance theory, and hylomorphism. Both historically and in the recent literature, most arguments pertaining to these four theories have been developed under the assumption that only one of them can be true. However there is room in this debate for various forms of pluralism: mild pluralism here refers to the view that while only one of these four theories is true of our world, there is at least one (...) other possible world in which a different substance ontology obtains; moderate pluralism refers to the view that while only one of these four theories is true of our world, there is at least one other possible world in which multiple substance ontologies obtain ; and extreme pluralism refers to the view that our own actual world contains substances belonging to different substance ontologies. In this paper I lay out a novel argument for a version of extreme pluralism. (shrink)

The debate between relational versus constituent substance ontology is longstanding and ongoing. In the contemporary literature it is mostly taken for granted that any version of hylomorphism must count as a constituent substance ontology. Here I argue that a certain sort of relational substance ontology could also legitimately be labeled hylomorphic, and in fact that relational substance ontologists have some good reasons to affirm this version of hylomorphism.

One might well wonder—is there a category under which every thing falls? Offering an informative account of such a category is no easy task. For nothing would distinguish things that fall under it from those that don’t—there being, after all, none of the latter. It seems hard, then, to say much about any fully general category; and it would appear to do no carving or categorizing or dividing at all. Nonetheless there are candidates for such a fully general office, including (...) thing, being, entity, item, existent, and—especially—object.[ It is not obvious that there is any fully general category (whether object or otherwise). Accordingly, not all accounts of object assign it to a fully general category, instead allowing that there are non-objects. On those views, object does indeed divide. Accounts of object, then, differ with respect to whether there are non-objects. And this is not the only fault line. Other dimensions of difference include what objects there are and what objects are. Accordingly, this entry will survey three broad questions about the category object: What, if any, is its contrast or complement? What is its extension? What is its nature? (shrink)

One recent debate in philosophy of physics has centered whether quantum particles are individuals or not. The received view is that particles are not individuals and the standard methodology is to approach the question via the structure of quantum theory. I challenge both the received view and the standard methodology. I contend not only that the structure of quantum theory is not the right place to look for conditions of individuality that quantum particles may or may not satisfy, but also (...) that there is an important role for traditional metaphysics to play. Consequently, my work brings together the philosophy of physics and traditional metaphysics literatures to shed new light on the debate over the individuality of quantum particles. I defend a set of conditions of individuality and argue that quantum particles satisfy these conditions thereby defending the view that particles are individuals in opposition to the received view. I also challenge a second feature of the standard methodology insofar as I challenge the significance of the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles in terms of which much discussion in the philosophy of physics literature is framed. My work is significant in a number of additional ways as well. My work implies that the dominant explanation for quantum statistics in terms of non-individuality is incorrect and it also undermines the ontic-structural realists metaphysical underdetermination challenge to the scientific realist. (shrink)