Abstract
In his paper Bare Particulars, T. Sider claims that one of the most plausible candidates for bare particulars are spacetime points. The aim of this paper is to shed light on Sider’s reasoning and its consequences. There are three concepts of spacetime points that allow their identification with bare particulars. One of them, Moderate structural realism, is considered to be the most adequate due its appropriate approach to spacetime metric and moderate view of mereological simples. However, it pushes the Substratum theory to dismiss primitive thisness as the only identity condition for bare particulars, but the paper argues that such elimination is a legitimate step.
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Notes
As Sider indicates, there is also an entirely different approach that conceives bare particulars as end-products of the conceptual separation of particulars and their properties (Tichý 1988, 211). According to this line of thought, bare particulars are not physically existing entities, and thus, a quest for their candidates is irrelevant. Bare particulars are only heuristic tools (e.g., to grasp the difference between essential and accidental properties), but this is denied in this paper. We assume that if there are bare particulars, then they must be – as real ontological entities – largely independent of our conceptual schemes.
It often happens in metaphysics that theories specify criteria of certain entities, but it is beyond their scope to identify examples. The competence is often in the hands of science, and our case of bare particulars and spacetime points is exactly that situation.
This distinction is also labeled as the distinction between pure and impure properties in the literature.
This explains why one of “the most serious” charges against ST is irrelevant. It is claimed that bare particulars are particulars but not individuals (because they are indistinguishable) and, as far as the individuation is concerned, ST fails. It is irrelevant because ST provides individuation criteria only after it is supplemented by a specific set of bare particulars with strict identity conditions of their own.
As Lowe comments, bare particulars are obviously particulars, whereas heacceities (and individual and Leibnizian essences—M.S.) are universals, although unsharable ones (Lowe 2003, 88). The distinction between individuating universals and bare particulars can also be found in Davis’s exposition of bare particulars (Davis 2003, 536) and in Adam’s distinction between thisness and suchness (Adams 1979, 6).
As will be argued at the end of the paper, our proposal directly accommodates this message because it considers spacetime as an essential ingredient of particulars.
There is an alternative to MS within the substantivalist camp. The alternative is metrical essentialism (Maudlin 1989, 86–8). It treats the metric fairly but at the cost substratum theorists are not willing to pay. Metrical properties are, according to metrical essentialism, intrinsic properties of spacetime points, but this contradicts the notion of a bare particular.
To be more precise, this is how M. Esfeld and J. Golosz replied to my proposal of identifying bare particulars with spacetime points within the framework of MSR.
In addition to metrical, topological, and differential structures, Golosz also considers affine connections as plausible individuators of spacetime points (2005, 92–93).
It was suggested to me in an e-mail exchange with T. Sider.
For Sider, as a defender of ontological composition, an ontology of mereological simples must be avoided, but I cannot see how he manages to do so in the realm of spacetime points.
As a matter of fact, the holistic features make Butterfield’s arguments against pointillisme formulated in Butterfield (2006) irrelevant to bare substrata with structuralist identity conditions.
I borrowed the adjective “hybrid” from B. Skow (2007, 11).
As far as I know, only supersubstantivalism can compete with hybrid particulars in this regard. However, supersubstantivalism reduces particulars directly to chunks of spacetime, and this is a high price for any ontology of particulars, including ST, because supersubstantivalism makes particulars superfluous.
References
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Acknowledgments
I am in debt to M. Esfeld, J. Golosz, and T. Sider for their e-mail replies that helped me to clarify the approach of MSR to bare particulars (Esfeld and Golosz) and expose some details of the proposal to identify spacetime points with bare particulars (Sider).
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Schmidt, M. On Spacetime, Points, and Bare Particulars. Int Ontology Metaphysics 9, 69–77 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12133-008-0023-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12133-008-0023-1