Well, in fact we have both analysis and synthesis, both analytic ontology/philosophy and synthetic ontology/philosophy.GaryLouisSmith wrote: ↑July 5th, 2019, 1:43 amOntology is analysis. Analysis is a breaking apart. And like Humpty Dumpty once broken it can't be put back together again to make an ordinary egg or thing.
Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?
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[/quote]
The Bare Particular
The bare particular is the most easily dismissed idea in philosophy. Few have embraced it. Let me come to its defense by way of analogy. Say you are a modern guy into UFOs and strange encounters, even abduction. You start to use the word “plasma”. It’s a word that I think is all throughout such literature. It might be the same as the ancient word “pneuma”, which was a type of material substance moving mysteriously all through the universe. And that spirit pneuma was alive, conscious stuff. Today, of course, now that Descartes has taught us that consciousness is immaterial, we do not believe in conscious plasma moving all about us, taking on the forms of cats and ghosts and floating heads. We are not into eerie, spooky ectoplasm. I think you get the idea.
Now as you sit there so quietly in your chair, look about and see all the forms that the bare particulars have taken. A lamp, a window, a muffled noise, some disheveled papers. Today people generally want to say that all those forms are mind dependent and not really out there. I have been saying for a long time that they really are out there and they are mind independent. What you thought of as evidence of consciousness in here is really out there. Think of bare particulars as plasma, which comes from the same root as plastic, moldable. And look at them out there all about your room. It’s almost like you are living with ghosts. With ancient universal Forms. With the intimate binding nexus. You are a piece of plasma, or rather a bare particular, that has taken on the ancient form of Thought. Everything is very old. And it is all out there. Oh, there is so much more to say.
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?
Is that man in the photo thinking "How should I live my life" ?Consul wrote: ↑July 5th, 2019, 2:32 amYes, I do. For me, he's a paradigmatic example of a good metaphysicist/ontologist.
I like his highly readable and enjoyable philosophical prose, and he's a highly original, inspiring, and thought-provoking thinker. He makes me think!
Although I reject several of his central positions, especially his view that properties and relations are universals, I admire his work.
I have a copy of a picture of him hanging on a wall in my living room, so I see him every day. It's this one:
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?
A critical comment by Grossmann:Consul wrote: ↑July 5th, 2019, 1:47 am"The Thin and the Thick Particular
Here is a problem that has been raised by John Quilter (1985). He calls it the 'Antinomy of Bare Particulars.' Suppose that particular a instantiates property F. a is F. This 'is' is obviously not the 'is' of identity, as in a is a or F is F. a and F are different entities, one being a particular, the other a universal. The 'is' we are dealing with is the 'is' of instantiation—of a fundamental tie between particular and property. But if the 'is' is not the 'is' of identity, then it appears that a considered in itself is really a bare particular lacking any properties. But in that case a has not got the property F. The property F remains outside a—just as transcendent forms remain outside the particular in Plato's theory.
I believe that we can at least begin to meet this difficulty by drawing the important distinction, already mentioned in Chapter 4, Section I, between the thin and the thick particular. The thin particular is a, taken apart from its properties (substratum). It is linked to its properties by instantiation, but it is not identical with them. It is not bare because to be bare it would have to be not instantiating any properties. But though clothed, it is thin.
However, this is not the only way that a particular can be thought of. It can also be thought of as involving its properties. Indeed, that seems to be the normal way that we think of particulars. This is the thick particular. But the thick particular, because it enfolds both thin particulars and properties, held together by instantiation, can be nothing but a state of affairs.
Suppose that a instantiates F, G, H, . . . They comprise the totality of a's (nonrelational) properties. Now form the conjunctive property F&G&H. . . . Call this property N, where N is meant to be short for a's nature. a is N is true, and a's being N is a (rather complex) state of affairs. It is also the thick particular. The thick particular is a state of affairs. The properties of a thing are 'contained within it' because they are constituents of this state of affairs. (Notice that states of affairs, such as a's being N, are not repeatable. So, along with thin particulars, they can be called particulars also.)
Therefore, in one sense a particular is propertyless. That is the thin particular. In another sense it enfolds properties within itself. In the latter case it is the thick particular and is a state of affairs. I think that this answers the difficulty raised by the Antinomy of Bare Particulars.
Two points before leaving this section: First, the distinction between thin and thick particulars does not depend upon a doctrine of properties as universals. It does presuppose a substance-attribute account of a particular, rather than a bundle view. But we have already seen that it is possible to take a substance-attribute view with the attributes as particulars, that is, as tropes. The thin particular remains the particular with its attributes abstracted away. The thick particular is again a state of affairs: the thin particular's having the (particular) attributes that it has.
Second, the thin and the thick particular are really the two ends of a scale. In between is the particular clothed with some, but only some, of its properties. They may be properties that are, for one reason or another, particularly important. This intermediate particular will, of course, be a state of affairs, but a less comprehensive one than the state of affairs that is the thick particular."
(pp. 94-6)
(Armstrong, D. M. Universals: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989.)
"Armstrong has proposed the following picture. We distinguish between a 'thin particular' a, and a 'thick individual thing' A. The thick individual is presumably the fact that a has all the properties it has. Call all of these properties N. Thus we have:
(l) A = a is N.
Now suppose that
(2) N contains whiteness.
Then, according to Armstrong, a translation rule allows us to say:
(3) A is white.
When we say of the billiard ball that it is white, according to Armstrong, we are making the assertion (3). But this cannot be true. When we make this assertion, we are talking about the billiard ball and saying that it has a certain color. We are not talking about the fact that 'something in the billiard ball', the little a, has the properties which it has, and saying of that fact that it is white, that it has this color. When we talk about individual things, we do not talk about facts, and conversely. The fact that a has the properties it has, this fact, has no color. Only individual things are colored. Of course, we can take 'A is white' to mean the same as 'a has N, and N contains whiteness'. Perhaps this is what Armstrong means by saying that we use a 'translation rule' to get from 'the N of a contains whiteness' to 'A is white'. But then the 'A' in 'A is white' no longer stands for the fact that A has N. It is just a dummy letter which does not stand for anything. All there is is the fact that a has N and that N contains whiteness."
(Grossmann, Reinhardt. The Existence of the World: An Introduction to Ontology. New York: Routledge, 1992. pp. 29-30)
He's right. Thin particulars are objects, and thick particulars are facts; so they belong to different ontological categories. The properties which are parts of facts aren't properties of the facts but of the objects which are parts of the facts.
Roderick Chisholm calls the substantative part (component/constituent) of a state of affairs/fact its substrate and its attributive part its content; and…
"We must take care not to confuse the properties of an event with the content of that event. The properties that constitute the content of an event are properties of the substrate of that event."
(Chisholm, Roderick M. "Events Without Times: An Essay on Ontology." Nous 24/3 (1990): 413-427. p. 419)
(Footnote: He regards events as a kind of states of affairs.)
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?
He's right insofar as Aristotelian substances aren't bare particulars; but he's wrong insofar as they aren't thick particulars (in his sense of the term) either, because they aren't facts/states of affairs. Armstrong's basic mistake is to equate thick particulars with facts rather than with substances or objects. Aristotelian substances have attributes, and a substance plus attributes is still a substance. A horse qua thin particular and a horse plus all its (intrinsic) properties qua thick particular are both substances!Consul wrote: ↑July 5th, 2019, 1:47 am"In the British Empiricist tradition, 'substance' has usually meant the factor of particularity, what Locke called the substratum. The great hostility to substance that you find in the British tradition has been hostility to substratum. Let us call the substratum substance in the thin sense, or the thin particular. But now notice that substance can also mean substratum plus properties. This is a usage that we associate with Aristotle and the Scholastic philosophers. Let us call this substance in the thick sense. Substratum plus properties constitutes the thick particular. Aristotle's primary substances—individual things, this man, this horse—are thick particulars."
(Armstrong, D. M. Universals: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989. p. 60)
Note that Aristotelian substances are (nonbare) substrata. The are (totally) identical to substrata, because they don't have (bare) substrata as proper parts. That is, an Aristotelian substance is not an ontological composite of a (bare) substratum and attributes.
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?
Armstrong knew how to live his life.
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?
David Armstrong: The Nature of Properties & Particulars: Three Disputes
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?
"Bare particularismGaryLouisSmith wrote: ↑July 5th, 2019, 4:10 am The Bare Particular
The bare particular is the most easily dismissed idea in philosophy. Few have embraced it. Let me come to its defense by way of analogy. Say you are a modern guy into UFOs and strange encounters, even abduction. You start to use the word “plasma”. It’s a word that I think is all throughout such literature. It might be the same as the ancient word “pneuma”, which was a type of material substance moving mysteriously all through the universe. And that spirit pneuma was alive, conscious stuff. Today, of course, now that Descartes has taught us that consciousness is immaterial, we do not believe in conscious plasma moving all about us, taking on the forms of cats and ghosts and floating heads. We are not into eerie, spooky ectoplasm. I think you get the idea.
Now as you sit there so quietly in your chair, look about and see all the forms that the bare particulars have taken. A lamp, a window, a muffled noise, some disheveled papers. Today people generally want to say that all those forms are mind dependent and not really out there. I have been saying for a long time that they really are out there and they are mind independent. What you thought of as evidence of consciousness in here is really out there. Think of bare particulars as plasma, which comes from the same root as plastic, moldable. And look at them out there all about your room. It’s almost like you are living with ghosts. With ancient universal Forms. With the intimate binding nexus. You are a piece of plasma, or rather a bare particular, that has taken on the ancient form of Thought. Everything is very old. And it is all out there. Oh, there is so much more to say.
Like the bundle theory, bare particularism maintains that objects have their properties as constituents. But bare particularism adds that there’s something else too. In addition to its properties, every object has as a constituent a bare particular (or ‘thin particular’ or ‘substratum’) that instantiates those properties. Bare particulars are ‘bare’ in at least this sense: unlike objects, they have no properties as parts.
Bare particularism, then, is the conjunction of two theses. First, every object has at least two kinds of constituents: its properties and its bare particular. Second, every object has its properties by having as constituents properties that are instantiated by another of its constituents: its bare particular.
Bare particulars play two important roles in the theory at hand. First, they are the subjects of properties or the items to which the properties are attached by instantiation or exemplification."
Object: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/object/
As far as I can see, there are three different conceptions of a bare particular:
1. A particular (thing) is bare iff it doesn't have any properties.
2. A particular (thing) is bare iff it has accidental properties but doesn't have any essential properties.
3. A particular (thing) is bare iff it has accidental or essential properties, but they aren't part(s) of it.
3 is ontologically unproblematic. Many philosophers think that properties are ways things are, and that a way a thing is isn't (a) part of it.
"Objects, however, are not made up of their properties in the way a clock is made up of its parts: screws, gears, a spring, an escapement, and a case. Parts of objects are objects, not properties. Properties—modes—are particularized ways objects are."
(Heil, John. From an Ontological Point of View. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. p. 128)
1 and 2 are ontologically problematic. 1 is plainly ontologically incoherent, because where there are things there must be ways they are. And 2 borders on ontological incoherence at least. For a thing without any essence or nature is limitlessly "formable" and "transformable". There are no constraints then. It can be and become anything by acquiring any sort of accidental properties. But I think that's ontologically impossible: Nothing can be or become anything! Everything must have some essence, nature or identity which determines what it is, and what it can be and become.
"[E]ssence, Locke said, in the 'proper original signification' of the word, is 'the very being of any thing, whereby it is, what it is'. In short, the essence of something, X, is what X is, or what it is to be X. In another locution, X's essence is the very identity of X."
(Lowe, E. J. Forms of Thought: A Study in Philosophical Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. pp. 144-5)
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?
That piece above was from my book. In that, book, when I write about something philosophical I never reason about it the way you do and just did. Rather I try to take my reader to a place where he can experience the thing itself.
I begin by taking the reader to the place of unembraced outcastes. Even the paranormal. (I do believe that philosophy is of the paranormal.) It will be literature and old words. Not the Age of Reason and Descartes.
Next you are in the quiet of your room, I name things of dim light. Muffled and disheveled. I speak of what is out there. I speak of ghosts and ancient forms. I say that you have become that.
__________________
We are in alchemy. Aristotle’s Prima Materia, the primal stuff from which everything is made. Think of the force fields and wave theory of today’s physics. And the Materia Quantitate Signata of Aquinas. That latter came about as though you took a hammer (maybe Thor’s hammer), struck Prime Matter and it shattered into infinite pieces. Think of today’s particle theory in physics.
This is romanticism. It is ghostly and eerie. You feel a frisson go through you. You experience THAT. The bare thing. It enters you. You quake. Descartes may not have understood, but I think Isaac Newton would have.
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?
Consul wrote:
Regarding 2, if existence precedes essence the entity will not have or be essence until the moment it ceases to be. Only man made categories depend upon essence: such as an infectious disease which is confirmed only by isolating the causal organism.As far as I can see, there are three different conceptions of a bare particular:
1. A particular (thing) is bare iff it doesn't have any properties.
2. A particular (thing) is bare iff it has accidental properties but doesn't have any essential properties.
3. A particular (thing) is bare iff it has accidental or essential properties, but they aren't part(s) of it.
3 is ontologically unproblematic. Many philosophers think that properties are ways things are, and that a way a thing is isn't (a) part of it.
"Objects, however, are not made up of their properties in the way a clock is made up of its parts: screws, gears, a spring, an escapement, and a case. Parts of objects are objects, not properties. Properties—modes—are particularized ways objects are."
(Heil, John. From an Ontological Point of View. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. p. 128)
1 and 2 are ontologically problematic. 1 is plainly ontologically incoherent, because where there are things there must be ways they are. And 2 borders on ontological incoherence at least. For a thing without any essence or nature is limitlessly "formable" and "transformable". There are no constraints then. It can be and become anything by acquiring any sort of accidental properties. But I think that's ontologically impossible: Nothing can be or become anything! Everything must have some essence, nature or identity which determines what it is, and what it can be and become.
"[E]ssence, Locke said, in the 'proper original signification' of the word, is 'the very being of any thing, whereby it is, what it is'. In short, the essence of something, X, is what X is, or what it is to be X. In another locution, X's essence is the very identity of X."
(Lowe, E. J. Forms of Thought: A Study in Philosophical Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. pp. 144-5)
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Regarding 3, does " ways things are" mean ways things are for the duration of the thing, or at one particular time so the spatial properties might not remain constant through time?
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?
Transience is sad and poets can capture the fleeting moment of a physical thing . See Keats's Ode to Melancholy.The Impressionists did this for art capturing momentary light effects.
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?
Walter Pater in Conclusion wrote, "To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?
Just a few minutes ago we had a couple of earthquake aftershocks here in Nepal during a rainstorm. That wakes a person up. Now the internet will probably go out - again.
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?
(p. 13)
"I prefer the more colloquial ‘object’ to the traditional term, ‘substance’. By speaking of objects rather than substances, I hope to avoid associations with conceptions of substance some readers might bring with them. An object can be regarded as a possessor of properties: as something that is red, spherical, and pungent, for instance. This, if you like, is to consider the object as a substratum,a property-bearer. You can also attend to or consider an object’s properties,ways that object is. The idea of a property borne and the idea of a property-bearer are correlative ideas. Such ideas result from acts of abstraction: selective attention, Locke’s partial consideration. Just as an object must be some way (nothing can be no way at all), ways must be ways something is. Property-bearers and properties, then, are equally ‘abstractions’. Do we perceive property-bearers? Well, we perceive beetroots, and beetroots are objects. Perceiving a beetroot is a matter of perceiving a red, spherical, pungent object. We can consider (or perceive) the beetroot as a spherical, red, pungent object, something that is these ways and others; and we can consider (or perceive) ways the beetroot is: red, spherical, pungent.
Objects, then, are the basic entities; property-bearers and properties are equally abstractions. Property-bearers require properties—no ‘bare particulars’—and properties require property-bearers; neither can exist apart from the other. To ask whether property-bearers themselves have properties is to invite confusion. Property-bearers are not hidden from view, not mysterious entities ‘coated’ with properties. The beetroot itself is a bearer of properties. When you point to a beetroot, you point to a property-bearer. You can equally point to the beetroot’s properties. In so doing, you need not alter the direction you are pointing.
Property-bearers and properties are inseparable. This is not because properties are bonded to property-bearers with an especially powerful metaphysical glue. Rather, property-bearers are objects considered as being particular ways, and properties are ways objects are. In considering an object as a property-bearer, we are considering it partially; in considering its properties,we are considering ways it is, another kind of partial consideration. Properties and property-bearers can be considered separately but they cannot be separated, even in thought.
Let me summarize. Objects are bearers of properties. A property-bearer is not a ‘thin particular’ to which properties are affixed. A property-bearer itself has all the properties it ‘supports’ and no more. Property-bearers are not ‘bare particulars’. A property-bearer is an object considered as something that is various ways,something that has various properties; properties are ways objects are. On one reading, Locke’s substrata are my objects."
(pp. 172-3)
(Heil, John. From an Ontological Point of View. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.)
"Substances are not bare, featureless entities to which properties attach themselves as limpets attach themselves to rocks at the seashore. Every substance is itself some way or other, indeed many ways. These ways are its properties. For a substance to possess a property is for it, the substance, to be a particular way. Properties—ways—do not make up a substance, they are not parts of substances. The charge, spin, and mass of an electron are not parts or constituents of the electron. As far as we know, electrons have no parts. Electrons might have spatial or temporal parts, but that is another matter, one I shall take up in due course. An electron's charge, spin, and mass are ways the electron is.
Considerations of this sort are of the first importance when you reflect on roles substances might plausibly play. A substance, an electron, for instance, is neither a compound including a 'bare particular' larded over with properties, nor a bundle or aggregation of properties. You can consider an electron as a substance, as a bearer of properties, as something that has a particular nature, something that is various ways. You can consider ways an electron is. In so doing, you are abstracting, engaging in what Locke called 'partial consideration.' Imagine a ripe tomato illuminated by bright sunlight. You can consider the tomato's shape, its colour, its heft, or you can consider the tomato as something that has a particular shape, colour, heft. When you do so, you are not considering parts of the tomato, ingredients that, taken together, add up to a tomato. You are considering the tomato and ways it is. And just as you can consider the tomato's shape without considering its colour, even though these are, at any given time, inseparable, so you can consider the tomato without considering various ways it is.
The categories of substance and property are fundamental and complementary. To think of a substance is to think of something that is various ways; to think of a property is to think of a way a substance is or could be. A substance cannot be no way at all, and a property cannot fail to be a property of a substance, a way a substance is or might be. Philosophers who have tried to dispense with substances—bundle theorists—and those who have tried to dispense with properties—extreme nominalists—begin and end with the wrong picture. If properties are ways, they must be ways something is. And if there is something, it must be some way or other. The idea that you might, in the interests of parsimony, get by with just a single category might be likened to the idea that you could have the smile without the cat—or the cat with no expression at all."
(pp. 16-7)
"I have suggested that the universe, whatever its ultimate nature as revealed by science, includes substances and properties. Properties are ways substances are. Substances are not congeries of properties; properties are not parts of, do not add up to, substances; substances are not made up of their properties. Nor are substances 'bare particulars', propertyless substrata that take on properties to yield objects or states of affairs. Substances and properties alike are abstract entities, abstract in the traditional sense. Abstraction, Locke's partial consideration, enables us to consider the tomato or its properties. You can have distinct—'separate'—thoughts about such things even though properties could not be prised apart from their bearers, and substances could not survive without bearing properties, without being propertied. Substances can gain or lose properties: the tomato can cease to be green, but only by coming to be some other colour (or by being obliterated)."
(p. 18)
"The universe—any universe—must include substances and properties. Substance and property are reciprocal, complementary categories. Substances are the bearers of properties, properties are ways substances are. Substances and properties alike are abstractions: you can consider a substance as a property bearer or you can consider its properties, but substances and properties could not exist apart. Substances are not compound entities made up of 'thin' or bare particulars clothed in properties."
(p. 51)
(Heil, John. The Universe As We Find It. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.)
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?
It is not the case that "existence precedes essence". A substance has its essence, its essential properties as long as it exists. Essential change is substantial change, in the sense that a substance cannot lose any of its essential properties without thereby ceasing to exist.
There's a distinction between essential properties and non-essential/accidental properties. A thing cannot survive a change of the ways it essentially is, but it can survive a change of the ways it accidentally is.
Essential vs. Accidental Properties: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/esse ... ccidental/
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