Bare Particulars and Lukáš Novák's Argument Against Them

In his contribution to the book I am reviewing, Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic (Ontos Verlag, 2012), Lukáš Novák mounts an Aristotelian argument against bare particulars.  In this entry I will try to understand his argument.  I will hereafter refer to Professor Novák as 'LN' to avoid the trouble of having to paste in the diacriticals that his Czech name requires.

As I see it, the overall structure of LN's argument is an instance of modus tollens:

1. If some particulars are bare, then all particulars are bare.
2. It is not the case that all particulars are bare.
Therefore
3. No particulars are bare.

On the Very Idea of a Bare Particular

'Bare particular' is a technical term in philosophy the provenance of which is the work of Gustav Bergmann. (D. M. Armstrong flies a similar idea under the flag 'thin particular.')  Being a terminus technicus,  the term does not wear its meaning on its sleeve. It does not refer to particulars that lack properties; there are none.  It refers to particulars that lack natures or nontrivial essential properties.  (Being self-identical is an example of a trivial essential property; being human of a nontrivial essential property.)  Bare particulars differ among themselves solo numero: they are not intrinsically or essentially different, but only numerically different.  Or you could say that they are barely different. Leibniz with his identitas indiscernibilium would not have approved. 

The notion of a bare particular makes sense only in the context of a constituent ontology according to which ordinary particulars, 'thick particulars' in the jargon of Armstrong, have ontological constituents or metaphysical parts.  Consider two qualitatively indiscernible round red spots.  There are two of them and thay share all their features.  What is the ontological ground of the sameness of features?  The sameness of the universals 'in' each spot.  What grounds the  numerical difference? What makes them two and not one?  Each has a different bare particular among its ontological constituents.  BPs, accordingly, are individuators/differentiators. On this sort of ontological analysis an ordinary particular is a whole of ontological parts including universals and a bare particular.  But of course the particulars exemplify the universals, so a tertium quid is needed, a nexus of exemplification to tie the bare particular to the universals. 

The main point, however, is that there is nothing in the nature of a bare particular to dictate which universals it exemplifies: BPs don't have natures.  Thus any BP is 'promiscuously combinable' with any first-order universal.  On this Bergmannian ontological scheme it is not ruled out that Socrates might have been an octopus or a valve-lifter in a '57 Chevy.  The other side of the coin is that there is no DE RE metaphysical necessity that Socrates be human.  Of course, there is the DE DICTO metaphysical impossibility, grounded in the respective properties, that an octopus be human.  But it is natural to want to say more, namely that it is DE RE metaphysically impossible that Socrates be an octopus.  But then the problem is: how can a particular qua particular 'contradict' any property?  Being an octopus 'contradicts' (is metaphysically inconsistent with)  being a man.  But how can a particular be such as to disallow  its exemplification of some properties? (116)

Thus I agree with LN that if there are bare particulars, then there are no DE RE metaphysical necessities pertaining to ordinary particulars, and vice versa. This is why LN, an Aristotelian, needs to be able to refute the very notion of a bare particular.

LN's Argument for premise (2) in the Master Argument Above

LN draws our attention to the phenomenon of accidental change.  A rock goes from being cold to being hot.  Peter goes from being ignorant of the theorem of Pythagoras to being  knowledgeable about it.  These are accidental changes: one and the same particular has different properties at different times.  Now a necessary condition of accidental change is that one and the same subject have different properties at different times.  But is it a sufficent condition?  Suppose Peter is F at time t and not F at time t* (t* later than t).  Suppose that F-ness is a universal.  It follows that Peter goes from exemplifying the universal F-ness at t to not exemplifying it at t*.  That is: he stands in the exemplification relation to F-ness at t, but ceases so to stand to t*.  But there has to be more to the change than this.  For, as LN points out, the change is in Peter.  It is intrinsic to him and cannot consist merely in a change in a relation to a universal.  Thus it seems to LN that, even if there are universals and particulars, we need another category of entity to account for accidental change, a category that that I will call that of property-exemplifications.  Thus Peter's being cold at t is a property-exemplification and so is Peter's not being cold at t*.  Peter's change in respect of temperature involves Peter as the diachronically persisting substratum of the change, the universal coldness, and two property-exemplifications, Peter's being cold at t and Peter's being not cold at t*.

These property-exemplifications, however, are particulars, not universals even though each has a universal as a constituent.  This is a special case of what Armstrong calls the Victory of Particularity: the result of a particular exemplifying a universal is  a particular.   Moreover, these items have natures or essences: it is essential to Peter's being cold that it have coldness as a constituent.  (This is analogous to mereological essentialism.) Hence property- exemplifications are particulars, but not bare particulars.  Therefore, (2) is true: It is not the case that all particulars are bare. 

I find LN's argument for (2) persuasive.  The argument in outline:

4. There are property-exemplifications
5. Property-exemplifications are particulars
6. Property-exemplifications have natures
7. Whatever has a nature is not bare
Therefore
2. It is not the case that all particulars are bare.

Premise (1) in the Master Argument

LN has shown that not all particulars are bare.  But why should we think that (1) is true, that if some particulars are bare, then all are?   It could be that simple particulars are bare while complex particulars, such as property-exemplifications,  are not bare.  If that is so, then showing that no complex particular is bare would  not amount to showing that no particular is bare.

The Master Argument, then, though valid, is not sound, or at at least it is not obviously sound: we have been given no good reason to accept (1).

Property-exemplifications, Tropes, and Accidents

But in all fairness to LN I should point out that he speaks of tropes and accidents, not of property-exemplifications.  I used the latter expression because 'trope' strikes me as  out of place.  Tropes are simples.  Peter's being ignorant of the theorem of Pythagoras at t, however, is a complex, and LN says as much on p. 117 top.    So the entity designated by the italicized phrase is not a trope, strictly speaking.  'Trope' is a terminus technicus whose meaning in this ontological context was first given to it by Donald C. Williams.  

Well, is the designatum of the italicized phrase an accident?  Can an accident of a substance have that very subtance as one of  its ontological constituents?  I should think not.  But Peter's being ignorant of the theorem of Pythagoras at t has Peter as one of its constituents.  So I should think that it is not an accident of Peter.

I conclude that either I am failing to understand LN's argument or that he has been insufficiently clear in expounding it.

A Final Quibble

LN suggests that the intuitions behind the theory of bare particulars are rooted in Frege's mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive distinction between concepts and objects. "Once this distinction has been made, it is very hard to see how there might be a genuine case of logical de re necessity." (115) The sentence quoted is true,  but as I said above, the notion of a bare particular makes no sense except in the context of a constituent ontology.   Frege's, however, is not a constituent ontology like Bergmann's but what Bergmann calls a function ontology.  (See G. Bergmann, Realism, p. 7.  Wolterstorff's constituent versus relation ontology distinction is already in Bergmann as the distinct between complex and function ontologies.)  So I deny that part of the motivation for  the positing of bare particulars is an antecedent acceptance of Frege's concept-object distinction.  I agree that if one accepts that distinction, then logical or rather metaphyscal de re necessity goes by the boards.  But the Fregean distinction is not part of the motivation or argumentation for bare particulars. 

Just what considerations motivate the positing of bare particulars would be a good topic for a separate post. 

Comments

[David Brightly]

Hello Bill,

Peter's change in respect of temperature involves Peter as the diachronically persisting substratum of the change, the universal coldness, and two property-exemplifications, Peter's being cold at t and Peter's being not cold at t*.

If we wanted to resist Lukáš's argument for his (2) couldn't we claim that the above amounts to double-counting? If Peter is the persisting entity that changes, and the change is in Peter, then Peter's being cold at t is already included in Peter (at t) and to introduce it as a separate entity is superfluous.

The account is somewhat reminiscent of the caloric theory of heat: warmth is a fluid that is added to or subtracted from a body, some extra entity over and above the body itself.

[Spencer Case]

Hello Bill,

Hope all is well. Just to make sure I'm on the same page, is a bare particular the same thing as a haecceity? I understand the latter to be the "this-ness" that makes one object distinct from a qualitatively identical replica with a different "this-ness" as in the classic example of two black spheres floating in empty space. If there not the same, could you explain the difference?

Thanks,

[John]

Bill, you write: "The notion of a bare particular makes sense only in the context of a constituent ontology according to which ordinary particulars, 'thick particulars' in the jargon of Armstrong, have ontological constituents or metaphysical parts."

I would have thought that the notion of a bare particular makes sense also in the context of a relational ontology according to which ordinary particulars are things-I-know-not-what standing in the instantiation relation to transcendent universals. Bare particulars, on this view, are the underlying substrata for properties. Ordinary objects are just the bare particulars instantiating those properties.

Indeed, I would have thought that the notion of a bare particular makes more sense in the context of such a theory. Isn't part of the motivation for adopting a constituent, as opposed to a relational, ontology precisely to avoid positing the notion of a bare particular? If properties are immanent in, or constituents of, the objects that exemplify them, then you don't need some bare particular to stand in the instantiation relation to transcendent universals; you've got what you need already there.

No doubt I am running together a variety of distinctions. In particular, I am making the constituent approach seem as though it is, and must be, a kind of bundle theory of objects. But I dimly recall Armstrong's own discussion of bare particulars in "Nominalism and Realism", and I was under the impression that the notion of a bare particular features in that discussion as an important aspect of a relational ontology.

Any help you can give me sorting this out would be helpful. Of course, nothing I've said here is particularly helpful for you, so I wouldn't be offended if you left my remarks to the side.

[Bill Vallicella]

Hi John,

Thanks for the comments. Unfortunately, 'bare particular' is used in at least two different ways. You mentioned Armstrong. If you consult the glossary of Nominalism and Realism you will see that for him bare particulars are particulars that lack properties or lack both properties and relations. Unsurprisingly, he rejects bare particulars so understood. But that is not what Bergmann meant by 'bare particular' and he owns the phrase. Or at least he first introduced it, just as D. C. Williams first introduced 'trope.' For Bergmann, what makes bare particulars bare is not that they have no properties: they cannot exist without standing in the exemplification nexus to universals. What they lack are natures. So any two bare particulars taken as such and abstracting from the universals they exemplify, differ only solo numero. They are posited to explain numerical difference.

When I use 'bare particular' I use it only in Bergmann's sense.

Still, you might press me: what can't a BP in something like that sense be said to stand in an exemplification relation to a transcendent universal, where 'transcendent' means 'not an ontological constituent of any particular'? My answer is that that suggestion cannot be taken seriously. Suppose I am staring at a round red spot. I see the roundness and I see the redness. But I could not be seeing them if they were transcendent universals outside the spatiotemporal realm. Staring at the ball, I do not see something colorless and shapeless. The sensible world is a world of particulars, but surely it is not a world of bare particulars.

And so I say that the BPs in Bergmann's sense make sense only in the context of a constituent ontology. Furthermore, it is part of the very sense of 'BP' that they figure only in a constituent ontology.

A constituent ontology is not the same as a bundle ontology, although every bundle ontology is a constituent ontology, whether the bundle be a bundle of tropes or a bundle of universals, or, as on Castaneda's theory, a bundle of property-bundles, where properties are universals. Consider a substratum theory that posits a substratum that supports tropes. (C. B. Marin suggested something like this.) This is a constituent ontology that is not a bundle ontology. On Bergmann's view, ordinary particulars are concrete facts consisting of bare particulars and universals linked by the exemplifiation nexus. This is another example of a constituent ontology that is not a bundle theory.

Feel free to press me further if that isn't clear.

[Bill Vallicella]

Hi Spencer,

All is well at this end, and I hope the same is true for you.

Bergmann posits bare particulars to ground or explain numerical difference. So consider Max Black's world in which all there is are two iron spheres that are indiscernible in respect of every monadic and relational property. Such a world seems possible. But if so, then the Identity of Indiscernibles cannot be a necessary truth. Black used the example to refute the Identity of Indiscernibles (which is nec. true if true), but he didn't talk about bare particulars, at least not in that famous article. Now if you asked Bergmann about the ontological ground of the numerical difference of the two spheres, he would say that they differ in virtue of the difference between two bare particulars.

One could further say that it is the bare particular that grounds the thisness or haecceity of each sphere. Each of the two spheres is a 'this-such.' Universals ground the suchness, bare particulars the thisness.

So we can say that one theory of haecceity involves the positing of bare particulars, but not every theory. Some people think of haecceities as properties. Plantinga is an example. His view is absurd in my humble opinion as I have argued elsewhere on this site and in my existence book. You can't make the thisness of a concrete particular into a property of it. Others have tried to understand haecceity in terms of spatiotemporal position. And there are still other theories.

To answer your question, 'haecceity' and 'bare particular' do not have the same meaning. Only one theory of haecceity involves the positing of bare particulars. But there are other theories.

Note also that while Bergmann is a constituent ontologist, Plantinga is a non-C ontologist, and yet the latter speaks of haecceities such as the property Socraeity.

Have I answered your question satisfactorily?

[Spencer]

Yes, I think I understand the difference now, though those other theories do strike me as very weird. One follow-up just to make sure I'm "tracking" as they used to say in the Army: suppose bare particulars ground this-ness. Now, could God potentially switch the bare particulars of the two spheres of the Black world without making any other changes, the way I might switch the handles and heads of two axes? I find myself intuitively averse to the idea that such a miracle could be real and substantive.

[Bill Vallicella]

Spencer,

I think the answer is yes. Of course the switch would make no discernible difference. So if "real and substantive" implies discernibility, then I agree with you. But why must a real difference be a discernible one?

Consider a world consisting of just two indiscernible axes. Isn't that world different from one in which the handles and heads are switched?

Suppose you have an indiscernible twin and your girlfriend has an indiscernible twin. Would it make a difference if you and your twin switched girlfriends?

[Spencer]

It looks like we have reached the end of the usefulness of the phrase "makes a difference" that seems so clear in ordinary speech. Yes, I am inclined to accept your girlfriend intuitive nudging, and had even been thinking of such cases. I will think on this further.