Maverick Philosopher

External Relations and Bare Particularism

K. V. writes,

I am a first year Jesuit novice of the USA Midwest province. I'm from Cincinnati, OH. I have interests in philosophy. I know Thomism well. My hope is to do metaphysics and philosophical logic within the analytic tradition. 

 

I saw that you wrote a paper on external relations and Bradley's Regress. Can I ask you a couple questions regarding external relations? Do you think that first order logic is ontologically committed to external relations? Also, if all relations are external, would this entail a sort of bare particularism about objects? In other words, would all necessary properties be conceived of as something added, rather than as the essence?

It is good to make your acquaintance, K. V. Best wishes for your studies.

 

First we need to clarify 'internal and 'external' as applied to relations.  

 

External Relations. My coffee cup rests on a coaster which rests on my desk. Consider first the dyadic on top of relation the relata of which are the cup and the coaster. This is an external relation in the sense that both the cup and the coaster can exist and have the intrinsic (non-relational) properties they have whether or not they stand in this relation. Removing the cup from the coaster need not induce an intrinsic change (a change in respect of an intrinsic property or change in existential status) in the cup or in the coaster. One could also put the point modally. In the actual world, the cup is on the coaster at time t. But there is a merely possible world W in which the cup is not on the coaster at t. In W, cup and coaster both exist and possess the same intrinsic properties they have in the actual world, but the cup does not bear the external on top of relation to the coaster.

Now consider the triadic between relation that relates the members of the ordered triple <coaster, cup, desk>. This relation is also external. The terms (relata) of the relation can exist and have the intrinsic properties they have whether or not they stand in the relation.

A-Internal Relations. If a relation is not external, then it is non-external. One sort of non-external relation is an A-internal relation, where ‘A’ honors David M. Armstrong:

Two or more particulars are internally related if and only if there exist properties of the particulars which logically necessitate that the relation holds. (Universals and Scientific Realism, II, 85)

Consider two balls, A and B. Each has the property of being red all over. Just in virtue of each being red, A and B stand in the same color as relation.  Each ball's being (the same shade of) red logically suffices for them to stand in the relation in question.  This relation is internal in that the non-obtaining of the relation at a later time or in a different possible world would induce an intrinsic change in one or both of the balls. In other words, the two balls could not cease to be the same color as one another unless one or both of the balls changed color. But the two balls could cease to be ten feet from each other without changing in any intrinsic or non-relational respect. Spatial relations are clear examples of external relations.

 

In a theological image, for God to bring it about that Mt. Everest is higher than Mt. Kiliminjaro he need do only two things: create the one mountain and then create the other. He doesn't have to do a third thing, namely, bring them into the higher than relation. 

A-internal relations can be said to be founded relations in that they are founded in intrinsic (non-relational) properties of the relata. Thus the relational fact of A’s being the same color as B decomposes into a conjunction of two non-relational facts: A’s being red & B’s being red. These non-relational facts are independent of each other in the sense that each can obtain without the other obtaining.  A-internal relations reduce to their monadic foundations.  They are thus an "ontological free lunch" in Armstrong's cute phrase.   They do not add to the ontological inventory. They are no "addition to being." So if every relation were A-internal, then the category of Relation, as an irreducible category of entities, would be empty.

B-internal relations. To say that two or more particulars are B-internally related, where ‘B’ honors Bradley and Blanshard, is to say that there is no possible world in which the particulars exist but do not stand in the relation in question. Thus two B-internally related particulars cannot exist without each other. Each is essential to the other. Here is an example. Set S has five members essentially (as opposed to accidentally) , while set T has seven members essentially. These essential properties of S and T found the relation larger than (has a greater cardinality than) that obtains between them. Although there are possible worlds in which neither set exists, there is no possible world in which both sets exist but fail to stand in the relation in question.  So S and T are B-internally related.

 

Here is a simpler example, Socrates and his singleton {Socrates}.  The first is an element of the second, and cannot fail to be an element of the second. And the second cannot fail to have Socrates as its sole element.  So Socrates and his singleton stand in a B-internal relation.  

 

Go back to the cup and the coaster. The first is on top of the second.  If they were B-internally related, then that very cup could not have existed without that very coaster, and vice versa. In every possible world in which the cup exists, the coaster exists.  That strikes me as preposterous. So while I grant that there are B-internal relations, not all relations are B-internal. There are external relations.

In sum, external relations are not founded in the non-relational properties of their relata. A-internal relations are founded in accidental non-relational properties of their relata. B-internal relations are founded in essential non-relational properties of their relata.

My reader asks a question that I will precisify as follows: Is standard first-order predicate logic with identity ontologically committed to external relations?  I should think so. The quantifiers range over a domain of existents.  If that were not the case, 'Cats exist' could not be replaced salva veritate with 'For some x, x is a cat.' For the particular quantifier to be an existential quantifier, the domain of quantification must be a domain of existents.  

 

So modern predicate logic includes a commitment to ontological pluralism, to a plurality of numerically distinct individual existents.  This is a totality of "independent reals" (to borrow a phrase from Josiah Royce). Each of these independent existents has no need of any other one for its existence.  In Humean terms, they are "distinct existences," i.e., numerically distinct existents.   No doubt they stand in external relations. The cat is on the mat but it has no need of the mat to exist and the mat pays the same compliment to the cat.  The relation that connects them is external.   

 

The reader's second question is none too clear.  He may be asking this: If all relations are external, does it follow that concrete particulars that stand  in such relations are bare particulars? First of all, what is a bare particular?

 

A bare particular is not a particular without properties. As a matter of metaphysical necessity, everything has properties. What make a bare particular bare is not its lack of properties, but the way it has the properties it has. It has them by exemplifying/instantiating them, where (first-order) exemplification is -- or is modelled on -- an asymmetrical external relation.  Thus the bare particular in a red round spot -- to use a typical Bergmannian, 'Iowa,' example -- stands in an external relation to the property of being red and the property of being round in the same spot.   A bare particular is not an Aristotelian primary substance; it is not an individual essence or nature.  It has properties but they are all accidental properties.  It cannot not have properties, but there is no necessity that it have the very properties it has. So, from 'Necessarily, every bare articular has properties' one cannot validly infer 'Every bare particular has the properties it has  necessarily.'  By contrast, an Aristotelian primary substance (prote ousia) is an individualized essence or nature.

 

The answer to the second bolded question, I think, is in the affirmative. But to explain this with any rigor would take more time than I presently have to invest.

From Positivism to Realism: The Philosophy of Gustav Bergmann

By William Heald via the WayBack Machine.

Bare Particular as Limit Concept

I have already shown that the concept prime matter is a limit concept.  The same holds for the concept bare particular. Both are lower limits of ontological analysis. I will be using 'bare particular' in Gustav Bergmann's sense.

What is a Particular?

Particulars in the sense relevant to understanding 'bare particular' may be understood in terms of impredicability.  Some things can be predicated of other things.  Thus being black can be predicated of my cat, and being a property can be predicated of being black; but my cat cannot be predicated of anything.  My cat is in this sense 'impredicable.'  Particulars are subjects of predication but cannot themselves be predicated.   Particulars, then, are ultimate subjects of predication.  Thus my cat is an ultimate subject of predication unlike being black which is a subject of predication, but not an ultimate subject of predication.  Particulars have properties but are not themselves properties.  Properties may be characterized as predicable entities. The particulars I am referring to are of course  concrete particulars. They are not those  abstract particulars known in the trade as tropes. (This curious nomenclature derives from Donald C. Williams. It has nothing to do with tropes in the literary sense.) A trope is a particularized property; better: a property assayed as a particular, an unrepeatable, as opposed to a universal, a repeatable entity.  Unrepeatability is the mark of particulars, whether concrete or abstract.

What is a Bare Particular?

First, what it is not.  It is a complete misunderstanding to suppose that philosophers who speak of bare or thin particulars, philosophers as otherwise different in their views as Gustav Bergmann, David Armstrong, and J. P. Moreland, mean to suggest that there are particulars that have no properties and stand in no relations.  There is no such monstrosity as a bare particular in this sense. What makes a bare particular bare is not its having no properties, but the way it has the properties it has.

A bare particular is a particular that lacks a nature or (real) essence. It is therefore quite unlike an Aristotelian primary substance.  Every such substance has or rather is an individual nature.  But while lacking a nature, a bare particular has properties, and it cannot not have them.  This 'having' is understood in terms of the asymmetrical external nexus of exemplification.  A bare particular is thus tied to its properties by the external nexus of exemplification. To say that the nexus that ties a to F-ness is external is to say that there is nothing in the nature of a, and nothing in the nature of F-ness to require that a exemplify F-ness.  After all, a, as bare, lacks a nature, and F-ness, while it has a nature,  is not such that there is anything  in it to necessitate its being exemplified by a. In this sense a bare particular and its properties are external to each other.  So, while it is necessary that bare particulars have properties, none of the properties  a bare particular has is essential to it.

This mutual externality of property to bearer entails promiscuous combinability:  any bare particular can exemplify any property, and any property can be exemplified by any bare particular. 

Similarities between Bare Particulars and Prime Matter

S1. Bare particulars in themselves are property-less while prime matter in itself is formless.   The bare particular in a thing is that which exemplifies the thing's properties.  But in itself it is a pure particular and thus 'bare.'  The prime matter of a thing is the thing's ultimate matter and while supporting forms is itself formless.

S2. Bare particulars, though property-less in themselves, exemplify properties; prime matter, though formless in itself, is formed.

S3. There is nothing in the nature of a bare particular to dictate which properties it will exemplify.  This is because bare particulars do not have natures.  Correspondingly, there is nothing in the nature of prime matter to dictate which substantial forms it will take. This is because prime matter, in itself, is without form.

S4.  Bare particulars, being bare, are promiscuously combinable with any and all first-level properties. Thus any bare particular can stand in the exemplification nexus with any first-level property.  Similarly, prime matter is promiscuously receptive to any and all forms, having no form in itself.

S5.  Promiscuous combinability entails the contingency of the exemplification nexus.  Promiscuous receptivity entails the contingency of prime matter's being informed thus and so.

S6. Bare particulars are never directly encountered in sense experience.  The same holds for prime matter.  What we encounter are always propertied particulars and formed matter.

S7. A bare particular combines with properties to make an ordinary, 'thick' particular.  Prime matter combines with substantial form to make a primary substance.

S8. The dialectic that leads to bare particulars and prime matter respectively is similar, a form of analysis that is neither logical nor physical but ontological.  It is based on the idea that things have ontological constituents or 'principles' which, incapable of existing on their own, yet combine to from independent existents.  Hylomorphic analysis leads ultimately to prime matter, and ontological analysis in the style of Bergmann and fellow travellers leads to bare or thin particulars as ultimate substrata.

Differences Between Bare Particulars and Prime Matter

D1. There are many bare particulars each numerically different from every other one.  They differ, not property-wise, but solo numero. In themselves, bare particulars are many.  It is not the case that, in itself, prime matter is many.  It is not, in itself, parceled out into numerically distinct bits.

D2. Bare particulars are actual; prime matter is purely potential.

D3. Bare particulars account for numerical difference.  But prime matter does not account for numerical difference. (See Feser's manual, p. 199)  Prime matter is common and wholly indeterminate.  Designated matter (materia signata) is the principle of individuation, i.e., differentiation.

Bare Particular as Limit Concept in the Positive Sense

It is obvious that the concept of bare particular, in the early Bergmann at least, is a limit concept.  (The item-sort distinction in the later Bergmann of New Foundations of Ontology complicates matters.) But is the limit concept bare particular negative or positive?  There is no prime matter in itself, which fact makes the concept of prime matter a limit concept in the negative sense: the concept does not point to anything real beyond itself but merely sets a limit to our hylomorphic analysis of the real. Should we say the same about the concept of bare particular?  Not in Bergmann's constituent ontology.  If  an ordinary concrete particular -- a round red spot to use an 'Iowa' example -- is built up out of more basic constituents, then the 'building blocks' must be real. 

Bare Particulars and Prime Matter: Similarities and Differences

This entry continues the discussion of prime matter begun here. That post is a prerequisite for this one.

Similarities between Bare Particulars and Prime Matter

S1. Bare particulars in themselves are property-less while prime matter in itself is formless.   The bare particular in a thing is that which exemplifies the thing's properties.  But in itself it is a pure particular and thus 'bare.'  The prime matter of a thing is the thing's ultimate matter and while supporting forms is itself formless.

S2. Bare particulars, though property-less in themselves, exemplify properties; prime matter, though formless in itself, is formed.

S3. There is nothing in the nature of a bare particular to dictate which properties it will exemplify.  This is because bare particulars do not have natures.  Correspondingly, there is nothing in the nature of prime matter to dictate which substantial forms it will take. This is because prime matter, in itself, is without form.

S4.  Bare particulars, being bare, are promiscuously combinable with any and all first-level properties. Thus any bare particular can stand in the exemplification nexus with any first-level property.  Similarly, prime matter is promiscuously receptive to any and all forms, having no form in itself.

S5.  Promiscuous combinability entails the contingency of the exemplification nexus.  Promiscuous receptivity entails the contingency of prime matter's being informed thus and so.

S6. Bare particulars are never directly encountered in sense experience.  The same holds for prime matter.  What we encounter are always propertied particulars and formed matter.

S7. A bare particular combines with properties to make an ordinary, 'thick' particular.  Prime matter combines with substantial form to make a primary (sublunary) substance.

S8. The dialectic that leads to bare particulars and prime matter respectively is similar, a form of analysis that is neither logical nor physical but ontological.  It is based on the idea that things have ontological constituents or 'principles' which, incapable of existing on their own, yet combine to from independent existents.  Hylomorphic analysis leads ultimately to prime matter, and ontological analysis in the style of Bergmann and fellow travellers leads to bare or thin particulars as ultimate substrata.

Differences Between Bare Particulars and Prime Matter

D1. There are many bare particulars each numerically different from every other one.  In themselves, bare particulars are many.  It is not the case that, in itself, prime matter is many.  It is not, in itself, parceled out into numerically distinct bits.

D2. Bare particulars are actual; prime matter is purely potential.

D3. Bare particulars account for numerical difference.  But prime matter does not account for numerical difference. (See Feser's manual, p. 199)  Prime matter is common and wholly indeterminate.  Designated matter (materia signata) is the principle of individuation, i.e., differentiation.

Related articles

Bare Particulars versus Aristotelian Substances

Van Inwagen, Properties, and Bare Particulars

Van Inwagen: No Truck with Tropes or Constituent Ontology Generally

J. P. Moreland on Constituent Ontology: Is Exemplification a Spatial Container Relation?

A Question for Trope Theorists

Reply to Ken Hochstetter on Divine Simplicity

Van Inwagen: No Truck with Tropes or Constituent Ontology Generally

Thanks again to Professor Levy to getting me 'fired up' over this topic.

..............................................

Is the notion of a trope intelligible?

If not, then we can pack it in right here and dispense with discussion of the subsidiary difficulties.  Peter van Inwagen confesses, "I do not understand  much of what B-ontologists write."  (Ontology, Identity, and Modality, Cambridge UP, 2001, p. 2)  'B' is short for 'Bergmann' where the reference is to Gustav Bergmann, the founder of the Iowa School.  B-ontology is what I call constituent ontology.  I will refer to it, and not just out of perversity, as C-ontology and I will contrast it with NC-ontology.  Van Inwagen is a premier example of an NC-ontologist, a non-constituent ontologist. 

The fundamental idea of C-ontology is that concreta have ontological parts in addition to their spatial parts if the concreta in question are material things.  To invoke a nice simple 'Iowa' example, consider a couple of round red spots on a white piece of paper.  Each spot has spatial parts.  On C-ontology, however, each spot also has ontological parts, among them the properties of the spots. For a C-ontologist, then, the properties of a thing are parts of it.  But of course they are not spatial or mereological parts of it.  A spot can be cut in two, and an avocado can be disembarrassed of its seed and exocarp, but one cannot physically separate the roundness and the redness of the spot or the dark green of the exocarp from the exocarp.  So if the properties of a thing are parts thereof, then these parts are 'ontological' parts, parts that figure in the ontological structure of the thing in question.

Examples of C-ontologies: a) trope bundle theory, b) universals bundle theory, c) tropes + substratum theory, d) Castaneda's Guise Theory, e) Butchvarov's object-entity theory, f) the ontological theories of Bergmann, Armstrong, and Vallicella according to which ordinary particulars are concrete facts, g) Aristotelian and Scholastic hylomorphic doctrines according to which form and matter are 'principles' (in the Scholastic not the sentential sense) ingredient in primary substances. 

If van Inwagen is right, then all of the above are unintelligible. Van Inwagen claims not to understand such terms as 'trope,' 'bare particular,' 'immanent universal' and 'bundle' as these terms are used in C-ontologies. He professes not to understand how a thing could have what I am calling an ontological structure.  "What I cannot see is how a chair could have any sort of structure but a spatial or mereological structure." (Ibid.) He cannot see how something like a chair could have parts other than smaller and smaller spatial parts such as legs made of wood which are composed of cellulose molecules along with other organic compounds, and so on down. If this is right, then there is no room for what I call ontological analysis as opposed to chemical analysis and physical analysis.  There can be no such intelligible project as an ontological factor analysis that breaks an ordinary particular down into thin particular, immanent universals, nexus of exemplification, and the like, or into tropes and a compresence relation, etc.

In sum: trope theory stands and falls with C-ontology; the project of C-ontology is unintelligible; ergo, trope theory is unintelligible resting as it does on such unintelligible notions as trope, and bundle of tropes.  Van Inwagen delivers his unkindest cut with the quip that he has never been able to understand tropes as "anything but idealized coats of paint."  (Ibid.)  Ouch!

Let's assume that van Inwagen is right and that the properties of concrete particulars cannot be construed as parts of them in any intelligible sense of 'part.'  If so, this puts paid to every C-ontology I am familiar with.  But can van Inwagen do better?  Is his NC-ontology free of difficulties?  I don't think so.  It bristles with them no less than C-ontology does.  I refer the interested reader to my "Van Inwagen on Fiction, Existence, Properties, Particulars, and Method" in Studia Neoaristotelica, vol, 12, no. 2 (2015), pp. 99-125.  Here is a pre-print version.  I will now reproduce some of it so that you can see how a C-ontologist can go on the attack:

Van Inwagen's Ostrich Realism and Commitment to Bare Particulars

Van Inwagen rejects both extreme and moderate nominalism. So he can't possibly be an ostrich nominalist. He is, however, as he himself appreciates, an ostrich realist or ostrich platonist. (214-15)

Suppose Max is black. What explains the predicate's being true of Max? According to the ostrich nominalist, nothing does. It is just true of him. There is nothing in or about Max that serves as the ontological ground of the correctness of his satisfying the predicate. Now 'F' is true of a if and only if 'a is F' is true. So we may also ask: what is the ontological ground of the truth of 'Max is black'? The ostrich reply will be: nothing. The sentence is just true. There is no need for a truth-maker.

The ostrich realist/platonist says something very similar except that in place of predicates he puts abstract properties, and in place of sentences he puts abstract propositions. In virtue of what does Max instantiate blackness? In virtue of nothing. He just instantiates it. Nothing explains why the unsaturated assertible expressed by 'x is black' is instantiated by Max. Nothing explains it because there is nothing to explain. And nothing explains why the saturated assertible expressed by 'Max is black' is true. Thus there is nothing concrete here below that could be called a state of affairs in anything like Armstrong's sense. There is in the realm of concreta no such item as Max-instantiating-blackness, or the concrete fact of Max's being black. Here below there is just Max, and up yonder in a topos ouranos are 'his' properties (the abstract unsaturated assertibles that he, but not he alone, instantiates). But then Max is a bare particular in one sense of this phrase. In what sense, then?

Four Senses of 'Bare Particular'

1. A bare particular is an ordinary concrete particular that lacks properties. I mention this foolish view only to set it aside. No proponent of bare particulars that I am aware of ever intended the phrase in this way. And of course, van Inwagen is not committed to bare particulars in this sense. Indeed, he rejects an equivalent view. “A bare particular would be a thing of which nothing could be said truly, an obviously incoherent notion.” (179)

2. A bare particular is an ontological constituent of an ordinary concrete particular, a constituent that has no properties. To my knowledge, no proponent of bare particulars ever intended the phrase in this way. In any case, the view is untenable and may be dismissed. Van Inwagen is of course not committed to this view. He is a 'relation' ontologist, not a 'constituent' ontologist.

3. A bare particular is an ontological constituent of an ordinary concrete particular, a constituent that does have properties, namely, the properties associated with the ordinary particular in question, and has them by instantiating (exemplifying) them. This view is held by Gustav Bergmann and by David Armstrong in his middle period. Armstrong, however, speaks of thin particulars rather than bare particulars, contrasting them with thick particulars (what I am calling ordinary concrete particulars). When he does uses 'bare particular,' he uses the phrase incorrectly and idiosyncratically to refer to something like (1) or (2). For example, in Universals and Scientific Realism, Cambridge UP, 1978, vol. I, p. 213, he affirms something he calls the "Strong Principle of the Rejection of Bare Particulars":

For each particular, x, there exists at least one non-relational property, P, such that x is P.

This principle of Armstrong is plausibly read as a rejection of (1) and (2). It is plainly consistent with (3). But of course I do not claim that van Inwagen is committed to bare or thin particulars in the sense of (3). For again, van Inwagen is not a constituent ontologist.

4. A bare particular is an ordinary concrete particular that has properties by instantiating them, where instantiation is a full-fledged external asymmetrical relation (not a non-relational tie whatever that might come to) that connects concrete objects to abstract objects, where abstract objects are objects that are not in space, not in time, and are neither causally active nor causally passive. What is common to (3) and (4) is the idea that bare particulars have properties all right, but they have them in a certain way, by being externally related to them. A bare particular, then, is nothing like an Aristotelian primary substance which has, or rather is, its essence or nature. The bareness of a bare particular, then, consists in its lacking an Aristotle-type nature, not it its lacking properties. My claim is that van Inwagen is committed to bare particulars in sense (4). Let me explain.

Van Inwagen's Bare Particulars

Consider my cat Max. Van Inwagen is committed to saying that Max is a bare particular in sense (4). For while Max has properties, these properties are in no sense constituents of him, but lie (stand?) outside him in a realm apart. These properties are in no sense at him or in him or on him, not even such properties as being black or being furry, properties that are plausibly held to be sense-perceivable. After all, one can see black where he is and feel furriness where he is. None of Max's properties, on van Inwagen's construal of properties, are where he is or when he is. None of them has anything to do with the concrete being of Max himself. As I made clear earlier, the realms of the concrete and the abstract are radically disjoint for van Inwagen. They are jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive realms: for all x, x is either concrete or abstract, but not both and not neither. So Max is here below in the realm of space, time, change, and causality while his properties exist in splendid isolation up yonder in the realm of abstracta. They are far, far away, not spatially and not temporally, but ontologically.

Max and his properties are of course connected by instantiation which is a relation that is both external and abstract. In what sense is the relation external? X and y are externally related just in case there is nothing intrinsic about the relata that entails their being related. Max is two feet from me at the moment. This relation of being two feet from is external in that there are no intrinsic properties of me or Max or both that entail our being two feet from each other. Our intrinsic properties would be just the same if we were three feet from each other. But Max and his brother Manny are both black. In virtue of their both being intrinsically black, they stand in the same color as relation. Hence the latter relation is not external but internal. Internal relatedness is supervenient upon the intrinsic features of the relata; external relatedness is not.

Suppose I want to bring it about that two balls have the same color. I need do only two things: paint the one ball red, say, and then paint the other ball red. But if I want to bring it about that there are two balls having the same color ten feet from each other, I have to do three things: paint the one ball red, say; paint the other ball red; place them ten feet from each other. The external relatedness does not supervene upon the intrinsic properties of the relata. Given that concrete particulars are externally related to their properties, these particulars are bare particulars in the sense defined in #4 above.

And What is Wrong with That?

Suppose you agree with me that van Inwagen's concrete particulars are bare, not in any old sense, but in the precise sense I defined, a sense that comports well with what the actual proponents of bare/thin particulars had in mind. So what? What's wrong with being committed to bare particulars? Well, the consequences seem unpalatable if not absurd.

A. One consequence is that all properties are accidental and none are essential. For if Max is bare, then there is nothing in him or at him or about him that dictates the properties he must instantiate or limits the properties he can instantiate. He can have any old set of properties so long as he has some set or other. Bare particulars are 'promiscuous' in their connection with properties. The connection between particular and property is then contingent and all properties are accidental. It is metaphysically (broadly logically) possible that Max combine with any property. He happens to be a cat, but he could have been a poached egg or a valve lifter. He could have had the shape of a cube. Or he might have been a dimensionless point. He might have been an act of thinking (temporal and causally efficacious, but not spatial).

B. A second consequence is that all properties are relational and none are intrinsic. For if Max is black in virtue of standing in an external instantiation relation to the abstract object, blackness, then his being black is a relational property and not an intrinsic one.

C. A third consequence is that none of Max's properties are sense-perceivable. Van Inwagen-properties are abstract objects and none of them are perceivable. But if I cup my hands around a ball, don't I literally feel its sphericalness or spheroidness? Or am I merely being appeared to spheroidally?

D. Finally, given what van Inwagen himself says about the radical difference between the abstract and the concrete, a difference so abysmal (my word) that it would be better if we could avoid commitment to abstracta, it is highly counter-intuitive that there should be this abymal difference between a cucumber, say, and its greenness. It is strange that the difference between God and a cucumber should “pale into insignificance” (156) compared to the difference between a cucumber and the property of being green. After all, the properties of a thing articulate its very being. How can they be so ontologically distant from the thing?

If you deny that concrete things as van Inwagen understands them are bare in the sense I have explained, then you seem to be committed to saying that there are two sorts of properties, van Inwagen properties in Plato's heaven and 'sublunary' properties at the particulars here below. But then I will ask two questions. First, what is the point of introducing such properties if they merely duplicate at the abstract intensional level the 'real' properties in the sublunary sphere? Second, what justifies calling such properties properties given that you still are going to need sublunary properties to avoid saying that van Inwagen's concreta are bare particulars?

Perceivability of Properties

Let us pursue point C above a bit further. "We never see properties, although we see that certain things have certain properties." (179) I honestly don't know what to make of the second clause of the quoted sentence. I am now, with a brain properly caffeinated, staring at my blue coffee cup in good light. Van Inwagen's claim is that I do not see the blueness of the cup, though I do see that the cup is blue. Here I balk. If I don't see blueness, or blue, when I look at the cup, how can I literally see that the cup is blue? 'That it is blue' is a thing that can be said of the cup, and said with truth. This thing that can be said is an unsaturated assertible, a property in van Inwagen's sense. Van Inwagen is telling us that it cannot be seen. 'That the cup is blue' is a thing that can be said, full stop. It is a saturated assertible, a proposition, and a true one at that. Both assertibles are abstract objects. Both are invisible, and not because of any limitation in my visual power or in human visual power in general, but because abstract objects cannot be terms of causal relations, and perception involves causation. Both types of assertible are categorially disbarred from visibility. But if both the property and the proposition are invisible, then how can van Inwagen say that "we see that certain things have certain properties"? If van Inwagen says that we don't see the proposition, then what do we see when we see that the cup is blue? A colorless cup? A cup that is blue but is blue in a way different from the way the cup is blue by instantiatiating the abstract unsaturated assertible expressed by 'that it is blue'? But then one has duplicated at the level of abstracta the property that one sees at the concrete cup. If there is blueness at the cup and abstract blueness in Plato's heaven, why do we need the latter? Just what is going on here?

To van Inwagen's view one could reasonably oppose the following view. I see the cup. I see blueness or blue at the cup. I don't see a colorless cup. To deny the three foregoing sentences would be to deny what is phenomenologically given. What I don't literally see, however, is that the cup is blue. (Thus I don't literally see what van Inwagen says we literally see.) For to see that the cup is blue is to see the instantiation of blueness by the cup. And I don't see that. The correlate of the 'is' in 'The cup is blue' is not an object of sensation. If you think it is, tell me how I can single it out, how I can isolate it. Where in the visual field is it? The blueness is spread out over the visible surfaces of the cup. The cup is singled out as a particular thing on the desk, next to the cat, beneath the lamp, etc. Now where is the instantiation relation? Point it out to me! You won't be able to do it. I see the cup, and I see blue/blueness where the cup is. I don't see the cup's BEING blue.

It is also hard to understand how van Inwagen, on his own assumptions, can maintain that we see that certain things have certain properties. Suppose I see that Max, a cat of my acquaintance, is black. Do I see a proposition? Not on van Inwagen's understanding of 'proposition.' His propositions are Fregean, not Russellian: they are not resident in the physical world. Do I see a proposition-like entity such as an Armstrongian state of affairs? Again, no. What do I see? Van Inwagen claims that properties are not objects of sensation; no properties are, not even perceptual properties. I should think that some properties are objects of sensation, or better, of perception: I perceive blueness at the cup by sight; I perceive smoothness and hardness and heat at the cup by touch. If so, then (some) properties are not abstract objects residing in a domain unto themselves.

Van Inwagen's view appears to have the absurd consequence that things like coffee cups are colorless. For if colors are properties (179) and properties are abstract objects, and abstract objects are colorless (as they obviously are), then colors are colorless, and whiteness is not white and blueness is not blue. Van Inwagen bites the bullet and accepts the consequence. But we can easily run the argument in reverse: Blueness is blue; colors are properties; abstract objects are colorless; ergo, perceptual properties are not abstract objects. They are either tropes or else universals wholly present in the things that have them. Van Inwagen, a 'relation ontologist' cannot of course allow this move into 'constituent ontology.'

There is a long footnote on p. 242 that may amount to a response to something like my objection. In the main text, van Inwagen speaks of "such properties as are presented to our senses as belonging to the objects we sense . . . ." How does this square with the claim on p. 179 that properties are not objects of sensation? Can a property such as blueness be presented to our senses without being an object of sensation? Apparently yes, "In a noncausal sense of 'presented.'" (243, fn 3) How does this solve the problem? It is phenomenologically evident that (a definite shade of) blue appears to my senses when I stare at my blue coffee cup. Now if this blueness is an abstract object as van Inwagen claims then it cannot be presented to my senses any more than it can be something with which I causally interact.

Related articles

Peter van Inwagen, "A Theory of Properties," Exposition and Critique

Van Inwagen, Properties, and Bare Particulars

Two Recent Publications of Mine

Trope Troubles: An Exercise in Aporetics with the Help of Professor Levy

Peter van Inwagen on Burden of Proof in Philosophy

A List of Bars Philosophers Opened On Being Denied Tenure

What the Meinongian Means by 'Has Being' and 'Lacks Being'

Senses of 'Abstract' with a Little Help from Hegel

Bare Particulars versus Aristotelian Substances

In this entry I will attempt to explain the difference between a bare particular and an Aristotelian primary substance.  A subsequent post will consider whether this difference is theologically relevant, in particular, whether it is relevant to the theology of the Incarnation.

What is a Particular?

Particulars in the sense relevant to understanding 'bare particular' may be understood in terms of impredicability.  Some things can be predicated of other things.  Thus being black can be predicated of my cat, and being a property can be predicated of being black; but my cat cannot be predicated of anything.  My cat is in this sense 'impredicable.'  Particulars are subjects of predication but cannot themselves be predicated.   Particulars, then, are ultimate subjects of predication.  Thus my cat is an ultimate subject of predication unlike being black which is a subject of predication, but not an ultimate subject of predication.  Particulars have properties but are not themselves properties.  Properties may be characterized as predicable entities.

Three Senses of 'Bare Particular'

1.  The first sense I mention only to set aside.  It is a complete misunderstanding to suppose that philosophers who speak of bare or thin particulars, philosophers as otherwise different in their views as Gustav Bergmann, David Armstrong, and J. P. Moreland, mean to suggest that there are particulars that have no properties and stand in no relations.  There is no such montrosity as a bare particular in this sense. 

In order to explain the two legitimate senses of 'bare particular' I will first provide a general characterization that covers them both.   A bare particular is a particular that lacks a nature or (real) essence. It is therefore quite unlike an Aristotelian primary substance.  Every such substance has or rather is an individual nature.  But while lacking a nature, a bare particular has properties.  This 'having' is understood in terms of the asymmetrical external nexus of exemplification.  A bare particular is thus tied to its properties by the external nexus of exemplification. To say that the nexus that ties a to F-ness is external is to say that there is nothing in the nature of a, and nothing in the nature of F-ness to require that a exemplify F-ness.  After all, a, as bare, lacks a nature, and F-ness, while it has a nature,  is not such that there is anything  in it to necessitate its being exemplified by a. In this sense a bare particular and its properties are external to each other.

This mutual externality of property to bearer entails what I call promiscuous combinability:  any bare particular can exemplify any property, and any property can be exemplified by any bare particular.  (A restriction has to be placed on 'property' but we needn't worry about this in the present entry.) 

David Armstrong holds that (i) there are conjunctive properties and that (ii) for each bare or thin particular there is the conjunctive property that is the conjunction of all of the particular's non-relational properties.  He calls this the particular's nature.  But I will avoid this broad use of 'nature.'  What I mean by 'nature' is essence.  Bare particulars lack essences, but not properties.  Therefore, no property or conjunction of properties on a bare-particularist scheme is an essence.  Note that it is given or at least not controversial that particulars have properties; it is neither given nor uncontroversial that particulars have essences.

I should also point out that talk of Aristotelian natures or essences would seem to make sense only within a constituent ontology such as Aristotle's.  

From the foregoing it should be clear that to speak of a particular as bare is not to deny that it has properties but to speak of the manner in which it has properties.  It is to say that it exemplifies them, where exemplification is an asymmetrical external tie.   To speak of a particular as an Aristotelian substance is also to speak of the manner in which it has properties.

Consider the dog Fido.  Could Fido have been a jellyfish?  If Fido is a bare particular, then this is broadly logically possible. Why not, given promiscuous combinability?  Any particular can 'hook up' with any property.  But if Fido is an Aristotelian substance this is not broadly logically possible.  For if Fido is a substance, then he is essentially canine.  In 'possible worlds' jargon, Fido, if a substance, is canine in every possible world in which he exists.  What's more, his accidental properties are not such as to be exemplified by Fido -- where exemplification is an external tie -- but are rather "rooted in" and "caused" by the substance which is Fido.  (See J. P. Moreland who quotes Richard Connell in Moreland's Universals, McGill-Queen's UP, 2001, p. 93)  The idea is that if Fido is an Aristotelian substance, then he has ingredient in his nature various potentialities which, when realized, are manifestations of that nature.  The dog's accidental properties are "expressions" of his "inner nature."  They flow from that nature.  Thus being angry, an accident of  Fido as substance, flows from his irascibility which is a capacity ingredient in his nature.  If Fido is a bare particular, however, he would be externally tied to the property of being angry.  And he would also be externally tied to the property of being a dog.

It follows that if particulars are bare, then all of their properties are had accidentally, and none essentially. 

We now come to the two legitimate senses of 'bare particular.'

2. The second sense of 'bare particular' and the first legitimate sense is the constituent-ontological sense.  We find this in Bergmann and Armstrong.  Accordingly, a bare particular is not an ordinary particular such as a cat or the tail of a cat or a hair or hairball of cat, but is an ontological factor, ingredient, or constituent of an ordinary particular.  Let A and B be round red spots that share all qualitative features.  For Bergmann there must be something in the spots that grounds their numerical difference.  They are two, not one, but nothing qualitative distinguishes them.  This ground of numerical difference is the bare particular in each, a in A, and b in B.  Thus the numerical difference of A and B is grounded in the numerical (bare) difference of a and b.  In one passage, Bergmann states that the sole job of a bare particular is to individuate, i.e., to serve as the ontological ground of numerical difference.

Particulars, unlike universals, are unrepeatable.  If F-ness is a universal, F-ness is repeated in each F.  But if a is F, a is unrepeatable: it is the very particular it is and no other.  One of the jobs of a Bergmannian bare particular is to serve as the ontological ground of an ordinary particular's particularity or thisness.  A Bergmannian bare particular is that ontological constituent in an ordinary particular that accounts for its particularity.  But note the ambiguity of 'particularity.' We are not now talking about the categorial feature common to all particulars as particulars.  We are talking about the 'incommunicable' thisness of any given particular.

3. The third sense of 'bare particular' and the second legitimate sense is the nonconstituent-ontological sense.  Summing up the above general characterization, we can say that

A bare particular is a particular that (i) lacks a nature (in the narrow sense lately explained); (ii) has all of its properties by exemplification where exemplification is an asymmetrical external nexus; and as a consequence (iii) has all of its properties accidentally, where P is an accidental property of x iff x exemplifies P but can exist without exemplifying P.

Note that this characterization is neutral as between constituent and nonconstituent ontology.  If one is a C-ontologist, then bare particulars are constituents of ordinary particulars.  If one is an NC ontologist who rejects the very notion of an ontological constituent, then bare particulars are ordinary particulars. 

Conclusion

I have explained the difference between a bare particular and an Aristotelian substance.  In a subsequent post I will address the question of how this deep ontological difference bears upon the possibility of  a coherent formulation of the Incarnation doctrine.

Related articles

Substance, Supposit, Incarnation, Trinity, and the Heresy of Nestorius

Does the Notion of a Bare Particular Make Sense Only in Constituent Ontology?

The Dispute

In an earlier entry that addressed Lukas Novak's argument against bare particulars I said the following:

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.

[. . .]

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 metaphysical de re necessity goes by the boards.  But the Fregean distinction is not part of the motivation or argumentation for bare particulars. 

My claim that bare particulars are at home only in constituent ontology raised the eyebrows of commenter John and of LN, who writes:

I cannot see why the notion of a bare particular should make sense only in a constituent ontology. A bare particular is a particular which has none of its non-trivial properties de re necessarily. This notion is quite intelligible, irrespectively of the way we go on to explain the relation of "having" between the particular and the property, whether we employ a constituent or functional or some other approach (of course, saying that it is intelligible is not saying that it is consistent!). If Bill agrees that once one makes the sharp Fregean distinction between concepts and objects then there is a strong motivation against conceding any de re necessity, then he should also agree that making this distinction provides a strong motivation for claiming the bareness of all particulars.

Resolving the Dispute

I believe that this is a merely a terminological dispute concerning the use of 'bare particular.'  I am a terminological conservative who favors using words and phrases strictly and with close attention to their historical provenience.  To enshrine this preference as a methodological principle:

MP:  To avoid confusion and merely verbal disputes, never use a word or phrase that already has an established use in a new way! Coin a new word or phrase and explain how you will be using it.

Now, to the best of my knowledge, the phrase 'bare particular' enters philosophy first in the writings of Gustav Bergmann.  So we must attend to his writings if we are concerned to use this phrase correctly.  Now in the terminology of Wolterstorff, Bergmann is a constituent ontologist as opposed to a relational ontologist.  In Bergmann's own terms, he is a "complex" as opposed to a "function" ontologist, Frege being the chief representative for him of the latter style of ontology.

"In complex ontologies, as I shall call them, some entities are constituents of others." (Realism, p. 7) "In function ontologies, as I shall call them, some entities are, as one says, 'coordinated' to some others, without any connotation whatsoever of the one being  'in' the other, being either a constituent or a part or a component of it." (Ibid.)

Bergmann, then, is a constituent or complex ontologist and his introduction of bare particulars (BPs) is within this context.  BPs are introduced to solve "the problem of individuation."  A better name for this problem is 'problem of differentiation.'  After all, the problem is not to specify what it is that makes an individual an individual as oppose to a member of some other category; the problem is to specify what it is that makes two individuals (or two entities of any category) two and not one.

How does the problem of individuation/differentiation arise?  Well, suppose you have already decided that "some entities are constituents of others."  For example, you have already decided that ordinary particulars (OPs) have, in addition to their spatial parts, special ontological parts and that among these parts are the OP's properties.  Properties for Bergmann are universals.  Now suppose you have two qualitatively indiscernible round red spots.  They are the same in respect of every universal 'in' them and yet they are two, not one.  What is the ontological ground of the numerical difference? 

On Bergmann's way of thinking, one needs an entity to do the job of individuation/differentiation.  Enter bare particulars.  And pay close attention to how Bergmann describes them:

A bare particular is a mere individuator.  Structurally, that is its only job.  It does nothing else.  In this respect it is like Aristotle's matter, or, perhaps more closely, like Thomas' materia signata.  Only, it is a thing. (Realism, p. 24, emphasis added)

Bare particulars, then, have but one explanatory job: to ground or account for numerical difference.  They are the Bergmannian answer to the question about the principium individuationis.  But please note that the positing of such individuators/differentiators would make no sense at all if one held to a style of ontology according to which round red spots just differ without any need for a ground of numerical difference.  For a relational ontologist, OPs have no internal ontological structure: they are ontological simples , not ontological complexes.  Here is  Peter and here is Paul.  They just differ.  They don't differ on account of some internal differentiator.  Peter and Paul have properties, but these are in no sense parts of them, but entities external to them to which they are related by an exemplification relation that spans the chasm separating the concrete from the abstract.  And because OPs do not have properties as parts, there is no need to posit some additional ontological factor to account for numerical difference.

I think I have made it quite clear that if we use 'bare particular' strictly and in accordance with the phrases' provenience, then it simply makes no sense to speak of bare particulars outside the context of constituent ontology.

Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately, I am not the king of all philosophers and I lack both the authority and the brute power to enforce the above methodological imperative.  So I can't force otber philosophers to use 'bare particular' correctly, or to put it less tendentiously: in accordance with Bergmann's usage.  But I can issue the humble request that other philosophers not confuse the strict use of the phrase with their preferred usages, and that they tell us exactly how they are using the phrase.

Novak's usage is different than mine.  He tell us that "A bare particular is a particular which has none of its non-trivial properties de re necessarily."  On this usage my cat would count as a bare particular if one held the view that there are no non-trivial essential properties, that all non-trivial properties are accidental.  But for Bergmann a cat is not a bare particular.  It -- or to be precise, a cat at a time -- is a complex one of whose constituents is a bare particular.  My cat Max is a Fregean object (Gegenstand) but surely no Fregean object is a Bergmannian bare particular.  For objects and concepts do not form complexes in the way BPs and universals form complexes for Bergmann.

On a Fregean analysis, the propositional function denoted by '___ is a cat' has the value True for Max as argument.  On a Bergmannian analysis, 'Max is a cat' picks out a fact or state of affairs.  But there are no facts in Frege's ontology.

To conclude: if we use 'bare particular' strictly and in accordance with Bergmann's usage, one cannot speak of bare particulars except in constituent ontology. 

Related articles

Constituent Ontology Versus Relational Ontology and an Argument Against the Latter

Bare Particulars and Lukáš Novák's Argument Against Them

Constituent Ontology and the Problem of Change

An Argument for Mental Acts

An earlier post explains the distinction between mental acts and mental actions.  But a logically prior question is whether there are any mental acts in the first place.  Suppose I hear the characteristic rumble of a Harley-Davidson engine and then suddenly think of Peter.  One cannot move straightaway from such a commonplace observation recorded in ordinary English to talk of mental acts of perceiving and of remembering.  This is because 'mental act' is a terminus technicus embedded within a theory.  It is a term that drags behind it a load of theoretical baggage that one may not want to take on board.  Every mental act is a mental state, a state of a mind.  (A state is necessarily a state of something; a mental state is necessarily a state of a mental something.)  So talk of mental acts seems to commit one to talk of minds or mental subjects.  But their existence is denied by those (Sartre, Butchvarov, et al.) who maintain that consciousness is subjectless.  That theoretical denial, however, is consistent with the commonplace that we sometimes hear and remember.  On the other hand, talk of mental acts commits one to an act-object distinction, a distinction that adverbialists deny.  So although it is obvious that we sometimes hear and remember, it is not obvious that there are mental acts.  So we need an argument.  Here is one.  It is my reconstruction of what I think Laird Addis is saying on p. 71 et passim of Natural Signs: A Theory of Intentionality (Temple University Press, 1989).

1. Consider two states of affairs, S1 and S2.  In S1 I am imagining a unicorn (and nothing else) at time t, while in S2 I am imagining  a mermaid (and nothing else) at t.  S1 and S2 are individually possible, though not jointly compossible.

2. S1 and S2 are numerically different, and this difference requires a ground, a 'difference-maker.'

3. One cannot locate the difference-maker on the side of the object, because there are no unicorns and there are no mermaids.  (For an analogy, compare two mathematical sets, one whose sole member is a unicorn, the other whose sole member is a mermaid. These sets are the same  set, the null set, inasmuch as there is nothing that could ground their difference.)

4. Since both S1 and S2 involve the same type of mental directedness, namely, imagination, the difference between S1 and S2 cannot be ascribed to a difference in type of mental directedness.

5. Since one and the same subject is the imaginer in both cases, the difference between S1 and S2 is not on the side of the subject.  Therefore:

6. There must be something that grounds the difference between S1 and S2, and this all men call 'mental act.' 

Cuteness and quinque viae parody aside, there must be something that grounds the difference between S1 and S2 assuming the Difference-Maker Principle: No difference without a difference-maker.  This principle strikes me as well-nigh self-evident: how on Earth (or on Twin Earth for that matter) could two different complexes just differ?  S1 and S2 are complexes not simples: their numerical difference requires an ontological ground.  Suppose someone insisted that the unordered set {Bill, Peter} is just different -- barely different -- from the unordered set {Peter, Bill}.  You would show him the door, right?  I can swallow a bare difference of simples but not of complexes. 

The difference between S1 and S2, then, traces back to a difference between two mental acts.  If you ask me what makes these two mental acts different, my answer will be that they differ in their object-directedness: one has unicorn-directedness, the other mermaid-directedness.  Perhaps this could be explained further by saying that a mental act is a mental state, where a mental state is a mind's exemplification of an intentional property.  So in S1 my mind exemplifies the intentional property unicorn-directedness while in S2 my mind exemplifies the intentional property mermaid-directedness.  These property-exemplifications just are the mental acts.

This is pretty close to a Bergmann-Addis assay of the act.  If it could be made to work in all details, then we could avoid Meinongianism, Adverbialism, and Sartreanism (Sartvarovianism?).  But being an aporetician, I am not sanguine.

 

Mental Acts Versus Mental Actions: Sellars and Bergmann

I have been assuming that there are mental acts and that there are mental actions and that they must not be confused.  It's high time for a bit of exfoliation.  Suppose I note that the front door of an elderly neighbor's house has been left ajar.  That noting is a mental act, but it is not an action.  I didn't do anything to bring about that mental state; I didn't decide to put myself in the state in question; I just happened to see that the door has been left ajar.  There is nothing active or spontaneous about the noting; it is by contrast passive and receptive.  But now suppose I deliberate about whether I should walk onto the man's property and either shut the door or inform him that it is ajar. Suppose he is a cranky old S.O.B.  with an equally irascible old dog.   I might decide that it's better to mind my own business and "let sleeping dogs lie."   The deliberating is a mental action.  So, assuming that there are mental acts and assuming that there are mental actions, it seems as clear as anything that they are different.

Why then are mental acts called acts if they are not actions?  It is because they are occurrent rather than dispositional.  Not everything mental is occurrent.  For example, you believe that every number has a successor even when you are dead drunk or dreamlessly asleep. This is not an occurrent believing.   Indeed, you have beliefs that have never occurred to you.  Surely you believe that no coyote has ever communicated with a bobcat by cellphone, although I will lay money on the proposition that you have never thought of this before.  You believe the proposition expressed by the italicized clause in that you are disposed to assent to it if the question comes up.  So in that sense you do believe that no coyote, etc. 

Mental acts are so-called, therefore, because they are actual or occurrent as opposed to potential or dispositional.  My noting that the old man's door has been left ajar is an occurrent perceptual taking that is not in the control of my will. As Wilfrid Sellars points out,

It is nonsense to speak of taking something to be the case 'on purpose.'  Taking is an act in the Aristotelian sense of 'actuality' rather than in the specialized practical sense which refers to conduct.  A taking may be, on occasion, an element of a scrutinizing -- which latter is indeed an action in the practical sense.  To take another example, one may decide to do a certain action, but it is logical nonsense to speak of deciding to will to do it; yet volitions, of course, are mental acts.  (Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes, Humanities Press, 1968, p. 74.)

Another example Sellars cites is drawing a conclusion from premises.  That is a mental action, but there are mental acts involved in this will-driven thinking process.  One is the 'seeing' that the conclusion follows from the premises.  It cannot be said that I decide to accept a conclusion that I 'see' follows from certain other propositions.  The will is not involved.  The 'seeing' is a mental act, but not a mental action.

Gustav Bergmann says essentially the same thing. "An act is not an activity and an activity is not an act." (Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong, University of Wisconsin Press, 1967, p. 153.)  He says that this was crystal clear to Brentano and Meinong, but that in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition 'act' carries an implication of activity.  "In the Aristotlelian-Thomistic account . . . an act of perceiving is the 'abstracting' of a substantial form; and an 'abstracting' is an activity." (Ibid.) 

Very interesting.  It sounds right to me, though I wonder if all Thomists would agree. Not being a Thomist, I incline to the later view.  So as I use 'mental act' a mental act is not a mental action or activity.  This is of course consistent, as already indicated, with its being  the issue of certain mental actions.

A deeper and more important question is whether there are mental acts at all.  Their existence is not obvious -- or is it?  Wittgenstein appears to have denied the existence of mental acts.  Bergmann believes he did, while Geach believes he did not.  There is also the related but distinct question whether mental acts require a subject distinct from the act which remains numerically the same over time.  But is even a momentary subject needed?  Why couldn't awareness be totally subjectless, a "wind blowing towards objects" in the Sartrean image?  Butchvarov takes a line similar to Sartre's. 

Clearly, there has to be some distinction between conscious intentionality and its objects.  That's a rock-bottom datum upon which "our spade is turned" to borrow a phrase from old Ludwig.  But why must consciousness be articulated into discrete acts?  Why believe in acts at all?  What are the phenomenological and dialectical considerations that speak in their favor?

Future posts will tackle all these questions as we plunge deeper into the aporetics of mind and bang into one impasse after another.  It should prove to be a humbling experience.

Ontological Analysis in Aristotle and Bergmann: Prime Matter Versus Bare Particulars

Hardly anyone reads Gustav Bergmann any more, but since I read everything, I read Bergmann. It is interesting to compare his style of ontological analysis with that of the great hylomorphic ontologists, Aristotle and Aquinas. The distinguished Aristotelian Henry B. Veatch does some of my work for me in a fine paper, "To Gustav Bergmann: A Humble Petition and Advice" in M.S.Gram and E.D.Klemke, eds. The Ontological Turn: Studies in the Philosophy of Gustav Bergmann (University of Iowa Press, 1974, pp. 65-85)

I want to focus on Veatch's comparison of Aristotle and Bergmann on the issue of prime matter/bare particulars. As Veatch correctly observes, "all of the specific functions which bare particulars perform in Bergmannian ontology are the very same functions as are performed by matter in Aristotle . . . ." (81) What are these functions?

Truthmaking and the Ontological Assay of Concrete Individuals

Could a concrete individual such as my man Peter function as the truthmaker of an accidental predication about him such as *Peter is hungry*?  Or must the truthmaker of such a truth be an entity with a proposition-like structure such as a concrete state of affairs or a trope?  Earlier posts have assumed and sometimes argued that Peter himself cannot make true any true accidental predications about him.  Alan Rhoda appears to disagree in a comment to an earlier post: "Unlike you, I don't find it 'obvious' that Peter cannot be the truthmaker of *Peter is hungry*. Or, rather, it's obvious if 'Peter' denotes a bare or thin particular . . . ."

So we need to take a few more steps into the truthmaking  problematic.  Whether or not Peter can function as the truthmaker of accidental predications about him depends on our 'ontological assay' (as Gustav Bergmann might have put it) of ordinary spatiotemporal particulars such as Peter. 

1.  I begin on an irenic note by granting to Alan that if 'Peter' denotes a bare or thin particular, then it is obvious that Peter cannot make true any accidental predications about him.  But 'Peter' in our sample sentence does not denote a bare or thin particular; it denotes  Peter 'clothed' in his intrinsic (nonrelational) properties, whether accidental or essential.

2.  I now argue that even if we take Peter together with his properties he cannot be the truthmaker of *Peter is hungry,* *Peter is sunburned,* etc.  It is widely agreed that if T makes true *p,* then *T exists* entails **p* is true.**  (As before, asterisks around an indicative sentence form a name of the Fregean proposition expressed by the sentence.) Truthmaking is a form of broadly logical necessitation.  So if Peter by himself is the truthmaker of *Peter is sunburned,* then in every possible world in which Peter exists, the proposition will be true.  But surely this proposition is not true in every world in which Peter exists:  being sunburned is an accidental property of Peter.  Therefore, Peter by himself is not the truthmaker of such accidental propositions as *Peter is sunburned.*

3.  So even if we take Peter together with all his intrinsic properties, he still cannot function as truthmaker of *Peter is sunburned,* etc. He cannot, because there are possible worlds in which Peter exists, but *Peter is F* (where 'F' picks out an accidental property) is false.  But what if we 'assay' Peter as a concrete state of affairs (not to be confused with a Chisholmian-Plantingian abstract state of affairs) along the lines of a Bergmannian or Armstrongian ontology?  Take the conjunction of all of Peter's intrinsic properties and call that conjunction K.  What is left over is the individuating element in Peter, call it a.  We can then think of Peter as the state of affairs or fact of a's being K. Included within this maximal state of affairs are various submaximal states of affairs such as a's being F, where 'F' picks out an accidental property.  We can then say that Peter, as a concrete maximal state of affairs which includes the submaximal state of affairs of Peter's being sunburned, is the truthmaker of *Peter is sunburned.*

This, indeed, is my 'official' line, the line I took in my book on existence.  For reasons I can't go into now, I assayed ordinary particulars are concrete states of affairs.  But many philosophers will balk at this.  Barry Miller, for instance, if I rightly recall, told me that it is a category mistake to think of ordinary particulars as states of affairs.  I see his point, but it is hardly compelling.  Be that as it may, I have been assuming in these posts on truthmaking that ordinary particulars are not states of affairs.

And so I say to Alan Rhoda, if ordinary particulars are not concrete states of affairs, then such particulars, by themselves, cannot function as truthmakers for accidental predications about them.  The reason was given above in #2.  Only if an ordinary particular or concrete individual has a proposition-like structure, only if it is a concrete state of affairs or something like one, can it function as truthmaker of accidental predications about it.

4.  To sum up.  Rhoda and I agree that bare or thin particulars cannot serve as truthmakers for accidental predications.  And it may be that we are also in agreement if he goes along with the Bergmannian-Armstrongian ontological assay of ordinary spatiotemporal particulars as concrete states of affairs.  But I do disagree with him if he thinks that ordinary particulars, not so assayed, can function as truthmakers of accidental predications.