Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Constituent Ontology

  • Constituent Ontology and the Problem of Change: Can Relational Ontology Do Better?

    Constituent ontologists would seem to have a serious problem accounting for accidental change.  Suppose an avocado goes from unripe to ripe over a two day period. That counts as an accidental change:  one and the same substance (the avocado) alters in respect of the accidental property of being unripe.  It has become different qualitatively while…

  • E. J. Lowe on the Distinction Between Constituent and Relational Ontology

    1. Uncontroversially, ordinary material particulars such as cats and cups have parts, material parts.  Equally uncontroversial is that they  have properties and stand in relations.  That things have properties and stand in relations is a plain Moorean fact beyond the reach of reasonable controversy.  After all, my cat is black and he is sleeping next…

  • Properties as Parts: More on Constituent Ontology

    Skin and seeds are proper parts of a tomato, and the tomato is an improper part of itself.  But what about such properties as being red, being ripe, being a tomato?  Are they parts of the tomato?  The very idea will strike many as born of an elementary confusion, as a sort of Rylean category mistake.  "Your…

  • What Exactly is an Ontological Constituent?

    I asked commenter John whether he thought that temporal parts — assuming that there are temporal parts — would count as ontological constituents of an ordinary particular such as an avocado.  Here is what he said: . . .  I believe that I would say that the temporal parts of an avocado are ontological constituents of it.…

  • 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. [. . .]…

  • Constituent Ontology and the Problem of Change

    In an earlier entry I sketched the difference between constituent ontology (C-ontology) and relational ontology (R-ontology) and outlined an argument against R-ontology.  I concluded that post with the claim that C-ontology also faces serious objections.  One of them could be called the 'argument from change.' The Argument from Change Suppose avocado A, which was unripe…

  • Constituent Ontology Versus Relational Ontology and an Argument Against the Latter

    Two Different Aproaches to Ontology Uncontroversially, ordinary material particulars such as cats and cups have parts, material parts.  Equally uncontroversial is that they  have properties and stand in relations.  That things have properties and stand in relations is a plain Moorean fact.  After all, my cat is black and he is sleeping next to my blue…

  • Stanislav Sousedik’s “Towards a Thomistic Theory of Predication”

    Enough of politics, back to some hard-core technical philosophy.  If nothing else, the latter offers exquisite escapist pleasures not unlike those of chess. Of course I don't believe that technical philosophy is escapist; my point is a conditional one: if it is, its pleasures suffice to justify it as a form of recuperation from  this all-too-oppressive world of…

  • Holes and Their Mode of Being

    Consider a particular hole H in a piece of swiss cheese.  H is not nothing.  It has properties.  It has, for example, a shape: it is circular.  The circular hole has a definite radius, diameter, and circumference.  It has a definite area equal to pi times the radius squared.  If the piece of cheese is 1/16th…

  • Metaphysical Grounding I: True Of

    (Note to Peter L:  This begins our discussion of metaphysical grounding and metaphysical explanation, topics of common interest.  We need, over a series of posts, to uncover and discuss as many examples as we can find.  My aim, and perhaps yours as well, is to demonstrate that metaphysical grounding and metaphysical explanation are legitimate topics,…

  • The Problems of Order and Unity and Their Difference

    Last Thursday, Steven N. and I had a very enjoyable three-hour conversation with ASU philosophy emeritus Ted Guleserian on Tempe's Mill Avenue.  We covered a lot of ground, but the most focused part of the discussion concerned the subject matter of this post.  If I understood Guleserian correctly, he was questioning whether there is any…

  • Kenny, Geach, and the Perils of Reading Frege Back Into Aquinas

    I have been studying Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Being (Oxford 2002).  I cannot report that I find it particularly illuminating.  I am troubled by the reading back of Fregean doctrines into Aquinas, in particular in the appendix, "Frege and Aquinas on Existence and Number." (pp. 195-204)  Since Kenny borrows heavily from Peter Geach, I will…

  • Are Facts Perceivable? An Aporetic Pentad

    'The table is against the wall.'  This is a true contingent sentence.  How do I know that it is true except by seeing (or otherwise sense perceiving) that the table is against the wall?  And what is this seeing if not the seeing of a fact, where a fact is not a true proposition but…

  • Butchvarov Against Facts

    In his essay, "Facts," (Studies in the Ontology of Reinhardt Grossmann, Javier Cumpa, ed., Ontos Verlag, 2010, p. 83) Panayot Butchvarov generously cites me as a defender of realism and a proponent of facts.  He credits me with doing something William P. Alston does not do in his theory of facts, namely, specifying their mode…

  • Indeterminate Yet Existent? The Aporetics of Prime Matter and Pure Consciousness

    Scott Roberts e-mails in reference to my post Hylomorphic Ontological Analysis and the Puzzle of Prime Matter:  I have also been perplexed at hylomorphism's dependence on something called [prime]  'matter', for the same reason as you give. But I think there is a way out, though perhaps not one a hylomorphist will like. You say…