Abstract
According to the standard view of particularity, an entity is a particular just in case it necessarily has a unique spatial location at any time of its existence. That the basic entities of the world we speak about in common sense and science are particular entities in this sense is the thesis of “foundational particularism,” a theoretical intuition that has guided Western ontological research from its beginnings to the present day. The main aim of this chapter is to review the notion of particularity and its role in ontology. I proceed in four steps. First, I offer a brief reconstruction of the tasks of ontology as “theory of categorial inference in L”. An ontological theory states which (combinations of) entity types or categories make true L-sentences true; the features of the stipulated categories explain why L-speakers are entitled to draw certain material inferences from the classificatory expressions of L. Second, I draw attention to the fact that since Aristotle this theoretical program typically has been implemented with peculiar restrictions prescribing certain combinations of category features, e.g., the combination of particularity, concreteness, individuality, and subjecthood. I briefly sketch how these restrictions of the “substance paradigm” or “myth of substance” are reinforced by the standard readings of predicate-logical constants, viz. the existential quantifier and the identity sign. Third, I argue that in the context of the substance paradigm foundational particularism is incoherent. I discuss the current standard conceptions of particulars as developed in the debate about individuation (bare particulars, nude particulars, tropes) and show that their main difficulties derive from the traditional restriction that particulars are so also logical subjects and/or individuals. Fourth, to show that the traditional linkages of category features are not conceptual necessities, I sketch the outlines of an ontology (General Process Theory) based on non-particular individuals. For ontologists in computer science working with description logic this monocategoreal ontology based on more or less generic “dynamics” may hold special interest. As General Process Theory documents, ontologists may well abandon the notion of particularity: in common sense and science we do reason about items that have a unique spatial location at any time, but the uniqueness of their location can be taken to be a contingent affair.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
On this see in particular Seibt 2004a, b and 2008.
- 3.
Cf. Mulligan, et al. 1984, p. 287.
- 4.
For historical and systematic reconstruction of Carnap’s influence on analytical ontology cf. e.g., Seibt 1996, 1997c.
- 5.
Unlike semantical theories, ontologies are not developed specifically for one language (conceptual scheme) only but aspire to articulate structures of the world as viewed from any language (conceptual scheme). Elsewhere (e.g., Seibt 2000b) I discuss the possible scope of ontological theories, given the possibility of ontological and linguistic relativity, and the relationship of language and conceptual schemes. Here the variable ‘L’ should simply be read as ‘L or any language functionally equivalent to L’ and expressions such as ‘our concept C’ should be read as ‘the concept C consisting in the inferential role R of L or functional equivalents of R in other languages.’
- 6.
This is a new way to read the Carnapian postulate of foundedness in the Aufbau, for further details on the methodological claims sketched here see Seibt 1997b and 2000b. The ‘model’ of the ontological category is denoted by an ulimate genera term of L (e.g., of English). One of the primary difficulties for theories of tropes (or ‘moments’) consists in the fact that the category ‘trope’ lacks a model in this sense – in English there is no term expressing the ultimate genus of ‘this red’ versus ‘that red.’ This lacuna is covered up by the tropist’s quick move to technical jargon like ‘property instances’ or ‘exemplifications of attributes,’ which does not ‘found’ the category in the required sense.
- 7.
Cf. Aristotle Metaphysics 1042a34, Physics 200b33, Metaphysics 1038b35f, ibid. 1017b16ff, Categories 2a13ff, Metaphysics 1037b1ff, Categories 3b33, Metaphysics 1041a4f, and ibid. 1041b11ff, respectively.
- 8.
Cf. Seibt 1990, cf. also Stegmaier 1977, who summarizes the situation in similar terms. The lack of internal semantic integration of the historical notions of substance is both documented and obscured in classical and more recent studies (e.g., by L. Prat, B. Bauch, E. Cassirer, R. Jolivet, J. Hessen, M. Latzerowitz, A. Reck. D. Hamlyn, A. Leschbrand, B. Singer, T. Scaltsas), which typically retreat to a purely inventatory approach. Rosenkrantz/Hoffmann 1991 and Simons 1994 offer definitions of independent particulars called ‘substance’ without, however, discussing whether the definiendum is representative for the notion of substance in a wider historical perspective.
- 9.
- 10.
Throughout this essay I will use the notion of a spatiotemporal location or region not in the sense of relativity theory but more generally to denote the pair of a spatial region and a certain temporal period; something occurs in the spatiotemporal region r = <S, T> if it occupies the spatial region S during T. Here and hereafter I simply speak of a ‘location’, with the understanding that such locations are extended regions that are connected (possibly multiply connected, i.e., containing holes).
- 11.
The predicate ‘x occurs in y’ is here used as a placeholder for a variety of more specific ontological relations such as spatiotemporal inclusion, exemplification, constitution, parthood, containment in the ontological assay, etc.
- 12.
For other examples and the full list of characteristic Aristotelian presuppositions to be found in the ontological tradition and the contemporary debate see Seibt 1990, 1995, 1996a, 1997b, 2005, 2007. Note that the simple version of (P2), the principle of particularism: all and only individuals are particulars, has been championed in the substance-ontological tradition but it seems not by Aristotle himself (cf. Gill 1994).
- 13.
- 14.
Quine 1952, p. 208.
- 15.
Op. cit.
- 16.
Op. cit. p. 209.
- 17.
Op. cit. p. 211.
- 18.
The expression ‘thing’ occurring in [8] is supposed to have the wide reading as ‘item’ or ‘entity’, it is not to carry any categorial restrictions to physical things.
- 19.
The two readings are frequently conflated and little attention has been paid to the fact that in addition the principle may be read either as a principle of individuation (stating conditions of distinctness) or of numerical identity (stating conditions of plurality), cf. Seibt 1996a.
- 20.
Russell 1911 (1984), p.
- 21.
Stove 1921 (1984), p. 183.
- 22.
Black 1952 (1976), p. 282, emphasis supplied.
- 23.
Allaire 1965 (1984), pp. 305 and 309.
- 24.
Ayer 1953 (1976), p. 264, emphasis supplied.
- 25.
Adams 1979, pp. 10 and 12; emphasis supplied.
- 26.
Castañeda 1989, p. 132.
- 27.
See Seibt 1996a.
- 28.
Bergmann 1967, p. 24.
- 29.
- 30.
Kripke 1980, p. 18.
- 31.
Sellars 1952, p. 282.
- 32.
- 33.
Allaire 1963, p. 299. The passage contains a rather compressed reduction argument, to be unfolded into something along the following lines. (i) Descriptors are either universal or particular. (ii) Two things α and β can be thought to be exact qualitative duplicates, i.e., to be qualitatively identical. (iii) The qualitative descriptors of the two things are numerically different, since they occur in numerically different things, i.e., in two different space-time locations. (iv) In order to account for the numerical difference of the qualitative descriptors of α and β we would need to choose between the following two options: (a) descriptors are universals but nevertheless they are individuated by their space-time location; (b) descriptors are particulars. (v) Neither option in (iv) is acceptable; therefore thesis (iii) is to be rejected – the qualitative descriptors of α and β are not numerically different but are ‘literally the same.’ See also Allaire 1968.
- 34.
Loux 1978, p. 108.
- 35.
Ibid. p. 110.
- 36.
Loux 1978, p. 110. Loux himself does go some way to investigate this question.
- 37.
Baker 1967, p. 211.
- 38.
Bergmann 1967, p. 24.
- 39.
Sellars 1952, p. 282f.
- 40.
See for example, Loux 1978, p. 110ff.
- 41.
Ibid., p. 26.
- 42.
There are additional difficulties for Bergmann’s account of a bare particular. Since Bergmann’s bare particulars are ‘momentary entities’ (1967, p. 34), they could in fact exemplify only very few of the attributes which we ascribe to things with predicates like ‘three years old’ or ‘getting colder’ or ‘doubled in size.’ Bergmann would need to hold that common-sense predicates of things express very complicated structures of attributes for momentary entities. Another sort of problem arises with relational properties. Consider the predicate ‘bigger than thing B’ predicated of A; if the attribute expressed by this predicate were to contain the ontological correlate of B, as this would be commonly constructed, the ontological description of A would contain two bare particulars, that of A and, embedded, that of B. But by definition a bare particular ‘cannot be “in” more than one ordinary thing’ (1967, p. 24).
- 43.
The link between particularity and individuality on the other hand is more innocuous. Initially Bergmann postulates just one explanatory function for bare particulars: ‘A bare particular is a mere individuator. Structurally that is its only function. It does nothing else’(1967, p. 25) If bare particularists had taken this modest characterization to heart, the theory might be in better shape. Unfortunately, however, the mono-functional entity apparently struck Bergmann and others as explanatorily shallow and thus the traditional linkages between individuality and other category features made their way into the functional characterization of bare particulars.
- 44.
- 45.
Cf. Hochberg (1992).
- 46.
- 47.
- 48.
Russell 1948, pp. 298, 304ff.
- 49.
- 50.
- 51.
Historically viewed, this second sense of individuality as specificity-in-functioning has been discussed in the Aristotelian tradition in individualistic interpretations of the ‘to ti en einai’, such as Duns Scotus’ ‘haecceitas’. Leibniz’ so-called principle of the identity of indiscernibles can count as an attempt to revive the understanding of individuality or thisness as specificity-in-functioning, against the more prevalent understanding of thisness as determined by unique location that enabled, and was supported by, the Cartesian geometrical approach to the physical world.
- 52.
Sellars, following C.D. Broad, takes ‘subjectless’ or ‘pure’ activities to be expressed by sentences with ‘dummy subject’, cf., ‘it is snowing,’ ‘it is lightening’ (Sellars 1981). Even though this might be helpful for illustrational purposes, it cannot serve as a criterion since many activities that cannot be understood as the ‘doings’ of a thing (or a collection of things) are expressed by nouns.
- 53.
In earlier expositions of the new ontological framework the basic category was called ‘dynamic masses’ and ‘free processes,’ but due to the ubiquitous presumption of foundational particularism it became increasingly necessary to highlight more clearly that the basic individuals of the new scheme are non-particular, i.e., general entities. The reader should note that even though GPT is a process ontology, general processes have little in common with Whiteheadian ‘actual occasions’; in fact, the closest categorial cognates to general processes are E. Zemach’s concrete ‘types’ (Zemach 1970). The predicate ‘x is a model for category y’ is defined in Seibt (2004b, Chap. 1). To simplify I use here ‘semantic descent’ and characterize subjectless activities directly in terms of ontological features (independent, concrete, non-particular etc.); the proper methodological procedure would be to show how the logical role of sentences about subjectless activities dovetails with ontological features of the entities in terms of which these sentences are interpreted. Cf. Seibt 2004b, chaps. 2 and 3.
- 54.
That is, there are no instantaneous activities in the sense of stages constituting temporally extended activities. GPT certainly acknowledges – and, in fact, makes much of this – that in common sense reasoning we do assume that activities exist continuously in time, and thus are dynamic features that can be ascribed to any point in the time period during which they are going on.
- 55.
Cf. History of Animals, 487a2. Aristotle speaks of ‘homoeomerous’ entities, which could be translated as ‘similar-parted’ (of a similar kind) and contrasted with ‘like-parted’ (homomerous, of the same kind). This difference has been neglected in the discussion of ‘homogeneous’ entities and here I will do so as well.
- 56.
- 57.
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Seibt, J. (2010). Particulars. In: Poli, R., Seibt, J. (eds) Theory and Applications of Ontology: Philosophical Perspectives. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8845-1_2
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