1. Particulars and Properties Lecture three: bundles and particulars.
Henry Taylor

2. Recap Where have we come?
We started off looking at the problem of resemblance.
We looked at whether you need universals to explain that, and we contrasted it with nominalism.
We then looked at whether universals are concrete or abstract.

3. This week Assume we accept universals. Are universals all there are?
Or do we need to postulate some other stuff as well?
Take the apple: is the apple nothing more than its redness, solidity, size, mass etc.
Of is there something in addition to its properties?

4. Universal bundle theory
Universals are all that exist: that’s all folks.
What are objects then? Things like shoes and ships and sealing wax?
Answer: they’re bundles of universals.

5. The view Bertrand Russell . 1872-1970.
A ball just is a bunch of universals: like redness, sphericity, bounciness, a certain density, mass etc.
He changed his mind at various times though…

6. Bundles
So, remember last week we said that objects instantiate universals?
On this view, objects are bundles of universals.
Notice how this interacts with the stuff we were looking at last week. Imagine if you thought universals are abstract and you thought that objects are bundles of universals. Does it follow that all objects are abstract? Is that ridiculous?

7. Bundles So, objects are bundles of universals.
The identity of the bundle is determined by the universals that are ‘in’ it.
But all instances of a universal are identical (remember how important this is for universalism).

8. Strange bundles Take two balls.
Let us pretend that they are each made of three properties: mass X, redness and sphericity.

9. Bundles Ball 1 is the bundle of: Mass X, Sphericity and Redness.
But if universalism is true then the mass of one ball is identical to the mass of the other, the sphericity of each ball is identical to the sphericity of the other, and the redness is each identical to the redness of the other.
And the identity of each bundle is determined by the universals in that bundle.
So, they are the same bundle.

10. Bundles
But if the two bundles are identical, then the balls must be identical (because they are bundles).
So the two balls are in fact identical: they’re the same thing.
Isn’t this implausible?

11. Bundles
More strictly: the bundle theory of universals is committed to the necessary truth of the identity of indiscernibles:
More informally: for any two objects, if they have the same properties, then they are identical.
xyP (((PxPy)^(PyPx)) (x=y))
This is thought to be implausible: it should be possible for two objects to have the same properties, but be non-identical objects.

12. Identity and indiscernibility.
The identity of indiscernibles:
xyP (((PxPy)^(PyPx)) (x=y))
This is much stronger than the indiscernibility of identicals:
xyP (((x=y)  ((PxPy)^(PyPx)))

13. Weird Bundles
Any Questions/comments?

14. Response: relations
The two balls differ in their relational properties.
Ball 1 will be a certain distance from the Eiffel tower, and Ball 2 will be a slightly different distance.
(They could be the same distance technically, but then they would be different distances from some other object, so let’s ignore that for now).

15. Relations.
So:
Ball 1= Mass X ^ Sphericity ^ Redness ^ ‘is Y distance from the Eiffel Tower’
Ball 2= Mass X ^ Sphericity ^ Redness ^ ‘is Z distance from the Eiffel Tower’ (and assume that ¬(Z=Y))
So the two bundles differ.
So the balls are not identical.

16. Reply: Max Black
Max Black.

17. Black’s Universe
Imagine a universe of two balls, alike in all of their properties.
There is nothing else in this universe.
In this universe, each ball has precisely the same properties in the bundle (even relational ones).
So each is the same bundle.
So, the two balls are identical.
But this is wrong: clearly they’re different balls!

18. Possible responses.
Just bite the bullet: they’re identical: what you have here is one ball, which is multiply located.
If you’ve already swallowed universals, that’s not too bad: you think universals can be multiply located, why not balls?
But is it possible for a ball to be fifteen metres away from itself? Does that make any sense?
What do we think?

19. Another option: accept particulars
Abandon the bundle theory of universals.
Still accept universals, but also accept something else: particulars (David Armstrong’s view).
What’s a particular?
It’s what it sounds like: it’s a particular thing, and the particular has properties.
So, a ball is not just a bundle of universals. It is a particular which has certain universals.
Similar to ‘substance’ or ‘substratum’

20. Particulars. On this view:
Ball 1 = Particular 1, which instantiates Redness, Sphericity and Mass.
Ball 2 = Particular 2, which instantiates Redness, Sphericity and Mass.
The balls are different particulars, so they are not identical.

21. Thin and Thick.
A ‘thin’ particular is a particular considered without any properties (sometimes called a ‘bare particular’).
A ‘thick’ particular is a particular considered along with its properties.
So on this view, objects (like apples) are thick particulars.
The particular is what differentiates one object from another, even if they have the same properties.

22. States of affairs Armstong’s view:
There are particulars (particular things) and there are properties (that are universals).
They come together as states of affairs: the having of universals by particulars.
These are the building blocks of reality: particulars having universals.
That is what exists!

23. States of affairs States of affairs are things being a certain way.
They are a thing (an apple) being a certain way (being red).
So, the building blocks of reality are not particulars, or universals exactly…
They are particulars having universals.

24. A world of states of affairs
1997 book by David Armstrong.
Argues in favour of the states of affairs view.
One of probably the two most important texts in contemporary metaphysics.

25. States of affairs: A Wittgensteinian view?
Remember: the world is a totality of facts, not things.
Wittgenstein also says:
‘what is the case-a fact-is the existence of states of affairs’
Armstrong interprets this to mean: states of affairs: particulars having properties.
So Armstrong thinks this is Wittgensteinian.

26. Questions/comments?

27. Particulars? What? But what is a thin particular?
It’s a ‘substance’ that is not the same as the properties of the object.
What is that, exactly?
It seems cut off from our epistemic access, because we only ever encounter properties.
It is (as Locke would say) ‘something, I know not what’.
‘The idea is that the [thin particular] is veiled behind its [properties], much like a person might be hidden behind their raincoat’ (Shamik Dasgupta, 2015, pp.450).

28. Let’s do the scores: Universal Bundle theory: More parsimonious
But has weird consequences about identity.
States of affairs:
Avoids identity worries
Less parsimonious
Has to invoke thin particulars, which are weird.

29. The particular/universal distinction.
Frank Plumpton Ramsey
( ).
Cambridge philosopher.
Died tragically young (26).
Wrote many great works, including ‘Universals’ (1925).

30. Ramsey’s problem
Ramsey worried that the particular/universal distinction was ‘a great muddle’.
Very roughly, he worried that semantic/linguistic distinctions were being taken too seriously by metaphysicians.
There is a semantic distinction between subject and predicate.
‘Socrates is wise’: Socrates is the subject, and ‘wise’ is the predicate.

31. Ramsey’s problem
Socrates is here the particular, and wisdom is the universal.
Ramsey claims that it is simply a quirk of our language that we place ‘Socrates’ in the subject place and ‘wise’ in the predicate place.
We could just as easily say ‘wisdom Socratises’.
Here ‘wisdom’ is subject (particular) and ‘Socratises’ is predicate (universal).

32. Ramsey’s problem
To think that there is a deep division in reality between particular and universal is to be misled by the superficial grammar of language.
A better picture is more faithful to the Tractatus:
Wisdom and Socrates hang together like ‘the links of a chain’.
It is not that one of them is universal, the other particular, there is no difference here: they are just equal parts of reality.

33. Ramsey’s spiritual successor: MacBride.
That is only a little taste of Ramsey’s argument.
Ramsey’s view has recently been developed and defended by Fraser MacBride.

34. Final questions?

35. Next time
We wrap things up with a final theory of properties: tropes.