In the last chapter we noted that there are charactered objects and characteristics. We learned that the character of charactered objects is best explained by postulating properties. Rosie the chicken has the properties (or better, the universals) being red and being a chicken. Properties are predicables, things that we predicate or assert of other things. But what about Rosie? What kind of thing, ontologically speaking, is she? The first thing to note about Rosie is that she is not a property. She is not “had” or “possessed” by something else in the same way the property being red is had by chickens and balls. Rosie is not a predicate: she is a subject. Rosie does the “having” and not the other way around. Rosie, this chicken in my backyard, is a concrete particular. Notice too that Rosie is a composite: she is a whole that has parts (her left foot, red feathers, carbon atoms, etc.) and properties (being red, being a chicken) that stand in various relations to one another. Rosie is not the only concrete particular in my backyard. This pile of trash next to Rosie, according to some philosophers, is also a concrete particular.1 Like Rosie it has parts (that piece of paper, those dust molecules, that aluminum can, and so forth) and properties (being a pile of trash, being shaped, etc.) that stand in various relations to one another. This car is also a concrete particular. It too has parts and properties that stand in various relations to one another.
A key question to be explored in this chapter is how to make sense of familiar concrete objects such as chickens, cars, and piles of trash. It is currently fashionable to think that the familiar concrete objects of everyday experience are “built up” out of more fundamental parts and properties. If so, then the composite whole (Rosie, the trash pile, the car) is metaphysically posterior to its parts and properties. This reductionist picture makes the most sense, we believe, for things like cars (ordered aggregates) and things like piles of trash (heaps). But for things like Rosie (living organisms), this picture is counterintuitive. Rosie, the composite whole, is fundamental, or so it seems.
There is, however, another historically prominent way to think of concrete particulars that does treat some wholes as fundamental sorts of thing. On this view, found notably in Aristotle, Rosie is a substance, a concrete particular in which the whole is metaphysically more fundamental than its parts and properties. In this chapter we shall argue for an Aristotelian view of concrete particulars, which distinguishes between ordered aggregates and heaps, on the one hand, and substances, on the other hand. With the former, the parts and properties of the thing are metaphysically prior to the whole. With the latter, the whole is metaphysically prior to its parts and properties. The main area of debate to be settled is whether the idea of whole-priority for composite objects is plausible. In other words, are there good reasons to think that Aristotelian substances exist? To enter into the debate, we begin by canvassing the two most prominent bottom-up approaches for understanding concrete particulars such as humans and chickens.
Bottom-Up Accounts of Concrete Particulars
It is natural to think that Rosie, the composite whole, “has” or possesses her properties. The properties are in some sense “in” Rosie. Yet two questions arise: What, exactly, does the “having”? And how is this “having” relation to be understood? On one prominent story—call it the substratum theory—if Rosie were placed under a metaphysical microscope, we would find three constituent entities: her properties, a bare substratum, and the exemplification relation joining the two together. The bare substratum is a featureless particular (a pincushion) that exemplifies the properties (the pins) had, loosely speaking, by Rosie. The sentence
1. Rosie is a chicken
is understood strictly and philosophically as
2. Rosie’s bare substratum (BSR) exemplifies the property being a chicken.
The literal bearer of a thing’s properties is not the composite whole but a constituent part of the whole, the bare substratum.
Why think that Rosie’s bare substratum, instead of Rosie herself, is the literal bearer of properties? The idea is that the bearer of a thing’s properties must be apprehended or conceived of independently of its properties, but Rosie, the complex whole, is not a thing that is apprehended or conceived of independently of her properties and therefore cannot be the literal bearer of her properties.2 The literal bearer of Rosie’s properties, BSR, is “bare” because it stands under or supports Rosie’s properties, like the pincushion to its pins, without itself having properties. It is a propertyless bearer of properties.
In order to highlight a key motivation of substratum theory, we must first set out another prominent bottom-up approach to complex objects: bundle theory. According to bundle theory, Rosie is a complex object constituted by her properties. Rosie is a bundle of properties, whether properties are understood as tropes or universals.3 Sentence 1—“Rosie is a chicken”—is understood by the bundle theorist as
3. Rosie is a bundle of compresent properties (either universals or tropes), including the property being a chicken.
The compresence relation is a kind of building relation that joins together a plurality of properties into a composite whole.
Now that we’ve set out the two most prominent bottom-up theories of concrete particulars, we are able to see a key motivation for substratum theories by raising a problem for bundle theory. Imagine two qualitatively indistinguishable objects: red sphere a and red sphere b. This scenario seems possible.4 Each object has qualitative properties such as being red and being a sphere. Assuming metaphysical realism, the properties had by objects a and b are universals—shareable properties. Assuming bundle theory, then objects a and b are bundles of universals.5 However, given a plausible principle for identifying complex wholes in virtue of their constituents (i.e., same constituents, same whole), a problem arises. More formally, a principle of constituent identity (PCI) can be formulated as follows:
PCI: If object a and object b have all the same constituents standing in all the same relations, then a is numerically identical to b.6
The problem, given metaphysical realism, bundle theory, and PCI, is that our imagined scenario is not possible. It is not possible for two qualitatively indistinguishable objects to exist. But the scenario seems possible, and if it is, then either metaphysical realism, bundle theory, or PCI must be rejected. The principle of constituent identity, PCI, is as good a principle as any, “a regulative principle that does nothing more than state a condition on the use of the terms ‘constituent’ and ‘whole’”;7 thus there is no good reason to reject it. If one is a metaphysical realist, bundle theory must be rejected.
The bundle theorist might not need to concede defeat, however, if it could be maintained, contrary to appearances, that objects a and b are not qualitatively indistinguishable. Perhaps, it could be argued, object a has a relational property not had by object b, and vice versa. Object a has the property (let’s say) being to the left of b, and object b has the property being to the right of a. If so, objects a and b are individuated by their relational properties; they are not numerically identical objects by virtue of each exemplifying a unique relational property. In this way, bundle theory can be salvaged, or so it seems, for the metaphysical realist.
Unfortunately, the appeal to relational properties won’t work. Recall that for the bundle theorist, the only constituents of composite objects are properties. For the metaphysical realist, properties are universals, and so universals are the basic building blocks of composite objects. As basic or fundamental objects, properties are metaphysically prior to their wholes. But the relational property being to the left of b (had by object a) presupposes the existence of object a, object b, and a spatial relation between them. In the same way, the relational property being to the right of a (had by object b) presupposes the existence of object a, object b, and the spatial relationship between them. The problem is that objects a and b must already exist as individuals in order to stand in spatial relationships to each other.8 But if they already exist, then relational properties cannot individuate the one from the other. Relational properties, if they exist at all, are not fundamental properties. They are not basic building blocks for composite wholes. Each object already exists as an individual metaphysically prior to standing in the spatial relationships that generate these relational properties. If so, then relational properties cannot individuate qualitatively indistinguishable objects. It seems that bundle theory (for the metaphysical realist) must go.
We are now able to see a key motivation for substratum theory, for according to the substratum theorists, there is, in addition to a thing’s properties, a bare substratum “in” each composite whole. Thus object a has a constituent (BSa) that object b doesn’t have, and vice versa (object b has a bare substratum BSb). Different constituents form different objects, according to PCI. Thus if one is a metaphysical realist there are good reasons to endorse substratum theory. We also learn that, in addition to being the literal bearer of a thing’s properties, a bare substratum can be employed to play the individuator role, grounding the numeric diversity of distinct particulars (even if they are qualitatively indistinguishable).
Unfortunately for the substratum theorist, however, there is a potentially devastating problem. Many philosophers think the idea of a bare substratum, a propertyless simple that has properties, is incoherent. It is not hard to see why. We are told that a bare substratum is bare. It has no properties. But we are also told that a bare substratum is literally the bearer of a thing’s properties. If so, then it has properties. So a bare substratum is a thing that both has and doesn’t have properties. This is as clear a case of a contradictory notion as there can be, or so it seems.
There are, however, defenders of bare substrata who think the apparent incoherence is easily sidestepped. For example, J. P. Moreland distinguishes two different senses for how particulars can have properties.9 A composite whole (called a substance by Moreland) has properties “rooted within” it, whereas a bare substratum (called a bare particular by Moreland) has properties “tied to” it. There is a sense, then, in which bare substrata do have properties: properties are tied to an ontologically simple particular. Bare substrata are “bare” because they have no properties as constituents; they are ontologically structureless blobs. Still, since properties are tied to them, it is true that they are the literal bearers of properties. While the rooted-in or tied-to distinction does seem to remove the incoherence worry for the metaphysical realist, there are additional problems in the neighborhood.
Defenders of bare substrata usually claim that bare substrata have no essential properties themselves. All the properties tied to bare substrata are contingently tied to them. But it seems that bare substrata do have natures, or essential properties: the property of being bare, the property of being a particular, the property of being simple, and so on. If so, then it seems that bare substrata are not ontologically simple: they have properties, and those properties need a literal bearer too. It is natural to think, since the bearer of a thing’s properties must be apprehended independently of its properties (as we noted above), that if a bare substratum has essential properties, those properties will be tied to its own lower-level bare substratum, a further constituent of our original substratum. Not only are bare substrata not simple on this picture: worse, it seems we are on the verge of generating an infinite regress of bare substrata with essential properties at descending levels “all the way down.”10
Moreland’s reply to this worry is to adopt a sparse theory of properties: some predicates—“is bare,” “is particular,” “is simple,” and so on—do not refer to properties.11 In this way it can be maintained that bare substrata have no essential properties or nature. While avoiding the threat of an infinite regress of metaphysical parts with properties for each bare substratum, this move comes at a cost: the denial of an abundant theory of properties. Some predicates, given the suggested adjustment, do not refer to properties. This concession might, it could be argued, undercut some of the original motivation in favor of metaphysical realism. We do not think this cost must be paid, nor do we think the threat of infinite regress is real, however. Let us explain.
In the discussion thus far, we have been adopting a constituent framework for understanding concrete particulars. Constituent ontologies account for the character of ordinary concrete objects, such as Rosie the chicken, in terms of physical and metaphysical parts had by the whole. On a different approach, the relational approach, ordinary concrete objects such as Rosie do not literally have metaphysical parts, even if they do have physical parts (carbon atoms, feathers, beaks, etc.). On the relational approach, the concrete particular, Rosie, stands in some external relation to its properties; for example, the properties are “tied to” Rosie via exemplification.12 In terms of metaphysical structure, constituent ontologies are “layer cake” ontologies and relational ontologies are “blob” ontologies.13 In other words, if you were to look at Rosie under your metaphysical microscope, if in fact the relational approach truly describes the metaphysical structure of things, you would see a structureless blob (an internally simple thing) with properties tied to it (somewhat like a flower connected to its petals). If, however, the constituent way of looking at things were in fact true, you would see various metaphysical parts standing in various relationships and forming a complex whole, like a cake if it were placed under a metaphysical microscope.
With this distinction in hand, it seems that the defender of bare substrata can adopt a hybrid approach such that complex wholes (substances) have properties as constituents whereas simple wholes (bare substrata) have properties in the relational way, and that the bare substrata, along with the properties they exemplified, are nonseparable parts of the whole (the substance) that has them. It could then be maintained that while a bare substratum has no constituents, it does (on an abundant theory of properties) have properties, and some essentially (i.e., the properties that pick out its nature). We think this scenario is possible. The notion of bare substrata is coherent and doesn’t require the rejection of an abundant theory of properties.
Even if bare substrata are perfectly respectable entities in their own right, there is a further question, however, regarding bare substratum theory. There are two reasons to think, as a stand-alone theory, that bare substratum views won’t work. First, even if the bare substratum has a nature, and thus some essential properties that ground its nature, bare substratum theory does not allow for structured wholes—everyday particulars—to have essential properties. All the complex/structured wholes’ properties are exemplified contingently by the bare substratum, even if (as we allow) the bare substratum has some essential properties that ground its nature. None of the complex whole’s attributes are intrinsic to the bare substratum; they are, as Michael Loux states, “always accidental to its bearer.”14 For those who think, as we do, that Rosie the chicken, for example, has some essential properties (being a chicken, being a particular) in addition to her accidental properties (being red, being five pounds, etc.), bare substratum theories in the end fall short. Second, the rooted-in or tied-to distinction employed to render the concept of bare substrata coherent pushes in the direction of a different theory of ordinary objects, a theory that allows for fundamental wholes that are in some sense metaphysically prior to their constituent parts (otherwise it is hard to make sense of the rooted-in locution). We shall explore this top-down approach to concrete objects below. Before we do so, it will be helpful to see if bundle theory, in which properties are construed as tropes, might be able to unproblematically accommodate the distinction between essential and accidental properties for ordinary objects. If so, then one of the central motivations in favor of Aristotelian substances (to be discussed shortly) would be undercut.
Consider again our loveable pet chicken, Rosie. According to trope bundle theory, Rosie, the composite object, is a bundle of compresent tropes. The “is” in this last sentence is the “is” of identity: Rosie, the composite whole, is identical to her bundle of compresent tropes. But then, contrary to appearance, all of Rosie’s tropes belong to her essentially. If Rosie were to grow an inch in height, she would lose a trope (being ten inches tall) and gain a new trope (being eleven inches tall). The problem is that the new emerging bundle of compresent tropes is a numerically distinct bundle. Rosie no longer exists. In her place is a new composite object, Rosie*. Thus bundle theory cannot accommodate (accidental—i.e., nonessential) change.
In reply, defenders of bundle theory have developed accounts that allow the possibility of change. The so-called nuclear bundle theory distinguishes two kinds of bundling relations: nuclear and peripheral compresence.15 On this view, since we are exploring trope theoretic versions of bundle theory, Rosie is identical with the set of nuclear tropes—tropes that pick out her essence. In addition to her nuclear tropes, she has peripheral tropes standing in the peripheral compresence relation. These peripheral tropes can come and go, but Rosie, along with her nucleus, will survive the gaining and losing of peripheral tropes. Nuclear bundle theory is an improvement on so-called classical bundle theory since it allows the commonsense distinction between essential and accidental properties, as well as the possibility of survival through change. The cost, however, is in terms of an additional primitive; there are now two primitive building relations for the bundle theorist: nuclear compresence and peripheral compresence.16 While the benefit—compatibility with a robust theory of change—seems worth the cost, it does bring focus to one final problem for the bundle theorist, a problem that affects all versions (i.e., realist and trope nominalist). The problem has to do with the nature of the building relation itself.
According to Robert Garcia, a bundle theorist takes compresence to be an object-making relation.17 In the context of bundle theory, compresence is supposed to take something from one category—property—and make or generate (out of a plurality or bundle of properties) something in another category—object. But what is the resultant entity that compresence makes? The resultant entity, according to Garcia, is most plausibly understood to be a state of affairs: the compresence of being a chicken and being red results in the state of affairs chickenhood being compresent with redhood. The problem with this story is that it leaves a critical explanatory gap at the heart of bundle theory. The explanatory gap has to do with how a plurality of properties yields a distinct entity that is characterized by those properties. As Garcia puts it, states of affairs are entities “involving those properties,” but they are not entities “charactered by those properties.”18 In other words, consider the state of affairs chickenhood being compresent with redhood. The latter involves the properties being a chicken and being red, but the state of affairs itself is neither red nor a chicken. Since according to Garcia explanatory gap problems affect any version of the object-making relation, then on bundle theory “it is simply axiomatic . . . that properties go together to generate non-properties which are charactered in the ways specified by those properties; . . . object-making is an explanatory black box. . . . [It is] relatively weak with respect to its explanatory power.”19 The bundle theorist must take it as a given that properties go together to form objects. The inability to explain how this takes place is an ideological cost for the theory. Given bundle theory’s lack of explanatory power, as well as the problems associated with substratum theories, it would be wise to consider top-down approaches to concrete objects like Rosie.
We now turn to consider Aristotelian substances, a top-down approach to some concrete objects that views the whole as a fundamental unity of parts, properties, and powers.
Top-Down Accounts of Some Concrete Particulars
We are considering ordinary concrete objects like Rosie the chicken. One observation about Rosie and other living organisms is that she exhibits a kind of natural unity and fundamentality. Rosie, according to the Aristotelian tradition, is a substance: a fundamental unity of parts, properties, and powers. As a fundamental unity, a substance “enjoys a certain naturalness or completeness or rounded-offness”20 not enjoyed by cars or piles of trash. We shall follow Aristotle in distinguishing between fundamental (natural) unities (substances) and nonfundamental (lesser or artificial) unities such as ordered aggregates or heaps.
In what sense are substances such as Rosie fundamental unities? One way to understand this is in terms of how Rosie, the composite whole, has her physical and metaphysical parts. As a substance, Rosie’s parts are nonseparable parts of Rosie. To say of some part that it is a nonseparable part of some whole is not to be understood as the claim that the part is essential to the whole; rather, it’s the claim that being a part of the whole is essential to the part.21 Consider this car’s spark plugs. These spark plugs are separable parts of the car. They are metaphysically prior to the whole they find themselves in. If the spark plugs were removed from the car, they would still be the same spark plugs; their nature and existence is indifferent to the whole of which they are a part. On the contrary, Rosie’s heart, as a part of a fundamental whole, is an inseparable part of Rosie. Rosie’s heart is defined in terms of the functional role it plays as part of the composite whole; take Rosie’s heart out of Rosie, and it is no longer a heart (or so we claim, following Aristotle). The heart, in some sense, survives its removal from Rosie. The thing that formerly was Rosie’s heart, when removed from Rosie, becomes a clump of matter. Yet that clump of matter is no longer Rosie’s heart, strictly speaking.
As fundamental unities of parts, properties, and powers, Aristotelian substances exhibit top-down, whole-to-part priority. Philosophers who endorse this picture reject the bottom-up approach to concrete particulars (of a certain kind) where wholes are built up out of more basic constituents. Rather, the substance, on this account, is a “particularized-nature”22 that has (nonseparable) parts, properties, and powers. The claim is not that substances have natures but rather that substances are natures.23 The essential properties of a substance flow out of or are determined by the kind of thing the substance is. The kinds of accidental properties a substance can have are also determined by its nature (e.g., a chicken can’t have the property being wise or being an English speaker, but it can have the property being red or being five pounds; the latter are accidental properties that come and go in chickens, guided by the stable patterns grounded in the thing’s nature). In this way, the unity of a substance can be explained in terms of final causation: the particularized nature is the final cause of its parts, properties (essential and accidental), and powers. Thus the natures function teleologically. As Loux explains, on Aristotle’s account of living organisms (i.e., substances), “Natures impose a top-down organization on the members of the relevant kind in the sense that the nature dictates a specific pattern of functional organization in which the various organic parts of a living being get their identity from the role they play in the overall functional economy imposed by the nature. What we have, then, is a single, unified form of being or life that spreads itself over the parts and subordinates them to the whole.”24
Thus it is possible, and we think plausible, to distinguish between a thing’s nature and its (essential and accidental) properties: a substance just is a particularized nature—a dog, a chicken, a geranium—that has properties, parts, and powers.25
As noted above, Moreland is a contemporary defender of Aristotelian substances. How does Moreland explicate our now-familiar sentence about Rosie? According to Moreland,
1. Rosie is a chicken
can be analyzed as
4. The property being a chicken inheres in Rosie as a constituent
and
2. Rosie’s bare substratum (BSR) exemplifies the property being a chicken.
Following Aristotle, Moreland employs a constituent framework for understanding ordinary concrete objects.26 Statements 4 and 2 are understood as follows: The concrete material substance, the particularized nature, Rosie, has as a constituent property (Moreland is a Platonist regarding properties: properties are universals) being a chicken.27 Hence the property inheres in or is rooted in Rosie. Moreover, the property being a chicken is tied to or exemplified by a further constituent of Rosie, Rosie’s individuator BSR.28 Thus Moreland employs at least two “building relations” to join together a plurality of properties into a composite whole: the exemplification relation (or tie) and the inherence relation.29
Endorsing this nonreductive picture, at least for living organisms and perhaps for other concrete (material or immaterial) objects, has certain benefits. For starters, belief in Aristotelian substances accommodates many of our prephilosophical intuitions such as belief that Rosie, for example, is a fundamental thing, a deep unity, and capable of surviving accidental change.
The view is not without worries, however. Two prominent worries are worth noting. First, it is not obvious that living organisms have only nonseparable parts. The trouble for the Aristotelian view begins with things like atoms.30 It certainly seems that atoms are separable parts of living organisms. Take one of Rosie’s carbon atoms. It is now a part of her. Next week, after she scratches it off her face (she likes to rub her face on the side of the pen), the carbon atom will no longer be a part of her. Then it will be a part of the ground and will soon be absorbed into that weed. It seems that the carbon atom, contrary to the claim made by the Aristotelian, is a separable part of Rosie. The reply to this worry is simplicity itself. When carbon atoms exist independently of some whole, they are genuine Aristotelian substances. When they are incorporated into some other substance as a part, they cease being a substance in their own right and become virtual or pseudosubstances.31
If accepted, this reply surfaces the second prominent worry. It seems that the resultant account of living organisms doesn’t cohere with things we know from science. Science tells us that carbon atoms (among other atoms, molecules, and cells) do work in the organism. But if there are only “carbon-atomish parts,”32 how can they do the work science says they do? Patrick Toner offers the following reply: “Everything we want to say about the work that gets done in organisms because of carbon atoms can all still be said. We just can’t endow such claims with too much metaphysical baggage.”33 In other words, the scientist can truly and coherently talk about carbon atoms (and other atoms, molecules, and cells) within living organisms. What the scientist can’t say, at least as a scientist, is that those carbon atoms are substances when existing apart from things and are nonsubstances or pseudosubstances when existing as nonseparable parts of things. Those claims are philosophical claims. The upshot is that there is no obvious conflict between the things scientists want to say about living organisms and the kinds of things (Aristotelian) philosophers want to say about living organisms.34
Since there are benefits to believing in substances and nothing important needs to be given up along the way, we think it best to admit them into our ontology.35 Summarizing then, some particulars (living organisms, atoms, maybe more) exist as fundamental unities, whereas others (ordered aggregates and piles) are constructions out of more basic parts.
The Divine Substance
Finally, we think the foregoing discussion helps us to better understand the divine substance. God is an immaterial concrete particular. A natural reading of Scripture suggests that God too has properties (e.g., being omnipotent, being omniscient, and being omnibenevolent) and other constituent parts (e.g., ideas, thoughts, volitions, a will, an intellect). One traditionally held view argues that this natural understanding of the divine is problematic. The idea is that if God has parts and properties, then in some sense God depends on those parts and properties for his existence and nature. If so, then God is not ultimate. Thus it is argued that God is simple, completely devoid of any metaphysical parts. This doctrine of divine simplicity was held by thinkers such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas in order to secure God’s supremacy.36 Many today, however, think the doctrine of divine simplicity is itself implausible.37 Whether or not the doctrine of divine simplicity can be salvaged, we want to highlight a further benefit to the Aristotelian view. The defender of Aristotelian substance can secure God’s supremacy even if there is complexity within the divine being. If God, as we maintain, is an Aristotelian substance, then he is a fundamental unity, a particularized nature, and thus metaphysically prior to his parts. As creator of all distinct reality, God depends on nothing outside his borders for his existence and nature, and as an Aristotelian substance, everything within God’s borders ultimately depends on God, the composite whole who is the final cause of his constituent parts and properties. In this way, we submit, Aristotelian substances can do important work not only in philosophy and science but in theology too.
Conclusion
In this chapter we’ve considered how to make sense of the concrete objects, or particulars, of our everyday experience. Some particulars are best thought of from the “bottom-up”: piles of trash and ordered aggregates like cars and computers are best thought of in this way, or so we’ve argued. Other particulars—atoms, organisms, God—are best thought of from the “top-down,” as substances or fundamental unities. In arguing for top-down dependency relations and whole-priority for some particulars, we are pushing back on the now dominant neo-Humean and reductionistic trend that prioritizes the microphysical over the macrophysical and the “scientistic” over the “manifest” image of reality.
1. A so-called universalist about mereology (from meros = parts, thus mereology = the study of parts and wholes) thinks any combination of concrete objects fuses or forms another concrete object, no matter how disparate. So my left toe, the moon, and that nail holding a board together at the White House form an object on this view. We ultimately side with common sense here and deny that such a nonnatural fusion forms a concrete whole. Still, for completeness we include things like piles or perhaps better, heaps of sand, which are at least somewhat naturally understood to be concrete objects even if the border between object and nonobject in those cases is somewhat fuzzy.
2. Michael J. Loux and Thomas M. Crisp, Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction, 4th ed. (New York: Routledge, 2017), 85.
3. Recall from chap. 8 that a trope is a nonshareable property, but a universal is a shareable property.
4. The classic statement of this kind of scenario is found in Max Black, “The Identity of Indiscernibles,” Mind 61 (1952): 153–64.
5. For more on metaphysical realism—the view that properties exist, many of which are universals—see chap. 8.
6. For an explication of PCI, see Loux and Crisp, Metaphysics, 95–96; and Robert C. Koons and Timothy H. Pickavance, Metaphysics: The Fundamentals (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 110.
7. Loux and Crisp, Metaphysics, 96.
8. This example assumes the relationalist view of space (roughly, the idea that space is constituted by the relations that obtain between objects). If the substantival view of space is assumed (roughly, the idea that space is a substance in its own right, existing independently from the objects “in” it), the show is up for the bundle theorist, unfortunately. On the substantival view of space, an object is individuated by something like a bare substratum, a point in space-time that is a particular. Thus since the only constituents of objects according to bundle theory are properties, substantival conceptions of space entail the falsity of bundle theory (assuming metaphysical realism and PCI).
9. J. P. Moreland, Universals (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), 140–57; Moreland, “Exemplification and Constituent Realism: A Clarification and Modest Defense,” Axiomathes 23, no. 2 (2013): 247–59.
10. For more on this worry, see Loux and Crisp, Metaphysics, 103–4.
11. J. P. Moreland and Timothy Pickavance, “Bare Particulars and Individuation: Reply to Mertz,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81, no. 1 (2003): 1–13.
12. For a nice overview of the issues and options with respect to relational and constituent ontologies, see Koons and Pickavance, Metaphysics, 104–25.
13. Moreland, “Exemplification and Constituent Realism,” 248.
14. Loux and Crisp, Metaphysics, 108.
15. Peter Simons, “Particulars in Particular Clothing: Three Trope Theories of Substance,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54, no. 3 (1994): 553–75.
16. Koons and Pickavance, Metaphysics, 114.
17. In addition to compresence (also called collocation), Garcia explores other proposals concerning the nature of this relationship including fusion and interdependence. See Robert K. Garcia, “Bundle Theory’s Black Box: Gap Challenges for the Bundle Theory of Substance,” Philosophia 42, no. 1 (2014): 115–26.
18. Garcia, “Bundle Theory’s Black Box,” 123. This problem also infects substratum theories: the product of properties tied to bare substrata, according to Michael Loux, are states of affairs. If so, the explanatory gap problem infects substratum theories too: the resultant entity that is the complex whole (the state of affairs) involves properties but is not charactered by those properties. See Michael Loux, “Aristotle’s Constituent Ontology,” in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, ed. Dean Zimmerman (Oxford: Clarendon, 2006), 2:216.
19. Garcia, “Bundle Theory’s Black Box,” 125 (emphasis in original).
20. Barry Smith, “On Substance, Accidents and Universals: In Defense of Constituent Ontology,” Philosophical Papers 26, no. 1 (1997): 108.
21. Patrick Toner, “On Substance,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 84, no. 1 (2010): 27.
22. Ross D. Inman, Substance and the Fundamentality of the Familiar: A Neo-Aristotelian Mereology (New York: Routledge, 2018), 20.
23. In the Aristotelian tradition, this nature is sometimes called the thing’s form, and the material parts of the whole are called its matter. On this reading, Aristotelian substances are fundamental unities of form and matter. This view is also called hylomorphism, a term spliced together from two Greek roots: hylē (matter) and morphē (form). For contemporary articulations and defenses of hylomorphism, see Michael C. Rea, “Hylomorphism Reconditioned,” Philosophical Perspectives 25 (2011): 341–58; and Robert Koons, “Staunch vs. Faint-Hearted Hylomorphism: Toward an Aristotelian Account of Composition,” Res Philosophica 91, no. 2 (2014): 151–77.
24. Loux, “Aristotle’s Constituent Ontology,” 246.
25. For a defense of the distinction between natures and essential (and accidental) properties, see Paul M. Gould and Richard Brian Davis, “Where the Bootstrapping Really Lies: A Neo-Aristotelian Reply to Panchuk,” International Philosophical Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2017): 415–28.
26. See Moreland, Universals; Moreland, “Exemplification and Constituent Realism.”
27. Here is a possible objection: You say substances have nonseparable parts, but if Platonism is true, then properties are separable parts, necessarily existing abstract objects that can (and do) exist apart from the substances that have them. Solution: Strictly speaking, the nonseparable part of the substance is the property-instance, a complex entity with three constituents: the property, the exemplification relation, and the bare substratum. The property-instance is the nonseparable part of Rosie, even if the property/universal can and does exist independently (and is thus metaphysically prior to Rosie). Thus this fix, if one follows Moreland, is to say that substances have no integral separable parts (even if they have separable metaphysical parts) where an integral part is a spatial part of a substance (e.g., atoms, molecules, cells, my left arm, my head, the whiteness of my toe, etc.). For more on the possibility of blending Platonism about properties with Aristotelian substances, see Paul Gould, “How Does an Aristotelian Substance Have Its Platonic Properties? Issues and Options,” Axiomathes 23, no. 2 (2013): 343–64.
28. Not all defenders of Aristotelian substances appeal to bare substrata. Some, such as Loux, argue that substances just come individuated by virtue of being a member of a substantial kind. Others posit different individuators such as thin particulars, matter, regions of space-time, individual essences, or complexes of parts. For more on the problem of individuation for Aristotelian substances, see Loux and Crisp, Metaphysics, 108–14.
29. For more on the idea of “building relations” that join pluralities of things into unities, see Karen Bennett, “Construction Area (No Hard Hat Required),” Philosophical Studies 154 (2011): 79–104.
30. Both worries discussed here are from Toner, “On Substance,” 42–46.
31. Toner, “On Substance,” 44. See also James D. Madden, Mind, Matter, and Nature (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 240–42.
32. Toner, “On Substance,” 44.
33. Toner, “On Substance,” 44. As Madden writes, “The elements [i.e., atoms, molecules, cells] are present in the sense that their essential capacities [i.e., their active and passive powers] have been adopted by the substance, what we call virtual presence as distinguished from substantial presence, but they strictly speaking do not exist as discrete parts of the substance.” Mind, Matter, and Nature, 241 (emphasis in original).
34. For a book-length defense of this claim, see William M. R. Simpson, Robert C. Koons, and Nicholas J. Teh, Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science (New York: Routledge, 2017). But see also Howard Robinson, “Modern Hylomorphism and the Reality and Causal Power of Structure: A Skeptical Investigation,” Res Philosophica 91, no. 2 (2014): 203–14.
35. In addition to the benefits cited in this section, Toner argues that the Aristotelian view of substance can solve philosophical problems such as the Problem of Material Constitution, the Problem of the Many, the Problem of Overdetermination, and the Problem of Vagueness. See Patrick Toner, “Emergent Substance,” Philosophical Studies 141 (2008): 281–97. To see how Aristotelian substances have been employed to solve problems regarding God’s relationship to abstract objects, see Gould and Davis, “Where the Bootstrapping Really Lies.”
36. See Augustine, Confessions 7.1.1; Augustine, City of God 11.10; Anselm, Proslogion 18; Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1.3.
37. For a clear and powerful statement of the contemporary challenge to the doctrine of divine simplicity, see Alvin Plantinga, Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2007).