The World Just Is the Way It Is

The Monist 104 (1):1-27 (2021)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

What is the relationship between objects and properties? According to a standard view, there are primitive individuals that ‘instantiate’ or ‘have’ various properties. According to a rival view, objects are mere ‘bundles’ of properties. While there are a number of reasons to be skeptical of primitive individuals, there are also a number of challenges that the bundle theorist faces. The goal of this paper is to formulate a view about the relationship between objects and properties that avoids many of the problems inherent in both of these views. The view I will end up defending implies a particularly radical version of Monism, and it collapses the object-property distinction altogether.

Similar books and articles

Taking monism seriously.David M. Cornell - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (9):2397-2415.
Essential bundle theory and modality.Mark Jago - 2018 - Synthese (Suppl 6):1-16.
Object and Property. [REVIEW]H. O. Y. Ronald C. - 1998 - Dialogue 37 (3):613-614.
Ontology and realism about modality.Crawford L. Elder - 1999 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 77 (3):292 – 302.
Object and Property. [REVIEW]Ronald C. Hoy - 1998 - Dialogue 37 (3):613-614.
Emergence for Nihilists.Richard L. J. Caves - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (1):2-28.
Material Objects and Essential Bundle Theory.Stephen Barker & Mark Jago - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (12):2969-2986.
What is Russellian Monism?Torin Alter & Yujin Nagasawa - 2012 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 19 (9-10):67–95.
Particles in a quantum ontology of properties.Olimpia Lombardi & Dennis Dieks - 2015 - In Tomasz Bigaj & Christian Wüthrich (eds.), Metaphysics in Contemporary Physics. Boston: Brill | Rodopi.
Trogdon on monism and intrinsicality.Alexander Skiles - 2009 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (1):149 – 154.
McGinn on Non-Existent Objects and Reducing Modality.Philip Bricker - 2004 - Philosophical Studies 118 (3):439-451.
Ontic structural realism as a metaphysics of objects.Michael Esfeld & Vincent Lam - 2011 - In Alisa Bokulich & Peter Bokulich (eds.), Scientific Structuralism. Springer Science+Business Media. pp. 143-159.
Fregean One-to-one Correspondence and Numbers as Object Properties.Boris Grozdanoff - 2009 - Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 13 (3):327-338.

Analytics

Added to PP
2020-06-04

Downloads
2,619 (#3,024)

6 months
465 (#3,517)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

David Builes
Princeton University

Citations of this work

A Humean Non-Humeanism.David Builes - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (3):1031-1048.
Modal Idealism.David Builes - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind.
Ordinary objects.Daniel Z. Korman - 2011 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Lawful Persistence.David Builes & Trevor Teitel - 2022 - Philosophical Perspectives 36 (1):5-30.
Eight Arguments for First‐Person Realism.David Builes - 2024 - Philosophy Compass 19 (1):e12959.

View all 11 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

Writing the Book of the World.Theodore Sider - 2011 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
The Principles of Psychology.William James - 1890 - London, England: Dover Publications.
Modal Logic as Metaphysics.Timothy Williamson - 2013 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Idealism and the Mind-Body Problem.David Chalmers - 2019 - In William Seager (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism. Routledge. pp. 353-373.
The Nature of Necessity.Alvin Plantinga - 1974 - Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.

View all 116 references / Add more references