Journal of Philosophical Investigations

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Associate Professor of philosophy, Institute for Social and Cultural Studies, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Whether objects have a substance or not has always been the focus of philosophers. Substratum theory is one of the well-known theories in contemporary analytical metaphysics. It tries to analyze the structure of an object based on the two components of substance and properties. This theory, by introducing the essence of objects as substratum, introduces properties in an empirical approach and provides an explanation of concrete objects or things. Contrarily, a collection of theories from an ontological point of view, with the denial of substratum, considers concrete things to be merely composed of properties and explains the clustering process of the same. This article, while explaining these two theories and judging their claims against each other, implicitly tries to show that modern physics not only needs philosophy to explain the ontological structure of concrete objects, but to go this science beyond the level of properties and phenomena it requires philosophy using specialized concepts to present a picture of the world around.

Keywords

Main Subjects

  • Allaire, E. B. (1963) "Bare Particulars", Philosophical studies, 14: 1-8.
  • Aristotle (1992) "Metaphysics", A New Aristotle Reader, trans. J. L. Ackrill, Oxford University Press, third edition.
  • Armstrong, D. M. (1978) Nominalism and Realism, Cambridge University Press.
  • Armstrong, D. M. (1997) A world of State of Affairs, Cambridge University Press.
  • Bergmann, G. (1967) Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong, University of Wisconsin Press.
  • Bunnin, N.; Jiyuan, Yu. (2004) The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy, Blackwell Publishing, First Published.
  • Campbell, K. (1981) "The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars", Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 6: 477-488.
  • Campbell, K. (1983) "Abstract Particulars and the Philosophy of Mind", Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 61.
  • Campbell, K. (1990) Abstract Particulars, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
  • Hoffman and Rosenkrantz (1997) Substance, its Nature and Existence, Routdledge, first published.
  • Lock, J. (1690) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, P. Nidditch (ed.) Oxford: Clarendon Press (1975).
  • Loux, M. (1978) Substance and Attribute: A Study in ontology, Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company.
  • Loux, M. (1998) Metaphysics a Contemporary Introduction, Rutledge, first Published.
  • Mahoozi, Reza (2012) The Concept of Substance in Analytic Philosophy in Resent Century, Sadra Publishing. (in Persian)
  • Moreland, J. P. (1989) "Keith Campbell and the Trope View of Predication", Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 67.
  • Parsons, G. G. (2001) Bundle Theory, Substratum and Spacetime, Macmillan University Press.
  • Robinson, H. (2004) Substance", in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance/
  • Russell, B. (1948) An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, London University Press.
  • Searle, J. R. (1963) "Particulars", in Science, Perception and Reality. New York: The Humanities Press.
  • Van Cleve, J. (1985) "Three Versions of The Bundle Theory", Philosophical Studies, 47, edit. Steven D. Hales, Bloomsburg University, Wadsworth Publishing Company.
  • Van Inwagen, Peter (2007) Metaphysics, in Stanford encyclopedia of philosoohy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics.
  • Zimmerman, D. (1997) "Distinct Indiscernibles and the Bundle Theory", Mind, 106.
CAPTCHA Image