A Metaphysics of Platonic Universals and their Instantiations: Shadow of Universals

by José Tomás Alvarado

Overview

This book offers a detailed defense of a metaphysics of Platonic universals and a conception of particular objects that is coherent with said metaphysics. The work discusses all the main alternatives in metaphysics of properties and tries to show why universals are the entities that best satisfy the theoretical roles required for a property. The work also explains the advantages of Platonic over Aristotelian universals in the metaphysics of modality and natural laws. Moreover, it is argued that only Platonic universals are coherent with the grounding profile required for universals. The traditional objections against Platonism are discussed and answered. The third part of the book, finally, offers a conception of particular objects as nuclear bundles of tropes that is coherent with the Platonic ontology of universals. This book is of interest to anyone that wants to understand the current –and intricate– debate in metaphysics of properties and its incidence in many other areas in philosophy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030533939
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	10/27/2020
Series:	Synthese Library , #428
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	977 KB

About the Author

José Tomás Alvarado (Santiago de Chile, 1969) is Associate Professor of the Institute of Philosophy of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (Santiago, Chile). His research has been focused on metaphysics of modality and metaphysics of properties. Shadow of Universals is the fruit of more than twelve years of work, developed and defended in more than one hundred papers published mainly in Spanish-speaking journals and discussed in the Spanish-speaking philosophical community in the last decade.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction
Part I. UniversalsChapter 2. Theoretical roles for universalsChapter 3. The superiority of universals over resemblance nominalismChapter 4. The superiority of universals over classes of tropesChapter 5. The superiority of universals over theological nominalism
Part II. Transcendent UniversalsChapter 6. Transcendent universals and modal metaphysicsChapter 7. Transcendent universals and natural lawsChapter 8. Transcendent universals and ontological priorityChapter 9. Objections against transcendent universalsChapter 10. Identity conditions for transcendent universals
Part III. ParticularsChapter 11. Substrata and bundlesChapter 12. The nuclear theory of trope bundlesChapter 13. The reformed nuclear theoryChapter 14. By way of conclusion: (neo) Platonism
Bibliography