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The bundle theory and the substratum theory: deadly enemies or twin brothers?

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Abstract

In this paper, I explore several versions of the bundle theory and the substratum theory and compare them, with the surprising result that it seems to be true that they are equivalent (in a sense of ‘equivalent’ to be specified). In order to see whether this is correct or not, I go through several steps: first, I examine different versions of the bundle theory with tropes and compare them to the substratum theory with tropes by going through various standard objections and arguing for a tu quoque in all cases. Emphasizing the theoretical role of the substratum and of the relation of compresence, I defend the claim that these views are equivalent for all theoretical purposes. I then examine two different versions of the bundle theory with universals, and show that one of them is, here again, equivalent to the substratum theory with universals, by examining how both views face the famous objection from Identity of Indiscernibles in a completely parallel way. It is only the second, quite extreme and puzzling, version of the bundle theory with universals that is not equivalent to any other view; and the diagnosis of why this is so will show just how unpalatable the view is. Similarly, only a not-so-palatable version of the substratum theory is genuinely different from the other views; and here again it’s precisely what makes it different that makes it less appealing.

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Notes

  1. One could also say 'tying device' or 'object-making device'.

  2. Compare to what Peter Simons puts as an objection to BTT (my italics): "One possibility is that compresence is neither a binary (gluing two tropes) nor a ternary (gluing two tropes and a place) relation but one with many more terms, as many as there are tropes in the bundle. We may not know what arity this relation has—it might even be infinite—and there might be different arities for different types of concrete independent particular, but there will be such a relation nevertheless. A big drawback this has is that it is hard to see what explanatory force this has. All we are saying is that a bundle of tropes is held together by whatever relation holds it together. This is really giving up." (Simons 1994, p. 371)

  3. I'll talk about adverbialism in Sect. 11.

  4. Or only contingently true.

  5. Of course, BTT does not suffer from this objection.

  6. The perhaps tempting idea to distinguish non-primitively between the compresence relations precisely by the number of properties they relate is unappealing because some distinct objects do have the same number of properties. (For instance two objects that are qualitative duplicates except for their colour.)

  7. Another such place, I believe (but without arguing for it in this paper), is a bundle-theoretic-like view called the "nuclear theory", defended by Simons (1994) and based on Husserl's view. This view does not fit in my table from Sect. 2, indeed, it has a different structure than 'standard' bundle and substratum theories since, as Simons himself says, "it combines aspects of both bundle theory and substratum theory". I believe that precisely because of its unusual structure the view is unappealing, but I do not offer any arguments to support that belief here.

  8. I am not saying that this solves all problems the endurantist might have with time travel.

  9. Indexing the relation of compresence would make it a perdurantist view.

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Acknowledgements

For very helpful suggestions and comments on earlier versions of this paper, I would like to thank Richard Glauser, Ghislain Guigon, Mark Heller, Dan López de Sa, Jonathan Lowe, Anne Meylan, Kevin Mulligan, Luc Schneider, Gianfranco Soldati, an anonymous referee of Philosophical Studies, as well as all members of the audience of the Bergman Conference in Aix-en-Provence in December 2006, the participants to the Neuchâtel Research Colloquium in December 2006, and the participants to the Ovronnaz Metaphysics Workshop in July 2007.

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Benovsky, J. The bundle theory and the substratum theory: deadly enemies or twin brothers?. Philos Stud 141, 175–190 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9158-0

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