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Against Aristotelian Universals: Two Arguments from Damiano Costa
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This episode is a discussion with philosopher Damiano Costa about his paper “An Argument Against Aristotelian Universals.” Costa examines the Aristotelian view that universals really exist, yet depend for their existence on being exemplified by particular things, and he explains why he thinks this position cannot be sustained.
The discussion focuses on two arguments against Aristotelian universals. The first targets the idea that the existence of a universal is grounded in exemplification. Costa argues that if exemplification is a relation, then exemplification would require the prior existence of the universal itself, making it impossible for exemplification to ground that universal’s existence.
The second argument considers whether grounding universals in states of affairs or facts, such as “the apple is red,” can avoid this difficulty. Costa argues that this strategy also fails, since such facts involve universals as constituents, where constituents partly ground the fact in the first place.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Episode
00:00:00
Speaker
All right, welcome back to the Dionysus Circle podcast. Today, present a conversation with Swiss philosopher Damiano Costa. We discuss his recent work on the Aristotelian theory of universals, focusing on two arguments he's developed against the view.
Grounding Universals
00:00:16
Speaker
you know One central theme of the discussion is Costa's objection to the attempt to ground the existence of universals, so things like redness, chairness, what what what what have you, in exemplifiers, you know in things that exemplify red, such as a red stop sign, or things that exemplify chair, such as the chair that I'm sitting on now. um You know, his thought is something like exemplification, that's a kind of relation.
00:00:45
Speaker
Relations presuppose generally the existence of the relata, which in this case would include the universal itself. Anyway, you'll hear the full argument developed in the episode. you know You should know, Costa has published in leading venues philosophy, the Journal Philosophy, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the British Journal for the History of Philosophy.
00:01:08
Speaker
And of course, I would especially recommend his 2021 An Argument Against Aristotelian Universals. You can easily ah check it out online.
Costa's Philosophical Journey
00:01:19
Speaker
um And I ah began the conversation just by asking Damiano you know a little bit about ah about himself, about his background. so i usually define myself as Swiss philosopher.
00:01:30
Speaker
So I'm a philosopher from Switzerland. I work mainly in metaphysics, a little bit also in the philosophy of physics. I have also a side interest in medieval philosophy. I did my PhD between ah Geneva and Columbia University.
00:01:44
Speaker
And I am now a professor in Lugano. And when it comes to how I got into philosophy, you know it's a typical story. So when I was a small child, I always ah enjoyed asking myself, wondering about the big questions of existence, like, you know, the structure of reality, the nature of the mind, ah ah the freedom of the will.
00:02:06
Speaker
Also growing up in a Catholic family, these questions often take also took the form of sort of um of a theological nature. So I was wondering about, for example, the compatibility of freedom and divine foreknowledge or things like this.
00:02:26
Speaker
And of course, I didn't know that there was a discipline that was ah ah dealing with such
Critique of Aristotelian Universals
00:02:31
Speaker
questions. And then finally, i i was able to give a name ah to my passion and and to make a living out of it as well.
00:02:40
Speaker
um So, yeah, today we're going to talk, like i said, about your article, An Argument Against Aristotelian Universals. And I thought maybe we could kind of just set the stage by talking about a couple of things. you know, maybe what is an Aristotelian universal?
00:02:56
Speaker
Second, you know, the basic reason reason you reject them, because basically, you To anticipate, you know we're going to talk about a couple arguments that you've given against the existence of Aristotelian universals. And then we'll also, you know in this brief introduction, just talk a little bit about what theory of universals you would prefer.
00:03:15
Speaker
So yeah, let's just start with the first point. you know How would you describe what is the Aristotelian view of universals? as As far as the term is used, at least in contemporary metaphysics, which is somehow loosely related to the historical view held by Aristotle, but not necessarily so. So as as much as it i in the context of contemporary metaphysics, I would say that the Aristotelian view of universal is, first of all, a form of realism, according to which, therefore, universes exist.
00:03:47
Speaker
um Not only this, but probably it's a view that somehow um is committed to the extra mental existence of universes. So it's not the form of ah nominalism or conceptualism. It's really view according to which universes exist.
00:04:02
Speaker
But so it's a particular form of realism according to which ah universes exist, but do not so independently of particulars. So universes exist in, in a sense to be specified, exist in the particulars that exemplify or resinatiate or have them.
00:04:21
Speaker
ah So in a sense, it's a view according to which universals live or exist among us. So in particulars. So they depend on them. um So it's a form of realism once again, but according to which universals are somehow anchored to concrete reality.
00:04:40
Speaker
Great. That's helpful. So, yeah. So first off, like you said, just to echo, um an Aristotelian theory of universals is a realist theory. And it's not the only realist theory. So, um you know, another realist theory would be, you know, a platonic theory. And we'll talk about that in a second.
00:04:58
Speaker
And so I guess the disagreement is like, how do these universals exist among different realists? Sorry, the disagreement among different realist conceptions of universals would be how do they exist? and i suppose maybe right now we should just mention very briefly you know roughly speaking what a universal is uh before we go further you know just roughly speaking um redness would be a universal it's shared by many it's common to many entities uh you know all the stop signs they're sharing redness um
00:05:33
Speaker
Anyway, do yeah, do you want to say anything? Just really, really feel on that, like just so that listeners understand what are... No, I think you're right, basically. So a universal is something that is shared by many things that might be, for example, particulars. Just like you mentioned, there might be several apples that are all red.
00:05:52
Speaker
Redness, the universal redness is what they share, what they have in common. um If there is such a thing, of course.
Platonism vs. Aristotelianism
00:05:59
Speaker
ah But yes, these are are what universes are supposed to be.
00:06:02
Speaker
yeah When it comes to the question of what a universal is, maybe, i mean, i'm I'm sure you're going to have a chance later during this conversation to say more more things about this. But I think that there is a tendency nowadays to think of universals as attributes, as things that that are had or characterize other things. So they might be, for example, universal properties or universal relations that in principle can be had or possessed.
00:06:29
Speaker
by things or shared by by several things. And I think that this characterization of universals as attributes plays a role and in the discussion that you're going to have. But I think this is enough to have an idea of a universal, what the universal is supposed to be.
00:06:45
Speaker
You know roughly speaking, you know, what would you say is your basic reason for rejecting an Aristotelian view of universals? Yeah, maybe I should start answering this question by saying that at least at the beginning, I really wanted to be an Aristotelian. So and the the Aristotelian view of universals had kind of an appeal ah ah on me. I thought that it was intuitive to believe in such a thing as a universal, but to see it as anchored in reality, as I was saying before, but then trying to understand the view, trying to
00:07:22
Speaker
have a better sense of what it it was really saying, ah e kind of stumbled upon a problem that I take to be a serious problem. So, um, again, I think we are going to discuss about this, but in a nutshell, the problem is that, um, I take the definition of the view to be one that enticed that universals, uh, Aristotelian universes in particular, somehow bring themselves about,
00:07:50
Speaker
and they contribute to ah make themselves exist. And I think that this is something that is problematic, is somehow contrary to other thoughts with the very nature of of dependence, of thisney this this relation of bringing about that structures
Metaphysical Grounding Principles
00:08:07
Speaker
reality, according to ah an Aristotelian view of reality itself.
00:08:13
Speaker
Right, so it's like, if something is going to come to exist, Generally speaking, it sounds very problematic to say that the thing brought itself or brought that about its own coming into existence. That seems like um that can't be the case.
00:08:31
Speaker
um And so, if if the Aristotelian view leads to that situation where you have to say somehow. the universal is bringing itself into existence, that's going to be really problematic. But yeah, we'll see how the details and see how that flushes out. Yeah. At this very general level, you you might see the problem as ah a problem that has been discussed several times throughout the history of philosophy. You might be familiar, and our listeners might be familiar with ah the phrase causa sui, cause of itself, right?
00:09:03
Speaker
And you might think that there is something problematic with the idea that something can cause itself into existence. And ah maybe the only way of making sense of this is to reject the letter of the motto causa sui and believe that when someone says that something is causa sui, is cause of itself, what is really said there is that the thing itself has no cause.
00:09:26
Speaker
Right. And so in general, it's impossible for something to bring itself about. Right. Cause if it brings itself about that, or sorry, if it, if it's brought into being, it seems like it has a cause and we been generally speaking, it look, yeah, it seems like it's going to be kind of absurd to say that something brought itself into being, cause it would have to, it it seems like it would have to exist prior to existing.
00:09:53
Speaker
Otherwise it could have brought itself in to being anyway. Okay. Cool. Yeah, we'll we'll go into more details here. um Okay, so yeah, just real quick, again, just kind of setting the stage here. Is there a view of ah you know universals that you would prefer over the Aristotelian view?
00:10:11
Speaker
Yeah. So one could take an argument against that is the Aristotelian view to be also an argument in the favor of nominalism. So in favor of rejecting the existence of universes.
00:10:24
Speaker
I myself, even after this argument, remain persuaded by the classical arguments for realism. So I take the existence of universes to be ah independently plausible. And I see the force of even the simplest arguments, such as the argument from resemblance, the idea that universes are needed to explain or are the more straightforward the explanation for resemblance in the concrete world or in general resemblance, I would say. And um also I'm pretty, I would say I'm persuaded also by the failure of various forms of nominalism. So if your listeners are
00:11:00
Speaker
interested I mean, the classical reference in contemporary metaphysics are the books of ah David Armstrong. like and in So all these, despite several serious replies that these arguments have received, and here I would suggest, ah for example, the works of ah ah Gonzalo Rodriguez Pereira, who have done serious work on on this in favor of nominalism. But still, I mean, I'm still persuaded by these arguments in favor of the existence of universal So i would brother um i would rather a lean towards ah a different form of realism. So one in which basically universes exist, but do not they owe their existence to the particulars that have them.
00:11:43
Speaker
So they have a sort of independent existence. um This does not mean, i should also point out, that the order of explanation has to be reversed somehow.
00:11:55
Speaker
So saying that universes are independent from particulars does not yet mean that particulars depend on universes. This would be something further to be said. I'm not actually ready to to claim anything in this direction. So I would lean towards a form of plot platonism according to which universes exist not simply independent from particulars.
00:12:19
Speaker
Cool. Okay, so that that's ah maybe enough for like kind of a general introduction um and Maybe we can kind of just fly for the listeners that you know, yeah, we're gonna look at kind of two arguments that you've developed against the Aristotelian theory of universals and And one of them kind of has to do with exemplification. And then the second argument has a little bit more to do with states of affairs and how states of affairs are constructed. And so we're going to get to those two arguments soon. And that's kind of going to be our main focus. But um my thought is maybe, you know, first we just dig a little bit deeper into the Aristotelian view, make sure that we yeah understand um what it's saying. And we can kind of move more quickly through this because we've already been touching on it. So I don't want to be too redundant, but um maybe reemphasize again that
00:13:16
Speaker
The Aristotelian view is one version of realism. The other version version of realism is Platonism. Is there anything you want to comment on in in that domain? Any further detail you think you want to give on that?
00:13:29
Speaker
Yeah, I think there are many things to to be said because just like the aristoteltoly Aristotelian view of universes is much richer than a simple view about the dependence of universes on particulars. Also, the contemporary views that go under this name, the Aristotelian view, and are indeed richer. They are views not only about the dependence of universes on particulars, but sometimes when talking about the Aristotelian view, people also um are considering other aspects of universes in their existence. So some people talk of the Aristotelian view as a view according to which that not only has to do with the dependence of universes on particulars, but also has to do with, ah say, for example, the location
00:14:15
Speaker
of universes. So the question there would be whether universe is located in spacetime or rather is not. And whether this entails that it is located somewhere else or nowhere at all.
00:14:32
Speaker
um so All this to say that under this label, the Aristotelian view, maybe several these different aspects of the nature of of a universe or several different questions that one might ask about this nature of the universe's goal.
00:14:51
Speaker
um But ah my arguments are really focused on ah ah the Aristotelian view as a view about the dependence of universes on particulars.
00:15:03
Speaker
Okay, that's helpful. So yeah, so so so there's different kind of questions that you can ask with respect to universals. Some of them have to do with like the source of their being, you know, and do they depend, for example, on being exemplified?
00:15:21
Speaker
Does redness depend red things to exist? But then I guess there's, yeah, other kind of related questions like, Suppose you know redness exists. Maybe it's because of red things exemplifying them. you know Does redness exist in space and time? is it Or does it exist out of it? So is that that that would be kind of like a location question. Is that what you're...
00:15:48
Speaker
Yeah, correct. And I think that one might have a sense of these different questions when one appreciates that the very way in which we have introduced the Aristotelian view, ah the general motto according to which universes exist in particulars, is actually ambiguous. What what is it to exist in? So existing in might refer to, again, the spatial temporal location of the universal, but it might also refer to other things. One might think that existing in is simply a way of talking about the fact that something cannot exist without the particulars. And so it really has to do with dependence, but it might even refer to other things. um So one might think that, for example, for a universal to exist in something else is actually a way of being.
Grounding Necessitarianism
00:16:40
Speaker
So in the direction of ontological pluralism, right, the idea that there are many ways of being, and and there is a specific way of being that is the way of being of universe. So you see, if you even when you start from this um very simple, very classical characterization of the Aristotelian view, according to which universes exist in particulars, And you appreciate the ambiguity of this expression. You see that under the label Aristotelianism, many, many views actually could cover themselves and have to be uncovered by us philosophers.
00:17:16
Speaker
That's helpful. Yeah. You know, one thing I was kind of thinking about, i don't know if this is quite apropos what you just said, but I was wondering myself, you know, dependency, that seems like a word that or a term that you might define in different ways.
00:17:33
Speaker
And I was kind of wondering to myself, you know, when it comes to Aristotelian theory of universals, the idea that maybe um universals depend for their existence on their exemplification, that would be a type of ontological dependency in the sense of,
00:17:54
Speaker
um the existence, the the fact that the universal is a being is depending on ah exemplification. Whereas, you know, there's other types of um dependency, maybe it's like one thing might depend on something else in terms of, I don't know, like it's explanation or maybe in terms of its definition or, well, I guess what i'm thinking is like,
00:18:24
Speaker
it seems to me in the Aerosene context, they talk about different types of priority. So it's like maybe exemplification is prior to the universal in terms of like ontological priority.
00:18:36
Speaker
And then maybe there's other times of types of priority, like there's something can be prior in time or something can be prior in explanation. So um I guess that that might be ar relevant thing to to think about at some point when it comes to the Aristotelian view, like what exactly is meant by dependency.
00:18:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think it's crucial to understand the Aristotelian view, to understand what we mean by dependence here. in um In that time, really a contemporary metaphysician, in the sense that the topic of dependence in metaphysics in particular is quite popular nowadays. It can be seen as a, say, ah a part of the contemporary Aristotelian revival in ah in nowadays metaphysics. So ah more and more metaphysicians talk about hylomorphism or essence, or indeed dependence. um So it can be seen as as part of this. And really, you're right in saying that ah the topic of dependence or priority um is itself ambiguous. When we talk about priority, we might mean, ah indeed, a priority in time, priority in some kind of order. and Here we are really talking about a sort a sort of objective mind independent, non-temporal order. And in the idea is that really,
00:19:54
Speaker
ah reality itself, ah which might be composed by entities of different categories, is a structured um hierarchically. And some entities are more fundamental, are prior, are more basic than the other others.
00:20:09
Speaker
So um to make a classical reference, well, of course, um Plato believed that universals are or forms are more fundamental in this sense, whereas um Aristotle believed that subs concrete substances are are more fundamental in this sense. So this is the general topic, which I take to be one of the classical topics of philosophy. But as I mentioned at beginning of my answer, I'm really a contemporary metaphysician. So nowadays we talk about this kind of ontological dependence.
00:20:40
Speaker
in um maybe i should say just a couple of words about sure how nowadays. So um until recently, ah metaphysicians tended to make sense of this notion in model terms. So in terms of necessity, right? Where we we could have said something like X depends on Y.
00:21:01
Speaker
um if and only if the existence of X necessarily in days ah necessarily implies the existence of Y. right So, I don't know, for example, you might think that ah um the whiteness of ah this piece of paper, ah intended as the whiteness of this very piece of paper, depends on this piece of paper because its existence entails the existence of the piece of paper, right? Necessarily so.
00:21:30
Speaker
um So this was one way, a classical way of of making sense of dependence in terms in terms of necessary entailment of the existence of one thing, of the other.
00:21:40
Speaker
But more recently, I think that people have realized that we can find easy counterexamples here. So, ah for example, if you believe that there are entities that exist necessarily,
00:21:56
Speaker
Well, somehow their existence is entailed ah by by the existence of any other thing. And this would create ah weird cases um of dependence. So, for example, it would depend on number four if a number four necessarily exists, which is a weird thing to say. It doesn't seem to be capturing really the idea of dependence that we wanted to capture in the first place.
00:22:21
Speaker
um So, um also, when we talk simply about dependence and entity depending on another, ah there is something that perhaps we are missing. Maybe you are saying something that was going in that direction before. So when we say that X depends on Y, we are not really specifying the aspect that is dependent.
00:22:44
Speaker
and the aspect is responsible somehow for the aspect that is dependent. So um take a classical example. You might think that wholes depend on the parts, right?
00:22:58
Speaker
But you might wonder what precisely of the parts is responsible for the whole. Maybe the existence of the parts or maybe the arrangement of the parts.
00:23:10
Speaker
in what of the whole depends on the parts, the existence of the whole, or maybe the nature of the whole. So it seems that this talk of dependence as a two-place relation, X depends on Y, does not allow you to ah specify these aspects of the dependence.
00:23:28
Speaker
And maybe for these reasons, so the failure of the model approach and the need of specifying the aspects, nowadays we rather talk of dependence in terms of a specific technical notion, which is ah technical the the notion of metaphysical grounding, which can be seen, can be seen at least introductory, as a relation among facts.
00:23:52
Speaker
So for example, the fact that say the table exists is grounded in the arrangement of the parts, the fact that the parts are arranged in a given way. So you have this relation that relates to facts and is supposed to capture um this dependency in non-modal terms and allows you to specify the aspect of dependence.
00:24:18
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. So, so when it comes to metaphysical grounding, um, yeah, you just gave an example. Okay. So if you arrange a certain set of physical items in a certain way, you will thereby generate or have in your hands a ah chair and, um,
00:24:38
Speaker
and um And so, yeah intuitively you want to say that the chair is sort of grounded in this particular arrangement of physical things. And um do do we want to include the the necessity idea? I mean, you were you werere talking about um the the modal issue related to dependency just a second ago. But ah do we want to say that if um one thing grounds another it necessitates dependency,
00:25:11
Speaker
that other thing, like... um Yeah, so the question of the relation between metaphysical grounding and necessity is one that is ah much discussed. And the principle that they have just mentioned goes under the name of ah grounding necessitarianism.
00:25:31
Speaker
And it's not obvious. I mean, it sounds intuitive. right Once you have the basis, you should somehow automatically also have what is grounded. right But here again, as you might expect, philosophers came ah up with some counterexamples. And there is an easy one that involves indeed ah things in their parts.
00:25:55
Speaker
So um the question is whether once you have the parts in the correct arrangement, you necessarily also have the whole, right? Or not. That's the question.
00:26:07
Speaker
in At first you might think, yes, but it's not obvious. Because suppose that you have ah a table and then you disassemble it And then for say a century or a millennium, you just have the parts without having the table. And then you rearrange them and you get a table. But is it the same table as before? It's not obvious, right?
00:26:32
Speaker
And if it is not the same table, then grounding necessitarianism is false because you have the base, you have the ground without having what is grounded, namely the existence of that table.
00:26:47
Speaker
So it's, it's not, ah i mean, it's a topic that is much discussed, the relationship between grounding and necessity, but it's not obvious what we should think about this. Yeah. That's interesting. Okay. Cause I was thinking of, I was trying to think of like more, um, you know, like,
00:27:04
Speaker
um
00:27:11
Speaker
I'm trying to think. like I guess I was thinking, you know, there's other, you know, you might casually use the word grounding where it doesn't necessitate the existence of that thing. Like someone might casually say that, you know, um my existence is grounded in my parents. But of course, my parents, you know, the existing does not, you know, entail necessarily my existing. Yeah. And maybe I should also point out that the example of the parents,
00:27:41
Speaker
maybe is more a case of causal dependence. So somehow the parents are involved in causing my existence. But the kind of dependence that we are talking about, metaphysical grounding, is not really um the same as caus ah causality, right? So usually
Exemplification Argument
00:28:00
Speaker
we think of causes as preceding in time the effects, not only in the causal order, but also in time. Whereas when it comes to metaphysical dependence or metaphysical grounding, usually there is a synchronicity, right? Or and there might be also cases of metaphysical grounding of entities that are completely outside time.
00:28:20
Speaker
So um these are some reasons to believe that really metaphysical grounding is something different from causality. Right. Yeah. So um what about like,
00:28:32
Speaker
and I'm just trying to get another example on the table for people. What about like two people signed a contract to make a corporation?
00:28:44
Speaker
and it seems like the you know know it seems like you might want to say, oh, the signing of the contract among those people grounded the existence of a corporation. But i guess that would fail...
00:28:59
Speaker
the necessity point, which maybe is not a problem, but it would at least fail the necessity point because it's like you can sign a contract, but if there's not a bunch of social institutions that at work that won't thereby generate a corporation. So here is another example of grounding that might somehow be illuminating to your listeners.
00:29:22
Speaker
ah So you feelre if you're familiar once again with classical ah Aristotelian metaphysics, ah so you might think about the category of individual accidents, like ah my being seated,
00:29:37
Speaker
right now. Well, accidents are supposed to be things or entities that are by their very nature dependent on the substances that have them.
00:29:48
Speaker
So if you believe in this kind of Aristotelian idea, then you have another example of of grounding probably there, right? So somehow the existence of those um individual accidents is grounded in something pertaining or concerning the substances. And in general, when when you ask, when you wonder about what is fundamental in reality, what they are but have the basic building locks they blocks in your metaphysics, you are wondering about a question that can probably be be stated ah in terms of crowning.
00:30:21
Speaker
And then, yeah, to bring it back to the kind of the question of the hour, the whole issue of the Aristotelian view of universal. So one seemingly plausible characterization of the Aristotelian view of universals is that um the universals depend on exemplification. So,
00:30:42
Speaker
um and I guess maybe we could we could describe that in terms of grounding. We might want to say that um the existence of universals is grounded in ah uh they are being exemplified so the existence of red is grounded in there being red things that have the attribute sorry yeah there are being things that have the attribute of being red uh and so um Anyway, that that's like, you know, the I suppose that's the relevance of talking about grounding right now is that, you know, that's one way of characterizing the Aristotelian view.
00:31:20
Speaker
Correct. So the idea, remember, the general idea is that according to the Aristotelian view, universes depend on particulars. But once you decide to express the, I mean, dependence in terms of grounding, the question is really how should you express this idea of dependence, right? And so you have to identify a relevant aspect pertaining to universals, and probably it is their existence.
00:31:46
Speaker
which is supposed to be grounded in something, in effect, involving the particulars. Right? And what would that fact be? Well, not the simple existence of the particulars. The particulars might exist without the universal existing according to the to the a Aristotelian view. So it is rather the fact that particulars exemplify or have or instantiate ah the universal.
00:32:12
Speaker
But it's not like it is a specific particular exemplifying the universal that grounds the existence of the universal. It is any particular. no So the simple fact that the universal is exemplified or instantiated is going to be the ground of the existence of the universe.
00:32:31
Speaker
yeah The fact that some particular or other is exemplifying redness is the ground, i suppose, of redness in the Aristotelian theory. Not necessarily this particular yeah stop sign, for example.
00:32:50
Speaker
Okay, great. um Maybe real quick, yeah we could just just briefly, again, we're inching closer to to getting to your kind of arguments against the Aristotelian view. but um You know, your first argument, yeah you know, is is makes important use of the idea of exemplification. So maybe we could just again, just giving a little bit more background, we could just mention something about exemplification. So, I mean, the idea of exemplification, I guess, is just like, you know, um if I got a blue cup, then the cup exemplifies.
00:33:27
Speaker
blueness Yeah, correct. So exemplification is just, as I say, a technical word. There are others as well. There is instantiation. There is participation. Some people call it in a more platonic fashion.
00:33:40
Speaker
um It's just a technical word to indicate something that, for a realist, I think is quite unavoidable. So if you have a universal, say universal redness, and you also have red things,
00:33:54
Speaker
then of course they are not completely unrelated. There is some kind of way in which they are related to one another. in um You might say that one has the other, one characterizes the other, one instantiates, participates, exemplifies the other. So we might have hugely different theories about this phenomenon, but I hope that at least the phenomenon we want to explain is clear enough. So we are talking about that thing.
00:34:22
Speaker
the relation between a universal and the particulars that somehow have it or share it. Okay, great. Okay, cool. So let's now um shift a little bit. So right off the bat, you might be worried about the Aristotelian view, which is that it looks like you have a situation where an existential fact, in other words, a fact about, um let's say, a universal existing,
00:34:51
Speaker
it kind of looks like that fact is being grounded in a relational fact. In other words, um the fact that a universal like redness exists, it seems like on the Aristotelian view, is being grounded in a relational fact that the universal redness the universal redness is related to, let's say, one stop sign or another, or one hat or another. um So anyway, could you just, yeah, just kind of walk talk a little bit about this idea that like someone might be worried already that we're about the Aristotelian view insofar as it sounds like we might be grounding an existential fact and a relational fact.
00:35:33
Speaker
Yeah, right. So i think that this is ah maybe what is behind one of the two arguments that we're going to discuss. Indeed. So the idea that the existence of something can be grounded in that very thing being related to something else.
00:35:50
Speaker
And yes, I definitely do feel the weirdness and it motivates one
Metaphysical Principles Critique
00:35:56
Speaker
of the arguments. So the idea is that if the existence of something is grounded in its being related to something else in a relational fact involving the thing itself, then the thing itself should already exist in some in some way, right? So to have the relational fact in the first place. So you see how the universal, as we ah were saying before, seems to be involved in bringing itself about, in grounding its own existence.
00:36:23
Speaker
So yes, I definitely share, of course. Yeah. Yeah. yeah yes This is reminding me, I feel like I've been to parties or like, you know, where things get heady and someone says something like, you know, it's like reality is ultimately relational. And and part of it is like, that sounds fun, but something sounds off about that. I can't, it can't be relations at the very bottom. And and I think,
00:36:48
Speaker
Yeah, the the sense is that... Anyway, yeah, I think this is connected to that that issue. This thought that relations cannot be at the bottom of everything might help somehow justify, see the motivation for um rejecting the idea that um indeed a relational fact might be the ultimate ground of the existence of something.
00:37:16
Speaker
But on top of this, I think that there is a specific problem here. So we are not simply saying that a relational fact grounds an existential fact, but we are saying that relational fact involving the entity that is set to exist and to ground the existence of which ah is somehow involved in that relational fact. And um I feel like this is even more problematic than that.
00:37:39
Speaker
the simple thought that an existence of fact can be grounded in relation. Right. Yeah. and And ultimately that might be that specific aspect of the issue might be what makes one uneasy about the thought that relational facts would be at the very bottom because it seems like at some point that's going to require a relational fact that involves item A being ontologically responsible for the existence of item something like that. At any rate, okay, yeah, that's a good distinction to make there. Okay, cool. Yeah, as I mentioned, we're gonna kind of talk about two arguments that you have.
00:38:19
Speaker
One against, they're both against Arizona and Universal. One kind of focuses on exemplification, the other one about a construction. And ah so maybe I'll just try to, ah my thought was like, maybe I'll kind of give like a rough sense of how I understand the um exemplification argument. And then you can kind of improve our understanding and all that kind of thing. So I'm just going to say, you know,
00:38:43
Speaker
Here seems to be the the one like way of describing your exemplification argument. The existence of a universal for Aristotelians ah is supposed to be grounded and its being exemplified. And so, for example, if you have a um a red stop sign, um that might be part of what grounds the existence of redness itself, the universal redness.
00:39:08
Speaker
But exemplification ah looks kind of like a genuine relation. So when a stop sign exemplifies red redness, that seems like a relation between the stop sign and redness.
00:39:24
Speaker
But if exemplification is a relation, seems... it seems that the relata, the things being related, need to exist prior to the relation. So, I mean, in a normal case, right, like if i there's a relation between me and ah Bob, I shake his hand, it seems like me, I need to exist prior to the shaking of hands. Bob needs to exist prior to the shaking of hands. So there's this basic idea that like, hey, ah prior to a relation, the relata, the things being related exist. And so,
00:39:58
Speaker
if exemplifications is ah as a relation, then it seems like redness as well as this, you know, the stop sign need to exist prior to their stop sign, exemplifying redness. But if redness exists prior to the exemplification relation, then of course, uh, you know, the existence of redness can't be grounded in, um,
00:40:19
Speaker
in this instance of exemplification. Anyway, that's my, sorry, I hope of that wasn't too long and confusing, but. Yeah, no, I think that you characterized it well. um Of course, we should always keep in mind that when talking about priority here, we are talking about metaphysical priority, right? That somehow the, and then,
00:40:39
Speaker
are the building blocks of relational facts. But yes, I think that the gist of of the argument is the one that you have just described. So according to the Aristotelian view, ah the you know the existence of universes is grounded in their being exemplified, but their being exemplified is basically to be exemplified by something like, for example, redness by red stop.
00:41:02
Speaker
In this, of course, redness being exemplified by a red stop is a relational fact. So it seems that relational facts ground existential facts. But as you have pointed out, the second step is that relational facts seem to be in turn grounded by the existence of the relata.
00:41:21
Speaker
And the relata there are the stop sign, but redness. So it seems that and if you put these two pieces of the puzzle, these two steps together, you get that the existence of redness is grounded ultimately on itself, which is, ah as we have mentioned before, something that is seems to be, according to many people, is a thought with the very notion of grounding or dependence. Nothing can ground itself.
00:41:49
Speaker
and and Good. So, you you know, um you know your your argument, you know, when you kind of put it in a rigorous way and you really outline all the premises and such, um it makes use of, I think, four metaphysical principles. And so we could kind of run through these maybe quickly to just help the listener appreciate, you know, the rigor of your argument, you know, the the argument and it's a full glory, so to speak. Okay. So, um, you know, the first principle is the relata first principle. And I was kind of trying to gesture at this with the whole, like, you know, um,
00:42:27
Speaker
You know prior to me shaking John's hand you need to have first the existence of Sam Bennett and then second you need to have the existence of John. So they're the two things that are in relation through the shaking of hands.
00:42:43
Speaker
They exist prior to the shaking of hands. So the ah roughly speaking, you know if there's a relation between X and Y, x and Y must first exist. So that's one principle, one metaphysical principle you're using in this theory, right?
00:43:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's correct. Indeed. yeah I call it relata first for some obvious reasons, because it places metaphysical priority in the hands of the relata as opposed to the relational fact. And the idea is that really, if you have relational facts, they are not something fundamental. and Rather, they are at least in part grounded in the existence of the relata.
00:43:24
Speaker
Okay, great. And um yeah, and then like I said, there's a couple of other principles at play in your argument. um Another one is the instance first principle. So this one might be a little bit harder explain easily. But basically idea is like if you have an existential claim like, you know, there is, you know,
00:43:44
Speaker
there is you know something that is red. Something is red. There's something that is red. That type of existential claim, well, it's going to be grounded in a particular red object that we could hypothetically name.
00:44:01
Speaker
you know Maybe we call the red object Tommy. And so an existential fact like there exists something red is going to be grounded in there being a particular thing which we could name, such as Tommy,
00:44:14
Speaker
being read. Your reconstruction or your presentation of the principle of instances first is indeed correct. Maybe another entry point into it is, well, suppose you have these two facts. One is an existential fact. Let's let's say, for example, to give a different example from the one that you're just given, consider the fact that something is human.
00:44:37
Speaker
Okay? This is the first fact. And the second fact is that Socrates is human. So an instance of the first one. You have two these two facts. And the question might be, are they related by the relations of grounding?
00:44:51
Speaker
Is one prior to the other? In principle, they might not be related at all. Grounding might go both ways. But this instance's first principle is one that tries to capture the the intuition according to which the fact with the instance is more fundamental than the existential fact. So, um, the fact that Socrates is human grounds the fact that the more, say more generic fact that something is human.
00:45:24
Speaker
but So it's one, you know, it's ah I think you're right. It's one of the... you you start seeing this sort of technicalities of the debate and grounding. um I mean, it's not something new in philosophy, of course, or there is there philosophy when philosophers start talking or a group of philosophers starts talking about something, then it gets very technical quite soon. And this is the situation of the contemporary debate on grounding, I would say. But If you start entering considering and entering into this debate and considering the these questions, you probably see the plausibility of of of these principles. And probably the other principles that I'm going to mention are in the same family as well.
00:46:04
Speaker
To move on to the other two. So the other one has to do with transitivity of grounding. So like ah very straightforward. So it's like, let's say um let's say something is scarlet. OK, that's its color. um maybe you want to say it being scarlet is grounded in it being red.
00:46:23
Speaker
Oh, sorry. No, no maybe we go the other way. If something's red, you might want say that's grounded in having a very specific redness, which is it being scarlet. And then you might want to say, well, it being scarlet is grounded in, you know, some very specific wave wavelength or wave like yeah wavelength. And so by transitivity of grounding, then you're going to say, well, X being red is grounded in,
00:46:48
Speaker
ah the ah the object displaying a very specific wavelength. And so anyway, if A is grounded in B and B is grounded in C, then A is grounded in C is like kind of idea basically. Yeah, correct. Correct. Yes, absolutely. Or to give a different example, um you might think that, for example, ah my existence is grounded in the existence and arrangement of my parts. And let's say, for example, the society in which live,
00:47:15
Speaker
i leave the existence of that society is grounded in my existence or or my being related to other human beings. Well, in that case, transitivity tells us that also the existence of the society is grounded in whatever grounds my existence.
00:47:33
Speaker
Yes. So this is the transitivity of grounding. Right. And then the irreflexivity of grounding, that's the final fourth metaphysical principle that you use in your argument. And that one is what we've already been talking about. It's just the how, like,
00:47:45
Speaker
Um, there there can't be ah you know, a circle back where something grounds itself. That would be like a reflexive grounding. And so irreflexivity is just saying, no, there cannot be that kind of reflexive grounding of itself.
00:48:00
Speaker
Yeah, correct. So no fact can ground itself. in um Indeed, so that the the the principles that you have just mentioned are supposed to, some of them are more popular, some of them are less popular, but they are all supposed to be principles that capture the nature of grounding or metaphysical priority or dependence. And by telling us how this relation behaves,
00:48:25
Speaker
They are supposed to behave ah behave so they are supposed to tell us something about what it is, what is the nature of of this relation of of dependence. Yeah. And if you put all these premises together, you end up with the Aristotelian view to the conclusion that the existence of a universal grounds itself.
00:48:51
Speaker
which is contrary, of course, to the reflexivity of grounding. And therefore, um you should find a premise to be rejected and eventually suggest the Aristotelian view should be rejected.
00:49:03
Speaker
So now let's talk a little bit about you know, objections that have come up and then that can lead us into your second argument for it. um So, um yeah, do you want to just talk about, know, what do you think are like,
00:49:14
Speaker
you know I mean, yeah, just some potential
Construction Argument
00:49:17
Speaker
objections to your argument. um Yeah, right. So I think that at least in principle, also in in the original argument, they considered several possible objections. But I think that in principle, ah there are many possible objections that are possible. i mean, there are many possible objections against this this argument. And this maybe is one of the reasons why I like this argument, because of course ah it's it's a bit my creature, so I'm a bit partial, but my feeling is that this argument constitutes a sort of entry point to many fundamental questions of metaphysics. and one of those questions is really whether exemplification is really relation, right? And the argument, as we have just presented, relies on this idea that exemplification really is a relation.
00:50:03
Speaker
And there is a huge discussion about this. ah Is it really a relation? um On the one end, I feel like it seems difficult to deny this. If one is a realist,
00:50:15
Speaker
then really you have two entities there. You have ah universal redness and you have the red thing. So ah somehow they should be linked or tied. It doesn't really matter how you want to call it, but there should be something like a relation there.
00:50:34
Speaker
And so there should be fact that is somehow a relational fact. ah But on the other hand, many realists or non-realists or nominalists ah think there are good reasons to reject this. So for example, there are various similar arguments like Bradley's regressed or regressed or Amrston also presented some arguments ah against this idea.
00:50:59
Speaker
ah So if exemplification is a relation, then you might end up in some regress, which is supposed to be vicious. um Now, like almost all philosophical arguments, there are replies here, and the debate is huge there.
00:51:17
Speaker
um I personally tend to be persuaded by the first reaction. If you are a realist, you have really two entities. you need some kind of relation there. If it is not a relation, it's unclear what it might be.
00:51:31
Speaker
ah Some people talk about the non-relational tie, but a tie is just a relation of some sort. um Some people talk of universals having slots.
00:51:43
Speaker
it's a, or universal is being unsaturated or incomplete. Uh, but you know, I feel like these attempts fall under what Aristotle used to call, um, empty metaphors, uh, by talking about participation. Maybe it's a little bit strong what they said, because I take those times really seriously. It's just a way of saying that um,
00:52:10
Speaker
i I feel like saying that exemplification is a relation is the most obvious choice there. in In the paper, I say that even if um exemplification is not a relation, it's something else,
00:52:24
Speaker
Then I feel like a principle of a different letter, but of a similar spirit to relata first would apply. So you would not have a relational fact because you don't have a relation, but you have effect concerning the tie.
00:52:42
Speaker
And I would feel like a principle that is similar to Relata First would apply in order to have fact about a tie between two things. You need the two things in the first place. So denying that exemplification is a relation, I don't think is going to solve the problem completely.
00:53:03
Speaker
Great. Okay. Yeah. I mean, i it would be nice to kind of um go a little bit into the The Bradley style worries about regress. Um, I guess that's kind of motivating, or that could be used to motivate the rejection of saying exemplification is a relation. um Because i don't know, I guess to me, it seems like we should, you know, be initially inclined to say exemplification is a relation just in sort of in virtue of like the linguistic form of the statement. You know if you say the stop sign is exemplifying redness, it kind of just seems like that's that's a relation.
00:53:46
Speaker
But yeah, basically, you know, if we had more time, it would be nice to go into this kind of Bradley style worries about regress, how, you know, Anyway, yeah, so we'll just kind of leave that aside, flag that for the listener. um So you kind of mentioned how, you know, there's a way of approaching this argument where, you know, you drop the insistence that exemplification is a relation. ah Is this kind of gesturing to a second argument that you've developed that, you know, this kind of like a we might call like a construction argument? Yeah, yeah, that's correct. So in my original know paper,
00:54:26
Speaker
As a kind of response, ultimate response, to the question of whether exemplification is a relation, whether this could block the argument, I point out that um the same job that is done in the argument by the RelataFirst principle could also be done by another principle.
00:54:48
Speaker
That is the idea that if you have facts on the one end, and their constituents on the other, so whatever makes up or is involved in the fact, then the constituents are supposed to be more fundamental than the fact.
00:55:07
Speaker
So this is a principle that is ah maybe close to an Aristotelian outlook of reality, right? So for example, substances or other components of facts are supposed to be more fundamental than facts.
00:55:23
Speaker
ah Maybe to situate this principle in a broader metaphysical perspective, you might see this at odds ah with ah a different perspective according to which facts are the basic building blocks of reality.
00:55:41
Speaker
and say objects or properties are abstractions out of these basic building blocks. So you might think that the world is a world of states of affairs or facts, and this would be the idea. And if you have other things, these are just secondary things in the order of of the metaphysical hierarchy of reality.
00:56:01
Speaker
So if you adopt the first approach and you think that constituents are always more fundamental than facts, Then you have a basically a different way to get to the similar to the same conclusion too.
00:56:15
Speaker
to at the conclusion of rejecting the Aristotelian view. Because, you know, the idea is that in any case you have that the Aristotelian view is the view according to which universes or the existence of the universes is grounded in their being exemplified.
00:56:30
Speaker
So, for example, redness on ah its being exemplified by this apple, say. You might think that this is not a relational fact.
00:56:42
Speaker
You might account for this in some other way, but still, it is a fact that involves, as a constituent, the universal itself. So, the apple is ready. Especially if you're already a a realist, right, which the Aristotelian is. You kind of gestured at this earlier. Right, because if you say, oh, the fact doesn't involve a universal, it seems like, well, then you're just going to end up exiting Yes, correct. So, of course, this is supposed to be an argument against the Aristotelian view, so a realist view. So the question is, if you are a realist, can you really say that the apple is red is not a fact that involves universal redness?
00:57:27
Speaker
In principle, you could, but it's not so straightforward how you can do that. So, again, ah discussing about this opens lots of further discussions about what the nature of the fact the Apple is red might be, right?
00:57:46
Speaker
in um Indeed, you might think that somehow this has to do with the appearance of redness, but of course this would introduce a sort of a perspectival aspect that is probably absent from the intuition of the Aristotelian. Another a philosopher might think that maybe the existence of the universal in is grounded in and the fact that the apple is red involves rather what we have been calling before individual accidents.
00:58:19
Speaker
So what nowadays would be rather we call the tropes. So this would be a different way of cashing out the Aristotelian view. And the question is there whether this actually solves the argument that I've just presented. I'm not totally sure about this because in this, I think I've, I'm not even sure, but I think that I've i've written it in one of the responses that i've I have published on, ah um I mean, the article has generated some debates.
00:58:49
Speaker
ah But the point is that not any trope would do. You need a red trope in order to ground the existence of redness. And what is it for a red trope to be a red trope? Probably it has to do with its relation to universal of redness. And so it's not so obvious that this would actually solve the problem completely, or this would properly characterize the Aristotelian view.
00:59:17
Speaker
Yeah. But yes, i mean, in principle, you might you might work in that direction of trying to understand the fact like the apple is red in a different way, not involving the universal.
00:59:30
Speaker
But yeah, so one objection that was raised against a kind of like construction version of the argument that I thought was interesting was ah this guy, Nathan Wildman, philosopher, what Nathan Wildman. He said something like, well, you know, if you say that the constituents, you know, always precede the state of affairs, well, like one state of affairs is Tommy exists. But, you know, if the constituents need to precede that state of affairs, then it seems like preceding Tommy exists is Tommy existing.
01:00:02
Speaker
So anyway, I don't know. was trying to say like, yeah like, well, yeah, I don't want to misrepresent him. But it yeah, something like that. Like, you know, actually this thisti constituents first type principle kind of generates some bizarre outcomes regardless of whether you're an Aristotelian, something like that.
01:00:26
Speaker
Yeah, correct. Maybe, ah but I mean, what you just said made me think about the fact that I should also mention that while my first paper, the version of the argument that was really based on Relata First, and I only mentioned this other version of the argument as a reply to a possible objection. There is another paper by mike Raven ah that is somehow in the same ballpark, is also presenting an argument against Aristotelian universals. That is basically the second argument that we have mentioned, that is really focused on this construction version of the argument. And so, uh, Nathan Wildman is really responding to the the two ah of us ah simultaneously.
01:01:10
Speaker
And I think that is, that is really, i mean, it's really interesting. Um, and it's a good point that needs to be, I think, properly addressed in the point is roughly the one, if I got that right, the one that you mentioned. So,
01:01:24
Speaker
The question is, suppose that you take seriously this idea of construction. So the idea is that constituents of facts are more fundamental than the facts themselves.
01:01:34
Speaker
this What I've called this kind of Aristotelian intuition. Constituents are more fundamental than facts. Well, can this be true in general?
01:01:47
Speaker
And Nathan came up with a possible counter example. ah Consider the fact that, again, Tommy exists. This seems to be a fact. What are the constituents of those facts? Well, at least one constituent is Tommy.
01:02:02
Speaker
And so this principle of construction would entail that Tommy exists, is grounded in, Tommy exists in the existence of one of the, of each of these constituents. So this would, again,
01:02:15
Speaker
um
01:02:18
Speaker
and by irreflexivity would be an argument against ah this this ah ah construction principle. So the idea that constituents are more fundamental than
Conclusion and Future Research
01:02:28
Speaker
facts. So it's a, I think it's a ah good point that needs to be properly addressed.
01:02:34
Speaker
ah My feeling is that construction, so this principle that cons constituents are more fundamental than facts, only so suggests that the existence of constituents is a sort of natural stopping point of metaphysical explanation.
01:02:53
Speaker
So I feel like the spirit of the principle ah probably vindicates a formulation that restricts the principle to cases that are are not existence facts.
01:03:04
Speaker
So you have a fact. In case it is not an existence fact, then this fact is grounded in the existence of the constituents.
01:03:17
Speaker
But if it is an existence fact, you have already reached what the principle tells you should be the bottom of this chain of grounding facts.
01:03:28
Speaker
So this is, I would reply. Yeah. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's really helpful. So it's like maybe, um, this principle of, um,
01:03:39
Speaker
constituents being more fundamental than the fact, you know, maybe it only applies when the fact has a sort of subject property type structure. And, you know, maybe Tommy exists, doesn't have that structure. And, you know, anyway, point being is that, yeah, maybe there's a way of articulating the principle so that it doesn't range over existence facts, because it looks like the ah Wildman type objection is is sort of
01:04:12
Speaker
depending or it'ss it's it's generating a counter example from specifically existential facts. So if there was a way of art articulating the constituency principle so that it's not including those types of facts, then maybe that would be one way of responding.
01:04:26
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, correct. And once again, it's not simply a response to my argument or Raven's argument. It's really a topic in its own right. It's the topic of, let's say, the question of whether facts are fundamental entities or are somehow grounded in their constituents, which I think is an independent interest and historical pedigree.
01:04:50
Speaker
Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on Damiano. I mean, ah it's really been a fascinating conversation. Really appreciate you kind of walking us through this you know fascinating fascinating line of argument that you've developed. um Just for the listeners. Yeah. Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about, you know, in terms of you know what you're working on now or maybe some other articles you'd want to highlight that listeners might find interesting?
01:05:15
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So as I mentioned, I work mainly in metaphysics and a little bit in philosophy of physics. i Nowadays, I'm i'm working on on this topic too. I'm basically investigating or mapping the various directions that this discussion can take. And eventually, at some point, I will probably write a new paper with some responses to objections like the one. by Nathan Wildman.
01:05:44
Speaker
ah On top of this, um I'm also working on philosophy of physics. So more specifically, I'm working on the concept of space time.
01:05:56
Speaker
I don't know how much your listeners might be fascinated by this topic, but you know, the the basic point being we we always, i mean, all of us talk about freely about space time.
01:06:10
Speaker
Not space and time, but space-time as a single thing. And this talk seems to be somehow justified by contemporary physics and especially relativity theory. But yeah the question is, what is really space-time?
01:06:27
Speaker
What does it take to abandon a traditional view according to which there is stay space and there is time and accept one according to which there is space-time? And um I feel like there is much work to be done there. ah there is a paper that I have published back in 2016 and philosophy compass.
01:06:47
Speaker
ah relativity and three four dimensionalisms together with two ah colleagues. And this is a sort of explanation of the consequence for our view of reality on the basis of relativity theory.
01:07:01
Speaker
And we also deal with this question of space time, but I feel that there is much work to to be done there and I'm i working on this right now. Wonderful. That sounds fascinating. um And yeah, so again,
01:07:14
Speaker
deiano Thank you so much for coming on. And yeah, to all the listeners, I highly recommend check out ah his article, An Argument Against Aristotelian Universals. Thanks again. Many thanks, Sam. It's been a pleasure to be here with you.