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Bare Particulars and Acquaintance: A Reply to Mr. Trentman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 1967

Kenneth Barber
Kenneth Barber
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Buffalo
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Extract

Consider two red disks having the same non-relational properties. That they are two and not one, it is claimed by some philosophers, can only be accounted for by claiming that each disk contains an individuator, i.e., a bare particular, which is merely numerically different from the particular in the other disk. While sucli a claim is clearly dialectical, one need not rest the case for bare particulars solely on the dialectical argument. One can, by giving an accurate phenomenological description of the situation containing the two red disks, also attempt to show that one is in fact acquainted with such entities. This latter possibility, however, has recently been challenged by Trentman on the grounds that one cannot give such a description without presupposing the existence of bare particulars.

Type
Discussions/Notes
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , March 1967 , pp. 580 - 583
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1967

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References

1 See, for example, Bergmann, Gustav, ”Synthetic A Priori”, Logic and Reality (The University of Wisconsin Press, 1964, 272–301Google Scholar, and also, Allaire, Edwin B., ”Bare Particulars”, Philosophical Studies, 14, 1963, 1–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Allaire, Edwin B., et al. Essays in Ontology (Iowa City, 1963), 14–21Google Scholar.

2 Trentman, John, ”Recognition, Naming and Bare Particulars”, Dialogue, Vol. V (1966) No. 1, 19–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 ”Bare Particulars”, p. 19.

4 ”Bare Particulars”, p. 19.

5 If this isn't entirely clear from the passage quoted, see in addition Allaire, Edwin B., ”Discussion: Ontology and Acquaintance: A Reply to Clatter-baugh”, Philosophy of Science, Vol. 32, Nos. 3-4 (1965), 277–280CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The central issue, of course, is structural and not textual; one need only show that the position can be so stated as to avoid Trentman's objections.

6 Trentman, pp. 22-24.

7 See “Bare Particulars”, p. 21, and “A Reply to Clatterbaugh”, p. 279.