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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
Some philosophers have claimed that one must be acquainted with the elements of one's ontology. Also, believing that substrata and universals are required in an adequate ontology, these philosophers have claimed acquaintance with such objects. This paper attempts to analyze what is involved in such claims and to argue that they result from a number of confusions. The paper deals largely with the claim that substrata, or bare particulars, are presented since numerical difference is a simple fact that is presented. It further attempts to argue that while neither substrata nor universals, as such, are objects of acquaintance, there are some distinctions to be drawn between talk of universals as presented objects and talk of substrata being presented.
An earlier version of this paper was read at a Symposium at the Annual Meeting of the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association in the Spring of 1961. The paper has also been presented in lectures at Göthenburg University in the spring of 1963 and at Indiana University in the fall of 1963.
1 See G. Bergmann, “Intentionality,” in Meaning and Existence, University of Wisconsin Press, 1960.
2 For a discussion of things as composites of qualities see H. Hochberg, “Things and Qualities,” to appear in the 1964 proceedings of the annual Oberlin philosophical meetings.
3 A variant of nominalism where one held that qualities were individuals, say this whiteness that whiteness, etc., and that “universale” were composites, in some sense, of such particulars would not be absurd in the sense that I am speaking of here. The qualities would not then be composed of individuals.
