On How We Know What there is
ed away. This argument fails. In the state-of-affairs metaphysic that Armstrong commends, particulars and universals are both but gutted remnants (Armstrong 1978a: 110, 1983: 84, 1989a: 43, 1993: 230). Particulars, like universals, occur only as the constituents of states of affairs. They are not given independently of their occurrence in states of affairs but are arrived at by a process of 'abstraction'. Particulars are what remain of a state of affairs once its other constituents have been abstracted away (Armstrong 1989b: 96, 1993: 433, 1997: 123). A particular, just like a universal, is a state-of-affairs type, the constituent that is common to all the state of affairs that contain it. Consequently, Armstrong's conception of universals as unsaturated provides no support, and a fortiori no a priori support, for (CP). Given a prior characterisation of particulars, Armstrong's conception could be applied to identify universals as those entities which remain once the particulars in a state of affairs have been abstracted away. But unless that characterisation served to distinguish particulars from universals, this method would be ineffective since it would not be possible to determine which constituents of a state of affairs are particulars, rather than universals, and require to be abstracted away in order to isolate the universal in a state of affairs. This just shows that Armstrong's conception, rather than This content downloaded from 207.46.13.146 on Tue, 23 Aug 2016 05:07:19 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ON HOW WE KNOW WHAT THERE IS 3 5 providing grounds for supposing that there is a particular-universal distinction, simply presupposes that such a distinction exists. It remains unclear just what sort of a priori justification (CP) could possess. At any rate, (CP) suffers intrinsic defects that prevent it delivering a particular-universal distinction a priori. First, given that necessarily equivalent states of affairs are identical, (CP) cannot distinguish a priori all particulars from all universals.4 (CP), if true, distinguishes particulars and universals that occur in atomic states of affairs. But it is epistemically possible that some universals occur only in molecular states of affairs. For example, it may be that the world is infinitely complex and contains only conjunctive universals (whose conjuncts are conjunctive, and so on ad infinituum).s The state of affairs in which each conjunctive universal occurs (F&G(a)) is necessarily equivalent to, and therefore identical with, some molecular states of affairs (F(a)&G(a)). Conjunctive universals do not occur in atomic state of affairs. Consequently, (CP) cannot distinguish particulars from these universals a priori. Second, (CP) is flawed in the way that all counting principles are. In 'lower-order' states of affairs, particulars instantiate universals. In 'higherorder' states of affairs, universals instantiate further universals. Higherorder states of affairs have been posited (by Armstrong and others) for a variety of purposes, including that of providing an account of natural laws.6 The epistemic possibility of such states of affairs undermines (CP)'s claim to be a priori. Contra (CP), higher-order states of affairs are atomic but contain more than one universal and no particulars (e.g. N(F,G), where N is a dyadic universal relating the universals F and G). The epistemic possibility of higher-order states of affairs undermines the claim of any counting principle to be a priori. For any counting principle which distinguishes particular and universal by determining the relative proportion of particulars and universals that go to make up states of affairs will fail if there are states of affairs which lack any particulars to be counted. This difficulty may be avoided by supposing that particulars and universals are arranged in a hierarchy of orders (where particulars are 0-order 4 Armstrong 1997: 133-34, endorses this identity criteria for states of affairs. s See Armstrong 1997: 31-33 and Oliver 1992: 95-96. Even if there are atomic states of affairs there may be other reasons for admitting complex universals (as emergent properties say) that do not figure as their constituents (Armstrong 1978b: 35, 1989a: 113, 1997: 27-28, 33, and, Tooley 1987: 123-29. If so, (CP) fails. Mellor 1995: 19699, argues against the possibility of any complex universals. 6 See Armstrong 1983: 88-92, 1997: 223-30, Tooley 1997: 67-91, and Mellor 1995: 208-9. Higher-order universals are posited for other purposes. See Armstrong 1978b: 134-141, Bigelow 1988: 38-100, Bigelow and Pargetter 1990: 38-92, and, Fales 1990:233-43. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.146 on Tue, 23 Aug 2016 05:07:19 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms