Anna Marmodoro: "Individual particulars"

Anna Marmodoro, Durham University/University of Oxford: "Individual particulars"

Abstract
'A sortal universal [e.g. human] supplies a principle for distinguishing and counting individual particulars which it collects [e.g. such as Callias and Glaucon].' (P. Strawson, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics, 1959, p. 168)

Strawson thought that the furniture of the world consists of individual particulars, which are collected under sortals such as ‘human’, which supply count principles (e.g., for humans) that pick out, e.g., Paul and Peter. However, what is it for an individual to be particular and what’s the ontology of ‘individual particulars’? This question is as ancient as philosophy itself, and ancient metaphysicians has much to contribute to address it, where Aristotle’s category of substance is the arrival point (rather than the starting point) of a long argumentation.

Following Strawson in ‘distinguishing and counting’ Paul and Peter as individual-particulars under the sortal ‘human’ does not tell us how a thing can be both individual and particular, or how many that thing would be, or how the individual is related to the particular in it. Parmenides made a start at addressing this question, and Plato and Aristotle argued with astonishing metaphysical ingenuity against pluralising divisions and uncontrollable regresses, to explain why a substance is one, if it is individual and particular.

What emerges is an Aristotle that is fundamentally different from his current reception in contemporary metaphysics, and whose metaphysics could guide us in understanding oneness, predication and change, while abandoning essential predication and Essentialism, as contemporary philosophers understand it.