ABSTRACT
When philosophers have tried to give an ontological analysis of familiar concrete particulars, they have frequently assumed that they are wholes made up of metaphysically more fundamental constituents and have endorsed either of two opposed positions – the substratum theory or the bundle theory. On the former view, a concrete particular is a whole made up of the various properties we associate with the particular together with an underlying subject or substratum that has an identity independent of the properties with which it found – a bare particular; and the claim is that the bare particular or substratum is the literal exemplifier of those properties. On the latter view, there are no underlying substrata; ordinary particulars are constituted exclusively by the properties associated with them; they are just “bundles” or “clusters” of those properties.
