ABSTRACT

Chapter 14 gestures toward a basic ontology. On the view sketched there, the world comprises simple objects standing in endless relations to one another. Simple objects, although lacking in parts, exhibit a structure. You can consider an object as a bearer of properties, itself unborne. You can also consider an object by considering its properties, ways the object is. Complex objects are made up of (possibly dynamic) collections of simple objects. Complex objects possess complex properties, properties wholly constituted by properties of the object’s simple constituents arranged as they are. Distinct objects ‘share’ a property when there is some way in which the objects are exactly similar.