Topics Existence

Question When discussing kinds of terms, there are certain kinds that come up often. Singular entities such as Queen Elizabeth II are one kind, categories such as cats are another, and properties such as blue are a third. However, what about substances like "gold"? Is a gold watch an instance of the property of being gold, or being made of gold? Or does the watch simply contain trillions of elements in the category "gold (atoms)"? Or is "gold" a singular entity that exists scattered throughout the Universe? Or are substances an entire category to themselves?

Accepted:
August 23, 2012

Comments

Very difficult and interesting question! Those of us who are Platonists and believe in abstract properties would acknowledge (maybe with some qualifications) properties like being a monarch, being feline, being blue, being a mineral, being gold, being a mineral with a certain atomic number, being a watch, being an artifact, and so on. On this view, properties can certainly be constituitive of individual objects: hence the gold watch instatiates the property of being made of gold. What might be deemed relational properties like (being a gold watch owned by a monarch) may not be constituitive, however, and may be accidental (the monarch may give the watch to a duke). While I am in the Platonist camp (I think there are truths about gold, even if there were no actual instances of gold in the world), probably more sober philosophers gravitate to some form of what is called nominalism or conceptualism. On one version, "gold" refers to a scattered object (all the gold that exists) but would lack a referent if there happens to be no gold (just as the title "The King of France" lacks a reference in the case that, as it happens, there is no King of France).