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O R I G I N A L P A P E R

Exemplification, Then and Now

Fred Wilson

Received: 25 April 2011 / Accepted: 7 July 2011 / Published online: 30 July 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract Exemplification can be found in ontologies from the ancient world, such

as those of Plato and Aristotle, and more recent ontologies, in particular those that

take what exists to be determined by the empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance.

This study examines some of the ways in which exemplification takes different

forms in these different ontologies. Exemplification has also been criticized as an

ontological category. This paper examines a number of these criticisms, to see the

extent to which they are viable.

Keywords Exemplification Ontologies Universals Properties Particulars

1 I

Peleus to his son Achilles, ‘‘Always be pre-eminent.’’ So goes Homer, anyway. But

pre-eminent in what? Recall how the Iliad begins:

Rage of Achilles, son of Peleus, let that be your song, O Muse1

, that is, Rage, is the first word of the Iliad , and therefore the first Indo-

European word of which we have a record. So the muse inspires Homer to create, in

the way that poets create, a narrative concerning the rage of Achilles. It is a part of

the story of the Greek conquest of Troy. Indeed, it is a central part, since the rage of

Achilles, so strong is it, that he withdraws from the battle, which, since he is greatest

of the Greek heros, the Greeks come near to defeat and disaster. Homer continues:

F. Wilson (&)

University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

1 Homer (1999, p. 12).

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Axiomathes (2013) 23:269–289

DOI 10.1007/s10516-011-9170-z



eminence that could be set before the mind, and then could be imitated, as the

youths sought in their own lives that same excellence, that arete . The core of a

moral life is the emulation of the Homeric heros.

We first have to relate this culturally ingrained view of moral standards and how

they are learned with the views of their greatest critic, Socrates.In the Phaedo,3 Socrates develops and defends an ontology on the basis of which

he can argue that, contrary to the usual opinion in Athens and in Greece of that age,

there is nothing to fear in death.4 The world, according to this ontology, has three

sorts of entities. There is, first, the world of ordinary things, the world we know in

our everyday experience, the world of ordinary things, the world of sensible

appearances. These sensible appearances are in themselves unconnected; there are

changes, but just what follows what is a contingent matter: Socrates is sitting in his

cell, so far as that sensible event is concerned there is nothing in it that implies what

its successor will be—does Socrates drink the hemlock? Or does he nip off to thesafety of Thebes? One could explain why this follows that, why one event

necessitates its successor, if one could find a connection between them, but so far as

our sense experience of the world goes, there is no such necessary connection. To

explain is to unify, unify by means of a necessary connection.

Socrates proposes that events in the world of sensible appearances are brought

about by entities of the second sort. Sensible appearances, as it turns out, occur in

souls, or no s. Souls are entities, and, more specifically, entities that are active: one

sensible appearance follows another because that is what is brought about by an

active soul. Neither souls nor their activities are given to us in sense experience, butwe know by our reasoning, by our reason, that souls are there, that they do exist.

Thus, although we do not see the soul of Socrates, we know by reason that the

activity of his soul determines that Socrates sitting in his cell is followed by his

drinking of the hemlock, rather than by his nipping off to Thebes. The activity of the

soul provides the connection that unifies, and therefore explains, the pattern of

appearances. Socrates is an active entity that causes changes in the world as it

appears to us in our sense experience. He is sitting in his cell, and later is drinking

the hemlock. The being of Socrates, what Socrates is and what he becomes, is

determined by the activity of his soul; that activity provides the connection that

explains.

But the soul is not simply an entity that strives: it strives in a certain direction.

Socrates argues that it is because his soul is striving after justice or the good that he

is and is about to become in a certain way rather than another. Here is Socrates’

quarrel with Anaxagoras. The latter had introduced soul or no s, into his

metaphysics, but did not do so in a way that could explain why Socrates was

about to drink the hemlock. Anaxagoras had no s as causal activity, but that activity

had no direction; he cannot tell us why Socrates is about to drink the hemlock rather

than nip off to Thebes. Socrates has an answer: this answer is in terms of his third

3 See Plato (1977, 97c1 ff). Also Wilson (2001, pp. 81–120; 2004b).4 See Turnbull (1963) and Vlastos (1969).

For a general and extended discussion of the Aristotelian metaphysics, see Wilson (1999), Logic and

the Philosophy of Science in Early Modern Thought: Seven Studies, Study One in particular.

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sort of entity. Socrates is about to drink the hemlock because he is striving after the

good : this is an ideal form and he is striving to exemplify in the way he is and is to

become this ideal form. Ideal forms are the third sort of entity in Socrates’ ontology.

The form gives direction to the striving.

We can see why Socrates holds that he can explain change where Anaxagorascannot. Socrates is moved by his soul. Here he and Anaxagoras agree. But there

Anaxagoras ends5: Anaxagoras provides no reason why Socrates should move from

where he is at to his drinking the hemlock. There is, however, no striving without a

good at which the striving aims. Anaxagoras leaves out this crucial entity, the good.

Socrates, by way of the forms, makes it integral to his explanation-scheme. Socrates

explains, Anaxagoras does not.

Socrates gives an argument, which is not without force, to establish the ideality

of the forms. Consider, he says, equality, that is, perfect equality. Any pair of equals

that we are given in our sensible experience of the world are not perfectly equal;these things are only imperfectly equal. But in order to identify something as

imperfectly equal one must perforce know what perfectly equal is—just as when we

identify something as not-red one must perforce know what red is. However, all

equals that we know by sense are imperfectly equal. What it is for something to be

perfectly equal, while, as we have seen, is given to us, it cannot be given to us in

sense experience. Perfect equality, this ideal form of equality, is therefore not part of

the world as we know it by sense; it is outside that world—an entity we have come

to know by our reason. The forms, then, are not sensible, but instead rational, not

sensible, but instead ideal.What holds for equality also holds for justice. Any justice that we know in the

world of sensible appearances is imperfectly just. But to know what it is to be

imperfectly just, one must know what it is to be perfectly just. Perfect justice is

therefore given to us, not through sense, but through reason. Socrates, as an active

soul, is striving to be just, that is, or at least as just as he can be: he is striving to

exemplify in the way he is and is to become this ideal form of justice. So he shall

drink the hemlock rather than nip off to Thebes, since to be just is to conform to the

laws of one’s state, in this case Athens—just as, at the Battle of Thermopylae,

conformity to the laws of Sparta requires its sons, even when they could have fled,

to fight the Persians to their own death.6 A death of which they have no fear.

The ideal form or exemplar is not known by sense; no one whom we might know

in the sensible world in which we all live conforms in his or her behaviour to that

standard—not even Socrates, who is clearly arrogant, and through that is like the

rest of us, falling short of the ideal standard. We are all, even the best of us,

imperfectly just. The ideal form of justice is therefore not an entity of the world of

sense, but lies outside that world—it is located neither here nor there, in a timeless

5 This is not entirely fair to Anaxagoras; see Wilson (2009, p. 20ff).6 Recall from Herodotus the inscription that later Greeks were to place at the site of the battle:

‘‘Stranger, announce to the Spartans that here

We lie, having fulfilled their laws.’’

‘Laws’ could be ‘orders’; but ‘orders’ conveys the suggestion that an element of arbitrariness is

possible, whereas it is clear that the orders were made in conformity to the laws, and so understood they

too have the force of laws.

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world, existing eternally, in the sense of being outside of time, and never changing.

We do know this world, though not by sense; it is known, rather, by our reason,

which leads us to it. But one must note that the image of Achilles that the Athenians

expected one to emulate is also nowhere; it is the creation of poets. Whether one is

Socrates striving to exemplify in his own life as we see it the form of ideal justice orAlcibiades striving to exemplify in his life as we see it the form one finds in the

image, created by Homer, of Achilles—in either case, the form that is being

emulated is not a sensible particular, located here and now—though, to be sure, the

image created by the poets is of an entity of the sort that is known by sense, where

the form of justice that Socrates emulates is known by reason.7

The ideal form of justice, that is, perfect justice, is an entity outside of time. It

therefore is, as we have said, eternal and in that sense immortal. Now, what

distinguishes the gods, the gods of Olympus, according to Homer, from ordinary

humans, is that they are immortal. The ideal forms to which Socrates directs ourattention, are also immortal. They are therefore gods, and to dwell among the forms

is to dwell among the gods, also as Socrates insists.

The virtuous or just life consists in the imitation of the forms, and specifically the

form of justice. In the world we know by sense experience we cannot escape

imperfection. But we can act to eliminate so far as possible these evils. The way to

eliminating or mitigating these evils is to turn away from the world of the sense to

the realm of the gods—that is, the forms—contemplating them and patterning our

lives like the patterns we are contemplating in the gods. As Theodorus, Socrates’

interlocutor, in the Theatetus, puts it, ‘‘the escape-route [from evil, fromimperfection] is assimilation to God, in so far as this is possible…’’. (Theatetus,

176b) This Plato’s famous rule of homoiosis theoi, that virtue consists in the

assimilation to God or the gods.

Of course, the gods of Olympus are immortal, as Homer presents them, in the

sense of omnitemporal—existing at all times. Immortality in the sense of

omnitemporalilty is the only way in which creatures of flesh and blood, creatures

as we experience them by our senses, could be immortal. Portraying the gods as

simply omnitemporal rather than as eternal is one of the ways in which Homer

misrepresents the gods: it misrepresents the gods as entities like ourselves, creatures

of flesh and blood and knowable by sense.

Homer misrepresents the human also. For Homer, humans are limited to the

world of sense experience. But that is an incomplete picture. Humans also have the

7 According to Plato, Aristotle tells us, sensible entities participate (methexis) in the forms (Ideas), but he

means by ‘‘participation’’ what is meant by ‘‘imitation.’’ As Aristotle explains in the Metaphysics:

Things of this other sort, then, he called Ideas, and sensible things, he said, were apart from these,

and were all called after these; for the multitude of things which have the same name as the Form

exist by participation in it. Only the name ‘participation’ was new; for the Pythagoreans say that

things exist by imitation of numbers, and Plato says they exist by participation, changing the name.( Meta. 987b)

The position of the Republic concerning the education the young is that the poets (read: Homer) are to

be excluded from the Ideal City because the present images, e.g., of Achilles, which the young are

seduced by the beauty of the poetry to imitate. Better, Plato argues, to imitate the ideal form of justice.

Forms are like images created by the poets: they are entities that are to be imitated.

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capacity to reach beyond the world of sense to the transcendent world of the ideal

forms. This capacity is their reason. This Homer leaves out.

It is through this capacity that Socrates is able to explain to his interlocutors why

he has no fear of death. As a philosopher he is constantly turning away from the

world of sense towards the forms. In the world of sense he is, to be sure, guided bythe forms, by the gods, including among the latter his daimon. But to know that

which he or she is to strive to exemplify in his or her own life, he or she must turn

away from the world of sense to the transcendent realm of the forms. And insofar as

he or she achieves knowledge of the forms, he or she achieves immortality. The

philosopher is constantly dying, turning away from the world of sense. But when we

see how this is done, we see that he or she achieves immortality, in the sense of

eternality. And we also see that there is nothing to fear in death.

With this metaphysics in mind we can see what is wrong with the common way

of educating the youth of Athens. The youth are expected to exemplify, in their ownbehaviour, the behaviour of the Achean heros like Achilles and of the Achean gods

like Zeus. This behaviour is not that of a just person, the examples in the Iliad are all

examples of imperfect justice: Achilles’ propensity to quickly anger and the

propensity of Zeus to rape are not things worthy of emulation. One should,

therefore, not strive to exemplify cases of imperfect justice, like the anger of

Achilles, but rather, as Socrates does, strive to emulate the form of perfect justice—

not the sort of justice one can find in the world of sensible appearances but the ideal

form of justice to which reason directs our attention. The poets, then, as Socrates

argues in the Republic, ought not be allowed to seduce the youth in any city whichaims to have virtuous citizens; it is the philosophers, masters of reason rather than

poetry, to whom the education of youth ought to be entrusted.

For us, the point is that Achilles, Zeus, and the ideal form of justice to which

reason leads us are exemplars that are to be emulated . If the poets and the ordinary

citizens to whom the education of youth is to be entrusted have their way, then

Achilles and Zeus are the exemplars that are to be imitated in the lives of the

citizens; if Socrates the philosopher is correct then it is the ideal form of justice, that

is, the exemplar, the prime exemplar, that ought to be imitated in one‘s own life and

in the lives of the citizens. The point of the exemplar is that the pattern that it

exemplifies be exemplified by any person who takes the exemplar to set the pattern

that he or she strives to exemplify in his or her own life.

Jeffrey Grupp8 has taken on the task of showing that any ontology makes no

sense if it involves anything like exemplification, something by means of which the

entities in the world of sensible entities located in space and time are linked or

connected to entities which are neither here nor there but are located rather in a

timeless world of ideal forms. He tells us that ‘‘…platonic exemplification may

leave one puzzled as to how exactly it can tie or connect unlocated (*L) universals

to located (L) physical particulars’’ (p. 30). Grupp deals with a number of ways in

which a philosopher might make exemplification part of his metaphysics. We shall

look further at his views, but right now let us look at the metaphysics we have been

examining, that which Plato develops in the Phaedo.

8 Grupp (2003).

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Now, a person, aiming to do what is right, can emulate Homer’s Achilles; or, to

put the same in different terms, with the image of Achilles before his or her mind, this

person can strive after the form found in Achilles. He or she can imitate the form of

what is right or just found in the image of Achilles created by the poets and exemplify

in his or her own life the pattern of behaviour found in Achilles. Others, too, canstrive after the same form, and imitate in their own lives the behaviour of Achilles.

These persons are, of course, ‘‘located,’’ in Athens or Miletus or Sparta or wherever.

Yet the image of Achilles is not located anywhere; it is ‘‘unlocated.’’ The one, that is,

the image of Achilles, is ‘‘connected to’’ the many, through the strivings of the latter

to imitate the former. But the form of justice presented in the image of Achilles is

imperfect relative to the standard of perfect or ideal justice to which our reason,

prodded by Socrates, has led us. Some, Socrates for example, strive to imitate this

ideal form of justice. The form they do attain falls short of the ideal, but still, it is the

ideal form that they strive to imitate. The ideal form of justice, which is, to be sure,unlocated, is nonetheless connected to the many all of whom are located but are also

those who strive to exemplify in their own lives that ideal form. There appears to be

no problem with the many exemplifying the standard found in Homer’s Achilles.

Equally there would appear to be no problem with the many exemplifying, or striving

to exemplify, the standard found in the ideal form of justice—provided, of course,

such an ideal standard exists, but then we also know that Socrates, through his and

our reason, has led us to recognize the existence of such an ideal form.

We admire Babe Ruth. He is an exemplar, and anyone can try to exemplify in his

or her own life the life of Babe Ruth. Why does that youth holding the bat in thisway follow upon his holding the bat in this other way? Answer: Because that is the

way Babe Ruth swung the bat and the youth is imitating Babe Ruth as an exemplar.

The youth’s swing of the bat is, if you will allow the expression, Ruth-ish.

Similarly: Why has that youth exiled himself from his city when the magistrates

angered him? Answer: Because that is the way Achilles behaved when Agamemnon

affronted him and the youth is imitating Achilles as an exemplar. The behaviour of

the youth is noble, like that of Achilles; what he did was the noble thing to do.

Similarly: Why does Socrates drink the hemlock after being condemned rather than

nipping off to Thebes? Because that is what the ideal form of justice requires and

Socrates is imitating that form as an exemplar. What Socrates was doing was the

just thing to do. We all know what it means to imitate Babe Ruth. We all know what

it means to imitate Achilles. It is just this that Socrates means when he argues that

we must imitate the ideal form of justice. Several persons can, in their sensible

appearances, display the Ruth-ish behaviour of the exemplar. This is unproblematic.

Similarly, several persons can, in their sensible appearances, display the noble

behaviour of Achilles, the exemplar being imitated. This is unproblematic. Again,

and also similarly, several persons, e.g., Seneca,9 Cato of Utica,10 can in their

9 Seneca the philosopher was ordered by Nero to commit suicide.10 Cato the Younger, of Utica, who had been educated under the guidance of Antipater of Tyre, a Stoic

philosopher, refused to accept the triumph of Caesar over the Republic and his becoming de facto the

ruler of Rome; and when Caesar defeated the last of the Republicans at the Battle of Thapsus, then, with

the stern righteousness demanded by the Republic, he refused to grant to Caesar the right to pardon him,

and committed suicide. He stabbed himself, but in doing so knocked over an abacus. The noise alerted his

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sensible appearances, display the righteous behaviour of the ideal form of justice,

the exemplar being imitated. There is, in other words, nothing problematic about

exemplification, that is, participation in an exemplar being imitated, in this

metaphysics. The notion of an ideal form as an exemplar to be imitated may be

problematic, but once that is granted, exemplification or imitation is unproblematic.Just as imitating Babe Ruth or imitating Achilles is unproblematic. Grupp is

therefore wrong in his claim that any metaphysics that is in some reasonable sense

Platonic and requires a notion of exemplification must be wrong.

2 II

There is, however, something inadequate about the metaphysics that Socrates

develops in the Phaedo. It remains an open question, why does, or ought, Socratesstrive after the form of human justice, rather than, say the form of doggie justice? If

he strove to live up to the standard of dogs, seeking only an animal existence, then

in all likelihood he would nip off to Thebes; but he doesn’t do that because he is

instead striving to imitate the form of human justice. If the Phaedo is correct in what

it says about souls, then souls are activities, but are, in the account of the Phaedo, in

fact simply bare activities. They are separate from the forms, and, since explanation

requires unification, that separation implies that there is no explanation why a soul

strives in one direction rather than another: whither they go is merely contingent.

So, why doesn’t Socrates seek doggie justice and nip off to Thebes? What explainshis staying to drink the hemlock? The third man argument is at hand. Socrates’

striving after human justice needs explaining; on the Phaedo model, Socrates

striving after human justice must be a striving after a form—that is, another form, a

super-form, as it were, of human justice. But this super-form is also separate from

Socrates and so his striving after this from requires explanation; this explanation

will be in terms of Socrates striving after yet another form, a super–super-form, or,

perhaps, a super–duper-form. However, this too is separate, the direction of

Socrates’ striving here again requires explanation—which will require an appeal to

a super–super–duper-form. And so on: there is an infinite regress, which never

yields the desired explanation, and is therefore vicious. Aristotle saw how to meet

this challenge: close the gap.11 That is, eliminate the separation of the souls and the

forms. Place the forms instead directly in the souls, and make them inseparable from

the souls. So, aiming at human justice is inseparable from the striving of Socrates’

soul. Socrates of necessity strives after human justice; that is just what he is: if

Socrates is separated from his aiming at human justice then Socrates ceases to be.

Footnote 10 continued

servants who summoned a physician who attempted to bandage the wound. Cato, upon awakening, thrust

him away, tore off the bandages, and expired. Lucan wrote his epitaph, ‘‘Victrix causa deis placuit sedvicta Catoni’’ (‘‘The conquering cause pleased the gods, but the conquered cause pleased Cato’’, Lucan

1.128). Plutarch reports that Caesar commented that ‘‘Cato, I grudge you your death, as you would have

grudged me the preservation of your life.’’ He is said to have died reading the Phaedo. There is a famous

painting of his suicide by Luca Giordano in the gallery at Nice.11 See Wilson (2001, p. 122 f).

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Socrates as a soul of necessity has a certain form, namely, that of humanity, and this

determines that he aims to instantiate or exemplify human justice, rather than doggie

justice, and that he will after all drink the hemlock. Furthermore, if something is of

necessity, then we can do nothing but acquiesce to it: any other attitude would be

unreasonable, attempting to will an end that one cannot achieve. Any end that one iscommitted to as a matter of metaphysical necessity is an end that not only

determines one’s being, what one is and what one will become, but also determines

what one ought to be.

On Aristotle’s scheme the form is inseparable from the soul: in other words, the

form is itself an active entity. In striving at an end that is what one will become, the

form exists only potentially. The soul is a form that is itself striving, that is, striving

to become actual; it aims to actualize itself. The soul that moves one aims at its

instantiation in being; the soul determines that one exemplify the form that the soul

is—exemplify that form in the world of ordinary experience, sensible experience.Thus, consider Socrates. Socrates is, as Aristotle speaks, a substance. This substance

has various sensible characteristics present in it, and which are therefore predicated

of it, for example, sitting in a jail cell is a sensible characteristic of the substance

Socrates, and is predicated of that substance. Socrates is sitting the jail cell. Since he

is that way, that is his way of being. These sensible appearances are present in things

taken to be substances. A substance has such and such a sensible appearance,

followed by another sensible appearance. The active form of the substance explains

such a change. The form, as the active cause of such a change, is not a sensible

characteristic, and is not present in the substance as the sensible characteristics arepresent in the substance. It lies behind or underneath the sensible characteristics, and

unlike the latter is not given in our sense experience of things. As Spinoza taught us

to speak, let us take for granted that informed soul is the nature of the ordinary thing

or, as Aristotle speaks, the substance which is ensouled, then the soul as a striving to

bring its form into being is natura naturans, nature naturing or nature begetting,

while the form as brought into being is natura naturata, nature natured or nature

begotten. Socrates as a substance has an active form as its soul. The striving aims to

bring it about that he (that is, the substance) sitting in the cell is followed by him

drinking the hemlock. There is an alteration in the sensible characteristics of the

substance; in such an alteration, the substance changes from one way of being to

another.

3 III

Grupp objected to an ontology that was Platonic, in the sense of having a timeless or

eternal form exemplified in sensible particulars, that it made no sense. Such an

ontology required, he claimed, that when one or more sensible particulars

exemplified a form, this required that exemplification both be located (L), where

each one of the particulars is located, and that it not have a location (*L), just as

the form to which it relates has no location: nothing can be both L and *L, so the

exemplification needed by Plato’s ontology cannot exist, and the ontology therefore

fails. We argued that Plato’s ontology escapes this criticism so long as the forms are

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thought of as parallel in appropriate respects to the images created by the poets.

What the ontology requires is not that we have something that is ‘‘L & *L’’, but

only that entities in time be like or imitate entities that are not in time: as the images

created by Homer and the poets show, things that are nowhere, the images, can be

like things that are somewhere, the sensible particulars, and, while ‘‘L &*L’’ mayin some sense be true, in any sense of ‘L’ that is here in use, the conjunction is not a

formal contradiction.

For Aristotle’s ontology, the active form or nature of a substance, the natura

naturans, is, like a Platonic form, outside the world of ordinary experience, and, in

that sense, is timeless, or eternal. This nature is exemplified by sensible particulars

which are in time. Unlike a Platonic form, however, the nature itself is also given to

us, as the natura naturata, exemplified in the patterns of sensible appearances of

those substances, one or many of them, of which it is the nature or form. For Plato,

exemplification connects a form, which is not in time, with sensible particularswhich are in time. For Aristotle, the form is not only outside of time, it is also in

time: the form or nature itself is also, as natura naturata, in time. Now, as with Plato

there is no reason why we should find it problematic that a timeless entity should be

connected to entities in time. Think of things in time as located serially in a line, the

order of the things on the line representing the temporal order of the things. Now

take an entity which is outside time; we can take it to be in a three-dimensional

space in which the line of temporally ordered things also exists. The temporally

ordered line can bend and turn in the three-dimensional space, without affecting the

temporal order of the things on the line. In particular, it can bend and turn so that theentity not on the line, outside the temporal order, can touch not just one but ever so

many objects on the line. It is not hard to conceive how an entity which is timeless

can be connected to one or more entities that are in time. What is more difficult is

the timeless form as natura naturata being exemplified multiply as a sensible entity

in many particulars scattered throughout time and space. Here Grupp’s argument

has greater force.

There is an obvious sense in which the nature as natura naturata is multiply

located.

The active form that is the soul of an ordinary thing or substance derives, one

sees clearly, from the forms of Plato’s ontology of the Phaedo. But the forms have

become very different entities. In Plato the forms are not to be found anywhere in

the world of sense. A form attracts the soul and the soul is attracted to that form, and

strives to exemplify in the world of ordinary experience the form to which it is

attracted. For Aristotle, the form as an active soul is, like a Platonic form, not in the

world of sense; it is not given to us in our sense experience of things. But it does

bring about its own being in the world of sense experience. Natura naturans is not

known by sense, but what it brings about is natura naturata, its own being in the

ordinary world, and this, the being of the form, is known by sense. The form outside

the ordinary world of sense, and knowable there only by reason, makes itself

manifest in that world of sense, and knowable there by sense. In Plato, the form is a

pattern—merely a pattern, if one wishes—for things in the world of ordinary

experience. In Aristotle, the form is an active cause of things in the world of

ordinary experience coming to have a certain pattern, coming to be in a certain

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pattern. But it is necessary to keep in mind that the way that the form makes itself

manifest in sense, the way that the form causes itself to be exemplified in the world

of sense, is exactly the same form, the active potentiality made actual, made actual

through the very activity which it is. This is the crucial difference from Plato: in

Plato the form is given to reason and not to sense, in Aristotle the form is given bothto reason and to sense.

4 IV

There is a sense in which Plato’s thought moves by way of metaphor. The soul aims

to imitate the form, or to assimilate itself to the form: these relations connect the

timeless world of the forms and the sensible world of ordinary experience, but their

basic sense clearly derives from the world of sense. Exemplification is but anotherway of speaking of the way in which ordinary things imitate the forms: it is a part of

the metaphorical structure in which Plato’s thought moves. There is a sense, too, in

which even the forms are metaphors. To be sure, Socrates uses an argument to

establish the existence of the forms and to establish that we do know these forms.

But the way in which they work in the overall structure of the ontology is based in

metaphor: they work in the ontology in more or less the way in which the images

created by Homer and the poets work in the lives of ordinary Athenians.

In Aristotle, it is not the same. To be sure, the active form, just as with the soul

and the forms in the Phaedo, is not given in sense: we know them and that they existthrough reason, not sense. In fact, if we think of the world as limited to the world of

sense experience, the world as delineated by an empiricist Principle of Acquain-

tance, then one can still recognize the role of metaphor. This is the idea that cause

consists in activity.

For both Plato and Aristotle the active causes transcend the world of sense

experience, and are known only by reason. The views are the same, insofar as they

both take cause to be essentially an activity. It brings about the exemplification of

the form or nature in the world of sense experience. For Plato, however, the form is

wholly transcendent. For Aristotle, in contrast, while the form does transcend the

world of sense experience, it is also immanent in that world. The active form that

brings about its own exemplification in the world of sense is the natura naturans.

But the natura naturata which is the nature of the thing made manifest in the world

of ordinary experience, is given to us in sense. And this nature or form in the sense

of natura naturata will be one entity that is present in many entities, the sensible

particulars that exemplify it—one entity exemplified by many entities. And we can

see this form present in the particulars that exemplify it. The form is not something

distinct from a particular which that particular imitates; rather, the form is present in

the particulars, it is something which those particulars can correctly be said to be.

Socrates in his behaviour exemplifies the form of justice; Socrates is just, and we

can see this fact, we can see the form of justice exemplified in his behaviour.

But there is a metaphor that carries the thought of both. This metaphor consists in

thinking of causation as activity on the model of the human will.

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For both Plato and Aristotle the notion of cause is clearly anthropomorphic . If

one thinks of doing ontology by the way of a Principle of Acquaintance, then cause

in this sense will have no place in one’s ontology: there are no two ways about it,

causation does not exist—that is, of course, as Hume argues, causation in the sense

of activity which establishes a necessary connection between cause and effect.There is still causation as it appears in the world of sense that must be analyzed.

Hume, John Stuart Mill, and Bertrand Russell all did important work in

disentangling causation as limited to the world of ordinary experience and the

metaphysical notion of cause as an activity which transcends that experiential

world. The point is that the notion of cause as a transcendent activity effecting

necessary connections amongst things in the world of experience is irremediably

anthropomorphic, and grounded in thought which is essentially metaphor.

5 V

Before turning to the issue of one entity being multiply-located in the realm of

sensible appearances, there is another point that must be made.

Plato’s forms are not given in sense. They occupy a realm of being (‘‘Plato’s

heaven’’, if you wish) that is separate from the realm of sense, a timeless realm

distinct from the realm of sensible particulars located at places in time, and also in

space. Grupp suggests that a timeless form which is an ‘‘unlocated entity [must]

‘reach across’ to the located, in order to connect to the located.’’ (p. 36) And ‘‘sincethe located can only be at a place, the unlocated must become located.’’ (ibid .) We

have seen that this is not so. Still, that is what Grupp holds, and he goes on to

suggest that the Platonist will have to introduce a relation which does the job of

connecting the form and the particulars; this is the task, he says, of the relation of

exemplification. However, the same problem arises: crossing from one realm of

being to the other, it must be both located and unlocated. Exemplification cannot do

the job it is asked that it do. This is, however, unfair: Platonic exemplification is

taken to be analogous to the relation of imitation that obtains between the image of a

Homeric hero. The image of the hero is located nowhere in the realm of ordinary

things, but the entities in the latter, the Athenians say, can unproblematically imitate

in their own behaviour and therefore exemplify the behaviour of the hero; and so

also can Socrates exemplify unproblematically the ideal form of justice. It is true

that exemplification must reach across the gap that separates the two realms, that of

reason and that of sense, but that does not require it to be both located and

unlocated: the question of where it is simply does not arise.

However, in the Aristotelian metaphysics the form as natura naturata is an entity

in the same realm as the particulars that exemplify it: both are sensible. It would

seem, then, that the form is not at a single place, and is therefore unlocated, while it

must also be located, namely located at any place where there is a particular which

has that form. In order to avoid this conclusion, the Aristotelian must introduce a

relation, what he or she calls exemplification, that links what is located to what is

unlocated. But this simply resolves the problem by re-creating it in a different guise:

it turns out that the relation of exemplification introduced to avoid entities which are

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both located and unlocated will itself have to be a relation that is both unlocated and

located. And it cannot be avoided as the Platonist avoided the similar challenge to

the notion of exemplification that he or she uses. The Platonist avoids it because the

exemplification that he or she uses is imitation. But for the Aristotelian, it is not true

that the sensible particular imitates the form; rather, the form as natura naturata is asensible entity present in the sensible particular, it is that form, even as Socrates is

just, and just in a way which we can see. And since the form is itself in each

particular that exemplifies it, it would seem to be located at each place where such a

particular is located and also seem to be unlocated, neither here nor there, neither

specifically now nor specifically then, nowhere specifically and no when specif-

ically—yet also specifically here and specifically here also and specifically there and

there and there, or perhaps just specifically here but it could also perhaps be there

also. Again we seem to have Grupp’s contradiction: located and unlocated.

6 VI

There is a further problem that Grupp does not discuss. It is a problem for any

metaphysics, including those of Plato and Aristotle, that divides entities into a realm

accessible to sense but not to reason and a realm accessible to reason but not to

sense. We can use the language of forms, but similar remarks will hold for any other

metaphysics that divides entities into a realm of reason and a realm of sense, e.g.,

Kant or Russell (the Russell of the Problems of Philosophy). In such an ontology,there are forms, known by reason, and appearances, all of which are particular

things, known by sense. The appearances exemplify the forms.

For example, let us say that the sensible particular Socrates exemplifies the form

of justice. We then have the fact that ‘‘Socrates is just.’’ Ontologically the difference

between the two realms is bridged by exemplification, perhaps problematically in

some ontologies, as Grupp suggests, but even if the answer is inadequate it is still an

answer. But how do we know the fact that the connector really does connect? We

know the subject Socrates by sense, not by reason, and we know the form which is

predicated of this subject by reason, and not by sense. We know the subject and we

know the predicate. But how do we know how the fact in which the form is

connected to the subject? By what faculty are we supposed to know that the subject

exemplifies one form rather than another, for example, that Socrates is really

knavish, like Alcibiades, or a brute like Thrasymachus, rather than just? We are

never told. We deserve an answer.12

7 VII

All this has been exemplification then. Let’s switch to more recent times,

exemplification now.

12 Compare Grossmann (1963b).

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Let us turn in particular to an ontology that restricts itself to what is for Plato and

Aristotle the world of sensible appearances—a world often said to be delineated by

the empiricist’s Principle of Acquaintance: admit into one’s ontology only those

entities which are of a sort with which one is acquainted in sensory experience (or

inner awareness). An ontology of this sort has but one realm of entities and not two,a realm in which all entities are given in sense experience. In this world there are

particular things and sensible properties. There are facts in this world: sensible

particulars are the subjects in these facts and in these facts sensible properties are

predicated of these subjects. There are no transcendent entities as in Platonism and

Aristotelianism. It is that part of the world of the Aristotelian, the world of sensible

particulars where the naturae naturatae are exemplified by those particulars. Some

of the problems raised by transcendent entities, mainly epistemological, do not arise

for this ontology; but others, of the sorts raised by Grupp, do apply, at least to some

versions of this ontology. The problems into which exemplification can fall do notdisappear.

Let us see.

One version of this ontology was defended by Herbert Spencer. He held that

whatever was given in sense had to be located at a specific place.13 If my shirt, that

is, Fred’s shirt, was red and there was another shirt, Herb’s, the very same colour,

the very same shade of red, then there was with regard to Fred’s shirt a property

which made it red, that shade of red, rather than green, say, or any other colour, and

there was also with regard to Herb’s shirt a property which made it red, just the

shade of red it was rather than green or blue or whatever. The two shirts were bothred, the same shade of red, but further, Spencer held, the property that made Fred’s

shirt red was different from the property that made Herb’s shirt red. Fred’s red was

different from Herb’s red. For the property of each, like the shirts they

characterized, was differently located . As one now speaks, the properties were

tropes.

John Stuart Mill disagreed: properties are not tropes; rather, properties are

universals. The red of Fred’s shirt is the very same entity as the red of Herb’s shirt.

To be sure, the red in Fred’s shirt is in an entity, a particular, that is located at one

place, and the red in Herb’s shirt is in another entity located at another place. In that

sense, the red about which we are talking is located at (at least) two places. It is

wholly located at each of two places.

Mill puts the argument that characteristics of things are not tropes in this way. He

states Spencer’s view thus (using ‘attribute’ where we have used ‘property’): he

(Spencer) ‘‘…maintains that we ought not to say that Socrates possesses the same

13 See Spencer (1902, p. 294).

More recently, properties as individualized properties has been defended by Sellars (1963b); see inparticular his ‘‘Naming and Saying.’’ For criticism of Sellars, see Hochberg (1984a), ‘‘Mapping, Meaning

and Metaphysics’’; to which Sellars (1977) replied in his ‘‘Mapping, Meaning and Metaphysics’’; to

which Hochberg (1984c) further replied in his ‘‘Sellars and Goodman on Predicates, Properties and

Truth.’’

For a systematic critique of Sellars’ metaphysics, see Wilson (2007b), ‘‘Acquaintance, Ontology and

Knowledge.’’.

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attributes which are connoted by the word Man, but only that he possesses attributes

exactly like them…’’. Mill then goes on to object that

Mr. Spencer is of the opinion that because Socrates and Alcibiades are not the

same man, the attribute which constitutes them men should not be called thesame attribute…. If every general conception, instead of being ‘the One in the

Many,’ were considered to be as many different conceptions as there are

things to which it is applicable, there would be no such thing as general

language. A name would have no general meaning if man connoted one thing

when predicated of John, and another though closely resembling thing when

predicated of William.

…The things compared are many, but the something common to all of them

must be conceived as one…14

Mill is surely correct: sensible particulars are presented to us in just that way,with properties presented as existing in those particulars, and where those

properties are presented as one and the same in several particulars. (And where

Mill speaks of properties, the same remarks hold for the entities of the realm of

sensible appearances in the Aristotelian metaphysics; the natura naturata is a set

of properties, and so what is said in a Millian ontology about properties holds pari

passu for natura naturata.) Properties are presented as universals, and not as

tropes: the world that we are presented with in our sensible experience contains no

tropes. There are two sorts of entity, particulars and universals, just as in a

Platonistic or Aristotelian world. But where these latter two ontologies have thesekinds separate from each other, in different realms, creating the problem of how

one could know facts in which entities from different realms are connected to one

another, this does not apply to the ontologies that restrict themselves to the world

of sensible appearances. In an ontology of the latter sort, each property is

connected to one, or more, particulars. But these connections do not cross from

one realm to another, different realm, where the entities in the different realms are

known in different ways. There is but one realm in which both universals and

particulars exist, the ones in the many. Connections of properties to things are

connections wholly within a single realm. The epistemological problems created

by having facts consist of entities in separate realms, one of reason and one of

sense, do not arise.

There are other problems, however, parallel to some of the problems Grupp

raised with regard to Platonism.

There is, however, one way of presenting Grupp’s central problem that remains

to be discussed.

14 Mill (1978, Book II, Ch. ii, sec. 3, note).

On the issue of tropes, see Wilson (2007c), ‘‘Universals, Bare Particulars, and Tropes: The Role of a

Principle of Acquaintance in Ontology.’’.

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8 VIII

The sensible properties that Mill is discussing of course never appear separately. They

are given to us in sense and are always as it were bundled; they are bundled into the

particular things that are given to us in sense. The relation between the property and thebundle, Grupp suggests, amounts to the exemplification tie found in Platonism. Grupp

argued that exemplification could not do the job required of it (though we argued that

this was incorrect with regard to Platonism) because it had to connect entities which

are located (L), that is, sensible particulars, to entities that are not located (*L), the

forms: exemplification had to be both L and*L, which is impossible. This problem

does not arise in an ontology in which properties are tropes. The relation that

corresponds to exemplification in Platonism connects a bundle to a property which is a

trope; it connects one entity, the bundle, which is located, to another entity, a trope,

which is also located. Here we do not have to say that the connec tion between the twoentities is both L and*L. Grupp’s contradiction does not arise.15

Tropes, however, do not exist: as Mill argued, properties are universals and not

tropes. As a universal, a property will be in several or in many particular things, just

as, we may recall, a natura naturata of the Aristotelian has to be exemplified in

many particulars. The particular things will be located (L) at specific places, but the

universal will not be at any specific place and therefore will not be located (*L).

The bundling tie that is supposed to relate the universal to the bundle will therefore

be both L and *L.

The bundling tie connects a bundle s as a subject of which a property P ispredicated.16 In fact, P is present in s, it is part of the bundle. So are other properties

15 Aristotelian natures or forms are each common to several individual substances. For example,

humanity, as an active form, is common to Socrates, Alcibiades, and even Stephen Harper. That makes

the form as natura naturata, a set of sensible properties, a universal. What individuates it into each

individual? Some argue that sensible properties are not universals but instead are tropes, each a particular

in itself. So, the humanity that we observe in Socrates in our sense experience, though indistinguishable

from the humanity that we observe in Alcibiades, is in fact different from the latter humanity: sensible

properties are as individual as the individuals they characterize. That solves the problem of individuation.

But it won’t do, for the reasons given by Mill.

There are three other possible solutions for the Aristotelian. One is the supposition that there is somesort of entity, not given in sense, that is purely individual; ‘‘prime matter’’ it was often called. However,

while not given in sense, they are supposed to individuate properties that are given in sense. That makes

the supposition of such an entity hard to defend. It does not seem acceptable.

Another solution is to hold that, besides the properties determined by the form, the ‘‘essential’’

characteristics, there are other, ‘‘accidental’’ characteristics. Substances which share a common form or

nature, as Socrates and Alcibiades share the form humanity, while not differeing in their essential

properties, will always differ in their accidental characteristics, as Socrates is snub-nosed while

Alcibiades is hawk-nosed. This seems the most reasonable solution, but it does have its own problems. It

does seem to presuppose the Identity of Indiscernibles, which many find unacceptable.

Yet another solution is to adopt the position of the empiricist, that what individuate the individuals

given in sense is the sensible element in the individual we can refer to as its extension, as James called it,

or area. Of this element, we will have more to say below. However, even if it works for the empiricist, itstill creates problems for the Aristotelian metaphysics: the natura naturata of the Aristotelian is not quite

the same, in ontological terms, as the individual things the empiricist takes to be given in sense. But this is

not the point to explore these issues, interesting as they may be.16 For the working out of an ontology like this, see Goodman (1951).

For a sensitive analysis of Goodman’s ontology, see Hausman (1967).

284 Axiomathes (2013) 23:269–289

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which are predicated of s. Let us suppose that Q and R are other properties in the

bundle. We have a bundle because P, Q, and R are, let us say, with (W ) one another.

The entity we have called a ‘‘bundle’’ really is a fact , namely, the fact that the three

properties stand in the relation of being with each other:

W (P,Q, R)

Now, as James has pointed out,17 within every fact like this, within every

phenomenal bundle, as a sensible part of that bundle, is an element which he calls

extensity or voluminousness: ‘‘we are,’’ he says, ‘‘accustomed to distinguish from

among the other elements the element of voluminousness.’’ (1890, p. 134) This

element is ‘‘discernable in each and every sensation,’’ he insists, surely correctly,

‘‘though,’’ he adds, it is ‘‘more developed in some than in others.’’ ( ibid . p. 135)

Each bundle contains exactly one such element of extension, one such area, and no

such area is in more than one bundle. Assuming that there are no tropes, thatproperties are universals, it this sensible element of extensity which enables us to

distinguish bundles as things which are individual or particular.18

Let R, in our example, be an area. The relation of being With bundles this with

Red and Square to make some one thing; it is a Red Square in the world of sensible

appearances. We then have a fact or bundle

W (P,Q, R)

which is distinguished from all other bundles by the presence in it, and unique to it,

of the area R. Since this bundle is distinguished from all other bundles by thepresence of R, we can therefore refer to this fact, that is, this bundle, using the

statement of fact

W (P,Q, R)

as a name of the fact rather than a sentence, or, rather, use it as a definite description.

We can then speak of the

The R bundle

and we can form the subject-predicate sentences

The R bundle is P

The R bundle is Q

We could even abbreviate the definite description as ‘Joe’, so that

The R bundle = Joe

17 James (1890, Ch. xx, p. 134).18 It can be argued that this element is that sort of individuating entity that some have called a ‘‘bare

particular.’’ Bergmann is one; see his (1964b) ‘‘Synthetic A Priori,’’ p. 288ff. See also Wilson (2007d),‘‘Effability, Ontology and Method.’’

This entity, unlike the other elements, the properties proper, in a bundle, is supposed to be in itself

‘‘bare’’—leading many ontologists to dismiss it as analogous to one of Locke’s substances, something

‘‘I know not what.’’ However, as James makes clear, we do know it: it is given in sense. But bareness is

probably not a fair characterization; it can be argued that the other elements in the bundle, the properties

proper, are equally bare. See Wilson (2004a).

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and we can form the subject-predicate sentences

Joe is P

Joe is Q

We can, in other words, treat the bundle as an individual or particular thing of

which the constituent elements other than the area R are predicated of that

particular.19 The elements other than the area unique to the bundle thus appear on

this way of speaking as predicated of the area functioning as an individuator. Note,

however, that the ‘is’ which one would, on this way of speaking, think of as an

‘‘exemplification tie’’ is not primitive nor unanalyzable; we have just shown how it

can be analyzed. If we take the ‘‘is’’ to represent a tie of exemplification, then

Grupp’s objection that the tie located (L) at one end, that of the individual which is

located, but is not located (*L) at the other end. At this other end, where it attaches

to the elements other than the area; these other elements are properties taken to be

universals, entities that are in themselves one but which are attached to many

individuals. However, we should analyze this ‘‘tie’’ as it ought to be analyzed, using

the more basic relation, the bundling relation W .

In this ontology, then, the basic entities are ordinary things presented to us in our

sensory experiences; they are the sensory appearances (the ‘‘mere’’ appearances) as

found in Plato and Aristotle. The ordinary things are presented as complex entities,

bundles with various sensory elements as parts. These sensory elements include

properties like red or green or square, but also, in every bundle, a further sensory

element, the area or extensity which the properties cover, as by a colour, orsurround, as by a circle. Once we see this we recognize how misleading is Grupp’s

remark that

‘‘One entity located at two places’’ arguably is not a description of one entity

but of two entities; and it is thus arguable that a universal, being one entity

multiply located, is self-contradictory inasmuch as it is both one entity and

more than one entity simultaneously. (Grupp 2003, p. 28)

One must say, in reply, that one entity, say X, being related to two other entities,

say Y and Z, does not transform X into two entities. There is, for example, Me orFred, whom we met earlier, is one entity who is related to each of my two daughters

as parent to child. Being thus related by the same relation to two entities does not

make Me to be more than one entity. It is simply dogma that insists that one entity

being at two locations causes that entity to divide into two entities.20 It is to

dogmatically insist, without argument, that properties must be tropes; it is dogmatic

because, as Mill insists, it is quite clear, if one consults one’s experience of these

things as given in sense, that properties aren’t tropes, that they really are as they

appear to be, namely, entities that can be the same in more than one individual, that

is, universals. The property Red being related by the bundling relation W to twoareas A1 and A2 does not cause Red to become two entities. A universal, which is

19 Goodman’s ontology in his (1951) Structure of Appearance is of this pattern. This sort of ontology is

analyzed in detail in Bergmann (1967), Realism.20 See Grossmann (1963a).

286 Axiomathes (2013) 23:269–289

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one, can be related to several individuators, which are many, without itself

becoming many. Contrary to Grupp, there is no contradiction in supposing a

universal to be multiply-located, that is, related simultaneously to two different

individuators.

James makes an effective comparison of sensorial elements and relations, askingus to think of thoughts of these as parts of the lives of birds. Our experience of the

world is ‘‘like a bird’s life’’, which ‘‘seems to be made up of an alternation of flights

and perchings.’’ The sensorial elements are like the perchings of the bird, and the

relations are like flights where there is, as it were, a ‘‘passage, a relation, a transition

from it [a perch], or between it and something else.’’ (James 1890, p. 243) James’

point is that relations are as much a feature of the world as we experience it as are

non-relational properties. For us, the point is that properties come bundled in the

world as we experience it. To be bundled is to stand in a relation, and that relation is

there, in the world as we experience it. To be bundled into a thing which is anindividual is for a property to be exemplified by that individual. It is not quite what

it was then, for Plato and Aristotle, but it is what exemplification is now, what it has

become in an ontology delineated by a Principle of Acquaintance. And what it has

become, what it is now, is non-problematic. Grupp supposes that there is a problem

for the defender of properties as universals who introduces exemplification as a

relation that ‘‘ties’’ universals as non-located things to particulars as located things.

But, surely, there are two reasons for introducing exemplification or something like

it. One reason is that which appears in the substance ontology deriving from Plato

and Aristotle. The soul as active brings a property into being, that is, causes it to bethat a given particular thing comes to have present in it a property of that sort.

Exemplification of the form in the particular is what the soul causes. The other

reason is this. It is found in an ontology that restricts itself to the sensible world, that

is, the world as delineated by a Principle of Acquaintance. In such a world the

reason for a tie is that it is simply a fact that we experience properties, or, more

exactly, sensory elements, as standing in a relation, namely, being with another , that

bundles them into particular things. It is a fact that the sensory elements taken to be

properties and the sensory elements we have called areas as individuators do stand

in the bundling relation: that relation is given to us in the world as we experience it.

The relation’s being there, in the world, is why it is introduced. It does solve a

philosophical problem, that of tying universals to particulars, as Grupp says, but that

is not the reason for introducing it: we have it in our ontology simply because it is

there, and we see it there. In fact, we use it to solve philosophical problems because

we have it there, because it is available: if it wasn’t there, if it didn’t exist, if it was

not available, we could not use it to solve our problems.

Further, we see it in our experience actually relating properties as universals to

individuators, so the problems that Grupp attempts to raise must be spurious. The

problems he raises turn on his use of the notion of being ‘‘located.’’ For him, an

entity, if ‘‘located’’ at one place cannot also be ‘‘located’’ at another. But why not?

For him, if there is an entity that is ‘‘multiply located’’, then it is not an entity, it is

not one but must be many. But why can it not be one in many? Why is it that an

entity ‘‘located’’ at one place cannot also be ‘‘located’’ at another. But why can’t it

be that way? The truth is, that it can be so. For a property to be located is for it to be

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in one bundle, and this is compatible with its being bundled into another bundle.

The same property being multiply located is a fact of experience. Just look and see.

Properties are therefore universals. And they are located in many different particular

things. That’s a fact. That fact does not make universals impossible. A property is a

one that is in many, and unproblematically so; we just see that that is the way theworld is. As Berkeley said, one should not create a dust and then complain that you

cannot see.

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