A Metaphysics of Platonic Universals and their Instantiations Shadow of Universals

This book offers a detailed defense of a metaphysics of Platonic universals and a conception of particular objects that is coherent with said metaphysics. The work discusses all the main alternatives in metaphysics of properties and tries to show why universals are the entities that best satisfy the theoretical roles required for a property. The work also explains the advantages of Platonic over Aristotelian universals in the metaphysics of modality and natural laws. Moreover, it is argued that only Platonic universals are coherent with the grounding profile required for universals. The traditional objections against Platonism are discussed and answered. The third part of the book, finally, offers a conception of particular objects as nuclear bundles of tropes that is coherent with the Platonic ontology of universals. This book is of interest to anyone that wants to understand the current –and intricate– debate in metaphysics of properties and its incidence in many other areas in philosophy.

Chapter 1. Introduction.- Part I. Universals. Chapter 2. Theoretical roles for universals.- Chapter 3. The superiority of universals over resemblance nominalism.- Chapter 4. The superiority of universals over classes of tropes.- Chapter 5. The superiority of universals over theological nominalism.- Part II. Transcendent Universals. Chapter 6. Transcendent universals and modal metaphysics.- Chapter 7. Transcendent universals and natural laws.- Chapter 8. Transcendent universals and ontological priority.- Chapter 9. Objections against transcendent universals.- Chapter 10. Identity conditions for transcendent universals.- Part III. Particulars. Chapter 11. Substrata and bundles.- Chapter 12. The nuclear theory of trope bundles.- Chapter 13. The reformed nuclear theory.- Chapter 14. By way of conclusion: (neo) Platonism.- Bibliography.

José Tomás Alvarado (Santiago de Chile, 1969) is Associate Professor of the Institute of Philosophy of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (Santiago, Chile). His research has been focused on metaphysics of modality and metaphysics of properties. Shadow of Universals is the fruit of more than twelve years of work, developed and defended in more than one hundred papers published mainly in Spanish-speaking journals and discussed in the Spanish-speaking philosophical community in the last decade.