Constituent Versus Relational Ontologies

Since the relationship between God and universals is one factor in the controversy over divine ultimacy lurking behind the classical theist versus theist personalist dispute I discussed here, here and here, it seems fitting to review this old entry. 

Debates over the difference between Platonism and Aristotelianism, and the respective merits of each position, are likely to continue for as long as Man philosophizes. This post does not seek to take a stance on which position is correct but to provide clarification on an issue which is too often lumped into this debate, that is the way in which particulars are related to their universals.

I contend that many of the superficial charges Platonists and Aristotelians, particularly those who adopt such position in virtue of the role they play in wider philosophical systems, lay at one another's feet really relate to the alternative and more fundamental differences between constituent and relational ontologies. This entry is intended to give a brief run-through of these two approaches to ontology. To do so I will look at two claims attributed to each position, at least in popular presentations (let us call their proponents the ‘pop-Platonist’ and ‘pop-Aristotelian’ respectively).

Pop-Aristotelian claims:

1a. There are no uninstantiated universals.
2a. Universals are in their possessors, with ‘in’ being taken in a non-spatial sense .

Pop-Platonism claims:

1b. There uninstantiated universals.
2b. Universals stand apart from their particulars and are related to them only through an external relation of exemplification.

To attribute both no. 1 claims to the respective philosophies in question would be correct. However the, no. 2 claims are in fact claims in a whole different dispute and, whilst commonly held by proponents of both views, are by no means essential to them. For instance historically Neoplatonists at least are as strongly committed to 2a as Aristotelians, whilst of course still holding a muscular account of uninstantiated universals. However Neoplatonism has an important additional ontological aspect to take into account which I will mention later.

As far as I know the terms ‘Relational’ and ‘Constituent Ontology’ were first coined by Nicholas Wolterstoff in a 1970 review of one of Gustav Bergmann's books. However, they only gained more widespread usage when the former employed them in his famous article on divine simplicity, where he uses the distinction to illustrate how many of Plantinga's criticisms of divine simplicity in Does God Have a Nature? would make no sense to the medievals. Bergmann himself had employed a similar distinction, using the term ‘Function Ontologies’, a nod to their Fregean heritage, instead of relational. So some brief definitions:

1. A Constituent Ontology holds that the universal in question forms an actual ontological part or constituent of the particular. In other words, it is in some sense immanent to the particular. A common way of explaining this ontological parthood is with reference to a property-instance or trope, this being made up of the universal, individuator and internal exemplification tie. On a constituent ontology particulars are ontologically structured 'layer-cake' entities, as David Armstrong was wont to say.

2. A Relational Ontology on the other hand holds that particulars have no structure above and beyond that of common mereological structure. In other words, they have no ontological parts such as properties intrinsic to them. Instead the particular has properties by standing in an extrinsic relation to another entity e.g. an abstract object. To appreciate how deep this difference goes it is worth considering that certain forms of nominalism e.g. those which identify a property in relation to a class or a set are also relational ontologies. Armstrong gripes that this lack of ontological structure reduces entities to 'blobs', a pejorative definition the relational ontologist Inwagen happily accepts.

Relational ontologies are far and away the more common amongst modern philosophers. One likely reason for this is that said ontology follows much more naturally from the extensionalistic view of properties tied in with predicate logic. The major problem most modern philosophers have with constituent ontologies is that they are allegedly based on a category mistake in taking an abstract object to be a part of a concrete one.

Scholastic philosophers have historically been constituent ontologists. The vast majority of them also claim to have been Aristotelians and thus have denied uninstantiated universals: however the arguments they commonly give e.g. that uninstantiated universals would reduce substances to 'mere shadows' with no intrinsic nature of their own (see pages 81 to 85 of Oderberg's Real Essentialism for a prime example of this), are clearly aimed first and foremost at a specific relational ontology account they treat as if it were Platonism tout court. Oddly, very few philosophers seem to notice the difference—out of what must be nearly a hundred essays and books I have looked at on the subject only a handful of them acknowledge it.

At the risk of controversy I would hold that the criticisms of Platonism in both Real Essentialism and Edward Feser's Scholastic Metaphysics are based on this confusion and that, whilst both books certainly give good arguments in favour of constituent ontologies, neither presents a strong defeater for ‘Platonism’. Philosophers need not, and I would claim should not, embrace relational ontologies, but that does not mean one is a priori forced into denying uninstantiated universals. J. P. Moreland, a self-styled ‘Constituent Platonist’, has argued this case in his various writings on universals. William Vallicella, the author of a number of interesting blog entries criticising Inwagen's article on the subject, also recognises this. Of course there may be reasons why constituent Platonism is inadvisable—for instance it might commit us to the existence of bare particulars, but I think others have done enough to show that it is not immediately incoherent. Ironically, the main difficulty Paul Gould's cites regarding constituent ontological Platonism, i.e. that it obliges us to recognise a non-spatial sense of being 'in', is that it does not accept Armstrong's Axiom of Localization and applies equally to any constituent ontology.

And now to end by complicating things further: it is hardly a secret that Scholastics, including the aforementioned Feser and Oderberg (and E. J. Lowe), do endorse uninstantiated universals after all! Instead of considering them to be ‘free-floating’ Abstract objects as some modern Platonists would, they take them to be grounded in the Divine Intellect. To preserve Aristotelian terminology this is spoken of in terms of existing in a mind but I question what ‘existence within a mind’ actually means and how it ultimately differs from the Neoplatonist’s claims the Forms are grounded in the One or the Theistic Activist proposal of God necessarily ‘creating’ Platonic universals in virtue of His intentional activity. The intuition behind these statements is of course that God is more fundamental than universals, even if the latter class of objects should be both timeless and necessary. In other words, God’s ultimacy requires the Deity to have some further unique categorical status.

Those who are sympathetic to this intuition and unwilling to follow theist personalists like William Lane Craig down the route of nominalism (never a happy journey) might concur with William Vallicella in claiming that strictly speaking God is neither an abstract nor a concrete being but the member of a sui generis class which shares some aspects of both. Modern philosophers, both theistic and atheistic, will find this conclusion hard to swallow, but given how fundamental the God of Classical Theism must be it is hardly surprising.

Bibliography

Inwagen, Peter Van (2011) ‘Relational vs. Constituent Ontologies’, Philosophical Perspectives, vol 25, Metaphysics. Accessible here. 

Gould, Paul (2013) ‘How Does an Aristotelian Substance Have its Platonic Properties? Issues and Options’, Axiomathes, Volume 23, Issue 2. Accessible here.

Moreland, J. P. (2013) ‘Exemplification and Constituent Realism: A Clarification and Modest Defense’, Axiomathes, Volume 23, Issue 2.   

Smith, Barry (1997) ‘On Substances, Accidents and Universals: In Defence of a Constituent Ontology’ Philosophical Papers, 26 (1997). Accessible here.

Wolterstorff, Nicholas (1991) ‘Divine Simplicity’, Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 5, Philosophy of Religion. Accessible here.

Vallicella, William (2012) ‘Constituent Ontology Versus Relational Ontology and an Argument Against the Latter’. Accessible here.

Vallicella, William (2014) ‘Peter van Inwagen's Trouble with Tropes’. Accessible here.

Vallicella, William (2012) ‘Properties as Parts: More on Constituent Ontology’. Accessible here.

Vallicella, William (2014) ‘Relational Ontology, Constituent Ontology, and Divine Simplicity’. Accessible here.