Questions: Substance as Bearer of Properties

Question 1

A philosopher strips away all of an apple's properties — redness, roundness, tartness — and asks what remains. A bundle theorist would most likely respond by saying...

• A. What remains is the apple's essence, which grounds all its accidental properties
• B. Nothing remains — the apple just is the bundle of its properties, and there is no substratum beneath them
• C. What remains is a bare particular: a real but propertyless subject of predication
• D. The exercise is incoherent because properties are not actually separable from substances

Answer: (B)

Bundle theory denies that there is any underlying substratum. A substance, on this view, is nothing over and above the cluster of compresent properties — remove them all and nothing is left because there was never a separate bearer. This contrasts directly with the substance-bearer view, which holds that there must be something doing the having — an underlying subject. Option C is the substance-bearer theorist's answer, not the bundle theorist's.

Question 2

Bundle theory faces a specific problem when two qualitatively identical objects exist. What is that problem?

• A. Two objects with the same properties would be the same bundle and therefore identical — even though they are clearly numerically distinct
• B. Bundle theory cannot explain how properties change over time without a persisting substance
• C. Two identical objects would need to share their properties, making each property do double duty
• D. Bundle theory predicts that qualitatively identical objects would always be in the same spatial location

Answer: (A)

If a substance is just its bundle of compresent properties, then two objects with exactly the same properties — say, two qualitatively identical iron spheres — would be the same bundle and therefore the same object. But our intuition is that they are numerically distinct (two spheres) even if qualitatively indistinguishable. The substance-bearer view avoids this by holding that substances are individuated by the underlying substratum, not by their properties — each bare particular is numerically distinct even if qualitatively identical to another.

Question 3

The substance-bearer view implies that properties are less real or metaphysically secondary compared to the underlying substance.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

The substance-bearer view makes a claim about the structure of reality — that substances and properties are distinct types of entities with different modes of existence (substances exist in their own right; properties inhere in substances). It does not rank them by reality. Properties are as real as the substances that bear them; the view simply denies that properties are self-standing individuals. Confusing a structural distinction with a hierarchy of reality is a common misreading of the view.

Question 4

The 'bare particular' problem arises because, on the substance-bearer view, stripping a substance of all its properties seems to leave something with no characterizing nature — a substratum that cannot itself be qualitatively described.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

This is the central philosophical pressure on the substance-bearer view. The substratum must exist to do the 'having,' but when all qualitative properties are mentally removed, what is left seems to be a pure, propertyless subject — a 'bare particular.' Critics argue this is either mysterious (how can anything exist with no properties?) or incoherent (how do we identify or individuate two bare particulars from each other if they have no qualitative differences?). This was Locke's worry about 'something I know not what.'

Question 5

Why did Locke describe substance as 'something I know not what'? What philosophical problem in the substance-bearer view generates this puzzling conclusion?

Model answer: Locke recognized that if we describe a substance by listing its observable properties (color, shape, texture, etc.), we are describing what it is like, not what it is. The substance itself — the bearer of those properties — seems to be whatever remains when all properties are stripped away. But that residue has no positive characterization: it is not round, not red, not tart — it has no qualities of its own. Locke called it 'something I know not what' because it is unknowable through ordinary observation. It must be posited to explain how properties can belong to a single individual, but it cannot itself be observed or described.

This is the bare particular problem. The substance-bearer view requires something to do the having — an underlying subject of predication. But that subject, stripped of its properties, is qualitatively bare. Bundle theory offers to dissolve the problem by eliminating the substratum entirely, though at the cost of the individuation problem. The debate is still live in contemporary metaphysics.