Substance

"Substance has long been one of the key categories in metaphysics. This Element focuses on contemporary work on substance, and in particular on contemporary substance ontologies, metaphysical systems in which substance is one of the fundamental categories and individual substances are among the basic building blocks of reality. The topics discussed include the different metaphysical roles which substances have been tasked with playing; different critieria of substancehood (accounts of what is it to be a substance); arguments for and against the existence of substances; and different accounts of which entities, if any, count as substances1"-- Provided by publisher Cover Title page Copyright page Substance Contents 1 Introduction 2 Roles 2.1 Ontological Roles 2.2 Roles Played by Substances 3 Criteria of Substancehood: Independence 3.1 Methodological Preliminaries 3.2 Approaching the Criterion of Independence 3.3 Existential Independence 3.4 Essential Independence 3.5 Identity Independence 3.6 Categorical Independence 4 Criteria of Substancehood: Grounding and Explanation 4.1 Metaphysical Explanation and Grounding 4.2 Ungroundedness and Explanatory Independence 4.3 Assessing the Criteria 4.4 Developing the Criteria 5 Further Criteria of Substancehood 5.1 Ultimate Subject 5.2 Simplicity 5.3 Unity 6 Arguments for and against Substances 6.1 Arguments in Favour of Substances 6.2 Arguments That There Are No Substances 6.3 Alternatives to Substance Ontologies 7 Candidate Substances 7.1 Ordinary Objects 7.2 Simple Particles 7.3 Space-Time 7.4 The Self References Acknowledgements