Examples
In metaphysics, the Bundle theory says that objects can be reduced to collections of properties; so whenever we talk about objects, we can be understood to be talking about bundles of properties. Does this mean that the bundle theory says that objects do not exist? Perhaps not objects as we had thought of them, but the theory is trying to give an account of what objects are; namely, they are bundles of properties. So, the bundle theorist is not denying that objects exist; he or she is affirming that objects are the same as bundles of properties. The only reason one would have for maintaining, then, that the bundle theory holds that objects do not exist is if you think that, according to our ordinary concepts, something simply cannot both be a bundle of properties and an object.
Philosophers mean about the same thing when they talk about what exists ultimately. For example, the bundle theory says that ultimately, properties and bundles thereof exist, rather than objects. The things that exist "ultimately" are precisely the things to which other things are reduced.
Read more about this topic: Reduction (philosophy)
Famous quotes containing the word examples:
“In the examples that I here bring in of what I have [read], heard, done or said, I have refrained from daring to alter even the smallest and most indifferent circumstances. My conscience falsifies not an iota; for my knowledge I cannot answer.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“No rules exist, and examples are simply life-savers answering the appeals of rules making vain attempts to exist.”
—André Breton (1896–1966)