A thing (individual, concrete particular) is nothing but a bundle of properties'. If we take it as it stands, this traditional metaphysical view is open to several familiar and, to my mind, decisive objections. Sophisticated upholders of the tradition, such as Russell and Castafieda, do not take it as it stands, but I shall argue that even their version of it remains open to some of the same objections. Then I shall suggest a third version of the view that avoids all the standard objections, but only at a price I think most people would be unwilling to pay.
Let us begin by seeing what is wrong with the bundle theory in its crudest
version. There are several subversions here, depending on how one unpacks the 'bundle' metaphor. For Example, it could be said that a thing is a set of which properties are members, or that it is a whole of which properties are parts. Perhaps there are other possibilities, too, but the idea in any case would be (i) that a thing is a complex entity of which properties are the sole constituents, and (ii) that for a thing to have or exemplify a property is for that property to be a constituent of it.
The bundle theory in this form is open to at least six objections. 1 The statement of them below assumes the theory holds a thing to be a set of properties, but parallel objections apply to the other alternatives as well.
ObJection 1. If a thing were nothing more than a set of properties, any set of properties would fulfill the conditions of thinghood, and there would be a thing for every set. But in fact there are many sets without corresponding things -e.g., the set (being an alligator, being purple }.
ObJection 2. If a thing were a set of properties, it would be an eternal, indeed,