Properties

References and further reading

	Campbell, Keith (1981) ‘The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 6: 477-488. Reprinted in Mellor and Oliver (1997). A succinct exposition and defence of a view of properties as tropes.
	Lewis, David (1983) ‘New Work for a Theory of Universals’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61: 343-377. Reprinted in Mellor and Oliver (1997). Lewis canvasses various explanatory tasks which he thinks that properties are required to perform.
	Loux, Michael (ed.) (1978) Universals and Particulars: Readings in Ontology, Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press. There is an especially useful section of papers on the debate between bundle theorists about particulars and their opponents.
	Mellor, D.H. and Oliver, Alex (eds) (1997) Properties, Oxford: Oxford University Press. A valuable collection of papers on the topic.
	Oliver, Alex (1996) ‘The Metaphysics of Properties’, Mind 105: 1-80. An excellent state-of-the-art piece focusing on the work by David Lewis and D.M. Armstrong.
	Quine, W.V.O. (1948) ‘On What There Is’, Review of Metaphysics 2: 21-38. Reprinted in Mellor and Oliver (1997). A classic paper containing, amongst other riches, Quine’s objections to properties.
	Rodriguez-Pereyra, Gonzalo (2002) Resemblance Nominalism: A Solution to the Problem of Universals, Oxford: Clarendon Press A recent and detailed defence of the view that particulars sharing properties is a matter of their resembling each other.
	Russell, Bertrand (1911) The Problems of Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. A good place to start reading. The relevant chapters (chapters 9 and 10) are reprinted in Mellor and Oliver (1997)
	Swoyer, Chris (1999) ‘How Ontology Might be Possible: Explanation and Inference in Metaphysics’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 23: 00-131. Considers the postulation of properties in metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, and semantics as a case study of the explanatory power of theories of ontology.