Instantiation principle

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title: "Instantiation principle" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["concepts-in-logic", "philosophical-realism", "metaphysical-principles"] description: "Concept in metaphysics and logic" topic_path: "philosophy" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instantiation_principle" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Concept in metaphysics and logic ::

The instantiation principle or principle of instantiation or principle of exemplification is the concept in metaphysics and logic (first put forward by David Malet Armstrong) that there can be no uninstantiated or unexemplified properties (or universals). In other words, it is impossible for a property to exist which is not had by some object.

The existence of properties or universals is not tied to their actual existence now, but to their existence in space-time considered as a whole.{{cite book | last = Armstrong | first = David | title = Universals: An Opinionated Introduction | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=MJzmAAAAIAAJ | format = paperback | type = book | year = 1989 | publisher = Westview Press | location = Colorado | isbn = 9780813307633

Those who endorse the principle of instantiation are known as in re (in thing or in reality) realists or 'immanent realists'.{{cite book | last = Loux | first = Michael | editor-last = Zimmerman | editor-first = Dean W. | title = Oxford Studies in Metaphysics | url = https://www.amazon.de/gp/reader/0199290598/ref=sr_1_1?p=S009&keywords=Aristotle%27s+Constituent+Ontology%27&ie=UTF8&qid=1340617206#reader_0199290598 | format = paperback | access-date = 2012-06-25 | type = book | year = 2006 | publisher = Oxford University Press | isbn = 978-0-19-929058-1 | chapter = Aristotle's Constituent Ontology

Difficulties for the instantiation principle arise from the existence of truths about the uninstantiated, for example about higher infinities, or about an uninstantiated shade of blue (if such a shade exists). Those truths appear to be about something, but what can their truthmaker be if they do not in some sense exist?

References

References

1. (2015). "Uninstantiated properties and semi-Platonist Aristotelianism". Review of Metaphysics.

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