Although I felt I was quite good at criticising a philosophical position, I was not very good at defending and making a case for a philosophical position.

A truthmaker is an entity in virtue of which the proposition it makes true is true. And it is a necessary condition of being a truthmaker (though not a sufficient one) that a truthmaker necessitates the proposition it makes true.

There are different interpretations of the problem of universals. I understand it as the problem of giving the truthmakers of propositions to the effect that a certain particular is such and such, e.g. propositions like 'this rose is red'. Others have interpreted it as a problem about the ontological commitments of such propositions or a problem about what those propositions mean.

The problem of how to characterise the properties that would trivialise the principle is one of the hardest problems concerning the principle of identity of indiscernibles and one the problems to which least attention has been paid of.

In my view the bundle theorist should say that when a bundle is located somewhere, there is an 'instance' of the bundle there. The instance is entirely constituted by the universals of the bundle. But the bundle and the instance are two distinct entities. Bundles of universals can be multiply located, but their instances cannot, and particulars are instances of a bundle of universals.

Those who think that metaphysics is just misunderstood grammar will react to my giving metaphysics some place or another in the system of knowledge.

At one point I took a copy of Berkeley's Principles from my father's library. That was the first philosophy book I read. I found it fascinating and wanted to read more philosophy.