Denkel argues that objects are nothing more than bundles of properties. From this point of view he tackles some central questions of ontology: how is an object distinct from others; how does it remain the same while it changes through time? A second contention is that properties are particular entities restricted to the objects they inhabit. The appearance that they exist generally, in a multitude of things, is due to the way we conceptualize them.

In this work, Professor Arda Denkel develops a unified ontology of objecthood, essences and causation. A principal tenet is that while the basic units of the physical world are substances, particular properties are the analytic ultimates of existence. Although properties must inhere in objects, individual things are nothing more than compresences of properties at particular positions. There exist no mysterious substrata. Principles explaining how properties are held together in compresences are basically the same as those that account for essences and for causal relations. There exist no...

In The Natural Background to Meaning Denkel argues that meaning in language is an outcome of the evolutionary development of forms of animal communication, and explains this process by naturalising the Locke-Grice approach. The roots of meaning are contained in observable regularities, which are manifestations of objective connections such as essences and causal relations. Denkel's particularistic ontology of properties and causation leads to a view of time that harmonises B-theory with transience. Time's passage, he argues, is a necessary condition of communication and meaning....