display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
33 ideas
| 21339 | We want the ontology of relations, not just a formal way of specifying them [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A satisfying account of relations must be ontologically serious. This means refusing to rest content with abstract specifications of relations as sets of ordered n-tuples. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A set of ordered entities would give the extension of a relation, which wouldn't, among other things, explain co-extensive relations (if all the people to my left were also taller than me). Heil's is a general cry from the heart about formal philosophy. |
| 21349 | Two people are indirectly related by height; the direct relation is internal, between properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If Simmias is taller than Socrates, they are indirectly related; they are related via their possession of properties that are themselves directly - and internally - related. Hence relational truths are made true by non-relational features of the world. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], 'Founding') | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a strategy for reducing external relations to internal relations, which are intrinsic to objects, which thus reduces the ontology. Heil is not endorsing it, but cites Kit Fine 2000. The germ of this idea is in Plato. |
| 21340 | Maybe all the other features of the world can be reduced to relations [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A striking idea is that relations are ontologically primary: monadic, non-relational features of the world are constituted by relations. A view of this kind is defended by Peirce, and contemporary 'structural realists' like Ladyman. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], 'Relational') | |
| A reaction: I can't make sense of this proposal, which seems to offer relations with no relata. What is a relation? What is it made of? How do you individuate two instances of a relations, without reference to the relata? |
| 18508 | Most philosophers now (absurdly) believe that relations fully exist [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It is a measure of how far we have fallen that so few philosophers nowadays see any difficulty at all in the idea that relations have full ontological standing. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 01.4) | |
| A reaction: We have 'fallen' because medieval metaphysicians didn't believe it. Russell seems to have started, and the tendency to derive ontology from logic has secured the belief in relations. How else can you be allowed to write aRb? I agree with Heil. |
| 21348 | In the case of 5 and 6, their relational truthmaker is just the numbers [Heil] |
| Full Idea: We might say that the truthmakers for 'six is greater than five' are six and five themselves. On this view, truthmakers for one class of relational truths are non-relational features of the world. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], 'Founding') | |
| A reaction: That seems to be a good way of expressing the existence of an internal relation. |
| 21351 | Truthmaking is a clear example of an internal relation [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Truthmaking is a paradigmatic internal relation: if you have a truthbearer, a representation, and you have the world as the truthbearer represents it as being, you have truthmaking, you have the truthbearer's being true. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], 'Causal') | |
| A reaction: It is nice to have an example of an internal relation other than numbers, and closer to the concrete world. Is the relation between the world and facts about the world the same thing, or another example? |
| 21344 | If R internally relates a and b, and you have a and b, you thereby have R [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A simple way to think about internal relations is: if R internally relates a and b, then, if you have a and b, you thereby have R. If you have six and you have five, you thereby have six's being greater than five. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], 'External') | |
| A reaction: This seems to work a lot better for abstracta than for physical objects, where I am struggling to think of a parallel example. Parenthood? Temporal relations between things? Acorn and oak? |
| 18532 | If causal relations are power manifestations, that makes them internal relations [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If causal relations are the manifesting of powers, then causal relations would appear to be a species of internal relation. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 07.4) | |
| A reaction: The point being that any relations formed are entirely dependent on the internal powers of the relata. Sounds right. There are also non-causal relations, of course. |
| 18510 | We need properties to explain how the world works [Heil] |
| Full Idea: When a tomato depresses a scale, it does so in virtue of its mass - how it is masswise - and not in virtue of its colour or shape. Were we barred from saying such things, we would be unable to formulate truths about the fundamental things. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: It doesn't follow that we have an ontological commitment to properties, but we certainly need to point out the obvious fact that things being one way rather than another makes a difference to what happens. |
| 4603 | Functionalists in Fodor's camp usually say that a genuine property is one that figures in some causal laws [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Functionalists in Fodor's camp usually say that a genuine property is one that figures in some causal laws. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: The problem is that anything which can't figure in a causal law will therefore be undetectable, so we could only speculate about the existence of such properties, never know them. |
| 4617 | A stone does not possess the property of being a stone; its other properties make it a stone [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A predicate that does not designate a property could nevertheless hold true of an object in virtue of that object's properties. An object is a stone not in virtue of holding the property of being a stone, but because it possesses certain other properties. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: Sounds simple but important, especially in relation to the mind. We are left with the problem of how to individuate a property, and the possibility of 'basic' properties. |
| 18522 | Categorical properties were introduced by philosophers as actual properties, not if-then properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Categorical properties were introduced originally by philosophers bent on distinguishing properties possessed 'categorically', that is, actually, by objects from mere if-then, conditional properties, mere potentialities. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 04.3) | |
| A reaction: He cites Ryle on dispositions in support. It is questionable whether it is a clear or useful distinction. Heil says the new distinction foreclosed the older more active view of properties. |
| 4615 | Complex properties are not new properties, they are merely new combinations of properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: New combinations of properties are just that: new combinations, not new properties. (This is not to reject complex properties, but only to reaffirm that complex properties are nothing over and above their constituents suitably arranged). | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: I wish I could be so confidence, but no one seems quite sure what a property is. Are they defined causally, or as 'qualities'? If the latter, what is a quality? Are there basic properties? Can properties merge to form a new one? |
| 18513 | Emergent properties will need emergent substances to bear them [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If you are going to have emergent fundamental properties, you are going to need emergent fundamental substances as bearers of those properties. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 02.6) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the theory of emergent properties (which I take to be nonsense, in its hardcore form) says that the substance is unchanged, but the property is new. Or else the bundle gives collective birth to a new member. Search me. |
| 4612 | Complex properties are just arrangements of simple properties; they do not "emerge" as separate [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Complex properties do not "emerge"; they are nothing "over and above" the properties of the simple constituents duly arranged. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: I am glad to see someone challenging the concept of 'emergence', which strikes me as incoherent. Small properties add up to macro-properties (like 'steep', or 'square'). |
| 7007 | I think of properties as simultaneously dispositional and qualitative [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers who accept that properties are intrinsic features of objects regard them as pure powers, pure dispositionalities; I prefer to think of properties as simultaneously dispositional and qualitative. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I am uneasy about 'qualitative' as a category, and am inclined to reduce it to being a dispositional power to cause primary and secondary qualities in observers. Roughness is only a power, not a quality, if there are no observers. |
| 18540 | Predicates only match properties at the level of fundamentals [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Only when you get to fundamental physics, do predicates begin to line up with properties. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 13.2) | |
| A reaction: A nice thought. I assume the actual properties of daily reality only connect to our predicates in very sloppy ways. I suppose our fundamental predicates have to converge on the actual properties, because the fog clears. Sort of. |
| 4587 | From the property predicates P and Q, we can get 'P or Q', but it doesn't have to designate another property [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If P and Q are predicates denoting properties, we can construct a disjunctive predicate ('P or Q'). But it is not clear that this gives us any right whatever to suppose that 'P or Q' designates a property. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Pref) | |
| A reaction: An important idea, needed to disentangle our ontology from our language, and realise that they are separate. Properties are natural; predicates are conventional. |
| 7015 | A predicate applies truly if it picks out a real property of objects [Heil] |
| Full Idea: When a predicate applies truly to an object, it does so in virtue of designating a property possessed by that object and by every object to which the predicate truly applies (or would apply). | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: I am sympathetic to Heil's aim of shifting our attention from arbitrary predicates to natural properties, but it won't avoid Fodor's problem (Idea 7014) that all kinds of whimsical predicates will apply 'truly', but fail to pick out anything significant. |
| 18533 | In Fa, F may not be a property of a, but a determinable, satisfied by some determinate [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It may be that F applies truly to a because F is a determinable predicate satisfied by a's possession of a property answering to a determinate of that determinable predicate. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.01) | |
| A reaction: Heil aims to break the commitment of predicates to the existence of properties. The point is that there is no property 'coloured' to correspond to 'a is coloured'. Red might be the determinate that does the job. Nice. |
| 18511 | Properties have causal roles which sets can't possibly have [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Properties are central to the universe's causal order in a way that sets could not possibly be. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: The idea that properties actually are sets is just ridiculous. It may be that you can treat them as sets and get by quite well. The sets can be subsumed into descriptions of causal processes (or something). |
| 7042 | A theory of universals says similarity is identity of parts; for modes, similarity is primitive [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The friend of universals has an account of similarity relations as relations of identity and partial identity; the friend of modes must regard similarity relations as primitive and irreducible. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.5) | |
| A reaction: We always seem to be able to ask 'in what respect' a similarity occurs. If similarity is 'primitive and irreducible', we should not be able to analyse and explain a similarity, yet we seem able to. I conclude that Heil is wrong. |
| 4611 | The supporters of 'tropes' treat objects as bundles of tropes, when I think objects 'possess' properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I resist the term 'trope' as it has become common for the proponents of tropes to regard objects as "bundles" of tropes. This turns tropes into something too much resembling parts of objects for my taste. .I think an object is a possessor of properties. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply a belief in 'substance', which is an intrinsically dodgy concept, but something has to exist. Keep ontology and epistemology separate! We can only know bundles of properties. |
| 7023 | Powers or dispositions are usually seen as caused by lower-level qualities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The modern default position on dispositionality is that powers or dispositions are higher-level properties objects possess by virtue of those objects' possession of lower-level qualitative (categorical) properties. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 09.2) | |
| A reaction: The new idea which is being floated by Heil, and which I prefer, is that dispositions or powers are basic. A 'quality' is a much more dubious entity than a power. |
| 21350 | If properties are powers, then causal relations are internal relations [Heil] |
| Full Idea: On the conception that properties are powers, it is no longer obvious that causal relations are external relations. Given the powers - all the powers in play - you have the manifestations. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], 'Causal') | |
| A reaction: This also delivers on a plate the necessity felt to be in causal relations, because the relation is inevitable once you are given the relata. But can you have an accidental (rather than essential) internal relation? Not in the case of numbers. |
| 18523 | Are all properties powers, or are there also qualities, or do qualities have the powers? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers who embrace properties as powers hold that every property is a power (Bird), or that some properties are qualities and some are powers (Ellis; Molnar). The latter include powers which are 'grounded in' qualities (Mumford). | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 04.4) | |
| A reaction: I don't like Heil's emphasis on 'qualities', which seems to imply their phenomenal rather than their real aspect. I'm inclined to favour the all-powers view, but can't answer the question 'but what HAS these powers?' Stuff is intrinsically powerful. |
| 18524 | Properties are both qualitative and dispositional - they are powerful qualities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: In my account of properties they are at once qualitative and dispositional: properties are powerful qualities. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 05.1) | |
| A reaction: I have never managed to understand what Heil means by 'qualities'. Is he talking about the phenomenal aspects of powers? Does he mean categorical properties. I can't find an ontological space for his things to slot into. |
| 7025 | Are a property's dispositions built in, or contingently added? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: There is a dispute over whether a property's dispositionality is built into the property or whether it is a contingent add-on. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 09.4) | |
| A reaction: Put that way, the idea that it is built in seems much more plausible. If it is an add-on, an explanation of why that disposition is added to that particular property seems required. If it is built in, it seems legitimate to accept it as a brute fact. |
| 7034 | Universals explain one-over-many relations, and similar qualities, and similar behaviour [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Universals can explain the one-over-many problem, and easily explain similarity relations between objects, and explain the similar behaviour of similar objects. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.1) | |
| A reaction: A useful summary. If you accept it, you seem to be faced with a choice between Plato (who has universals existing independently of particulars) and Armstrong (who makes them real, but existing only in particulars). |
| 7039 | How could you tell if the universals were missing from a world of instances? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Imagine a pair of worlds, one in which there are the universals and their instances and one in which there are just the instances (a world of modes). How would the absence of universals make itself felt? | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.7) | |
| A reaction: A nice question for Plato, very much in the spirit of Aristotle's string of questions. Compare 'suppose the physics remained, but someone removed the laws'. Either chaos ensues, or you realise they were redundant. Same with Forms. |
| 7009 | Similarity among modes will explain everthing universals were for [Heil] |
| Full Idea: My contention is that similarity among modes can do the job universals are conventionally postulated to do. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 4441 for Russell's nice objection to this view. The very process by which we observes similarities (as assess their degrees) needs to be explained by any adequate theory of properties or universals. |
| 7041 | Similar objects have similar properties; properties are directly similar [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Objects are similar by virtue of possessing similar properties; properties, in contrast, are not similar in virtue of anything. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.2) | |
| A reaction: I am not sure if I can understand the concept of similarity if there is no answer to the question 'In what respect?' I suppose David Hume is happy to take resemblance as given and basic, but it could be defined as 'sharing identical properties'. |
| 7032 | Objects join sets because of properties; the property is not bestowed by set membership [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The set of red objects is the set of objects possessing a property: being red. Objects are members of the set in virtue of possessing this property; they do not possess the property in virtue of belonging to the set. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 12.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a very effective denial of the claim that universals are sets. However, if 'being a Londoner' counts as a property, you can only have it by joining the London set. Being tall is more fundamental than being a Londoner. |