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Full Idea
According to the principle of Property Abstraction, there is, for any suitable condition, a property that is possessed by an object just in case it conforms to the condition. This is usually taken to be a second-order logical truth.
Gist of Idea
The property of Property Abstraction says any suitable condition must imply a property
Source
Kit Fine (Senses of Essence [1995], §4)
Book Ref
'Modality, Morality and Belief', ed/tr. Sinnott-Armstrong/Raffman/Asher [CUP 1995], p.60
A Reaction
Fine objects that it is implied that if Socrates is essentially a man, then he essentially has the property of being a man. Like Fine, I think this conclusion is distasteful. A classification is not a property, at least the way most people use 'property'.
11863 | (λx)[Man x] means 'the property x has iff x is a man'. [Wiggins] |
11176 | The property of Property Abstraction says any suitable condition must imply a property [Fine,K] |
9725 | 'Predicate abstraction' abstracts predicates from formulae, giving scope for constants and functions [Fitting/Mendelsohn] |
11028 | λ-abstraction disambiguates the scope of modal operators [Fitting] |
13703 | λ can treat 'is cold and hungry' as a single predicate [Sider] |