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Single Idea 8959

[filed under theme 8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 12. Denial of Properties ]

Full Idea

Field regards the eliminability of apparent reference to properties from the language of science as a foregone result.

Gist of Idea

Field presumes properties can be eliminated from science

Source

report of Hartry Field (Science without Numbers [1980]) by Zoltán Gendler Szabó - Nominalism 5.1 n50

Book Ref

'The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics', ed/tr. Loux,M /Zimmerman,D [OUP 2005], p.36

A Reaction

Field is a nominalist who also denies the existence of mathematics as part of science. He has a taste for ontological 'desert landscapes'. I have no idea what a property really is, so I think he is on to something.

The 18 ideas with the same theme [rejection of the category of properties]:

16621 Accidents are not parts of bodies (like blood in a cloth); they have accidents as things have a size [Hobbes]
4546 We realise that properties are sensations of the feeling subject, not part of the thing [Nietzsche]
6063 Russell can't attribute existence to properties [McGinn on Russell]
18439 Because things can share attributes, we cannot individuate attributes clearly [Quine]
9017 Predicates are not names; predicates are the other parties to predication [Quine]
7925 There is no proper identity concept for properties, and it is hard to distinguish one from two [Quine]
10295 Quine suggests that properties can be replaced with extensional entities like sets [Quine, by Shapiro]
3322 Quine says that if second-order logic is to quantify over properties, that can be done in first-order predicate logic [Quine, by Benardete,JA]
6078 Quine brought classes into semantics to get rid of properties [Quine, by McGinn]
8479 Don't analyse 'red is a colour' as involving properties. Say 'all red things are coloured things' [Quine, by Orenstein]
7618 Very nominalistic philosophers deny properties, though scientists accept them [Putnam]
5456 Redness is not a property as it is not mind-independent [Ellis]
8959 Field presumes properties can be eliminated from science [Field,H, by Szabó]
3906 If possible worlds are needed to define properties, maybe we should abandon properties [Scruton]
4029 Nominalists ask why we should postulate properties at all [Mellor/Oliver]
16263 Fundamental physics seems to suggest there are no such things as properties [Maudlin]
7965 Does the knowledge of each property require an infinity of accompanying knowledge? [Macdonald,C]
19121 We can reduce properties to true formulas [Halbach/Leigh]