green numbers give full details.     |    back to list of philosophers     |     expand these ideas

Ideas of Alex Oliver, by Text

[British, fl. 1996, At the University of Cambridge.]

1996 The Metaphysics of Properties
§02 p.16 The expressions with properties as their meanings are predicates and abstract singular terms
§02 n12 p.16 There are five main semantic theories for properties
§02.1 p.2 A metaphysics has an ontology (objects) and an ideology (expressed ideas about them)
§03 p.8 Ockham's Razor has more content if it says believe only in what is causal
§03 p.18 There are just as many properties as the laws require
§07 p.13 'Structural universals' methane and butane are made of the same universals, carbon and hydrogen
§09 p.20 There are four conditions defining the relations between particulars and properties
§09 p.21 If properties are sui generis, are they abstract or concrete?
§09 p.21 We have four options, depending whether particulars and properties are sui generis or constructions
§10 p.21 Instantiation is set-membership
§11 p.25 Located universals are wholly present in many places, and two can be in the same place
§11 p.26 Abstract sets of universals can't be bundled to make concrete things
§11 p.26 Things can't be fusions of universals, because two things could then be one thing
§11 p.28 Uninstantiated universals seem to exist if they themselves have properties
§11 p.32 If universals ground similarities, what about uniquely instantiated universals?
§11 p.238 Uninstantiated properties are useful in philosophy
§11 p.238 Aristotle's instantiated universals cannot account for properties of abstract objects
§12 p.34 The property of redness is the maximal set of the tropes of exactly similar redness
§12 p.34 Tropes are not properties, since they can't be instantiated twice
§12 p.35 The orthodox view does not allow for uninstantiated tropes
§12 p.35 Maybe concrete particulars are mereological wholes of abstract particulars
§12 p.36 Tropes can overlap, and shouldn't be splittable into parts
§15 p.45 Science is modally committed, to disposition, causation and law
§15 n46 p.44 Nominalism can reject abstractions, or universals, or sets
§19 n48 p.51 Conceptual priority is barely intelligible
§22 p.59 Accepting properties by ontological commitment tells you very little about them
§22 p.63 Reference is not the only way for a predicate to have ontological commitment
§24 p.73 Necessary truths seem to all have the same truth-maker
§24 p.73 Slingshot Argument: seems to prove that all sentences have the same truth-maker