Combining Texts

Ideas for 'On Liberty', 'fragments/reports' and 'Ontology'

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2 ideas

7. Existence / E. Categories / 3. Proposed Categories
Logic is based either on separate objects and properties, or objects as combinations of properties [Jacquette]
     Full Idea: Logic involves the possibilities of predicating properties of objects in a conceptual scheme wherein either objects and properties are included in altogether separate categories, or objects are reducible to combinations of properties.
     From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2)
     A reaction: In the first view, he says that objects are just 'logical pegs' for properties. Objects can't be individuated without properties. But combinations of properties would seem to need essences, or else they are too unstable to count as objects.
Reduce states-of-affairs to object-property combinations, and possible worlds to states-of-affairs [Jacquette]
     Full Idea: We can reduce references to states-of-affairs to object-property combinations, and we can reduce logically possible worlds to logically possible states-of-affairs combinations.
     From: Dale Jacquette (Ontology [2002], Ch. 2)
     A reaction: If we further reduce object-property combinations to mere combinations of properties (Idea 7683), then we have reduced our ontology to nothing but properties. Wow. We had better be very clear, then, about what a property is. I'm not.