display all the ideas for this combination of texts
14 ideas
| 8571 | Universals are wholly present in their instances, whereas properties are spread around [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Universals and properties are different because a universal is supposed to be wholly present wherever it is instantiated. A property, by contrast, is spread around. The property of being a donkey is partly present wherever there is a donkey. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Un and Prop') | |
| A reaction: No mention of tropes. The claim that universals are widespread, and yet must be instantiated, is dealt with by Lewis's commitment to the existence of possible donkeys. |
| 10717 | Natural properties figure in the analysis of similarity in intrinsic respects [Lewis, by Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Lewis argues that there are natural properties, which makes various analyses possible, especially of similarity in intrinsic respects. Naturalness comes in degrees, with perfectly natural properties being the limiting case. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983]) by Alex Oliver - The Metaphysics of Properties 4 | |
| A reaction: This sounds to be the wrong way round. We don't start with similarities and work back to natural properties. We encounter natural properties (through their causal action), and these give rise to the similarities. |
| 16217 | Lewisian natural properties fix reference of predicates, through a principle of charity [Lewis, by Hawley] |
| Full Idea: For Lewis natural properties are important for their role in making language and thought determinate: principles of charity or humanity tell us to attribute natural properties to predicates wherever possible, break underdetermination of their reference. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983]) by Katherine Hawley - How Things Persist 3.8 | |
| A reaction: Lewis always seems to find reasons in semantics or logic for his metaphysics, instead of in the science. Lewis ends up with 'folk' natural properties, instead of accurate ones. |
| 8613 | Objects are demarcated by density and chemistry, and natural properties belong in what is well demarcated [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Where my cat (Bruce) ends, there the density of matter, the relative abundance of chemical elements, abruptly change. Bruce is also a locus of causal chains, which traces back to natural properties. Natural properties belong to well demarcated things. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Cont of L') | |
| A reaction: This is an amazingly convoluted way to define natural properties in terms of the classes they generate, but it seems obvious to me that the properties are logically prior to the classes. |
| 8585 | Reference partly concerns thought and language, partly eligibility of referent by natural properties [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Reference consists in part of what we do in language or thought when we refer, but in part it consists in eligibility of the referent. And this eligibility to be referred to is a matter of natural properties. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Cont of L') | |
| A reaction: This is a surprising conclusion for Lewis to reach, having started from properties as any old set members (see Idea 8572). There are references to intentional objects, such as 'there should have been someone on duty'. |
| 8586 | Natural properties tend to belong to well-demarcated things, typically loci of causal chains [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: One thing that makes for naturalness of a property is that it is a property belonging exclusively to well-demarcated things (like my cat Bruce, who is a locus of causal chains). | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Cont of L') | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 8557. Well-demarcated things may also have gerrymandered properties that are parts of 'arbitrary Boolean compounds' (Lewis). Why not make use of the causal chains to identify the properties? |
| 8589 | For us, a property being natural is just an aspect of its featuring in the contents of our attitudes [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The reason natural properties feature in the contents of our attitudes is that naturalness is part of what it is to feature therein. We aren't built to take a special interest in natural properties, or that we call them natural if they are interesting. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Cont of L') | |
| A reaction: Evolution never features in Lewis's metaphysics. I would have thought we were very much built to focus on natural properties. This sounds odd, and gives no help in distinguishing natural properties from all our other daft contents. |
| 15460 | All perfectly natural properties are intrinsic [Lewis, by Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Lewis proposed that all perfectly natural properties are intrinsic. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], p.355-7) by David Lewis - Defining 'Intrinsic' (with Rae Langton) IX | |
| A reaction: Depends what you mean by 'natural', 'property' and 'intrinsic'! Presumably there are natural extrinsic facts, in naturally necessary relationships. If all natural properties are powers, they would have to be intrinsic. Extrinsics would be derivative. |
| 15726 | Natural properties fix resemblance and powers, and are picked out by universals [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps we could call a property 'perfectly' natural if its members are all and only those things that share some one universal, ...where the natural properties would be the ones whose sharing makes for resemblance, and the ones relevant to causal powers. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Un and Prop') | |
| A reaction: This is Lewis fishing for an account of properties that does a bit better than the mere recourse to set theory (which he intuitively favours) seems to do. He remains neutral about the ontological status of a universal (though he prefers nominalism). |
| 7031 | Lewis says properties are sets of actual and possible objects [Lewis, by Heil] |
| Full Idea: David Lewis has produced an important theory of properties as sets of actual and possible objects. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983]) by John Heil - From an Ontological Point of View §12.2 | |
| A reaction: The notion that a property is an 'object' sounds wrong, as it is too passive. It also seems to allow for the possibility of uninstantiated properties existing, where properties are presumably always 'of' something. |
| 8572 | Any class of things is a property, no matter how whimsical or irrelevant [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Any class of things, be it ever so gerrymandered and miscellaneous and indescribable in thought and language, and be it ever so superfluous in characterizing the world, is nevertheless a property. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Un and Prop') | |
| A reaction: I much prefer, at the very least, the sparse approach of Armstrong, and in fact would vote for Shoemaker's highly physical view. Lewis proceeds after this to try to pick out the properties that really matter. |
| 18433 | There are far more properties than any brain could ever encodify [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: There are so many properties that those specifiable in English, or in the brain's language of synaptic interconnections and neural spikes, could only be an infinitesimal minority. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Un and Prop') | |
| A reaction: Thus there are innumerable properties that must lack predicates. But there are also innumerable predicates that correspond to no real properties. I conclude that properties and predicates have very little in common. Job done. |
| 8604 | We need properties as semantic values for linguistic expressions [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: We need properties, sometimes natural and sometimes not, to provide an adequate supply of semantic values for linguistic expressions. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Un and Prop') | |
| A reaction: A characteristically twentieth century approach, which I find puzzling. We don't need a Loch Ness Monster in order to use the term 'Loch Ness Monster'. Lewis appears to have been a pupil of Quine... He was not, though, a Predicate Nominalist. |
| 14499 | Properties are classes of possible and actual concrete particulars [Lewis, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Lewis has a preference for a nominalist conception of properties as classes of possible and actual concrete particulars. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects II.3 | |
| A reaction: I'm sympathetic to nominalism, but still can't swallow the idea that a property like redness is nothing more than a collection of particulars, the red things. This class will include all sorts of non-red features. |