Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Purifications (frags)', 'Utopia' and 'Person and Object'

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3 ideas

8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 1. Nature of Properties
Some properties can never be had, like being a round square [Chisholm]
     Full Idea: There are properties which nothing can possibly have; an example is the property of being both round and square.
     From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 4.2)
     A reaction: This is a rather bizarre Meinongian claim. For a start it sounds like two properties not one. Is there a property of being both 'over here' and 'over there'? We might say the round-square property must exist, for God to fail to implement it (?)
Some properties, such as 'being a widow', can be seen as 'rooted outside the time they are had' [Chisholm]
     Full Idea: Some properties may be said to be 'rooted outside the times at which they are had'. Examples are the property of being a widow and the property of being a future President.
     From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 3.4)
     A reaction: This is the sort of mess you when you treat the category in which an object belongs as if it was one of its properties. We categorise because of properties.
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 10. Properties as Predicates
If some dogs are brown, that entails the properties of 'being brown' and 'being canine' [Chisholm]
     Full Idea: The state of affairs which is some dogs being brown may be said to entail (make it necessarily so) the property of 'being brown', as well as the properties of 'being canine' and 'being both brown and canine'.
     From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.4)
     A reaction: And the property of 'being such that it is both brown and canine and brown or canine'. Etc. This is dangerous nonsense. Making all truths entail the existence of some property means we can no longer get to grips with real properties.