display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
| 13584 | The extension of a property is a contingent fact, so cannot be the essence of the property [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The extension of a property in any given world is just a contingent fact about that world; its extension is not the essence of the property. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 2.07) | |
| A reaction: The Quinean idea, common among logicians, that a predicate is just a set defined for some model, may be useful in the logic, but is preposterous as an account of what a property actually is in nature, even if the set covers possible worlds. |
| 13587 | There is no property of 'fragility', as things are each fragile in a distinctive way [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There is no natural property of 'fragility'; glasses, parchments, ecosystems and spiders' webs are fragile in their own ways, but they have nothing intrinsic or structural in common. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.06) | |
| A reaction: This is important (and, I think, correct) because we are inclined to say that something is 'intrinsically' fragile, but that still isn't enough to identify a true property. Ellis wants universals to be involved, and even a nominalist must sort-of agree. |
| 13577 | Typical 'categorical' properties are spatio-temporal, such as shape [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The paradigmatically 'categorical' properties are spatio-temporal, depending on how things are distributed in space and time. Shape is the obvious example. ...Other examples are number, size and configuration. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.09) | |
| A reaction: I'm finding it very frustrating that this concept is much discussed in current philosophy of science (e.g. by Bird), but it is exceedingly hard to pin down any exact account of these 'categorical' properties, or even why they are so-called. |
| 9436 | The property of 'being an electron' is not of anything, and only electrons could have it [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There is no property of being an electron. It could only be instantiated by electrons, so it does not seem genuine. And what is the thing that supposedly instantiates the property of being an electron? | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 75,92), quoted by Stephen Mumford - Laws in Nature 7.3 | |
| A reaction: I agree entirely. Bird launches an excellent attack on categorial properties. |
| 13582 | 'Being a methane molecule' is not a property - it is just a predicate [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: In my view 'being a methane molecule' is not a property name, but a predicate that is constructed out of a natural kind name, and so pretends to name a property. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 2.03) | |
| A reaction: I can't tell you how strongly I agree with this. How long have you got? This is so incredibly right that... You get the idea. He observes that such properties cannot be instantiated 'in' anything. |