display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
6520 | If reality just has relational properties, what are its substantial ontological features? [Robinson,H] |
Full Idea: Some thinkers claim the physical world consists just of relational properties - generally of active powers or fields; ..but an ontology of mutual influences is not an ontology at all unless the possessors of the influence have more substantial features. | |
From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], IX.3) | |
A reaction: I think this idea is one of the keys to wisdom. It is the same problem with functional explanations - you are left asking WHY this thing can have this particular function. Without the buck stopping at essences you are chasing your explanatory tail. |
7007 | I think of properties as simultaneously dispositional and qualitative [Heil] |
Full Idea: Some philosophers who accept that properties are intrinsic features of objects regard them as pure powers, pure dispositionalities; I prefer to think of properties as simultaneously dispositional and qualitative. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
A reaction: I am uneasy about 'qualitative' as a category, and am inclined to reduce it to being a dispositional power to cause primary and secondary qualities in observers. Roughness is only a power, not a quality, if there are no observers. |
7015 | A predicate applies truly if it picks out a real property of objects [Heil] |
Full Idea: When a predicate applies truly to an object, it does so in virtue of designating a property possessed by that object and by every object to which the predicate truly applies (or would apply). | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 03.3) | |
A reaction: I am sympathetic to Heil's aim of shifting our attention from arbitrary predicates to natural properties, but it won't avoid Fodor's problem (Idea 7014) that all kinds of whimsical predicates will apply 'truly', but fail to pick out anything significant. |
7042 | A theory of universals says similarity is identity of parts; for modes, similarity is primitive [Heil] |
Full Idea: The friend of universals has an account of similarity relations as relations of identity and partial identity; the friend of modes must regard similarity relations as primitive and irreducible. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.5) | |
A reaction: We always seem to be able to ask 'in what respect' a similarity occurs. If similarity is 'primitive and irreducible', we should not be able to analyse and explain a similarity, yet we seem able to. I conclude that Heil is wrong. |