display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
| 15754 | Without properties we would be unable to express the laws of nature [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: The ontological correlates of true law-statements must involve properties. How else can one pick our the uniformities which the law-statements entail? | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Properties [1992], 1) | |
| A reaction: I'm unconvinced about the 'laws', but I have to admit that it is hard to know how to describe the relevant bits of nature without some family of concepts covered by the word 'property'. I'm in favour of taking some of the family into care, though. |
| 4034 | Whether we apply 'cold' or 'hot' to an object is quite separate from its change of temperature [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Evading properties by means of predicates is implausible when things change. If a cold thing becomes hot, first 'cold' applies, and then 'hot', but what have predicates to do with the temperature of an object? | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Properties [1992], §1) | |
| A reaction: A clear illustration of why properties are part of nature, not just part of language. But some applications of predicates are more arbitrary than this (ugly, cool) |
| 8535 | To the claim that every predicate has a property, start by eliminating failure of application of predicate [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Upholders of properties have been inclined to postulate a distinct property corresponding to each distinct predicate. We could start by eliminating all those properties where the predicate fails to apply, is not true, of anything. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Properties [1992], §1) | |
| A reaction: This would leave billions of conjunctional, disjunctional and gerrymandered properties where the predicate applies very well. We are all 'on the same planet as New York'. Am I allowed to say that I 'wish' that a was F? He aims for 'sparse' properties. |
| 8537 | Tropes fall into classes, because exact similarity is symmetrical and transitive [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Exact similarity is a symmetrical and transitive relation. (Less than exact similarity is not transitive, even for tropes). So the relation of exact similarity is an equivalence relation, partitioning the field of tropes into equivalence classes. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Properties [1992], §2) | |
| A reaction: Armstrong goes on the explore the difficulties for trope theory of less than exact similarity, which is a very good line of discussion. Unfortunately it is a huge problem for everyone, apart from the austere nominalist. |
| 8538 | Trope theory needs extra commitments, to symmetry and non-transitivity, unless resemblance is exact [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Trope theory needs extra ontological baggage, the Axioms of Resemblance. There is a principle of symmetry, and there is the failure of transitivity - except in the special case of exact resemblance. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Properties [1992], §2) | |
| A reaction: [see text for fuller detail] Is it appropriate to describe such axioms as 'ontological' baggage? Interesting, though I suspect that any account of properties and predicates will have a similar baggage of commitments. |