55 ideas
| 18395 | Sets are mereological sums of the singletons of their members [Lewis, by Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Lewis pointed out that many-membered classes are nothing more than the mereological wholes of the classes formed by taking the singleton of each member. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991]) by David M. Armstrong - Truth and Truthmakers 09.4 | |
| A reaction: You can't combine members to make the class, because the whole and the parts are of different type, but here the parts and whole are both sets, so they combine like waterdrops. |
| 15496 | We can build set theory on singletons: classes are then fusions of subclasses, membership is the singleton [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The notion of a singleton, or unit set, can serve as the distinctive primitive of set theory. The rest is mereology: a class is the fusion of its singleton subclasses, something is a member of a class iff its singleton is part of that class. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This is a gloriously bold proposal which I immediately like, because it cuts out the baffling empty set (which many people think 'exists'!), and gets mathematics back to being about the real world of entities (as the Greeks thought). |
| 15500 | Classes divide into subclasses in many ways, but into members in only one way [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A class divides exhaustively into subclasses in many different ways; whereas a class divides exhaustively into members in only one way. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 1.2) |
| 15499 | A subclass of a subclass is itself a subclass; a member of a member is not in general a member [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Just as a part of a part is itself a part, so a subclass of a subclass is itself a subclass; whereas a member of a member is not in general a member. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: Lewis is showing the mereological character of sets, but this is a key distinction in basic set theory. When the members of members are themselves members, the set is said to be 'transitive'. |
| 15498 | We can accept the null set, but there is no null class of anything [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: There is no such class as the null class. I don't mind calling some memberless thing - some individual - the null 'set'. But that doesn't make it a memberless class. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: The point is that set theory is a formal system which can do what it likes, but classes are classes 'of' things. Everyone assumes that sets are classes, reserving 'proper classes' for the tricky cases up at the far end. |
| 15503 | We needn't accept this speck of nothingness, this black hole in the fabric of Reality! [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Must we accept the null set as a most extraordinary individual, a little speck of sheer nothingness, a sort of black hole in the fabric of Reality itself? Not really. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: We can only dream of reaching the level of confidence that Lewis reached, to make such beautiful fun of a highly counterintuitive idea that is rooted in the modern techniques of philosophy. |
| 15502 | There are four main reasons for asserting that there is an empty set [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The null set is a denotation of last resort for class-terms that fail to denote classes, an intersection of x and y where they have no members in common, the class of all self-members, and the real numbers such that x^2+1=0. This is all mere convenience. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: A helpful catalogue of main motivations for the existence of the null set in set theory. Lewis aims to undermine these reasons, and dispense with the wretched thing. |
| 15497 | We can replace the membership relation with the member-singleton relation (plus mereology) [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Given the theory of part and whole, the member-singleton relation may replace membership generally as the primitive notion of set theory. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], Pref) | |
| A reaction: An obvious question is to ask what the member-singleton relation is if it isn't membership. |
| 15506 | If we don't understand the singleton, then we don't understand classes [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Our utter ignorance about the nature of the singletons amounts to sheer ignorance about the nature of classes generally. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 2.1) |
| 15511 | If singleton membership is external, why is an object a member of one rather than another? [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Suppose the relation of member to singleton is external. Why must Possum be a member of one singleton rather than another? Why isn't it contingent which singleton is his? | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: He cites Van Inwagen for raising this question, and answers it in terms of counterparts. So is the relation internal or external? I think of sets as pairs of curly brackets, not existing entities, so the question doesn't bother me. |
| 15513 | Maybe singletons have a structure, of a thing and a lasso? [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Maybe the singleton of something x is not an atom, but consists of x plus a lasso. That gives a singleton an internal structure. ...But what do we know of the nature of the lasso, or how it fits? We are no better off. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: [second bit on p.45] |
| 15507 | Set theory has some unofficial axioms, generalisations about how to understand it [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Set theory has its unofficial axioms, traditional remarks about the nature of classes. They are never argued, but are passed heedlessly from one author to another. One of these says that the classes are nowhere: they are outside space and time. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: Why don't the people who write formal books on set theory ever say things like this? |
| 10191 | Set theory reduces to a mereological theory with singletons as the only atoms [Lewis, by MacBride] |
| Full Idea: Lewis has shown that set theory may be reduced to a mereological theory in which singletons are the only atoms. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991]) by Fraser MacBride - Review of Chihara's 'Structural Acc of Maths' p.80 | |
| A reaction: Presumably the axiom of extensionality, that a set is no more than its members, translates into unrestricted composition, that any parts will make an object. Difficult territory, but I suspect that this is of great importance in metaphysics. |
| 15508 | If singletons are where their members are, then so are all sets [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If every singleton was where its member was, then, in general, classes would be where there members were. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a big dislocation of understanding of the nature of sets, between 'pure' set theory, and set theory with ur-elements. I take the pure to be just an 'abstraction' from the more located one. The empty set has a puzzling location. |
| 15514 | A huge part of Reality is only accepted as existing if you have accepted set theory [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The preponderant part of Reality must consist of unfamiliar, unobserved things, whose existence would have gone unsuspected but for our acceptance of set theory. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 2.6) | |
| A reaction: He is referring to the enormous sets at the far end of set theory, of a size that had never been hitherto conceived. Excellent. Daft to believe in something entirely because you have accepted set theory, with no other basis. |
| 15523 | Set theory isn't innocent; it generates infinities from a single thing; but mathematics needs it [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Set theory is not innocent. Its trouble is that when we have one thing, then somehow we have another wholly distinct thing, the singleton. And another, and another....ad infinitum. But that's the price for mathematical power. Pay it. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 3.6) |
| 10405 | In the iterative conception of sets, they form a natural hierarchy [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: In the iterative conception of sets, they form a natural hierarchy. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.1) |
| 10407 | Logical Form explains differing logical behaviour of similar sentences [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: 'Logical Form' is a technical notion motivated by the observation that sentences with a similar surface structure may exhibit quite different logical behaviour. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: [Swoyer goes on to give some nice examples] The tricky question is whether each sentence has ONE logical form. Pragmatics warns us of the dangers. One needs to check numerous inferences from a given sentences, not just one. |
| 15525 | Plural quantification lacks a complete axiom system [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: There is an irremediable lack of a complete axiom system for plural quantification. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 4.7) |
| 15518 | I like plural quantification, but am not convinced of its connection with second-order logic [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I agree fully with Boolos on substantive questions about plural quantification, though I would make less than he does of the connection with second-order logic. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 3.2 n2) | |
| A reaction: Deep matters, but my inclination is to agree with Lewis, as I have never been able to see why talk of plural quantification led straight on to second-order logic. A plural is just some objects, not some higher-order entity. |
| 15524 | Zermelo's model of arithmetic is distinctive because it rests on a primitive of set theory [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: What sets Zermelo's modelling of arithmetic apart from von Neumann's and all the rest is that he identifies the primitive of arithmetic with an appropriately primitive notion of set theory. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 4.6) | |
| A reaction: Zermelo's model is just endlessly nested empty sets, which is a very simple structure. I gather that connoisseurs seem to prefer von Neumann's model (where each number contains its predecessor number). |
| 15517 | Giving up classes means giving up successful mathematics because of dubious philosophy [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Renouncing classes means rejecting mathematics. That will not do. Mathematics is an established, going concern. Philosophy is as shaky as can be. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 2.8) | |
| A reaction: This culminates in his famous 'Who's going to tell the mathematicians? Not me!'. He has just given four examples of mathematics that seems to entirely depend on classes. This idea sounds like G.E. Moore's common sense against scepticism. |
| 15515 | To be a structuralist, you quantify over relations [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: To be a structuralist, you quantify over relations. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 2.6) |
| 15520 | Existence doesn't come in degrees; once asserted, it can't then be qualified [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Existence cannot be a matter of degree. If you say there is something that exists to a diminished degree, once you've said 'there is' your game is up. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: You might have thought that this was so obvious as to be not worth saying, but as far as I can see it is a minority view in contemporary philosophy. It was Quine's view, and it is mine. |
| 10421 | Supervenience is nowadays seen as between properties, rather than linguistic [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: Supervenience is sometimes taken to be a relationship between two fragments of language, but it is increasingly taken to be a relationship between pairs of families of properties. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 7.17) | |
| A reaction: If supervenience is a feature of the world, rather than of our descriptions, then it cries out for explanation, just as any other regularities do. Personally I would have thought the best explanation of the supervenience of mind and body was obvious. |
| 15501 | We have no idea of a third sort of thing, that isn't an individual, a class, or their mixture [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: As yet we have no idea of any third sort of thing that is neither individual nor class nor mixture of the two. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: You can see that Lewis was a pupil of Quine. I quote this to show how little impression 'stuff' makes on the modern radar. His defence is that stuff may not be a 'thing', but then he seems to think that 'things' exhaust reality (top p.8 and 9). |
| 15504 | Atomless gunk is an individual whose parts all have further proper parts [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A blob can represent atomless gunk: an individual whose parts all have further proper parts. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: This is not the same as 'stuff', since gunk is a precise fusion of all those parts, whereas there is no such precision about stuff. Stuff is neutral as to whether it has atoms, or is endlessly divisible. My love of stuff grows. Laycock is a hero. |
| 10410 | Anti-realists can't explain different methods to measure distance [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: Anti-realists theories of measurement (like operationalism) cannot explain how we can use different methods to measure the same thing (e.g. lengths and distances in cosmology, geology, histology and atomic physics). | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: Swoyer says that the explanation is that measurement aims at objective properties, the same in each of these areas. Quite good. |
| 10416 | Can properties have parts? [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: Can properties have parts? | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: If powers are more fundamental than properties, with the latter often being complexes of the underlying powers, then yes they do. But powers don't. Presumably whatever is fundamental shouldn't have parts. Why? |
| 10399 | If a property such as self-identity can only be in one thing, it can't be a universal [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: Some properties may not be universals, if they can only be exemplified by one thing, such as 'being identical with Socrates'. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000]) | |
| A reaction: I think it is absurd to think that self-identity is an intrinsic 'property', possessed by everything. That a=a is a convenience for logicians, meaning nothing in the world. And it is relational. The sharing of properties is indeed what needs explanation. |
| 10417 | There are only first-order properties ('red'), and none of higher-order ('coloured') [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: 'Elementarism' is the view that there are first-order properties, but that there are no properties of any higher-order. There are first-order properties like various shades of red, but there is no higher-order property, like 'being a colour'. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 7.1) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Bergmann 1968] Interesting. Presumably the programme is naturalistic (and hence congenial to me), and generalisations about properties are conceptual, while the properties themselves are natural. |
| 15516 | A property is any class of possibilia [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A property is any class of possibilia. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 2.7) |
| 10413 | The best-known candidate for an identity condition for properties is necessary coextensiveness [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: The best-known candidate for an identity condition for properties is necessary coextensiveness. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 6) | |
| A reaction: The necessity (in all possible worlds) covers renates and cordates. It is hard to see how one could assert the necessity without some deeper explanation. What makes us deny that actually coextensive renates and cordates have different properties? |
| 10402 | Various attempts are made to evade universals being wholly present in different places [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: The worry that a single thing could be wholly present in widely separated locations has led to trope theory, to the claim that properties are not located in their instances, or to the view that this treats universals as if they were individuals. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: I find it dispiriting to come to philosophy in the late twentieth century and have to inherit such a ridiculous view as that there are things that are 'wholly present' in many places. |
| 10400 | Conceptualism says words like 'honesty' refer to concepts, not to properties [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: Conceptualists urge that words like 'honesty', which might seem to refer to properties, really refer to concepts. A few contemporary philosophers have defended conceptualism, and recent empirical work bears on it, but the view is no longer common. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: ..and that's all Swoyer says about this very interesting view! He only cites Cocchiarella 1986 Ch.3. The view leaves a lot of work to be done in explaining how nature is, and how our concepts connect to it, and arise in response to it. |
| 10403 | If properties are abstract objects, then their being abstract exemplifies being abstract [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: If properties are abstract objects, then the property of being abstract should itself exemplify the property of being abstract. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: Swoyer links this observation with Plato's views on self-predication, and his Third Man Argument (which I bet originated with Aristotle in the Academy!). Do we have a regress of objects, as well as a regress of properties? |
| 14748 | The many are many and the one is one, so they can't be identical [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: What is true of the many is not exactly what is true of the one. After all they are many while it is one. The number of the many is six, whereas the number of the fusion is one. The singletons of the many are distinct from the singleton of the one. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 3.6) | |
| A reaction: I wouldn't take this objection to be conclusive. 'Some pebbles' seem to be many, but a 'handful of pebbles' seem to be one, where the physical situation might be identical. If they are not identical, then the non-identity is purely conceptual. |
| 6129 | Lewis affirms 'composition as identity' - that an object is no more than its parts [Lewis, by Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Lewis says that the parts of a thing are identical with the whole they compose, calling his view 'composition as identity', which is the claim that a physical object is 'nothing over and above its parts'. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], p.84-7) by Trenton Merricks - Objects and Persons §I.IV | |
| A reaction: The ontological economy of this view is obviously attractive, but I don't agree with it. You certainly can't say that all identity consists entirely of composition by parts, because the parts need identity to get the view off the ground. |
| 15512 | In mereology no two things consist of the same atoms [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: It is a principle of mereology that no two things consist of exactly the same atoms. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: The problem with this is screamingly obvious - that the same atoms might differ in structure. Lewis did refer to this problem, but seems to try to wriggle out of it, in Idea 15444. |
| 15519 | Trout-turkeys exist, despite lacking cohesion, natural joints and united causal power [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A trout-turkey is inhomogeneous, disconnected, not in contrast with its surroundings. It is not cohesive, not causally integrated, not a causal unit in its impact on the rest of the world. It is not carved at the joints. That doesn't affect its existence. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: A nice pre-emptive strike against all the reasons why anyone might think more is needed for unity than a mereological fusion. |
| 15521 | Given cats, a fusion of cats adds nothing further to reality [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Given a prior commitment to cats, a commitment to cat-fusions is not a further commitment. The fusion is nothing over and above the cats that compose it. It just is them. They just are it. Together or separately, the cats are the same portion of Reality. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 3.6) | |
| A reaction: The two extremes of ontology are that there are no objects, or that every combination is an object. Until reading this I thought Lewis was in the second camp, but this sounds like object-nihilism, as in Van Inwagen and Merricks. |
| 15522 | The one has different truths from the many; it is one rather than many, one rather than six [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: What's true of the many is not exactly what's true of the one. After all they are many while it is one. The number of the many is six, whereas the number of the fusion is one. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 3.6) | |
| A reaction: Together with Idea 15521, this nicely illustrates the gulf between commitment to ontology and commitment to truths. The truths about a fusion change, while its ontology remains the same. Possibly this is the key to all of metaphysics. |
| 10566 | Lewis prefers giving up singletons to giving up sums [Lewis, by Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: In the face of the conflict between mereology and set theory, Lewis has advocated giving up the existence of singletons rather than sums. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991]) by Kit Fine - Replies on 'Limits of Abstraction' 1 |
| 14244 | Lewis only uses fusions to create unities, but fusions notoriously flatten our distinctions [Oliver/Smiley on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Lewis employs mereological fusion as his sole method of making one thing out of many, and fusion is notorious for the way it flattens out and thereby obliterates distinctions. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991]) by Oliver,A/Smiley,T - What are Sets and What are they For? 3.1 | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a key point in the discussion of mereology in ontological contexts. As a defender of intrinsic structural essences, I have no use for mereological fusions, and look for a quite different identity for 'wholes'. |
| 10660 | A commitment to cat-fusions is not a further commitment; it is them and they are it [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Given a prior commitment to cats, a commitment to cat-fusions is not a further commitment. The fusion is nothing over and above the cats that compose it. It just is them. They just are it. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], p.81), quoted by Achille Varzi - Mereology 4.3 | |
| A reaction: I take this to make Lewis a nominalist, saying the same thing that Goodman said about Utah in Idea 10657. Any commitment to cat-fusions being more than the cats, or Utah being more than its counties, strikes me as crazy. |
| 10406 | One might hope to reduce possible worlds to properties [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: One might hope to reduce possible worlds to properties. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Zalta 1983 4.2, and Forrest 1986] I think we are dealing with nothing more than imagined possibilities, which are inferred from our understanding of the underlying 'powers' of the actual world (expressed as 'properties'). |
| 15509 | Some say qualities are parts of things - as repeatable universals, or as particulars [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers propose that things have their qualities by having them as parts, either as repeatable universals (Goodman), or as particulars (Donald Williams). | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 2.1 n2) | |
| A reaction: He refers to 'qualities' rather than 'properties', presumably because this view makes them all intrinsic to the object. Is being 'handsome' a part of a person? |
| 10404 | Extreme empiricists can hardly explain anything [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: Extreme empiricists wind up unable to explain much of anything. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the major problem for empiricism, but I am not sure why inference to the best explanation should not be part of a sensible empirical approach. Thinking laws are just 'descriptions of regularities' illustrates the difficulty. |
| 10408 | Intensions are functions which map possible worlds to sets of things denoted by an expression [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: Intensions are functions that assign a set to the expression at each possible world, ..so the semantic value of 'red' is the function that maps each possible world to the set of things in that world that are red. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: I am suddenly deeply alienated from this mathematical logicians' way of talking about what 'red' means! We need more psychology, not less. We call things red if we imagine them as looking red. Is imagination a taboo in analytical philosophy? |
| 10409 | Research suggests that concepts rely on typical examples [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: Recent empirical work on concepts says that many concepts have graded membership, and stress the importance of phenomena like typicality, prototypes, and exemplars. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Rorsch 1978 as the start of this] I say the mind is a database, exactly corresponding to tables, fields etc. Prototypes sound good as the way we identify a given category. Universals are the 'typical' examples labelling areas (e.g. goat). |
| 10401 | The F and G of logic cover a huge range of natural language combinations [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: All sorts of combinations of copulas ('is') with verbs, adverbs, adjectives, determiners, common nouns, noun phrases and prepositional phrases go over into the familiar Fs and Gs of standard logical notation. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice warning of how misleading logic can be when trying to understand how we think about reality. Montague semantics is an attempt to tackle the problem. Numbers as adjectives are a clear symptom of the difficulties. |
| 10420 | Maybe a proposition is just a property with all its places filled [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: Some say we can think of a proposition as a limiting case of a property, as when the two-place property '___ loves ___' can become the zero-placed property, or proposition 'that Sam loves Darla'. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 7.6) | |
| A reaction: If you had a prior commitment to the idea that reality largely consists of bundles of properties, I suppose you might find this tempting. |
| 6017 | Nomos is king [Pindar] |
| Full Idea: Nomos is king. | |
| From: Pindar (poems [c.478 BCE], S 169), quoted by Thomas Nagel - The Philosophical Culture | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the earliest recorded shot in the nomos-physis wars (the debate among sophists about moral relativism). It sounds as if it carries the full relativist burden - that all that matters is what has been locally decreed. |
| 10412 | If laws are mere regularities, they give no grounds for future prediction [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: If laws were mere regularities, then the fact that observed Fs have been Gs would give us no reason to conclude that those Fs we haven't encountered will also be Gs. | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: I take this simple point to be very powerful. No amount of regularity gives grounds for asserting future patterns - one only has Humean habits. Causal mechanisms are what we are after. |
| 10411 | Two properties can have one power, and one property can have two powers [Swoyer] |
| Full Idea: If properties are identical when they confer the same capacities on their instances, different properties seem able to bestow the same powers (e.g. force), and one property can bestow different powers (attraction or repulsion). | |
| From: Chris Swoyer (Properties [2000], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, but possibly a misunderstanding. Powers are basic, and properties are combinations of powers. A 'force' isn't a basic power, it is a consequence of various properties. Relational behaviours are also not basic powers, which are the source. |