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Properties

DOI
10.4324/9780415249126-N121-1
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DOI: 10.4324/9780415249126-N121-1
Version: v1,  Published online: 1998
Retrieved March 29, 2024, from https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/properties/v-1

3. The existence of properties

Given a view about the nature of properties – a view about what properties are supposed to be – there is then an issue about whether there are any such entities. Arguments for the existence of properties are guided by thoughts about what explanatory tasks properties are to be put to. Two broad explanatory tasks dominate.

One is in semantics and concerns the meanings of predicates. Some philosophers (such as Carnap, Church and Montague) take properties to be the meanings (intensions) of predicates (e.g. ‘is red’) and abstract nouns (‘redness’). For instance, in Montague’s system, a predicate’s intension is a function from each possible world w, and a context of use at w, to the set of entities at w to which the predicate applies. Other philosophers (notably Frege) take properties to be the referents of predicates. (Frege uses the word ‘Begriff’ when talking about the referents of predicates. English translations of Frege’s work are potentially misleading as they standardly translate that word as ‘concept’ rather than as ‘property’. When Frege uses that word he is not talking about any kind of mental entity, such as the kind consisting of our mental representations. Instead, he intends to be talking about non-mental, abstract entities which things ‘fall under’).

The other explanatory task is in metaphysics and concerns the nature of resemblance. This task was outlined above in §1 The problem was to explain how distinct tomatoes can resemble each other in colour or size or age. The suggested solution was to say that not only do tomatoes exist, but so do properties, and that tomatoes resemble each other by sharing these properties. The suggestion is that positing properties (understood as universals) solves the problem of resemblance. This strategy draws upon Plato’s ‘One over Many’ argument (see Universals §3). The same strategy is offered for more sophisticated examples. A major problem in the philosophy of science is to explain how it is that all and only laws of nature resemble each other in a way that no law of nature resembles a non-lawlike regularity. A proposed explanation is that all and only laws of nature involve ordered pairs of properties which stand in a relation of necessitation N. (see Laws, natural)

This distinction between lawlike and non-lawlike regularities is allied to another elusive distinction: that between genuine and so-called ‘grue-like’ properties (see Goodman, N. §3). According to Goodman’s definition, something is grue if and only if it is green and has not been examined before a certain time t (say, the year 2000), or is blue and has not been examined by t. (A cognate term is ‘bleen’ - something is bleen if and only if it is blue and has been examined before t, or is green and has not been examined before t). Since all examined emeralds have been found to be green, it is natural to infer inductively that all emeralds are green. But since all examined emeralds have been found to be grue, by parity of reasoning it seems that all emeralds are grue, and hence that all unexamined emeralds are blue, not green. Describing the evidence in different ways (in terms of ‘green’ or in terms of ‘grue’) apparently warrants mutually incompatible claims. We might reply that ‘green’ is more inductively projectible (more eligible to figure in inductive inferences) than ‘grue. But why say that? Perhaps because ‘green’ is semantically more simple than ‘grue’. Again, why? Perhaps because what ‘green’ refers to, the property being green, is connected to laws of natures in a way that what ‘grue’ refers to, the property being grue, is not. Whatever the full details, the laws of nature tell us (or so we think) that where objects reflect the same wavelengths of light, they have the same colour. Green meets this condition, grue does not. Objects that reflect the same wavelengths of light will be variously grue or bleen according to which of them have, or have not, been examined before time t. In this sense, all green objects have a genuine property in common, but not all grue objects do. Or so it has controversially been argued.

Some philosophers sharply distinguish the explanatory task in metaphysics from that in semantics. The semantic task requires that each predicate has a corresponding property. The metaphysical task does not. Some proponents of the latter task claim that there exist only such properties as are required to ground objective resemblances between particulars. It is then for empirical science to discover which properties exist. In David Lewis's terminology, the metaphysical task employs a ‘sparse’ – as opposed to an ‘abundant’ - view of properties. (This terminology may be misleading, because the issue is not about the relative number of properties that each explanatory task requires).

The term ‘nominalism’ does not currently have a settled use (see Nominalism). At least two doctrines go by this name: a logically stronger and a logically weaker one. The logically stronger one says that there are no abstract entities of any sort (e.g. whether numbers, properties, or sets). The logically weaker concerns only one sort of abstract entity, properties, and says that there are no properties. Objections to abstract entities are ipso facto objections to properties. Two of the most familiar such objections are: How could we know about such entities? And how could we refer to them? As objections to properties, their force partly depends on the view of properties in question. Perhaps they have more apparent force against properties understood as transcendent, than as immanent, entities. (See Abstract objects §4).

There are a number of specific arguments against the existence of properties understood as universals. (The same arguments – or close variants of them – might be deployed against properties understood in other ways). Here are three of them.

First, the problem of instantiation: what is it for a particular to have a property? If it is for the particular to stand in an instantiation relation to the property, what is it for the particular and the property to stand in that relation? An apparently vicious regress threatens. (This is known as Bradley’s regress - see Bradley, F.H. §5).

Second, identity conditions for properties: what are the necessary and sufficient conditions under which properties are identical? Some philosophers argue that properties have no identity conditions. They conclude that talk of properties is insufficiently clear to be philosophically useful.

Third, the explanatory value of properties: is postulating properties genuinely explanatory? Does saying that several tomatoes are red if and only if they have the property of being red in any sense explain what it is for tomatoes to be red? Some philosophers argue that it does not, and that to say that the tomatoes have the property of being red is a cumbrous and unilluminating restatement of the original claim that several tomatoes are red. It is concluded, more generally, that talk of properties is explanatorily empty.

Quine (1948) contains seminal presentations of these last two objections. Quine’s own view is that there is no problem of resemblance, and thus no call for postulating properties to solve it. Your tomato is red; your neighbour’s tomato is red; and that is all that needs to be said. The so-called problem of resemblance is a pseudo-problem, and the postulation of properties is a pseudo-explanation of resembling particulars. Quine’s view has since been labelled (by others) Ostrich Nominalism. Quine’s animadversions against properties are also a consequence of his more general view that intensional entities, such as properties, meanings, and propositions, lack identity conditions, and so are of dubious intelligibility (see Quine, W.v.O. §6).

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Citing this article:
Daly, Chris. The existence of properties. Properties, 1998, doi:10.4324/9780415249126-N121-1. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Taylor and Francis, https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/properties/v-1/sections/the-existence-of-properties.
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