Nominalism about Properties

Guigon, Ghislain; Rodríguez-Pereyra, Gonzalo

doi:10.4324/9781315724874

2015

DOI: 10.4324/9781315724874

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Nominalism about Properties

Ghislain Guigon¹,

Gonzalo Rodríguez-Pereyra²

Abstract: As Lorne Falkenstein has pointed out, scholarship on Hume's account of space and time has taken giant steps forward in the past 20 years. Previously, even sympathetic Hume scholars, such as Norman Kemp Smith and Charles Hendel, criticised Hume's account on partly inadequate grounds and focused on the finite divisibility of space and time. Nowadays, our understanding of A Treatise of Human Nature, Book 1 (1739), part 2, in which Hume puts forward his account of spatial properties, is both more accurate and wide… Show more

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Quidditism and the Resemblance of Properties

Guigon

2016

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy

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It is widely agreed that properties play causal roles: they capture the causal powers of things. But do properties have their causal roles essentially? David Lewis did not think so. He adhered to the doctrine of quidditism, namely the doctrine that the identity of properties is primitive and that they can trade their causal roles. Quidditism is controversial. But Lewis did not see why he should want to reject it. He knew that he could avoid quidditism on the cheap by treating individuals and properties alike in rejecting transworld multilocation of properties and endorsing a counterpart theory for properties. But he did not see why he should want to do so. In this article, I argue that Lewis should have wanted to endorse a counterpart theory for properties in order to reject quidditism. My argument concerns resemblance relations among properties. Another constitutive role of properties is that they capture objective resemblances between their instances. The premises of my argument are intuitive claims about resemblances among some properties that Lewis held on Humean grounds.

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Quidditism and the Resemblance of Properties

Guigon

2016

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy

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TruthsquaGrounds

Guigon

2017

Philos Phenomenol Research

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A number of philosophers have recently found it congenial to talk in terms of grounding. Grounding discourse features grounding sentences that are answers to questions about what grounds what. The goal of this article is to explore and defend a counterpart-theoretic interpretation of grounding discourse. We are familiar with David Lewis's applications of the method of counterpart theory to de re modal discourse. Counterpart-theoretic interpretations of de re modal idioms and grounding sentences share similar motivations, mechanisms, and applications. I shall explain my motivations and describe two applications of a counterpart theory for grounding discourse. But, in this article, my main focus is on counterpart-theoretic mechanisms.

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Individuals as Universals: Audacious Views in Early Twelfth-Century Realism

Tarlazzi¹

2017

Journal of the History of Philosophy

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This article investigates a twelfth-century realist view on universals, the individuum-theory. The individuum-theory is criticised by Peter Abelard and Joscelin of Soissons, and endorsed by 'Quoniam de generali' as well as by the unpublished Isagoge commentary found in MS Paris, BnF, lat. 3237, which is taken into account for the first time. The individuum-theory blurs traditional distinctions between nominalism and realism by claiming that the universal is the individual thing itself. Its main strategies for such a claim are presented, namely: putting forward identity "by indifference," distinguishing status and attentiones, and neutralising opposite predicates. It is argued that these strategies have parallels in Peter Abelard's own views. The individuum-theory's paradoxical realism seems to defend universal res after criticisms were advanced against more traditional material essence realism and it seems to have been using some of the nominalists' tools

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Nominalism about Properties

Cited by 3 publications

References 4 publications

Quidditism and the Resemblance of Properties

Quidditism and the Resemblance of Properties

TruthsquaGrounds

Individuals as Universals: Audacious Views in Early Twelfth-Century Realism

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