Showing papers on "Exemplification published in 1972"

Relatedness Without Relations

Abstract: 1. Two Conceptions of relations. Belief in the existence of relations is a widespread phenomenon in twentieth century philosophy. It used to be that philosophers believed in properties without feeling themselves committed to relations. But now belief in properties goes hand in glove with a belief in relations. I shall defend the earlier view that properties alone are sufficient to account for things being related. In this section, my aim is to show that one thing's being related to another cannot be accounted for by relations. In short, relatedness cannot be accounted for by relations. But the whole reason for being of relations is as a support for relatedness. Thus I shall conclude that there are no such entities as relations. Talk about either relations or properties might be taken in either of two ways. In respect to properties, these two ways correspond to the philosophical traditions that treat properties, on the one hand, as existing ante res and, on the other, as existing in rebus. On the former view, a property is an entity that is a distinct thing from an individual that has it. It is something other than the individual and thus, for there to be a state of affairs of the individual having the property, it is necessary for a link-called exemplification, participation, or copulation-to exist between the two. The property exists by itself as a distinct thing and is thus not individuated by the individual having it. On the latter view, a property is a constituent of the individual that has it. It is not a distinct thing from the individual that has it. If it were a distinct thing, one could speak of another individual also having it. But the properties of another individual are its constituents and are not distinct from it. Thus if one property were had by two individuals, it would not really be one property but would be two properties. A property

Color Qualities and Reference to Them

Abstract: Rightly or, wrongly I am going to take it that the doctrine of simple qualities says three things. First, that yellow, for example, is a simple unanalyzable quality. I don't really believe this to be true, except in what it denies, but I have no immediate quarrel with it. Second, a simple quality, such as yellow, is what it is quite independently of its pattern of exemplification. Third, yellow is somehow ineffable, the sheer dazzling yellowishness of yellow things cannot be conveyed in words. In the third case, I do not mean the commonplace that words are different from things, that the word 'ye"ow' is not itself yellow. I mean the view that there is something about color qualities as immediately apprehended by us that eludes description. Now all these views are somewhat old-fashioned. The third is hardly mentioned nowadays. Yet I am not so sure that we are not still very much in