Quine approaches his naturalistic analogue of metaphysics throughthe idea of regimented theory. Regimented theory is our overallscience, the sum total of our best and most objective knowledge aboutthe world, reformulated in the clearest and simplest form. Quine seesthis kind of reformulating as of a piece with ordinary scientificendeavours, but carried further than working scientists are likely tohave reason to do. He discusses the distorting effect which language islikely to have on our view of the world and comments:
The philosophers who most influenced Quine were the LogicalEmpiricists (also known as Logical Positivists), especially RudolfCarnap. The distinction between analytic truths and synthetic truthsplays a crucial role in their philosophy. Analytic truths might becharacterized as those true solely in virtue of the meanings of thewords they contain, or of the rules of the language, or something ofthe sort. Synthetic truths, by contrast, state matters ofextra-linguistic fact, and are known by experience. The LogicalEmpiricists accounted for truths which do not seem to be answerable toexperience, most obviously the truths of logic and mathematics, bysaying that they are analytic. This position was very widely held bythe 1940s. Quine, however, famously casts doubt onanalytic-synthetic distinction, and rejects the use made of it bythe Logical Empiricists and other philosophers from the 1930s on.(Notable among the others is C. I. Lewis, first a teacher and then acolleague of Quine; his influence on Quine has perhaps beenunderestimated. See Baldwin 2013, Ben-Menahem 2016, and Sinclair2016.)
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Quine claims that the dispositions he relies on in his account oflanguage are like the case of fragility rather than the case of Caesar.The disposition to assent to an observation sentence when receivingcertain stimulations is a physical state of the person concerned; inparticular, presumably, of his or her brain. The claim that a givenperson has such a disposition is thus a claim about the state of aphysical object. It is, moreover, a claim that we can test, at leastunder favourable conditions. There is no reason to exclude it fromregimented theory.
What frames these critical points about necessity is that Quineholds that regimented theory, the best and most objective statement ofour knowledge, simply has no need for that notion. The benefit ofincluding such idioms in regimented theory is not worth the cost inunclarity that it would bring.
The modal characterization of an essential property of an object as aproperty that an object must possess fits well with (at leastone aspect of) our everyday understanding of the notion ofessentiality, which often seems simply to be the notion of necessity.To say that something is essential for something else is typicallyjust to say that the first is necessary for the second. But howeverwell this account fits with (this aspect of) our everydayunderstanding of essentiality, it has some consequences that may besurprising: this characterization classifies the property of beingsuch that there are infinitely many primes (or, perhaps, being suchthat there are infinitely many primes if the thing in question isexistent) as essential to Socrates (as well as to all other things),since Socrates (like all other things) must have this property.Socrates must have this property for the simple reason that it isnecessary that there are infinitely many primes. Moreover, thischaracterization classifies the property of being the sole member ofthe unit set \(\2\\) as essential to the number 2, given that it isnecessary that 2 is the sole member of the unit set \(\2\\).
The asymmetry between the essential properties of Socrates, who is anordinary object, and Socrates, which is an abstract object, isexplained: given the theory and definitions proposed, it is notessential to Socrates that he is an element of Socrates, but it isessential to Socrates that Socrates is an element of it (see Zalta2006, 5, for the details).
Roughly, an intrinsic property is a property that an object possessesin isolation, while an extrinsic property is a property thatan object possesses only in relation to other objects. Againthere are different ways of cashing out this distinction. But againthe important point is that on any plausible account of thedistinction, the properties invoked by Fine will not count asintrinsic properties. Thus, condition (2) will not be satisfied.[4]
In addition to these sorts of claims about the essential properties ofordinary individuals, claims about the essential properties of naturalkinds have figured prominently in the literature, since Kripke(1972/1980) and Putnam (1975) made essentialist claims concerning, forexample, cats and water. The core intuitions are that in any possibleworld anything that is not an animal is not a cat and that in anypossible world anything that is not composed of molecules ofH2O is not water. Since we discovered empirically that catsare animals (and not, for example, robots) and that water isH2O (and not some other type of molecule), each of theseclaims asserts a necessary a posteriori connection betweentwo properties. In the first case, what is asserted is that it isnecessary that anything that is a cat is an animal. In the secondcase, what is asserted is that necessarily anything that is (a sampleof) water is composed of molecules of H2O.[6] It is natural to construe these claims on the model of theessentialist claims we have so far considered: it is essential to aparticular object, namely the species cat, to be such thatall of its instances are also instances of the kind animal; it isessential to a particular object, namely the kind water, tobe such that all samples of it are composed of molecules ofH2O. Notice that one may hold that cats are essentiallyanimals in the sense that there is a necessary a posterioriconnection between the property of being a cat and the property ofbeing an animal, without holding that any particular cat isessentially an animal. In other words, from the fact that it isnecessary that every individual that is a cat is an animal, it doesnot follow that every individual that is in fact a cat is such thatnecessarily it is an animal. In still other words, this type ofessentialism about natural kinds does not entail sortalessentialism.
Aristotle, General Topics: metaphysics Descartes, René: modal metaphysics identity: of indiscernibles identity: transworld Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm: modal metaphysics logic: modal logical truth material constitution modality: epistemology of natural kinds possible objects possible worlds Sorites paradox substance
It is not obvious that there is any fully general category (whetherobject or otherwise). Accordingly, not all accounts ofobject assign it to a fully general category, insteadallowing that there are non-objects. On those views, objectdoes indeed divide.
Accounts of object, then, differ with respect to whetherthere are non-objects. And this is not the only fault line. Otherdimensions of difference include what objects there are andwhat objects are. Accordingly, this entry will survey threebroad questions about the category object:
The Contrast Question, as we shall call it, is this: what, ifany, is the contrast or complement of the category object?With what, exactly, are objects to be contrasted? Put differently, arethere non-objects, and if so, what kinds of things are they? Somerelated questions: if there are non-objects, do they form a natural class or collection? What might that class or collection be?
If there are non-objects, some obvious topics to pursue include whatthey are and what they are like. Here we may appeal to variousdistinctions metaphysicians have offered across disparate projects.These distinctions may not map precisely onto anobject/non-object divide and may not have been formulated explicitlyin those terms. But they can still offer insight into what thecontrast or complement of object might be and in turn shedlight on what the category of object might amount to.
We will now survey several such distinctions; in each case there is apurportedly exclusive and exhaustive classification of items into twonon-empty categories, one of which intuitively maps ontoobject and the other onto non-object.
So one might make the distinction between objects and properties.Objects are restricted to one space-time region, while properties arenot. Most objects will occupy many space-time regions by having partsat those regions, though. So it is better to say that objects can bewholly located at only one region, while properties can be whollylocated at many disjoint regions.[9]
Another attempt to analyze the object/property distinction is tosubsume it under the concrete/abstract distinction. According to some,some things are concrete and others are abstract. Some have it thatthere are concrete objects and abstract objects (see entry). The former are usually described as material and having causal powers (see entry on the metaphysics of causation), while the latter are usually thought to immaterial and lack causalpowers. While usually the latter are classified as objects, it is asensible view that the concrete things are objects, and the abstractaare otherwise.
But the concrete/abstract distinction seems no more perspicuous thanthe object/property distinction, and itself cries out for explication.Nearly everyone can agree on the things that belong in each category,but precisely in virtue of what they belong in that category remains amatter of debate. Perhaps this is a reason to rest content withthinking of the object/property distinction as the abstract/concretedistinction. The latter seems intuitive, and resists analysis in morefundamental terms.[10]
In surveying the possible contrasts or complements of object,we have thus far emphasized the intuitive grouping of items intocategories like object (substance,individual, particular, etc.) on the one hand andproperty (or attribute, universal, feature,etc.) on the other. These are standard metaphysical categories, andthey suggest that the proper contrast or complement of objectincludes properties or other property-like items. 2ff7e9595c
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