Abstract
It has been maintained by such philosophers as Quine and Goodman that purely ‘extensional’ language suffices for all the purposes of properly formalized scientific discourse. Those entities that were traditionally called ‘universals’ — properties, concepts, forms, etc. — are rejected by these extensionalist philosophers on the ground that ‘the principle of individuation is not clear’. It is conceded that science requires that we allow something tantamount to quantification over non-particulars (or, anyway, over things that are not material objects, not space-time points, not physical fields, etc.), but, the extensionalists contend, quantification over sets serves the purposes nicely. The ‘ontology’ of modern science, at least as Quine formalizes it, comprises material objects (or, alternatively, space-time points), sets of material objects, sets of sets of material objects,... but no properties, concepts,or forms. Let us thus examine the question: Can the principle of individuation for properties ever be made clear?
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References
J. Kemeny and P. Oppenheim, ‘On Reduction’, Philosophical Studies 7 (1956), 6–19.
P. Oppenheim and H. Putnam, ‘Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis’, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science,vol. II (ed. by H. Feigl, G. Maxwell, and M. Scriven), University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, 1958, pp. 3–36.
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© 1969 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Putnam, H. (1969). On Properties. In: Rescher, N. (eds) Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hempel. Synthese Library, vol 24. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1466-2_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1466-2_12
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