Properly Extensive Quantities

Philosophy of Science 82 (5):833-844 (2015)
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Abstract

This article introduces and motivates the notion of a “properly extensive” quantity by means of a puzzle about the reliability of certain canonical length measurements. An account of these measurements’ success, I argue, requires a modally robust connection between quantitative structure and mereology that is not mediated by the dynamics and is stronger than the constraints imposed by “mere additivity.” I outline what it means to say that length is not just extensive but properly so and then briefly sketch an application of proper extensiveness to the project of providing a reductive ground for metric quantitative structure

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Zee R. Perry
New York University, Shanghai

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References found in this work

Science Without Numbers: A Defence of Nominalism.Hartry H. Field - 1980 - Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press.
The metaphysics of quantity.Brent Mundy - 1987 - Philosophical Studies 51 (1):29 - 54.
Zero-value physical quantities.Yuri Balashov - 1999 - Synthese 119 (3):253-286.

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