"Meaning and the Problem of Universals, A Kant-Friesian Approach", by Kelley L. Ross


Thus, Locke cannot find any difference between the idea "horse" and the idea "Bucephalus" but "in leaving out something that is peculiar to each individual, and retaining so much of those particular complex ideas of several particular existences as they are found to agree in" [An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chapter XI, §9, & Book III, Chapter III, §9].

That's very similar to Ayn Rand's solution. But Rand did not resort to any mysticism whatsoever in her characterisation of objects; they are just plain, old-fashioned, concrete objects--not ideas or bare collections of properties, just physical objects. What she claims is that you abstract from an object by taking its particular collection of (qualitative) properties and omitting their quantitative measurements. These measurements must exist in some quantity, but they may exist in any quantity, so they are omitted for the purposes of abstraction*. This sounds like an obvious enough approach, but then again, the right approach always sounds obvious after the fact.

*At least two qualifications must be made to this thesis:

  1. Measurements essential to the meaning of the concept must be retained. Hence, the concept 'forty-foot pole' will retain the measurement of forty feet, but its width, colour, texture and so on can be safely omitted.
  2. Measurement omission often only occurs for a certain range of values that are plausible for that concept. Hence, a chair that is a hundred feet tall would, ceteris paribus, no longer be a chair. The omitted measurements for the height of a chair, therefore, must fall within a range of values that would result in a physical object suitable for the being in question to sit on.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Philosophy of Al Qaeda

People out there seem pretty interested in the philosophy of Al Qaeda. Three of my most recent hits have involved searches on those words. Mine is the top-ranked page when "Al-Qaeda" is spelled with a hyphen, and the second-ranked page when it is not. And my page was only referring to someone else's blog page in the first place! So let's talk about the philosophy of Al Qaeda. Paul Berman wrote an excellent article about it. He identifies Sayyid Qutb as the most important philosopher behind the movement. Qutb is Qaeda's intellectual hero, its "Karl Marx". In this respect, Qutb's best known work is Milestones , his Das Kapital . Berman, however, calls attention to Qutb's deeper work, the enormous In the Shade of the Koran . It is full of literary beauty and deep ideas. Just because ideas are deep, however, does not mean that they are true, and many of Qutb's ideas, Berman argues, are indeed false. Qutb opposes the separation of church and s
Read more

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Do you see any conflict between your spending considerable money on the care of your mother and your principle of spreading out wealth to help the most people? Yes. In a sense, my spending money on my mother's care is in conflict with that principle. But so is the fact that I flew back to Australia to visit my daughters at Christmas. That money could also be better spent elsewhere. I've never claimed that I live my life perfectly in accordance with those principles of sharing my money as much as I should. Interview with Peter Singer by Princeton Alumni Weekly , January 26, 2000. Is Peter Singer a hypocrite? Lonnie Lee Best, from his excellent web page on " The Psychology of Hypocrisy ", defines a hypocrite as 'a person whose actions contradict his or her stated or internal beliefs. (Or vice versa.)' From the sections on " Singer's Mother " and " Singer's Donations ", it seems clear enough that Singer falls into this cat
Read more

Commensurability 5.0

Key concept: commensurability Dictionary Definition: measurability by a common standard (Based on definition of "commensurable" in WordNet 2.0 .) Substantive Account: of a claim, measurability of its truth or falsity by a common standard that falls along a continuum of degrees, or levels , of conduciveness to non-coercive agreement. I distinguish the following four levels: Level 1 Keyword: Commonality. UPDATE 2014/12/28: Could also be triviality. Necessary and sufficient condition: Pre-existing agreement about truth or falsity of claim. Examples: "The Pope is Catholic" is at level 1 because of pre-existing agreement of its truth. "The moon is made of green cheese" is at level 1 because of pre-existing agreement of its falsity. Additionally, non-trivial claims can be at level 1 relative to a particular discussion. For example, assumptions made in a scientific paradigm are at level 1 relative to all who share that paradigm. Level 2 Keywor
Read more