Friday, March 9, 2018

A regress of qualitative difference

According to heavyweight Platonism, qualitative differences arise from differences between the universals being instantiated. There is a qualitative difference between my seeing yellow and your smelling a rose. This difference has to come from the difference between the universals seeing yellow (Y) and smelling a rose (R). But one doesn’t get a qualitative difference from being related in the same way to numerically but not qualitatively different things (compare: being taller than Alice is not qualitatively different from being taller than Bea if Alice and Bea are qualitatively the same—and in particular, of the same height). Thus, if the qualitative difference between my seeing yellow and your smelling a rose comes from being related by instantiation to different things, namely Y and R, then this presupposes that the two things are themselves qualitatively different. But this qualitative difference between Y and R depends on Y and R exemplifying different—and indeed qualitatively different—properties. And so on, in a regress!

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