tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post8677268682968910742..comments2024-03-28T19:56:42.305-05:00Comments on Alexander Pruss's Blog: A nominalist reductionAlexander R Prusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-24875022963489503592021-06-21T19:19:55.680-05:002021-06-21T19:19:55.680-05:00^thoughts on this Dr. Pruss?^thoughts on this Dr. Pruss?Arath55https://www.blogger.com/profile/07398440799143810977noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-13340228750845683712021-06-21T19:19:54.924-05:002021-06-21T19:19:54.924-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.Arath55https://www.blogger.com/profile/07398440799143810977noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-79879129474051919612021-06-21T19:19:46.435-05:002021-06-21T19:19:46.435-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.Arath55https://www.blogger.com/profile/07398440799143810977noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-40477006043354696482021-06-20T06:54:54.701-05:002021-06-20T06:54:54.701-05:00(Retype due to some typos) 1. Your opinion on the ...(Retype due to some typos) 1. Your opinion on the nominalist view that we only have the vocabulary that we use that seems to commit us to universals because it enables us to say things that would be very tedious to say if we didn’t have that new vocabulary, but the new vocabulary doesn’t carry any ontological commitments with it. <br /><br />For example, try saying “everything the Pope says is true.” Try saying that if you don’t have the truth predicate. What you will end up saying is something that’s kind of infinitely complicated. If the Pope says grass is green then grass is green and if the Pope says grass is purple then grass is purple and so on. The purpose of the truth predicate is just to avoid having to say. It make us possible to say things that that we couldn’t say because we couldn’t express that infinite conjunction. And the talk about properties would be the same. The reason why we have nominalization and talk about properties is just to make it possible to say certain kinds of things that otherwise we would end up expressing using infinite conjunctions and infinite disjunctions but not any ontology that goes along with it. <br /><br />2. Suppose we’ve got two red balls and what we’re gonna say is that the redness is the same in the two balls. There’s a much more informative though rather more complicated explanation about the surface reflectance properties of the balls and the transmission photons to the eyes of the perceiver and the processing that’s going on in their brain and so on. That’s stuff is definitely there, it’s common on any sensible picture about what’s going on. And once you think about all of that picture, the need to appeal to universals, the universal of redness to explain the judgements about similarities is going to be redundant because we’ll get a much more complete explanation out of the kind of underlying scientific theory’s in that case.Arath55https://www.blogger.com/profile/07398440799143810977noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-41617576319395282002021-06-19T20:49:29.779-05:002021-06-19T20:49:29.779-05:001. Dr. Pruss, what’s your opinion on the nominalis...1. Dr. Pruss, what’s your opinion on the nominalist view that we only have the vocabulary that we use that seems to commit us to universals because it enables us to say things that would be very tedious to say if we didn’t have that new vocabulary, but the new vocabulary doesn’t carry any ontological commitments with it. <br /><br />For example, try saying “everything the Pope says is true.” Try saying that if you don’t have the truth predicate. What you will end up saying that’s kind of infinitely complicated. If the Pope says grass is green then grass is green and if the Pope says grass is purple then grass is purple and so on. The purpose of the truth predicate is just to avoid having to say. It make us possible to say things that that we couldn’t say because we couldn’t express that infinite conjunction. And the talk about properties would be the same. The reason why we have nominalization and talk about is just to make it possible to say certain kings of things that otherwise we would end up expressing using infinite conjunctions and infinite disjunctions but not any ontology that goes with it. <br /><br />2. Suppose we’ve got two red balls. There’s a much more informative though rather more complicated explanation about the the surface reflectance properties of the balls and the transmission photons to the eyes of the perceiver and the processing that’s going on in their brain and so on. That’s stuff is definitely there, it’s common on any sensible picture about what’s going on. And once you think about all of that picture, the need to appeal to universals, the universal of redness to explain the judgements about similarities is going to be redundant because we’ll get a much more complete explanation out of the kind of underlying scientific theory’s in that case. Arath55https://www.blogger.com/profile/07398440799143810977noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-79412352914949016392013-12-09T08:16:51.311-06:002013-12-09T08:16:51.311-06:00I think there is an important lesson here. The Qu...I think there is an important lesson here. The Quinean discussion of ontological commitment is focused on quantifiers and identity. But discussion of the applicability of predicates other than identity (e.g., "are similar" or "are opposite") may be just as important, or even more important, for particular reductive proposals.Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-15327367917201758982013-12-09T07:55:24.431-06:002013-12-09T07:55:24.431-06:00Agreed, and that's a nice example. I have van...Agreed, and that's a nice example. I have van Inwagen in mind here as a target, though, and he has no explanatory ambitions of any kind in his Platonism.<br /><br />But maybe your objection can still be run. One way is to say that my story may work for sentences where properties appear in two predicates, the instantiation predicate ("Smith has roundness") and the identity predicate ("green = blue"). But there are many more predicates one may apply to properties. How do we run the story about those? The worry is that for each such predicate, we need to hard-code which properties (or tuples of properties) satisfy it, and that makes the theory even more unwieldy.<br /><br />Divide up predicates that apply to properties into two classes. Type I predicates are such that the applicability of the predicate to properties can be defined in terms of identity and instantiation and predicates applying to things. Type II predicates is everything else.<br /><br />A potential example of a Type I predicate is "are incompatible". "P and Q are incompatible iff necessarily: (x)~(x has P and x has Q)." But there seem to be predicates of Type II. E.g., "are similar". That two properties are similar doesn't mean that their instances similar. <br /><br />Maybe one can handle some or all Type II predicates with a "qua" connective, but that's pretty hairy. (Thus P and Q are similar iff necessarily:(x)(y)(x has P and y has Q implies x qua having P is similar to y having Q. But even here there are going to be technical difficulties. What if P and Q can't be instantiated in the same world?)Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-6600963944154785472013-12-09T07:38:02.257-06:002013-12-09T07:38:02.257-06:00My suspicion is that this "solution" wou...My suspicion is that this "solution" would deprive (meta)physical theories of explanatory power. For suppose we wanted to say, "For every property there is a (different) opposite property" -- we could perhaps come up with something logically equivalent (a long disjunction) but we would have abandoned any kind of explanatory ambition.Heath Whitehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13535886546816778688noreply@blogger.com