{"id":7990,"date":"2014-04-27T15:50:39","date_gmt":"2014-04-27T15:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/04\/27\/a-question-about-constituent-ontology-1\/"},"modified":"2014-04-27T15:50:39","modified_gmt":"2014-04-27T15:50:39","slug":"a-question-about-constituent-ontology-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/04\/27\/a-question-about-constituent-ontology-1\/","title":{"rendered":"A Question About Constituent Ontology: Sensible Properties as ‘Parts’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following from a reader.  I've edited it for clarity.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Here is a quick question for you: suppose someone were to grant you that there is the sensible character blue<\/em> that you say that there is, a character of your coffee cup, but then still wanted to know why it is "in" or a "constituent" of  a substance such as a cup.  So, take this person to have read and understood your argument about nude particulars and to have said: "Indeed, whatever red is, it cannot be an abstractum<\/em>, for certainly something of the sort could never enter into visual experience.  Nor could "the fact that" some sensible particular stands in an instantiation relation to such an abstract object enter into visual experience, for we theorize such metaphysical facts, we do not see them.  So I grant that blue is a visible property, but why should we say that blue, so characterized is "in" or is a "constituent" of a sensible particular item?"<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, one assumption I am making is that a certain form of nominalism is untenable. Suppose someone said that what makes a blue object blue is that English speakers apply the predicate 'blue' to it.  Nelson Goodman actually maintains something as crazy as this in one of his books.   (Intellectual brilliance and teaching at Harvard are not prophylactic against silliness.)  Why is it crazy?  Because it is the metaphysically antecedent blueness of the thing in question, my trusty coffee cup, for example, that grounds the correctness of the application of 'blue' to the cup.  I am tempted to say that this realism is just Moorean common sense. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"Blue<\/a>In other words, 'blue' is true of the cup because the cup is blue.  And not the other way around.  It is false that the cup is blue because 'blue' is true of it.  Obviously, this use of 'because' is not causal, as causation is understood by most contemporary philosophers.  But neither is it logical.  It is not logical because it does not express a relation that connects a proposition to a proposition.  It expresses an asymmetrical relation of metaphysical grounding. This relation is a relation between what is at most a proposition-like<\/em> entity such as a concrete fact or state of affairs and a proposition.<\/span><\/p>\n

The truthmaker of 'This cup is blue' cannot be anything of a linguistic nature.  (More generally, it cannot be anything of a representational nature.)  And yet something makes our sample sentence true.    There must be a truthmaker.  It would be silly to say that the sentence is "just true."  Given that there must be a truthmaker, it is going to involve the cup and the property, both construed as 'real,' i.e., extramental and extralinguistic.  There is more a truthmaker than this, but we don't need to go into this 'more.'<\/span><\/p>\n

My reader grants that blue is a visible property.  One literally sees the blueness of the cup.  This is not a Platonic visio intellectualis<\/em>.  It is not a seeing with the 'eyes' of the mind, but a seeing with the eyes of the head.  Now if this is the case, then the property I see when I see a blue cup as blue cannot be an item off in a realm apart.  It cannot be a denizen of a Platonic topos ouranos<\/em>, and I am not peering into such a heavenly place when I see blue.  Blueness  cannot be an abstract object as many contemporary philosophers use this phrase.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now if I see the blueness where<\/em> the cup is, and when<\/em> the cup is (although only at times at which the cup is in fact blue), then the pressure is on to say that blueness is some sort of 'proper part' of the cup, albeit in an extended, unmereological sense of 'part.'  It can't be the whole of the cup because the cup has other empirically detectable properties such as being hot and smooth and of such-and-such weight and electrical conductivity.  What other options are there?<\/span><\/p>\n

Reflecting on the data of the problem, I come to the following conclusions: The blueness is real: it is extramental and extralinguistic. It is empirically detectable; hence it cannot be an abstract object. The blueness is detectable at the cup, not at some other place. The blueness is not identical to the cup.<\/span><\/p>\n

We can account for the data by saying say that the blueness of the cup is an ontological constituent of the cup.  Is there a better theory?    <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>Properties as Parts: More on Constituent Ontology<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Against Ostrich Nominalism<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Defining 'Accident'<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Constituent Ontology Versus Relational Ontology and an Argument Against the Latter<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>E. J. Lowe on the Distinction Between Constituent and Relational Ontology<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Tropes<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Is Socrates a Substance or a Cross-Categorical Hybrid?<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following from a reader.  I've edited it for clarity. Here is a quick question for you: suppose someone were to grant you that there is the sensible character blue that you say that there is, a character of your coffee cup, but then still wanted to know why it is "in" or a "constituent" … Continue reading “A Question About Constituent Ontology: Sensible Properties as ‘Parts’”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-constituent-ontology","category-nominalism-and-realism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7990\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}