Heavy Duty Property Realism

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Abstract

Heavy duty property realism is an extremely ideologically parsimonious version of realism about properties, where realism about properties is the view that there are properties. Heavy duty property realists, for example, endorse metaphysical analyses such as (1) and (2), where ‘a’ refers to the property of being positively charged and ‘b’ refers to the relation of being one meter from.

(1) x is unit positively charged =df x instantiates a

(2) x is one meter from y =df x, y instantiates b

As a result of endorsing such analyses, heavy duty realists are able endorse a theory containing only a handful of primitive expressions, such as ‘not’, ‘and’, ‘for some’ and the multigrade predicate ‘instantiates’. As a result of this, their theory is arguably significantly more ideologically parsimonious than credible rival theories of properties. I argue, however, that despite this attractive feature, heavy duty property realism should be rejected.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 6 Jul 2017
EventAustralasian Association of Philosophy Conference 2017 - The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia
Duration: 2 Jul 20176 Jul 2017
https://aap.org.au/Conference-2017 (Conference Website)

Conference

ConferenceAustralasian Association of Philosophy Conference 2017
Country/TerritoryAustralia
CityAdelaide
Period2/07/176/07/17
Internet address

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