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Department of Philosophy

Recent Seminars and Lectures

Markku Keinanen - Against Determinable Universals

24th November 2010, 11:30, Room 005, 48/49 Old Elvet

Weekly Research Seminar

Please note that this seminar was held in room 005, 48/49 Old Elvet, Durham.  Refreshments were served from 5pm with the talk commencing at 5.30am.

Title: Against Determinable Universals 

Abstract:

The task of this paper is to formulate a trope nominalist account of determinables.

Moreover, I take up certain recent arguments for determinable universals (Armstrong 1997, Johansson 2000; Ellis 2001) and formulate a trope nominalist answer to them. I assume that the determinate properties and relations are particulars, i.e., tropes. Since the best examples of fundamental tropes are determinate quantities (masses, charges and distances), I concentrate on the tropes determining quantitative features of objects. According to the proposed account, tropes fall under a highest determinable (mass, charge, distance) because of standing in the formal relations of proportion to each other. We can identify the determinable kind of tropes with a kind term applying to a group tropes connected by the different relations of proportion. The proposed account can explain most of the features of the tropes falling under a highest determinable without introducing determinable universals. However, it must deny the existence of spectral kinds having uninstantiated values.

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