Ranvier wrote: ↑March 26th, 2023, 8:00 amI've should've included this note: "
qualities and
quiddities" are NOT "
properties" but subjective descriptions of an object. Not "objective"!
No, qualities, quantities, and quiddities are all kinds of
properties, and they are all different from
concepts or
predicates qua descriptive representations (descriptions) of things. Conceptual or verbal representations (signs) have
semantic properties (meaning, reference) that properties lack. For example, the physical concept <mass> has meaning&reference, but it's nonsensical to say that the mass of a physical object has meaning&reference.
Generally speaking, properties are ways things are, ways of being (
modi essendi); and there are (ontologically) objective ways things are.
By the way, the noun "quiddity" has more than one meaning in contemporary philosophy, but…
QUOTE>
"I am using 'quidditative property' to denote any property pertaining to what (
quid) a thing is, whether accidental or essential, monadic or relational. A quidditative property is a what-determination."
(Vallicella, William F. "Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis." In
Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, edited by Daniel D. Novotný and Lukáš Novák, 45-75. New York: Routledge, 2014. p. 70n33)
<QUOTE
So, a quiddity in this sense is a "whatness"—as opposed to a "howness" (quality)—, i.e. an individualizing or "sortal" property telling us what (kind of thing) a thing is.
Whether quiddities thus defined are properties
sui generis or reducible to bundles of (essential) qualities is another question I'm not going to discuss here.
Others use this term in the following senses:
QUOTE>
"[T]here is a sense in which individuals are all the same. In abstraction from their properties and relations they are barely numerically different. (This is the rejection of the doctrine of
haecceity.) By contrast, properties and relations do each have their own haecceity, or, better, their own quiddity or nature."
(Armstrong, D. M.
A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. p. 44)
"Haecceitism for individuals is parallel to Quidditism for universals."
(Armstrong, D. M.
A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. p. 59)
———
"The term ‘quiddity’ is sometimes used for these potentially hidden fundamental properties that play the causal/nomic role specified in microphysics."
(Chalmers, David.
Constructing the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. pp. 348-9)
"Metaphysical quidditism holds that there exist quiddities distinct from the associated roles and powers."
(Chalmers, David.
Constructing the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. p. 352)
"Here we can say that
quiddities are the fundamental categorical properties that play the fundamental roles specified in physics. Alternatively, we can say that quiddities are the categorical bases of the microphysical dispositions characterized in physics. We can stipulate in addition that quiddities are distinct from the roles or the dispositions themselves. A view on which there are only role or dispositional properties, and no distinct properties playing those roles or serving as the basis for the dispositions, is a view on which there are no quiddities.
It is not obvious that there must be quiddities. There are respectable structuralist or dispositionalist views of physics on which physics involves just structure or dispositions all the way down."
(Chalmers, David. "Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism." In
Consciousness and the Physical World: Perspectives on Russellian Monism, edited by Torin Alter and Yujin Nagasawa, 246-276. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. p. 254)
———
"While the understanding of ‘quiddity’ varies somewhat, at least in the context of the dispositionalism vs. categoricalism debate the meaning is fairly well-established: quiddities are categorical (i.e., non-dispositional) properties, each of which is identical to itself and distinguished from all others. A quiddity can be seen as the property-analogue of a bare substratum: its intrinsic nature consists wholly in self-identity and numerical distinctness from other quiddities, and that is all there is to be said."
(Dumsday, Travis.
Dispositionalism and the Metaphysics of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. p. 95)
———
"The believer in quiddities says that there are intrinsic properties that realize the roles picked out by the Ramsification of a scientific theory—even a basic physical theory—and says that other intrinsic properties could have played these roles."
(Peacocke, Christopher.
The Primacy of Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. p. 189)
<QUOTE
