Properties

Abstract

In the present climate of metaphysics nothing is more important, I think, than the recognition of properties and relations as fundamental constituents of reality. Once properties and relations are admitted, further questions can be raised. Should we, as our languages seem to urge us, admit alongside properties and relations, things, particulars, which have the properties and between which relations hold? Or should we instead try to construct particulars out of properties and relations, or even out of properties alone, or relations alone? Again, should we take properties and relations as universals, that is, should we take it that different particulars can have the very same property, in the full strict sense of the word ‘same’, and that different pairs, triples…. n-tuples….can be related by the very same relation? Or should we instead hold that properties and relations are particulars (abstract particulars, tropes, moments) so that each particular has its own properties that no other particular can have, and pairs, etc. of particulars each their own relations? A third issue: should we allow that properties and relations themselves can be propertied and stand in relations? Or should we instead with Brian Skyrms (1981) allow nothing but a first level of properties and relations?