What properties exist?
In the metaphysical sense, what properties exist as universals (if they are universals)?
I'm very attracted to the scientific realist idea that the physical/mechanistic properties are the only universals that exist. These universals are like the "potentials" of substance to act in a certain way. They describe how a substance acts. Physical properties include length, solubility, frequency, albedo, etc. However, this link includes certain properties such as color which I don't consider to exist as a universal property. Color is what happens when a wave has a certain wavelength and is interpreted by a conscious entity. So, wavelength might be a universal property because multiple things can exhibit the same wavelength of light.
However, I suppose even these properties could be analyzed to be the product of the 17 different elementary particles and the 4 forces, which would act as Aristotle's "kinds". To be a part of a kind is to have certain properties. The kind is the most fundamental part of reality, then.
I'm very attracted to the scientific realist idea that the physical/mechanistic properties are the only universals that exist. These universals are like the "potentials" of substance to act in a certain way. They describe how a substance acts. Physical properties include length, solubility, frequency, albedo, etc. However, this link includes certain properties such as color which I don't consider to exist as a universal property. Color is what happens when a wave has a certain wavelength and is interpreted by a conscious entity. So, wavelength might be a universal property because multiple things can exhibit the same wavelength of light.
However, I suppose even these properties could be analyzed to be the product of the 17 different elementary particles and the 4 forces, which would act as Aristotle's "kinds". To be a part of a kind is to have certain properties. The kind is the most fundamental part of reality, then.
Comments (8)
Rather, these universals are more like particulars themselves, like tropes. Aristotle might have been a trope theorist by today's standards. They are the fundamental particles that allow matter to act in the way it does. All other universals, like the ones mentioned above, would merely be describing how matter acts. It's not that matter possesses these properties, it's that matter acts in a certain way, dictated by fundamental tropes, tropes that exist in the world.
I don't have a fantastic understanding of quantum mechanics, but from what I do know, these elementary particles all have an opposite (other than the higgs). It's almost as if they are just logically necessary and unanalyzable (whatever the hell that means).
This problem exists as much with particulars; for example where does the object we can all see exist? By this I mean not 'where in relation to the other objects in its surroundings?' but 'in what absolute space?'. This seems to be a problem because 'your space' is not coterminous with 'my space'. Of course we naturally (and rightly, I think) assume that each phenomenological space is a perspective on a common space, but it remains the case that the location of the tree cannot be established except relatively to an arbitrarily chosen perspective, the absolute location just like the absolute space and the absolute object are formal indeterminables.
I think it is likewise for properties; they are formal 'entities' indeterminably located in a shared logical space. That logical space can be conceptualized in terms of sets or in terms of substances and properties. Either of these ways of conceptualizing becomes problematic when questions regarding substantive existence are asked in relation to them. I suspect such questions are simply based on category errors, on our equivocal notions of 'existence'.
It doesn't exist anywhere, it just exists. There's no reason to assume that everything has a location. Spacetime exists; where is it?
The questions can spiral inwards a bit though if one uses the word 'exists'. For some reason when I hear the word 'exists' I reach inside my space-time continuum. I quite take your underlying point.