Heh. What I had in mind was Quine’s criterion for ontological commitment under which it wouldn’t. So Silas is cool is something like, where cool is the predicate letter C: ∃x(Cx ∩ x=”Silas”). We’re committed to the existence of the bound variables (to exist is to be the value of a bound variable) but not of the properties, there doesn’t have to be anything like coolness (assuming that was what you were suggesting).
There is an older argument that claims all words must refer to things and thus a word like “cool” must refer to coolness. But I wasn’t intending to make that argument (though I didn’t say nearly enough in my previous comment to expect everyone to figure that out).
We’re committed to the existence of the bound variables (to exist is to be the value of a bound variable) but not of the properties, there doesn’t have to be anything like coolness (assuming that was what you were suggesting).
My reading of Silas’s essay (and in particular looking at his diagrams) gave me impression that his ‘2’ is closer to what you would describe as a ‘property’ than the category in which you put ‘Silas’.
I was just starting from the observation that in our mathematical discourse we treat numbers like objects, not properties. “The number between 2 and 4”, “there is a prime number greater than one million”, “5 is odd” etc. all treat numbers as objects.
I would call those properties that had properties. But I’m a programmer, not a mathematician or philosopher (so don’t know which limitations I’m supposed to have placed around my thinking!)
By the way, I think ‘cool’ is kinda ‘lame’ but ‘awesomeness’ is kinda ‘cool’. Just sayin’.
Heh. What I had in mind was Quine’s criterion for ontological commitment under which it wouldn’t. So Silas is cool is something like, where cool is the predicate letter C: ∃x(Cx ∩ x=”Silas”). We’re committed to the existence of the bound variables (to exist is to be the value of a bound variable) but not of the properties, there doesn’t have to be anything like coolness (assuming that was what you were suggesting).
There is an older argument that claims all words must refer to things and thus a word like “cool” must refer to coolness. But I wasn’t intending to make that argument (though I didn’t say nearly enough in my previous comment to expect everyone to figure that out).
My reading of Silas’s essay (and in particular looking at his diagrams) gave me impression that his ‘2’ is closer to what you would describe as a ‘property’ than the category in which you put ‘Silas’.
I was just starting from the observation that in our mathematical discourse we treat numbers like objects, not properties. “The number between 2 and 4”, “there is a prime number greater than one million”, “5 is odd” etc. all treat numbers as objects.
I would call those properties that had properties. But I’m a programmer, not a mathematician or philosopher (so don’t know which limitations I’m supposed to have placed around my thinking!)
By the way, I think ‘cool’ is kinda ‘lame’ but ‘awesomeness’ is kinda ‘cool’. Just sayin’.