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Concept
Property (philosophy)
Summary
In logic and philosophy (especially metaphysics), a property is a characteristic of an object; a red object is said to have the property of redness. The property may be considered a form of object in its own right, able to possess other properties. A property, however, differs from individual objects in that it may be instantiated, and often in more than one object. It differs from the logical/mathematical concept of class by not having any concept of extensionality, and from the philosophical concept of class in that a property is considered to be distinct from the objects which possess it. Understanding how different individual entities (or particulars) can in some sense have some of the same properties is the basis of the problem of universals.
A property is any member of a class of entities that are capable of being attributed to objects. Terms similar to property include predicable, attribute, quality, feature, characteristic, type, exemplifiable, predicate, and intensional entity.
Generally speaking, an object is said to exemplify, instantiate, bear, have or possess a property if the property can be truly predicated of the object. The collection of objects that possess a property is called the extension of the property. Properties are said to characterize or inhere in objects that possess them. Followers of Alexius Meinong assert the existence of two kinds of predication: existent objects exemplify properties, while nonexistent objects are said to exemplify, satisfy, immanently contain or be consubstantiated by properties that are actually possessed and are said to encode, be determined by, be consociated with or be constituted by properties that are merely ascribed to objects. For example, since Pegasus is merely mythical, Pegasus encodes the property of being a horse, but Pegasus exemplifies the property of being a character of Greek mythology as well. Edward Jonathan Lowe even treated instantiation, characterization and exemplification as three separate kinds of predication.
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Ontological neighbourhood
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Related concepts (18)
Philosophy
Philosophy (love of wisdom in ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its own methods and assumptions. Historically, many of the individual sciences, like physics and psychology, formed part of philosophy. But they are considered separate academic disciplines in the modern sense of the term.
Identity (philosophy)
In philosophy, identity (from identitas, "sameness") is the relation each thing bears only to itself. The notion of identity gives rise to many philosophical problems, including the identity of indiscernibles (if x and y share all their properties, are they one and the same thing?), and questions about change and personal identity over time (what has to be the case for a person x at one time and a person y at a later time to be one and the same person?). It is important to distinguish between qualitative identity and numerical identity.
Universal (metaphysics)
In metaphysics, a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals are repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things. For example, suppose there are two chairs in a room, each of which is green. These two chairs both share the quality of "chairness", as well as greenness or the quality of being green; in other words, they share two "universals". There are three major kinds of qualities or characteristics: types or kinds (e.