Prima facie, there are distributional properties, distributable properties, and they are distinct. It is one thing, Josh Parsons (2004) suggests, to have a redness distribution (say, to be red in such-and-such places but not in others) and another to be just plain red. What I’m interesting in is the claim that there are no distributable properties; there are just distributional properties. Is this a coherent proposal?
One might object as follows. Suppose that D is a distributional property. Intuitively, the instantiation of D involves a distribution of instances of some distributable property D*. On the current proposal, there simply is no property like D*, so the instantiation of D cannot literally involve a distribution of D*-instances. But then how are we to understand what it is for D to be instantiated in the first place? Just as distributors need material to distribute, distributional properties need distributable properties distribute.
I think the thing to say in response to this concern is that it mistakenly, though understandably, assumes that the sense in which distributional properties are ‘distributional’ lines up closely with the everyday sense of the term. Instead, we should think of ‘distributional property’ more as a technical term.
I do not mean to suggest, however, that the notion of distributional property we are working with here is obscure. Suppose that Frank, pointing to Gary who is grimacing and then to Albert who is smiling, says, “There is pain to the left and pleasure to the right.” One might claim in this case that a proper part of the world consisting of Frank, Gary, and Albert involves a distribution of distributable properties including being in pain and having pleasure. Let us call this way of understanding distributional properties the ordinary conception of distributional properties.
One might claim instead that the proper part of the world mentioned above instantiates the distributional property being in pain-to-the-left-and-pleasure-to-the-right. Here the idea is that the truth-maker for Frank’s claim is that the Frank-Gary-Albert fusion instantiates the single aforementioned property. In this case the fusion does not instantiate being in pain and having pleasure qua distributable properties because there are no such properties. To contrast this conception of distributional properties with the ordinary one, call it the minimalist conception (given its commitment to distributional properties but not distributable properties).
Both the ordinary conception and the minimalist conception, as far as I can tell, are coherent, so it seems to me that so far we have not been given a good reason to think that the claim that there are distributional properties but no distributable properties is incoherent. What do you all think?
-Kelly
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4 comments:
A related question is whether there might exist *distributional* property rights, but not *distributable* instances of that property right (per licensed agreements to manufacturers of patented or copywritten technology.)
The possible complications for intellectual proeprties law are legion. E.g. contractual disputes over exclusive market agreements might require new statutes. Afterall, one party could always claim that a license did not provide for *distributable instances* of a property right, but merely a distributional right. And under such an agreement, no opportunities for generating revenue for the manufacturer would exist.
... as with all issues in ontology, there are pragmatic considerations that should be brought to bear on what exists and why.
Kelly's proposal of allowing distributional properties and property rights w/out distributable instances could harm consumers and further burden an already overloaded federal court system.
I respectfully reject the proposal.
Hi Kelly,
I’m not sure if any of these objections are all that different from the one you’re responding to. They certainly don’t show that the minimalist view (that there are no distributable properties, but only distributional properties) is incoherent, but instead try to question its plausibility. Anyhow, here goes…
FIRST OBJECTION: The mind your ps and qs objection.
Frank, pointing to Gary who is grimacing and then to Albert who is smiling, says, “There is pain to the right and pleasure to the left.” He pauses for a minute to consider his error, and then says, “Sorry guys, I always get my right confused with my left.”
According to the minimalist conception Frank initially ascribes the distributional property being in pleasure-to-the-left-and-pain-to-the-right to the Frank-Gary-Albert fusion. Then, after he changes his mind, he ascribes the distributional property being in pain-to-the-left-and-pleasure-to-the-right to the Frank-Gary-Albert fusion. But how could he have made such an embarrassing mistake?
(I don’t take this in itself to be a very serious objection, that is, I don’t think the minimalist needs to worry all that much about the properties speakers ascribe to objects; the problem is that the two properties ascribed seem to have something in common. This leads of course to the following.)
SECOND OBJECTION: the something in common objection.
Consider the following three cases.
Case 1: Frank, points to Gary who is grimacing and then to Albert who is smiling, and says, “There is pain to the left and pleasure to the right.”
Case 2: Frank, points to Gary who is grimacing and then to Albert who is grimacing, and says, “There is pain to both the left and the right.”
Case 3: Frank, points to Gary who is smiling and then to Albert who is grimacing, and says, “There is pleasure to both the left and the right.”
On the ordinary conception each pair of cases has something in common: (i) in cases 1 and 2 someone is in pain, (ii) in cases 1 and 3 someone is experiencing pleasure, and (iii) in cases 2 and 3 two people are experiencing the same sensation. There is something in common in these cases. Not so on the minimalist’s conception.
On the minimalist conception, the Frank-Gary-Albert fusions instantiate a single property in each case. In case 1 it is the distributional property being in pain-to-the-left-and-pleasure-to-the-right; in case 2 it is the distributional property being in pain-to-the-left-and-pain-to-the-right; in case 3 it is the distributional property being in pleasure-to-the-left-and-pleasure-to-the-right. But what do these distributional properties have in common?
The minimalist can just take the similarity between the cases as primitive. This might appear unmotivated, but how bad is it really? Well…
THIRD OBJECTION: the similarity objection.
Let’s assume, for the moment that the ordinary conception is true (so that I can describe the following situation). Consider two discs, D1 and D2, composed of points. Let D1 be an otherwise black disc with a red dot on it (that is, there is some roundish region of D1 which is composed of red points and then the rest of D1 is composed of black points). And let D2 be an otherwise black disk with a slightly bigger red dot on it. D1 and D2 are almost indiscernible.
The minimalist would have to hold that D1 has something like the distributional property of being otherwise-black-with-a-roundish-type-1-red-dot-located-at-so-and-so and that D2 has something like the distributional property of being otherwise-black-with-a-roundish-type-2-red-dot-located-at-so-and-so. Suppose he takes this similarity as primitive. How far is he willing to go?
Now consider a whole legion of otherwise black discs with red dots of slightly different shapes and sizes in about the same place, which are all near perfect copies of each other. Is the minimalist willing to hold that there is some sort of primitive similarity relation between this legion of discs? Here I think the cost is just too high, but maybe I’m missing something.
-Byron
Hello again,
For what it’s worth, I’ve come up with another --- this time, I think, more serious ---objection to the minimalist proposal.
FOURTH OBJECTION: The distributional properties are distributable too objection.
Assume, for reductio, that the minimalist’s proposal is true (there are distributional properties but no distributable properties). According to the minimalist’s proposal, the property of being in pain-to-the-left-and-pleasure-to-the-right exists and is a distributional property. But there appears to be a sense in which a distributional property such as being in pain-to-the-left-and-pleasure-to-the-right is itself distributable. Let that the fusion of Fritz, Gregory, and Allen be a perfect duplicate of the fusion of Frank, Gary, and Albert. It seems fair to assume that both the Fritz-Gregory-Allen and the Frank-George-Albert fusions instantiate the distributional property being in pain-to-the-left-and-pleasure-to-the-right. If so, then the distributional property being in pain-to-the-left-and-pleasure-to-the-right is also a distributable property; but, according to the minimalist’s proposal, there are no distributable properties. Contradiction. Therefore, the minimalist’s proposal is false.
Does this objection work?
-Byron
[... ] is one another great source on this issue[...]
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