The Feasibility of Determinables and its Relation to the Scientific Image

• Autores: Juan José Colomina Almiñana
• Localización: VII Conference of the Spanish Society for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science: Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 18-20 July 2012 / Sociedad de Lógica, Metodología y Filosofía de la Ciencia en España (aut.), Concepción Martínez Vidal (dir. congr.), José L. Falguera López (dir. congr.), José Miguel Sagüillo Fernández-Vega (dir. congr.), Víctor Martín Verdejo Aparicio (dir. congr.), Martín Pereira Fariña (dir. congr.), 2012, ISBN 978-84-9887-939-1, págs. 382-388
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto Completo Libro
• Resumen

  • Objects have properties. Stones are solid, particles have mass, flowers have colors. All these instances exemplify how the world consists of entities possessing a property or determinate from a given category or determinable. According to this view, the world has a determinate/determinable structure. But, what does it really mean that the world has a determinate/determinable structure? The main purpose of this paper is to answer this question and explore the relation between the notions of determinate and determinable and our current scientific image of the world. First, we shall discuss the traditional distinction between determinate and determinable. I shall support that this classical approach does not provide a satisfactory explanation of the nature of determinables. This distinction solely based on the notion of extensionality or co-determinability (which holds among attributes that belong in the same determinable) avoids the question of what exactly a determinable is. Then, we shall defend that it is necessary to reformulate the relation between determinate and determinable within a space that is restricted to relatively determinate states (or partial information scenarios), and that this fact can provide a definition of what the candidate determinates should be.