This project is generously funded by the European Commission through a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (LOFUPRO, Grant No. 792202)

About

Talk about properties is ubiquitous throughout the sciences and everyday language, and raises difficult philosophical questions concerning the nature and existence of properties. The aim of this project was to lay down a fundamental theoretical framework for a novel deflationary account of properties. In contrast to more traditional accounts of properties, which take metaphysical questions about properties as their starting point, deflationary accounts take questions about language to be primary. The project aims to advance and inform philosophical research by combining philosophical analysis with tools from mathematical logic, yielding novel insights in metaphysics (universals), the philosophy of language (the function of property talk, its connection to truth and reference), the philosophy of logic (unrestricted quantification), the philosophy of mathematics (the logicist thesis), and philosophical logic (type-free theories, paradoxes).

The project’s principal objectives can be summarized as follows:

1. Developing a precise account of the logical function of property talk.

2. Developing a philosophical account of the nature of properties based on their role in language.

3. Developing formal theories of properties suitable for applications in the foundational studies.

For more information on this project, including a summary of the results obtained, please visit the project's site on the website of the European Commission.

Events

Propositions, properties, sets, and other abstract objects

A two-day workshop providing a platform for recent work in philosophical logic and metaphysics

February 7 - February 8, 2020. University of Amsterdam

Programme