Events and Actions: Some Comments on Brand and Kim

Abstract

After noting that “the paradigm case of something particular is something in the world, say, an individual table, person, or pen”, Myles Brand says, in his interesting paper, that “examples of properties and propositions are also specifiable”.¹ He tells us nothing more concerning this latter. Just how are properties and relations specifiable? Brand thinks it is a “plausible working hypothesis” that properties are legitimate objects, as good as “specifiable groupings of particulars” — which presumably sets or classes are. But sets, remember, are specifiable wholly in terms of their membership. A set α is ordinarily regarded as identical with a set β if and only if every member of a is a member of β and conversely. Properties, however, are not specifiable in terms of the particulars that have them. In fact, it is to be feared that no one has ever quite told us adequately just how properties are to be specified, and consequently what the condition for identity between them actually is. It thus seems to me doubtful that the assumption of properties is on a par with that of sets or classes as a plausible working hypothesis. Similar comments apply to the assumption of propositions. If properties are available propositions are also, and conversely. The most sophisticated recent attempt to construct a logic accommodating both is perhaps that contained in Alonzo Church’s Presidential Address to the Pacific Division a year ago entitled ‘Russellian Simple Type Theory’.²