180068 SE Properties (2022S)

ORGANISATIONAL MATTERS: Depending on circumstances, this seminar will take place in the lecture hall or online. Details will be communicated in time on Moodle or by e-mail.
The seminar will be held in German, but most of the literature will be in English. Papers may be written in German or English.

AIMS: This seminar aims to introduce students to one of the most exciting philosophical topics. They shall become familiar with important historical and contemporary questions and debates about properties and be able to relate them to other areas of philosophy.

A second aim of this seminar is to practise philosophical writing. Based on the seminar content, we will discuss how to find and develop a topic and how to structure and write of philosophical texts. Students can write their BA thesis in this seminar; it can also serve as a basis for MA theses in the PP MA course.

CONTENT: Properties play an essential role in many areas of philosophy. Metaethics, for example, deals with the question of whether moral properties exist independently of human conventions, judgements or emotions. The philosophy of science examines, among other things, whether properties are theory-dependent or theory-independent. The philosophy of mathematics discusses the primacy of abstract objects, properties or structures in its explanations. Epistemology discusses properties in connection with the objects of knowledge. Logic deals with modal properties, and in the philosophy of language, properties can serve as the truth-makers of predicates. But what exactly are properties and what types of properties are there?

In this seminar we will first look at the ontology of properties. Is a property itself a kind of object or does it only exist in other objects? Do properties exist individuated in the things that possess them, are they objective similarities between things, or are they ontologically dependent on observers, concepts or judgements? Are they maybe simply attributions we make? What does it mean, ontologically speaking, to say that several things possess the same property: do they actually share it, do they have a commonality, or do they have similar abilities or powers?

Then we will look at various distinctions made in philosophy regarding properties. For example, we distinguish between essential and accidental, sortal and characterising, intrinsic and extrinsic, primary and secondary, sparse and abundant, determinable and determinate, dispositional and categorical, one-, two- and multi-place properties. We discuss the purposes of these distinctions and the merits and disadvantages of different approaches to them.

METHOD: On each topic, students will prepare one text each in small groups and then present them in the seminar. There will be texts with divergent viewpoints for each of the topics, which we will compare in the seminar and discuss their pros and cons. Special attention will be given to the application of the respective points of view in other areas of philosophy. Students who do not present a text on a topic will prepare an essay plan for the relevant unit.