How to be a Realist about Similarity : Towards a Theory of Features in Object-Oriented Philosophy

• This essay calls for an independent theory of features in object-oriented philosophy. Theories offeatures are in general motivated by at least two interconnected demands: 1) to explain why objects have thecharacteristics they have, 2) to explain how regular divisions in those characteristics can be intuited. Whilea theory of universal properties may be the most internally consistent means of addressing these demands,an object-oriented metaphysics needs to address them without a concept of shared features. This meansthat regular divisions of invariant features and our intuitions of them cannot be explained by the repetitionof self-same characteristics or natural laws. They can instead be explained by the immanent repetition ofsimilar features. However, this requires a new, radically aesthetic understanding of what it means to besimilar in the first place, one in which similarity is an emergent process rather than a state of affairs existingbetween resembling particulars.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Filosofi, etik och religion (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Philosophy, Ethics and Religion (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora och konst (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

universal properties

tropes

features

object-oriented ontology

similarity

aesthetics

materialism

repetition

Plato

Edmund Husserl

Bertrand Russell

Graham Harman

History Of Sciences and Ideas

Idé- och lärdomshistoria

Retorik

Rhetoric

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)