Resemblance: A logico-philosophical analysis

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Tezin Türü: Doktora

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Edebiyat Fakültesi, Felsefe Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2005

Öğrenci: İSKENDER TAŞDELEN

Danışman: DAVİD GRÜNBERG

Özet:

Indiscernibility, interchangeability and resemblance relations may be named as weak-identity relations or identity-like relations. Indeed,identical objects can be thought to satisfy all these three relations. According to realist view, these relations are defined on the basis of properties of objects. While indiscernibility is a context-independent relation, since indiscernibility is defined in terms of all properties of objects, interchangeability and resemblance relations are defined in terms of some significant properties of objects and thus they should be regarded as context-dependent. We should consider the following points while comparing rivalling theories of resemblance: 1. The theory explaining resemblance relations between objects should cover as many domains as possible. Instead of simply admitting that objects of a given type may resemble each other, the theory should explain how these relations are possible. 2. Objects do not just resemble or they do not; resemblance is a relation that admits degrees. Thus the theory providing a finer analysis of close and weak resemblances should be preferred. In comparison to resemblance nominalism, realist theory of resemblance is strongerwith respect to both points. The criticism that realist view may not explain degrees of resemblance can be rejoined by removing the indeterminacy as to the nature of this notion.Among knowledge representation systems, property and attribute systems provide a simple but strong models for analytic ontology. Weak identity relations can easily be defined in these systems and the results following from these definitions can be seen to conform to our intuitions about weak identity relations.