In one sense, properties are mostly emergent anyway.  Otherwise they would be had by the constituent parts which they seldom do . Even if an entity has a property, component parts of that entity may not. Atomism would seem to imply that for every property, if x has that property, and y is a part of x, then for some random part y of x,  x has the property and y doesn’t. Water is wet, but water molecules are not wet. Wetness is the effect of how  water molecules interact. It is an emergent property.

So perhaps we could venture an ontological thesis that for every property, if some entity has it ( is this necessary though ?) , then some decomposition of the entity lacks it, and by extension some assemblage of the entities also lack it. So properties have a sort of incidence zone, a level at which they are exemplified and above and below which they are not exemplified. This would suggest that they are just are effects, but effects that have causal power, because the effect of any entity will be via its properties.

This would also suggest a sort of layered ontology where an entity is ‘generated’ from the level immediately below it. ( sounds almost neo-platonic – Plotinus Enneads ) Perhaps also, the effect of underlying properties are exhausted in generating the entity above, and so are just not available to higher levels directly, although I can imagine situations where an entity exploits properties of entities at deeper layers… so I am still undecided whether this constraint is real or just imagined.

The constructed layer would effectively block access to lower level properties. So property sets (types) would individuate layers, but it is unclear whether this kind of abstraction is sufficient to do anything more than characterise a class of entities. Layers, and types in this sense, ARE IN-effective because, being abstract, they fail to get traction except through language… but they render the causal nexus intelligible so they do pull their weight – so to speak.

So if layers are essentially property sets, then an entity will be at one and only one level – if properties emerge and submerge as described here.. Moreover, the layers will be characterised by the emergent properties so entities at lower layers would not even recognise those at higher layers,. The clay will not see the statue. All statues will be equivalent from the perspective of the clay. The pen does not know what it is writing. The ink does not understand the word it expresses, and the page is oblivious of the ink…. and so on. but.. when do layers and even entities become intelligible ? They are not part of the world, they are cognitive support – and present the possibility of engineering.

If types are sets of properties, then an entity will conform to that type by virtue of the emergent properties that its component parts collectively generate – because properties will all be emergent in this scheme. The possibility is also open for a property to be generated from disjunct property sets, so that there are multiple ways to construct the relevant property. Two ways of being brittle – exemplified by entities that conform to the same emergent property by way of two disjoint property sets.

So there is then a second relationship between types. Already, there is :

 <sub type/super type>  – which is all about sets and subsets of properties

but there is also

< prior/posterior> – where entities with one set of properties – generate entities with another set

Is this  a kind of logical priority or is it temporal ( essentially causal ) priority

It also suggests that there is a fundamental distinction between being and being such ( ie. having properties ). It is only a short step from this into the meinongian jungle !!! ( BTW I will do a piece on meinong shortly. he is the whipping boy, but perhaps the savior of analytical philosophy !!

This also implies that there are no properties that everything has, so being must simply be existence, with no properties because absolute being has NO supertype. Conversely,  do the atomic components have any properties ? If all properties ARE emergent, then can atoms have ANY ? By definition. Or alternatively, perhaps atomics are ALL-property, ie. nothing but property….. How could this happen ?

Afterthought. perhaps it is the phenomenon of information that allows communication between two layers. entities in respective layers would recognise the signals sent and respond accordingly.

 

here ends the rant.