Philosophical Topics, 21 1993; 199-231.

This paper has two objectives. The first is to develop a logic for properties that accommodates the increasingly widespread philosophical view that it is an empirical question just which properties there are. According to this view, there can be no logical or a priori existence conditions for properties. This leads to a very minimal logic that, because of its philosophical neutrality, provides a useful setting in which richer theories of properties can be developed. The second objective of the paper is to show how this logic provides a general framework within which a variety of accounts of properties can be formulated, classified, and compared. Proofs that the logic is strongly sound and complete, compact, and has the downward Lowenheim-Skolem property are sketched in an appendix.

Related papers on properties and logics for them

1. ``Complex Predicates and Conversion Principles,'' Philosophical Studies, 87, 1997; 1--32 [abstract]
2. "C. I. Lewis's Calculus of Predicates," History and Philosophy of Logic, 16, 1995; 19-37 [Abstract]
3. ``Complex Predicates and Theories of Properties,"  Journal of Philosophical Logic, 27, 1998; 295--325  [Abstract]
4. "Theories of Properties: From Plenitude to Paucity," Philosophical Perspectives, 10, 1996; 243-264. [Abstract]
5. "How Ontology Might be Possible: Explanation and Inference in Metaphysics," Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 23, 1999; 100-131. [Abstract]
6. "Critical Study of Edward Zalta's Intensional Logic and the Metaphysics of Intensionality," Noûs, 17, 1993; 243-248.
7. "Belief and Predication," Noûs 17, 1983; 197-220. [Abstract]
8. "Sense and Nonsense," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 9, 1979; 683-700.