Determinables and Brute Similarities

Ingvar Johansson has argued that there are not only determinate universals, but also determinable ones. I here argue that this view is misguided, by reviving a line of argument to the following effect: what makes determinates falling under a same determinable similar cannot be distinct from what makes them different. If true, then some similarities — imperfect similarities between simple determinates properties — are not grounded in any kind of property-sharing. Section 1 introduces some of the main points of Johansson's realism about determinables. Section 2 argues that realism about determinables entails that the difference-makers and the similarity-makers of determinate properties are distinct. Section 3 argues that the difference-and similarity-makers, if they are distinct from each other, also have to be distinct from the determinate properties themselves. Section 4 argues that both the similarity-makers and the difference-makers of determinates are epistemologically inaccessible. Section 5 puts forward two other problematic implications of the distinction between the similarity-makers and the difference-makers of determinates. Section 6 introduces the view that the similarity-makers and the difference-makers of determinate properties are one and the same. Section 7 argues that no contradiction is involved in such an identity claim, for imperfect similarity and imperfect dissimilarity between properties are two faces of the same relation.