Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T00:45:34.286Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Properly Extensive Quantities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Abstract

This article introduces and motivates the notion of a “properly extensive” quantity by means of a puzzle about the reliability of certain canonical length measurements. An account of these measurements’ success, I argue, requires a modally robust connection between quantitative structure and mereology that is not mediated by the dynamics and is stronger than the constraints imposed by “mere additivity.” I outline what it means to say that length is not just extensive but properly so and then briefly sketch an application of proper extensiveness to the project of providing a reductive ground for metric quantitative structure.

Type
Metaphysics
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I am indebted to Erica Shumener, Harjit Bhogal, Shamik Dasgupta, Hartry Field, Cian Dorr, Tim Maudlin, audiences at the BSPS and PSA 2014 meetings, and the NYU Thesis Prep seminar for invaluable comments on previous versions of this article.

References

Arntzenius, Frank, and Dorr, Cian. 2012. “Calculus as Geometry.” In Space, Time and Stuff, ed. Arntzenius, Frank. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balashov, Yuri. 1999. “Zero-Value Physical Quantities.” Synthese 119 (3): 253–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Euclid. 1908. The Thirteen Books of Euclid’s Elements. Vol. 1, trans. Sir Thomas Little Heath, ed. Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Field, Hartry. 1980. Science without Numbers. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Krantz, David, Luce, Duncan, Suppes, Patrick, and Tversky, Amos, eds. 1971. Foundations of Measurement. Vol. 1, Additive and Polynomial Representations. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Mundy, Brent. 1987. “The Metaphysics of Quantity.” Philosophical Studies 51 (1): 2954.CrossRefGoogle Scholar