Numbers themselves are not properties
— Herg

Really? What then of the distinction quality vs quantity? — TheMadFool

Number is not the same as quantity. The number 3 is not the same as 3 OF something.

For instance, red is a certain wavelength of light. — TheMadFool

No it isn’t. Red is a colour. There is a wavelength of light that, when viewed by humans with normal vision, causes them to see the colour red, but that is not the same as red being that wavelength.

Here you seem to be making an implicitly metaphysical claim that the physical stuff the hammer is made out of is actually real, and therefore, because it’s actually real, the dog can actually play with it. — bloodninja

The fact that dogs can play with hammers does not imply that they are real. Dogs can play with hammers in cartoons, and no-one would think that dogs and hammers in cartoons are real. I will, however, concede that in using the term ‘object’ without making it clear that I mean ‘physical object’, since ‘object’ is frequently understood in philosophy to imply independent existence I may have seemed to be making a claim for reality of the hammer. This was not my intention.

Please note that, for the dog, the hammer is neither ontologically ready-to-hand equipment nor an ontologically present-at-hand object. I think it’s safe to say that dogs aren’t ontological, and for that reason the dog has no understanding of the being of the hammer as either a hammer or an object. For the dog it is a curious play-thing. Therefore that the dog can play with the hammer does not prove that the hammer is also an object. Ontologically speaking, the dog is just irrelevant. — bloodninja

You begin here by saying that the dog has no ontological view of the hammer (which I will agree to), but then you allow that to the dog the hammer is a play-thing. Obviously you do not mean to imply that the dog THINKS of the hammer as a play-thing – it just plays with it – but even so, your position is untenable, because if the dog is able to play with the hammer but does not view the hammer AS anything, this can only be by virtue of the hammer possessing some properties that are not conferred on the hammer by its being viewed AS something, but are actually intrinsic to the hammer. These are the hammer’s physical properties – its length, breadth, mass, shape, molecular constitution, and so on. These intrinsic physical properties constitute the hammer as a physical object.

The hammer driving in the nail in wood in order to..., the door knob you don't notice but that you nevertheless turn to open the door in order to enter the room in order to..., the keyboard beneath your fingers that you type on in order to express the meaning of the sentence in order to..., the sidewalk at your feet while rushing to the train in order to not be late to work... have in the first instance the intelligibility of readiness-to-hand, there is no awareness of anything like an object. — bloodninja

Untrue. I can pick up a hammer, knowing it to be a hammer, and also being aware AT EXACTLY THE SAME TIME of its size and shape and appearance, which are its properties as a physical object.

Moreover, properties do not belong to the ready-to-hand. Properties only belong to present-at-hand ontology. — bloodninja

Everything that exists necessarily has properties, irrespective of whether it features in anyone’s ontology or not. Are you seriously going to claim that the hammer does not have such properties as length, breadth and mass?

It may be, of course, that you think hammers do not really exist, in which case your position is idealist. Are you in fact an idealist?

I think that it's astonishing that anyone thinks that they're in a position to judge the creator of the fucking universe. — Wosret

Your sentence implies the following argument:

X created the universe.
Therefore I should not judge X.

Clearly not a valid argument.

The hammer is not an object, it is equipment. — bloodninja

It’s both. The fact that it’s used as equipment does not prevent it being an object. If it were not an object, my dog could not sniff it, pick it up in his mouth, or anything else he might do with it. The hammer is not equipment as far as my dog is concerned, so if it were only equipment and not an object, he would not be able to interact with it at all, which clearly he can.

As such it belongs to a different ontological order than the subject/object (or mental/physical) ontology that this discussion has been grounded in. — bloodninja

Disagree. The ontological order of a thing is the kind of existence we understand it to have, and the kind of existence we (most of us, anyway!) understand the hammer to have is as a physical object. The use of an object (e.g. as a hammer) is not an ontic or even ontological property; it’s an epistemic property – the hammer’s being a hammer is a matter of us knowing that it is a hammer (or, more correctly, knowing of it as a hammer), not of its being in itself a hammer.

What you are calling the hammer’s extrinsic properties (when looked at as a deworlded thing, i.e. not as a hammer) are in fact its primordial, background relationships and uses as equipment and as a hammer. — bloodninja

Both are true. Extrinsic properties are a general type of properties, and use as equipment is a subtype within that general type.

When I needed to nail a pailing on the rails I didn't have to look for a physical object that resembled the intrinsic properties of a hammer and then mysteriously project mental thoughts onto it about the extrinsic ways I could use the physical object to get the job done. I never once explicitly though about the hammer, only about the task to be done. This is because we are primordially in the world encountering equipment as equipment and only later experience ourselves as deworlded subjects abstractly thinking about objects and properties and whether hammers exist and what nothing is. — bloodninja

At no point have I suggested that we have to look for an object with certain intrinsic properties before we use it. Actually it’s the reverse; we look for an object with a certain extrinsic property – something with some such property as ‘usable for hammering things in with’ – and only sometimes do we then notice its intrinsic properties: for example, the hammer may have a loose head (intrinsic); but even then we would be more interested in the extrinsic properties than the intrinsic (is it too loose to do its job? – extrinsic). Nor am I suggesting that in using a hammer we need to EXPLICITLY or ABSTRACTLY think about the hammer; we just need to think about it enough to select it for the job of hammering.

If all the humans in the world suddenly vanished, so that there was no-one who could think of a hammer as being a hammer, the hammer itself would be completely unchanged.
— Herg

The material stuff the hammer is made out of would be unchanged, I don't disagree with that. However there would be no hammer. Because hammer-ness, as such, depends on humans existingly making hammers intelligible; not by thinking, but by using, and using in order to fulfill appropriate tasks in appropriate ways. — bloodninja

Since you prefer ‘using‘ to ‘thinking of’, I will rephrase, though it makes no significant difference.

‘There would be no hammer’ is badly phrased. It sounds as if the object has ceased to exist, but that is not so; all that has happened is that no-one is now using the object as a hammer. Rather than saying ‘there would be no hammer’, therefore, you should say ‘no-one would be using this object as a hammer’.

Let’s get technical. The object that we use as a hammer is physical, and being physical is an intrinsic property of the object, i.e. a property that the object has in and of itself. Being used as a hammer, by contrast, is an extrinsic property, i.e. a property arising from the object’s interaction with the rest of the world (or some part of it). This extrinsic property consists in a relation in which the object stands to ourselves (the relation of being used by us as a hammer). When I said ‘the hammer itself would be completely unchanged’, I meant in respect of its intrinsic properties, including the property of being physical. Only its extrinsic properties would have changed.

I’m agnostic about an afterlife, and as a result my feelings about death are very variable, because I simply don’t know whether anything comes afterwards or what it will be like if it does. In some moods I fear not existing (which when you think about it makes no sense at all), in other moods I fear being disembodied for eternity (a far worse prospect – how would I communicate with anyone? I would probably go insane), in yet other moods I think how amazing it would be to meet up with all the dead people I have known and loved (I was actually at a funeral today of a very dear friend who died in August of cancer at the age of only 46), and in yet other moods I simply tell myself to stop thinking about things I can’t change and get on with life. This last mood is really the only sensible one.

But if there is life after death, then an entirely new perspective is available. It becomes possible, based on works or faith in this life to spend eternity in heaven, hell, or to be reincarnated as some believe. So the real question that remains is, what if the idea of no life after death is wrong? What could happen then? Does one truly want to remain in ignorance by not thinking about it until it is too late to pick a new course? — Lone Wolf

I don’t want to remain in ignorance, but I see no choice in the matter, because I just don’t believe the evidence is there. I certainly don’t want to spend my remaining time (I’m 65) in a probably fruitless search. I’ve got better things to do.

Best way to face death – call a friend, make a coffee, read a good book, go for a walk in the sun or the rain, play with the dog. The best way to face death is just to get on with living. That's what I try to do, and I'm successful 99% of the time. Of course, it helps that at 65 I'm still pretty healthy. When I'm 75 or 85 I may be singing a different song.

A hammer is neither a physical phenomenon nor a mental phenomenon. Sure it is made from physical stuff but it's being as equipment, in other worlds its intelligibility, is only possible upon a background of shared practices. This background is neither mental nor physical. To reduce it to either would be to completely misunderstand the phenomenon. — bloodninja

A hammer is a physical object. The fact that we think of a hammer as a tool has no effect on the hammer, it’s a physical object whether we think of it that way or not. If all the humans in the world suddenly vanished, so that there was no-one who could think of a hammer as being a hammer, the hammer itself would be completely unchanged. Our thoughts about objects and our uses of objects do not make the objects anything other than what they are. What you call the hammer’s “intelligibility” is not part of the hammer, it is part of our thinking of and use of the hammer.

So, there's no such thing as a quantitative property. Humans walking on 2 legs and dogs on 4 don't assist in distinguishing the two? — TheMadFool

Certainly there are quantitative properties. A 2-legged man has the quantitative property of having 2 legs, while a legless man has the quantitative property of having zero legs. But the number itself, 0 or 2, is not the property; the property is not 0 or 2, it is having 0 legs or having 2 legs. Numbers themselves are not properties.

What is NOTHING ( N )?

Definitions:
1. Google: not anything
2. Merriam-Webster: nonexistence

Do the two definitions concur? — TheMadFool

Yes. “Not anything” means the absence of all things that could exist. (And also, to be exhaustive, of all things that could not exist, but of course they are absent by necessity.) “Nonexistence” means nothing existing. They mean the same. And they are both correct.

Only things that could exist could instantiate properties (if and when they exist), so if all things that could exist are absent, no properties can be instantiated. So nothing cannot have properties. If we think we have found a property of nothing, we have gone wrong somewhere. Probably what has happened is that we have chosen words to describe a state of affairs that misdescribe it; there will always be a way of describing the state of affairs in which the supposed property of nothing disappears.

N is neither mental nor physical. It can't be a thought and neither is it a physical object. — TheMadFool

No indeed. Being mental or physical are ways of existing, and as such are arguably not properties (since existence is generally held not to be a property). Nevertheless, only something that could exist could exist in a certain way, and so nothing, which is the absence of all things that could exist, could not exist in any way at all, and so cannot be either mental or physical.

Therefore, the two general responses to ''what is N?'' viz
1. N is empty space
2. N is a concept
are just an analogy or plain wrong. — TheMadFool

Agreed.

N, being nonexistence, shouldn't have properties. If we divide possible properties into two - qualitative and quantitative - then it's quite obvious N can't have qualitative properties like color, shape, texture, sound, etc. but, surprisingly, N is, quantitatively, zero. In other words, N has the quantitative property of zero - there's no thing in N i.e. the number of things in N is zero. — TheMadFool

Zero is not a property. Rather, it is an alternative to saying ‘nothing’, e.g.:

How many objects are in the box? Zero.
What is in the box? Nothing.

N forms boundaries. For instance, what is both a cat and a dog? Nothing! This forms a clear cut boundary between the categories cat and dog. — TheMadFool

In this and the remarks that follow it, you are actually talking about the concept of N, not about N. If we say ‘Nothing is both a cat and a dog’, we are using the concept of nothing to express the fact that in our domain of discourse, everything is either wholly cat or wholly dog. So insofar as there is a property of usefulness here, it is the concept of N that has the property, not N itself.

When we talk of properties of physical objects, we consider their quantitative aspect too. We say ''5 bananas'', ''2 cars'', etc. These numbers, as relates to objects, are the quantitative properties of things.

Similarly, when we quantify NOTHING, we do so with the number zero. Zero is the quantitative property of NOTHING just like 5 is the quantitative property of your right/left hand. — TheMadFool

Numbers are not properties of things, at any rate not in the way you suggest. The property your hand possesses is not fiveness, but five-fingeredness. Similarly, in a bunch of 5 bananas, the bunch itself does not possess the property of fiveness, but the property of five-banananess. As for each individual finger or banana, insofar as it possesses any quantitative or numerical property, it possesses the property of oneness; and it seems to true but trivial that all objects whatsoever must exhibit this property.