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I'm designing a learning program and I need to come up with a set of terms for the "objects" the user interacts with.

In a concise way, I'd like to come up with two terms that describe:

  1. a property (like color, if applied to a fruit)
  2. the set of possible values for this property (like red, yellow, green, if applied to an apple)

Property seems like a fitting word here, but this raises a bit of trouble: what, then, are red, yellow, green? Also properties. So how to differentiate the class from the set of all instances?

It seems difficult to me, perhaps due to my insufficient understanding of the philosophical nomenclature, to draw a distinction between the concrete set of all members of a class and the abstract class itself. Certain concepts relevant to philosophizing seem to have made affordances for this. For instance, man in the following:

One small step for man...

vs men in the following:

Either men will learn to live like brothers, or they will die like beasts.

Any ideas? My best stab at would be something like:

Property ------- Value

David J.
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  • See [Properties (aka: attributes)](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties/). – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Nov 24 '20 at 08:55
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    The relation of *predication*: a property (an universal) is predicated of an object, maybe is not that holding between properties of different levels of generality: color vs red. In this case (also if some philosopher proposed to say that color is a property of red) we may say that a concept (property) is *subsumed* into a more general one. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Nov 24 '20 at 09:00
  • Class and set are abstract objects corresponding to a concept: the individual men belongs to the set of humans (fall under the concept *man*). – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Nov 24 '20 at 09:01
  • @MauroALLEGRANZA. You mean the individual man? – David J. Nov 24 '20 at 09:23
  • @MauroALLEGRANZA. Are you making a suggestion here? It's hard for me to tell – David J. Nov 24 '20 at 09:24
  • Concept-property-class-set vs individual-particular-(concrete) object. This is waht is reasonable to assume. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Nov 24 '20 at 10:14
  • Classical terminology: Universal vs particular and Concept vs object . – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Nov 24 '20 at 11:11
  • This is more like a programming question. You want an enum, or an enumerated type. Color = (red, green, blue). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enumerated_type – user4894 Nov 25 '20 at 06:24
  • @user4894 I know how to program it. These concepts will be facing the user, so I have to find a good way of presenting it to the user. – David J. Nov 25 '20 at 06:48

2 Answers2

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In logic and various other areas the terms type and token are used.

From the WP article type-token distinction:

The type–token distinction is the difference between naming a class (type) of objects and naming the individual instances (tokens) of that class.

Thus, in the example you give of colour, the type colour has associated tokens including red, green, and blue.

nwr
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If the attribute is fuzzy, the number of members of the class must be more fuzzy because there must always be an additional layer of interpretation about which things fit the class. How many things fit attribute x is actually a separate question entirely, divorced from what x is.

Things are nothing but sets of attributes and boundary conditions and none of it is concrete except in that it is specific Enough for a given purpose. When i say i want an apple, the kind doesn't matter, but when an apple vendor says they want an apple, it matters.

BTW, "One small step for A man, one giant leap for mankind." was the intended quote, explicitly to make that distinction. He screwed it up.

Kaiser Basileus
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