Resemblance

Abstract

Our ordinary judgments and our metaphysical theories share a common commitment to facts about resemblance. The nature of resemblance is, however, a matter of no small controversy. This essay examines some of the pressing questions that arise regarding the status and structure of resemblance. Among those to be discussed in what follows: what kinds of resemblance relations are there? Can resemblance be analyzed in terms of the sharing of properties? Is resemblance an objective or subjective matter? What, if any, resemblance facts are fundamental? How does resemblance relate to naturalness?Platitudes aside, few things are more similar than apples and oranges. Consider, then, a more heterogeneous list of entities: the Stanley Cup, the Fourth Century BCE, Caddyshack, the Twin Prime Conjecture, and the property of punctuality. None of these entities resemble one another nearly as much as an apple resembles an orange. In fact, their marked differences rule out any easy verdict on which are most similar to which. And, while it is commonplace to assume that we can aptly speak about relations of similarity among ordinary entities like apples and oranges, it is far from obvious that the resemblance structure of reality-the distribution of similarity relations among entities-is so rich as to settle any and every question we might pose about resemblance. For instance, is Caddyshack more like the Twin Prime Conjecture or the Stanley Cup? To what degree do the Fourth Century BCE and punctuality resemble one another? To take sides on these issues is, in part, to take sides on a debate about the resemblance structure of the world. Conversely, to take sides on issues about resemblance is to settle (or, of necessity, leave unsettled) these and other questions about what is similar to what.The motivation for trying to understand the nature of similarity is obvious enough: it plays a ubiquitous role in cognition. Among many other roles, it underwrites our categorization of entities, our recognition of patterns, and perhaps our inductive and analogical reasoning. 1 So, to the extent we seek a metaphysical explanation of the successes or failings of our cognition, we owe some metaphysical explanation of facts about resemblance. This essay surveys some of the metaphysical concerns that arise in making sense of resemblance. (Throughout, I use "resemblance" and "similarity" interchangeably. 2 ) These by no means exhaust the issues raised by resemblance, but they are among the most important in developing a full-fledged metaphysics of resemblance.In Section Two, some species of resemblance are introduced and the connection between resemblance and properties is discussed. In Section Three, Nelson Goodman's influential arguments regarding resemblance and, in particular, the connection between properties and resemblance are examined. After marking some additional puzzles about the

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“…Second, they do not seem to have anything in common when we introspect them, that is, they seem heterogeneous. Talk of heterogeneity may be usefully reformulated in terms of similarity and dissimilarity, which are notions more commonly found in the philosophical literature and which have been subject to more philosophical scrutiny (refer to Cowling 2017 for a review of philosophical issues around similarity or resemblance). This reformulation is rather innocuous: talk of similarity is often used to clarify that of heterogeneity (as the quotation further below by Smuts shows).…”

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“…Cette place prééminente de la ressemblance dans le discours ordinaire et scientifique appelle une explication métaphysique [Cowling 2017], [Guigon 2014], [Rodriguez-Pereyra 1999. Pour beaucoup de philosophes, nos jugements de ressemblance seraient ultimement dépendants de (et justifiés par) une organisation intrinsèque de la réalité.…”

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