Chapter 5

What is measured?

5.1 Introduction

Measurement is a specific kind of evaluation of properties of objects. A measure-

ment-oriented ontology and epistemology of properties is a complex subject, in
which the ontic dimension (what properties are) and the epistemic dimension (what
we can know about properties and how we can know it) are deeply intertwined.
Hence a discussion of properties is an important part of a discourse on measure-
ment. Let us restart from our discussion of properties in Sect. 2.2.
An empirical property of an object is associated with a mode of empirical inter-
action of the object with its environment. This association happens under the condi-
tions that
• an object empirically interacts with its environment in multiple modes, and each
mode of interaction is considered to correspond to a property of the object,1 and
• some objects are comparable with respect to some of their properties, and some-
times distinct objects are discovered to have empirically indistinguishable
properties.2

1
This does not preclude the possibility that in some cases distinct modes of interaction do not cor-
respond to distinct properties, i.e., one property may correspond to multiple modes of interaction.
A well-known example in physics is mass, which is associated with both inertial and gravitational
phenomena, and therefore to distinct modes of interaction. This is consistent with Brian Ellis’
insight that “our quantity concepts are generally cluster concepts” (1968: p. 32). More generally,
the interaction of an object with each different instrument might be interpreted as a different mode
of interaction: from an operationalist perspective, the interaction with each instrument corre-
sponds, by definition, to a different property (see Sect. 4.2.2).
2
The plausibility of these conditions is confirmed also in a philosophical context. For example, to
the question What is a property? Baron et al. (2013: p. 35) answer: “This is a thorny issue. For
present purposes we conceive of properties as the entities that ground causal powers and similarity
relations.”

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 111

L. Mari et al., Measurement across the Sciences, Springer Series in Measurement
Science and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65558-7_5
112 5 What is measured?

By considering properties of objects as associated with modes of empirical interac-

tion of objects with their environment, we avoid taking a position on:
• The nature of properties of objects, other than that we consider them to be enti-
ties able to produce at least in principle observable effects and to support the
comparison of objects3
• The difference between inherent (or essential) and contingent (or accidental)
properties, where the identity of the bearer, i.e., the object, is supposed to be
affected by a change of one of its inherent properties (a vase might be considered
a different object than the amorphous amount of clay from which it was shaped),
but not by a change of one of its contingent properties (a vase may still be con-
sidered the same object, even if it is chipped)
• The issue of the possible distinction between object-specific (“primary”, e.g.,
mass) and observer-related (“secondary”, e.g., perceived color) properties4
This is consistent with a pragmatic stance which, we believe, is appropriate to
ground a discussion on measurement:
• We consider a property of an object to exist insofar as the object somehow inter-
acts with its environment, though we accept that everything we consider as
known about a property is always revisable, and could turn out to be wrong.
• We acknowledge that empirical interactions may be physical, but also psycho-
logical, sociological, etc., thus admitting the existence of nonphysical
properties.
• We consider a property of an object to be associated with a mode of interaction
of the object, but we acknowledge that the existence of a property may be hypoth-
esized also independently of a mode of interaction, and we do not say anything
further about what a property is per se.5

3
That “the familiar objects of the everyday world agree in their characteristics, features, or attri-
butes” is considered “a prephilosophical truism” (Loux & Crisp, 2017: p. 18).
4
For an analysis on this distinction, see for example Heil (2003: ch. 8), who also presents the idea
that properties manifest themselves through empirical interactions of objects: “all there really is to
a concrete entity is its power to affect and be affected by other entities. Assuming that an entity’s
powers depend on its properties, this suggests that there is no more to a property than powers or
dispositionalities it confers on its possessors. […] The business of science is to tease out funda-
mental properties of objects. Properties are what figure in laws of nature, and laws govern the
behaviour of objects. Properties, then, are features of the world that make a difference in how
objects behave or would behave” (p. 75).
5
The subject of what properties are is complex, and out of the scope of this book, in which a (black
box) characterization of how properties manifest themselves is sufficient. For a philosophically
oriented introduction to this subject, see for example the articles by Orilia and Swoyer (2020),
Weatherson and Marshall (2018), and Wilson (2017) in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Concepts such as <property>, <attribute>, <feature>, and <characteristic> are so fundamental in
human knowledge that it is not clear how they could be defined without circularity. For example,
René Dybkaer (2004: p. 51) defines <property> as an “inherent state- or process-descriptive fea-
ture of a system including any pertinent components”, while leaving <feature> as a primitive (i.e.,
undefined) concept. Were he requested to define <feature>, he plausibly might have included the
term “property” in the definition, thus showing that the concept is ultimately defined in terms of
5.1 Introduction 113

Furthermore, we consider that phrases such as “the objects a and b are comparable
with respect to a given property” and “a given property of the object a and a given
property of the object b are comparable” refer to the same empirical situation.6
Whenever this happens, we say that the given properties of a and b are of the same
kind (as in JCGM, 2012: 1.2), and thus we assume that a general property exists of
which the given properties of a and b, which we call individual properties, are
instances (see also an introduction of these concepts in Sect. 2.2). General and indi-
vidual properties—such as mass and any given mass, respectively—are sometimes
called, particularly in the philosophical literature, “determinables” and “determi-
nates”, respectively (see, e.g., Wilson, 2017). Hence length and reading comprehen-
sion ability are examples of general properties, and the length of a given rod and the
reading comprehension ability of a given individual are examples of individual
properties. The length of a given rod and the radius of a given disk are comparable,
being individual properties of the same kind, i.e., the general property length,
whereas the length and the mass of any two objects are not comparable, as they are
individual properties of different kinds.
Even given this modest perspective, several important issues remain open for
consideration, regarding in particular the distinction between the existence of a
property and the knowledge that we can have of it. This chapter is devoted to an
analysis of this subject, and to providing an interpretation of the (measurement)
relation

measurand = measured value of a property

as introduced in Sect. 2.2.4, a specific case7 of the Basic Evaluation Equation

property of an object = value of a property

itself. Not surprisingly, these concepts are also sometimes used in a somewhat confusing way in
pivotal texts of measurement science, for example Foundations of Measurement (Krantz et al.,
1971: p. 1) which states in its opening sentence: “when measuring some attribute of a class of
objects or events, we associate numbers (or other familiar mathematical entities, such as vectors)
with the objects in such a way that the properties of the attribute are faithfully represented as
numerical properties”. The idea that an attribute has properties represented as properties is not
exactly obvious, to say the least.
6
In fact, the first phrase, while seemingly better reporting what empirically happens (“in the com-
parison we handle objects, right?”, as a colleague of ours told us), assumes a greater ontic burden,
given that the entity with respect to which objects are compared is a kind of property, whereas
kinds of properties do not explicitly appear in the second phrase. Furthermore, it is surely possible
that properties of the same object are compared, for example the height and the width of a rigid
body: in terms of comparison of objects this would require a cumbersome phrasing like “an object
is compared with itself with respect to a (kind of) property”.
7
Measurands are “quantities intended to be measured” (as defined in JCGM, 2012: 2.3): hence,
while measurands are properties of objects, a property of an object becomes a measurand for us
only when we are interested in obtaining a value for it via a measurement. Several aspects of our
analysis apply to the generic case, thus for example also to Basic Evaluation Equations which
describe specifications, instead of reporting results of measurements.
114 5 What is measured?

formalized as8

P a  p

for example

length rod a   1.2345 m

or

reading comprehension ability  student b   1.23 logits  on a specific RCA scale 

or

blood type  patient c   A in the ABO system

where in the first case the relation is about a ratio (and more specifically an empiri-
cally additive) quantity (length) and the value is the product of a number and a
quantity unit (the metre), in the second case the relation is about an interval quantity
(reading comprehension ability) and the value is a number in an interval scale (here
denoted as logits, on a specific RCA scale) (Maul, Mari, & Wilson, 2019), and in the
third case the relation is about a nominal property (blood type) and the value is an
identifier for a class in a specified classification system (the ABO system)
(Mari, 2017).
In the case of ratio quantities, which is the common situation in the measurement
of physical properties, the relation becomes

quantity of an object = value of a quantity

formalized more specifically as

Q  a   Q Q 

where the value is the product of a number {Q} and a quantity unit [Q] (which is a
different usage of “[ ]” than on the left-hand side of the equation): thus, in the
example above, {length[rod a]} = 1.2345 and [length[rod a]] = m.9 While what fol-

8
As noted in Sect. 2.2.3, the notation P[a] is aimed at highlighting that P can be formalized as a
function but it is not a mathematical entity as such.
9
As inspired by the seminal work of James Clerk Maxwell (1873), this relation is commonly writ-
ten as

Q  QQ 

which we call “Q-notation” for short. Despite its success (see, e.g., de Boer, 1995: p. 405 and
Emerson, 2008: p. 134, but also JCGM, 2012: 1.20 Note 2 and ISO, 2009b), this notation is not
5.1 Introduction 115

lows applies to all properties, we often refer more specifically to quantities, due to
their widespread use in the tradition of measurement science and their richer alge-
braic structure, which makes examples easier to present and understand (Box 5.1).

Box 5.1: A very short introduction to ontology

Given our statement that this chapter is mainly devoted to exploring a mea-
surement-oriented ontology of properties, a few preliminary words might be
useful about what we consider to be an ontology. As Willard V.O. Quine
wrote, “A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can
be put in three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: ‘What is there?’ It can be
answered, moreover, in a word – ‘Everything’ – and everyone will accept this
answer as true. However, this is merely to say that there is what there is. There
remains room for disagreement over cases; and so the issue has stayed alive
down the centuries” (1948: p. 21).
Cases about which there can be or has been disagreement include the
sphere of fixed stars, phlogiston, and continuous flows of electricity, not to
mention nearly every proposed property in the human sciences, perhaps most
famously general intelligence: it was not at all trivial to arrive at the conclu-
sion that, for example, phlogiston does not exist, and in fact required a radical
revision of several related bodies of knowledge. But of course even today we
can talk in a meaningful way about the sphere of fixed stars, phlogiston, and
continuous flows of electricity; otherwise a sentence such as “all visible stars
are fixed to a celestial sphere” would be meaningless rather than false (on par
with a phrase like “all qwerty uiop are fixed to a celestial sphere”).
Hence the fact that x appears in meaningful sentences is not sufficient to
conclude that x exists. It should be acknowledged that there are indeed differ-
ent modes of existence: for example, both paper books and prime numbers
greater than 1 million exist, but their modes of existence differ. The “disagree-
ment over cases” to which Quine refers is related to the existence in a given
mode, not to the generic situation of any possible mode of existence. As
another well-known example, unicorns do not exist as physical entities, but do
exist as literary entities. Thus, our ability to talk in a grammatically correct

completely clear, as it does not maintain the distinction between general quantities and individual
quantities. By writing the left-hand-side entity as Q[a] we make explicit the reference to the quan-
tity Q of the object a. This also highlights that, while the unit is a feature of the general quantity Q,
and therefore writing it as [Q] is correct (recalling that brackets in “Q[a]” and “[Q]” have different
meanings: “Q[a]” stands for the Q of a, e.g., the length of a given rod; “[Q]” stands for the unit of
Q), the numerical value depends on both the quantity of the object and the chosen unit. A more
complete form of the expression is then {Q[a]}[Q], to be read “the numerical value of Q[a] in the
unit [Q]” (see also ISO, 2009b: 6.1).
116 5 What is measured?

way of an entity x is not sufficient to guarantee that x exists as an entity of the

kind Y, nor is the fact that x exists as an entity of the kind Z sufficient to guar-
antee that it exists also as an entity of the kind Y. As a consequence, a claim
of existence of an entity x is interesting only if it is specified as a claim of
Y-existence, i.e., existence in the mode Y, for a given Y. The ambiguity is
avoided if instead of the generic “do unicorns exist?” we ask “do unicorns
exist as physical entities?”, i.e., “do unicorns have Y-existence?”, where
Y = physical, which according to our current knowledge has a different answer
from “do unicorns have Z-existence?”, where Z = literary.
Furthermore, such a claim is about the Y-existence of x as an object, not
about the meaning of the term “x”, or the concept <x>. As it was put by Quine
(1948, p. 28): “The phrase ‘Evening Star’ names a certain large physical
object of spherical form, which is hurtling through space some scores of mil-
lions of miles from here. The phrase ‘Morning Star’ names the same thing, as
was probably first established by some observant Babylonian. But the two
phrases cannot be regarded as having the same meaning; otherwise that
Babylonian could have dispensed with his observations and contented himself
with reflecting on the meanings of his words. The meanings, then, being dif-
ferent from one another, must be other than the named object, which is one
and the same in both cases.” In Gottlob Frege’s terminology (1892), this is
effectively presented by acknowledging that two terms (such as “Evening
Star” and “Morning Star”) can have different senses and nevertheless the
same reference, and also that a term can have Y-sense but no Y-reference, i.e.,
a term can be intended as referring to an entity x of the kind Y even though x
has no Y-existence. Furthermore, this explains the difference between the two
relations Evening Star = Morning Star and Evening Star = Evening Star: the
former required a lot of astronomical ingenuity and knowledge for its discov-
ery, while the latter is a trivial, logical truth, as is any identity x = x, indepen-
dent of astronomical facts.
It is then worth emphasizing that, as used here, “ontology” is not a syn-
onym of “metaphysics”. Rather, “it refers to the set of ‘things’ a person
believes to exist, or the set of things defined by, or assumed by, some theory.
What’s in your ontology? Do you believe in ghosts? Then ghosts are in your
ontology, along with tables and chairs and songs and vacations, and snow, and
all the rest” (Dennett, 2017: p. 60) (for a wide presentation of a “scientific
perspective” on ontology, see Bunge, 1977, possibly starting from his “list of
ontological principles occurring in scientific research”, p. 16). Of course, at
least some of the things we believe to exist are physical, and some are
psychosocial.
A key problem in ontology—and perhaps the key problem of ontology of
properties—is whether things such as a given mass and mass as such are exist-
ing (though possibly abstract) entities, or are just concepts that we produce for
organizing our knowledge. An intermediate position, called extensionalism, is
5.1 Introduction 117

that they are not individual entities but sets (or possibly mereological sums:
Varzi, 2019): a given mass would then just be a set of masses of objects, and
mass the set of all given masses, and therefore a set of sets.
The answer to such a problem depends on whether one’s ontology has
room for abstract entities or only for concrete entities, a distinction that is
sometimes presented in terms of universals and particulars (the possible dif-
ferences between <abstract> and <universal> and between <concrete> and
<particular> are beyond the scope of our purposes here), and grounds the
opposition between realism and nominalism: “The realist’s ontology repre-
sents a two-category ontology; it postulates entities of two irreducibly differ-
ent types: particulars and universals. According to the nominalist, however, all
the theoretical work done by the two-category ontology of the realist can be
done by an ontological theory that commits us to the existence of entities of
just one category, particulars” (Loux & Crisp, 2017: p. 50).
In what follows we try to remain as neutral as possible about the alternative
between realism and nominalism.

5.1.1 The meaning of the Basic Evaluation Equation

The Basic Evaluation Equation

property of an object = value of a property

conveys the core information obtained by measurement (neglecting measurement

uncertainty, for the moment). Despite the fact that information of this sort is com-
monly produced and used, the apparent simplicity of the relation hides the question:
Is the relation an actual equality, or is the “=” sign just a placeholder for a different
relation?
The problem is mostly immaterial in day-to-day practice and is thus usually left
in the background, so that one sometimes encounters claims such as Gary Price’s
(2001: p. 294) that the relation “‘equals’ means ‘is expressed, modeled, or repre-
sented by’”. Since <expression>, <modeling>, and <representation> are distinct
concepts, such a statement only informs us of a lack of interest in understanding
what kind of information a Basic Evaluation Equation actually conveys. In distinc-
tion to this vagueness, it is our position that an answer to this problem is indeed
critical for a measurement-related ontology and epistemology of properties. Note
that different positions are possible (Mari, 1997), the two extremes being
• a strong ontology, which assumes that properties of objects inherently have val-
ues, so that if they are known it is because they have been discovered by means
of experimental activities, and
118 5 What is measured?

• a weak ontology, which assumes that values are assigned as a means of

representation.
The common ground of these positions is the acknowledgment that (i) in perform-
ing measurement, the starting point is the identification of a property of an object to
be measured, i.e., the measurand, and the discovery (according to a strong ontology)
or the selection (according to a weak ontology) of a set of possible values of that
property, and (ii) the outcome of the process is that one value in the set (or a subset
of them, as in JCGM, 2012: 2.1, if measurement uncertainty is taken into account)
is attributed to the measurand. The issue is about how to interpret such an attribu-
tion: Is the value established because it exists in the object before and independently
of any experimental activity, or is it (just) chosen to suitably report the acquired
information on the object? Is then measurement akin to discovery or invention?
Even more fundamentally, this issue is grounded upon the issue of the very exis-
tence of properties: Do entities such as length and reading comprehension ability
exist in the world, or are they just constructs by which we organize our knowledge?
Positions like the one underlying the representational theories of measurement
(see Sect. 4.2.3) emphasize the representational aspect of measurement, plainly stat-
ing that the task of measurement is “to construct numerical representations of quali-
tative structures” (Krantz, Luce, Suppes, & Tversky, 1971: p. xviii), and from their
beginnings have acknowledged that “the major source of difficulty in providing an
adequate theory of measurement is to construct relations which have an exact and
reasonable numerical interpretation” (Scott & Suppes, 1958: p. 113). Such weaker
ontologies are less demanding, and this may make their practical consequences
applicable also to those who accept a stricter position: a value may be chosen to
represent a property of an object exactly because that property has that value.10 If
instead it is maintained that properties of objects do not inherently have values, the
representation may be chosen according to different criteria, and is required to be at
least consistent: if properties of objects are observed to be ordered then their
assigned values should be ordered in turn, but any ordered set would be suitable,
and so on. However, a stronger ontology invites interpretation of advancements in
measurement-related knowledge and practices as an evolutionary process: at the
beginning the available information could be so “meager and unsatisfactory” (quot-
ing Lord Kelvin; see the related discussion by Kuhn, 1961) that the evaluation
results are more or less everything that is known of the considered property, and
therefore consistency in the representation is the only condition that can be sought.
Such an approach could be later abandoned with the acquisition of more and better
information, leading to corroboration of the hypothesis of the very existence of the
property, up to the extreme position that the measurand has a knowledge-indepen-
dent true value, to be estimated through measurement.11

10
Interestingly, the form of the Basic Evaluation Equation, in which the property of the object and
the value of the property are related by an “=” sign, suggests the interpretation that the property is
the value: we discuss this delicate point in Sect. 6.4.
11
The history of the concept of true value is complex, and definitely still not settled (see also Sects.
5.1 Introduction 119

5.1.2 A pragmatic introduction to the problem

Basic Evaluation Equations are at the core of any measurement, and therefore an
understanding of them is a requirement for a well-grounded measurement science.
However, “equality gives rise to challenging questions which are not altogether easy
to answer” (Frege, 1892: p. 25): Quoting again Price (2001: p. 294), in a Basic
Evaluation Equation does the equality sign mean “is expressed, modeled, or repre-
sented by”? or something else?
In what follows, we introduce the problem only in terms of ordinal comparisons.
This does not affect the generality of the presentation, and hopefully makes it clearer
by referring to a less controversial relation than equality, thus avoiding the “chal-
lenging questions”—including the ones connected with the possible role of uncer-
tainty—that equality brings with itself.
Let us consider the case of mass.
1. In measurement we deal with entities such as masses of given objects, e.g.,
mass[rod a], and values of mass, e.g., 1.23 kg. For the sake of argument, let us
call the former “O-entities” (i.e., related to objects) and the latter “V-entities”
(i.e., related to values), by noting that different terms may (but do not necessar-
ily) correspond to different kinds of entities, and the conclusion that we might
well reach is that properties of objects, i.e., O-entities, and values of properties,
i.e., V-entities, are different ways of referring to the same kind of entity.
2. O-entities and V-entities are such that we can compare
• O-entities among themselves (the mass of rod a is less than the mass of rod b)
• V-entities among themselves (1.23 kg is less than 2.34 kg)
• O-entities and V-entities (the mass of rod a is less than 1.23 kg)
3. In particular, the chain of inequalities

mass rod a   1.23 kg  2.34 kg  mass rod b 

is understandable and does not pose problems of interpretation, also about the
transitivity of the relation (e.g., from mass[rod a] < 1.23 kg and 1.23 kg < 2.34 kg
the conclusion is unproblematically obtained that mass[rod a] < 2.34 kg).

3.2.2 and 4.2.1). While sometimes considered to be a useless metaphysical residual, in some con-
texts the reference to true values is maintained and emphasized. As an example, the current version
of the NIST Quality Manual for Measurement Services (the National Institute of Standards and
Technology, NIST, is the US National Metrology Institute) defines <measurement> as (emphasis
added) “an experimental or computational process that, by comparison with a standard, produces
an estimate of the true value of a property of a material or virtual object or collection of objects, or
of a process, event, or series of events, together with an evaluation of the uncertainty associated
with that estimate, and intended for use in support of decision-making” (11th version, 2019, www.
nist.gov/system/files/documents/2019/04/09/nist_qm-i-v11_controlled_and_signed.pdf, including
the note that “the NIST Measurement Services Council approved [this] definition of measurement
to include value assignments of properties using qualitative techniques”) (Possolo, 2015: p. 12).
120 5 What is measured?

4. The comparison of O-entities among themselves and the comparison of V-entities

among themselves are different processes:
• For comparing O-entities among themselves we compare properties of
objects, thus by means of an empirical process, such as the one performed by
means of a balance and leading to the conclusion that the mass of rod a is less
than the mass of rod b.
• For comparing V-entities among themselves we compare numbers (assum-
ing their unit is the same), thus by means of a mathematical process, such as
the one that leads to the conclusion that 1.23 kg is less than 2.34 kg.
5. A correspondence can be established between O-entities and V-entities:
• O-entities can be made to correspond to V-entities through a process that
can be generically called “evaluation” (see Sect. 2.2.4 for discussion of this
lexical choice), leading to the association of a value with the given property
of an object; measurement is then a specific kind of evaluation: the mass of
rod a can be evaluated as 0.12 kg.
• V-entities can be made to correspond to O-entities through a process that
can be generically called “realization”, leading to the selection or construc-
tion of an object such that one of its properties is associated with the given
value: 0.12 kg can be realized by the mass of rod a.
6. Via these correspondences, if O-entities are evaluated, then the obtained
V-entities can be compared among themselves, and this comparison conveys
information about the relevant O-entities, so that the O-entities do not them-
selves need to be directly compared (as in stage (3) above): if the mass of rod a
is evaluated as 0.12 kg and the mass of rod b is evaluated as 3.45 kg, the com-
parison that 0.12 kg is less than 3.45 kg leads to the inference that the mass of
rod a is less than the mass of rod b. Nevertheless, comparing O-entities among
themselves and comparing V-entities among themselves remain different
processes.
7. Hence O-entities and V-entities are at the same time
• analogous in some respects, because they are comparable: both O-entities
and V-entities can be thought of as properties, but
• different in some other respects, because the ways in which we compare
them among themselves are different: O-entities are properties identified
through objects that have them, whereas V-entities are properties identified
through numbers that multiply units.12

12
We have not been able to find a term to designate the entities obtained by multiplying or dividing
a unit by a number which is not necessarily integer (a multiple of a unit is a “measurement unit
obtained by multiplying a given measurement unit by an integer greater than one” (JCGM, 2012:
1.17), and a submultiple of a unit is a “measurement unit obtained by dividing a given measure-
ment unit by an integer greater than one” (JCGM, 2012: 1.18, emphasis added)). Hence we main-
tain the term “multiple” with this broader meaning: if u is a unit and x is a nonnegative real number,
x u is a multiple of u.
5.1 Introduction 121

Fig. 5.1 Graphical representation of the relations among object-related entities, such as the mass
of some given object, and value-related entities, such as x kg for some given positive number x

Figure 5.1 summarizes the relations among these entities.

What follows in this and the following chapter is an exploration and an analysis
of these fundamental issues.

5.1.3 Anticipating the main outcomes

As we have already seen, a measurement-oriented ontology and epistemology of

properties is definitely a nontrivial subject. To help orient the analysis that follows,
we start by anticipating here some of the main conclusions.
For any given property, say mass, there are four interrelated but conceptually
distinct kinds of entities that can be taken into account:
(i) The general property (mass), M
(ii) Individual properties (given masses), m
(iii) Properties of objects (the masses of given objects a), M[a]
(iv) Values of the property (x kg for any given x): 1.2345 kg
Our claim is that all four of these kinds of entities are required in a sufficiently well-
structured discourse on measurement.
(i) General properties are the entities that measuring instruments are designed to
measure, so that for example balances are designed to measure masses, not the
mass of any given object in particular; moreover, scales (and therefore, in par-
ticular, units) are about general properties. Scientific laws, when they are
invoked, pertain to general properties.
(ii) Individual properties are the entities whose relations characterize the mathematical
structure of the general property of which they are instances: mass is an additive
quantity because the set of masses, independently of the objects that can have such
masses and their relation with any possible unit of mass, has an additive structure.
(iii) Properties of objects are the entities that are measured in any actual measure-
ment and to which values of properties are attributed: a given balance in a
given situation is an instrument for measuring the mass of a given object.
(iv) Finally, values of properties are the entities that report the information acquired
by means of calibrated measuring instruments applied to properties of objects:
1.2345 kg and 2.7216 lb are values that could be attributed to the mass of a
given object.
122 5 What is measured?

Fig. 5.2 Graphical representation of the relations among the four kinds of entities related to
properties

While all this could well be taken for granted, the structure of the relations among
these entities is important for a measurement-oriented ontology and epistemology
of properties. Starting from the uncontroversial assumption that individual proper-
ties (ii)13 are instances of general properties (i) (so that for example, any given mass
is an instance of mass, i.e., more customarily and trivially, any given mass is a
mass), we acknowledge that individual properties are entities which need to be
somehow identified in order to be handled, and in particular to be compared with
each other. On this basis we develop here two basic arguments.
First, individual properties (ii) are identified as properties of objects (iii) or as
values of properties (iv), so that for example a given mass can be identified as the
mass of a given object a or as x kg for a given nonnegative number x, as it is explicit
in the case of the Basic Evaluation Equation. In fact, properties of objects and val-
ues of properties are complementary modes of identification of instances of general
properties: by identifying a mass as the mass of a given object a, the reference is to
the object a that bears that mass; if a mass is instead identified as x kg for a given
nonnegative number x, the reference is to an element of the structure that, via the
choice of a mass unit and the construction of its multiples, includes all masses.14
Figure 5.2 summarizes the relations among these kinds of entities, and highlights
the pivotal role of individual properties in the conceptual framework we are devel-

13
The label “(ii)” refers to the four assertions immediately above, and similarly for the labels
below.
14
It is not controversial that individual properties are instances of general properties, but there is a
delicate ontological issue about how properties of objects and values of properties are related to
individual properties (see also the discussion in Sect. 5.3.1). With the aim of remaining as indepen-
dent as possible of ontological presuppositions, we only assume that properties of objects and
values of properties identify individual properties.
5.2 Some clarifications about properties 123

oping. An individual property p is an instance of a general property P, and can be

identified as the property P[a] of an object a or as the value p of property P.
Second, the complementarity of the two modes of identification of individual
properties is exploited in measurement. The information conveyed by a Basic
Evaluation Equation

property of an object = value of a property

is indeed that an individual property p1, identified as a property of an object (i.e.,

p1 = P[a] for a given object a), and an individual property p2, identified as a value of
a property (i.e., p2 = p for some value p of P), are reported to be the same individual
property, p1 = p2 and therefore P[a] = p, as the result of the evaluation. Any Basic
Evaluation Equation is then interpreted to be a mere identity from an ontic point of
view, but a significant relation from an epistemic point of view.15 This reveals the
fundamental meaning of the Basic Evaluation Equation:
• The property P[a] of the object a is an individual property p (the mass of any
given object is a given mass).
• By means of a measurement the individual property p that was known as P[a] is
identified also as a given value p of P (the mass that was known as the mass of a
given object is identified also as 1.2345 kg).
These two basic arguments need to be carefully presented, explained, and justified,
and to this purpose the balance of this chapter and the next one are devoted.

5.2 Some clarifications about properties

The concept <property> has some ambiguities that we need to discuss before pro-
ceeding with our analysis.

5.2.1 Properties of objects as entities of the world

First of all, by considering properties of objects as associated with modes of interac-

tion of the objects with their environments we acknowledge that properties of
objects exist in the empirical world, and thus not only in our minds.16 A given object

15
This double meaning—an ontic identity that is a significant epistemic relation—is more exten-
sively discussed in Sects. 5.3.2 and 6.4.
16
The concept <property> is so general that this condition needs to be specified. For example, one
could consider that number 2 has the property of being even and of having 4 as its square: consider-
ing these as modes of interaction would be peculiar, at least because the very idea that numbers
interact with something empirical is peculiar in turn. Hence our analysis actually relates to empiri-
124 5 What is measured?

generally has multiple modes of interaction with its environment, and each corre-
sponds to a property of the object. In fact, against radical operationalism, it may be
discovered that the same property is the cause of distinct modes of interaction.17
According to the tripartition introduced in Sect. 2.1, properties of objects are
then, at least preliminarily, claimed to be entities of the world, not conceptual enti-
ties and not linguistic entities (as discussed further in Sect. 5.3). For example, that
an object floats in water is a fact that can be observed or experimentally assessed,
and is independent of the information that we may have on the object and its proper-
ties. That is, objects floated before Archimedes’ explanation in terms of the relation
between the weight and the shape of the object and the density of the water. In other
words, a property of an object can be conceptualized and given a term, but it is not
itself a concept or a linguistic expression. Of course, there can be disputable obser-
vations and mistaken reports of observations: what we assume here is just that at
least some interactions are uncontroversially observed, and that there must be some-
thing in the empirical world, thus independent of our conceptions, which causes
those interactions.
There is an analogy in this between objects and properties (see Fig. 5.3).
Concepts can be associated with objects, such as rods and human beings, but rods
and human beings remain something other than concepts. Objects can exist with-
out any associated concept (an obvious example being objects that existed before
conscious beings evolved), and we can have concepts of or about non-existing
objects, as in the canonical cases of unicorns and phlogiston. Furthermore, while
objects are subjected to empirical transformations (rods can rust, human beings
grow old, etc.), concepts of or about objects are unaffected by such transforma-
tions, but can be adjusted to better match objects (concepts do not rust, but the
concept of a rusted object is different from the concept of a polished object, etc.).
Further, what can be properly defined is the concept of an object, not the object as

Fig. 5.3 Graphical

representation of the
relations between objects,
properties, and their
concepts

cal properties and empirical modes of interaction. We use the adjective “empirical” for referring to
a feature of something in opposition to the possibility that that something is purely conceptual,
informational, or linguistic (see also Sect. 2.2.1).
17
According to Abraham Kaplan, “We do not first identify some magnitude, then go about devising
some way to measure it. As operationists have long insisted, what is measured and how we mea-
sure it are determined jointly. Operationists may have given undue emphasis to the ‘how’ as against
the ‘what’, but this emphasis is a healthy corrective to the naive idea that magnitudes can be con-
ceived quite independently of procedures for determining their measure in particular cases” (1964:
p. 177). Hence, we endorse such a “naive [!] idea”, and consider then that individual quantities, and
individual properties more generally, are conceived independently of procedures for measuring
them.
5.2 Some clarifications about properties 125

such: objects are manipulated, designed, assembled, identified, etc., but not
defined. By analogy, concepts can be provided of properties of objects, such as the
length of a rod and the reading comprehension ability of an individual, but lengths
of given rods and reading comprehension abilities of given individuals are not
themselves concepts. Indeed, while properties of objects can be subjected to
empirical transformations (the length of a rod can change, the reading compre-
hension ability of an individual can improve, etc.), the concepts of properties of
objects are unaffected by such transformations. Importantly, then, when expres-
sions such as “unit definition” (e.g., throughout the SI Brochure, BIPM, 2019)
and “measurand definition” are used (e.g., in the definition of <definitional uncer-
tainty> given by the International Vocabulary of Metrology (VIM) (JCGM, 2012:
2.27)), they are just shorthands for “definition of the concept of the unit” and
“definition of the concept of the measurand”, or, more operationally, “definition
of the mode of identification of the unit” and “definition of the mode of identifica-
tion of the measurand”.
An exception to this is found in objects and properties of objects whose exis-
tence is dependent on (usually but not always shared) belief and social agreement,
such as money, limited liability corporations, marriages, and beauty, which are
often referred to as “social constructs” (see, e.g., Searle, 1995) to emphasize the
role of human intentionality in their existence. But even in such cases there is a
distinction between the object or property and the concepts one may have of it
(e.g., one may have a concept of money, separately from having money), and so
the other comments given here about the distinction between objects and concepts
remain applicable. In Sect. 6.6 we further discuss the existence of these kinds of
properties.
A summary can be depicted as in Fig. 5.3, adapted from ISO (2009a: 5.4.1,
where the term “characteristic” is used to denote concepts of properties of objects).
In this context, the condition that properties of objects are associated with modes
of interaction is not obvious. In Sect. 3.4.1 we mentioned the “hage” of a person,
defined as the product of his or her height and age, and presented as an exemplary
case of a supposedly non-existing property of human beings (Ellis, 1968: p. 31). In
other words, this is a definition of a perfectly legitimate concept, but it might not
correspond to any empirical property. However, this is not something that can be
taken for granted: sooner or later, it might happen that a hage-related interaction of
human beings is discovered. Again, the problem is meaningful because it relates to
the claim that a property does exist as such, whereas that the concept of hage exists
is a matter of fact.
While the arrow in Fig. 5.3 points from property to concept of property, indicat-
ing (properly) that a concept of an empirical property must be derived from the
property itself, the historical relationship may have well gone the other way; that is,
one might develop a concept of a property before the conceived property is found
empirically. This sort of historical sequence is far too many centuries in the past to
be observed for common physical properties like length and weight, but this is not
so for properties such as energy and temperature, and for many properties in the
human sciences.
126 5 What is measured?

5.2.2 Properties and predicates

In the philosophical tradition, and in formal logic in particular, a property is what a

predicate designates,18 and is therefore a Boolean entity that either applies or does
not apply to a given object, or, as more commonly said, that a given object either has
or does not have. The distinction between predicates (as well as characteristics) and
properties is effectively depicted as in Fig. 5.4.
For example, properties in this sense are designated by the predicates “has a
length”, “is longer than one metre”, and “is 1.2345 m long”: for any given object a
that is the subject of these predicates, it is assumed that either it has a length or it has
not, and so on. If a property in the sense of formal logic (hereafter designated P# for
maintaining a notational distinction with the properties as considered in measure-
ment science, P) applies to an object, and therefore the corresponding predicate
applied to a term that designates the object is true, we say that the object has that
property: a rod a has the property of having a length, can have the property of being
longer than one metre, etc. The proposition that the rod a is longer than one metre
is then written as19

is _ longer _ than _ one _ metre  rod a   true

whereas for example it might be that

is _ longer _ than _ one _ metre  screw a    false

Fig. 5.4 The semiotic triangle (as in Fig. 2.1) applied to properties in the sense of formal logic

18
There are many excellent books that can be used as reference on formal logic. The textbook by
Hodges (1977), for example, is interesting for its explicit emphasis on the relations between natu-
ral languages and logic and the absence of required mathematical pre-competences.
19
The relations P#(a) = true and P#(a) = false are usually written as P#(a) and not(P#(a)) for short,
respectively. In what follows we use the same symbols and expressions to denote properties and
the corresponding predicates. This notational choice, of using the same symbol for a property and
the mathematical entity that models the property, is usual—for example, the Guide to the expres-
sion of uncertainty in measurement (GUM) adopts it with this justification: “For economy of nota-
tion, in this Guide the same symbol is used for the physical quantity (the measurand) and for the
random variable that represents the possible outcome of an observation of that quantity” (JCGM,
2008: 4.1.1, Note 1). Nevertheless, it is a possible source of confusion: even though properties are
not notationally differentiated from their concepts and expressions, as previously noted, properties
are not concepts and are not expressions.
5.2 Some clarifications about properties 127

There is an ambiguity about the very concept that an object does not have a prop-
erty. For example, if we consider now the object water a″ = the water in a given
glass, should we simply accept that

is _ longer _ than _ one _ metre  water a    false

despite its obvious difference with the previous case? Hence the problem arises of
maintaining a distinction between the case of objects that do not have a property P#
but could have it and the case of objects that even in principle cannot have a prop-
erty P#. This is based on the idea that only in the first case can P# be experimentally
assessed on the object, and thus that the second case would be better reported as

is _ longer _ than _ one _ metre  water a    undefined

We can account for this difference by restricting the application of each property P#
to a given set of objects, called the domain of P#. Hence the object screw a′ belongs
to the domain of the property is_longer_than_one_metre, and does not have the
property, whereas the object water a″ does not belong to the domain of the property,
because trying to assess whether some amount of water in a glass is longer than one
meter is meaningless. The distinction between physical properties and psychosocial
properties is then usually and first of all a distinction of domain: a rod has no read-
ing comprehension ability (the domain of reading comprehension ability does not
include rods), and a company has no length (the domain of length does not include
companies). In summary, for each property P# the set of objects is split into three
subsets: the subset of objects that actually have P#, the subset of objects that may
have P# but do not actually have it, and the subset of objects that cannot have P#. The
identification of the domain of a property, i.e., the union of the first two subsets, can
be considered an essential component of knowledge of that property.20

5.2.3 Properties and relations

In the philosophical tradition, and again in formal logic in particular, a distinction is

also maintained between properties and relations, where the former are features of
(i.e., apply to) single objects and the latter are features of two or more objects, and

20
If the position is assumed that every predicate designates a property (in the sense of formal
logic), things can become tricky. Consider, e.g., the predicate “is a length”: if is_a_length(a) = true,
then it is because a is a property, and it is in fact a length. The domain of is_a_length is then a set
of properties—so that is_a_length(a given rod) is undefined, not false—and is_a_length is a higher
order property, i.e., a property of properties. It is doubtful that such kinds of properties can be
assessed via empirical interactions (on the other hand, is_a_quantity is an example of a second-
order property, which instead admits an empirical validation—see the related discussion in Sect.
6.3.2).
128 5 What is measured?

all are designated by predicates with either one or two or more arguments, respec-
tively. For example, ordering is a relation between pairs of objects—if a is less than
a′ then order(a, a′) = true (more usually written as a < a′)—and betweenness is a
relation between triples of objects—if a is greater than a′ and less than a″ then
between (a, a′, a″) = true (more usually written as a′ < a < a″). In this sense any
physical quantity that is relative to a reference system is a relation, as is the case,
e.g., of the speed of an object, which is not a property of the object but a relation
between the object and the system in reference to which speed is considered. Hence,
according to this terminology, while has_a_given_length is a property that an object
can have, has_a_given_speed is a relation, e.g., has_a_given_speed(rod a, refer-
ence system b).21
This distinction is not usually maintained in measurement science, in which the
terms “property” and “quantity” are usually applied both to what would be consid-
ered properties and relations in formal logic. For a property to change it is then
sufficient that one object, to which the property applies, changes.22
We accept this terminological custom here, and—consistently with the current
edition of the VIM (JCGM, 2012: 1.1)—use the term “property” for relations as
well.23 With this convention, the difference between properties in the sense of for-
mal logic and properties in the sense of measurement science can be analyzed.

21
This is what the Galilean relativity principle asserts. According to Einstein’s relativity theory, the
length of a body observed from a frame of reference in motion with respect to the body depends on
the relative velocity of the two systems: in this view length is also a relation. Moreover, even in
classical physics is_1.2345_m_long(a) could be reinterpreted as the relation is_1.2345-fold_
long(a, s) between the object a and any measurement standard s which materializes the metre:
from this perspective, all ratio properties treated in measurement are relations.
22
This avoids the need of specifically dealing with the so-called Cambridge changes, “such as
when I change from having ‘non-brother’ true of me to having ‘brother’ true of me, just when my
mother gives birth to a second son”, the problem being of course that “it might seem faintly para-
doxical that there need be no (other) changes in me (height, weight, colouring, memories, charac-
ter, thoughts) in this circumstance” (Mortensen, 2020: ch. 2). Consider an example closer to our
context, like

is _ at _ a _ distance _ of _ 1.2345 _ m _ from  body a,reference b   true

If instead we assumed that the property is

is _ at _ a _ distance _ of _ 1.2345 _ m _ from _ reference _ b  body a   true

then changes of the position of b would need to be considered also as changes of a property of
a, even though a itself did not move.
23
Sometimes the term “attribute” is used to encompass properties and relations. This was the
choice of the second edition of the VIM, which defines <(measurable) quantity> as an “attribute of
a phenomenon, body or substance that may be distinguished qualitatively and determined quanti-
tatively” (ISO et al., 1993: 1.1).
5.2 Some clarifications about properties 129

5.2.4 From properties of formal logic to properties of

measurement science

Since a Basic Evaluation Equation such as

length rod a   1.2345 m

can be rewritten in the predicative form as

is _ 1.2345 _ m _ long  rod a   true

one could conclude that these expressions convey exactly the same information.
This is not the case, and a consideration of the differences allows us to highlight
some fundamental features of properties (in the sense of measurement science, the
meaning to which we implicitly refer henceforth).
Consider the three (logical) equations:

R1 : is _ 1.2345 _ m _ long  rod a   true

R2 : is _ 2.3456 _ m _ long  rod a   true

R3 : is _ 3.4567 _ kg _ heavy  rod a   true

While R1 and R3 can hold at the same time, R1 and R2 cannot. However, the pred-
icative form P#(object) is unable to prevent both R1 and R2 from being asserted as
true at the same time. Indeed, consider rewriting the three predicates as P#1, P#2, and
P#3, respectively: How could one know that, for a given x, both P#1(x) and P#3(x) can
be true but that if P#1(x) is true then P#2(x) must be false?
In order to acknowledge that R1 and R2 are incompatible, the involved proper-
ties must be recognized as having an internal structure, such that the equations could
be rewritten in a parametric form as

R1a : is _ long1.2345 _ m  rod a   true

R2a : is _ long2.3456 _ m  rod a   true

R3a : is _ heavy3.4567 _ kg  rod a   true

or in the relational form

R1b : is _ long  rod a,1.2345 m   true

R2 b : is _ long  rod a,2.3456 m   true

130 5 What is measured?

R3b : is _ heavy  rod a,3.4567 kg   true

that under the functional condition of uniqueness—for all x, P#(x, y1) = true and
P#(x, y2) = true imply y1 = y2—corresponds to the more usual functional form:

R1c : long rod a   1.2345 m

R2 c : long rod a   2.3456 m

R3c : heavy rod a   3.4567 kg

where “long” and “heavy” are not predicates anymore (as used in this way “long” is
then different from the predicate “is long”24), but examples of what Rudolf Carnap
called functors (1937: p. 14; a discussion on predicates and functors in the context
of measurement is in Mari, 1996). In short, once the set of possible values of the
parameter x is given, one functor, “long”, which maps objects to values, corresponds
to the whole set of predicates “is longx m”. Hence, just as predicates are the linguistic
counterparts of properties and relations in the sense of formal logic, functors are the
linguistic counterparts of properties in the sense of measurement science.25
With a formalization based on functors the incompatibility of R1b and R2b
becomes explicit. However, this cannot be justified on the basis of the linguistic fact
that the functor “long” is the same in R1b and R2b: they remain incompatible even if
in R2b “long” is translated into another language, e.g., into the Italian “lungo”. Such
an incompatibility is an empirical fact, which calls for a justification, to be devel-
oped in the sections that follow. Interestingly, the basics of a measurement-oriented
ontology and epistemology of properties can be first developed without recourse to
values of properties, which will deserve a specific analysis on their own.

24
Admittedly, a form such as “long[rod a]” is clearly awkward, and is introduced here only as an
intermediate step from properties in the sense of logic, e.g., is long[rod a], to properties in the
sense of measurement science, e.g., length(rod a).
25
There is in fact another functional form for conveying the information brought by a Basic
Evaluation Equation:

R1d : long _ in _ m rod a   1.2345

R2d : long _ in _ m rod a   2.3456

R3d : heavy _ in _ kg rod a   3.4567

We further discuss it in particular in Sect. 6.2.2, in the context of the analysis of the way repre-
sentational theories of measurement deal with values.
5.2 Some clarifications about properties 131

5.2.5 Context dependence of properties

Our analysis of properties and objects is grounded on the basic assumption that
objects can persist in space and time even if one or more of their properties change.26
In particular, by indexing properties of objects by time instant (so that, for example,
long[a, t] is the property designated by the functor “long” that the object a has at
time instant t), a property-related comparability criterion is given such that, for dis-
tinguishable time instants t and t′, it may happen that

long  a,t   long  a,t 

heavy  a,t  / heavy  a,t 

where ≈ denotes indistinguishability with respect to the given criterion:27,28 it is a

situation in which the object a has maintained its individuality from t to t′ because

26
For example, on the one hand, at least in the broadly Western tradition, each of us admits our own
persistence in time as individuals even though we change, say, our height and weight and, less trivi-
ally, our cognitive abilities. On the other hand, an object can change to another one if one or more of
its properties change, as in the case of an informous amount of clay that is modeled and finally
becomes a jar. An extreme case of the dilemma of the conditions of object persistence is known since
the classical world as the Theseus paradox (see Korman, 2016: 2.4): Does a ship remain the same
even if, one by one, all its wooden boards are substituted? And therefore, is an object characterized
by the matter of which it is constituted, or by its shape? The assumption of some basic persistence is
intrinsic to our concept of object. Even just imagining how to avoid it is challenging. In one of his
tales, “Funes el memorioso” (“Funes the Memorious”), Jorge Luis Borges (1944) tried imagining
what it would be like to avoid it, by telling of an individual of prodigious memory: “In the seven-
teenth century, Locke postulated (and condemned) an impossible language in which each individual
thing—every stone, every bird, every branch—would have its own name; Funes once contemplated
a similar language, but discarded the idea as too general, too ambiguous. The truth was, Funes
remembered not only every leaf of every tree in every patch of forest, but every time he had perceived
or imagined that leaf.” Compare this with: “All is impermanent, because all is in a state of perpetual
change. A thing does not remain the same during two consecutive ksanas (the ksana being the short-
est period of time in Buddhism). It is because things transform themselves ceaselessly that they
cannot maintain their identity, even during two consecutive ksanas” (Nhat Hanh, 1974: p. 35).
27
By acknowledging that time instant is also a property (of the reference system shared by the
considered objects), the condition that t and t′ are distinguishable time instants should be written
as t ≉ t′, not t ≠ t′, thus emphasizing that two time instants could be indistinguishable (because,
e.g., they are within 1 ns of one another and the quality of the available instrumentation is not able
to detect this difference) even though they are not necessarily exactly the same.
28
A relation such that object a at time instant t and object a′ at time instant t′ are indistinguishable
in their being long may be differently interpreted. If objects are considered to be entities with time
instances, then the relation could be written as long[a(t)] ≈ long[a′(t′)] (see Mortensen, 2020: ch.
5). By focusing even more explicitly on objects and considering to be long as a feature of the way
objects are compared, the relation could be written instead as a(t) ≈ long[a′(t′)]. The focus in mea-
surement science on properties—what is measured is the property of an object, not an object per
se—justifies our choice of adopting the form long[a] ≈ long[a′], and possibly its time explicit ver-
sion long[a, t] ≈ long[a′, t′] whenever appropriate. The alternative position of focusing on objects
is taken in particular in the representational theories of measurement, which usually develop their
formalization on empirical relations among objects; see, e.g., how the concept <relational struc-
ture> is introduced in Krantz et al. (1971: p. 8).
132 5 What is measured?

in particular its being long has not changed,29 while, plausibly among other proper-
ties, its being heavy has changed.
A complementary basic assumption is that property-related comparability is
applicable not only to the same object in different time instants, but also to different
objects, in the same or different time instants: objects are comparable via the com-
parison of their properties. Hence it may happen, for example, that

long  a,t   long  b,t   a and b are synchronously indistinguishable in their being long 

long  a,t   long  b,t   a and b are asynchronously indistinguishable in their being long 

but also, of course, that

long  a,t   long  b,t   a and b are synchronously distinguishable in their being long 

long  a,t   long  b,t   a and b are asynchronously distinguishable in their being long 

More generally, properties are acknowledged to be mutually related, so that the

property of being long of an object may change not only with time but also, for
example, with the temperature of the object, the pressure of the surrounding envi-
ronment, etc. Hence, there is a context c that influences (and is influenced by)
long[a]: we designate by long[a, c] the property of being long of the object a in the
context c, with the understanding that time is part of the context, or possibly long[a,
c, t] in order to emphasize the time instant when the property is taken into account.
The relation of experimental indistinguishability of properties of objects deserves
some more analysis.

5.2.6 Indistinguishability of properties of objects

Let us assume that the indistinguishability of two properties of objects has been
observed, as in the case

long  a   long  b 

How should such a relation be interpreted?30 An aspect of the issue pertains to the
fact that property comparisons relevant to measurement are empirical activities, as
discussed in Sect. 2.3, and that any such activity is usually affected by factors that

29
“Its being long has not changed” is awkward phrasing, and could be changed to the more usual
“its length has not changed”. We maintain it at the moment, given that the relation of the adjective
“long” with the corresponding noun “length” is discussed afterwards.
30
In what follows, it is immaterial whether the comparison is synchronous or asynchronous, and
whether it depends on the context: therefore the reference to time and context is usually omitted.
5.2 Some clarifications about properties 133

prevent its ideal realization. Hence, even when two properties are found to be indis-
tinguishable, a more specific comparison might reveal that they are not equal, but
only similar.
Like any generic similarity, indistinguishability is
• reflexive (any property is indistinguishable from itself: P[a] ≈ P[a]) and
• symmetric (if two properties are indistinguishable, then the order in which they
are considered is immaterial: P[ai] ≈ P[aj] if and only if P[aj] ≈ P[ai]), but
• not transitive (given three properties, from the facts that the first and the second
are indistinguishable and that the second and the third are indistinguishable, the
conclusion that also the first and the third are indistinguishable does not follow:
P[ai] ≈ P[aj] and P[aj] ≈ P[ak] do not imply that P[ai] ≈ P[ak]).
The non-transitivity of indistinguishability has at least one critical consequence:
properties of objects could not be consistently represented, or even named, in any
sufficiently simple form. Indeed, the observation that P[ai] and P[aj] are indistin-
guishable would lead one to represent them with the same symbol, and the observa-
tion that P[aj] and P[ak] are also indistinguishable would lead one to represent P[ak]
with the same symbol as P[aj], and therefore as P[ai]; but since P[ai] and P[ak] could
be instead distinguishable, this would lead to the situation in which distinguishable
properties are represented by the same symbol, a case of homonymy and therefore
information loss in representation. Furthermore, since the comparison can be iter-
ated, there might be a sequence of objects a1, a2, …, an such that P[a1] ≈ P[a2] and
P[a2] ≈ P[a3] and … P[an–1] ≈ P[an] even though, for each i, P[ai] ≉ P[ai+2], with the
consequence that all comparable but mostly distinguishable properties of objects
are represented by the same symbol, and therefore that the representation conveys
no information at all.31
This issue does not seem to have a general solution better than provisionally
assuming the transitivity of indistinguishability, and therefore modeling the com-
parison of properties of objects as an equivalence relation, which could be then
discovered to be not such by means of further and more refined comparisons. As we
discuss below, providing information on properties of objects in terms of traceable
values is the specific solution to this problem adopted in measurement science (see
also Mari & Sartori, 2007).

31
This is the paradox known as sorites, a term which derives from the Greek word “soros”, mean-
ing <heap> (see Hyde & Raffman, 2018). The classical way to present it is in terms of logical
properties, for example as follows. Let an be a set of n grains of wheat. Of course a0 is not a heap,
i.e., is_heap(a0) = false. Moreover, an and an+1 are indistinguishable in their being heaps, in the
sense that if a set is not a heap, adding a grain to it does not make it a heap, i.e., if is_heap(an) = false
then is_heap(an+1) = false. Then starting from the first clause and by the repeated application of the
second clause the conclusion is reached that is_heap(an) = false no matter how large n is.
134 5 What is measured?

5.3 A philosophical interlude

The analysis developed so far about properties has been mainly technical, aimed at
setting a conceptual framework for interpreting the Basic Evaluation Equation

property of an object = value of a property

In fact, such an interpretation has an unavoidable (though possibly only implicit)

philosophical background. Given a Basic Evaluation Equation such as

length rod a   1.2345 m

one may claim, for example, that this is just a sophisticated linguistic shorthand
for reporting something about the relation between two objects, rod a and an
object that in some primitive sense is attributed “to be one metre”, or possibly “to
have one metre”, but that there is nothing in the world that corresponds to <being
one metre> or <having one metre>, let alone the <length of rod a> and <one
metre>. Accordingly, properties of objects and values of properties would be noth-
ing more than conceptual tools created to organize our knowledge of the world.32
However, a Basic Evaluation Equation could be instead interpreted literally, as
reporting a relation between entities—properties of objects and values of proper-
ties—that exist in the world, of course with respect to a given mode of existence,
as discussed in Box 5.1.
The subject is so fundamental for any ontology (see references in Footnote 5)
that we will not feign to provide any original contribution to this discussion. We
conclude this chapter simply by discussing why we support a realist position about
individual properties, while postponing to Sect. 6.6 the more complex analysis of
the existence of general properties.

5.3.1 Do individual properties exist?

Even if the experimental issues regarding the indistinguishability of properties of

objects are somehow settled, there remains a general ontological problem. Let us
suppose that the repeated application of the best available means of comparison has
been unable to find any difference between the properties of two objects, so that
according to the available information the indistinguishability relation P[ai] ≈ P[aj]
could be in fact considered an equality, P[ai] = P[aj]: How should such a relation be
interpreted?

32
Depending on how radical (or consistent) this position is, one could say the same about objects:
the world is in principle an undifferentiated blob, and objects are only conceptual constructions we
provide for understanding the world.
5.3 A philosophical interlude 135

There are two, basically alternative, answers to this question (see Orilia &
Swoyer, 2020).33
• According to one position, no matter how similar P[ai] and P[aj] are, they are
still distinct entities, as the objects ai and aj are distinct, because any property of
an object is by definition a property that only that object has and can have. In this
sense, the equality P[ai] = P[aj] is simply a convenient notation for an equiva-
lence P[ai] ≅ P[aj]: while the objects ai and aj have indistinguishable modes of
interaction with the environment, their properties remain different because they
are of different objects. A plausibly unavoidable consequence of this position is
that an object a at the time instant ti and the same object a at any other time
instant tj—as introduced in Sect. 5.2.5—cannot have the same property, i.e., P[a,
ti] and P[a, tj] must be distinct entities.
Under this assumption, the ontology of properties is then straightforward, given
that it may include only properties of objects at time instants as fundamental
entities,34 and it assumes their relation of indistinguishability as primitive. Thus,
there are no individual properties independent of objects at time instants, and
what we consider lengths, given reading comprehension abilities, and so forth
are no more than concepts that we create to help organize our experience of and
communication about the world. However, this position assumes that each prop-
erty of each object at each time instant is a distinct entity, and therefore that at
each new instant a bunch of properties is created, so that an ever increasingly
growing multitude of properties exists. This is an instance of a position that in the
philosophical tradition is often called nominalism.
• According to another position, properties of objects are such that distinct objects
can have one and the same property. Hence the indistinguishability of P[ai] and
P[aj] suggests that they could be indeed the same property. In this sense,
P[ai] = P[aj] is the theoretical counterpart of P[ai] ≈ P[aj]: the fact that the objects
ai and aj have indistinguishable modes of interaction with the environment sup-
ports the hypothesis that they have the same property. In the lexicon of ontology,
properties of objects are then universals: each property is a universal, which can
be instantiated in, i.e., exemplified by, one or more objects.
The ontology of properties in this case might be considered then more complex
than in the previous case, given that it includes universal entities, such as any
given length and any given reading comprehension ability, together with particu-
lars such as the length of any given rod and the reading comprehension ability of
any given individual. However, this position avoids assuming that each property
of each object in each instant is a distinct entity, and accounts for the relation of

33
Note that this alternative is presented with no reference to values of properties, which are instead
discussed in Chap. 6.
34
With or possibly even without objects: in an extreme position, objects could be just considered
as the bundles of their properties—see Maurin (2018) (and since properties change as time passes,
this also means that objects have no persistence: I am not the same person as I was one second ago,
but we are only equivalent, according to a more or less complex criterion of equivalence; this might
be an interpretation of the radical impermanence mentioned in Footnote 26 about Buddhism).
136 5 What is measured?

indistinguishability of properties of objects in a simple way: two properties of

objects are indistinguishable if they identify the same universal property, or if
they identify distinct universal properties which prove to be indistinguishable
according to the available empirical means. This is an instance of a position that
in the philosophical tradition is often called realism.
The two positions share the common condition that properties of objects are particu-
lar entities, spatiotemporally situated. Whether things such as lengths and reading
comprehension abilities are concepts, as nominalists assert, or entities that exist in
the world independently of the knowledge that we have of them, as realists assert, is
an ontological alternative that affects the interpretation of some key components of
measurement, in particular the meaning of the Basic Evaluation Equation, but can-
not be decided by experimental activity.35 Each position can be translated into the
other one safely (and usually unproblematically, though sometimes in a cumber-
some way—see the examples in Footnote 35; see also Mari & Giordani, 2012:
p. 762).
We believe that most scientists, technologists, and practitioners, in both the phys-
ical and human sciences, are (perhaps unconsciously) at least moderate realists
about properties, in that they consider individual properties such as lengths and
reading comprehension abilities to exist in some sense (see also the discussion in
Sect. 6.6). If explicitly asked, they might plausibly accept the more complex ontol-
ogy in which properties are considered to be universals, given that the adoption of
the more complex ontology does not affect day-to-day practice, and simplifies the
reporting of experimental results by at least provisionally accounting for the
observed indistinguishability of properties of objects in terms of their equality, such
that properties of objects can be included in relations interpreted as actual equali-
ties. Furthermore, this ontology allows for a more flexible treatment of properties,
in particular by admitting the possibility of formally handling properties that might
currently not be instantiated by any existing object (and maybe even properties that

35
The alternative between realism and nominalism relates not only to properties, as realism and
nominalism clash about the existence of universals as such. Take these two examples: “the steam
engine was invented at the end of the seventeenth century” and “the tiger is an endangered spe-
cies”. For a nominalist they cannot be literally true, because “the steam engine” and “the tiger” do
not refer to anything in the world, but only to concepts we adopt to organize our knowledge. He or
she would explain the meaning of the two sentences by considering them to be shorthands for
something like “the first object that we presently conceptualize as <steam engine> was invented at
the end of seventeenth century” and “the current number of objects that we conceptualize as
<tiger> is less than a given threshold”, or even more explicitly “the extension of <steam engine>
was empty before the end of seventeenth century” and “the cardinality of the current extension of
<tiger> is less than a given threshold”. This reduction strategy may become cumbersome. For
example, in the case of “Shakespeare’s works include 39 plays”, the nominalist would claim that
the quantification is on concepts, so that, e.g., A Midsummer Night’s Dream does not exist as such
but it is only a concept by means of which we identify a subset of the objects (paper volumes, digi-
tal files, theater performances, etc.) with the property of having Shakespeare as their author.
Assessing the truth of the sentence would then require first of all assessing an equivalence criterion
between such disparate entities, and then counting the number of the so obtained equivalence
classes.
5.3 A philosophical interlude 137

are known not to be instantiated by any object, such as lengths greater than the
diameter of the universe and masses greater than the mass of the universe).36 Finally,
while a realist ontology has a greater categorical complexity, it spares the nominalist
requirement of an immensely great number of properties, immensely growing at
each time instant with the creation of new properties. For these reasons we maintain
here the position that individual properties are universals.

5.3.2 Individual properties as universals: an explanation

The idea that individual properties are universals is conceptually sophisticated: How
can it be that indistinguishable properties of distinct objects may correspond in fact
to the same individual property? Let us consider a mathematical relation such as ∑
1/(i 2i) = ln(2), where i is an integer ranging from 1 to infinity, an equation which is
known to be true, given that both ∑ 1/(i 2i) = 0.693147 … and ln(2) = 0.693147 ….
In terms of the involved numbers the relation ∑ 1/(i 2i) = ln(2) is not different from
0.693147 … = 0.693147 …: but while the latter is a logical identity, which does not
convey any information, the former implies some mathematical knowledge, so that
in some respect the two entities, ∑ 1/(i 2i) and ln(2), must be different. However,
there is also a respect in which the equality actually holds, so that we can say that
∑ 1/(i 2i) = ln(2) is true, while, for example, ∑ 1/(i 2i) = 2 is false. This double
interpretation—different but equal at the same time—accounts for the principled
difference between ∑ 1/(i 2i) = ln(2) and 0.693147 … = 0.693147 …, which can be
explained in terms of the distinction between the sense and the reference of an
expression (as noted in Box 5.1 above), where the sense of an expression is the con-
cept it designates and the reference of an expression is the entity it refers to.37
Hence “∑ 1/(i 2i)” and “ln(2)”
• are different expressions (the former starts with a symbol of summation, the lat-
ter with the name of a function, and so on),
• with different senses, since they designate different concepts (the former is a
series, the latter is a function evaluated in a given argument),
• but with the same referent, since they refer to the same mathematical object (the
number 0.693147 …).
This is a possible interpretation of the relation P[ai] ≈ P[aj], and indeed the one we
adopt here: when claiming, e.g., that the length of ai is indistinguishable from (or

36
There is one more reason supporting realism about properties, related to the status of values of
properties, a subject that we explore in Chap. 6. Just as a mention here, though obtained through
the conventional definition of a unit, an entity such as 1.2345 m seems to have an existence inde-
pendent of the knowledge that we have of it. In other words, values are not concepts.
37
An analogous distinction is put between the intension and the extension of a concept (see Sect.
2.1). Hence, the intensions of the concepts <∑ 1/(i 2i)> and <ln(2)> are different, while their
extension is the same, i.e., the number 0.693147 …. Note that intensions and extensions are some-
times attributed to terms too; see, e.g., Chalmers, 2002.
138 5 What is measured?

even the same as) the length of aj, we interpret this as the hypothesis that there is one
individual length that is identified as the length of the two objects, and therefore is
known in two different ways. In fact
• while the expressions “P[ai]” and “P[aj]” have different senses (because they
convey information on properties of different objects),
• their referent could be the same, and actually is the same if the equation
P[ai] = P[aj] is true, i.e., they refer to the same individual length.
In other words, if P[ai] = P[aj] is true, it is because there is one individual length
which is a universal entity that ai and aj both have.

5.3.3 Do we really need properties?

The position developed in the previous section has some analogies with Bertrand
Russell’s conception of natural numbers: “Under what circumstances do two classes
have the same number? The answer is, that they have the same number when their
terms can be correlated one to one, so that any one term of either corresponds to one
and only one term of the other. […] When the relation holds between two [classes],
those two [classes] have a certain common property, and vice versa. This common
property we call their number. This is the definition of numbers by abstraction”
(1903: pp. 113–116). The natural number n is then what all classes of n elements
have in common, as identified by a one-to-one correspondence among their ele-
ments. Such a position is compatible with both
• an extensionalist position: the number n is the class of all classes of n elements,
and
• an intensionalist position: the number n is the property that all classes of n ele-
ments share.
Hence extensionalism considers properties to be nothing but “classes of the entities
whose properties they are [, so that] for example, human baldness (or being bald) is
to be identified with the class of all bald humans, while over the domain comprising
all chunks of minerals, the property crystalline is the class of all crystalline rocks”
(Rozeboom, 1966: p. 172). As Hilary Putnam discusses (1969), extensionalism on
properties assumes that if, for all x, x is P# if and only if x is Q#, then P# and Q# are
the same property. This applies not only to the properties in the sense of formal
logic, but also to the properties in the sense of measurement science. Any reference
to a property would be then just a convenient shorthand for a given (although usu-
ally unknown) set: “the object a has a given length” would precisely and only mean
“the object a belongs to a given set”—that is, the set of objects having the same
length as a—and so on.38 According to Joel Michell, the consequence is that “the

38
This is about individual properties. There is also an extensionalist interpretation of general prop-
5.3 A philosophical interlude 139

ontology of modern science [comprises] material objects (or, alternatively, space-

time points), sets of material objects, sets of sets of material objects, …, but no
properties” (p. 305).39
Were the extensionalist objection against properties to be accepted, any discourse
about the ontology and epistemology of properties should be deemed to be extrin-
sic, a purely linguistic shorthand reducible to a set theoretical analysis. Again from
Rozeboom we take a general reply (1966: p. 172):
What is objectionable about this […] is that properties are really distinguishing features of
the entities which possess them, as that in principle properties can be coextensive even
though non-identical. Thus if all crystalline rocks were translucent and conversely, we
should deny that crystallinity and translucency are the same property of rocks even though
the class of crystalline rocks would be identical with the class of translucent rocks.

A more specific and non-hypothetical example is provided by any physical law

which connects two quantities via a constant, as is the case of the Planck–Einstein
relation E = hν, stating that the photon energy E is proportional to its frequency ν,
via the Planck constant h. According to this law, in the case of photons the individ-
ual property having energy e, for any given e, and the individual property having
frequency e/h are coextensive (i.e., the set of photons ai such that E[ai] = e and the
set of photons aj such that ν[aj] = e/h are the same). Nevertheless, the quantities
energy and frequency remain distinct. Moreover, though not logically contradictory,
the idea that laws of physics establish relations among sets, and that products and
powers of sets can be somehow considered (as in the case of kinetic energy, which
depends on the square of velocity), is counterintuitive, to say the least. Finally,
another well-known counterexample was provided by W.O. Quine (1951): “crea-
tures with a heart” and “creatures with a kidney” have the same extension, but their
meanings are clearly not interchangeable.
This whole discussion seems to provide sufficient reasons to refuse the exten-
sionalist objection, and more generally not to endorse a nominalist position, and to
continue exploring a measurement-oriented ontology and epistemology of proper-
ties under a realist perspective, according to which the Basic Evaluation Equation

erties. For example, according to Earl Babbie (who uses a peculiar lexicon: “variable” for general
property and “attribute” for value), “variables … are logical sets of attributes. Thus, for example,
male and female are attributes, and sex or gender is the variable composed of those two attributes.
The variable occupation is composed of attributes such as farmer, professor, and truck driver.
Social class is a variable composed of a set of attributes such as upper class, middle class, and
lower class” (2013: p. 13). Along the same line, Michell claims that “the variable of length is sim-
ply the class of all lengths” (1990: p. 51).
39
Indeed, representational theories of measurement usually formalize measurement as a mapping
from objects to numbers: “the first problem … the analysis of any procedure of measurement must
consider … is justification of the assignment of numbers to objects or phenomena” (Suppes &
Zinnes, 1962: p. 3). See also Sect. 6.2.2. Interestingly, extensionalism models logical properties
and properties of measurement science (i.e., what we above designated as P# and P, respectively)
in exactly the same way, as mappings from sets of objects to sets of values (whatever they are), the
only difference being that the cardinality of the codomain of logical properties is 2 (Lawvere &
Rosebrugh, 2003: 1.2).
140 5 What is measured?

conveys information about the relation between entities which have their own
modes of existence in the world. On this basis, in the following chapter we develop
the position that individual properties are universals by framing it in a metrological
framework, in which values of properties also play a significant role, and then
broaden the picture in order to consider the very problem of the existence of general
properties.

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