Abstract
In his “Are Properties, Particular, Universal, or Neither?” Javier Cumpa argues that science not metaphysics explains how properties are instantiated. I accept this conclusion provided physics can be stated using rather few primitive predicates. In addition, he uses his scientific theory of instantiation to argue for Neutralism, his thesis that the “tie” between properties and their instances implies neither that properties are particular nor that they are universals. Neutralism, I claim, is a thesis that realist about universals have independent reason to accept and their opponents have reason to reject. So, neutralism is not neutral on the topic of whether properties are universals. Nor is Cumpa’s Theory of Instantiation as naturalistic as he claims. I argue that although compatible with Ontological Naturalism, his theory provides a precedent for the non-naturalistic emergence of mental properties. Finally, I argue that because his theory requires a simple physics it presupposes a more rationalist epistemology than that of Methodological Naturalism.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Mario Santos-Sousa, Pinilopi Stylianopoulou. Karol Lenart, Enrique Aramendia and especially Javier Cumpa for helpful feedback at the Physis lectures, Complutense University of Madrid, July 2019.
Appendix: Properties etc. as Operators?
Frege’s concept of a concept is of an unsaturated item, a function assigning propositions to referring expressions. At one stage Armstrong suggested that universals were similarly unsaturated, and this conception of properties etc. resembles the concept of form in scholastic hylomorphism. I have developed this with an operator theory of universals, which I now repudiate. This solves the instantiation problem provided the resultant of the operator can itself be an operator. Consider, for instance, an operator R that assigns to a particular b an operator Rb that in turn assigns to a particular b a state of affairs Rab. Then R is a dyadic operator Rxy but it requires no instantiation in addition to that implicit in the idea of an operator and it requires no multiplicity of instantiation predicates.
I have two objections: from emergent novelty and from the multiple composition.
Emergent Novelty
I take temperature to be an emergent novelty. Suppose being of temperature 200°Celsius is an operator that acts on a portion of H2O molecules whose product is steam at 200°. The problem with this is that it explains why the steam is at 200°. Indeed, it is a formal “cause” in Aristotle’s theory of the four “causes” – better translated as “explanations”. Such an explanation is redundant because the novelty is explained by a better formal explanation, the underlying motion of molecules. This redundancy is the basis of Molière’s “virtus dormitiva” jibe.
Contrast this with bridging law emergence, in which the bridging law provides the efficient “cause”, not the formal “cause”. Suppose Molière’s doctors had been right and the chemical structure of morphine does not explain why opium sends you to sleep. In that case there would be a bridging law that whenever a substance is made up of morphine it is a soporific substance, and the chemical structure would not be the formal cause of its being soporific.
The Objection from Multiple Composition
There are (at least) two conceptions of a universal, the universal as a respect of resemblance and the universal as a component. TIC is based on the first conception; the operator theory is based on the second. This leads, however, to the objection to the supposed way in which the universals compose the particular. To be sure we can give a theory of operators in which we “compose” them using conjunction and other algebraic operations on operators, but not all of these are like conjunction in that they are intuitively genuine compositions out of components. Negation, for instance, is not a true composition because the universal F-ness is not part of not-being F. [9] An especially serious case is the one that arises from the very respect which I proclaimed as an advantage for operator theory, the two-stage instantiation of polyadic and in particular dyadic properties etc. Consider a transitive symmetric relation, Rxy, that is an internal relation such as such as being of the same hue. And consider an instance Rbc. Then on the operator conception, we can form the monadic operators Rbx and Rcx by acting on b and on c. But because Rxy is transitive and symmetric relation and Rbc, it follows that Rbx if and only if Rcx. Moreover, because Rxy was an internal relation, necessarily Rbx if and only if Rcx. Hence the monadic operators Rbx and Rcx are the same universal. This provided a case in which same monadic universal is “composed” in two ways with two different components b and c. And to any who might suggest that Rbx and Rcx are distinct universals even though necessarily co-instantiated, I reply that being of the same hue as b and being of the same hue as c, are both just that hue, the one b and c share. Therefore, there is just the one universal.
A more familiar and less technical example of multiple composition might be the identity of being a triangle with being a trilateral. Unfortunately, intuitions vary on this and some seem to think there are two distinct universals.
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