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Do Material Things Have Intrinsic Properties?

Metaphysica

Abstract

Possession of any actual physical property depends on the ambient conditions for its bearers, irrespective of one's particular theory of dispositions. If ‘self-sufficiency’ makes a property intrinsic, then, because of this dependence, things in the actual world cannot have an intrinsic physical resemblance to one another or to things in other possible worlds. Criteria for the self-sufficiency of intrinsic properties based on, or implying indifference to both ‘loneliness’ and ‘accompaniment’ entail that no self-sufficient property can require its bearers to be extended in space or time, yet all physical properties of concrete objects do require this. These outcomes undermine the vindication of physicalism claimed by neo-Humeans for their metaphysical project. For physical properties dependent on ambient conditions cannot supervene on intrinsic properties independent of ambient conditions: when ambient conditions change we get a change in the former without a change in the latter.

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Notes

  1. Many of these are reviewed in Weatherson 2008.

  2. This idea, invoked in Lewis (1983), takes a back seat in his later discussions of intrinsicality, because he links it to his notion of the ‘naturalness’ of a property, which has proved hard to formulate. I argue in favour of such an account (Harris, forthcoming) on the basis, first set out in Francescotti 1999, that intrinsicality is easier to define in contradistinction to extrinsicality than within the tight circle of notions intrinsicality, resemblance and naturalness. Extrinsicality can be defined thus: possession of an extrinsic property consists in a relation to one or more actual or possible distinct concrete objects.

  3. Is radioactive decay an exception? At the level of the atom this appears random, immune from outside influence and, so, self-sufficient (although exceptional regular taken statistically across a mass of atoms). In rare, extreme conditions, however, this process is reversed, namely those in super-nova explosions in which all the elements heavier than iron are formed, including those which subsequently exhibit radioactive decay. So even this apparently self-sufficient process is not immune from the influence of specific ambient conditions, rare though these may be. Is the very instant of the ‘big bang’ an exception? Possibly, but one which hardly undermines CDT.

  4. Bostock writes

    If an object x has mass property M, then that property is irreducibly dispositional iff x having it is enough to ensure that x would behave in certain ways in certain circumstances. The mass property is categorical, on the other hand, iff x having it is not enough to ensure that x would behave in certain ways in certain circumstances. If the property is categorical, what is also needed is a law—as an extra entity over and above x and its mass property—governing how objects with mass m would behave in certain circumstances.

    Either way, actual properties, whether irreducibly dispositional or categorical but governed by laws, fall under CDT.

  5. Apply the ‘mere Cambridge test’ of extrinsicality: should I cease to exist, both car and computer would undergo a ‘mere Cambridge change’, making no difference to what they were like (or, in counterpart theory, there is a possible world without a counterpart of me, in which my car and computer have duplicates). There is a fair degree of consensus that this is a sufficient (if not necessary) condition for a property to be extrinsic.

  6. ‘Primary’ in something like Locke’s sense (Essay Book 2 Ch.8) but involving a different catalogue of qualities. Ancient atomism, and mechanist views of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries employed the notion that the smallest parts of things possess their few fundamental properties absolutely, self-sufficiently , independently of any relation, condition or degree, and that such necessarily categorical properties enjoy some kind of primacy in the scheme of things, and in the explanations science provides. Science has long since parted company with this intuition: Dalton’s atoms, apart from possessing mass, were utterly different. Their important properties were their propensities to combine—all entirely dependent upon ambient conditions, and coming in more than 90 varieties. Since then, the science of the successively smaller parts of things has exclusively explained matter by positing particles whose relevant properties are dispositions manifested in specific circumstances of combination, and whose only categorical properties are mass and size.

  7. HumeTreatise Book 1 section iv.

  8. E.g. Bird (2001)

  9. Whose number is very small—six, according to Rees (1999))

  10. In Lewis 1986c p. ix. The status of this hypothesis is debatable. Lewis does not consider it to be necessary. Cameron (2008) discusses the tight interdependence of the notions involved, and does not consider it to be warranted. It is unclear what would show that it was false. I argue that it provides no support for doctrines of physicalism.

  11. Mass and charge are taken to act as though from a point in continuum mechanics. You might say that they are exemplified at a point, but not by a point. For when we know the shape and density of a solid object we are able to identify both the mass of that object and the point (centre of gravity) though which that mass can be taken to act, but it is the whole object which possesses that mass, not the centre of gravity. For much more on such matters, see Butterfield 2006.

  12. See Kim 1984

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Harris, R. Do Material Things Have Intrinsic Properties?. Int Ontology Metaphysics 11, 105–117 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12133-010-0062-2

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