Abstract
Among those who posit properties, liberals (mostly nominalists) admit abundant, ontologically free properties, which particulars possess whenever they satisfy the same predicate and belong to the same class, however artificial. I call them “L-properties” (for “Liberal”). Some liberals also admit that some few L-properties are natural, while most of them are artificial (the same applies to the corresponding classes). Others (mostly but not only realists) commit to a more discriminating use of the category: properties are sparse, they make for the objective similarities among particulars, and more importantly, they allow to analyze “objective similarity” and “class naturalness” in terms of property-possessing and sharing. They give particulars their “true nature”, and I call them “A-properties” (for “Analytical”). This article provides a defense of this second type of properties, in the particular case of sortals. To that end, a new fact is put forward: that sorts are classes which are natural not as a primitive feature, but in virtue of what the particulars which belong to them are, and which makes them naturally belong to them. I then argue that this fact entails the existence of the desired type of properties, “sortal A-properties”, although leaving open the question of how they should be construed.
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Notes
If one were to use the “grounding” relation, one would say that A-properties ground both natural and artificial classes while still explaining why only some are natural. This is a stronger than the claim that artificial classes are grounded in natural ones, which could be reached without postulating A-properties. For instance, one could (in a Lewisian manner) postulate fundamental and primitive natural classes, in which all artificial classes are grounded. But when postulating A-properties, natural classes are not primitively natural anymore: they are so in virtue of the fact that their members possess and share A-properties. More on that will be said in Section 6.
Thus, I take theories which postulate non-particular entities (like universals) or particular but abstract entities (like tropes) to be non-nominalist. Some might choose to classify Trope Theory as a kind of nominalism, but this is a simple matter of definition, which is of no importance for the core of this article.
See for instance (Rodriguez-Pereyra, 2002, p. 2) about the role he gives to properties: “All I am committed to when I say that different particulars share properties is that there is something that makes red particulars red, square particulars square, and so on. This something might be an entity, like a universal or trope, or simply that those particulars resemble each other.” He also he denies that Goodman’s predicate “grue” corresponds to a property, so his properties are not liberal but analytical (p. 16).
Again, see Rodriguez-Pereyra (2002): “Thus all my use of the word ‘property’ commits one to is the idea of an identity of nature between some different particulars. But this need not mean that there are one or more entities, over and above the particulars that are identical in nature, which are present in those particulars. This may be the case, if universals or tropes exist; but it will not be the case if that identity of nature consists, for instance, simply in that the particulars in question resemble each other” (p. 16–17).
Thanks go to Anna Marmodoro for suggesting this new objection.
“Ostrich nominalists” don’t recognize the fact. They deny the need to distinguish between natural and artificial classes, and therefore they fall outside the scope of the discussion. Since they refuse to see the fact, they have been called “ostrich nominalists” by (Armstrong, 1980), whose own position has, in turn, been labelled “mirage realism” by (Devitt, 1980).
This is nicely captured by Campbell’s questions A and B (Campbell, 1990). He considers a red object and asks “what is it about this thing in virtue of which it is red?” (question A) and then, considering two red objects, “what is it about these two things in virtue of which they are both red?” (question B). Then, he says, realists “invariably take it for granted that the two questions are to be given parallel answers” (p. 29), since a property is both that in the instantiation of which the nature of a particular consists, and that in virtue of which particulars can have the same nature. But realists (about universals or tropes) are not the only ones to do so: RodriguezPereyra also does. What they all have in common is to postulate A-properties, while construing them in different ways.
References
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Campbell, K. (1981). The metaphysic of abstract particulars. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 6(1), 477–488.
Campbell, K. (1990). Abstract particulars. Blackwell.
Devitt, M. (1980). “Ostrich nominalism” or “mirage realism”? Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 61(4), 433–449.
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Tricard, J.N. How Particulars Naturally Belong to (Natural) Classes. Philosophia 51, 1705–1721 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00601-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-022-00601-0