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The Problem of Temporary Intinsics: An Overview Shieva Kleinschmidt

The Problem of Intrinsics has been around since Heraclitus drew our attention to cases of what looked like single entities having incompatible properties. He attempted to give two sorts of examples of this: entities having incompatible properties simultaneously, and entities having incompatible properties in virtue of first having one, and then having the other. His examples of the first type are easily explainable via either disambiguation or some sort of relativisation. For example: “the sea is the purest and most polluted water: to fishes drinkable and bringing safety, to humans undrinkable and destructive”, and “the track of writing is straight and crooked”. However, Heraclitus’s cases of change over time might seem more difficult to explain. For example: “Cold things grow hot, a hot thing cold, a moist thing withers, a parched thing is wetted”, and most famously, “Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and again different waters flow”. Roughly 2,500 years after Heraclitus wrote of this puzzle of change over time, David Lewis re-presented (and clarified) it for us, with the label ‘The Problem of Temporary Intrinsics’. He says, Persisting things change their intrinsic properties. For instance shape: when I sit, I have a bent shape; when I stand I have a straightened shape. Both shapes are temporary intrinsic properties; I have them only some of the time. How is such change possible? The problem is that Leibniz’s Law tells us that nothing can differ from itself. But if a single thing both persists and changes, then that thing will differ (in virtue of there being genuine change) from itself (in virtue of it really being that thing that persists). There are a number of responses to this puzzle. A thorough though likely incomplete list: (a) Object-Restriction: No such cases exist, because nothing can persist (across time or space) through change. (b) Property-Restriction: Apparent cases of change don’t really involve incompatible properties. This may be due to the existence of something like distributional properties. Instead of a thing being cold at one time and warm at another, on this view the thing would have a single property that distributes coldness to it at one time and warmness at another. Polka-dottedness is taken to be a paradigm example of this sort of property. (c) Multitude Containment: Objects can differ from themselves. Leibniz’s Law is false, because identicals can be discernible: having incompatible properties is not unacceptably problematic. (Heraclitus may have held this view; we can read him as arguing for Monism by pointing out that there are many cases where an ordinary object has incompatible properties. If we allow for these cases, then it’s hard to see why we would ever take instantiation of incompatible properties as good evidence that there is a plurality of objects. And since Monism is the more parsimonious view, if we don’t have reason to reject it, we should accept it.) (d) Serious Tensing: Objects change with respect to which intrinsic properties they have, but no object is ever such that it is F and F. If an object is F, then the object is not F, though it may be the case that the object will be F, or that it was F. For instance, I am sitting. It is not true that I am not sitting. But I will be not sitting, and I was not sitting. At a later time, it will be true that I am sitting, and it will not be true that I am not sitting. But at no time is it true that I am sitting, and I am not sitting. 2

Sitting and not sitting are genuinely intrinsic, incompatible properties, and they are had by ordinary objects (without being derived from things like proper temporal parts). Ordinary things undergo real change. The cost, though, is positing irreducible tense. (e) Object Plenitude: The primary bearers of the incompatible intrinsic properties are distinct. The thing-at-r1 is F, and the thing-at-r2 is F. We cannot derive a contradiction from this; there is no single entity with incompatible properties. There are various ways to endorse this. 1. The Temporal Parts Solution: As Lewis intended, we can endorse worm theory, according to which ordinary objects persist in virtue of perduring. They are extended in time in the same way they are extended in space, and have proper temporal parts at each time at which they are present at all. Those temporal parts are the primary bearers of temporary intrinsic properties like standing and being happy. A fusion of two temporal parts, one which is F and the other which is F, may be said to be both F and F. But this merely involves the fusion having a part that is F and a distinct part that is F. An ordinary, persisting object’s having “temporary” intrinsic properties amounts to it having permanent properties involving merely some of its temporal parts which have those intrinsic properties. 2. The Stage Solution: As Sider has presented, we can endorse stage theory, according to which ordinary objects are temporally unextended. Strictly speaking, they do not persist. However, they stand in counterpart relations to one-another, and these facts serve as the truthmakers for our ordinary- language claims about the objects persisting. Endorsing this option is a way of endorsing (a), but with a friendlier semantics than that view suggests. I am currently sitting; I, a temporally unextended entity, have the property of sitting simpliciter, and non-derivatively (or at least, it is not derived from any proper temporal parts). When we say that I will later be not-sitting, all that’s needed for the truth of our statement is that there is some entity that is relevantly similar to me, and perhaps which stands in the right causal relations to me (together giving us a basis for claiming the objects stand in a relation that Peter van Inwagen coined “gen identity”), and which is not sitting. Sider notes that, while the worm-theoretic version of the four-dimensionalist response to the Problem of Intrinsics involves claiming that ordinary, persisting objects aren’t really the bearers of temporary intrinsic properties like standing and being happy, the stage-theoretic version of the four- dimensionalist response to this puzzle does still allow ordinary objects to be the primary bearers of these properties. It’s not just a proper part of you that’s happy right now. You really are happy. (Given that you are reading my manuscript, I can only hope.) 3. The Constituent Solution: just as with the Temporal Parts Solution, ordinary objects have their properties derivatively, and so persist through change, but without contradiction because they never have the relevant properties simpliciter. However, instead of deriving the properties from their proper parts, these objects derive their properties from certain objects they are proper parts of, namely, the fusions of themselves and the properties they have at that time. This view has been proposed by Jeffrey Brower, who says, “ordinary 3

objects undergo intrinsic change by successively entering into larger wholes of which they and their temporary intrinsics are proper parts or constituents.” It’s useful to think of this as involving a combination of positing hylomorphic compounds and “top-down” property derivation (where at least some properties of at least some proper parts are derived from the properties had by their wholes; for those properties, for a proper part to have that property is for it to be a proper part of something that has that property simpliciter), though this picture is stronger than what is required for the solution. (f) Property Plenitude: The temporary properties we take objects to have actually correspond to groups of properties, one for each region at which the property might be had. So, for instance, rather than there merely being a single property of standing, which I have now and lack later, there are instead several properties, including standingT1, standingT2, standingT3, etc. When I seem to change with respect to whether I’m standing, it is in virtue of, for instance, instantiating standingT1, but not instantiating standingT2. This picture of properties is patterned on contextualism. In adopting this response, we can maintain that ordinary objects are the primary bearers of these properties, and we can also maintain that the relevant properties are intrinsic. We also avoid the ontological costs of positing irreducible tense in order to achieve these ends. (g) Relativisation: The temporary properties had by objects are relativised in some way. Objects do not simply have temporary, intrinsic properties simpliciter. This can be cashed out by invoking one of several kinds of relativisation strategies. 1. Relativising the Property: A thing is F-at-r and F-at-r’, which won’t be sufficient for generating a contradiction. There’s no single property the object both has and lacks. Rather, the object stands in one relation to one region, and it stands in another relation to another region. So, for instance, I might be standing@now, but (not standing)@later. And: a time-traveller might be standing@outdoors and (not standing)@indoors. There is no contradiction that can be generated, because one can consistently stand in the relations standing@now and (not standing)@later. Insofar as we relativise the properties in question, the previously apparently intrinsic properties are actually relations. Even if we accept this, there is a problem: we may have taken some of these properties (or relations) to be had by (or stood in by) objects that are aspatial and atemporal. If those very properties are relations to regions, it is at best awkward to claim the immaterial objects stand in these relations. (One highly overlooked response to this worry: positing variable adicity of properties. But I will leave discussion of the details of this response for another paper.) 2. Adverbialism: Objects bear the having-at-r relation to properties. That is, the instantiation relation is relativised. A thing is-at-r F and is-at-r’ F, but it never just is both. Violations of Leibniz’s Law are avoided. 3. Indexicalism: Objects bear the having-F-at relation to regions. 4. Relativising the Truth of Propositions: An object can be such that, at t, it is F, and at t’, it is F. There’s never a time at which they’re both true. Ordinary objects are the primary bearers of genuinely intrinsic properties, without the cost of positing irreducible tense or a greater plurality of properties than we may have expected.