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Barnes, Bryant, Ma August 2019 BARNES, BRYANT, M.A. AUGUST 2019 PHILOSOPHY PROPERTY INDIVIDUATION (66 pp.) Thesis Advisor: Deborah C. Smith This thesis will address the question of what individuates a property. In the current literature, the question is predominately answered in three ways. Quidditism takes properties to be categorical and individuated by their quiddities, that is, by the intrinsic nature of the property. Structuralism takes properties to be individuated by the structural roles (e.g., causal or nomological) that they play. Causal structuralism, for example, maintains that a property is individuated by the causal relationships it enters. I will survey the strengths and weaknesses of these positions and conclude by arguing for John Heil’s mixed view, which takes properties to be both dispositional and categorical. However, because Heil’s mixed view is about the nature of properties and not individuation, I will have to construct individuation conditions appropriate for his theory regarding the nature of properties. My concluding chapter will consist of articulating and defending my individuation conditions for Heil’s mixed view. PROPERTY INDIVIDUATION A thesis submitted To Kent State University in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Bryant Barnes August 2019 © Copyright All rights reserved Except for previously published materials Thesis written by Bryant Barnes B.A., King University, 2016 M.A. Kent State University, 2019 Approved by _______________________________, Advisor Deborah C. Smith _______________________________, Chair, Department of Philosophy Michael Byron _______________________________, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences James L. Blank TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………………………………………………………...iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………..vi INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………...1 CHAPTERS 1. Introduction...……………………………...………………………………………………………………………..…..……1 1.1 The Scope of the Thesis and Terminology………………………………………………………….………1 1.2 A Brief Look at Quidditism………………………………………………………………………………….……..3 1.3 A Brief Look at Structuralism………………………………………………………………………………….….4 1.4 A Foray into the Nature of Properties………………………………………………………………….…….5 1.5 A Happy Middle…………………………………………………………………………………………….…………..6 2.Quidditism………………………………………………………………………………………………...……………..........8 2.1 Structuralism and Quidditism……………………………………………………………………………..……..8 2.2 Why be a Quidditist?………………………………………………………………………………………….……10 2.3 What is a Quiddity?…………………………………………………………………………………………….……11 2.4 The Argument from Parsimony and Austere Quidditism…………………………………….……14 2.5 Extremely and Moderately Austere Quidditism……………………………………………………….16 2.6 Non-recombinatorial Quidditism……………………………………………………………………….…….17 2.7 Epistemological Arguments Against Quidditism…………………………………………….………...19 2.8 Non-recombinatorial Quidditism and Skepticism……………………………………………………..22 3. Role-Based Theories………………………………………………………………....................................……24 3.1 Structuralism…………………………………………………………………………………………………………...24 3.2 Ramsification and the Clarification of Roles………………………………………………………….….26 3.3 Nomological and Causal Structuralism………………………………………………………………….….28 3.4 Minimal and Relational Structuralism……………………………………………………………….……..30 3.5 The Symmetry Problem………………………………………………………………………………….………..35 4. Mixed Views……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….….42 4.1 Martin’s Dual Aspect Interpretation of Powerful Qualities……………………………………...42 4.2 Heil’s Identity Theory…………………………………………………………………………………………..…..45 iv 4.3 Identity Theory or DAI?................................................................................................47 5. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….........................................53 5.1 An Initial Articulation of the Individuation Conditions………………………………………….….53 5.2 A Problem with the Directionality of Dispositional Natures……………………………………..54 5.3 The Identity of Natures…………………………………………………………………………………………...58 5.4 A Kind of Quidditism……………………………………………………………………………………….……….60 REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…64 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS When I think back on writing this thesis, the words “That’s good for your project but not for your thesis” immediately come to mind. Of course, this came from my thesis advisor and mentor, Dr. Deborah C. Smith, who always kept me on track when I could not reign in all the tangents that would have otherwise been clumsily thrown into this thesis. I cannot thank her enough for keeping me on track throughout this process, providing immensely helpful comments on my initial chapter drafts (comments which, if combined, would probably exceed the length of this thesis), and always being available to bounce ideas off of. I would also like to thank my readers, Dr. David Pereplyotchik, Dr. Frank Ryan, and Dr. Donald White, who have been patiently waiting for this thesis to (finally) be completed. I value their time and greatly appreciate them devoting some of it to reading this thesis. I would also like to thank those professors whose classes I have spent the most time in and impacted my growth as a student. Dr. Pereplyotchik whose Socratic style of questioning and energy in and out of the classroom is something that I try to emulate. Dr. Aldea, with whom I read roughly 10,000 pages of Husserl, ramping up my reading comprehension. Dr. Byron, whose careful attention to precision while answering questions in class has benefited me immensely as I have gone on to write and speak in philosophical settings. I must also thank William Fenton, Cara Griffiths, and all my fellow graduate students for making my years at Kent State a wonderful experience and listening to me occasionally rant about the problems I ran into while writing this. vi Lastly, I would like to thank Dr. Craig Streetman from King University, who initially sparked my interest in philosophy and always indulged my various project ideas as an undergraduate. vii Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 The Scope of the Thesis and Terminology Arguably, the world is made up of objects and properties. Such objects include hearts, lungs, and individuals with both hearts and lungs. Properties include tallness, redness, negative charge, being happy to have one’s thesis finished, etc. A lot has been said about what individuates objects, especially individuals. There is a large literature on the putative haecceities (or individual essences) of particular objects, but the question of what individuates properties is relatively new on the scene. It is this latter question that will be the focus of my thesis. I will call it the individuation question: Individuation Question: What individuates a property across possible worlds, that is, what are the cross-world identity conditions for a property. As Dustin Locke has articulated, the debate over what individuates a property is a “domestic dispute among property realists” (Locke 2012, 347). I take the existence of properties as an assumption that all those who discuss individuation share. So, I will not be engaging those who do not believe that properties exist. Furthermore, like most philosophers who engage the individuation question, I will assume that properties are universals rather than collections of tropes.1 However, it is beyond the scope of this thesis to defend this assumption. 1 A universal is a property that can be instantiated in different objects at the same time. If the property of redness were a universal, then everything that instantiates redness would be instantiating the same property. On the other hand, trope theory maintains that everything is particular. Every instance of redness would be unique. When a group of tropes are sufficiently similar, the trope theorist groups them under one concept (e.g., the concept of redness). 1 A closely related question to property individuation regards the nature of laws (e.g., Coulombs’ laws or Newton’s laws of motion). How one answers the question of property individuation will entail answers for questions such as ‘what is a law of nature’ or ‘are the laws of nature necessary or contingent’. It is beyond the scope of this thesis to directly address these questions, but I will make it explicit when a theory of property individuation entails a particular answer to whether laws are necessary or contingent.2 Before I continue, I should get clear on the range of properties that I am considering here. I am not talking about all properties. Rather, I am writing about a specific class of properties: fundamental physical properties. Physical properties should be distinguished from abstract properties, such as the property of being a prime number. The former kind of property is instantiated in concrete physical objects, whereas the latter is not. Fundamental properties can be explained in different ways. Following David Lewis, we can say that fundamental properties are those that act as a supervenience base for all other properties, they are intrinsic to objects, and they can “completely and without redundancy” characterize objects (1986, 60). Additionally, they “are not at all disjunctive, or determinable, or negative” (Lewis 2009, 204). Another explanation is that fundamental properties are those that would be featured in a completed science that describes the world at the most basic level (Schaffer 2004; Bird 2009).3 So, properties such as spin, force, and charge are plausible candidates for fundamental properties. In the rest of this thesis, unless otherwise specified, I will use ‘properties’ and ‘property’ to talk about these fundamental properties. 2 Throughout
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