The paper pinpoints certain unrecognized difficulties that surface for recombination and duplication in modal realism when we ask whether the following inter-world fixity claims hold true: 1) A property is perfectly natural in a world iff it is perfectly natural in every world where it is instantiated; 2) Something is mereologically atomic in a world iff all of its duplicates in every world are atomic. In connection to 1), the hypothesis of idlers prompts four variants of (...) Lewis’s doctrine of perfectly natural properties, all deemed unsatisfactory for the purposes of duplication and recombination. By means of 2), instead, we show that the principle of recombination does not countenance the atomicity or non-atomicity of duplicates; but it should, because it is genuinely possible that: a) something, which is atomic, is non-atomic; and b) something, which is non-atomic, is atomic. In discussing 1) and 2), the paper substantiates a tension in Lewis’s metaphysics between modal intuitions and the reliance on the natural sciences. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the distinction between natural kinds and natural properties. Some theorists deny the distinction, and claim that natural kinds can be identified with properties. For example, natural kinds might be understood as the perfectly natural properties, reducible to properties or the extensions of properties. Alternatively, one might argue that natural kinds and natural properties are distinct and that natural kinds could be considered as (...) a sui generis type of entity. For example, one might hold that natural kinds require a distinct kind of universal, substantival universal, or sortal. Alternatively, one might claim that properties themselves form natural kind groupings, in virtue of causal mechanisms. This chapter argues that classification into natural kinds can reflect real differences between natural groups, without the supplementary ontological distinction between properties and kinds. -/- . (shrink)

The interpretation of Lewis‘s doctrine of natural properties is difficult and controversial, especially when it comes to the bearers of natural properties. According to the prevailing reading – the minimalist view – perfectly natural properties pertain to the micro-physical realm and are instantiated by entities without proper parts or point-like. This paper argues that there are reasons internal to a broadly Lewisian kind of metaphysics to think that the minimalist view is fundamentally flawed (...) and that a liberal view, according to which natural properties are instantiated at several or even at all levels of reality, should be preferred. Our argument proceeds by reviewing those core principles of Lewis‘s metaphysics that are most likely to constrain the size of the bearers of natural properties: the principle of Humean supervenience, the principle of recombination in modal realism, the hypothesis of gunk, and the thesis of composition as identity. (shrink)

The perfectly natural properties and relations are special—they are all and only those that "carve nature at its joints." They act as reference magnets, form a minimal supervenience base, figure in fundamental physics and in the laws of nature, and never divide duplicates within or between worlds. If the perfectly natural properties are the (metaphysically) important ones, we should expect being a perfectly natural property to itself be one of the (perfectly) (...) natural properties. This paper argues that being a perfectly natural property is not a very natural property, and examines the consequences. (shrink)

Since the publication of David Lewis's ''New Work for a Theory of Universals,'' the distinction between properties that are fundamental – or perfectly natural – and those that are not has become a staple of mainstream metaphysics. Plausible candidates for perfect naturalness include the quantitative properties posited by fundamental physics. This paper argues for two claims: (1) the most satisfying account of quantitative properties employs higher-order relations, and (2) these relations must be perfectly (...) class='Hi'>natural, for otherwise the perfectly natural properties cannot play the roles in metaphysical theorizing as envisaged by Lewis. (shrink)

Locke's claims about the "inadequacy" of substance-ideas can only be understood once it is recognized that the "sort" represented by such an idea is not wholly determined by the idea's descriptive content. The key to his compromise between classificatory conventionalism and essentialism is his injunction to "perfect" the abstract ideas that serve as "nominal essences." This injunction promotes the pursuit of collections of perceptible qualities that approach ever closer to singling out things that possess some shared explanatory-level constitution. It is (...) in view of this norm regulating natural-historical inquiry that a substance-idea represents a sort for which some such constitution serves as the "real essence," i.e. as that on which all the sort's characteristic "properties" depend. (shrink)

Metaphilosophy, Volume 53, Issue 1, Page 85-99, January 2022.

This dissertation explores the concepts of naturalness, intrinsicality, and duplication. An intrinsic property is had by an object purely in virtue of the way that object is considered in itself. Duplicate objects are exactly similar, considered as they are in themselves. The perfectly natural properties are the most fundamental properties of the world, upon which the nature of the world depends. In this dissertation I develop a theory of intrinsicality, naturalness, and duplication and explore their philosophical (...) applications. Chapter 1 introduces the notions, gives a preliminary survey of some proposed conceptual connections between the notions, and sketches some of their proposed applications. Chapter 2 gives my background assumptions and introduces notational conventions. In chapter 3 I present a theory of naturalness. Although I take ‘natural’ as a primitive, I clarify this notion by distinguishing and explicating various conceptions of naturalness. In chapter 4 I give a theory of various notions related to naturalness, especially intrinsicality and duplication. I show that ‘intrinsic’ and ‘duplicate’ are interde nable, and then give analyses of these and other notions in terms of naturalness. If, as I think likely, naturalness cannot be analyzed, then what is the proper response? David Lewis suggests: accept naturalness as a primitive. I am sympathetic to this proposal, but not to the form Lewis gives it: chapter 5 contains an argument against Lewis’s theory of naturalness. In chapter 6 I reject the idea that naturalness is analyzable in terms of immanent universals. I focus on the work of D. M. Armstrong. I also criticize Armstrong’s arguments against transcendent universals. (shrink)

This paper presents an account of what it is for a property or relation (or ‘attribute’ for short) to be logically simple. Based on this account, it is shown, among other things, that the logically simple attributes are in at least one important way sparse. This in turn lends support to the view that the concept of a logically simple attribute can be regarded as a promising substitute for Lewis’s concept of a perfectly natural attribute. At least in (...) part, the advantage of using the former concept lies in the fact that it is amenable to analysis, where that analysis—i.e., the account put forward in this paper—requires the adoption neither of an Armstrongian theory of universals nor of a primitive notion of naturalness, fundamentality, or grounding. (shrink)

Is part of a perfectly natural, or fundamental, relation? Philosophers have been hesitant to take a stand on this issue. One reason for this hesitancy is the worry that, if parthood is perfectly natural, then the perfectly natural properties and relations are not suitably “independent” of one another. In this paper, I argue that parthood is a perfectly natural relation. In so doing, I argue that this “independence” worry is unfounded. I (...) conclude by noting some consequences of the naturalness of parthood. (shrink)

Several variants of Lewis's Best System Account of Lawhood have been proposed that avoid its commitment to perfectly natural properties. There has been little discussion of the relative merits of these proposals, and little discussion of how one might extend this strategy to provide natural property-free variants of Lewis's other accounts, such as his accounts of duplication, intrinsicality, causation, counterfactuals, and reference. We undertake these projects in this paper. We begin by providing a framework for classifying (...) and assessing the variants of the Best System Account. We then evaluate these proposals, and identify the most promising candidates. We go on to develop a proposal for systematically modifying Lewis's other accounts so that they, too, avoid commitment to perfectly natural properties. We conclude by briefly considering a different route one might take to developing natural property-free versions of Lewis's other accounts, drawing on recent work by Williams. (shrink)

According to sparse modalism, the notion of essence can be analysed in terms of necessity and naturalness. In this paper, I develop and defend a version of sparse modalism that is equipped with a non-standard, relativized conception of naturalness. According to this conception, properties and relations can be natural to different degrees relative to different kinds of things, and relations can be natural to different degrees relative to different slots. I argue that this relativized version of sparse (...) modalism can accommodate various cases that the standard, non-relativized version can’t. The alternative version can accommodate cases where a relation is essential to a relatum but merely necessary to another, cases where a property is essential to an object but merely necessary to another, and cases where a less-than-perfectly natural property is essential to an object. (shrink)

According to proponents of one influential account of metaphysical naturalness, properties fall along a spectrum from perfectly natural to highly non-natural. The perfectly natural end of the spectrum is occupied by properties that appear in the laws of nature, account for resemblance and causal powers, and ground other properties, whereas the highly non-natural properties at the spectrum’s other end are not like this at all. However, there is another phenomenon that (...) looks very much like metaphysical naturalness but is context-dependent. I call this phenomenon context-dependent naturalness. In this paper I describe two cases in which inappropriate use is made of metaphysical naturalness and argue that in such cases, the context-dependent importance of certain properties has been confused for the context-independent importance of those properties. I argue that in order to avoid such problems we should embrace context-dependent naturalness. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of the metaphysics of fundamental laws I call “the Package Deal Account ” that is a descendent of Lewis’ BSA but differs from it in a number of significant ways. It also rejects some elements of the metaphysics in which Lewis develops his BSA. First, Lewis proposed a metaphysical thesis about fundamental properties he calls “Humean Supervenience” according to which all fundamental properties are instantiated by points or point sized individuals and the only (...) fundamental relations are geometrical spatial and temporal relations between these. While the BSA does not require HS Lewis seems to hope that it is true. In contrast, the PDA is not committed to HS or even to the fundamental arena in which fundamental properties are instantiated possessing geometrical structure and thus is able to accommodate relations and structures found in contemporary physics that apparently conflict with HS. Second, although Lewis’ BSA doesn’t require HS his Humeanism does require that fundamental properties are categorical. In contrast, the PDA allows for the possibility that fundamental properties are individuated in terms of laws and so are not categorical. Third, the PDA expands and develops the criteria for what counts in favor of a candidate system with more attention to the criteria employed by physicists in evaluating proposed theories. Fourth and most importantly, unlike Lewis’ BSA, the PDA does not presuppose metaphysically primitive elite properties/quantities that Lewis calls “perfectly natural” properties/quantities or presuppose a metaphysically preferred language whose terms denote such properties/quantities. It replaces Lewis’ account with an account on which natural properties are not metaphysically prior to the laws but are elements of a package that includes a fundamental arena that plays the role of space-time as well as fundamental laws and properties. By doing so it responds to some epistemological and metaphysical issues that have been raised regarding natural properties and their role in the BSA. In sum, the PDA goes further in explicating the notion of laws in terms of the aims and practices of science especially fundamental physics rather than in terms of prior metaphysics. I begin by reviewing Lewis’ account of perfectly natural properties and his Humean BSA of laws. (shrink)

Many philosophers have thought that the problem of personal identity over time is not metaphysically deep. Perhaps the debate between the rival theories is somehow empty or is a ‘merely verbal dispute’. Perhaps questions about personal identity are ‘nonsubstantive’ and fit more for conceptual analysis and close attention to usage than for theorizing in the style of serious metaphysics, theorizing guided by considerations of systematicity, parsimony, explanatory power, and aiming for knowledge about the objective structure of the world. I discuss (...) a thesis about consciousness according to which there are perfectly natural phenomenal properties. Although I do not argue for this thesis, I believe that it is plausible, whether or not physicalism is true. Given the thesis, there are deep, substantive questions about which individuals or pluralities instantiate the relevant phenomenal properties. Equally substantive questions can then be asked about the duration and other spatiotemporal characteristics of those individuals or pluralities, both in actual cases and in hypothetical puzzle cases adapted from the personal identity literature. I suggest that, at least prima facie, these questions interact with our future-directed egoistic concern in much the same way that the personal identity question is often thought to. As a slogan: “you give me substantive, determinate facts about consciousness; I give you substantive, determinate facts about personal identity”. (shrink)

All organised bodies are composed of parts, similar to those composing inorganic nature, and which have even themselves existed in an inorganic state; but the phenomena of life, which result from the juxtaposition of those parts in a certain manner, bear no analogy to any of the effects which would be produced by the action of the component substances considered as mere physical agents. To whatever degree we might imagine our knowledge of the properties of the several ingredients of (...) a living body to be extended and perfected, it is certain that no mere summing up of the separate actions of those elements will ever amount to the action of the living body itself. (shrink)

In this paper, I will develop a new theory of the nature of happiness, or “perfect happiness.” I will examine what perfect happiness is and what it is not and I will try to answer some fundamental questions about this property. According to the theory, which I shall call “the fulfillment theory,” perfect happiness is perfect fulfillment. The analysis of happiness in this paper is a development of the old idea that happiness is getting what you want and can be (...) classified as a kind of desire-satisfaction theory. According to the fulfillment theory of happiness, it is necessarily the case that an individual x is perfectly happy if and only if all x’s wants are fulfilled. The interpretation of this basic definition is important, since the consequences of the particular version defended in this essay are radically different from the consequences of many other popular theories of happiness. The fulfillment theory is also quite different from most other desire-satisfaction theories of happiness. We will see that it has many interesting consequences and that it can be defended against some potentially serious counterarguments. The upshot is that the analysis of (perfect) happiness developed in the present paper is quite attractive. (shrink)

Are properties perfectly natural (or not) relative to worlds, or are they perfectly natural (or not) tout court? That is, could there be a property P that is instanti-ated at worlds w1 and w2, and is perfectly natural at w1 but not at w2? Here, we offer an original argument for the non-world-relativity of perfect naturalness. Along the way, we reply to a prima facie compelling argument for the contin-gency of perfect naturalness, based (...) upon the connection between natural prop-erties and laws of nature. (shrink)

The notion of maximal greatness is arguably part of the very concept of God: something greater than God is not even possible. But how should we understand this notion? The aim of this paper is to provide a Śaivist answer to this question by analyzing the form of theism advocated in the Pratyabhijñā tradition. First, I extract a model of divine greatness, the Hierarchical Model, from Nagasawa’s work "Maximal God". According to the Hierarchical Model, God is that than which nothing (...) could be greater by virtue of being better suited than all other beings in relation to certain great-making properties (§1). I then offer an analysis of the form of theism advocated in the Pratyabhijñā tradition by discussing passages from the works of Somānanda, the founder of the Pratyabhijñā school, and of Utpaladeva, the most prominent of Somānanda’s disciples. I argue that the Pratyabhijñā theist cannot account for divine greatness in terms of the Hierarchical Model. My argument is that the Hierarchical Model requires a comparison between God and other beings that cannot be made with the Pratyabhijñā God (§2). Finally, I develop an original alternative model, the Unlimited Nature Model, that accounts for God’s maximal greatness in a way that suits Pratyabhijñā’s theism. According to the Unlimited Nature Model, the nature of all ordinary beings is metaphysically limited as a result of realizing only a small portion of the potential of what could be, and God is maximally great because only he has a completely unlimited nature (§3). (shrink)

Thomas Williams has argued that the doctrine of univocity is true and salutary. Such a claim is frequently contested, particularly in regard to the property—if there be any such—of existence or being. Inspired by the thought of Francisco Suárez, I outline a way of understanding the thesis of the analogy of being that avoids the criticisms levelled by Williams and others against analogy. I further suggest that the metaphysically committed version of univocal predication favoured by many analytic philosophers of religion (...) causes difficulties for the practice of perfect being theology, which is often taken to play an important role in the construction of kataphatic philosophical theologies. My exposition of the analogy of being is, I suggest, better fitted to the practice of perfect being theology and, thus, salutary for the practice of Christian natural theology. (shrink)

According to the conciliatory view in metaontology, there are multiple possible languages corresponding to the popular positions in ontology. In each of these languages, the term ‘exists’ expresses a distinct “existence-like” property, and consequently the claims associated with each of the rival ontological positions come out true in some such language. Species of the conciliatory view can be distinguished based on claims about how the various existence-like properties are related vis-à-vis metaphysical naturalness. On some versions, all of the existence-like (...) properties are held to be equally natural, such that there is no “metaphysically privileged” language. However on others, there is held to be a most natural existence-like property and hence a most fundamental ontological language. In this paper I defend two views, one metaontological and one ontological. I first defend a version of the conciliatory view according to which there is exactly one perfectly natural existence-like property, but the rest are still “reasonably” natural. I then argue that, assuming this metaontological view, we should accept a permissive ontological view in the fundamental language (i.e. one with a very expansive domain). (shrink)

This paper introduces a framework for thinking about ontological questions—in particular, the Special Composition Question—and shows how the framework might help support something like an account of restricted composition. The framework takes the form of an account of natural objects, in analogy with David Lewis’s account of natural properties. Objects, like properties, come in various metaphysical grades, from the fundamental, fully objective, perfectly natural objects to the nomologically otiose, maximally gerrymandered, perfectly non-natural (...) objects. The perfectly natural objects, I argue, are the mereological simples, and (roughly) a collection composes an object of degree-n naturalness if and only if its members are arranged F-wise, for some property F that appears in the degree-n natural laws. Arbitrary composites turn out to be perfectly non-natural objects and are metaphysical bystanders. Ordinary composite objects fall in between. Some—e.g., atoms—are very (though not perfectly) natural; others—e.g., tables—are highly non-natural. (shrink)

This paper explores the debate between those philosophers who take (fundamental, perfectly natural) properties to be pure powers and those who take them to be powerful qualities. I first consider two challenges for the view that properties are powerful qualities, which I call, respectively, ‘the clarification challenge’ and ‘the explanatory challenge’. I then examine a number of arguments that aim to show that properties cannot be pure powers and find them all wanting. Finally, I sketch (...) what I take to be the most promising argument against pure powers and for powerful qualities. (shrink)

This thesis is divided into three parts, the first and second ones focused on combinatorics and classification problems on discrete and geometrical objects in the context of descriptive set theory, and the third one on generalized descriptive set theory at singular cardinals of countable cofinality.Descriptive Set Theory (briefly: DST) is the study of definable subsets of Polish spaces, i.e., separable completely metrizable spaces. One of the major branches of DST is Borel reducibility, successfully used in the last 30 years to (...) solve and compare many classification problems. One of our goals is the classification of knots, very familiar and tangible objects in everyday life, which also play an important role in modern mathematics. The study of knots and their properties is known as knot theory. Our plan is to gain insight into knots using discrete objects, such as linear and circular orders. This approach was already exploited in [6]. The first part of this work is therefore devoted to countable linear orders and the study of the quasi-order of convex embeddability and its induced equivalence relation. We obtain both combinatorial and descriptive set-theoretic results. We also expand our research to the case of circular orders.Another objective of this first part is to extend the notion of convex embeddability on countable linear orders. We provide a family of quasi-orders of which embeddability is a particular case as well. We study these quasi-orders from a combinatorial point of view and analyse their complexity with respect to Borel reducibility. Furthermore, we extend the analysis of these quasi-orders to the set of uncountable linear orders.The second part of the project deals with classification problems on knots and $3$ -manifolds. The goal here is to apply the results obtained in the first part to the study of proper arcs and knots, establishing lower bounds for the complexity of some natural relations between these geometrical objects. We also obtain some combinatorial results which are particularly interesting when we restrict to the set of wild proper arcs and wild knots, classes which haven’t received much attention so far. These parts are included in the two preprints [4, 5] in collaboration with my supervisor Alberto Marcone, Luca Motto Ros (University of Torino), and Vadim Weinstein (University of Oulu).The second part of this work also includes the classification of non-compact $3$ -manifolds up to homeomorphism (the case of compact $3$ -manifolds has already been solved: indeed, there are only countably many $3$ -manifolds up to homeomorphism; see [7]), and that of Cantor sets of $\mathbb {R}^3$ up to conjugation (answering to Question 5.5 of [3]). Here we resort to algebraic tools. Stone duality gives a neat way to go back-and-forth between totally disconnected Polish spaces and countable Boolean algebras (see [1]). The main ingredient is the Stone space of all ultrafilters on a Boolean algebra. In this work we introduce a weaker concept which we call “blurry filter”. Using blurry filters instead of ultrafilters enables one to extend the class of spaces under consideration beyond totally disconnected. As an application of this method, we show that both homeomorphism on non-compact $3$ -manifolds and conjugation of Cantor sets in $\mathbb {R}^3$ are completely classifiable by countable structures. These results are part of an upcoming paper in collaboration with Vadim Weinstein.The last part of this thesis concerns the natural generalization of descriptive set theory that occurs when countable is replaced by uncountable, called Generalized Descriptive Set Theory (briefly: GDST). In particular, we focus on the case of GDST for a singular cardinal $\kappa $ of countable cofinality. The goal here is to study the generalizations of the Perfect Set Property and the Baire Property to subsets of spaces of higher cardinalities, like the power set $\mathcal {P}(\kappa )$. We consider the question under which large cardinal hypotheses classes of definable subsets of these spaces possess such regularity properties, focusing on rank-into-rank axioms, like I2, and classes of sets definable by $\Sigma _1$ -formulas with parameters from various collections of sets. The obtained results are included in [2], a joint work with my co-supervisor Vincenzo Dimonte and Philipp Lücke (University of Hamburg).Abstract prepared by Martina IannellaE-mail: [email protected]: https://air.uniud.it/handle/11390/1262824. (shrink)

According to D. Lewis, fundamental physical quantities such as mass are families of perfectly natural properties. The best theory of naturalness, however, is nominalistic. But the nominalistic Lewisian has to account for the unity of the particular masses in terms of fundamental ordering and congruence relations among individuals. Such a first-order relational theory can do without perfectly natural mass qualities, without making the having of a particular mass extrinsic. This strictly relational account can be applied (...) to fundamental vectorial quantities such as the field strengths, too. So conceived, vector fields are compatible with Lewis ' hypothesis of Humean Supervenience. Even the denier of real possible worlds should seek to retain the advantages of this first-order, strictly relational theory. German D. Lewis zufolge sind physikalische Grundgrößen wie die Masse Familien von perfekt natürlichen Eigenschaften. Die beste Theorie der Natürlichkeit ist jedoch die nominalistische. Der nominalistische Lewisianer muss aber den Familienzusammenhalt der einzelnen Massequalitäten durch fundamentale Ordnungs- und Kongruenzbeziehungen zwischen den Masseträgern erklären. Eine solche erststufig-relationale Theorie kann auf perfekt natürliche Massequalitäten verzichten, ohne das Haben einer Masse zu einer extrinsischen Eigenschaft zu machen. Diese strikt relationale Theorie ist auch auf fundamentale Vektorgrößen wie die Feldstärken anwendbar. Derart konzipierte Vektorfelder sind mit Lewis ' Hypothese der Hume'schen Supervenienz vereinbar. Die Vorteile dieser erststufigen, strikt relationalen Theorie sollte auch der Gegner des modalen Realismus zu erhalten suchen. (shrink)

Our words are vague, yet the world is precise. This dissertation consists of three essays that jointly attempt to articulate, explore, and defend this claim. In the first essay, I present my positive proposal for a non-metaphysical treatment of vagueness. Inspired by research on the Problem of the Many, I claim that we are speaking many perfectly precise languages simultaneously and that each speech act involves uttering many perfectly precise sentences. This position, which I call supersententialism, is the (...) most plausible alternative to metaphysical vagueness: it provides a fully reductive account of vagueness that preserves the T-schema. The second essay aims to address a rampant, albeit unnoticed, argument schema that purports to show that non-metaphysical accounts of vagueness cannot explain vagueness in fundamental, or perfectly natural, properties. In response, I propose a position that I call ersatz metaphysical vagueness according to which the term ‘perfectly natural’ is vague. Ersatz metaphysical vagueness retains the idea that the world is precise, but replicates the advantages of genuine metaphysical vagueness. I show how, by adopting this hypothesis, there can be vagueness in attributions of perfectly natural properties arising from the vagueness in our notion of perfect naturalness rather than from ‘the world itself’. Ersatz metaphysical vagueness thus provides us with a highly general alternative to genuine metaphysical vagueness. The final essay explores the relationship between metaphysical vagueness and ontological deflationism. Ontological deflationist positions treat the quantifier as having a highly plastic meaning. This plasticity naturally leads to vagueness in the quantifier. Thus, ontological deflationists are committed to vague existence. Is this vague existence ‘metaphysical vagueness’ or ‘vagueness in the world’? The rest of the essay clarifies this question and answers it under various clarifications. (shrink)

Here is a view at least much like Lewis’s “Humean supervenience,” and in any case highly influential—in that some endorse it, and many more worry that it is true. All truths about the world are fixed by the pattern of instantiation, by individual points in space-time, of the “perfectly natural properties” posited by end-of-inquiry physics. In part, this view denies independent variability: the world could not have been different from how it actually is, in the ways depicted (...) by common sense and the special sciences, without differing in the punctiform instantiation of fundamental physical properties. In part, it makes an ontological claim: what it is for one of the objects recognized by common sense or special sciences to be there in the world, bearing the properties attributed by a true description, is “nothing over and above” the obtaining of fundamental physical properties at points, and fundamental physical relations among points. I argue that this view is untenable. I concede that for every true claim in familiar discourses, there is a state of affairs at the level of fundamental microphysics that is the truth-maker—some state of affairs sufficient for truth in the familiar claim. The problem is that the view needs to posit not just truth-makers at the level of microphysics, but truth-conditions—states of affairs the obtaining of which is required for truth in any familiar claim, and the failure of which renders the familiar claim false. That is, the view must posit necessary conditions, at the level of microparticles, for truth in familiar claims. This it cannot plausibly do. (shrink)

Traditional Christology maintains that Christ was a single divine person with two natures (human and divine). According to kenotic Christology, certain divine properties such as omniscience and omnipotence were divested in order for Christ to acquire essential human properties. However, such a view appears to conflict with perfect-being theology, which takes omniscience and omnipotence to be essential properties for being divine. I propose a view that adopts a Thomistic theory of essences in order to show that there (...) need be no conflict, and hence Christ can give up the property of being omniscient while still being essentially omniscient. (shrink)

Even if an argument from religious experience can show that the subjects of religious experience are in contact with something which can justifiedly be named 'God', this does not settle the matter because, 'God' has a use other than its use as a proper name, in which use the term had descriptive content. To be of interest to Natural Theology, the argument from religious experience must show that the object of religious experience has the properties associated with the (...) term 'God' in this descriptive sense. In particular, it must show that the object of religious experience is omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly loving, and the creator of the physical universe. ;I consider five ways of making that further argument: a descriptivist theory of names, whereby the name has as its content the predicates in the description; an account of religious experience whereby the subject perceives that God has those properties named in the description; an argument from the testimony of God concerning his own properties; an argument from the effects of religious experience on its subjects to the effect that since it makes them better, the experiences must be at least of a benevolent being; and an argument that Christian practice is a well-founded doxastic practice, and so beliefs formed in this practice are prima facie justified, including the belief that the object of religious experience is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly loving. I find all these arguments inadequate to make the case. (shrink)

We investigate particular cosmological models, based either on tachyon fields or on perfect fluids, for which soft future singularities arise in a natural way. Our main result is the description of a smooth crossing of the soft singularity in models with an anti-Chaplygin gas or with a particular tachyon field in the presence of dust. Such a crossing is made possible by certain transformations of matter properties. We discuss and compare also different approaches to the problem of crossing (...) of the Big Bang–Big Crunch singularities. (shrink)

The study of the temporal structure of events in natural language is of prime importance in linguistics. Though there has been recent progress on formal theories of events, these theories do not address certain syntactic and semantic properties peculiar to languages such as Hindi. This paper concentrates on properties related to perfectivity. It motivates a small number of semantic features for events and their objects, such as whether an object exists independently of an event, whether it is (...) totally affected by the event, and so on. It then formalizes these features. It also shows how they can be formalized in an algebraic framework and applied in a categorial grammar to derive the properties of verbal and nominal predicates. The result is an integration of descriptive semantics with algebraic theories of objects and events. (shrink)

This paper combines two ideas: (1) That the Lewisian best system analysis of lawhood (BSA) can cope with laws that have exceptions (cf. Braddon-Mitchell in Noûs 35(2):260–277, 2001; Schrenk in The metaphysics of ceteris paribus laws. Ontos, Frankfurt, 2007). (2) That a BSA can be executed not only on the mosaic of perfectly natural properties but also on any set of special science properties (cf., inter alia, Schrenk 2007, Selected papers contributed to the sections of GAP.6, (...) 6th international congress of the society for analytical philosophy. Mentis, Paderborn/Münster, 2008; Cohen and Callender in Philos Stud 145:1–34, 2009, Erkenntnis 73:427–447, 2010). Bringing together (1) and (2) results in an analysis of special science ceteris paribus laws. (shrink)

*[Intertheoretic Reduction]: ___ When a new and very powerful theory turns out to entail a set of propositions and principles that mirror perfectly the propositions of some older theory or conceptual framework, we can conclude that the old terms and the new terms refer to the very same thing, or express the very same properties. (e.g. heat = high average molecular kinetic energy) The old theory is then said to be "reducible" to the new theory.

Purpose of the article is to study the Western worldview as a framework of beliefs in probable supernatural encroachment into the objective reality. Methodology underpins the idea that every cultural-historical community envisions the reality principles according to the beliefs inherent to it which accounts for the formation of the unique “universes of meanings”. The space of history acquires the Non-Euclidean properties that determine the specific cultural attitudes as well as part and parcel mythology of the corresponding communities. Novelty consists (...) in the approach to the miracle as a psychological need in a religious authority, expressed through the religious and non-religious (scientific) worldviews, which are interconnected by invariant thinking patterns deeply inside. It has been proven that the full-fledged existence of the religion is impossible without a miraculous constituent. It has been illustrated that the development of society causes a transformation of beliefs in gods and in miracles they do. The theological origins of the scientific beliefs stating the importance and regularity of the natural processes have been outlined. Conclusions: religion suggests emotional involvement and reasoning which is realized by means of a miracle. The modern science reproduces the theological concept of the permanence of God and His will at own level. Through the history of humankind not only the nature of miracle (whereof the common tendency belongs to the daily reality expansion) underwent changes but also its suggested subject (wherein abstraction is in trend). (shrink)

This paper examines the doctrine of existence as a perfection. Examining some of the comments from Leroy Howe, there is an immense amount of confusion with the idea of existence as a perfection. Leaning on some level of the cosmological argument, I believe it is Descartes that brings forth a proper understanding of why existence is a great making property. However, there is a level of irrelevance between the Kantian problem existence as a predicate and the nature of Anselm's argument.

It is often said that the best system account of laws needs supplementing with a theory of perfectly natural properties. The ‘strength’ and ‘simplicity’ of a system is language-relative and without a fixed vocabulary it is impossible to compare rival systems. Recently a number of philosophers have attempted to reformulate the BSA in an effort to avoid commitment to natural properties. I assess these proposals and argue that they are problematic as they stand. Nonetheless, I (...) agree with their aim, and show that if simplicity is interpreted as ‘compression’, algorithmic information theory provides a framework for system comparison without the need for natural properties. (shrink)

Many theories assimilate the idioms of modality to those of quantification; they hold that so-and-so is possible iff there is a "world" at which it is true that so-and-so. "Modal realism" identifies worlds with certain concrete particulars, and truth at a world with what is true of it. Rival "ersatz" theories identify worlds with certain abstract entities and identify what is true at them with what they represent. ;David Lewis argues that pre-theoretic modal intuitions are best explained by modal realism. (...) I try to make a case for ersatzism. ;First, I argue that modal realism is flawed on the grounds that it entails the impossibility of certain intuitively possible spatiotemporal structures; it fails to explain fully even those intuitions with which it is compatible; and it renders the origin of modal knowledge mysterious. ;Next, I argue that objections to ersatzism are not conclusive. ;Lewis objects that even a generic version of ersatzism requires an unnameable and maybe unintelligible primitive relation. I suggest that the problems with naming are perfectly general; they have nothing to do with metaphysical theories of modality in particular. And I suggest a solution taken from Lewis himself. I also argue that any purported unintelligibility is due to illegitimately assimilating the relation to spatiotemporal relations. ;Finally, I consider some difficulties with a version of ersatzism that aims to reduce modality to impure set-theory. One concerns the accommodation of intuitions about properties that are not, but might have been, instantiated. Another concerns accommodation of intuitions about relations of exclusion and entailment among properties. I suggest that these difficulties are due to faulty assumptions about the nature of properties rather than any fundamental flaws in this ersatz approach. So I propose an account of properties that when incorporated into ersatzism circumvents these difficulties and allows it to claim the advantages of modal realism without its drawbacks. Unlike traditional accounts, this takes the essence of a property to consist in its role in imposing a certain classificational structure on the particulars that instantiate it, rather than in any unique and irreducible "quiddity". (shrink)

Metaphysicians often distinguish between joints and basic ways. Joints are the unified and joint-carving properties that trace the structure of the world. They are theorized under the ideology of structural, perfectly natural, or sparse properties. Basic ways are the ultimate and independent properties that give rise to all others. They are theorized under the ideology of grounding, where the ungrounded properties are the basic ways. While these notions are often seen as rivals, I argue (...) that we need both, because the joints and the basic ways crosscut. For the sake being exhaustive and ecumenical, I distinguish between natural and normative sorts of joints and basic ways. I argue that, for either sort, if there is such a sort of joint and basic way, then there are joints that are not basic ways and there are basic ways that are not joints. (shrink)

*This work has turned into a bigger project, and some of it is published in "Lewis on reference".* Some things, argues Lewis, are just better candidates to be referents than others. Even at the cost of attributing false beliefs, we interpret people as referring to the most interesting kinds in their vicinity. How should this be accounted for? In section 1, I look at Lewis’s interpretationism, and the reference magnetism it builds in (not just for ‘perfectly natural’ (...) class='Hi'>properties, but for certain kinds of auxiliary apparatus). In section 2, I draw on (Field, 1975) to argue that what properties are reference magnetic may be an ultimately conventional matter—though in the Lewisian setting, there may be an objectively best conventional choice to make. But Lewis’s own account has implausible commitments, so in section 3 I consider variations and alternatives, all of which have problems. In section 4, I look in more detail at eligibility-based interpretationism that do not appeal to naturalness, arguing that there are credible metasemantic theories of this form. (shrink)

For [Formula: see text], the coarse similarity class of A, denoted by [Formula: see text], is the set of all [Formula: see text] such that the symmetric difference of A and B has asymptotic density 0. There is a natural metric [Formula: see text] on the space [Formula: see text] of coarse similarity classes defined by letting [Formula: see text] be the upper density of the symmetric difference of A and B. We study the metric space of coarse similarity (...) classes under this metric, and show in particular that between any two distinct points in this space there are continuum many geodesic paths. We also study subspaces of the form [Formula: see text] where [Formula: see text] is closed under Turing equivalence, and show that there is a tight connection between topological properties of such a space and computability-theoretic properties of [Formula: see text]. We then define a distance between Turing degrees based on Hausdorff distance in the metric space [Formula: see text]. We adapt a proof of Monin to show that the Hausdorff distances between Turing degrees that occur are exactly 0, [Formula: see text], and 1, and study which of these values occur most frequently in the senses of Lebesgue measure and Baire category. We define a degree a to be attractive if the class of all degrees at distance [Formula: see text] from a has measure 1, and dispersive otherwise. In particular, we study the distribution of attractive and dispersive degrees. We also study some properties of the metric space of Turing degrees under this Hausdorff distance, in particular the question of which countable metric spaces are isometrically embeddable in it, giving a graph-theoretic sufficient condition for embeddability. Motivated by a couple of issues arising in the above work, we also study the computability-theoretic and reverse-mathematical aspects of a Ramsey-theoretic theorem due to Mycielski, which in particular implies that there is a perfect set whose elements are mutually 1-random, as well as a perfect set whose elements are mutually 1-generic. Finally, we study the completeness of [Formula: see text] from the perspectives of computability theory and reverse mathematics. (shrink)

Descriptive set theory and computability theory are closely-related fields of logic; both are oriented around a notion of descriptive complexity. However, the two fields typically consider objects of very different sizes; computability theory is principally concerned with subsets of the naturals, while descriptive set theory is interested primarily in subsets of the reals. In this paper, we apply a generalization of computability theory, admissible recursion theory, to consider the relative complexity of notions that are of interest in descriptive set theory. (...) In particular, we examine the perfect set property, determinacy, the Baire property, and Lebesgue measurability. We demonstrate that there is a separation of descriptive complexity between the perfect set property and determinacy for analytic sets of reals; we also show that the Baire property and Lebesgue measurability are both equivalent in complexity to the property of simply being a Borel set, for $\boldsymbol {\Sigma ^{1}_{2}}$ sets of reals. (shrink)

Let an X/Y distinction be a distinction between kinds of properties, such as the distinctions between qualitative and non-qualitative, intrinsic and extrinsic, perfectly natural and less-than-perfectly natural or dispositional and categorical properties. An X/Y distinction is hyperintensional iff there are cointensional properties P and Q, such that P is an X-property, whereas Q is a Y-property. Many accounts of metaphysical distinctions among properties presuppose that such distinctions are non-hyperintensional. In this paper, I (...) call this presupposition into question. I develop a sufficient condition for the hyperintensionality of X/Y distinctions and argue that this condition is satisfied by a number of standard classifications of properties. It follows that non-hyperintensional analyses of distinctions among properties are harder to defend than is often assumed. (shrink)

Discusses different possible understandings of human nature, e.g., that it consists in the properties distinctive of humans, essential to them, or distinctive –and essential. In the end, it defends a version of perfectionism mandating the development of those properties essential to humans and conditioned on their being living things. It then uses this version to answer standard objections to perfectionism, e.g., that human nature includes trivial or morally repellent properties; it also rejects the traditional view that each (...) person's perfection necessarily involves acting morally or virtuously toward others. (shrink)

Restricting attention to the class of extensive games defined by von Neumann and Morgenstern with the added assumption of perfect recall, we specify the information of each player at each node of the game-tree in a way which is coherent with the original information structure of the extensive form. We show that this approach provides a framework for a formal and rigorous treatment of questions of knowledge and common knowledge at every node of the tree. We construct a particular information (...) partition for each player and show that it captures the notion of maximum information in the sense that it is the finest within the class of information partitions that satisfy four natural properties. Using this notion of “maximum information” we are able to provide an alternative characterization of the meet of the information partitions. (shrink)

Let us agree that everything that there is exists, and that to be, to be real, and to exist are one and the same. Does everything that there is exist to the same degree? Or do some things exist more than others? Are there gradations of being? I argue that some entities exist more than others. Moreover, many of the notions in play in contemporary metaphysical discourse, such as fundamentality, perfect naturalness, and grounding ought to be cashed out in terms (...) of degree of existence. (shrink)

The leading account of intrinsicality over the last thirty years has arguably been David Lewis's account in terms of perfect naturalness. Lewis's account, however, has three serious problems: i) it cannot allow necessarily coextensive properties to differ in whether they are intrinsic; ii) it falsely classifies non-qualitative properties like being Obama as non-intrinsic; and iii) it is incompatible with a number of metaphysical theories that posit irreducibly non-categorical properties. I argue that, as a result of these problems, (...) Lewis's account should be rejected and replaced with an alternative account, which also analyses intrinsicality in terms of perfect naturalness, but which avoids these problems. (shrink)

According to vitalism, living organisms differ from machines and all other inanimate objects by being endowed with an indwelling immaterial directive agency, ‘vital force,’ or entelechy . While support for vitalism fell away in the late nineteenth century many biologists in the early twentieth century embraced a non vitalist philosophy variously termed organicism/holism/emergentism which aimed at replacing the actions of an immaterial spirit with what was seen as an equivalent but perfectly natural agency—the emergent autonomous activity of the (...) whole organism. Organicists hold that organisms unlike machines are ‘more than the sum of their parts’ and predict that the vital properties of living things can never be explained in terms of mechanical analogies and that the reductionist agenda is doomed to failure. Here we review the current status of the mechanist and organicist conceptions of life particularly as they apply to the cell. We argue that despite the advances in biological knowledge over the past six decades since the molecular biological revolution, especially in the fields of genetics and cell biology the unique properties of living cells have still not been simulated in mechanical systems nor yielded to reductionist—analytical explanations. And we conclude that despite the dominance of the mechanistic–reductionist paradigm through most of the past century the possibility of a twentyfirst century organicist revival cannot be easily discounted. (shrink)

Dispositional essentialism is the view that all or many fundamental properties are essentially dispositional, orpowers. The literature on the dispositional essence of powers is abundant. In contrast, the question of how to understand the fundamentality of fundamental powers has received scarce interest. Therefore, the fundamentality of powers stands in need of clarification. There are four main conceptions of the fundamental, namely as that which is (i)metaphysically independent; or (ii)belonging to a minimally complete basis; or (iii)perfectly natural; or (...) (iv)metaphysically primitive. Here, I present and discuss each of these approaches from the viewpoint of dispositional essentialism. I show that (i) is incompatible with the metaphysics of powers and (ii)–(iv) have more drawbacks than merits. Therefore, my conclusion is that the dispositional essentialist should seek an alternative. Although I offer no positive account, I pave the way to more fruitful views by identifying the shortcoming of these unpromising options. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that dispositions are necessarily intrinsic. However, there are no good positive arguments for this view. Furthermore, many properties (such as weight, visibility, and vulnerability) are dispositional but are not necessarily shared by perfect duplicates. So, some dispositions are extrinsic. I consider three main objections to the possibility of extrinsic dispositions: the Objection from Relationally Specified Properties, the Objection from Underlying Intrinsic Properties, and the Objection from Natural Properties. These objections ultimately fail.