Natural Properties, Supervenience, and Mereology (original) (raw)

Natural Properties, Supervenience and Composition

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.

Mereological monism and Humean supervenience

According to Lewis, mereology is the general and exhaustive theory of ontological composition (mereological monism), and every contingent feature of the world supervenes upon some fundamental properties instantiated by minimal entities (Humean supervenience). A profound analogy can be drawn between these two basic contentions of his metaphysics, namely that both can be intended as a denial of emergentism. In this essay, we study the relationships between Humean superve-nience and two philosophical spin-offs of mereological monism: the possibility of gunk and the thesis of composition as identity. In a gunky scenario, there are no atoms and, thus, some criteria alternative to mereological atomicity must be introduced in order to identify the bearers of fundamental properties; this introduction creates a precedent, which renders the restriction of the additional criteria to gunky scenarios arbitrary. On the other hand, composition as identity either extends the principle of indiscernibility of identicals to composition or is forced to replace indiscernibility with a surrogate; both alternatives lead to the postulation of a symmetric kind of superve-nience which, in contrast to Humean supervenience, does not countenance a privileged level. Both gunk and composition as identity, thus, display a tension with Humean supervenience.

Laws, modality and properties in naturalistic metaphysics

This seminar focuses on core problems in naturalistic metaphysics, i.e. metaphysics informed by science and relevant to scientific investigations. Our first core topic is the nature and status of laws of nature. Two main camps in the debate on the metaphysical character of laws are usually distinguished: a Humean regularist approach and anti-Humean necessitarianism. In this seminar, we will study this debate and discuss contemporary variations of Humeanism and of anti-Humeanism (such as dispositionalism and primitivism), as well as anti-realism and the structural approach to laws of nature. Humeans usually subscribe to the thesis known as `Humean supervenience', which states, roughly, that all facts (and properties) about complex systems supervene on the individual facts (and properties) about their fundamental components. We will analyze the implications of modern science (in particular of physics) for Humean supervenience. These discussions lead directly to further metaphysical questions regarding the status of modalities and fundamental properties. Regarding the former, we will investigate whether a cogent distinction can be made among various types of necessity|suchas logical, metaphysical and nomic necessity|, and what the grounds of nomic necessity might be. Regarding properties featuring in fundamental laws, our main interest will be in the question of their essential character, i.e., whether they are essentially dispositional or categorical, intrinsic or extrinsic.

Natural Properties and Atomicity in Modal Realism

2015

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.

Lewisian Naturalness and a new Sceptical Challenge

Logic and Logical Philosophy, 2021

The criterion of naturalness represents David Lewis’s attempt to answer some of the sceptical arguments in (meta-) semantics by comparing the naturalness of meaning candidates. Recently, the criterion has been challenged by a new sceptical argument. Williams argues that the criterion cannot rule out the candidates which are not permuted versions of an intended interpretation. He presents such a candidate  the arithmetical interpretation (a specific instantiation of Henkin’s model), and he argues that it opens up the possibility of Pythagorean worlds, i.e. the worlds similar to ours in which the arithmetical interpretation is the best candidate for a semantic theory. The aim of this paper is a) to reconsider the general conditions for the applicability of Lewis’s criterion of naturalness and b) to show that Williams’s new sceptical challenge is based on a problematic assumption that the arithmetical interpretation is independent of fundamental properties and relations. As I show, if...

AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL BASIS FOR LEWISIAN REALISM.docx

Here, I argue that, even though causal acquaintance, as Lewis agrees, is ruled out as the epistemological basis for Lewisian realism, the 'mysterious' quasi-causal acquaintance, which critics put forward, is sufficient as such a basis. Effectively, I argue towards the dissolution of the mystery.

Essential Properties Are Super-Explanatory: Taming Metaphysical Modality

Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 2020

This article aims to build a bridge between two areas of philosophical research: the structure of kinds and metaphysical modality. Our central thesis is that kinds typically involve super-explanatory properties, and that these properties are therefore metaphysically essential to natural kinds. Philosophers of science who work on kinds tend to emphasize their complexity, and are generally resistant to any suggestion that they have essences. The complexities are real enough, but they should not be allowed to obscure the way that kinds are typically unified by certain core properties. We show how this unifying role offers a natural account of why certain properties are metaphysically essential to kinds.

(Once again) Lewis on the analysis of modality

Synthese, 2018

We propose a novel interpretation of Lewis on the analysis of modality that is constructed from primary sources, comprehensive and unprecedented (in toto). Our guiding precepts are to distinguish semantics from metaphysics, while respecting the interrelations between them, and to discern whatever may be special, semantically or metaphysically, about the modal case. Following detailed presentation (Sect. 2), we amplify and advocate our interpretation by providing a conforming genealogy of Lewis's theory of modality (Sect. 3) and applying it to construct a detailed and newly illuminating version of the Lewisian theory of modality de re (Sect. 4).