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Intrinsicality and determinacy

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Abstract

Comparativism maintains that physical quantities are ultimately relational in character. For example, an object’s having 1 kg rest mass depends on the relations it stands in to other objects in the universe. Comparativism, its advocates allege, reveals that quantities are not metaphysically mysterious: Quantities are reducible to familiar relations holding among physical objects. Modal accounts of intrinsicality—such as Lewis’s duplication account or Langton and Lewis’s combinatorial account—are popular accounts preserving many of our core intuitions regarding which properties are intrinsic. I argue that to endorse both comparativism and a modal account of intrinsicality, we must reject the plausible thesis that determinable properties are instantiated solely in virtue of their determinates. I call this ‘the determinacy tension’ and I suggest approaches for dissolving it.

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Notes

  1. Absolutists need not take every quantitative property to be fundamentally monadic. For instance, if spatiotemporal relations are quantitative properties, they may not count as monadic properties of objects.

  2. E.g., Bigelow and Pargetter (1988), Armstrong (1978), Kim (2016), Wolff (2020), and Perry (forthcoming).

  3. Mundy (1987) understands monadic mass properties as universals.

  4. We can also analyze claims involving determinable properties using higher-order quantification, such as:

    Toaster has mass:ab−analysis (∃P)(P is a mass determinate & Toaster has P).

    One reason to do this would be to avoid analyzing determinable claims in terms of infinitely long disjunctions.

  5. See Schaffer (2009), Rosen (2010), Fine (2012), Raven (2012), and Trogdon (2013), among many others.

  6. This is how I interpret Bennett’s project in (2011) and (2017), although she is interested in characterizing these as building relations and not as interested in capturing the ‘in virtue of’ locution. She expresses caution regarding whether to count the determinate–determinable relation as a building relation (2017, p. 14). Wilson (2014) also emphasizes that there is no ‘big-G’ grounding relation; instead, there are many ‘little-g’ grounding relations. Authors who are skeptical of the utility of ground include Daly (2012), Wilson (2014), Koslicki (2015), and Kovacs (2017).

  7. For a specific use of the ‘in virtue of’ locution in the debate concerning the metaphysics of quantity, see Dasgupta (2013).

  8. See Baker (2017) for some potentially problematic consequences of comparativism.

  9. For discussion of extensive quantities, see Perry (2016), (forthcoming).

  10. See Wilson (2014), Koslicki (2015), and Bennett (2017) for discussions of the determinable–determinate relation that do not understand it as a kind of ‘grounding’ relation.

  11. Nevertheless, to determine exactly how mass should be characterized under a Lewisian worldview, we need a more nuanced discussion. See Hawthorne (2006).

  12. For example, ‘Toaster has 5kg mass’ asymmetrically necessitates ‘Microwave is grue or it is not the case that Microwave is grue’, but we do not think the latter fact holds in virtue of the former.

  13. For this use of the locution, see Lewis (1983a, pp. 111–112), Lewis (1986, p. 61), Sider (1996, p. 3), and Weatherson and Marshall (2012).

  14. This follows straightforwardly if we understand ‘in virtue of’ in terms of ground and we take ground to be transitive.

  15. One way Lewis characterizes the intrinsicality of relations is by appealing to internality and externality. A relation is internal when its obtaining supervenes on the intrinsic monadic properties of the relata and external otherwise. Natural quantitative relations will be external according to the comparativist because they do not supervene on intrinsic quantitative properties of objects standing in these relations.

  16. These do not exhaust the types of criticisms facing the duplication account. Bader (2013) focuses on the need for an account of intrinsicality to distinguish between properties that are had intrinsically and those that are had extrinsically. He also considers other counterpart-theoretic properties that he claims the duplication account cannot accommodate. Bader (2013) and Witmer, Butchard, and Trogdon (2005) criticize the appeal to ‘naturalness’ in accounts of intrinsicality. See Marshall (2013) for an overview of accounts of intrinsicality that do not appeal to naturalness.

  17. Wolff (2020) questions whether the determinable-determinate distinction applies to quantities.

  18. Defenders of hyperintensional accounts of intrinsicality include Rosen (2010), Eddon (2011), Bader (2013), and Marshall (2015).

  19. See Bader (2013) as well. Grounding-based accounts of intrinsicality are not the only hyperintensional accounts that can accommodate the extrinsicality of comparativist mass. Analysis-based accounts of intrinsicality can also capture the extrinsicality of comparativist mass. Such accounts have been proposed by Skow (2007) and Marshall (2015). Witmer, Butchard, and Trogdon’s (2005) account can also accommodate the extrinsicality of comparativist mass. I do not intend to advocate for any one of these accounts over the others.

  20. See Bader (2013) for a criticism of Rosen’s account of intrinsicality and for another version of a grounding-based account of intrinsicality.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Ronald Houts, Michael Caie, Martín Abreu Zavaleta, David Kovacs, Ted Sider, Merrie Bergmann, and anonymous reviewers at this journal for their helpful feedback.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, 1001 Cathedral of Learning, 15260, Pittsburgh, PA, United States

    Erica Shumener

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Shumener, E. Intrinsicality and determinacy. Philos Stud 179, 3349–3364 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01832-3

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