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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.
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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 ordinarylanguage 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 fourdimensionalist 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
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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.