Intrinsicality without Naturalness

Abstract

Rae Langton and David Lewis have proposed an account of “intrinsic property”that makes use of two notions: being independent of accompaniment and being natural. We find the appeal to the first of these promising; the second notion, however, we find mystifying. In this paper we argue that the appeal to naturalness is not acceptable and offer an alternative definition of intrinsicality. The alternative definition makes crucial use of a notion commonly used by philosophers, namely, the notion of one property being had in virtue of another property. We defend our account against three arguments for thinking that this “in virtue of”notion is unacceptable in this context. We also take a look at a variety of cases in which the definition might be applied and defend it against potential counterexamples. The upshot, we think, is a modest but adequate account of what we understand by “intrinsic property.”

Intrinsic/Extrinsic: A Relational Account Defended

“…R I * also handles well-known objections to other accounts of intrinsicality. Unlike the famous account of Langton and Lewis, R I * can correctly classify disjunctive properties without the contentious notion of naturalness, it correctly classifies properties of the form being such that there is an F, and it correctly classifies border-sensitive properties, such as being a rock.³¹ There are other ac- The first of these three objections has be raised by many, including Yablo (1999), Marshall and Parsons (2001), and Witmer et al (2005). The second is presented by Marshall and Parsons (2001).…”

“…Another version of the grounding approach that provides the same plausible results is the grounding definition Witmer develops in "A Simple Theory of Intrinsicality," written for this collection. On this view, F is an intrinsic property of x just in case its presence or absence is grounded only in facts that are "parts" of x (where the notion of x's spatial parts is replaced by Witmer with the notion of that on which x is ontologically dependent).¹⁶  Witmer, Butchard, and Trogdon (2005) offer a grounding account that retains the idea of Langton and Lewis that intrinsic properties are independent of accompaniment. They propose: "Property P is intrinsic iff, for any possible individual x, if x has P, x has P in an intrinsic fashion," where "x has P in an intrinsic fashion iff (i) P is independent of accompaniment and (ii) for any property Q, if x has P in virtue of having Q, Q is also independent of accompaniment" (p. 333).…”

“…But Obama himself is not literally a part of any set since sets are abstract objects. It would seem to follow that {Obama}'s existence is ground- The account of Witmer, Trogdon, and Butchard (2005) allows that some fundamental properties are intrinsic and some are not. Yet, despite their appeal to grounding, the independence from accompaniment component gives the implausible result that all INPs are extrinsic (as mentioned in note 16).…”

“…To make priority monism consistent with a grounding view, Trogdon (2009) modifies the original Witmer, Butchard and Trogdon (2005) account by distinguishing between intra-and inter-level grounding (being instantiated intra-virtue-of vs. inter-virtue-of). He proposes that "x has P in an intrinsic fashion just in case (i) P is independent of accompaniment; and (ii) for any individual y and property Q, if x has P intra-virtue-of y's having Q, then Q is either fundamental or independent of accompaniment" (2009, p. 143).…”

“…But by construing the notion of consisting in at work here in terms of necessary biconditionals, her account entails that (HI) and (HI L ) are false.  A grounding approach does not need to rely on the notion of relationality; e. g., the grounding account of Witmer, Butchard, and Trogdon (2005) relies, instead, on the notion of being independent of accompaniment.…”