Saturday, February 13, 2016

Metaphysical monstrosities

I have been looking at ‘Van Inwagen on Fiction, Existence, Properties, Particulars, and Method’, by Bill Vallicella (Studia Neoaristotelica Review Article 12 (2015) / 2). Bill is the famous Maverick Philosopher.

Section 3 deals with haecceity. A haecceity property is one which, unlike man or white cannot be multiply instantiated, or as Scotus said, not-predicable of several things (indicibilis de pluribus). For example, being Socrates (Socrateity) is a property which, if instantiated, is instantiated by Socrates alone in the actual world and by nothing distinct from Socrates in any possible world.

It is necessary to posit such properties, Bill argues, to support the semantic thesis of the univocity of ‘exists’ and ‘is’, and its ontological counterpart, that there are no modes of being/existence. It is essential to the thesis that number-words are univocal, and that ‘exists’ is a number-word. But it is not a number-word, for we can say of certain individual things that they exist, using referring terms.
Consider my cat Max Black. I joyously exclaim, ‘Max exists!’. My exclamation expresses a truth. Compare ‘Cats exist’. Now I agree with van Inwagen that the general ‘Cats exist’ is equivalent to ‘The number of cats is one or more’. But it is perfectly plain that the singular ‘Max exists’ is not equivalent to ‘The number of Max is one or more’. For the right-hand-side of the equivalence is nonsense, hence necessarily neither true nor false.
Right, but can’t a proper name N signify a property N* which can be instantiated, but by only one individual, and always and necessarily by the same individual? Then it makes sense to state there is only one object possessing N*, a statement which is false only if there are no (i.e. zero) objects possessing N*. Bill considers this, but thinks it a heavy price to pay for univocity across general and singular existentials.

‘Haecceity properties are metaphysical monstrosities’.

Why? His argument is that being properties, haecceities are necessary beings, and so exist at all possible times in all possible worlds. But how, before Socrates came into existence, could there have been any such property as the property of being identical to him. There would have been simply nothing to give content to the proposition that it is Socrates.

Now I agree that a haecceity predicate is essential to save the univocity of ‘exists’. And I agree, for the reasons given by Bill, that a haecceity property is absurd. But can there not be predicates, i.e. grammatical items, which have no properties corresponding to them?

More later.

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