Abstract
This paper is concerned with two concepts of qualitativeness that apply to intensional entities (i.e., properties, relations, and states of affairs). I propose an account of pure qualitativeness that largely follows the traditional understanding established by Carnap, and try to shed light on its ontological presuppositions. On this account, an intensional entity is purely qualitative iff it does not ‘involve’ any particular (i.e., anything that is not an intensional entity). An alternative notion of qualitativeness—which I propose to refer to as a concept of strict qualitativeness—has recently been introduced by Chad Carmichael. However, Carmichael’s definition presupposes a highly fine-grained conception of properties and relations. To eliminate this presupposition, I tentatively suggest a different definition that rests on a concept of perspicuous denotation. In the penultimate section, both concepts of qualitativeness are put to work in distinguishing between different ‘grades’ of qualitative discriminability.
Highlights
One of the central concepts of David Lewis’s metaphysics was that of duplicate: he employed it, e.g., in his explication of the two doctrines of ‘Determinism’ and ‘Materialism’ in his ‘New Work for a Theory of Universals’ (1983)
It might be suspected that the account of pure qualitativeness proposed in Sect. 2.1—in particular, the conjunction of (PQ) and (Inv)—presupposes a rich ontology of attributes and that the individuation of attributes should not be ‘too coarse-grained’
As for the notions of pure qualitativeness and involvement, I will in the following assume that the analyses proposed in Sect. 2.1 are correct
Summary
One of the central concepts of David Lewis’s metaphysics was that of duplicate: he employed it, e.g., in his explication of the two doctrines of ‘Determinism’ and ‘Materialism’ (i.e., physicalism) in his ‘New Work for a Theory of Universals’ (1983). A theorist may find it useful to postulate a multiplicity of pure yet (in some sense) pairwise indiscriminable properties in order to make sense of such ‘quantitative’ properties as having a mass of ten pounds.6 She may think that, for whatever reason, there are no particulars and that all physical objects are pure intensional entities.. Qualitative properties and relations platonist who ( implausibly) happens to be a Lewisian modal realist may well be tempted to take those formulations on board She will find that Determinism is vacuously true; for if no two things are duplicates, a fortiori no two possible worlds have duplicate initial temporal segments. The task of explicating this latter concept will be left for another paper
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