Saturday, November 21, 2009

Spatiotemporal position

Here is a regulative principle for metaphysics: As much possible, treat spatiotemporal position on par with other properties, like wisdom, mass, momentum, fearsomeness, beauty, tallness, charge, etc. (I leave it open whether spatiotemporal position is a relational property or not.)

8 comments:

Gabriele Contessa said...

Hi Alexander,

I'd like to hear more about why you take this to be a regulative principle rather than a substantial metaphysical thesis. As far as I can see, whether or not the spatiotemporal location of an object is one of its properties is an issue that needs to be decided on the basis of arguments not be built into some regulative principle. In any case, what reason would you have to think that this is a genuine regulative principle? I don't think any metaphysicians before the 20th century would have taken the the location of an object to be one of its properties. In fact as far as I can see all arguments for that thesis rely on the assumption that for every predicate that an object satisfies there is a property of the object corresponding to that predicate, an assumption which most metaphysicians today and most metaphysicians of the past seem to reject. Am I wrong?

Alexander R Pruss said...

1. On my reading of Leibniz's view, there are no absolute locations. What there are are distance relations. And the distance relations reduce to facts about the clarity of monadic representation. Leibniz, then, seems to take location to be a relational (and perhaps context-dependent) property, albeit not a primitive one.

2. In my example I listed a variety of properties, some of which are relational (fearsomeness), some of which are context-dependent (tallness), etc. It may very well be that the ontological status of these properties differs, and it seems very likely to me that only some of them are properties in a narrower, ontologically committive sense. I wasn't claiming that location is a property in an ontologically committive sense, but only that, as much as possible, we should treat it on par with other properties in the broader sense in which a property is just an abstract correlate of a predicate--without any Platonic commitments.

3. Why a regulative principle? Because this is a species of the regulative principle of simplicity.

4. It might help if I give examples of the sorts of things I take this regulative principle to make implausible: (a) A-theory; (b) views on which objects reduce to properties of places; (c) views on which diachronic identity is a "special problem".

Alexander R Pruss said...

By the way, nice to hear from you!

Gabriele Contessa said...

Hi Alexander,

I believe that many of the "properties" on your list are not genuine properties (although some of the corresponding predicates may be truly ascribable to some objects). But, putting my views on properties aside, if you are taking properties to be abundant, why does the principle need to be formulated at all (and why would it be simply regulative)? If there is a "property" for every predicate and there are predicates that ascribe a certain location to objects, it seems to follow that there are spatiotemporal "properties" and that they are on par with all other "properties".

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by 'treat x on par with y', but if one believes (as I do) that an object's location is not a genuine property of the object, why should one treat it on par with those "properties" on your list that are genuine properties and if one is to treat it on par with all "properties" genuine and not what is gained by doing so? (How do you treat those "properties"?)

Alexander R Pruss said...

I agree that some of the properties are not real properties. However, there is a way of talking, which I think is quite appropriate, in which we really mean little more by "property" than "predicate", identified up to synonymy. And that's what I'm doing.

So the principle is: Don't treat locational predicates different from non-locational predicates. That might have been a better formulation.

Gabriele Contessa said...

Now I'm happy! ;-) Thanks!

Alexander R Pruss said...

That said, I think that the not-so-real properties like fearsomeness are grounded in existences and/or genuine properties. If so, then if location isn't a genuine property, it's grounded in genuine properties and/or existences. The best candidate for that is causal dispositional properties. But I don't know how to do the grounding.

Gabriele Contessa said...

I think my views on this are quite unorthodox but whereas I agree that many "properties" that are truly attributed to objects supervene on the powers of the fundamental constitutents of those objects, I don't think that this is the case with spatiotemporal location. I just don't see what genuine properties of the object its location would supervene on. The fact that an object is located somewhere at a certain time is just a brute fact about the object (if location is not brute what could be?). (Note that this is not to deny that the exercise of some power can alter the location of the object. Only that in doing so it necessarily alters any of its genuine properties).