1 of 1- DanielCC
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Haecceities and Kind-Instances
To what extent do Kind-Instances, that is property-instances of a given Kind, fulfil the same role as Haecceities, understood in the Plantinga sense of 'individual essences'?
Both are unrepeatable individual natures the reality of which renders the Identity of Indiscernibles true albeit impossible (because no two entities can share all intrinsic properties). The main differences is that the later are exemplifable abstract objects whereas the former are concrete (Plantinga's ontology does not allow for instances/tropes though it’s an interesting question as to whether a parallel ontology which did would find itself saddled with redundant haecceity instances). One might make a case for it being counter-intuitive for the individuality of an object to be something the object only stands in a relationship to, although this is really just a particularly painful example of one of the problems with Relational approaches to ontology.
A distinct advantage Haecceities have over Kind-Instances is that being necessary being they can be used to explain quantification over merely possible individuals. An advantage of Kind-Instances is that they are likely to feature in many Classical Theistic ontologies anyway thus constitute no worryingly add hoc categorical addition.
Anyone else have any thoughts on this topic?
- Dennis
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Re: Haecceities and Kind-Instances
DanielCC wrote:
To what extent do Kind-Instances, that is property-instances of a given Kind, fulfil the same role as Haecceities, understood in the Plantinga sense of 'individual essences'?
Both are unrepeatable individual natures the reality of which renders the Identity of Indiscernibles true albeit impossible (because no two entities can share all intrinsic properties).
What are kind-instances? I thought they were like property-instances, insofar as they are tropes, and tropes (although not Haecceities) were direct counter examples against the Identity of Indiscernibles.
- DanielCC
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Re: Haecceities and Kind-Instances
Kind-Instances are indeed a variety of trope; I just avoided using that term since a lot of people having an annoying habit of confusing tropes with trope Nominalism.
I wouldn't say tropes constitute a counter-example to the Identity of Indescernables, as much as they render it trivially true. Because tropes are unrepeatable no two entities can ever share the exact same properties (although each of the instances they share can be instances of the same universal).
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Thread Starter- Dennis
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Re: Haecceities and Kind-Instances
Aren't natural kinds and properties two subcategories of universals. Don't Kind-instances differ from property-instances?
With that said, if tropes secure the Identity of indisciernibles, then it perhaps has some sort of advantage over haecceitas. Both tropes and haecceitas seem like natural enough replies. However, "this-ness" is too primitive a property, if it's a non qualitative one. (Conflicting intuitions can only be solved by argument, so I keep telling myself.)
Since lots of people take pains to demonstrate a bare particular rather than admitting Haeccitas (probably because they think that the problems for the theory are insurmountable), I don't think I'm that confident of haecceitas despite its prima facie appeal. What kind of causal power does a bare particular have devoid of what it possesses?