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Naturalness, intrinsicality, and duplication
Abstract
This dissertation explores the concepts of naturalness, intrinsicality, and duplication. An intrinsic property is had by an object purely in virtue of the way that object is considered in itself. Duplicate objects are exactly similar, considered as they are in themselves. The perfectly natural properties are the most fundamental properties of the world, upon which the nature of the world depends. In this dissertation I develop a theory of intrinsicality, naturalness, and duplication and explore their philosophical applications. Chapter one introduces the notions, gives a preliminary survey of some proposed conceptual connections between the notions, and sketches some of their proposed applications. Chapter two gives my background assumptions and introduces notational conventions. In chapter three I present a theory of naturalness. Although I take 'natural' as a primitive, I clarify this notion by distinguishing and explicating various conceptions of naturalness. In chapter four I give a theory of various notions related to naturalness, especially intrinsicality and duplication. I show that 'intrinsic' and 'duplicate' are interdefinable, and then give analyses of these and other notions in terms of naturalness. If, as I think likely, naturalness cannot be analyzed, then what is the proper response? David Lewis suggests: accept naturalness as a primitive. I am sympathetic to this proposal, but not to the form Lewis gives it: chapter five contains an argument against Lewis's theory of naturalness. In chapter six I reject the idea that naturalness is analyzable in terms of immanent universals. I focus on the work of D. M. Armstrong. I also criticize Armstrong's arguments against transcendent universals. In chapter seven I address criticisms of David Lewis's definition of 'intrinsic' offered by Mike Dunn. In chapter eight I discuss the possibility of analyzing our three notions. I discuss defining 'natural' in terms of supervenience and other concepts, and then criticize attempts by Jaegwon Kim and Michael Slote to analyze intrinsicality in terms of "quasi-logical" concepts. Finally, in chapter nine I present a new application for the notion of naturalness: the statement of "metrical realism" in the philosophy of space and time.
Subject Area
Philosophy
Recommended Citation
Sider, Theodore Ronald, "Naturalness, intrinsicality, and duplication" (1993). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9329668.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9329668