Moderate Anti-Haecceitism

In this paper I will propose an answer to the problem of individual identity that avoids both extreme haecceitism, the view that the individuality of a thing is primitive and independent of qualitative features, and extreme or the view that a thing's individuality consists in nothing over and above its having certain qualities. My proposal avoids extreme anti-haecceitism by acknowledging that the uniqueness of a given individual is not reducible to the uniqueness of the set of qualities it exemplifies; yet my position is a variety of anti-haecceitism because it denies that thisnesses are metaphysically primitive and unanalyzable. This view may be called moderate anti-haecceitism. A few words about terminology are in order before getting down to issues. The term haecceitas was used by Duns Scotus (iz66-1308) for the singularity in virtue of which a particular may be referred to as a this. The labels, haecceitism and anti-haecceitism, are reported by David Kaplan (I975) to have been suggested by Robert M. Adams. As Kaplan (I975) and Adams (I979) use this language, a haecceity is a primitive non-qualitative property of an object, that of being identical to the object. I will use the term thisness in a neutral way for the property of being identical with a given individual, regardless of whether this property is primitive or not, and regardless of whether it is qualitative or not. A property or relation is primitive if it is not analyzable, or explicable in terms of other relations or properties. The term property will be used in a very broad sense. In general, the true predication of a subject will be taken to indicate that the entity designated by the subject has a property that corresponds to the predicate. A number of techniques could be introduced in order to avoid paradoxes of self-predication, but nothing in what follows will turn on which of these is employed; no theory of properties will be presented. Adams (I979) distinguishes qualitative from non-qualitative properties. Purely qualitative properties, according to Adams, are those that could be expressed in a language without the aid of such refer

Classical Philosophy and Thought · Medieval Philosophy and Theology · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science

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