Defining 'Intrinsic'

by: Rae Langton, David Lewis

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 58, No. 2. (1998), pp. 333-345.

View FullText article

DOI, JSTOR

Reviews [Write a review of this article]

There are no reviews of this article

Find related articles from these CiteULike users

sprev, davsans, Philosophy-Metaphysics (group), qwermish

Find related articles with these CiteULike tags

intrinsic, metaphysics, philosophy, properties, property

Referat

Something could be round even if it were the only thing in the universe, unaccompanied by anything distinct from itself. Jaegwon Kim once suggested that we define an intrinsic property as one that can belong to something unaccompanied. Wrong: unaccompaniment itself is not intrinsic, yet it can belong to something unaccompanied. But there is a better Kim-style definition. Say that P is independent of accompaniment iff four different cases are possible: something accompanied may have P or lack P, something unaccompanied may have P or lack P. P is basic intrinsic iff (1) P and not-P are nondisjunctive and contingent, and (2) P is independent of accompaniment. Two things (actual or possible) are duplicates iff they have exactly the same basic intrinsic properties. P is intrinsic iff no two duplicates differ with respect to P.

@article{citeulike:88, abstract = {Something could be round even if it were the only thing in the universe, unaccompanied by anything distinct from itself. Jaegwon Kim once suggested that we define an intrinsic property as one that can belong to something unaccompanied. Wrong: unaccompaniment itself is not intrinsic, yet it can belong to something unaccompanied. But there is a better Kim-style definition. Say that P is independent of accompaniment iff four different cases are possible: something accompanied may have P or lack P, something unaccompanied may have P or lack P. P is basic intrinsic iff (1) P and not-P are nondisjunctive and contingent, and (2) P is independent of accompaniment. Two things (actual or possible) are duplicates iff they have exactly the same basic intrinsic properties. P is intrinsic iff no two duplicates differ with respect to P.}, author = {Langton, Rae and Lewis, David }, citeulike-article-id = {88}, doi = {10.2307/2653512}, journal = {Philosophy and Phenomenological Research}, keywords = {metaphysics, philosophy}, number = {2}, pages = {333--345}, posted-at = {2008-07-04 06:41:00}, priority = {0}, title = {Defining 'Intrinsic'}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2653512}, volume = {58}, year = {1998} }

RIS record

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:88 L3 - citeulike-article-id:88 TI - Defining 'Intrinsic' JF - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research VL - 58 IS - 2 SP - 333 EP - 345 N2 - Something could be round even if it were the only thing in the universe, unaccompanied by anything distinct from itself. Jaegwon Kim once suggested that we define an intrinsic property as one that can belong to something unaccompanied. Wrong: unaccompaniment itself is not intrinsic, yet it can belong to something unaccompanied. But there is a better Kim-style definition. Say that P is independent of accompaniment iff four different cases are possible: something accompanied may have P or lack P, something unaccompanied may have P or lack P. P is basic intrinsic iff (1) P and not-P are nondisjunctive and contingent, and (2) P is independent of accompaniment. Two things (actual or possible) are duplicates iff they have exactly the same basic intrinsic properties. P is intrinsic iff no two duplicates differ with respect to P. KW - metaphysics KW - philosophy AU - Langton, Rae AU - Lewis, David PY - 1998/// UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2653512 ER -

RIS BibTeX