Well, the example in my previous comment wasn’t particularly good because, if the series is indeed soritical, there would be no clear cut-off point. But let’s suppose it’s a quasi-soritical series, with the intermediate steps different enough from one another as to allow for a clear cut-off point (for instance, when the brain is replaced by a computing device).

I think that Ezequiel provides a very interesting way of stating the question. First of all, I agree that my point is not an objection, but a charge of the ungroundedness for the adoption of different approaches to what seem to be similar cases. But what I think is especially useful in his comment is the structure of the example with which he shows the similarity among the cases of persistence through time and identity through worlds. However, I think he is constructing the example with an assumption Mackie will probably reject.

Ezequiel is assuming both for the temporal and the modal series that “in general, the decision as to whether a certain object … falls or not within the extension of the concept cat must depend on its intrinsic properties”. But Mackie rejects that the modality implicit in substance sortals (the fact that a substance sortal property is necessarily permanent) is due to essential properties of objects. For example, she says, the claim that human being is a substance sortal that applies to Aristotle does not imply that Aristotle could not have existed without being human. Then, it is difficult to understand Ezequiel´s assumption that the persistence conditions through time are grounded on intrinsic properties. ¿In what sense would those properties be intrinsic?

This is why one could ask her to reject the idea that the persistence conditions for objects that substance sortals provide, can be formulated as de dicto necessity conditions, and to assume that an object can change through time as it does through worlds, instead of asking her to assume that objects can change through worlds as they do through time (in virtue of their intrinsic properties), which is what Ezequiel suggests with his example.

Hi there! I agree with you guys that that there is something prima facie strange about 'cat' and 'human being' not expressing essential properties. I think, however, that the following two issues are worth disentangling: (a) Is there a distinction between “essential” properties and “necessary permanent” properties? (b) If the answer to (a) is yes, are there English predicates that express necessary permanent but not essential properties? I think the answer to (a) should be yes: we can and should distinguish between necessarily permanent properties and essential properties. (This is what I mean by ‘necessarily permanent’ and ‘essential’: property P is necessarily permanent iff necessarily if x is P at t, x is always P; property P is essential iff necessarily, if x is P, x is necessarily P). Now, given that there are properties that are necessarily permanent but not essential, is the property expressed by ‘cat’ one of them? This is the issue (b), about which I do not know what to say. It may be that our intuitions that ‘cat’ is necessarily permanent are stronger that our intuitions that it is essential. If so, this would be a reason to be cautious about the claim that ‘cat’ expresses an essential property, even if we are more or less sure that it expresses a necessarily permanent one.

In any case, my suggestion is that we change the focus of the discussion. Instead of asking ‘do sortals capture persistence conditions across possible worlds as well as time’,  we could instead split the question in two parts: ‘what kinds of properties we can distinguish?’, ‘which kind of property is expressed by ‘cat’, ‘tree’, etc? This way, we get to discuss the basic metaphysical and semantic issues, without making it sound as a point about the technical notion of “sortal”.

A final point about Ezequiel’s example: I thought that whether x is a cat or not does not depend on x’s intrinsic properties. Among other things, for x to be a cat, it must be the case that x is not a proper part of something which is a cat.

Enjoy this week activities, I wish I could join!!!

Hi, it’s great that Pablo  joins us.

As regards Martin’s comment: I am not sure that I understand what you say, because you seem to argue that Mackie would not accept my supposition that ‘cat’ is to be applied to something because of its intrinsic features because she says that being a cat is not an essential property. But I don’t see why you suppose that there is so close a relationship between essential and intrinsic properties. Indeed, she seems to accept that sortals such as ‘cat’ apply to something in virtue of the intrinsic nature of the thing in question (for instance, at the end of “Coincidence and Identity”, and this seems also suggested in the way she argues for her “Irrelevance of the Future” principle).

As to what you say in the last paragraph: I actually try to argue in the way you say, but that is because the fact that sortals provide persistence conditions is common ground between her position and the one I want to defend, namely, that sortal properties are essential. I don’t argue the other way around, because I don’t want to say that sortals do not provide persistence conditions (but that may well be your position!).

As to Pablo’s remarks: Mackie presupposes an affirmative answer to both of your (a) and (b) questions. Her examples of predicates expressing necessarily permanent but not essential properties (that is, which may be de dicto but not de re necessary) are ‘being a permanent bachelor’ and ‘originating in Finland’. I don’t know what you think of these, but I think the last one is a good example. In any case, I was presupposing that it was a good example.

I think you are right when you say that it would be more interesting to discuss whether so called sortal properties are in any interesting way (and in what precise way) different from other properties, but I don’t know what to say about that right now. Any suggestions?

Finally, as to you last point: I think that probably I don’t need to say something as strong as that whether something is a cat depends only on its intrinsic properties, it may be that something weaker will do as well (that could exclude the example you present). I think you are probably right, but in any case, as Mackie actually presupposes that sortal properties are intrinsic, I suppose the argument (as an argument against her views) still works.

A brief comment on Martin's ideas: I wonder, if an object x can be the same object in a different (possible) world without being the same kind of object it is in the actual world (or without having in that world the same "sortal" property it has in the actual one), then something else must be founding its identity. In that case, that other misterious identity-source should be working too in the actual world, and thus, we would have to say that x is still x even if it falls under a sortal concept S at t1 and under a different sortal concept P at t2 (in its existence in the actual world). So Martín could be a human being now and a carrot a bit later, and we would have to say that he (the carrot) is still Martín. So, as he says, it would be a problem to maintain, at the same time, the permanent possesion of sortal properties and the location of trans-world identity in something other than these properties (although I agree with Ezequiel in that this position would not necessarily be incoherent). This brings in another problem: it can make objects eternal. For suppose that you have an object x which is a car in t1, a bunch of iron in t2 and a motocycle in 3. Leaving aside the point regarding the conservation of the constitutive matter (according to Mackie there would be identity for the iron along the transformations), the object x (car-pile of iron-motocycle) should be claimed to be the same object througout the entire process-since there are not their sortal properties but something else what keeps its identity-. So nothing ever passes away; things just lose properties (including sortal properties) but not identities.

Regarding Pablo's comment, if things work in this way, then apparently there would be no difference between sortal properties and different properties.

Besides, what kind of property could be this misterious identity-source be?

Hi Pablo and Justina!

As regards Pablo´s question (a) Is there a distinction between “essential” properties and “necessarily permanent” properties?, we have on the one hand, the two examples Mackie offers and Ezequiel points out, which are the property of being a permanent bachelor and the property of originating in Finland. In addition to this, we have as well, if we follow Mackie, the examples of substance sortal properties as being a cat. On her account, substance sortals satisfy Pablo´s characterization of “necessarily permanent” properties (property P is necessarily permanent iff necessarily if x is P at t, x is always P), but not that of “essential” properties (property P is essential iff necessarily, if x is P, x is necessarily P). In what follows I will say why I think that Mackie should deny the claim that substance sortals are necessarily permanent.

Mackie´s position is related to a conception of bare particulars which rejects the claim that individuals have non trivial essential properties that represent non-trivial necessary conditions for their identity in all possible worlds. Instead, she seems to admit only a restricted de re modality, in Lewis´s (modified) lines. She calls this position an extreme haecceitism.

Regarding Ezequiel´s example, the reason why I think she would reject arguing from identity conditions through time to identity conditions through worlds, (as you suggest), is that she thinks of “could have become” as a (restricted) variety of “could have been”. Thanks to this restriction, she thinks she could agree with her opponents (for example an essentialist) about the range of possibilities that is included in the ways in which Aristotle could have become different, even if disagreeing about the range of ways in which he could have been different. And it is for this agreement that she suggests that “there is no reason why an extreme haecceitist should not believe in substance sortals.” (How things might have been p. 157).

But as I said before, I think there is some reason (in her frame) to reject substance sortal properties. Some reason to reject at least the idea that these properties satisfy the de dicto modal principle (NP) Necessarily (for all x, if x is (an) F at any time in its existence, then x is (an) F at all times in its existence).

For if we agree that we should have the same approach when thinking of temporal and modal identity conditions, identity conditions through time should be restricted in the same way Mackie proposes to restrict identity conditions through worlds. Secondly, I think she should accept that both the temporal and the modal cases are subject to context, being the function of context to determine which possibilities are to be included and which ignored.

As regards Justina´s observation: I do not see why you think that nothing would ever pass away. As I understand it, individuals can pass away, even if there is no property or properties which, in each case, stand as necessary conditions for their persistence. A reason for this may be that passing away conditions of individuals are context dependent.

Perhaps this is due to the fact that I don't quite understand neither Mackie's "extreme haecceitism", nor Martin´s "context dependent conditions for pasing away", but I still think that there is a problem with eternal objects here. So let me rephrase it and please correct me where I go wrong.

My starting point is this: if what Mackie is saying is that an object x could exist (that is, keep its identity as x) in different possible worlds without keeping, at the same time, the sortal properties that provide its identity conditions in the actual world, then its identity must lie somewhere else. The way I imagine it, since x is the same object in every possible world, then what provides these identity conditions must be related to the concept of "object". But "object" is not a sortal concept, and therefore, it does not provide persistence conditions (among other things). Now, translate all this to the actual world. We have x here, and since, according to Martin, there is no reason (in Mackie´s frame) to understand sortal properties as permanent, then it follows that x can be sucessively an S, a T, a U... (all of these are names for sortal properties). Everytime x misses one of these properties, it passes away as an S, T or U (because all of these properties are linked to passing away conditions), but it still is an object (actually, the same object). Since "object" does not provide passing away conditions, when x stops existing as an object and something else takes out its place is indeterminated. There is not a moment where we all would admit that x has passed away (as an object and not merely as an S). Thus, it is conceivable the fact that x could go from sortal to sortal (either in this or in other possible worlds) without ever extinguishing as an object. Ergo, x could be eternal.

But again, probably Mackie's extreme haecceitism has nothing to do with the traits of th concept of "object". In that case, I wonder where lies the indentity of an object, what makes it be the oject that it is and not any other.

I take your point to be that there is a problem with the position I am suggesting Mackie should adopt (and with her position as she presents it), and that the problem would be that “it is conceivable the fact that x could go from sortal to sortal (either in this or in other possible worlds) without ever extinguishing as an object. Ergo, x could be eternal.” But why do you think that the possibility of eternal objects is a problem?

On the other hand, the claim that there is no property that is in principle a persistence condition for objects (which is something the thesis of substance sortals seems to suggest) does not imply that it is not the case that there is always at least some property that gives the persistence conditions of an object.

Take object a to be Jessica´ s pet. At a certain period of time, that pet is a cat. Through a soritical series, the cat turns into a cat-shaped robot. It continues to be Jessica´ s pet. It continues to be object a. after that, the cat-shaped robot is crashed by a car, Jessica is left without a pet and object a ceases to exist.

More radically, take object b to be the object most loved by Jessica. Object b is a doll at a certain period of time, a cat at a second period, and a man at a third period. After that time, Jessica doesn’t love any object at all. So object b ceases to exist.

In both examples, we have given persistence conditions for the object, even when we have rejected the idea that those conditions are provided by sortal properties. What do you think about them?

I’m not sure whether I have a problem with the mere possibility of eternal objects. I mean, I can admit that some objects exist (changing their sortal properties or not) at all times. What I wouldn’t be so happy to accept is that all objects are eternal (maybe I like death? I don’t know). And committing to thesis A bellow carries on the idea that all objects are eternal, not the mere possibility that some of them could be eternal (as it is implied by thesis B):

thesis A: only sortal concepts provide substantial persistence conditions for the objets falling under them (sortal concept S specifies somehow when an object x starts existing and ceases to exist). Objects can gain or loose sortal properties wihout ceasing to exist as the same object they are (they can stop being the same S, but they still are the same x if that makes sense). What keeps the object existing as the object x it is not the successive sortal properties it cain gain and loose, but some other persistence conditions linked to the concept of object (which are vague enough to let all objects be, as objects, eternal).

thesis B: sortal concepts, but also many other property concepts (maybe all of them) provide persistence conditions at least in this innocent way: a concept P (not a sortal concept necessarily) specifies somehow when an object starts existing and ceases to exist as P. In this sense, since objects –as in A- do not rest their identities and existence-spans in sortal properties, it only takes a regular concept providing contingently eternal persistence conditions for having an eternal object. On the other hand, it could happen too that the properties of an object -or stricly speaking, their innocent persistence conditions- would dictate its demise at some point. So there can be eternal objects and non eternal objects as well.

Note two things:

(1) both A and B share the common assumption that an object can go through successive sortal properties without ceasing to exist altogether; this is so because I take that this is what Mackie tries to propose at the modal level and, according to your (very accute) observation, this should be repeated at the actual world, at the temporal level. But I myself don’t agree with this assumption, at least not regarding some sortal concepts as natural kinds.

(2) I am distinguishing innocent persistence conditions (linked to any concept, sortal or not) and substantial persistence conditions (linked only to sortal concepts). Above they are stated pretty equally but there is a difference between them if you look closely. Now, your proposal takes option B: properties like “being the favourite thing in the world for Jessica” (F for short) provide innocent persistence conditions: a thing starts existing as an F whenever Jessica likes it a lot, and stops existing as an F whenever Jessica dislikes it (and this does not mean that the thing disappears, but only that it is no longer liked by Jessica). But the strange object “the F” (let’s admit that there are such things in the world, although I have my doubts) exists as long as Jessica is alive and not apathetic, it does goes through different sortal concepts, and it could be eternal if Jessica were an eternal being and were eternally not-apathetic. So far, so good and you are right. But concepts as F provide innocent persistence conditions and sortal concepts provide substantial persistence conditions, which are not limited to innocent persistence conditions (although they imply them also, going besides beyond them) because of the traditional role adscribed to sortal concepts: when all the fuzz about these concepts started, it was partly because they are different, because they are supposed to answer the Aristotelian question regarding the identity of objects: they tell us what objects are, where should we look for their identities, to what makes them be the things they are. Thus, it is supposed that when an object exists, it has a sortal property that it keeps throughut its existence, and that it ceases to exists altogether when it looses it (it cannot exist, period, without being an S). Regular concepts, on the other hand, only tell us how concepts are, not what they are: that's why innocent persistence conditions tell us when the object stops existing as an F (that is, stops being in a certain way), but not when it stops existing, period. So, since they are different in this sense, sortal persistence conditions not only tell us when the object gains or looses existence as an object which is so and so, but as that very same object. Substantial persistence conditions tell us when an object starts and ceases to exists, period, and not when it merely starts or ceases to exist as an S (but keeps existing as any other thing).

I think that Mackie is trying to make a strong statement against sortals, but while denying that sortal concepts provide susbtantial existence conditions (at the modal level), she needs to replace that substantiality with a different one (her haecceity?). Thus, option A bases object identity in something else than sortal properties, but this other thing plays exactly the same role of providing substantial persistence conditions to the objects. Now, your position, B, forgets entirely about substantial persistence conditions, and plays only with innocent ones. So even when it is workable, I wonder how would you manage to answer the Aristotelian question: in jettisoning substantial properties, you loose the possibility of saying what objects are, opposite to how they are. Now, there is a different option, which I think is the one you would take: you could say that “the F” is the F object (as an answer to the Aristotelian question rgarding it), so it ceases to exist altogether with Jessica’s apathy or death. But then, you are ascribing substantial persistence conditions to any concept: the concept of being red, for example, could tell us what a thing is, in the same way the concept F could tell us what the F object is. And that would have what I take to be devastating consequences for your ontology: you should admit a world constituted not by the traditional entities, but by things Jessica likes, red things, things that look like a chicken, etc., a Humpty-Dumpty world. Maybe that’s acceptable, but I prefer my old neat world made out of chairs, dogs and persons.

That's what I think about them.

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