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Single Idea 15075

[filed under theme 9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 1. Unifying an Object / a. Intrinsic unification ]

Full Idea

It is natural to suggest that to be a man is to have certain kind of temporal-modal profile. ...but it seems natural that being a man accounts for the profile, ...so one should not appeal to an object's modal features in stating what the object is.

Gist of Idea

Modal features are not part of entities, because they are accounted for by the entity

Source

Kit Fine (Necessity and Non-Existence [2005], 09)

Book Ref

Fine,Kit: 'Modality and Tense' [OUP 2005], p.348

A Reaction

This strikes me as a correct and very helpful point, as I am tempted to think that the modal dispositions of a thing are intrinsic to its identity. If we accept 'powers', must they be modal in character? Fine backs a sortal approach. That's ideology.

Related Idea

Idea 14481 Wherever an object exists, there are intrinsic properties instantiating every modal profile [Thomasson]

The 23 ideas with the same theme [unification of an object by some intrinsic aspect of it]:

472 No things would be clear to us as entity or relationships unless there existed Number and its essence [Philolaus]
13261 Plato sees an object's structure as expressible in mathematics [Plato, by Koslicki]
13265 Plato was less concerned than Aristotle with the source of unity in a complex object [Plato, by Koslicki]
590 Things are one numerically in matter, formally in their account, generically in predicates, and by analogy in relations [Aristotle]
10949 Primary things just are what-it-is-to-be-that-thing [Aristotle]
603 How is man a unity of animal and biped, especially if the Forms of animal and of biped exist? [Aristotle]
17838 Things may be naturally unified because they involve an indivisible process [Aristotle]
17840 A unity may just be a particular, a numerically indivisible thing [Aristotle]
17841 The formal cause may be what unifies a substance [Aristotle]
16163 Aristotle says that the form is what makes an entity what it is [Aristotle, by Frede,M]
17041 Natural objects include animals and their parts, plants, and the simple elements [Aristotle]
18459 Diversity arises from the power of unity [Porphyry]
16650 'Unity' is a particularly difficult word, because things can have hidden unity [Duns Scotus]
16751 Unity by aggregation, order, inherence, composition, and simplicity [Conimbricense, by Pasnau]
12745 Philosophy needs the precision of the unity given by substances [Leibniz]
16513 Identity of a substance is the law of its persistence [Leibniz]
14164 The only unities are simples, or wholes composed of parts [Russell]
17517 Could the same matter have more than one form or principle of unity? [Ayers]
15075 Modal features are not part of entities, because they are accounted for by the entity [Fine,K]
12886 A whole requires some unique relation which binds together all of the parts [Simons]
24065 Structured wholes are united by the teamwork needed for their capacities [Koslicki]
14495 I aim to put the notion of structure or form back into the concepts of part, whole and object [Koslicki]
13264 If a whole is just a structure, a dinner party wouldn't need the guests to turn up [Koslicki]