Full Idea
I suggest that our distinction between natural and unnatural (gerrymandered) objects corresponds to a distinction between series of stages which are and are not linked by certain non-supervenient relations.
Gist of Idea
An object is 'natural' if its stages are linked by certain non-supervenient relations
Source
Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 5.5)
Book Reference
Hawley,Katherine: 'How Things Persist' [OUP 2004], p.156
A Reaction
See Idea 16213 for the nature of these 'relations'. I don't understand how an abstraction (as I take it) like a relation can unify a physical object. A trout-turkey is unified by a relation of some sort. Hawley defends Stage Theory.
Related Idea
Idea 16213 Stages of one thing are related by extrinsic counterfactual and causal relations [Hawley]