natural properties, then persons are fully real. In what follows, I’ll presuppose the
principle and focus on whether persons enjoy any such properties. (If the principle is
false, we lose one further route to showing the full reality of persons, so our case isnot
strengthened if it fails.)
Some candidate properties spring to mind. First, consider shape properties, such as
being three-dimensional or being triangular. Shape properties might seem like good
candidates for being perfectly natural properties, and persons have shapes. So here
are the makings for a quick argument for the full reality of persons.
Unfortunately, this quick argument fails for multiple reasons. First, I don’t think
that the shape properties of persons are perfectly natural properties because, in
general, the shape properties of any material objects are not perfectly natural. Rather,
a material object has the shape that it has in virtue of occupying a region (or regions)
of space–time.^24 The shape properties of regions of space–time might (or might not)
be perfectly natural, but if the shape properties of material objects are instantiated in
virtue of occupying regions with certain shapes, then the shape properties of material
objects are extrinsic properties. And I do not think that extrinsic properties can be
perfectly natural properties.^25
Second, and perhaps as troubling, holes and shadows also have shapes. But holes
and shadows are not fully real. And so, at the very least, the shape properties that
they enjoy cannot be perfectly natural properties. (Recall the discussion of section
5.7.) It would be good to have an independent reason for thinking that the shape
properties had by persons are perfectly natural. Otherwise the argument for the
full reality of persons will be pretty weak.
Note that a similar worry can be raised about an appeal to spatial (or spatiotem-
poral) relations, upon which one might reasonably assume shapes to supervene.^26
Persons stand in distance relations to other things. If distance relations are
perfectly natural—if they are real relations—then persons must be fully real. But
holes also stand in distance relations to other things—and so the distance relations
that they enjoy must not be perfectly natural. Similar remarks apply to the idea
thatoccupationis a perfectly natural relation that relates occupants of space–time
to space–time itself.^27
What about the properties that are postulated by physics? Persons have mass, for
example, although they have the mass property that they have in virtue of having
parts that have certain mass properties. (Let’s distinguish this claim from the
stronger, and perhaps empirically false, claim that the mass of a composite object
(^24) See McDaniel (2007) for a defense of this claim.
(^25) This is a consequence of Lewis’s (1986) account of the extrinsic–intrinsic distinction. But I regard it as
plausible independently of whether Lewis 26 ’s view is true.
I do not think this is quite right: the shapes of regions of space–time might supervene on the distance
relations between their parts, but, in general, the shapes of the occupants of space–time regions supervene
on the shapes of the regions they occupy. 27
I advocated that occupation is perfectly natural in McDaniel (2007).