best thought of asfirst-order properties. For now, let us assume that they are.
Examples of haecceities includebeing Kris McDanielandbeing Shieva Kleinschmidt.
The case for the fundamentality of haecceities is based on the claim that there is a
possible world that is exactly like this one except with respect to whether I exist. In
this other possible world, there is a person born when I was born, a child of my actual
parents, who grows through life having the same life history, and who dies a
qualitatively similar death. But that person is not me. He’s merely a qualitative
duplicate of me. What motivates this claim? I believe that the source of this intuition
is the deeper intuition that any completely“objective”description of reality must
leave out something of ultimate importance, namely, whether and where I am to be
found in that reality. Facts about subjectivity are notfixed by all the objective facts.
There is an interesting question of whether this intuition and the intuition
favoring the non-supervenience of qualia have the same root—or whether the
intuition apparently favoring the non-supervenience of qualia really favors the
non-supervenience of haecceities. Perhapsthereasonthatonemightfeelthatan
objective description of all of the putatively relevant physical facts does not capture
what it’s like to experience orange is because it doesn’t capture what it’slikeforme
to experience orange.^39 If this is correct, we could grant that the fact that there is
a particular distribution of orange sensations might befixed by a particular
distribution of physical properties—but this distribution of physical properties
nonetheless under-determines the ultimate subjective facts, namely, facts concern-
ingwhothepeoplewhohavetheseorangesensations are. On this way of thinking,
even facts about what experiences are like are objective facts that could be deter-
mined by other objective facts. But regardless of whether the haecceitistic intuition
stems from the same root as the qualia intuition, let us take it at face value for now
and see where it leads us.^40
Suppose the haecceitistic intuition is correct. Consider the following argument.
There is a possible world exactly like this world in all other respects except Kris
McDaniel does not exist at that world. If there is a possible world like this, then being
Kris McDaniel does not supervene on the distribution of all other perfectly natural
properties and relations. So far, so good. But we can’t simply appeal to the principle
used earlier, since that was formulated in terms of qualitative properties. Instead,
we’ll employ a more general principle: if a property or relation P fails to
supervene on all other perfectly natural properties or relations, then P is itself a
perfectly natural property or relation. Given this sufficient condition for being
(^39) Remarks in Nagel (1983: 221–4) suggest that there is an explanatory gap between an objective
description of the world and a description that has me explicitly in it. This explanatory gap seems akin
to the explanatory gap between a physicalistic description of the world and a description that includes facts
about what experiences are like. 40
This is not to say that the case for fundamental haecceities rests solely on this intuition about
subjectivity. Mackie (2006) provides a powerful case for the claim that there are no sufficient conditions for
being me, which is an important component of the case for fundamental haecceities.