properties are ontologically on a par withfirst-class properties. By contrast, it is not
surprising that past objects have a nature and existence of their own if minimal
Meinongian presentism (discussed in section 3.3) is true, since, on that view, past things
do enjoy a fundamental mode of being. The right way to think of second-class properties
is to think of them as beings by courtesy.
Appealing to orders of existence is also not likely to be successful. The form of
existence of second-class properties doesn’t seem more polyadic than the form
of existence offirst-class properties. Of the three kinds of ontological degeneracy
I have distinguished, degree of being seems the most apt for the case at hand.
We have seen how one can distinguish betweenfirst-class and second-class
properties. But one might wish for morefine-grained distinctions than this. For
even among the second-class properties, some appear to be more natural than others.
We should consider how to capture this apparent fact.
Lewis (1986: 61) faced a similar question when he developed his theory of natural
properties. Should we work with a primitive absolute distinction between the natural
and the non-natural, and thendefinerelative naturalness in some way? Or should we
take as primitive a notion of relative naturalness, and definex is perfectly naturalas
there is no property more natural than x? Lewis opted to take the former route, and
suggested that relative naturalness amounted to length of definition in terms of the
perfectly natural properties in some canonical language.
I doubt that Lewis’s strategy will be successful. There are notorious difficulties with
specifying the purported canonical language, to begin with.^7 But another reason I am
doubtful is that I take seriously the possibility of analogous properties that do not have
a focal analogue instance. It is hard to see how to capture the difference between such
analogous properties and merely disjunctive properties in the way that Lewis pro-
poses. That said, if Lewis’s strategy is promising, it can be mimicked by the proponent
of degrees of being. The difference betweenfirst and second-class properties—that
is, the perfectly natural and the rest—canbecashedoutinthewaysuggested,
simply by distinguishing between existing in the best way and second-rate existence,
and then providing a more stratified naturalness ranking via definition in a
canonical language.^8
But there is a second possibility for relating degree of naturalness and degree of
being: hold that the degrees of being of properties are proportionate to their degrees
of naturalness. If this is correct, then a straightforward account of naturalnessin
terms of degrees of beingis apparent:“property P ismore natural thanproperty Q”is
defined as“P is more real than Q”;“property P is natural to degreen”is defined as
“the degree to which P exists isn.”In short, we can define what it is for a property to
(^7) Sider (2011: xx) sounds a hopeful note, however.
(^8) Note that Aquinas did not argue for degrees of being (in my sense) but rather merely made a
distinction betweenfirst-class entities—those that are God or fall under one of the categories—and the
second-class ones which merely are beings in the sense of being true.