Properties and Hyperintensionality: A Study in Property Individuation (Philosophical Studies Series, 163)

This book defends property hyperintensionalism: a view of property individuation according to which properties can be distinct even if they are necessarily had by the exact same entities.J. J. Snodgrass brings order to the debate over property individuation between property hyperintensionalism and property intensionalism, a rival view according to which such properties are identical, and argues that property hyperintensionalism earns its place in metaphysics.After giving some background on the concepts of a property and a criterion of identity, Snodgrass motivates property hyperintensionalism first by cataloguing a wide range of intuitively distinct properties that are necessarily had by the exact same entities, and second by attending to the different relations these properties bear to one another, both of which bring out the limits of property intensionalism.The discussion that follows takes up numerous objections against property hyperintensionalism.These include claims that the vie