“An intrinsic property, as David Lewis puts it, is a property ‘which things have in virtue of the way they themselves are’, as opposed to an extrinsic property, which things have ‘in virtue of their relations or lack of relations to other things’.”
— Ted Sider (see source here).
“An extrinsic (or relational) property is a property that depends on a thing’s relationship with other things. For example, mass is an intrinsic property of any physical object, whereas weight is an extrinsic property that varies depending on the strength of the gravitational field in which the respective object is placed.”
— See source here.
Introduction
Very few physicists use the term “intrinsic property”. What’s more, when they do so, they don’t use it in the same which in which many philosophers do. Take the following as an example:
“In science and engineering, intrinsic and extrinsic properties are two classifications of matter or objects. An intrinsic property is inherent or innate to the sample, while an extrinsic property is not inherent to the sample.
“An intrinsic property remains the same regardless of the conditions under which it is measured. Its value depends on chemical composition and structure. The value of an extrinsic property may change, depending on conditions. It depends on the way external factors affect the sample.”
According to philosophers, intrinsic properties underlie “chemical composition and structure”: chemical composition itself can never be deemed to be intrinsic. In addition, structure is the abstract result of the chemical and physical reality of what is studied.
In other words, chemical composition itself must have an intrinsic nature, rather than it being intrinsic nature itself.
So we now need to know what it is for intrinsic properties to underlie chemical composition.
Does the chemical or physical composition of any given x simply emerge from that which is intrinsic?
Of course, these difference alone don’t provide us with a good reason to dismiss the existence of intrinsic properties (i.e., in the philosophical sense of that term). And that’s primarily because various philosophers have provided arguments as to why there must be intrinsic properties, and therefore intrinsic nature.
David Lewis on Intrinsic Properties
It may be the case that Philip Goff’s position on intrinsic nature (which will be discussed in a moment) is inspired by the work of the American philosopher David Lewis (1941–2001).
Firstly, let’s take Lewis’s own definition of intrinsic properties:
“A thing has its intrinsic properties in virtue of the way that thing itself, and nothing else, is.”
[This is the exact opposite of relationalism.]
Lewis’s wording above is almost identical to some passages written by Philip Goff, which will be quoted later, and which can also be found elsewhere.
So could there ever be such a state as “the way that a thing itself is” regardless of everything else? That is, regardless of a thing’s relations to other properties, objects, events, conditions, etc., its place in time and space, and so on?
Lewis’s position can be taken to its most extreme (or, perhaps, ridiculous) in the following statement:
Object (or thing) O would still have intrinsic property P even if the entire world around it disappeared.
Perhaps there’s a midway position in which it can be argued that there are indeed intrinsic properties: However, they still have vital (even essential) relations to extrinsic properties. In other words, extrinsic proprieties may determine — to some extent at least — intrinsic properties.
All that said, it may now be countered that because objects are such-and-such-a-way, then they can only be affected (or determined) in particular ways precisely because they have the intrinsic properties which they do have. That may mean that there may be some kind of mutual relation between intrinsic and extrinsic properties.
Yet there may still be no “way” an object is regardless of its relations to other things (i.e., it relation to extrinsic properties).
To be clear on one distinction.
Some metaphysicians highlight the difference which can be made between the following:
(1) Properties which objects have independently of any external factors acting upon them (i.e., intrinsic properties).
(2) Properties which are deemed to be the way they are regardless of what’s external to them (i.e., essential properties).
If the distinctions above are applied to Philip Goff’s later example, then the intrinsic nature of mass would be what it is independently of any external factors acting upon it. Similarly, an object (or its intrinsic property) will be what it is regardless of what’s external to it.
Philip Goff on Intrinsic Nature
It may well be the case that “physics doesn’t fully describe reality”.
Yet it doesn’t help here that we’re talking about what are called “intrinsic properties”. That’s because it’s not clear how that word — “properties” — is meant to be read or interpreted. (Forget about the word “intrinsic” for a moment.)
In other words, all this will depend on what intrinsic properties are supposed to be. And it may be the case that whatever such philosophers take these properties to be, they can never be described by physics. Indeed, that may be (rhetorically put) the main point of such properties.
Take the case of the English philosopher Philip Goff.
Philip Goff doesn’t simply stress the fact that physics only concerns itself with doings and relations. He also tells us what’s missing from this picture: intrinsic nature. Indeed, Goff goes one step beyond that by telling us exactly what intrinsic nature is! He does so in the following passage:
“What then is the intrinsic nature of matter? Panpsychism offers an answer: consciousness. Physics describes matter ‘from the outside’, that is to say, physics gives us rich information about the behaviour brought about by mass, spin, charge, etc. But there must be more to what something is than what it does; and according to panpsychism, mass, spin, charge, etc, are, in their intrinsic nature, forms of consciousness.”
Even if there is such a thing as “the intrinsic nature of matter”, etc., why must it be consciousness? Why not something else? Why not noumena, pixie dust, God’s thinking, etc? Indeed, since Goff tells us that intrinsic nature is beyond physics, then it’s hard to establish if we could ever (conclusively) find the right candidate for such a role. How could we ever know that we’d done so?
Thus, panpsychism isn’t going to be discussed in this piece.
That’s primarily because there are different properties that are — and can be — taken to be intrinsic by other philosophers.
In any case, whatever philosophers take intrinsic properties to be, those properties will be beyond physics — as already stated. So, again, one could (rhetorically) say that they’re designed to be beyond physics…
In other words, Goff’s intrinsic properties are designed to be (quite literally) metaphysical.
Did Bertrand Russell Reject Intrinsic Properties?
“An essential property is a property that an individual has to have if it exists at all; it is a property that it has at every instant it exists, and in every possible world in which it exists.”
— — See source here.
When discussing the properties and events of physics, the English philosopher Bertrand Russell took a relationalist position. In other words, he seemed to reject what’s now called “intrinsic properties”. (It may be argued, however, that intrinsic properties underlie the “relational world”, without them thereby being relational themselves.)
We also have a connection set up between what is intrinsic and what is essential. So although what is intrinsic is that “which things have in virtue of the way they themselves are”, such properties may also be essential. That is, an intrinsic property may also be essential. Indeed, surely it must be essential.
In any case, Bertrand Russell once asked the following question:
“What do we mean by ‘piece of matter’?”
He answered his own question by telling us that
“[w]e do not mean something that preserves a simple identity throughout its history”.
Now that statement is partly correct and partly incorrect. It also seems to be a remark against essentialism, not against intrinsicalism.
It’s true that any particular thing (or even Russell’s “piece of matter”) won’t have (or instantiate) precisely the same properties over any given period of time. (That statement may not be true of particles and other fundamental entities.) So object O at time t¹ will be different in some — or in many — ways to O taken at t². In everyday terms, there are things about Paul Murphy which are true in June 2024; though which won’t be true of Paul Murphy in August 2024. And, of course, the same can be said of any given oak tree or a crab.
In other words, an object (or entity) needn’t ( as Russell put it) “exist complete at every moment”. So it depends on what Russell meant by the word “complete”. If it means that everything that “belongs” to object O at time t¹, will not do so at t², then that’s correct. However, an entity doesn’t need to be the sum of literally all its properties at every single point and place in time of its entire existence. (This was Leibniz’s position. See Robert Stalnaker!) It’s only the case that certain (essential?) properties are passed on from t¹ to t² to tⁿ…
Of course, if there aren’t any essential or intrinsic properties in the first place, then this scenario can’t work, and we must take Russell literally.
So it doesn’t follow that because any object (or thing) x doesn’t remain identically the same in all respects over time that it doesn’t remain the same in at least some respects.
In metaphysical terms, we call those unchanging aspects essential properties. So although the terms “essential” and “intrinsic” are related, it’s surely the case that both essential and intrinsic properties must “exist complete at every moment” when it comes to a particular entity.
However, we may not like such a reference to “essential” properties, and want to to use the words “important” or “enduring” instead (see Quine 1960).
Thus, I’ll loose millions of neurons over time, just as an oak tree will loose many of its leaves. Nonetheless, both persons and trees do have important characteristics — functional, formal and physical — which last over time. Indeed, if that weren’t the case, then we wouldn’t have any (philosophical) right to keep on referring to a particular thing (or even a particular person) with the same name over time.
Russell himself did believe (he was explicit about this) that we have no right to use the same name over time because he rejected intrinsic properties. Either that or he didn’t deem the enduring and/or important properties of an x to also be intrinsic properties.
The upshot of Russell’s position (if only in 1927) is that there are no intrinsic properties and, consequently, there aren’t really any things (or objects). In other words, all x’s properties are extrinsic. (Semantically, surely if there are no intrinsic properties, then there are no extrinsic properties either.)
Russell’s (partly Kantian) bottom line is that we have no access — either observationally or otherwise — to the intrinsic characteristics of such things. Instead, “[w]hat we know about them” is simply “their structure and their mathematical laws”. In other words, all we’ve got is mathematical structure…
This basically means that it’s “mathematical structure all the way down” — at least in the case of quantum mechanics, and, perhaps, physics generally.
Finally, did all this mean that Russell outrightly rejected the existence of intrinsic properties? Or did he argue that although all “we know about” objects (such as electrons) are their relational or extrinsic properties, it’s still the case that intrinsic properties must exist?
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