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Analysis Advance Access originally published online on July 9, 2009
Analysis 2009 69(4):643-649; doi:10.1093/analys/anp096
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© The Authors 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Properties, possibilia and contingent second-order predication

Joseph Melia and Duncan Watson

University of Leeds Leeds LS2 9JT, UK j.w.melia@leeds.ac.uk phl5dw@leeds.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.


   1. The problem
 
Lewis identifies the monadic property being F with the set of all actual and possible Fs; the dyadic relation R is identified with the set of actual and possible pairs of things that are related by R; and so on (1986: 50–69).1 Egan has argued that the fact that some properties have some of their (second-order) properties contingently leads to trouble:

Let @ be the actual world, in which being green is [someone's] favourite property, and let w be a world in which being green is [nobody's] favourite property. Since being green is somebody's favourite property in @, it must be a member of ... being somebody's favourite property. Since being green is not anybody's favourite property in w, it must not be a member of being somebody's favourite property. Contradiction. (Egan 2001: 50–51)

Egan suggests identifying properties with functions from worlds to extensions. However, . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   2. On ‘being someone's favourite property’
 

   3. On ‘being Fred's favourite property’
 

   4. A final dilemma
 

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