Abstracts
Haecceitism Untethered
by Nathaniel Baron-Schmitt
Haecceitism says that the qualitative facts don’t necessitate the facts about individuals. There are multiple possible worlds compatible with any given qualitative way for the world to be. But how many possible worlds? How haecceitistic is modal space? I raise and investigate this question (which as far as I know has never explicitly been asked). In particular, I motivate one constraint:
Tethering: for any distinct duplicate worlds w1 and w2 with the same fundamental individuals, w1 and w2 differ in their permutations of fundamental individuals.
Anti-haecceitism trivially entails Tethering, but haecceitism is logically neutral on Tethering. I argue that haecceitists should accept Tethering.
After motivating Tethering, I pose a serious problem for it. The problem concerns the possibility of “recycling” of an object’s parts, Ship-of-Theseus-style, either across time or across possible worlds. It is extremely difficult to avoid the conclusion that the fundamental facts about an object’s very small parts, and indeed about any plausibly fundamental objects, could necessitate that it is the Ship of Theseus here rather than some other duplicate ship.
Although I have no happy solution to offer, I argue against the most obvious and natural solutions. In particular, the wrong conclusion to draw is that particular ships and other ordinary objects turn out to be fundamental. Among other problems, this leads to a view on which nonfundamental qualitative facts are systematically overdetermined by the fundamental facts.
IS PARTHOOD A RELATION? NO.
From a relational to a quanticational account of parthood
by Martina Botti
It is a standard assumption in contemporary metaphysics that parthood is a relation, specially, a relation holding between two objects: an object that is a part, say a finger, and a composite object (a whole) that includes it, say a hand. Most of the scholarship work in metaphysics of parthood has been focused on better understanding the properties of part/ whole relations and the formal systems that best model them. As a result, the question of what parthood is has been de facto identied with the question of what kind of relation parthood is. In this paper I break with the orthodoxy and argue that to be a part of is no more a relation than to exist is a property. To this end, I prove, rst, an overlooked incompatibility result: Simplicity of Plenitude. SOP says that an ontology committed to Plenitude, ie. the claim that, for every object, there is a plenitude of objects that coincide with it, is incompatible with any mereological account of coincidence. I construct SOP as a paradox: there is no way to both (i) interpret the universal quantifier in Plenitude as intended, ie. absolutely unrestricted and (ii) include both composite and atomic objects in the ontology, as—I argue—any mereological account of coincidence requires. To see in more detail how the argument unfolds, consider the claim that absolutely every object coincides with some other object. This is a claim entailed by every formulation of Plenitude (Fairchild 2019). Then, consider the claim that both atomic and nonatomic objects exist. That they both do, I argue, is required by all mereological accounts of coincidence, that is to say, accounts in which the fact that objects coincide is the fact that they share a mereological makeup (as opposed to a location). It turns out that these two claims are mutually incompatible. If we interpret the quantier in the claim that every object coincides with some other object as absolutely unrestricted, then we cannot have an ontology where both atomic and non-atomic objects exist, if the fact that they coincide must be captured in purely mereological terms. As I argue, any plenitudinous mereology (i.e. any mereology compatible with Plenitude) would need to meet the following desiderata. First, it would need to avoid a commitment to the axiom of anti-symmetry of parthood, which plays a crucial role in the proof of most extensionality claims in mereology (Cotnoir 2010). Second, it would need to be compatible with Universalism, i.e. the claim that every plurality of objects composes some object: the reason is that the same anti-arbitrariness concerns that motivate Plenitude motivate Universalism. Finally, it would need to be supplemented. As it turns out, the only principle of supplementation that is compatible with the rst two desiderata delivers, in presence of Plenitude, a gunky ontology (Gilmore forthcoming), namely one that does not accommodate atomic objects. I argue that the incompatibility captured by Simplicity of Coincidence is driven by the fact that parthood, a quanticational notion, is mistakenly treated as a relational one, and that to be a part of triggers an extension of the interpretation of the quantiers. Quantifying over both every atom and every object that is composed of those atoms is quantifying over too many things: there is not, like Plenitude requires, an interpretation of the quantier that allows us to quantify over absolutely all those things. Far from prompting a rejection of Plenitude, this result, I argue, should prompt a revision of the logical nature of parthood: not a relation holding between objects within our quantication domain, but an operator that triggers an extension of the interpretation of our quantiers. I set forth and present a formal system that accommodates my revised account of parthood and discuss some applications to the debate on real definitions and, more generally, the metaphysics of identity.
Meta-Expressivism
by Åke Gafvelin
According to Fine (2001), there are at least three types of true propositions. Firstly, there are true propositions that represent reality as it really is (<There are particles arranged x,y,z-wise>, could be an example). Call these really true propositions. Secondly, there are true propositions that represent reality, but not as it really is (<There are tables>, could be an example). Call these derivatively true propositions. Thirdly, there are propositions that do not represent reality at all, but are still worthy of being called true on a permissive and deflationary understanding of truth ( If we accept moral expressivism, <It is wrong to boil babies for fun> could be an example). Call these quasi-true propositions.
In this paper, I will be considering the metaphysical status of attributions of real truth, such as:
(F) P is really the case.
Granted, if (F) is a true proposition, then P is really the case. But what is the metaphysical status of (F) itself? Is it really true, derivatively true, or quasi-true? In this paper, I will argue that (F) is best seen as quasi-true. Thus, whilst really true and derivatively true metaphysical propositions represent the world, claims about what is really true are, on the whole, non-factual (even if they may have factual components). I call this position Meta-Expressivism.
Fregean Aristotelianism
by Andrea Lupo
Several philosophers have recently argued that broadly Aristotelian views in the metaphysics of properties are dissolved by endorsing higher-orderism – roughly, the view that theorizing about property-like entities requires primitive higher-order resources (cf. Jones (2018), Trueman (2020), Bacon (2024), among others). In this paper, I consider one such broadly Aristotelian view that remains underexamined in this literature – roughly, the view that the existence of properties requires their being instantiated (cf. Armstrong (1978) for the development of this view in a different setting). I begin by showing how the view is statable in the higher-order setting. I then show how the resources of higher-order logic help us to identify the principles which are plausibly taken to underly this Aristotelian view. Yet, I also show that the view is inconsistent with classical higher-order logic. I conclude by considering a number of responses on behalf of the Aristotelian.
Realism about Metaphysics and Philosophical Naturalism
by Matteo Morganti
The traditional conception of metaphysics – as the inquiry into the most general features of reality – makes realism about it an obvious choice. That is, it makes it natural to think that, if one does metaphysics at all, they should assume that at least some metaphysical claims provide true or approximately true descriptions of things. The popular naturalistic trend in meta-metaphysics is often regarded as lending support to this realist view. In this talk, I will argue that – to the contrary – there are no good reasons for believing substantial, genuinely metaphysical claims about reality. If this is the case, it follows that a different epistemic attitude towards the metaphysical enterprise is necessary. In closing, I will make some (initial) suggestions regarding how to conceive of metaphysics in a non-realist, yet non-eliminativist setting, and in a way that vindicates both the traditional characterization of the discipline and the appeal of naturalism.
Linguistic Indeterminate Existence
by Elisa Paganini
It has been authoritatively argued that existence cannot be indeterminate for reasons related to semantic vagueness. I claim instead that even if vagueness is semantic, existence is indeterminate.
The Fundamentality First Approach to Metaphysical Structure
by Jessica Wilson
Many first-order views, drawn from religion/cosmology, science, and philosophy, presuppose that there is what I call ‘metaphysical structure’, whereby some goings-on in a given domain D are fundamental, and non-fundamental goings-on in D metaphysically depend, one way or another, on fundamenta in D. These data motivate the metametaphysical project of giving an account of metaphysical structure, coupling (i) an account of what makes it the case that some goings-on in a domain D are fundamental with (ii) an account of what makes it the case that non-fundamental goings-on in a domain D metaphysically depend on fundamental goings-on in D. Here I present my preferred ‘Fundamentality First’ package deal approach to metaphysical structure, coupling a primitivist approach to fundamentality with a pluralist approach to metaphysical dependence, with the primary aim of establishing Fundamentality First as a viable contender.
Under the auspices of
