Fabrice Correia

In this chapter, I discuss the distinction between essential and accidental properties from a contemporary perspective. I first distinguish between the modal notion and the Aristotelian notion of essence. I present various ways of cashing out the modal notion, and then I turn to the Aristotelian notion, which has been at the centre of metaphysical enquiry over the past thirty years or so. I present and discuss simple modal accounts of that notion, then sophisticated accounts and finally non-modal accounts. In the very last part of the chapter, I briefly go through various topics: individual essences; the question of what is essential to what; the use of essence in the characterisation of other notions; so-called generic essence and other generalizations of the standard, objectual notion of essence; and finally, scepticism and anti-realism about essence.

Grounding is a hyperintensional notion: necessarily equivalent sentences need not be equivalent from a ground-theoretic perspective. How fine-grained, exactly, is grounding? There is a striking lack of consensus on this question. In this chapter, I try to systematize and review the main options that have been put forward in the literature. For reasons that have to do with both naturalness and convenience, I for the most part take the question to be about what is sometimes called, following Kit Fine’s (2012a) terminology, strict full grounding, and I take for granted a conception of grounding as a relation that is many-to-one and non-factive. I discuss the consequences of making alternative assumptions only in the very last section.

Many philosophers have recently been impressed by an argument to the effect that all grounding facts about “derivative entities”—e.g. the facts expressed by the (let us suppose) true sentences ‘the fact that Beijing is a concrete entity is grounded in the fact that its parts are concrete’ and ‘the fact that there are cities is grounded in the fact that p’, where ‘p’ is a suitable sentence couched in the language of particle physics—must themselves be grounded. This argument relies on a principle, _Purity_, which states that facts about derivative entities are non-fundamental. Purity is questionable. In this paper, I introduce a new argument—the argument from _Settledness_—for a similar conclusion but which does not rely on Purity. The conclusion of the new argument is that every “thick” grounding fact is grounded, where a grounding fact [F is grounded in G, H, …] is said to be thick when at least one of F, G, H, … is a fact—a condition that is automatically satisfied if grounding is factive. After introducing the argument, I compare it with the argument from Purity, and I assess its cogency relative to the relevant accounts of the connections between grounding and fundamentality that are available in the literature.

In what follows, we will reply to the critical comments one by one in the order that seemed most natural to us, given the topics covered. Apart from the references section towards the end, our replies are conceived as pieces each of which can be read independently from any of the others (but not, of course, independently from the comments it responds to). We hope to have done justice to the critical points made by our commentators and to have come up with viable answers to the various challenges they raise.

Cross-temporal grounding is a type of grounding whereby present facts about the past (for example that Caesar was alive) are explained in terms of past facts (for example that Caesar is alive) rather than in terms of other present facts. This paper lays the foundations for a theory of cross-temporal grounding. After introducing the general idea of a type of grounding connecting facts to past facts, we offer two arguments that past-directed facts require cross-temporal grounds—the ‘argument from intimacy’ and the ‘argument from past explanation’. We then go on to show that cross-temporal grounding statements can be understood as instances of a type of explanation which is perfectly legitimate and intelligible, even if somewhat unusual. Finally, we explain how the logic of grounding can be extended to accommodate cross-temporal grounding statements.

Ontological dependence and grounding are two important items in the metaphysician’s toolbox: both notions can be used to formulate important philosophical claims and to define other notions that play a central role in philosophical theorising. Philosophical inquiry about ontological dependence and (especially) grounding has been very lively over the past few years, making it difficult to write a short review article on any of them, let alone a short review article on both. I try to reach a good compromise between a discussion of each notion taken separately and a discussion of how they relate to one another. I begin by introducing the notions and discussing a number of their connections with modality (Sections 9.1 and 9.2), starting with grounding for systematic reasons (some important concepts of ontological dependence are defined in terms of grounding). I then further the discussion of how the notions are connected to each other, by arguing against the view that (partial) grounding is equivalent to (the converse of) ontological dependence between facts (Section 9.3). Finally, I discuss their respective roles in the theory of fundamentality (Section 9.4).

It would be a good thing to have at our disposal a general theory of location that is neutral with respect to the view that some objects have more than one exact location, the view that some objects are located without having an exact location, and the view that some objects are “spanners”—where a spanner is an object exactly located at a region that has proper parts but which has no proper part exactly located at a proper part of the region. As far as I know, no theory of location that can be found in the literature has this feature. I put forward a new theory that does—or so I argue. The theory takes as its sole locational primitive the notion of being entirely located at.

Many philosophers have recently been impressed by an argument to the effect that all grounding facts about “derivative entities”—e.g. the facts expressed by the (let us suppose) true sentences ‘the fact that Beijing is a concrete entity is grounded in the fact that its parts are concrete’ and ‘the fact that there are cities is grounded in the fact that p’, where ‘p’ is a suitable sentence couched in the language of particle physics—must themselves be grounded. This argument relies on a principle,Purity, which states that facts about derivative entities are non-fundamental. Purity is questionable. In this paper, I introduce a new argument—the argument fromSettledness—for a similar conclusion but which does not rely on Purity. The conclusion of the new argument is that every “thick” grounding fact is grounded, where a grounding fact [F is grounded in G, H, …] is said to be thick when at least one of F, G, H, … is a fact—a condition that is automatically satisfied if grounding is factive. After introducing the argument, I compare it with the argument from Purity, and I assess its cogency relative to the relevant accounts of the connections between grounding and fundamentality that are available in the literature.

In a recent article forthcoming in *Mind*, Leech (2020) presents a challenge for essentialist accounts of metaphysical modality: why should it be that essences imply corresponding necessities? Leech’s main focus is to argue that one cannot overcome the challenge by utilizing an account of essence in terms of generalized identity due to Correia and Skiles (2019), on pain of circularity. In this reply, we will show how to use identity-based essentialism to bridge ‘epistemic’ and ‘explanatory’ understandings of this alleged essence-to-necessity gap without circularity, Leech’s arguments notwithstanding. We do so by first presenting a novel proof that generalized identities imply corresponding necessities. We then propose several substantive identity-based explanations of how it is, exactly, that essences imply necessities.

Temporaryism—the view that not always everything always exists—comes in two main versions: presentism and expansionism (aka the growing block theory of time). Both versions of the view are commonly formulated using the notion of being present, which we, among others, find problematic. Expansionism is also sometimes accused of requiring extraordinary conceptual tools for its formulation. In this paper, we put forward systematic characterizations of presentism and expansionism which involve neither the notion of being present nor unfamiliar conceptual tools. These characterizations are full-blown logics, each logic comprising an axiomatic proof system and an intuitive semantics with respect to which the system is both sound and complete.

ABSTRACT We critically review two extant paradigms for understanding the systematic interaction between modality and tense, as well as their respective modifications designed to do justice to the contingency of time’s structure and composition. We show that on either type of theory, as well as their respective modifications, some principles prove logically valid whose truth might sensibly be questioned on metaphysical grounds. These considerations lead us to devise a more general logical framework that allows accommodation of those metaphysical views that its predecessors rule out by fiat.

Realism about tense is the view that the contrast between what was, what is and what will be the case is real, and not merely a projection of our ways of thinking. Does this view entail realism about temporal passage, namely the view that time really passes, in the same sense of ‘real’? We argue that the answer is affirmative for many versions of tense realism, and indeed for all sensible versions. We thereby address an important conceptual issue regarding these two forms of realism and rebut recent claims that tense realism is compatible with anti-realism about temporal passage.

We argue that sensitivity to the distinction between the tensed notion of being something and the tensed notion of being located at the present time serves as a good antidote to confusions in debates about time and existence, in particular in the debate about how to characterise presentism, and saves us the trouble of going through unnecessary epicycles. Both notions are frequently expressed using the tensed verb ‘to exist’, making it systematically ambiguous. It is a commendable strategy to avoid using that verb altogether in these contexts and to use quantification and a location predicate instead.

This monograph is a detailed study, and systematic defence, of the Growing Block Theory of time (GBT), first conceived by C.D. Broad. The book offers a coherent, logically perspicuous and ideologically lean formulation of GBT, defends it against the most notorious objections to be found in the extant philosophical literature, and shows how it can be derived from a more general theory, consistent with relativistic spacetime, on the pre-relativistic assumption of an absolute and total temporal order. The authors devise axiomatizations of GBT and its competitors which, against the backdrop of a shared quantified tense logic, significantly improves the prospects of their comparative assessment. Importantly, neither of these axiomatizations involves commitment to properties of presentness, pastness or futurity. The authors proceed to address, and defuse, a number of objections that have been marshaled against GBT, including the so-called epistemic objection according to which the theory invites skepticism about our temporal location. The challenge posed by relativistic physics is met head-on, by replacing claims about temporal variation by claims about variation across spacetime. The book aims to achieve the greatest possible rigor. The background logic is set out in detail, as are the principles governing the notions of precedence and temporal location. The authors likewise devise a novel spacetime logic suited for the articulation, and comparative assessment, of relativistic theories of time. The book comes with three technical appendices which include soundness and completeness proofs for the systems corresponding to GBT and its competitors, in both their pre-relativistic and relativistic forms. The book is primarily directed at researchers and graduate students working on the philosophy of time or temporal logic, but is of interest to metaphysicians and philosophical logicians more generally.

Some of the most eminent and enduring philosophical questions concern matters of priority: what is prior to what? What 'grounds' what? Is, for instance, matter prior to mind? Recently, a vivid debate has arisen about how such questions have to be understood. Can the relevant notion or notions of priority be spelled out? And how do they relate to other metaphysical notions, such as modality, truth-making or essence? This volume of new essays, by leading figures in contemporary metaphysics, is the first to address and investigate the metaphysical idea that certain facts are grounded in other facts. An introduction introduces and surveys the debate, examining its history as well as its central systematic aspects. The volume will be of wide interest to students and scholars of metaphysics.

In Fine 1994, Kit Fine challenges the view that the notion of essence is to be understood in terms of the metaphysical modalities, and he argues that it is not essence which reduces to metaphysical modality, but rather metaphysical modality which reduces to essence. In this paper I put forward a modal account of essence and argue that it is immune from Fine’s objections. The account presupposes a non‐standard, independently motivated conception of the metaphysical modalities which I dub Priorean. Arthur Prior never endorsed that very conception, but in some respects his own views on the topic are so close to it, and different from all currently accepted views, that the label ‘Priorean’ is perfectly appropriate.

In the third of his Logical Investigations, Husserl draws an important distinction between two kinds of parts: the dependent parts like the redness of a visual datum or the squareness of a given picture, and the independent parts like the head of a horse or a brick in a wall. On his view, the distinction is to be understood in terms of a more fundamental notion, the notion of foundation. This paper is an attempt at clarifying that notion. Such attempts have already been undertaken by Peter Simons and Kit Fine, and the paper also contains elements of comparison of our three sets of views.