Sungil Han

Since Kripke’s Naming and Necessity, it has been widely accepted that the essences of particular substances may be knowable only a posteriori. E. J. Lowe, however, argues against a posteriori essentialism, claiming that if a posteriori essentialism is accepted, a substance should depend for its identity upon another substance, but the identity dependence of a substance upon another has problematic consequences. In this paper, I defend a posteriori essentialism against Lowe’s argument. How a substance depends for its identity upon another substance is more complex than Lowe thinks. Once the complexity is unraveled, I argue, the identity dependence of a substance upon another does not have the implausible consequences Lowe thinks it has.

The problem of contingent existence is the problem of how an individual’s nonexistence such as Socrates’s nonexistence is possible within the framework of possible worlds, or, equivalently, how a negative existential proposition about Socrates can be true at some world. This paper is concerned with Robert Adams’s celebrated solution that distinguishes two modes of truth at a world: inner and outer. Adams argues that Socrates’s nonexistence is not an inner truth but an outer truth at a world in which he does not exist. However, Adams’s solution faces significant challenges, as his proposed rule for determining outer truths leads to undesirable consequences. For Adams’s solution to be viable, a revised rule is necessary. Iris Einheuser attempts to address this issue by providing an alternative rule, arguing that Adams’s rule is not inevitable. However, this paper argues that Einheuser’s proposal ultimately fails, as it implies the unacceptable conclusion that all entities are necessary existents.

According to Kripke’s thesis of the necessity of origin, if an object has an origin, it necessarily has that origin. Kripke’s thesis has special cases that we may refer to as “origin theses” when applied to certain types of objects, such as humans and tables. While origin theses have intuitive plausibility, why they are true remains unclear. This paper addresses a prominent line of defense for origin theses. In a celebrated note in Naming and Necessity, Kripke briefly presented an incomplete argument. Advocates of this line of defense attempt to establish origin theses by proposing additional principles with which to complete Kripke’s argument. I call these defenses “Kripkean defenses.” The usual debate in the literature regarding Kripkean defenses has focused on the justifiability of the proposed principles. In this paper, I highlight a neglected issue that arises for Kripkean defenders, even if the debate is assumed to be settled in their favor. I argue that, even if Kripke’s argument is sound, it falls short of establishing origin theses, leaving an inferential gap. How to close the gap is a new problem for Kripkean defenders. My goal in the paper is to offer a solution that I believe is their best hope. If I am right, Kripkean defenders should commit themselves to the Aristotelian view that individuals such as human beings and tables are, in a robust Aristotelian sense, substances with irreducible powers that emerge from the powers of their causal origin.

The project of grounding necessity in essence often goes together with the model of essence that assimilates the constitutive essence of an object to the definition of it. The paper argues that if the grounding project is to succeed, the definitional model must be questioned. Like any object whatever, a concrete individual is necessarily identical to that individual. It is argued that this necessity can have an essential ground only if the primitive identity property of it or its thisness is essential to it, and the thisness is in its constitutive essence while not in the definition of it. A concrete individual is in essence partly definable but not fully explainable, for the definition of it forms a crucial part of its constitutive essence, but the constitutive essence includes something fundamental beyond definition or explanation. The definitional model must give way to a model of essence that accommodates this.

It is standard to think that in Spinoza’s system, all things are necessary and in no sense contingent. However, in his classic book, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, published in 1969, Edwin Curley argues based on the proposition 28 of the first part of the Ethics that Spinoza endorses necessitarianism of only a modest kind, according to which when it comes to finite modes, there is a sense in which they are contingent. In this paper, I revisit Curley’s argument. Commentators have responded to Curley’s argument, showing that Spinoza’s remarks on infinite modes entail that finite modes can in no sense be contingent. But this alone falls short of dispelling Curley’s misgivings about the standard interpretation, for it remains unexplained why Curley is wrong in thinking that the proposition 28 supports his moderate necessitarian interpretation. In defense of the standard interpretation, I bolster the usual response to Curley in greater detail than has been done in the literature and explain why, pace Curley, the proposition 28 plays no evidential role in support of Curley’s interpretation.

In The Fragmentation of Being, Kris McDaniel argues for ontological pluralism, proposing that we should accept not just being itself but also modes of being into which being fragments. McDaniel’s guiding idea is that being is analogous, and given the analogy of being, being should be taken to fragment into modes of being. I argue that even if McDaniel is right that being is analogous, ontological pluralism is not forced upon us. Given the analogy of being, objects don’t have being simpliciter but have it in virtue of having something more fundamental particular to them. Upon examination, this falls short of supporting ontological pluralism, for the analogy of being implies that there are many grounds of being, but we are given no good reason for taking grounds of being as modes of being.