About

Maegan Fairchild is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. She specializes in metaphysics, with interests that extend to philosophical logic, epistemology, and aesthetics. Her research primarily concerns 'maximally permissive' approaches to ontology, exploring how taking extreme or revisionary theories seriously can facilitate progress on a wide range of challenging philosophical questions. Her current work includes projects on ontological maximalism, the role of social practice and personal significance in material object metaphysics, metaphysical vagueness, authenticity and self-discovery, and wishful thinking in theory choice.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Philosophy
• Epistemology
• Computer Science
• Pathology
• Theology
• Law
• Medicine
• Linguistics
• Psychology
• Environmental ethics

Selected publications

• Symmetry and Hybrid Contingentism

  2024-03-21 · 2 citations

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This paper outlines a defense of hybrid contingentism: that it is contingent which individuals there are but not contingent what properties there are. Critics raise two main lines of concern: first, that the hybrid contingentist's treatment of haecceitistic properties is metaphysically mysterious, and second, that hybrid contingentism involves an unjustified asymmetry in the associated modal logic. I suggest that in the setting of higher-order metaphysics these dismissals may be too quick. It is not at obvious whether and to what extent we should expect certain ‘symmetries’ across the orders; and so whether as Williamson (2013) says “the default preference is for a uniform metaphysics, on which being is contingent at all orders or none.”

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• <i>The Bounds of Possibility: Puzzles of Modal Variation</i>

  The Philosophical Review · 2023-10-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  There comes a time in every metaphysician’s life when she finally thinks—sure, maybe I should learn more about woodworking. She might then find herself reading something like Christopher Schwarz’s The Anarchist’s Workbench. In a chapter titled “All The Mistakes” Schwarz (2020: 47) reflects on attempts to design “a perfect bench,” starting with the honestly named $175 Workbench: The poor bench has changed so much during the last 19 years that it’s almost unrecognizable. Despite its oddness, I still love it…. If I had to rebuild this bench, it would be much the same, except I would remove all the knockdown hardware…. I wish the benchtop was longer (it’s 70″ long now—I don’t know why).This is a review of Bounds of Possibility—not of The Anarchist’s Workbench. But like Schwarz, the authors of Bounds of Possibility begin honestly: “This book is long. It could have been somewhat shorter. But it couldn’t have been just one sentence long.”They aren’t wrong. It is a long book, and perhaps it could have been written with less knockdown hardware. But, as it stands, Bounds of Possibility is a master class in dogged dedication to a puzzle, a meticulous and fantastically rewarding investigation that easily justifies the length.The focus is a family of arguments that purport to show that if some object (a workbench, a book) could have been different in some respect (longer, shorter), then it also could have been vastly different in that respect (700″, a single sentence). These Tolerance Arguments fit a canonical schema: Tolerance:a is tolerant.Non-contingency:If a is tolerant, then it is necessary that a is tolerant.Iteration:Whatever is possibly possible is possible.Persistent Closeness:When properties are close, they are necessarily close.Hypertolerance:a is hypertolerant. We generate instances by supplying some definition of ‘closeness’ for properties. An object is tolerant if it could have had any property close to a property it has, and it is hypertolerant if it could have had any property ancestrally close to a property it has. Since we can supply any binary relation between properties for ‘closeness’, some Tolerance Arguments aren’t interesting: sometimes Tolerance is obviously false, or Hypertolerance immediately plausible. The most puzzling arguments of this form—Tolerance Puzzles—challenge entrenched modal judgments, threatening the stability of a picture on which familiar bits of the world could have been otherwise but couldn’t have been just anywise.Take Woody. Woody the workbench is tolerant with respect to close lengths—it could have been slightly longer or shorter. But that doesn’t seem to turn on anything special about how Woody is; it is difficult to imagine how we could have made Woody so that it wasn’t tolerant! If Woody is necessarily tolerant, then for any length that Woody might have had it is possibly possible for Woody to have been slightly longer or shorter than that. Given Iteration, we are led to the uncomfortable conclusion that Woody is also hypertolerant: our trusty workbench could have been too long to fit in the driveway or too short to balance a toolbox.Bolstered by a primer in the first chapter (“Logical Tools”), Bounds of Possibility is an advertisement-by-example for the usefulness of higher-order languages in first-order metaphysics. Throughout, the authors are eager to put to rest “any nagging concern that one somehow needs to learn a lot of metatheory in order to do higher-order metaphysics” (52). The beginning of the book, however, is largely nontechnical. The authors introduce the puzzles (in chapter 2), paying special attention to the crucial but underexamined Non-contingency premise (in chapter 3) and to the relationship between Tolerance Puzzles and nearby “Coincidence Puzzles” (in chapter 4). Even taken alone, the first act of Bounds of Possibility is a clarifying intervention in the literature on identity, persistence, and material constitution. The authors are also careful throughout to quarantine likely distractions. They are, for example, emphatic about distinguishing Tolerance Puzzles from the Sorites, offering motivations for each of the key premises that “have nothing to do with the deeply problematic ‘small differences can’t matter’ idea” (79). The remainder of Bounds of Possibility is an original and richly detailed exploration of responses to Tolerance Arguments—accepting Hypertolerance, denying Iteration, and denying Non-contingency. The four chapters focused on Hypertolerance and Iteration are particularly ambitious, and together systematize a mess of threads through debates about essentialism, supervenience, and the nature of metaphysical necessity. It is no surprise, then, that this part of the book is challenging. The chief downside of this is that we don’t get to the authors’ own positive proposal until chapter 11. (Impatient readers should take the advice in the introduction: read chapters 2, 3, and 11 before returning to the exploration of alternative strategies.)Happily, the resolution is worth the wait. In the end the authors resist any fully general treatment of Tolerance Puzzles. Instead, they defend a two-piece account that throws the brakes on Non-contingency while allowing principled instances of Tolerance-denial or Hypertolerance. The account combines a dramatically plenitudinous ontology with an equally dramatic metasemantic proposal. On the metasemantic side, they argue for widespread semantic plasticity in terms like ‘this’, ‘Woody’, and ‘workbench’. Many of our expressions have semantic profiles that are massively sensitive to external factors, so what we assert using them can differ across modal circumstances in fine-grained ways. On the metaphysics side, they defend a form of plenitude that guarantees that wherever there is any material object, there is a “dizzying variety of other, coinciding material objects” (266). These coincidents also vary modally in fine-grained ways and so supply referents for semantically plastic expressions.To see how this helps with Tolerance Puzzles, we’ll have to dig into the details. There is far more in this book (in the footnotes alone!) than I can helpfully engage with here. Instead, I will focus on drawing out some key ideas from the positive account.If the carpenter had planned a bit better, Woody could have been slightly longer. But if Tolerance is contingent, had she done so, there might have been some ways of making a slightly longer workbench that wouldn’t have made Woody at all.Why is that so hard to face? One source of discomfort is the apparent threat to the security of ordinary tolerance judgments. When the carpenter remarks “I could have made this a bit longer,” she’s right to be confident—of course she could have! But if Woody very easily could have been intolerant, couldn’t the carpenter easily have been wrong? Given how slight the changes are that could have taken us “to the edge,” “if one takes Tolerance to be a contingent truth, one seems forced to think that one is just lucky not to be mistaken about it.” But our Tolerance judgments don’t “feel like a risky bet in the way this picture suggests” (89).This is the idea behind the security argument, which the authors argue in chapter 3 is the primary obstacle to denying Non-contingency. In chapter 11, we find that the problematic premise is Independence: Independence:If Tolerance could easily have been false, we could easily have falsely believed it. The difference between Woody being tolerant and Woody being intolerant can come down to minor or distant differences—differences in the position of the carpenter’s saw or the quantity of metal used months ago at the screw factory (92–94). Independence is motivated by the thought that those can’t be differences that our modal beliefs are sensitive to (90–91, 262–63).Here’s where semantic plasticity comes in. Independence is false: the carpenter couldn’t have easily been mistaken, because in the worrying circumstances she would have asserted some other proposition by saying “I could have made this a bit longer.” (Plenitude already guarantees a wealth of appropriately tolerant candidates for ‘this’.) Of course, not all of our tolerance judgments crucially involve demonstratives, so this can’t be the whole story. The much harder part is making sense of more general speeches, like ‘Every table you made today could have been made smoother by sanding it more carefully’ (6).Here, the authors distinguish Tolerance Puzzles from what they call Quantified Tolerance Puzzles (see esp. 2.2 and 11.5). These are structurally parallel arguments that instead begin with premises like: Table Tolerance:Every table is tolerantly a table. Where something is tolerantly a table if it could have had any ‘close’ property while still being a table. The authors favor a unified treatment of the main Tolerance Puzzles and the quantified versions. In this case: Table Tolerance is true but contingent. Again, we’re in no danger of making a mistake in nearby worlds. If there had been intolerant tables, the predicate ‘table’ in utterances like “This could have been a better table if we’d made it longer” would have picked out a different property. The authors readily admit that plasticity on this scale takes some getting used to. Thankfully, the convincing discussion of choice-points and alternatives in chapters 12 and 13 does a lot to build fluency.Still, I’m unsettled about the treatment of quantified puzzles. This isn’t because of any unwillingness to accept the more dramatic parts of their account—it may be that I’m tempted by something slightly more dramatic.When we reflect only on paradigm instances of predicates like ‘table’, it’s easy to conclude that part of what it is to be a table is to be modally flexible in certain unrepresentative respects. The authors thus warn that we should “steer clear of Tolerance premises about all tables which would seem plausible if we were thinking only of paradigmatic tables” but are still friendlier to generalizations in the neighborhood than I would expect (64). Here, Yablo (forthcoming) provides an especially helpful foil. He proposes an account that is similarly plenitudinous, but which would reject Table Tolerance. On that view, although every table could have been slightly longer, if it had been, it might have lost the modal flexibility required for tablehood. Yablo and the authors agree that every table is tolerant; they disagree about whether the tablehood of (actual) tables is modally robust (285–87).My hesitation is that plenty of familiar objects—tables, workbenches, books—already seem to be intolerantly “on their edge.” Imagine a raw-edged table made from a distinctively knotty piece of cherry wood. We might naturally insist: “That table could have been made shorter, but only if you’d kept that lovely pin knot on the edge.” The authors acknowledge similar examples at key points in their discussion but call them “rare” or “marginal and exotic” (83–84, 162–63). I worry that they aren’t exotic at all. When we think about particular tables (your first handmade workbench, your grandmother’s dining table, your ex’s wobbly IKEA Melltorp) it becomes much more plausible that ‘table’ fails to fix on objects with any obvious modal uniformity—undermining even the simpler claim that every table is tolerant. (The authors themselves float a number of interesting proposals in this vein. They’re tempted, for example, to say that ‘house’ expresses a property of objects with “attitude-sensitive” modal profiles, so which differences houses could tolerate depends on the attitudes of relevant agents [300–301].)Although this suggests a more cautious approach to instances of Quantified Tolerance Puzzles, I think it is very much in the spirit of the core account. Given that our modal judgments are in good standing and that (as I suspect) interesting generalizations of those judgments are very hard to come by, the combination of plenitude and widespread semantic plasticity seems by far the most promising story on offer. Of course, there’s far more to say. Unsurprisingly, given a source as rich as Bounds of Possibility: this review could have been much longer.

  PublisherDOI

• Plenitude, Coincidence, and Humility

  Philosophical Perspectives · 2022 · 3 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Philosophy
  • Epistemology
  • Psychology

  It is a persistent trope in period dramas that the most garishly extravagant character — the matriarch with all the feathers — is most concerned to trumpet their conservative virtues. And so too in metaphysics! Fairchild (2019) advertised the humility of material plenitude, arguing that despite the profligate ontology of coincident objects it entails, the best version of plenitude is one that takes no stand on a range of nearby questions about modality and coincidence. Roughly, the thought is that plenitude says only that there are coincident objects corresponding to every consistent pattern of essential and accidental properties. Plenitude says — or should say — nothing about which patterns those might be, and so should be compatible with any reasonable hypothesis about which combinations of properties it is possible for something to have. I argued in the earlier paper that a particular formulation of the target view (Global Plenitude) has exactly that virtue. But like the many-feathered matriarch, Global Plenitude turns out not to be very humble at all. Global Plenitude is incompatible with an exceptionally compelling hypothesis about coincidence: that there are some things which coincide, but might not have. Scandal ensues. Thankfully (as we know from the dramas) untangling a scandal can reveal a lot about the underlying character of the thing. Getting a handle on the shape of the problem for Global Plenitude paves the way for an attractive fix, but also puts significant pressure on our aspirations to humility. In what follows, I recap and diagnose the problem for the old formulation (Section 2) and propose an improvement (Section 3). Along the way, I discuss a number of connected questions. Section 2.3 explores whether a plenitudinous picture of the world really does require that coincidence be contingent, and Section 5 asks whether the ambitions of plenitude are compatible with “nontrivial essences.” (Roughly, nontrivial properties that are had essentially if at all.) I argue that these are genuine choice-points, yielding pictures that reflect different plenitudinous virtues. Path Plenitude. For every function f from worlds to individuals in those worlds, there's an object whose coincidence path is described by f. Where f describes o's coincidence path iff o coincides with f(w) wherever f is defined, and doesn't exist otherwise. Although path approaches tend to be much cleaner, attempts at formulating essentialist varieties of plenitude can cast new light on a range of difficult questions. This paper takes a special interest in the ways that essentialist formulations of plenitude can reveal a kind of tension in the usual ambitions of plenitudinous metaphysics. But essentialist approaches also engage questions of much broader interest. Among them: What are the minimal consistency constraints on modal profiles? Which properties can be had essentially, and which can be had accidentally?2 Can the difference between non-plenitudinous pictures of the world and plenitudinous ones be captured by reference to further constraints on essences or modal profiles? My own suspicion is that, despite some messiness, the essentialist approach will help us make progress on each of these questions. Still, it is better to describe the world in a tidy way if we can. Here too the scandal uncovers some unexpectedly good news: in Section 4, I argue that the revised essentialist formulation turns out to be equivalent to Path Plenitude. We're usually happy to acknowledge that ordinary objects can survive some changes and not others, and more generally that they might have been otherwise than they actually are. Most famously: the statue could have been painted a different color or placed on a different pedestal, but it couldn't have been a radically different shape. It would be destroyed by squashing, but not by repainting or relocation. This ring could have been carved with a different engraving, and might someday survive having portions of metal removed for resizing. We can trim the fringe on a caftan, or dye the entire thing, but it would be destroyed if it were wholly unraveled. ‘Pluralists’ say that at least some ordinary objects differ in these respects from other objects that they temporarily or permanently coincide with. The statue is made up of a lump of clay which, unlike the statue itself, could survive all sorts of squashings and re-shapings. The royal signet could not have had a different engraving, while the piece of metal that constitutes both the ring and the signet would be destroyed if we removed a large enough quantity of gold. If a rogue restorer at the Costume Institute were to tie-dye it, we'd still have an ugly caftan in the collection, but the designer garment would have been destroyed.3 Although these coincident things share many of their properties — like shape or color — they differ in whether they have those properties essentially or accidentally.4 More briefly; they have different modal profiles. Plenitude goes further. Wherever there is any object, there's a multitude of coincident things — at least one for every consistent modal profile. As Yablo (forthcoming) puts it: plenitude adds to mere pluralism about coincidence that coincident things “differ as widely as possible” in their modal properties; “their modal profiles are as various as you like”. The plenitudinous world is, in some sense, full to the brim with coincident things. “The story is really very simple. It is this: every region of spacetime that contains an object at all contains a distinct object for every possible way of distributing ‘essential’ and ‘accidental’ over the non-sortalish properties actually instantiated there. Each spatio-temporal region is, as my Australian friends would say, chocka.” (354) A property F is neutral iff necessarily, for all x and y, if x and y coincide, Fx iff Fy.5 Crucially, in what follows, I'll be carefully silent about how we fill out ‘coincidence’: the views discussed here are meant to be compatible with understanding coincidence as spatiotemporal coincidence, mereological coincidence, or some other specialized property-sharing. I will be assuming throughout that coincidence is an equivalence relation, and so in particular that necessarily everything coincides with itself. Template. Necessarily, for any object o and any good modal profile on there is something coincident with o that has of will how to the some ways of out the of the the to the The plenitudinous says that only possible combinations of modal properties are those that to the sorts of things that we and so of plenitude the of those objects whose we to the of plenitude — that every good profile is instantiated — while that the only profiles are the ones corresponding to ordinary things or it still to something about the of The to profiles in doesn't to stand in for any hypothesis about which modal profiles are but is a for some kind of minimal consistency on modal profiles. We some to handle for a modal profile is out by about which combinations of properties are The statue has both the property and the property But the say that there's something coincident with the statue that is essentially and it possible for to be also least as the plenitudinous very some ordinary of a statue or too many out of a The plenitudinous will that there could be something like the that a or something like the statue that is What the plenitudinous is not that the of neutral properties is but that a modal profile something that has that of properties is no to by out modal profiles that are but otherwise all of a But the is at least it an for essentialist We're for an on which the of modal profiles is some as as modal the possible patterns of neutral properties. This is to a further of plenitude that — In Fairchild I that plenitude is humble if it is compatible with any reasonable hypothesis about the of neutral properties modal The thought that plenitude is only by what is possible — by what ways there are for things to A of plenitude should the world with as as The further thought is that is all that plenitude a of plenitude should wholly humble about what exactly it is that The us that the best of plenitude is one that says nothing more or than that the world modal between coincident is something really attractive about of but the of much of what is that the many ambitions of plenitude are in a kind of tension with each I that tension but my is to at least the different The story with Global Plenitude. that understanding modal profiles as of neutral properties those had essentially and those had minimal on good modal is that the essential properties be For any F of and any property in if F necessarily if every property in F is in is in has a and a is not a it can survive some things otherwise. But had been would have been Among neutral properties are and that doesn't But it is possible for something to have the property while the nothing actually coincident with could have a modal profile to which it essentially and is only For something actually coincident with to be it would have to be not But had the world been everything that would be It is that at iff at all worlds distinct from A F of properties at iff it is at that for all if x has every property in the between and are properties F and that F doesn't necessarily there's actually something that is F but not But had things been it would have been that every F is In other F For any F of and any property in if F at if every property in F is in is in If F essentially F is in that is a property necessarily had by both and will that is in that if there are neutral properties that are not necessarily had by everything or that they are had essentially if at those are also in an in Section and and I discuss it in Section Global Plenitude. Necessarily, for any object o and any modal profile on o that and there is something coincident with o that has a modal profile to which something essentially and is be and so a good modal profile. so there are very nearby of the that by and so to a problem for Global Plenitude. In Section I an to that Global Plenitude is with the of coincidence, and how it is an of a more like I'll very say it might be at least a that plenitude of some of the I in earlier in the from Fairchild (2019) can to Section like are but on of modal profiles and on a understanding of neutral properties. it to we can usually by in by about the properties that things have in But the to that which properties are neutral is to be to the the about coincidence. We're in a much better to plenitude if we can that fill out the and make it possible to and modal profiles. But are also they of a is a of Global Plenitude. The thought that, were to the about neutral if any could be to a of Global we'd have some of is But as Global Plenitude It The problem is that the property by of humility. It doesn't that Global Plenitude is consistent with every hypothesis about neutral it in a very significant hypothesis about neutral properties. individuals with properties. we the new objects coincidence by these and so properties from the neutral properties in the a o in the For any the property that is necessarily had by o and nothing will to a neutral neutral is the property with in the that property is had essentially if at all. the in the that for at there's some with which it essentially that a The a consistency and an of the kind of view I'll discuss in Section but at all to humility. things only coincide with each The statue and the clay coincide, but could have both — the could have portions of clay to make the statue than it actually and also to coincidence, at least the usual plenitudinous of you to the in with and I my with of the most questions about and that are by kind of is the are we the of the there were at least things the of the both have on one of and on the Global Plenitude doesn't any of The in and to for of a Here and I'll to a property that out exactly one world — that is, a property that would be had by everything if that world were and had by nothing otherwise. Where is a will the property that with a or with and all neutral properties by all other neutral properties of a at not with a and not with and Each should be a property that x x coincides with a at and coincides with at coincidence is and the that a and to coincide at Necessarily, if x and y coincide, necessarily if x and y both exist they a more Global Plenitude is to in to there is a profile that is at but there are of F and in A that it is possible at for something to be and F and not and for something to be and and not but there's only one every world other than and if is it is both F and In other Global Plenitude in to we have of properties it is possible for something to each of but which are that there still be something that has all of The that if coincidence is we can a profile that from exactly As as we to that coincidence might be contingent, a new of for modal profiles — Global Plenitude In Section I'll propose an Plenitude) which the that Global Plenitude. But also that what that Global Plenitude is it It a I on what is This is it still there any in which Global Plenitude — as it — up to the of out modal between The takes up by a plenitudinous picture the of This is a of an no from the it a view that I to But I that it can be in much the way that our of the plenitudinous I'll that we a kind of plenitude, a that about as as they trope in the period the an turns out not to be a all. objects are as and — that share the essential properties of and that they are also essentially and essentially is does further not in to — only to be destroyed doesn't but not be a good to the of x y iff essential neutral properties are a of essential neutral properties. For any x and y, if x and y coincide, necessarily, if x and y both exist they Plenitude. Necessarily, for any x and property there a y of x that necessarily, y is coincident with x iff x has Plenitude. Necessarily, for any object o and any modal profile on o that and there is something coincident with o that has that for any the property with x is had essentially if at all. by with x is in for every profile. Roughly, for any o that coincides with each profile on o will to a of Although at Plenitude and the to that from the of As coincident things differ as widely as region is silent about how to coincidence, we have a very with how to of As as coincidence is than we could the of as one that doesn't coincidence at all. We say that were the and the you and I are each on that were Plenitude is compatible with pictures the world is with but also with much pictures there are very so most everything is a more or In every the plenitudinous is “The problem is that the by the still us with an — exactly are so modal profiles no be an about which of the possible modal profiles are but there is still an about which the possible modal profiles are. that the plenitudinous does not really that all of the consistent ones are both plenitudinous and we can fill out a picture that an to are so modal profiles Plenitude to be more at the of the but the plenitudinous can help to a to fill out own The that about both I is that the of plenitude is for the to up at all. a with plenitude that has something to with a kind of We ontology to we can at too out on an It is to how Plenitude could be made to with that and with plenitudinous Plenitude on of an otherwise conservative — of modal or of — to the we can a Plenitude. Necessarily, any object o and any good modal profile on there is something coincident with o at which has is A is at I'll the of but we can the in We to that for properties a profile says are had there is some world something those properties. The we in Section of properties that could each be had but which were that nothing could have all of those properties we have some accidental properties and that there is only one world something and something but nothing we to that good profiles us to worlds — there's enough in modal to that all of the properties in A can be by something with every property in if a of properties is there's some way of it up each of properties is by something at a different a on modal to it each contains the of is A there's an which every to a world an object that has every property in and every property in The is a it says that there's a way of every in the to a world other than something in that world has every property in every property in and every property in these that is enough to the modal profile in The that the essential properties are the that all of the accidental properties are and the that we have to Although it might a that is a very of the that us to in the We that accidental properties make on modal to have an accidental property the of to the that having of properties might require the of of modal Path Plenitude. For every function f from worlds to individuals in those worlds, there's an object whose coincidence path is described by f. f describes o's coincidence path iff o coincides with f(w) wherever f is defined, and doesn't exist otherwise. I'll these from worlds to individuals or equivalence with Path Plenitude will a number of for those of us by Plenitude. of Path Plenitude are to it will and as an that Plenitude is But more it it much to what picture of the world Plenitude us to — what kind of plenitude in the I'll to some of these in Section there will be a to here is an picture of how the will If Path We to that something for every we have something for every good profile. for every every good profile on o at with a path function that f(w) we have a for every good profile with some path function that if there is some described by coincides with o and has at And Path every path describes Path for every good profile there will be something with If We to that something for every good we have something for every We that for every path function f that f(w) we can a good profile on o at that if has it has a coincidence path described by f. This is the but having it, the as every is had by for every path function there's something with a coincidence path described by f. might to Section For any world and o in we can every good profile on o at with a path function f that f(w) that if something has a coincidence path described by it has at be a good profile on o at is we know that A is at is, we know that there's a function that to worlds objects that have every property in and every property in f(w) o otherwise This is a for any good profile with a Path Plenitude. We're to that something for every have something for every good profile. be some good profile on some o in the we can with a function f that f(w) path plenitude, f describes the coincidence path of some that is coincident with o at we to that has that is, that has every property in essentially and every property in A that coincides with o at has every property in and in A at that has every property in essentially, we to that has every property in at every other world it — that is, at every world f is at every world other than if at coincides with But also by every has every property in at as does coincident with it — if has every property in that has every property in A we to that for any property F in and there's some that F is in and there's some world something every property in is an And F is neutral and coincides with at and F at has at for any good on o at that Path there's something coincident with o at which has This is Plenitude. For any path function f that f(w) we can a good profile on o at that if has it has a coincidence path described by f. with f(w) and or with and or with and every property in necessarily by F The to is that is is so really we to that A is are to but throughout the of the on the that f is a path function f out at most one at each world it is to that A is every property in by at that is the of all of the properties from that has at and so will every property in the of contains all and only the properties by F is a neutral property of at we know that has every property by F — and in has every property in The of that the of all of the is that if is in is not by there's some that that is F and not at how the special property if is F at coincides with at by the of there's some in that is in The other is if a property is in for some in there's some and that at by the of the property has F at and so has F and at F doesn't and so is in we to that there's an that every to a world from something that has every property in and every property in But by our every is with a world which is distinct from and contains something that has every property in and every property in — is have a for any path function f with a good profile. with and or with and or with and describes coincidence has has also has F for all if at coincides with and at every world f describes coincidence We only to that f doesn't coincidence in other that there worlds f is but is But has essentially, is in and so by the of F in if f is at a has a coincidence path described by f. that for any path f that f(w) we can a good modal profile on o at that if has at it has a coincidence path described by f for any path that there's something with a coincidence path described by f. This is Path Plenitude. The equivalence between Plenitude and Path Plenitude can a lot for For one thing, it a of out the path approach with a much of essentialist modal and so of to some of the questions about and But more the equivalence a really picture of what the world like Plenitude. Plenitude. For every function f from worlds to in those worlds, there's something whose is described by f. A function f describes iff o in all and only the worlds f is defined, and f(w) exactly all of properties there. Yablo describes the properties as those that are had by x of what be on with x in other If the properties are the neutral the picture of the world by Plenitude is also described by If F essentially F is in Necessarily, if something is it is essentially that it is possible that not everything has a a necessarily But if is a neutral Plenitude is with there will be things that have but only If F is a neutral property that something is F and something is not something is equivalence with Path Plenitude to at least if we to in some of neutral properties as of modal object with a coincidence path that a property region in some world has that property there. object with a coincidence path that of a property region has that property essences are property with Path nothing has a path that The of to Plenitude would us a plenitude that doesn't and is compatible with nontrivial The up a that is otherwise difficult for a to can like but might also much more of for that having is a neutral and that with has it Plenitude with is, in sense, more humble than Plenitude It much to nothing more or than that coincident things “differ as widely as possible” in their modal properties. But here the of Section 2.3 I kind of humility at a really significant of to a that I the how to which properties are had essentially if at As of the of plenitude is the that to difficult questions about and might from constraints on the on a scandal the usually a has a new of is to or there's a on the that here I'll from the I about We're with a much about the of we to between or we the kind of by Path The as I it, is between an approach to ontology we for that are humble about how the of the might and an approach to ontology that humility for other virtues. the up to their ambitions by constraints on the of the metaphysics. still not which to still made some to a that some for Global Plenitude — about and about coincidence. also argued that the essentialist approach can much better than Global and that the view can be connected to other on The is, I a better of the character of plenitude — feathers and all. to and for of some of the and to and for about the material in Section I also to and the for very on of on by the at the of at o has a property F essentially iff o is F and necessarily, if o o is F o has a property F iff o is F and o and is not Plenitude. neutral property describes that or and

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• Arbitrariness and the long road to permissivism

  Noûs · 2021 · 25 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Epistemology
  • Philosophy

  Abstract Radically permissive ontologies like mereological universalism and material plenitude are typically motivated by concerns about arbitrariness or anthropocentrism: it would be objectionably arbitrary, the thought goes, to countenance only those objects that we ordinarily take there to be. Despite the prevalence of this idea, it isn't at all clear what it is for a theory to be “objectionably arbitrary”, or what follows from a commitment to avoiding arbitrariness in metaphysics. This paper aims to clarify both questions, and examines whether arguments from arbitrariness really are the proper foundations for one or both varieties of ontological permissivism. I argue that these considerations (even when made more precise) are far less successful at motivating radical forms of permissivism than we often take them to be. To do better, permissivists must either supply a much more developed metaphysics of material objects, or a controversial (but tempting) conception of what we're doing when we do metaphysics.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Varieties of plenitude

  Philosophy Compass · 2020 · 14 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Epistemology
  • Computer Science

  Abstract Material Plenitude is the view that there is an abundance of coincident objects wherever there is any material object. Although plenitude has garnered increased attention from metaphysicians in recent years, it has yet to be well‐understood beyond its slogan from. The goal of this article is to explore a few places for puzzlement about plenitude; in particular, how we ought to motivate and formulate the target view. I'll suggest along the way that an investigation of plenitude is not merely of interest in its own right, but can provide valuable insights into abundant ontologies more generally.

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• The Barest Flutter of the Smallest Leaf: Understanding Material Plenitude

  The Philosophical Review · 2019-04-01 · 70 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  According to material plenitude, every material object coincides with an abundance of other material objects that differ in the properties they have essentially and accidentally. Although this kind of plenitude is becoming increasingly popular, it isn't clear how to make sense of the view beyond its slogan form. As I argue, it turns out to be extraordinarily difficult to do so: straightforward attempts are either inconsistent or fail to capture the target idea. Making progress requires us to engage in more delicate metaphysics than we might have expected and, along the way, reveals substantive constraints on the material world. In this article, I argue that any attempt to develop a coherent version of plenitude is subject to two under-appreciated challenges, and I develop a version of plenitude (global plenitude) capable of overcoming both.

  PublisherDOI

• Against Conservatism in Metaphysics

  Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement · 2018-07-01 · 64 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract In his recent book, Daniel Korman contrasts ontological conservatives with permissivists and eliminativists about ontology. Roughly speaking, conservatives admit the existence of ‘ordinary objects' like trees, dogs, and snowballs, but deny the existence of ‘extraordinary objects', like composites of trees and dogs (‘trogs'). Eliminativists, on the other hand, deny many or all ordinary objects, while permissivists accept both ordinary and extraordinary objects. Our aim in this paper is to outline some of our reasons for being drawn to permissivism, as well as some of our misgivings about conservative metaphysics. In the first section, we discuss a tempting epistemic line of argument against conservatism. This isn’t a line of argument we find especially promising. Our most basic complaint against conservatism is not that conservatism has poor epistemic standing even if true, but instead that conservatism is weird. We develop this thought in the second part of the paper. In the final section we discuss some larger methodological issues about the project of ontology.

  PublisherDOI

• A Paradox of Matter and Form

  Thought A Journal of Philosophy · 2017-01-01 · 19 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  In the face of the puzzles of material constitution, some philosophers (hylomorphists) have been moved to posit a distinction between an object’s matter and its form. A familiar difficulty for contemporary hylomorphism is to say which properties are eligible as forms: for example, it seems that it would be intolerably arbitrary to say that being statue shaped is embodied by some material object, but that other complex shape properties aren’t. Anti-arbitrariness concerns lead quickly to a plenitudinous ontology. The usual complaint is that the super-abundance of material objects is too extraordinary to accept, but I want to raise a different worry: I argue that the most natural way of developing this picture is already inconsistent. I show that a simple version of plenitudinous hylomorphism is subject to a Russellian argument, but argue that we cannot treat the problem straightforwardly as an instance of Russell’s Paradox of Sets.

  PublisherDOI

• Some chemical and physiopharmacologic properties of the venoms of the rattlesnake Crotalus viridis helleri and Crotalus scutulatus scutulatus

  Toxicon · 1976-01-01 · 3 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• John Hawthorne

  University of Southern California

  4 shared

• Richard W. Carlson

  Planetary Science Institute

  4 shared

• Roland Schaeffer

  Hôpitaux Universitaires de Strasbourg

  4 shared

• D C Buffkin

  Oregon Health & Science University

  4 shared

• R. Tanz

  University of Southern California

  4 shared

• Howard Whigham

  White Memorial Medical Center

  4 shared

• N. Maeda

  Southern California University for Professional Studies

  4 shared

• T.R. Pattabhiraman

  University of Arizona

  4 shared