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Fundamentality
Edited by Alexander Skiles (Rutgers - New Brunswick)
About this topic
| Summary | It is commonplace for philosophers to ask whether a phenomenon of one kind is fundamental. Related questions are whether it is grounded in, or metaphysically dependent upon, or is less basic than a phenomenon of some other kind. Such claims raise a number of deep, unresolved philosophical questions in their own right. How are these notions of fundamentality related? What theoretical pursuits require them, and how can we come to know truths couched in terms of them? How do they relate to notions of mereology, modality, explanation, reduction, realization, substance, truthmaking, essence, provability, and causation? How is discourse about fundamentality to be regimented, and can well-behaved and interesting logical and semantic frameworks for this discourse be developed? What are the ontological commitments of this discourse? Must reality contain a sparsely populated ‘fundamental level’ of entities or facts? And how fundamental are these notions of fundamentality themselves? |
| Key works | Notions of fundamentality have been discussed in philosophy since its inception, and can be found discussed at length by Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Bolzano, Husserl, Armstrong, Lewis, and Kim among many others. Interest in these notions has intensified during the first two decades of the 21st century largely (but not solely) due to the influence of Fine 1995, 2001, and 2012; Correia 2005; Schaffer 2003, 2009, and 2010; Rosen 2010; Sider 2009 and 2011; and Wilson 2014. |
| Introductions | For excellent introductions to recent work on metaphysical grounding see Clark & Liggins 2012, Correia & Schnieder 2012, and Trogdon 2013; for recent work on dependence in metaphysics see Correia 2008 and Koslicki 2013. |
Show all references
Related
Siblings
- Conceptual Analysis and A Priori Entailment (91)
- Determinates and Determinables (90)
- Emergence (785 | 508)
- Grounding (847 | 41)
- Interlevel Metaphysics, Misc (140)
- Metaphysical Levels (87 | 34)
- Physicalism (705 | 384)
- Realization (544 | 11)
- Reduction (1,048 | 226)
- Supervenience (639 | 36)
- Token Identity (147)
- Truthmakers (810)
Contents
574 found
Order:
| 1 — 50 / 574 |
- Logics of Metaphysical Definition.Andrew Bacon - manuscript
- A Dilemma for Plenitude.David Builes - manuscriptAccording to modal plenitude, every material object is exactly coincident with infinitely many other material objects, where each of these exactly coincident objects merely differ from one another in their modal properties. Such a position is often taken to be a consequence of the only non-arbitrary generalization of the view that (say) a statue is numerically distinct from the lump of clay from which it is made. The goal of this paper will be to argue against modal plenitude. Usually, modal (...)
- Are Skeptical Doubts about Ground Warranted?Louis deRosset - manuscriptNo. More carefully: apparently not. [This piece was published in the Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Ground (2020), edited by Michael J. Raven with the title "Anti-Skeptical Rejoinders", pp. 180-193].
- Next Best Thing—What Can Quantum Mechanics Tell Us About the Fundamental Ontology of the World?Bixin Guo - manuscriptMany discussions in the metaphysics and philosophy of physics literature aim to use physics as a guide to elucidate what the world really, fundamentally is like. However, we don’t yet have a confirmed fundamental theory of physics—what’s the next best thing we can possibly say about the fundamental that is properly informed by our best theories of physics? This paper offers a starting point to address this question. It focuses on the literature on the ontology of quantum mechanics, where the (...)
- A Common-Sense A-Theory: Time’s Passing, Cross-temporal Relationships, Truthmakers.Alexander Jackson - manuscriptI propose a novel A-theory, and show that it attractively articulates our common-sense, pre-relativistic conception of time. This A-theory posits fundamental facts about how things were at a specific past times. It allows fundamental cross-temporal relationships. It treats time’s passing by positing fundamental facts like: four hours passed from 8am today until noon. First, I motivate my account of time’s passing. Second, I defend fundamental cross-temporal relationships. Third, I rebut arguments demanding present truth-makers for truths about the past. Author (MS) (...)
- Escape the Presentism–Eternalism Dilemma: Towards A Common-Sense A-Theory.Alexander Jackson - manuscriptI propose a novel A-theory that attractively articulates our common-sense, pre-relativistic conception of time. This A-theory posits fundamental facts about how things were at a specific past times. It treats time’s passing by positing fundamental facts like: four hours passed from 8am today until noon. It allows fundamental cross-temporal relationships. I show that the presentism–eternalism dilemma does not embarrass the proposed A-theory. There are two notions of existence in play: existence at a time and ‘-existence’. Neither features in the fundamental (...)
- Fundamentality and Rationally Open-Ended Endeavours: Reply to Amijee.Yannic Kappes - manuscriptAmijee ("Inquiry and Metaphysical Rationalism") argues that as long as we have not yet discovered that any fact is ungrounded, we ought to be committed to a version of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), according to which every fact is grounded. In this note I present Amijee’s argument, rebut it, and diagnose where it fails. In a nutshell, the issue with Amijee's argument is that in general, rationally searching for something/seeking something/trying to achieve something does not require believing that (...)
- What is Fundamental in Fundamental Physics?Alexander Niederklapfer - manuscriptMetaphysicians as well as philosophers of science often turn to particle physics for a description of the most fundamental entities in our universe. The common assumption is that physics readily provides a clear account of both what those fundamental building blocks are and how they come together to form more complicated objects, and, conversely, how compound objects can be seen as being composed of those fundamental entities. I argue that this picture contains a major difficulty because quantum theories allow for (...)
- Ultimate-Humeanism.Samuel John Andrews - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.Super-Humeans argue that the most parsimonious ontology of the natural world compatible with our best physical theories consists exclusively of particles and the distance relations between them. This paper argues by contrast that Super-Humean reduction goes insufficiently far, by showing there to be a more parsimonious ontology compatible with physics: Ultimate-Humeanism. This novel view posits an ontology consisting solely of the particles and distance relations required for the existence of a single brain. Super-Humeans impose conditions on what counts as an (...)
- Fundamentality in the Social World.Sara Bernstein - forthcoming - In Yannic Kappes, Asya Passinsky, Julio De Rizzo & Benjamin Schnieder, Facets of Reality. Berlin: De Gruyter.This paper suggests that the notions of fundamentality and fundamentalia that are useful for understanding the social world are substantively different than the notions of fundamentality and fundamentalia that are useful for understanding the objects of the natural sciences. I describe these differences. Joints in the social world can be created and destroyed. Simply describing social joints can in some circumstances create them. After arguing for the distinctness of fundamentality in the physical world from fundamentality in the social world, I (...)
- A recipe for complete non-wellfounded explanations.Alexandre Billon - forthcoming - Dialectica.In a previous article on cosmological arguments, I have put forward a few examples of complete infinite and circular explanations, and argued that complete non-wellfounded explanations such as these might explain the present state of the world better than their well-founded theistic counterparts (Billon, 2021). Although my aim was broader, the examples I gave there implied merely causal explanations. In this article, I would like to do three things: • Specify some general informative conditions for complete and incomplete non-wellfounded causal (...)
- Modal Idealism.David Builes - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind.I argue that it is metaphysically necessary that: (i) every fundamental entity is conscious, and (ii) every fundamental property is a phenomenal property.
- Two Notions of Fundamentality in Aristotle.Phil Corkum - forthcoming - In Richard Neels, Ground and Fundamentality in Plato and Aristotle. Routledge.Aristotle speaks of the fundamental as what is ungrounded or, in his own terminology, separate; and he also speaks of the fundamental as what grounds all else, or as what is absolutely prior. Karen Bennett notes that these two notions of fundamentality are extensionally equivalent, provided grounding is well-founded and transitive. Does Aristotle view separation and priority as extensionally equivalent? That is a difficult question to answer, in part because there are a variety of grounding relations in Aristotle, and in (...)$190.00 new (collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct downloadExport citation
Bookmark - What is priority monism? Reply to Kovacs.Damiano Costa - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.Priority monism is the view that the cosmos is the basic concrete entity on which each of its parts depend. Kovacs has recently argued that none of the classical notions of dependence could be used to spell out priority monism. I argue that four notions of dependence – namely rigid existential dependence, generic existential dependence, explanatory dependence, and generalised explanatory dependence – can indeed be used to spell out priority monism, and specify the conditions under which this is possible.
- Laws and Reasons Why.Julio De Rizzo - forthcoming - Analytic Philosophy.Laws play some role in explanations: at the very least, they somehow connect what is explained, or the explanandum, to what explains, or the explanans. Thus, thermodynamical laws connect the match's being struck and its lightning, so that the former causes the latter; and laws about set formation connect Socrates' existence with {Socrates}'s existence, so that the former grounds the latter. But is there more to the explanatory role of laws? A natural proposal, which finds considerable support in the literature, (...)
- Against Metaphysical Egalitarianism.Peter W. Finocchiaro - forthcoming - Analytic Philosophy.Many philosophers think that a metaphysical theory should be evaluated by the degree to which its ideology accurately represents the fundamental structure of reality. But that position pushes them to make seemingly invidious metaphysical distinctions. For instance: is a metaphysical theory that employs logical conjunction better than one that employs logical disjunction? In this paper, I evaluate a prominent solution to this problem: metaphysical egalitarianism. According to metaphysical egalitarianism, the best theory is the theory that avoids making seemingly invidious metaphysical (...)
- Between Substances and Processes: Bridging Metaphysical Divides on Fundamentality, Persistence, and Individuation.Benazir Flores Valdivia, Laura Nuño De la Rosa & Vanessa Triviño - forthcoming - Análisis Filosófico.Since the early 21st century, processualist approaches have gained prominence in analytic metaphysics and the philosophy of science, prompting diverse responses from advocates of substantialism. However, the polarization of the debate between process and substance metaphysics has often led to oversimplifications that obscure the potential for constructive dialogue. This paper argues that these frameworks should not be treated as monolithic systems, but rather analyzed through the lens of specific metaphysical problems—namely, fundamentality, persistence, and individuation. Focusing primarily on process metaphysics, we (...)
- On the Value of Reformulating.Josh Hunt - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.Throughout science and mathematics, expert inquirers often reformulate existing problem-solving procedures and theories. But what value is there to reformulating, particularly when one already knows how to solve a given problem? Is reformulating merely instrumentally valuable for other practical or epistemic aims, or does it constitute a distinctive kind of epistemic achievement? I argue that by changing what we need to know to solve a problem, significant reformulations constitute a kind of intellectual value. Whereas some reformulations are trivial notational variants, (...)
- Priority, Existence and Fact Constituency.Guido Imaguire - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.This article deals with a very simple question: Can an entity (object, property, or relation) e constitute a fact p, which is more fundamental than the very fact that e exists? Some metaphysicians, based on the ‘existence precedes constituency’ dogma have been defending a negative answer for this question. My main aim in this article is to argue against this dogma. I will, firstly, show why this question is important, and then, secondly, present some plausible counterexamples, that is, cases in (...)
- Opacity in the Book of the World?Nicholas K. Jones - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies:1-28.This paper explores the view that the vocabulary of metaphysical fundamentality is opaque, using Sider’s theory of structure as a motivating case study throughout. Two conceptions of fundamentality are distinguished, only one of which can explain why the vocabulary of fundamentality is opaque.
- Against Zero-Grounding.Tien-Chun Lo, Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra & Alexander Skiles - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies.A number of grounding-theorists hold that some truths are grounded but they are not grounded in anything. These are zero-grounded truths. Some have used the idea of zero-grounding to account for the grounds of identity truths, truths of iterated grounding, negative existentials, arithmetical truths, and necessary truths. In this paper we give two arguments to the effect that zero-grounding is an unintelligible idea, and then we show that, as should be expected with an unintelligible idea, the proposed elucidations of the (...)
- Plural Grounding and Redundancy Elimination: A Defence of the Modal Collapse Argument.Jasper Lohmar - forthcoming - Analysis.Van Inwagen argued that the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) implies necessitarianism, i.e., that all truths are necessary truths. Schnieder and Steinberg showed that van Inwagen’s argument fails if we apply a notion of plural grounding to the discussion of the PSR: the conjunction of all contingent truths is fully grounded in the plurality of all contingent truths. I argue that this manoeuvre fails if we accept a principle I call Redundancy Elimination. This principle follows naturally from the transitivity of (...)
- Brute Fact Parsimony.James McIntyre - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies.This paper argues that two of the theoretical virtues—ontological and ideological parsimony—reduce to a more foundational and familiar theoretical imperative to avoid positing brute facts. Following recent developments in metaphysics, I characterize ontological and ideological parsimony as principles that impose theoretical costs on fundamental ontology and primitive ideology respectively. I subsequently argue that both sorts of theoretical commitment entail costly brute (i.e., ungrounded) commitments. We can thus understand ontological and ideological parsimony as reducing to brute fact parsimony. After defending this (...)
- Infinite regresses: The confusion between stopping problems and starting problems.Guido Melchior - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.The established view about regress problems has it that they, roughly speaking, come in only one variety. This view is mistaken. Two types of problems are typically subsumed under the label of regress problems – stopping problems and starting problems. Both problem types share the same surface structure in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, but their deeper founding structure reveals some key differences. Stopping problems rely on a regress clause, raise the question whether infinite chains are possible, and present (...)
- Ontology without hierarchy.Kristie Miller, Michael J. Duncan & James Norton - forthcoming - In Javier Cumpa, The Question of Ontology: The Contemporary Debate. Oxford University Press.It has recently become popular to suggest that questions of ontology ought be settled by determining, first, which fundamental things exist, and second, which derivative things depend on, or are grounded by, those fundamental things. This methodology typically leads to a hierarchical view of ontology according to which there are chains of entities, each dependent on the next, all the way down to a fundamental base. In this paper we defend an alternative ontological picture according to which there is no (...)
- Type-R Physicalism.Will Moorfoot - forthcoming - Philosophical Psychology.In this paper, I argue for an often-neglected solution to the conceivability argument: the reconciliatory response. Its advocates state that, even if zombies are metaphysically possible, it does not follow that all versions of physicalism are false. To make the reconciliatory response, we must construct a theory that counts as a version of physicalism (because it makes higher-level facts count as physical) but also allows for the metaphysical possibility of zombies. Call any physicalist theory that can make the reconciliatory response (...)
- Divine Aseity and Self-Existence.Thomas Oberle - forthcoming - Faith and Philosophy.According to the doctrine of divine aseity, God is existentially independent. He does not depend upon anything for his existence. I argue that the notion of metaphysical grounding is ideally suited for capturing God’s existential independence. On this approach, God’s aseity is the view that God’s existence is ungrounded, and so fundamental. I defend this approach against rival causal and modal-existential analyses of God’s existential independence. I then argue that the nature of grounding provides metaphysical and explanatory reasons to reject (...)
- Can Pantheism Explain the Existence of the Universe?Thomas Oberle - forthcoming - Religious Studies.Many traditional theists maintain that God is the ultimate explanation of the universe, for why anything exists at all. For the traditional theist, only a being who is fundamental and transcendent can provide an ultimate ground and explanation of the universe. This requirement that God transcend the universe in order to ultimately explain it poses a challenge for pantheism, the view that God is numerically identical with the universe. If God is identical with the universe, and God is supposed to (...)
- Notation, Redundancy and Fundamental Logical Structure.Carlos Romero - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-16.A hundred years ago, Ramsey (1927) devised a new system of notation to more perspicuously represent the idea that ‘p’ and ‘¬¬p’ express the same fact. Recently, Monroy Pérez (2023) has argued that we can apply Ramsey’s insight to solve a recalcitrant problem for logical elitism — the thesis, most famously defended by Sider (2011), that the world’s fundamental metaphysical structure includes logical structure. Here, I discuss the general role of language in the framing of logical elitism and present four (...)
- Against Grounding Physicalism.Ezra Rubenstein - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.It is well-known that naturalistic dualism faces the ‘T-shirt problem’: it seems to require that the connections between physical and phenomenal truths are somehow covered by compact physical-phenomenal laws. This paper is a detailed exploration of a parallel issue that arises for grounding physicalism –– the view that phenomenal truths are grounded in, but not reducible to, physical truths. It presents four possible responses on behalf of grounding physicalists, and argues that none is satisfactory.
- Generalism Without Generation.Ezra Rubenstein - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.According to generalism, the world is fundamentally general –– ultimately, there are no individuals. I distinguish two versions of this view. ‘Permissive generalism’ holds that facts involving individuals are non-basic: they are generated by purely general basic facts. I argue that permissive generalists will struggle to provide suitably systematic and non-arbitrary explanations for facts involving individuals. These problems are avoided by switching to ‘strict generalism’: the view that truths about individuals are non-perspicuous, and reduce to purely general perspicuous truths. I (...)
- Normativity, Ideology, and Joint-Carving.Reuben Sass - forthcoming - Mind.Much recent metaphysics points to certain features as being natural, or carving at nature’s joints. There are now various accounts, both primitivist and reductive, of what joint-carving is. But there has been comparatively little discussion of accounts which define joint-carvingness in normative terms. Several motivations have been suggested for such normative accounts, including parsimony and an explanation of the epistemic value of joint-carving. But I argue that normative accounts are especially useful for non-ontic joint-carving or structure. As introduced by Sider, (...)
- Collective Allism: The Universal Plurality as Fundamental Reality.Raul Saucedo - forthcoming - Springer.In this book I articulate a new view about fundamental reality, an alternative to the familiar opposition between monism and pluralism. On this view, what’s metaphysically fundamental is neither the universal whole nor certain subcosmic entities, but the plurality of all entities, i.e. all entities taken collectively. I call it collective allism. Using higher-order resources, I systematically develop the view and give shape to the robust realism about plurals and the unorthodox ideology of fundamentality upon which it rests. I argue (...)
- Identity and the Epistemology of Grounding.Alexander Skiles - forthcoming - In Damian Aleksiev & Yannic Kappes, The Epistemology of Grounding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- The Identity of Necessary Indiscernibles.Zach Thornton - forthcoming - Philosophers' Imprint.I propose a novel metaphysical explanation of identity and distinctness facts called the Modal Proposal. According to the Modal Proposal, for each identity fact – that is, each fact of the form a=b – that fact is metaphysically explained by the fact that it is necessary that the entities involved are indiscernible, and for each distinctness fact –that is, each fact of the form a≠b – that fact is metaphysically explained by the fact that it is possible for the entities (...)
- The Role of Explanation in the Epistemology of Grounding.Michael Wallner - forthcoming - In Yannic Kappes, Asya Passinsky, Julio De Rizzo & Benjamin Schnieder, Facets of Reality. Berlin: De Gruyter.Despite the tight connection between grounding and explanation, Thompson (2016) and Maurin (2019) have recently argued that explanation cannot be an epistemic guide to ground. Skiles & Trogdon (2021) disagree. Reconstructing Thompson’s and Maurin’s worry about grounding and explanation as a dilemma, they argue that one of the horns of this dilemma can be resisted, such that explanation can be an epistemic guide to ground. In this paper, I offer a different solution by showing that the other horn of the (...)
- The Fundamentality First approach to metaphysical structure.Jessica Wilson - forthcoming - Australasian Philosophical Review.(Note: this is the lead article in a forthcoming issue of Australasian Philosophical Review edited by Dana Goswick, with invited comments by Karen Bennett, Ricki Bliss, Jonathan Schaffer, Alexander Skiles. There is a call for commentators, with abstracts due October 31, 2025) A wide range of scientific, religious/cosmological, and philosophical views presuppose that there is what I call `metaphysical structure', whereby (i) some goings-on in a given domain D are (absolutely or comparatively) fundamental; and (ii) (comparatively) non-fundamental goings-on in (...)
- Being social, being socially constructed, and being fundamental relative to social reality.Emilie Pagano - 2026 - Philosophical Studies 183 (1).Although the properties of being social and of being socially constructed are indispensable to our understanding of social reality, social metaphysicians are unclear about how they’re related. In this paper, I argue that whereas everything that’s socially constructed is also social, not everything that’s social is also socially constructed. In particular, I argue that something is what I call “fundamental relative to social reality,” something that’s social but not also socially constructed. I sketch an account of fundamentality relative to social (...)
- Metaphysical Foundationalism.Michael Bevan - 2025 - Philosophical Studies.Metaphysical foundationalism is the view that ground is well-founded. Despite its reputation as the default view of the general structure of reality, it is a view with few explicit defenders whose theoretical virtues remain largely unexplored. This paper makes an abductive case for metaphysical foundationalism, which lays emphasis on these virtues as relevant to theory choice. As part of the discussion I outline a new theory of ground and of generative relations, and describe a formalism for regimenting it.
- Logical Grounds Reconsidered.Michael Bevan - 2025 - Ratio:1-7.I begin by formulating a puzzle about grounds of disjunctions and fundamentality which puts pressure on some standard ways of thinking about logical grounds. An alternative to the standard picture of logical grounds is introduced which resolves the puzzle and has much else to recommend it in terms of its scope and uniformity.
- Pluralisms in gunky worlds.Claudio Calosi & Damiano Costa - 2025 - Philosophical Studies 182 (8):2101-2122.The possibility of gunk has famously been used by Schaffer (Philos Rev 119:31-76, 2010) to argue in favour of priority monism. In this paper, we present and explore different principled ways of being a priority pluralist in gunky worlds, thus weakening, if not deflecting, the gunk threat to pluralism.
- Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics (Cambridge Elements in Metaphysics).Phil Corkum - 2025 - Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Neo-Aristotelian metaphysics comprises the topics in contemporary metaphysics which bear similarity to the interests, commitments, positions and general approaches found in Aristotle. Despite the current interest in these topics, there is no monograph length general introduction to the methodology and themes of neo-Aristotelian metaphysics. One underdiscussed question concerns demarcation: what unifies the topics that fall under the heading of neo-Aristotelianism? Contemporary metaphysicians who might be classified as ‘neo-Aristotelians’ tend towards positions reminiscent of Aristotle’s metaphysics—such as sympathy with grounding, substance ontology, (...)
- Grounding and properties.August Faller - 2025 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 68 (2):592-616.Metaphysical grounding is often presented as a relation of directed dependence analogous to causation. The relationship between causation, properties, and laws of nature is hotly debated. I ask: what is the relationship between grounding, properties, and laws of metaphysics? I begin by considering the grounding analogue of Humean quidditism. Finding it implausible, I turn to the primitive-laws account of grounding, recently defended by Jonathan Schaffer and others. I argue this view is also unsatisfactory. I then present several possible dispositionalist-like accounts (...)
- How It All Depends: A Contemporary Reconstruction of Huayan Buddhism.Li Kang - 2025 - In Justin Tiwald, The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 335-351.Few would deny that something ontologically depends on something else. Given that something depends on something, what depends on what? Huayan Buddhism 華嚴宗, a prominent Chinese Buddhist school, is known for its extensive thesis of interdependence, according to which everything depends on everything else. This intriguing thesis is entangled with seemingly paradoxical claims that everything is not only identified with everything else but also contained within it. Moreover, the radical thesis of interdependence entails that dependence is pervasive and symmetric. In (...)
- (1 other version)Ordinary objects.Daniel Z. Korman & Jonathan Barker - 2025 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.An encyclopedia entry which covers various revisionary conceptions of which macroscopic objects there are, and the puzzles and arguments that motivate these conceptions: sorites arguments, the argument from vagueness, the puzzles of material constitution, arguments against indeterminate identity, arguments from arbitrariness, debunking arguments, the overdetermination argument, and the problem of the many.
- From indeterminacy in a fundamental theory to fundamental indeterminacy?Chanwoo Lee - 2025 - Analytic Philosophy 66 (1):84-96.In this paper, I examine a case for fundamental indeterminacy (FI) by Elizabeth Barnes and offer my counterarguments. Barnes' account of FI includes both the characterization of FI and why we need to accept it. I argue that her reasons for accepting FI can be challenged even when we accept her characterization of FI. Her main claim is that finding a fundamental proposition that our fundamental theory is indeterminate about (FPF) gives us a reason to accept FI in metaphysics. I (...)
- What's in a Name? Qualitativism and Parsimony.Daniel S. Murphy - 2025 - Philosophical Studies 182 (5):1361-1381.According to qualitativism, thisness is not a fundamental feature of reality; facts about particular things are metaphysically second-rate. In this paper, I advance an argument for qualitativism from ideological parsimony. Supposing that reality fundamentally contains an array of propertied things, non-qualitativists employ a distinct name (or constant) for each fundamental thing. I argue that these names encode a type of worldly structure (thisness structure) that offends against parsimony and that qualitativists can eliminate without incurring a comparable parsimony-offense.
- Haecceitism and Symmetry-Breaking: Things, Time, and Powers.Daniel S. Murphy - 2025 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 12.According to anti-haecceitism, facts about particular things are modally fixed by qualitative matters. According to qualitativism, such facts are metaphysically second-rate, perhaps because grounded in qualitative matters. Qualitativism seems to imply anti-haecceitism, so objections to the latter threaten the former. The most powerful sort of apparent counterexample to anti-haecceitism, I think, consists in a pair of situations that seem the same, and qualitatively symmetric, for a stretch of time, but that differ in how that symmetry breaks. I examine this sort (...)
- Derivative Indeterminacy.Kevin Richardson - 2025 - Erkenntnis 90 (1):169-185.Indeterminacy is metaphysical (or worldly) if it has its source in the way the world is (rather than how it is represented or known). There are two questions we could ask about indeterminacy. First: does it exist? Second: is indeterminacy derivative? I focus on the second question. Specifically, I argue that (at least some) metaphysical indeterminacy can be derivative, where this roughly means that facts about indeterminacy are metaphysically grounded in facts about what is determinate.
- Branching Actualism and Modalized Priority Monism.Braylen Samuel - 2025 - Philosophia.Priority monism is the view that the concrete cosmos is the sole substance. Recently, Martin Glazier has posed a problem for this view by arguing that the cosmos isn’t a substance as all substances are necessarily substances and the cosmos is not. In defense of priority monism, I argue that priority monists face the pressure of adopting a branching theory of modality called branching actualism to help resolve the issues raised by Glazier in a unified way. However, this could potentially (...)
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