Symmetry and Hybrid Contingentism

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.”