The Limits of Neo‐aristotelian Plenitude (And Its Conceptual Neighbors)

Abstract

Neo‐Aristotelian Plenitude is the thesis that, necessarily, any property that could be had essentially by something or other is had essentially by something or other if and only if and because it is instantiated; any essentializable property is essentialized iff and because it is instantiated. In this paper, I develop a partial nonmodal characterization of ‘essentializable' and show it cannot be transformed into a full characterization. There are several seemingly insurmountable obstacles that any full characterization of essentializability must overcome. Moreover, these obstacles threaten other views in the conceptual neighborhood such as Counterpart Theoretic Plenitude and Conceptualist Plenitude.

Mountains and Their Boundaries

“…To illustrate: 'tree' is associated with something like the following application conditions: trees exist if there are atoms arranged treewise. 18 Since there are atoms arranged treewise, the application conditions are satis ed, guaranteeing that there are trees-that is, objects with the sort 14 See Fairchild (2019) and Spencer (2020) on the di culties facing existing formulations of plenitudinism.…”

Varieties of plenitude

“…(Also left open is whether our preferred notion of coincidence is liberal enough to allow immaterial things to coincide with material things. )15 See alsoSpencer (2019) for a related argument that trying to find a general answer to the question "Which properties can be had essentially?" is probably hopeless.16 Yablo (1987) is especially interesting in connection with this.…”

“…See also Spencer () for a related argument that trying to find a general answer to the question “Which properties can be had essentially?” is probably hopeless.…”

Plenitude, Coincidence, and Humility

“…22See Spencer (2020) for a sustained discussion of the many challenges we face in trying to provide a principled characterization of the ‘essentializable’ properties.…”