Varieties of plenitude

Fairchild, Maegan

doi:10.1111/phc3.12654

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Note that while Universalism holds that there are many partially overlapping entities, "many thingism" holds that there are many co-located entities differing in having properties essentially or contingently. For a general discussion and introduction see Fairchild (2020). See Kriegel (2019) for a discussion of some of the complications many thingism leads to in the theory of reference.…”

Section: Endnotesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The essence of the mental

Buchanan

Grzankowski

2022

European J of Philosophy

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Your belief that Obama is a Democrat would not be the belief that it is if it did not represent Obama, nor would the pain in your ankle be the state that it is if, say, it felt like an itch. Accordingly, it is tempting to hold that phenomenal and representational properties are essential to the mental states that have them. But, as several theorists have forcefully argued (including Kripke (1980) and Burge (1979, 1982)) this attractive idea is seemingly in tension with another equally attractive thesis, namely, the token‐identity thesis; the thesis according to which every mental state token is identical with some or other token physical state. In this paper, we show that these seemingly incontrovertible essentialist intuitions are in fact compatible with “token physicalism” regarding the mental. Given a suitably plentitudinous ontology of objects, we argue that there are physical things with which our token mental states can be identified. This is preferable to existing views that give up the essentiality claims or simply reject the token‐identity thesis.

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Section: Endnotesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…16 16 Exactly how to restrict the plentitude of entities is a matter of contemporary debate. See Fairchild (2019, 2020), Kriegel (2019), Leslie (2011), and Yablo (1987) for further discussion. We follow Leslie by focusing on “strongly modally independent” properties.…”

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confidence: 99%

The essence of the mental

Buchanan

Grzankowski

2022

European J of Philosophy

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“…The principle of plenitude is often presented by use of the slogan that for every consistent modal profile based on actually instantiated properties, there is an object instantiating this modal profile (see e.g., Fairchild, 2020). If the principle of plenitude is true, then wherever there is an ordinary object, there are myriads of further objects that slightly or massively differ in their modal profile to the ordinary object.…”

Section: The Principle Of Plenitudementioning

confidence: 99%

“…10 Presumably, the reason why such overambitious sorcerers are rarely discussed in the literature is that, in contrast to the finking sorcerer, the overambitious sorcerer would not falsify the counterfactual saying that the cube would dissolve, were it to be put into water. 11 Both in Bennett, 2004 andFairchild, 2020, 'essence' is used in the modal sense of expressing de re necessity. 12 Vetter, forthcoming argues for the claim that essences constrain potentiality (her generalised notion of a disposition).…”

Section: Endnotesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plenitude and necessarily unmanifested dispositions

Werner

2021

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy

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The principle of plenitude says that every material object coincides with abundantly many further objects that differ in their modal profiles. A necessarily unmanifested disposition is a disposition that necessarily does not manifest. This paper argues that if the principle of plenitude holds, then there are some necessarily unmanifested dispositions. These necessarily unmanifested dispositions will be argued to evade some objections against the cases of necessarily unmanifested dispositions put forward by Carrie Jenkins and

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“…66Different versions of plenitude have been defended or discussed in Fine (1994, 1999), Yablo (1987), Bennett (2004), Hawthorne (2006), Leslie (2011), Jago (2016), and Fairchild (2019). See Fairchild (2020) for an overview.…”

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confidence: 99%

Arbitrariness and the long road to permissivism

Fairchild

2021

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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.

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Varieties of plenitude

Cited by 10 publications

References 44 publications

The essence of the mental

The essence of the mental

Plenitude and necessarily unmanifested dispositions

Arbitrariness and the long road to permissivism

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