Overlap, overdetermination, and the necessity of origin

Abstract

Proponents of the necessity of material origins hold roughly that an entity’s originating matter could not have been radically different from its actual originating matter. Sungil Han defends the considerably stronger position that an entity’s originating matter could not have been at all different from its actual originating matter. I raise some worries for Han’s key premise as it pertains to biological origins, and discuss certain methodological limitations of Han’s project as it pertains to the origins of artifacts.