Plenitude, Coincidence, and Humility

IF 1.6 1区 哲学 0 PHILOSOPHY
Maegan Fairchild
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Abstract

It is a persistent trope in period dramas that the most garishly extravagant character — the matriarch with all the feathers — is most concerned to trumpet their conservative virtues. And so too in metaphysics! Fairchild (2019) advertised the humility of material plenitude, arguing that despite the profligate ontology of coincident objects it entails, the best version of plenitude is one that takes no stand on a range of nearby questions about modality and coincidence. Roughly, the thought is that plenitude says only that there are coincident objects corresponding to every consistent pattern of essential and accidental properties. Plenitude says — or should say — nothing about which patterns those might be, and so should be compatible with any reasonable hypothesis about which combinations of properties it is possible for something to have. I argued in the earlier paper that a particular formulation of the target view (Global Plenitude) has exactly that virtue. But like the many-feathered matriarch, Global Plenitude turns out not to be very humble at all. Most vividly, Global Plenitude is incompatible with an exceptionally compelling hypothesis about coincidence: that there are some things which coincide, but might not have. Scandal ensues. Thankfully (as we know from the dramas) untangling a scandal can reveal a lot about the underlying character of the thing. Getting a handle on the shape of the problem for Global Plenitude paves the way for an attractive fix, but also puts significant pressure on our aspriations to ‘humility’. In what follows, I recap and diagnose the problem for the old formulation (Section 2) and propose an improvement (Section 3). Along the way, I discuss a number of connected questions. Section 2.3 explores whether a plenitudinous picture of the world really does require that coincidence be contingent, and Section 5 asks whether plenitude allows for “nontrivial essences.” (Roughly, nontrivial properties that are had essentially if at all.) I argue that both are genuine choice-points, yielding quite different pictures which are nonetheless compatible with what I take to be the characteristic ambitions of plenitude. Both Global Plenitude and the new formulation I propose in Section 3 are what I’ll call ‘essentialist’ varieties of plenitude. Briefly, and with a promise to return to the details: plenitude is
充足、巧合和谦卑
在古装剧中,最华丽的奢侈角色——带着所有羽毛的女族长——最关心的是宣扬她们保守的美德,这是一个持久的比喻。在形而上学中也是如此!费尔柴尔德(2019)宣传了物质丰富性的谦卑性,他认为,尽管它带来了重合物体的挥霍本体论,但丰富性的最佳版本是不涉及一系列有关形态和巧合的问题。粗略地说,这个思想是,充分性只说,有一致的对象对应于每一个基本和偶然性质的一致模式。充分性没有说——或者应该说——这些可能是哪种模式,因此应该与任何关于某物可能具有哪些属性组合的合理假设相兼容。我在之前的文章中指出,目标视图(Global abundance)的一个特定表述恰好具有这种优点。但就像长着许多羽毛的母象一样,Global plentiity一点也不谦逊。最生动的是,“全球丰盛”与一个非常令人信服的关于巧合的假设是不相容的:有些事情是重合的,但可能不是。丑闻。值得庆幸的是(正如我们从电视剧中所知道的),解开丑闻可以揭示很多事情的潜在特征。为“全球饱足”找到问题的根源,为有吸引力的解决方案铺平了道路,但也给我们“谦卑”的愿望带来了巨大的压力。在接下来的内容中,我将回顾和诊断旧公式的问题(第2节),并提出改进建议(第3节)。在此过程中,我讨论了一些相关的问题。第2.3节探讨了一个丰裕的世界图景是否真的需要偶然的巧合,第5节探讨了丰裕是否允许“非平凡的本质”。(粗略地说,这些是非平凡的属性基本上是存在的。)我认为,两者都是真正的选择点,产生了截然不同的图景,尽管如此,它们与我所认为的丰裕的典型抱负是相容的。全球充实和我在第3节中提出的新表述都是充实的“本质主义”变种。简单地说,并承诺回到细节:充足是
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1.50
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