Let us distinguish two kinds of contingentism: entity contingentism and metaphysical contingentism. Here, I use ‘entity’ very broadly to include anything over which we can quantify—objects (abstract and concrete), properties, and relations. Then entity contingentism about some entity, E, is the view that E exists contingently: that is, that E exists in some possible worlds and not in others. By contrast, entity necessitarianism about E is the view that E exists of necessity: that is, that E exists in all possible (...) worlds. We can distinguish two views: global entity contingentism and global entity necessitarianism. Global entity contingentism is the view that for any possible E, E exists contingently. Global entity necessitarianism is the view that for any possible E, E exists necessarily. While entity contingentism and entity necessitarianism are views about the modal status of entities, metaphysical contingentism and necessitarianism are views about the modal status of metaphysical principles. Metaphysical contingentism about some metaphysical principle, P, is the view that P is contingent: it is true in some worlds, and false in others. Metaphysical necessitarianism about P is the view that P is necessary: either P is true in every world, or false in every world. We can then distinguish two views: global metaphysical contingentism and global metaphysical necessitarianism. Global metaphysical contingentism is the view that for any internally coherent metaphysical principle P, P is contingent: P is true in some worlds and false in others. Global metaphysical necessitarianism is the view that for any internally coherent metaphysical principle, P, P is necessary: it is either true in every world, or false in every world. This chapter principally focuses on metaphysical rather than entity contingentism, though §2 briefly discusses the latter. As we will see, (§2), both global entity contingentism and global entity necessitarianism are controversial views, and most philosophers fall somewhere between these two extremes, holding that some, but not all, entities exist necessarily—a view we can call entity moderatism. By contrast, global metaphysical necessitarianism has, until recently, largely been the default view. It is only recently that some philosophers have argued that we should be metaphysical contingentists about at least some metaphysical principles—a view we can call metaphysical moderatism. §3 considers why global metaphysical necessitarianism has hitherto been so persuasive, then evaluates (§3.1) some arguments for the view before considering more recent arguments in favour of the contingency of (at least some) metaphysical principles (§3.2). (shrink)

In debates about the metaphysics of material objects examples of colocated objects are commonly taken to be examples of coincidence too. But the argument that colocation is best understood as involving coincidence is never spelled out. This paper shows under what conditions colocation entails coincidence and argues that the entailment depends on a principle that actually rules out certain forms of colocation. This undermines the argument from colocation to coincidence.

The literature suggests two main answers to the question of what it is for a material object to be located at a region of spacetime. Both have a number of virtues. However, both suffer from well-known problems. According to one answer, location is a primitive relation with no informative metaphysical analysis. But this makes a number of necessary truths seem mysterious and leaves them unexplained. According to the other answer, to be located at a region is just to be identical (...) to that region. But this is inconsistent with a number of independently plausible theses about material objects and their locations. In this paper, I explore a new theory of location and argue that it has the virtues of these familiar theories but not their vices. I then explore some further connections the new theory has with some contemporary issues in metaphysics. (shrink)

According to one of the more popular endurantist packages on the market, a package I will call multilocational endurantism, enduring objects are exactly located at multiple instantaneous regions of spacetime. However, for all we know, the world might turn out to be spatiotemporally gunky and spatiotemporal gunk entails that this package is false. The goal of this paper is to sketch a view which retains the spirit of multilocational endurantism while also recognizing the possibility of certain types of objects which (...) endure through gunk. (shrink)

The notion of an extended simple region (henceforth ESR) has recently been marshalled in the service of arguments for a variety of conclusions. Exactly how to understand the idea of extendedness as it applies to simple regions, however, has been largely ignored, or, perhaps better, assumed. In this paper we first (§1) outline what we take to be the standard way that philosophers are thinking about extendedness, namely as an intrinsic property of regions. We then introduce an alternative picture (§2), (...) according to which extendedness is extrinsic. In §3 we argue that it matters which way of thinking about extendedness is the right one, since how ESRs behave is sensitive to what extendedness consists in, and various arguments that appeal to ESRs turn out to be unsound if extendedness is extrinsic rather than intrinsic. (shrink)

Relativity theory is often said to support something called ‘the four-dimensional view of reality’. But there are at least three different views that sometimes go by this name. One is ‘spacetime unitism’, according to which there is a spacetime manifold, and if there are such things as points of space or instants of time, these are just spacetime regions of different sorts: thus space and time are not separate manifolds. A second is the B-theory of time, according to which the (...) past, present, and future are all equally real and there is nothing metaphysically special about the present. A third is perdurantism, according to which persisting material objects are made up of different temporal parts located at different times. We sketch routes from relativity to unitism and to the B-theory. We then discuss some routes to perdurantism, via the B-theory and via unitism. (shrink)

Many philosophers have thought that the problem of personal identity over time is not metaphysically deep. Perhaps the debate between the rival theories is somehow empty or is a ‘merely verbal dispute’. Perhaps questions about personal identity are ‘nonsubstantive’ and fit more for conceptual analysis and close attention to usage than for theorizing in the style of serious metaphysics, theorizing guided by considerations of systematicity, parsimony, explanatory power, and aiming for knowledge about the objective structure of the world. I discuss (...) a thesis about consciousness according to which there are perfectly natural phenomenal properties. Although I do not argue for this thesis, I believe that it is plausible, whether or not physicalism is true. Given the thesis, there are deep, substantive questions about which individuals or pluralities instantiate the relevant phenomenal properties. Equally substantive questions can then be asked about the duration and other spatiotemporal characteristics of those individuals or pluralities, both in actual cases and in hypothetical puzzle cases adapted from the personal identity literature. I suggest that, at least prima facie, these questions interact with our future-directed egoistic concern in much the same way that the personal identity question is often thought to. As a slogan: “you give me substantive, determinate facts about consciousness; I give you substantive, determinate facts about personal identity”. (shrink)

In both the historical and contemporary literature on the metaphysics of space, a core dispute is that between relationism and substantivalism. One version of the latter is supersubstantivalism, according to which space is the only kind of substance, such that what we think of as individual material objects are actually just parts of spacetime which instantiate certain properties. If those parts are ontologically dependent on spacetime as a whole, then we arrive at an ontology with only a single genuinely independent (...) substance, namely the entire spacetime manifold. This is monist supersubstantivalism. A view on which the parts of spacetime are ontologically prior to the whole has been called pluralistic supersubstantivalism. As currently formulated, supersubstantivalism carries significant advantages and encounters major difficulties. I argue that some of the latter motivate... (shrink)

The four principal competing substance ontologies are substratum theory, bundle theory, primitive substance theory, and hylomorphism. Both historically and in the recent literature, most arguments pertaining to these four theories have been developed under the assumption that only one of them can be true. However there is room in this debate for various forms of pluralism: mild pluralism here refers to the view that while only one of these four theories is true of our world, there is at least one (...) other possible world in which a different substance ontology obtains; moderate pluralism refers to the view that while only one of these four theories is true of our world, there is at least one other possible world in which multiple substance ontologies obtain ; and extreme pluralism refers to the view that our own actual world contains substances belonging to different substance ontologies. In this paper I lay out a novel argument for a version of extreme pluralism. (shrink)

Super-substantivalism (of the type we’ll consider) roughly comprises two core tenets: (1) the physical properties which we attribute to matter (e.g. charge or mass) can be attributed to spacetime directly, with no need for matter as an extraneous carrier “on top of” spacetime; (2) spacetime is more fundamental than (ontologically prior to) matter. In the present paper, we revisit a recent argument in favour of super-substantivalism, based on General Relativity. A critique is offered that highlights the difference between (various accounts (...) of) fundamentality and (various forms of) ontological dependence. This affords a metaphysically more perspicuous view of what super-substantivalism’s tenets actually assert, and how it may be defended. We tentatively propose a re-formulation of the original argument that not only seems to apply to all classical physics, but also chimes with a standard interpretation of spacetime theories in the philosophy of physics. (shrink)

Supersubstantivalism, the view that material objects are identical to their locations, has recently been defended in metaphysics and philosophy of physics. One of the most powerful arguments in its favour is the so-called argument from harmony. There is a certain harmony between material objects and their locations. Necessarily, if material object x is located at a spherical region, x is spherical. Necessarily, if material object x is located at region r, any part of x is located at a part of (...) r. Supersubstantivalism offers a straightforward explanation of such harmony. By contrast, dualism, the view that material objects are distinct from their locations, does not offer any explanation and should regard harmony principles as unexplained coincidences. In this paper I put forward a theory, which I shall call the ‘Inheritance Theory’, that does provide a straightforward explanation of harmony on behalf of dualists. (shrink)