Essence Facts and Explanation
Essence Facts and Explanation
Abstract: Some essence facts have metaphysical explanations. Some metaphysical explanations for essence facts consist in non-essential facts.
Do essence facts have explanations? A common answer is ‘no’. But I think the correct answer, at least in some cases, is ‘yes’. Not all essence facts are brute facts. And not all non-brute essence facts have explanations in terms of further essence facts. In some cases, the essential is explained by the inessential.[1]
‘Explanation’ is a notoriously fraught term. By ‘explanation’, parties to the debate mean some variety of metaphysical explanation, as opposed to causal explanation, or some merely epistemological notion of explanation.[2] In what follows, I mean that, too. Also, I mean to treat ‘(metaphysically) explains’ and ‘in virtue of’ interchangeably. I intend to be fairly neutral, however, about the exact nature of metaphysical explanation. In Aristotelian (1952) terms, I assume that what is at issue is whether some essence facts have (inessential) formal or material causes, as opposed to efficient causes. In Finean (2001), (2012) terms, I assume that what is at issue is whether some essence facts have (inessential) factive, strict grounds. In what follows, I will also assume that the question can be posed in other frameworks for understanding metaphysical explanation.[3]
So which essence facts have metaphysical explanations? It may be an essential fact about a particular desk that it is made of wood. And there may be an explanation of this wooden desk’s origins. And there may be no explanation of the fact that this wooden desk is essentially wooden. But some hold that there is also no explanation, in the relevant sense, of the essence fact that it is wooden. Indeed, Jeff Speaks (2014) says:
Suppose that my desk—call it ‘Fred’—is essentially wooden. Given this, can we explain why Fred is wooden? One might well think that we can’t. Or, at least, we can’t explain this in the same way that we can explain why a book is sitting on a particular table—after all, Fred simply couldn’t exist without being wooden, and so we can’t recount events in the history of Fred’s existence which led to its woodenness. (Speaks 2014: 149)[4]
Though we can’t recount events in the history of Fred’s existence which led to its woodenness, we can fairly easily recount events in Fred’s pre-history that led to his woodenness. If his woodenness is of the oaky variety, for instance, then the relevant explanation we can offer is that an acorn gave rise to a tree which in turn gave rise to Fred in all its wooden glory. But Speaks acknowledges that this sort of (causal) explanation is available. He continues:
(T)here is, of course, another sense in which we can explain how Fred came to be wooden—and that is just that we can explain how Fred came to be. But, given that Fred could not exist without being wooden, this is the only sort of explanation of Fred’s woodenness which we can give. (ibid., italics in original.)
It seems, however, that we can give an explanation of Fred’s woodenness in the relevant sense. It’s this: Fred is wooden in virtue of being composed of particular cellulose fibers arranged in a particular way.[5] To reiterate: what is explained is Fred’s being wooden, which, in turn, is an essence fact. No attempt has been made to explain the fact that Fred is essentially wooden. Speaks’s challenge, however, is to explain the former; not the latter.
Some might object that Fred’s being composed of particular cellulose fibers arranged in a particular way is hardly an explanation of an essence fact concerning Fred. The objector might insist that the fact that Fred is wooden just is the fact that Fred is composed of particular cellulose fibers arranged in a certain way.[6] But if Fred is a normal desk, then Fred is capable of surviving changes to the particular cellulose fibers that compose it along with changes to their arrangement. Since that particular arrangement of cellulose fibers cannot survive such a change, the fact that Fred is wooden is not the fact that Fred is composed of those particular cellulose fibers arranged in a certain way. And if all of that is right, there is an explanation, in the relevant sense, of Fred’s woodenness. And that is so even if Fred’s being wooden is an essence fact. So, at least some essence facts, like the fact that Fred is wooden, do have an explanation, in the relevant sense: Fred is wooden because Fred is composed of particular cellulose fibers arranged in a certain way. Furthermore, if Fred can exist without being composed of this very collection of cellulose fibers in this arrangement, then the fact that Fred is composed of this very collection of cellulose fibers in this arrangement is presumably not an essence fact about Fred.[7] So at least some essence facts, like the fact that Fred is wooden, have an explanation. And that explanation is not in terms of further essence facts.
This purported counterexample to the claim that essence facts lack explanations of the relevant sort relies on a particular combination of views on the metaphysics of persistence and constitution. That combination of views is widely held, however.[8] So we may tentatively conclude that many—at least the partisans to the metaphysical views in question—should hold that some essence facts admit explanations, in the relevant sense.
Some resist the claim that Fred persists by being first coincident with or constituted by one collection of particular cellulose fibers (plus arrangement) and then another. One might reject the coincidence or constitution claim and instead hold that a collection of particular cellulose fibers (plus arrangement) at a time is a temporal part of Fred, rather than something with which Fred temporarily coincides.[9] On one version of this sort of view, Fred is a fusion of temporal parts, all of which are instantaneous collections of particular cellulose fibers arranged in a certain way.[10] But then the essence fact that Fred is wooden may be explained by the fact that Fred is coincident with or constituted by, but not identical to, such a fusion. And the fact that Fred is coincident with or constituted by such a fusion is distinct from the fact that Fred is wooden, since Fred could have had a shorter or longer career than Fred actually does, while that very fusion cannot. In such a case, Fred would be constituted by a different fusion of temporal parts. Hence, the fact that Fred is coincident with or constituted by this particular fusion is not a further essence fact about Fred.[11]
The literature on persistence and constitution contains many exotic variants on the two broad views briefly sketched here. But strategies along the lines of those outlined above can be tailored to produce explanations for at least some essence facts on many prominent views of persistence and constitution that admit genuine, non-trivial essence facts. So, it is plausibly not the case that all essence facts are brute facts. Some essence facts have explanations in terms of the inessential.[12]
References
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[1] The question I am most interested in is whether there are essence facts that have explanations that are not in terms of further essence facts. Some offer explanations of some essence facts in terms of other essence facts. (See, for example, Lowe (ms).) It is also important to emphasize that the sort of explanans I provide below is “inessential” in the sense that it lacks any relevant modal content, rather than providing an explanans that invokes contingency. Thanks here to an anonymous referee.
[2] ‘Ground’ may or may not be a good term for it. (See Wilson (2014), Cameron (forthcoming), Schaffer (forthcoming), and Wilson (forthcoming).) Fine (2001), (2012) takes grounding (or Grounding) to be an explanatory relation. Schaffer (2016) takes grounding (or Grounding) to back such explanations.)
[3] If you like, recast the relata of the metaphysical explanation relation in your own favorite way. See Schaffer (2009), Rosen (2010), and Fine ibid. for some options.
[4] Shamik Dasgupta (2014) appears to concur: “(E)ssentialist truths are the worldly analogue of nominal definitions. And they do appear to stand to ground as nominal definitions do to proof: the question of what grounds them strikes us as illegitimate in something like the way that the question of how one might prove a definition does.” (Dasgupta 2014: 8) It is unclear, though, whether Dasgupta is concerned here with essence facts rather than the fact that some fact is an essence fact.
[5] Perhaps Fred also manages to be wooden partly in virtue of the history of the cellulose molecules so arranged. This is so if there can be intrinsic duplicates of Fred that fail to be wooden.
[6] I am assuming on the objector’s behalf that metaphysical explanation is irreflexive. See Jenkins (2011) for discussion.
[7] I mean to use ‘collection’ neutrally so as not to presuppose whether the collection is a set, fusion, or plurality. On the case for necessity of grounding, see Trogdon (2013).
[8] Proponents of these or closely related views include Baker (1997), (2000), (2013); Brower (2010), (2014); Chisholm (1976); Doepke (1982); Fine (1999), (2006); Haslanger (1989a), (1989b), (1994); Hawthorne (2008); Hinchliff (1996); Johnston (1987), (1992); Koslicki (2008); Lombard (1986); Lowe (1987), (1989); Markosian (2010); Meiland (1966); Mellor (1981), (1998); Oderberg (1996); Rea (1995), (1998), (2000); Rosenkrantz (2005); Simons (1987); Smith (2009); Sosa (1987); Thomson (1983), (1998); Wiggins (1968), (1980); Zimmerman (1996), (1999); and many others besides.
[9] x is a temporal part of y at t =df x exists only at t, x is a part of y at t, and x overlaps at t everything that is a part of y at t. x overlaps y at t =df something is a part of x and y at t. Proponents of the view of persistence in question tend to prefer to formulate these notions using a primitive two-place is a part of relation rather than a three-place is a part of at t. And some opponents insist that parthood has more than three places. See Sider (2001) and Gilmore (2009) for further discussion.
[10] x is a fusion of the ys at t =df each of the ys is part of x at t and every part of x overlaps one of the ys at t.
[11] As is well known, proponents of the view that Fred is a fusion of temporal parts typically reject constitution or coincidence and instead embrace contingent identity (Gibbard (1975); Myro (1986); Gallois (1998)) or, more commonly, counterpart theory (Lewis (1968), (1986); Heller (1990); Sider (2001)). The proposed explanation may fail if one of these views is correct. Such views are often put forward in the spirit of anti-essentialism, however. And if there are no genuine, non-trivial essence facts, then, of course, there’s no explaining them, either.
[12] Thanks to Ben Caplan, Gregory Glatz, Justin Plumridge, Alex Skiles, Joshua Spencer, Kelly Trogdon, Rebecca Wardell, and anonymous referees for this journal for comments and discussion.