LAUSR

Recent metaphysics has turned its focus to two notions that are—as well as having a common Aristotelian pedigree—widely thought to be intimately related: grounding and essence. Yet how, exactly, the two are related remains opaque. We develop a unified and uniform account of grounding and essence, one which understands them both in terms of a generalized notion of identity examined in recent work by Fabrice Correia, Cian Dorr, Agustín Rayo, and others. We argue that the account comports with antecedently plausible principles governing grounding, essence, and identity taken individually, and illuminates how the three interact. We also argue that the account compares favorably to an alternative unification of grounding and essence recently proposed by Kit Fine. Recent metaphysics has turned its focus to two notions that are—as well as having a common Aristotelian pedigree—widely thought to be intimately related: grounding (when some phenomenon non-causally ‘derives’ from another) and essence (when some phenomenon is in the ‘nature’ of another). However, how they’re related remains quite opaque.1 We aim to clarify their link by proposing a unified and uniform account of both notions that analyzes them in terms of a third: what we call, following Linnebo (2014), generalized identity. Along with the intrinsic desirability of accounting for either notion alone (which has proven elusive), our proposal illuminates how the two interact by means of a single, relatively wellbehaved conceptual tool. What do we mean by “generalized” identity? Objectual identities (e.g. “Hesperus is Phosphorus”) are familiar, and display a canonical form: an identity-indicating * This article is the product of full and equal collaboration between its authors; the order of authorship is alphabetical. 1 How grounding and essence interact is explicitly taken up in Audi (2012; 2015), Carnino (2014), Correia (2005; 2013), Dasgupta (2014; 2016), Fine (2012; 2015), Guigon (forthcoming), Greenberg (2014), Kment (2014), Koslicki (2012; 2015), Rosen (2012; 2015), Skiles (2015), Trogdon (2015), and Zylstra (forthcoming).