properties or stand in fundamental relations. A natural generalization of this prin-
ciple is that metaphysically ground-floor notions apply only to entities that are fully
real.^12 Holes, shadows, and other beings by courtesy are not fully real. So the notion
of strict essence does not apply to them. Therefore, they lack strict essences, just as
the historical tradition suggests.
Perhaps strict essence is not metaphysically basic. Many think that Fine (1994a)
has successfully shown that strict essence does not straightforwardly reduce to
modality. But there might nonetheless be a reductive account that is not as straight-
forward. There are two reductive accounts that do not straightforwardly imply that
beings by courtesy lack strict essences. One of them, defended by Brogaard and
Salerno (2013), analyzes strict essence in terms of counter-possible conditionals.^13
The other, defended by Dunn (1990), provides an account of essence in terms of
necessary relevant predication. Brogaard and Salerno’s account plausibly implies that
everything has a strict essence, but I won’t explore this here. Similarly for Dunn’s
account, but I am somewhat less sure about this. But there is also an account
defended by Wildman (2013), according to which an object has a property strictly
essentially if and only if it has that property modally essentially and that property is a
perfectly natural property.^14 Wildman’s view, in conjunction with the principle
(articulated in section 5.7) that only fully real entities enjoy perfectly natural prop-
erties and relations, straightforwardly implies that beings by courtesy lack strict
essences. This strikes me as a feature rather than a bug of Wildman’s account,
since the accountfits in quite nicely with the traditional view.
Suppose beings by courtesy lack strict essences. This fact is not without conse-
quence. First, it generates a problem for one answer to the question of what grounds
facts about grounding. Second, it might generate a similar problem for a particular
view about truth-making. Third, as hinted at it in section 4.8, this fact raises troubles
for one way of understanding the putative discipline of formal ontology. Before
moving on, let’s briefly discuss these.
In section 8.2, we discussed the question of what grounds facts about grounding.
Recall that Bennett (2011a) and deRosset (2013) hold that when G grounds H, it is
G that also grounds the fact that G grounds H. We contrasted this view with one
defended by Dasgupta (2015), according to which it is the strict essence of H, or one
of H’s constituents, that grounds the fact that G grounds H.^15 Here is one of
Dasgupta’s (2015; forthcoming) examples: the fact that a bunch of individuals are
interacting in certain ways grounds the fact that those individuals constitute a
conference. And what grounds this grounding fact is the essence of conferences:
(^12) This principle is similar to Sider’s (2011) purity principle.
(^13) See Steward (2015) for trenchant criticisms of Brogaard and Salerno’s proposal.
(^14) See also Cowling (2013a). Relatedly, Gorman (2014b: 123–4) argues that Fine’s counter-examples to
the modal view of essence don 15 ’t work since it should be restricted to“real”properties.
For the reasons footnoted in section 8.3, Dasgupta should also add G among the grounds to get the
total ground of the grounding fact.