“what it is to be”a conference just is for a bunch of individuals to interact in certain
ways.
This approach sounds initially plausible. However, conferences are mere aggre-
gates of persons, and hence are beings by courtesy, and the properties of being a
conference and constituting a conference are also second-rate properties. Facts about
conferences are thereby also mere beings by courtesy. Hence, none of them has a
strict essence. Therefore, facts about the strict essences of conferences cannot explain
the particular grounding facts at issue here, since no such strict essences exist. In
general, if not everything has a strict essence, it is unlikely that this approach to
explaining grounding facts will succeed.
Similarly, Audi (2012: 108) asserts that grounding relates two facts in virtue of the
essences of the properties involved in those facts. But many properties are beings by
courtesy, and if such properties lack strict essences, then there will be far fewer
grounding facts than one might have thought.
The same sort of worry faces Lowe’s (2006: 203; 2009: 209, 212) attempt to explain
the relation of truth-making in terms of strict essence. It is well known that, unless
everything is a truth-maker for every necessary truth, we can’t simply say thatxis a
truth-maker for a propositionPif and only ifPis true in every possible world in
whichxexists. Lowe proposes that we appeal to the idea thatxis a truth-maker forP
only if it is part of the strict essence ofPthatx’s existence ensuresP’s truth. However,
if propositions are mere beings by courtesy—an open possibility but certainly not one
that we’ve established here!—then Lowe’s attempted analysis of truth-making fails.^16
And, as noted in section 4.6, certain ways of understanding formal ontology are
predicated on the idea thatbeing an objecthas a strict essence that can be revealed by
phenomenological investigation. But ifbeing an objectjust isbeing something, and
being somethingis not terribly natural, thenbeing an objectlacks a strict essence.
In general, the project of formal ontology, at least as initially developed by Husserl,
was based on the idea that we have intuitions of the essences of philosophically
interesting, topic-neutral notions such asbeing an object,identity, part and whole,
dependence, ground, and many others.^17 I take philosophers in the recent school
initiated by Kit Fine to be engaged in a similar project. Recall the questions that
concerned us in section 8.2: to what extent can we definitively settle the logical or
structural features of relations likeparthoodandgroundingindependently offirst-
order metaphysical theorizing about their relata? Ifparthoodandgroundinghave
essences for us to intuit, then our intuitions of these essences are the decisive data
that tell us the logical or structural features of these relations in advance of other
(^16) Mulligan (2009: 50) suggests a reading of Pfänder according to which the judgment that every truth
has a ground is grounded in the essence of truth and judgment. If judgments are propositions rather than
mental acts, the same possible problem Lowe faces also arises for Pfänder’s theory. And if truth is a non-
fundamental property, as deflationalists about truth hold, a similar problem arises. See Pfänder (2009:
24917 – 60) for relevant discussion.
See McDaniel (2014b) for further discussion of Husserl and intuitions of essences.