Nomic Essentialism

Abstract

According to nomic (or causal, or dispositional) essentialists, the identity of a property is tied up with its nomic role, the role it plays in the laws of nature. Modally speaking this is straightforward: a property could not have obeyed different laws. But postmodally it is unclear what it means, since it is hard to see how to state the fundamental facts without mentioning particular properties. Various ideas are considered and criticized, such as that facts about property instantiations, or property existence, or property identity, are grounded in facts about laws; and that the laws are essential to properties. The latter, it is argued, is insufficiently metaphysically specific to count as an improvement on the modal formulation.