Is generalised identity a basis for essence and grounding?

Abstract

This paper examines what role generalised or higher-order identity can and should play in the context of essence and grounding. Emphasising important analogies to ordinary identity, I will speak of quasi-identity. While many philosophers embrace essence and grounding as primitive notions, F. Correia and A. Skiles offer an analysis in terms of identifications linking sentences and open formulas instead of singular terms. Their basic idea is to construe an essential feature as a conjunctive part and a ground as a disjunctive part of the target item. This paper focuses on grounding. First, in the ingredient argument, I assume that the determinative and explanatory character of grounding comes with an inherent and non-trivial necessitating force and argue that quasi-identity is a poor candidate ingredient in an analysis of grounding, because it lacks any sign of such a force. For an alleged de dicto necessitation principle for quasi-identity is dubitable and, in any case, fails to represent an inherent necessitating force. And a de re necessitating force that might be attributed to quasi-identity blatantly fails to be non-trivial. Secondly, in the arrangement argument, I argue that grounding cannot be gained from a subtle arrangement of quasi-identity and truth-functions, because to understand when the arrangement applies and when it does not one already needs a grounding-like notion. Two constructive insights are suggested. First, grounding relations in the general sense are generated by chaining specific grounding operations, of which conjoining and disjoining are only examples. Secondly, quasi-identity is not part of a generation mechanism for grounding but serves as an important transport mechanism for grounding from transparent to opaque cases.