Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

In my talk I will discuss how the metaphysical position of essentialism can help us shed light on the nature of spacetime and solve some difficulties associated with the stance of substantivalism. Spatiotemporal essentialism assumes that the metric structure of spacetime determines the identity of points and regions. I will distinguish three variants of spatiotemporal essentialism and compare them with respect to how they deal with the hole argument as well as some lesser challenges. I will argue in favor of Lewis-style radical essentialism which assumes that a necessary and sufficient condition for being a given spatiotemporal point is to occupy its actual place in the metric structure. This solution gives additional arguments to the thesis of the ontological primacy of structures over objects.