Dispositions and Dependence

According to the principle No Upwards Essence , there are no cases in which some essentially depends on , yet grounds . One of the most pressing objections that afflict Dispositional Essentialism (DE) is that it violates No Upwards Essence and is therefore untenable. In this paper, I defend DE against this objection. First, I argue that DE only violates No Upwards Essence in the presence of further contentious assumptions that proponents of DE are not necessarily forced to accept. And second, I argue that No Upwards Essence should not be adopted: The extant arguments in favor of the principle are wanting, and it is subject to counterexamples.