Radically permissive ontologies like mereological universalism and material plenitude are typically motivated by concerns about arbitrariness or anthropocentrism: it would be objectionably arbitrary, the thought goes, to countenance only those objects that we ordinarily take there to be. Despite the prevalence of this idea, it isn't at all clear what it is for a theory to be “objectionably arbitrary”, or what follows from a commitment to avoiding arbitrariness in metaphysics. This paper aims to clarify both questions, and examines whether arguments from arbitrariness really are the proper foundations for one or both varieties of ontological permissivism. I argue that these considerations (even when made more precise) are far less successful at motivating radical forms of permissivism than we often take them to be. To do better, permissivists must either supply a much more developed metaphysics of material objects, or a controversial (but tempting) conception of what we're doing when we do metaphysics.

中文翻译：

---

任意性和放任主义的漫漫长路

激进的本体论，如分子普遍主义和物质丰富性，通常是出于对任意性或人类中心主义的担忧：这种想法认为，只支持我们通常认为存在的那些对象是令人反感的任意性。尽管这种想法很流行，但对于一个理论来说，“令人反感的任意”是什么，或者从形而上学中避免任意性的承诺所带来的结果，却完全不清楚。本文旨在澄清这两个问题，并检验来自任意性的论点是否真的是一种或两种本体论许可主义的适当基础。我认为，这些考虑（即使更精确）在激发激进形式的宽容主义方面远没有我们通常认为的那么成功。为了做得更好，宽容主义者必须要么提供更发达的物质形而上学，要么提供一个有争议（但诱人）的概念，即我们在做形而上学时正在做什么。