Speaking of Essence

Philosophical Quarterly:754-771 (2015)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Classical modalism about essence is the view that essence can be analysed in modal terms. Despite Kit Fine's influential critique, no general refutation of classical modalism has yet been given. In the first part of the paper, I provide such a refutation by showing that the notion of essence cannot be analysed in terms of any sentential operator definable in the language of standard quantified modal logic. As a reaction to Fine's critique, some have defended sophisticated modalism, which attempts to analyse essence in an enriched modal language quantifying over both possible and impossible worlds. In the second part of the paper, I argue that sophisticated modalism falls prey to variations on Fine's counterexamples to classical modalism. I conclude that the most promising approaches to understanding the notion of essence consist in taking essence either as primitive or as analysable via a combination of modal and non-modal notions.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Essence in abundance.Alexander Skiles - 2015 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 45 (1):100-112.
Essence and modality.Kit Fine - 1994 - Philosophical Perspectives 8 (Logic and Language):1-16.
Systems of modal logic for impossible worlds.Charles G. Morgan - 1973 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 16 (1-4):280 – 289.
Ya shouldn’ta couldn’ta wouldn’ta.Stephen Steward - 2015 - Synthese 192 (6):1909-1921.
Essence and dependence.Jessica Wilson M. - 2020 - In Mircea Dumitru (ed.), Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine. Oxford University Press. pp. 283-300.
The Epistemology of Essence.Tuomas Tahko - 2018 - In Alexander Carruth, S. C. Gibb & John Heil (eds.), Ontology, Modality, Mind: Themes from the Metaphysics of E. J. Lowe. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 93-110.
Logics of essence and accident.Joao Marcos - 2005 - Bulletin of the Section of Logic 34 (1):43-56.
Ockhamism and Quantified Modal Logic.Andrea Iacona - 2015 - Logique Et Analyse 58:353-370.
Essence, Essence, and Essence.Ryan Christensen - 2014 - Studia Philosophica Estonica 7 (2):72.
A Kantian Critique of David Lewis's Modal Realism.Thomas Doty Eudaly - 1989 - Dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Not Everything is Possible.Andrea Iacona - 2007 - Logic Journal of the IGPL 15 (3):233-237.
Concrete Impossible Worlds.Martin Vacek - 2013 - Filozofia 68 (6):523-530.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-05-13

Downloads
203 (#90,793)

6 months
20 (#102,138)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Alessandro Torza
University of Parma

Citations of this work

Modality is Not Explainable by Essence.Carlos Romero - 2019 - Philosophical Quarterly 69 (274):121-141.
Counterpossibles.Alexander W. Kocurek - 2021 - Philosophy Compass 16 (11):e12787.
Essential vs. Accidental Properties.Teresa Robertson & Philip Atkins - 2013 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Essence and the inference problem.Ashley Coates - 2021 - Synthese 198 (2):915-931.

View all 24 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

Modal Logic as Metaphysics.Timothy Williamson - 2013 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Essence and modality.Kit Fine - 1994 - Philosophical Perspectives 8 (Logic and Language):1-16.
Counterpart theory and quantified modal logic.David Lewis - 1968 - Journal of Philosophy 65 (5):113-126.
Remarks on counterpossibles.Berit Brogaard & Joe Salerno - 2013 - Synthese 190 (4):639-660.
The logic of essence.Kit Fine - 1995 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 24 (3):241 - 273.

View all 26 references / Add more references