In a recent issue of this journal, Berit Brogaard and Joe Salerno presented a counterfactual theory of essence, designed to get around Kit Fine’s influential objections to the standard modal account of essence. I argue that Brogaard and Salerno’s theory does not avoid Fine’s objections. Then I propose a sequence of variations on their theory, and argue that none of them succeed either.

Marco Messeri offers a new solution to the problem of lucky proof (an influen­tial objection to Leibniz’s infinite-analysis theory of contingency. Messeri claims that contingent truths like “Peter denies Jesus” cannot be proved by a finite analysis because predicates like “denies Jesus” are infinitely complex. I argue that infinitely complex predicates appear in some necessary truths, and that some contingent truths have finitely complex predicates. Messeri’s official account is disjunctive: a truth is contingent just in case either it contains an (...) infinitely complex predicate or it concerns existence. I argue against Messeri’s official account and suggest that some other disjunctive account might be appropriate. (shrink)