Can Metaphysical Modality Be Based on Essence?

Mackie, Penelope

doi:10.1093/oso/9780199652624.003.0013

Cited by 28 publications

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“…5 But see Hazlett (2010); Leech (2018); Mackie (2006); Wiggins (2001). 6 See also Leech (2019); Wright (2002Wright ( , 2018.…”

Section: From Essence To Necessitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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From Essence to Necessity via Identity

Leech

2020

Mind

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An essentialist theory of modality claims that the source of possibility and necessity lies in essence, where essence is (obviously) then not to be defined in terms of necessity. Hence such theories owe us an account of why it is that the essences of things give rise to necessities in the way required. A new approach to understanding essence in terms of the notion of generalized identity promises to answer this challenge by appeal to the necessity of identity. I explore the prospects for this approach, and argue that it fails. If one favours an account of essence in terms of generalized identity, then one will not, I argue, be able to satisfactorily defend an essentialist theory of modality against the challenge; if one wishes to defend an essentialist theory of modality, and thereby to give an explanation of how necessity arises from essence, one should not understand essence in terms of generalized identity.

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“…5 But see Hazlett (2010); Leech (2018); Mackie (2006); Wiggins (2001). 6 See also Leech (2019); Wright (2002Wright ( , 2018.…”

Section: From Essence To Necessitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are further reasons to doubt the promise of this general approach. The challenge to justify (NP) or a version of (NP), and various ways to respond, taking seriously the idea of real denition as a starting point, have been considered in recent work, such asLeech (2018),Mackie (2020) andRomero (2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

From Essence to Necessity via Identity

Leech

2020

Mind

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“…First, it is argued that an explanatory gap is felt between essence and necessity (cf., Casullo, 2020; Leech forth. ; Mackie, 2020;Noonan, 2019;Romero, 2019). This challenge targets the intelligibility of the sourcehood thesis: it amounts to an explanatory demand of how and why essence gives rise to necessity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the necessity of essence

Bovey

2022

Philos Stud

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In the present inquiry, I defend the claim that the thesis that essence is the source of all (metaphysical) necessity is compromised. I argue that, on pain of circularity, essentialists cannot successfully account for the necessity of essences. In response to the difficulties I raise, I discuss potential solutions on behalf of essentialists and explain why I find none of them compelling. My conclusion on the matter is that the best essentialists can hope for is a view where the necessity of essences is left unexplained (by essences).

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“…Worries about an alleged 'gap' between essence and necessity within the essentialist framework recur repeatedly in recent literature (e.g. Casullo 2020;Leech 2018;Mackie 2020;Noonan 2018;Romero 2019). Leech's distinctive and important contribution is to argue that essentialists cannot avail themselves of we take to be promising new account of essence-in terms of generalized identity-in order to bridge it.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Like Fine (2020, p. 462), we read Mackie (2020) as worrying that the denial of (NP) seems to be a conceptual possibility, since she focuses on showing that there are conceptually coherent views of essence on which (NP) is false. Leech (2020) and Noonan (2018) employ a similar argumentative strategy, so it is reasonable to read them in a similar fashion.…”

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Essence, Modality, and Identity

Correia

Skiles

2021

Mind

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Suppose that identity-and therefore generalized identity, if it purports to be a bona fide notion of identity at all-not only has all the usual non-modal features (reflexivity, symmetry, transitivity, obeys something akin to Leibniz's Law, and so on), but also holds with necessity. If that is so, it seems that what might be called the identity-based essentialist can easily say why essence implies necessity. As Leech puts it, 'statements of essence are a special case of statements of identity.Statements of identity are necessary. Hence, statements of essence are necessary too ' (p. 13). Yet according to Leech, identity-based essentialism 'just moves the bump in the carpet', since one may now reasonably ask why one should agree that generalized identity implies necessity (p. 14). Why, just because there is no difference between a thing's being Plato versus its being both Plato and human, should it therefore follow that Plato is necessarily human? Leech argues that in order to bridge this new gap one can either account for necessity in terms of essence, or account for essence in terms of generalized identity in the way we envisage-but one cannot do both, 'on pain of circularity' (p. 16).We disagree. In fact, there are a number of safe and non-circular routes from generalized identity to necessity for the identity-based essentialist to choose from. Leech considers only one, which centers around a generalization of the classic proof of the necessity of objectual identity due to Barcan (1947) and Kripke (1971). After laying out the necessary background ( §1), we present a more direct proof that shows why one should agree that generalized identity implies necessity, and argue that neither our proof nor the generalized Barcan-Kripke proof tangles the essentialist up in any circularity ( §2). As we said before, Leech is not alone in worrying about a purported 'gap' between essence and necessity for the essentialist to bridge, although what that gap is, exactly, gets described by different authors in rather different ways, including by Leech. So after dealing with the epistemic challenge of providing reasons to believe that generalized identity implies necessity, we propose several full-blown accounts of necessity in terms of identity, and use them to address a further metaphysical challenge of describing in detail how it is that generalized identities generate necessities ( §3). Thus we conclude that identity-based essentialism deserves serious consideration in discussions of the nature and source of metaphysical modality.

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Can Metaphysical Modality Be Based on Essence?

Cited by 28 publications

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From Essence to Necessity via Identity

From Essence to Necessity via Identity

On the necessity of essence

Essence, Modality, and Identity

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