Essence and Essentialism

This is a pre-peer review draft (from March 2026) of my contribution to a planned edited volume on Bengson, Cuneo, and Shafer-Landau's The Moral Universe (Oxford University Press 2024). The volume may see the light of day eventually, but it'll be a while. Here's an abstract: Identifying the source of normativity and morality is a holy grail of Western moral philosophy. My contribution focuses on BCS's claim that the fundamental normative facts have their source (by which BCS mean: full non-normative (...) grounds) in their corresponding essence facts. Key to this argument is the claim that a fact that specifies the essence of a property is always a non-normative fact, including when the property whose essence is being specified is a normative property. I argue that the characterization of normative facts on which they rely is inadequate in this theoretical context, whereas a superior alternative characterization classifies essence facts concerning normative properties as normative facts. I then show how my argument also undermines BCS’s claim that there are “enchanted” properties: properties that are non-normative but have partly normative essences. (shrink)

This paper develops a logic of essence (HLE) in the framework of higher-order logic. The theory aims to provide a general framework for theorizing about the essences of objects, properties, propositions, and logical operations like conjunction, negation, quantification, etc. The first part of the paper presents the formal language and axiom system of HLE. After that, some theorems of the system are proved and it is shown how the logic of metaphysical necessity can be developed within the framework of HLE. (...) The second part of the paper develops a possible worlds semantics for HLE, gives a proof of soundness, and provides examples of models that demonstrate the consistency of some simple essentialist theories. (shrink)

The fact that it is essential that p in some sense explains that p. This paper makes one negative and one positive contribution. Negatively, the paper argues that the sense of explanation is not ground, and we prove—contra Vogt—that the issue has nothing to do with whether one works with a representational or worldly notion of ground. Positively, the paper proposes an inferentialist account of essence and uses that to develop an account of essentialist explanation.

This paper offers a formal and exegetical analysis of the notion of proprium (proper accident), a concept rooted in Aristotelian logic and further developed by Thomas Aquinas and other medievals. While commonly defined as a property that necessarily follows from a thing’s essence without being part of it, the proprium has been a source of terminological divergence and substantive disagreement, both in scholastic and analytic circles. We defend a refined version of Kit Fine’s account—according to which propria follow logically from (...) essence—by situating it within the framework of Aristotelian-Thomistic logic and explicating it through higher-order logic. In particular, we argue that proper accidents are those whose definition contains the proper subject as a specific difference, thus violating the so-called “inverse proportion of extension and comprehension,” and yielding propositions that are true solely in virtue of the meaning of the terms involved, while being non-analytic in a modern sense. The paper contributes both a formal reconstruction of the concept and a historical reinterpretation of Aquinas’s position, and it clarifies how our account refines or reconciles competing contemporary views—especially those framed in causal rather than logical terms. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson is known for defending the view that second-order S5 system axiomatized with Barcan Formulae gives us the most sensible doctrine for metaphysical modality. Barcan Formulae require a constant domain of quantification in which absolutely everything is necessary. Among the objects that constitute this ‘everything’ we find contingently non-concrete objects. These objects do not occupy spatiotemporal coordinates and exist just in the logical sense of ‘exist’ defended by Williamson. In this paper, I try to characterize these sui generis objects (...) arguing that the only properties we can use to individuate them are non-qualitative, including some modal properties. This is so because, as I show in the paper, if we try to individuate contingently non-concrete objects using qualitative properties we incur into the predicative reading of expressions like ‘possible X’ rejected by Williamson. (shrink)

STIT logic is a family of logics of agency that have received attention in the literature. Despite a variety of developments, most of the existing studies on STIT logic are based on propositional logic. Such propositional STIT logics have computational advantages, but in these logics it seems difficult to distinguish the _de re_ and _de dicto_ readings of sentences about choice independently of models and assignments. To overcome this expressive limitation, this paper presents a cstit-based atemporal first-order STIT logic and (...) its finite domain version as members of a family of term-modal logics possibly with a generalized axiom of independence of agents. The main result is that our proposed Hilbert-style systems for term-modal logics with the alethic modality, equality and non-rigid terms, when they have the (generalized) axiom of independence of agents only if the number of agents is finite, are strongly complete. In particular, the strong completeness of a Hilbert-style system for our first-order STIT logic of finite domain is proved. (shrink)

It is argued that Quine's oft-made point about modal opacity has a hitherto unappreciated force. It ultimately suggests that Kripke's recursive semantics is not well-defined on de re modal statements, assuming that (e.g.) numbers are not individuated intensionally . (Marcus's system QS4 avoids the issue due to her substitutional quantifiers, although she invokes intensional objects for other reasons). One solution is to restrict substitution in both the object language and the metalanguage, but either the problem repeats in the meta-metalanguage (and (...) so on), or Kripke must relinquish that modal truths represent metaphysical realities, e.g., essences. However, a Kripkean might retort that QML is indispensable to a scientific description of natural language, meaning that Quine is also threatened with an intensional ontology. A programmatic sketch is offered in reply. The ontology of intensional linguistics is accepted as faithful to the ontology of ordinary language, but a Quinean can coherently add that the ontology is mistaken. (shrink)

The concept of essence is a paradigm case of a putatively hyperintensional concept in metaphysics, a concept that can draw distinctions between necessarily equivalent propositions. Yet as several authors have recently emphasized, fine-grained distinctions in metaphysics come with a substantial risk of inconsistency, due to the Russell-Myhill paradox and its variants. This concern is especially pressing for hyperintensionalists about essence because the hyperintensionality of essence has been motivated primarily by examples. This paper presents a novel, more systematic case for the (...) hyperintensionality of essence that shows that the relevant distinctions can be systematically modeled in a natural theoretical framework. I start by offering a general heuristic to motivate a range of examples of fine-grained essentialist distinctions. I then present a higher-order logical framework for regimenting essentialist statements and provide a general argument for hyperintensionality on the basis of minimal assumptions about the logic of essence. Finally, I address the question of consistency by developing a semantic framework that demonstrates that the relevant fine-grained distinctions can indeed be consistently drawn. (shrink)

STIT logic is a family of logics of agency that have received attention in the literature. Despite a variety of developments, most of the existing studies on STIT logic are based on propositional logic. Such propositional STIT logics have computational advantages, but in these logics it seems difficult to distinguish the de re and de dicto readings of sentences about choice independently of models and assignments. To overcome this expressive limitation, this paper presents a cstit-based atemporal first-order STIT logic and (...) its finite domain version as members of a family of term-modal logics possibly with a generalized axiom of independence of agents. The main result is that our proposed Hilbert-style systems for term-modal logics with the alethic modality, equality and non-rigid terms, when they have the (generalized) axiom of independence of agents only if the number of agents is finite, are strongly complete. In particular, the strong completeness of a Hilbert-style system for our first-order STIT logic of finite domain is proved. (shrink)

The problem of _de re_ modality is how, if at all, one can make sense of it. Most who have discussed this problem have assumed that modality _de dicto_ is relatively unproblematic. It is, rather, the interpretation of sentences involving, within the scope of modal operators, singular terms or free variables which is thought to give rise to grave—and in the view of some, insuperable—difficulties. Quine has two arguments against the intelligibility of _de re_ modality: a “logical” and a “metaphysical” (...) one. That the “logical” argument is central to Quine’s attack is surely indisputable. But my claim that it is his basic argument is, in effect, denied by Kit Fine. I can (and do) agree with Fine that there are some significant differences between the two arguments. The most important question, for my purposes, is whether he is right to claim that the two arguments have force independently of one another. (shrink)

Two arguments for S5 being the logic of metaphysical modality are favourably discussed: one from the logic of absolute necessity, one from Timothy Williamson. Two arguments against S5 being the logic of metaphysical modality are discussed and rebuffed: one from Nathan Salmon against S4, and thereby S5, being the logical of metaphysical modality; and one from Michael Dummett against the B principle for metaphysical modality. In the Appendix, some comments are offered on the logics of ‘true in virtue of the (...) nature of’, and its relation to logical necessity. It is argued that the logic both of ‘true in virtue of the nature of _x_’ and of essentialist logical necessity is S5. (shrink)

I begin the chapter by considering the distinction between modality _de re_ and modality _de dicto_ in the works of Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, G. E. Moore, and Norman Malcolm. I then consider two similar objections to modality _de re_ brought by William Kneale and W. V. Quine. Both of these objections fail because they depend on a _de re/de dicto_ confusion. Moreover, I formulate a general rule for correlating propositions that express modality _de re_ with propositions that express modality (...) _de dicto_. The formulation I offer relies heavily on proper names and I conclude by suggesting further routes of inquiry into the connection between proper names and essentialism. (shrink)

This paper argues that the following three popular doctrines are in tension with one another: (i) property essentialism, the view that at least some properties have essences; (ii) the canonical reduction of modality to essence, due to Fine; and (iii) Aristotelianism, the view that properties cannot exist uninstantiated. I consider the different ways in which the Aristotelian might respond to the tension I raise, and I show that each of them has a metaphysically interesting upshot. I also suggest that none (...) of the Aristotelian’s possible responses is prima facie preferable to Platonism, the view that properties can exist uninstantiated, and that Aristotelianism is less plausible overall than ETM or property essentialism. I tentatively conclude, then, that my arguments make a case that the property essentialist—and, more tentatively, the property realist—should embrace Platonism over Aristotelianism. My primary aim in doing so, however, is not to definitively argue for Platonism, but more modestly to raise a challenge to the Aristotelian that has not yet appeared in the literature on properties. (shrink)

This paper explores the thesis that de re quantification into propositional attitudes has been wrongly conceived. One must never bind an individual variable in the context of a propositional attitude. Such quantification fails to respect the quantificational scaffolding of discursive thinking. This is the lesson of the Meinong–Russell debate over whether there are objects of thought about which it is true to say they are not. Respecting it helps to see how to solve contingent Liar paradoxes of propositional attitudes such (...) as Kripke’s Nixon–Jones. (shrink)

This paper is the twin of (Duži and Jespersen, in submission), which provides a logical rule for transparent quantification into hyperprop-ositional contexts de dicto, as in: Mary believes that the Evening Star is a planet; therefore, there is a concept c such that Mary believes that what c conceptualizes is a planet. Here we provide two logical rules for transparent quantification into hyperpropositional contexts de re. (As a by-product, we also offer rules for possible-world propositional contexts.) One rule validates this (...) inference: Mary believes of the Evening Star that it is a planet; therefore, there is an x such that Mary believes of x that it is a planet. The other rule validates this inference: the Evening Star is such that it is believed by Mary to be a planet; therefore, there is an x such that x is believed by Mary to be a planet. Issues unique to the de re variant include partiality and existential presupposition, sub-stitutivity of co-referential (as opposed to co-denoting or synonymous) terms, anaphora, and active vs. passive voice. The validity of quantifying-in presupposes an extensional logic of hyperinten-sions preserving transparency and compositionality in hyperinten-sional contexts. This requires raising the bar for what qualifies as co-denotation or equivalence in extensional contexts. Our logic is Tichy's Transparent Intensional Logic. The syntax of TIL is the typed lambda calculus; its highly expressive semantics is based on a procedural redefinition of, inter alia, functional abstraction and application. The two non-standard features we need are a hyper-intension (called Trivializatiori) that presents other hyperintensions and a four-place substitution function (called Sub) defined over hyperintensions. © 2013 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved. (shrink)

Two new metaphysical notions 'weak essence' and 'strong accident' are introduced. A proposition φ is weakly essential if once φ is true, φ is possibly true; and the proposition φ is strongly accidental if cp is true but necessarily false. Under the condition that the frame is serial, if φ is essential, then φ is weakly essential, and if φ is strongly accidental, then φ is accidental. The relation between weak essence and strong accident, as that between essence and accident, (...) is that one is the negation of the other. A logical system that describes weak essence and strong accident is established, and the system is shown to be sound and complete with respect to serial frames using possible worlds semantics. © 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved. (shrink)

In this text, a variety of modal logics at the sentential, first-order, and second-order levels are developed with clarity, precision and philosophical insight. All of the S1-S5 modal logics of Lewis and Langford, among others, are constructed. A matrix, or many-valued semantics, for sentential modal logic is formalized, and an important result that no finite matrix can characterize any of the standard modal logics is proven. Exercises, some of which show independence results, help to develop logical skills. A separate sentential (...) modal logic of logical necessity in logical atomism is also constructed and shown to be complete and decidable. On the first-order level of the logic of logical necessity, the modal thesis of anti-essentialism is valid and every de re sentence is provably equivalent to a de dicto sentence. An elegant extension of the standard sentential modal logics into several first-order modal logics is developed. Both a first-order modal logic for possibilism containing actualism as a proper part as well as a separate modal logic for actualism alone are constructed for a variety of modal systems. Exercises on this level show the connections between modal laws and quantifier logic regarding generalization into, or out of, modal contexts and the conditions required for the necessity of identity and non-identity. Two types of second-order modal logics, one possibilist and the other actualist, are developed based on a distinction between existence-entailing concepts and concepts in general. The result is a deeper second-order analysis of possibilism and actualism as ontological frameworks. Exercises regarding second-order predicate quantifiers clarify the distinction between existence-entailing concepts and concepts in general. Modal Logic is ideally suited as a core text for graduate and undergraduate courses in modal logic, and as supplementary reading in courses on mathematical logic, formal ontology, and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

In ‘Senses of Essence’ Kit Fine tentatively proposed that one could take the notion of real definition as basic and define essence in terms of it. Building on Litland 2023 this paper begins to develop an account where the notion of full, immediate real definition is taken as basic. We then sketch how one can provide non-circular definitions of the logical operations and sketch how one can define various essentialist operations.

Some scholars have claimed that Avicenna was the first logician to prove the Barcan formula, its converse, and the Buridan formula. However, I will show that this is not the case, and that Avicenna was not particularly concerned with implications between de re and de dicto modality. It is likely that Khūnajī was the first Arabic logician to explicitly endorse some implications between the de re and de dicto modality as well as the so-called Barcan formula, its converse, and the (...) Buridan formula. In this paper, I have examined Khūnajī’s account of these implications. (shrink)

This chapter highlights Russell’s original conception of logical atomism as a new and boldly scientific method in philosophy that makes Principia’s mathematical logic its essence and applies the logical forms uniquely revealed by Principia to undermine the metaphysician’s arguments for the ineliminability of abstract particulars and their specialized kinds of necessity. Philosophy, Russell explained, is the science of the possible. Wittgenstein expressed agreement in his Notes on Logic and in his Tractatus, proclaiming that the only necessity is logical necessity. I (...) argue that the pristine form of logical atomism is not found in the 1918 lectures, but in Russell’s 1911 “Analytic Realism” and it finds its canonical articulation in his 1914 Our Knowledge of the External World As a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy. The logical atomism lectures reflect Russell in flux, with his acquaintance epistemology at an impasse. Russell could not imagine how his multiple-relation theory, even amended by acquaintance with logical forms, could find the truth-bearers for general and molecular belief. Russell eventually turned, not to Wittgenstein, but to neutral monism and a tenuous alliance with behaviorism to get over the impasse. I offer hope of returning to Russell’s original acquaintance epistemology and its multiple-relation theory. I argue that modern so-called rival logics, relevant and modal, can be studied within Principia’s logic just as are rival geometries. Principia’s logic is an impredicative (simple) type theory and it studies relational structures by studying the way relations, exemplified or not, order their fields. Rival logics and non-logical necessities are simply distinct structures. Thus, in spite of its hostility to modern non-logical necessities (especially metaphysical necessity de re), Russell’s logical atomism remains the last and best hope for a genuinely scientific philosophy. (shrink)

This paper presents a Modal Predicate Logic with conceptually restricted quantification. It provides a framework for the modeling of a variety of de re modalities and knowing who reports in a realist and literally transparent way. The framework also allows us to make proper sense of talk about things non-existent.

This essay aims to redress the contention that epistemic possibility cannot be a guide to the principles of modal metaphysics. I introduce a novel epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics. I argue that the interaction between the two-dimensional framework and the mereological parthood relation, which is super-rigid, enables epistemic possibilities and truthmakers with regard to parthood to be a guide to its metaphysical profile. I specify, further, a two-dimensional formula encoding the relation between the epistemic possibility and verification of essential properties obtaining (...) and their metaphysical possibility or verification. I then generalize the approach to haecceitistic properties, and examine the Julius Caesar problem as a test case. (shrink)

This collection of Marcus's non-technical essays include her earlier ground-breaking axiomatizations of quantified modal logic, and explore such topics as the necessity of identity, the directly referential role of proper names as "tags", the interplay of possibility and existence, and others viewed as iconoclastic when Marcus first addressed them, but now long incorporated into current discussion.

This is a reissue of a book which is an exploration and defence of the notion of modality 'de re', the idea that objects have both essential and accidental properties. It is one of the first full-length studies of the modalities to emerge from the debate to which Saul Kripke, David Lewis, Ruth Marcus and others have contributed. The argument is developed by means of the notion of possible worlds, and ranges over key problems including the nature of essence, trans-world (...) identity, negative existential propositions, and the existence of unactual objects in other possible worlds. In the final chapters Professor Plantinga applies his logical theories to the clarification of two problems in the philosophy of religion - the Problem of Evil and the Ontological Argument. (shrink)

Teitel (Mind 128:39-68, 2019) argues that the following three doctrines are jointly inconsistent: i) the doctrine that metaphysical necessity reduces to essence; ii) the doctrine that possibly something could fail to exist; and iii) the doctrine that metaphysical necessity obeys a modal logic of at least S4. This paper presents a novel solution to Teitel’s puzzle, regimented in a higher-order logical setting, which is crucially based on the idea that the putative reduction of metaphysical necessity to essence should be understood (...) through appealing to some hyperintensional notion—such as grounding or real definition—rather than the notion of identity/identification. Moreover, it will also be shown that the proposed reductive account has a significant advantage over its rival account. (shrink)

Most accounts of the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles tend to be, broadly speaking, either Humean or Lockean in the sense that they agree that the substance or essence of two different things are not useful for discerning them and disagree only on whether the things have or do not have either a substance or essence. I propose an alternative position more Leibnizian in that a difference in essence makes a difference for thought and for distinguishability. Using Alvin Plantinga’s (...) account of essentialism from The Nature of Necessity, I explain how, on an essentialist perspective, both the Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Identity of Indiscernibles can be applied using those essential properties which Plantinga calls world-indexed properties—the property of having a property in some particular possible world. The resulting modal version of PII is no more trivial than a modal use of the Indiscernibility of Identicals. (shrink)

It is commonplace to formalize propositions involving essential properties of objects in a language containing modal operators and quantifiers. Assuming David Lewis’s counterpart theory as a semantic framework for quantified modal logic, I will show that certain statements discussed in the metaphysics of modality de re, such as the sufficiency condition for essential properties, cannot be faithfully formalized. A natural modification of Lewis’s translation scheme seems to be an obvious solution but is not acceptable for various reasons. Consequently, the only (...) safe way to express some intuitions regarding essential properties is to use directly the language of counterpart theory without modal operators. (shrink)

We gain new insight by returning to W. V. Quine’s first objection to quantified modal logic, a logic due to Ruth Marcus. After noting that much of Quine’s objection does not actually apply to that initial logic, I establish that, in any case, there was always an easy answer to Quine’s interpretive challenge that (i) was of the sort he called for and (ii) that he should probably have seen. The investigation yields a diagnosis of the underlying mistake Quine was (...) making in all his objections to modal logic and _de re_ modality generally—a mistake still being made today. (shrink)

In this paper, I distinguish two senses of the word ‘essence’ both of which figure prominently in recent analytic metaphysics. To disambiguate, I adopt the terminology of ‘modal essence’ (for how a thing metaphysically must be) and ‘whatness essence’ (for what a thing is). With the help of this terminology, I address Kit Fine’s charge that modal metaphysics in the framework of Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity proffers an incorrect conceptual analysis of whatness essence. I show that the charge is (...) baseless, and thus that there is no justification for Fine’s verdict that the Kripkean conception of metaphysics should be given up. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a complete Natural Kind Semantics for an Essentialist Theory of Kinds. The theory is formulated in two-sorted first order monadic modal logic with identity. The natural kind semantics is based on Rudolf Willes Theory of Concept Lattices. The semantics is then used to explain several consequences of the theory, including results about the specificity (species–genus) relations between kinds, the definitions of kinds in terms of genera and specific differences and the existence of (...) negative kinds. First, I show under which conditions the Hierarchy principle, which has been subjected to counterexamples in the literature, holds. I also show that a different principle about the species–genus relations between kinds, namely Kant’s Law, follows from the essentialist theory. Second, I introduce two new operations for kinds and show that they can be used to provide traditional definitions of kinds in terms of genera and specific differences. Finally, I show that these operations of specific difference induce, for each kind, a uniquely specified contrary kind and a uniquely specified subcontrary kind, which can be used as semantic values for non-classical predicate negations of kind terms. (shrink)

In this chapter, I discuss the distinction between essential and accidental properties from a contemporary perspective. I first distinguish between the modal notion and the Aristotelian notion of essence. I present various ways of cashing out the modal notion, and then I turn to the Aristotelian notion, which has been at the centre of metaphysical enquiry over the past thirty years or so. I present and discuss simple modal accounts of that notion, then sophisticated accounts and finally non-modal accounts. In (...) the very last part of the chapter, I briefly go through various topics: individual essences; the question of what is essential to what; the use of essence in the characterisation of other notions; so-called generic essence and other generalizations of the standard, objectual notion of essence; and finally, scepticism and anti-realism about essence. (shrink)

Let an iterated essentialist statement be a statement of the form 'It lies in the nature of x1,x2,... that it lies in the nature of y1,y2,... that φ'. Let Iteration be the thesis that there are true iterated essentialist statements. Iteration has recently been disputed by Dasgupta (2014) and Glazier (2017). Both authors take the falsity of Iteration to be central to the explanatory role of essentialist truths. An important consequence that is not explicitly noted by them is that the (...) falsity of Iteration would entail that metaphysical necessity is not reducible to essence in the manner suggested by Fine (1994). This paper defends Iteration against these challenges, drawing attention to some features of the collective essences of properties, propositions, and logical operations that have been largely neglected in discussions about essence. (shrink)

Considered a classic in the philosophy of language movement known variously as the New Theory of Reference or the Direct-Reference Theory, as well as in the metaphysics of modal essentialism that is related to this philosophy of language. This award-winning book is based on the author’s doctoral dissertation.

Since the publication of Kit Fine's “Essence and Modality”, there has been lively debate over how best to think of essence in relation to necessity. The present aim is to draw attention to a definition of essence in terms of modality that has not been given sufficient attention. This neglect is perhaps unsurprising, since it is not a proposal made in response to Fine's 1994 paper and ensuing discussion, but harks back to Ruth Barcan Marcus's earlier work in the 1960s (...) and 1970s on essentialist claims. At the core of Barcan Marcus's account is Minimal Essentialism, of which there are several extensions, in particular, for cases of referential predicates (such as “x is identical to Socrates”), Individuating Essentialism, and Aristotelian Essentialism. I argue that Minimal Essentialism fares favourably against a host of familiar examples. I close with some historical observations, that the distinction between essence and necessity was already commonplace in the early days of quantified modal logic and its philosophy. (shrink)

Philosophers distinguish between having a property essentially and having it accidentally. The way the distinction has been drawn suggests that it is modal in character, and so that it can be captured in terms of necessity, or cognate notions. The present chapter takes the suggestion at face value by considering a number of modal characterizations of the essential/accidental distinction that have been articulated and discussed since the early 20th century, as well as some of the challenges that they face.

This essay considers Kant’s theory of modality in light of a debate in contemporary modal metaphysics and modal logic concerning the Barcan formulas. The comparison provides a new and fruitful perspective on Kant’s complex and sometimes confusing claims about possibility and necessity. Two central Kantian principles provide the starting point for the comparison: that the possible must be grounded in the actual and that existence is not a real predicate. Both are shown to be intimately connected to the Barcan formulas, (...) and Kant’s views on what he distinguishes as three different kinds of modality are then considered in light of this connection. (shrink)

Analytic philosophy in the mid-twentieth century underwent a major change of direction when a prior consensus in favour of extensionalism and descriptivism made way for approaches using direct reference, the necessity of identity, and modal logic. All three were first defended, in the analytic tradition, by one woman, Ruth Barcan Marcus. But analytic philosophers now tend to credit them to Kripke, or Kripke and Carnap. I argue that seeing Barcan Marcus in her historical context – one dominated by extensionalism and (...) descriptivism – allows us to see how revolutionary she was, in her work and influence on others. I focus on her debate with Quine, who found himself retreating to softened, and more viable, versions of his anti-modal arguments as a result. I make the case that Barcan's formal logic was philosophically well-motivated, connected to her views on reference, and well-matched to her overall views on ontology. Her nominalism led her to reject posits which could not be directly observed and named, such as possibilia. She conceived of modal calculi as facilitating counterfactual discourse about actual existents. I conclude that her contributions ought to be recognized as the first of their kind. Barcan Marcus must be awarded a central place in the canon of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

his paper is an excerpt from a larger project that aims to open a new pathway into Spinoza's Ethics by formally reconstructing an initial fragment of this text. The semantic backbone of the project is a custom-made Spinozian model theory that lays out some of the formal prerequisites for more ne-grained investigations into Spinoza's fundamental ontology and modal metaphysics. We implement Spinoza's theory of attributes using many-sorted models with a rich system of identity that allows us to clarify the puzzling (...) status of such logical principles as the Substitution of Identicals and Transitivity of Identity in Spinoza's thought. The intensional structure of our Spinozian models also captures his proposal that states of a airs can be necessitated or excluded by the essences of particular things, an essence-relative modality that should be of interest to philosophers who have sought to rehabilitate the concept of essence in contemporary analytic metaphysics. (shrink)

There has been much debate recently on the question whether essence can explain modality. Here, I examine two routes to an essentialist account of modality. The first is Hale's argument for the necessity of essence, which I will argue is — notwithstanding recent attempted defences of it — invalid by its very structure. The second is the proposal that it is essential to essential truth that it is necessary. After offering three possible versions of the view, I will argue that (...) each fails to provide a metaphysical explanation of necessity in terms of essence. (shrink)

With the comeback of metaphysics on the agenda of analytical philosophy a renewed interest for modalities and their specific properties was not lagging far behind. Yet, their indispensability in debates, say for example on identity and essence, stands in marked contrast to the explanatory meagerness when modalities are introduced by reference to ‘possible worlds’. However, what is required for an appropriate understanding of modalities is not, or so I try to argue, a philosophical account in any ambitious sense of the (...) word but rather a specification of their ‘structural’ properties, which allow us to differentiate between various types of modalities. The proper framework for such a specification is conveniently offered by proof theory, and here specifically by Gentzen methods. Therein we find not only all that is needed to understand modalities, modalities are thereby also handed back to where once they originated: logic. Keywords: modalities, modal logic, possibilities, possible worlds, proof-theoretic meaning. (shrink)

David Lewis is usually thought to reject what Quine called “Aristotelian essentialism”. The starting point of this paper is to define and explain Aristotelian essentialism and locate it in the context of the criticism that Quine made of quantified modal logic. Indeed, according to Quine, Aristotelian essentialism would be one of the consequences of accepting quantified modal logic. After having explained Lewis’s stance in the Quinean debate against quantified modal logic, this paper will deal with the question as to whether (...) Lewis accepts or rejects Aristotelian essentialism. I think there are different plausible interpretations of the essentialist thesis, and I will distinguish between three such interpretations. This distinction between different interpretations of essentialism is both interesting per se and helpful in understanding the senses in which Lewis is or is not an antiessentialist. I will say, in fact, that while it is true that Lewis rejects Aristotelian essentialism under the first two understandings of the essentialist thesis, he endorses such a thesis according to a third understanding. I will then take this to show that there is a sense in which Aristotelian essentialism survives in Lewis’s metaphysical theory. (shrink)

Bundle theories identify material objects with bundles of properties. On the traditional approach, these are the properties possessed by that material object. That view faces a deep problem: it seems to say that all of an object’s properties are essential to it.Essential bundle theoryattempts to overcome this objection, by taking the bundle as a specification of the object’s essential properties only. In this paper, I show that essential bundle theory faces a variant of the objection. To avoid the problem, the (...) theory must accept the contingency of identity. I show how this can be achieved in a coherent and well-motivated way, a way that isn’t available to traditional bundle theories. (shrink)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a claim of metaphysical modality, in possession of good alethic standing, must be in want of an essentialist foundation. Or at least so say the advocates of thereductive-essence-firstview, according to which all modality is to be reductively defined in terms of essence. Here, I contest this bit of current wisdom. In particular, I offer two puzzles—one concerning the essences of non-compossible, complementary entities, and a second involving entities whose essences are modally ‘loaded’—that together (...) strongly call into question the possibility of reducing modality to essence. (shrink)

What is the relation between metaphysical necessity and essence? This paper defends the view that the relation is one of identity: metaphysical necessity is a special case of essence. My argument consists in showing that the best joint theory of essence and metaphysical necessity is one in which metaphysical necessity is just a special case of essence. The argument is made against the backdrop of a novel, higher-order logic of essence, whose core features are introduced in the first part of (...) the paper. The second part investigates the relation between metaphysical necessity and essence in the context of HLE. Reductive hypotheses are among the most natural hypotheses to be explored in the context of HLE. But they also have to be weighed against their non-reductive rivals. I investigate three different reductive hypotheses and argue that two of them fare better than their non-reductive rivals: they are simpler, more natural, and more systematic. Specifically, I argue that one candidate reduction, according to which metaphysical necessity is truth in virtue of the nature of all propositions, is superior to the others, including one proposed by Kit Fine, according to which metaphysical necessity is truth in virtue of the nature of all objects. The paper concludes by offering some reasons to think that the best joint theory of essence and metaphysical necessity is one in which the logic of metaphysical necessity includes S4, but not S5. (shrink)

Theoria, Volume 88, Issue 2, Page 403-405, April 2022.

Theoria, Volume 88, Issue 2, Page 403-405, April 2022.

Aristotle is essentially human; that is, for all possible worlds metaphysically consistent with our own, if Aristotle exists, then he is human. This is a claim about the essential property of an object. The claim that objects have essential properties has been hotly disputed, but for present purposes, we can bracket that issue. In this essay, we are interested, rather, in the question of whether properties themselves have essential properties (or features) for their existence. We call those who suppose they (...) do “property essentialists”; those who do not, “property anti-essentialists,” or “quidditists.” We offer two complementary arguments. Our total argument is under-girded by two assumptions: transworld identity theory and “received view” counterfactual semantics, a la David Lewis. We then argue that, if one presumes that these are true, then one risks running headlong into paradox if one also accepts property anti-essentialism. That's the first argument. By contrast, if one accepts these same assumptions in conjunction with property essentialism, then the paradox is avoided. This is the second argument. We take it that our arguments work to show that, between property essentialism and quidditism, the property essentialist is on better footing. Plausibly, properties themselves do have essential properties for their existence. (shrink)

Aristotle was the founder not only of logic but also of modal logic. In the Prior Analytics he developed a complex system of modal syllogistic which, while influential, has been disputed since antiquity--and is today widely regarded as incoherent. Combining analytic rigor with keen sensitivity to historical context, Marko Malink makes clear that the modal syllogistic forms a consistent, integrated system of logic, one that is closely related to other areas of Aristotle's philosophy. Aristotle's modal syllogistic differs significantly from modern (...) modal logic. Malink considers the key to understanding the Aristotelian version to be the notion of predication discussed in the Topics--specifically, its theory of predicables and the ten categories. The predicables introduce a distinction between essential and nonessential predication. In contrast, the categories distinguish between substantial and nonsubstantial predication. Malink builds on these insights in developing a semantics for Aristotle's modal propositions, one that verifies the ancient philosopher's claims of the validity and invalidity of modal inferences. While it acknowledges some limitations of this reconstruction, Aristotle's Modal Syllogistic brims with bold ideas, richly supported by close readings of the Greek texts. (shrink)

Paradoxes of nested modality, like Chisholm’s paradox, rely on S4 or something stronger as the propositional logic of metaphysical modality. Sarah-Jane Leslie’s objection to the resolution of Chisholm’s paradox by means of rejection of S4 modal logic is investigated. A modal notion of essence congenial to Leslie’s objection is clarified. An argument is presented in support of Leslie’s crucial but unsupported assertion that, on pain of inconsistency, an object’s essence is the same in every possible world. A fallacy in the (...) argument is exposed. Alternative interpretations of Leslie’s objection are provided and are found to involve equivocation between different notions of “essence.” A material artifact’s modal essence, as distinct from its quiddity essence, could have been different than it is. (shrink)