A Modal Account of Essence

Abstract

According to the simple modal account of essence, an object has a property essentially just in case it has it in every world in which it exists. As many have observed, the simple modal account is implausible for a number of reasons. This has led to various proposals for strengthening the account, for example, by adding a restriction to the intrinsic or sparse properties. I argue, however, that these amendments to the simple modal account themselves fail. Drawing on lessons from these failures, I propose a new version of a modal account, inspired by Ruth Barcan Marcus'sdefenseofthecoherenceofquantifiedmodallogic,accordingtowhichanobjecthas a property essentially just in case (i) it has it in every world in which it exists, (ii) the property is discriminating (or non-trivial), and (iii) the property is qualitative. The resulting account of essence does not face any of the standard objections other accounts face, and I defend it from other potential objections.

Essence, Triviality, and Fundamentality

“…Indeed, one of the only recent discussions of this approach concludes that it clearly fails (Wildman 2016). Since then, only a single paper has explored the possibility of appealing to triviality in analysing essence (De 2020). 5 I argue here, though, that adequately developing the triviality condition provides a way around the Finean cases, and that combining this condition with a condition concerning relative fundamentality produces a promising analysis of essence.…”

“…As in Della Rocca’s account, the guiding idea is that if an entity’s having a property is, in a significant sense, due to how everything must be, then the entity’s possession of that property is trivial in a way that keeps it from providing distinctive information about the object. De (2020, 25), drawing on Barcan Marcus (1967), explains why this sort of triviality seems relevant to the notion of constitutive essence:If a property is trivial then it fails to tell us what it is to be a particular object over any other object, and so such properties do not play one of the primary roles associates with (constitutive) essences. In other words, the discrimination constraint [the requirement that essential properties are discriminating] ensures that essences really do shed light on the true natures of things.…”

“…Indeed, one of the only recent discussions of this approach concludes that it clearly fails (Wildman 2016). Since then, only a single paper has explored the possibility of appealing to triviality in analysing essence (De 2020). 5…”

Essence

“…But let us briefly look at a few of them. (My discussion here draws extensively on De [2020].) Brogaard and Salerno (2013) suggest that "x is essentially F iff (i) necessarily, if x exists then x is F, and (ii) if nothing had been F, x wouldn't have existed" (5).…”

Counterpossibles

“…This is not a counterpossible; but more importantly, it just seems true (De, 2020; Torza, 2015; Williamson, 2017). Second, Brogaard and Salerno predict it's essential to Socrates that he exists, which many take to be problematic for the theory of essence (De, 2020).…”