Essence and Explanation

Abstract

In Necessary Beings, Bob Hale addresses two questions: What is the source of necessity? What is the source of our knowledge of it? He offers novel responses to them in terms of the metaphysical notion of nature or, more familiarly, essence. In this paper, I address Hale's response to the first question. My assessment is negative. I argue that his essentialist explanation of the source of necessity suffers from three significant shortcomings. First, Hale's leading example of an essentialist explanation merely asserts that the nature of an entity explains some necessity, but leaves unexplained how it does so. Second, his essentialist explanation of particular necessities introduces new necessities that remain unexplained. Third, Hale's version of essentialism presupposes a controversial metaphysical theory of properties, for which he offers no defense.

The laws of modality

“…However, this approach has recently come under fire from those who fail to see how essences deliver a perspicuous explanation of necessity (see e.g. Romero, 2019;Casullo, 2020;Leech, 2020;Mackie, 2020). There remains an explanatory gap, it is thought.…”

Modality

“…In this context, it is most pertinent to turn to Barbara Vetter's Potentialism, a type of Dispositionalism in modality which is undoubtedly also a de re first 55 For examples of the former, see Cameron (2008) and Whittle (2010). For examples of the latter, see Casullo (2020), Leech (2021), Mackie (2020), Noonan (2018), Romero (2019) and Wildman (2021). See also Correia (2012) for a suggested refinement of the very pillar of Finean Essentialism.…”

On explaining necessity by the essence of essence

“…Given its importance, we find some controversy around it in the recent literature. Its critics (Casullo 2020, Leech 2021, Romero 2019 argue that it begs the question. But in their recent defence of it, Wallner and Vaidya (2020) argue that it can be made to work.…”