Essence, modality, and intrinsicality

Abstract

Kit Fine (Philos Perspect 8:1-16, 1994) famously objected against the idea that essence can be successfully analyzed in terms of de re necessity. In response, I want to explore a novel, interesting, but controversial modal account of essence in terms of intrinsicality and grounding. In the first section, I will single out two theoretical requirements that any essentialist theory should meet-the essentialist desideratum and the essentialist challenge-in order to clarify Fine's objections. In the second section, I will assess Denby's improved modal account, which appeals to the notion of intrinsicality, and argue that it is untenable. In the third section, I will explain how, when combined with a modal-existential criterion, a hyperintensional account of intrinsicality-in the same vein as Bader (J Philos 110(10):525-563, 2013) and Rosen (in: Hale and Hoffman (eds) Modality: Metaphysics, logic, and epistemology, Oxford, OUP, 2010)-can help successfully address Fine's counterexamples. In the fourth section, I will evaluate how this novel analysis of essence stands with respect to sortal, origin, and natural kinds essentialism and discuss potential objections and difficulties. Keywords Essence • Essentialism • Modality • Intrinsicality • Grounding • Parthood 1 Introduction: the essentialist desideratum and the essentialist challenge In his influential paper Essence and Modality (1994) Kit Fine argues that, as they stand, modal analyses of essence-both the conditional and the unconditional variants (Correia 2007)-bring about controversial and counterintuitive results. In order to see why, let us consider the conditional analysis for the present discussion: CMA: x is essentially F def. necessarily, if x exists, then x is F.

Modal Conceptions of Essence

“…Alternatively, instead of engineering a new notion of sparseness, one might look for some off-theshelf relation between properties and objects that will play the suitable role. This route has been undertaken by Bovey (2021), who puts forward a characterization of essence in terms of standard modal logic plus a relational notion of intrinsicality. Whether Socrates is a member of {Socrates} in virtue of the way {Socrates} is on its own depends on whether Socrates is a part of {Socrates}.…”