Essentiality without Necessity

CORRADINI, GALVAN (2018). In: T. TAMBASSI (ed.), Studies in the Ontology of E.J. Lowe, Editiones Scholasticae, Germany, 125-157, 2018

The aim of this essay is to deepen our understanding of E.J. Lowe’s essentialism, showing its importance for the characterisation of the modal notion of necessity. In the first section, we make an attempt to outline the basic characteristics of Lowe’s notion of essence. In order to recount Lowe’s theory in a sufficiently complete way, it would be necessary to present the features of his four-category ontology; however, in this first section we will focus in detail only on the concept of instantiation and on the distinction between essential and accidental properties of a substance. This is functional to the defence of an essentialist theory of necessity – a theory to which the second section of this paper is devoted – that is inspired by Lowe’s essentialism but does not fully coincide with it, rather developing it in an autonomous manner. The presentation of this theory serves as a basis for the discussion of some aspects of Lowe’s four-category ontology that are closely connected with his essentialism. That discussion is carried out in the third section, where the complex relations between instantiation, exemplification and characterisation will be addressed.

Ratio, 2024

Intrinsic properties are those which cannot be had or lacked in virtue of other things. Being a square is intrinsic, in this sense, whereas being next to a square is not. But what, exactly, counts as an “other thing” in this context? As it turns out, this is a surprisingly difficult question. I provide a critical assessment of three existing proposals (in terms of identity, mereology, and ontology), before developing my own, alternative account. Along the way, we highlight ways in which this project intersects with other philosophical issues, including debates over the nature of existence, the essentiality of origins, and the truth of priority monism.

Philosophical Studies, 1981

Inquiry, 2023

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 o ering three possible versions of the view, I will argue that each fails to provide a metaphysical explanation of necessity in terms of essence.

Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 1986

She had both brains and beauty. She was a friend of Virginia Woolfand, years later, told herfamily that Winston Churchill had wanted to marry her. (“Just think, ” says Francis, “I might have been Randolph.”)' ... A property P is an essential property of an object x iffx could not exist and ...

Philosophical Studies, 2019

Since Kit Fine presented his counterexamples to the standard versions of the modal view, many have been convinced that the standard versions of the modal view are not adequate. However, the scope of Fine's argument has not been fully appreciated. In this paper, I aim to carry Fine's argument to its logical conclusion and argue that once we embrace the intuition underlying his counterexamples , we have to hold that properties obtained, totally or partially, by application of logical operations are not essential to non-logical entities. I also demonstrate that most of the post-Finean versions of the modal view, which were developed to accommodate Fine's counterexamples , entail that such properties are essential to the entities, and so fail to capture the notion of essence at issue in Fine's counterexamples. Additionally, I explore the consequence of my argument for Fine's proposed logic of essence. The logic turns out to be inadequate in its present shape as it represents such properties to be essential to the entities. I conclude by developing a modification to the logic to overcome the shortcoming.

Philosophical and Phenomenological Research, 1998

Synthese, 2018

This paper deals with generalisations of modally based criteria for determining whether a given property is essential to an individual to the case of generic essences. These criteria usually presuppose extensionally individuated properties. The limitations of their generalisations are demonstrated using the case of the necessarily empty individual property and the necessarily empty individual office. I do not present a novel stance on the discussion of individual essences. The novelty of this paper lies in its claim that none of these criteria can be generalised to generic essences.

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, 2019

Fine, Lowe and Hale accept the view that necessity is to be explained by essences: Necessarily p iff, and because, there is some x whose essence ensures that p. Hale, however, believes that this strategy is not universally applicable; he argues that the necessity of essentialist truths cannot itself be explained by once again appealing to essentialist truths. As a consequence, Hale holds that there are basic necessities that cannot be explained. Thus, Hale style essentialism falls short of what Wilsch calls the explanation-challenge (EC) for the metaphysics of necessity. Without endorsing the EC, I argue that Hale’s argument for basic, unexplained necessities fails due to a misunderstanding of the structure of essentialist explanations. Getting clear about the structure of essentialist explanations of necessity leads to a re-evaluation of crucial circularity- and regress-arguments that have been discussed in the debate about essentialism.