Essence and Modal Knowledge

Axiomathes

How can we acquire knowledge of metaphysical modality? How can someone come to know that he could have been elsewhere right now, or an accountant rather than a philosophy teacher, but could not have been a turnip? Jago proposes an account of a route to knowledge of the way things could have been and must be. He argues that we can move to knowledge of metaphysical modality from knowledge about essence. Curtis rejects Jago’s explanation. It cannot, he argues, explain our knowledge of de re necessity. We agree. But there is more to be said. To give an account of our knowledge of metaphysical necessity is part of the task Jago set himself. But another part is to give an account of the knowledge of the (non-actual) possibilities accorded to particular objects. And prior to both what is needed, and something Jago attempts to supply, is an account of how ordinary knowers can come to have knowledge of an individual’s essential properties. We argue that Jago’s accounts of both these addition...

In recent work, E. J. Lowe presents an essence-based account of our knowledge of metaphysical modality that he claims to be superior to its main competitors. I argue that knowledge of essences alone, without knowledge of a suitable bridge principle, is insufficient for knowing that something is metaphysically necessary or metaphysically possible. Yet given Lowe’s other theoretical commitments, he cannot account for our knowledge of the needed bridge principle, and so his essence-based modal epistemology remains incomplete. In addition to that, Lowe’s account implies a psychologically unrealistic reconstruction of how we ordinarily acquire knowledge of metaphysical modalities. The discussion of Lowe’s suggestive essence-based account is also intended as a case study that illustrates a more general problem in the epistemology of modality: the great difficulty of explaining our modal knowledge in terms of a single overtly non-modal kind of knowledge. The failure of Lowe’s account suggests that such a sweeping reductive explanation of our modal knowledge might simply not be available. This should be good news for those philosophers who champion less reductive or more pluralistic accounts of our modal knowledge.

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.

Philosophia, 2010

Modal epistemology has been dominated by a focus on establishing an account either of how we have modal knowledge or how we have justified beliefs about modality. One component of this focus has been that necessity and possibility are basic access points for modal reasoning. For example, knowing that P is necessary plays a role in deducing that P is essential, and knowing that both P and ¬P are possible plays a role in knowing that P is accidental. Chalmers and provide two good examples of contrasting views in modal epistemology that focus on providing an account of modal knowledge where necessity and possibility are basic access points for modal knowledge, and Yablo (1993) provides a good account of how we have justified beliefs about modality. In contrast to this tradition I argue for and outline a modal epistemology based on objectual understanding and essence, rather than knowledge or justification and necessity and possibility. The account employs a non-modal conception of essence and takes objectual understanding of essence, rather than knowledge of essence to be basic in modal reasoning. I begin by articulating account of objectual understanding, on which objectual understanding of F is not equivalent to propositional knowledge of F. I then argue that an epistemology of essence that uses property variation-in-imagination is better construed as a model that delivers objectual understanding of essence rather than knowledge of essence. I argue that this is so, since the latter and not the former runs into a version of the Meno paradox. I show how this account can be applied to two issues in modal epistemology: the Benacerraf problem for modality, and the architecture of modal knowledge.

Mind, 2009

In philosophical logic necessity is usually conceived as a sentential operator rather than a predicate. An intensional sentential operator does not allow one to express quantified statements such as 'There are necessary a posteriori propositions' or 'All laws of physics are necessary' in first-order logic in a straightforward way, while they are readily formalised if necessity is formalised by a predicate. Replacing the operator conception of necessity by the predicate conception, however, causes various problems and forces one to reject many philosophical accounts involving necessity that are based on the use of operator modal logic. We argue that the expressive power of the predicate account can be restored if a truth predicate is added to the language of first-order modal logic, because the predicate 'is necessary' can then be replaced by 'is necessarily true'. We prove a result showing that this substitution is technically feasible. To this end we provide partial possible-worlds-semantics for the language with a predicate of necessity and perform the reduction of necessities to necessary truths. The technique applies also to many other intensional notions that have been analysed by means of modal operators. * We thank Raf De Clercq, Leon Horsten, Hannes Leitgeb, Tim Williamson and two anonymous referees of Mind for useful comments and suggestions.

Philosophical Quarterly, 2019

Some metaphysicians believe that metaphysical modality is explainable by the essences of objects. In Section II, I spell out the definitional view of essence, and in Section III, a working notion of metaphysical explanation. Then, in Section IV, I consider and reject five natural ways to explain necessity by essence: in terms of the principle that essential properties can't change, in terms of the supposed obviousness of the necessity of essential truth, in terms of the logical necessity of definitions, in terms of Fine's logic of essence, and in terms of the theory of real definitions. I will conclude that the present evidence favours rejecting the hypothesis that modality is explainable by essence.

Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 2020

This article aims to build a bridge between two areas of philosophical research: the structure of kinds and metaphysical modality. Our central thesis is that kinds typically involve super-explanatory properties, and that these properties are therefore metaphysically essential to natural kinds. Philosophers of science who work on kinds tend to emphasize their complexity, and are generally resistant to any suggestion that they have essences. The complexities are real enough, but they should not be allowed to obscure the way that kinds are typically unified by certain core properties. We show how this unifying role offers a natural account of why certain properties are metaphysically essential to kinds.

Ars Disputandi

This book consists of a collection of writings by Alvin Plantinga, arranged so as to give an overview of his views on modal metaphysics. All parts of this book have been published before, from 1969 to 1993. Most come from journal articles or collections of essays; some come from Plantinga's earlier books. The book seems to be intended for use in graduate courses or by those who are not interested in working through Plantinga's entire corpus. [2] Matthew Davidson has written a very useful and fairly lucid summary of each of the chapters by Plantinga. Indeed, given Plantinga's byzantine,`Chisholming' style, Davidson has provided many with a great service. For he not only states Plantinga's views on various issues, but also gives Plantinga's main reasons for holding them. However, as Davidson seems to be an acolyte of Plantinga, you will not nd much critique of the doctrines being presented. Davidson does note though that Plantinga has changed or modi ed his views somewhat: e.g. on whether or not`actualism' implies`serious actualism'. [20; but cf. 167 70; 178 82; 198 9] Again, Davidson does not worry much about whether allowing properties like`being identical to Socrates' commits us to ontological pro igacy. [Cf. 58] Again, he only mentions the issue, whether giving proper names their own Fregean senses and individual essences invites some absurdities: e.g., if Cain is by de nition the one who killed Abel, it will be necessarily false that Cain did not kill Abel. [16] In any case, given this book's function as an introductory text, the Introduction would be more useful had Davidson given the page numbers where Plantinga makes his various claims. [3] As Plantinga has written nothing new in this book, and many have already commented on his views, method etc. I shall not present a large critique of what he says. Still I offer a summary of the doctrines that the book contains. These include: modality de re and de dicto; haecceity; possible worlds; transworld identity; actualism; proper names; propositions. [4] As for modality de re and de dicto, Plantinga argues that, despite antiessentialists like Quine and Kneale, traditional Aristotelian necessity de re is respectable logically and ontologically. He rst argues that their objections are not decisive. [29 35] He then shows how to transform de re necessity into de dicto necessity. [36 7; 47] He goes on to discuss how to avoid the inference from φ is essential to s' to`s exists'. [41] [5] As for haecceity, Plantinga rst critiques Searle's theory of proper names,

The aim of Modality and Explanatory Reasoning (MER) is to shed light on metaphysical necessity and the broader class of modal properties to which it belongs. This topic is approached with two goals: to develop a new and reductive analysis of modality, and to understand the purpose and origin of modal thought. I argue that a proper understanding of modality requires us to reconceptualize its relationship to causation and other forms of explanation such as grounding, a relation that connects metaphysically fundamental facts to non-fundamental ones. While many philosophers have tried to give modal analyses of causation and explanation, often in counterfactual terms, I argue that we obtain a more plausible, explanatorily powerful and unified theory if we regard explanation as more fundamental than modality. The function of modal thought is to facilitate a common type of thought experiment—counterfactual reasoning—that allows us to investigate explanatory connections and which is closely related to the controlled experiments of empirical science. Necessity is defined in terms of explanation, and modal facts often reflect underlying facts about explanatory relationships. The study of modal facts is important for philosophy not because these facts are of much metaphysical interest in their own right, but largely because they provide evidence about explanatory connections.

Philosophy

Recently, Kit Fine's (1994) view that modal truths are true in virtue of, grounded in, or explained by essentialist truths has been under attack. In what follows we offer two responses to the wave of criticism against his view. While the first response is pretty straightforward, the second is based on the distinction between, what we call, Reductive Finean Essentialism and Non-Reductive Finean Essentialism. Engaging the work of Bob Hale on Non-Reductive Finean Essentialism, we aim to show that the arguments against Fine's view are unconvincing, while we acknowledge the presence of a deep standoff between the two views.