Hostname: page-component-54dcc4c588-wlffp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-09-14T17:51:06.636Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Essence, Explanation, and Modality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2020

Michael Wallner  and
Anand Vaidya
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 95 , Issue 4 , October 2020 , pp. 419 - 445
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Blackburn, Simon, Essays in Quasi-Realism (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).Google Scholar
Bueno, Otávio & Shalkowski, Scott, ‘Modalism and Theoretical Virtues: Toward an Epistemology of Modality’, Philosophical Studies, 172(3) (2014), 671–689.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Ross, ‘On the Source of Necessity’, Hale, Bob & Hoffman, Aviv (eds.), Modality. Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 137–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casullo, Albert, Essays on A Priori Knowledge and Justification (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Correia, Fabrice, ‘(Finean) essence and (priorean) modality’, Dialectica, 61(1) (2007), 63–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Correia, Fabrice, ‘On the Reduction of Necessity to Essence’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 84(3) (2012), 638–653.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cowling, Sam, ‘The Modal View of Essence’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 43(2) (2013), 248–266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Della Rocca, Michael, ‘Essentialism: Parts 1 & 2’, Philosophical Books, 37 (1996), 1–13, 81–89.Google Scholar
Fine, Kit, ‘Essence and Modality’, Philosophical Perspectives, 8 (1994), 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fine, Kit, ‘Response to Fabrice Correia’, Dialectica, 61(1) (2007), 85–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glazier, Martin, ‘Essentialist Explanation’, Philosophical Studies, 174 (2017), 2871–2889.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gorman, Michael, ‘The Essential and the Accidental’, Ratio, 18(3) (2005), 276–189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hale, Bob, ‘The Source of Necessity’, Noûs, 36(s16) (2002), 299–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hale, Bob, Necessary Beings. An Essay on Ontology, Modality, and the Relations Between Them (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hale, Bob, ‘The Basis of Necessity and Possibility’, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 82 (2018), 109–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kment, Boris, Modality and Explanatory Reasoning (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kment, Boris, ‘Essence and Modal Knowledge’, Synthese (2018), https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-01903-1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leech, Jessica, ‘Essence and Mere Necessity’, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 82 (2018), 309–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David, ‘New Work for a Theory of Universals’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 61 (1983), 343–377.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Livingstone-Banks, Jonathan, ‘In Defense of Modal Essentialism’, Inquiry, 60(8) (2017), 816–838.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowe, Jonathan, ‘Two Notoins of Being: Entity and Essence’, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 62 (2008), 23–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowe, Jonathan, ‘What is the source of our knowledge of modal truths?’, Mind, 121 (2012), 919–950.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackie, Penelope, ‘Can metaphysical modality be based on essence?’, Dumitru, Mircea (ed.): Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality. Themes from Kit Fine (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar
Noonan, Harold, ‘The New Aristotelian Essentialists’, Metaphysica, 19(1) (2018), 87–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roca-Royes, Sonia, ‘Modal knowledge and counterfactual knowledge’, Logique Et Analyse, 54(216) (2011), 537–552.Google Scholar
Romero, Carlos, ‘Modality is not explainable by essence’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 69(274) (2019), 121–141.Google Scholar
Schaffer, Jonathan, ‘It is the Business of Laws to Govern’, Dialectica, 70(4) (2016), 577–588.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skow, Bradford, Reasons Why (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skow, Bradford, ‘Levels of Reasons and Causal Explanation’, Philosophy of Science, 84(5) (2017), 905–915.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spinelli, Nicola, ‘Essence and Lowe's Regress’, Organon F, 25(3) (2018), 410–428.Google Scholar
Tahko, Tuomas E., ‘Counterfactuals and modal epistemology’, Grazer Philosophische Studien, 86 (2012), 93–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tahko, Tuomas E., ‘Empirically-Informed Modal Rationalism’, Fischer, Robert W. & Leon, Felipe (eds.), Modal Epistemology After Rationalism (Dordrecht: Springer, 2017), 29–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tahko, Tuomas E., ‘The Epistemology of Essence’, Carruth, Alexander, Gibb, Sophie & Heil, John (eds.), Ontology, Modality, Mind: Themes from the Metaphysics of E.J. Lowe (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 93–110.Google Scholar
Vaidya, Anand J. & Wallner, Michael, ‘The epistemology of modality and the problem of modal epistemic friction’, Synthese (2018), https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1860-2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Cleve, James, ‘Brute Necessity’, Philosophy Compass, 13(9) (2018), 1–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vetter, Barbara, ‘Recent Work: Modality Without Possible Worlds’, Analysis, 71(4) (2011), 742–754.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallner, Michael, ‘The Structure of Essentialist Explanations of Necessity’, Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, 9(1) (2020), 4–13.Google ScholarPubMed
Wildman, Nathan, ‘Modality, Sparsity, and Essence’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 63 (2013), 760–782.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wildman, Nathan, ‘Against the Reduction of Modality to Essence’, Synthese (2018), https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1667-6CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williamson, Timothy, The Philosophy of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zalta, Edward N., ‘Essence and Modality’, Mind, 116 (2006), 659–693.CrossRefGoogle Scholar