Essence and modality

A truthmaker for a proposition P is exact if it contains nothing irrelevant to P. What are the exact truthmakers for necessitated propositions? This paper makes progress on this issue by showing how to extend Fine's truthmaker semantics for intuitionistic logic to an exact truthmaker semantics for intuitionistic modal logic. The project is of interest also to the classical logician: while all distinctively classical theorems may be true, they differ from the intuitionistic ones in how they are made true. This sheds new light on the status of the T and B axioms.

Lowe claims that having knowledge of the essence of an object is a precondition for thinking about it. Lowe supports this claim with roughly the following argument: you cannot think about something unless you know what you are thinking about; and to know what it is that you are thinking about just is to know its essence. I will argue that this line of reasoning fails because of an equivocation in the expression 'what a thing is' (and similar ones), which can be used to indicate the essence of the thing but also, more commonly, some description of that thing which is useful in the context to identify it. I will then consider some possible variations of the argument, both in its premises and in its conclusion, and I will argue that they either fail to produce a sound argument or they weaken the conclusion too much to preserve the philosophical interest of the result.

The aim of this article is to highlight the contributions that Roman Ingarden could make to social
ontology. In achieving this objective, I shall juxtapose his conceptual apparatus from existential ontology
(Ingarden, 1947/2013, 1948/2016) with Searle’s (1995, 2010) model of theory of institutional facts. I shall
define that Searle’s (1995) approach to social reality is ontologically deflationary. When referring to
an ontological assumption of such a model, it becomes problematic to explain how a social entity such
as a corporation exists (Smith, 2003; Smith & Searle, 2003). Consequently, he modifies his position by
acknowledging that a corporation comes into being by a declaration and does not need a physical entity
to continue to exist (Searle, 2010). On the grounds of his existential ontology, Ingarden distinguishes
between relations (existential moments): self-sufficient and dependent. In my paper, I shall point out
that this distinction allows for a more accurate description of the mode of being of social entities, such
as corporations. Searle did not make such a distinction explicitly on the grounds of his naturalistic
ontology. In this paper, I shall describe the mode of existence of the corporation as a purely intentional
object.

Representational accounts of painful experiences, which characterize contents of pain in indicative terms, face a serious problem known as the Messenger-Shooting Objection. This problem arises from the fact that indicative representational accounts do not seem to be able to accommodate the observation that painful experiences rationalize actions aimed towards their own removal. I present a novel representational account of painful experiences which can solve the Messenger-Shooting Objection while still being an indicative representational theory. I argue that the proposed account is also coherent with the contemporary scientific paradigm concerning pains.

Purity is the principle that fundamental facts only have fundamental constituents. In recent years, it has played a significant role in metaphysical theorizing—but its logical foundations are underdeveloped. I argue that recent advances in higher-order logic reveal a subtle ambiguity regarding Purity’s interpretation; there are stronger and weaker versions of that principle. The arguments for Purity only support the weaker interpretation, but arguments that employ it only succeed if the stronger interpretation is true. As a result, nearly every metaphysician who has appealed to Purity has made a mistake—in that the inferences that they make are not justified by the arguments that they provide.

Husserl and the Reduction of Modality to Essence Although Husserl's theory of essence has recently emerged as historically important, it has not been deemed useful to contemporary essentialism. Many essentialists nowadays propose to reduce metaphysical modality to the essences of things. They are accordingly tasked with explaining why essence generates modality in the required way. It is widely believed, however, that Husserl has a modal account of essence and is thus unable to contribute to such a project. Against this consensus, I show that Husserl's theory of essence contains resources for safeguarding a promising recent proposal to meet this explanatory challenge, viz., the proposal to model essence in terms of generalized identity and to establish its necessity by appeal to the necessity of identity. Recently, Jessica Leech (2021) has challenged this proposal on grounds that, because identity inherits its necessity from the logical necessity of self-identity, it collapses the necessity of essence into logical necessity. To this extent, it appears to make the latter do all the work in accounting for metaphysical necessity, obviating the need for an essentialist account of modality in the first place. I argue that Husserl has something approaching an account of essence as generalized identity and that his account contains resources for defusing Leech's challenge. If I am right, then Husserl's essentialism is a live and potentially fruitful resource for the contemporary project of reducing metaphysical modality to essence.

We describe the main issue debated at the IV Blasco Disputatio: whether our knowledge of metaphysical possibility and necessity rests on knowledge of essence. But before getting to this specific issue, we offer a broader introduction to the more general problems in the epistemology of modality. In this way, we establish a background against which the contributions to this SI can be better appreciated.

This book provides an exhaustive overview of the ontology of relations. Moreover, it offers a detailed defense of the existence of irreducible relations in the universe and shows that entities such as powers should be better thought of as relations. At first, the author discusses many classical arguments for and against the existence of relations and draws preliminary distinctions between internal and external relations and symmetrical and non-symmetrical relations. He defends the existence of irreducible relations against several objections, most notably three Bradleyan regresses. In response to these objections, the author argues that both internal and external relations should be thought of as relational modes and that intentional, temporal and spatial relations are external. He also presents several problems that are typically taken to affect non-symmetrical relations and introduces one new version of a theory to deal with them—the O-Roles theory. Finally, the author explores essential dependence relations and causal dependence relations and defends the view that powers are relational modes. "The Ontology of Relations" will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in metaphysics, philosophy of science, and history of philosophy.

Many authors have proposed that grounding is closely related to metaphysical laws. However, we argue that no existing theory of metaphysical laws is sufficiently general. In this paper we develop a general theory of grounding laws, proposing that they are generative relations between pluralities of propositions and propositions. We develop the account in an essentialist language; this allows us to state precisely the sense in which grounding might be reduced to laws. We then put the theory to use in showing how moral laws can play a role in grounding particular moral facts, in defending monism about ground, and in showing in what sense there is no gap between the grounds and the grounded. Finally, we make a novel proposal about what grounds facts about ground.

The common view has it that there are two families of approaches towards the logical structure of impossible worlds – Australasian and North American. According to the first, impossible worlds are closed under the relation of logical consequence of one of the non-classical logics. The North American approach is more liberal, allowing for impossible worlds where no logic holds. After pointing out the questionable consequences of each view, I propose a third one. While this new perspective allows for worlds where no logical consequence holds, it also imposes some constraints on what worlds are built upon. This renders the proposed view not as restrictive as the Australasian approach and not as liberal as the North American approach. Due to its intermediary nature, I have named this perspective ‘the Pacific’ approach.

Monism is the claim that only one object exists. While few contemporary philosophers endorse monism, it has an illustrious history – stretching back to Bradley, Spinoza and Parmenides. In this paper, I show that plausible assumptions about the higher-order logic of property identity entail that monism is true. Given the higher-order framework I operate in, this argument generalizes: it is also possible to establish that there is a single property, proposition, relation, etc. I then show why this form of monism is inconsistent; because all propositions are identical, p is identical to ~p – and so they have the same truth-value. At least one of the assumptions that generate higher-order monism must be rejected.

I describe the general structure of most infinite regress arguments; introduce some basic vocabulary; present a working hypothesis of the nature and derivation of an infinite regress; apply this working hypothesis to various infinite regress arguments to explain why they fail to entail an infinite regress; describe a common mistake in attempting to derive certain infinite regresses; and examine how infinite regresses function as a premise. Resume: Je decris ia structure generaie de la plupart des arguments a regression infinie; introduis un vocabulaire de base; presente une hypothese de travail sur la nature d'un type de regression et sur sa deduction; applique cette hypothese de travail a divers arguments a regression infinie pour expJiquer pourquoi certaines regressions infinies ne s'ensuivent pas logiquement; decris une erreur courante dans les tentatives de deduire certaines regressions infinies; examine comment des regressions infinies jouent Ie role de premisse.

Poetry has a hallucinatory component; it is about a delirium-like state of being. It is about reducing a meaning of something to the absolute essence.

- Cecil Balmond, Structural Artist
(Source: THE SECRET OF DOSTOEVSKY’S NOVELS AND BALMOND’S DESIGNS by Simeon B. Mihaylov)

Thomas Lynch has proposed that scholars of religion can profitably follow Sally Haslanger's lead and treat "religion," as she treats race, as a social construction. He argues that this proposal resembles my treatment of "religion" in Philosophy and the Study of Religions, but it goes further by treating "religion" as what Haslanger calls a strongly pragmatic social construction, that is, a category that is solely the product of the use of the concept and which does not capture any feature in the world. In this response, I clarify that this argument can be made in a way that is stronger and closer to that of Haslanger if one adopts the position she calls "promiscuous realism."

To address the question "on what there is" raised by Quine, and to accomplish the task of comprehending exhaustively the many ontological units that populate the great province of Being, we propose as an alternative to Puntel's ontology a new ontology designated as "Structural Ontology" (SO). Such ontology is based on systematic-structural theoretical foundations, but leads to a diverse view in which structured factual units, structural configurations (dynamics), as well as apparent ontological units (objects), all encompassed by the temporal subdimension that interconnects them, understood as an internal sub-dimension of the macrodimension of Being, co-subsist. In this sense, we begin by situating the ontological theme in current philosophical discussion from a Quinean perspective. We then present a concept of truth derived from our reading of puntelian philosophy, which will be the point of connection between language and the world. Subsequently, we show how from the concept of truth, after a brief foray into philosophical semantics, we arrive at the ontological field from the ontological categories of structure and ontological state. Finally, we outline, in its general features, our structural ontology, which includes its own ontological notions that give new directions to philosophical understanding of this great theme.

This dissertation aims to examine the prospects of forging a link between modal logic and metaphysical principles within the corpus of Avicenna's works, considering in-depth research on the notions of necessity and possibility, with a specific focus on their relevance to the concept of essence. Modal concepts have been a subject of philosophical inquiry since Aristotle and have garnered increasing attention, especially over the past twenty-five years. These concepts remain relevant and are continuously updated through the engagement with various theories in the realms of logic and metaphysics, especially in relation to the concept of essence. In this study, the concept of modality is situated at the intersection of logic, epistemology, and metaphysics, serving as a connective element that narrows the interstice between these disciplines. The scrutiny of modal concepts stands as a significant milestone of this thesis. Building on this foundation, the initial facet of the analysis addresses the debates surrounding essentialism within contemporary philosophical discourse. Research has revealed that the concept of essence remains a pivotal focus of contemporary discussions in both modal logic and metaphysics. This includes the examination of possible worlds semantics in contemporary modal logic, the challenges encountered in acquiring knowledge of essence and modality in the current epistemological landscape, the centrality of essence within ontological theories in contemporary metaphysics, and the debates on dispositional essentialism as the culmination of these theoretical developments. The second facet of this thesis probes the question of Avicenna's relevance to contemporary philosophical issues, positing his philosophy as a model for the development of contemporary Islamic philosophy. The question is: "Could Avicenna answer the dilemmas addressed in modern philosophy?" This inquiry has been assessed considering its connections to logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. As demonstrated in the thesis, Avicenna's treatment of modal concepts presents innovative and substantial solutions to a range of issues. These include delineating the role of essence within modal logic, navigating the acquisition of modal knowledge within epistemology, and elucidating the operational significance of the concept of disposition within ontology—areas where contemporary theories often encounter significant challenges and exhibit limitations in providing comprehensive responses.

I provide a case-by-case definition of essential truths based on the notions of metaphysical necessity and ontological dependence. Relying on suggestions in the literature, I adopt a definition of the latter notion in terms of the notion of ground. The resulting account is adequate in the sense that it is not subject to Kit Fine's famous counterexamples to the purely modal account of essence. In addition, it provides us with a novel conception of truths pertaining to the essence of objects, which might help to dispel doubts on the legitimacy of the notion of essence itself.

Quelle solution peut-on donner aux paradoxes de Chisholm et
de Salmon ? Dans une large mesure, elle dépendra du diagnostic porté
sur ces paradoxes. Il apparaît d'emblée qu'ils ressemblent fortement
à des paradoxes sorites, qui sont des paradoxes du vague . En

In his paper Possibility Precedes Actuality Tuomas Tahko makes the attractive proposal that essences should be understood in terms identity and existence conditions. I first offer a reconstruction of this proposal in light of Lowe's notorious claim that essences are not entities. Proceeding from this, I then bring up several problems with the notion of identity conditions. I conclude that Tahko's idea would fare better without this notion.

Higher-order logic, with its type-theoretic apparatus known as the simple theory of types (STT), has increasingly come to be employed in theorizing about properties, relations, and states of affairs-or 'intensional entities' for short. This paper argues against this employment of STT and offers an alternative: ordinal type theory (OTT). Very roughly, STT and OTT can be regarded as complementary simplifications of the 'ramified theory of types' outlined in the Introduction to Principia Mathematica (on a realist reading). While STT, understood as a theory of intensional entities, retains the Fregean division of properties and relations into a multiplicity of categories according to their adicities and 'input types' and discards the division of intensional entities into different 'orders', OTT takes the opposite approach: it retains the hierarchy of orders (though with some modifications) and discards the categorization of properties and relations according to their adicities and input types. In contrast to STT, this latter approach avoids intensional counterparts of the Epimenides and related paradoxes. Fundamental intensional entities lie at the base of the proposed hierarchy and are also given a prominent part to play in the individuation of non-fundamental intensional entities.

The theory of variable embodiments has been primarily formulated to model ordinary objects as things that change their parts over time. A variable embodiment /f/ is a sui generis whole constructed from a principle f, the principle of a variable embodiment, and it is manifested at different times by different things picked out by such a principle f. This principle is usually clarified as a function that picks out, at any given time the variable embodiment exists, its corresponding manifestation at that time, and it fails to pick out anything at any other time. The first purpose of this article is to examine and refute three natural understandings of such a principle. Specifically, first, we argue against the view that it should be understood extensionally as either a partial function or total function. Next, we provide some motivations to reject the understanding of the principle as a function in intensional terms, where the notion of intension is analyzed in terms of a specific vers...

Over the past 40 years, philosophy has become a vital arena for feminists. Recent feminist work has challenged canonical claims about the role of women and has developed new methods of analysis and critique, and in doing so has reinvigorated central areas of philosophy. The Feminist Philosophy Collection presents new work representative of feminist contributions to the six most significant areas of philosophy: Feminist Ethics and Political and Social Philosophy; Feminist Philosophy of Religion; Feminist Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art; Feminist Metaphysics; Feminist History of Philosophy; and Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. Feminist work in some fields, notably ethics and social theory, has been going on for four decades, while feminist philosophy of art and aesthetics, as well as feminist metaphysics, are still young. Thus, some volumes will contain essays that build upon established feminist work as they explore new territory, while others break exciting new ground.

The article presents the centrality of the concept of being (esse) in the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas, with emphasis on the influence of the platonic notion of participatio in its elaboration. In this perspective the text explores the various influences that Aquinas received in the elaboration of his ontology, presenting how the notions of causality, act and power, participation, esse and ens, essence and existence, were synthesized in an organic and rigorous way in an original metaphysical perspective in history of Western philosophy. Thus, it is demonstrated that esse, as the foundation of reality, is prior to the essentia and, by its actualization, enables the being (ens): ens quod habet esse, being is that which has to be. The Thomistic "ontological difference" is therefore placed as the difference between what is and what has to be.

Humean accounts of natural lawhood (such as Lewis's) have often been criticized as unable to account for the laws' characteristic explanatory power in science. Loewer (Philos Stud 160:115-137, 2012) has replied that these criticisms fail to distinguish grounding explanations from scientific explanations. Lange (Philos Stud 164:255-261, 2013) has replied by arguing that grounding explanations and scientific explanations are linked by a transitivity principle, which can be used to argue that Humean accounts of natural law violate the prohibition on self-explanation. Lange's argument has been sharply criticized by Hicks and van Elswyk (

Kit Fine has proposed a new solution to what he calls 'a familiar puzzle' concerning modality and existence. The puzzle concerns the argument from the alleged truths 'It is necessary that Socrates is a man' and 'It is possible that Socrates does not exist' to the apparent falsehood 'It is possible that Socrates is a man and does not exist'. We discuss in detail Fine's setting up of the 'puzzle' and his rejection, with which we concur, of two mooted solutions to it. (One of these uses standard, Kripkean, notions, and the other rests on work done by Arthur Prior.) We set out, and reject, the philosophy of modality underlying Fine's new solution, and we defend an alternative response to the alleged puzzle. Our solution follows the work of David Wiggins in distinguishing between the sentential operator 'It is necessary that' and the predicate modifier 'necessarily'. We briefly provide this distinction with a possibleworld semantics on which it is neither a necessary truth, in some sense, that Socrates exists nor true, in some sense, that Socrates necessarily exists.

Philosophical orthodoxy holds that pains are mental states, taking this to reflect the ordinary conception of pain. Despite this, evidence is mounting that English speakers do not tend to conceptualize pains in this way; rather, they tend to treat pains as being bodily states. We hypothesize that this is driven by two primary factors -- the phenomenology of feeling pains and the surface grammar of pain reports. There is reason to expect that neither of these factors is culturally specific, however, and thus reason to expect that the empirical findings for English speakers will generalize to other cultures and other languages. In this article we begin to test this hypothesis, reporting the results of two cross-cultural studies comparing judgments about the location of referred pains (cases where the felt location of the pain diverges from the bodily damage) between two groups -- Americans and South Koreans -- that we might otherwise expect to differ in how they understand pains. In l...

What does bodily pain have in common with mental pain? According to "evaluativism," both are representations of something bad. This paper puts forward three claims. First, that evaluativism vis-à-vis bodily pain is false for it renders it irrational to take painkillers. Second, that evaluativism vis-à-vis mental pain is true. Third, that this difference between bodily and mental pain stems from the fact that only the latter is normative, that is, based on reasons. The normative difference between bodily and mental pain implies that mental pains are not bad, while bodily pains are not representations. Pain is unique among perceptual experiences. It is not merely something which cannot be experienced without being exist, but something which cannot exist without being Mental painkillers and reasons for pain 2 Manuscrito-Rev. Int. Fil. Campinas, 2018. wished not to exist. The negative affect of pain, its painfulness, makes it bad, that is, gives us a reason to seek painkillers to get rid of it. Kripke once imagined yellow killer objects that kill whoever looks at them, but this thoughtexperiment by no means implies that a yellow-experience can be intrinsically bad. The yellow-experience has a very bad consequence, namely, death; but it is not bad itself. While the idea of a relief from yellow-experiences, yellow-experiencekiller, as it were, hardly makes sense, life without painkillers is hard to imagine. Recently it has been suggested that pain is painful in virtue of its being evaluative, or more precisely, "a perception of evil" (Korsgaard 1996: 155). Evaluativism is considered to be the best version of representationalism visà-vis bodily pain, the theory that it is in virtue of representing a bodily disturbance that pain has its phenomenal character. Evaluativism requires that pain not only represent a bodily disturbance, but represent it as bad. 1 The evaluative component is required because unlike ordinary perceptual experiences, say visual or tactile experiences, pain necessarily moves us to act against it, e.g., by taking medicines or painkillers. Ironically, evaluativism has been criticized for making the perfectly rational act of taking painkillers seem as irrational as shooting the messenger (Korsgaard Hall 1989, Bain 2013, Jacobson 2013). The messenger objection argues that evaluativism cannot explain what it is that renders a representation of a bad bodily disorder bad in itself, thereby making it rational to take painkillers. The very idea of a bad representation, a representation that constitutes a reason to seek its elimination, is suspect.

The exigent cause for Aesthetic philosophy is the failure of art to give a genuine justification for its existence. Aesthetic freedom is a part of aesthetic philosophy that gives a structured approach to the study of art forms including origin, directions and finding a proper end. The challenges to aesthetic freedom include the area of production, preservation, universalism, individuality and representations. Aesthetic freedom investigates the virtues of the essence and existential justifications in order to deal with the construction of both subjective human relationships and objectified artistic forms. The concept of Mithuna delves further into the reasons for closing the gaps between two opposite bodies to affirm the purpose of reproduction and procreation. This reduction of gaps results from intrinsic dualism which is further elaborated in the paper. The study of aesthetics is incomplete without the study of desires and therefore the concepts of desire are developed into cognitive pleasure, morality, consciousness, and auspiciousness.

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.

When citing this paper, please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences Nanay's (2010) response offers an insightful restatement of his original argument (Nanay, 2005). Towards the end of his response, Nanay provides the following schema (substituting for the placeholders P, Q, R, and S). (1) X's having trait A (rather than B) depends counterfactually on x's mother surviving to reproductive age and having A. (2) X's mother surviving to reproductive age and having trait A depends counterfactually on selection against B-organisms.

According to actualism about possible worlds everything that exists is actual. Possible worlds and individuals are actually existing abstract parts of the actual world. Aristotelian actualism is a view that there are only actual individuals but no possible ones, nor their individual abstract representatives. Because of that, our actualist account of modality should differ depending on whether it concerns actual individuals or possible ones. The main goal of the dissertation is to develop a metaphysical framework for Aristotelian actualism.
Chapter 1 explains basic issues associated with the possible world approach to modality. I overview modal realist and actualist views on possible worlds and explain why I support the actualist approach. Subsequently, I introduce a distinction between Platonic and Aristotelian actualism, and discuss some semantic issues associated with actualism as such.
In Chapter 2 I argue that Aristotelian actualism, modeled on linguistic ersatzism, is preferable over its Platonic counterpart. Subsequently, I propose a metaphysical framework for Aristotelian ersatzism which is based on a claim that our modal concepts work differently for actual and possible individuals. In order to explain that claim I introduce three specific differences concerning modal features of actual and possible individuals: (a) Representational Difference, according to which actual and possible individuals are represented differently by possible worlds; (b) Metaphysical Difference, according to which actual and possible individuals are represented by possible worlds as having different metaphysical nature; (c) Modal Difference, which says while there are singular and contingent possibilities involving actual individuals, all possibilities about possible individuals are general and necessary. I propose to interpret those differences in terms of the doctrines of haecceitism, antihaecceitism and existentialism. There is however no consensus on how those views should be characterized. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 focus on providing a precise characterization of those doctrines.
Chapter 3 focuses on the doctrines of modal haecceitism and antihaecceitism, which I view as opposite accounts of how possible worlds represent possibilities. According to modal haecceitism what possible worlds say about particular individuals does not supervene on what they say qualitatively. Modal antihaecceitism is a denial of such a claim.
Chapter 4 concerns metaphysical haecceitism and antihaecceitism, which I take to be alternative accounts of the fundamental structure of reality. For the metaphysical haecceitist reality contains irreducible singular facts, while for the metaphysical antihaecceitist reality is purely qualitative and general.
Chapter 5 focuses on an argument between existentialists and antiexistentialists. Existentialists claim that there are contingent singular propositions, while antiexistentialists deny that. I defend existentialism against antiexistentialist counterarguments, as well as criticize some of the antiexistentialist accounts of singular propositions modeled on the notion of individual essence.
In Chapter 6, by appealing to the results of investigations conducted in Chapters 3, 4 and 5, I reconsider Representational, Metaphysical and Modal Differences. According to a view that I propose: (a) Representational Difference entails (extreme) modal haecceitism for actual individuals but (extreme) modal antihaecceitism for possible individuals; (b) Metaphysical Difference entails metaphysical haecceitism (individualism) for actual individuals, but metaphysical antihaecceitism (generalism) for possible individuals; finally (c) Modal Difference entails existentialism: while there are singular and contingent possibilities involving actual individuals, all possibilities about possible individuals are general and necessary. In Chapter 6, I also explain the implications of those views for the various issues, including transworld identity, essentialism, or the modal status of modal space.
Lastly, Chapter 7 overviews some semantic and metaphysical applications of Aristotelian ersatzism. I explain how it manages to accommodate Kripkean semantics and how it is able to account for the possibilities of indiscernibles, alien individuals and iterated modalities. I also address some possible objections to my proposal, including an issue of implicit representation and the Humphrey objection.

According to the simple modal account of essence, an object has a property essentially just in case it has it in every world in which it exists. As many have observed, the simple modal account is implausible for a number of reasons. This has led to various proposals for strengthening the account, for example, by adding a restriction to the intrinsic or sparse properties. I argue, however, that these amendments to the simple modal account themselves fail. Drawing on lessons from these failures, I propose a new version of a modal account, inspired by Ruth Barcan Marcus's defense of the coherence of quantified modal logic, according to which an object has a property essentially just in case (i) it has it in every world in which it exists, (ii) the property is discriminating (or non-trivial), and (iii) the property is qualitative. The resulting account of essence does not face any of the standard objections other accounts face, and I defend it from other potential objections. * I would like to thank Julia Langkau and Nathan Wildman for very helpful feedback on an earlier version of the paper. 1 Essences have been important also for accounts that forgo possible worlds. For instance, Kit Fine argues that modality is reducible to essence; see e.g. (Fine, 1994). 2 Brody develops a separate account of essence, which he also dubs 'Aristotelian', in (Brody, 1980). I will not discuss that account here.

An intuitive objection to modal realism is that merely possible worlds and their inhabitants seem to be irrelevant to an analysis of modality. Kripke originally phrased the objection in terms of being concerned about one’s modal properties without being concerned about the properties one’s other-worldly counterparts have. The author assesses this objection in a variety of forms, and then provides his own formulation that does not beg the question against the modal realist. Finally, the author considers two potential answers to the objection so understood and concludes that only one of them has a chance of succeeding.

El objetivo de este trabajo es doble. En primer lugar, argumentaré que el problema de la identidad diacrónica es un problema subsidiario de asumir, por un lado, una posición ontológica en particular respecto de la constitución de los objetos físicos, el tridimensionalismo, y por el otro, y estrechamente relacionado, de asumir el presentismo como metafísica del tiempo. Mostraré que, asumiendo una ontología tetradimensional y el eternalismo, el problema naturalmente se disuelve. En segundo lugar, mostraré que tenemos sólidos motivos empíricos para favorecer el tetradimensionalismo a la luz de la física contemporánea, en particular, de la teoría especial de la relatividad.

The domain of modal epistemology tackles questions regarding the sources of our knowledge of modalities (i.e., possibility and necessity), and what justifies our beliefs about modalities. Virtue epistemology, on the other hand, aims at explaining epistemological concepts like knowledge and justification in terms of properties of the epistemic subject, i.e., cognitive capacities and character traits. While there is extensive literature on both domains, almost all attempts to analyze modal knowledge elude the importance of the agent’s intellectual character traits in justifying beliefs about what is possible or necessary. My aim in this paper is to argue that intellectual traits of character, like thoroughness, autonomy, epistemic courage and open-mindedness, are relevant to modal epistemology.

Gettier cases are used to show that having a justified true belief is not sufficient for knowledge. They are cases in which an epistemic agent has a belief that is both justified and true, but intuitively cannot be taken to count as knowledge. Modal epistemology is the field of philosophy that tackles questions regarding the sources of our knowledge of modalities (possibility and necessity) and what offers justification for beliefs about what is possible or necessary. Part of the tradition in modal epistemology is to consider conceivability as a guide to metaphysical possibility. As such, if an agent can conceive that P, then the agent is justified to believe that P is metaphysically possible. In this paper I will discuss the possibility of constructing Gettier cases for a tripartite, conceivability-based, definition of modal knowledge.

Most philosophers treat ontological dependence and metaphysical dependence as distinct relations. A number of key differences between the two relations are usually cited in support of this claim: ontological dependence's unique connection to existence, differing respective connections to metaphysical necessitation, and a divergence in their formal features. Alongside reshaping some of the examples used to maintain the distinction between the two, I argue that the additional resources offered by the increased attention the notion of grounding has received in recent years potentially offer us a way to unite the two relations, promising the attendant benefits parsimony offers, as a result.

There are three theories in the epistemology of modality that have received sustained attention over the past 20 years (1998–2018): conceivability-theory, counterfactual-theory, and deduction-theory. In this paper we argue that all three face what we callthe problem of modal epistemic friction(PMEF). One consequence of the problem is that for any of the three accounts to yieldmodal knowledge, the account must provide an epistemology of essence. We discuss an attempt to fend off the problem within the context of the internalism versus externalism debate about epistemic justification. We then investigate the effects that the PMEF has on reductive and non-reductive theories of the relation between essence and modality.

Comment, pour accéder à ce que Leibniz nomme le Pays des Possibles, parmi les termes transcendentaux la voie de la Vérité ouverte par Wittgenstein et aménagée par Carnap est surclassée par la voie de l'Être ouverte par Nicholas Rescher et aménagée dans ses tables ontologiques pour la représentation de micromondes possibles.

In this article I defend a form of classical possibilism with an actualist foundation. As a matter of fact, I believe that this position is more in keeping with the classical metaphysical tradition. According to this form of possibilism, I construe possible objects as possible non-existing objects of an existing producing power. Consequently, they are nothing vis-à -vis the modality of their own actual being, although they do exist with regard to the modality of the producing power’s being. The actualist requirement prescribed by the Frege-Quinean criterion of the quantification domain is thus fulfilled; indeed, really possible objects are not actual objects, but their possibility is actual.

This “think piece” explores the definitional possibilities of “body”—that is, what is a body and how should we understand it, especially in light of the recent emergence of virtual bodies.  To this end, the author employs an essentialist framework for understanding: Is the body reducible to some fundamental essence or substance, something common to all bodies?  To what extent does a definition of body extend to virtual bodies?  These questions (and others) are posited, and the author invites readers to consider the manifold issues engendered by such reflection.

This paper aims to demonstrate that the ontology of consciousness is consistent with both the modal and the metaphysical versions of Haecceitism. I examine the varieties of Haecceitism, and I specify the intended versions that the arguments will vindicate. I define the property of 'being purely qualitative', and examine its relation to the properties of phenomenal consciousness. I draw, inter alia, on Bayesian perceptual psychology, in order to specify the identity-conditions of phenomenal properties in detail. I provide two, abductive arguments for the claim that the identity-conditions on some individuals are metaphysically haecceitistic, in virtue of the relations that hold between those individuals and the phenomenal properties that they instantiate. The first argument is corroborated by empirical results concerning the phenomenological effects of attention. The second argument is corroborated by empirical results from the study of color in vision science. The arguments vindicate a version of Metaphysical Haecceitism, because the individuals are shown to be typed by the phenomenal properties that they instantiate, although quantification over the individuals is an ineliminable condition on their identity and distinctness. I provide, then, a regimentation of the extant proposals in the ontology of consciousness, using the logic of hyperintensional ground, as augmented by the Bayesian probability calculus. The hyperintensional regimentation vindicates a version of Modal Haecceitism, because the probabilistic ontological dependence of the parts of worlds on other parts thereof provides an ineliminable condition on the identity and distinctness of worlds.

The traditional Lewis-Stalnaker semantics treats all counterfactuals with an impossible antecedent as trivially or vacuously true. Many have regarded this as a serious defect of the semantics. For intuitively, it seems, counterfactuals with impossible antecedents-counterpossibles-can be non-trivially true and non-trivially false. Whereas the counterpossible "If Hobbes had squared the circle, then the mathematical community at the time would have been surprised" seems true, "If Hobbes had squared the circle, then sick children in the mountains of Afghanistan at the time would have been thrilled" seems false. Many have proposed to extend the Lewis-Stalnaker semantics with impossible worlds to make room for a non-trivial or non-vacuous treatment of counterpossibles. Roughly, on the extended Lewis-Stalnaker semantics, we evaluate a counterfactual of the form "If A had been true, then C would have been true" by going to closest world-whether possible or impossible-in which A is true and check whether C is also true in that world. If the answer is "yes", the counterfactual is true; otherwise it is false. Since there are impossible worlds in which the mathematically impossible happens, there are impossible worlds in which Hobbes manages to square the circle. And intuitively, in the closest such impossible worlds, sick children in the mountains of Afghanistan are not thrilled-they remain sick and unmoved by the mathematical developments in Europe. If so, the counterpossible "If Hobbes had squared the circle, then sick children in the mountains of Afghanistan at the time would have been thrilled" comes out false, as desired. In this paper, I will critically investigate the extended Lewis-Stalnaker semantics for counterpossibles. I will argue that the standard version of the extended semantics, in which impossible worlds correspond to maximal, logically inconsistent entities, fails to give the correct semantic verdicts for many * I am grateful to Daniel Nolan, Weng Hong Tang, and an anonymous referee for Philosophical Studies for extremely helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Thanks also to Jørgen Berthelsen, Eline Busck Gundersen, Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen, and audience in the Research Unit for Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Philosophy of Cognition at Aarhus University. suggest, then the Lewis-Stalnaker semantics seems inadequate. Many have proposed to extend the Lewis-Stalnaker semantics with impossible worlds to make room for a non-trivial or non-vacuous treatment of counterpossibles. Roughly, according to the extended Lewis-Stalnaker semantics, a counterfactual A C is true just in case C is true in the closest or most similar worlds-whether possible or impossible-to the actual world in which A is true. Although I will be more precise in section 2, we can generally think of impossible worlds as worlds in which the a priori impossible happens: worlds in which conceptual, mathematical, and logical truths are false, and in which conceptual, mathematical, and logical falsehoods are true Consider "If there were a recursive computer that could prove any mathematical sentence that is true, then Gödel's incompleteness theorem would be true." To evaluate this counterpossible, according to the extended Lewis-Stalnaker semantics, we go to the closest or most similar impossible world w in which there is a recursive computer that can prove any true mathematical sentence and ask: is Gödel's theorem true in w? Presupposing an intuitive grasp of relative closeness or similarity between worlds, we should answer "no" to this question: if there were a recursive computer that could prove any true mathematical sentence, Gödel's theorem would be false precisely because it rules out the possibility of such a computer. If so, the extended Lewis-Stalnaker semantics tells us that the counterpossible is false. And intuitively, it is false, albeit only non-trivially so. Consider also "If intuitionistic logic were correct, then the law of excluded middle would fail." To evaluate this counterpossible, we go to the closest or most similar impossible world w in which intuitionistic logic is correct and ask: does the law of excluded middle fail in w? Presupposing an intuitive grasp of relative closeness or similarity between worlds, we should answer "yes" to this question: if intuitionistic logic were indeed true, there would be counterexamples to the law of excluded middle-at least in infinite domains. If so, the extended Lewis-Stalnaker semantics tells us that the counterpossible is true. And intuitively, it is true, albeit only non-trivially so. The extended Lewis-Stalnaker semantics is arguably also the standard account of counterpossibles in the literature, and it has been endorsed by Berit Brogaard & Joseph Salerno, Daniel Nolan, and David Vander Laan amongst others. In this paper, however, I will argue that the extended Lewis-Stalnaker semantics fails when impossible worlds correspond to maximal, logically inconsistent entities for which it holds that either A or ¬A is true, for every sentence A.