Abstract

A common view is that self-identity is essential to objects if anything is. Itself a substantive metaphysical view, this is a position of some import in wider debates, particularly (but not exclusively) in connection with such problems as physicalism and personal identity. In this article I challenge the view. I distinguish between two accounts of essence, the modal and the definitional, and argue that self-identity is essential to objects on the former but not on the latter. After laying out my case, I deal with a number of objections.

Highlights

  • Is self-identity essential to objects? The received view is that if objects have essences at all, self-identity cannot fail to be in them

  • The implication being that if one believes in essence, that this includes self-identity is the very least one ought to say

  • Even if consequential essence is genuine, I would regard it as a result of some significance to have established that if the Definitional essentialist wants to allow specific self-identity in the essence of objects, he must think of definition in a broader and rather unorthodox way—as well as, notice, successfully countering the argument from relevance: for otherwise general self-identity, which is the needed reflexive property, will not be essential to the object, and the whole attempt will still fail

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Summary

Introduction

Is self-identity essential to objects? The received view is that if objects have essences at all, self-identity cannot fail to be in them. My view is that different views of essence yield different answers to the question whether self-identity, general or specific, is essential to objects. If you hold (a version of) the modal account of essence—according to which a property p is in the essence of an object x if and only if, necessarily, if x exists x has p— you are committed to answering that yes, self-identity, both general and specific, is essential to objects. You are committed to answering that no, self-identity, either general or specific, is not essential to objects It has been on the contemporary philosophical scene for more than twenty years, and is beginning to be included in metaphysics course syllabi, the definitional approach is still less established than its competitor. I will allow myself to elaborate briefly on it

The definitional account of essence
The argument from relevance
The argument from circularity
Explanatory power
Truth-in-virtue-of
Entities without identity
Reductio
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