The Context of Essence

Abstract

Abstract I address two related questions: first, what is the best theory of how objects have de remodal properties? Second, what is the best defence of essentialism given the variability of our modal intuitions? I critically discuss several theories of how objects have their de remodal properties and address the most threatening ant essentialist objection to essentialism: the variability of our modal intuitions. Drawing on linguistic treatments of vagueness and ambiguity, I show how essentialists can accommodate the variability of modal intuitions while holding that objects have their modal properties independently of contexts. Essentialism is a doctrine about objects and their properties. Roughly, an object 0 has property P essentially when 0 must have P in order to be the object that it is. > If 0 has P essentially, then, necessarily, in any world in which 0 exists, 0 must have P. > Given that an object has the same essential properties in every possible world in which it exists, we can think of the essential properties as capturing the nature of the object. According to this picture, essentialism is grounded upon de remodality: the essential properties of an object are a feature of the way these objects are in themselves, and are not merelyan artefact of the waywe talk or think about them. > I think it is a fact about mycat, C. Louise, that she could not have been a banana. This is a fact about her. It is a fact about a particular protein that for it to exist it must include certain amino acids.