From Essence to Metaphysical Modality?
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ORIGINAL PAPER
From Essence to Metaphysical Modality? Harold W. Noonan1 Received: 14 July 2020 / Accepted: 4 November 2020 The Author(s) 2020
Abstract 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 additional matters are also unsatisfactory. This is important because the thought that our knowledge of metaphysical modality has its source in our knowledge of essence is currently an attractive one and Jago has set out very clearly what must be done to justify the thought. The flaws in his proposal thus indicate the work needed if the attractive thought is to be accepted. Keywords Essence Necessity Fine Lowe Sortal concept
1 Introduction The Aristotelian concept of essence, of ‘what it is to be’, and the link, if any, between that concept and the modal concepts of necessity and possibility were core topics of metaphysical discussion in the centuries that followed its introduction. Aristotle himself favoured a so-called ‘definitional’ account of essence according to which the concept of essence can be specified independently of de re modal notions, & Harold W. Noonan [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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Axiomathes
although he saw a link between modal concepts and concepts closely related to that of essence, in the Topics defining the notion of an accidental property, for example, in terms of a property that might or might not belong to an object (cf. Fine 1994: 2)). The issue of the link between essence and modality persisted beyond antiquity and was discussed at length by Avicenna and the scholastic philosophers in the middle ages (e.g. Boethius, Aquinas, Ockham) where the question of whether essence can be separated from existence took center stage, with modal notions (and in particular the distinction between what is actual and what is merely possible) playing key roles in the debate. (See, e.g. Witt 2011; Normore 2012) And in modernity too the link was widely discussed, with both Locke and Mill, to give just two examples, taking positions on the matter. (Locke 1975,
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