eprintid: 10184510
rev_number: 7
eprint_status: archive
userid: 699
dir: disk0/10/18/45/10
datestamp: 2024-01-03 14:50:57
lastmod: 2024-01-03 14:50:57
status_changed: 2024-01-03 14:50:57
type: article
metadata_visibility: show
sword_depositor: 699
creators_name: Ditter, Andreas
title: The Reduction of Necessity to Essence
ispublished: pub
divisions: UCL
divisions: B03
divisions: C01
divisions: F16
note: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
abstract: In ‘Essence and Modality’, Kit Fine (1994) proposes that for a proposition to be metaphysically necessary is for it to be true in virtue of the nature of all objects. Call this view Fine’s Thesis. This paper is a study of Fine’s Thesis in the context of Fine’s logic of essence (LE). Fine himself has offered his most elaborate defence of the thesis in the context of LE. His defence rests on the widely shared assumption that metaphysical necessity obeys the laws of the modal logic S5. In order to get S5 for metaphysical necessity, he assumes a controversial principle about the nature of all objects. I will show that the addition of this principle to his original system E5 leads to inconsistency with an independently plausible principle about essence. In response, I develop a theory that avoids this inconsistency while allowing us to maintain S5 for metaphysical necessity. However, I conclude that our investigation of Fine’s Thesis in the context of LE motivates the revisionary conclusion that metaphysical necessity obeys the principles of the modal logic S4, but not those of S5. I argue that this constitutes a distinctively essentialist challenge to the received view that the logic of metaphysical necessity is S5.
date: 2020-04
date_type: published
publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
official_url: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzz045
oa_status: green
full_text_type: other
language: eng
primo: open
primo_central: open_green
verified: verified_manual
elements_id: 2106454
doi: 10.1093/mind/fzz045
lyricists_name: Ditter, Andreas
lyricists_id: ADITT53
actors_name: Ditter, Andreas
actors_id: ADITT53
actors_role: owner
full_text_status: public
publication: Mind
volume: 129
number: 514
pagerange: 351-380
citation:        Ditter, Andreas;      (2020)    The Reduction of Necessity to Essence.                   Mind , 129  (514)   pp. 351-380.    10.1093/mind/fzz045 <https://doi.org/10.1093/mind%2Ffzz045>.       Green open access   
 
document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10184510/1/DITTROv1.pdf