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ESSENTIALISM: PART 1
Quine once characterised essentialism as the doctrine that some of the
attributes of a thing (quite independently of the language in which the thing
is referred to, if at all) may be essential to the thing, and others accidental.
This view is now widely held. But this was not always the case. Quines
multifarious objections to quantified modal logic and essentialism were very
influential and it took the pioneering work of Marcus, Kripke et al. to bring
essentialism back into the realm of respectability. Despite these genuine
advances in easing Quinean queasiness about essentialism, I believe that at
least one of Quines objections does have considerable force and that, even
where his objections do not succeed, a consideration of them sheds much
light on the character and resources of various essentialist systems. In this
paper, I will explain and evaluate some recent work on essentialism by taking
up two of the Quinean objections.
The Quinean objection with the most force is his claim that there is no
principled way to assign, as essentialism requires, certain properties as essential
to a given thing and other properties as non-essential. As Quine indicates,
an essentialist foregoes an appeal to the meanings of the terms in which a
thing is referred to as accounting for the truth or falsity of sentences that
attribute essential properties to that thing. Once this step is taken, Quine
says, there is no legitimate basis on which to divide a things properties into
the essential and the non-essential. It is for this reason that Quine speaks of
the metaphysical jungle of Aristotelian e~sentialism~
and of the distinction
between essential and non-essential properties as invidi~us~and
LL baffling.
Quine has not, I believe, actually made good on this charge. He has not
shown that there is anything troubling about the way in which typical
essentialists want to divide properties into the essential and the nonessential. Some of the reasons for this failure will become clear in what
1 . 7he Wqs ofparadox and Other Essajs (Harvard University Press, 1976), p. 175f.
2. I should note that although I will cover a broad range of recent essentialist literature, I
cannot hope to do justice in this short paper to all the important contributions to the
current debate over essentialism. In particular, I regret not having space to discuss Alan
Sidellesprovocative work NecessiQ, Essence, and Indiuiduation: A Defense ofConventionalim (Cornell
University Press, 1989).
3. Op. cit. p. 176.
4. Op. cit. p. 184.
5. Word and Object (MIT Press, 1960), p. 199. For a more recent version of this type of criticism,
see Alan McMichael, The Epistemology of Essentialist Claims, in Peter French, Theodore
Uehling and Howard Wettstein (eds.)Midwest Studies in Phihsop/p, vol. xi (1986), pp. 33-52.
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follows.6 However, despite the fact that Quine himself has failed here,
essentialists must take this Quinean objection seriously. It is incumbent on
an essentialist not to make essentialist claims without a principled reason. Yet
there is, as I will argue, at least the appearance that some recent work on
essentialism is guilty of precisely this mistake. These difficulties facing
essentialists do not, I believe, justify Quines wholesale rejection of essentialist
talk, but they do show that essentialists have not yet fully dealt with what I
regard as Quines most important challenge.
To prepare the way for my analysis and critique, I need to offer a general
characterisation of essentialism and to discuss a different kind of Quinean
objection to essentialism. This objection turns on certain purported counterexamples to the essentialist view that a thing can have essential properties
independently of the particular way in which it is picked out. Despite the
fact that this objection was rightly discredited many years ago, it has recently
resurfaced in a different guise. Significantly, in responding to this new version
of the objection, recent essentialists have made their systems vulnerable to a
Quinean charge of arbitrariness. To see how all this is SO, lets begin with a
general characterisation of essentialism.
I . Essmtialivn Charachised
From the Quinean definition quoted at the beginning, we can extract two
claims required by essentialism:
(1) The fact that it is true (or false) to say that a thing has a property such
as being necessarily F does not depend on the way in which the thing
is referred to.
(( 1) is tantamount to the claim that the principle of substitutivity does not
break down in modal contexts. Such contexts would thus be referentially
transparent.)
(2) At least some things have some properties such as being necessarily F
(where this property is a non-trivial necessary property).
Some clarifications are in order. O n Quines definition, essentialism would
require not only that some things have properties such as being necessarily
F, but that those things also have certain other properties contingently. I omit
the requirement that there be some contingent properties because otherwise
a view which held that each property of each thing is essential to it would
not count as essentialist. Yet this would be infelicitous, for such a view is
clearly an extreme version of essentialism, not a form of anti-es~entidism.~
6. See also Ruth Barcan Marcus, Essentialism in Modal Logic, Now, vol. i (1967), pp. 91-96;
A Backward Glance at Quines Animadversions on Modalities, in Robert Barrett and
Roger Gibson (eds.), Perspectives on Quine (Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp. 230 243; and Richard
Cartwright, Some Remarks on Essentialism,Journd ofPhiho&, vol. Luv (I 968),pp. 6 15-626.
7. Leibniz is such an extreme essentialist. For discussion, see Benson Mates, 7he Philosophy of
Labnzr (Oxford University Press, 1986).
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substitutivity enables us to derive claims like (3a) from claims like (1) and (2).
Thus, as long as an essentialist gives the relevant definite description wide
scope, he can legitimately say that (3) is true and that no matter how the
number 9 is referred to it is necessarily greater than 7. So the Smullyan
defence against Quine consists of pointing out that a modal claim, viz. (3),
that might initially seem to be false can actually be seen as true when the
relevant definite description is construed as having wide scope.
Quine, of course, was aware of Smullyans response, but he initially
dismissed it because he thought that, in allowing differences in scope to affect
the truth-value of claims containing modal contexts, Smullyan violated
Russells theory.I5 Yet Quine was clearly mistaken for Russell did allow scope
to matter in attitude contexts and there is no reason to think he would not
make the same claim for modal contexts.16
3. Knipkean Reconstmah
A major impetus behind the resurgence of interest in essentialism in the last
two decades has been Saul Kripkes Naming and Necessi&. Part of what made
that work so exciting for essentialists was that it offered a general method for
handling certain objections to essentialist claims. That method is, in effect, a
subtle extension of the Smullyan strategy for responding to Quines worries
about the number of planets, as I will now explain.
To see the kind of objection Kripke is concerned with, I need to discuss
briefly an important commitment of essentialism: the necessity of identity.
For an essentialist, if a and 6 are terms that refer to the same object, i.e.
if a = 6 , then necessarily a = b. This can be shown as follows:
(4) Necessarily a
= a.
(6) Necessarily a = b.
15. See the I96 1 edition of Quines Fmm u Lagicul Point of V i .
16. See Neale, Descriptions, pp. 137-138, and Marcuss A Backward Glance at Quines
Animadversions on Modalities, p. 236. In the preface to the 1980 edition of Fmm u Logical
Point of Viw, Quine retracts his mistaken claims about Russell.
17. Haward University Press, 1980. See also Kripkes Identity and Necessity, in Stephen
Schwartz (ed.), Numzng, NecessiQ and Nuturul Kin& (Cornell University Press, 1977) pp. 66-1 0 1.
18. See Marcus, The Identity of Individuals in a Strict Functional Calculus of Second Order,
Journal ofsymbolic Logic, vol. xii (1947), pp. 12-15 (published under the name Ruth Barcan).
For related proofs, see Kripkes Numing undNecessiQ, p. 3, and Identity and Necessity, p. 89.
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a is
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(12a) is the wide scope reading; it says: concerning the thing x such that x is
the G , x is not necessarily F. (12b) is the narrow scope reading; it says: it is
not necessary that whatever thing x is the G is also F. Notice that if (1 1) is
false, then so is (1 2a). This is because in (12a) the variable x serves as a rigid
designator for the thing that is in fact the G, i.e. for a. Since the variable
here rigidly designates a and since, for Kripke,
(1 1) It is not necesssarily the case that
is F
is false, it follows that (12a) is false. However, the falsity of (1 1) does not entail
the falsity of (12b). (12b) is true just in case there is a possible situation in
which whatever is the G is not F. And this can be so, even if the thing that
is actually the G is necessarily F. Since Kripke regards (1 1) as false and (12)
as true, and since this can be so only if (12) is given a narrow scope reading
as in (12b), he must be interpreting (12) as (12b).
Here we can see how Kripkes strategy is an elaboration of the Smullyan
strategy. Both Kripke and Smullyan realise that essentialists are committed
to claims about an object that might seem to be false (viz. (3) and (9)).Kripke
and Smullyan each show that these claims can be seen to be unproblematically
true once they are distinguished from certain related, but false claims. In
these other claims, a definite description that in fact picks out the object in
question is interpreted as having narrow scope relative to a modal operator
(cf. (3b), (10) and the denial of (12b) each of which Kripke and Smullyan
would regard as false).
Kripke goes beyond Smullyan in the following way. The Smullyan strategy
only provides a way to safeguard problematic modal claims (such as (3)) that
contain a definite description. Kripke can handle such cases, but he also
provides a way to safeguard claims such as (9) that contain proper names
and not definite descriptions.
Kripke employs his general strategy to defend a number of essentialist
claims that he endorses. These include the claims: water is necessarily H 2 0 ,
heat is necessarily molecular motion, Cicero is necessarily Tully, cats are
necessarily mammals, gold is necessarily the element with atomic number
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79, the Queen necessarily has the parents she in fact came from, etc. Some
of these claims will be touched on below.
4. More Objections to Transparency
Despite the efforts of Smullyan and Kripke, attempts to demonstrate the
opacity of modal contexts still flourish. Indeed, the currently popular counterexamples have the same basic form as those already rebutted. Interestingly,
however, in response to these more recent counterexamples, essentialists tend
not to use the kind of strategy developed by Smullyan and Kripke.
Perhaps the most popular argument for opacity is this: Lets say that a
certain artisan at a certain time puts together a lump in the shape of the top
half of a certain giants body and a lump in the shape of the bottom half of
that giants body. Call the resulting statue Goliath and the resulting lump
Lumpl. The lump and the statue came into existence simultaneously, i.e.
at the moment when the artisan fused the two original lumps of clay. Suppose
that the artisan, soon after, destroys both the statue and the lump at once,
by smashing, or by means of an explosion, or whatever. Lumpl and Goliath
thus go out of existence at the same time and we can, indeed, say that there
are no temporal differences between them. The statue exists when and only
when the lump exists. It is plausible to say that
(13) Goliath is essentially a statue
and that
(14) Lumpl is not essentially a statue.
This is so because, for example, Lumpl might have been squeezed into a
ball and not been destroyed, but this cannot be said of Goliath. If (13) and
(14) are true, and if modal contexts are transparent, it follows that
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Why do these philosophers think that in this case the statue is identical
with the lump? The consideration usually appealed to is parsimony. Lewis
says, it reeks of double-counting to deny identity in such a case.23 In most
cases these arguments amount to little more than an assertion of an intuition
that there is only one object here. Such arguments do not have much force,
for it seems unlikely that philosophers who are inclined to regard modal
contexts as transparent would share this intuition. Or, if they do share this
intuition, such philosophers might see giving it up and accepting that there
is a multiplicity of objects in this case as a price worth paying in order to
maintain what they take to be the most natural account of modal predication.
Recently, however, a more subtle and potentially more effective argument
for identity in this case has emerged. This argument turns on a general
principle of the form
(16) Ify is a paradigm statue and x is intrinsically exactly likey and x does
not partly overlap any statue then x is a
(16) is, in effect, a claim of supervenience: x a n d y cannot differ with respect
to being a statue unless there is some intrinsic difference between them.25
This is a very plausible principle; it expresses the view that being a statue is
not a basic property. Something is or fails to be a statue in virtue of certain
other properties it has or fails to havez6 If (16) is correct, the claim of identity
follows quickly: Lump 1 is, on a plausible construal of intrinsic, intrinsically
exactly like the statue Goliath. Thus, by (16), Lumpl counts as a statue.
Since Lumpl is a statue, it could fail to be identical with the statue Goliath
only if there are two statues each wholly occupying the same region at the
same time. But asJohnston points out,* this seems rather gratuitous, especially
in light of the fact that once it is granted that Lumpl is a statue, it will, after
all, have all the modal properties of a statue, including being essentially a
statue. So the modal grounds for distinguishing Goliath and Lumpl would
disappear once it is granted that Lump1 is a statue. Thus no basis would
remain, it seems, for denying the identity of Lump 1 and Goliath once (16) is
accepted.
But is (16) correct? To deny it, one would have to allow that there are at
least some cases in which an objecty is a statue and x is not, yet there is no
intrinsic difference between them. If this were the case, then there would, it
seems, be no way to explain whyy is a statue and x is not. (Appealing to
modal differences would not help because such differences themselves are
explained in terms of the difference with regard to the property of being a
statue.)** In this sense, one might say that the difference between x a n d y
23. Orr the Pluralig .f Worlds, p. 252; Noonan elaborates this point in much detail in Constitution
is Identity.
24. On the reason for the third conjunct of the antecedent,see Noonans Constitution is Identity.
25. NeitherJohnstonnor Noonan, who both discuss this argument, offers a definition of intrinsic.
26. See Michael Burke, Copper Statues and Pieces of Copper: A Challenge to the Standard
Account, Analysis, vol. lii (1992), p. 14.
27. Mark Johnston, Constitution is Not Identity, Mind, vol. ci (1992),p. 98.
28. See Burke, Copper Statues and Pieces of Copper.
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31. I explore this issue in my paper Essentialists and Essentialism (Journal of Philnsop/y,
forthcoming).
32. See Copper Statues and Pieces of Copper; Dion and Theon: An Essentialist Solution to
an Ancient Puzzle, Journal ofPhilosop/y, vol. xci (1994), pp. 129-139; and Preserving the
Principle of One Object to a Place: A Novel Account of the Relations Among Objects,
Sorts, Sortals, and Persistence Conditions, Philosophy and Phenomenological Reseanh, vol. liv
(19941, pp. 591-624.
33. James Van Cleve, Why a Set Contains Its Members Essentially, NONOUS,
vol. xix (1985), pp.
585-602 (see esp. $6).
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