Metaphysical modality and essentiality

Diplôme Thèse Metaphysical modality and essentiality eng 2013-12-16 author Michels Robert 739375 director Mulligan Kevin 22751 10.13097/archive-ouverte/unige:39333 urn:nbn:ch:unige-393330 L. 794 Essentialists claim that we can distinguish between an object's essential and its accidental properties. Following important developments in modal logic during the 1960s and 70s, the orthodox view was that the essential properties of an object are its necessary properties. In his influential 1994 paper "Essence and Modality", Kit Fine argues that the orthodox view is wrong. His two main claims are that first, essentiality cannot be defined in terms of necessity and second, that necessity should instead be defined in terms of essentiality. In my dissertation, I aim to undermine both of his claims in order to defend a variation of the orthodox view. To do this, I first develop Fine's proposal for an essentialist definition of necessity into a more general essentialist theory of modality. I then raise a series of problems for the resulting theory. Finally, I introduce and defend a novel definition of essentiality in terms of metaphysical necessity and a notion of metaphysical dependence. Modality Possibility Necessity Essence Essentiality Metaphysics Dependence Dewey 100/501 European Commission Perspectival thoughts and facts 238128 PETAF EU FP7 89 Département de philosophie 3G false 029f996e-4e66-4949-85ec-9bcd79fcce10 Thesis Restricted thesis_rmichels.pdf 1181508 application/pdf ce377d8fd8c71aae7c1ecbabf7dd1fb08198744e80d60b686528ed63ceb4e2bc restrictedAccess Faculté des lettres / Département de philosophie

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Michels, Robert