Full Idea
On a friendly reading of Quine, there is nothing to make the difference between a table's being contingently plastic and its being essentially plastic.
Gist of Idea
How do we tell a table's being contingently plastic from its being essentially plastic?
Source
Frank Jackson (Possible Worlds and Necessary A Posteriori [2010], 5)
Book Reference
'Modality', ed/tr. Hale,B/Hoffman,A [OUP 2010], p.261
A Reaction
This is, of course, the dreaded modern usage of 'essential' to just mean 'necessary' and nothing more. In my view, there may be a big problem with knowing whether a problem is necessary, but knowing whether it is essential is much easier.