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Single Idea 11185

[filed under theme 9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / b. Essence not necessities ]

Full Idea

There seems to be surface synonymy between 'is essentially' and de re occurrences of 'is necessarily', but intersubstitution often fails to preserve sense (as in 'Winston is essentially a cyclist' and 'Winston is necessarily a cyclist').

Gist of Idea

'Is essentially' has a different meaning from 'is necessarily', as they often cannot be substituted

Source

Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.193)

Book Ref

-: 'Nous' [-], p.193

A Reaction

Clearly the two sentences have different meanings, with 'essentially' being a comment about the nature of Winston, and 'necessarily' probably being a comment about the circumstances in which he finds himself. Very nice. See also Idea 11186.

Related Idea

Idea 11186 'Essentially' won't replace 'necessarily' for vacuous properties like snub-nosed or self-identical [Marcus (Barcan)]

The 22 ideas from Ruth Barcan Marcus

11180 Essentialist sentences are not theorems of modal logic, and can even be false [Marcus (Barcan)]
11181 Aristotelian essentialism involves a 'natural' or 'causal' interpretation of modal operators [Marcus (Barcan)]
11183 The use of possible worlds is to sort properties (not to individuate objects) [Marcus (Barcan)]
11182 If essences are objects with only essential properties, they are elusive in possible worlds [Marcus (Barcan)]
11186 'Essentially' won't replace 'necessarily' for vacuous properties like snub-nosed or self-identical [Marcus (Barcan)]
11185 'Is essentially' has a different meaning from 'is necessarily', as they often cannot be substituted [Marcus (Barcan)]
11184 Aristotelian essentialism is about shared properties, individuating essentialism about distinctive properties [Marcus (Barcan)]
11187 In possible worlds, names are just neutral unvarying pegs for truths and predicates [Marcus (Barcan)]
11189 Dispositional essences are special, as if an object loses them they cease to exist [Marcus (Barcan)]
10785 Maybe a substitutional semantics for quantification lends itself to nominalism [Marcus (Barcan)]
10787 Is being just referent of the verb 'to be'? [Marcus (Barcan)]
10786 Anything which refers tends to be called a 'name', even if it isn't a noun [Marcus (Barcan)]
10788 Nominalists see proper names as a main vehicle of reference [Marcus (Barcan)]
10789 Nominalists say predication is relations between individuals, or deny that it refers [Marcus (Barcan)]
10790 Quantifiers are needed to refer to infinitely many objects [Marcus (Barcan)]
10791 Substitutional semantics has no domain of objects, but place-markers for substitutions [Marcus (Barcan)]
10794 The nominalist is tied by standard semantics to first-order, denying higher-order abstracta [Marcus (Barcan)]
10795 Substitutional language has no ontology, and is just a way of speaking [Marcus (Barcan)]
10796 If objects are thoughts, aren't we back to psychologism? [Marcus (Barcan)]
10797 Substitutivity won't fix identity, because expressions may be substitutable, but not refer at all [Marcus (Barcan)]
10798 A true universal sentence might be substitutionally refuted, by an unnamed denumerable object [Marcus (Barcan)]
10799 Nominalists should quantify existentially at first-order, and substitutionally when higher [Marcus (Barcan)]