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Single Idea 12761

[filed under theme 9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties ]

Full Idea

If necessity is explained in terms of possible worlds, ...then an essential property is a property that a thing has in all possible worlds in which it exists.

Gist of Idea

An essential property is one had in all the possible worlds where a thing exists

Source

Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.71)

Book Ref

Stalnaker,Robert C.: 'Ways a World Might Be' [OUP 2003], p.71

A Reaction

This seems to me to be a quite shocking confusion of necessary properties with essential properties. The point is that utterly trivial properties can be necessary, but in no way part of the real essence of something.

The 21 ideas with the same theme [essence just is necessary properties]:

13083 The essence is the necessary properties, and the concept includes what is contingent [Leibniz]
11156 The essence is that without which a thing can neither be, nor be conceived to be [Mill]
16997 An essential property is true of an object in any case where it would have existed [Kripke]
17045 De re modality is an object having essential properties [Kripke]
13952 Essentialism says some of a thing's properties are necessary, and could not be absent [Cartwright,R]
12761 An essential property is one had in all the possible worlds where a thing exists [Stalnaker]
12142 Essentially, a has P, always had P, must have had P, and has never had a future without P [Brody]
12143 An object having a property essentially is equivalent to its having it necessarily [Brody]
16467 'Socrates is essentially human' seems to say nothing could be Socrates if it was not human [Stalnaker]
14076 Essentialism is the existence of a definite answer as to whether an entity fulfils a condition [Gibbard]
13793 An essential property is one possessed by all counterparts [Lewis, by Elder]
13969 Kripkean essential properties and relations are necessary, in all genuinely possible worlds [Soames]
18888 Essentialism says some properties must be possessed, if a thing is to exist [Salmon,N]
13808 A relation is essential to two items if it holds in every world where they exist [Forbes,G]
12012 Essential properties are those without which an object could not exist [Forbes,G]
11158 Essentialist claims can be formulated more clearly with quantified modal logic [Fine,K]
11160 Simple modal essentialism refers to necessary properties of an object [Fine,K]
13072 Modern essences are sets of essential predicate-functions [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
17080 Modern essentialists express essence as functions from worlds to extensions for predicates [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
14380 The distinction between necessary and essential properties can be ignored [Rocca]
17952 Modal accounts make essence less mysterious, by basing them on the clearer necessity [Vetter]