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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 Ref
'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.
| 14632 | Quine may have conflated de re and de dicto essentialism, but there is a real epistemological problem [Jackson] |
| 14631 | How can you show the necessity of an a posteriori necessity, if it might turn out to be false? [Jackson] |
| 14633 | How do we tell a table's being contingently plastic from its being essentially plastic? [Jackson] |
| 14635 | An x is essentially F if it is F in every possible world in which it appears [Jackson] |