Kit Fine and Gideon Rosen propose to define constitutive essence in terms of ground-theoretic notions and some form of consequential essence. But we think that the Fine–Rosen proposal is a mistake. On the Fine–Rosen proposal, constitutive essence ends up including properties that, on the central notion of essence (what Fine calls ‘the notion of essence which is of central importance to the metaphysics of identity’), are necessary but not essential. This is because consequential essence is (roughly) closed under logical consequence, (...) and the ability of logical consequence to add properties to an object’s consequential essence outstrips the ability of ground-theoretic notions, as used in the Fine–Rosen proposal, to take those properties out. The necessary-but-not-essential properties that, on the Fine–Rosen proposal, end up in constitutive essence include the sorts of necessary-but-not-essential properties that, others have noted, end up in consequential essence. (shrink)

This paper sets out a number of reasons for thinking that the framework of possible worlds, even when construed non-reductively, does not provide an adequate basis for an explanation of modality. I first consider a non-reductive version of Lewis' modal realism, and then move on to consider the ersatzist approach of Plantinga et al. My main complaint is that the framework of possible worlds gets the semantics and metaphysics of ordinary modal discourse wrong. That is, possible worlds do not give (...) us an adequate answer to the semantic question of what ordinary modal claims mean, nor do they give us an adequate answer to the metaphysical question of what makes such claims true. (shrink)

In this critical review I discuss the main themes of the papers in Kit Fine's Modality and Tense: Philosophical Papers. These themes are that modal operators are intelligible in their own right and that actualist quantifiers are to be taken as basic with respect to possibilist quantifiers. I also discuss a previously unpublished paper of Fine's on modality and existence.