Abstract

The neo-Aristotelian conception of essence has gained prominence in recent analytic metaphysics. I will present an epistemic problem for such essentialists. The challenge centers on the following question: assuming there are essence-facts, what relationship between essence-facts and essence-attitudes explains why those attitudes’ correctness is not coincidental? It is a debunking challenge—what I call the explanatory challenge. The explanatory challenge is distinctive for at least three reasons: (i) it does not centrally concern the domain in question containing abstract objects, or having evolutionary etiologies, (ii) it targets neo-Aristotelian essentialism, not merely essentialism insofar as it is modally analyzable, and (iii) the challenge comes in three grades—weak, moderate, and strong. Although debunking challenges do not pose a problem unique to essentialism, they have yet to be explicitly applied to essentialism in detail. I aim to redress this omission here. I begin by explaining the challenge’s grades, paying particular attention to a species of the moderate grade, which generates a more specific challenge I call the deflationary challenge. Then, I’ll survey David Oderberg’s and E.J. Lowe’s epistemologies of essence. I’ll argue that their accounts fail the weak challenge and that this leaves them especially vulnerable to the moderate challenge, where this involves positive reason to think essence-facts do not, in fact, play an explanatory role in forming one's essence-attitudes. Lastly, I’ll propose that Amie Thomasson’s deflationary account of identity-conditions might offer a deflationary challenge for essentialism.