Necessity, Essence, and Explanation

Abstract

I shall discuss some of the relations among metaphysical modality, essence, and explanation. Marion Godman, Antonella Mallozzi and David Papineau have recently argued that the essence of a kind consists in its super-explanatory property-a single property that is causally responsible for a multitude of commonalities shared by the instances of the kind. And they argue that this super-explanatory account of essence offers a principled account of aposteriori necessities concerning kinds. I shall examine their arguments and argue that they are fallacious. Along the way, a general problem will also emerge that applies to any account that tries to explicate the notion of essence in terms of an explanatory relation.