Constitution versus Predication: An Essentialist Reply to the Modalist Challenge

Abstract Meeting successfully the modalist challenge needs the reconsideration of certain issues. In particular, the purposeful slip of tongue from essence or sortal form to essential properties made by the modalists creates the illusion that essentialism is a sort of de re necessity. To dispel the illusion one has to show why coming about under a kind and also being of that kind is not a property of the instances of that kind. The distinction between constitution under a form and the predication of properties to substances constituted by their form is explored as pertinent to the essentialist reply. Propria as ‘necessary accidents’ are connected to essences. The suggestion is that one can draw, with this connection, on the intensional notion of metaphysical necessity. Lastly, the role of particularized immanent sortal forms is considered by suggesting that they can fill out a gap in the universalist account of sortal essences.