申論題

以下兩題,第1.題請主要用中文答,第2.請只用英文答,
2. The following passage is excerpted, with slight modifications, from Kit Finc, "Essence and Modality":
 It is my aim in this paper to show that the contemporary assimilation of essence to modality is fundamentally misguided and that, as a consequence, the corresponding conception of metaphysics should be given up.
 Let us turn first to the modal account. There are somewhat different ways the account can go. At its very simplest, it takes an object to have a property essentially just in case it is necessary that the object has the property. But there are two variants on the basic account, which make the necessary possession of the property conditional on something else. One variant makes the necessary possession conditional on existence: an object is taken to have a property essentially just in case it is necessary that the obje ject has the property if it exists. The other variant makes the necessary possession conditional upon identity: an object is taken to have is necessary that the object has the property if it is identical to that very object ve a property essentially just in case it is necessary that the object has the property if it is identical to that very object.

My objection to the modal accounts will be to the sufficiency of the proposed criterion, not to its

necessity. I accept that if an object essentially has a certain property then it is necessary that it has

the property (or has the property if it exists); but I reject the converse. For the time being, we shall

confine our attention to the existentially conditioned form of the criterion. Once the objection is

developed for this form, it will be clear how it is to be extended to the categorical form.

 Consider, then, Socrates and the set whose sole member is Socrates. It is then necessary, according

to standard views within modal set theory, that Socrates belongs to singleton Socrates if he exists;

for, necessarily, the singleton exists if Socrates exists, and, necessarily, Socrates belongs to

singleton Socrates if both Socrates and the singlcton exist. It therefore follows according to the

modal criterion that Socrates essentially belongs to singleton Socrates.

But, intuitively, this is not so. It is no part of the essence of Socrates to belong to the singieton.

Strange as the literature on personal identity may be, it has never been suggested that in order to

understand the nature of the person one must know to which sets he belongs. There is nothing in

the nature of a person, if I may put it this way, which demands that he beiongs to this or that set or

which even demands that there be any sets.

(d) A couple of paragraphs later, Fine writes:
         I am aware, though, that there may be readers who are so in the grip of the modal account of essence that they are incapable of underst rstanding the concept in any other way. ...it may help such a reader to reflect on the difference between saying that singleton Socr crates essentially contains Socrates and saying that Socrates essentially belongs to singleton Socrates. For can we not recognize a sense of nature, or of "what an object is", according to which it lies in the nature of the singleton to have Socrates as a member even though it does not lie in the nature of Socrates to belong to the singleton? Once we recognize the asymmetry between these two cases, we have the means to present the objection. For no corresponding modal asymmetry can be made out.________