Necessity of Origin and Modal Metaphysics

Abstract

Kripke proposed that the origin of an entity should be deemed as part of the essence of it. Kripke’s argument required a crucial premise stating that certain hunk of matter and certain other non-trivial conditions are sufficient to deliver the entity in question. Further efforts by philosophers like Nathan Salmon and Graeme Forbes to make this requirement both precise and feasible have all nevertheless ended in failure. Here it is argued why this failure will always recur in these lines. The problem of the necessity of origin should be tackled in a different vein. It is argued that there seems to be no middle ground between necessity of all conditions of origin and contingency of all those conditions. Particularly, the idea that conditions of origin may be for the most part necessary, allowing the possibility of slight changes in them, is incoherent with a sensible conception of the ontological realm of the modal.