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Reply to Baldwin on De Re Modalities

However, Baldwin claims that (io) will not do as an analysis of the proposition in question, and consequently that my approach to de re modalities is 'incompatible with the intended understanding of essentialist claims' (p. 255), and he suggests that the mistake lies in my trying to use a sentential modal operator where only a predicate modal operator can do the job properly. Here I shall try to show that, while (io) may not be the most perspicuous way of analysing Baldwin's essentialist proposition, I was not mistaken in using a sentential modal operator in dealing with de re modalities. Baldwin's argument turns on the issue of how we are to interpret a sentence of the form '(Ax)(OFx)[a]' (the first conjunct of (io) and the negation of its second being sentences of this form). He considers first the proposal (based on a theory of Stalnaker and Thomason) that '(Ax)(oFx)[a]' is true iff the thing which is actually a is F in all possible worlds. But Baldwin points out that this proposal inevitably makes (io)'s first conjunct false, thus failing to do justice to the essentialist claim, since by this account that conjunct 'is true iff the person who is actually Elizabeth II was begotten by George VI in all possible worlds', yet 'neither George VI nor Elizabeth II exist in all possible worlds' (p. 255). He therefore suggests that we consider instead the strategy of 'taking the modal sentence operator in (io) to express "weak necessity". . . i.e. truth only in all those possible worlds in which the things denoted by the terms within the scope of the modal operator exist' (ibid.). But then it seems we fall foul of (i o)'s second conjunct, since 'we want it not to be essential of George VI that he begat Elizabeth II even though in all possible worlds in which she . . exist[s], George VI did beget Elizabeth II' (ibid.). Baldwin goes on to remark: