We argue that Indian speakers’ discourse about reincarnation represents a counterexample to the ordinary-language evidence for the Kripkean thesis of material-origin essentialism. Advocates of the essentiality of origins contend not only that persons have the property of coming from the two particular gametes they actually came from essentially, but also that competent ordinary-language speakers find this view intuitively compelling. We adduce evidence from Indian speakers’ discourse, both ordinary-language remarks and published literature about reincarnation, to disconfirm that contention. We argue that the view that persons are mental entities is clearly coherent, intuitive, and not obviously necessarily false. We consider mental essentialism as an alternative, according to which persons are only accidentally embodied or biological. But we argue against it in favour of a modally relative anti-essentialism: what properties count as essential to an object and what properties count as accidental is not fixed but varies according to pragmatic utility.

中文翻译：

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轮回与反本质主义：反对物质起源的本质性的论证


我们认为，印度人关于轮回的论述代表了克里普克物质起源本质论的日常语言证据的反例。起源本质论的支持者不仅认为人具有来自他们实际上本质上来自的两个特定配子的属性，而且有能力的普通语言使用者认为这种观点直观上令人信服。我们引用印度人的话语中的证据，包括普通语言言论和出版的有关轮回的文献，来反驳这一论点。我们认为，人是精神实体的观点显然是连贯的、直观的，而且不一定是错误的。我们认为精神本质主义是另一种选择，根据这种观点，人只是偶然地体现出来的或生物性的。但我们反对它，支持模态相对反本质主义：哪些属性对对象来说是必要的，哪些属性是偶然的，这些属性不是固定的，而是根据实用效用而变化。