about essences. David Lewis offers another argument. The paradox of coincidence can be solved if we accept inconstancy. We can then say that it is possible for a dishpan and a piece of plastic to coincide, in some context. That context can then be described using CT. Sider makes the point that David Lewis feels he was forced to defend CT, due to modal realism. Sider uses CT as a solution to the paradox of material coincidence. Counterpart theory compared to qua-theory and individual concepts We assume that contingent identity is real. Then it is informative to compare CT with other theories about how to handle de re representations. Qua-theory Kit Fine (1982) and Alan Gibbard (1975) (according to Rea 1997) are defences of qua-theory. According to qua-theory we can talk about some of an object's modal properties. The theory is handy if we don't think it is possible for Socrates to be identical with a piece of bread or a stone. Socrates qua person is essentially a person. Individual concepts According to Rudolf Carnap, in modal contexts variables refer to individual concepts instead of individuals. An individual concept is then defined as a function of individuals in different possible worlds. Basically, individual concepts deliver semantic objects or abstract functions instead of real concrete entities as in CT. Counterpart theory and epistemic possibility Kripke accepts the necessity of identity but agrees with the feeling that it still seems that it is possible that Phospherus (the Morning Star) is not identical to Hespherus (the Evening Star). For all we know, it could be that they are different. He says: What, then, does the intuition that the table might have turned out to have been made of ice or of anything else, that it might even have turned out not to be made of molecules, amount to? I think that it means simply that there might have been a table looking and feeling just like this one and placed in this very position in the room, which was in fact made of ice, In other words, I (or some conscious being) could have been qualitatively in the same epistemic situation that in fact obtains, I could have the same sensory evidence that I in fact have, about a table which was made of ice. The situation is thus akin to the one which inspired the counterpart theorists; when I speak of the