 Thus, Kment’s theory answers  question (a)  by appealing to IBE and conceptual competence. But what is his answer to  question (b),  namely, how are essentialist knowledge and modal knowledge connected? By contrast with Lowe and Hale, who appeal to deductive inference from knowledge of essence to knowledge of necessity, Kment holds that essentialist knowledge contributes to our modal knowledge by restricting methods such as conceiving and counterfactual reasoning, in other words, by providing epistemic friction, in the terminology introduced above. His account, thus, indicates a possible answer to (PMEF) (see  §2).