De Re Modality, Misc

Edited by Alessandro Torza (National Autonomous University of Mexico)
About this topic
Summary This category contains entries on Essentialism and De Re Modality which are not relevant to any other of its subcategories.
Related

Contents
190 found
Order:
1 — 50 / 190
  1. Dispositions and Ethics.Rani Lill Anjum, Svein Anders Noer Lie & Stephen Mumford - manuscript
    What is the connection between dispositions and ethics? Some might think very little and those who are interested in dispositions tend to be metaphysicians whose interests are far from value. However, we argue in this paper that dispositions and dispositionality are central to ethics, indeed a precondition. Ethics rests on a number of notions that are either dispositional in nature or involve real dispositions or powers at work. We argue for a dispositional account of value that offers an alternative to (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  2. Logical Forms: Validity and Variety of Formalizations.Georg Brun - forthcoming - Logic and Logical Philosophy:341-361.
    Formalizations in first-order logic are standardly used to represent logical forms of sentences and to show the validity of ordinary-language arguments. Since every sentence admits of a variety of formalizations, a challenge arises: why should one valid formalization suffice to show validity even if there are other, invalid, formalizations? This paper suggests an explanation with reference to criteria of adequacy which ensure that formalizations are related in a hierarchy of more or less specific formalizations. This proposal is then compared with (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  3. Leibniz and the Status of Possible Worlds in advance.Seth A. Jones - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophical Research.
    The dispute over the exact nature and status of possible worlds in Leibniz’s philosophy has proven difficult to resolve. The standard view, that there is one unique actual world and that possible worlds exist solely as ideas within God’s understanding, sits in tension with important metaphysical and theological components of Leibniz’s system. For example, Leibniz takes possible individuals to have some “essence or reality” in themselves and to strive for existence, which allows him to ground counterfactual claims and to overcome (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  4. Modality and Essence in Contemporary Metaphysics.Kathrin Koslicki - forthcoming - In Yitzhak Melamed & Samuel Newlands (eds.), Modality: A Conceptual History. Oxford, UK:
    Essentialists hold that at least a certain range of entities can be meaningfully said to have natures, essences, or essential features independently of how these entities are described, conceptualized or otherwise placed with respect to our specifically human interests, purposes or activities. Modalists about essence, on the one hand, take the position that the essential truths are a subset of the necessary truths and the essential properties of entities are included among their necessary properties. Non-modalists about essence, on the other (...)
    Remove from this list  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  5. Leibniz on Possibilia, Creation, and the Reality of Essences.Peter Myrdal, Arto Repo & Valtteri Viljanen - forthcoming - Philosophers' Imprint.
    This paper reconsiders Leibniz’s conception of the nature of possible things and offers a novel interpretation of the actualization of possible substances. This requires analyzing a largely neglected notion, the reality of individual essences. Thus far scholars have tended to construe essences as representational items in God’s intellect. We acknowledge that finite essences have being in the divine intellect but insist that they are also grounded in the infinite essence of God, as limitations of it. Indeed, we show that it (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  6. Relevance as difference-making: a generalized theory of relevance and its applications.Gerhard Schurz - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies:1-38.
    In this paper a generalized account of relevance as difference-making is developed. It is argued that relevance should not be considered as a particular relation, but as a (higher-order) property of instances of arbitrary relations: namely the property that variations of the relata of the relation instance make a difference for its truth. This generalized account of relevance can be fruitfully applied in many domains, such as (i) logical reasoning with applications to explanation, confirmation, verisimilitude, is-ought inference, (ii) probabilistic reasoning (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  7. Essentialist Arguments for Discernibility are Unsound.Antoine Taillard - forthcoming - Acta Analytica:1-21.
    It is common to argue that something x is distinct from something y by pointing out that x and y do not share all their essential properties. I show that arguments of this type are unsound. This unsoundness is rooted in the fact that sentences of the form ‘x is essentially F’ are ambiguous. Under one reading, the sentence says of x that it has a property of a unique and special kind. Interpreted in that way, the sentence is false, (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  8. The Essences of Fundamental Properties.Jennifer Wang - forthcoming - Metaphysics 2 (1):40-54.
    There is a puzzle concerning the essences of fundamental entities that arises from considerations about essence, on one hand, and fundamentality, on the other. The Essence-Dependence Link (EDL) says that if x figures in the essence of y, then y is dependent upon x. EDL is prima facie plausible in many cases, especially those involving derivative entities. But consider the property negative charge. A negatively charged object exhibits certain behaviors that a positively charged object does not: it moves away from (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  9. Plenitude, Coincidence, and Humility.Maegan Fairchild - 2023 - Philosophical Perspectives 36 (1):59-77.
    Fairchild (2019) advertised the humility of material plenitude, arguing that despite the profligate ontology of coincident objects it entails, the best version of plenitude is one that takes no stand on a range of nearby questions about modality and coincidence. Roughly, the thought is that plenitude says only that there are coincident objects corresponding to every consistent pattern of essential and accidental properties. Plenitude says (or should say) nothing about which patterns those might be, and so should be compatible with (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  10. Spinoza on the Essences of Singular Things.Sebastian Bender - 2022 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9.
    Essences play a central role in Spinoza’s philosophy, not only in his metaphysics, but also in his philosophy of mind, his theory of affects, and his political philosophy. Despite their importance, however, it is surprisingly difficult to determine what exactly essences are for Spinoza. On a widespread reading, the essence of X is nothing but the concept of X. This paper argues against this identification of essences and concepts. Spinozistic concepts are maximally inclusive: the concept of X contains everything that (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  11. A note on psychological continuity theories of identity and neurointerventions.Sebastian Jon Holmen - 2022 - Journal of Medical Ethics 48 (10):742-745.
    An important concern sometimes voiced in the neuroethical literature is that swift and radical changes to the parts of a person’s mental life essential for sustaining his/her numerical identity can result in the person ceasing to exist—in other words, that these changes may disrupt psychological continuity. Taking neurointerventions used for rehabilitative purposes as a point of departure, this short paper argues that the same radical alterations of criminal offenders’ psychological features which under certain conditions would result in a disruption of (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  12. Spinoza on Mind, Body, and Numerical Identity.John Morrison - 2022 - In Uriah Kriegel (ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind. pp. 293-336.
    Spinoza claims that a person’s mind and body are one and the same. But he also claims that minds think and do not move, whereas bodies move and do not think. How can we reconcile these claims? I believe that Spinoza is building on a traditional view about identity over time. According to this view, identity over time is linked to essence, so that a thing that is now resting is identical to a thing that was previously moving, provided that (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  13. Can Essentiality of Origin Save Meritocracy From The Luck Objection?Toby Napoletano - 2022 - Philosophia 51 (2):883-895.
    Rawls famously argued against meritocratic conceptions of distributive justice on the grounds that the accumulation of merit is an unavoidably lucky process, both because of differences in early environment, and innate talents. Thomas Mulligan (2018a) has recently provided a novel defense of meritocracy against the “luck objection”, arguing that both sources of luck would be mostly eliminated in a meritocracy. While a system of fair equality of opportunity ensures that differences in social class or early environment do not lead to (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  14. Machine learning and essentialism.Kristina Šekrst & Sandro Skansi - 2022 - Zagadnienia Filozoficzne W Nauce 73:171-196.
    Machine learning and essentialism have been connected in the past by various researchers, in order to state that the main paradigm in machine learning processes is equivalent to choosing the “essential” attributes for the machine to search for. Our goal in this paper is to show that there are connections between machine learning and essentialism, but only for some kinds of machine learning, and often not including deep learning methods. Similarity-based approaches, more connected to the overall prototype theory, spanning from (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  15. Dispositional realism without dispositional essences.Matthew Tugby - 2022 - Synthese 200 (3):1-27.
    Dispositional realism, as we shall use the term, is a non-reductive, anti-Humean approach to dispositions which says that natural properties confer certain dispositions as a matter of metaphysical necessity. A strong form of dispositional realism is known as pan-dispositionalism, which is typically interpreted as the view that all natural properties are identical with, or essentially dependent on, dispositions. One of the most serious problems facing pan-dispositionalism is the conceivability objection, and the solution commonly offered by essentialists employs the so-called redescription (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  16. The Modalities of Essence and Ground.Jonas Werner - 2022 - Frankfurt (Main): Vittorio Klostermann.
    It is not a coincidence that every red rose is coloured. No rose can be red without being coloured. A red rose is coloured in virtue of its being red, its being coloured is metaphysically explained by its being red. This is, at least in part, underwritten by what it is for the rose to be coloured, by the nature – or essence – of its being coloured. If this is right, then questions concerning possibility and necessity, questions concerning metaphysical (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  17. Asymmetry cannot solve the circularity/regress problem of property structuralism.Ralf Busse - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):10685-10720.
    Strong dispositional monism, the position that all fundamental physical properties consist in dispositional relations to other properties, is naturally construed as property structuralism. J. Lowe’s circularity/regress objection constitutes a serious challenge to SDM that questions the possibility of a purely relational determination of all property essences. The supervenience thesis of A. Bird’s graph-theoretic asymmetry reply to CRO can be rigorously proved. Yet the reply fails metaphysically, because it reveals neither a metaphysical determination of identities on a purely relational basis nor (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  18. Defending Intrinsic Biological Essentialism.Michael Devitt - 2021 - Philosophy of Science 88 (1):67-82.
    In “Resurrecting Biological Essentialism,” I went against the consensus in the philosophy of biology by arguing that a Linnaean taxon, including a species, has an essence that is, at least partly,...
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  19. The Bounds of Possibility: Puzzles of Modal Variation.Cian Dorr, John Hawthorne & Juhani Yli-Vakkuri - 2021 - Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edited by John Hawthorne & Juhani Yli-Vakkuri.
    In general, a given object could have been different in certain respects. For example, the Great Pyramid could have been somewhat shorter or taller; the Mona Lisa could have had a somewhat different pattern of colours; an ordinary table could have been made of a somewhat different quantity of wood. But there seem to be limits. It would be odd to suppose that the Great Pyramid could have been thimble-sized; that the Mona Lisa could have had the pattern of colours (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  20. Two Sorts of Constitutivism.Jeremy David Fix - 2021 - Analytic Philosophy 62 (1):1-20.
    Some things, but only some things, are by nature subject to standards. Why? I explain and develop what I call nature-first constitutivism, which says that what something is determines what it should be. Nature is the basis of normativity. I explain this view in terms of a unique type of property which particulars of a genus can lack even though those properties partially determines the nature of the genus. Such properties partially describe the nature of a genus and are thereby (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  21. Conceptualizing causal powers: activity, capacity, essence, necessitation.Ruth Porter Groff - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):9881-9896.
    Talk of powers is muddled. Building upon Powers and capacities in philosophy: The new aristotelianism, Routledge, London, 2012a, pp 207–227), I disambiguate four senses of the term: powers construed as activity, as capacity/potentiality, as essence and as necessity, respectively, in an attempt to clarify what it is that realists about causal powers take themselves to be realists about.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  22. Semantic theories, linguistic essences, and knowledge of meaning.Nick Haverkamp & Miguel Hoeltje - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):14459-14490.
    This paper argues, first, that the information problem poses a foundational challenge to mainstream semantics. It proposes, second, to address this problem by drawing on notions from Kit Fine’s essentialist framework. More specifically, it claims that the information problem can be avoided by strengthening standard truth theories, employing an operator expressing the notion of a relative constitutive semantic requirement. As a result, the paper proposes to construe semantic theories as theories of semantic requirements, and semantic knowledge as knowledge of such (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  23. On the essence of empty properties.Miloš Kosterec - 2021 - Synthese 198 (1):491-507.
    This paper deals with generalisations of modally based criteria for determining whether a given property is essential to an individual to the case of generic essences. These criteria usually presuppose extensionally individuated properties. The limitations of their generalisations are demonstrated using the case of the necessarily empty individual property and the necessarily empty individual office. I do not present a novel stance on the discussion of individual essences. The novelty of this paper lies in its claim that none of these (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  24. Social kinds are essentially mind-dependent.Rebecca Mason - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (12):3975-3994.
    I defend a novel view of how social kinds (e.g., money, women, permanent residents) depend on our mental states. In particular, I argue that social kinds depend on our mental states in the following sense: it is essential to them that they exist (partially) because certain mental states exist. This analysis is meant to capture the very general way in which all social kinds depend on our mental states. However, my view is that particular social kinds also depend on our (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  25. Essentializing Inferences.Katherine Ritchie - 2021 - Mind and Language 36 (4):570-591.
    Predicate nominals (e.g., “is a female”) seem to label or categorize their subjects, while their adjectival correlates (e.g., “is female”) merely attribute a property. Predicate nominals also elicit essentializing inferential judgments about inductive potential and stable explanatory membership. Data from psychology and semantics support that this distinction is robust and productive. I argue that while the difference between predicate nominals and predicate adjectives is elided by standard semantic theories, it ought not be. I then develop and defend a psychologically motivated (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  26. The ground of ground, essence, and explanation.Michael Wallner - 2021 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 6):1257-1277.
    This paper is about the so-called meta-grounding question, i.e. the question of what grounds grounding facts of the sort ‘φ is grounded in Γ ’. An answer to this question is pressing since some plausible assumptions about grounding and fundamentality entail that grounding facts must be grounded. There are three different accounts on the market which each answer the meta-grounding question differently: Bennett’s and deRosset’s “Straight Forward Account” (SFA), Litland’s “Zero-Grounding Account” (ZGA), and “Grounding Essentialism” (GE). I argue that if (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  27. In Defense of Platonic Essentialism About Numbers.Megan Wu - 2021 - Stance 14 (1):103-113.
    In defense of anti-essentialism, pragmatist Richard Rorty holds that we may think of all objects as if they were numbers. I find that Rorty’s metaphysics hinges on two rather weak arguments against the essences of numbers. In contrast, Plato’s metaphysics offers a plausible definition of essentiality by which numbers do have essential properties. Further, I argue that Rorty’s argumentative mistake is mischaracterizing Plato’s definition. I conclude that Plato’s definition of “essential” is a robust one which implies that many properties, beyond (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  28. Dispositionality, categoricity, and where to find them.Lorenzo Azzano - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):2949-2976.
    Discussions about dispositional and categorical properties have become commonplace in metaphysics. Unfortunately, dispositionality and categoricity are disputed notions: usual characterizations are piecemeal and not widely applicable, thus threatening to make agreements and disagreements on the matter merely verbal—and also making it arduous to map a logical space of positions about dispositional and categorical properties in which all parties can comfortably fit. This paper offers a prescription for this important difficulty, or at least an inkling thereof. This will be achieved by (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  29. Meaning and Definition: Scepticism and Semantics in Twelfth‐Century Arabic Philosophy.Fedor Benevich - 2020 - Theoria 88 (1):72-108.
    The theory of essential definitions is a fundamental anti‐sceptic element of the Aristotelian‐Avicennian epistemology. In this theory, when we distinguish the genus and the specific differentia of a given essence we thereby acquire a scientific understanding of it. The aim of this article is to analyse systematically the sceptical reasons, arguments and conclusions against real definitions of three major authorities of twelfth‐century Arabic philosophy: Faḫr al‐Dīn al‐Rāzī, Šihāb al‐Dīn al‐Suhrawardī and Abū l‐Barakāt al‐Baġdādī. I focus on showing how their refutation (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (7 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  30. Can Essence Provide Knowledge of Metaphysical Necessity? A Reply to Jago.Benjamin L. Curtis - 2020 - Philosophia 48 (3):931-933.
    In this paper I argue against Mark Jago’s recent suggestion that ordinary knowers can move from knowledge of essence to knowledge of metaphysical necessity.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  31. Filosofía, análisis y juegos: el inútil intento de definir las cosas.Sebastián Briceño Domínguez - 2020 - Tópicos: Revista de Filosofía 59:121-151.
    According to McGinn, the aim of philosophy is to discover essences through conceptual analysis, and it qualifies as a game in Suits’ sense. However, everything in Suits’ definition of game seems to exclude from its scope McGinn’s definition of philosophy. Here I criticise McGinn’s definition and offer a more comprehensive one. Incidentally, this definition will allow us to include philosophy within the class of activities that do satisfy Suits’ definition of game.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  32. Essence and Identity.Kathrin Koslicki - 2020 - In Mircea Dumitru (ed.), Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine. Oxford, UK: pp. 113-140.
    This paper evaluates six contenders which might be invoked by essentialists in order to meet Quine’s challenge, viz., to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the crossworld identity of individuals: (i) an object’s qualitative character; (ii) matter; (iii) origins; (iv) haecceities or primitive non-qualitative thisness properties; (v) “world-indexed properties”; and (iv) individual forms. The first three candidates, I argue, fail to provide conditions that are both necessary and sufficient for the crossworld identity of individuals; the fourth and fifth criteria are (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  33. Are Reference Rules Inessential to Meaning?Kirk Ludwig - 2020 - Metaphysics 3 (1):92-102.
    This article responds to a case-based argument by Mark Richard that rule of reference is not essential to meaning. It objects that the argument requires shifting between understanding the relevant term in the case, ‘marriage,’ as a determinable, in order to support one premise, and a determinate, in order to support another. On no univocal interpretation can both premises be made true.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  34. Overcoming the modal/amodal dichotomy of concepts.Christian Michel - 2020 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 20 (4):655-677.
    The debate about the nature of the representational format of concepts seems to have reached an impasse. The debate faces two fundamental problems. Firstly, amodalists (i.e., those who argue that concepts are represented by amodal symbols) and modalists (i.e., those who see concepts as involving crucially representations including sensorimotor information) claim that the same empirical evidence is compatible with their views. Secondly, there is no shared understanding of what a modal or amodal format amounts to. Both camps recognize that the (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  35. Is Reference Essential to Meaning?Mark Richard - 2020 - Metaphysics 3 (1):68-80.
    Most linguists and philosophers will tell you that whatever meaning is, it determines the reference of names, the satisfaction conditions of nouns and verbs, the truth conditions of sentences; in linguist speak, meaning determines semantic value. So a change in semantic value implies a change in meaning. So the semantic value a meaning determines is essential to that meaning: holding contributions from context constant, if two words have different semantic values they cannot mean the same thing. If this is correct, (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  36. On What (In General) Grounds What.Kevin Richardson - 2020 - Metaphysics 2 (1):73–87.
    A generic grounding claim is a grounding claim that isn’t about any particular entity or fact. For example, consider the claim: an act is right in virtue of maximizing happiness. One natural idea is that generic grounding claims state mere regularities of ground. So if an act is right in virtue of maximizing happiness, then every possible right act is right in virtue of maximizing happiness. The generic claim generalizes over particular grounding relations. In this essay, I argue that this (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  37. The World Is a Necessary Being.Chad Vance - 2020 - Philosophia 48 (1):377-390.
    A standard conception of metaphysical modality accepts that Some de re modal claims are true, These should be understood in terms of a possible worlds semantics, and There is trans-world identity. For instance, it seems true that Humphrey could have won the election. In possible worlds speak, we say that there exists a possible world where Humphrey wins the election. Furthermore, had that possibility been actualized instead of this one, Humphrey—our Humphrey, the very same man—would still have existed. Here, I (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  38. A Case for Modal Fragmentalism.Yiwen Zhan - 2020 - Philosophia 49 (3):1309-1328.
    The idea of fragmentalism has been proposed by Kit Fine as a non-standard view of tense realism. This paper examines a modal version of the view, called modal fragmentalism, which combines genuine realism and realism of modality. Modal fragmentalism has been recently discussed by Iaquinto. But unlike Iaquinto, who primarily focused on possibilities de re, in this paper, we focus on expressions of possibilities de dicto. We argue that the chief idea of modal realism should be that different worlds are (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  39. 'On a Supposed Puzzle Concerning Modality and Existence'.Thomas Atkinson, Daniel J. Hill & Stephen K. McLeod - 2019 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 26 (3):446-473.
    Kit Fine has proposed a new solution to what he calls ‘a familiar puzzle’ concerning modality and existence. The puzzle concerns the argument from the alleged truths ‘It is necessary that Socrates is a man’ and ‘It is possible that Socrates does not exist’ to the apparent falsehood ‘It is possible that Socrates is a man and does not exist’. We discuss in detail Fine’s setting up of the ‘puzzle’ and his rejection, with which we concur, of two mooted solutions (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  40. Metaphysical Constraints, Primitivism, and Reduction.Michael Bertrand - 2019 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 5 (4):503-521.
    The argument from absence of analysis (AAA) infers primitivism about some x from the absence of a reductive analysis ofx. But philosophers use the word ‘primitive’ to mean many distinct things. I argue that there is a robust sense of ‘primitive’ present in the metaphysics literature that cannot be inferred via the AAA. Successfully demonstrating robust primitivism about somexrequires showing two things at once: that a reduction ofxis not possible and that an explanatorily deep characterization ofxis not available. In order (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  41. On Essential Structures and Symmetries.Tomasz Bigaj - 2019 - In Bartłomiej Skowron (ed.), Contemporary Polish Ontology. De Gruyter. pp. 1-24.
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  42. Existence and Essence in Mulla Sadra’s Ontology.Muhammad Kamal - 2019 - Philosophy Study 9 (7).
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  43. Esencjalizm, antyhaecceityzm i haecceityzm.Karol Lenart - 2019 - Hybris 44 (1):131-151.
    A standard contemporary formulation of essentialism defines essential properties with a help of a concept of possible worlds. It is often argued that in order to use possible worlds effectively, facts about transworld identity of individuals need to be determined. In this paper I discuss how essentialist might attempt the issue of transworld identity of individuals. Specifically, I analyze a connection between essentialism and the two theories that explain the transworld identity issue, that is, haecceitism and antihaecceitism. I provide a (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  44. In Virtue Of: Determination, Dependence, and Metaphysically Opaque Grounding.Henrik Rydéhn - 2019 - Dissertation, Uppsala University
    This dissertation investigates grounding, the relation of non-causal determination whereby one fact obtains in virtue of some other fact or facts. Although considerations of grounding have been central throughout Western philosophy, the last 15-20 years have seen a renaissance of systematic work on grounding in analytic philosophy. The aim of the dissertation is to contribute to our understanding of the nature of grounding and its relation to other central phenomena in metaphysics. -/- Chapter 1 of the dissertation provides a brief (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  45. Part, slot, ground: foundations for neo-Aristotelian mereology.Thomas Sattig - 2019 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 11):2735-2749.
    Slot mereology reduces parthood to slot-filling: a material object is structured by a certain arrangement of slots; and the fillers of these slots are the object's proper parts. My aim in this essay is to go further and reduce slot-filling to essence and grounding. In combination, the reduction of parthood to slot-filling and the reduction of slot-filling to essence and grounding yields the reduction of parthood to essence and grounding. If this overarching reduction succeeds, it promises new metaphysical foundations for (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  46. Does God Know the Occurrence of a Change Among Particulars? Avicenna and the Problem of God’s Knowledge of Change.Amirhossein Zadyousefi - 2019 - Dialogue 58 (4):621-652.
    (i) God is omniscient; therefore, for any change, C, among particulars, God knows the occurrence of C. (ii) If God knows the occurrence of C, then X. (iii) not-X. It is clear that the set of propositions (i)—(iii) is inconsistent. This is the general form of two problems—which I call the ‘problem of change in knowledge’ (PCK) and the ‘problem of change in essence’ (PCE)—for Avicenna concerning God’s knowledge of particulars. No work in the secondary literature has discussed exactly what (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  47. 4. Individual Essence and the Creation.Linda Zagzebski - 2019 - In Thomas V. Morris (ed.), Divine and Human Action: Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism. Cornell University Press. pp. 119-144.
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  48. The Haecceitic Euthyphro problem.Jason Bowers & Meg Wallace - 2018 - Analysis 78 (1):13-22.
    Haecceitism is the thesis that, necessarily, in addition to its qualities, each thing has a haecceity or individual essence. The purpose of this paper is to expose a flaw in haecceitism: it entails that familiar cases of fission and fusion either admit of no explanation or else only admit of explanations too bizarre to warrant serious consideration. Because the explanatory problem we raise for haecceitism closely resembles the Euthyphro problem for divine command theory, we refer to our objection as the (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  49. Essence and modal knowledge.Boris Kment - 2018 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 8):1957-1979.
    During the last quarter of a century, a number of philosophers have become attracted to the idea that necessity can be analyzed in terms of a hyperintensional notion of essence. One challenge for proponents of this view is to give a plausible explanation of our modal knowledge. The goal of this paper is to develop a strategy for meeting this challenge. My approach rests on an account of modality that I developed in previous work, and which analyzes modal properties in (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  50. On the essence of empty properties.Miloš Kosterec - 2018 - Synthese (1):1-17.
    This paper deals with generalisations of modally based criteria for determining whether a given property is essential to an individual to the case of generic essences. These criteria usually presuppose extensionally individuated properties. The limitations of their generalisations are demonstrated using the case of the necessarily empty individual property and the necessarily empty individual office. I do not present a novel stance on the discussion of individual essences. The novelty of this paper lies in its claim that none of these (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
1 — 50 / 190