- New
-
Topics
- All Categories
- Metaphysics and Epistemology
- Value Theory
- Science, Logic, and Mathematics
- Science, Logic, and Mathematics
- Logic and Philosophy of Logic
- Philosophy of Biology
- Philosophy of Cognitive Science
- Philosophy of Computing and Information
- Philosophy of Mathematics
- Philosophy of Physical Science
- Philosophy of Social Science
- Philosophy of Probability
- General Philosophy of Science
- Philosophy of Science, Misc
- History of Western Philosophy
- Philosophical Traditions
- Philosophy, Misc
- Other Academic Areas
- Journals
- Submit material
- More
Essence and Essentialism, Misc
Edited by Nathan Wildman (Tilburg University)
About this topic
| Summary | Essentialism is, broadly speaking, the doctrine that objects have essential properties. One issue here concerns the analysis or definition of ‘essential’ - i.e., what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for being an essential property? Modalists define essential properties in terms of an entity’s de re modal properties. And, while popular, the major challenges modalism faces have led many to embrace non-modalist accounts, which define essence in terms of e.g., 'real definition' or metaphysical explanation/grounding. A second issue concerns the extension of essential properties. Debates here center around various forms of essentialism, typically distinguished by the types of properties in question (e.g. origin essentialism, concerning whether an entity’s origin is essential to it, sortal essentialism, about whether an entity essentially is an instance of the sortal it is an instance of, etc.). A third issue concerns how we know essence facts. Tight connections with modal epistemology here seem obvious, but, depending upon how we answer the above analysis question, it could turn out that essence epistemology is an entirely different beast. Finally, while we can inquire about the essences of particular instances of kinds (e.g. is Tigger essentially carnivorous?), we can also ask questions about the essences of kinds themselves (e.g. are tigers essentially carnivorous?), where the former concerns individual or objectual essence, the latter, general or generic essence; the exact relation between these two types of essence is yet to be determined. |
| Key works | The place to start is Kripke 1980, which effectively re-introduced metaphysicians to essentialism; closely related is Putnam 1975. Regarding the analysis of essence, the most important piece is Fine 1994, where Fine offers his influential critique of the modalist analysis of essence. Highlighted modalist responses include Gorman 2005, Zalta 2006, Correia 2007, and Wildman 2013, though also see Correia 2012 for a few tweaks to Fine’s position and Lowe 2008 for an alternative non-modalist account. Meanwhile, concerning extension, Mackie 2006 offers a wonderful and detailed over-view of the debates here, while Paul 2006 argues against ‘shallow’ (minimalist) essentialism. Finally, on epistemology, see the above Lowe, Tahko 2018, as well as the affiliated section on Modal Epistemology. |
| Introductions | Robertson & Atkins 2013 - An excellent introduction to the Essential/Accidental Property distinction, touches upon most of the major topics concerning essence; Roca-Royes 2011 - Another excellent introduction looking at the relation between essential properties and other types of properties. |
Show all references
Related
Siblings
- Essentialism and Quantified Modal Logic (195)
- Essentialism about Species (108)
- Origins Essentialism (77)
- Scientific Essentialism (134)
- Anti-Essentialism (101)
See also
- Modal Epistemology (860 | 52)
- Fundamentality (472)
- Mereological Essentialism (54)
- Essentialism about Species (108)
- Philosophy of Gender (3,743 | 1,929)
- Feminist Metaphysics (474)
- Natural Kinds (608)
- Biological Natural Kinds (318)
- Abstract Objects (656 | 577)
- Identity (1,589 | 498)
- Material Objects (1,842 | 470)
History/traditions: Essence and Essentialism, Misc
- Locke: Essence (80)
Contents
721 found
Order:
| 1 — 50 / 721 |
- Conceivability, Essence, and Haecceities.David Elohim - manuscriptThis essay aims to redress the contention that epistemic possibility cannot be a guide to the principles of modal metaphysics. I introduce a novel epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics. I argue that the interaction between the two-dimensional framework and the mereological parthood relation, which is super-rigid, enables epistemic possibilities and truthmakers with regard to parthood to be a guide to its metaphysical profile. I specify, further, a two-dimensional formula encoding the relation between the epistemic possibility and verification of essential properties obtaining (...)Remove from this listExport citation
Bookmark - (1 other version)Generalized Identity, Zero-Ground, and Necessity.Yannic Kappes - manuscriptThis paper offers a modification of Fabrice Correia's and Alexander Skiles' ("Grounding, Essence, and Identity") definition of grounding in terms of generalized identity that extends it to zero-grounding. This definition promises to improve our understanding of zero-grounding by capturing it within the framework of generalized identity and allows an essentialist theory of modality based on Correia's and Skiles' account to resist a recent challenge by Jessica Leech. The latter is achieved by combining the following two ideas: (1) Some necessities are (...)
- Transworld identity as a problem for essentialism about kinds.Kaave Lajevardi - manuscriptEssentialism about natural kinds involves talking about kinds across possible worlds. I argue that there is a non-trivial transworld identity problem here, which cannot be (dis)solved in the same way that Kripke treats the corresponding transworld identity problem for individuals. -/- I will briefly discuss some ideas for a solution. The upshot is scepticism concerning natural-kind essentialism.
- Essential Accident and the Four-Fold Problems.Nadia Maftooni - unknown - Kheradnameh Sadra Quarterly 37.Essential accidents are among the complicated issues of the vast domain of philosophical-logical epistemology. In this paper, after a review of the meaning of the essential accident and its distinctive features from the viewpoint of philosophers such as Aristotle, Farabi, and Ibn-Sina, the writer poses the problems which are related to essential accidents. On the whole, two objections are advanced against the meaning of essential accidents and two more against its distinctive features.On of the conceptual problems is related to determining (...)Remove from this listExport citation Bookmark
- Value-based Essentialism: Essentialist Beliefs about Social Groups with Shared Values.April Bailey, Joshua Knobe & Newman George - forthcoming - Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.Psychological essentialism has played an important role in social psychology, informing influential theories of stereotyping and prejudice as well as questions about wrongdoers’ accountability and their ability to change. In the existing literature, essentialism is often tied to beliefs in shared biology—i.e., the extent to which members of a social group are seen as having the same underlying biological features. Here we investigate the possibility of “value-based essentialism” in which people think of certain social groups in terms of an underlying (...)
- Zygotes are Persisting Organisms.Nicholas Colgrove - forthcoming - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy.Zygotes are persisting organisms. That is, zygotes are organisms and most born human beings are identical to the zygotes from which they originated. I defend these claims against recent critiques. Chunghyoung Lee, for example, argues that for any zygote, z, z may develop into one of several, numerically distinct infants. If so, then for any infant, that infant is not identical to the zygote from which they originated. If Lee is correct, then zygotes are like gametes, which may give rise (...)
- Teleological essentialism across development.Rose David, Sara Jaramillo, Shaun Nichols & Zachary Horne - forthcoming - Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.Do young children have a teleological conception of the essence of natural kinds? We tested this by examining how the preservation or alteration of an animal’s purpose affected children’s persistence judgments (N = 40, ages 4 - 12, Mean Age = 7.04, 61% female). We found that even when surface-level features of an animal (e.g., a bee) were preserved, if the entity’s purpose changed (e.g., the bee now spins webs), children were more likely to categorize the entity as a member (...)
- Grounding and Properties.August Faller - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.Metaphysical grounding is often presented as a relation of directed dependence analogous to causation. The relationship between causation, properties, and laws of nature is hotly debated. I ask: what is the relationship between grounding, properties, and laws of metaphysics? I begin by considering the grounding analogue of Humean quidditism. Finding it implausible, I turn to the primitive-laws account of grounding, recently defended by Jonathan Schaffer and others. I argue this view is also unsatisfactory. I then present several possible dispositionalist-like accounts (...)
- The Mess We Make: On the Metaphysics of Artifact Kinds.Nurbay Irmak - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-17.According to natural kind essentialism, there are certain properties essential to natural kinds. A similar view, artifact kind essentialism, is commonly held for artifactual kinds. According to artifact kind essentialism, artifactual kinds have essential properties that determine their conditions of membership. In this paper, I explore and defend the possibility of a nonessentialist alternative for artifactual kind membership.
- (1 other version)Generalized Identity, Zero-Ground, and Necessity.Yannic Kappes - forthcoming - Erkenntnis.This paper offers a modification of Fabrice Correia’s and Alexander Skiles’ (_Grounding, Essence, and Identity_) definition of grounding in terms of generalized identity that extends it to _zero_-grounding. The definition promises (1) to improve our understanding of zero-grounding by capturing it within the framework of generalized identity, and (2) to unlock the theoretical potential of zero-grounding for Correia’s and Skiles’ account. The latter is demonstrated by arguing that the definition allows an essentialist theory of modality based on Correia’s and Skiles’ (...)
- (1 other version)Modality and Essence in Contemporary Metaphysics.Kathrin Koslicki - forthcoming - In Sam Newlands and Yitzhak Melamed, Modality: A Conceptual History. pp. 263-293.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 (...)
- Moritz Geiger’s Notion of Dynamic Essence – a Challenge for the Contemporary ‘Platonic’ Conception of Essence?Robert Michels - forthcoming - Disputatio.In 1924, the Munich-school phenomenologist Moritz Geiger argued that there are dynamic essences. His two examples are the tragic, and being human, his main ideas are that what it takes to be tragic varies over time historically and that what makes an organism human varies across different stages of its ontogenetic development. He hence points to two ways in which essences may be dynamic, that is, subject to change. The current paper takes Geiger’s view seriously and assumes that it poses (...)
- Giving Generic Language Another Thought.Eleonore Neufeld, Annie Bosse, Guillermo Del Pinal & Rachel Sterken - forthcoming - WIREs Cognitive Science.According to an influential research program in cognitive science, philosophy, and linguistics, there is a deep, special connection between generics and pernicious aspects of social cognition such as stereotyping. Specifically, generics are thought to exacerbate our propensity to essentialize, lead us to overgeneralize based on scarce evidence, and lead to other epistemically dubious patterns of inference. Recently, however, several studies have put empirical and theoretical pressure on some of the main tenets of this research program. The goal of this paper (...)
- Social Kind Essentialism.Asya Passinsky - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies.There has been widespread opposition to so-called essentialism in contemporary social theory. At the same time, within contemporary analytic metaphysics, the notion of essence has been revived and put to work by neo-Aristotelians. The ‘new essentialism’ of the neo-Aristotelians opens the prospect for a new social essentialism—one that avoids the problematic commitments of the ‘old essentialism’ while also providing a helpful framework for social theorizing. In this paper, I develop a neo-Aristotelian brand of essentialism about social kinds and show how (...)
- On Explaining Necessity by the Essence of Essence.Carlos Romero - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.There has been much debate recently on the question whether essence can explain modality. Here, I examine two routes to an essentialist account of modality. The first is Hale's argument for the necessity of essence, which I will argue is — notwithstanding recent attempted defences of it — invalid by its very structure. The second is the proposal that it is essential to essential truth that it is necessary. After offering three possible versions of the view, I will argue that (...)
- Mentalizing Objects.David Rose - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy 4.We have a mentalistic view of objects. This is due to the interdependence of folk psychology and folk physics, where these are interconnected by what I call Teleological Commingling. When considering events that don’t involve agents, we naturally default to tracking intentions, goal-directed processes, despite the fact that agents aren’t involved. We have a deep-seated intentionality bias which is the result of the pervasive detection of agency cues, such as order or non-randomness. And this gives rise to the Agentive Worldview: (...)
- Opaque Grounding and Grounding Reductionism.Henrik Rydéhn - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-27.This article aims to contribute to the largely neglected issue of whether metaphysical grounding – the relation of one fact’s obtaining in virtue of the obtaining of some other (or others) – can be given a reductive account. I introduce the notion of metaphysically opaque grounding, a form of grounding which constitutes a less metaphysically intimate connection than in standard cases. I then argue that certain important and interesting views in metaphysics are committed to there being cases of opaque grounding (...)
- Dispositional essentialism and the necessity of laws: a deflationary account.Alan Sidelle - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies:1-22.Two related claims have lately garnered currency: dispositional essentialism—the view that some or all properties, or some or all fundamental properties, are essentially dispositional; and the claim that laws of nature (or again, many or the fundamental ones) are metaphysically necessary. I have argued elsewhere (On the metaphysical contingency of laws of nature, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002) that the laws of nature do not have a mind-independent metaphysical necessity, but recent developments on dispositions have given these ideas a new (...)
- Contemporary Reflections on Substantial Kind Change in Avicenna.Tuomas E. Tahko - forthcoming - Theoria.Contemporary metaphysics, and especially neo‐Aristotelian metaphysics, tackles many of the same problems as Avicenna did. One of these problems is the possibility of substantial kind change. For instance, is it possible for an animal to change its species? Aristotle and Avicenna both regarded species to be eternal, but their metaphysics might allow for individuals to change their kinds—what is important is that one kind cannot change into another kind. From a contemporary perspective, this may seem odd, given what we know (...)
- The monotonicity of essence.William Vincent - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies:1-15.Kit Fine’s logic of essence and his reduction of modality crucially rely on a principle called the ‘monotonicity of essence’. This principle says that for all pluralities, xx and yy, if some xx belong to some yy, then if it is essential to xx that p, it is also essential to yy that p. I argue that on the constitutive notion of essence, this principle is false. In particular, I show that this principle is false because it says that some (...)
- Two problems for Zylstra's truthmaker semantics for essence.Lisa Vogt - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.In his article ‘Making semantics for essence’ (Inquiry, 2019), Justin Zylstra proposed a truthmaker semantics for essence and used it to evaluate principles regarding the explanatory role of essence. The aim of this article is to show that Zylstra's semantics has implausible implications and thus cannot adequately capture essence.
- An Unsurpassable World.Nevin Climenhaga - 2025 - In Justin J. Daeley, Optimism and The Best Possible World. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. pp. 213-236.Historically, philosophers who thought our world unsurpassable, like Leibniz, thought it the uniquely best of all possible worlds. But recent developments in value theory and philosophy of religion make clear that our world could be unsurpassable, but not uniquely best—because other worlds are still as good as or incomparable with it. In particular, the world may contain infinities that result in incomparability with many other worlds. This chapter advances the recent philosophical debate over whether it is tenable to hold that (...)
- How It All Depends: A Contemporary Reconstruction of Huayan Buddhism.Li Kang - 2025 - In Justin Tiwald, The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.Few would deny that something ontologically depends on something else. Given that something depends on something, what depends on what? Huayan Buddhism 華嚴宗, a prominent Chinese Buddhist school, is known for its extensive thesis of interdependence, according to which everything depends on everything else. This intriguing thesis is entangled with seemingly paradoxical claims that everything is not only identified with everything else but also contained within it. Moreover, the radical thesis of interdependence entails that dependence is pervasive and symmetric. In (...)
- Explanatory challenges and neo-Aristotelian essentialism.Kyle Darby O’Dwyer - 2025 - Synthese 205 (3):1-23.The neo-Aristotelian conception of essence has gained prominence in recent analytic metaphysics. I will present an epistemic problem for such essentialists. The challenge centers on the following question: assuming there are essence-facts, what relationship between essence-facts and essence-attitudes explains why those attitudes’ correctness is not coincidental? It is a debunking challenge—what I call the explanatory challenge. The explanatory challenge is distinctive for at least three reasons: (i) it does not centrally concern the domain in question containing abstract objects, or having (...)
- Alethic Modalities.Nathan Salmón - 2025 - Philosophical Studies 182 (1):287-304.It is widely held that metaphysical modality is the broadest non-epistemic, alethic modality, and that /a posteriori/ modal essentialist truths, like that gold has atomic number 79, enjoy the necessity of the broadest alethic modality. One prominent argument for these conclusions--given by Cian Dorr, John Hawthorne, and Juhani Yli-Vakkuri--rests upon an extremely dubious premise: that certain pairs of properties—e.g., being gold and being made of atoms containing 79 protons—are one and the very same property. The two properties are seen to (...)
- Kant’s Essentialism and Mechanism and Their Relevance for Present-Day Philosophy of Psychiatry.Hein van den Berg - 2025 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 15 (2):1-30.This paper aims to evaluate the relevance of Kant’s much discussed essentialism and mechanism for present-day philosophy of psychiatry. Kendler et al (2011) have argued that essentialism is inadequate for conceptualizing psychiatric disorders. In this paper, I develop this argument in detail by highlighting a variety of essentialism that differs from the one rejected by Kendler et al. I show that Kant’s essentialism is not directly affected by the argument of Kendler et al (2011), and that Kendler et al’s (2011) (...)
- The Sources of Necessity: Essence, Laws, and Logic.Tobias Wilsch - 2025 - OUP.This book investigates the idea that the sources of necessity—essence, laws, and logic—have the power to explain because they exert necessity, a modal force, on the facts. 'The Sources of Necessity' explores this idea through two interwoven themes: explanation and necessity. It develops a unified account of explanation and clarifies the distinctive explanatory contributions of each source. It examines the governing role of natural laws, the interaction between essences and logic in accounting for absolute necessity, and the existence and nature (...)
- Degrees of Reality.Damian Aleksiev - 2024 - In Yannic Kappes, Asya Passinsky, Julio De Rizzo & Benjamin Schnieder, Facets of Reality — Contemporary Debates. Contributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. pp. 20-30.This essay outlines a hierarchical framework of Reality that allows for degrees of Reality. I use Reality (with a capital “R”) to designate reality in a primitive, metaphysical sense. Reality, grounding, and essence are the key elements of the framework presented here. I assume that Reality must have a fundamental level and all fundamental phenomena must be Real. Moreover, I postulate that everything non-fundamental is ultimately grounded in the fundamental Real. But what about the Reality of the non-fundamental? I argue (...)
- Definition and essence from Aristotle to Kant.Peter R. Anstey & David Bronstein (eds.) - 2024 - New York, NY: Routledge.This volume brings together twelve essays exploring the history of theories of definition and essence in Western philosophy from Aristotle to Kant. Definition and essence have been central to philosophical theorising since antiquity and remain so to this day. This volume presents a series of explorations of key authors and themes connected by a common set of questions: What are definitions and essences? What are the connections between them? What are their logical and metaphysical properties? What sorts of things have (...)
- Deep perception: the direct awareness of individual being and the practice of being who we are.Jeremy Barris - 2024 - Lanham: Lexington Books.Deep Perception draws on analytic, continental, and Eastern philosophy to argue that direct perceptions of the being or essential character of a person, thing, or situation are possible. These perceptions are also enactments of our own being. Jeremy Barris explores their nature, logic, and practice.
- Essence and Modality: Continued Debate.Andrew Dennis Bassford - 2024 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 31 (3):309-336.Here I offer a critical evaluation of modalism about essential properties. To that effect, I begin by rehearsing Fine’s now infamous counterexamples to pure modalism. I then consider two recent defenses of it, offered by Livingstone-Banks and Cowling, respectively. I argue that both defenses fail. Next I consider the most plausible variety of impure modalism – sparse modalism – which has recently been defended by Wildman and de Melo. Skiles has argued that sparse modalism fails too. I argue that Skiles’s (...)
- About Haecceity: An Essay in Ontology.Matthew Davidson - 2024 - London: Routledge.This book offers an in-depth and updated examination of the nature of haecceity—that primitive entity which explains why something is distinct from other things. -/- The book begins by exploring different conceptions of haecceity throughout history. The discussion of various figures across history is important for getting clear on the nature of haecceity and its role in individuation. The next part of the book examines different views about the nature of haecceity. The author defends a view on which haecceities have (...)
- Persistence conditions: what they are, and what it is to have them.Dirk Franken - 2024 - Synthese 204 (3):1-26.It is common among metaphysicians to talk about objects _having_ persistence conditions or, equivalently, about the persistence conditions _of_ objects. However, as frequent as these statements are, as rare are the attempts to clarify their meaning in a systematic manner. In the present paper, I try to provide such an explanation by considering in detail the question of what it is for an object to have persistence conditions. The central results are the following. _First_: that an object has (in contrast (...)
- Engaging Kripke with Wittgenstein: the standard metre, contingent apriori, and beyond.Martin Gustafsson, Oskari Kuusela & Jakub Mácha (eds.) - 2024 - New York, NY: Routledge.This volume draws connections between Wittgenstein's philosophy and the work of Saul Kripke, especially his Naming and Necessity. Saul Kripke is regarded as one of the foremost representatives of contemporary analytic philosophy. His most important contributions include the strict distinction between metaphysical and epistemological questions, the introduction of the notions of contingent a priori truth and necessary a posteriori truth and original accounts of names, descriptions, identity, necessity and realism. The chapters in this book elucidate the relevant connections between Kripke's (...)
- Ontologiset Kategoriateoriat.Markku Keinänen & Jani Hakkarainen - 2024 - Ensyklopedia Logos.Ontologiset kategoriateoriat pyrkivät vastaamaan metafysiikan klassiseen ongelmaan: kysymykseen siitä, mihin eri kategorioihin oliot eli entiteetit jakaantuvat. Olioilla tarkoitetaan tässä mitä tahansa, joka on olemassa. Olevan kategoriat eli ontologiset kategoriat (lyhyesti kategoriat) ovat alustavasti olioiden hyvin yleisiä lajeja. Jäsenyys olioiden kategoriassa ei niinkään kerro sitä, mitä piirteitä oliolla on, vaan sen olemisen tavan ¬– miten se esimerkiksi on tai voi olla maailman rakenneosa. Esimerkkejä mahdollisista kategorioista ovat konkreettiset partikulaariset yksilöoliot (substanssit), ominaisuudet, relaatiot, prosessit, tapahtumat ja joukot. -/- 1. Mitä ovat ontologiset (...)
- The ‘Reduction’ of Necessity to Non-Modal Essence.Kathrin Koslicki - 2024 - In Kathrin Koslicki & Michael J. Raven, The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 319-332.Non-modalists about essence reject the idea that metaphysical modality is prior to essence, e.g., in the sense that the latter can be reduced to or defined in terms of the former. On the contrary, according to these theorists, the explanation, if anything, proceeds in the opposite direction: metaphysical modality does not explain, but is instead explained in terms of, essence. Thus, for non-modalists like Aristotle, Kit Fine and E. J. Lowe, one of the primary theoretical roles of essence is to (...)
- The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy.Kathrin Koslicki & Michael J. Raven (eds.) - 2024 - New York, NY: Routledge.Essences have been assigned important but controversial explanatory roles in philosophical, scientific, and social theorizing. Is it possible for the same organism to be first a caterpillar and then a butterfly? Is it impossible for a human being to transform into an insect like Gregor Samsa does in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis? Is it impossible for Lot’s wife to survive being turned into a pillar of salt? Traditionally, essences (or natures) have been thought to help answer such central questions about (...)
- Essence, Grounding, and Explanation.David Mark Kovacs - 2024 - In Kathrin Koslicki & Michael J. Raven, The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 305-318.Chapter 20 David Kovacs’ “Essence, Grounding, and Explanation” sets out four different ways in which essence might be taken to relate to the notion of grounding or metaphysical explanation, i.e., the type of connection that is often expressed by means of non-causal “in virtue of” or “because”-claims: (i) Unity: essence and grounding belong to a unified set of explanatory concepts; (ii) Supplementation: essence and grounding both contribute in their own way to a distinctive type of explanation; (iii) Independence: essence is (...)
- Conventionalism.Jonathan Livingstone-Banks & Alan Sidelle - 2024 - In Kathrin Koslicki & Michael J. Raven, The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 437-454.Conventionalism about essence is the view that truths about what is (and isn’t) essential to things are based upon talk and thought about the world, rather than mind-independent facts. This chapter presents motivations for conventionalism, and explains how conventionalism can be (and has been) developed to accommodate essences that can only be discovered with the help of empirical investigation, like “water is H2O” or “Obama is human”. We examine a range of objections that have been raised against conventionalism—often presented dismissively (...)
- The Epistemology of Essence.Antonella Mallozzi - 2024 - In Kathrin Koslicki & Michael J. Raven, The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy. New York, NY: Routledge.The chapter discusses the issue of how we may achieve knowledge of essence. It offers a critical survey of the main theories of knowledge of essence that have been proposed within contemporary debates, particularly by Lowe, Hale, Oderberg, Elder, and Kment.
- Essences of Individuals.Marco Marabello - 2024 - In Kathrin Koslicki & Michael J. Raven, The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy. New York, NY: Routledge.A common distinction is the one drawn between individuals and kinds. On the one hand, individuals are entities such as the chair where I am now sitting, my cat Aristotle, the particles that compose the chair and my cat, and the 2023 Rugby World Cup, that is, particular objects or events. On the other hand, kinds are entities such as chairs, cats, and world-cup finals, that is, roughly, groupings of particular objects or events. Granting this distinction and the assumption that (...)
- The once and always possible.Kory Matteoli - 2024 - Synthese 203 (28):1-32.In Death and Nonexistence, Palle Yourgrau defends what he calls the principle of Prior Possibility: nothing comes to exist unless it was previously possible that it exists. While this seems like a plausible principle, it’s not strong enough; it allows the impossible to come to exist. I argue for a stronger principle: nothing exists unless its existence has always been possible. Further, I argue that we then have reason to accept a surprising result: nothing exists unless its existence is always (...)
- Contemporary (Analytic Tradition).Robert Michels - 2024 - In Kathrin Koslicki & Michael J. Raven, The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy. New York, NY: Routledge.This paper provides an overview of the history of the notion of essence in 20th century analytic philosophy, focusing on views held by influential analytic philosophers who discussed, or relied on essence or cognate notions in their works. It in particular covers Russell and Moore’s different approaches to essence before and after breaking with British idealism, the (pre- and post-)logical positivists’ critique of metaphysics and rejection of essence (Wittgenstein, Carnap, Schlick, Stebbing), the tendency to loosen the notion of logical necessity (...)
- Is L.A. Paul’s Essentialism Really Deeper than Lewis’s?Cristina Nencha - 2024 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 20 (1):31-54.L.A. Paul calls “deep” the kind of essentialism according to which the essential properties of objects are determined independently of the context. Deep essentialism opposes “shallow essentialism”, of which David Lewis is said to be a prominent advocate. Paul argues that standard forms of deep essentialism face a range of issues (mainly based on an interpretation of Quinean skepticism) that shallow essentialism does not. However, Paul claims, shallow essentialism eliminates the very heart of what motivates essentialism, so it is better (...)
- Possible World Semantics Meets Metaphysics.Alik Pelman - 2024 - Xlinguae 17 (3) (Special Issue: Phil of Lang):122-134.Possible world semantics has been gradually fine-grained over the years. First, simple extensional semantics was fine-grained by relativizing it to worlds considered as counterfactual, thus generating standard possible-world semantics, which was later further fine-grained by relativizing it to worlds considered as actual, thus generating two-dimensional semantics. However, worlds considered as actual were only considered with respect to the empirical facts obtaining in such worlds. This paper shows that no less of an important role is played by another feature of actual (...)
- Plato’s Essentialism: Reinterpreting the Theory of Forms , by Vasilis Politis.Federico M. Petrucci - 2024 - Mind 133 (531):860-867.
- Esencia y Modalidad, de Kit Fine.Carlos Romero (ed.) - 2024 - Ciudad de México: UNAM. Translated by Carlos Romero."Esencia y Modalidad" es un clásico moderno, donde Kit Fine defiende la irreducibilidad de la esencia a la necesidad. Bajo la égida de autores como Saul Kripke, Ruth Barcan o David Lewis, la metafísica analítica se había desarrollado hasta entonces en el marco de la lógica modal cuantificada. En esta conferencia, Kit Fine cuestiona el orden explicativo tradicional mediante contraejemplos que ya forman parte del arsenal argumentativo de la disciplina, y luego sugiere ponerlo de cabeza, mediante una propuesta que hoy (...)
- La influencia del esencialismo de Kit Fine.Carlos Romero - 2024 - In Esencia y Modalidad, de Kit Fine. Ciudad de México: UNAM. pp. 9-30.Ensayo introductorio para mi traducción del influyente artículo "Essence and Modality" de Kit Fine.
- Sex and Gender.Esther Rosario - 2024 - In Kathrin Koslicki & Michael J. Raven, The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy. New York, NY: Routledge.This chapter surveys essentialist and anti-essentialist theories of sex and gender. It does so by engaging three approaches to sex and gender: externalism, internalism, and contextualism. The chapter also draws attention to two key debates about sex and gender in the feminist literature: the debate about the sex/gender distinction (the distinction debate) and the debate about whether sex and gender have essences (the essentialism/anti-essentialism debate). In addition, it describes three problems that theories of sex and gender tend to face: the (...)
- Modern.Anat Schechtman - 2024 - In Kathrin Koslicki & Michael J. Raven, The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 41-52.My aim in this chapter is to survey some of the most important developments in thinking about essence in the early modern period, highlighting ways in which thinkers in the period gradually depart from the medieval Aristotelian tradition. In this tradition, essence is thought of as selective, explanatory, and kind-determining. Whereas in the beginning of the early modern period some figures (such as René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Margaret Cavendish, and Anne Conway) still adhere to this traditional view, later figures (including (...)
| 1 — 50 / 721 |
PhilPapers logo by Andrea Andrews and Meghan Driscoll.
This site uses cookies and Google Analytics (see our terms & conditions for details regarding the privacy implications). Use of this site is subject to terms & conditions.
All rights reserved by The PhilPapers Foundation
Server: philpapers-web-54b44b69b7-g6h22 uwo