Natural‐Kind Essentialism, Substance Ontology, and the Unity Problem: Two Dispositionalist Solutions

Dialectica 70 (4):609-626 (2016)
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Abstract

What accounts for the linkage of seemingly diverse and inherently separable fundamental properties, such that they are regarded as properties of a single thing? Multiple answers to this question have been put forward in both the historical and current literature, especially from competing substance ontologies and competing theories concerning the metaphysics of natural kinds. Here I lay out and critically assess two ways in which dispositionalism might contribute to the discussion.

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Travis Dumsday
Concordia University of Edmonton

References found in this work

Real Essentialism.David S. Oderberg - 2007 - New York: Routledge.
From an Ontological Point of View.John Heil - 2003 - Philosophy 79 (309):491-494.
Critical Notices.Nancy Cartwright - 2003 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (1):244-249.
Nature's Capacities and Their Measurement.Tim Maudlin & Nancy Cartwright - 1993 - Journal of Philosophy 90 (11):599.
Resurrecting biological essentialism.Michael Devitt - 2008 - Philosophy of Science 75 (3):344-382.

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