Dispositional essentialism and the grounding of natural modality

Philosophers' Imprint 14 (2014)
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Abstract

Dispositional essentialism is a non-Humean view about the essences of certain fundamental or natural properties that looms large in recent metaphysics , not least because it promises to explain neatly the natural modalities such as laws of nature, counterfactuals, causation and chance. In the current paper, however, several considerations are presented that indicate a serious tension between its essentialist core thesis and natural “metaphysical” interpretations of its central explanatory claims

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Siegfried Jaag
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

Citations of this work

Making best systems best for us.Christian Loew & Siegfried Jaag - 2018 - Synthese 197 (6):2525-2550.
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Grounding theories of powers.Matthew Tugby - 2021 - Synthese 198 (12):11187-11216.
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References found in this work

Counterfactuals.David K. Lewis - 1973 - Cambridge, MA, USA: Blackwell.
Writing the Book of the World.Theodore Sider - 2011 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
New work for a theory of universals.David K. Lewis - 1983 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (4):343-377.
A World of States of Affairs.D. Armstrong - 1997 - Cambridge University Press.
What is a Law of Nature?D. Armstrong - 1983 - Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

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