Philosophy Dictionary of ArgumentsHome | |||
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Essentialism: the view that objects have some of their properties necessarily. See also essence, necessity de re, necessity, contingency, properties, actualism, possible worlds._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
Author | Concept | Summary/Quotes | Sources |
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M.J. Cresswell on Essentialism - Dictionary of Arguments
I 58 Essentialism/Terence Parsons/Cresswell: the doctrine that some things necessarily have a property that other things do not necessarily have. Terence ParssonsVs: an essentialist theorem is false in a maximum model and there is a maximum model for each consistent set of closed nonmodal formulas. I.e. that no physical theory contains essentialism in relation to its predicates. Problem: if we restrict the intended model by means other than axioms, it is not clear whether we can avoid essentialism. >Unintended models. I 59 Essentialism/necessity/possibility/Cresswell: comes through via the language that we build on the language of physics. Physics only provides the entities that we need for the semantics of their language. The essentialism does not need to touch the question of the adequacy of a theory as complete framework of a physical description of the world. >Adequacy, >Completeness._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Cr I M. J. Cresswell Semantical Essays (Possible worlds and their rivals) Dordrecht Boston 1988 Cr II M. J. Cresswell Structured Meanings Cambridge Mass. 1984 |