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. | |||
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Robert Stalnaker on Essentialism - Dictionary of Arguments
I 71 Essentialism/today/VsQuine: most modal logicians today accept essentialism. QuineVsEssentialism: incorrect: it is incorrect to say that one description is better than the other, because it better characterizes essential properties of an object. >Essential property, >Possible worlds, >Modal logic. I 72 Essence/essentialism/essential property/LeibnizVsQuine/Stalnaker: thesis: every property of every individual constitutes its essence and only the existence of the thing as a whole is contingent. >Leibniz. I 74 Anti-Essentialism/quantified modal logic/Stalnaker/conclusion: in order to connect the two, we need real semantic conditions for atomic predicates. Reason: (Ex)N(Fx) > (x)N(Fx) is a theorem, but not its substitution instance (Ex)N(Rxy) > (x)N(Rxy). If something necessarily is father of x, then everything is necessarily father of x. Of course, only intrinsic predicates are in question, but this is assumed and not explained. >Intrinsicness. I 85 Essentialism/Stalnaker: questions about essentialism are questions about how far it is appropriate and possible to abstract. >Abstraction._____________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. |
Stalnaker I R. Stalnaker Ways a World may be Oxford New York 2003 |
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> Counter arguments against Stalnaker
> Counter arguments in relation to Essentialism
Ed. Martin Schulz, access date 2024-04-18