Essence and Explanation: A Logical Mismatch

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, 2019

Fine, Lowe and Hale accept the view that necessity is to be explained by essences: Necessarily p iff, and because, there is some x whose essence ensures that p. Hale, however, believes that this strategy is not universally applicable; he argues that the necessity of essentialist truths cannot itself be explained by once again appealing to essentialist truths. As a consequence, Hale holds that there are basic necessities that cannot be explained. Thus, Hale style essentialism falls short of what Wilsch calls the explanation-challenge (EC) for the metaphysics of necessity. Without endorsing the EC, I argue that Hale’s argument for basic, unexplained necessities fails due to a misunderstanding of the structure of essentialist explanations. Getting clear about the structure of essentialist explanations of necessity leads to a re-evaluation of crucial circularity- and regress-arguments that have been discussed in the debate about essentialism.

CORRADINI, GALVAN (2018). In: T. TAMBASSI (ed.), Studies in the Ontology of E.J. Lowe, Editiones Scholasticae, Germany, 125-157, 2018

The aim of this essay is to deepen our understanding of E.J. Lowe’s essentialism, showing its importance for the characterisation of the modal notion of necessity. In the first section, we make an attempt to outline the basic characteristics of Lowe’s notion of essence. In order to recount Lowe’s theory in a sufficiently complete way, it would be necessary to present the features of his four-category ontology; however, in this first section we will focus in detail only on the concept of instantiation and on the distinction between essential and accidental properties of a substance. This is functional to the defence of an essentialist theory of necessity – a theory to which the second section of this paper is devoted – that is inspired by Lowe’s essentialism but does not fully coincide with it, rather developing it in an autonomous manner. The presentation of this theory serves as a basis for the discussion of some aspects of Lowe’s four-category ontology that are closely connected with his essentialism. That discussion is carried out in the third section, where the complex relations between instantiation, exemplification and characterisation will be addressed.

Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, ed. Daniel Novotny and Lukas Novak. Routledge, 2014

Philosophical Studies, 1976

Mind & Society, 2001

This essay examines the proposal that psychological essentialism re s u l t s f rom a history of natural selection acting on human re p resentation and inference systems. It has been argued that the features that distinguish essentialist re p resentational systems are especially well suited for re p resenting natural kinds. If the evolved function of essentialism is to exploit the rich inductive potential of such kinds, then it must be subserved by cognitive mechanisms that carry out at least three distinct functions: identifying these kinds in the environment, constructing essentialized re p resentations of them, and constraining inductive inferences about kinds. More o v e r, there are different kinds of kinds, ranging from nonliving substances to biological taxa to within-species kinds such as sex, and the causal processes that render these categories coherent for the purposes of inductive generalization vary. If the evolved function of essentialism is to support inductive generalization under ignorance of tru e causes, and if kinds of kinds vary in the implicit assumptions that support valid inductive i n f e rences about them, then we expect different, functionally incompatible modes of essentialist thinking for different kinds. In part i c u l a r, there should be differences in how biological and nonbiological substances, biological taxa, and biological and social role kinds are essentialized. The functional differences between these kinds of essentialism are discussed.

2016

It is widely accepted that if a property is essential then it is necessary. Against this I present numerous counterexamples from biology and chemistry, which fall into two groups: (I) A property is essential to a genus or species, yet some instances of this genus or species do not have this essential property. (II) A property is essential to a genus, yet some species of this genus do not have this essential property. I discuss and reject four minor objections. Then I discuss in depth whether a distinction between constitutive essence and consequential essence is able to handle these counterexamples. I conclude that this distinction is better put as one between (1) the essence, which is necessary, and (2) the essential properties, which are not formally necessary. An essence of an object X is the substantial universal expressed by its real definition. An object X has a property P essentially iff the property P is explanatory and non-trivial, and P follows from the essence of X.

Philosophy Compass, 2011

Pace Necessitism—roughly, the view that existence is not contingent—essential properties provide necessary conditions for the existence of objects. Sufficiency properties, by contrast, provide sufficient conditions, and individual essences provide necessary and sufficient conditions. This paper explains how these kinds of properties can be used to illuminate the ontological status of merely possible objects and to construct a respectable possibilist ontology. The paper also reviews two points of interaction between essentialism and modal logic. First, we will briefly see the challenge that arises against S4 from flexible essential properties; as well as the moves available to block it. After this, the emphasis is put on the Barcan Formula (BF), and on why it is problematic for essentialists. As we will see, Necessitism can accommodate both (BF) and essential properties. What necessitists cannot do at the same time is to continue to understanding essential properties as providing necessary conditions for the existence of individuals; against what might be for some a truism.

1997

This thesis argues for the incoherency of the putative distinction between those properties which are possessed essentiallyin a metaphysical senseby an object and those which are possessed only accidentally. This thesis is thus a critique of metaphysical essentialism. In chapter one I distinguish various kinds of essentialism, possibility and necessity. I explore both metaphysical and semantical issues associated with the essential/accidental distinction. I examine Quine's related attack on quantified modal logic. The burden of Quine's objections is carried by his antipathy to metaphysical essentialism, arguments against which he leaves undeveloped. In chapter two I remedy this defect and develop a line of attack on the essential/accidental distinction by adapting and sytematising an argument of Chisholm's in his seminal paper of 1967. I consider various lines of response by the essentialist and find them wanting. I concede that the weakest point in my attack on essentialism is an appeal to a principle about the transworld identity conditions of individuals. Given this concession, my discussion changes tack in chapters three and four. I granl irenically the coherence ofthe essentiaVaccidental distinction. In chapter three I argue that even given this concession there is no cogent case to be made for the claim commonly advanced by essentialists that an object's origin is essential to that object's identity. What I take to be the stongest argument for origin essentialism is in effect self-refuting because it appeals to the very principle of transworld identity which grounds my rejection of essentialism in chapter two. In chapter four I argue that there is no compelling ground to believe that an object essentially satisfies-in a metaphysical as opposed to a conceptual sense of 'essentially'the sortals which are true of it. lv CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 ESSENTIALISM, QUINE AND QML 1.1 INTRODUCTION 1.2 ESSENTIALISM AND ANTI-ESSENTIALISM 1.2.1 LOGICAL, CAUSAL AND METAPHYSICAL POS SIBILITY AND IMPOSSIBILITY 1.2.2 WOULD HAVE AND COULD HAVE 1.2.3 METAPHYSICALESSENTIALISMVERSUS CONCEPTUAL ES SENTIALISM 1.2.4 FORMAL AND ORDINARY LANGUAGE CHARACTERISATIONS OF ES SENTIALISM 1.3 INFORMAL MODAL SEMANTICS 1.3.I NECESSARILY TRUE THAT P I.3.2 NECESSARILY IS F 1.3.2.1 (:xxNECF)xAND (:X)NEC(FX) t.3.2.2 (xXl\rECF)xAND (X)NEC(FX) 1.3.3 EQUIVALENCE OF'(NIECF)A', AND 'NEC(FA)', 1.3.3.1 EMPTYNAMES'A' 1.3.3.2 RUSSELLIAN INTERPRETATION OF DEFINITE DESCRIPTIONS 7.3.3.3 APARTICULARNON-RUSSELLIAN INTERPRETATION OF DEFINITE DESCRIPTIONS 1.3.3.4 INTERPRETING 'NECG(IX)FX)" WHERE '(IX)FX' IS

Computación y Sistemas, 2018

In this paper, I deal with property modifiers defined as functions that associate a given root property P with a modified property [M P]. Property modifiers typically divide into four kinds, namely intersective, subsective, privative and modal. Here I do not deal with modal modifiers like alleged, which appear to be wellnigh logically lawless, because, for instance, an alleged assassin is or is not an assassin. The goal of this paper is to logically define the three remaining kinds of modifiers together with the rule of left subsectivity that I launch as the rule of pseudo-detachment to replace the modifier M in the premise by the property M* in the conclusion, and prove that the rule of pseudodetachment is valid for all kinds of modifiers. Furthermore, it is defined in a way that avoids paradoxes like a small elephant being smaller than a large mouse.