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Essence and modality

Philosophical Perspectives 8 (Logic and Language):1-16 (1994)

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  1. Supervenience in metaphysics.Stephan Leuenberger - 2008 - Philosophy Compass 3 (4):749-762.
    Supervenience is a topic-neutral, broadly logical relation between classes of properties or facts. In a slogan, A supervenes on B if and only if there cannot be an A-difference without a B-difference. The first part of this paper considers different ways in which that slogan has been cashed out. The second part discusses applications of concepts of supervenience, focussing on the question whether they may provide an explication of determination theses such as physicalism.
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  • Fabrice Correia and Benjamin Schnieder (eds.), Metaphysical Grounding. Understanding the Structure of Reality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, vii + 311 pp., GBP 55 (Hardback), ISBN 9781107022898. [REVIEW]Stephan Leuenberger - 2014 - Dialectica 68 (1):147-151.
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  • Essence, plenitude, and paradox.Sarah-Jane Leslie - 2011 - Philosophical Perspectives 25 (1):277-296.
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  • On the Lewisian Principle of Recombination and Quidditism.Karol Lenart - 2021 - Acta Analytica 36 (3):357-371.
    In this paper, I discuss a connection between quidditism and the Lewisian principle of recombination. I begin by reconstructing a typical characterisation of a Lewisian principle of recombination, followed by an explanation of quidditism. In the remainder, I argue that a proponent of a Lewisian principle of recombination cannot endorse quidditism without some important modifications of her view.
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  • Grounding, Essence, and Contingentism.Karol Lenart - 2021 - Philosophia 49 (5):2157-2172.
    According to grounding necessitarianism if some facts ground another fact, then the obtaining of the former necessitates the latter. Proponents of grounding contingentism argue against this claim, stating that it is possible for the former facts to obtain without necessitating the latter. In this article I discuss a recent argument from restricted accidental generalisations provided by contingentists that advances such possibility. I argue that grounding necessitarianism can be defended against it. To achieve this aim, I postulate a relationship between grounding (...)
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  • Why pure mathematical truths are metaphysically necessary: a set-theoretic explanation.Hannes Leitgeb - 2020 - Synthese 197 (7):3113-3120.
    Pure mathematical truths are commonly thought to be metaphysically necessary. Assuming the truth of pure mathematics as currently pursued, and presupposing that set theory serves as a foundation of pure mathematics, this article aims to provide a metaphysical explanation of why pure mathematics is metaphysically necessary.
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  • The Meaning of Meaning-Fallibilism.Catherine Legg - 2005 - Axiomathes 15 (2):293-318.
    Much discussion of meaning by philosophers over the last 300 years has been predicated on a Cartesian first-person authority (i.e. “infallibilism”) with respect to what one’s terms mean. However this has problems making sense of the way the meanings of scientific terms develop, an increase in scientific knowledge over and above scientists’ ability to quantify over new entities. Although a recent conspicuous embrace of rigid designation has broken up traditional meaning-infallibilism to some extent, this new dimension to the meaning of (...)
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  • The Nature of Necessity.Brian Leftow - 2017 - Res Philosophica 94 (3):359-383.
    I give an account of the nature of absolute or metaphysical necessity. Absolute-necessarily P, I suggest, just if it is always the case that P and there never is or was a power with a chance to bring it about, bring about a power to bring it about, etc., that not P. I display both advantages and a cost of this sort of definition.
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  • On God and Necessity.Brian Leftow - 2014 - Faith and Philosophy 31 (4):435-459.
    My God and Necessity offers a theist a theory of modal truth. Two recent articles criticize the theory’s motivation and main features. I reply to these criticisms.
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  • Wildman’s Defense of Sparse Modalism and a Dilemma of Post-Finean Modalism.Jaeho Lee - 2020 - Axiomathes 30 (5):531-547.
    Since K. Fine’s influential criticism of modalism, many philosophers have agreed that we cannot understand the concept of essence with that of modality. However, some philosophers have resisted this mainstream position. In this paper, I examine N. Wildman’s claim that, unlike other versions of modalism, his version of modalism, namely Sparse Modalism can save modalism. I will argue first that if we introduce the notion of grounding into this debates, Wildman’s criticisms of other versions are significantly undermined. Next, I will (...)
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  • Unity and essence in Chalmers' theory of consciousness.Geoffrey Lee - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 167 (3):763-773.
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  • The function of modal judgment and the Kantian gap.Jessica Leech - 2018 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 13):3193-3212.
    What is the function of modal judgment? Why do we make judgments of possibility and necessity? Or are such judgments, in fact, dispensable? This paper introduces and develops an answer to these questions based on Kant’s remarks in section 76 of the Critique of Judgment. Here, Kant appears to argue the following: that a capacity to make modal judgments using modal concepts is required for a capacity for objective representation, in light of our split cognitive architecture. This split cognitive architecture (...)
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  • Ruth Barcan Marcus and Minimal Essentialism.Jessica Leech - 2023 - Ratio 36 (4):289-305.
    Since the publication of Kit Fine's “Essence and Modality”, there has been lively debate over how best to think of essence in relation to necessity. The present aim is to draw attention to a definition of essence in terms of modality that has not been given sufficient attention. This neglect is perhaps unsurprising, since it is not a proposal made in response to Fine's 1994 paper and ensuing discussion, but harks back to Ruth Barcan Marcus's earlier work in the 1960s (...)
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  • Potentiality.Jessica Leech - 2017 - Analysis 77 (2):457-467.
    Vetter's Potentiality is an exposition and development of a new account of possibility and necessity, given in terms of potentialities. In this critical notice, I give an outline of some of the key claims of the book. I then raise some issues for the extent to which Vetter's view can accommodate genuine de re modalities, especially those of possible existence and non-existence.
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  • Physical and metaphysical necessity.Stephen Leeds - 2007 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 88 (4):458–485.
    I propose a different way of thinking about metaphysical and physical necessity: namely that the fundamental notion of necessity is what would ordinarily be called "truth in all physically possible worlds" – a notion which includes the standard physical necessities and the metaphysical ones as well; I suggest that the latter are marked off not as a stricter kind of necessity but by their epistemic status. One result of this reconceptualization is that the Descartes-Kripke argument against naturalism need no longer (...)
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  • From Essence to Necessity via Identity.Jessica Leech - 2021 - Mind 130 (519):887-908.
    An essentialist theory of modality claims that the source of possibility and necessity lies in essence, where essence is then not to be defined in terms of necessity. Hence such theories owe us an account of why it is that the essences of things give rise to necessities in the way required. A new approach to understanding essence in terms of the notion of generalized identity promises to answer this challenge by appeal to the necessity of identity. I explore the (...)
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  • Defending internalists from acquired sociopaths.Leary Stephanie - 2017 - Philosophical Psychology 30 (7):878-895.
    People who suffer brain damage to their ventromedial prefrontal cortex have a puzzling psychological profile: they seem to retain high intellect and practical reasoning skills after their brain injuries, but continually make poor decisions in many aspects of their lives. Adina Roskies argues that their behavior is explained by the fact that, although VM patients make correct judgments about what they ought to do, they are entirely unmotivated by those judgments. Roskies thus takes VM patients to be real-world counterexamples to (...)
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  • The space of possibilities of dispositional essentialism.Xavi Lanao - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (11):2813-2839.
    How we define the space of possibilities of dispositional essentialism —that is, the set of possible worlds that are genuinely possible from the point of view of DE—has important consequences for central modal debates such as how to understand the concept of essence or the relation between DE and the necessity of laws of nature. In order to define DE’s space of possibilities we need to explore DE’s consequences regarding both necessity and possibility. Unfortunately, the notion of possibility has not (...)
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  • Contingent composition as identity.Giorgio Lando & Massimiliano Carrara - 2018 - Synthese.
    When the necessity of identity (NI) is combined with composition as identity (CAI), the contingency of composition (CC) is at risk. In the extant literature, either NI is seen as the basis for a refutation of CAI or CAI is associated with a theory of modality, such that: either NI is renounced (if counterpart theory is adopted); or CC is renounced (if the theory of modal parts is adopted). In this paper, we investigate the prospects of a new variety of (...)
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  • Progressive teleology.Nicky Kroll - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (11):2931-2954.
    I argue for a teleological account of events in progress. Details aside, the proposal is that events in progress are teleological processes. It follows from this proposal that final causes are ubiquitous: anything happening at any time is an event with a telos.
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  • Thought and Thing: Brentano's Reism as Truthmaker Nominalism.Uriah Kriegel - 2015 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 90 (3):153-180.
    The ontological theory of the later Franz Brentano is often referred to as ‘reism.’ But what exactly is reism, and how is it related to modern-day nominalism? In this paper, I offer an interpretation of Brentano’s reism as a specific variety of nominalism. This variety, although motivated by distinctly modern concerns about truthmakers, adopts a strategy for providing such truthmakers that is completely foreign to modern nominalism. The strategy rests on proliferation of coincident concrete particulars. For example, ‘Socrates is wise’ (...)
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  • The Deflationary Theory of Ontological Dependence.David Mark Kovacs - 2018 - Philosophical Quarterly 68 (272):481-502.
    When an entity ontologically depends on another entity, the former ‘presupposes’ or ‘requires’ the latter in some metaphysical sense. This paper defends a novel view, Dependence Deflationism, according to which ontological dependence is what I call an aggregative cluster concept: a concept which can be understood, but not fully analysed, as a ‘weighted total’ of constructive and modal relations. The view has several benefits: it accounts for clear cases of ontological dependence as well as the source of disagreement in controversial (...)
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  • Metaphysically explanatory unification.David Mark Kovacs - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (6):1659-1683.
    This paper develops and motivates a unification theory of metaphysical explanation, or as I will call it, Metaphysical Unificationism. The theory’s main inspiration is the unification account of scientific explanation, according to which explanatoriness is a holistic feature of theories that derive a large number of explananda from a meager set of explanantia, using a small number of argument patterns. In developing Metaphysical Unificationism, I will point out that it has a number of interesting consequences. The view offers a novel (...)
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  • Towards a Hylomorphic Solution to the Grounding Problem.Kathrin Koslicki - 2018 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements to Philosophy 82:333-364.
    Concrete particular objects (e.g., living organisms) figure saliently in our everyday experience as well as our in our scientific theorizing about the world. A hylomorphic analysis of concrete particular objects holds that these entities are, in some sense, compounds of matter (hūlē) and form (morphē or eidos). The Grounding Problem asks why an object and its matter (e.g., a statue and the clay that constitutes it) can apparently differ with respect to certain of their properties (e.g., the clay’s ability to (...)
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  • Towards a Neo‐Aristotelian Mereology.Kathrin Koslicki - 2007 - Dialectica 61 (1):127-159.
    This paper provides a detailed examination of Kit Fine’s sizeable contribution to the development of a neo‐Aristotelian alternative to standard mereology; I focus especially on the theory of ‘rigid’ and ‘variable embodiments’, as defended in Fine 1999. Section 2 briefly describes the system I call ‘standard mereology’. Section 3 lays out some of the main principles and consequences of Aristotle’s own mereology, in order to be able to compare Fine’s system with its historical precursor. Section 4 gives an exposition of (...)
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  • On the essence of empty properties.Miloš Kosterec - 2021 - Synthese 198 (1):491-507.
    This paper deals with generalisations of modally based criteria for determining whether a given property is essential to an individual to the case of generic essences. These criteria usually presuppose extensionally individuated properties. The limitations of their generalisations are demonstrated using the case of the necessarily empty individual property and the necessarily empty individual office. I do not present a novel stance on the discussion of individual essences. The novelty of this paper lies in its claim that none of these (...)
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  • A Plea for Descriptive Social Ontology.Kathrin Koslicki & Olivier Massin - 2023 - Synthese 202 (Special Issue: The Metametaphysi):1-35.
    Social phenomena—quite like mental states in the philosophy of mind—are often regarded as potential troublemakers from the start, particularly if they are approached with certain explanatory commitments, such as naturalism or social individualism, already in place. In this paper, we argue that such explanatory constraints should be at least initially bracketed if we are to arrive at an adequate non-biased description of social phenomena. Legitimate explanatory projects, or so we maintain, such as those of making the social world fit within (...)
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  • Aristotle's Formal Identity of Intellect and Object: A Solution to the Problem of Modal Epistemology.Robert C. Koons - 2019 - Ancient Philosophy Today 1 (1):84-107.
    In De Anima Book III, Aristotle subscribed to a theory of formal identity between the human mind and the extra-mental objects of our understanding. This has been one of the most controversial featu...
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  • Counterfactuals and the analysis of necessity.Boris Kment - 2006 - Philosophical Perspectives 20 (1):237–302.
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  • Essence and modal knowledge.Boris Kment - 2018 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 8):1957-1979.
    During the last quarter of a century, a number of philosophers have become attracted to the idea that necessity can be analyzed in terms of a hyperintensional notion of essence. One challenge for proponents of this view is to give a plausible explanation of our modal knowledge. The goal of this paper is to develop a strategy for meeting this challenge. My approach rests on an account of modality that I developed in previous work, and which analyzes modal properties in (...)
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  • Necessity and linguistic rules.Boris Kment - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Amie Thomasson has argued against descriptivism about modality, which starts from the idea that modal statements serve to track features of the world and that these features explain the truth-values of modal claims. Thomasson objects that descriptivists cannot satisfactorily explain how modal features fit into the naturalistic picture of the world and that they cannot account for our apparent capacity to acquire modal knowledge. On Thomasson’s alternative to descriptivism (called ‘normativism’), the function of modal claims is to facilitate communication about (...)
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  • Shaping up location: Against the Humean argument for the extrinsicality of shape.Shieva Kleinschmidt - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (8):1973-1983.
    Recently, we have been presented with an argument against the intrinsicality of shape that appeals to a plausible Humean principle. According to the argument, if shape is intrinsic and the location relation is fundamental, then we cannot explain the necessary correlation between an object’s shape and the shape of its location. And, it is claimed, the Humean principle tells us that an unexplained necessary correlation like this one is unacceptable. In this paper I respond to this argument by rejecting the (...)
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  • Husserls syn på mening og objektivitet – fra persepsjon til matematikk.Frode Kjosavik - 2020 - Norsk Filosofisk Tidsskrift 55 (1):20-33.
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  • The Conceptual Basis and Empirical Grounds of Ontic Structural Realism存在的構造実在論の概念的基礎と経験的根拠存在的構造実在論の概念的基礎と経験的根拠.Naoaki Kitamura & Kohei Morita - 2019 - Kagaku Tetsugaku 52 (1):1-22.
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  • The Kripkean explanation of aposteriori necessity: in the case of identity statements about chemical substances.Dongwoo Kim - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    In the addenda to his Naming and Necessity, Kripke provides an account of how necessary aposteriori statements are possible. In such a case, there is an apriori general principle telling us that it is necessary if true at all. Though straightforward in its broad compass, this account faces two obvious questions in its application: in each case of necessary aposteriori statements, what is the underlying principle and how is it established apriori? I treat these questions with respect to theoretical identity (...)
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  • A Case for Necessitarianism by Amy Karofsky (Routledge, 2021). ISBN 9781032026169. [REVIEW]Samuel Kimpton-Nye - 2024 - Philosophy 99 (1):132-137.
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  • Pandispositionalism and the metaphysics of powers.Samuel Kimpton-Nye - 2022 - Synthese 200 (5):1-21.
    Some philosophers maintain that physical properties are irreducibly modal: that properties are powers. Powers are then employed to provide explanations of other phenomena of philosophical interest such as laws of nature and modality. There is, however, a dispute among powers theorists about how far the powers ontology extends: are all manner of properties at all levels of fundamentality powers or are powers only to be found among the fundamental properties? This paper argues that the answer to this question depends on (...)
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  • Necessity, Essence, and Explanation.Dongwoo Kim - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-17.
    I shall discuss some of the relations among metaphysical modality, essence, and explanation. Marion Godman, Antonella Mallozzi and David Papineau have recently argued that the essence of a kind consists in its super-explanatory property—a single property that is causally responsible for a multitude of commonalities shared by the instances of the kind. And they argue that this super-explanatory account of essence offers a principled account of aposteriori necessities concerning kinds. I shall examine their arguments and argue that they are fallacious. (...)
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  • Debating Powers: Where the Real Puzzle Lies.Samuel Kimpton-Nye - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Stephen Mumford and Alexander Bird disagree about which properties are powers and, correspondingly, about the extent of the philosophical work to which powers may be put. Unfortunately, there is an important respect in which these authors are talking past each other and so the reason for their disagreement remains obscured. I highlight what has gone wrong in their recent exchange, attempt to clear up the confusion and pinpoint the true source of their disagreement. My hope is to redirect the efforts (...)
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  • ∈ : Formal concepts in a material world truthmaking and exemplification as types of determination.Philipp Keller - 2007 - Dissertation, University of Geneva
    In the first part ("Determination"), I consider different notions of determination, contrast and compare modal with non-modal accounts and then defend two a-modality theses concerning essence and supervenience. I argue, first, that essence is a a-modal notion, i.e. not usefully analysed in terms of metaphysical modality, and then, contra Kit Fine, that essential properties can be exemplified contingently. I argue, second, that supervenience is also an a-modal notion, and that it should be analysed in terms of constitution relations between properties. (...)
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  • Omnipresent meaning-interdependence and ubiquitous analyticity.Filip Kawczyński - 2021 - Semiotica 2021 (240):317-334.
    In this paper I investigate the nature of the relation between meaning-interdependence and analyticity. The theory within which meaning-interdependence reaches its peak and becomes omnipresent is meaning holism, according to which every two expressions are meaning-interdependent. A lot of people reject holism partially due to the impression that the theory leads to the picture in which language is self-sufficient in the sense that it is nothing but a game of meanings which is detached from reality. What stands behind that impression (...)
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  • Post-Classical Islamic Philosophy – a Contradiction in Terms?Jari Kaukua - 2020 - Nazariyat : Journal for the History of Islamic Philosophy and Sciences 6 (2):1-21.
    This paper engages critically with Dimitri Gutas’ recent characterization of post-classical Islamic philosophy and theology as a form of paraphilosophy or intellectual activity that merely simulates philosophy. I argue that this view arises from a misguided understanding of the concept of philosophy that should provide the standard for its historiography. In order to avoid a number of problematic consequences, such as gaps in historical continuity or a disconnection from what we understand by philosophy today, we must take our cue from (...)
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  • Explanation by status as empty-base explanation.Yannic Kappes - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):2575-2595.
    This paper explores the practice of explanation by status, in which a truth with a certain status is supposed to be explained by its having that status. It first investigates whether such explanations are possible. Having found existing accounts of the practice wanting, it then argues for a novel account of explanation by status as empty-base explanation. The latter notion captures a certain limiting case of ordinary explanation so that according to the empty-base account, explanation by status can be fruitfully (...)
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  • A critique of Armstrong’s truthmaking account of possibility.Javier Kalhat - 2008 - Acta Analytica 23 (2):161-176.
    In this paper I argue against Armstrong’s recent truthmaking account of possibility. I show that the truthmaking account presupposes modality in a number of different ways, and consequently that it is incapable of underwriting a genuine reduction of modality. I also argue that Armstrong’s account faces serious difficulties irrespective of the question of reduction; in particular, I argue that his Entailment and Possibility Principles are both false.
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  • Artifacts and mind-dependence.Tim Juvshik - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):9313-9336.
    I defend the intention-dependence of artifacts, which says that something is an artifact of kind K only if it is the successful product of an intention to make an artifact of kind K. I consider objections from two directions. First, that artifacts are often mind- and intention-dependent, but that this isn’t necessary, as shown by swamp cases. I offer various error theories for why someone would have artifact intuitions in such cases. Second, that while artifacts are necessarily mind-dependent, they aren’t (...)
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  • Function essentialism about artifacts.Tim Juvshik - 2021 - Philosophical Studies (9):2943-2964.
    Much recent discussion has focused on the nature of artifacts, particularly on whether artifacts have essences. While the general consensus is that artifacts are at least intention-dependent, an equally common view is function essentialism about artifacts, the view that artifacts are essentially functional objects and that membership in an artifact kind is determined by a particular, shared function. This paper argues that function essentialism about artifacts is false. First, the two component conditions of function essentialism are given a clear and (...)
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  • A New Logic of Technical Malfunction.Bjørn Jespersen & Massimiliano Carrara - 2013 - Studia Logica 101 (3):547-581.
    Aim of the paper is to present a new logic of technical malfunction. The need for this logic is motivated by a simple-sounding philosophical question: Is a malfunctioning corkscrew, which fails to uncork bottles, nonetheless a corkscrew? Or in general terms, is a malfunctioning F, which fails to do what Fs do, nonetheless an F? We argue that ‘malfunctioning’ denotes the modifier Malfunctioning rather than a property, and that the answer depends on whether Malfunctioning is subsective or privative. If subsective, (...)
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  • Explanatory Asymmetries, Ground, and Ontological Dependence.Lina Jansson - 2017 - Erkenntnis 82 (1):17-44.
    The notions of ground and ontological dependence have made a prominent resurgence in much of contemporary metaphysics. However, objections have been raised. On the one hand, objections have been raised to the need for distinctively metaphysical notions of ground and ontological dependence. On the other, objections have been raised to the usefulness of adding ground and ontological dependence to the existing store of other metaphysical notions. Even the logical properties of ground and ontological dependence are under debate. In this article, (...)
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  • Are there essential forms in the social domain?Ludger Jansen - 2023 - Ratio 36 (4):306-318.
    Traditionally, nature has often been thought to be structured by essential forms providing the generic features of natural things and thus the foundations for scientific explanations. In contrast, human history and the social domain have been thought to be the realm of ever-changing appearances, where contingency prevails. The paper argues that the existence of essential forms is compatible with the contingent, mind-dependent and historical character of the social world, and that essential forms can also be found in the social domain. (...)
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  • Knowing how things might have been.Mark Jago - 2018 - Synthese (Suppl 8):1-19.
    I know that I could have been where you are right now and that you could have been where I am right now, but that neither of us could have been turnips or natural numbers. This knowledge of metaphysical modality stands in need of explanation. I will offer an account based on our knowledge of the natures, or essencess, of things. I will argue that essences need not be viewed as metaphysically bizarre entities; that we can conceptualise and refer to (...)
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