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Single Idea 11185
[filed under theme 9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / b. Essence not necessities
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Full Idea
There seems to be surface synonymy between 'is essentially' and de re occurrences of 'is necessarily', but intersubstitution often fails to preserve sense (as in 'Winston is essentially a cyclist' and 'Winston is necessarily a cyclist').
Gist of Idea
'Is essentially' has a different meaning from 'is necessarily', as they often cannot be substituted
Source
Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.193)
Book Ref
-: 'Nous' [-], p.193
A Reaction
Clearly the two sentences have different meanings, with 'essentially' being a comment about the nature of Winston, and 'necessarily' probably being a comment about the circumstances in which he finds himself. Very nice. See also Idea 11186.
Related Idea
Idea 11186
'Essentially' won't replace 'necessarily' for vacuous properties like snub-nosed or self-identical [Marcus (Barcan)]
The
22 ideas
from Ruth Barcan Marcus
11180
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Essentialist sentences are not theorems of modal logic, and can even be false
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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11181
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Aristotelian essentialism involves a 'natural' or 'causal' interpretation of modal operators
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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11183
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The use of possible worlds is to sort properties (not to individuate objects)
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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11182
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If essences are objects with only essential properties, they are elusive in possible worlds
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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11186
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'Essentially' won't replace 'necessarily' for vacuous properties like snub-nosed or self-identical
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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11185
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'Is essentially' has a different meaning from 'is necessarily', as they often cannot be substituted
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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11184
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Aristotelian essentialism is about shared properties, individuating essentialism about distinctive properties
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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11187
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In possible worlds, names are just neutral unvarying pegs for truths and predicates
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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11189
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Dispositional essences are special, as if an object loses them they cease to exist
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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10785
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Maybe a substitutional semantics for quantification lends itself to nominalism
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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10787
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Is being just referent of the verb 'to be'?
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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10786
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Anything which refers tends to be called a 'name', even if it isn't a noun
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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10788
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Nominalists see proper names as a main vehicle of reference
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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10789
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Nominalists say predication is relations between individuals, or deny that it refers
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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10790
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Quantifiers are needed to refer to infinitely many objects
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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10791
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Substitutional semantics has no domain of objects, but place-markers for substitutions
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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10794
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The nominalist is tied by standard semantics to first-order, denying higher-order abstracta
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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10795
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Substitutional language has no ontology, and is just a way of speaking
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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10796
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If objects are thoughts, aren't we back to psychologism?
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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10797
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Substitutivity won't fix identity, because expressions may be substitutable, but not refer at all
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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10798
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A true universal sentence might be substitutionally refuted, by an unnamed denumerable object
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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10799
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Nominalists should quantify existentially at first-order, and substitutionally when higher
[Marcus (Barcan)]
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