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Single Idea 12144

[filed under theme 9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 8. Essence as Explanatory ]

Full Idea

The reasonableness of the essentialist hypothesis will be proportional to the extent that we can, as a result, use a's possession of P to explain a's other properties, ...and there is an inability to explain otherwise why a has P.

Gist of Idea

Essentialism is justified if the essential properties of things explain their other properties

Source

Baruch Brody (Identity and Essence [1980], 6.3)

Book Ref

Brody,Baruch: 'Identity and Essence' [Princeton 1980], p.152

A Reaction

Brody as a rather liberal notion of properties. I would hope that we can do rather more than explain a's non-essential properties. If the non-essential properties were entailed by the essential ones, would they not then also be essential?

The 21 ideas with the same theme [essence is what intrinsically explains a thing]:

12361 Primary substances are ontological in 'Categories', and explanatory in 'Metaphysics' [Aristotle, by Wedin]
11244 Metaphysics is the science of ultimate explanation, or of pure existence, or of primary existence [Aristotle, by Politis]
16972 The four explanations are the main aspects of a thing's nature [Aristotle, by Moravcsik]
5084 A thing's nature is what causes its changes and stability [Aristotle]
11994 Aristotelian essences are properties mentioned at the starting point of a science [Aristotle, by Kung]
17184 All natures of things produce some effect [Spinoza]
16787 Explanatory essence won't do, because it won't distinguish the accidental from the essential [Locke, by Pasnau]
5057 If you fully understand a subject and its qualities, you see how the second derive from the first [Leibniz]
10937 Essential properties are the 'deepest' ones which explain the others [Copi, by Rami]
11992 Aristotelian essences underlie a thing's existence, explain it, and must belong to it [Kung]
12144 Essentialism is justified if the essential properties of things explain their other properties [Brody]
11871 Essences are not explanations, but individuations [Wiggins]
17564 The essence of a star includes the released binding energy which keeps it from collapse [Inwagen]
12089 Essences mainly explain the existence of unified substance [Witt]
17390 Natural kinds don't need essentialism to be explanatory [Dupré]
10935 An essential property of something must be bound up with what it is to be that thing [Fine,K, by Rami]
16542 Explanation can't give an account of essence, because it is too multi-faceted [Lowe]
13921 All things must have an essence (a 'what it is'), or we would be unable to think about them [Lowe]
12247 Essence is not explanatory but constitutive [Oderberg]
15181 Being a deepest explanatory feature is an actual, not a modal property [Sidelle]
11906 The Kripke and Putnam view of kinds makes them explanatorily basic, but has modal implications [Mackie,P]