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Single Idea 13952
[filed under theme 9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties
]
Full Idea
Essentialism, as I shall understand it, is the doctrine that among the attributes of a thing some are essential, others merely accidental. Its essential attributes are those it has necessarily, those it could not have lacked.
Gist of Idea
Essentialism says some of a thing's properties are necessary, and could not be absent
Source
Richard Cartwright (Some Remarks on Essentialism [1968], p.149)
Book Ref
Cartwright,Richard: 'Philosophical Essays' [MIT 1987], p.149
A Reaction
The problem with this, which Cartwright does not address, is that trivial and gerrymandered properties (such as having self-identity, or being 'such that 2+2=4') seem to be necessarily, but don't seem to constitute the essence of a thing.
The
19 ideas
from Richard Cartwright
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9783
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While no two classes coincide in membership, there are distinct but coextensive attributes
[Cartwright,R]
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9784
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A false proposition isn't truer because it is part of a coherent system
[Cartwright,R]
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9786
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Philosophers working like teams of scientists is absurd, yet isolation is hard
[Cartwright,R]
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13952
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Essentialism says some of a thing's properties are necessary, and could not be absent
[Cartwright,R]
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13953
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An act of ostension doesn't seem to need a 'sort' of thing, even of a very broad kind
[Cartwright,R]
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13954
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The difficulty in essentialism is deciding the grounds for rating an attribute as essential
[Cartwright,R]
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13955
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Essentialism is said to be unintelligible, because relative, if necessary truths are all analytic
[Cartwright,R]
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13941
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Are the truth-bearers sentences, utterances, ideas, beliefs, judgements, propositions or statements?
[Cartwright,R]
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13942
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Logicians take sentences to be truth-bearers for rigour, rather than for philosophical reasons
[Cartwright,R]
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13943
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We can attribute 'true' and 'false' to whatever it was that was said
[Cartwright,R]
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13944
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We can pull apart assertion from utterance, and the action, the event and the subject-matter for each
[Cartwright,R]
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13946
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To assert that p, it is neither necessary nor sufficient to utter some particular words
[Cartwright,R]
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13947
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'It's raining' makes a different assertion on different occasions, but its meaning remains the same
[Cartwright,R]
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13948
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For any statement, there is no one meaning which any sentence asserting it must have
[Cartwright,R]
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13951
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Assertions, unlike sentence meanings, can be accurate, probable, exaggerated, false....
[Cartwright,R]
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13950
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People don't assert the meaning of the words they utter
[Cartwright,R]
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13945
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A token isn't a unique occurrence, as the case of a word or a number shows
[Cartwright,R]
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14961
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Clearly a pipe can survive being taken apart
[Cartwright,R]
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14962
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Bodies don't becomes scattered by losing small or minor parts
[Cartwright,R]
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