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Single Idea 15181
[filed under theme 9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 8. Essence as Explanatory
]
Full Idea
The property of being a deepest explanatory feature is a nonmodal property: it's an actual property.
Gist of Idea
Being a deepest explanatory feature is an actual, not a modal property
Source
Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.4)
Book Ref
Sidelle,Alan: 'Necessity, Essence and Individuation' [Cornell 1989], p.126
A Reaction
I don't accept the existence of properties of the form 'being-F'. The possibility of securing a door may be the deepest explanatory feature of a lock. [To be fair to Sidelle, see context - just for once!] Dispositions are actual.
The
22 ideas
from 'Necessity, Essence and Individuation'
15032
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Necessary a posteriori is conventional for necessity and nonmodal for a posteriority
[Sidelle, by Sider]
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15167
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Empiricism explores necessities and concept-limits by imagining negations of truths
[Sidelle]
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15165
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A priori knowledge is entirely of analytic truths
[Sidelle]
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15168
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That water is essentially H2O in some way concerns how we use 'water'
[Sidelle]
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15166
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Causal reference seems to get directly at the object, thus leaving its nature open
[Sidelle]
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15169
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Metaphysics is clarifying how we speak and think (and possibly improving it)
[Sidelle]
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15164
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We seem to base necessities on thought experiments and imagination
[Sidelle]
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15172
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Clearly, essential predications express necessary properties
[Sidelle]
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15173
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That the essence of water is its microstructure is a convention, not a discovery
[Sidelle]
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15171
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The necessary a posteriori is statements either of identity or of essence
[Sidelle]
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15176
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The individuals and kinds involved in modality are also a matter of convention
[Sidelle]
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15174
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A thing doesn't need transworld identity prior to rigid reference - that could be a convention of the reference
[Sidelle]
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15175
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Evaluation of de dicto modalities does not depend on the identity of its objects
[Sidelle]
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15180
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There doesn't seem to be anything in the actual world that can determine modal facts
[Sidelle]
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15181
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Being a deepest explanatory feature is an actual, not a modal property
[Sidelle]
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15177
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Contradictoriness limits what is possible and what is imaginable
[Sidelle]
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15179
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To know empirical necessities, we need empirical facts, plus conventions about which are necessary
[Sidelle]
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15178
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Can anything in science reveal the necessity of what it discovers?
[Sidelle]
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15182
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Because some entities overlap, reference must have analytic individuation principles
[Sidelle]
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15184
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Causal reference presupposes essentialism if it refers to modally extended entities
[Sidelle]
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15185
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We aren't clear about 'same stuff as this', so a principle of individuation is needed to identify it
[Sidelle]
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15183
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'Dthat' operates to make a singular term into a rigid term
[Sidelle]
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