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Full Idea
The essentialist encapsulating formula is meant to be existence-exhaustive (an attribute the satisfaction of which is logically necessary and sufficient to be the thing) and truth-exhaustive (promising all the structural truths).
Gist of Idea
Essential definition aims at existence conditions and structural truths
Source
Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 01)
Book Ref
-: 'Journal of Philosophy' [-], p.361
A Reaction
[compressed] If he thinks essentialism means that one short phrase can achieve all this, then it is not surprising that Almog renounces his former essentialism in this essay. He may, however, have misunderstood. He should reread Aristotle.
| 17864 | Defining an essence comes no where near giving a thing's nature [Almog] |
| 17863 | Essences promise to reveal reality, but actually drive us away from it [Almog] |
| 17866 | Essential definition aims at existence conditions and structural truths [Almog] |
| 17867 | If a concept is not compact, it will not be presentable to finite minds [Almog] |
| 17868 | Surface accounts aren't exhaustive as they always allow unintended twin cases [Almog] |
| 17869 | Kripke and Putnam offer an intermediary between real and nominal essences [Almog] |
| 17871 | Fregean meanings are analogous to conceptual essence, defining a kind [Almog] |
| 17872 | Definitionalists rely on snapshot-concepts, instead of on the real processes [Almog] |
| 17873 | Water must be related to water, just as tigers must be related to tigers [Almog] |
| 17870 | Alien 'tigers' can't be tigers if they are not related to our tigers [Almog] |
| 17876 | Individual essences are just cobbled together classificatory predicates [Almog] |
| 17877 | The number series is primitive, not the result of some set theoretic axioms [Almog] |