green numbers give full details | back to texts | expand these ideas
5486 | Essentialism says metaphysics can't be done by analysing unreliable language |
5468 | Properties are 'dispositional', or 'categorical' (the latter as 'block' or 'intrinsic' structures) [PG] |
5469 | The passive view of nature says categorical properties are basic, but others say dispositions |
5456 | Redness is not a property as it is not mind-independent |
5481 | Properties have powers; they aren't just ways for logicians to classify objects |
5458 | Nearly all fundamental properties of physics are dispositional |
5443 | Kripke and others have made essentialism once again respectable |
5444 | 'Individual essences' fix a particular individual, and 'kind essences' fix the kind it belongs to |
5462 | Essential properties are usually quantitatively determinate |
5448 | 'Real essence' makes it what it is; 'nominal essence' makes us categorise it a certain way |
5477 | One thing can look like something else, without being the something else |
5479 | Scientific essentialists say science should define the limits of the possible |
5483 | Essentialists deny possible worlds, and say possibilities are what is compatible with the actual world |
5447 | Metaphysical necessities are true in virtue of the essences of things |
5476 | Essentialists say natural laws are in a new category: necessary a posteriori |
5478 | Imagination tests what is possible for all we know, not true possibility |
5482 | Possible worlds realism is only needed to give truth conditions for modals and conditionals |
5453 | Essentialists mostly accept the primary/secondary qualities distinction |
5466 | Primary qualities are number, figure, size, texture, motion, configuration, impenetrability and (?) mass |
5485 | Emeralds are naturally green, and only an external force could turn them blue |
5484 | Essentialists don't infer from some to all, but from essences to necessary behaviour |
5457 | Predicates assert properties, values, denials, relations, conventions, existence and fabrications [PG] |
5488 | Regularity theories of causation cannot give an account of human agency |
5489 | Humans have variable dispositions, and also power to change their dispositions |
5490 | Essentialism fits in with Darwinism, but not with extreme politics of left or right |
5472 | Natural kinds are of objects/substances, or events/processes, or intrinsic natures |
5471 | Essentialism says natural kinds are fundamental to nature, and determine the laws |
5446 | For essentialists two members of a natural kind must be identical |
5480 | The whole of our world is a natural kind, so all worlds like it necessarily have the same laws |
5445 | Essentialists regard inanimate objects as genuine causal agents |
5463 | Essentialists believe causation is necessary, resulting from dispositions and circumstances |
5491 | A general theory of causation is only possible in an area if natural kinds are involved |
5442 | For 'passivists' behaviour is imposed on things from outside |
5473 | The laws of nature imitate the hierarchy of natural kinds |
5474 | Laws of nature tend to describe ideal things, or ideal circumstances |
5475 | We must explain the necessity, idealisation, ontology and structure of natural laws |
5460 | Causal relations cannot be reduced to regularities, as they could occur just once |
5459 | Essentialists say dispositions are basic, rather than supervenient on matter and natural laws |
5461 | The essence of uranium is its atomic number and its electron shell |
5464 | For essentialists, laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, being based on essences of natural kinds |
5487 | Essentialism requires a clear separation of semantics, epistemology and ontology |