15075
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Modal features are not part of entities, because they are accounted for by the entity [Fine,K]
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Full Idea:
It is natural to suggest that to be a man is to have certain kind of temporal-modal profile. ...but it seems natural that being a man accounts for the profile, ...so one should not appeal to an object's modal features in stating what the object is.
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From:
Kit Fine (Necessity and Non-Existence [2005], 09)
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A reaction:
This strikes me as a correct and very helpful point, as I am tempted to think that the modal dispositions of a thing are intrinsic to its identity. If we accept 'powers', must they be modal in character? Fine backs a sortal approach. That's ideology.
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13590
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Essences can make sense in a particular context or enquiry, as the most basic predicates [Quine]
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Full Idea:
The notion of essence makes sense in context. Relative to a particular enquiry, some predicates may play a more basic role than others, or may apply more fixedly; and these may be treated as essential.
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From:
Willard Quine (Intensions Revisited [1977], p.121)
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A reaction:
Quine has got a bad press on essentialism, and on modal logic, but I take this point seriously. If you give something a fixed identity by means of essence in some context, you can then go ahead and apply possible world reasoning in that context.
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15073
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Self-identity should have two components, its existence, and its neutral identity with itself [Fine,K]
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Full Idea:
The existential identity of an object with itself needs analysis into two components, one the neutral identity of the object with itself, and the other its existence. The existence of the object appears to be merely a gratuitous addition to its identity.
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From:
Kit Fine (Necessity and Non-Existence [2005], 08)
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A reaction:
This is at least a step towards clarification of the notion, which might be seen as just a way of asserting that something 'has an identity'. Fine likes the modern Fregean way of expressing this, as an equality relation.
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