Essence and logical properties

Morvarid, Hashem

doi:10.1007/s11098-018-1156-x

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 23 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…When an object does pertain to the essence of another, then we have a case of ontological dependence (Fine 1995b): thus it is true in virtue of the essence of the singleton that Socrates is its member, and accordingly the singleton ontologically depends on Socrates. In order to account for necessities involving two or more objects neither of which pertain to the essence of the other, such as the necessary distinctness of Socrates and Plato, essentialists must, and do, allow for 'collective essence' (Correia 2012, Zylstra 2018a, Morvarid 2018). Thus it is true in virtue of the collective essence of Socrates and Plato together that they are distinct.…”

Section: Against Dualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(Or, if these assumptions are dropped, semi-duality can be argued to hold with regard to a restricted class of cases -those which conform to the assumptions.) The main assumption is what Wilsch (2017, 436) calls the 'bearer-constraint' for essence (see also Morvarid 2018): that the bearer of an essence is always part of the content of the proposition that is true in virtue of its essence. Thus if it is true in virtue of the essence of X that p, it would follow that p is 'about' X, that X are among the 'objectual content' (Fine 1995a) of p. I will adopt this assumption for present purposes, but a reader who disagrees with it may read the following argument as restricted to the cases where it holds.…”

Section: Iterated Potentiality and Essencementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Essence, Potentiality, and Modality

Vetter

2020

Mind

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

According to essentialism, metaphysical modality is founded in the essences of things, where the essence of a thing is roughly akin to its real definition. According to potentialism (also known as dispositionalism), metaphysical modality is founded in the potentialities of things, where a potentiality is roughly the generalized notion of a disposition. Essentialism and potentialism have much in common, but little has been written about their relation to each other. The aim of this paper is to understand better the relations between essence and potentiality, on the one hand, and between essentialism and potentialism, on the other. It is argued, first, that essence and potentiality are not duals but interestingly linked by a weaker relation dubbed ‘semi-duality’; second, that given this weaker relation, essentialism and potentialism are not natural allies but rather natural competitors; and third, that the semi-duality of essence and potentiality allows the potentialist to respond to an important explanatory challenge by using essentialist resources without thereby committing to essentialism.

show abstract

Section: Against Dualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Iterated Potentiality and Essencementioning

confidence: 99%

Essence, Potentiality, and Modality

Vetter

2020

Mind

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Hashem Morvarid () argues that wholely logical truths (i.e., logical truths, e.g., ϕ ∨ ¬ ϕ , s = s ) and partly logical truths (i.e., truths that follow from essential truths, e.g., H ∨ P , where ⊞ s H , H is the sentence ‘Socrates is human’, P is the sentence ‘Socrates is a philosopher’) are essential to some items only if those items overlap the logical constants. I think that both claims are false, and that this suggests some skeptical worries about essence, but that it also bolsters the methodological prescription.…”

Section: Skeptical Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constitutive and Consequentialist Essence

Zylstra

2019

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recent work on essence describes essence as assimilated to definition. It also posits a plurality of kinds of essence. How does assimilation relate to pluralism? According to one view, a kind of essence is adequate only if it is definitional: something is essential to an item, in the relevant sense, only if it is part of what it is to be that item. In this paper, I argue that assimilation and pluralism are in tension with respect to consequentialist essence. This is problematic given that, as a methodological prescription, some philosophers advise us to work with consequentialist essence. In this paper, I develop a theory of constitutive essence and use it to resolve the problem by defining an adequate notion of consequentialist essence that preserves the methodological prescription.

show abstract

“…Morvarid (2018) features a discussion of new Modalisms and logical properties such as self-identity.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Is self-identity essential to objects?

Spinelli

2019

Synthese

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A common view is that self-identity is essential to objects if anything is. Itself a substantive metaphysical view, this is a position of some import in wider debates, particularly (but not exclusively) in connection with such problems as physicalism and personal identity. In this article I challenge the view. I distinguish between two accounts of essence, the modal and the definitional, and argue that self-identity is essential to objects on the former but not on the latter. After laying out my case, I deal with a number of objections.

show abstract

Essence and logical properties

Cited by 5 publications

References 23 publications

Essence, Potentiality, and Modality

Essence, Potentiality, and Modality

Constitutive and Consequentialist Essence

Is self-identity essential to objects?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About