A few philosophers of biology have recently explicitly rejected Essential Membership, the doctrine that if an individual organism belongs to a taxon, particularly a species, it does so essentially. But philosophers of biology have not addressed the broader issue, much discussed by metaphysicians on the basis of modal intuitions, of what is essential to the organism. In this paper, I address that issue from a biological basis, arguing for the Kripkean view that an organism has a partly intrinsic, partly (...) historical, essence. The arguments appeal to the demands of biological explanation and are analogous to arguments that I have given elsewhere that a taxon has a partly intrinsic, partly historical, essence. These conclusions about the essences of individuals and taxa yield an argument for Essential Membership. Finally, I cast doubt on LaPorte’s objection to that doctrine arising from the view that a species cannot survive having a daughter. (shrink)

This dissertation addresses the problem of trans-world identity in possible worlds semantics, and argues that essentialism does not provide a satisfactory solution to it. If one takes possible worlds semantics seriously as a viable elucidation of the logic of the metaphysical modalities, one must also take a realistic stance toward possible worlds. But then, contrary to Kripke, Plantinga, Van Inwagen, and others, there is a problem with trans-world identity; the real problem being, not the problem of identifying individuals across (...) possible worlds, but rather the problem of the theoretical basis for these identifications. Possible worlds semantics presupposes a substantive theory of what constitutes the cross-world continuation or persistence of individuals. Standard formulations of these semantics nevertheless fail to articulate such a theory. Therefore cross-world identifications become inherently problematic. All available solutions to this problem either presuppose non-trivial essentialism or are incoherent. Non-trivial essentialism is the view that there are certain non-identity properties which a given individual has in every world in which it exists but which other possible individuals fail to have in some of the worlds in which they exist. ;But the question of the coherence of essentialism itself is intimately connected with one's views concerning the nature and existence of properties. Three Cantorian paradoxes are adduced, one against individuative essentialism, one against non-trivial essentialism, and one against properties in general. The paradoxes against properties in general and non-trivial essentialism can be avoided only if one eschews a Quine/Goodman view of property existence---the view that any extensionally well-defined class answers to a property---and makes some kind of distinction between natural and artificial properties. Nevertheless such an eschewal does not avoid the paradox of individuative essentialism. Thus essentialism cannot provide a completely adequate theory of trans-world individuation. For although it provides the necessary conditions for the identity of individuals across possible worlds, it does not allow us to identify these individuals on this basis alone. This conclusion precludes actualist solutions to the problem of the individuation of possibilia which quantify over individual essences. (shrink)

In this paper Modern Essentialism is used to solve a problem of individuation of spacetime points in General Relativity that has been raised by a New Leibnizian Argument against spacetime substantivalism, elaborated by Earman and Norton. An earlier essentialistic solution, proposed by Maudlin, is criticized as being against both the spirit of metrical essentialism and the fundamental principles of General Relativity. I argue for a modified essentialistic account of spacetime points that avoids those obstacles.

Fine Individuation says it is impossible for distinct people who are not collaborating on a work of art to produce one and same artwork. This is an intra-world thesis, but is necessarily true, if true at all. Author Essentialism says it is impossible for someone else to produce one and the same work of art produced by some actual artist. This is an alleged necessary truth regarding cross-world relations. Both theses have been vigorously defended. I argue here that both (...) are false, but for reasons that are entirely novel. (shrink)

Fine Individuation says it’s impossible for distinct people who are not collaborating on a work of art to produce one and same artwork. This is an intra-world thesis, but is necessarily true, if true at all. Author-Essentialism says it’s impossible for someone else to produce one and the same work of art produced by some actual artist. This is an alleged necessary truth regarding cross-world relations. Both theses have been vigorously defended. I here argue that both are false, but (...) for reasons that are entirely novel. (shrink)

Kripke argues for origin essentialism, the view that the same individual cannot have multiple origins. Sober hypothesises that Kripke's origin essentialism applies to biological species. This paper shows that Sober's hypothesis fails. Because Kripke's original argument is invalid, it cannot vindicate Sober's proposal. Salmon offers an influential reformulation of Kripke's argument but his argument fails to extend to species: the notion of an individual's origin is too narrow to apply to species, and Salmon's argument rests on (...) a thought experiment that conflicts with how species evolve. Thus, Sober and others are wrong to think that Kripke's origin essentialism can save species essentialism. (shrink)

It is often claimed that principles of individuation imply essential properties of the things individuated. For example, sets are individuated by their members, hence sets have their members essentially. But how does this inference work? First I discuss the form of such inferences, and conclude that the essentialist inference is not a purely formal matter: although there is a form which all principles of individuation have in common, it is not true that any statement of that form is a principle (...) of individuation, and hence there is no valid inference based purely on that form. However, I argue that there is a viable version of the essentialist inference nonetheless. The resources for a proper reconstruction of this type of inference can be gathered from reflections upon the role principles of individuation play in the project of the ontologist: such principles turn out to carry a modal weight similar to that of definitions or conceptual truths. It follows that, no matter how austere the ontology, some portion of essentialist modality is inevitable. (shrink)

Several philosophers have recently defended Causal Essentialism—the view that every property confers causal powers, and whatever powers it confers, it confers essentially. I argue that on the face of it, Causal Essentialism implies a form of Monism, and in particular, the thesis I call ‘Mereological Monism’: that there is some concretum that is a part of every concretum. However, there are three escape routes, three views which are such that if one of them is true, Causal Essentialism (...) does not imply any form of Monism at all. I survey the costs associated with taking these escape routes along with the costs associated with accepting Mereological Monism. (shrink)

Essentialism in philosophy is the position that things, especially kinds of things, have essences, or sets of properties, that all members of the kind must have, and the combination of which only members of the kind do, in fact, have. It is usually thought to derive from classical Greek philosophy and in particular from Aristotle’s notion of “what it is to be” something. In biology, it has been claimed that pre-evolutionary views of living kinds, or as they are sometimes (...) called, “natu-ral kinds”, are essentialist. This static view of living things presumes that no tran-sition is possible in time or form between kinds, and that variation is regarded as accidental or inessential noise rather than important information about taxa. In contrast it is held that Darwinian, and post-Darwinian, biology relies upon varia-tion as important and inevitable properties of taxa, and that taxa are not, therefore, kinds but historical individuals. Recent attempts have been made to undercut this account, and to reinstitute essentialism in biological kind terms. Others argue that essentialism has not ever been a historical reality in biology and its predecessors. In this chapter, I shall outline the many meanings of the notion of essentialism in psychology and social science as well as science, and discuss pro- and anti-essentialist views, and some recent historical revisionism. It turns out that nobody was essentialist to speak of in the sense that is antievolutionary in biology, and that much confusion rests on treating the one word, “essence” as meaning a single notion when in fact there are many. I shall also discuss the philosophical implica-tions of essentialism, and what that means one way or the other for evolutionary biology. Teaching about evolution relies upon narratives of change in the ways the living world is conceived by biologists. This is a core narrative issue. (shrink)

Causal essentialists hold that a property essentially bears its causal and nomic relations. Further, as many causal essentialists have noted, the main motivations for causal essentialism also motivate holding that properties are individuated in terms of their causal and nomic relations. This amounts to a kind of identity of indiscernibles thesis; properties that are indiscernible with respect to their causal and nomic relations are identical. This can be compared with the more well-known identity of indiscernibles thesis, according to which (...) particulars that are qualitatively indiscernible are identical. Robert Adams has developed a well-known objection to this thesis by considering a series of possibilities involving nearly qualitatively indiscernible particulars that naturally leads to a possibility involving qualitatively indiscernible particulars. I argue that we can construct parallel cases involving a series of possibilities involving properties that are nearly indiscernible with respect to their causal and nomic relations that naturally lead to possibilities involving properties that are indiscernible with respect to their causal and nomic relations. The same features that make Adams’ argument forceful also carry over to my cases, giving us a powerful objection to the causal essentialist identity of indiscernibles thesis. (shrink)

Cimpian & Salomon present promising steps towards understanding the cognitive underpinnings of adult essentialism. However, their approach is less convincing regarding ontogenetic and evolutionary aspects. In contrast to C&S's claim, the so-called inherence heuristic, though perhaps vital in adult reasoning, seems an implausible candidate for the developmental and evolutionary foundations of psychological essentialism. A more plausible candidate is kind-based object individuation that already embodies essentialist modes of thinking and that is present in infants and nonhuman primates.

In ordinary language, in the medical sciences, and in the overlap between them, we frequently make claims which imply that we might have had different gametic origins from the ones we actually have. Such statements seem intuitively true and coherent. But they counterfactually ascribe different DNA to their referents and therefore contradict material-origin essentialism, which Kripke and his followers argue is intuitively obvious. In this paper I argue, using examples from ordinary language and from philosophy of medicine and bioethics, (...) that statements which attribute alternative material origins to their referents are useful, common in political and medical reasoning, and in many cases best interpreted literally. So we must replace the doctrine of material-origin essentialism with one that can make sense of ordinary discourse and the language of the medical sciences. I propose an anti-essentialist account of such counterfactuals according to which individuals’ modal properties are relative to a given inquiry. (shrink)

The term 'essentialism' in its popular usage is usually qualified in some way, as in 'biological essentialism', 'gender essentialism' and 'social essentialism'. The essentialist theses were defended on the grounds that denying them leads, under plausible assumptions, to pairs of worlds containing objects which are intrinsic and spatio‐temporal duplicates and yet which are numerically distinct. This chapter outlines some technical difficulties in getting the definitions of 'essential property' and 'individual essence' exactly right. It explains the (...) idea of a metaphysically essential property in terms of Aristotle's 'essential/accidental' contrast. A popular idea is to invoke the notion, which has its roots in Aristotle's theory of essence and accident, of a substance sortal. A different way of developing a sortal‐based account of essential kinds is suggested by David Wiggins, who argues that it is only ultimate sortals that represent essential properties, where an ultimate sortal is the most general sortal corresponding to a given principle of individuation. (shrink)

A large body of existing research suggests that people think very differently about categories that are seen as kinds (e.g., women) and categories that are not seen as kinds (e.g., people hanging out in the park right now). Drawing on work in linguistics, we suggest that people represent these two sorts of categories using fundamentally different representational formats. Categories that are not seen as kinds are simply represented as collections of individuals. By contrast, when it comes to kinds, people have (...) two distinct representations: a representation of a collection of individual people and a representation of the kind itself. The distinction between these two representational formats helps to shed light on otherwise puzzling findings about stereotyping and essentialism. Stereotyping appears to involve a representation of a collection of people, while essentialism involves a representation of a kind itself. (shrink)

Quine, in an influential passage, characterizes a certain kind of metaphysical view as "Aristotelian essentialism." Recent work on Aristotle suggests that he may not have been an essentialist in Quine's sense. This paper examines the question whether, and to what extent, Aristotle is committed to the kind of essentialism Quine discusses. Various promising areas of Aristotle's thought (alteration vs. coming-to-be and passing-away, kath' hauto predication) are examined and found wanting as sources of essentialism. Instead, Aristotle is found (...) to be committed to essentialism in the hylomorphic conception of substance featured in the late books of the Metaphysics, despite the superficially anti-essentialistic appearance of the conception of matter as the ultimate subject of predication. Essentialism is part and parcel of Aristotle's conception of substances as the basic individuals. (shrink)

The bare particular anti-essentialism theory holds that for every individual and every property, there are possible worlds in which the individual has the property and possible worlds in which it does not. It is argued that one cannot make semantical sense out of bare particular anti-essentialism within the framework of the standard semantics for modal logic. An alternative to the standard semantics is proposed that can make sense out of the bare particular theory. The alternative will (...) not require that the anti-essentialism doctrine be true, but that doctrine will be embodied in a simple formal condition which is naturally imposed on the models definable within the alternative semantics. (shrink)

Since the inception of large‐scale human genome research, there has been much caution about the risks of exacerbating a number of socially dangerous attitudes linked to human genetics. These attitudes are usually labeled with one of a family of genetic or genomic “isms” or “ations” such as “genetic essentialism,” “genetic determinism,” “genetic reductionism,” “geneticization,” “genetic stigmatization,” and “genetic discrimination.” The psychosocial processes these terms refer to are taken to exacerbate several ills that are similarly labeled, from medical racism and (...) psychological fatalism to economic exploitation and social exclusion. But as genomic information becomes more familiar in clinical and research settings as well as other life activities, do we need to continue to worry so much about this family of attitudes and their impact on existing problems?In genomics, the underlying anxiety has been that disclosure of genomic information will trigger a series of (seemingly unavoidable) negative responses that will affect individuals, their families, and their communities at large. The fundamental social challenges that hyperbolic genomic messaging, low genomic literacy, and “folk biology” help sustain remain to be addressed. If we hope to break the cycle of genomic isms and ations, we will have to get better at resisting overinterpretations of the relevance that genomics has for people’s future potentials, ancestral vulnerabilities, community memberships, and ethnic affiliations. (shrink)

The book addresses three main issues. The first concerns the essences (natures, identities) of biological taxa, particularly species. Kripke and other metaphysicians hold that these essences are (at least partly) intrinsic, underlying, probably largely genetic properties. This view, based largely on intuitions, is dismissed by the consensus in the philosophy of biology as being incompatible with Darwinism and reflecting ignorance of biology. The book argues that the demands of biological explanation show that the metaphysicians are right. The positive view of (...) the consensus is that the essences are wholly relational: taxa must have certain histories. The book argues that there is indeed an historical component to the essence, but this component presupposes an intrinsic component. The book’s second issue concerns the essences of biological individuals. Metaphysicians have had much to say about this, again on the basis of intuitions. Many hold that an individual is essentially a member of its species. This has recently been unequivocally rejected by philosophers of biology. The book appeals to biological explanation again to argue for essential membership; furthermore, to argue for the Kripkean view that an organism’s essence is partly intrinsic and partly relational (a matter of origin). Finally, the book addresses the lively contemporary issue of whether race is biologically “real”. From the perspective developed earlier, the book argues that there are indeed racial kinds, in some sense, that are “in the realm of the biological”. These kinds also have partly historical and partly intrinsic underlying essences. (shrink)

Pace Necessitism – roughly, the view that existence is not contingent – essential properties provide necessary conditions for the existence of objects. Sufficiency properties, by contrast, provide sufficient conditions, and individual essences provide necessary and sufficient conditions. This paper explains how these kinds of properties can be used to illuminate the ontological status of merely possible objects and to construct a respectable possibilist ontology. The paper also reviews two points of interaction between essentialism and modal logic. First, we (...) will briefly see the challenge that arises against S4 from flexible essential properties; as well as the moves available to block it. After this, the emphasis is put on the Barcan Formula (BF), and on why it is problematic for essentialists. As we will see, Necessitism can accommodate both (BF) and essential properties. What necessitists cannot do at the same time is to continue to understanding essential properties as providing necessary conditions for the existence of individuals; against what might be for some a truism. (shrink)

Relative essentialism, the view that multiple objects about which there are distinct de re modal truths can occupy the same space at the same time, is a metaphysical view that dissolves a number of metaphysical issues. The present essay constructs and defends relative essentialism and argues that it is implicit in some of the ideas of W. V. Quine and Donald Davidson. Davidson’s published views about individuation and sameness can accommodate the common-sense insights about change and persistence of (...) Aristotle and Kripke. Aristotle and Kripke have to give up unmediated direct reference resting on a unique correct articulation of reality into entities. Davidson has to acknowledge a distinction between descriptions giving accidental and those giving essential features of an object. Quine and Davidson were in a position to be a relative essentialist, but were over-impressed by supervenience. The relative essentialist view of beings developed from Quine and Davidson strongly suggests the Heideggerian distinction between beings and Being, and is the perspective from which analytic philosophy can engage that topic. Relative essentialism also connects analytic philosophy to Derrida’s thinking about differance. (shrink)

In this article I consider contemporary philosophical conceptions of human nature from the point of view of the ideal of gender equality. My main argument is that an essentialist account of human nature, unlike what I take to be its two main alternatives (the subjectivist account and the cultural account), is able coherently to justify the educational pursuit of this ideal. By essentialism I refer to the idea that there are some features common to all human beings (independent of (...) individual, cultural and historical factors) that are conducive to a good life and human flourishing. I also consider the main philosophical challenge of essentialism, the naturalistic fallacy, and the ways in which contemporary versions of essentialism might escape this charge. (shrink)

The paper offers some preliminary and rather unsystematic reflections about the question: Do Beliefs Have Their Contents Essentially? The question looks like it ought to be important, yet it is rarely discussed. Maybe that’s because content essentialism, i.e., the view that beliefs do have their contents essentially, is simply too obviously and trivially true to deserve much discussion. I sketch a common-sense argument that might be taken to show that content essentialism is indeed utterly obvious and/or trivial. Somewhat (...) against this, I then point out that a “sexy” conclusion that is sometimes drawn from Putnam-Burge-style externalist arguments, namely that our mental states are not in our heads, presupposes content essentialism — which suggests that the view is not entirely trivial. Moreover, it seems intuitively that physicalists should reject the view: If beliefs are physical states, how could they have their propositional contents essentially? I distinguish three readings of the title question. Content essentialism does seem fairly obvious on the first two, but not so on the third. I argue that the common-sense argument mentioned earlier presupposes one of the first two readings but fails to apply to the third, on which ‘belief’ refers to belief-state tokens. That’s because ordinary belief individuation is silent about belief-state tokens. Token physicalists, I suggest, should indeed reject content essentialism about belief-state tokens. What about token dualists? One might think they ought to embrace content essentialism about belief-state tokens. I end with puzzling why this should be so. (shrink)

The concept of authenticity is central to how people value many different types of objects and yet there is considerable disagreement about how individuals evaluate authenticity or how the concept itself should be defined. This paper attempts to reconcile previous approaches by proposing a novel view of authenticity. Specifically, I draw upon past research on psychological essentialism and propose that when people evaluate the authenticity of objects, they do so by evaluating the extent to which the object embodies or (...) reflects a valued essence. I suggest that this explanation of authenticity provides an overarching framework that describes how people evaluate object authenticity across a variety of contexts and I report the results of three experiments that directly test the predictions made by this explanation. (shrink)

Scientific essentialism holds that: (1) each scientific kind is associated with the same set of properties in every possible world; and (2) every individual member of a scientific kind belongs to that kind in every possible world in which it exists. Recently, Ellis (Scientific essentialism, 2001 ; The philosophy of nature 2002 ) has provided the most sustained defense of scientific essentialism, though he does not clearly distinguish these two claims. In this paper, I argue that (...) both claims face a number of formidable difficulties. The necessities of scientific essentialism are not adequately distinguished from semantic necessities, they have not been shown to be necessities in the strictest sense, they must be relativized to context, and they must either be confined to a subset of scientific properties without warrant or their connection to causal powers must be revoked. Moreover, upon closer examination (1) turns out to be a trivial thesis that can be satisfied by non-kinds, and (2) is inapplicable to some of the most fundamental kinds in the basic sciences. (shrink)

Some philosophers believe that the doctrine that individuals have (nominal) essences is supported by arguments designed to show that proper names have senses. Three such arguments are extracted from recent pieces of philosophy: one from the absurdity of bare particulars, A second from the necessary conditions for identifying bearers of proper names, And a third from the ability to replace proper names in discourse with the help of sortal terms. All three arguments are rejected upon examination. The bearing this rejection (...) has for our conception of how we identify particulars through time is briefly discussed. Finally, An attempt to revive this sort of essentialism vis-A-Vis semantic categories is criticized. (shrink)

The major objection for including mental properties, and laws, within the domain of scientific essentialism concerns phenomenal properties, and such an objection is often raised via the intuition that zombies are conceivable. However, if these properties can be individuated in terms of roles and establish nomological relations, zombies are not possible because they would be nomologically identical to us but property different, an independence that essentialism denies. If there are not nomological relations, the essentialist denies that there are (...) phenomenal properties, and we are zombie. But it seems there are phenomenal properties, so this option too should be discarded. The only option left is that phenomenal properties are categorical properties. However, I argue that this option is not viable and that these properties are better construed as dispositions, which gives physicalism a better chance to be defensible. (shrink)

Psychological essentialism is a folk theory characterized by the belief that a causal internal essence or force gives rise to the common outward behaviors or attributes of a category's members. In two studies, we investigated whether 4- to 7-year-old children evidenced essentialist reasoning about heart transplants by asking them to predict whether trading hearts with an individual would cause them to take on the donor's attributes. Control conditions asked children to consider the effects of trading money with an (...) individual. Results indicated that children reasoned according to essentialism, predicting more transfer of attributes in the transplant condition versus the non-bodily money control. Children also endorsed essentialist transfer of attributes even when they did not believe that a transplant would change the recipient's category membership. This finding runs counter to predictions from a strong interpretation of the “minimalist” position, an alternative to essentialism. (shrink)

Essentialism is, on the one hand, anchored with considerable firmness in a common sense picture of the world. On the other hand, it was dismissed for logico-philosophical reasons by a scientifically minded theorist like Quine. ``New essentialists'' like Kripke did engage in very profitable theorizing on an essentialist basis, but made no significant effort to investigate the prospects of imparting to an essentialist metaphysics a solid foundation within a scientific world view. These foundational prospects are the concern of the (...) article. – The investigation is guided by two ideas which are elaborated within a proof theoretical framework in the course of the article. First, being an essential F (where ``F'' represents a predicate) is linked with a lifelong possession of the property signified by ``F'' (but there is something more in it). Second, a special kind of necessity is involved in (true) predications of essential F-ness; it should be capable, like possibly all kinds of necessity, of being spelt out, in the final analysis, in terms of the provability of appropriate propositions in appropriate theoretical systems. In outlining the relevant axiomatic bases, the article draws on an early paper by E. Hirsch on individuation and essence. (shrink)

Kupperman (1995) advances an anti-essentialist view of emotions in which he suggests that there can be emotion without feeling or affect, emotion without corresponding motivation, and emotion without an intentional relation to an object such that the emotion is about that object in some way. In this reply to Kupperman's essay, I suggest a number of problems with his rejection of the essentialist position. I argue that in his discussion of feelings Kupperman is crucially not clear about the distinction between (...) the ascription of emotions by others versus the experience of emotions by an individual. Furthermore, I also question his analysis of the role of linguistic empiricism in philosophy and psychology. With respect to Kupperman's analysis of intentionality, I argue that he confuses the ability to readily identify intentional objects with the issue of their actual existence. Finally, I suggest that Kupperman confuses the concepts of action and motivation in his discussion of motivation. (shrink)

According to Essentialism, an object’s properties divide into those that are essential and those that are accidental. While being human is commonly thought to be essential to Socrates, being a philosopher plausibly is not. We can motivate the distinction by appealing—as we just did—to examples. However, it is not obvious how best to characterize the notion of essential property, nor is it easy to give conclusive arguments for the essentiality of a given property. In this paper, I elaborate on (...) these issues and explore the way in which essential properties behave in relation to other related properties, like sufficient-for-existence properties and individual essences. (shrink)

Psychological essentialism is an intuitive folk belief positing that certain categories have a non-obvious inner “essence” that gives rise to observable features. Although this belief most commonly characterizes natural kind categories, I argue that psychological essentialism can also be extended in important ways to artifact concepts. Specifically, concepts of individual artifacts include the non-obvious feature of object history, which is evident when making judgments regarding authenticity and ownership. Classic examples include famous works of art (e.g., the Mona (...) Lisa is authentic because of its provenance), but ordinary artifacts likewise receive value from their history (e.g., a worn and tattered blanket may have special value if it was one’s childhood possession). Moreover, in some cases, object history may be thought to have causal effects on individual artifacts, much as an animal essence has causal effects. I review empirical support for these claims and consider the implications for both artifact concepts and essentialism. This perspective suggests that artifact concepts cannot be contained in a theoretical framework that focuses exclusively on similarity or even function. Furthermore, although there are significant differences between essentialism of natural kinds and essentialism of artifact individuals, the commonalities suggest that psychological essentialism may not derive from folk biology but instead may reflect more domain-general perspectives on the world. (shrink)

Modality is standardly thought to come in two varieties: de dicto and de re. De re modality concerns the attribution of modal features to things or individuals, and enshrines a commitment to Aristotelian essentialism. This chapter considers how David Lewis's conception of de re modality fits into his overall metaphysics. The hypothesis is that the driving force behind his metaphysics in general, and his adherence to counterpart theory in particular, is the distinctly Humean thought that necessary connections between distinct (...) existences are literally unintelligible. Lewis's appeal to counterpart theory in his account of truthmakers is explicitly aimed at delivering a truthmaker principle that eschews necessary connections. Lewis's attitude towards several well‐rehearsed debates in contemporary ontology and the reasons underlying that attitude closely mirror Hume's incendiary verdict on "divinity and school metaphysics." Finally, de re modality is connected with his adherence to the doctrine of "Humean supervenience". (shrink)

Kant argued that individuals should be punished “proportional to their internal wickedness,” and recent work has demonstrated that essentialism—the notion that observable characteristics reflect internal, biological, unchanging “essences”—influences moral judgment. However, these efforts have yielded conflicting results: essentialism sometimes increases and sometimes decreases moral condemnation. To resolve these discrepancies, we investigated the mechanisms by which essentialism influences moral judgment, focusing on perceptions of actors’ control over their behavior, the target of essentialism (particular behaviors vs. actors’ character), (...) and the component of essentialism (biology vs. immutability). Participants punished people described as having a criminal essence more than those with a non‐criminal essence or no essence. Probing potential mechanisms underlying this effect, we found a mediating role for perceptions of control and weak influences of essentialism focus (behavior vs. character) and component of essentialism (biology vs. immutability). These results extend prior work on essentialism and moral cognition, demonstrating a causal link between perceptions of “internal wickedness” and moral judgment. Our findings also resolve discrepancies in past work on the influence of essentialism on moral judgment, highlighting the role that perceptions of actors’ control over their behavior play in moral condemnation. (shrink)

Recently, macroscopic accounts of chemical kind individuation have been proposed as alternatives to the microstructural essentialist account advocated by Kripke, Putnam, and others. These accounts argue that individuation of chemical kinds is based on macroscopic criteria such as reactivity or thermodynamics, and they challenge the essentialism that grounds the Kripke-Putnam view. Using a variety of chemical examples, I argue that microstructure grounds these macroscopic accounts, but that this grounding need not imply essentialism. Instead, kinds are individuated on the (...) basis of similarity of reactivity between substances, and microstructure explains similarity of reactivity. (shrink)

This paper defendsintensional essentialism: a property (intensional entity) is not essential relative to an individual (extensional entity), but relative to other properties (or intensional entities). Consequently, an individual can have a property only accidentally, but in virtue of having that property the individual has of necessity other properties. Intensional essentialism is opposed to various aspects of the Kripkean notion of metaphysical modality, eg, varying domains, existence as a property of individuals, and its category of properties (...) which are both empirical and essential with respect to particular individuals and natural kinds. The key notion of intensional essentialism isrequisite. A requisite is explicated as a relation-in-extension between two intensions (functions from possible worlds and moments of time)X, Y such that wherever and wheneverX is instantiatedY is also instantiated. We predict three readings of the sentence. Every wooden table is necessarily wooden , one involving modalityde re and the other two modalityde dicto. The first reading claims that no individual which is a wooden table is necessarily wooden. The claim is backed up by bare particular anti-essentialism. The two other interpretations claim that it is necessary that whatever is a wooden table is wooden. However, as we try to show, one is logically far more perspicuous thanks to the concept of requisite and thus preferable to more standardde dicto formalizations. (shrink)

This essay traces the rather consistent essentialist thread that runs through the whole Short Treatise. This allows us not only to better understand the work itself but also to obtain a firmer grasp of the nature of Spinoza’s entire philosophical enterprise. In many ways, the essentialism we find in the Short Treatise is in line with Spinoza’s mature thought; but there are also significant differences, and discerning them throws light on the development of Spinoza’s philosophy.

Since the publication of Kit Fine's “Essence and Modality”, there has been lively debate over how best to think of essence in relation to necessity. The present aim is to draw attention to a definition of essence in terms of modality that has not been given sufficient attention. This neglect is perhaps unsurprising, since it is not a proposal made in response to Fine's 1994 paper and ensuing discussion, but harks back to Ruth Barcan Marcus's earlier work in the 1960s (...) and 1970s on essentialist claims. At the core of Barcan Marcus's account is Minimal Essentialism, of which there are several extensions, in particular, for cases of referential predicates (such as “x is identical to Socrates”), Individuating Essentialism, and Aristotelian Essentialism. I argue that Minimal Essentialism fares favourably against a host of familiar examples. I close with some historical observations, that the distinction between essence and necessity was already commonplace in the early days of quantified modal logic and its philosophy. (shrink)

This article seeks to introduce a greater degree of precision into our understanding of Madhyamaka Buddhist ontological non-foundationalism, focussing specifically on the Madhyamaka founder Nāgārjuna (c. 150–250 CE). It distinguishes four senses of what the ‘foundation’ whose existence Mādhyamikas deny means; that is, (1) as ‘something that stands under or grounds things’ (a position known as generic substantialism); (2) as ‘a particular kind of basic entity’ (specific substantialism); (3) as ‘an individual essence (a haecceity or thisness of that object) (...) by means of which it is identical to that very object, to itself’ (modal essentialism); and (4) as ‘an essence in the absence of which an object could be of a radically different kind or sort of object than it in fact is’ (sortal essentialism). It then proceeds to delineate the Madhyamaka refutation of the specific substantialist position in terms of its argued denial of dharma as basic entity; of generic substantialism and modal essentialism in terms of its argued denial of svabhāva as both foundation for and essence of putative entities; and of sortal essentialism in terms of its argued denial of essentialist conceptions of conceptual thought (vikalpa), mental construction (prapañca), and in short the entire domain of ratiocination (kalpanā), by means of its notion of conceptual imputation (prajñaptir upādāya)—a denial strictly speaking ontological, but of what are putative epistemic entities. The final portion of the article explains the relationship of ontological to other forms of non-foundationalism according to Madhyamaka. (shrink)

This paper presents a functional genealogy of essentialist authenticity. The essentialist account maintains that authenticity is the result of discovering and realizing one’s ‘true self’. The genealogy shows that essentialist authenticity can serve the function of supporting continuity in one’s individual characteristics. A genealogy of essentialist authenticity is not only methodologically interesting as the first functional genealogy of a contingent concept. It can also deepen the functional understanding of authenticity used in neuroethics, provide a possible explanation for the prevalence (...) of the idea of an essentialist true self and justify the use of the ideal of authenticity. First, essentialist authenticity is defined and explained through the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Second, a general need to have steady characteristics is derived from basic human practices. Third, circumstances that make it more challenging to steady oneself are identified and shown to have become more prevalent in the age of modernity when the ideal of authenticity emerged. Finally, it is shown how essentialist authenticity helps to steady the self. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Matter and Mathematics: An Essentialist Account of the Laws of Nature by Andrew YOUNANDominic V. CassellaYOUNAN, Andrew. Matter and Mathematics: An Essentialist Account of the Laws of Nature. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023. xii + 228 pp. Cloth, $75.00Andrew Younan’s work situates itself between two opposing philosophical accounts of the laws of nature. In one corner, there are the Humeans (or Nominalists); in the (...) other, the Anti-Humeans (or Platonists). The goal of the book is to find an explanation for the orderliness of the natural world that avoids falling into the difficulties of the two opposing philosophies. For example, the Humeans treat “events” as fundamental, and the laws of nature follow from these “events.” For the Humeans, reality is essentially random, with any order being something of our own contrivance. Whereas for the Anti-Humeans, the laws of nature are fundamental and are treated as causing events, turning the effect of necessity into the cause of material [End Page 166] characteristics. Looking to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, Younan proposes the recovery of a third option, the Essentialist position. This Essentialist position understands substances, that is, individual beings, as fundamental and all else (for example, events and laws of nature) follow from these individual beings. The thesis of the book, generally understood, is that Essentialism evades the critiques that the Humeans and Anti-Humeans put against one another while retaining what is right in each approach.The book is divided into two parts. The book’s first part deals with general objections and replies and is divided into three chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 address the two opposing accounts of nature mentioned, while chapter 3 argues for the benefits of recovering an Essentialist position. Chapter 1 examines the objection that Aristotelian natural philosophy is incompatible with modern science, an objection raised by Descartes. Chapter 2 addresses the objections of the Humeans, namely, that natural philosophy and, with it, causality and induction have been debunked. Chapter 3 looks at the fathers of quantum theory, specifically Heisenberg, and argues that a return to Aristotle’s understanding of nature would benefit the modern scientific project. The book’s second part is an argument for the Essentialist position and is divided into three chapters. Chapters 4 and 5 are the foundation for chapter 6. Chapter 4 is an abstractive account of mathematics, differing from Descartes and his conceptions, which draws on the texts of Aristotle and Aquinas’s Division and Methods. Chapter 5 situates necessity and its role in Aristotelian natural philosophy. Chapter 6 is the author’s attempt at defining what it is to be a law of nature.Younan argues that adopting an essentialist understanding of nature in a system where all knowledge begins in the senses has three significant “payoffs.” The first is that it avoids governance language, that is, it avoids making laws themselves causes of necessity; the second is that it avoids the assertion of a priori knowledge; the third is that it understands individual things as the fundamental primitives in nature, restoring the substance to its proper place as the thing that “stands under” accidental being.The book is concluded with an appendix that explores and rearticulates Thomas Aquinas’s fifth way under the consideration of everything the author had argued for in the book’s main text. Taking as established by the rest of the book that necessity and teleology go hand in hand, Younan argues for a creator God who establishes a universe freely but within certain parameters that follow upon being itself. Younan concludes, with Thomas Aquinas, that laws of nature are “ordinances of reason” that must come from a rational mind. To be as consistent as they are, the laws of nature must be promulgated by God, and they are discoverable within the nature of matter itself.Younan’s book often engages its interlocutors on the big-picture scale, frequently giving generalizations and not going into details to avoid getting bogged down in the weeds. The author is very aware of what he is doing. [End Page 167] It is appropriate since engaging the multiheaded hydra of the schools of thought that Younan... (shrink)

This book presents vigorous and wide-ranging arguments in defense of an Aristotelian metaphysical scheme along fairly orthodox Thomistic lines. The central claim is that the items that populate the world have real essences – natures that mind-independently define what each such item is. This Aristotelian essentialism, Oderberg begins by telling us, is a different doctrine from what has recently been called ‘essentialism’, and a more powerful one . For recent essentialism has treated a thing's essence as merely (...) all those properties that the thing takes with it across all possible worlds – and here modality gets presupposed in order to explain essentialness, when the order should be reversed.We can observe essences, Oderberg holds, even though the observation is indirect, and even though knowing what to make of our observations requires applying metaphysical knowledge. Positivism-inspired worries that there is something unfactual about modal claims, and hence about essences, are unfounded . Claims about essences do have factual content, but not because they merely express our concepts or our grammar, and not because they simply report empirical findings . True reports of the essences of objects articulate a metaphysical insight from Aristotle: an object's essence is a compound of its substantial form and its prime matter . Its form actuates potentialities of its matter . The laws of nature derive from essences, and hence are necessary rather than contingent . Artifacts are ‘accidental unities’ of individual substances and …. (shrink)

The ways in which space-time points and elementary particles are modeled share a curious feature: neither seems to specify which basic object has which properties. This chapter sketches the motivation for this claim and searches for an explanation for it. After reviewing several proposals, it argues for a view according to which objects occupy their place in a given relational structure essentially. This view, which is termed minimal structural essentialism, provides a metaphysical grounding for the physical equivalence of models (...) related by permutation. An interesting consequence of this position is that space-time points and elemental particles turn out to be individuals, albeit of a rather different sort than has traditionally been considered. (shrink)

Quine's arguments against the attribution of essential properties de re to individuals have been the motivation for attempts at reinstating essentialism as a respectable metaphysical thesis and at defending the coherence of modal logic in general.I shall argue here along somewhat different lines, that the particular version of essentialism Quine objects to is in fact untenable but that this conclusion is far from entailing a commitment to some version of conventionalism, and in particular that it does not entail (...) the view that the only kind of necessity that is coherent is de dicto necessity.In what follows, I shall assume, without arguing for it, that de re essentialism and subjunctive conditionals are intimately related, and in particular, that any version of de re essentialism which conflicts with our basic intuitions about subjunctive conditionals is untenable. (shrink)

Alan Sidelle's Necessity, Essence, and Individuation is a sustained defense of empiricism—or, more generally, conventionalism—against recent attacks by realists. Sidelle focuses his attention on necessity a posteriori, a kind of necessity which contemporary realists have taken to support realism over empiricism. Turning the tables against the realists, Sidelle argues that if there are in fact truths necessary a posteriori, it is not realism, but rather empiricism which provides the best explanation for them.

Scholars agree that Aristotle held a view that has been called "Aristotelian Essentialism" , but disagree about what this thesis entails. I reconstruct as the view that there are certain individuals, namely substances, that have essences, and that essences are to be understood as "explanatorily basic" features of an individual--features of an individual substance that serve as part of a scientific explanation of the presence of other features of that individual, but are not themselves explained in (...) this way. When Aristotle's view is understood in this way, interesting differences and parallels between him and contemporary essentialists emerge. For one, so-called "properties of origin" such as "being born to George and Barbara Bush" are not essential to the individual that has them, on Aristotle's view. Furthermore, understanding Aristotle's view in this way explains why essences are not, as it has often been maintained, merely "career attributes"--properties that an individual has necessarily and at each moment at which it exists. I argue that for Aristotle, essences belong to an individual in virtue of the species to which it belongs, and that Aristotle subscribes to the "species-form" view of essence. I examine and respond to arguments to the contrary that, in both the Metaphysics and the Generation of Animals, Aristotle holds that the essence of an individual substance is an "individual form" unique to that thing, and not shared by any other individual. Aristotle's account of family resemblances, in particular, has been thought by many to present problems for understanding Aristotle's essentialism. In that text it looks like Aristotle gives up on the view that only certain features--the ones that define the species--are essential to an individual when he attempts to explain the phenomena of family resemblance. I conclude with a sketch of a reading of this text that shows Aristotle holding an account of family resemblances that is consistent with the view that only certain features--the explanatorily basic ones--are part of the essences of individual substances. (shrink)