Real Essentialism pptx

[...]... this as real essentialism according to the sort of position I defend Perhaps one can think of it as hyper -real essentialism (a nominalist might call it unreal!), but for all that it is inadequate and incorrect as a theory of reality (More on this in Chapter 4.) Real essentialism takes nature seriously, and whilst it may countenance the existence of the immaterial – as I think it Contemporary essentialism. .. contemporary essentialism, nor independent of prior physicalist commitments about the nature of reality This should be enough at least to motivate the real essentialist outlook 1.4 Why real essentialism? Real essentialism starts with certain prior commitments, and it is right that these should be made clear from the outset (I will have more to say about them in Chapters 2 and 3.) First, there is a real world,... aspects of the theory of real essences will begin to take on more definite lines 2 Some varieties of anti -essentialism 2.1 Empiricist anti -essentialism It is through examination of some of the anti-essentialist views that have dominated contemporary philosophy that we can begin to gain a grasp of what essentialism (that is, real essentialism) does and does not hold We will see that anti -essentialism contains... in pain).24 Of course there are many dimensions of contrast for the term real – real v fictional, real v artefactual, real v imaginary and the like – and the essentialist incorporates all of these distinctions into his ontology But the overall position he holds is that there is a real world, and that the things in it are all real in the sense that they are beings of one kind or another and their being... Modalism cannot help us It confuses the consequences of real possibility and real necessity with their constitution Given the real modalities, we can use possible-worlds talk to illustrate them, and maybe even use possibleworlds thought experiments to uncover some of our intuitions about what modal realities there are And perhaps we can even speak of real possible worlds as abstract structures within a... whilst it may countenance the existence of the immaterial – as I think it Contemporary essentialism and real essentialism 19 should – it does not reduce or refer nature as it is in concrete physical reality to a realm of the immaterial that is supposed to be its ultimate ontological ground Essences are real, they encompass all kinds of being and, thirdly, they are knowable The essentialist is committed... successful the mathematical theory may be Secondly, real essentialism does not privilege the microscopic over the macroscopic, unless the object of investigation is specifically the microscopic Taking the macroscopic seriously is shown in the very form of the real essentialist definition, which gives both the genus and the specific difference, 16 Real Essentialism for example: ‘Water is a colourless, odourless... uncovered merely by reflecting on semantics rather than metaphysics.) Contemporary essentialism and real essentialism 7 1.2 Against modalism: Fine’s critique The critique of modalism goes further and deeper than what has been said so far In two important papers, Kit Fine has undermined the very thinking at the heart of contemporary essentialism (Fine 1994a, 1995a) He asserts that the contemporary assimilation... such that it distinguishes the thing from every Contemporary essentialism and real essentialism 9 other thing with a different nature – then we do indeed have a modal asymmetry between Socrates and singleton Socrates The modal criterion cannot tell us by virtue of what a thing has the necessary features it has, and therefore it does not ‘carve reality at the joints’, to use the familiar metaphor The modalist... that the real essentialist starts from the classic Aristotelian position that metaphysics is the study of being qua being: being in all its manifestations and varieties, classified according to a suite of concepts and categories that derive from the Aristotelian tradition There are other kinds of essentialism, and we have already encountered ‘scientific’ essentialism There is also Platonist essentialism, .