Real essentialism

✍ Scribed by David S Oderberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 329
• Series: Routledge studies in contemporary philosophy, 11
• Category: Library

✦ Table of Contents

Content: Contemporary essentialism and real essentialism --
Against modalism : possible worlds --
Against modalism : Fine's critique --
Reductionism : the illusory search for inner constitution --
Why real essentialism? --
Some varieties of anti-essentialism --
Empiricist anti-essentialism --
Quinean animadversions --
Popper : avoiding 'what-is?' questions --
Wittgenstein : the shadow of grammar --
The reality and knowability of essence --
Why essences are real --
The 'problem of the universal accidental --
An empirical test for essence? --
Coming to know essence --
'Paradigms', 'stereotypes', and classification --
The structure of essence --
Hylemorphism : act and potency --
Substantial form --
Prime matter --
Substance --
The immanence of essence --
Essence and identity --
Real definition and the true law of identity --
The Porphyrian tree --
The analogy of being --
Individuation --
Identity over time --
Essence and existence --
The real distinction in contingent beings --
Everything is contingent, almost --
Powers --
Laws of nature --
Aspects of essence --
Kinds of accident --
The nature of properties --
Knowledge of essence via properties --
Artefacts --
Origin and constitution --
Life --
The essence of life --
Kinds of organism --
Against emergence --
Species, biological and metaphysical --
Is biological essentialism dead? --
Against the cladistic species concept --
Vagueness --
A plea for morphology --
The person --
The essence of personhood --
Hylemorphic dualism --
Consciousness, psychology, and the person --
Form, body, and soul --
Soul, intellect, and immateriality --
Soul, identity, and material dependence.