The Essences of Fundamental Properties

Wang, Jennifer

doi:10.5334/met.29

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 60 publications

(59 reference statements)

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“…A well-motivated view is that, being fundamental and therefore not having a real definition, those positions have no non-trivial neo-Aristotelian essences at all, neither intrinsic nor relational (cf. Wang, 2019). They simply are the things they are.…”

Section: Insubstantiality: States Of Affairs and Moderate Structural ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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No foundations for metaphysical coherentism

Busse

2023

Philos Stud

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Recently, metaphysical coherentism has been propounded as an alternative to metaphysical foundationalism and infinitism. The view replaces the picture of reality as a hierarchy of levels with that of a network of objects or facts standing in symmetric or, more generally, cyclic relations of metaphysical dependence. This paper defends the orthodox picture of a well-founded hierarchy against the claimed superiority of coherentism. First, it will be argued that alleged theoretical advantages of coherentism do not hold up to scrutiny. Secondly, examples that are claimed to support coherentism are either misdescribed as involving metaphysical interdependence, or foundationalist treatments fare at least as good and often better than coherentist interpretations. Thirdly, a similar diagnosis applies to a recently proposed coherentist interpretation of quantum entanglement. The more general diagnosis is that claims of metaphysical dependence are convincing only if there is a detailed account of how one item metaphysically explains another. While foundationalists can resort to various specific explanatory relations, coherentism seems to be incapable of providing detailed explanations.

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Section: Insubstantiality: States Of Affairs and Moderate Structural ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cf. Wang (2019), Busse (2021). 31 For Humean approaches see Miller (2014), Bhogal and Perry (2017), Dorst (2023).…”

Section: Insubstantialitymentioning

confidence: 99%

No foundations for metaphysical coherentism

Busse

2023

Philos Stud

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“…Kindred formulations appear in Fine, (1994) and(1995). For a discussion on the implications of this principle with respect to fundamental entities, see Wang, (2019) and Wilson, (2020). dispositional essentialist thesis.…”

Section: Fundamental Powers Qua Metaphysically Independentmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Fundamentality of Fundamental Powers

Giannotti

2021

Acta Anal

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Dispositional essentialism is the view that all or many fundamental properties are essentially dispositional, or powers. The literature on the dispositional essence of powers is abundant. In contrast, the question of how to understand the fundamentality of fundamental powers has received scarce interest. Therefore, the fundamentality of powers stands in need of clarification. There are four main conceptions of the fundamental, namely as that which is (i) metaphysically independent; or (ii) belonging to a minimally complete basis; or (iii) perfectly natural; or (iv) metaphysically primitive. Here, I present and discuss each of these approaches from the viewpoint of dispositional essentialism. I show that (i) is incompatible with the metaphysics of powers and (ii)–(iv) have more drawbacks than merits. Therefore, my conclusion is that the dispositional essentialist should seek an alternative. Although I offer no positive account, I pave the way to more fruitful views by identifying the shortcoming of these unpromising options.

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“…Bennett ( 2017 ); Morganti ( 2020 ), and Tahko ( 2018 ). See Wang ( 2019 ) for an argument against interpreting entity-fundamentality in the context of DE in terms of ontological independence.…”

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confidence: 99%

Nominalist dispositional essentialism

Vogt

2022

Synthese

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Dispositional Essentialism, as commonly conceived, consists in the claims that at least some of the fundamental properties essentially confer certain causal-nomological roles on their bearers, and that these properties give rise to the natural modalities. As such, the view is generally taken to be committed to a realist conception of properties as either universals or tropes, and to be thus incompatible with nominalism as understood in the strict sense. Pace this common assumption of the ontological import of Dispositional Essentialism, the aim of this paper is to explore a nominalist version of the view, Austere Nominalist Dispositional Essentialism. The core features of the proposed account are that it eschews all kinds of properties (be they universals, tropes, or sets of particulars), takes certain predicative truths as fundamental, and employs the so-called generic notion of essence. As I will argue, the account is significantly closer to the core idea behind Dispositional Essentialism than the only nominalist account in the vicinity of Dispositional Essentialism that has been offered so far—Ann Whittle’s (2009) Causal Nominalism—and is immune to crucial problems that affect this view.

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The Essences of Fundamental Properties

Cited by 7 publications

References 60 publications

No foundations for metaphysical coherentism

No foundations for metaphysical coherentism

The Fundamentality of Fundamental Powers

Nominalist dispositional essentialism

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