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    Essence talk must be hyperintensional, meaning necessaril... — Carmelics
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    Home/Philosophy of Language
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    Essence talk must be hyperintensional, meaning necessarily equivalent predicates cannot be substituted salva veritate in essence contexts.

    Modality & PossibilityPhilosophy of Language
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

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    Reason for
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    • 1.Socrates is essentially human, but not essentially 'human and a member of a set'.
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    • 2.Being human and being 'human and a member of a set' are necessarily equivalent.
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    • 3.If essence contexts were merely intensional, substitution of necessarily equivalent predicates would preserve truth.
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    Reasons Against

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    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Essence contexts can be understood as intensional operators indexed to a restricted class of worlds defined by a sortal or kind, not as genuinely hyperintensional.
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    • 2.If essence is analyzed via Kit Fine's own modal primitivism, the necessity of membership in singleton sets can be blocked by restricting the relevant modal base to natural-kind worlds, preserving intensionality.
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    • 3.The failure of substitution in Fine's example reflects an independently motivated restriction on which necessities are 'metaphysically revelatory', not a syntactic opacity irreducible to possible-worlds semantics.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.David Lewis's counterpart theory can explain the asymmetry between 'essentially human' and 'essentially human and a set-member' via differences in counterpart relations across contexts, without invoking hyperintensionality.
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    • 2.If counterpart relations are context-sensitive and sortal-governed, then the substitution failure is pragmatic and context-relative, not a feature of the semantic structure of essence predicates themselves.
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    Philosophy of LanguageModality & Possibility

    Related

    Being human and being 'human and a member of a set' are necessarily equivalent.David Lewis's counterpart theory can explain the asymmetry between 'essentially ...Essence contexts can be understood as intensional operators indexed to a restric...If counterpart relations are context-sensitive and sortal-governed, then the sub...
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    If essence contexts were merely intensional, substitution of necessarily equival...If essence is analyzed via Kit Fine's own modal primitivism, the necessity of me...Socrates is essentially human, but not essentially 'human and a member of a set'...The failure of substitution in Fine's example reflects an independently motivate...

    Similar

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    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: hyperintensionality
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    However, various philosophers have employed hyperintensional resources to theorize about aspects of the world beyond representation. Famously, Fine (1994) argues that work on the essences of things must play a central role in metaphysics and essence talk must be hyperintensional. In the construction “\(x\) is essentially \(F\)”, we cannot be guaranteed to preserve truth by substituting necessarily equivalent predicates. Socrates is (suppose) essentially human, but not essentially (human and a me
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

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    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit