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    Carmelics

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    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Perspectives
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Universal features that do not run explanatorily deep are insufficient to constitute the essence of a kind.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Locke's nominal essence view holds that shared observable properties exhaustively constitute kind membership for epistemic purposes.
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    • 2.If knowledge of kinds is necessarily limited to nominal essences, then explanatory depth is a metaphysical posit beyond what kind-constitution requires.
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    • 3.A criterion for essence that exceeds knowable criteria conflates metaphysical and epistemological demands on natural kinds.
      ?

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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Quine argued that essentialism is incoherent because necessity is always relative to a description, not intrinsic to an object.
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    • 2.If there is no description-independent fact about which universal features are 'explanatorily foundational,' the explanatory-depth criterion is arbitrary.
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    • 3.A criterion for essence that cannot be non-arbitrarily applied fails to do the taxonomic work Aristotelian essentialism demands of it.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Essence, for Aristotle, must not only be universal across the kind but must also explain the other features of the kind.
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    • 2.A feature can be universal without being explanatorily foundational.
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