Essence without fundamentality

• Autores: Agustín Rayo
• Localización: Theoria: an international journal for theory, history and foundations of science, ISSN 0495-4548, Vol. 30, Nº 3, 2015 (Ejemplar dedicado a: History and Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics), págs. 349-363
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In Modality and Explanatory Reasoning, Boris Kment argues that a single notion of essence can be used to play two distinct theoretical roles. He thinks there is an important connec- tion between essence and metaphysical necessity, on the one hand, and between essence and metaphysical explanation, on the other. In this paper I will argue that it is not clear that a single notion of essence should be used to perform both these jobs. For whereas the project of giving metaphysical explanations requires a notion of essence that distinguishes between truths that are more or less “funda- mental” in a metaphysical sense, the project of shedding light on metaphysical necessity does not.