Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: According to Essentialism , an object’s properties divide into those that are essential and those that are accidental. While being human is commonly thought to be essential to Socrates, being a philosopher plausibly is not. We can motivate the distinction by appealing – as we just did – to examples. However, it is not obvious how best to characterize the notion of essential property , nor is it easy to give conclusive arguments for the essentiality of a given property. In this paper, I elaborate on these issues and explore the way in which essential properties behave in relation to other related properties, like sufficient‐for‐existence properties and individual essences .
Source: Philosophy Compass
Author: Sonia Roca‐Royes
Institution: University of Stirling
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Research Councils UK
OpenAlex ID: W1930065675