Year: 1998
Type: article
Abstract: In this paper, I examine the case that has been made for origin essentialism and find it wanting. I focus on the arguments of Nathan Salmon and Graeme Forbes. Like most origin essentialists, Salmon and Forbes have been concerned to respect the intuition that slight variation in the origin of an artifact or organism is possible. But, I argue, both oftheir arguments fail to respect this intuition. Salmon's argument depends on a sufficiency principle for crossworld identity, which should be rejected, if-as Salmon concedes-a given artifact might have been originally made from slightly different material. Similarly, Forbes's argument succeeds only if essentially the same argument can be used to establish a claim that-by his own admission-is too strong, namely that no variation, however slight, in an organism's origin is possible.
Source: Mind
Author: T Robertson
Institution: Reed College
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2145851222