Warum man Essentialist sein kann – eine logische Konstruktion im Schnittfeld von Sprache, Ontologie und Naturwissenschaft

Essentialism is, on the one hand, anchored with considerable firmness in a common sense picture of the world. On the other hand, it was dismissed for logico-philosophical reasons by a scientifically minded theorist like Quine. ``New essentialists' like Kripke did engage in very profitable theorizing on an essentialist basis, but made no significant effort to investigate the prospects of imparting to an essentialist metaphysics a solid foundation within a scientific world view. These foundational prospects are the concern of the article. – The investigation is guided by two ideas which are elaborated within a proof theoretical framework in the course of the article. First, being an essential F (where ``F' represents a predicate) is linked with a lifelong possession of the property signified by ``F' (but there is something more in it). Second, a special kind of necessity is involved in (true) predications of essential F-ness; it should be capable, like possibly all kinds of necessity, of being spelt out, in the final analysis, in terms of the provability of appropriate propositions in appropriate theoretical systems. In outlining the relevant axiomatic bases, the article draws on an early paper by E. Hirsch on individuation and essence.     

Review

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Contents of Volume 57

Volume Contents

Contents of Volume 57     

How To Extend The Dialogical Approach To Provability Logic

The core ideas of the dialogicalapproach to modal propositional logic are explainedby means of an elementary example. Subsequently,ways of extending this approach to the system G ofso-called provability logic are checked, therebyraising the question whether the dialogician is inneed of shaping his Nichtverzögerungsregel(non-delay-rule), in order to get it sufficiently precise,in different ways for different modal systems.     

Deontische logik: Die variante der lokalen ?quivalenz

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Vier Philosophen über semantische Paradoxien

In his treatise on sophisms, the medieval logician and philosopher J. Buridan expounded a theory on what we have come to call semantic paradoxes. His theory has not yet been fully understood. The present paper aims at showing that Barwise’s and Etchemendy’s considerations on paradoxes (founded upon Aczel’s non-well-founded sets) provide the framework for an improved understanding. Barwise’s and Etchemendy’s account is contrasted with Kripke’s. Finally, a recent analysis of Buridan’s position by Epstein is criticized