Marc lange on essentialism |
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Authors: | Brian Ellis |
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Affiliation: | Southern Methodist University |
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Abstract: | For scientific essentialists, the only logical possibilities of existence are the real (or metaphysical) ones, and such possibilities, they say, are relative to worlds. They are not a priori, and they cannot just be invented. Rather, they are discoverable only by the a posteriori methods of science. There are, however, many philosophers who think that real possibilities are knowable a priori, or that they can just be invented. Marc Lange [Lange 2004 Lange, Marc. 2004. A Note on Scientific Essentialism, Laws of Nature, and Counterfactual Conditionals. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 82: 227–41. ] thinks that they can be invented, and tries to use his inventions to argue that the essentialist theory of counterfactual conditionals developed in Scientific Essentialism [Ellis 2001 Ellis BD 2001 Scientific Essentialism Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , hereafter SE] is flawed. |
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