Essentialism, antihaecceitism, and haecceitism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18778/1689-4286.44.09Keywords:
essence, essentialism, possible worlds, haecceiitsm, antihaecceitism, individuals, identityAbstract
A standard contemporary formulation essentialism defines essential properties with a help of a concept of possible worlds. It is often argued that in order to use possible worlds effectively, facts about transworld identity of individuals need to be determined. In this paper I discuss how essentialist might attempt the issue of transworld identity of individuals. Specifically, I analyze a connection between essentialism and the two theories that explain the transworld identity issue, that is, haecceitism and antihaecceitism. I provide a detailed analysis of different variants of antihaecceitism and argue, that all of them are incompatible with basic intuitions that stay behind essentialism. In contrast to that, I defend a position that essentialism ought to be combined with some form of haecceitism. In the remainder of this paper I provide the two ways through which essentialist might be a haecceitist.
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Narodowe Centrum Nauki
Grant numbers 2017/25/N/HS1/01378
