Generic Essence, Objectual Essence, and Modality

Essence and Modality

The concept of essence has played an important role in the history and development of philosophy; and in no branch of the discipline is its importance more manifest than in metaphysics. Its significance for metaphysics is perhaps attributable to two main sources. In the first place, the concept may be used to characterize what the subject, or at least part of it, is about. For one of the centra...

Essence and Modality∗

∗This paper was published in Mind , 115/459 (July 2006): 659–693. Note: In transferring the LTEX in this preprint to the format used for publication in Mind, a couple of symbols were omitted. This preprint can be used to determine what the missing symbols are. †I’d like to thank Adriano Palma and Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde for inviting me to prepare this material and present it at the École Normal...

Essence' Description

A description of the Essence' language as used by the tool Savile Row.

Essence, Plenitude, and Paradox

Confounding: essence and detection.

Confounding is examined from first principles. In follow-up studies a confounder is a predictor of diagnosing the illness--by being either a risk indicator or a determinant of diagnostic errors; in addition, it shows different distributions between the exposed and nonexposed series. In case-referent studies confounding can arise in two ways. A priori confounders are correlates of exposure in th...