Dispositions, Mellor once remarked, are as shameful in many eyes as pregnant spinsters used to be, ' ideally to be explained away, or entitled to a shotgun wedding to take the name of some decently real categorical property' [18]. This 'Victorian prejudice' against dispositions still exists. On reflection, this fact is perhaps not really surprising. Dispositions have dallied in most corners of ...

Individuals tend to explain the characteristics of others with reference to an underlying essence, a tendency that has been termed psychological essentialism. Drawing on current conceptualizations of essentialism as a fundamental mode of social thinking, and on prior studies investigating belief in genetic determinism (BGD) as a component of essentialism, we argue that BGD cannot constitute the...

In this paper I explain why I favour a metaphysics in which all fundamental natural properties are essentially dispositional. First, by considering what a world might be like that has no laws, I argue that properties can necessitate laws, and that this is best explained by dispositional essentialism concerning those properties. I then argue that we should not regard any properties as being exce...

Humeanism – the idea that there are no necessary connections between distinct existences and Nomic Essentialism properties essentially play nomic roles they do two of most important influential positions in metaphysics science. Traditionally, it has been thought these were incompatible competitors. We disagree. argue is an attractive version captures that, for example, mass plays role actually ...

Does it matter that the hearts of 'brainstem dead' patients may persist in beating spontaneously? Hostile reactions, to the Danish inclusion of cardiac criteria in the determination of death, betray reductionist views of human life at the core of 'brainstem' conceptions of death. Such views (whether centred on neurological function or on abstractions concerning 'personhood') supplant the richne...

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509 I. The Stubborn Persistence of Sex Segregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513 R II. Gender, Antiessentialism, and Masculinities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517 R A. Gender and Antiessentialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517 R B. Multiple Masculinitie...

Many studies appear to show that categorization conforms to psychological essentialism (e.g., Gelman & Wellman, 1991). However, key implications of essentialism have not been scrutinized. These are that people’s categorizations should shift as their knowledge of micro-structural properties shift, and that people should defer in their categorizations to appropriate experts. Three studies are rep...

Scientific essentialism aims to account for the natural laws’ special capacity to support counterfactuals. I argue that scientific essentialism can do so only by resorting to devices that are just as ad hoc as those that essentialists accuse Humean regularity theories of employing. I conclude by offering an account of the laws’ distinctive relation to counterfactuals that portrays laws as conti...

Dispositional essentialism maintains that all sparse properties are essentially powerful. Two conceptions of sparse properties appear compatible with dispositional essentialism: sparse properties as pure powers or as powerful qualities. This paper compares the two views, criticizes the powerful qualities view, and then develops a new theory of pure powers, termed Point Theory. This theory neutr...