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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
A Metaphysics Of Artifacts: Essence And Mind-Dependence, Tim Juvshik
A Metaphysics Of Artifacts: Essence And Mind-Dependence, Tim Juvshik
Doctoral Dissertations
My dissertation explores the nature of artifacts – things like chairs, tables, and pinball machines – and addresses the question of whether there is anything essential to being an artifact and a member of a particular artifact kind. My dissertation offers new arguments against both the anti-essentialist and current essentialist proposals. Roughly put, the view is that artifacts are successful products of an intention to make something with certain features constitutive of an artifact kind. The constitutive features are often functional features, but may include structural, material, aesthetic, and other features. I further explore the ways in which artifacts are …
Identity And The Limits Of Possibility, Sam Cowling
Identity And The Limits Of Possibility, Sam Cowling
Open Access Dissertations
Possibilities divide into two kinds. Non-qualitative possibilities are distinguished by their connection to specific individuals. For example, the possibility that Napoleon is a novelist is non-qualitative, since it is a possibility for a specific individual, Napoleon. In contrast, the possibility that someone---anyone at all---is a novelist is a qualitative possibility, since it does not depend upon any specific individual. Haecceitism is a thesis about the relation between qualitative and non-qualitative possibilities. In one guise, it holds that some maximal possibilities---total ways the world could be---differ non-qualitatively without differing qualitatively. It would, for example, be only a haecceitistic difference that distinguishes …