Real Essentialism Book

List of illustrations     ix
Preface     x
Acknowledgements     xiii
Contemporary essentialism and real essentialism     1
Against modalism: possible worlds     1
Against modalism: Fine's critique     7
Reductionism: the illusory search for inner constitution     12
Why real essentialism?     18
Some varieties of anti-essentialism     21
Empiricist anti-essentialism     21
Quinean animadversions     25
Popper: avoiding 'what-is?' questions     30
Wittgenstein: the shadow of grammar     38
The reality and knowability of essence     44
Why essences are real     44
The 'problem' of the universal accidental     47
An empirical test for essence?     52
Coming to know essence     54
'Paradigms', 'stereotypes', and classification     57
The structure of essence     62
Hylemorphism: act and potency     62
Substantial form     65
Prime matter     71
Substance     76
The immanence of essence     81
Essence and identity     86
Real definition and the true law of identity     86
The Porphyrian Tree     92
The Analogy of Being     105
Individuation     108
Identity over time     117
Essence and existence     121
The real distinction in contingent beings     121
Everything is contingent... almost     125
Powers     130
Laws of nature     143
Aspects of essence     152
Kinds of accident     152
The nature of properties     156
Knowledge of essence via properties     162
Artefacts     166
Origin and constitution     170
Life     177
The essence of life     177
Kinds of organism     183
Against emergence     193
Species, biological and metaphysical     201
Is biological essentialism dead?     201
Against the cladistic species concept     214
Vagueness     224
A plea for morphology     234
The person     241
The essence of personhood     241
Hylemorphic dualism     243
Consciousness, psychology, and the person     245
Form, body, and soul     248
Soul, intellect, and immateriality     250
Soul, identity, and material dependence     255
Conclusion     259
Notes     261
Bibliography     295
Index     309