How Things Might Have Been: Individuals, Kinds, and Essential Properties - Image 1

£44.05

Oxford University Press How Things Might Have Been: Individuals, Kinds, and Essential Properties

Name: How Things Might Have Been: Individuals, Kinds, and Essential Properties
Brand: Oxford University Press
Price: 44.05 GBP
Availability: InStock

Metaphysics

About as cheap as it gets. The only time it was cheaper was 2 months ago.

£44 today · all-time low £44 (Mar 2026) · usually the usual

NEW HERE?

Amazon shows you one price. We show you all of them.

Tosheroon watches Amazon prices so you don't have to. Every product on Amazon has a price history — we make it visible. Set the price you'd actually pay, and we'll email you the second it gets there. No app, no account, one email.

WHAT'S ON THIS PAGE

↓ Price chart
when this has been cheap or pricey

↓ Forecast
where the price is heading next

↓ Statistics
all-time high & low, recent range

↑ Price alert
name your number, we'll email you

Price History & Forecast

Grey patches = out of stock. Cheaper = lower on the chart. Hover for exact prices.

Last 7 days • 7 data points (No recent data available)

Historical

Generating forecast...

Price Distribution

Price distribution over 7 days • 2 price levels

Days at Price

Current Price

Price Analysis

Most common price: £44 (6 days, 85.7%)

Price range: £44 - £45

Price levels: 2 different prices over 7 days

Description

How are we to distinguish between the essential and accidental properties of things such as individual people, cats, trees, and tables? Almost everyone agrees that such individuals could have been different, in certain respects, from the way that they actually are. But what are the respects in which they could not have been different: which of their properties are essential to their being the individuals that they are? And why? Following the revival of interest among analytic philosophers in essentialism and de re modality generated by the work of Kripke and others in the 1970s, these questions have been the subject of intense, yet still unresolved, debate. In this book, Penelope Mackie challenges most of the answers that have been given to these questions. Via a critical examination of rival theories, she arrives at what she calls "minimalist essentialism" an unorthodox theory according to which ordinary individuals have relatively few interesting essential properties, and intuitions that appear to support stronger versions of essentialism are interpreted as consistent with the theory. The topics discussed include the rivalry between the interpretation of de re modality in terms of "identity across possible worlds" and its interpretation in terms of David Lewis's counterpart theory, some notorious modal puzzles generated by the theory that individuals exist with different properties in different possible worlds, the notion of an individual essence, Kripke's "necessity of origin" thesis, and the widely held view that there are sortal properties that are essential properties of the things to which they belong. The book also includes a discussion of the relation between essentialism about individuals and essentialism about natural kinds, and a critical examination of the connection between semantics and natural kind essentialism.

Product Specifications

Brand: Oxford University Press
Format: paperback
ASIN: 0199562407
Category: Books > Subjects > Politics, Philosophy & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Metaphysics
Domain: Amazon UK
Publication Date: 15 April 2009
Listed Since: 16 July 2008

Barcode

No barcode data available

Oxford University Press How Things Might Have Been: Individuals, Kinds, and Essential Properties

About as cheap as it gets. The only time it was cheaper was 2 months ago.

Price History & Forecast

Price Distribution

Price Analysis

Description

Product Specifications

Barcode

Similar Products You Might Like

The Analytic Tradition in Philosophy, Volume 3: The Struggle for Modality

Springer - Existence as a Real Property: The Ontology of Meinongianism

Existence as a Real Property: The Ontology of Meinongianism: 356 (Synthese Library, 356)

Modal Logic as Metaphysics

Thought and World: The Hidden Necessities

Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine

Modality (Central Problems of Philosophy)

Norms and Necessity

Necessary Beings: An Essay on Ontology, Modality, and the Relations Between Them

Essays in Quasi-Realism

Epistemology of Modality and Philosophical Methodology (Routledge Studies in Epistemology)

Life Scientific Philosophy, Phenomenology of Life and the Sciences of Life: Ontopoiesis of Life and the Human Creative Condition: 59 (Analecta Husserliana, 59)

Being: A Study in Ontology

Philosophical Analysis: A Defense by Example: 39 (Philosophical Studies Series, 39)

Properties, Powers and Structures: Issues in the Metaphysics of Realism: 05 (Routledge Studies in Metaphysics)

Philosophical Analysis: A Defense by Example: 39 (Philosophical Studies Series, 39)

Normativity, Lifeworld, and Science in Sellars’ Synoptic Vision

Thought and Reality (Lines of Thought)

The Intimate Strangeness of Being: Metaphysics After Dialectic (Studies in Philosophy & the History of Philosophy): 56 (Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy)

Metaepistemology: Realism and Anti-Realism (Palgrave Innovations in Philosophy)

Empiricism and the Problem of Metaphysics

Modal Epistemology After Rationalism: 378 (Synthese Library, 378)

Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality

Michael Dummett: Contributions to Philosophy: 25 (Nijhoff International Philosophy Series, 25)