Reductive Essentialism: Rejecting a Layered World

L. A. Paul
University of Arizona 

Essentialists and other nonreductionists who distinguish higher-order and lower-order objects (such as cells and their microphysical constituents) have difficulty with causal overdetermination. I argue that we can distinguish between objects such as cells and their constituents without endorsing higher and lower orders of objects, and once the causal structure of the cases is better understood, that there is no overdetermination.