Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Leo Tolstoy, Joseph Butler and Anjan Chakravarrty

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4 ideas

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 5. Essence as Kind
15145 A kind essence is the necessary and sufficient properties for membership of a class [Chakravartty]
     Full Idea: The modern concept of a kind essence is a set of intrinsic properties that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for the membership of something in a class of things, or 'kind'.
     From: Anjan Chakravarrty (Inessential Aristotle: Powers without Essences [2012], 2)
     A reaction: I am always struck by the problem that the kind itself is constructed from the individuals, so circularity always seems to loom.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism
15147 Cluster kinds are explained simply by sharing some properties, not by an 'essence' [Chakravartty]
     Full Idea: The fact that members of some cluster kinds are subjects of causal generalizations reflects the degree to which they share causally efficacious properties, not the fact that they may be composed of essence kinds per se.
     From: Anjan Chakravarrty (Inessential Aristotle: Powers without Essences [2012], 2)
     A reaction: I think this is right. I am a fan of individual essences, but not of kind essences. I take kinds, and kind explanations, to be straightforward inductive generalisations from individuals. Extreme stabilities give the illusion of a kind essence.
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 5. Self-Identity
3144 Everything is what it is, and not another thing [Butler]
     Full Idea: Everything is what it is, and not another thing.
     From: Joseph Butler (works [1732]), quoted by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 2.4
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 9. Sameness
21315 A tree remains the same in the popular sense, but not in the strict philosophical sense [Butler]
     Full Idea: When a man swears to the same tree having stood for fifty years in the same place, he means ...not that the tree has been all that time the same in the strict philosophical sense of the word. ...In a loose and popular sense they are said to be the same.
     From: Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1)
     A reaction: A helpful distinction which we should hang on. Of course, by the standards of modern physics, nothing is strictly the same from one Planck time to the next. All is flux. So we either drop the word 'same' (for objects) or relax a bit.