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Full Idea
One person can be more or less of a poet than another, so 'poet' is not a conclusory answer to the question 'What is it that is singled out here?' 'Poet' rides on the back of the answer 'human being'.
Gist of Idea
'Human being' is a better answer to 'what is it?' than 'poet', as the latter comes in degrees
Source
David Wiggins (Substance [1995], 4.5.1)
Book Ref
'Philosophy: a Guide Through the Subject', ed/tr. Grayling,A.C. [OUP 1995], p.222
A Reaction
So apparently one must assign a natural kind, and not just a class. Wiggins lacks science fiction imagination. In the genetic salad of the far future, being a poet may be more definitive than being a human being. See Idea 12063.
Related Idea
Idea 12063 Sortal classification becomes science, with cross reference clarifying individuals [Wiggins]
| 12057 | Matter underlies things, composes things, and brings them to be [Wiggins] |
| 12047 | We refer to persisting substances, in perception and in thought, and they aid understanding [Wiggins] |
| 12056 | An ancestral relation is either direct or transitively indirect [Wiggins] |
| 12055 | Sortal predications are answers to the question 'what is x?' [Wiggins] |
| 12059 | A river may change constantly, but not in respect of being a river [Wiggins] |
| 12063 | Sortal classification becomes science, with cross reference clarifying individuals [Wiggins] |
| 12064 | The category of substance is more important for epistemology than for ontology [Wiggins] |
| 12065 | Seeing a group of soldiers as an army is irresistible, in ontology and explanation [Wiggins] |
| 12049 | Naming the secondary substance provides a mass of general information [Wiggins] |
| 12050 | Substances contain a source of change or principle of activity [Wiggins] |
| 12052 | We never single out just 'this', but always 'this something-or-other' [Wiggins] |
| 12051 | If the kinds are divided realistically, they fall into substances [Wiggins] |
| 12053 | 'Human being' is a better answer to 'what is it?' than 'poet', as the latter comes in degrees [Wiggins] |
| 12054 | Secondary substances correctly divide primary substances by activity-principles and relations [Wiggins] |