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Full Idea
It is natural to suppose, in the case of such objects as Wooster and Jeeves, that in addition to possessing constitutive essential properties they will also enter into constitutive essential relationships.
Clarification
Wooster and Jeeves always appear together in the same works of fiction, as master and servant
Gist of Idea
Maybe some things have essential relationships as well as essential properties
Source
Kit Fine (Ontological Dependence [1995], III)
Book Ref
-: 'Aristotelian Society' [], p.282
A Reaction
I like this. If we are going to have scientific essences as structures of intrinsic powers, then the relationships between the parts of the essence must also be essential. That is the whole point - that the powers dictate the relationships.
| 14250 | Metaphysics deals with the existence of things and with the nature of things [Fine,K] |
| 14253 | An object's 'being' isn't existence; there's more to an object than existence, and its nature doesn't include existence [Fine,K] |
| 14251 | A natural modal account of dependence says x depends on y if y must exist when x does [Fine,K] |
| 14252 | We should understand identity in terms of the propositions it renders true [Fine,K] |
| 14256 | How do we distinguish basic from derived esssences? [Fine,K] |
| 14257 | An object depends on another if the second cannot be eliminated from the first's definition [Fine,K] |
| 14255 | We understand things through their dependency relations [Fine,K] |
| 14254 | Dependency is the real counterpart of one term defining another [Fine,K] |
| 14259 | Maybe two objects might require simultaneous real definitions, as with two simultaneous terms [Fine,K] |
| 14261 | There is 'weak' dependence in one definition, and 'strong' dependence in all the definitions [Fine,K] |
| 14258 | Maybe some things have essential relationships as well as essential properties [Fine,K] |
| 14260 | An object only essentially has a property if that property follows from every definition of the object [Fine,K] |