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Single Idea 16787

[filed under theme 9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 8. Essence as Explanatory ]

Full Idea

There is no non-arbitrary way to pick out certain features as essential and others as purely accidental. …This argument of Locke's blocks explanatory essence. …There is a confusion of nominal with real essence.

Gist of Idea

Explanatory essence won't do, because it won't distinguish the accidental from the essential

Source

report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 27.7

Book Ref

Pasnau,Robert: 'Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671' [OUP 2011], p.660

A Reaction

Pasnau waxes enthusiastic about this demolition of explanatory essence, and says we must fall back on kinds. It is true that you would need to compare a few tigers to get at the essence of an individual tiger. It's induction, but there are exceptions.

Related Idea

Idea 16786 You can't distinguish individuals without the species as a standard [Locke]

The 21 ideas with the same theme [essence is what intrinsically explains a thing]:

12361 Primary substances are ontological in 'Categories', and explanatory in 'Metaphysics' [Aristotle, by Wedin]
11244 Metaphysics is the science of ultimate explanation, or of pure existence, or of primary existence [Aristotle, by Politis]
16972 The four explanations are the main aspects of a thing's nature [Aristotle, by Moravcsik]
5084 A thing's nature is what causes its changes and stability [Aristotle]
11994 Aristotelian essences are properties mentioned at the starting point of a science [Aristotle, by Kung]
17184 All natures of things produce some effect [Spinoza]
16787 Explanatory essence won't do, because it won't distinguish the accidental from the essential [Locke, by Pasnau]
5057 If you fully understand a subject and its qualities, you see how the second derive from the first [Leibniz]
10937 Essential properties are the 'deepest' ones which explain the others [Copi, by Rami]
11992 Aristotelian essences underlie a thing's existence, explain it, and must belong to it [Kung]
12144 Essentialism is justified if the essential properties of things explain their other properties [Brody]
11871 Essences are not explanations, but individuations [Wiggins]
17564 The essence of a star includes the released binding energy which keeps it from collapse [Inwagen]
12089 Essences mainly explain the existence of unified substance [Witt]
17390 Natural kinds don't need essentialism to be explanatory [Dupré]
10935 An essential property of something must be bound up with what it is to be that thing [Fine,K, by Rami]
16542 Explanation can't give an account of essence, because it is too multi-faceted [Lowe]
13921 All things must have an essence (a 'what it is'), or we would be unable to think about them [Lowe]
12247 Essence is not explanatory but constitutive [Oderberg]
15181 Being a deepest explanatory feature is an actual, not a modal property [Sidelle]
11906 The Kripke and Putnam view of kinds makes them explanatorily basic, but has modal implications [Mackie,P]