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9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 12. Origin as Essential

[origin of an object is part of what is essential to it]

21 ideas
How a thing is generated does not explain its essence [Aristotle, by Politis]
     Full Idea: Aristotle thinks that the explanation of how a thing is generated does not contribute to the explanation of why the thing is the very thing it is.
     From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 7.5
     A reaction: Good for him. The origin of a thing strikes me as an entirely different matter from the intrinsic nature of the thing, and I don't see how the origin of something can be necessary, if it is in any way possible that it originated differently.
Aristotle wants definition, not identity, so origin is not essential to him [Aristotle, by Witt]
     Full Idea: Properties of origin are not essential for Aristotle, because he determines what is essential not by reflecting on the identity of an individual, but by considering how to define the individual.
     From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], id) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 6.2
     A reaction: [see also Idea 12102] This spells out my intuition, or rather my understanding of the normal usage of the word 'essence'. You can fully know the essence of something (e.g. a person), while having no knowledge of the origin.
If two things are the same, they must have the same source and origin [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: When things are absolutely the same, their coming-into-being and destruction are also the same and so are the agents of their production and destruction.
     From: Aristotle (Topics [c.331 BCE], 152a02)
     A reaction: Thus Queen Elizabeth II has to be the result of that particular birth, and from those particular parents, as Kripke says? The inverse may not be true. Do twins have a single origin? Things that fission and then re-fuse differently? etc
If we lose track of origin, how do we show we are maintaining a reference? [Kripke, by Wiggins]
     Full Idea: Perhaps Kripke's argument for the necessity to a thing of its actual origin is that the speculator has to be able to rebut the charge that he has lost his grasp of his subject of discourse if he conceives of this subject with changed parents or origin.
     From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance Renewed 4.10
     A reaction: On the whole Wiggins opposes necessity of origin (cf. Forbes, who defends it). If this idea is right, then any means of ensuring reference will do the job, and it clearly wouldn't be an argument that guaranteed necessity of origin.
Kripke argues, of the Queen, that parents of an organism are essentially so [Kripke, by Forbes,G]
     Full Idea: If we generalise what Kripke says about the Queen, then he is arguing that the parents of any organism are essentially the parents of that organism.
     From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Graeme Forbes - The Metaphysics of Modality 6.1
     A reaction: It strikes me that we have to be extremely careful in specifying what it is that Kripke is saying. I take it that either Kripke is saying something rather uninteresting, or he is saying what Forbes suggests. Parenthood is essential, not just necessary.
Could the actual Queen have been born of different parents? [Kripke]
     Full Idea: Could the Queen - could this woman herself - have been born of different parents from the parents from whom she actually came?
     From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3)
     A reaction: Tricky! No, because the past is fixed? Could the Queen have visited Russia when she was 20? I suppose so. Might she not have had parents, given who she is? I don't see why not. Could this desk have been made by someone else? Why not?
Socrates can't have a necessary origin, because he might have had no 'origin' [Lowe on Kripke]
     Full Idea: Against Kripke's thesis of 'necessity of origin' I will just point out the intuitive force of the claim that Socrates - that very person - could, logically, have had no beginning to his existence at all, or have come into existence ex nihilo.
     From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], p.110-) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 6.5
     A reaction: It also strikes me that one base-pair difference in his DNA (by a mutation, or a fractionally different parent) would still leave him as Socrates. People are not good candidates for 'rigid' designation. Counterparts seems a better account here.
Interrupted objects have two first moments of existence, which could be two beginnings [Brody]
     Full Idea: If 'beginning of existence' meant 'first moment of existence after a period of nonexistence', then objects with interrupted existence have two beginnings of existence.
     From: Baruch Brody (Identity and Essence [1980], 4.1)
     A reaction: One might still maintain that the first beginning was essential to the object, since that is the event that defined it - and that would clarify the reason why we are supposed to think the origins are essential. I say the origin explains it.
A particular statue has sortal persistence conditions, so its origin defines it [Gibbard]
     Full Idea: A proper name like 'Goliath' denotes a thing in the actual world, and invokes a sortal with certain persistence criteria. Hence its origin makes a statue the statue that it is, and if statues in different worlds have the same beginning, they are the same.
     From: Allan Gibbard (Contingent Identity [1975], III)
     A reaction: Too neat. There are vague, ambiguous and duplicated origins. Persistence criteria can shift during the existence of a thing (like a club which changes its own constitution). In replicated statues, what is the status of the mould?
I can ask questions which create a context in which origin ceases to be essential [Lewis]
     Full Idea: If I ask how things would be if Saul Kripke had come from no sperm and egg, but was brought by a stork, that makes sense. I create a context that makes my question make sense, which is a context that makes origin not to be essential.
     From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.5)
     A reaction: I'm not clear why delivery by a stork doesn't just count as a different origin, and hence it turns out to be essential to Kripke. If Kripke were a necessary being (and he's a good candidate), then he would have no origin.
Essential properties of origin are too radically individual for an Aristotelian essence [Witt]
     Full Idea: The radical individuality of essential properties of origin makes them unsuitable for inclusion in an Aristotelian essence.
     From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], 6.2)
     A reaction: Nevertheless, Aristotle believes in individual essences, though these seem to be fixed by definitions, which are composed of combinations of universals. The uniqueness is of the whole definition, not of its parts.
McGinn falsely claims necessity of origin is a special case of the necessity of identity [Forbes,G on McGinn]
     Full Idea: McGinn assimilates the origin relation among organisms to the identity relation, so that the necessity of origin becomes a special case of the necessity of identity. We argue that this assimilation is illegitimate.
     From: comment on Colin McGinn (On the Necessity of Origin [1976]) by Graeme Forbes - The Metaphysics of Modality 6.1
     A reaction: Not sure about this. I have long suspected what McGinn suspects. Once you have identified the organism with a particular origin, it hardly seems surprising that this particular origin has become inescapable.
An individual might change their sex in a world, but couldn't have differed in sex at origin [Forbes,G]
     Full Idea: In the time of a single world, the same individual can undergo a change of sex, but it is less clear that an individual of one sex could have been, from the outset, an individual of another.
     From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 6.5)
     A reaction: I don't find this support for essentiality of origin very persuasive. I struggle with these ideas. Given my sex yesterday, then presumably I couldn't have had a different sex yesterday. Given that pigs can fly, pigs can fly. What am I missing?
If Socrates lacks necessary existence, then his nature cannot require his parents' existence [Fine,K]
     Full Idea: If there is nothing in the nature of Socrates which demands that he exists, then presumably there is nothing in the nature of Socrates which demands that his parents exist.
     From: Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994], p. 6)
     A reaction: This sounds conclusive to me, against any claim that Socrates necessarily had those parents, if the claim is based on the identity or esssence of Socrates.
Necessity-of-origin won't distinguish ex nihilo creations, or things sharing an origin [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
     Full Idea: A necessity-of-origins approach cannot work to distinguish things that come into being genuinely ex nihilo, and cannot work to distinguish things sharing a single origin.
     From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1)
     A reaction: Since I am deeply suspicious of essentiality or necessity of origin (and they are not, I presume, the same thing) I like these two. Twins have always bothered me with the second case (where order of birth seems irrelevant).
Peope favor historical paths over outward properties when determining what something is [Gelman]
     Full Idea: People favor historical paths over outward properties when determining what something is. ...An object looking like a knife is less likely to be called 'a knife' if it is described as having been created by accident.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'Essentialism')
     A reaction: I like this because it talks, suggestively, of 'historical paths' rather than of 'origin'. Thus we might judge a person's identity by their traumatic experience rather than by their birth. This doesn't challenge necessity of origin, but affects labels.
The zygote is an essential initial part, for a sexually reproduced organism [Simons]
     Full Idea: It is essential to an organism arising from sexual reproduction that it has its zygote as initial improper part.
     From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 7.3)
     A reaction: It can't be necessary that an organism which appears to be sexually reproduced actually is so (if you don't believe that, read more science fiction). It may well just be analytic that sexual reproduction involves a zygote. Nothing to do with essence.
In twinning, one person has the same origin as another person [Merricks]
     Full Idea: Origin essentialists claim that parental union results in a person, and that person could not have resulted from any other union. However, if the fertilised egg undergoes twinning, at least one of the resultant persons is not the original person.
     From: Trenton Merricks (Propositions [2015], 5.V)
     A reaction: Merricks says that therefore that origin could have just produced the second twin, rather than the original person. This is interesting, but doesn't seem to threaten the necessity of origin thesis. Once I'm here, I have that origin, despite my twin.
Origin is not a necessity, it is just 'tenacious'; we keep it fixed in counterfactual discussions [Mackie,P]
     Full Idea: I suggest 'tenacity of origin' rather than 'necessity of origin'. ..The most that we need is that Caesar's having something similar to his actual origin in certain respects (e.g. his actual parents) is normally kept fixed in counterfactual speculation.
     From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 6.9)
     A reaction: I find necessity or essentially of origin very unconvincing, so I rather like this. Origin is just a particularly stable way to establish our reference to something. An elusive spy may have little more than date and place of birth to fix them.
Why does origin matter more than development; why are some features of origin more important? [Vetter]
     Full Idea: Not every feature of an individual's origin is plausibly considered necessary, so we can distinguish two questions: 'why origin, rather than development?', and 'why these particular features of origin?'.
     From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.2)
     A reaction: [she cites P. Mackie 1998] The point is that exactly where someone was born doesn't seem vital. If it is nothing more than that every contingent object must have an origin, that is not very exciting.
We take origin to be necessary because we see possibilities as branches from actuality [Vetter]
     Full Idea: The plausibility of the necessity of origin is a symptom of our general tendency to think of possibility in terms of the 'branching model' - that unactualised possibilities must branch off from actuality, at some point.
     From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.9)
     A reaction: [she cites P. Mackie 1998] It is hard to see how we could flatly deny some possibilities which had absolutely no connection with actuality, and were probably quite unimaginable for us.