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9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 14. Knowledge of Essences

[how we might know the essence of an object]

19 ideas
Aristotle claims that the individual is epistemologically prior to the universal [Aristotle, by Witt]
     Full Idea: Aristotle could have claimed that the universal is prior to the individual in the epistemic realm, but the individual is prior in the realm of being. ...Instead, he claims that the individual is epistemologically prior to the universal.
     From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], partic) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 5.1
     A reaction: This point strikes me as fairly self-evident. We only learn about the universal by induction from the individuals.
Actual knowledge is of the individual, and potential knowledge of the universal [Aristotle, by Witt]
     Full Idea: Aristotle resolves his aporia about substances and universals by distinguishing between actual knowledge, which is of the individual, and potential knowledge, which is of the universal.
     From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], potent) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle
     A reaction: [See Witt 145-9 for the aporia] A vital piece in the jigsaw I am assembling. I connect this way of thinking with modern modal thinking, and actual and possible worlds. It obviously results in individual essences taking priority.
We only know essences through non-essential features, esp. those closest to the essence [Suárez]
     Full Idea: We can almost never set out the essences of things, as they are in things. Instead, we work through their connection to some non-essential feature, and we seem to succeed well enough when we spell it out through the feature closest to the essence.
     From: Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 40.4.16), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.5
     A reaction: It is a common view that with geometrical figures we can actually experience the essence itself. So has science broken through, and discerned actual essences of things?
Experience does not teach us any essences of things [Spinoza]
     Full Idea: Experience does not teach us any essences of things.
     From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letters to De Vries [1664], 1664?)
     A reaction: This, along with Leibniz's claim that experience cannot reveal necessities, may constitute a striking criticism of empiricism, but it invites the obvious reply 'so much the worse for essences'. An essence seems to be a theoretical concept, not a priori.
The essence of a triangle is simple; presumably substance essences are similar [Locke]
     Full Idea: The essence of a triangle lies in a very little compass, consists in a very few lines; ...so I imagine it is in substances, their real essences lie in a little compass, though the properties flowing from that internal constitution are endless.
     From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.32.24)
     A reaction: This is the clearest evidence I can find that Locke firmly believed in real essence of substances, despite all his sarcasm about anyone who claimed to know what they are. He evidently knows at least one real essence, namely that of the triangle.
A space between three lines is both the nominal and real essence of a triangle, the source of its properties [Locke]
     Full Idea: A space between three lines is the real as well as nominal essence of a Triangle; it being not only the abstract idea to which the name is annexed, but the very Essentia or Being of the thing itself, that foundation from which all its properties flow.
     From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.03.18)
     A reaction: Highly significant, coming from a famous doubter of essences. It seems to me that Locke would accept that we know have the essences of innumberable physical entities, which seemed impossible in his day.
The schools recognised that they don't really know essences, because they couldn't coin names for them [Locke]
     Full Idea: The schools seem to intimate the confession of all mankind, that they have no idea of the real essences and substances, since they have not names for such ideas.
     From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.08.2)
     A reaction: He observes that schools timidly coined a few abstract terms for essences, but that they never caught on. This is an interesting criticism of essentialism from ordinary language. If a term names something real, it ought to 'catch on'.
Essence is the distinct thinkability of anything [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: (Essence) is the distinct thinkability (cogitabilitas) of anything.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Notes on John Wilkins [1672], A6.2.487-8), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 1
     A reaction: A very original remark from the young Leibniz. It is neutral as to whether this is a real feature of objects, or a feature of human mental capacities. Presumably accidental features are thinkable, so 'distinct' is the key word.
Real cognition grasps a thing from within itself, and is not satisfied with mere predicates [Hegel]
     Full Idea: In genuine cognition ...an object determines itself from within itself, and does not acquire its predicates in an external way. If we proceed by way of predication, the spirit gets the feeling that the predicates cannot exhaust what they are attached to.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §28 Add)
     A reaction: I take this to be a glimpse of Hegel's notoriously difficult account of essence. Place this alongside Locke's distinction between Nominal and Real essences. Once we have the predicates, we want to grasp their source.
If there are essential properties, how do you find out what they are? [Chisholm]
     Full Idea: It seems to me that if Adam does have essential properties, there is no procedure at all for finding out what they are.
     From: Roderick Chisholm (Identity through Possible Worlds [1967], p.85)
     A reaction: My tentative suggestion is that the essential properties are those which explain the nature, power, function and role of Adam in the 'actual' world. Whatever possibilities he acquires, he had better retain the capacity to be the First Man.
If essences are objects with only essential properties, they are elusive in possible worlds [Marcus (Barcan)]
     Full Idea: Some philosophers make a metaphysical shift, by inventing objects (individual concepts, forms, substances) called 'essences', which have only essential properties, and then worry when they can't locate them by rummaging around in possible worlds.
     From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.192)
Kripke claims that some properties, only knowable posteriori, are known a priori to be essential [Kripke, by Soames]
     Full Idea: Kripke's first (good) route to the necessary a posteriori is based on the idea that certain properties of objects that they can be known to have only a posteriori, may be known a priori to be essential properties of anything that has them.
     From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Scott Soames - Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori p.180
     A reaction: Interesting, and a key issue. I think this is precisely where I disagree with the Kripkean view of necessities. Logicians want to know a priori what is essential for identity, but scientists want to know what makes things tick. See Kripke on pain.
An essence is the necessary properties, derived from an intuitive identity, in origin, type and material [Kripke, by Witt]
     Full Idea: For Kripke an object's essence simply consists of its necessary properties. ...His essential properties of individual objects follow from our intuitions about their identity. ...They are of three sorts: of origin, of sortals, and of material.
     From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 6 n3
     A reaction: This is because Kripke is only interested in identity, whereas Aristotle is interested in explanation. The sorts are efficient, formal, material. Big Q: could Aristotle's account of essence do all the work that is required of essences by Kripke?
The difficulty in essentialism is deciding the grounds for rating an attribute as essential [Cartwright,R]
     Full Idea: I see no reason for thinking essentialism unintelligible, but a chief perplexity is the obscurity of the grounds on which ratings of attributes as essential or accidental are to be made.
     From: Richard Cartwright (Some Remarks on Essentialism [1968], p.158)
     A reaction: In that case some of us younger philosophers will have to roll up our sleeves and tease out the grounds for essentialism, starting with Aristotle and Leibniz, and ending with the successes of modern science.
If we must know some entity to know an essence, we lack a faculty to do that [Lowe]
     Full Idea: If knowledge of essence were by acquaintance of a special kind of entity, we would doubt our ability to grasp the essence of things. For what faculty could be involved in this special kind of acquaintance?
     From: E.J. Lowe (What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? [2013], 7)
     A reaction: This is Lockean empirical scepticism about essences, but I take the view that sometimes you can be acquainted with an essence, but more often you correctly infer it from you acquaintance - and this is just what scientists do.
Knowing an essence is just knowing what the thing is, not knowing some further thing [Lowe]
     Full Idea: To know something's essence is not to be acquainted with some further thing of a special kind, but simply to understand what exactly that thing is.
     From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 2)
     A reaction: I think he is wrong about this, or at least is working with an unhelpful notion of essence. Identity is one thing, and essence is another. I take essences to be certain selected features of things, which explain their nature.
How can we show that a universally possessed property is an essential property? [Mumford]
     Full Idea: Essentialists fail to show how we ascend from being a property universally possessed, by all kind members, to the status of being an essential property.
     From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 07.5)
     A reaction: This is precisely where my proposal comes in - the essential properties, as opposed to the accidentaly universals, are those which explain the nature and behaviour of each kind of thing (and each individual thing).
Essentialism comes from the cognitive need to categorise [Gelman]
     Full Idea: Essentialism has its source in the cognitive requirement of categorization in certain domains - particularly as they affect the young learner.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Essentialist')
     A reaction: I think the phenomenon is better understood as part of the cognitive requirement to understand and explain. Categorisation is just one way to aid explanation. Children try to understand (essentially) a new animal without categorisation.
We found no evidence that mothers teach essentialism to their children [Gelman]
     Full Idea: We found no evidence that mothers teach essentialism to their children. ...Mothers teach children about kinds, not about essences, and mothers help children identify which categories are richly structured.
     From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 07 'Conclusions')
     A reaction: This is a psychologist who specialises in this topic. If you think essentialism is inculcated by a our culture, you will have to blame the fathers.