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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The Metaphysics of Properties' and 'Some Remarks on Essentialism'

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6 ideas

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 1. Unifying an Object / b. Unifying aggregates
10725 Abstract sets of universals can't be bundled to make concrete things [Oliver]
     Full Idea: If a particular thing is a bundle of located universals, we might say that it is the set of its universals, but this won't work because the thing can be concrete but sets are abstract.
     From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11)
     A reaction: This objection applies just as much to tropes (abstract particulars) as it does to universals.
10726 Things can't be fusions of universals, because two things could then be one thing [Oliver]
     Full Idea: If a particular thing is a bundle of located universals, we might say it is a mereological fusion of them, but if two universals can be instantiated by more than one particular, then two particulars can have the same universals, and be the same thing.
     From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11)
     A reaction: This and Idea 10725 pretty thoroughly demolish the idea that objects could be just bundles of universals. The problem pushes some philosophers back to the idea of 'substance', or some sort of 'substratum' which has the universals.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties
13952 Essentialism says some of a thing's properties are necessary, and could not be absent [Cartwright,R]
     Full Idea: Essentialism, as I shall understand it, is the doctrine that among the attributes of a thing some are essential, others merely accidental. Its essential attributes are those it has necessarily, those it could not have lacked.
     From: Richard Cartwright (Some Remarks on Essentialism [1968], p.149)
     A reaction: The problem with this, which Cartwright does not address, is that trivial and gerrymandered properties (such as having self-identity, or being 'such that 2+2=4') seem to be necessarily, but don't seem to constitute the essence of a thing.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 14. Knowledge of Essences
13954 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.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism
13955 Essentialism is said to be unintelligible, because relative, if necessary truths are all analytic [Cartwright,R]
     Full Idea: Apparently those who think essentialism unintelligible see support for their position in the doctrine that necessary truths are all analytic. Only relative to some mode of designation does it make sense to speak of an object as necessarily this or that.
     From: Richard Cartwright (Some Remarks on Essentialism [1968], p.158)
     A reaction: He has in mind Quine and his mathematician-cyclist (Idea 8482). Personally I have no problems with the example. No one is essentially a cyclist - that isn't what essence is. Two-legged people can be cyclists.
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 3. Relative Identity
13953 An act of ostension doesn't seem to need a 'sort' of thing, even of a very broad kind [Cartwright,R]
     Full Idea: For an ostension to be successful it is surely not necessary that I gather what sort of object it is you have indicated, such as being a horse or a zebra. I may even gather which thing you have indicated without knowing that it is a mammal or even alive.
     From: Richard Cartwright (Some Remarks on Essentialism [1968], p.157)
     A reaction: This nicely articulates the objection I have always felt to Geach's relative identity. 'Oh my God, what the hell is THAT???' is probably going to be a successful act of verbal reference, even while explicitly denying all knowledge of sortals.