display all the ideas for this combination of texts
6 ideas
| 24089 | Essences are fictions needed for beings who represent things [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The true essence of things is a fiction of representing being, without which being is unable to represent. 11[330] Thinking must assert substance and identity because a knowing of complete flux is impossible. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[329]) | |
| A reaction: I have defended (in my PhD) the thesis that the concept of essence is required for explanation. Do animals need the concept of essence in order to represent? I think people and animals ascribe essential natures to most things. |
| 11237 | Only universals have essence [Plato, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Plato argues that only universals have essence. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.4 |
| 11238 | Plato and Aristotle take essence to make a thing what it is [Plato, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Plato and Aristotle have a shared general conception of essence: the essence of a thing is what that thing is simply in virtue of itself and in virtue of being the very thing it is. It answers the question 'What is this very thing?' | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.4 |
| 17390 | Natural kinds don't need essentialism to be explanatory [Dupré] |
| Full Idea: The importance of natural kinds for explanation does not depend on a doctrine of essences. | |
| From: John Dupré (The Disorder of Things [1993], 3) | |
| A reaction: He suggest as the alternative that laws do the explaining, employing natural kinds. He allows that individual essences might be explanatory. |
| 17389 | A species might have its essential genetic mechanism replaced by a new one [Dupré] |
| Full Idea: Contradicting one of the main points of essentialism, there is no reason in principle why a species should not survive the demise of its current genetic mechanisms (some other species coherence gradually taking over). | |
| From: John Dupré (The Disorder of Things [1993], 2) | |
| A reaction: I would say that this meant that the species had a new essence, because I don't take what is essential to be the same as what is necessary. The new genetics would replace the old as the basic explanation of the species. |
| 17388 | It seems that species lack essential properties, so they can't be natural kinds [Dupré] |
| Full Idea: It is widely agreed among biologists that no essential property can be found to demarcate species, so that if an essential property is necessary for a natural kind, species are not natural kinds. | |
| From: John Dupré (The Disorder of Things [1993], 2) | |
| A reaction: This uses 'essential' to mean 'necessary', but I would use 'essential' to mean 'deeply explanatory'. Biological species are, nevertheless, dubious members of an ontological system. Vegetables are the problem. |