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11993
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Jones may cease to exist without some simple property, but that doesn't make it essential [Kung]
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Full Idea:
If Jones ceases to be a father, or ceases to be over eight years old, he will cease to exist, yet these properties surely do not belong essentially to him.
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From:
Joan Kung (Aristotle on Essence and Explanation [1977], II)
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A reaction:
This seems to correct, though I would doubt whether either of these count as true properties, in the causal sense I prefer. If being 'over 8' is a property, how many 'over n' or 'under m' properties does he have? One for each quantum moment?
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11992
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Aristotelian essences underlie a thing's existence, explain it, and must belong to it [Kung]
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Full Idea:
Three essentialist claims are labelled 'Aristotelian': the thing would cease to exist without the property; an essential property is explanatory; and it is such that it must belong to everything to which it belongs.
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From:
Joan Kung (Aristotle on Essence and Explanation [1977], Intro)
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A reaction:
She says the second one is indispensable, and that it rules out the third one. My working assumption, like hers, is that the second one is the key part of the game, because Aristotle wanted to explain things.
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6215
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'Contingent' means that the cause is unperceived, not that there is no cause [Hobbes]
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Full Idea:
For contingent, men do not mean that which hath no cause, but that which hath not for cause any thing that we perceive, as when a traveller meets a shower, they both had sufficient causes, but they didn't cause one another, so we say it was contingent.
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From:
Thomas Hobbes (Of Liberty and Necessity [1654], §95)
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A reaction:
Contingent nowadays means 'might not have happened', or 'does not happen in all possible worlds'. Personally I share Hobbes' doubts about the concept of contingency, and this is quite a good account of the misunderstanding.
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