12812
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Things have real essences, but we categorise them according to the ideas we receive [Locke]
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Full Idea:
This I do say, that there are real constitutions in things from whence simple ideas flow, which we observe combin'd in them. But we distinguish particular substances into sorts or genera not by real essences or constitutions, but by observed simple ideas.
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From:
John Locke (Letters to William Molyneux [1692], 1693.01.20)
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A reaction:
This is the clearest statement I can find of Locke's position on essences. He is totally committed to their reality, but strongly aware of the empirical constraints which keep us from direct knowledge of them. He would be amazed by modern discoveries.
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11990
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'Haecceitism' says that sameness or difference of individuals is independent of appearances [Kaplan]
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Full Idea:
The doctrine that we can ask whether this is the same individual in another possible world, and that a common 'thisness' may underlie extreme dissimilarity, or distinct thisnesses may underlie great resemblance, I call 'Haecceitism'.
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From:
David Kaplan (How to Russell a Frege-Church [1975], IV)
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A reaction:
Penelope Mackie emphasises that this doctrine, that each thing is somehow individuated, is not the same as believing in actual haecceities, specific properties which achieve the individuating.
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11991
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If quantification into modal contexts is legitimate, that seems to imply some form of haecceitism [Kaplan]
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Full Idea:
If one regards the usual form of quantification into modal and other intensional contexts - modality de re - as legitimate (without special explanations), then one seems committed to some form of haecceitism.
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From:
David Kaplan (How to Russell a Frege-Church [1975], IV)
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A reaction:
That is, modal reference requires fixed identities, irrespective of possible changes in properties. Why could one not refer to objects just as bundles of properties, with some sort of rules about when it ceased to be that particular bundle (keep 60%?)?
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