15 ideas
| 11976 | Aristotelian essentialism says essences are not relative to specification [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: So-called 'Aristotelian essentialism' is the doctrine of essences not relative to specifications. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], III) | |
| A reaction: In other words, they are so-called 'real essences', understood as de re. Quine says essences are all de dicto, and relative to some specification. I vote for Aristotle. |
| 13804 | A property is essential iff the object would not exist if it lacked that property [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: A property P is an essential property of an object x iff x could not exist and lack P, that is, as they say, iff x has P at every world at which x exists. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 1) | |
| A reaction: This immediately places the existence of x outside the normal range of its properties, so presumably 'existence is not a predicate', but that dictum may be doubted. As it stands this definition will include trivial and vacuous properties. |
| 13805 | Properties are trivially essential if they are not grounded in a thing's specific nature [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: Essential properties may be trivial or nontrivial. It is characteristic of P's being trivially essential to x that x's possession of P is not grounded in the specific nature of x. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: This is where my objection to the modal view of essence arises. How is he going to explain 'grounded' and 'specific nature' without supplying an entirely different account of essence? |
| 13808 | A relation is essential to two items if it holds in every world where they exist [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: A relation R is essential to x and y (in that order) iff Rxy holds at every world where x and y both exist. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: I find this bizarre. Not only does this seem to me to have nothing whatever to do with essence, but also the relation might hold even though it is a purely contingent matter. All rabbits are a reasonable distance from the local star. Essence of rabbit? |
| 13806 | Trivially essential properties are existence, self-identity, and de dicto necessities [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: The main groups of trivially essential properties are (a) existence, self-identity, or their consequences in S5; and (b) properties possessed in virtue of some de dicto necessary truth. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: He adds 'extraneously essential' properties, which also strike me as being trivial, involving relations. 'Is such that 2+2=4' or 'is such that something exists' might be necessary, but they don't, I would say, have anything to do with essence. |
| 13807 | A property is 'extraneously essential' if it is had only because of the properties of other objects [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: P is 'extraneously essential' to x iff it is possessed by x at any world w only in virtue of the possession at w of certain properties by other objects. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 2) | |
| A reaction: I would say that these are the sorts of properties which have nothing to do with being essential, even if they are deemed to be necessary. |
| 13809 | One might be essentialist about the original bronze from which a statue was made [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: In the case of artefacts, there is an essentialism about original matter; for instance, it would be said of any particular bronze statue that it could not have been cast from a totally different quantity of bronze. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 3) | |
| A reaction: Forbes isn't endorsing this, and it doesn't sound convincing. He quotes the thought 'I wish I had made this pot from a different piece of clay'. We might corrupt a statue by switching bronze, but I don't think the sculptor could do so. |
| 11978 | Causal necessities hold in all worlds compatible with the laws of nature [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Just as a sentence is necessary if it holds in all worlds, so it is causally necessary if it holds in all worlds compatible with the laws of nature. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], V) | |
| A reaction: I don't believe in the so-called 'laws of nature', so I'm not buying that. Is there no distinction in Lewis's view between those sentences which must hold, and those which happen to hold universally? |
| 13810 | The source of de dicto necessity is not concepts, but the actual properties of the thing [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: It is widely held that the source of de dicto necessity is in concepts, ..but I deny this... even with simple de dicto necessities, the source of the necessity is to be found in the properties to which the predicates of the de dicto truth refer. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (In Defense of Absolute Essentialism [1986], 3) | |
| A reaction: It is normal nowadays to say this about de re necessities, but this is more unusual. |
| 11979 | It doesn't take the whole of a possible Humphrey to win the election [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Even if Humphrey is a modal continuant, it doesn't take the whole of him to do such things as winning. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], Post B) | |
| A reaction: This responds to Kripke's famous example, that people only care about what happens to themselves, and not to some 'counterpart' of themselves. |
| 16994 | Counterpart theory is bizarre, as no one cares what happens to a mere counterpart [Kripke on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Probably Humphrey could not care less whether someone else, no matter how much resembling him, would have been victorious in another possible world. Thus Lewis's view seems even more bizarre that the usual transworld identification it replaces. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968]) by Saul A. Kripke - Naming and Necessity notes and addenda note 13 | |
| A reaction: I begin to see this as a devastating reply to a theory I previously found quite congenial. |
| 11974 | Counterparts are not the original thing, but resemble it more than other things do [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Your counterparts resemble you closely in content and context in important respects. They resemble you more closely than do the other things in their worlds. But they are not really you. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], I) | |
| A reaction: It is a dilemma. If my counterpart were exactly me, I couldn't contemplate possibly losing a leg, or my sanity. But if my counterpart isn't exactly me, then I don't have much interest in its fate. Only essences can save us here. Cf. me tomorrow. |
| 11975 | If the closest resembler to you is in fact quite unlike you, then you have no counterpart [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If whatever thing in world w6 it is that resembles you more closely than anything else in w6 is nevertheless quite unlike you; nothing in w6 resembles you at all closely. If so, you have no counterpart in w6. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], I) | |
| A reaction: This is the nub, because the whole theory rests on deciding whether two things resemble sufficiently 'closely'. But then we need a criterion of closeness, so we must start talking about which properties matter. Essences loom. |
| 11977 | Essential attributes are those shared with all the counterparts [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: An essential attribute of something is an attribute it shares with all its counterparts. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], III) | |
| A reaction: I don't like this. It ties essence entirely to identity, but I think essence precedes identity. Essence is a nexus of causal and explanatory powers which bestows an identity on each thing. But essence might be unstable, and identity with it. |
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |