30 ideas
| 12302 | Definitions formed an abstract hierarchy for Aristotle, as sets do for us [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: For us it is sets which constitute the most natural example of a hierarchical structure within the abstract realm; but for Aristotle it would have been definitions, via their natural division into genus and differentia. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Aristotle on Matter [1992], §1 n4) | |
| A reaction: I suppose everyone who thinks about reality in abstraction ends up with a hierarchy. Compare the hierarchy of angelic hosts, or Greek gods. Could we get back to the Aristotelian view, instead of sets, which are out of control at the top end? |
| 12249 | 'Animal' is a genus and 'rational' is a specific difference [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The standard classification holds that 'animal' is a genus and 'rational' is a specific difference. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: My understanding of 'difference' would take it down to the level of the individual, so the question is - which did Aristotle believe in. Not all commentators agree with Oderberg, and Wedin thinks the individual substance is paramount. |
| 14266 | Aristotle sees hierarchies in definitions using genus and differentia (as we see them in sets) [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: For us, sets constitute the most natural example of a hierarchical structure within the abstract realm. But for Aristotle it would have been definitions, via their natural division into genus and differentia. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Aristotle on Matter [1992], 1 n4) | |
| A reaction: Genus and differentia are only part of the story in Aristotle, and this remarks strikes me as perceptive. It is precisely the mapping of the explanatory hierarchy which Aristotle seeks in a good definition. |
| 12242 | Definition distinguishes one kind from another, and individuation picks out members of the kind [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: To define something just means to set forth its limits in such a way that one can distinguish it from all other things of a different kind. To distinguish it from all other things of the same kind belongs to the theory of 'individuation'. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: I take Aristotle to have included individuation as part of his understanding of definition. Are tigers a kind, or are fierce tigers a kind, and is my tiger one-of-a-kind? |
| 12238 | The Aristotelian view is that numbers depend on (and are abstracted from) other things [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The Aristotelian account of numbers is that their existence depends on the existence of things that are not numbers, ..since numbers are abstractions from the existence of things. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This is the deeply unfashionable view to which I am attached. The problem is the status of transfinite, complex etc numbers. They look like fictions to me. |
| 12254 | Being is substantial/accidental, complete/incomplete, necessary/contingent, possible, relative, intrinsic.. [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Being is heterogeneous: there is substantial being, accidental being, complete being, incomplete being, necessary being, contingent being, possible being, absolute being, relative being, intrinsic being, extrinsic being, and so on. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: Dependent being? Oderberg is giving the modern scholastic view. Personally I take 'being' to be univocal, even if it can be qualified in all sorts of ways. I don't believe we actually have any grasp at all of different ways to exist. |
| 14268 | Maybe bottom-up grounding shows constitution, and top-down grounding shows essence [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: It may be that the two forms of grounding have a different source; the one from the bottom up is required for the constitution of the thing to be intelligible; the one from the top down is required for the essence of the thing to be intelligible. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Aristotle on Matter [1992], 2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Aristotle Met. 1019a8-10 in support] Close reading of Fine would be needed to elucidate this properly, but it is a suggestive line of thought about how we should approach grounding. |
| 12253 | If tropes are in space and time, in what sense are they abstract? [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: If tropes are in space and time, in what sense are they abstract? | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a conclusive objection to claims for any such thing to be abstract. See, for example, Dummett's claim that the Equator is an abstract object. |
| 12256 | We need to distinguish the essential from the non-essential powers [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: We need a theory of essence to help us distinguish between the powers that do and do not belong to the essence of a thing. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a very good reason for searching for the essence of things, though the need to distinguish does not guarantee that there really is something to distinguish. Maybe powers just come and go. A power is essential in you but not in me? |
| 12252 | Empiricists gave up 'substance', as unknowable substratum, or reducible to a bundle [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The demise of 'substance' was wholly due to mistaken notions, mainly from the empiricists, by which it was conceived either as an unknowable featureless substratum, or as dispensable in favour of some or other bundle theory. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a view that the notion of substance is essential to explaining how we understand the world. I am inclined to think that if we accept the notion of essence we can totally dispense with the notion of substance. |
| 14267 | There is no distinctive idea of constitution, because you can't say constitution begins and ends [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: If the parts of a body can constitute a man, then why should men not constitute a family? Why draw the line at the level of the man? ...Thus the idea of a distinctive notion of constitution, terminating in concrete substances, should be given up. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Aristotle on Matter [1992], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is in the context of Aristotle, but Fine's view seems to apply to Rudder Baker's distinctive approach. |
| 14264 | Is there a plausible Aristotelian notion of constitution, applicable to both physical and non-physical? [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: There is a question of whether there is a viable conception of constitution of the sort Aristotle supposes, one which is uniformly applicable to physical and non-physical objects alike, and which is capable of hierarchical application. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Aristotle on Matter [1992], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is part of an explication of Aristotle's 'matter' [hule], which might be better translated as 'ingredients', which would fit non-physical things quite well. |
| 12241 | Essences are real, about being, knowable, definable and classifiable [Oderberg, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Real essences are objectively real, they concern being, they are knowable, they are definable, and they are classifiable. | |
| From: report of David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.4) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This is a lovely summary (spread over two pages) of what essentialism is all about. It might be added that they are about unity and identity. The fact that they are intrinsically classifiable seems to mislead some people into a confused view. |
| 12244 | Nominalism is consistent with individual but not with universal essences [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Nominalism is consistent with belief in individual essences, but real essentialism postulates essences as universals (quiddities). Nominalists are nearly always empiricists, though the converse may not be the case. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is where I part company with Oderberg. I want to argue that the nominalist/individualist view is more in tune with what Aristotle believed (though he spotted a dilemma here). Only individual essences explain individual behaviour. |
| 12240 | Essentialism is the main account of the unity of objects [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Real essentialism, more than any other ontological theory, stresses and seeks to explain the unity of objects. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: A key piece in the jigsaw I am beginning to assemble. If explanation is the aim, and essence the key to explanation, then explaining unity is the part of it that connects with other metaphysics, about identity and so on. 'Units' breed numbers. |
| 12247 | Essence is not explanatory but constitutive [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Essence is not reducible to explanatory relations, ...and fundamentally the role of essence is not explanatory but constitutive. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: Effectively, this asserts essence as part of 'pure' metaphysics, but I like impure metaphysics, as the best explanation of the things we can know. Hence we can speculate about constitution only by means of explanation. Constitution is active. |
| 12258 | Properties are not part of an essence, but they flow from it [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: A substance is constituted by its essence, and properties are a species of accident. No property of a thing is part of a thing's essence, though properties flow from the essence. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 7.2) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I understand this. How can you know of something which has no properties? I'm wondering if the whole notion of a 'property' should be eliminated from good metaphysics. |
| 12257 | Could we replace essence with collections of powers? [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Why not do away with talk of essences and replace it with talk of powers pure and simple, or reduce essences to collections of powers? But then what unites the powers, and could a power be lost, and is there entailment between the powers? | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Bennett and Hacker 2003 for this view] The point would seem to be that in addition to the powers, there are also identity and unity and kind-membership to be explained. Oderberg says the powers flow from the essence. |
| 12236 | Leibniz's Law is an essentialist truth [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz's Law is an essentialist truth. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: That is, if two things must have identical properties because they are the same thing, this is because those properties are essential to the thing. Otherwise two things could be the same, even though one of them lacked a non-identifying property. |
| 12250 | Bodies have act and potency, the latter explaining new kinds of existence [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The fundamental thesis of real essentialism is that every finite material body has a twofold composition, being a compound of act and potency. ...Reality can take on new kinds of existence because there is a principle of potentiality inherent in reality. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: I take from this remark that the 'powers' discussed by Molnar and other scientific essentialists is roughly the same as 'potentiality' identified by Aristotle. |
| 12234 | Realism about possible worlds is circular, since it needs a criterion of 'possible' [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Any realist theory of possible worlds will be circular in its attempt to illuminate modality, for there has to be some criterion of what counts as a possible world. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Seems right. At the very least, if we are going to rule out contradictory worlds as impossible (and is there a more obvious criterion?), we already need to understand 'impossible' in order to state that rule. |
| 12235 | Necessity of identity seems trivial, because it leaves out the real essence [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The necessity of identity carries the appearance of triviality, because it is the eviscerated contemporary essentialist form of a foundational real essentialist truth to the effect that every object has its own nature. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: I like this. Writers like Mackie and Forbes have to put the 'trivial' aspects of essence to one side, without ever seeing why there is such a problem. Real substantial essences have necessity of identity as a side-effect. |
| 12237 | Rigid designation has at least three essentialist presuppositions [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The rigid designator approach to essentialism has essentialist assumptions. ..The necessity of identity is built into the very conception of a rigid designator,..and Leibniz's Law is presupposed...and necessity of origin presupposes sufficiency of origin. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed. He cites Salmon 1981:196 for the last point] This sounds right. You feel happy to 'rigidly designate' something precisely because you think there is something definite and stable which can be designated. |
| 12245 | Essence is the source of a thing's characteristic behaviour [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: In the traditional terminology, function follows essence. Essence just is the principle from which flows the characteristic behaviour of a thing. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: Hence essence must be identified if the behaviour is to be explained, and a successful identification of essence is the terminus of our explanations. But the essences must go down to the micro-level. Explain non-characteristic behaviour? |
| 14265 | The components of abstract definitions could play the same role as matter for physical objects [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: If one considers Aristotle's standard example of a definition, then it is plausible that its defining terms ('plane figure' in the case of a circle) should be constitutive of it in the same general way as physical matter constitutes something physical. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Aristotle on Matter [1992], 1) | |
| A reaction: It strikes me that an appropriate translation for the Greek 'hule' might be the English 'ingredients', since Fine seems to be right about the broad application of hule in Aristotle. |
| 12246 | What makes Parmenidean reality a One rather than a Many? [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: Even if there were no multiplicity in unity - only a Parmenidean 'block' - still the question would arise as to what gave the amorphous lump its unity; by virtue of what would it be one rather than many? | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: Which is prior, division or unification? If it was divided, he would ask what divided it. One of them must be primitive, so why not unity? If one big Unity is primitive, why could not lots of unities be primitive? Etc. |
| 12239 | The real essentialist is not merely a scientist [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: It is incorrect to hold that the job of the real essentialist just is the job of the scientist. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: Presumably scientific essentialism, while being firmly a branch of metaphysics, is meant to clarify the activities of science, and thereby be of some practical use. You can't beat knowing what it is you are trying to do. |
| 12243 | The reductionism found in scientific essentialism is mistaken [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: The reductionism found in scientific essentialism is mistaken. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: Oderberg's point is that essence doesn't just occur at the bottom of the hierarchy of kinds, but can exist on a macro-level, and need not be a concealed structure, as we see in the essence of a pile of stones. |
| 16713 | Philosophers are the forefathers of heretics [Tertullian] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers are the forefathers of heretics. | |
| From: Tertullian (works [c.200]), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 20.2 |
| 6610 | I believe because it is absurd [Tertullian] |
| Full Idea: I believe because it is absurd ('Credo quia absurdum est'). | |
| From: Tertullian (works [c.200]), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason n4.2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a rather desperate remark, in response to what must have been rather good hostile arguments. No one would abandon the support of reason if it was easy to acquire. You can't deny its engaging romantic defiance, though. |