Sounds dangerous―flipping tractors is not a good idea, but much easier to do than many people realize! Where the lantana is up here it is so vigorous it usually chokes out just about everything else. You get the odd rainforest pioneer tree coming up through it, and they are usually fairly easy to avoid. I acquired a little excavator a few months ago, and I intend to use that for the more precise work after the tractor has done most of the clearing, but since I bought it the ground's been too soggy to use it.

I think we might be straying off topic, but I don't think God will mind. Apparently he's very interested in everything we do.

...flipping tractors is not a good idea... — Janus

That I didn't is clear evidence of divine intervention. God is on my side. Turning and seeing the wheels three feet off the ground was very - sobering.

God is on my side. — Banno

Three persons, on one side?

:up:

Yep. We might even go a step further and ask if the idea of essences is worth keeping. — Banno

I am waiting to see if they can offer a definition of essence as a thing that is not in the set of properties and abilities.

I'd be happy to consider alternatives - if they could be given clearly. — Banno

The positivists have a simple solution: the world must be divided into that which we can say clearly and the rest, which we had better pass over in silence. But can anyone conceive of a more pointless philosophy, seeing that what we can say clearly amounts to next to nothing? If we omitted all that is unclear, we would probably be left with completely uninteresting and trivial tautologies. — Neils Bohr

The positivists have a simple solution: the world must be divided into that which we can say clearly and the rest, which we had better pass over in silence. But can anyone conceive of a more pointless philosophy, seeing that what we can say clearly amounts to next to nothing? If we omitted all that is unclear, we would probably be left with completely uninteresting and trivial tautologies. — Neils Bohr

Spot on Neils.

Maybe a little harsh on the “pointless” comment.

But that’s what I am often saying to @Banno about how analytics is unconcerned with the world. Analytics is essential to science and knowing truth. But the points it makes are not about the world; it is about talking about the world. It points out what cannot be said about the world, but nothing that CAN be said. It does not talk about the world itself. It supports statements about the world, but it need not, and can use Clark Kent and Lois Lane to make its most salient points. A truth found in the world, and not just in an analytic proof, requires having another point besides the truth-table of it all.

In other words, sometimes it is wisdom to say things that sound contradictory or that cannot be born out in formal logic. We can aim for the world first and ask analytic questions later - treacherous, but so is learning all formal logic and not using it to say anything about life.

Waiting for Godot. — Banno

It's coming to Broadway next month with Keanu Reeves. I hear the music score and dancing are amazing..

First sentence is true. Second, not so much. I'll be in NYC the week before opening, alas.

definition of essence — MoK

Come on people. We all know what essence is.

It is hard to say, I’ll give you that. But come on.

A definition points to an essence.
A definition is an essence.
Essences point to definitions, to language, to intelligibility.

Essence is a difference.
A difference points toward essences.
“This is different than that” says the same thing as “the essence of this is different than the essence of that.” There is an essential difference where there is any difference.

But we all deal in essence, basically, in every unique individual dealing. When we distinguish, or identify, a thing, we invoke an essence.

It is “what”.
It is the “what” in whatever you say, or what you are speaking about, or what you are speaking for.

It is what you just said. You asked “what” is the definition of essence.

What is essence?
Essence is whatness. This complete answer also, literally, begs the question, so I get the 2500 year old conundrum with “essence”. This is why above I said “it is difficult to say” - words presume, essence, so the essence of essence assumes itself exists. Words fail, but we can’t avoid them, when it come to what is essence.

Essence is intimately connected to speaking, the object spoken about, and the speaker; but more simply, essence is the intimate connection between the spoken (the language) and the object spoken about (the world or the “what”ever). (The speaker is presumed in the language.)

Essence is able to be demonstrated in physical experiment, or shown in words, in a form of logic. So there are two different directions in the world to seek essence - the object, and the speaking subject’s words.

We turn this in on itself when we make the object language itself. What is the essence of “language”?
What is the language that defines “essence”?
Same question.

“What” is essence completed, the “what it is to be.”

Essence is the meaning of a word that might be compiled from an analysis of all of the uses of a word - if we quantify and collect all of the uses of a word and find its mean use, we’d hold the essence.

Please read that again @Banno.

Definition is the linguistic representation of the essence of some thing.
So a definition is like an essence when it is accurate and complete (extremely rare).

Essence is the idea, that is or can be put into words. Or it reflects an idea like it reflects a substance/object. It can be an idea of something in the world, or an idea of some other idea; both the word and ideas contain essences. (I’ve already said this in other words above.)

Essence happens, as you predicate subjects.

It is essentially easier to use “essence” in a sentence, than it to simply define “what is essence”, because each word in any definition has its own essence, and its own definition…..because words are intimately connected with essences…. like we can link essences to things in the world. It’s all a moving, intertwining target from which we seek to sort out the essence.

It’s impossible to sum up “essence” as it is tied to “is” and existence. ‘What is?’ is as essential to the conversation as ‘What is?’. Both necessitate the other; both ‘what’ and ‘is’ rely on each other as cause, and cause each other as effect. Like a Yin Yang.

What is is what. Essence is the ‘what’ part, if one is seeking to try to dissect this with precision.

(@Astorre, this is the other side of your discussion of being/becoming. The fixed thing part of the process that is being/becoming - and this is just as difficult to speak clearly about, because it is so pre-Supra-non-all-linguistic.)

But we use ‘essence’ expressly everyday, if not impliedly, all of the time. Like right now, as I demonstrate both how difficult it is to get to the essence of something like “essence”, and how easily some of you are reading right through this.

Essence, as it might be said to exist in an individual subject, is able to be universalized as a category, if there are multiple similar subjects and a desire to categorize them. For example, I am a speaking thing, you are a speaking thing, speaking is part of the essence of what it is to be me, and what it is to be you, so if we want to create a universal category such as “person”, we can say “part of the essence of all persons is they are things that can speak.” So essence relates to the individual things and to the words about things - it is found in things and in categories of things.

Essence is in categorization, as it is in particularized identification.

Sets have an essence; members have an essence.
What makes two penguins each count as individual penguins, is what makes both penguins count as members of the set of all penguins.

Essences put into words, are practical, and natural, and make it easier to speak and communicate about things. Like a proper name. If we called everything “this” and “that” and “it”, we would easily get confused about which one we were talking about. So we use names like “computer screen” or “English” to point out deferent things in front of us, and “what” “it” is we are speaking about in particular. Essences fill in more details about what is named - essences are like really long names - “man” is a name, whereas “man the rational, speaking, thinking, willing, absurd, loving animal” is a longer name, providing something of the essence of a man, universalizable as the essence of all men. (This risks Nominalism, so sample it, put it aside and we can revisit later.)

A definition conveys something of the essence of a word. It is extremely difficult to outline all the elements of the essence or definition of some particular thing, for many reasons.
So “necessary and sufficient” in all possible worlds is like an aspirational goal when capturing an essence in language.
We can admit we do not know all of the necessary and sufficient conditions about some essence while also admitting that we know some conditions of some essence. Gold is essentially different than H2O. I may have a long way to go to outline the full essence of gold or h2o, but we can easily enumerate some essential differences between buckets of gold and buckets of h2o. Therefore, we see something of the essence of gold and the essence of h2o by seeing they are clearly not the same thing.

Essence is the intelligible aspect of an individual thing.

Essence is for mind what texture is for touch.

To get to the essence of what an essence is, there is much, much more to say. It is important to first recognize, before we say anything more, that with each sentence we utter that has a subject and predicate, we invoke reference to some essential distinction. For instance, my last sentence made “each sentence” the subject; this subject must have some particular essence such as “subject and predicate we utter.” That is what I am referring to as the essence of a sentence (there is more to say to capture the complete essence of a sentence, and perhaps something to be removed from what I have said, but with each step, we grapple with essential distinctions…)

We don’t move through language without grappling with essences, like traversing a jungle of differences. Always dangerous.

We cannot escape a conversation, or the jungle, without defining the essential, and tracking our now fixed progress.

To dream essences exist in the world of the forms (Plato) - ok, why, how does that help explain what it is you are explaining?
To intuit they exist inside a substance (Aristotle) - ok, why, how does that give account?
To admit they only exist in mind, and language - ok, why, do they still serve their purpose of facilitating an exchange of information about a world (intelligibility of some other thing)?

But to deny essences exist? Doesn’t seem possible to say. Or think.

We might even go a step further and ask if the idea of essences is worth keeping. — Banno

What practical difference between an idea and an essence is there?

So this suggestion is incoherent.

Essences are only a kind of idea. Ideas are of the ideal, the essential. If we abandon the idea of essences, what will be left of our ideas at all? What do we think about? What do we think with? What does mind deal in, if not essential form? Isn’t there an essence of “idea” that distinguishes idea from the brain it sits with? How are there any essential differences between different ideas without essence?

So how is the notion of asking whether the idea of essences is worth keeping even possible of consideration? It sounds incoherent to wonder about ideas without essences.

And I didn’t even get into is-ness. So much more that is essential to essence and not worth losing sight of.

@Leontiskos @Count Timothy von Icarus

Come on people. We all know what essence is. — Fire Ologist

This doesn't suggest that you are willing to consider the possibility that you (and a great many others) are misunderstanding things.

What does mind deal in, if not essential form? — Fire Ologist

The mind deals in patterns recognized by neural networks. The recognition you have, of the patterns you recognize is a characteristic of your mind rather than a recognition of something essential to things which your mind recognizes as fitting some pattern.

Of course Plato didn't have the benefit of the neuroscientific understanding that is available to us today. So it is understandable that he foisted the notion of essences on so many philosophers. You, on the other hand, have an opportunity to develop a better informed understanding.

patterns — wonderer1

What is a pattern?

Lines drawn distinguishing this from that, as this repeats and in a repeatable pattern.

What links this to that to reveal some repetition?

A pattern is multiple different instances of some one sameness, some essence. Otherwise you wouldn’t notice the repetition and call it a pattern.

So something essential to any “pattern” is repetition of something fixed.

This doesn't suggest that you are willing to consider — wonderer1

It doesn’t suggest anything regarding what I am willing to consider. I’ve considered many things and will do so again. I am considering your post now.

The recognition you have, of the patterns you recognize is a characteristic of your mind rather than a recognition of something essential to things — wonderer1

Not now that I am reading your words. I am considering characteristics of your mind, not mine, or else we are speaking different languages. I am looking for what is essential to your meaning. You sound physicalist. I guess essences sound spiritualist to you, so they need to be refuted as “something to things.”

I haven’t really discussed how essences exist, just what they are, and pointed out that they are. How? Maybe magic, or neural patterns and brain functioning. That’s an essentially different conversation.

Essence is whatness. — Fire Ologist

And what is whatness?

A being is something that objectively exists and has a set of properties and abilities. The properties allow us to distinguish between one being and another being. A being without ability cannot act, so abilities are necessary as well. So to me, the set of properties and abilities completely explains a being. Could you please tell me what is missing when it comes to a being, what you call an essence, if it is not a property or an ability? If by essence you may mean a set of properties and abilities, then I would be quite happy to accept otherwise, you need to explain what the essence is.

you need to explain what the essence is. — MoK

Like it’s a form floating in Plato world, or a substance emerging in Aristotle world?

I said from the start it is hard to say. We are asking what it is to ask “what?”, so we have already presumed our answer.

“What the essence is?”

Do you mean to ask “How the essence is?”

Because if you are asking for “what” the essence is then you are asking for the essence of “whatness”. Essence IS whatness. So go read my above post again to keep restating “whatness” and “essence”.

But if you, like @wonderer1, are really asking “how” an essence can exist, that is a great question, but another subject (more along the lines of “what is ‘being/becoming’”). Do we really need to get into that to think through “essence” a bit more?

What is wrong with my post above about essence? You are asking me to say more. To say what the essence is. But show me where something I said doesn’t help define “essence” already.

A being is something that objectively exists and has a set of properties and abilities. — MoK

That is one way to say it.
Another way to say it is that every being that independently (objectively) exists has an essence (set of properties).

So why do you need more? You seem to be in full agreement with all that I said. What do you think an essence is, that you have not invoked “essence” by talking about a being that objectively exists with a particular set of properties?

So why do you need more? You seem to be in full agreement with all that I said. What do you think as essence is, that you have not invoked “essence” by talking about a being that objectively exists with a particular set of properties? — Fire Ologist

You miss the abilities. Other than that, we are on the same page. Now, going back to the Trinity, why are three beings with different properties and abilities needed? To me, a single being with the ability to create and who is knowledgeable suffices.

I don't necessarily disagree with that. There is however, IMO, a quite good argument against "substances" that is advanced by process metaphysicians on this front:

To be a substance (thing-unit) is to function as a thing-unit in various situations. And to have a property is to exhibit this property in various contexts. ('The only fully independent substances are those which-like people-self-consciously take themselves to be units.)

As far as process philosophy is concerned, things can be conceptualized as clusters of actual and potential processes. With Kant, the process philosopher wants to identify what a thing is with what it does (or, at any rate, can do). After all, even on the basis of an ontology of substance and property, processes are epistemologically fundamental. Without them, a thing is inert, undetectable, disconnected from the world's causal commerce, and inherently unknowable. Our only epistemic access to the absolute properties of things is through inferential triangulation from their modus operandi-from the processes through which these manifest themselves. In sum, processes without substantial entities are perfectly feasible in the conceptual order of things, but substances without processes are effectively inconceivable.

Things as traditionally conceived can no more dispense with dispositions than they can dispense with properties. Accordingly, a substance ontologist cannot get by without processes. If his things are totally inert - if they do nothing - they are pointless. Without processes there is no access to dispositions, and without dispositional properties, substance lie outside our cognitive reach. One can only observe what things do, via their discernible effects; what they are, over and above this, is something that always involves the element of conjectural imputation. And here process ontology takes a straight-forward line: In its sight, things simply are what they do rather, what they dispositionally can do and normally would do.

The fact is that all we can ever detect about "things" relates to how they act upon and interact with one another - a substance has no discernible, and thus no justifiably attributable, properties save those that represent responses elicited from it in interaction with others. And so a substance metaphysics of the traditional sort paints itself into the embarrassing comer of having to treat substances ·as bare (propertyless) particulars [substratum] because there is no nonspeculative way to say what concrete properties a substance ever has in and of itself. But a process metaphysics is spared this embarrassment because processes are, by their very nature, interrelated and interactive. A process-unlike a substance -can simply be what it does. And the idea of process enters into our experience directly and as such.

Nicholas Rescher - "Process Metaphysics: An Introduction to Process Philosophy

The general point here being that processes seem to be more necessary than substance. But, against this we might consider one of the great weaknesses of many forms of process metaphysics, that they make all substances (things) essentially arbitrary and just end up positing a single, universal, wholly global process. That is, they collapse the distinction between substance and accidents. This turns out to just be the old Problem of the One and the Many, with the process answer being a sort of hybrid of Parmenides and Heraclitus, siding with Parmenides on the one hand vis-á-vis the unity of being (there being just one thing, the global process), but with Heraclitus on all being flux.

Against this, we can consider that activities and properties seem to have to be predicated of some substance. One does not have a "fast motion" with nothing moving, or nothing in particular moving. A dog can be brown, or light, but we don't have "just browness" with nothing in particular being brown. So we might suppose that some properties, even if they are processes, are parasitic on a different sort of process. Substances themselves are changeable (generation and corruption), yet there is something that stays the same between different instantiations of the same substantial form.

Second, there is an ostentatious plurality within being in that we are each individual persons; we experience our own thoughts and sensations and not other people's. Hence, there seems to be real multiplicity, and real unity as respects individual minds/persons. Essences are primarily concerned with the metaphysical principle by which things are the intelligible unities that they are. Thus, they are there to explain how there are specific properties in the first place. That is, they are primarily an explanatory metaphysical principle, rather than serving primarily to explain how words refer to different types of things. So, not our ability to pick out and refer to ants, but rather the fact that ants exist as a particular sort of thing and represent relatively self-determining and self-moving wholes.

Unity here occurs on a sliding scale, since unity and multiplicity are contrary, as opposed to contradictory opposites. Hence, the desire to pick out the exact limits of ants, people, trees, etc. in terms of superveniance is misguided. Physical substances are constantly changing. Their essence is the principle that explains how they are what they are.

Another difficulty with ignoring substances would be the fact that most of a thing's apparent properties only show up in particular contexts. Salt is "water soluble," but only ever demonstrates this property when placed in water (i.e., an interaction). Hence, the idea of potencies and powers.

Anyhow, an essence helps explain a thing's affinity to act one way and not any other. In terms of organism's, which most properly possess essences (i.e., are substantial unities rather than bundles of external causes) the essence helps explain the end/final causality related to the organic whole, and how an organism's parts are related to it as a whole (the idea in biology or "function.")

The problem with making essences into static sets of properties is that it:

A. Neglects how physical things are always changing (hence physus); and

B. Only really gets at the epistemic and linguistic movements of picking out types of things, not the actuality that must underlie their having their observed properties.

The article from @Banno is a sort of classical misunderstanding of universals/essences. It opens by pointing out that under realism they play some sort of a metaphysical role, and then presents an argument that presupposes that what is at stake is the use of categorical terms. If categorical terms could be otherwise, then there are not essences. If categorical terms are socially determined, then there cannot be essences (presumably because essences are just lookup lists of properties that link a word/concept to some things).

This misses the point entirely. Realists have generally not denied that terms are based on human ends and they don't deny that they are historically influenced. They don't deny that we can make up more or less arbitrary terms by dividing and concatenating intelligible wholes. Nor do they maintain that universals must exist for every common term. The rebuttal to the idea of essences is that there are not truly such things as tigers or trees, but rather that man finds it useful to name them such, and that this is what makes them so.

But the immediate question here would be "what caused this convention to be useful?" The most obvious answer is that there are such things as cats, flowers, etc. and that they are not ontologically dependent on language or man's will to exist as such. Nominalism seems to either end up acknowledging a prior actuality that is the cause of "names" (essence) or else (more commonly in recent thought) defaults into a sort of extreme volanturism where "usefulness" or "will" becomes an unanalyzable metaphysical primitive that chooses what everything is (i.e., John Calvin individualized or democratized; "In the beginning the Language Community created the heaven and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the soup of usefulness. And the Spirit of the Language Community moved upon the face of the waters. And the Language Community said, Let this be light: and thus it was light.")

Whereas the reductionist realist wants to say that essences can be reduced to properties because more basic actualities can explain more complex beings. The difficulty is showing that this is so. Exactly which set of actualities corresponds to catness and the organic unity of cats, or which component actualities combine to form man and his ends? Of course, there are higher, more general principles, but if these are analogously realized they are not subject to any univocal reductionism.





I don't know if I'd put it quite like that, although that is how commonly how it is put. Mystical author's like Saint John of the Cross or Saint Bernard of Clairvaux are extremely popular and influential in Catholicism. I would say rather that there are different stresses. The Orthodox put less focus on systematic theology, and so this makes mysticism more central to theological discourses. They also put a greater focus on asceticism in general. Just about half the days of the year are fast days, and recommended fasts tend to be more austere. I might say they are more praxis focused, at least in the Anglophone context, but even this seems hard to justify completely. They do make a very different distinction between the active and contemplative life. For Catholics, the active life is mostly service and evangelism, while the contemplative life is all forms of prayer, psalmody, the Hours, fasts, etc. For the Orthodox, all that latter stuff is also the "active life" and the contemplative life is strictly noetic prayer.

They are definitely different, but it's hard to say just how. The Rosary is in some ways similar to the Jesus Prayer/prayer rope. The Orthodox hours are more "noetic" in a way (they call out the nous in particular). I cannot think of a better word. They also seem somehow more inwardly, and thus individually focused in a way that I cannot quite put my finger on, even though they are also performed corporately. The biggest distinction is that they are vastly longer, too long really to be practical for the laity unless they are only keeping Matins and Vespers or Compline, whereas Catholic laity keeping the full Hours seems much more common. Their Lenten compline is legit an hour and a half long lol.

To be a substance (thing-unit)... — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think this is a misrepresentation from the outset. Isn't this just exactly what Heidegger criticized about the objectification of metaphysics? The original Greek term was nearer in meaning to 'being' than 'thing', and a great deal is lost in equiviocating them. 'Being' is a verb.

I will read the rest of your response later and reply to it. I am sincerely sorry. I am short on time.

As far as process philosophy is concerned, things can be conceptualized as clusters of actual and potential processes. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think we can agree that God is simple and irreducible. To me, that is the definition of the mind, too. The mind is a substance with the ability to experience, freely decide, and create. These abilities are needed to guarantee that a change in things could exist, such as ideas that we are entertaining right now. Mind itself can do one thing at any given moment since it is simple, so I think more minds are involved in intelligent creatures like humans. God, however, is a different beast. It is a mind, but has access to Knowledge. God has the ability to create stuff, too. Our minds create ideas always. The act of creation and the point that God exists must lie at the same point, though since otherwise you need a time, you need time for time, etc. which leads to a regress. The act of creation was necessary, too, necessary in the sense that it was a must-do since no other points were available to God. Saying all these, I think God/mind is not subject to change, going from potentiality to actuality, whereas the stuff, non-mind thing, such as matter, are subject to change, so they are going from potentiality to actuality. So we have two sorts of substances, mind-sort and non-mind-sort.

Who's the positivist?

It's coming to Broadway next month with Keanu Reeves. I hear the music score and dancing are amazing.. — Hanover

I can't wait for Disney to release the animation...

Essence is the meaning of a word that might be compiled from an analysis of all of the uses of a word - if we quantify and collect all of the uses of a word and find its mean use, we’d hold the essence. — Fire Ologist

Fucksake.

The 20th century just didn't happen for some folk.

...catness... — Count Timothy von Icarus

But it seems you can never quite say what "catness" is.

Catness is that which is had by a cat, such that it is a cat and not some other thing.

As if this were an explanation. Somewhat circular, no?

I suggest that we do manage to use the word "cat" without having available some essence that specifies what is a cat and what isn't.

We can of course stipulate such an essence. But we do not need to in order to use the word.

It simply is not true that there is some fundamental unchanging nature which all cats possess, unless we stipulate such a nature.

67. I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than "family resemblances"; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait,
temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way.— And I shall say: 'games' form a family.

And for instance the kinds of number form a family in the same way. Why do we call something a "number"? Well, perhaps because it has a—direct—relationship with several things that have hitherto
been called number; and this can be said to give it an indirect relationship to other things we call the same name. And we extend our concept of number as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre. And
the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres.

But if someone wished to say: "There is something common to all these constructions—namely the disjunction of all their common properties"—I should reply: Now you are only playing with words. One might as well say: "Something runs through the whole thread— namely the continuous overlapping of those fibres". — Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

Added: for those watching on, The article in question is Why alchemists can make gold.

:up: :100:

Good post and article. Simple but effective. Should put the whole thing to bed.

Should put the whole thing to bed. — Apustimelogist

You'd think.

But we have a couple of folk who insist on using syllogistic logic together with essentialism, in order to defend a particular theological dogma.

The thread isn't going to end any time soon.

Cheers.

Essence is the meaning of a word that might be compiled from an analysis of all of the uses of a word - if we quantify and collect all of the uses of a word and find its mean use, we’d hold the essence. — Fire Ologist

What does this even mean? I gather up 5,000 definitions of "dog" and I add them together and divide by 5,000? How do you add definitions and divide them?

Calculate one out for me so I can see what you mean. Use the word "essence" as the example so I can see if your definition of essence is even correct. Wouldn't that be crazy if we used your definition engine to show your definition engine produced wrong definitions? What would that mean?

So

Essence is the meaning of a word that might be compiled from an analysis of all of the uses of a word - if we quantify and collect all of the uses of a word and find its mean use, we’d hold the essence.
— Fire Ologist

What does this even mean? — Hanover

Meaning is use.

You find the word in a context.
You gather up as many uses and contexts.
From them you could distill an essence, a meaning of the word in the most contexts.

Sloppy thinking, but that is what analytics seems to make of seeking whatness.

Meaning is use. — Fire Ologist

Actually it's don't look to the meaning, look instead to the use.

look instead to the use. — Banno

I understand that. I think looking to the use only, over many uses, reveals what could be called an essence. You can ignore the word “essence”, use words like “use in context”, and instead look to the use.

I think this is not just looking to use, but an overlooking if emergent meaning.

Another difficulty with ignoring substances — Count Timothy von Icarus

That’s really what I don t get - why do we ignore what is essentially right in our face every time we speak, every time we point?

But it seems you can never quite say what "catness" is. — Banno

Neither does anyone say how “catness” is used. You just use it.

No one is saying it is easy to define the essence of cat. Not one is saying that it is easy to say what catness is.

Catness - involves a certain shaped ear and face on a typically furry four-legged……..

You want to throw out the the whole substance baby with the lack of completeness bathwater, yet you are willing to use catness over and over and leave it all incomplete and vague anyway.

Neither does anyone say how “catness” is used. You just use it. — Fire Ologist

Think on this a bit, if you will. It carried the very point Wittgenstein and others have made against essences.

You choose to ignore the fact that we ubiquitously use words without having at hand an essence.

We just don't need essences to get on. They are a philosopher's invention.

As if this were an explanation. Somewhat circular, no?

How so? At any rate, the "problem" you have identified exists just as much for reductionism. If we say a being a cat consists in having some set of properties then for each property we can ask, "and what does that consist in?" And this process can be repeated for each sub-property and the properties that define them. This will eventually have to either bottom out in irreducible properties (what you have claimed is "circular") or it will end up with us describing various properties in terms of each other in a circular fashion (although this does not appear to be a viscous circle). The problem will be just the same for popular forms of nominalism (e.g. tropes); it isn't unique to realism.

At any rate, that cats and trees exist seems obvious, hence the burden of proof for reductionism would seem to lie with the reductionist.






Yes that's a good point, although in context Rescher is talking about modern substance/superveniance metaphysics. He acknowledges early on (more than Heidegger IIRC) that Aristotle could rightly be classified as a process metaphysician to a good degree. As Paul Vincent Spade puts it, his via media between Parmenides and Heraclitus tends a good deal more towards the latter, because substances are always undergoing generation and corruption.

The Thomistic take on this same sort of argument is:

It is through action, and only through action, that real beings manifest or “unveil” their being, their presence, to each other and to me. All the beings that make up the world of my experience thus reveal themselves as not just present, standing out of nothingness, but actively presenting themselves to others and vice versa by interacting with each other. Meditating on this leads us to the metaphysical conclusion that it is the very nature of real being, existential being, to pour over into action that is self-revealing and self-communicative. In a word, existential being is intrinsically dynamic, not
static.

...by metaphysical reflection I come to realize that this is not just a brute fact but an intrinsic property belonging to the very nature of every real being as such, if it is to count at all in the community of existents. For let us suppose (a metaphysical thought experiment) that there were a real existing being that had no action at all. First of all, no other being could know it (unless it had created it), since it is only by some action that it could manifest or reveal its presence and nature; secondly, it would make no difference whatever to any other being, since it is totally unmanifested, locked in its own being and could not even react to anything done to it. And if it had no action within itself, it would not make a difference even to itself....To be real is to make a difference.

One of the central flaws in Kant’s theory of knowledge is that he has blown up the bridge of action by which real beings manifest their natures to our cognitive receiving sets. He admits that things in themselves act on us, on our senses; but he insists that such action reveals nothing intelligible about these beings, nothing about their natures in themselves, only an unordered, unstructured sense manifold that we have to order and structure from within ourselves. But action that is completely indeterminate, that reveals nothing meaningful about the agent from which it comes, is incoherent, not really action at all [or we might say, cannot be meaningfully ascribed to any "thing," i.e. as cause].

The whole key to a realist epistemology like that of St. Thomas is that action is the “self revelation of being,” that it reveals a being as this kind of actor on me, which is equivalent to saying it really exists and has this kind of nature = an abiding center of acting and being acted on. This does not deliver a complete knowledge of the being acting, but it does deliver an authentic knowledge of the real world as a community of interacting agents—which is after all what we need to know most about the world so that we may learn how to cope with it and its effects on us as well as our effects upon it. This is a modest but effective relational realism, not the unrealistic ideal of the only thing Kant will accept as genuine knowledge of real beings, i.e., knowledge of them as they are in themselves independent of any action on us—which he admits can only be attained by a perfect creative knower. He will allow no medium between the two extremes: either perfect knowledge with no mediation of action, or no knowledge of the real at all.

W. Norris Clarke - "The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics"

This, of course, does not rule out the role of context in essences, which was a particular contribution of the Patristics in fully fleshing out, e.g.:

For all created things are defined, in their essence and in their way of developing, by their own logoi and by the logoi of the beings that provide their external context. Through these logoi they find their defining limits.

-St. Maximus the Confessor - Ambiguum 7

Or there is the Hegelian response, which is perhaps more relevant to 's original point.

Hegel's basic demarche in both versions [of the Logic] is to trade on the incoherencies of the notions of the thing derived from this modern epistemology, very much as in the PhG. The Ding-an-sich is first considered: it is the unity which is reflected into a multiplicity of properties in its relation to other things, principally the knowing mind. But its properties cannot be separated from the thing in itself, for without properties it is indistinguishable from all the others. We might therefore say that there is only one thing in itself, but then it has nothing with which to interact, and it was this interaction with others, which gave rise to the multiplicity of properties. If there is only one thing-in-itself, it must of itself go over into the multiplicity of external properties. If we retain the notion of many, however, we reach the same result, for the many can only be distinguished by some difference of properties, hence the properties of each cannot be separated from it, it cannot be seen as simple identity.

Thus the notion of a Ding-an-sich as unknowable, simple substrate, separate from the visible properties which only arise in its interaction with others, cannot be sustained. The properties are essential to the thing, whether we look at it as one or many. And so Hegel goes over to consider the view which makes the thing nothing but these properties, which sees it as the simple coexistence of the properties. Here is where the theories of reality as made up of ' matters' naturally figure in Hegel's discussion.

But the particular thing cannot just be reduced to a mere coexistence of properties. For each of these properties exists in many things. In order to single out a particular instance of any property, we have to invoke another property dimension. If we want to single out this blue we have to distinguish it from others, identify it by its shape, or its position in time and space, or its relation to other things. But to do this is to introduce the notion of the multipropertied particular, for we have something now which is blue and round, or blue and to the left of the grey, or blue and occurring today, or something of the sort.

-Charles Taylor - Hegel

The problem is not unrelated to the notion of haeccity introduced by Scotus.