Catness is that which is had by a cat, such that it is a cat and not some other thing.
Somewhat circular, no? — Banno
How so? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Not something I'd agree with. It presumes that there is a something it is to being a cat...If we say a being a cat consists in having some set of properties... — Count Timothy von Icarus
Well, if you can't see the circularity in setting out the essence of cats in terms of catness, and catness in terms of what it is to be a cat, and what it is to be a cat in terms of essence, there's not much more to say.
Not something I'd agree with. It presumes that there is a something it is to being a cat...
Simpler to just say that some individuals are cats.
Telling, in it's way. You appear to think that the only alternative to essentialism is reductionism, so that's what you are addressing. But what is being mooted here is that we simply do not need access to an essence. Not even a reductionist one - if by that what you mean is "some set of properties."
A particular picture of how language works has you enthralled. In that picture there is a something that is the meaning of a word, and the aim is to set out what that something is.
Hence your rejection of Quine and Wittgenstein and most anything more recent than the French Revolution.
But sure, we agree that there are cats and trees.
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. — Banno
We just don't need essences to get on. They are a philosopher's invention. — Banno
Simpler to just say that some individuals are cats. — Banno
essences are not about language or signification, except inasmuch that the former explains the causes of the latter (e.g., disparate cultures all developed a word for "ant" because there are ants). This is the same mistake your article makes, assuming that essences are entirely about philosophy of language. — Count Timothy von Icarus
As if there never need be a table to use “table”.
Essence is intimately connected to language, and intelligibility, but it is not wholly subsumed by language and more rightly sits in things, as “what is known and said about them.”
no one here is saying cats don't exist. — Apustimelogist
Final causality is probably the most relevant issue, not signification. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Well, no, and it's odd that you would supose this. Of course a circular argument may be formal valid - but the point is that as an explanation circularity is a bit useless. Wittgenstein's hinge propositions are an example of an irreducible item that is not circular.So is everything that is irreducible also circular? Are definitions of mathematical objects circular? — Count Timothy von Icarus
The epistemic issues raised by multiplicity and ceaseless change are addressed by Aristotle’s distinction between principles and causes. Aristotle presents this distinction early in the Physics through a criticism of Anaxagoras.1 Anaxagoras posits an infinite number of principles at work in the world. Were Anaxagoras correct, discursive knowledge would be impossible. For instance, if we wanted to know “how bows work,” we would have to come to know each individual instance of a bow shooting an arrow, since there would be no unifying principle through which all bows work. Yet we cannot come to know an infinite multitude in a finite time.2
However, an infinite (or practically infinite) number of causes does not preclude meaningful knowledge if we allow that many causes might be known through a single principle (a One), which manifests at many times and in many places (the Many). Further, such principles do seem to be knowable. For instance, the principle of lift allows us to explain many instances of flight, both as respects animals and flying machines. Moreover, a single unifying principle might be relevant to many distinct sciences, just as the principle of lift informs both our understanding of flying organisms (biology) and flying machines (engineering).
For Aristotle, what are “better known to us” are the concrete particulars experienced directly by the senses. By contrast, what are “better known in themselves” are the more general principles at work in the world.3,i Since every effect is a sign of its causes, we can move from the unmanageable multiplicity of concrete particulars to a deeper understanding of the world.ii
For instance, individual insects are what are best known to us. In most parts of the world, we can directly experience vast multitudes of them simply by stepping outside our homes. However, there are 200 million insects for each human on the planet, and perhaps 30 million insect species.4 If knowledge could only be acquired through the experience of particulars, it seems that we could only ever come to know an infinitesimally small amount of what there is to know about insects. However, the entomologist is able to understand much about insects because they understand the principles that are unequally realized in individual species and particular members of those species.iii
Some principles are more general than others. For example, one of the most consequential paradigm shifts across the sciences in the past fifty years has been the broad application of the methods of information theory, complexity studies, and cybernetics to a wide array of sciences. This has allowed scientists to explain disparate phenomena across the natural and social sciences using the same principles. For instance, the same principles can be used to explain both how heart cells synchronize and why Asian fireflies blink in unison.1 The same is true for how the body’s production of lymphocytes (a white blood cell) takes advantage of the same goal-direct “parallel terraced scan” technique developed independently by computer programmers and used by ants in foraging.2
Notably, such unifications are not reductions. Clearly, firefly behavior is not reducible to heart cell behavior or vice versa. Indeed, such unifications tend to be “top-down” explanations, focusing on similarities between systems taken as wholes, as opposed to “bottom-up” explanations that attempts to explain wholes in terms of their parts.i...
You've tried this argument before. The term "cat" is indeed in a sense arbitrary. We could have used any word we like, we could have not had a word for cats, or had one word for both cats and dogs, or any of innumerable other combinations. That we happen to have the word "cat" is not ordained by God, but an accident of the history of English.Either there is something on account of which some individuals are called cats, or the term is arbitrary. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Me?...you have defended the reductionist modal thesis time and time again as vastly superior, so that's what I responded to. — Count Timothy von Icarus
You've tried this argument before. The term "cat" is indeed in a sense arbitrary. We could have used any word we like, we could have not had a word for cats, or had one word for both cats and dogs, or any of innumerable other combinations. That we happen to have the word "cat" is not ordained by God, but an accident of the history of English.
"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."
Wittgenstein carefully dismantles presumptions of metaphysics. To say he is not doing metaphysics would be an error.I don't think I'm disagreeing with Wittgenstein here. Wittgenstein is very careful not to tread into metaphysics. You frequently use Wittgenstein to make metaphysical claims that he himself does not make. Anti-metaphysics cannot make claims like "essences don't exist" without becoming metaphysics. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Some are saying you call this thing a “cat” and you call that thing a “squid” because people just do. And like things are in flux, what people do is in flux.
Others are saying you call this thing a “cat” because of something about the thing, and you call that thing a “squid” because of something else about that other thing. — Fire Ologist
Ism, ism, ism...volanturism and linguistic idealism — Count Timothy von Icarus
Of course there would be cats. Just no one to call them "cats" - except your God, of course, and perhaps this is what your argument is actually about. You want to set up a theory of language that needs God.Cats would not exist if man was not there to call them forth as such. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Of course they are not arbitrary. They are useful.Such categorizations are not arbitrary. — Count Timothy von Icarus
There is the speaker.
There is the word spoken.
There is what is spoken about. — Fire Ologist
Obvious as this is, I am pleased that at least you have understood this.no one here is saying cats don't exist. — Apustimelogist
Yes, and will stay that way until the challenge is met.The whole notion of essence just seems seems either over-reductive or completely redundant in its vagueness. — Apustimelogist
Sigh. Attempting to throw the ball back to you.You'll have to lay out what you understand by "essence" — Count Timothy von Icarus
How might a computer recognize a cat? — Hanover
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
Of course there would be cats. Just no one to call them "cats" -
Obvious as this is, I am pleased that at least you have understood this.
Babies use words despite not understanding Aristotle
Ok, then explain in virtue of what they would be cats in this case? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Babies use words despite not understanding Aristotle
Is this inane strawman more "performance art?" — Count Timothy von Icarus
In virtue of the supposition of a world that includes cats but not people.
If you are not going to study modal logic, I guess you will have to take my word for it.
It shows again that we do not need a theory of essences in order to use words.
It might well be the core of our differences. I take effective language use as granted - it's foundational that we are talking here about cats and essences and possible worlds. If that is not granted, then our talk would indeed be incongruous scratchings. You, in opposition, seem to hold that we could only have this successful practice against a complicated Aristotelian or Platonic theoretical base.
But babies do talk, and the do not understand Aristotle.
The performative contradiction is in your already using language in order to formulate the very theory you think you need in order to use language.
I'd say it's becasue of your penchant for rhetoric over logic. Ism, ism, ism - the need to find the right box, rather than take the argument on its merit. I'm not overly impressed with what you have said here, nor in the referential opacity thread. I think you are showing the limits of your grasp of logic.Can you see why I call this extreme volanturism? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Yep. That's becasue as a tool it is quite good at showing where mistakes are being made.Anyhow, for someone who says they logic is just a tool, and that any logic can be used just in case we find it useful, you sure do like to appeal to formalisms quite a bit to make metaphysical claims. — Count Timothy von Icarus
So cats would still be cats in a world without people in virtue of the fact that people have created a logical system that allows them to say "cats would still be cats in a world without people?" And I suppose that trees were trees before there were people in virtue of the fact that people can make the claim "there were trees before people?" — Count Timothy von Icarus
First, name one culture that conflates cats and dogs, or any other domesticated animal. — Count Timothy von Icarus
The term "essence" has been used in very different ways throughout the history of philosophy. Locke's real/nominal essences are very different from what Hegel has in mind and both are very different from what modern analytics have in mind, with their "sets of properties"/bundle theories, which is wholly at odds with how the Islamic and Scholastic thinkers thought of essences. — Count Timothy von Icarus
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