(1) is the object being something--an object with an essence. So (2) contradicts (1). — Terrapin Station
I'm an anti-realist on essences. Essences are merely a way we think about objects--basically they're our conceptual abstractions, our universals/type categories. So yeah, that's different than an object itself, since objects themselves have no essences. — Terrapin Station
Sure, if I am referring to the same time, that would be a contradicton, but I'm not. That's the whole point of the argument. It was stated in the argument: "When a particular object comes into existence..." So it is very clear that I am assuming a time prior to the existence of the object. It is a temporal argument, assuming certain things about time and objects, namely that objects come into existence in time. — Metaphysician Undercover
you are not apprehending that an object itself necessarily has an essence. — Metaphysician Undercover
Do you agree that each and every object is distinguishable from every other object? There is something, or some things, about each object which makes it other than every other object. This is "what the object is", and we call that its essence. The essence is inherent within the object itself, and this is what makes the object itself, what it is, and not some other object. — Metaphysician Undercover
When we come to know the object, we reproduce that essence within our minds — Metaphysician Undercover
But this is a reproduction of the object's essence — Metaphysician Undercover
This reproduction of the essence is not the same thing as the essence which inheres within the object, or else we'd have to conclude that the object is within the person's mind when the person knows the object. — Metaphysician Undercover
Right, you're saying that (1) obtains prior to the object coming to be, which is what makes it contradictory. There's no object to have an essence prior to the object coming to be. — Terrapin Station
That's better known as haecceity. If in your definition, "essence" is the same as "haecceity" I'd say that there is "Metaphysician Undercover 'essence'," but I'd add that's it's incoherent to say that it's anything other than the object itself, so it can't exist (or subsist, or whatever tortured verbiage we'd need to use to refer to it) aside from the object, and I'd also add that it's every single property of the object itself (which makes it not map well to "essence" in its conventional definition rather than your definition). — Terrapin Station
That I don't at all agree with. I wouldn't say that we reproduce it at all, and we certainly wouldn't reproduce every single property of it. Rather than reproducing it, we perceive it (from a particular reference point only), we either file it with respect to concepts we've already formulated and/or we formulate new concepts about it, etc. — Terrapin Station
You'd not be able to reproduce every single property of it. — Terrapin Station
Prior to the existence of the object (object + haecceity) there is only the haecceity of the object, — Metaphysician Undercover
tell me how it is not necessary to conclude that the haecceity of the object precedes the existence of the object itself. — Metaphysician Undercover
Do we perceive the haecceity, or do we perceive the essence? — Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, that's exactly the case, and that's why the essence of the object (which is what exists within one's mind), is not the same thing as the haecceity of the object, which is inherent within the object. — Metaphysician Undercover
If the object comes into existence in time, — Metaphysician Undercover
In order that the object will come into existence as the object which it does come into existence as, and not something else. — Metaphysician Undercover
Which is what I'm referring to by (1) (It was my formulation after all!--you can't tell me what it was referring to contra what I had in mind!). There is no object to have haecceity prior to the object ___ing to have haecceity. (I used a "blank" because I don't want to fill in a word that you'll misunderstand--whatever you call it. The object has to ____ in order to have haecceity) — Terrapin Station
As a nominalist, what's inexplicable is that anyone would have difficulty with why an object is that particular object versus whatever else it could be in their view.) — Terrapin Station
There can't be a something of an object prior to there being the object in question. — Terrapin Station
Now, what necessitates your claim that the haecceity which the object has, is not prior to the object itself? — Metaphysician Undercover
and being philosophically minded, we want to know why this is the case. — Metaphysician Undercover
When the object exists, it has something. — Metaphysician Undercover
Does it not make sense to you that my computer existed prior to me having it? — Metaphysician Undercover
Ah--so you're just getting at the idea of platonic forms, basically? I don't at all buy that ontologically. Only dynamic structures/relations of matter exist, and they're all particulars. (I'm using "exist" there so that it encompasses everything there is in any sense.) So if there was haecceity, or essence, or anything like that, it would necessarily be dynamic structures/relations of matter. Or it would BE a particular object. In my ontology there are no (real) abstracts. Abstracts are concrete mental occurrences--that is, particular concepts held by individuals. — Terrapin Station
The haecceity doesn't come into existence as an object, the object comes into existence having a haecceity. What we are referring to is the object's haecceity. At T1 the haecceity exists, at T2 the object exists with that haecceity. The haecceity doesn't come into existence as an object, it's something the object has. — Metaphysician Undercover
Okay, but if the object in question only comes into existence at T2, then that particular object doesn't have its essence (or haecceity) at T1, right? — Terrapin Station
That's not what you're saying with "essence precedes existence," though, is it? — Terrapin Station
In order that this is not nonsense, the words must refer to something, but the object itself does not exist. So the words refer to the object's essence, "what" the thing is. — Metaphysician Undercover
No. The words refer to the idea you have, your imagination of it. — Terrapin Station
Okay, but it's important to clarify that nothing belonging to the object exists prior to the object, nothing that's at all a property of the object, because the object in no way exists prior to the object. — Terrapin Station
So then we could say that the essence or haecceity of an object can exist prior to the object, in this particular, idiosyncratic sense of those terms, as long as people exist and they imagine that there could be something like a particular object (and then once an object obtains, people count it as that particular object), but this would only go for a very small percentage of objects (people don't pre-imagine most of the objects in the world), and it would only be the case that essence or haecceity exist prior to the object in question relative to the object in question. That is, essence or haecceity wouldn't precede existence in general/unqualified, because it turns out that people have to exist in order for them to imagine things. So existence comes first in general. In the history of the world, there's nothing like this sense of essence or haecceity until life begins and people evolve, so that we can have people who imagine objects and then who count objects that obtain or that they become aware of after their imagining, as the objects they imagined — Terrapin Station
Let's assume that the haecciety is properly called "the object". — Metaphysician Undercover
"The haecceity" and "the object" refer to one and the same thing, object X.
Then the object exists as the haecceity prior to having a physical presence as a material object.
The material existence Y, is the property. Then we have a continuity of existence of the object, and at T1 the object X, has no material presence, but at T2 the object has a material presence, Y. At T1 X is only a haecceity,
You haven't yet supported your claim that nothing which is a property of the object could be prior to the object. That X is a property of Y at T2 does not exclude the possibility that X existed at T1 and Y did not. — Metaphysician Undercover
The issue though, is that the haeccity of each particular object is necessarily prior to that particular object, so by inductive reasoning we can conclude that haecceity is prior to all objects, in a general, and absolute sense. — Metaphysician Undercover
Rather than "properties," consider a quality, such as the color red - not a red thing, like a stop sign, but the color red itself, apart from any instantiation of it; not the particular range of electromagnetic wavelengths that correspond to it, or how we perceive it, or even how we imagine it, but what it is in itself. — aletheist
Properties and qualities are synonyms in my view. — Terrapin Station
Remember that I'm a nominalist, including that I'm a nominalist in the sense of rejecting realism for abstract existents in general. — Terrapin Station
Also, in general, I don't buy that anything exists if it's not actualized. — Terrapin Station
That's not to say that I reject possibilities (that is, more than one option for future states), although I'll refrain from explaining what I think possibilities amount to so as to not derail the conversation to a big discussion about that instead. — Terrapin Station
A big "Huh???" there. That seems like quite a non sequitur. — Terrapin Station
I don't buy that there are immaterial, nonphysical existents period. In my view, the very idea of nonphysical existents is incoherent. — Terrapin Station
At T1, X wouldn't be anything if it has no material presence. — Terrapin Station
That's due to the simple fact that what properties are in the first place is identical to (dynamic structures and relations of) matter. Properties are simply what matter/those dynamic structures are relations of matter are "like," the qualities they have, the way they interact with other things, etc. You can't have that if you don't have the dynamic structures and relations of matter in question. — Terrapin Station
There's no reason to wonder why something comes to be as some particular and not something else unless we can even make sense out of that idea. — Terrapin Station
Agreed, I was just suggesting an example that is more familiar to most people than haecceity; especially since I tend to think of the latter as the distinct property that only actual things have, so that I am not inclined to equate it with essence myself. Instead, it is the brute "here and now" aspect of any individual thing that reacts with other individual things. — aletheist
But space and time are completely conceptual ... — Metaphysician Undercover
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