Anyway, well off topic. Time to move on.

I had in mind Aristotelian metaphysics, in particular. — Wayfarer

Me, too.

While there are various ad hoc workarounds, and no doubt Tim can give you the details, syllogistic logic deals in A,E,I and O, and these are single-placed predictions - all predicate letters have one argument-place, f(a). So "Socrates is older than Plato" has to be changed to "Socrates is a-thing-older-than-Plato". This pictures relations between individuals as properties of substances. Relations are reified - they become "things" - rather than relations between things.

In the case of identity, "Socrates is Socrates" is parsed as "Socrates is a-thing-that-is-Socrates", an a strange substance is invented, a-being-that-is-Socrates.

Consider cats again. "There are cats" in more recent logic is ∃(x)(x is a cat) - "there is an x such that x is a cat". But in syllogistic logic it is parsed as something like "The cat has the property of being a cat", thereby inventing "the property of being a cat", which is subsequently reified into "catness" and the rigmarole of essences.

So it seems that adopting a primitive logic leads pretty directly to an odd metaphysics, inhabited by "catness" and "Socratesity" and so on.

Of course, it's possible that there are aspects of reality captured by syllogistic logic but lost in more recent work. But that's a case to be argued, not an assumption to be made.

I just brought that one up because it is an example that seems like obvious equivocation that is not actually equivocation — Count Timothy von Icarus

This?

(i = w) ∧ Bridge(I) ⊢ Bridge(w) — Count Timothy von Icarus

“I=W" can only be true if we restrict the referent of 'water’ to its solid form. But doing so would be an error. The referent of "water" is not just ice.

...it's also the case that if "ice is water (any phase)" is meant as identity — Count Timothy von Icarus

If that's how you mean it, then it's wrong, since ice is water in it's solid form; ice is never liquid water.

I'll leave you to the complexities of Occam. It's been surpassed.

Consider a book, rather than a believer. A book says something like: "Superman can fly" or "Mark Twain is a best seller." Does the book also say that Clark Kent can fly and that Samuel Clemens is a best seller? Does identity substitution work here? Now, on one view, we could ask what the writer intended. If the writer intended to express their beliefs and has no idea that Mark Twain = Samuel Clemens, and the text is taken as an expression of belief, then it seems that we cannot substitute? Whereas, on a "death of the author view" it would seem to be the reader who determines in substitution holds in ambiguous situations. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The writer's intention is irrelevant. The book says "Superman can fly" not "Clark Kent can fly", and any one who says otherwise would be misquoting. Substitution of co-referents is not licensed inside quotation or belief reports.

Hmm.

Added: the book idea is actually quite neat- see the SEP article on quotation, the quotes there are pretty much considered independently, but in a book or other body of literature we might need a more holistic account. So for example, Quine and Davidson use ideas of holism that might be comparable to a book rather then discreet quotes.

Quine: No statement is assessed in isolation; its truth-value depends on the whole theory. Likewise, perhaps no quote in a book can be fully interpreted in isolation.
Davidson: Meaning emerges through interpretation of the speaker’s (or text’s) whole pattern of use, not individual utterances.

So the book example illustrates why opaque contexts may not be exhausted by local quotation rules — a single quote can’t capture the interpretive force of a whole body of text. That’s where holism starts to look more natural.

Thanks for the thought.

modern analytical philosophers have a pretty jaundiced view of metaphysics. — Wayfarer

I doubt Charmers would agree. Like most of the generic critique of analytic philosophy - itself now an anachronistic term - that's more a caricature than anything of content.

One thing I've taken from this thread is that I'm somewhat intrigued by the reliance of your "classical tradition" on a logic limited to single place predications. I conjectured earlier that this might explain much of the reification of being. It'd be a big topic to address, but might elicit some interest.

I'd maintain that more recent (ie, post-enlightenment) logic shows that the way metaphysics was done was quite muddled. Metaphysics is still happening, but with less of the making shit up and more of the working through the issue.

As for Olo, I just haven't been able to interpret what he said as a coherent chain of statements. Harsh, perhaps, but that's what it amounts to.

Whatever.

I still do not understand what you are saying.

I guess so.

I've pointed to Davidson once or twice. That's were I'm pointing now.

If I havn't made a point, it;\'s becasue I can't follow what youa re saying.

And there's stuff like this:

Language only involves interpreting utterances? — Fire Ologist

No. Why did you choose to include the word "only"? Language involves interpreting utterances.

I'd be happy to help rehabilitate essence.

So if the "Thomistic distinction between essence and accident" is understood as the modal difference between properties had in some possible world and properties had in ever possible world, we could move on.

But if we do that and invoke god, a being for whom every possibility is a necessity, we again risk modal collapse - there would be no difference between necessity and possibility. The devil is in the detail, and so, perhaps, is God...

So we are back to the challenge to theists: give a coherent account of god's nature.

So, yes, DNA is very much like the molecular counterpart of 'essence'. — Wayfarer

Is your claim that if the dog we call Bee had a different DNA, it would be a different dog? That seems to be agreeing with the modal definition of essence - that "Bee" has a certain DNA in every world in which she exists, and that if we stipulate a world in which @frank's dog bee has a different DNA, then we are stipulating a world in which Frank has another dog that happens to have the same name as Bee.

But this is part of the problem here - the sliding between different definitions of "essence".

So Tim, from what I have understood, would reject the modal definition of essence, maintaining somewhat hyperbolically that essence is what makes a thing what it is, but is not the necessary properties of a thing.

You seem now to be saying that essence is what makes a thing what it is, and that is the properties it has in every possible world.

Asa I've maintained, the modal definition has the benefits both of not being circular and being arguably consistent.

why do you raise the interpreter? — Fire Ologist

Becasue language inherently involves interpreting utterances.

I'm sorry, I wasn't able to see what you were saying.

Is not an undistributed middle. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yeah, maybe not. It's a bit of a muddle, really. I'm not at all sure what you are claiming here. So what looks like a violation of Leibniz’s Law is really just equivocation about the reference of "w". Not sure what your point is in relation to the topic. Yes, some problems are to do with ambiguity, but some problems are also to do with referential opacity, and they are not the same.

What are you trying to argue?

You don't need modal logic for this sort of metaphysics. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If a theory of how names work does not account for modal contexts, it's broken. That's what went wrong with the description theory of reference. If essences are understood as a theory of how names work - that the name refers to the essence - then they will have the very same issue with modality. The response would be to say that the essence is had in every possible word - that is, necessarily. This amounts to the view that essences are the properties had by an individual in every possible world in which it exists.

It's not a question of needing modal logic, but of seeing how names work.

But I'd understood that you rejected defining essence in terms of necessary properties. I think it is still up to you to give an account of what you mean by "essence", or to accept that your account - that which makes a thing what it is and not something else - is circular and unhelpful.

You can just put it plainly: "cats are cats because I stipulate that it is so. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Both you and Olo miss the bit about it not being "I" but "we". That the word "cat" refers to cats is a fact about the way the community of speakers of English use "cat", not some individual foible.

They would still be cats even if I didn't stipulate this — Count Timothy von Icarus

"They would still be cats" already uses the word "cats".

Think on that. You are already using language, in an attempt to talk about a world without language. So you end up using the word "cats" in the very act of explaining that there are cats despite our use of "cats".

And all you are doing here is saying that cats might have been called something else, or that we might have divided the world up differently, not differentiating cats from other mammals. And of course here you would be right.

So we return to what might be the fundamental issue, that your are already using language in order to formulate the very theory you think you need in order to use language. You want to talk about a world with no cats, without reference to cats, but of course can only do so by referring to cats.

We are always, already, embedded in an interpretation of the way things are.

...how are there species? — Count Timothy von Icarus

There aren't, not until we name them. Yet we give different species different names becasue of their differences.

I was clearly asking for a culture that doesn't distinguish the species at all. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I understand it, Old English used "hind" for the female of the species we now call deer, and "hart" for the male, but had no word specifically for the species. They divided things up quite differently to us, being perhaps more interested in sexual dimorphism than genetics, around reproduction and hunting rather than taxonomy. That's becasue the divisions are made by us, as a part of a community, and not handed down by god or found in nature independently of our language. They did not distinguish the species at all. That's what you asked for. But no doubt you will somehow contrive not to be shocked.

This sort of thing:

"Why are cats the specific sort of organic wholes they are?"
"Because modal logic allows us to stipulate x exists and x is a cat." — Count Timothy von Icarus

...misrepresents what is being said in reply to your essentialism. It's not what @Sam26 said. Sam might reply, but seems to me not worth addressing further.

I think the dialogue may be ending, since I don't see anything new today. Doubtless the thread will go on for a few more pages. that's to be expected, in a forum where a simple problem will attract five hundred replies. I think my case is carried.

substitution of "water" for "ice" suggests that the narrow sense applies. — Ludwig V

Yep.

The ice bridge argument is just invalid. It's another undistributed middle.

Equivocation can take place in the same context, but it is not necessary; it can occur over different contexts. Consider:

Water is H₂O, and water is always a liquid.

There's an ambiguity between the two uses of "water", the first refering to any state, solid, liquid, gas, the second to the liquid only. But we might have:

Water is H₂O, and Alice believes that water is always a liquid.

Same ambiguity, two states.

I think that's right. What do you think?

digressions don’t trouble me. But I think that actually pretty relevant.

Thanks. All good stuff.

African Elephants were long thought to be one. While there is some morphological difference between savanna and forest elephants, they were taken as the same species. However their DNA was shown to be statistically quite different.

Are we to count them as one species with two subspecies, or as two distinct species? Mitochondrial evidence showed that the two groups had not interbreed in any large scale for millions of years. So the decision was made to count them as two species.

Actually, that decision was made over time, as the differences in data became clearer. But the final step had some conservation implications. By splitting into two species they (the IUCN African Elephant Specialist Group) were able to list the African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) as critically endangered, and the savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) as Endangered - whereas together they only met the criteria for being endangered.

Australian Eucalypts are notorious for mingling their DNA - to the extent that it is now not uncommon for them to be considered a cluster of species rather than insist on separating and shrinking the number of individuals in a species.

The take away is that DNA does not divide the world up neatly in to species. We do the dividing, sometimes using DNA evidence, sometimes not.

DNA does not provide clear natural essences or clear-cut natural kinds.

First, name one culture that conflates cats and dogs, or any other domesticated animal. — Count Timothy von Icarus

English.

The word "deer" comes from the PIE dheusom, "creature that breathes". In Old English it referred to any non-domestic animal.

Old English conflated any non-domesticated animal - dear, pigs, foxes, whatever - into the one word - "deor". Perhaps becasue of the preference for retrieving venison in a hunt, the word came to pick out only the cervidae.

Near enough.

Referential opacity is a different issue to referential equivocation.

You mash them.

Can you see why I call this extreme volanturism? — Count Timothy von Icarus

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.

Possible worlds are posited, not found. You can specify one with cats, or one without, but either way there are already cats (∃(x)(x is a cat) in order for you to do the specifying.

To see how it works, you have to do the work.

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

Yep. That's becasue as a tool it is quite good at showing where mistakes are being made.

Dude, H₂O≠ liquid water. Palestine ≠ Israel. Stop equivocating.

Ok, then explain in virtue of what they would be cats in this case? — Count Timothy von Icarus

In virtue of the supposition of a world that includes cats but not people.

That's how modality works. We can stipulate a possible world in which there are cats but no people to call them cats. It's a world that is logically accessible from our own. In that world there are cats, because that is how that world is specified.

If you are not going to study modal logic, I guess you will have to take my word for it.

Babies use words despite not understanding Aristotle

Is this inane strawman more "performance art?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

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.

What do you await? — Hanover

I really do not know...

I'll leave it to Tim.

But what do we make of Kripke? — Ludwig V

Natural kinds - ice, water, and so on - are not individuals. Referential opacity is a problem for individuals.

Both natural kinds and individuals can be named using rigid designators. We can construct similar case...

• Alice believes that water is refreshing.
• Alice does not believe that H₂O is refreshing.

The response is the same. A contradiction only occurs if Alice believes that water = H₂O. Not if water = H₂O.

Ice is water.
Ice makes for a good bridge.
Therefore water makes for a good bridge. — Count Timothy von Icarus

U(x)(x is ice ⊃ x is water)
Ux(x is ice ⊃ x makes a good bridge)
Ux (x is water ⊃ x makes a good bridge.)
That's invalid. Sorry, Tim.

It is not wrong. — Ludwig V

Yeah, it is.

Presumably, the implication goes the other way, so that if we can replace a with b in a formula, then we have a=b. — Ludwig V

Not quite. Not just a formula, but all formula. If in all formula we can substitute a for b, without altering any truth value, then a=b. That's Leibniz's law.



"Water" can mean the liquid only, or it can mean any of liquid, solid, and gas. If we assert that water = H₂O, we are asserting the latter, since we are also by symmetry asserting that H₂O = water. I don't see an issue, provided we are clear here. Tim's post seems tangential.

How might a computer recognize a cat? — Hanover

Yep.

Perhaps picture a large statistical model connected to appropriate sensors, comparing what is said to what is sensed, and making a statistical connection between hearing "cat" and certain things it is seeing/hearing.

The code might not be algorithmic, would not set out explicit criteria, but would perhaps use the word sometimes correctly sometimes not, and change the various weightings of it's model to accomodate further information.

What Tim is proposing is like a database lookup table - an analogy he used - where the computer runs down a list of criteria until it finds "cat". (Added: appears to be stuck in the same trope.)

That's not how neural nets and LLMs work.

no one here is saying cats don't exist. — Apustimelogist

Obvious as this is, I am pleased that at least you have understood this.

The whole notion of essence just seems seems either over-reductive or completely redundant in its vagueness. — Apustimelogist

Yes, and will stay that way until the challenge is met.

Notice the rhetorical move:

You'll have to lay out what you understand by "essence" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sigh. Attempting to throw the ball back to you.

We await Tim's providing an coherent explanation of what an essence is, and why it is needed.

There is the speaker.
There is the word spoken.
There is what is spoken about. — Fire Ologist

You left out the interpreter. In doing so you ignored the fact of communality that is inherent in language. Hence your account is inherently incomplete.

@Count Timothy von Icarus

Babies use words despite not understanding Aristotle

volanturism and linguistic idealism — Count Timothy von Icarus

Ism, ism, ism...

Cats would not exist if man was not there to call them forth as such. — 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.

The arc, again, in which you only accept those ideas that are compatible with your dogma.

Such categorizations are not arbitrary. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Of course they are not arbitrary. They are useful.

You are repeatedly attributing the ism of linguistic idealism. That just shows a lack of imagination. Have another look at "On the very idea of a conceptual schema" as an example of an alternative. We do not need the odd juxtaposition of idealism and realism.

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

Wittgenstein carefully dismantles presumptions of metaphysics. To say he is not doing metaphysics would be an error.

...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

Me?

This arguing in terms of "isms" is a hedge. You never quite say what "reductionism" is.

So let me be quite specific, and lay this misrepresentation to rest. I have been at pains to point to a non-reductionist position. I do not think that there must be a set of properties that are necessary and sufficient to set out what it is for something to be a cat. I have consistently argued, using material from both Wittgenstein and Quine, that we use such word despite there not being such a set of properties.

There remains the possibility of our stipulating some set of such criteria. We do this, in some circumstances. But it is not necessary that we do this in order to make use of such words.

There is also the term of art, "essence", that in modal logic is the set of properties had by some individual in every possible world. This is simply one way in which we might understand the word "essence", a way that has huge advantages over your "what makes a thing what it is", since it brings with it the structure of modality and possible world semantics.

We do not need to have access to to such a set in order to make use of words.

Neither of us is denying that cats and trees exist. You seem to have the idea that unless there is an essence, there cannot be cats and trees. That's odd, since it seems you cannot actually tell us what an essence is, beyond "that which makes something a cat or a tree". That, again, is the picture that has you in thrall.

What makes a cat a "cat" is at least in part, that we use the word "cat" to talk about some things but not others. It's we who seperate cats form dogs and from kittens, and we who manage to use the word despite not having to hand an explicit essence of catness...

This is a lesson not just from Wittgenstein, as cited above, but from Quine's Gavagi parable. But you could not follow that in our previous conversation, either.

Either there is something on account of which some individuals are called cats, or the term is arbitrary. — 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.

For sure, the economy has slowed, growing at an annual rate of 1.2% in the first half of the year, down one percentage point from 2024. — The US economy is a puzzle but the pieces aren't fitting together

We will have to wait and see.

So is everything that is irreducible also circular? Are definitions of mathematical objects circular? — 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.

The definition of mathematical objects from ZFC are certainly not circular, so I can't make much of that part of your comment either.

Your reply here misses the point. (indeed, it a non sequitur). It remains for you to present a way of dealing with essences that is not circular.

When's the last time you looked for an analysis of the Russia/Ukraine conflict? Three years ago? — frank

Yesterday. I read the Kyiv Post maybe once or twice a week.

There's also a show in Australia called "Planet America", which is enjoyable. It's a mix of news and comedy - it might have once been called "satire" but that term no longer works in relation to US politics.

I suppose that the US foreign policy is perhaps more important to folk outside the US than to folk inside.

The tariffs are curious because they are somewhat novel and unpredictable. Estimates put the reduction of US GDP at up to 6%, and it is this slow down of the US economy that will have the greater effect on Australia, rather than a 10% tariff on our exports to the US. If everyone else ends up paying 10% or more, then that makes little difference to our competitiveness in the US market.

remember that it is the US customer, not Australia, who pays the 10%.

Australia's economy is much more closely aligned with that of China than the US, has been for decades, so the US economy is increasingly irrelevant. But our foreign policy remains closely aligned with that of the US and Europe, an it is this tension that is interesting here.

So the talks in Alaska matter at least as much to us as US economic decisions.

What may be developing is an alliance between Australia, Japan and South Korea, independent of US foreign policy. Australia is re-assessing it's own attitude in the light of the changes in the US.

I don't understand why non-Americans always focus on the stuff that doesn't really matter. — frank

The talks with Putin regarding Ukraine don't matter?

The Reserve Bank has published a study confirming that growing concentration in the Australian economy has contributed to poorer productivity growth and higher mark-ups.

How Costly are Mark-ups in Australia? The Effect of Declining Competition on Misallocation and Productivity

https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/08/15/reserve-bank-corporate-profiteering-productivity-roundtable/

There is substantial evidence that the degree of competition in the Australian economy has declined over the decade or so leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic. This has the potential to weigh on productivity, and in turn incomes, and so the welfare of the Australian people. In this paper we calibrate the general equilibrium model from Edmond, Midrigan and Xu (2023) to Australian microdata to answer the following question: If the degree of competition in the Australian economy had not declined from mid-2000s levels, how much higher would aggregate productivity and GDP be due to resources being better allocated across firms throughout the economy? The answer, according to this model, is 1–3 per cent. The model also suggests even larger economic costs once we account for other channels through which rising mark-ups affect the economy, though these are less precisely estimated. — Reserve bank

So corporate profiteering is costing 1 to 3 percent of GDP.

Keep this in mind as the week progresses, in relation to the forthcoming productivity discussions.

Pissant. Makes a big fuss, gets the attention because of the smell, ruins the barbecue for everyone else and does nothing useful.

What’s that horrible Americanism that Trump sycophants always used about the findings of various criminal and civil investigations into him, even when they were clearly incriminatory? — Wayfarer

TACO?

I prefer pissant.

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

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.

If we say a being a cat consists in having some set of properties... — Count Timothy von Icarus

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.

But what if there is no such something? What if we just use words, and in using them get on with life?

Perhaps you cannot see how this would work. 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.

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.

Meaning is use. — Fire Ologist

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

Played.

Before the talks, Trump told Fox 'I won't be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire'

After the talks, 'No deal until there's a deal', whatever the fuck that means.

Pissant.