And just what is life?

[polytropos]

So if objects require essences to account for their properties, what then accounts for the properties of an essence? It seems to me that it could only be another essence, by the same reasoning. For if there are no essences of essences, we could not distinguish the variety of essences that we do.

I would deny that essences themselves have properties. (I think this is implicit in Linus’s response, since he says that, “The properties flow from the essence of the substance.” It is the properties of the substance which flow from the essence.) Properties are a species of accident (generally speaking, “essential accidents”), and accidents inhere in substances, so I would say that it is a category mistake to say that essences themselves have properties.

To attribute an essence to something is really to acknowledge the unity consequent upon its having a form, and the form is that from which properties flow. Electrons are essentially negatively charged and essentially have a rest mass of 9.1093897 x 10^-31 Kg. A hylemorphist would hold that the unity of these properties in an electron is not accidental; electrons are not bundles of properties which happen to coincide, but properties are specified by form. (Though it is important to note that the positing of form is not a repudiation of material explanations. One posits a form for a tree without being committed to the notion that we can’t learn more about how trees grow.)

Essence is an articulation of what really flows (when uninhibited) from the form of a thing. To go back to the tree example, we could uproot a tree and strip it of all of its leaves. It has no way to obtain nutrients, but it is still a tree with the power of growth (a power that cannot be exercised). In this case, growth would be a power of the tree in the right conditions, but our uprooting the tree and removing its leaves has blocked the exercise of that power. Growth remains of the essence of the tree, though.

 

[balto]

I would deny that essences themselves have properties. (I think this is implicit in Linus’s response, since he says that, “The properties flow from the essence of the substance.” It is the properties of the substance which flow from the essence.) Properties are a species of accident (generally speaking, “essential accidents”), and accidents inhere in substances, so I would say that it is a category mistake to say that essences themselves have properties.

To attribute an essence to something is really to acknowledge the unity consequent upon its having a form, and the form is that from which properties flow. Electrons are essentially negatively charged and essentially have a rest mass of 9.1093897 x 10^-31 Kg. A hylemorphist would hold that the unity of these properties in an electron is not accidental; electrons are not bundles of properties which happen to coincide, but properties are specified by form. (Though it is important to note that the positing of form is not a repudiation of material explanations. One posits a form for a tree without being committed to the notion that we can’t learn more about how trees grow.)

I think that you are right about all of this, although to think this way is almost offensive to the modern mind. Part of the difficulty in coming to understand reality in terms of material and formal causes lies in the fact that a lot of people (myself included) hear the word “essence” or “form” and think of something mysterious or magical, almost like a form or essence is some ghostly mold or scaffold that matter is “poured into” (or whatever analogy suits your fancy). Correct me if I am wrong, but in modern terms I think that all formal causes are asserting is that structure is important and that you cannot reduce a structure to its component parts without circularly assuming the structure to explain how the parts explain the structure. So the materialist objects that an essence is “unknowable” because the materialist is trying to reduce everything to an essence alone, giving rise to Platonic absurdities. But the hylemorphist seems to agree that structure cannot exist independent of a material instantiation but that the structure is a real component of the substance.

 

[hasantas]

I think this boils down to a game of semantics which makes things unnecessarily complicated.

Consider the question “What is water?” for example. We know that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, yet it exhibits properties distinct from either element. Does it really help to introduce some essence–say “water-ness”–to explain these properties? Not really. In chemistry, we understand these properties to be emergent, arising from the union of simpler substances. There’s no need to invent essences to explain it.

That is true " In chemistry, we understand these properties to be emergent, arising from the union of simpler substances" Here the point of view is important. Everyone can feel himself as truthful at his point. We must take care at point and the way that the speciality and property which oxygen and hydrogen get after composed.

We should consider water with it’s all consequenses and usefulness for life. The will and decision which compose/create water had to know and see all consequences of water with all other substances. Nature or God(creator) must decided this… Which one? (Nature has no mind, decision, eyes, acknowledge, etc.)

The properties of compound are conclusion of some chemical reactions. But every reaction has a order and system of which essential character cannot be explained at all. Forexample what is source of power and energy? And where these come from? We only see and feel the conclusions and we call and name them this law, that law indeed there is no law itself in presence. The fact is that every law is rule/act of God’s attributes becoming manifest in order.

Every compound is miracle of God’s almighty power. İf it is not than compose elements one by one in laboratories and get those compounds. Can anyone do? İf not than how mindless, blind, deaf, heartless nature and substance and power can do? Or do all these could be by themselves and chances?

Theres is art, beauty and order in all natures. Just look at flowers, butterflys, birds, trees etc. Who does that art and beauty? Nature? By themselves or chances? There is more to say….

Everyone has a free decision and this is our exam.

God bless us and lead to true path.

 

[Oreoracle]

I would deny that essences themselves have properties. (I think this is implicit in Linus’s response, since he says that, “The properties flow from the essence of the substance.” It is the properties of the substance which flow from the essence.)

My primary concern, then, is how you would define something which lacks properties. If you had to explain to someone what an “essence” is, what would you say? I don’t want an ostensive definition that simply lists examples. I want to know how an essence is defined in itself, in the most general sense.

I hope I’m making it clear that I’m not using a fanciful definition of “property”. I’m talking about any fact of an essence that could be used to identify it. For example, even numbers are defined in terms of a property they possess: they are divisible by 2. Any proper definition uses properties, and I want some for “essence”.

If you can’t give me properties, then I’m sorry to say that I’ll just reject the concept as vacuous.

Properties are a species of accident (generally speaking, “essential accidents”), and accidents inhere in substances, so I would say that it is a category mistake to say that essences themselves have properties.

Thus far, this whole manner of thinking sounds similar to set theory, honestly. The set is an essence, and the elements of the set are accidents. But it’s perfectly legitimate in set theory to have sets within a set. The analogous situation is an essence of essences, which is what I was inquiring about.

Frankly I think the set interpretation is more elegant, because a set is just “a group of objects”. It doesn’t arbitrarily distinguish between the objects based on whether or not we feel their existence needs to be accounted for.

 

[balto]

Thus far, this whole manner of thinking sounds similar to set theory, honestly. The set is an essence, and the elements of the set are accidents. But it’s perfectly legitimate in set theory to have sets within a set. The analogous situation is an essence of essences, which is what I was inquiring about.

Frankly I think the set interpretation is more elegant, because a set is just “a group of objects”. It doesn’t arbitrarily distinguish between the objects based on whether or not we feel their existence needs to be accounted for.

Analogies to set theory may sound enticing, but I’m not sure that they are sufficient to explain substances. It would be erroneous to claim that my laptop is “nothing but” a collection of mechanical parts, because the mechanical parts have to be arranged in a particular form and interact in particular ways to give rise to, as you called them in an earlier post, “emergent properties.”

To continue the mathematics analogies, I think an essence would be more akin to an individual or a small number of permutations of the set you are considering. But considering permutations incorporates a level of information into the system that says that these permutations are significant and these are not. I think the essence would be like the information and the parts would be the matter and the substance would be both united together. Of course this is intended to be nothing more than a loose analogy, but maybe it gets across the point we are trying to make.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

So if objects require essences to account for their properties, what then accounts for the properties of an essence? It seems to me that it could only be another essence, by the same reasoning. For if there are no essences of essences, we could not distinguish the variety of essences that we do.

Ahhh, a skeptic with a sense of humor. But I forgot, a sense of humor is nothing but the random motion of protons, neutrons, electrons, etd. Then again, there can’t be a sense of humor, that implies a destination achieved, a goal or end reached. But such an event would be like arriving at the station without tracks and with no train. Random motion arrives at no destination - except in the Reductionist universe.

Linus2nd

 

[polytropos]

My primary concern, then, is how you would define something which lacks properties. If you had to explain to someone what an “essence” is, what would you say? I don’t want an ostensive definition that simply lists examples. I want to know how an essence is defined in itself, in the most general sense.

Well, to quote David Oderberg, essentialism is “the thesis that everything has a real essence - an objective metaphysical principle determining its definition and classification.” To specify, an essence is that which specifies and delimits a substance’s having one substantial form rather than another. (It is known by a real definition of the substance in question, consisting an a genus and species. Generally speaking, the essence of a thing is its nature.)

You and I may not be talking about the same thing when we say that an essence has/does not have properties. I would say that properties properly inhere in substances, and I’m not enough of a realist about mathematics to say that mathematical objects likewise have properties in the same sense.

So I’d say: In a strict ontological sense, an essence does not have properties in the same way a substance has properties (so there is no vicious regress, for the essence does not itself need an essence). But hopefully my remarks above clarify what an essence is.

Thus far, this whole manner of thinking sounds similar to set theory, honestly. The set is an essence, and the elements of the set are accidents. But it’s perfectly legitimate in set theory to have sets within a set. The analogous situation is an essence of essences, which is what I was inquiring about.

Frankly I think the set interpretation is more elegant, because a set is just “a group of objects”. It doesn’t arbitrarily distinguish between the objects based on whether or not we feel their existence needs to be accounted for.

Mereological essentialism does take its queue from set theory; mereological essentialists hold that any loss or gain of a proper part changes the identity of a substance. (But I don’t subscribe to mereological essentialism, as it’s pretty implausible.)

What you seem to be referring to is a “bundle theory” of essence. But I think that such theories tend to forgo the whole motivation for essentialism, ie. that essences are meant to account for the unity and identity of substances. A bundle theory has the effect of reducing substantial identity to collections of properties. But as I think my tree example makes clear, that is rather difficult to coherently specify. The tree remains a tree if we strip it of its leaves and uproot it, although it does not grow. While growth is an essential property of trees, the having of the essence is consistent with that property not inhering at some time. For that reason, bundle theories, whether they are mereological or attempt to specify a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the having of a particular essence, generally don’t achieve much. (Another critique of bundle theories is that generally speaking they don’t account for unity. If I have two substances and two essences that are “sets of accidents,” then why can I not take the union of the sets and just consider them as one substance? What accounts for the separation of two substances?)

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I would deny that essences themselves have properties. (I think this is implicit in Linus’s response, since he says that, “The properties flow from the essence of the substance.” It is the properties of the substance which flow from the essence.) Properties are a species of accident (generally speaking, “essential accidents”), and accidents inhere in substances, so I would say that it is a category mistake to say that essences themselves have properties.

To attribute an essence to something is really to acknowledge the unity consequent upon its having a form, and the form is that from which properties flow. Electrons are essentially negatively charged and essentially have a rest mass of 9.1093897 x 10^-31 Kg. A hylemorphist would hold that the unity of these properties in an electron is not accidental; electrons are not bundles of properties which happen to coincide, but properties are specified by form. (Though it is important to note that the positing of form is not a repudiation of material explanations. One posits a form for a tree without being committed to the notion that we can’t learn more about how trees grow.)

Essence is an articulation of what really flows (when uninhibited) from the form of a thing. To go back to the tree example, we could uproot a tree and strip it of all of its leaves. It has no way to obtain nutrients, but it is still a tree with the power of growth (a power that cannot be exercised). In this case, growth would be a power of the tree in the right conditions, but our uprooting the tree and removing its leaves has blocked the exercise of that power. Growth remains of the essence of the tree, though.

I think if you read Being and Essence ( dhspriory.org/thomas/english/DeEnte&Essentia.htm ), you will see that I am correct. It is true that accidents inhere in substances and essential properties, powers, behaviors, etc. are accidents. However substances themselves are undifferentiated. A substance is simply any being that exists - God, Angel, man, horse, rock, atom, etc. But each of the latter are particular kinds of substances, particular essences or natures which exist. Thomas says that an essence is the " quidity " or the kind of thing that exists. In this sense, essence and nature would be equivalent terms.

But each essence or nature is composed of potency and act, universally. This potency and act, in material beings, correspond to matter and form. In his commentary on " A’s " Physics, Thomas says that " A " says that Nature is the cause of motion and change in those things in which it exists per se… In other words all the essential characteristics of a particular essence ( a substance composed of matter and a specific form) flow from the essence or nature of that substance. It is true that these accidents inhere in a particular substance. But they flow from the essence ( the matter and form ) from which that substance is formed. A substance gets all its particular accidents ( properties, etc ) through its essence but all these accidents do inhere in the substance - the being that actually exists.

These terms are discussed at some lengh also In " A’s " Physics and Metaphysics and Thomas’ Commenty… on each.

It is all some what confusing and I do get the terms mixed up sometimes.

Linus2nd

 

[MPat]

No, I don’t define science to not be in the business of essences. I am talking about any natural science, really–any discipline that uses the scientific method as its main method of investigation.

OK, saying that, according to you, “anything that uses essences is not allowed to be called “science”” might have overstated things. Yet in this case you still only seem to be interested in uses of science where it divides things into parts. That is, the science where we are specifically not interested in the essence of the thing as a whole.

Certainly you can talk about “steelness” once you’ve ascertained what “steel” is. But to ascertain what steel is and the properties it has, you need to parse steel into its components and see the relationships. If I ask “what are the properties of steel?” and you answer “they are the properties bestowed by steelness”, then I hope we can agree that you would have effectively explained nothing. If anything you’ve only restated the question.

Now I would certainly agree that essences are useful as nouns that save time in conversations. For instance “water-ness” would be a synonym for “the set of properties resulting from the relationships between hydrogen and oxygen atoms that are bonded so as to form the molecule H2O”. But the point is that appealing to water-ness doesn’t help us explain water’s properties. We only began to understand water by understanding the interactions between the relevant atoms.

Yes, if we have a question “Why does this object has the essence of water?” (mostly equivalent to your question), the answer “It has the essence of water.” is not very useful, for the question asks for a cause (“Why?”). You gave material and formal causes, someone else might give an efficient cause (“I burned some hydrogen in air and cooled the product so that it would condense into liquid.”) or the final cause (“I wanted to show the class how hydrogen burns.”).

Again, I would agree with this usage. But keep in mind that discussing a class is only useful once you’ve already ascertained the particular substances. In other words, you can only talk about a set once you’ve defined its elements. To appeal to the class to prove something about the particulars is usually a circular form of argument, as the class is rather understood in terms of the particulars.

Which is simply not what the talk about essences is for.

Let’s look at it this way. When one says that water’s boiling temperature is one hundred degrees Celsius, what does this number describe? It does not describe a molecule (boiling temperature makes no sense for a single molecule), it does not describe oxygen and hydrogen (they have much lower boiling temperatures), it does not describe this specific drop of water (for we specifically want to say that it will be the same for another drop).

That is why we need essences: they give us something to assign those quantities to. No, simply having those “placeholders” does not tell us what are they going to hold. But decrying them as “some abstract metaphysical gobbledygook” can backfire just as easily as decrying talk about syllogisms as “some abstract logical gobbledygook” (and why does no conclusion follow from “All criminals are mammals.” and “You are a mammal.”…?) or decrying Turing machines as “some abstract mathematical gobbledygook” (that’s what prevents us from wasting our time creating a tool deciding if a given program will run forever)…

Yes, they all reduce to the same substances, but the substances are related differently. That is how they are distinguished. For example, hydrocarbons are made of the same types of atoms, but we distinguish them based on how those atoms are bonded. Pretending that the distinctions were made before these various types of bonding were observed is circular at best and dishonest at worst.

Now if we take what you said literally, that is just completely wrong. Scientists were able to tell the difference between methane and benzene (not that you need a scientist for that) long before they learned what a covalent bond is.

Thus I suspect you meant something else here…

Now you can say that some abstract metaphysical gobbledygook “caused” the atoms to be related differently, but the point still stands: we learn about differences between objects by comparing components and their relations, not by philosophizing about essences. We learn by reducing, not compounding (for, if you can’t solve a problem, how would you solve an even more difficult, compounded problem?).

As I have said, essences and causes are different.

 

[Oreoracle]

Analogies to set theory may sound enticing, but I’m not sure that they are sufficient to explain substances. It would be erroneous to claim that my laptop is “nothing but” a collection of mechanical parts, because the mechanical parts have to be arranged in a particular form and interact in particular ways to give rise to, as you called them in an earlier post, “emergent properties.”

Right, but, as in math, we can build off of the notion of set once it’s in place. You mention permutations, for example. Once you have sets, you can define tuples to get ordered lists, from which permutations follow. You can make classes to give certain sets primacy over others and so forth.

The fact that most of math can be built from set theory is a good illustration of how the supposedly “reductionist” approach is actually quite constructive later on. I’m guessing you guys would argue that this is only because math is not concerned with accidents, properties, etc., right?

Well, to quote David Oderberg, essentialism is “the thesis that everything has a real essence - an objective metaphysical principle determining its definition and classification.”

This definition isn’t clear to me. Nature doesn’t really “classify” anything–we do. Objects differ, sure, but we are the ones that decide whether certain objects need distinction from others for various purposes or whether it’s permissible to regard them as being the same.

Also confusing is the idea of “determination”. Is this determination causal? Is it just a logical implication?

I assure you I’m not trying to be difficult, this just sounds very odd to me. Suppose hypothetically that we didn’t have a name or a conception of chairs. Still, we notice everyone using these devices for sitting in more relaxing positions. We decide that it would be useful to give objects which share this property a name; we shall call them “chairs”. In fact, we needn’t talk about particular chairs. We can discuss them in the general sense; in other words, we can describe the essence of chairs.

It seems rather convoluted to insist that an object makes sitting more comfortable because it is called a chair. The reverse seems more natural: it is called a chair because it has that property. The property motivated the use of the name, the name didn’t “determine” the property. I’ll grant you that, if I tell you something’s a chair and I’m not lying about it, you can be sure it has the expected properties. But this thinking doesn’t reflect how the language actually developed nor how the understanding was gained.

So I’d say: In a strict ontological sense, an essence does not have properties in the same way a substance has properties (so there is no vicious regress, for the essence does not itself need an essence). But hopefully my remarks above clarify what an essence is.

But this seems arbitrary to me. You suggest that certain objects exist whose characteristics require accounting for, and you propose essences to fill the role. You then define essences so they don’t require similar treatment. But what’s stopping us from rejecting your initial premise altogether? Perhaps “properties”, the characteristics that need accounting for, don’t really exist. Maybe every object has characteristics and they just exist in their own right. I don’t see what we actually lose by doing this.

It reminds me of the cosmological argument. It is argued that we need God to explain the universe, and then God is defined so that he doesn’t require explanation. Why not simply define the universe to not require an explanation and skip a step? It’s the same assumption with one fewer entity.

 

[Oreoracle]

Yet in this case you still only seem to be interested in uses of science where it divides things into parts. That is, the science where we are specifically not interested in the essence of the thing as a whole.

It only appears that I’m interested in non-essence applications of science because, well, science doesn’t really use essences, which was my point all along. The fact that there seem to be no applications to speak of was the observation I was making.

Let’s look at it this way. When one says that water’s boiling temperature is one hundred degrees Celsius, what does this number describe?

In the right circumstances, it could describe the solution to an equation.

Seriously though, I will repeat that essences, as names, can be useful once you’ve already ascertained what you’re talking about. Once you understand H2O, it’s perfectly permissible to just call it “water” from then on. My point is that giving H2O the name “water” didn’t really help you learn anything about it. You only learn what water is by getting your hands dirty and examining the components of the substance. Only then do you learn about the properties that the essence was purported to explain.

That is why we need essences: they give us something to assign those quantities to. No, simply having those “placeholders” does not tell us what are they going to hold.

And I concur completely. Are you sure we ever actually disagreed?

Now if we take what you said literally, that is just completely wrong. Scientists were able to tell the difference between methane and benzene (not that you need a scientist for that) long before they learned what a covalent bond is.

They were able to tell some differences, sure. But they discovered more differences and could explain the previous differences once they examined the components.

 

[MPat]

Let’s look at those two parts:

It only appears that I’m interested in non-essence applications of science because, well, science doesn’t really use essences, which was my point all along. The fact that there seem to be no applications to speak of was the observation I was making.

Seriously though, I will repeat that essences, as names, can be useful once you’ve already ascertained what you’re talking about. Once you understand H2O, it’s perfectly permissible to just call it “water” from then on. My point is that giving H2O the name “water” didn’t really help you learn anything about it. You only learn what water is by getting your hands dirty and examining the components of the substance. Only then do you learn about the properties that the essence was purported to explain.

And I concur completely. Are you sure we ever actually disagreed?

So, in one and the same post you seem to be claiming that science doe not use essences in any way and admitting that some uses actually do exist. That looks self-contradicting. Now, if you do not like how I have tried to reconcile those two parts to make them less incoherent (by assuming that you meant different things by “science” in those cases), maybe you should try to reconcile them yourself…? It is your position, after all… So, please, try to state it as precisely, as you can.

 

[MPat]

This definition isn’t clear to me. Nature doesn’t really “classify” anything–we do. Objects differ, sure, but we are the ones that decide whether certain objects need distinction from others for various purposes or whether it’s permissible to regard them as being the same.

OK, so, your solution is Nominalism.

The problem with it is that, while you can argue in favour of Nominalism, it is hard to live or do science while consistently following it…

For example, let’s look at something you said:

For instance “water-ness” would be a synonym for “the set of properties resulting from the relationships between hydrogen and oxygen atoms that are bonded so as to form the molecule H2O”.

But if you will hold Nominalism to be correct, that is left unsupported. Let’s say you have a drop of water (actually, “what Realists would call a drop of water” might be more precise). How do you know it is made of molecules? Has anyone checked? No, checking other objects doesn’t count. It would if you had at least a suspicion that they share the same essence, which could include consisting of molecules, but you reject that.

It seems rather convoluted to insist that an object makes sitting more comfortable because it is called a chair.

No one is claiming that. We claim that the object “makes sitting more comfortable”, because it is a chair (in a good condition) and that it gets called by the word “chair” for the same reason.

The reverse seems more natural: it is called a chair because it has that property. The property motivated the use of the name, the name didn’t “determine” the property. I’ll grant you that, if I tell you something’s a chair and I’m not lying about it, you can be sure it has the expected properties.

Er, no, I can’t be sure of that. It is much more comfortable to sit on a table, bed or stone, than to sit on a chair that has lost a couple of legs (but, as you might note, not the name “chair”).

As you can see, making a definition based on properties is not easy…

But this seems arbitrary to me. You suggest that certain objects exist whose characteristics require accounting for, and you propose essences to fill the role. You then define essences so they don’t require similar treatment. But what’s stopping us from rejecting your initial premise altogether? Perhaps “properties”, the characteristics that need accounting for, don’t really exist. Maybe every object has characteristics and they just exist in their own right. I don’t see what we actually lose by doing this.

So, you have a problem of having nothing to assign the boiling temperature to, and you want to solve it by saying that the boiling temperature doesn’t exist…? You do understand that you have just forfeited an ability to make coffee or tea…?

It reminds me of the cosmological argument. It is argued that we need God to explain the universe, and then God is defined so that he doesn’t require explanation. Why not simply define the universe to not require an explanation and skip a step? It’s the same assumption with one fewer entity.

That’s “offtopic”. If you want to find out why your understanding of that argument is incorrect (it does not work as you assume), you might wish to read other Feser’s blog posts, like edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/07/so-you-think-you-understand.html or edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/07/cosmological-argument-roundup.html.

 

[Oreoracle]

So, in one and the same post you seem to be claiming that science doe not use essences in any way and admitting that some uses actually do exist.

“Uses” is a pretty vague term. Yes, I’ve admitted that essences have linguistic uses as nouns, but I think I’ve been consistent in my assertion that they are not used for actual explanation or discovery. Giving something a name or classifying it doesn’t teach you anything about it, nor does it explain the properties one has identified. This is why none of the posters here has yet found a non-trivial use of essences in the natural sciences beyond linguistic uses.

OK, so, your solution is Nominalism.

It doesn’t make a difference to me what you want to call it. I don’t really think of anything I said as ideological, though, because it’s not controversial. I didn’t make any claims about what does or doesn’t exist, for example. I’ve mostly just been describing how language works.

But if you will hold Nominalism to be correct, that is left unsupported. Let’s say you have a drop of water (actually, “what Realists would call a drop of water” might be more precise). How do you know it is made of molecules?

I know it has molecules because that is implicit in the definition of “water”; water is composed of H2O molecules by definition. It’s like asking how someone knows that triangles are polygons. We don’t need a fancy -ism to answer, it’s just contained in the definition.

But maybe you meant to ask how I know that a given substance is water?

Er, no, I can’t be sure of that. It is much more comfortable to sit on a table, bed or stone, than to sit on a chair that has lost a couple of legs (but, as you might note, not the name “chair”).

I think if I had a chair that lost some of its legs I would point out to guests that it is indeed a “broken chair”. Of course this term is really taking the history of the object into account; the object was a chair but then lost one of the familiar properties of chairs later on.

I’m aware that you could replace this question with something more difficult to fix. It reminds me of the old philosophical question “How many parts of a car do you need to change before it’s a new car?”. Yes, I get it–language is ambiguous sometimes. That doesn’t mean that positing the existence of extra entities really helps.

Indeed, we’re in the same boat here. How many “accidental” changes can be made to an object before it becomes an essential change? Maybe I chip a piece off of a wooden chair, but it’s still a chair. If you do so often enough, the chair would eventually become a pile of wood shavings. So when did the chair become wood shavings? It’s the same dilemma. You haven’t really saved any trouble.

 

[MPat]

“Uses” is a pretty vague term. Yes, I’ve admitted that essences have linguistic uses as nouns, but I think I’ve been consistent in my assertion that they are not used for actual explanation or discovery. Giving something a name or classifying it doesn’t teach you anything about it, nor does it explain the properties one has identified. This is why none of the posters here has yet found a non-trivial use of essences in the natural sciences beyond linguistic uses.

OK, so, it is the word “uses” that had different meanings… Good.

Anyway, the questions you talk about are of the type “What is the essence of this object?”, “Why does this object has this essence?” or “What properties does having this essence give the object?”. Naturally, the answer to these questions is not supposed to be “This object has this essence.” and no one expects that to be the answer.

It doesn’t make a difference to me what you want to call it.

Why not? Using a short and non-ambiguous (at least less ambiguous than “uses”) name that is commonly used does make it easier to find out if I understand your views correctly. You might look at “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy” (plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/nominalism-metaphysics/) or “Catholic Encyclopedia” (newadvent.org/cathen/11090c.htm) if you’d like to see a description.

I don’t really think of anything I said as ideological, though, because it’s not controversial. I didn’t make any claims about what does or doesn’t exist, for example. I’ve mostly just been describing how language works.

Well, it simply means that you have an opportunity to learn that, in fact, those views are neither non-ideological nor uncontroversial.

I know it has molecules because that is implicit in the definition of “water”; water is composed of H2O molecules by definition. It’s like asking how someone knows that triangles are polygons. We don’t need a fancy -ism to answer, it’s just contained in the definition.

So, you have chosen to use the word “definition” where we’d prefer the word “essence”. Of course, I expect that will lead you to some problems if you still want to reject essences…

But maybe you meant to ask how I know that a given substance is water?

No, as the answer is simple: you know that, because that was given in the question.

On the other hand it is much harder to see how you would know that you are dealing with water if you were not told that. If you claim that water is defined as being composed of molecules, you would have to check if the object is actually composed of molecules before deciding that it fits the definition of water… I am afraid that is a very impractical approach…

Another problem is that you conclude that the given object is composed of molecules, because it is (consists of?) water, but you will have to know if it is made of molecules before you can find out if that is really water… That seems to be circular…

After you deal with circularity, you will have to deal with material properties that are not in the definition. For example, how are you going to find out that this drop of water is going to boil at 100 degrees Celsius? Do you think that can be done without writing equations of quantum mechanics for all electrons, protons and neutrons in it…? You know, people were able to find that out that using a different way, but are you sure you can support its use while rejecting essences…?

 

[polytropos]

The fact that most of math can be built from set theory is a good illustration of how the supposedly “reductionist” approach is actually quite constructive later on. I’m guessing you guys would argue that this is only because math is not concerned with accidents, properties, etc., right?

I’m not sure what you’re saying here. Are you likening the generality of set theory to theoretical reduction in science? I don’t see how the comparison is warranted or how an a priori formal science proceeding from the axioms of set theory could be considered “reductionist”.

This definition isn’t clear to me. Nature doesn’t really “classify” anything–we do.

I agree that nature does not classify. But the definition says that essence determines the classification, not that nature classifies. So that might be where we turn our attention.

Objects differ, sure, but we are the ones that decide whether certain objects need distinction from others for various purposes or whether it’s permissible to regard them as being the same.

Also confusing is the idea of “determination”. Is this determination causal? Is it just a logical implication?

I would say that it is related to formal-causal (rather than efficient-causal) considerations. (For that reason, it is not as strong or implausible of a claim as you seem to impute to it in your chair example.) Essence is a tinge epistemic; it is that by which we classify and define forms, which are the objective principles of unity of substances.

Let’s consider the position that “we are the ones that decide” essence. I’d claim that that position is inconsistent, since “we” are logically prior to our conventions, so the quantification over us presupposes that there is a non-conventional real definition of rational-deciders-of-essence, or what have you. Unless we are to say that we uniquely have non-conventional essences, which would be rather ad hoc, it is not possible to formulate such a conventionalism about essences. There is, then, a non-subjective ontological correlate of essence which “fixes the reference,” so to speak.

But this thinking doesn’t reflect how the language actually developed nor how the understanding was gained.

Well, our language is certainly oriented (for the most part) abount essences. But I think there is a simplification lurking in your chair example, in that it is overwhelmingly rare that we conscientiously define the reference of some kind of thing. That is mostly done in the sciences, where observation is removed so much as to make it necessary that we define things to correspond to the properties we are observing. (Electrons being an example.)

The other thing I’d point about chairs is that they are artifacts, ie. they have accidental forms, and their unity qua chair is accidental. (Their underlying proper parts are substances, which are what have substantial forms and natural essences, as I would claim. So there is a conventional aspect to calling things “chairs,” which I’m not interested in denying.)

But this seems arbitrary to me. You suggest that certain objects exist whose characteristics require accounting for, and you propose essences to fill the role. You then define essences so they don’t require similar treatment. But what’s stopping us from rejecting your initial premise altogether? Perhaps “properties”, the characteristics that need accounting for, don’t really exist. Maybe every object has characteristics and they just exist in their own right. I don’t see what we actually lose by doing this.

I don’t think it’s arbitrary. In a substance-accident ontology, substances are ontologically independent entities, and accidents are those things which inhere in them. (I’m using accident more or less interchangeably with “property,” but by property I mean an essential accident.)

Take any number of things that are not substances. It wouldn’t make sense to have an accident of an accident–or at least, it would not be an accident in the same sense as an accident of a substance. (One can have second-order predication, but it seems to me like second-order accidents would largely consist of non-intrinsic Cambridge relations.) Likewise, it would only equivocally make sense to say that proper names have “properties.” There is no presumption, then, in favor of the suggestion that entities of a different category of being than substances should have properties.

It reminds me of the cosmological argument. It is argued that we need God to explain the universe, and then God is defined so that he doesn’t require explanation. Why not simply define the universe to not require an explanation and skip a step? It’s the same assumption with one fewer entity.

Depends which cosmological argument we are talking about. Aquinas’s, for instance, do not take as a premise that the universe as a whole needs explanation. They start with specific instances of change or efficient causality or finality in the universe, and argue that such existences generate a regress which cannot be vicious or ungrounded. (So they basically argue that the universe on its own is not self-explanatory.) Such a regress must terminate in a specific sort of being, namely a being who lacks potencies. Only consequently do we argue that such a being has the divine attributes.

 

[Oreoracle]

Why not? Using a short and non-ambiguous (at least less ambiguous than “uses”) name that is commonly used does make it easier to find out if I understand your views correctly.

Firstly, it’s interesting that you say it’s non-ambiguous when one of the articles you referenced actually attributes two different meanings to the word. But I dislike -isms because they are often much broader than the belief system of the individual they purportedly describe. Atheism is a prime example. Even such a seemingly simple concept takes a variety of forms, and I’ve had countless Christians say “atheists believe such-and-such” when in fact I don’t believe any such things. So I question the utility of -isms in many cases.

Looking at the definitions you linked to though, I think the problem is that term “exists”. What does it mean to say an abstraction or a universal exists? When mathematicians talk about, say, hyperreal numbers, I don’t actually imagine numbers floating around in the cosmos somewhere. I just see a useful theoretical tool; a concept. If someone invents something new, I don’t suppose that there was some essence of it that had always existed, just waiting to be realized in a concrete form. We just made up a new word to describe a new object, that’s all.

In fact, I will pose that question to you: Suppose a new type of object comes into being, so that it has a unique essence associated with it that is unlike the essences of other objects (otherwise it wouldn’t be new). It might be the first computer, for example. Was there just some essence of computers floating around in existence somewhere, lying in wait for its time to be applicable to the physical world?

So, you have chosen to use the word “definition” where we’d prefer the word “essence”. Of course, I expect that will lead you to some problems if you still want to reject essences…

I don’t see how. If all I’ve done is replaced some of your terminology, we should expect everything to remain conceptually the same, just with different terms.

Our approaches seem to differ in only two respects: 1) I use “definitions” and “properties” instead of “essences” and “accidents”. 2) You think objects are classified by nature, whereas I think they’re just classified by convention. In other words, “computers” originated as a concept when humans designed a tool that was meant to carry out computations. The matter needn’t be complicated by speaking of “essences” that existed before computers were possible.

Does this sound like a fair assessment?

On the other hand it is much harder to see how you would know that you are dealing with water if you were not told that. If you claim that water is defined as being composed of molecules, you would have to check if the object is actually composed of molecules before deciding that it fits the definition of water.

I agree, but it seems we’re again in the same boat here. If I gave you a substance and asked you what its essence is, you would need to make the same observations to be sure that it has the essence of water.

This is obviously not how either of us would do it outside of a laboratory, though. We would just note that whatever substance we’re dealing with has some characteristics that we typically observe in water and use induction to reach the conclusion that it’s probably water.

The “real world” approach to problems is almost always inductive.

You know, people were able to find that out that using a different way, but are you sure you can support its use while rejecting essences…?

But they didn’t use essences. They observed that this sample of water has a property, this one has the same property, this other one has the same property…Hey, maybe all samples of water will have this property! So they published their results and challenged others to refute them. After extensive testing the results of the initial experiments were corroborated. This is just the scientific method.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

In my original post I referrenced an article by Edward Feser on the definition or explanation of what life is. The best way of understancing that is by reading the article. Now I wonder if everyone here has done that? It is a very good article and Feser promises more explanation in his forth coming book, Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction ( can be ordered now from Amozon ).

And of course our atheist friend has raised objections, which he claims are not ideological. I’m afraid I must take that with a grain of salt. Atheism is by definition ideological. An atheist cannot admit the existence of anything that threatens his position. And life, understood in its Aristotelian/Thomistic context, is a real threat to atheism. And, by extension, the existence of essences offers an equivalent threat. So the game is to deny the existence of essences or to reduce their meaning to mere nominalism, a mere convenience. I have taken the liberty of abstracting on paragraph from Feser’s article below.

" Now, Scholastics distinguish between the essence of a thing and its properties, where both terms are used in a way that is crucially different from the way they are usually used by most contemporary philosophers. One way to think of the essence of a thing is as what we capture when we give its genus and specific difference (where a “specific difference” is what differentiates one species from others in the same genus, and where “genus” and “species” are to be understood in their traditional logical, rather than biological, senses). To take a traditional example for purposes of illustration, suppose we take a human being to be a rational animal (“animal” being the genus and “rational” the specific difference). The properties of a human being (as the Scholastic uses the term “properties”) are what flow or follow from this essence, and include things like the capacity for perceptual experience, the capacity for self-movement, the ability to form concepts, and so forth. Rational animality is not the cluster of these properties, but rather that by virtue of which a thing has them. And “properties” are not any old characteristics a thing has, but only those that flow from a thing’s essence – that is to say, those that are proper to a thing. (For exposition and defense of the Scholastic conception of essence and properties, see chapter 4 of my book Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction. "

Now Nominalism may work fine when restricted to inorganic substances like H2O ( to cite the example used by our worthy opponent), although it is not entirely satisfactory. And it gets less and less satisfactory the more complex inorganic substances get - just look at the really complex substances on the Periodic table. It is all well and good to say that H2 and O have a natural affinity for each other - though that ignores the question of " why. " And that can only be answered by saying it was the intention of the evolutionary forces of nature, as an agent cause of this affinity or the creative causality of the Agent Cause of the universe. At this point I don’t care which, but it must be one or the other.

But once the molecule or element is constituted, it manifests definite properties entirely different from its constituent particles, whatever they are. And this is because this thing, molecule, cell, or atomic element ( or part thereof ) has a definite nature or essence from which these properties, powers, behaviors flow. Now we can ignore this, as in Nominalism, but it begs the question. The fact that a name makes it more convenient to discuss or treat of the molecule, cell, or atom in real life or classroom situations does not do away with the fact that each has a definite nature of essence, from which definite properties flow. And when one insists that this is not important, one must suspect that the denial is made strictly for ideological reasons. After all what can be the harm in admitting that things have a nature or essence? What in the world are people afraid of?

They are afraid of the implications of such an admission, because once we move into organic substances, substances instantiating immanent activity or life is not far off. In other words the human soul is just around the corner. And the atheist must deny this at all costs. And for this reason, he must deny everything which could conceiveably lead to it.
And the very idea of nature or essence leads directly to the human soul. So these too must be denied.

Linus2nd

 

[Oreoracle]

I’m not sure what you’re saying here. Are you likening the generality of set theory to theoretical reduction in science?

The attitude thus far in this thread is that just using “components” is insufficient for describing objects. This approach seems to be considered “reductionist”. I’m using set theory as an analogy to show that, once you have the notion of parts/components of a whole, it’s not hard to build up to any level of sophistication you want.

In particular, it doesn’t seem like we really lose out on any of the richness that a theory of essences would yield. If anything, we get all the same results with weaker assumptions.

I agree that nature does not classify. But the definition says that essence determines the classification, not that nature classifies. So that might be where we turn our attention.

I don’t see the difference between classifying and determining classification.

I’ve already brought up the issue of inventions to MPat: If a new type of object is invented, was its essence just lying in wait to be realized in concrete form all along? But another issue with letting nature/the universe/God/metaphysics do the classifying for us is that there are multiple ways of classifying objects depending on your intentions. How do we know that our classifications concur with the “determined” ones?

A famous example is that people who live in arctic climates tend to have far more words to describe snow than those living in temperate zones. So which culture does it correctly? Are the temperate folk right in insisting that all icy precipitation shares the same essence, or does nature/the universe/God/metaphysics concur with the arctic people, and regard different degrees of precipitation as essentially different? Food also presents problems. Do tomatoes have the essence of vegetables or the essence of fruit? Does salmon have the essence of red meat or not?

If you accept that the labels are conventions, these cease to be issues, because then we can just say that the classification depends on one’s intentions. Regarding tomatoes as vegetables is perfectly acceptable if you’re emphasizing the fact that they taste like vegetables and are a common ingredient in vegetable soup, for example. Regarding them as fruits is more appropriate if you’re commenting on their biology. Neither definition is the “correct” or “real” one, they’re just conventions.

I don’t think it’s arbitrary. In a substance-accident ontology, substances are ontologically independent entities, and accidents are those things which inhere in them. (I’m using accident more or less interchangeably with “property,” but by property I mean an essential accident.)

I’m not saying that the classification doesn’t make sense, I’m saying that it seems arbitrary to say that certain objects require explanation but others don’t. In particular, it seems that you’ve just deliberately defined things so that objects will need to have other metaphysical objects to account for them. I’m saying that it works just as well to simply regard physical objects as existing and differing from each other in their own right. Whatever work the essences do in your theory could be constructed through the use of conventional classifications–we needn’t begin by assuming they exist independently of our efforts.

No, I don’t expect anyone here to find the simplification appealing, and I’m not asking whether you guys would like it. I am only inquiring about what we would lose with this simplification. It doesn’t seem as if we lose anything.

 

[polytropos]

I’m using set theory as an analogy to show that, once you have the notion of parts/components of a whole, it’s not hard to build up to any level of sophistication you want.

In particular, it doesn’t seem like we really lose out on any of the richness that a theory of essences would yield. If anything, we get all the same results with weaker assumptions.

But again, why should we believe that theoretical reduction in the sciences works like the a priori formal science of mathematics? The analogy limps exactly where it needs not to: scientific practice has not led to the reduction of biology to chemistry, chemistry to physics, etc.

It is also rather doubtful whether mathematics as derived from set theory can be likened to “parts/components of a whole.” The logical parts of propositions are not “parts” in the same sense that hydrocarbons are “parts” of humans. How do we identify the “parts” of the Bolazno-Weierstrass theorem?

Then there might be additional concerns about what mathematics as derived from set theory is. Set theory generates a mathematics which vindicates a lot of our intuitions, but it can’t decide whether (for instance) there is a cardinality between aleph-nought and c. (It is consistent with either possibility.) That would, then, be evidence that the “reductive-constructive method” (if mathematics can rightly be described in that way, which I doubt) has its intrinsic limitations.

The attitude thus far in this thread is that just using “components” is insufficient for describing objects. This approach seems to be considered “reductionist”.

I do think that reductionism is insufficient. If components are sufficient for determining essence of some object (call it O), then one would have to specify how the components are arranged. But in doing so, on pain of circularity, one cannot quantify over the structure of the object O. But one has to specify why the sum of the components of an object with a certain essence are the components of that object.

Another issue is faced with the idea of “components.” There either are fundamental particles or there are not.* If there are fundamental components, then they can’t be reduces, and their natures have to be accounted for by some means other than reductionism. If there are not fundamental components, then there are not parts that we can quantify over. And since we are admitting, then, that it is possible (and necessary) to determine essence by quantifying over non-elementary entities, we would be conceding reductionism altogether.

*I don’t think there are; what physicists mean by calling quarks and leptons fundamental is that we cannot observe whether they have a structure, and if they have a structure, it is smaller than 10^-16 cm. And of course if quarks and leptons did turn out to have a structure, the question would arise as to whether their components have a structure.

I don’t see the difference between classifying and determining classification.

Consider two objects. One is red, and one is blue. We classify them as red and blue respectively. Their colors determine their classifications but are not their classifications.

If a new type of object is invented, was its essence just lying in wait to be realized in concrete form all along?

No. One could say that there are two sorts of essences and forms. Those in concrete objects are particulars, and those cognized by minds are universal. There is a sense in which essences do pre-exist in the divine mind, but if an object is invented, its essence comes into being with its own particular form. (The questions of divine mind and universal essences, as well as the implications for philosophy of mind, are not directly relevant to this; I don’t want to mislead. Those facts would be consequent upon the existence of particular essences in concrete substances.)

But another issue with letting nature/the universe/God/metaphysics do the classifying for us is that there are multiple ways of classifying objects depending on your intentions. How do we know that our classifications concur with the “determined” ones?

Science and closer observation. The theory is about formal principles of unity in naturally occurring substances. Essences are rooted in form. When we grasp an essence, it is by a “real definition” of a thing. But I’m certainly not committed to the idea that most of the “real definitions” that we grasp are anywhere near exhaustive or infallible. (They are phrased in terms of genus and specific difference because that is the best way to make the real definition at least coextensive with that to which it refers, ie. humans are rational animals. But rationality and animality do not exhaustively describe humans.)