Proof For/Against Nominalism?

[Wesrock]

Wesrock:

But if there are no essences at least at the fundamental level, there is no reason these things should be at all the same.

That is a good point. I think the objector assumes this or doesn’t understand because this is part of his argument against the Kalam (which incidentally I don’t accept, but it’s applicable):

“Now let’s take an animal – a cat. What is this ‘chair’ to it? I imagine a visual sensation of ‘sleep thing’. To an alien? It looks rather like a shmagflan because it has a planthoingj on its fdanygshan. Labels are conceptual and depend on the conceiving mind, subjectively. So, after all that, what has begun to exist? A causally inert abstract concept.

The objector is confusing the concepts themselves with the labels we use. Labels are irrelevant to the point and are only systems we’ve developed to refer to concepts.

He’s also missing the distinction between substantial form and accidental form.

You see, once we strip away the labels and concepts, all we have left is matter and energy which is only ever involved in what has been called transformative creation, meaning it doesn’t begin to exist, but is being constantly being reformed throughout time. It only began to exist at the Big Bang or similar (in Craig’s model)…

I deleted some of the quoted due to the character limit.

So he seems to think everything is reducible down to having matter and energy as universally common principles between them. So he plays right into my point about essences at the fundamental level.

He references the Law of Conservation of Energy. I’m curious what he thinks that is, because he speaks of it almost as if it’s a Platonic Form.

He mentions forms are casually inert but that’s only on a Platonist reading. He doesn’t understand the Aristotlean approach.

From what I’ve read, Aquinas’ Argument from Motion would work even in an eternal universe. How would that work?

It would require some extensive background discussion to speak to why even eternal, unchanging matter is itself a potency that is being actualized. Actually, maybe a quick thought, again, without surrounding support, if fundamental particles are compositions of essence and an act of existence which are unidentical, it should be clear that an essence in itself does not include an act of existence (as Kant noted in his rebuttal of Anselm’s cosmological argument, “existence can’t be predicated on an essence.”) So it follows, unfortunately without me really developing anything properly, that there is nothing about being any particular essence (unidentical with existence) that gives it existence (otherwise it would be identical), so such an essence is a potential that must be actualized, and it cannot actualize itself (as it can’t be prior to its own existence), so it must be actualized by another, and that is true of anything in that type of series of dependency except of something that is Pure Act, in which what it is is identical to that it is.

Holy smokes that is slapdash train of thought incarnate.

 

[Wesrock]

It may be time to speak to the distinction between the essence of a being and the act of existence of a being.

Being here refers to any existing thing. I know it’s commonly used to refer to intelligent beings like human beings, but I’m using it in a broader sense.

Essence sounds like a mysterious word, but by the word essence we’re speaking to what is essential to being this type of being as opposed to that type of being. What makes it distinct. Or more briefly, by essence we mean what a being is in principle. This is contrasted to a being actually existing.

So there are two principles that belong to any existing being. The essence and its act of existence. It must not be thought of as these two things as being able to exist separately. An essence without an act of existence doesn’t exist anywhere at all. It’s not an independent substance. It’s a principle that is really distinct from the existence of a thing.

Immanuel Kant refuted the ontological arguments put forward by the rationalists of his day on the basis that the existence of a being can’t be predicated on its essence. Thomists would agree. The whatness does not include a necessary act of existence.

Suppose I encounter an alien from Blargon V. He has never been to earth. I tell him what a lion is, what a Tyrannosaurus Rex is, and what a unicorn is. I then tell him that of these three one doesn’t exist, one once existed, and one currently exists. Knowing the what doesn’t inform him as to which exists, which once existed, and which doesn’t exist.

Suppose you know what lions are, and then you go into hibernation for 100 years. You’re woken and asked whether lions exist or are extinct. Your knowledge of what lions are doesn’t answer the question.

Now suppose we consider a million sided polygon. We can do math on this hypothetical object. We can know absolutely what such a thing is. However, such knowledge as to what it is does not tell us whether it is.

The essence of a thing is not reducible to its act of existence, and the act of existence of a thing is not reducible to its essence. In all beings of our experience, the whatness and existence are two principles that must go together for a being to actually exist. This follows for any being in which the essence is not identical to a pure act of existence.

All beings are common in that they share in having an act of existence. It’s the essence that conditions the act of existence of a being such that this being is not the same type of being as that being.

I used examples such as lions, unicorns, polygons, etc… But this argument holds true even for reductivists who instead look at fundamental particles alone, as pointed out in a previous post. What is essential to distinguishing this existing being from that existing being.

 

[Wesrock]

If I’m good I may be able to speak to the realism of universals and abstract objects contra nominalism and conceptualism in future posts in this topic.

 

[IWantGod]

These forms are not independent of God as something external to him which he knows.
But neither are they arbitrarily determined by him to be what they are. God’ s choice isn’t in defining forms arbitrarily but in choosing which to bring into being. These forms are eternal and derivative of Being Itself. They are known by God because he knows himself as Subsistent Being. They are, in a sense, his essence, of what Subsistent Being is. I wouldn’t limit it at that, mind.

Enjoying what you have said, but you have to be careful not to give the impression that God is the essences of these things. I of course know that is not your intent but felt the need to say something. They exist as intelligible possibilities in the mind of God because of God’s nature, but God’s actual nature is none of those possibilities. They are more like finite instantiations of what is possibly other than that which is infinite.

 

[STT]

On essence and existence, these things are ideas. To me, ideas are , as I have said so many times, concepts within our minds . I am a conceptual nominalist, so abstract ideas like essence and existence have no ontic reality . That is to say, if all sentient beings (humans) were to die, then all such abstract ideas would die with them. They don’t exist outside of conceiving minds…

Essence is referring to some objective entity. Essence as a noun is an abstract concept.

 

[IWantGod]

If I’m good I may be able to speak to the realism of universals and abstract objects contra nominalism and conceptualism in future posts in this topic.

You are one of the few posters worth reading on the subject.