• Banno
    26.1k
    Kripke argued that the essence of a gold atom is the property of having an atomic number of 79, which is the number of protons in the nucleus of a gold atom.Arcane Sandwich
    Yep.

    Tim seems to be advocating some form of species essentialism, in which species are static groups with inherent essences. See the conversation with @Apustimelogist.

    Kripke advocates a modal essentialism, such that certain properties of object and kinds are essential. The properties he has in mind are those that the object or kind has in every possible world. So Gold has the property of having 79 protons in its nucleus, because that's what the word "gold" refers to. See the thread Kripke: Identity and Necessity. There's a fair bit involved.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    If your philosophy of language forces you to ho and hum and deflect away from questions like "did cockroaches not exist until humans decided to 'count' them as such?" then yes, that seems like a rather major defect.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Yeah, it sure would be., Who says that?
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    So you do think insects existed prior to anyone deciding what counts as an insect? You seemed to be just objecting to that.

    If insects existed prior to humans deciding what counts as an insect, in virtue of what were they insects?
  • Banno
    26.1k
    So you do think insects existed prior to anyone deciding what counts as an insect?Count Timothy von Icarus

    Sure. I've argued similar points at length, elsewhere. There is gold in those hills, even if no one knows about it.

    "What counts as an insect" is much the same question as "How should we use the word insect". There's books about that, if you are interested.
  • Apustimelogist
    674

    I'm not necessarily trying to promote some kind of metaphysical permissivism (first time I have heard this phrase today actually) or any particular metaphysics about objects, I just think its plausible that people could have found bizarre combinations of things in the world commensensical as things to pick out if the statistical structure of the world afforded them some particular relevance. It just doesn't, so why pick them out. But then that means what we find intuitive as objects probably depends on the context. I mean some flint tools you see just look like literal rocks to my eyes but clearly the subtlety of what makes them not just rocks is not about them as objects in themselves.

    The name? Just nonsense.

    Anti-essentialism can only get one up to a certain point. "Essence" might be an ugly word for an analytic ear, yet Kripke argued that the essence of a gold atom is the property of having an atomic number of 79, which is the number of protons in the nucleus of a gold atom. Kinda hard to argue with that, even if one isn't an essentialist.Arcane Sandwich

    Its a thought provoking example but it hasn't compelled me to essentialism yet, at least not in a way that doesn't seem trivial.
  • Dawnstorm
    272
    I've never heard of permissivists before this thread, and I'm not yet done with reading Count Timothy von Icarus' link about "objects", but it turns out that if I had to choose between those options, that's where I would gravitate towards, though I'm not sure how far I'd go. This is a thought experiment I've had along those lines some years ago:

    Imagine a butterfly on a flower. Draw an imaginary globe such that part of the butterfly (and the flower and whatever else) is inside the globe and part outside. Watch the butterfly fly away. Now figure out some maths that allows you to run a exact simulation of the universe, except that you have to follow one rule: what's inside the circle will stay together. You can break time and space if you have to. If this is possible you have a universe that's materially the same as the one we live in, except it's also entirely incomprehensible. That does sound pretty permissivist, doesn't it? The fun thing is this actually helps me make sense of the world (intuitively; I can't explain how).

    ***

    As for those semantic triangles:

    My thoughts tend towards the idea that what we have in our minds is "knowledge about the world", which is a web of concepts, a world view. Seeing, for example, tree activates the tree node. Hearing the word "tree" (or reading it) also activates the tree node. But hearing the word "tree" also activates the word-node, while seeing a tree only activates the tree node. And when we add new information, there are two possibilities: we construct word-first concepts or we construct experience-first concepts. All concepts are ultimately experience-first concepts ("ultimately" here simply meaning that at one time there were no words). If you're born into a language community, though, when faced with a "new" experience, you'll likely at first try to express it with the words at hand. Maybe there's a so far ill-understood word that applies? If not, we can always ask a what's-that-called question. If presented with a "new" word, we can ask a what-is-a-[word] question, to which the answer will either consist of other words or experiences (a picture, a demonstration etc.).

    I've always thought of the Sausseurian model as zeroing in on the thought-signbody (signified-signifier) angle and ignoring the object, not because it's not important, but because it's not part of the discipline of linguistics. Under the structuralist model, we look at the nodes. Take away one node, and we have to distribute the content among the neighbouring ones. It's a valid if limited way of looking at language.

    Now, if you want to bring back the object into discussion under the Sausseurian model, the only real opportunity is to treat the object as an alternate sign (which it isn't if you expand linguistics to include pragmatics - Austin, Grice et. al). And that's how you basically get Derrida. There's no ultimate signifier, it's all differance, and we cling to our binary oppisitions so we don't get carried away by the current. (I think Derrida still has something to say, but I'm losing that sense with people like Lacan...).

    Quines inscrutable reference as illustrated by gavagai is fairly intuitive to me. Makes sense. People don't need to know what they're talking about; they need to get things done. So:

    Others, perhaps you and I and maybe Dawnstorm, think that there may be multiple ways to divvy up stuff, each of them capable of being coherent if not complete.Banno

    Yes, that's pretty much me, too.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    So insects existed prior to humans and what makes them insects is whatever answers the question "how should we use the word insect?" Yet, there is also nothing essential to insects? Is there anything else we can point to outside of contemporary language use, in virtue of which insects are actually insects and not just called so?


    Because if what makes something an insect is exhausted by "how the word insect is used," it seems that this explanation will either be vacuously circular, or unable to explain how insects were insects before language existed.

    Melville famously spends a lot of Moby Dick arguing that whales are fish. And "fish" was used to describe whales for a long time. But clearly, while whales were whales before man, whales were not both fish and not-fish during this period. To word use seems inadequate to explain being.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    ...there is also nothing essential to insects?Count Timothy von Icarus

    Sticking to the example, which isn't a great one, insects have six legs. Now will we count that as a bit of ontology, in that having six legs is a special feature of insects, or will we count it as a bit of language use, as in it's not correct to say of something without six legs, that it is an insect?

    How are these questions distinct? Extensionally, they are identical.

    And there is no such thing as a fish.
  • Apustimelogist
    674
    And "fish" was used to describe whales for a long time. But clearly, while whales were whales before man, whales were not both fish and not-fish during this period.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Ironically, there are actually some fish that are more closely related to whales than they are to any other fish, genetically speaking.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    Fossil record doesn't say much. Whatever fossils we have of anything are a miniscule fraction of individuals that have existed.

    This seems like an argument from ignorance. I know of no reputable biologist who claims that there have actually been very many hominid-like families throughout the history of Earth, just "lost to time." There are just the fairly recent hominids. And the same are true for many families.

    What's the idea here. "A man like species could have walked the Earth with the dinosaurs, or any time since, but we just don't know about it." But not only this, but it's "very likely." I don't think so.

    The idea that very many families of hominid-like animals have evolved many times is highly unlikely for a number of reasons.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    The name? Just nonsense.Apustimelogist

    I'm curious about it, since it sounds like a real word. That's why I looked it up, it sounds like a real word that I've never read or heard. Is it a combination of other words? Or is it something that just occurred to you?
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    Sticking to the example, which isn't a great one, insects have six legs. Now will we count that as a bit of ontology, in that having six legs is a special feature of insects, or will we count it as a bit of language use, as in it's not correct to say of something without six legs, that it is an insect?Banno

    Well, that's morphology that you're talking about there, as in, the phenotype. It's not the most reliable way of classifying living beings. It used to be, in the past, before genetics and molecular biology.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    Sticking to the example, which isn't a great one, insects have six legs. Now will we count that as a bit of ontology, in that having six legs is a special feature of insects, or will we count it as a bit of language use, as in it's not correct to say of something without six legs, that it is an insect? [/I]

    It's not correct for insects at all times. Consider the caterpillar. Which is not to say that I don't think that we can unambiguously delineate insects, we clearly can (although there might be ambiguities in classification in edge cases). However, the basic rules for word application known to all competent speakers of a language often do not accomplish this delineation particularly well. That's why science has specialized terminology.

    Which makes sense. Entomologists do not study insects and refine their intentions towards them by studying how the word "insect" is used in normal language. Physicists do not primarily study physics by observing how that fields terms are used by the average English language speaker. To say "you can identify what an insect is by looking at everyday language," is getting things backwards. Often, a term is created in the sciences and only later enters everyday usage, and often everyday usage diverges from proper scientific usage.
    How are these questions distinct?

    One is about what makes a certain type of being what it is. The other is about word use. They only collapse if one supposes a sort of metaphysical super glue that binds term and thing, or supposes that the objects of our knowledge are words and not natural phenomena.

    Extensionally, they are identical.

    No they aren't. Didn't you just agree that signification must be contextual, holophrastic, etc.?

    If someone says "get this insect away from me," while pointing at their ex-spouse, they are clearly referring to their spouse. In the sentence, "I can't wait to watch the Insects play their set tonight," the word probably refers to a band. If you're an employee at a garden store and your boss tells you to "sweep all the insects out of the storage shed," they do not mean for you to carefully sort through the animals in there and spare the arachnids and centipedes.

    I'd maintain that words are primarily a means of knowing, not what we know. So we don't find out what an insect is primarily by looking at word usage. Yet even if we took that approach, we would do well to focus on the usage of biologists whilst doing biology. But how is the usage of scientific terms developed? Not primarily by investigating how a term is already used, but by investigating the phenomena the word is being used to signify.

    But it's the thing signified by the scientific term that existed before man existed, not "whatever the term can apply to." I hope you can see the problem here. Insects can't have existed before man and be defined by however "insect" is used in normal language, because the term is used in various ways in different contexts in normal language. This would mean that some things would be both insect and not-insect. Nor can they be defined by "however science currently defines 'insect,'" since this would imply that whenever a scientific term is refined the being of past entities is also thereby changed.

    Aside from being convoluted, and implying that propositions about the past flip their truth values, it also gets the direction of causality completely backwards. Scientific terms are developed as a means of knowing and mastering natural phenomena. The natural phenomena exist first. The observation of them determines word use. They do not become what they are in virtue of being spoken of in a certain way.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    And there is no such thing as a fish.

    If you have to affirm nonsense like "fish don't exist," it's a knock against your philosophy. Fish would have existed in Melville's day as both a commonly recognized type of animal and a scientific designation. So were there fish then, but then when the technical way of speaking changed fish vanished from existence, not even just in the present and future, but even from the past? This is akin to claims that "fire changed" when phlogiston theory was abandoned.

    This is what happens when you collapse the distinction between sign and referent, and make words the primary object of knowledge (philosophy of language as essentially first philosophy).
  • Apustimelogist
    674
    This seems like an argument from ignorance. I know of no reputable biologist who claims that there have actually been very many hominid-like families throughout the history of Earth, just "lost to time." There are just the fairly recent hominids. And the same are true for many families.

    What's the idea here. "A man like species could have walked the Earth with the dinosaurs, or any time since, but we just don't know about it." But not only this, but it's "very likely." I don't think so.

    The idea that very many families of hominid-like animals have evolved many times is highly unlikely for a number of reasons.
    Count Timothy von Icarus

    Take yourself and look at the genetic differences between you and your parents. Then their parents, then their parents, then their parents. Miniscule genetic change. Then see what happens when you just trace this lineage back in time. You will get very gradual genetic change and very gradual phenotype change between yourself going back to some other kind of ape in the past to some mammal before that to some reptile and eventually some fish and something before that. All life on earth shares a common ancestor. So what I am saying is a fact. And therefore it is a fact that there is a gradual and continuous change between all of the individuals that ever existed, not just in your lineage but any lineage. The boundaries between your reptiluan ancestors and your mammalian ancestors and your primate ancestors will be continuous, ambiguous, graded, fuzzy.

    Nothing to do with the fossil record and fossil record only sees a miniscule of these individuals in various separate branches and times.
  • Apustimelogist
    674
    But it's the thing signified by the scientific term that existed before man existed, not "whatever the term can apply to." I hope you can see the problem here. Insects can't have existed before man and be defined by however "insect" is used in normal language, because the term is used in various ways in different contexts in normal language. This would mean that some things would be both insect and not-insect. Nor can they be defined by "however science currently defines 'insect,'" since this would imply that whenever a scientific term is refined the being of past entities is also thereby changed.Count Timothy von Icarus

    So how is it defined?
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    Yet morphology can be a useful way to classify species. Biological species are very complex, and they are always changing at the individual, community, and species level, so we should not be surprised if there are many useful, correct ways to classify them. But what they are, their existence, does not seem like it should depend on our classifications. Otherwise, they would undergo a fundamental change whenever we reclassified them (although note that, if all predication is per accidens, then what something is does change when we speak of it differently; mapping the coastline changes what it is, reclassifying animals might cause fish to vanish from history, etc.)




    :up: Ok, that sounds way more plausible. Although it does not seem that evolution is always very gradual (e.g. proposed cases of observed speciation). There is evidence for rapid evolution due to bottlenecks, fertile hybrid offspring reproducing in the wild, etc., and the whole EES controversy. It's an open question how larger shifts in anatomy (e.g. hands to wings, hands to fins, fins to hands, etc.) evolve, because the intermediary stages do not seem like they should be particularly adaptive, which would suggest, if not genetic "jumps" (obviously still perhaps over many generations), then at least phenotypical ones. One way this has been proposed to work is through "inactive" DNA functioning as a sort of "search for solutions" without the penalties of altering phenotype. Such changes can then be "activated" by a mutation (or epigenetically), allowing for a shift that is actually immediately adaptive.

    But either way, I don't see how this is particularly problematic for species unless we are committed to some sort of rigid definition of species, viz. the "metaphysical superglue" approach or "Excel spreadsheet metaphysics." Individual organisms are always changing, and species populations are in constant flux. So, biological species are not the type of thing for which a "spreadsheet metaphysics" is appropriate (neither is life/living). Yet neither is the argument: "Either species are defined rigidly in this way, or they don't exist," a good one. It's a false dichotomy.

    Consider an analogy from motion. A ball cannot roll from one room to another without at some point being partway in-between each room. We can divide this motion an infinite number of times (at least potentially), and so we will never find the "exact moment" when the ball crosses the threshold, when it starts to be in the doorway, or when it passes halfway into the other room. Yet there is also absolutely no difficulty in predicating "in the room" or "out of the room" of the ball most of the time. Motion and change occur over intervals. That we don't have "the one moment" where the ball crosses between rooms does not entail that it is not in either room, or that there can be no rooms, just as gradual evolution need not entail that there are no biological species.

    Processes can be more or less stable. We can think of an entire ancestral line as a process. For some species, such as the cockroach, the process has been in a fairly stable equilibrium for an extremely long time, perhaps 100-300 million years.

    Note too that if one does not exclude a phenomenological element from the consideration of what things are, a cat can simply never become a dog, a hippo, a dinosaur, etc. Even if evolution took a genetic lineage upon such a path of convergent evolution, the phenomenological experience of seeing, feeling, hearing, etc. a cat will remain distinct for all species that are not indistinguishably similar to cats. Yet if two species are indistinguishable, even upon close inspection with instruments, then in virtue of what could they even be said to be "two species?"



    Through the study of insects. Just as "fish" was refined by a study of aquatic lifeforms. As we come to know things better, we might change our scientific classifications. This doesn't change what the things are. Our ancestors obviously experienced fish. The sign vehicle is not identical with the thing signified.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    Yet morphology can be a useful way to classify species. Biological species are very complex, so we should not be surprised if there are many useful, correct ways to classify them. But what they are, their existence, does not seem like it should depend on our classifications. Otherwise, they would undergo a fundamental change whenever we reclassified them (although note that, if all predication is per accidens, then what something is does change when we speak of it differently; mapping the coastline changes what it is, reclassifying animals might cause fish to vanish from history, etc.)Count Timothy von Icarus

    Sure. Morphological classifications tend to be more useful in botany, for example, or in microbiology. They're not that useful in zoology nowadays. But I agree that insects, fish and whales existed prior to the emergence of human beings. In that sense, it doesn't matter if we call a whale a fish. Its existence, and what it is, are independent of our conceptual schemes, language, thoughts, etc. Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    Fun fact: springtails are six-legged arthropods that are not insects. They're an example of how morphological classifications are not quite reliable. In other words, not every arthropod that has six legs is an insect.
  • Leontiskos
    3.7k
    Must we pretend? Do dogs do not exist outside human linguistic frameworks?Count Timothy von Icarus

    If your philosophy of language forces you to ho and hum and deflect away from questions like "did cockroaches not exist until humans decided to 'count' them as such?" then yes, that seems like a rather major defect.Count Timothy von Icarus

    If you have to affirm nonsense like "fish don't exist," it's a knock against your philosophy. Fish would have existed in Melville's day as both a commonly recognized type of animal and a scientific designation.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Good stuff. :up:
    The absurdity of nominalism can hardly be overestimated. It's high time we stop letting people pass off absurd theories as normal.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    Well, yes, as I said, it's not a great example. We might get out our CRISPR and re-arrange the genetics of a fruit fly so that it has an extra body segment and two more pairs of legs. Is it still an insect?

    I'm suggesting that this is as much a question of word use as it is of entomology.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    Well, yes, as I said, it's not a great example. We might get out our CRISPR and re-arrange the genetics of a fruit fly so that it has an extra body segment and two more pairs of legs. Is it still an insect?Banno

    Good question. I've no idea. I can see arguments for, as well as against.

    I'm suggesting that this is as much a question of word use as it is of entomology.Banno

    Could be.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    I don't see these responses helping much.

    A metaphorical use is different to a literal use. Calling your ex an insect works becasue of the literal use. We could have a discussion of the best way to define 'literal', but that'd be yet another step away from Quine.

    The extension of a predicate is the list of individuals to whom it applies. In your example, the set of animals having six legs is an insect, and it's not correct to say of something without six legs, that it is an insect. That is, the set of animals that have six legs and the set of animals to which the word "insect" applies are the vey same. they are extensionally equivalent. (Part fo the problem here is the one mentioned much earlier, where it remains unclear what you think an essence is, especially in extensional terms).

    We do not find out what an insect is by looking only at the use of the word, but finding out what an insect is, is the same as finding out how to use the word "insect" coherently. The example of "fish" is informative here. Whales were once called fish, but as we refined the use of that word it became clear that there were considerable differences between, say, teleosts and Cetacea; too great to justify the use of the common name. The word "fish" dropped out of use for Cetacea. More recently it has been suggested that there is nothing that is common to all and only fish; that there is no essence of "fishness". That's what prompted Stephen Jay Gould to joke that there was no such thing as a fish. If you insist that there must be an essence of fish in order to justify our use of the word "fish" you will be defying the science. Of course there are fish, which is to say nothing more than that it is useful to have that word at hand to talk about some of the animals that live in water and cook up nicely. It does nto imply, as you seem to think, that there must be an essence of fishness for us to be able to use the word at all.

    I am not suggesting that word use determines what something is. Nor is it true that what something is determines word use. I said previously that such a juxtaposition is fraught. I am pointing to the interplay between word use and our interactions with the world. We divide the world up not on the basis of some prelinguistic ontology, but on the basis of what works for us.

    This is not to "collapse the distinction between sign and referent" but as Davidson phrased it "In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but reestablish unmediated touch with the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false."
  • Banno
    26.1k
    Good question. I've no idea. I can see arguments for, as well as against.Arcane Sandwich

    And we might well chose to go either way. There is no fact of the matter, only how useful it is for us to talk one way or the other. I'd be inclined to suggest that a ten-legged fruit fly would still be a fruit fly, and so choose to count it as an insect. That'd be to remove having six legs as a necessary attribute of insects. Some other fact might replace it, perhaps a genetic marker or a different morphological characteristic. But whatever is chosen, at some stage that too might come into question.

    What's salient is that over time we might well change what we regard as the essence of insect, but that each time we do this we are changing something about the use of the word, not about the beasts. That is, essence is about word use, rather than ontology. We are not discovering that characteristic that determines what is an insect and what is not, but deciding which characteristic determines our use of the word "insect".

    I think this is in line with Kripke's discussion of essences.

    Compare the discussion of simples around Philosophical Investigations, §48.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    Dragging this back to the OP...

    There need not be some property understood to apply to and only to Gavagai in order for the word to be understood and used effectively. More broadly, there need not be some fixed, agreed and understood referent in order for the word to be used in the community being examined, and the anthropologist need not have such a fixed referent at hand in order to set out the use of "gavagai" in that community.
  • Apustimelogist
    674
    Although it does not seem that evolution is always very gradual (e.g. proposed cases of observed speciation). There is evidence for rapid evolution due to bottlenecks, fertile hybrid offspring reproducing in the wild, etc., and the whole EES controversy. It's an open question how larger shifts in anatomy (e.g. hands to wings, hands to fins, fins to hands, etc.)Count Timothy von Icarus

    I mean, any of the timescales regarding these kinds of debates are still going to be very long in general / will be long enough.

    Yet neither is the argument: "Either species are defined rigidly in this way, or they don't exist," a good one. It's a false dichotomy.Count Timothy von Icarus

    I don't think anyones saying animals don't exist, but the intractable complexity, variety makes various different classifcatory schemes or ways of talking about animals or referring to groups or population plausible. All there really is are individuals that reproduce other individuals. They are all different but there are also similarities, but this is all graded.

    Processes can be more or less stable. We can think of an entire ancestral line as a process. For some species, such as the cockroach, the process has been in a fairly stable equilibrium for an extremely long time, perhaps 100-300 million years.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Yes, sure but I don't think that changes what I say. Those cockroaches still got there from the original ancestor and that still took a long gradual change. At the same time, its not entirely clear what it means when biologists say that cockroaches have stayed stable for millions of years. It might be in a different sense to some other kind of population genetics. Similar to how someone might get confused if they take one of those genetic tests that tell you you're 60% German and then compare it to how biologiata also say you share 60% of your DNA with a banana. Clearly what they mean by these percentages is different, referring to different things.

    Yet if two species are indistinguishable, even upon close inspection with instruments, then in virtue of what could they even be said to be "two species?"Count Timothy von Icarus

    Yes but distinguishability can become apparent over longer and longer times. Like how pople visibly age rather slowly.

    I think at the end of the day we all agree animals exist and we try to classify them non-arbitrarily in ways that are most informative regarding the world and other facts we interact with.
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    3.2k


    I'm suggesting that this is as much a question of word use as it is of entomology.

    This is to make language into first philosophy. Here is why I would disagree with such a move. It is easier to see with the example something like an ant rather than some hypothetical creature born of sci-fi technology, so let's take the ant.

    1. Being is causally prior to being known. An ant can neither be known nor observed unless it exists (granted a hypothetical entity might be known before it is generated through its principles).

    2. What we choose to call things is not essential to them. That the token "insect" is applied to ant is accidental; it does not make an ant what it is.

    3. Things' existence is causally related to the development and evolution of language. Why does every language refer to different species? Because they are an obvious and important facet of the world. A good explanation accounts for and goes in the direction of causation, it explains why something is the case, not just that it is the case.

    Consider seasons. If the Earth didn't experience seasons, names for seasons wouldn't be ubiquitous. Perhaps, if our languages evolved on a planet without discernible seasons we might eventually identify a planet that had them and develop a technical term, but it wouldn't be the sort of thing every language needs.



    The extension of a predicate is the list of individuals to whom it applies. In your example, the set of animals having six legs is an insect, and it's not correct to say of something without six legs, that it is an insect. That is, the set of animals that have six legs and the set of animals to which the word "insect" applies are the vey same. they are extensionally equivalent. (Part fo the problem here is the one mentioned much earlier, where it remains unclear what you think an essence is, especially in extensional terms).

    Yes, this is what I refered to earlier as "Excel spreadsheet metaphysics." A term "retrieves" a set or table; something like a SQL query. I don't think it will do. For one, that definition would exclude caterpillars, larva, etc. Likewise, if we tear the leg off an ant, does it cease to be an insect? Clearly not. The problem here is that animals are constantly changing all the time, at both the individual and species level, and such a rigid definition seems doomed to leave out important distinctions.

    It seems like the demand for "metaphysical super glue" mentioned before. "This term glues on to this specific set."

    Definitions solely in terms of genetics are likewise insufficient. A flout would always be an equal pair of fox and trout, so if would have an identifiable enough genome associated with it, but a flout isn't a real organism. Test tube meat exists, and it is, genetically, "cow," but a slab of meat is not a cow. I think has brought up some of the other relevant difficulties in such an approach.

    "Essences," as employed for most of history, are not lookup variables in this way. Organisms are quintessentially beings instead of mere heaps (existing according to a nature, not solely as a bundle of external causes) because they are self-organizing, self-governing, and most of all, goal-directed. The parts of an organism are proper parts of a proper whole because they are unified in terms of a goal that is intrinsic to the organism. This is the idea of "function" and teleonomy in biology. The parts of a flout or rock are not organized in this way.

    And perhaps, , this is also a way of finding a via media between permissivism and eliminativism. The most obvious discrete wholes we experience are ourselves and other people. We have our own thoughts and sensations, not other peoples. There is a clear plurality of experiencers, but also a unity to our own individual consciousness (although obviously we can be psychologically more or less unified).

    So this is one obvious difference. A human being is a locus of sensation, purposes, thought, etc. A hout—a discontinuous half-human, half-trout composite—is not. A human (or fox, or trout) has parts with specific functions that are oriented towards the whole in a goal-directed manner. The flout does not. The flout does not act to sustain itself, reproduce itself, aid its community, etc. in a unified manner.

    If organisms are beings (plural) then it is also quite obvious that there are different types of such beings, and that these types can be more or less unified and self-determining in their pursuit of goals, and more or less self-aware as respects their goals (which in turn allows them to become more unified in pursuing a goal by mobilizing all possible resources vis-á-vis their ends). A cockroach, for instance, is only so self-determining. It pursues ends, but it cannot learn in the manner of a dog, or reflect on its ends like a man.

    Essences are called in first and foremost to explain change, and how it is that things can be more or less self-determining and a source of changes/cause.

    From the biological example, you can work backwards towards things that are more or less unified/divisible. A volume of gas or water is very easily divided. A water molecule less so. But they're all subject to flux. Process philosophy gets that right. Even subatomic particles appear to have a begining and end, and we might conceive of them as being primarily stabilities in process, not things.

    However, you cannot have a good ontology that has just one thing, a universal process, and that's why the delineation of proper beings is so important, it's a via media between the extreme multiplicity of atomism (viz. everything is just clouds of particles) and an all encompassing bigism (viz. "there is just one thing). Grounding beings is also what allows for per se predication. Whereas if all predication is accidental, then things do fundamentally change when they are called something else, thought of differently, etc., because they are just bundles of relations. This is why I think a lot of the more extreme nominalist, co-constitutionalists, etc. are in fact correct, given we accept their premises, when they say things like "the Moon didn't exist until someone was there to speak of it," or that sort of thing.
  • Arcane Sandwich
    2.2k
    The fully eliminative response (not van Inwagen's almost fully eliminative response) is that you and I do not exist. You are just a collection of atoms arranged Count-wise, I'm just a collection of atoms arranged Sandwich-wise. The collection of atoms arranged Count-wise collectively experience all of the things that you said. If there's n atoms, it would not be parsimonious to say that there is one more thing (i.e., n+1), such that the thing in question is you. And the same goes for me.

    The permissive response in the case of fouts is the following parity argument:

    1) There is no ontologically significant difference between bikinis and fouts.
    2) If so, then: if bikinis exist, then fouts exist.
    3) Bikinis exist.
    4) So, fouts exist.

    Eliminativists can resist this argument by denying the third premise: bikinis do not exist. Conservatives would reject the first premise: there is indeed an ontologically significant difference between bikinis and fouts. But that difference can't have anything to do with the question about scattered objects, because bikinis are scattered objects just as much as fouts are. Instead, the difference must be that bikinis are artifacts while fouts are presumably natural objects. In that sense, there were creative intentions involved in the making of the bikini, but no creative intentions were involved in the creation of fouts.

    Of course, theistic permissivists (and yes, they exist) can simply reject the preceding claim by arguing that creative intentions were indeed involved in the creation of fouts: just as God creatively intended to bring foxes and trouts into existence, He also creatively intended to bring fouts into existence.
  • Banno
    26.1k
    This is to make language into first philosophy.Count Timothy von Icarus
    Well, no it isn't, but if it were, then that might be a good thing.

    Each of the three points you list is fraught with complexity. As such, they will not be of much help in showing any problems with the contention at hand. And each takes us further from Quine. Remember Quine? This is a thread about Quine. But also, you have neglected to explain how these three count against the suggestion.

    Something has to exist in order to be a cause. Even if this is accepted, how does it count against meaning as use? Names are pretty arbitrary. So what? Why does every language refer to different species? Becasue it is useful to us to do so. Again, so what.

    Some first Australia tribes had names for a half dozen seasons. Are you saying that they were wrong? What are you saying?

    All this by way of pointing out that it is very unclear how the first part of your post even addresses the ideas of the last few pages.
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