Philosophy Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Essence, philosophy: the essence of an object is understood to mean one or more properties without which the object is inconceivable. Critics argue that such necessary properties can only be attributed to concepts, but not to empirical objects. See also features, essentialism, ultimate justification, properties, metaphysics, concepts, necessity de re, substance._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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P. Simons on Essence - Dictionary of Arguments
I 258 Essential/Simons: what exists, exists essentially. But it does not exist necessarily. Solution: assuming that e.g. whatever is a human, must be a human. Essential/Simons: essential means "relatively necessary". It is essential for Cicero that he exists. Necessary/Wiggins: necessary should distinguish these cases. >Necessity/Wiggins, >Necessity de re/Wiggins. I 261 Trivially essential/Simons: e.g. to be colored if red, e.g. to be self-identical, e.g. to exist, e.g. "to be like that 2 + 2 = 4" is trivially essential. Essential attributes: essential attributes are no "mere facts" ("brute facts"), but an object has them by virtue of the fact that it belongs to a certain type. It is not accidental for an object of a given type, that it has the characteristics which underlie the type. >Attributes, >Features/Frege. I 284 Normal/essential/middle course/Simons: "normal part of a normal thing of a type" is the middle course between simple and essential part. This is often forgotten by philosophers ((s) they take type as the fundamental concept but no formal theory). Normality: perhaps starting from wellformedness. Woltersdorff: e.g. music piece, performance. SimonsVs: this does not work because of transitivity of identity. >Transitivity, >Identity._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Simons I P. Simons Parts. A Study in Ontology Oxford New York 1987 |
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Ed. Martin Schulz, access date 2024-04-19