[MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

[Scott Roberts]

Ham,

 Scott said [to David M]:
> My view is that without something like an essence,
> there couldn't be concepts or memory, and therefore
> no thinking. On the other hand, a concept is dependent
> on its expression, so one can't be an essentialist.
> In other words, I see anti-essentialism and essentialism
> as being two ways of falling off the Middle Way.

Ham said:
I find this dialogue interesting.  Both of you reject a primary essence, yet
David speaks of an "agency" reducing the possible to the actual and Scott
rejects the essence logically needed for concepts on the ground that "a
concept is dependent on its expression", whatever that means.  Now an agent
implies a source or authority on whose behalf the agent acts, while concepts
and experience (as Scott suggests) couldn't exist without an essence.

In view of these statements and the fact that you both agree that experience
and concepts exist, I don't understand why you are determined to bend
conventional logic in order to renounce essentialism.  I would have assumed
that both of you would see DQ as the essential source, as problematic as the
dynamics of a progenitive Quality would be.

Scott:
Because there are rocks, should one be a rockist? If I say that concepts are 
somewhat like essences, that just means I think there are some things like 
essences. I also think there are some things like existents. So by that 
logic I should be an essentialist and an existentialist. But I am neither. 
More below.

And why should you assume that I would see DQ as "the essential source"? Are 
you forgetting (once again) that I have differences with the MOQ, in 
particular on how it privileges DQ over SQ?

Ham said:
I know that you both regard my thinking as a throwback to Cartesianism, but
it seems to me that you can't have either a "you" or "your concept" without
a prior source.  As a starter, perhaps Scott will be kind enough to explain
what he means by "a concept is dependent on its expression", and why this
rules out essence.

Scott:
An essence of something is defined as "what makes that something what it 
is", or something like that. An essentialist, then, would be someone who 
thinks that this essence that makes something what it is is independent of 
the somethings. So there is an essence of horse, in addition to horses. 
Plato's Forms are, of course, quintessentially essences. (I'll let you 
explain how your self-description as an essentialist differs from this. I've 
asked you a couple of times why you call your primary source 'Essence', and 
never got an answer.)

A concept is something like an essence, in that each utterance of the word 
'cat' means what it means because we have a concept of catness. When I say 
"a concept is dependent on its expression" I mean that there is no concept 
unless and until it is expressed. Further, in being expressed, it gets used 
in ever varying contexts, so over time and new contexts, the concept changes 
as a consequence of its expression. So there is no concept independent of 
its expression. But on the other hand, there is no expression independent of 
its concept (otherwise there is only meaninglessness). So that's the way I 
think of essences and their existents (given that I see every object as a 
sign, though with many of them (physical objects) we have lost the ability 
to pass through them to their meaning). They are mutually dependent. Hence 
to be an essentialist and to be an anti-essentialist are both falling off 
the Middle Way. Each privileges one (essence or existent) over the other.

- Scott