[MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

[Ham Priday]

Hi 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.)

Sorry, I must have missed your question or thought I'd answered it by
explaining the ontology behind it.

For me, there is only one Essence, which is why I refer to it as the Primary
Source.  All differentiated entities are of course derived from this source,
the dynamics of which have been the subject of much debate between Reinier
and myself.  So, while I'm not an essentialist in the platonic sense, my
philosophy is founded on Essence and my metaphysics borrows from the
thinking of the Neo-platonists, Eckhart, Cusa, and to some extent Hegel (an
existentialist).

> 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.

What do you call an idea, then, before it is "expressed"?  And where do we
all get the concept of "catness" if not by seeing (or experiencing) the
cuddly four-legged furry animal with whiskers and a tail?  The word "cat"
does not have to be "uttered" for you or me to picture it in our mind as a
concept.  In fact, we could have the concept without the name.
The problem I'm having with you and the semiotics people (or are you
nominalists?) is that you equate the concept with the label, which almost
makes language your essence.

You continue:
> 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.

This may be true of some abstractions, such as metaphysical concepts.  But
aren't you completely dismissing experience here?  The bulk of our daily
participation in the world consists in processing information about observed
phenomena, like cats, people, trees, houses, and books -- not abstract
conceptions.  I don't think our concept of these existents changes
significantly just because we "express" them.  I could write a hundred
essays on cats, but my concept of a cat would not change.

Once again, your epistemology baffles me.  And most baffling of all is that
you don't posit a starting place for proprietary awareness.  In "The World
as Will and Idea" Schopenhauer said that the world is an idea insofar as it
is an object in the mind of a subject.  His ultimate reality, though, was
Will (or what we might call "intent"), and he asserted that if the will is
completely negated the representational world is also negated.  It seems to
me that you are using "idea" in that same context, which would seem to put
you in bed with David who said that the essential "stuff" is an idea.

--Ham