From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Tue Aug 30 2005 - 13:54:27 BST
Scott,
>The usual use of "essentialist" in philosophy is to claim the reality
>of the essence of things beyond the transitory appearance ("existence")
>of things.
>It is, as far as I can tell, the same universalist stand as opposed to
>the
>nominalist: horses are horses because they have partake in horseness,
>which exists (if one is an essentialist) in addition to the particular
>horses. A Platonic Form, in short, which a nominalist or
>anti-essentialist (same thing, as far as I can see) will call "just" a word
or concept.
Paul: I'm not sure if an essentialist necessarily has to believe in
Platonic Forms. But anyway, as I understand it, 'essentialism' is just the
theory that one can divide the properties of an object up into those which
are intrinsic to it being what it is, and those that are not, i.e. those
that are merely accidental. The worst thing about this is that it leads to
the belief that one description can, in principle at least, get at the
essential construction of the world which raises the epistemological problem
of how you know when you have hit upon a description of an object's
essential properties.
>However, suppose one doesn't insist that all essences be eternal and
>unchanging. Then the MOQ would appear to be essentialist, only it calls
>essences "static patterns of value".
Paul: I don't agree with this. My interpretation is that all static values
emerge in a relationship to other values i.e. they are dependently
originated and sustained. As such there is nothing that is non-relational
hence there are no essences. In the MOQ 'things' are defined as "enormously
complex correlation[s] of sensations and boundaries and desires." [LILA
p137] Does this make the MOQ nominalist? Well, as I have said previously,
the question of whether one is nominalist or not depends on a prior
assumption that either individual objects or universal forms must have
metaphysical primacy over the other. Since, as far as I can tell, the MOQ
makes no such assumption (as both universal forms and individual objects are
static) I still think this is a false dilemma.
Note that a particular horse in a
>given
>instant is not an SPOV.
Paul: I don't think that's right. A particular horse in a given instant is
composed of a particular combination of related biological and inorganic
values. It's just that the particular relations of values described by
humans as 'horses' are those valued for human biological, social and
intellectual purposes, purposes which are apt to change and which don't get
any closer to or further away from anything that could be metaphysically
worthy of the term 'essential horseness'. So there is nothing intrinsic to
be discovered about the patterns of the horse, just a resemblance between
patterns valued within specific purposes. Just see these patterns as
positively and negatively valued inorganic and biological 'causal pressures'
under different social and intellectual descriptions, in this case
descriptions containing the word 'horse'.
Rather it instantiates SPOV (by being a horse, also
>by being a particular horse, say Trigger, over time). Because it
>follows a bunch of SPOV we can to some extent predict its behavior.
Paul: It is not because it follows static patterns but rather because it
*is* a bunch of static patterns that we can predict its behaviour. 'It' is
not separate from the patterns.
But Paul (and
>probably Pirsig) claim that the MOQ is anti-essentialist. From this I
>guess one must conclude that they assume that until there was language,
>there were no SPOV.
Paul: No, it is clear from the hierarchy that there were at least inorganic
and biological patterns before there was language. And these patterns are
presumed to be causally independent of social and intellectual patterns.
Regards
Paul
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