Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'The Truth in Relativism' and 'Essence and Being'

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8 ideas

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 1. Essences of Objects

14221	Serious essentialism says everything has essences, they're not things, and they ground necessities [Shalkowski]
	Full Idea: Serious essentialism is the position that a) everything has an essence, b) essences are not themselves things, and c) essences are the ground for metaphysical necessity and possibility.
	From: Scott Shalkowski (Essence and Being [2008], 'Intro')
	A reaction: If a house is being built, it might acquire an identity first, and only get an essence later. Essences can be physical, but if you extract them you destroy thing thing of which they were the essence. Does all of this apply to abstract 'things'.

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 6. Essence as Unifier

14222	Essences are what it is to be that (kind of) thing - in fact, they are the thing's identity [Shalkowski]
	Full Idea: The route into essentialism is, first, a recognition that the essence of a thing is "what it is to be" that (kind of) thing; the essence of a thing is just its identity.
	From: Scott Shalkowski (Essence and Being [2008], 'Essent')
	A reaction: The first half sounds right, and very Aristotelian. The second half is dramatically different, controversial, and far less plausible. Slipping in 'kind of' is also highly dubious. This remark shows, I think, some confusion about essences.

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 13. Nominal Essence

14226	We distinguish objects by their attributes, not by their essences [Shalkowski]
	Full Idea: In ordinary contexts, we distinguish objects not by their essences but by their attributes.
	From: Scott Shalkowski (Essence and Being [2008], 'Ess and Know')
	A reaction: Hence we have a gap between what bestows identity intrinsically, and how we bestow identity conventionally. If you could grasp the essence of something, you might predict a new attribute, as yet unobserved.

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism

14225	Critics say that essences are too mysterious to be known [Shalkowski]
	Full Idea: According to critics, the thorniest problem for essentialism is the question of our knowledge of essence. It is usually at this point that terms of abuse such as 'dark', 'mysterious', and 'occult' are wheeled out.
	From: Scott Shalkowski (Essence and Being [2008], 'Ess and Know')
	A reaction: I'm inclined to think that the existence of essences can be fairly conclusively inferred, but that attributing a precise identity to them is the biggest challenge.

10. Modality / A. Necessity / 4. De re / De dicto modality

14223	De dicto necessity has linguistic entities as their source, so it is a type of de re necessity [Shalkowski]
	Full Idea: De dicto necessity is a species of de re necessity. Anyone prone to countenance de dicto necessity must recognise mental and/or linguistic entities, thus counting each of them as a res to which necessity attaches.
	From: Scott Shalkowski (Essence and Being [2008], 'Essent')
	A reaction: This seems to rest on the Kit Fine thought that analytic necessities seem to derive from the essences of words such as 'bachelor'. I like this idea: all necessity is de re, but some of the 'things' are words.

19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 7. Extensional Semantics

14224	Equilateral and equiangular aren't the same, as we have to prove their connection [Shalkowski]
	Full Idea: That 'all and only equilateral triangles are equiangular' required proof, and not for mere curiosity, is grounds for thinking that being an equilateral triangle is not the same property as being an equiangular triangle.
	From: Scott Shalkowski (Essence and Being [2008], 'Serious')
	A reaction: If you start with equiangularity, does equilateralness then require proof? This famous example is of two concepts which seem to be coextensional, but seem to have a different intension. Does a dependence relation drive a wedge between them?

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / f. Ethical non-cognitivism

22450	If moral systems can't judge other moral systems, then moral relativism is true [Williams,B, by Foot]
	Full Idea: If some societies with divergent moral systems merely confront each other, having no use for the assertion that their own systems are true and the others false except to mark the system to which they adhere, then relativism is a true theory of morality.
	From: report of Bernard Williams (The Truth in Relativism [1974]) by Philippa Foot - Moral Relativism p.3
	A reaction: 'Having no use for' an assertion is not the same as the assertion being impossible. Some liberal cultures refuse to criticise others because their highest value is tolerance, even when the target culture wholly contradicts the critics' other values.

23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues

7903	The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna]
	Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom.
	From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88)
	A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate').