What's In A Thing? - Essentialism

Motivations...
Some time ago I remember debating a fellow Jedi in chat. It got pretty heated, mostly because my expectations of a teacher were different than his intentions as one. At any rate, one of the questions or perhaps allegations he put forward against me is that I hardly ever put myself out here, open up my thoughts for discussion and dissection by the community. So in the last couple of days some thoughts have been penetrating my mind and I figured it be a convenient opportunity to prove this fellow wrong and perhaps learn something while doing so.
I've been hosting a visitor, a relative of my stepsiblings'. She is much into both New-Age-y gobbledygook and a number of pseudo-sciences like homoeopathy and astrology. In particular she believes in auras and energies, mind over matter, that kind of thing. Coincidentally I watched a conversation, a hangout on the topic of essentialism by people better equipped with the tools of philosophy than her and probably even than myself, although I do suspect that they have been missing out on thoughts seeing how I recognized factual mistakes whenever they touched upon things closer to my area of expertise.

So, essentialism.
Basically, it's the idea that things have an essence to themselves. It is the reason we collect autographs as opposed to copies of autographs. It is the reason that a washed and disinfected sweater that was once worn by, say, Joseph Stalin still feels uncomfortable to us, eventhough all it is today is a mere sweater. Do numbers exist? Am I still myself if I replace every part of myself or indeed if I consider that no part of what I am today has been alive back when I was born? Do words have meanings or do they have usages?
A remarkable example I heard was a variation on the Ship Of Theseus problem: Say in a dry dock you have this old ship that has been in numerous adventures. Some of the wood rots and every year you have to replace one of the thousand planks. So a millennium goes by and the entire ship now consists of completely different planks. Of course the time passed slowly and after every change you labeled the new thing in the dry dock that Ship Of Theseus, so the new ship is still that eventhough it is nothing what it initially was. What, however, if in a second dry dock you saved all of the rotten planks and had been reconstructing the original ship? Do you now have two Ships Of Theseus? Which is the true one? It reminded me of the Banach-Tarski-Paradox, but let's do philosophy here, not math...

So with all these considerations and questions out there, sit back and have a think. What are your thoughts? Do you believe in essences, in intrinsic, objective attributes of things? Why? Why don't you, if you don't? Do you think this sort of magical thinking can be useful or how did it come about? Would you wear Hitler's sweater if you knew it? Would you wear it if you didn't? Do you think quantities are real absent minds to comprehend them?
A more brutal question that came to my sick and deranged mind was on cannibalism: Setting aside the health or moral implications of eating meat in general, and assuming that your fellow man was not killed for that purpose nor out of old age or bad health themselves: Could you eat parts of what was once a human being? Why? Or why not? Does this question change your general outlook on essences?

Human meat is just meat, same as any other animal. The only reason that I wouldn't eat it is because of the flavor/texture, and social conventions. Plus, I don't know of any human killing factory where they ship human meat from for consumption, and I don't want to kill anything. But if it's dead, like any animal, you might as well give it respect by using every piece of it. The skin should be tanned and the meat should be eaten, and we already use the bones for medical studies.

But on your question of essentialism. I'm very familiar with the ship, and so I'll talk about it.

If you were to say that a change to the ship would change its essence, then we could talk about molecular structure and how it constantly changes, the ship only being itself for a very small period of time. Or we could say "this is the ship in the Atlantic ocean" is different from "this is the ship in the Pacific ocean", and once the ship returns to the Atlantic, "this is the ship in the Atlantic ocean which at one point in time was in the Pacific ocean." We do this as human beings, giving ourselves perceived differing values for the well traveled and those who have stayed in their hometown for their entire life. But it's a bit silly, isn't it?

We are Jedi. Though we have differing views of what it is, we all believe in the Force. My personal view of the Force is that of material monism, similar to the Advaita Vedanta tradition in Hinduism, and so that will influence my answer. Though, it isn't strictly like Advaita Vedanta, as I still believe that the one thing (the Force) has its own properties (similar to Spinoza's God). (Of course, we could argue ontological metaphysics, but when has that ever gotten anyone anywhere? There's a reason why Peirce proposed Pragmatism as a school of philosophy, and it was because of debates over ontological metaphysics!) So my answer is as follows:

There is a perceived essential quality of the ship. This essential quality exists insofar as human experience is relevant. Human experience is an expression of the Force. The Force can easily express itself in different ways, and contradictory ways (having properties of both x and not x). As a result, the essential quality of the ship both exists and does not exist. It exists insofar as this expression (or property) of the Force is concerned, and it does not exist (or has the potential to either exist or not) in all other expressions of the Force. The Force is infinite and timeless, and so all possibilities exist simultaneously.

Ultimately, though it may not be satisfactory as an answer, there both are and are not essential properties of individual objects.

Oh, and I wouldn't wear Hitler's sweater. It probably doesn't smell very good and probably requires cleaning and tailoring.

There are very complicated issues about life in society, morals and good customs. When we understand that there is no sin the most obvious question is, "Why then should I not do this or that." I also asked several times on the threshold of things and this was the next answer I got. There is a limit in the very inner nature of every human being, but the flesh is flesh, whether it is human or not, but the question is, you could live in society like that? In some cases the answer may be yes, in others not, still have to be careful, there's a reason this is called "limit" since it pierced, it is very difficult to put back this limit in your life.

What we must do is to think: What are my limits? What are the limits of my actions so that I can have a good life and so I can help with ocrescimento and happiness in the world. I believe this is our true mission, to bring peace and properidade the world.

There is a zen koan where someone asks a teacher do the trees have Buddha-nature and is answered that it's not important, important is unleashing his own.

I'm not Buddhist, but Zen is my favorite of the traditional religions.

While I have great respect for practical philosophy, applied philosophy, I see no use in theoretical, done-in-vacuum philosophy other than an exercise of logic.

As of the question on the essentialism - I'm no physic, but in ultra-mega-simplistic model, ain't we all complex systems of solidified energy? In computer science, all information is made of bits, which go back to solid state physics and are a way of sructuring energy. Material things all seem to follow this scheme.

In this sense, Force can be seen as gaining access to raw bytecode of universe and using it directly.

From this perspective, people and things and thoughts and Hitler's sweater and ships of Theseus are all drops of water in single ocean of the Force, however each concreted through it's individual history.

And if you can percept the bytecode directly, what use the complex programming techniques are? My point is that while rationality has it's use, Jedi are defined by being Force-sensitive and adhering to code. And the code is all about serving the world with action out of empathy.

So, I don't feel essentialism to be of huge essence for a Jedi, to be true j-D

What constitutes what the ship is?

Is its identity its essence?

Rejecting Platonism, there is no reality to the idea of "The Ship of Theseus"'.

The qualities of a thing when it is created are here used as the qualifying criterion that defines its identity. Its essence is here decided as what it was built of.

Perhaps we could address the perennial question with Aristotle’s definition (paraphrased): that which makes the thing what it is and without which it would not be what it is. Nothing in this definition about its identity being identical with the original.
The Four Causes are designed to answer questions of essences. The material is wood but not the original wood. Through time the builders would be different men but still the same kind of efficient cause. It final cause remains the same: it is a sailing ship. The formal cause also would agree that it is the Ship of Theseus.

Is a thing identified with ownership and use? I lean toward Nominalism here – the names of things are arbitrary inventions as are the definitions of qualities. The evolutionary adaptation of avoiding the unclean is here projected and applied to a historical person and his possessions. Certainly some things are prohibited for good reasons but not in this case. It is magical thinking to believe that there is anything in the sweater of its wearer. There is more myth and metaphor influencing one’s reticence to wear such a thing.

I live in England. But where is "England"? Can I go out and grab "England"? Can I hold it in my hand or measure it with a piece of scientific equipment. Getting out my microscope and examining the ground all I find is dirt.

Where is "England"?

England is one of those useful fictions Watts speaks of. It is very useful to have a conception of England, to know what one talks about when one talks about England, but it is a creation of our language, it isn't "real" in the way the dirt is real.

I'm not well-versed in Essentialism, but it seems like one of those cases where we've created these fictions to describe the world, forgotten that we've created them, forgotten they're fictions entirely, and then spend lots of time trying to answer silly questions like "What is England if everything which makes up England has changed?"

Living in the realm of the hyper-real indeed...

Is the Ship of Theseus the same ship? Well it is and it isn't. We're the users of language, we define the concepts ourselves, the way we define it is the answer. The medium is the message.

Oh and referring to the owning of "original" objects rather than remakes. Someone more in the know may have to correct me but from what I understand/half remember the Chinese are a lot less finicky about some antique being the original antique rather than a reproduction.

If this is the case then it would imply that a view on essentialism is cultural, and if its cultural then this may well just point to it only existing in the minds who choose to believe in its existence. Hardly an essential view at all in that case (pun intended).

I am reading a bit of Parfit at the moment, as I'm a newb in philosophy it seems relevant to this topic. I havent got very far but he has likened identity to two types;
- numeric/quantitative presence (matter?)
- an ascribed qualitative presence (identity?)

An example he (in the vid, and paper I'm reading) gives is teleportation, does molecular reading and destruction at the departure point kill the traveller - and does the exact replica created at the other teleport (arrival end) become a new person? It could be said it is new in a quantitative sense, but not new in a qualitative sense. Gives a new meaning to Star Trekking across the universe...

... or passing out or sleeping. Are we the same 'mind' when we wake that we were when we fell asleep... or just a reboot using the last save point and if so how could we know what we lost in the process?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS-46k0ncIs

I think I use the concept of essence as a tool to comprehend and process the material which is unknown (purely, or even perhaps introduced by its dynamic nature) or not just settled within my own worldview, but I don't feel compelled to believe it's finite or even tangible... again I prefer to consider it a direction of movement, rather then a destination or static state ie the act of seeking order/context/balance etc, depending on what it might be.

I'm not sure that I have a good answer concerning an item that has been replaced slowly over time being the same as it was. All I can say is that in my life time I'm fairly certain that all of the cells in my body have died and been replaced a time or two and while I am not the same person I was when they were last replaced I am still me. (unless they aliens replaced me and didn't even tell me :laugh: )

As for things having an essence of themselves, that I have some thoughts on. Growing up a martial artist I was surrounded by a variety of weapons. I can honestly say that weapons can have an essence, an energy of their own. In my experience it is especially true of hand made swords. When you hold it you can feel it. It speaks to you. They talk about matching the weapon to the user, it's not just about styles, weight, size, etc. It's about matching your energy to the energy of the blade.

I could go on but I foresee a rambling rant that's entire point was made early on. So...

imo it was both the adventures and the material that made it the ship of theseus (which includes the adventures OF THE material as well as all the individual adventures of every crewman) and i dont know that i can articulate that in any more precise a manner than the above but i will try

first i have to say that i do not believe that we are in the position to be 100% certain of much of anything when it comes to conclusions about the ultimate nature of reality

and to conclude the ultimate nature of any particular object is akin to concluding the ultimate nature of reality itself i think

i think that the best science of our era tells us that perception has an ultimately biological foundation, and that this means that there are inherent and insumountable limitations to what our cognitive systems are capable of processing

it may be that those limitations are much further out than we might assume, but it might also be that they are not

to my way of thinking, theseus and the ship are the convenient labels we use to identify a very small part of a very large process, a part small enough that it can be acknolwedged as a cohesive history, which includes the purely physical material aspect of the object, but is not limited toit

at first we would say that this history is a simple matter of material construction - it is a physical object made of lumber and constructed in a deliberate way

but this is only something we do because of necessity and convenience

a larger perspective would be to begin with the understanding that to be genuine in any attempt to recognize any ultimate nature, we have to acknowledge the full scope of what our best understanding tells us is true of existence itself, which means we pretty much have to go back to the begining of time, the big bang, or the LET THERE BE LIGHT moment, or whatever origin you subscribe to

at first there was nothing, and at some point, some part of it became theseus and his ship. now its something elze

and so even if there is an inherent essence to a thing, in and of itself, that essence is a temporary result of events which have been unfolding since the begining, which will continue until its end, and of which we can only recognize a recent and relatively insignificant version

which we can only recognize because we can segment one small part of its evolution within the brackets of a specific process and specific timeline

this all creates a sort of identity that we can grasp - i.e. the trees were cut into lumber which was made into a ship which was given to theseus which sailed whatever seas and had whatever adventures, ect ect

and in this way the ship of theseus is not simply a material object, nor is it ONLY an idea -it is a HISTORY; material, mental, and existential

a BRACKETED history

the molecules and atoms of which that ship were formed existed long before the trees which were shaped to the lumber and will still exist when the sun has died and the earth is cold

so the idea that i am trying to express is that determining the ultimate essence of things is very likely beyond us

but even if it is not beyond us, since ultimate reality is not only spatial but also historical, this determination must be made with the full scope of all existential history AND FUTURE in mind

which means that it is definitely beyond ME

or, perhaps as others have said, the tao which can be spoken of is not the eternal tao