Timocrates wrote:

Yes, you are really mostly fields of stuff, Shade. I do enjoy a debate with an electron cloud of mostly nothingness.

But if your gods in science say you are, then so be it and believe it.

Well that's more of a question of mereology and Reductionism isn't it?

iwpoe wrote:

DanielCC wrote:

As I touched on re Ellis' view, the 'arrangement' or 'configuration' of which you speak is itself an instance of a universal property and presumably one which its possessor has essentially (even if there will only be one instance of it in the natural course of things). As the OP pointed out, in his case as an objection, this would imply there would be as as many species as there are geneticaly differentiated individuals.

I am quite fine with this (animals being something like the manifestation of genetic forms), but one usually means something more robust by this when one speaks of 'species'. I'm concerned more as to whether 'cat' in the usual sense represents a determinate form shared by everything called cat which arose as a distinct and essential differentiation from evolutionary predecessors (and which may, or may not, depending on the account, be the only ligitimate source for future things rightly called 'cat). I clearly have no interest in denying living forms in some sense.

For the sake of the argument let's grant that 'cat' in the usual sense does not denote a shared form. Instead however we could still have shared forms in terms of shared genetic characteristics (genus rather than species) - there would be a vast number of these characteristic groups and they would not tally with our pre-biological understanding of species, however the essentialist would argue that this is just another example of the natural sciences uncovering the 'hidden structure' of things a la discovering the essential characteristic of Water being H2O despite our having been acquainted with that element for millennia.

Shade Tree Philosopher wrote:

with some provisos, under the right conditions: All those come from 'beyond' the material compoments - an escape-hatch physicalists and reductionists have been driving their trucks through since Epicurus' 'arrangement' and 'swerve'. I think the major proviso, however, is:

Keep in mind that I'm still not giving a physicalist reading. My level of skepticism is at the level of the biological species because that's the level (or at least a common sense version of that level) at which Aristotle and most classical thinkers operated. As far as I can tell Plato, Aristotle, Thomas, et al basically think that there is an "essence" or somthing like an essence corrisponding to most species names. Cow-essence, dog-essence, bass-essence, oak-essence, etc. With the Greek thinkers these species are in a perpetual cycle of eternal cyclical apperance and have no moment of origional arising. With the Christian thinkers they arose all at once upon God's creation. Neither fits neatly with the modern synthesis.

I'm sure some kind of essences apply in some respect to living things, I just don't know how and if it is to be integrated with an evolutionary account, since there is often thought to be some kind of issue with one essence giving rise to a completely distinct one I'm not sure how and if to apply it at the species level. I am, at the moment, resting on a thought akin to something like 'all "species" so-called are potentialities of some singular thing called life.'

Shade Tree Philosopher wrote:

There is no empirical evidence for such a strong claim. What we see is individual organisms produced from other organisms, and there is a variation, even an articulation, over the generations. dogs and cows have some common ancestor, one that is not the ancestor also of hermit crabs.

But everything ultimately on the present understanding has a single common ancestor. Perhaps there are stops that form subsequently that cut off progression of subsequent lines in certain directions: maybe crabs could never even in principle under any circumstances come to give rise to something like an oak tree. But the point is more that vast differences in form say between some fish-like thing a billion years ago and us do not preclude a generative transformation.

Shade Tree Philosopher wrote:

The natural history of life on earth is individual, just as its members are. And it's a mere speculation how, for example that humans could eventually generate plankton, and nobody has a clue what pressures could be put upon our population to do the thing. My impression (from Stephen Jay Gould) is that that natural history is unrepeatable.

As much as I love Gould, is this "impossibility" merely practical or in principle?

Shade Tree Philosopher wrote:

Pardon if I sound sharp. I had fires to put out mere weeks after joining.

You're fine. I've been on reddit and 4chan. My level for "feeling attacked" is well above anything I've ever experienced here.

Timocrates wrote:

Yes, it is necessary. Or if not, then play with a poisonous snake as if it were a domesticated dog, iwpoe. The difference is not merely appearance.

Eh, you get the right snake on the right day. -shrug-

Timocrates wrote:

Shade didn't offer the proposition that we are electrons as a question : "one usually thinks of a solid as made of a purely continuous stuff - but it's really mostly fields of force and electron clouds, by volume"

Which just begs the question, of course.

Did I say it that way? I shouldn't have said it that way.
How about this way: 'Solids really exist, and there is a what-it-is to be solid. I'm an Aristotelish-scholastianic dude. It's just not defined as we used to. Real solids are really more like a tinkertoy full of magnets, than a block of very smooth cheese.'

We can grasp that X exists while having only approximate or even wrong ideas about its detailed nature. Sure, there's cats - but maybe cat is not a philosophically correct, natural species, while mammal is, v. fish; or maybe not mammal but animal v. plant.

My position in this thread is 'what, me worry'. I have no worry that evolutionary theory somehow cuts into natural kinds, or essences, etc.

Chris-Kirk