The other day, my discussion with Oscar about vague essential properties (see the Comments section to his "RG Modality"-post turned into a nice beer-fuelled evening of talk, laughter and goodnatured name-calling. The topic soon expanded to the venerable question whether there are essential properties at all, with a bunch of people split quite nicely over the issue. Oscar was joined by Manolo M. on the "of course there are" front, while I was joined by Sanna on the side that was soon called "the Postmodernists", which I still find very amusing. Jose C., Pepe and Guido took up various positions in the middle, and off we were.
I won't try to record the whole thing, but here's a taste of the strange arguments that were produced (that's the nice thing about writing a post, by the time the others get to quote the strange arguments you yourself came up with after your third beer, they're already in the relatively obscure Comments section...):
In the case of the discussion whether Pluto and Sedna (or how that thing was called) were planets, what was at stake was to find a definition that captures the essential property "to be a planet". That is to say, either it was (at that time) objectively false to call Pluto a planet five years ago, or it is objectively false to deny that Pluto is a planet today.
If you find that bizarre, it might be because you're a postmodernist as well, or, as Oscar later suggested, a postmodalist.
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2 comments:
As I understand this, both Oscar and Sanna agree that it is not an essential property of Mars that it is a planet (de re), but Sanna points out that this is compatible with Mars being essentially a planet (de dicto). Am I understanding this right?
Oscar's recent 1 only supports the de re claim, does not go against the de dicto one, which might accout for 2.
As to 3, I found the "destroying" intuitions potentially misleading: do you destroy the Golden Bachelor when you marry him? Well: in virtue of marrying, he is no longer the Golden Bachelor, the Golden Bachelor no longer exists!
I took Sanna to be making a similar point wrt Mars: if the object that actually is Mars cease to fall under 'is a planet,' it would thereby cease to be Mars.
(One consequence would be, of course, if one grants the de re claim, that Mars is only contingently Mars. Which is not to say that it is not neceesarily self-indetical!)
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