Frank asked:

For the past few years I have been occupied with trying to determine whether a form has its own
unique essence. For example, I have tried to determine whether a geometric form, say a cube, has its
own particular essence without which it ceases to be a "cube." Here, I am not referring to "attributes,"
or "characteristics" of the form. Rather, I am trying to find out if FORM, any form (known or unknown),
has its own unique essence that is not the, or a form's attribute. If you should have any insight about
this, (a target reading list would be welcomed), please be in touch.

Thanks from the USA!

============

Philosophically this problem goes back a long way Frank, back at least as far as I know to Plato who
referred to it as the "one over many problem". The approach I take to this is generally a scientific one
so when we talk about 'essence' I'm asking the question what might 'essence' be. This problem has
commonly been termed the problem of universals, the essence in something (like cubes) being called
a 'universal'.

I think we could generally accept that no two things are literally (or numerically) identical, certainly not
at least in a spatio-temporal sense. Surely any objects a and b that are spatio-temporally identical
would be one and the same thing. Nevertheless, putting spatio-temporal continuity aside, within our
everyday language we describe certain things as being "identical with" other things. I suggest when
these words are uttered we are using identical in the weak or folk sense of the word. Consequently
we might say "almost identical with". Additionally the utterance "these objects have something in
common" can be heard, that "something" we often take to be the (weakly) identical property. And so
this applies also to properties and relations of the particular "some thing" in question. This leads
David Armstrong (a leading commentator in this area of philosophy) to say "Apparently, there can be
something identical in things which are not identical". (Universals and Scientific Realism1978) In your
example obviously this is 'cube-likeness'. We might have two cubes of different sizes or colours for
example but the fact that they are 'cubes' makes them somehow identical, certainly in geometry.

Lets look briefly at both sides of this argument:

The Realist Stance

Armstrong is a realist about universals although he tends to avoid the word 'essence' (it seems to
conjure up metaphysical questions and Armstrong takes a scientific approach). Armstrong says these
things ('cube-likeness' or 'redness' in the case of red objects for example) are really there in the
world. His view is that sameness of type is a Moorean fact. The philosopher G.E. Moore gave the
example of his having two hands being an undeniable fact, "we can argue about the philosophical
account which ought to be given of material object...but not whether one should deny that there are
such things".

Consider the following statement:

a and b have the same property (are of the same type) F.

The realist about universals wants to say there is such an entity F. F or F-ness is the essence or the
"universal" contained in both a and b. However it seems clear (to me at least) that to commit to the
existence of F in the above sentence means our best scientific theories must confirm as true the
existence of F.

The Nominalist Stance

W.V.O. Quine has perhaps most famously been charged with being a Nominalist. This is essentially
the opposing view to the realist view, the view that there doesn't really exist anything like 'essence' at
all. It has been generally thought that Quine rejects the notion that we need to postulate such an
abstract entity as a universal or 'the essence' in like kind objects. I don't think the general view about
Quine here is quite correct.

Quine's most famous paper on this topic is called "On What There Is" (1951). Early in this paper
Quine criticises usage of the word "exists". Some things are simply not spatio-temporal kinds of
things, for example the square root of 567 is 24, a square root of 567 then exists, it is 24 but it does
not exist in a spatio-temporal sense. The ontological acceptance of these types of things Quine
suggests is in principle similar to our acceptance of a scientific theory. This follows from Quine's
naturalism. The things we take to exist are defined within a simple conceptual scheme into which the
fragments and experiences of the theory can be fitted and arranged.

Interestingly Quine doesn't consider himself a nominalist. The commitment for Quine isn't to the
actual existence of 'cube-likeness' or 'redness' but to what he terms the bound variable.There is
"something" that all cubes (or all roses, or all red houses, Quine's examples) have in common, but
only in so far as there are cubes and roses and red houses. It seems Quine withdraws to a semantic
or theoretical level. These are useful theoretical entities (universals or essences) within a conceptual
scheme (a theory) and as far as that goes we can tentatively accept them as existing, in the same
way as we can accept abstract mathematical entities such as prime numbers and square roots etc.

A famous exchange regarding these issues occurred between two Australian philosophers, and
Quine (Pacific Philosophical Quarterly61, 1980). Against Quine, the realists David Armstrong wrote
"Against Ostrich Nominalism", and Michael Devitt wrote "Ostrich Nominalism or Mirage Realism".
Quine replied with "Soft Impeachment Disowned". Quine said "I have argued that there is no blinking
these ontological assumptions; they are as integral to the physical theory that uses them as are the
atoms, electrons, the sticks for that matter, and the stones". Last year (2000) Rodriguez-Pereyra
published an article in Mindentitled "What is the Problem of Universals?" Rodriguez-Pereyra
represents some new direction. He looks at the truth values of sentences which postulate universals.
In 1989 Armstrong published a very good little book on the topic Universals: An Opinionated
Introductionthis would serve as a great bibliography.

Steve McKinlay