Essence: It's not there. You can't put a ribbon around it. You can't send it to your friend.
You can't say it's shared by all humans because you can't test all humans for it...or any human for that matter. But...you can name anything at all as the essence of something. It's a value judgment, except in the few cases where the word serves as a scientific term denoting a particular, measurable substance of condition of a substance. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: armandobaeza <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: armandobaeza <[email protected]> Sent: Thu, August 16, 2012 6:12:07 PM Subject: Re: Can art continue to exist without an aesthetic criteria? There is an "is-ness" as you call It, an essence to the recognition shared by all humans , and that recognition is by it's "essence' regardless of it's color shape/age/ or gender. Where am I wrong.? ab On Aug 16, 2012, at 2:56 PM, [email protected] wrote: > In a message dated 8/16/12 5:41:46 PM, [email protected] writes: > > >>> Here's a nice rule to settle certain disputes. "I stipulate if it's in >>> Webster's Third it's a word." >> >> What about "foopgoom"? >> >> I know you're aware that the point of my last was to lampoon those who > think by "stipulating" they can affect the ontic status of anything (except, > perhaps, the ontic status of the stipulation, the utterance). > > You may see ink on paper, but you've never seen a "word" in your life. Or > heard one. "Foopgoom!" Did you just hear a word? How would you tell? Run to > your little dictionary? The latest ones have lots of "new words". But they're > only sounds they've at last decided to call "words". What was their > "is-ness" before? > > You know about "is-ness" -- that fictitious "essence" thing that some > people believe makes an object not just what you call it, but what it "really > IS". Problem: "is-nesses" -- including "wordness" -- are mental inventions, > purely notional, like unicorns. And "souls". > > Did you ever wonder how some lucky sounds get to become "words", while > other sounds have to remain "sounds-second-class" until a bell rings? I'll tell > you. > > One summer in Switzerland, I found a thing in my room that I called a > 'foopgoom'. I thought it was so apt a label, I put my case to Plato and his > word-and-thing certification-committee way up there. In their meeting last > Thursday, they officially declared "foopgoom" to be a real word! And they made it > official by ringing a big bell they call the verbell! That Swiss object now > really IS a foopgoom! > > If your response is to say that that's a bad joke, my reply will be: > "ISN'T it!"
