Essentialism and Evolution
Posted by daydreamer at 12:25, 05 Jul 2010Pilfered from Wiki:
An essence characterizes a substance or a form, in the sense of the Forms or Ideas in Platonic idealism. It is permanent, unalterable, and eternal; and present in every possible world.
I have seen it said that we are all innately essentialist. A quick look inside myself throws up the possibility that this is tied to the 'I Am' occurring in my head describing me as a fixed entity in space and time and that from this instinctive feeling comes, once written down and discussed and re-written down, philosophical Essentialism.
Evolution seriously complicates this though.
Picking the example from the book that points this out:
Platonic Essentialism states that there is such a thing as a Rabbit, but goes further, there is a perfect Rabbit from which all other Rabbits derive their form. Rabbits are a shadow of the Perfect Rabbit, just like a triangle drawn on paper is a representation of the perfect triangle that exists only in mathematics (and can be approximated, but never perfectly, in the real world). Those Greeks sure loved their geometry hay!
So we have this concept that Rabbits exist somewhere else as well as here, and that Rabbits here reflect the Rabbits elsewhere. Or for humans; that a human here is some sort of shadow or reflection of a human 'idea' existence elsewhere.
Here is where evolution changes things though.
A Rabbit as seen today is not a rabbit from the past, or how rabbits will be in the future. The concept of a rabbit as seen today actually represents a statistical distribution of Rabbits. So we might study all Rabbits and graph their features. We would produce a bell shaped curve, where the peak is the quintessential Rabbit, the very essence of Rabbitness. Drawing a line down through the middle of the bell curve would give us the modern concept of Rabbitness. If we were to measure the Rabbit population for a million years though we would see its features shift across the graph and 'Rabbitness' would be lost. Our line down the middle of the graph is artificial.
Many people are now fine with this idea, but it sort of puts a spanner in the works for essentialism.
Some modern ideas that parallel Plato's realm of ideas involve ideas like a sea of consciousness from which we come, and eventually return to (and some just call it God), which isn't entirely essentialist I give you, but the notion that the defining charateristics of any species exist outside of the species (such as in a soul) has essentialist qualities.
I find this whole thing very interesting. Would a human soul stuck in an ant be human? Or do we just flat give up on strict essentialism? (for the soul?) - and is this as important as it seems given how innate it feels (especially in our younger years)?
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Comments
28 June 2006
16 hours 28 min
Daydreamer,
Used to be fun in parlor discussions. In their own way, both Hegel and Kant pick up on it. For Hegel, it was essence and existence. For Kant, it was neumenon and Phenomenon. For Aristotle, it was poppy-cock. Aristotle, Plato's most famous student, rejected many of his teachings.
Would an ant's soul stuck in a human be an ant? From a rational perspective, these questions are difficult to answer; but, they are fun to play with. Personally, I agree with Aristotle about this, which is rare for me. Except in certain areas of biology and physiology, I usually don't agree with Aristotle.
The movie "Avitar" can help people visualize this idea.
What do you think?
cnnek
{You Can Teach People How To Think Critically Or What To Think; But, You Can't Do Both! It Is Better To Teach People How To Think Critically!!!}
12 April 2007
4 min 33 sec
There is no such thing as a perfect rabbit, just as there is no such thing as a perfect human.
There might be a concept akin to the ideal of the perfect human, but I think different people would have as many different opinions on what exactly is that makes us human.
But in the end, what is the ultimate essence of beings? maybe simply... that they are :)
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
21 February 2009
2 days 17 hours
I guess we're back onto the subject of behavior and the soul.
This is what interests me with this. Splitting down the middle so we have our physical and mental sides (i am not certain whether that is true, but splitting between the material and consciousness is not an uncommon theme) we are left with the question - what does the soul represent?
The cultural information appearing at my ears has imbued me with a sense that my soul is human and that at death I will take certain qualities and experiences of my humanity with me. But evolution makes it seem like we are drawing an arbitrary line down our physicalness and calling that human, whereas the whole point about evolution is that this is a false view, we are changing every generation.
So rather than me having a 'human' soul I must surely just have a 'soul' that is somewhat more independent of my 'human-ness'. Given that human-ness is not a constant.
Now this is fine by me, and fits in with many other belief systems. It doesn't seem to fit with some of the major ones though and it seems to me that this is a good example of a material science affecting the philosophy underlying the theology and I like examples of those since philosophy can wall itself off, which I believe to be a generally poor way to conduct philosophy.
12 April 2007
4 min 33 sec
Like you said, this pairs nicely with the Eastern philosophies advocating for reincarnations and all that wheel of life gig. So who knows how many times I was squashed as a bug before someone deemed I was ready to begin the 'human' course.
...Damn, life as a bug seems way easier! ;)
I think we can all agree that life is transient and in a constant state of flux. Perhaps that's the same for that funky kind of energy some folks call the "soul".
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
21 February 2009
2 days 17 hours
I can go along with that.
Perhaps we can define a strong essentialism of the type embodied in something like born again christianity; where we have a human soul, created now, and it is perfectly human, created fully and equally by God.
Weak essentialism might drop many qualities of this more strict soul while keeping other qualities (just some essential characteristics), the problem bring that then maybe not all are equal - just like biology is not equal. I suspect ideology will prevent many from considering this.
It will get very complicated as the easy problem of consciousness is progressed, making it look more and more like to keep the basic essentialist ingredients we need to have them emerging or being picked up by neural complexity.
Given the output of souls in different creatures perhaps it is necessary to drop the idea of essential characteristics in the soul. I.e is the output of the soul related to the limitations of the biology, or can the soul exceed the biology? Looking at the natural world we surely see a mass of evidence of biology dictating action. And what of explanations of sociopathology and psychopathology in terms of biology, are essentialist qualities of the soul getting through - or is it far more complicated than traditions have so far been able to imagine and encompass?