Essentialism (aka the idiocy of Nominalism)
Essentialism is the philosophy that states that essential characteristics of a thing can be separated from its accidents. What is an accident? It’s not just when you have a car wreck. In metaphysics, an accident is a characteristic of an entity that is not essential to its nature.
For example: I have two trees. They both have roots. They both have a main trunk. they both have branches. They both have leaves of some sort. The one on the left however is generally triangular in shape. It’s leaves stay green all year long and are very thin, hard and sharp. You can guess it is some sort of evergreen tree - pine for example. On the right is a tree that is generally broccoli shaped and has broad flat leaves that are not sharp and change colors and fall off in the fall. It is a deciduous tree - a maple for example.
It should be obvious what the essential characteristics of these trees are, and what the accidents are. The essential characteristic - the things that make them trees - are the trunk, the roots, the branches, the fact that they have some leaves of some sort. If any of these were missing in either case, we would not have a tree. We would have something untreeish. If there was a green shortish stalk that didn’t have any branches, but instead had petals, we would have a flower not a tree. But the accidents - the things that are incidental and not germane to the principal - can change without changing the essence of treeness. A tree can have a triangular shape or a broccoli shape. Or it can have other odd shapes. It can be tall or short. It can be a conifer or deciduous. It can have needles or broad, flat leaves. But in any case, it has roots, a trunk and leaves of some kind. (more…)
The Truth War
I’m adding one more series to my plate here on this site. As you know I’ve taken a nose dive into the Cedarville conspiracy issue. I’ll give a brief history if for a wrap up. Cedarville has been in the midst of some philosophical controversy over the past 5-6 years, and as a result some Bible professors have been let go, for what has been cited as “violations of the faculty handbook”. These professors are some of the more “Conservative” professors at Cedarville. They stand for conservative hermeneutics. Because these conservative professors have been let go, and because certain other “Liberal” professors have not been let go, there has arisen a group of students, as personified in the Facebook group “Students who want the truth about the faculty exodus away from Cedarville,” who have jumped to the conclusion that Cedarville is intentionally trying to oust its conservative faculty to replace them with liberal faculty so that they can move away from such things as “Conservative Hermeneutics… Biblical Truth… Scriptural Authority… Her Baptist Roots…” Now there are a plethora of issues that surround this. I’ve tackled the logical error that is the assumption of what is going on – the conspiracy theory that has arisen. But now I’m going to get into some other areas of this.