Reddit reviews Real Essentialism (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. 11)

This may be well off of base, but you may want to start by looking at neo-Aristotelean accounts of real essences (something which would need to exist for any kind of teleology you are looking for). For example:https:

//www.amazon.com/Essentialism-Routledge-Studies-Contemporary-Philosophy/dp/041587212X

Here is a littler overview of teleological talk in modernbiology:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleology-biology/#nat

Well, it depends on what you want to study. If you want to go for religious experience, phenomenology, and epistemology, Yandell's "The Epistemology of Religious Experience", Otto's "The Idea of the Holy", James' "Varieties ...", and Alston's "Perceiving God" would be good.

For Medieval philosophy you really can't beat Aquinas. Since the SCG and ST are pretty hefty, it'd be good to start with Aristotle's metaphysica and physica (late late late edit: not just that, but read his works on souls as well as his other works). McKeon's "The Basic works of Aristotle" is an okay translation. There's a better one, but the name eludes me. After that, Aquinas' "On Being and Essence" is a must-read for metaphysics. Then either flip through the SCG or ST, or even better, find a companion for the two works (Peter Kreeft, Feser, and Sir A. Kenny are all decent). Beyond Aquinas, and a bit earlier than him, are Augustine and the Church fathers. I can't really say much on them because I'm not too familiar-- I fell in love with the Medieval philosopher-theologians before I converted, I didn't really pay much mind to those earlier than them in the Christian tradition. However, Augustine is usually the man I've heard recommended.

Beyond the books, philosophy papers between, say, Bergmann, Pruss, Almeida, et al. are wonderful. Almeida's "On Vague Eschatology", "A New Cosmological Argument Undone" (in response to Pruss), Almeida's refutation of Rowe's new evidentialist argument from evil, and his reply to Alston's skeptical theist response to Rowe's new evidentialist argument. Usually these will be followed by a response, and counter-response, etc.

For Oderberg, and in general for the Neo-Aristotelians, Tahko's collection of essays by varying neo-Aristotelians in "Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics", Oderberg's "Whatever is Changing...", and Oderberg's "Real Essentialism" are not explicitly Christian or related to the philosophy of religion (except the second, that is explicitly about the First Way of St. Thomas Aquinas) but implicitly related via the essentialists (particularly the Aristotelians) in the Christian tradition.

edit: Question for you: Which works of Plantinga? Also, by Zacharias, you mean Ravi Zacharias? I've never read much on him but I've heard he's okay. What is your take on him?

>The terms are rarely properly defined, the points are rarely laid out concisely, and so on.

While this may be true of some particular examples, it's precisely the opposite for most of philosophy. It is layspeak where terms are rarely defined concisely. You can see an atheist here (PDF) examining Dawkins' argument, and trying to figure out what the hell Dawkins means by "complex", and then going on to conclude that the argument doesn't work and that Hume provided much better arguments against theism.

As for essence and existence, this is examined in minutia in multiple books, one recent important example being Real Essentialism by David Oderberg. He could be wrong, but I'd hardly call that "not-being-precise."

> Things are made of behaviors that are made of behaviors

Well this claim is disputable. One might simply reply that science only observes behaviors but has a blind spot on ontological reality. This was a criticism even Russel (and others) raised.

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>I am pointing out that substance and accidents is a terrible way to describe the world

Terrible why? It highlights the world in a very different way... which might not fit the narrow mechanistic vision we all try to fit everything now, but there is no reason to think such mechanistic view is true, in fact there are good reasons to think it's not correct. Thomas Nagel (not a religious guy at all) presents a good case in his book Mind and Cosmos 1


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>That distinction doesn't exist. There is no such thing a tree with a tendency to grow. The tendency of parts to grow and behave is the tree. The tree is the tendency, the behavior. Trees are the dynamic result of large scale movements that are the result of small scale movements. There are not separately substances and accidents - there is only one thing, not two. This dualistic idea is wrong because reality is mono. We do not have objects over here and properties of them over there. We do not have trees and their color, or the trees and their behavior separately.


Again you seem confused.
First I think it's pretty clear that the distinction between a table and a tree does exist, since tree grow, but tables are something that are necessarily imposed by humans on a tree.

You are trying to see some sort of dualism here which I am not describing, but definitively that "things = behavior" is a doubtful one. This in fact already breakdown if you think of animals and humans - unless you go the "Dennett route" thinking consciousness is just illusion (and that raises a whole lot more problems)
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>That is why gold as a "collection of particles" is a substance, but gold nuggets isn't.

This is my mistake, I meant a "pile of nuggets" or something imposed on gold

>Again, I think this is a false distinction. If I gave you a chunk of metal, you couldn't cut down a tree with it. The axe's arrangement and the chunk's arrangement are very similar, and so they behave similar, but the axe has some causal powers that a chunk does not, and giving it a wood handle changes those further. An axe is composed of its parts, but it also does not behave as its individual bits would behave. Any unique arrangement of matter has unique causal powers.

We can agree on the last point you make but the difference is that again an axe structure is imposed externally on the substances.

The "behavior" to be an axe, is not something that exists in metal and wood itself, but something that is imposed on them and that's the difference.

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>Arrangements are a convenient way of talking, but really nothing about that axe is holding still in a static position - the axe is a dance steel, and the steel is a dance of many different elements, that are dances, all the way down. Get enough steel in one place and hot enough, and it will glow and churn and produce a magnetic dynamo and continental plates on its surface. That is a very different set of causal powers of the axe, and yet they are made of the same steel. Get it hot enough, and it fuses into heavier elements. The macroscopic arrangment of things can force changes at smaller levels.

Yes arrangements are a conveninet way of talking, ans substance theory does not deny that.

And yes, again no disagreement here, the axe has many causal powers beyond that of an axe imposed purpose.. .and such causal powers derive from the powers of the substances the axe is made of.
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>Don't confuse the map for the terrain. Our mathematical constructs of fields is an attempt to describe reality, but it is reality that is real, of course. That said, quantum field theory is a really close fit. A field is just something that can have a wiggle in it. We know there are wiggles, so we give it a field to wiggle in, but we aren't sure if it is even made of anything. Every thing you consider to be stationary and solid is a dance of dances of dances of wiggles.

Well technically a "field" is a mathematical idea.
A field is any set of elements that satisfies the field axioms for both addition and multiplication and is a commutative division algebra.

A field is called such because centuries ago gravity and electromagnetism were described mathematically as vector fields and now they are still described as such (but not mere vector see, gravity for example is a tensor field).

The "field view" seems to reflect what we observe experimentally, but this does not mean necessarily it is ontologically true and more importantly there are some problems (e.g. the Cosmological constant prediction) that clearly indicate that the theory is missing something...


Right about 120 years ago scientists thought their physical view of the world was complete and done - they even told Max Planck he should not get into theoretical physics because there was nothing to do there - but boy they were wrong on so many levels.

I think it's important to realize mathematical descriptions might work even if they do not actually reflect ontological reality.

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In any case, we do not have to agree. If you want know more about substance theory and essentualism I'd recommend David S. Oderberg's "Real Essentialism"

In fact Oderberg can explain (and defend) this much better than I could ever do.

This is what you want.

Honestly, I'm not one hundred percent up to speed on more than the basics of essentialism, though David Oderberg seems to have no compunctions about accepting both evolution and essentialism in the later chapters of his book on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Essentialism-Routledge-Studies-Contemporary-Philosophy/dp/041587212X?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-d-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=041587212X

Then we have papers like this which seem to take the question right be the horns: https://www.academia.edu/23058295/Aristotelian_Essentialism_Essence_in_the_Age_of_Evolution

As human beings, yes they absolutely do. The key word in my post you may have overlooked is ontological - the mode of being. A human being is by their nature a rational animal. It is just that in the case of an infant, their full reasoning abilities isn't developed, or in the case of a disabled person, they have some sort of privation of their intellectual abilities (though I'd argue the vast majority of "disabled" people still have abstract thinking and ability to reason).

This is a philosophical view known as essentialism which is still very relevant well defended, particularly in this excellent book Real Essentialism by philosopher David Oderberg.