The Bare Essentials: A Skeptical Challenge to the Real/Nominal Dichotomy and Insensible

Essence

“Our idea of any individual man would be as far different from what it is now, as is his

who knows all the springs and wheels and other contrivances within of the famous clock at

Strasbourg, from that which a gazing countryman has for it, who . . . observes only some of the

outward appearances” (Ariew, 382). In discussing his epistemology in An Essay Concerning

Human Understanding, John Locke presents this metaphor in order to help make the distinction

between real and nominal essence more concrete in the mind of the reader. The importance of

this duality arises during Locke’s discussion of the limits of linguistic classification, and while

his conclusions in this realm of thought seem justified, the particular real/nominal distinction

seems puzzling. For Locke, there is a difference between the sense properties of a given

substance (its nominal essence) and that which causes us to experience said substance in the way

that we do (its real essence). Yet, under the prevailing paradigms of thought regarding the power

of scientific inquiry, such a dichotomy seems untenable. As humanity learns more about the

causal (or seemingly causal) relationships between forms, we become closer to discovering a

complete picture of the world that will enable us to explicate in detail what causes us to interact

with and perceive things the way that we do, and our language reflects that. What I shall argue is

that, by applying mild pressure to the concept, it’s possible to make nominal essence converge to

real essence as a function of scientific progress. This will in turn allow his claims about our

arbitrary choice of categorization schemes to be generalized without exception.

Before we begin, it is important to note that this could very well be more of an

anachronism than anything else; scientific investigation in Locke’s time was far less mature than

it is now, and so the idea that laymen would eventually classify things based on their
fundamental make-up might have seemed absurd at the time. However, we now know that

science has (to the best of our knowledge) succeeded in finding actual substantial differences to

justify the categories that our language happens to pick out (e.g. DNA differences for species);

where it hasn’t, we have altered language to fit our advances in understanding.

With this in mind, it would be prudent to first discuss the details of Locke’s position. For

Locke, a substance’s nominal essence is nothing more than the collection of ideas which are

associated with a word when we invoke it. For instance, if I would label any feathered creature

capable of flight as a bird, then the properties of having feathers and having the power to fly

would constitute the nominal essence of birds. However, Locke doesn’t think that this category

is particularly special in any regard because it doesn’t necessarily pick out differences in real

essence. What Locke means by real essence is whatever metaphysical reality causes those

nominal properties to appear as they do. In this example, an exceedingly skilled biologist might

be able to identify the specific segments of DNA that all birds share, which include those that

cause the growth of feathers and the development of a certain shape of wing (which in turn

enables flight). While Locke seems to believe that real essence is insensible, (a problem that we

shall deal with later), this explanation would at least be closer to getting at the real essence of the

category ‘birds.’ Further, Locke thinks that in the case of simple ideas and substances, the two

notions are equivalent, (he uses the example of a triangle), because their properties are entirely

derivable from their properties, (e.g. one can figure out everything there is to know about a

triangle just by knowing that it has the property of being the area enclosed by three lines).

Conversely, he thinks that in complex ideas the two are always distinct because the foundation of

a complex idea’s properties aren’t inextricably conjoined with its attributes (i.e. knowing that a

chicken is a bird doesn’t allow us to know how it behaves, what color feathers it has, etc.).
 These distinctions are meaningful to Locke because he believes that language tends to

identify things by their nominal essence, but that it’s impossible to know if those categories

actually pick out meaningful differences in real essence. Thus, he concludes that our words are

more of a reflection on the way our mind works, and less of an objective undisputable way of

segregating things. However, if one accepts that differences in real essence must at least

correspond to differences in observable properties, (an assumption that will be justified later),

then one must also accept that a complete explanation of all observable properties (of all

substances) must provide a guide to the supposedly inaccessible world of real essence. Suppose,

for the sake of the argument, that science had reached its theoretical conclusion and we had such

a complete picture. Then, we could physically describe why yellow things appear yellow, and

red things appear red. Now consider two objects that are otherwise identical except for their

color. According to Locke’s own words, these two entities must have different real essences

(qua object) because they realize different properties. What Locke will not concede, though, is

that the variability in real essence is as simple as it is in the nominal case, (i.e. perhaps our red

object and our yellow object are wildly different in the real sense), but this ultimately does not

matter because we now have access to real essence. At this point, we may conceive of science as

pushing our understanding of the nominal essence of things towards the state where we can at

least talk (even if Locke believes it will be in an indirect way) about differences in real essence.

In this manner, scientific investigation is capable of eliminating the real/nominal distinction

because, as definitions evolve with further understanding, the sensible properties we identify as

necessary to a kind get closer and closer to providing a full explanation of all sensible properties

a kind has. From here, whether or not our particular scheme segregates the ‘real’ world in a way
that makes sense is irrelevant, because we may apply all of Locke’s arguments against natural

kinds in the realm of the real anyways.

There is one minor, albeit unavoidable, weakness to this program. Namely, we need to

know that science is actually capable of achieving that complete picture of the world, because

without completeness, a skeptic might always defer the question one layer deeper and ask about

the real essence of whatever entities we used to describe things (e.g. ask about the real essence of

the atoms that make up the gold, and then of the fermions and bosons, ad infinitum). To address

this concern, we might just appeal to Locke’s empiricism and claim that it seems consistent with

Locke’s world view that observable things are in principle fully describable from within our

experience.

The first objection that must be considered is that this is simply a misreading of Locke.

Proponents of Locke might defend the interpretation whereby real essence is, by definition,

something that is inaccessible to our senses. In fact, Locke even says “the real essence is the

constitution of the insensible parts of that body, on which those qualities and all the other

properties . . . depend” (382). There are three responses to this view; first, one might retreat to

Berkeley’s arguments against the material substratum; second, one might appeal to simplicity

and say that if science is capable of providing an internally complete and consistent picture of the

world, then it’s needlessly mysterious to posit the existence of extra-material substance; and last,

one might just resist the part of the view that is problematic to our specific mission whereby two

different real essences are able to cause a single nominal essence (e.g. two boxes that are literally

indistinguishable by humans and human technology, but that are still said to be different in the

‘real’ sense). In this final case, real essence is a useless notion because it then is an idea that we

must have that can have no ground in experience (which goes directly against Locke’s
empiricism). Indeed, given the progress and predictive success that scientific investigation has

yielded, it appears (at least prima facie) archaic to hold the position that there exists something

beyond the reach of our five senses (that is also capable of causing sensible properties). At any

rate, Locke denounces this particular possibility explicitly: “For if two abstract complex ideas

differ either in number or sorts of their component parts, they make two different, and not one

and the same essence” (385). Thus, we can dispense with this objection and conclude that Locke

must be talking about a real essence that, at least in principle, corresponds to differences that are

accessible to our senses.

The second obvious criticism of this position is that, in general, use of a semantic notion

does not necessarily entail use of the corresponding scientific notion. For example, a chef might

refer to a tomato as a vegetable because it is the edible part of a plant, whereas a scientist,

(whose classificatory system does a better job of explaining the sense properties of its members

than a culinary one), would identify the tomato as a fruit. If we allow for inconsistencies like

this, a supporter of Locke might be able to maintain that nominal essence is something akin to

the chef’s abstraction scheme (which is subject to change based on his further experience) while

real essence is analogous to the scientific ideal. Once again, there are two ways of dealing with

this. One way is to resist this interpretation of Locke is simply to cite Locke’s own reluctance to

engage in this sort of linguistic relativism: “For though men may make what complex ideas they

please . . . they must in some degree conform their ideas to the things they would speak of; or

else men’s language will be like that of Babel” (385). Since this alone is hardly satisfying as a

response, (and it is easy to imagine a case where two individuals have different notions of the

same word), one might allow for a person to be wrong about, or ignorant of their own linguistic

notions. For example, our chef likely intends to use the terms ‘tomato,’ ‘vegetable,’ and ‘fruit’
in the same way as others (i.e. he would not want their definitions to be functions of his personal

experience) and therefore wants to appeal to some objective qualities which will make these

terms distinct and precise. In our case, he might reflect upon his definition, (a vegetable is the

edible part of a plant), and realize that apples and berries also are edible parts of things he

considers plants, understanding that he must revise his idea of a vegetable or consider these

things vegetables. What one can conclude from this is that we all aim towards an exact way of

categorization (which science currently claims to offer), and can then dispose of the relativistic

worry.

Ultimately, this means that Locke’s denial of the existence of naturally existing kinds at

the nominal level must generalize to the level of real essence. While this is certainly consistent

with Locke’s world view, it does have some interesting implications. First, this means that

believing in immaterial essence is entirely irrational, (anticipating Berkeley). Although we

began this argument with a similar suspicion, all that was needed to collapse the two notions of

essence was the fact that differences in nominal essence must correspond to differences in real

essence. Once we were able to ground essence in the sensible world, any proposed substratum

would serve literally no purpose. Finally, it raises a concern that perhaps language is entirely a

social construct, and so any effort to establish a perfectly unambiguous one is doomed to fail.

Since we have basically reached an anti-essentialist position, the only remaining explanation for

linguistic development and variety must appeal to shared perception and experience amongst

users of the language. However, the conclusion we reached is that there is no preferred system

of categorization, and thus, because social constraints aren’t perfect, we have that even members

of the same community will always be able to use words in different, equally valid ways.