This is correct and well stated, but I'm afraid will be lost on those who have not even progressed to understanding the difference between percepts and concepts. How sad.
Odd, isn't it? What you stated seems so obvious, yet most philosophers, and virtually all theologians are completely incapable of understanding it. No metaphysics and no epistemology can be correct that incorporates this "universal essence" error. It is difficult to believe that this error, so easily and correctly dismissed by Ayn Rand, should be so vehemently defended and embraced by so many who seem otherwise intelligent enough to understand their error. However, there is a reason for it. Care to guess what it is?
Hank
"If men are to be saved, the enemy is reason." -- Ayn Rand
Oh, cut it out. This is FR, what did you expect?
For me it runs even deeper than this. I have had discussions on this very board where individuals who are clearly well educated and should know better will make this error, and when it is pointed out, "This is reification, for this reason, therefore this is wrong go try again." Just say, 'No it isn't' and go on to make the exact same error all over again. It seems to me that until one truly sees what reification is, it is nearly invisible and impossible to see. Once seen clearly, it is never (well, rarely) mistaken again.
However, there is a reason for it. Care to guess what it is?
Oh sure, if admitted the whole game goes out the window. If there are no reified forms or 'essence' that is prior to existence then these cannot have existed in the "Mind of God" prior to His creating them. (I named thee before thy mother conceived thee) Furthermore ID becomes impossible without this reification, since species must have existed in the Mind of God before He could have created them, or He wouldn't have known what to create. The Design of the Designer.
This exposes the fallacy of this line of thinking. Go back little more than a century, when people were trying to figure out the 'medium' that light traveled through, and postulated the 'ether.' Now, if all concepts are reified, then they all exist as accurate representations in the Mind of God first. The 'ether' was an erroneous concept, so God must have had an 'intentionally' erroneous concept in His mind, for men to first entertain in error, before coming to 'The Truth.'
The 'ether' too abstract?
Since the beginning of history 'Leviathan', the whale, was thought to be a 'great fish.' It was only recently, with the advent of science, that we came to realize that whales were in fact mammals. Now, if all concepts of species were perfectly represented in the Mind of God, only to accessed by men as needed, such an error would never take place, since the 'Idealized Form' would not be a creation of man but a creation of God, who cannot commit error. The fact of correcting incorrect concepts proves they have no 'metaphysical' existence but are the products of the human mind.
Where was the essence of the T Rex prior to 1850 or so, when it was first discovered? Hiding in the Mind of God to lead man to eventual evolutionary error? Or of the other dynosaurs? How about the 'essence' of the concept of the atomic explosion? Seen from this point of view there is nothing that human beings create that was not first thought of and created in 'essence' or Platonic Form or Formal Cause by God first. This is equally true of stem cell research as it is of genetic engineering, cloning or RU-486. So whence comes the objection to what God has already created? Where were 'black holes' prior to Einstein? Where were 'quarks' prior to atom smashers? The whole of human history is replete with discarded concepts that prove they cannot be such reified, idealized forms.
so easily and correctly dismissed by Ayn Rand,
I saw a replay of an early Phil Donahue where he had Rand on. Some lady from the audience was berating her, how she used to believe Rand then went to college and learned this and that and blah, blah, blah . . . . And about then Rand cut her off, said she would answer the question if someone else asked it without the woman's implied insult. The audience, and myself, were mystified. Phil just moved on.
I puzzled over this for days, then the light went on, I saw what she had done. Rand had a superior,(i would say intuitive - if it weren't a contradiction in terms) ability to instantly take a statement, analyze it for content, determine if it was premise or conclusion, and if conclusion, trace back the logic chain and identify the premises. She identified the insult in the premise of the woman's statement. I have seen and read much since then and have always marveled at this ability. This rejection of reification is a primary example of it. Either the logic chain or the premise is faulty. And for those who have an ideology that, by definition takes place prior to existence this fallacy is inherent in the premise, and usually emobodied in the logic chain somewhere as well.
This thread is based upon Decartes' "I think, therefore I am" which came from his ruminations of the 'demon box.' It was always obvious to me that if we take all his givens as true, it raises more questions than it answers prior to his conclusion 'Cogito ergo sum.'
Why is the 'demon' a demon? If the 'demon' is all there is, then that demon is, for all intents and purposes God, since there is no other. If the 'demon' is truly a demon, this implies in contrast to God; so where is God in this scenario? Did God create the demon? Why, to deceive Descartes? Who created the 'box?' The demon or God? Who created the man, the demon or God? Why is the demon deceiving the man and why is God permitting it?
I could go on all day, the stolen concepts in the construction abound. Abandon these stolen concepts and the fact that he had Descartes before dehorse is obvious, he must exist to think, not exist because he thinks. This leads back to the subject, Decartes reified thought and based existence upon that reification. This is self-contradictory since thought must 'exist' prior to existence. If we correct the error: I am, therefore exist to I think.
One final point, to quote from the article:
Descartes finds that he has no trouble doubting the existence of real objects/events - our senses too easily deceive us.
See all the begged questions here? How does he know what his senses are? How does he know his senses deceive him unless he already knows they exist? How does he know what deception is, if he cannot first know truth, what is not deception, if he cannot be sure everything is not deception? If all is deception then how does he know that 'deception' is, in fact, not a deception? If he presupposes the existence of 'deception' then has this not proved 'existence' without going through the rest of the rigamaroll?
Rand cut through all this with the simple Axiom, for there to be anything existing that perceives anything, there must be existence first. But then, you know this already.
There isn't? But your sentence assumes that I understand what you mean by the word, "cat," a term which refers in essence to "a small carnivorous mammal (Felis catus or F. domesticus) domesticated since early times as a catcher of rats and mice and as a pet and existing in several distinctive breeds and varieties." Definition implies logical species or nature or essence.