universals and humanness
Assuming that I am human, and my peers are human as well, then it follows that we share something in common. We all seem to share in common the property (humanness), just as a lemon would share the property yellowness with another lemon. But let us look closer at the relationship between lemons for a second. Provided of course that the lemons in question are good and ripe they will have said commonality. So then, this lemon and that lemon are yellow. The shirt in my closet is yellow; as are the little sticky pads I have on my desk. All these objects are equal, in that they are equally yellow (they may be different shades, but this makes no difference as they are still shades of yellow). If we are to agree that provided one thing is in common to another thing, then it cannot be the case that in the same respect to which these things are in common they can also be different. So as far as yellow is concerned, these things are not different from one another. Yet at the same time we see these things as individual things and as such they must be different from one another. We're left with individual things that cannot be equal to one another. So what of the equality that we know to be there? The equality of yellowness must be distinct
We are left then, with transcendence or immanence in regards to the nature of universals. A good place to begin here is with what gives me the most trouble- transcendence. First of all, it seems that there is a problem of clarity here. I am human, Bob is human and we have this thing (humanness) in common. Ultimately, we are left with this thing floating around out there in some mystical wonderland. So how is it that this thing, which is distinct in every possible way, can be known in any useful way? Great, there's humanness floating around out there, but it gives no explanation of what it is. If we have something that is red, and we have another thing that is red, we would say that they have redness in common, but what is redness? It makes matters less intelligible rather than more so, this independent redness. This other would be considered a universal, and if we take the analogy to be a good one, then humanness would have to be a universal as well. For I am a human, just as Helder is, and we share in the commonality humanness. But remember in said analogy I had granted that two lemons, so long as they were both ripe, would share the universal- yellowness. If it were the case that one lemon was quite rotten, then the two lemons probably wouldn't have this commonality. So then would there be a situation in which two humans wouldn't share in humanness? Consider a baby born sans a functioning brain. So long as we are speaking of the offspring of the human reproductive cells, or even chemistry (what I will refer to as a baby), then yes, this baby is a human. It could be a deformed baby, a premature baby, or a Siamese twin baby, doesn't matter. It would still be a human. Let's move to the other end of the spectrum, old age. Does it matter that an extremely elderly person losses all control of his faculties, no. This being is still a human. Such a being may not have the ability to enjoy the faculties, which one time brought so much joy to life, but that's a question of quality rather than humanness itself. All ethical considerations aside, I really can only think of death as being a situation in which humanness ceases to be of a particular being. One might object and say that after a human dies, he's still human; it's just that he's a dead human. But consider this: if a man/woman were to die, one could say that he/she was a good man/woman, thus implying that he/she is no longer a man/woman. Now, man and woman exhaust the list of things human when speaking of the categories, so if something is not a man or woman anymore, then it is reasonable to conclude that the being in question is no longer human. On the grounds of this one could assume that the universal humanness always accompanies human babies at least from birth onward until
Some common words found in the essay are:
, red red, universals altogether, transcendent universals, red share redness, form redness copied, share redness gained, hand physical, assume human, roommate's hand, yellowness lemon, form redness, redness gained, universals contained,
Approximate Word count = 1854
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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