Where does essence collide?

The set of properties a thing must have to be the kind of thing it is, its essential nature as opposed to its accidental features: a triangle is essentially three-sided but only accidentally drawn in ink. This is Aristotle's to ti en einai, the what-it-is-to-be of a thing, and Locke's real essence beneath the nominal names we give kinds; Fine's 1994 Essence and Modality argued that a thing's essence is prior to and not reducible to what is merely necessarily true of it. The referent is a claim in metaphysics about how a thing really is, a truth about a thing's identity, and it is not a belief people happen to hold nor a bottled plant extract.[1]

Unit

The defining properties without which a thing would not be that thing

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Argued for by definition, thought experiment, and analysis of what a thing could and could not lose while remaining itself

The everyday, often unspoken assumption that members of a category share a deep, unchanging, unseen inner nature that makes them what they are and causes their observable features: children treat a tiger as a tiger because of something inside it, not because of its stripes. Medin and Ortony named this psychological essentialism in 1989, and Gelman's 2004 Psychological essentialism in children reviewed the evidence that it appears early and shapes how people reason about living kinds, gender, and race. The referent is a documented feature of human thought, a cognitive tendency that can mislead, and studying it makes no claim that essences are real; it is not the philosopher's metaphysical essence nor a concentrated aroma.[2]

Unit

A person's inferred belief that a category has an inner causal nature

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Probed in experiments using induction tasks, transformation and adoption scenarios, and judgements about inborn versus acquired traits