Anti-Essentialism

Over at Massimo’s place, co-blogger Julia Galef takes off on several tacks at the same time. While she winds up trying to convince us that religion –Christianity – loves pain and suffering, and that humility is stupid, both subjects for another post, along the way she sideswipes Essentialism, the idea that there exist “essences” that are sets containing the necessary characteristics for all the members that are to be contained in a group or set. This might seem to be a benign concept, but it is not, to the Atheist. To the Atheist it is a threat. Galef calls it the Fallacy of Essentialism.

Atheists are committed to the idea of non-exceptionalism of humans. The human is an animal just like the others and no more. If humans are exceptional in any way, the questions of why and how that came to be demand an answer. That is not a debate that Atheists wish to entertain. It is very necessary therefore, to kill any idea of human exceptionalism. One way this can be done is by attacking Essentialism: if there are no essences, then there can be no essence that sets humans apart. Both Massimo and Julia take that position. There are no essences, no possible way to distinguish or differentiate humans or living things or anything from anything else. There is no else. To think that there are essences that can result in classification is a fallacy, or so Galef claims.

How is it, then, that the entire fundament of biology has been categorization and classification? Are there no essences that distinguish one genus from another, or genus from species, or even living thing from not living thing? Evolutionists now claim that all animals are the same, deriving from the same source. At least, the species are not stable; they are evolving. That still denies the obvious: is there no characteristic that differentiates a lioness from a male lion? Is there no difference between living things and dead things? Living things and minerals? Livers and Lungs? Blood and urine?

The following article addresses just that, and it was written earlier.

Essence of Life

I have written before about the essential denials that are required in order to support the Philosophical Materialist pose. One of the most interesting has been the denial of the existence of any differentiation between living things and non-living things, such as Massimo Pigliucci’s statement that he could see no life essence, unless it was DNA. Pigliucci is trained in biology and now is officially a philosopher since being transferred into a teaching position in the philosophy department.

Biologists have long been able to tell living things apart from mere minerals. It is their specialty, in fact, the study of living things. So certainly there must be a metric for determining if something is alive, dead, or is not capable of life. And of course there is. It is likely that every biology book informs students of something like this:

Life, n.: that property of plants and animals which makes it possible for them to take in food, get energy from it, grow, adapt themselves to their surroundings, and reproduce their kind: it is the quality that distinguishes a living animal or plant from inorganic matter or a dead organism.
Webster’s Unabridged.

Probably every 5th grader knows that. So why does the biologist – philosopher feel constrained to deny it? Or to reduce it to an absurdity?

There is a very good reason for a Philosophical Materialist to deny that life has an essence, a differentiating quality that sets it apart from mere matter. The problem is that life, its very essence, is not quantifiable materially. Life has qualities, such as those in the definitions above, but life, as an entity contained within a material entity, cannot be weighed, or measured in any way; it has no quantities. In fact, like truth, it is binary: it exists or it does not exist. A living thing possesses something at its core that is not material. And that non-material something differentiates living things from non-living things.

Obviously this is a fatal admission for Philosophical Materialism. Therefore life cannot exist as a differentiable quality from mere matter, if the doctrine of materialism is to be preserved.

This shows as clearly as possible the nature of the intellectual industry of today. Many pretenders to the title of Intellectual are sullied by their strict adherence to Atheo-materialist cant, a doctrine that comes first and foremost, an axiom and presupposition, with observable facts being either fit to the doctrine or denied outright.

The problem of life has further repercussions. Life, as a non-material entity, produces other qualities, especially in humans. These include sentience, conscious thought, agency, abstract design, intellect and the ability to communicate real and abstract concepts - all things that differentiate life from non-life, all things that are not predictable from the existence of mere matter, all things that refute the pure materialism doctrine.

So these things, life, sentience, conscious thought, agency, intellect, abstraction, these all must be “explained” within materialist parameters, or else denied as delusions or illusions. Denial is the easy way out, obviously.

Here is the harder problem for Philosophical Materialism: What is the source of this non-material entity, life? Some evolutionary biologists, in unguarded moments, claim that all life comes from prior life – an undeniable statement – that is intended to prove materialist evolution if one presupposes a magical First Life jumping into being. But that transfers the issue to a single instance, where a material, non-living entity somehow acquires this non-material quality, a quality not previously existing or predictable from material things. And this violates the universal laws of the material universe, cause and effect, and entropy.

Materialist/Evolutionists escape this issue by running away: they do not accept First Life as an issue for evolution; evolution starts after first life. The bloody gash in logic is inescapable.

The Philosophical Materialist / Public Intellectuals are not deterred by logical defects. They proclaim possession of Critical Thinking, a method they never define, one that somehow bends itself around the defects and incorporates itself into the thought pattern required to salvage materialism. And most importantly it salvages Atheism. It is Atheism that gives the Public Intellectual his eliteness, his elevated ability to create a universe to his own liking, his ability to create his own truths that are not beholden to any actual Truth.

As Julien Benda pointed out in his book, The Treason of the Intellectuals, the Public Intellectual quit any stance of disinterested search for Truth over a century ago. They incorporated political stances of racism, eugenics and nationalism in the early 20th century. Now they incorporate Consequentialism, secular socialism, Humanism and anti-Semitism in their philosophies, rather than rational objectivism.

What they don’t address is this: What is the source of the non-material entity, life, which differentiates living things from non-living? That thing, life, is merely denied as even existing, despite all evidence to the contrary. If it cannot be explained in material terms, then it must be denied, no matter how silly that is. When living things deny their own life, they also deny their own rationality.

On the other hand, maybe he is right and the essence of Massimo really is just DNA and nothing else; that would explain a few things. And if Julia is right about humility being degrading, that would explain the lack of intellectual humility and its consequent, rational objectivity, exhibited by Public Intellectuals. This is for Julia:

"Pride grows on the human heart like lard on a pig."
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn