Essence and definition by abstraction

• Published in: Synthese (Dordrecht) Vol. 198; no. Suppl 8; pp. 2001 - 2017
• Main Author: Hale, Bob
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.04.2021; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Aristotle (384-322 BC); Definitions; Education; Epistemology; Hume, David (1711-1776); Identity; Knowledge; Locke, John (1632-1704); Logic; Mathematics; Metaphysics; Philosophy; Philosophy of Language; Philosophy of Science; Principles; S.I. : New Directions in the Epistemology of Modality; Theory; Truth; A priori knowledge; Definition; Abstraction; Essence
• ISSN: 0039-7857; 1573-0964
• DOI: 10.1007/s11229-018-1726-7

We may define words or concepts, and we may also, as Aristotle and others have thought, define the things for which words stand and of which concepts are concepts. Definitions of words or concepts may be explicit or implicit, and may seek to report preexisting synonymies, as Quine put it, but they may instead be wholly or partly stipulative. Definition by abstraction, of which Hume’s principle is a much discussed example, seek to define a term-forming operator, such as the number operator, by fixing the truth-conditions of identity-statements featuring terms formed by means of that operator. Such definitions are a species of implicit definition. They are typically at least partly stipulative. Definitions of things, or real definitions, are, by contrast, typically conceived as true or false statements about the nature or essence of their definienda, and so not stipulative. There thus appears to be an obvious and head-on clash between taking Hume’s principle as an implicit and at least partly stipultative definition of the number operator and taking it as a real definition, stating the nature or essence of cardinal numbers. This paper argues that this apparent tension can be resolved, and that resolving it sheds light on part of the epistemology or essence and necessity, showing how some of our knowledge of essence and necessity can be a priori.