Sentence examples for nominal essence from inspiring English sources

Scientific knowledge occurs when our nominal essence ideas match the real essences.

Properly understood, Downing argues, the distinction between real and nominal essence is a metaphysical distinction.

John Locke distinguished, in his Essay, "real essence" from "nominal essence".

A nominal essence, on the other hand, is an abstract idea that we make when we identify similar qualities shared by objects; the nominal essence is the idea of those shared similarities.

Some Locke scholars take this to imply that the real essence is always relativized to the nominal essence for Locke.

Locke calls such a general idea that picks out a sort, the nominal essence of that sort.

By his lights, both simple ideas and modes have real and nominal essences.

Thus in modes, we get the real and nominal essences combined.

And this fact is what all real and nominal essences have in common for Locke.

It is in this context that Locke makes the distinction between real and nominal essences noted above.

By contrast, the ideas that we use to make up our nominal essences come to us from experience.