At the end of Section 1.2, the question of is versus made up of was posed. Does what something is made up of define what it is? This question is important not only to the puzzle of what ideas really are that was posed along with the question, but also to the greater scheme of things. First, we need to define these two concepts. In the question, when “made up of” is used, it refers to the composition or the individual parts of something. In contrast, what something “is” refers to what something exists as or its fundamental nature.
So, really what we are dealing with is the question of whether the parts of something define the whole. Consider a table. The physics explanation for what the table is involves describing it as a mass of atoms. It is created from the wood, and the cellulose fibers that the wood is made of, and then the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms that the cellulose respectively is made out of. But we do not call the table a mass of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. We consider it to be a table.
The table is mostly made up of just four basic elements (carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen). These elements are very abundant and common in the world, existing in many different compounds and situations. These other things, such as plants and humans are made up of many of the same elements, but they are not considered to be tables. Therefore, this seems to suggest that the way that the elements are arranged is a crucial part to defining what the object is. Based on this line of reasoning, everything can be defined in terms of its fundamental elements (the material aspect) put together in a specific pattern or recipe (the more idea-based aspect). From this, it seems reasonable to conclude that the world, though created of material atoms, requires ideas to be properly put together.
These two concepts have been termed by philosophers as the concepts of identity and essence. Identity is what the thing or object is (in more complicated but rigorous terms, how the object relates to itself); essence is the fundamental properties that allow the same thing to be what it is. The identity of the table is that it is a table, but its essence might contain the properties that the table needs to fulfill the task of a table (and a possible property of this might include that it must support whatever is placed upon it) and that it might involve a sheet of some material placed upon legs, made also of some material. These properties collectively define the essence of the table, but its identity remains that it is a table. Also, what an object is made up of seems to only be part of its essence, (one property of the table is that it is made of wood, for example) but there are other aspects (such as the table can be used for placing objects upon).
So, it becomes the connection between these two ideas that becomes the main area for debate between philosophers. What exactly is the connection between essence and identity?
In metaphysics, the identity of indiscernibles refers to the concept that two things are identical if every property of the first thing is also shared by the second thing, and vice versa. This principle ties together the concepts of identity and essence previously mentioned in Section 1.3. Identity and Essence. What the principle is basically claiming is that if two things have the same essence, they are the same, and therefore identical. Another part of this principle is that there cannot exist two things that are distinctly separate, yet somehow maintain the same set of properties (or essence). If we accept the identity of indiscernibles to be true, it directly relates essence and identity, stating that identity is determined by essence.
Most often, philosophers related identity and essence to be very closely related, arguing that if the essence of a thing is lost, it loses its identity. However, is it possible that the two concepts are not indeed related? For example, it is possible that nothing really has a true “identity”. Identity could be just a concept that humans have created. We use it to name things to describe them to others, but objects do not inherently have an identity; instead, they have an essence that makes them what they are.
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