---
schema: 1
type: term
title: >-
  **essentialistic point of view** — treating an entity as if it has a fixed,
  underlying essence
description: >-
  **Essentialistic point of view** — treating an entity as if it has a fixed,
  underlying essence. In this channel's material, the term contrasts with a
  _pragmatic_ point of view: diagnostic categories like OCD are useful and real
  for practice, but do not correspond to fixed, checkable essences.
canonical: >-
  https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/explore/term/essentialistic-point-of-view-treating-an-entity-as-b380dfc0abd1
markdown: >-
  https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/explore/term/essentialistic-point-of-view-treating-an-entity-as-b380dfc0abd1.md
llms: null
parent: 'https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/llms.txt'
channel: everyinc
updated: '2026-10-23T22:12:35.346Z'
language: null
children: []
---


# \*\*essentialistic point of view\*\* — treating an entity as if it has a fixed, underlying essence

Canonical: https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/explore/term/essentialistic-point-of-view-treating-an-entity-as-b380dfc0abd1

Parent: [Channel index](https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/llms.txt)

## Definition

**Essentialistic point of view** — treating an entity as if it has a fixed, underlying essence. In this channel's material, the term contrasts with a _pragmatic_ point of view: diagnostic categories like OCD are useful and real for practice, but do not correspond to fixed, checkable essences.

\On this channel, an \essentialistic point of view\ means treating an entity as if it has a \fixed, underlying essence\ — a checkable core that would make it truly one thing. The term appears in an interview with psychiatrist \Awais Aftab\ to mark what diagnostic categories like \OCD\ *are not*.\  > It's an entity that exists from a pragmatic point of view, but not from an essentialistic point of view.    \The contrast is with \pragmatic reality\: a diagnosis can be real enough to talk about, identify, and use for guiding treatment, even while > OCD as far as we know it's not one thing and even its symptom boundaries stay \fuzzy\.[^4caa6fda-b8ae-5bfd-ad34-331a298cb088@12]\      - There is > a lot of pressure to be able to reduce these things down into a checklist — that pressure is essentially the push toward an essentialistic view.  - Yet > really a good clinician has a little bit of like a smell for it, and the discussion links that to AI history: reducing expert behavior to diagnostic rules is exactly what early rule-based AI did, and > it's exactly what didn't work. What ended up working is deep learning.        - \Essentialistic point of view\: treating an entity as having a fixed, underlying essence.  - In this material, diagnoses like OCD exist *pragmatically* but *not essentially* — useful, yet without checkable essences.  - The same essentialistic impulse behind checklists failed in both clinical intuition and early rule-based AI.