A Reply to the Statement that 'Mind is a Formal Essence'

I like that definition. It appears to be something from the philosophy of logic or perhaps set theory. One must be careful though not to exploit self-referencing systems so far as to stipulate they may create real existence in the abstract.

I wonder if written words haven't an aesthetic equivelent of sound and speech. The things one utters may be satisfying and even appropriate yet less than extrinsically meaningful.

One might want to say that mind is empty. Yet an empty mind is a kind of equivelent of non-being and only seems to gain meaning and even self-cognition as it acquires content and non-emptiness. All of those synaptic connections store data in chemical form with neural storage and asssociation structures of tremendous complexity.

Essences and essentialism were a part of the philosophy of logic I believe that is somewhat transcended now as it were because more complete descriptions or categorizations of the empirical world of experience are regarded as linguistic ontologies or sets. Essences of things like atoms tend to be regarded as descriptions of locations and relations in language rather than as things-in-themselves.

Classical realism is somewhat of a theological question. Language and even set theory may refer to existing 'real' structures or 'things' yet still be regarded as just phenomenal descriptions of events or processes.

At any rate your definition is an interesting approach that seems to describe mind as a set theory or formal classification (as in Quine's 'Philosophy of Logic'). I haven't read that book for a few weeks and am a little vague on the distinction between formal and applied logical forms.