Substantial Change, Prime Matter, and Individuation

Eric Levy wants to talk about prime matter.  I am 'primed' and my powder's dry:  Nihil philosophicum a me alienum putamus. "I consider nothing philosophical to be foreign to me."

Change, Accidental and Substantial 

There is no change without a substrate of change which, in respect of its existence and identity, does not change during the interval of the change. In a slogan: no change without unchange. No becoming other (alter-ation, Ver-aenderung) without something remaining the same. In the case of accidental change, the substrate is materia secunda, in one of its two senses, a piece of paper, say, as opposed to paper as a kind of material stuff. It is a piece of paper that becomes yellow with age, not paper as a kind of stuff. In the case of substantial change the substrate is said to be prime matter, materia prima. On the scholastic view, prime matter must exist if we are to explain substantial change. (See Edward Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics, pp. 171 ff.) Thus to the problems with substantial change already mentioned (in an earlier portion of this  text not yet 'blogged') we may add the problems that are specific to prime matter. Besides the route to prime matter via substantial change, there is the route via the very procedure of hylomorphic analysis. Traversing these routes will give us a good idea of why the positing of prime matter has seemed compelling to scholastics.

Given that thought sometimes makes contact with reality, one can ask: what must real things be like if thought is to be able to make contact with them? What must these things be like if they are to be intelligible to us? A realist answer is that these mind-independent things must be conformable to our thought, and our thought to them. There must be some sort of isomorphism between thought and thing. Since we cannot grasp anything unstructured, reality must have structure. So there have to be principles of form and organization in things. But reality is not exhausted by forms and structures; there is also that which supports form and structure. In this way matter comes into the picture.  Forms are determinations.  Matter, in a sense that embraces both primary and secondary matter, is the determinable as such.

Proximate matter can be encountered in experience, at least in typical cases. The proximate matter of a chair consists of its legs, seat, back. But this proximate matter itself has form. A leg, for example, has a shape and thus a form. (Form is not identical to shape, since there are forms that are not shapes; but shapes are forms.) Suppose the leg has the geometrical form of a cylinder. (Of course it will have other forms as well, the forms of smoothness and brownness, say.) The cylindrical form is the form of some matter. The matter of this cylindrical form is wood, say. But a piece of wood is a partite entity the parts of which have form and matter. For example, the complex carbohydrate cellulose is found in wood. It has a form and a proximate matter. But cellulose is made of beta-glucose molecules. Molecules are made of atoms, atoms of subatomic particles like electrons, and these of quarks, and so it goes.

Hylomorphic analysis is thus iterable. The iteration cannot be infinite: the material world cannot be hylomorphic compounds 'all the way down,' or 'all the way up' for that matter. The iteration has a lower limit in prime or primordial or ultimate matter (materia prima), just as it has an upper limit in pure form, and ultimately in the forma formarum, God, the purely actual being. Must hylomorphic analysis proceed all the way to prime matter, or can it coherently stop one step shy of it at the lowest level of materia secunda? I think that if one starts down the hylomorphic road one must drive to its bitter end in prime matter. (Cf. Feser's manual, p. 173 for what I read as an argument to this conclusion.) Ultimate matter, precisely because it is ultimate, has no form of its own. As John Haldane describes it, it is "stuff of no kind." (“A Return to Form in the Philosophy of Mind” in Form and Matter, ed. Oderberg, p. 50) We could say that prime matter is the wholly indeterminate determinable. As wholly indeterminate, it is wholly determinable.

(Question: if prime matter is wholly indeterminate, is it also indeterminate with respect to being either determinate or indeterminate? Presumably not.  Is there a problem lurking here?)

The Antinomy of the Existence of Prime Matter

While it is easy to appreciate the logic that leads to the positing of prime matter, it is difficult to see that what is posited is coherently thinkable. Here is one consideration among several. Call it the Antinomy of the Existence of Prime Matter. It may be compressed into the following aporetic dyad:

1. Prime matter exists.

2. Prime matter does not exist.

Argument for limb (1). There is real substantial change and it cannot be reduced to accidental change. All change is reduction of potency to act, and all change requires an underlying substrate of change that remains self-same and secures the diachronic identity of that which changes. The substrate of a change is the matter of the change. What changes in a change are forms, whether accidental or substantial. Without the potency-act and matter-form distinctions we cannot accommodate the fact of change and avoid both the Heraclitean doctrine of radical flux and the Eleatic denial of change. Or so say the scholastics. In the case of accidental change, the subject or substrate is secondary matter (materia secunda). But substantial change is change too, and so it also requires a substrate which cannot be secondary matter and so must be prime matter. Given what we must assume to make sense of the plain fact of both accidental and substantial change, “prime matter must exist.” (Feser's manual, p. 172) It must exist in reality as the common basis of every substantial change.

Argument for limb (2). Prime matter is pure potency. It has to be, given the exigencies of accounting for substantial as opposed to accidental change. As pure potency, prime matter is wholly indeterminate and wholly formless. In itself, then, prime matter does not exist. It does not exist actually, as is obvious. But it also does not exist potentially: prime matter does not have potential Being. This is because the principle of the metaphysical priority of act over potency requires that every existing potency (e.g., the never actualized potency of a sugar cube to dissolve in water) be grounded in something actual (e.g., the sugar cube). The pure potency which is prime matter is not, however, grounded in anything actual. (Note that one cannot say that prime matter is a pure potency grounded in each primary substance. Prime matter is the ultimate stuff of each primary substance; it is not potency possessed by these substances.) Therefore, prime matter does not exist. It does not exist actually and it does not exist potentially. This is also evident from the first of the twenty-four Thomistic theses:

Potency and act are a complete division of being. Hence whatever is must be either pure act or a unit composed of potency and act as its primary and intrinsic principles. (Quoted by Feser, Schol. Metaph., p. 31)

If so, prime matter does not exist. For prime matter is neither pure act nor composed of potency and act. It is interesting to observe that while purely actual Being can itself be by being something actual, purely potential Being cannot itself be by being something potential (or actual). God is actual Being (Sein, esse) and an actual being (Seiendes, ens). But prime matter is neither potential nor actual. So prime matter neither is actually nor is potentially.

It thus appears that we have cogent arguments for both limbs of a contradiction. If the contradiction is real and not merely apparent, and the arguments for the dyad's limbs are cogent, then either there is no prime matter, the very concept thereof being self-contradictory, or there is prime matter but it is is unintelligible to us. One could, I suppose, be a mysterian about prime matter: it exists but we, given our cognitive limitations, cannot understand how it could exist. (Analogy with Colin McGinn's mysterianism: consciousness is a brain process, but our cognitive limitations bar us from understanding how it could be.) But I mention mysterianism only to set it aside.

But perhaps we can avoid contradiction in the time-honored way, by drawing a distinction. A likely candidate is the distinction between prime matter in itself versus prime matter together with substantial forms. So I expect the following scholastic response to my antinomy:

Prime matter exists as a real (extramental) factor only in primary substances such as Socrates and Plato. It exists only in hylomorphic compounds of prime matter and substantial form. But it does not exist when considered in abstraction from every primary substance. So considered, it is nothing at all. It is not some formless stuff that awaits formation: it is always already formed. It is always already parcelled out among individual material substances. Once this distinction is made, the distinction between prime matter in itself and prime matter together with substantial forms, one can readily see that the 'contradiction' in the above dyad is merely apparent and rests on an equivocation on 'exist(s).' The word is being used in two different senses. In (1) 'exists' means: exists together with substantial form. In (2), 'exist' means: exist in itself. Thus the aporetic dyad reduces to the logically innocuous dyad:

1*. Prime matter exists together with substantial forms.

2*. Prime matter does not exist in itself in abstraction from substantial forms.

Unfortunately, this initially plausible response gives rise to a problem of its own. If prime matter really exists only in primary substances, then prime matter in reality is not a common stuff but is parcelled out among all the primary substances: it exists only as a manifold of designated matters, the matter of Socrates, of Plato, etc. But this conflicts with the requirement that prime matter be the substratum of substantial change. Let me explain.

If a new substance S2 comes into existence from another already existing substance S1 (parthenogenesis may be an example) then prime matter is what underlies and remains the same through this change. Now this substratum of substantial change that remains the same must be something real, but it cannot be identical to S2 or to S1 or to any other substance. For if the substratum of substantial change is identical to S1, then S1 survives, in which case S2 is not a new substance generated from S1 but a mere alteration of S1. Don't forget that substantial change cannot be reduced to an accidental change in some already existing substance or substances. In substantial change a new substance comes to be from one or more already existing substances. (I will assume that creation or 'exnihilation' does not count as substantial change.)

If, on the other hand, the substratum of change is identical to S2, then S2 exists before it comes to exist. And it seems obvious that the substratum of substantial change underlying S2's coming to be from S1 cannot be some other substance. Nor can the substratum be an accident of S2 or S1. For an accident can exist only in a substance. If the substratum is an accident of S1, then S1 must exist after it has ceased to exist. If the substratum is an accident of S2, then S2 must exist before it comes to exist.

The argumentative punchline is that prime matter cannot exist only in primary substances as a co-principle tied in every case to a substantial form. If prime matter is the substratum of substantial change, then prime matter must be a really existent, purely potential, wholly indeterminate, stuff on its own.

The Problem of the Substrate

The problem just presented, call it the Problem of the Substrate or the Problem of the Continuant, may be pressed into the mold of an aporetic tetrad:

1. Prime matter is the substrate of substantial change.

2. Prime matter does not exist in reality except as divided among individual material substances.

3. The substratum of a substantial change cannot be identified with any of the substances involved in the change, or with any other substance, or with any accident of any substance. (For example, the substratum of the substantial change which is Socrates' coming into existence from gametes G1 and G2 cannot be identified with Socrates, with G1, with G2, with any other substance, or with any accident of any substance.)

 4. There is substantial change and it requires a really existent substrate.

The tetrad is inconsistent issuing as it does in the contradiction: Prime matter does and does not exist only in individual material substances.

The obvious solution is to deny (2). But if we deny (2) to solve the Problem of the Substrate, then we reignite the Antinomy of the Existence of Prime Matter. We solved the Antinomy by making a distinction, but that distinction gave rise to the Problem of the Substrate/Continuant. We appear to be in quite a pickle. (For more on the Substrate/Continuant problem, see John D. Kronen, Sandra Menssen and Thomas D. Sullivan, “The Problem of the Continuant: Aquinas and Suárez on Prime Matter and Substantial Generation,” The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Jun., 2000), pp. 863-885.)

The Problem of Individuation

Finally a glance at the related ontological, not epistemological, problem of individuation. This problem is actually two problems. There is the problem of individuation proper, namely, the problem of what makes an individual substance individual as opposed to universal, and there is the connected problem of differentiation, namely, the problem of what makes numerically different individual substances numerically different. It is clear that prime matter cannot be the principle of differentiation. For one thing, prime matter is common to all material substances. For another, prime matter as pure potency is indeterminate, hence not intrinsically divided into parcels. Moreover, pace Feser, prime matter cannot “bring universals down to earth” in his phrase: it cannot be the principle of individuation, narrowly construed. (Schol. Metaph., p. 199) For what makes Socrates an individual substance rather than the substantial form he shares with Plato cannot be common, indeterminate, amorphous, matter.

Prime matter is not up to the job of individuation/differentiation. It is designated matter (materia signata quantitate) that is said to function as the ontological ground or 'principle' of individuation and numerical difference. Unfortunately, appeal to designated matter involves us in an explanatory circle. Designated matter is invoked to explain why Socrates and Plato are individual substances and why they are numerically different individual substances. But designated matter cannot be that which individuates/differentiates them since it presupposes for its individuation and differentiation the logically (not temporally) antecedent existence of individual material substances. Why are Socrates and Plato different? Because their designated matters are different. Why are their designated matters different? Because they are the matters of different substances. The explanation moves in a circle of rather short diameter.

Feser considers something like this objection but dismisses it as resting on a confusion of formal with efficient causality. But there is no such confusion in the objection as I have presented it. Efficient causality does not come into it at all. No one thinks that there is an agent who in a temporal process imposes substantial form on prime matter in the way that a potter in a temporal process imposes accidental form upon a lump of clay. I can grant Feser's point that prime matter and substantial form are related as material cause to formal cause. I can also grant that prime matter and substantial form are mutually implicative co-principles neither of which can exist without the other. Granting all this, my objection remains. Prime matter in itself is undifferentiated. It it differentiated and dimensive only in combination with substantial forms. But this is equivalent to saying that prime matter is differentiated and dimensive only as the designated matter of particular individual substances. But then designated matter cannot non-circularly explain why numerically different substances are numerically different. For the numerical difference of these matters presupposes the numerical difference of the substances.

Comments

[Eric Levy]

Your subtle and sure logical investigation provoked a mighty explosion. The reader must shore assorted fragments against the ruins (of a venerable and highly controversial ontological concept). I shall try to salvage a few scraps in a later post. Meanwhile, I am cognitively concussed, yet nevertheless scrambling for cover.

[BV]

Eric,

I am curious as to all the books you quote from -- do they reside in your own personal library?

[Eric Levy]

Your extremely acute logical arguments exhilarate this reader. Yet in my respectful – and highly fallible opinion, but hopefully not too annoying – opinion, some of their premises are erroneous.

Note: Just as I was about to post this, I noted that you have just posted a piece entitled “Bare Particulars and Prime Matter: Similarities and Differences.” I have not yet had time to read your new post, but point #4 in my present post might seem otiose and unwarranted – yet, I trust, not aggravating – as it deals briefly with this very distinction.

(1) Bill: There is no change without a substrate of change which, in respect of its existence and identity, does not change during the interval of the change. In a slogan: no change without unchange. No becoming other (alter-ation, Ver-aenderung) without something remaining the same.

Eric: This seems incorrect or, at least, misleading. On the one hand, the substrate “does not change,” if by “does not change” you mean that the same “parcel “of matter compounded with the individual form is involved. That is, the substrate does not change quantitatively. But on the other hand, the substrate, construed as prime matter, does indeed change, because, as Owens indicates, “Anything that is sensible matter is changeable” (1963, 342). That is, the substrate changes qualitatively. Owens elaborates (in a different text): “‘Matter’” in its chief or primary sense, however, meant for Aristotle the substrate of generation and corruption (GC I 4, 320a2-5), even though the designation ‘primary matter’ never seems to have been limited by him in that sense” (1967, 198, n.6). I shall return to the relation between (a) matter and change and (b) matter and sameness later, in point #4. Please bear with me.

(2) Bill: The proximate matter of a chair consists of its legs, seat, back.

Eric: This seems misleading, perhaps because I don’t know what you mean by “proximate matter.” A substance is perhaps composed of parts, but its matter (whether materia prima or materia signata) is not composed of parts. Instead, matter constitutes the whole thing to which it pertains. Owens confirms: “The matter has to be conceived as being the whole composite – potentially” (1963, 341. He elaborates: “The matter, then, is the thing itself. It and the form are one and the same thing. The matter is the thing as potency. In saying that a statue is bronze, you are expressing the Being of the statue. You are saying what it is. Everything in the statue is in some way bronze. But you are expressing the Being of the statue only as potency. If you say, ‘It is a figure of Hercules,’ you are expressing the very same Being, but you are expressing it as act (1963, 341). He adds: “When he [Aristotle] speaks of the matter as a ‘part’ of the thing, he must be understood in a sense that does not exclude the matter from being the whole thing – potentially. The bronze is the whole statue, expressed as potency. There is nothing in the statue, considered from a material viewpoint, that is not bronze. The bronze expresses everything in the statue, but only as its matter” (1963, 341). I shall return to the notion of matter as potency in points #4 and 5.

(3) Bill: Question: if prime matter is wholly indeterminate, is it also indeterminate with respect to being either determinate or indeterminate? Presumably not. Is there a problem lurking here?

Eric: No, in my opinion, there is no problem. According to Owens, matter is “absolutely undetermined” (1963, 332; 1967, 198, n. 6). He elaborates: “It is the concept of a principle wholly undetermined, yet necessarily posited in reality by any form that is extended, multiplied in singulars, or terminating substantial change” (1967, 211). There is nothing indeterminate about the indeterminateness of matter.

(4) Bill: All change is reduction of potency to act, and all change requires an underlying substrate of change that remains self-same and secures the diachronic identity of that which changes. The substrate of a change is the matter of the change. What changes in a change are forms, whether accidental or substantial. Without the potency-act and matter-form distinctions we cannot accommodate the fact of change and avoid both the Heraclitean doctrine of radical flux and the Eleatic denial of change.

Eric: There seems to be a misconstruction here. To begin with, since matter considered on its own has no individuality, it cannot be “self-same, as “self-same” presupposes identity. Owens confirms that prime matter “is not individual, like any of the materials of which a house is composed” (1967, 198, n. 6). He continues: “Rather it is below the level at which individuality and universality appear. Considered just in itself, it has nothing to distinguish it as found in one thing from itself as found in another” (1967, 198, n. 6). Nor can matter be “self-same” with respect to the change in it imposed by predication of the form. Unlike the form predicated of it, matter is not construed in terms of self-sameness. On the contrary, matter is potency to change. Moreover, the change proper to matter occurs in the matter. Matter can change with the same form (as when an accord develops into an oak tree) or with a change of forms. Owens elaborates: “As the substrate of substantial change, it may be said – with the appropriate therapy – to change from the one form to another. So doing, it shows itself to be really distinct from its forms, since it really persists while the forms really replace each other. But it is not therefore a really distinct being from the form” (1967, 199, n. 6).

When you apply the term, “self-same” to matter in this way, I get the impression that you are somehow fusing prime matter with the notion of the “bare particular,” reprehended by trope theorists. In that context, the bare particular is construed as an inert, bland substrate, a static, unpropertied holder of properties – what Garcia terms “the non-property haver of properties, which has properties in the sense of being characterized by them” (2015, 148). Maurin treats the substrate similarly: “Properties may change, that is, but as long as the underlying substrate persists the thing will persist as well” (2003, 126). But this kind of substrate is not Aristotelian prime matter, which is what we might call malleable, remembering that the hammer in this case is entitative determination – that is, predication of the form. In the following passage, Denkel distinguishes between matter and bare particular, but without indicating the principle of potency crucial to the former: “A parcel of matter constitutes an object without being itself a bare particular that holds the qualities of the object together” (1996, 35).

(5) Bill: Prime matter is pure potency. It has to be, given the exigencies of accounting for substantial as opposed to accidental change. As pure potency, prime matter is wholly indeterminate and wholly formless. In itself, then, prime matter does not exist. It does not exist actually, as is obvious. But it also does not exist potentially: prime matter does not have potential Being.

Eric: There seems to be a misconstruction here. Matter is not pure potency as such. It is potency only with respect to the form – only, with respect, that is, to the potential to be determined by the form. Owens confirms: “The matter of a thing, therefore is the capacity or potency to become something else. For the matter is a permanent principle, that can be either according to a form or according to the privation of the form. A piece of bronze, not yet a statue, is able to become a statue. Wood is similarly able to become a bed. The bronze is the matter for the statue, the wood for the bed” (1963, 339).

(6) Bill: The either there is no prime matter, the very concept thereof being self-contradictory, or there is prime matter but it is unintelligible to us.

Eric : Unintelligible? Owens disagrees: “[Matter is] a positive, though entirely non-actual subject of predication. Because the potential is positive without being determinate, this concept of matter is possible to the human mind. Its referent is any sensible thing considered potentially as substance. It is the concept of a principle wholly undetermined, yet necessarily posited in reality by any form that is extended, multiplied in singulars, or terminating substantial change” (1967, 210-211).

(7) Bill: But designated matter cannot be that which individuates/differentiates them since it presupposes for its individuation and differentiation the logically (not temporally) antecedent existence of individual material substances. Why are Socrates and Plato different? Because their designated matters are different. Why are their designated matters different? Because they are the matters of different substances. The explanation moves in a circle of rather short diameter.

Eric: There seems to be a misconstruction here. Far from presupposing “the logically antecedent existence of individual material substances,” matter IS the material substance, but that substance considered potentially. I requote an item involving Owens in point #2 above: “The matter, then, is the thing itself. It and the form are one and the same thing. The matter is the thing as potency” (1963, 341). For more on matter and differentiation, please see the next point.
(8) Bill: Prime matter in itself is undifferentiated. It is differentiated and dimensive only in combination with substantial forms. But this is equivalent to saying that prime matter is differentiated and dimensive only as the designated matter of particular individual substances. But then designated matter cannot non-circularly explain why numerically different substances are numerically different. For the numerical difference of these matters presupposes the numerical difference of the substances.

Eric: You appear to be putting the cart before the horse here. Might I approach the issue in stages? To begin with, there is no “particular individual substance” – the composite of matter and form – without matter. How therefore can matter presuppose substance? Owens clarifies: “The concept will have to be that of a positive subject, able to receive predication” (1967, 203). Moreover, Owens would, I think, turn your statement around. Rather than saying that matter is “dimensive only in combination with substantial forms,” he states that the object cannot be dimensive without matter: “It [matter] is the concept of a principle wholly undetermined, yet necessarily posited in reality by any form that is extended, multiplied in singulars, or terminating substantial change” (210-211). He adds: “In any case, its presence is absolutely required to account for the extension of a formally identical characteristic in parts outside parts, and for the multiplication of the characteristic in a plurality of individuals, without any formal addition whatsoever” (1967, 211).
Futhermore, the question of differentiation through matter entrains the principle of entelechy or self-realization of the form. To say that matter is the principle of individuation, though not itself an individual, is to say that differential realization of the same form in material substances denominated by that form renders those substances numerically distinct. The form is not actualized identically or uniformly in each substance. As Owens indicates, form is ““the determining force of a whole” (1963, 387). But the determining force of form is not uniformly manifested in different individuals of the same kind. That is, it does not entail uniform determination of the matter in each individual constituted by the union of (that) form and matter.

Might we investigate the Aristotelian notion of entelechy at some point? In rejecting matter, bundle theory rejects entelechy, depriving the concrete particular of the potential for self-realization. Change in the concrete particular is reduced to the notion of alteration of the constituents of the trope or property bundle. There is no intrinsic force or energy of self-actualization – and hence no possibility of responsibility (in rational beings) to optimize it. In my opinion, trope theory is the metaphysical counterpart to the post-structuralist privileging of discourse, which, according to Foucault, “have decentered the subject in relation to the” network of discourses by which man seeks to give his existence meaning (1972, 13). In Jonathan Culler’s formula, “the self can no longer be identified with consciousness. It is dissolved as its functions are taken up by a variety of interpersonal systems that operate thorough it” (Culler 1975, 28). In this schema, according to Suzanne Gearhart, “our subjectivity is a product of the particular cultural power that in reality fashions each of us” (Gearhart 1997, 459). In this dispensation, the individual rational substance is demoted to the status of a bundle of discourses.

[David Brightly]

Bill, I often find these metaphysical arguments very difficult to follow. You say, for example, that the following statements issue in contradiction.

1. Prime matter is the substrate of substantial change.
2. Prime matter does not exist in reality except as divided among individual material substances.
3. The substratum of a substantial change cannot be identified with any of the substances involved in the change, or with any other substance, or with any accident of any substance.
4. There is substantial change and it requires a really existent substrate.

I don't understand how you get this result. Let's think of 'prime matter' and 'substance' as undefined terms and (1)--(4) as axioms. If there is a contradiction hidden here then it should be impossible to find a model for these sentences. But if we say 'prime matter' means water and that 'substance' means (water) droplet we get something like the following,

1. Water is the substrate of droplet change.
2. Water does not exist in reality except as divided among individual droplets.
3. The substratum of a droplet change cannot be identified with any of the droplets involved in the change, or with any other droplet, or with any accident of any droplet.
4. There is droplet change and it requires a really existent substrate.

This seems perfectly consistent. A world of eternal fission and fusion of water droplets obtained by abstracting away all other compounds and the other phases of water.

[BV]

Eric,

I have time to respond only to your first comment. The point I am making is very simple. I'll illustrate it with an example, change of position. At t1 I am seated. At later time t2 I am standing. That is an example of change from one state to a different one. So there is a difference of states (in this case postures). But that does not suffice for a change. There must also be something that remains the same throughout the change, in this case me. Now re-read my opening sentences and they should make sense to you.

And consider this. Suppose a being seated is followed by a standing. Does that constitute a change? No. For if my being seated is followed by your standing, there is no change in any primary substance.

[BV]

David,

I don't grant that your foursome models mine. Your (3) is false. Consider a case of fission. Droplet D1 splits into D2 and D3. The substratum of this change is D1, a droplet.

Besides, water is not prime matter.

[Eric Levy]

I’m sorry, Bill. I do not see the connection between (a) your example and (b) prime matter as the substrate of change. Doesn’t your example shift us to a different ontological context – from (a) the composition of substance through the compounding of form and matter to (b) consideration of substance as an agent able to reduce itself from potency to act?

Your example concerns a rational substance changing its location through locomotion. That substance is already constituted as substance. Does not your example, therefore, move us from consideration of (a) potency to be acted upon (as with respect to the potency of prime matter to be determined by the form) to (b) potency to act upon something else (as when a rational substance gets up from a seated position)?

I am plunged into confusion.

[Eric Levy]

Might I add something to my preceding comment? Doesn’t your example concern the action of an agent, not the potency of prime matter to change? As Ross indicates, in a comment on Metaphysics θ. 6, 1048b24, “If there is something that is not ‘of’ anything else, it is prime matter, not being a ‘this.’ Subjects or substrata differ by being or not being ‘thises’” (1924). You in the act of changing your position are definitely a “this.” Prime matter is not a “this.”

[M. Nightingale]

Bill,

(1) I think the point David was making is simply that your tetrad is not aporetic. It doesn't look aporetic to me either. I can affirm all of those statements without saying that prime matter does not exist, so a contradiction does not result.

(2) One analogy that may help for understanding prime matter as pure potency would be some sort of active potency (i.e. power). Take the seeing potency of the eye: whether it sees red, blue, or nothing (for reasons other than blindness), this power/potency exists. This power seems analogous to the substrate of substantial change, as the seeing power is to colors, so is the ultimate substrate to substantial forms. In both cases, the potency exists in a mode distinct from its actuality (prime matter, is neither substantial form nor substance; the seeing power is neither color nor actually seeing).

For all the similarities, there are also many differences. I just thought it would be helpful to reflect on what it means to be a potential being. A further question: Does analytics philosophy shrink from potency? When you posited the first aporetic dyad, my first (scholastic) thought was "Yes, both of those statements are true, or perhaps both false. For potency stands between being and non-being." Having a sense for scholastic sensibilities, you amended the two propositions, but still did not introduce the word potency. Is there a reason for this?

(3) Your final consideration on the principle of individuation touches on a very difficult question: how it is that quantity (which seems to follow substance) can be a principle by which substances are individual. I once listened to lecture on the topic (an attempted, and apparently successful, resolution), but was not at that time capable of appreciating the problem, and therefore did not throw myself into the challenging thinking involved in the solution. If you are interested I can look around again for that lecture.

Max

(One last note: I can't ever quite figure out anything that Eric is saying. He seems to quote many texts and express wonder at your points, but I never quite know where he is going. Nonetheless, I am thankful that it has prompted your own considerations.)

[Eric Levy]

Faculties are potencies in some respect. Animals have the faculty of movement. You are a rational animal with the faculty of movement. When you move from a seated to a standing position, you are actualizing your potential to move (or to achieve movement). As Ross indicates, “Potentiality indeed everywhere presupposes and is rooted in actuality” (1949, 177). Faculties are potencies and, as Ross further notes, “actuality is the end to which potentiality points, and not vice versa. Animals do not see in order that they may have the faculty of sight, but have this in order that they may see” (1949, 177).

But I do not see where prime matter enters into this. We are talking about the agent of movement, and that agent is a primary (rational) substance.

[David Brightly]

Morning Bill,
It seems quite natural to say that D1 changes into D2 and D3, in which case we can hardly assign the role of the unchanging substratum of this instance of change to D1. It seems equally natural, to me at least, to assign this role to the water, or perhaps more specifically, to the water of D1.

[BV]

Max asks:

>> A further question: Does analytics philosophy shrink from potency? When you posited the first aporetic dyad, my first (scholastic) thought was "Yes, both of those statements are true, or perhaps both false. For potency stands between being and non-being." Having a sense for scholastic sensibilities, you amended the two propositions, but still did not introduce the word potency. Is there a reason for this?<<

No, analytic philosophy does not shrink from potency. There is plenty of analytic work on powers and dispositions and the like. My dyad was this:

1. Prime matter exists.
2. Prime matter does not exist.

A contradiction, obviously. Not a contradiction:

1* Prime matter potentially exists.
2* Prime matter does not actually exist.

Apparently, you want to say that prime matter exists potentially. But I explicitly argued against that idea in "argument for limb (2)." I have the power to see even when I am not seeing anything. But that power is grounded in something actual, my visual apparatus (eyes, optic nerve, visual cortex). Prime matter is a pure potency not grounded in anything actual -- and therefore something impossible.

[BV]

Good morning David.

Your claim is that my tetrad is not inconsistent. I haven't properly responded to you yet, but hope to do so later in the day.

[Eric Levy]

On Bill’s comment: “Prime matter is a pure potency not grounded in anything actual -- and therefore something impossible.” But, in my opinion, this is incorrect. Let us take a step backward first in order to move the explanation forward, hoping thereby not to provoke Max to further insult. In Aristotelian ontology, as Owens indicates, “Potency can therefore be known and defined only in terms of its corresponding act” (1963, 407). Prime matter never exists alone or in isolation. It can be a component of material substance only in relation to the corresponding Form. Thus, prime matter is indeed “grounded” in something actual – namely, the Form or Act of the compound substance. If substance comprised just one component, Form, it would be a Parmenidean being, not an Aristotelian one. That is, it would be unchanging and eternal, without the potency to become or to change. One function of prime matter is to account for and enable the becoming of being – the process of generation and corruption that sublunary being undergoes. It is a profound notion – one that can be extended, of course, to personal development, with respect to the exercise of faculties (which are potentialities that can be reduced to act). Consider, for example, the mind. It has the faculty of thought. That faculty entails the potential not merely to think, but to think more openly and deeply: to think in such a way that thought moves beyond its prior limitations, such as prejudice or and the tendency to construe dismissively – and even pejoratively – whatever it fails to understand.

[BV]

David,

Here again is my tetrad:

1. Prime matter is the substrate of substantial change.
2. Prime matter does not exist in reality except as divided among individual material substances.
3. The substratum of a substantial change cannot be identified with any of the substances involved in the change, or with any other substance, or with any accident of any substance.
4. There is substantial change and it requires a really existent substrate.

The question is whether or not the tetrad is inconsistent. You claim that it is not. I claim that it is. But I merely asserted this claim. Can I demonstrate that the tetrad is inconsistent?

a. All change requires a substrate.
b. There are substantial (as opposed to accidental) changes, e.g., Socrates' coming into existence. Something comes to acquire the substantial form *being human.* (An example of an accidental change is an avocado's going from unripe on Monday to ripe on Friday.)
Therefore
c. Substantial change requires a substrate. a, b.
d. The substrate of substantial change is prime matter. Prime matter is what remains the same across the substantial change.
Therefore
e. Prime matter, as the substrate of substantial change, exists. From b, c, d.
f. Prime matter in itself is wholly indeterminate, i.e., without substantial or accidental form.
g. What is wholly indeterminate cannot actually exist.
h. What is wholly indeterminate cannot potentially exist.
i. Prime matter, as the substrate of substantial change, is not the designated matter of the primary substance coming into existence.
j. Prime matter, as the substrate of substantial change, is not the designated matter of the substance or substances from which the primary substance (Socrates e.g.) comes into existence. Why not? Because designated matter is already informed by substantial form.
Therefore
k. Prime matter, as the substrate of substantial change, must be prime matter in itself, i.e., unformed or wholly indeterminate prime matter. i, j.
l. Prime matter in itself does not exist. f, g, h
m. (l) and (e) are contradictories.

So what do you say, David? I have derived a contradiction from the doctrine of prime matter. This is the contradiction which can be teased out of my tetrad.

[Eric Levy]

Might I further play advocate for prime matter? Prime matter must be construed as counterpart to the Form, “able to receive predication” of that Form (Owens 1967, 203) Whereas Bill says that “prime matter is a pure potency not grounded in anything actual,” Owens would, I think, say that prime matter is that which grounds the corresponding Form, enabling that Form to exercise its formative influence, “as it fulfills its function as the determining force of a whole” (1963, 387).

We can make a similar observation by considering the other aspect of prime matter: indeterminacy. Kosman provides a convenient starting point: “Matter is a principle of indeterminacy relative to some being” (2013, 24). Again, the concept of prime matter requires the concept of Form (in this case, as the principle of determination). In this context, prime matter is that which grounds the corresponding Form, enabling that Form to exercise its determinative function.

Might I add something? We note that various substances in a given species actualize the species-form variously. With respect to the species-form, man, for example, we are apt to say that some men more admirably realize their constituent Form than others. In praising his father, Hamlet references this point: “He was a man, take him for all in all: / I shall not look upon his like again” (1.2.187-88). This view is perhaps due to the Platonic inheritance. The transcendent Platonic Form has become the immanent Aristotelian Form. But despite that transformation, the notion of differential participation in Form by individual substances (concrete particulars) remains.

[Eric Levy]

Prime matter is not pure potency. That is, it is not potency as such. Instead, it is potency to determination through receiving predication. Its ontological function is to enable generation, development, and corruption of a given substance. Without prime matter, construed in this way, concrete particulars could be, but they could not become in the sense of progressively realizing their innate potential to fulfill their own intrinsic form.

But I realize that here I am a voice crying in the wilderness.

Incidentally, I discovered yesterday that Politis (Routledge, 2004) is not alone in claiming that Aristotelian substance is not a compound or union of form and matter. The argument occurs more recently in Kosman (Harvard UP, 2013): “Substance not a combination of matter and form” (26).

[David Brightly]

Hello Bill, Could the defender of prime matter say something like this? That prime matter is indeterminate with respect to form but determinate with respect to quantity and number and that form is determinate with respect to, well, form, and indeterminate with respect to quantity and number. There is a pleasing symmetry here. Their combination is fully determinate substance. Quantification in (g) is over substances not principles.

[David Brightly]

Bill, I also have an objection to your Argument for limb (2). You declare right at the outset that prime matter is pure potency. I'm afraid I can't make sense of this. My understanding is that matter--form and potency--actuality are distinct axes onto which we can decompose substance. Seeking to decompose matter into potency--actuality has the feel of a category error. It's a little like agreeing that a piece of music can be understood in terms of melody, harmony, and rhythm, say, and then asking how much melody is in the rhythm. I'm not surprised a contradiction can be teased out of this.

[BV]

David,

Read this: http://www.iep.utm.edu/aq-meta/#H5

Prime matter is the lower limit of hylomorphic analysis. As such, it is matter devoid of any and all forms. As devoid of forms, it is devoid of actuality. So it is pure potency.

[David Brightly]

Bill,

>> As devoid of forms, it is devoid of actuality. So it is pure potency.

But potency is grounded in actuality. Contradiction in one step. Agreed. But only if the matter--form principle is subject to and subordinated to the potency--actuality principle. There are good reasons for not doing this, not the least of which are the contradictions you derive. So why does Thomism insist on it?

[Michaal]

Hey Eric, your posts are extremely informative. I caught you referencing Owens and Kosman a few times if I am not mistaken. Owens is fantastic and I just finished reading "The Doctrine of Being" interestingly enough. His explanation of Ontos and Ousia is probably the finest available in Aristotelian scholarship. I also noticed that you mentioned Entelechy a few times. Since Kosman and Joe Sachs are prominent defenders of a different interpretation of motion that is often connected with Aristotle, what is your personal opinion of how Entelechy was used throughout history? Do you agree with the claim that Averroes, Maimonides and Aquinas' conceptions of Entelechy distort, and ultimately limit the effect of motion when construed in a scholastic manner? Because based on the modern scholarship of Aristotle, your comments regarding Prime Matter are actually quite powerful and cogent when getting into the nitty gritty of it.