Maverick Philosopher

What is Potentiality?

Substack latest. An exploration of a much-misunderstood notion.

I Get a Rise out of Aristotle

Substack latest.

Is the political life the highest life?

Norms in Nature? Some Doubts

Substack latest. It opens like this:

Our friend Malcolm Pollack, riffing on some complaints of mine about Michael Anton's talk of natural rights, wrote the following:

Rights are normative in their essence, while Nature simply is. Therefore, I see only two possibilities:

1) “Natural” rights flow from an intrinsic source of normative authority. Since brute and indifferent Nature cannot be such a source, then for such rights to exist in themselves, as opposed to being mere conventions and intuitions, requires the existence of God. They are therefore “natural” rights in virtue of our nature qua creations of a transcendent and normatively authoritative Deity.

2) There is in fact no such authoritative source, and so natural rights are nonsense. (Upon stilts.) It may be in our nature to have the intuitions we do about possessing such rights, but it is a category error to imagine that rights themselves can originate in the material world.

In response, I pointed out that this is far too quick inasmuch as there are Aristotelians who seek to ground norms in nature herself. These thinkers do not accept what to Pollack and the modern mind seems self-evident, namely, that there is a gap between the normative and the factual that disallows any derivation of normative claims from factual ones.  One prominent Aristotelian is Philippa Foot. So let's see what she has to say.  

ComBox open.

A Battle of Titans

Substack upload.

It is sometimes said that there are only two kinds of philosophers, Platonists and Aristotelians.  What follows is a quotation from Heinrich Heine which expresses one version of this useful simplification.  Carl Gustav Jung places it at the very beginning of his Psychological Types (Princeton UP, 1971, p. 2. Jung does not properly source the Heine quotation.)

Democrat Election Skulduggery

The Dems are now a hard-Left party. For a leftist, the end justifies the means. If you have to cheat to win, then you cheat. And so they cheat.  Case in point: Arizona election fraud. See here, here, and here. 

When caught, leftists lie about their cheating and about their lying. Do leftists ever tell the truth? Yes, of course -- when it serves their purpose. Truth is not a leftist value. Their highest value is power, its gaining and maintaining. 

Animal Awareness: Aristotle, Galileo, Kant

This just over the trans0m from Edward Buckner. I have added my comments in blue.

Aristotle: Even if all animals were eliminated and thereby all perceptions (since only animals perceive), “there will still be something perceptible—a body, for example, or something warm, or sweet, or bitter, or anything else perceptible.”

BV: Evaluation of the above requires that we get clear about the sense of 'perceptible.' There are at least the following three senses:

1) X is perceptible₁ =_df it is logically possible that x be perceived.

2) X is perceptible₂ =_df it is nomologically possible that x be perceived.

3) X is perceptible₃ =_df x is able to be perceived by some sentient being.

I suggest that (3) is what we normally mean by 'perceptible.'  What (3) says is that for a thing to be perceptible, there must be at least one existing perceiver with the ability to perceive the thing.  On (3), then, Aristotle is mistaken. So on a charitable interpretation, he probably means something like (2): many if not most natural things are such that, if there were an able-facultied perceiver on the scene, one or more natural things would be perceived, and would be perceived as having in themselves such qualities as being warm, bitter, or sweet. Aristotle is a realist about what we now call secondary qualities.

Galileo: “tastes, odors, colors, and so on are no more than mere names so far as the object in which we place them is concerned, and that they reside only in the consciousness. Hence if the living creature were removed, all these qualities would be wiped away and annihilated.”

BV: Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) belongs to the modern period which he helped inaugurate, along with Rene Descartes (1596-1650).   The main point to note for present purposes is that Galileo reduces the sensory qualities that Aristotle viewed as properties of things themselves to perceiver-relative 'secondary qualities.' So if "living creatures were removed," then at least the secondary qualities would be "removed" along with them. That's quite the contrast with Aristotle.  The Stagirite is a realist about warmth, etc,; the Italian is an idealist about warmth, etc.

What would Kant’s view be? Does he think that if all perceiving beings ceased to exist, then appearances would cease to exist? But appearances, according to him, are things like trees and rocks. Does he then think that if all perceiving beings ceased to exist, trees and rocks, and all other non-sentient things, would cease to exist? We should be told.

BV:  Underlying Ed's questions is the question: Who or what is the knowing subject for Kant?  For Aristotle, the knowing subject is the concrete man embedded in nature, a hylomorphic composite in which anima forma corporis. For Kant, however, the concrete man, the man of flesh and blood embedded in nature, with both animal body and animal soul, is blosse Erscheinung, a mere appearance or phenomenon, and thus an object of knowledge, but not the subject of knowledge, i.e., not the knowing subject.  For Kant, the knowing subject is transcendental.  This is Kant's view whatever you think of it. It is undoubtedly fraught with difficulties, but my sketch is accurate albeit superficial. 

And so the answer to both of Ed's questions is in the negative.

Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Divine Simplicity

Dominik Kowalski has a question for me about footnote 3 in Peter van Inwagen's "God's Being and Ours" in Miroslav Szatkowski, ed., Ontology of Theistic Beliefs, de Gruyter, 2018, pp. 213-223. (Van Inwagen's essay is right after my "Does God Exist Because He Ought to Exist?, pp. 203-212. I managed to upstage van Inwagen, but only alphabetically.) Here is footnote 3:

Catholic philosophers have often said not that God’s existence is a consequence of his nature but that his existence and his nature are identical. This doctrine is one of the many implications of the more general “doctrine of Divine Simplicity”, according to which phrases like ‘God’s power’, ‘God’s wisdom’, ‘God’s love’, ‘God’s nature’ and ‘God’s existence’ all denote one and the same thing, namely the Divine Substance – that is, God, God himself, God full stop. The doctrine of Divine Simplicity, however, presupposes an Aristotelian ontology of substance and attribute (for present purposes, “Aristotelianism”). From the point of view of a Platonist like myself, the doctrine of Divine Simplicity is wrong simply because it presupposes Aristotelianism, and Aristotelianism is false.

Here is Dominik's question:

Where does that idea come from? [The idea that DDS presupposes an Aristotelian ontology.] Seriously, I don't understand. It might be disputable whether we can reconcile Plotinus' understanding of the way the One exists with a Thomistic view about God, but divine simplicity is a core pillar of (Neo-)Platonist arguments, e.g. the argument from composition. As said, perhaps the identification of God with existence is a newer concept due to development by philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition, but prima facie I think formulating the dispute the way van Inwagen does, muddies the water. Divine Simplicity mustn't be identified with an explicitly Thomistic formulation, this just undersells the disputes the doctrine has historically surrounded [undersells the disputes that have historically surrounded the doctrine].

1) Kowalski is right  that the ontological simplicity of the Absolute is at the core of Platonism and Ne0-Platonism. The Good of Plato, the One of Plotinus, and the God of Aquinas are all ontologically simple.  The theology of Aquinas quite obviously incorporates this neo-Platonic element, along with other elements, some of which do not comport well with the neo-Platonic element.  No Absolute worth its salt can fail to be simple, and the God of Aquinas is the Absolute in his system. For Aquinas, Deus est ipsum esse subsistens. Literally translated, God is self-subsisting To Be.  Intellectual honesty demands that we admit that this God concept teeters on the brink of unintelligibility.  But it is defensible as a Grenzbegriff, a boundary or limit  concept. See The Concept GOD as Limit Concept.

 

God is not a being among beings, but Being itself.  In this respect God is like the One of Plotinus. There is no Many in which the One is a member.  The ONE is not one of many. Similarly, in Aquinas there is no totality of beings in which God is a member.  God is not one being among many. He is utterly transcendent like the One of Plotinus and the Good of Plato. And yet, God is not other than every being, every ens, for he himself is. If God were other than every being, then he would be other than himself, which is impossible. This distinguishes the God of Aquinas from Heidegger's Being. For Heidegger, das Sein ist kein Seiendes, Being is other than every being, everything that is. For Aquinas, Gott oder das Sein ist selbst seiend, God or Being is himself being. Or, as I say in my existence book, The Paradigm Existent, the Unifier, is not a being (which would imply that it is a being among beings), but the being, the one and only being (ens) that is identical to its Being (esse) .  That is indeed one of the entailments of DDS: there is no real distinction in God as between God and Being and between God and his Being.

 

2) As for Peter van Inwagen, he, like so many hard-core analytic types, uses 'Platonism' and related expressions in a loose and historically uninformed way.  He calls himself a Platonist but he certainly does not accept 'into his ontology' -- as these types say -- Platonic Forms or Ideas (eide), Platonic participation (methexis) of phenomenal particulars in Forms, and the rest of the conceptual machinery which naturally within Plato's system implies levels/grades of Being and modes of Being which Dominik, as a German speaker, can understand as Seinsweisen or Seinsmodi. In the essay in question, van Inwagen comes out unequivocally against modes of Being.  (I employ the majuscule 'B' in 'Being' so as to mark the crucial distinction between Being and beings, esse et ens/entia, das Sein und das Seiende. Observing that distinction is initium sapientiae in ontology.)

 

Van Inwagen's main man is Willard van Orman Quine who contributed to the misuse of the good old word 'abstract' with his talk of 'abstract objects.' So-called abstract objects are not products of abstraction.  Van Inwagen buys into this lapse from traditional usage along with his colleague Alvin Plantinga. Accordingly, there are properties, but they are 'abstract objects' which exist just as robustly (or just as anemically) as 'concrete objects.' So-called abstract objects are, besides being outside of space and time, causally inert.  So it is no surprise that Plantinga and van Inwagen reject the DDS claim that God is identical to each of his omni-attributes or essential properties.  To their way of thinking, that identity claim makes of God a causally inert abstract object, which of course God, as causa prima, cannot be.

 

3) When van Inwagen says that DDS presupposes an Aristotelian ontology of substance and attribute, what he says is true inasmuch as said ontology is a constituent ontology (C-ontology). This is what he, as a self-styled 'Platonist' objects to. I explain C-ontology in my Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on DDS.  See section 3. Here is part of what I say in that section:

Since a Plantinga-type approach to ontology rules out DDS from the outset, no sophisticated adherent of the doctrine will adopt such an approach. The DDS defender will embrace an ontology that accommodates an ontologically simple being. Indeed, as Nicholas Wolterstorff (1991) notes, classical proponents of DDS such as Aquinas had a radically different ontological style, one that allowed for the coherent conceivability of DDS. They did not think of individuals as related to their properties as to abstracta external to them, but as having properties as ontological constituents. They, and some atheist contemporaries as well, think in terms of a “constituent ontology” as opposed to what Wolterstorff calls a “relation ontology” or what might be called a “nonconstituent ontology”. Bundle theories are contemporary examples of constituent ontology. If properties are assayed as tropes and a concrete particular as a bundle of tropes, then these tropes or abstract particulars are parts of concrete particulars when suitably bundled. Properties so assayed are brought from Plato’s heaven to earth. The togetherness or compresence of tropes in a trope bundle is not formal identity but a kind of contingent sameness. Thus a redness trope and a sweetness trope in an apple are not identical but contingently compresent as parts of the same whole. A model such as this allows for an extrapolation to a necessary compresence of the divine attributes in the case of God. Aquinas, the greatest of the medieval proponents of DDS, is of course an Aristotelian, not a trope theorist. But he too is a constituent ontologist. Form and matter, act and potency, and essence and existence are constituents of primary substances. Essence and existence in sublunary substances such as Socrates are really distinct but inseparably together. Their unity is contingent. This model permits an extrapolation to the case of a being in which essence and existence are necessarily together or compresent. Constituent ontology, as murky as it must remain on a sketch such as this, at least provides a framework in which DDS is somewhat intelligible as opposed to a Plantinga-style framework on which DDS remains wholly unintelligible. The arguments for DDS amount to arguments against the nonconstituent ontological framework.

Combox open. I invite Dominik to tell me whether I have answered his question to his satisfaction.

Felicitas Theoretica et Visio Beata: Monasticism and Christianity

The bliss of the bios theoretikos as described by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics is the model for the Beatific Vision as described by Thomas Aquinas. The ultimate salvific state is a  contemplative state. Monasticism is an institutional expression of this root commitment.  The monk's life is decidedly biased toward the intellectual and the theoretical. As opposed to what? As opposed to a life in which praxis is paramount.

Question: Is the life of the monk the highest life for the Christian? Is the monastic life the highest form of  imitatio Christi?  Christ was no anchorite.  He did not flee from the agitation of the cities and from the people except for relatively short periods. He associated with the canaille, with publicans and prostitutes. His ministry was among them where he risked everything and in human terms lost everything.

Despite their drastic differences, Socrates too moved among the people  and met a predictable fate. He lived in no ivory tower where he could think and write in peace and in leisurely retirement. He wrote nothing. His academy was the agora. His was the dialectic of the streets, not that of the learned essay. A battle-hardened soldier, he knew how to translate military valor into civil courage. Among his interlocutors were powerful and vicious men.  He took risks, offended them, and was executed by the State.  But back to Christ.  Let us hear St. Neilos the Ascetic. This is from his Ascetic Discourse in the Philokalia, that marvellous compendium of Patristic teachings.

For philosophy is a state of moral integrity combined with a doctrine of true knowledge concerning reality. Both Jews and Greeks fell short of this, for they rejected the Wisdom that is from heaven and tried to philosophize without Christ, who alone has revealed the true philosophy in both His life and His teaching. For by the purity of His life He was the first to establish the way of true philosophy. He always held His soul above the passions of the body, and in the end, when His death was required by His design for man's salvation. He laid down even His soul. In this He taught us that the true philosopher must renounce all life's pleasures, mastering pains and passions, and paying scant attention to the body: he must not overvalue even his soul, but must readily lay it down when holiness demands.

The apostles received this way of life from Christ and made it their own, renouncing the world in response to His call, disregarding fatherland, relatives and possessions. At once they adopted a harsh and strenuous way of life, facing every kind of adversity, afflicted, tormented, harassed, naked, lacking even necessities; and finally they met death boldly, imitating their Teacher faithfully in all things. Thus through their actions they left behind a true image of the highest way of life.

Although all Christians should have modeled their own life on this image, most of them either lacked the will to do so or else made only feeble efforts. There were, however, a few who had the Strength to rise above the turmoil of the world and to flee from the agitation of cities. Having escaped from this turbulence, they embraced the monastic life and reproduced in themselves the pattern of apostolic virtue. They preferred voluntary poverty to possessions, because this freed them from distraction, and so as to control the passions, they satisfied their bodily needs with food that was readily available and simply prepared, rather than with richly dressed dishes. Soft and unnecessary clothing they rejected as an invention of human luxury, and they wore only such plain garments as are required for the body. It seemed to them a betrayal of philosophy to turn their attention from heavenly things to earthly concerns more appropriate to animals. They ignored the world, being above human passions.

I draw your attention to the third paragraph. Christ did not flee from the agitation of the cities. He did not ignore the world and its turmoil. He was not above human passions. The God-Man was fully human. He did not die like a Stoic sage. He experienced to the full the brutality of the brutal Romans, dying like a man in utter agony of body and in despair of spirit, abandoned.

So the question is: Is the monastic way a way to evade true imitation of Christ? I myself am of the monkish disposition and not at all inclined to go into the agora like Socrates  or into the temple with its moneychangers like Christ. Luther I find repellent; the anti-rational but also anti-mystical Kierkegaard fascinating but wrongheaded; the Roman church wishy-washy despite its deep depths of mysticism; it is the East and the mystical depths of Orthodox Christianity that attract me. Athens is closer to Constantinople than to Rome.

And so I ask my question in the spirit of Socratic self-examination. I do not have an answer.  The unexamined life is not worth living, and the highest examination is the examination of one's own life.

Related:

Kierkegaard: "To Hell with the Pope!" and Monkishness. The Highest Life

Conceiving the Afterlife: Life 2.0 or Beatific Vision?

'Political' is not a Dirty Word

Years ago I heard a man on C-Span whose name and the name of whose organization I have forgotten. The man headed an outfit promoting a strict interpretation of the U.S. constitution. Throughout his talk he repeated the remark that his organization was not political, not political, NOT POLITICAL!

 

Nonsense, say I. What the hell else could it be? What could be more political than questions about constitutions and their interpretation, and organizations that promote a particular style of constitutional interpretation?

 

'Political' is not a dirty word. How could it be when the human being, by nature, is zoon politikon, a political animal? Aristotle, who made the point, also appreciated that the political life cannot be the highest life. That honor goes to the theoretical life. The vita activa subserves the vita contemplativa. The doctor angelicus follows in the footsteps of the Peripatetic. 

After MacIntyre: On Deriving Ought from Is

Are there any (non-trivial*) valid arguments that satisfy the following conditions:  (i) The premises are all purely factual  in the sense of purporting to state only what is the case; (ii) the conclusion is normative/evaluative?  Alasdair MacIntyre gives the following example (After Virtue, U. of Notre Dame Press, 1981, p. 55):

1. This watch is inaccurate.

Therefore

2. This is a bad watch.

MacIntyre claims that the premise is factual, the conclusion evaluative, and the argument valid.  (The argument is an enthymeme the formal validity of which is ensured by the auxiliary premise, 'Every inaccurate watch is a bad watch.') The validity is supposed to hinge on the functional character of the concept watch.  A watch is an artifact created by an artificer for a specific purpose: to tell time accurately.  It therefore has a proper function, one assigned by the artificer.  (Serving as a paperweight being an example of an improper function.)  A good watch does its job, serves its purpose, fulfills its proper function. MacIntyre tells us that "the concept of a watch cannot be defined independently of the concept of a good watch . . ." and that "the criterion of something's being a watch and something's being a good watch . . . are not independent of each other." (ibid.)  MacIntyre goes on to say that both criteria are factual and that for this reason arguments like the one above validly move from a factual premise to an evaluative conclusion.

Speaking as someone who has been more influenced by the moderns than by the ancients, I don't see it.  It is not the case that "the concept of a watch cannot be defined independently of the concept of a good watch . . . ."  A watch is "a portable timepiece designed to be worn (as on the wrist) or carried in the pocket." (Merriam-Webster)  This standard definition allows, as it should, for both good and bad watches.   Note that if chronometric goodness, i.e., accuracy, were built into the definition of 'watch,' then no watch would ever need repair.  Indeed, no watch could be repaired. For a watch needing repair would then not be a watch.

MacIntyre is playing the following game, to put it somewhat uncharitably.

He smuggles the evaluative attribute good into his definition of 'watch,' forgets that he has done so thereby generating the illusion that his definition is purely factual, and then pulls the evaluative rabbit out of the hat in his conclusion.  It is an illusion since the rabbit was already there in the premise.  In other words, both (1) and (2) are evaluative.  So, while the argument is valid, it is not a valid argument from a purely factual premise to an evaluative conclusion.

So if the precise question is whether one can validly move from a purely factual or descriptive premise to an evaluative conclusion, then MacIntyre's example fails to show that this is possible.

What MacIntyre needs is the idea that some statements are both factual and evaluative.  If (1) is both, then (2) -- This is a bad watch -- follows and  MacIntyre gets what he wants.  But if (1) is both, then (1) is not purely factual. The question, however, was whether there is a valid immediate inference from the purely factual to the normative/evaluative.  The answer to that, pace MacIntyre, is in the negative.

Is Man a Functional Concept?

But now suppose that, with respect to functional concepts, the move from fact to value is logically kosher because functional concepts embed criteria of evaluation.  Then this discussion is relevant to ethics, the normative study of human action,  only if man is a functional concept.  Aristotle maintains as much:  man qua man has a proper function, a proper role, a proper 'work' (ergon).  This proper function is one he has essentially, by his very nature, regardless of whatever contingent roles a particular human may instantiate, wife, father, sea captain.  Thus, " 'man' stands to 'good man' as 'watch' stands to 'good watch' . . . ." (56)  Now if man qua man has a proper and essential function, then to say of a particular man that he is good or bad is to imply that he has a proper and essential function.  But then to call a man good is also to make a factual statement.  (57)

The idea is that being human is a role that includes certain norms, a role that each of us necessarily instantiates whether like it or not.  There is a sort of coalescence of factual individual and norm in the case of each human being just as, in Aristotle's ontology, there is a sort of coalescence of individual and nature in each primary substance. 

But does man qua man have a proper role or function?  The moderns fight shy of this notion.  They tend to  think of all roles, jobs, and functions of humans as freely adopted and contingent.  Modern man likes to think of himself as a free and autonomous individual who exists prior to and apart from all roles.  This is what Sartre means when he says that existence precedes essence:  Man qua man has no pre-assigned nature or essence or proper function: man as existing individual makes himself what ever he becomes.  Man is not God's artifact, hence has no function other than one he freely adopts.

Although Aristotle did not believe in a creator God, it is an important question whether an Aristotle-style healing of the fact-value rift requires classical theism as underpinning. MacIntyre seems to think so. (Cf. p. 57)  Philippa Foot demurs.

Interim Conclusion

If the precise question is whether one can validly (but non-trivially) move from a purely factual or descriptive premise to an evaluative conclusion, I have yet to see a clear example of this.  But one ought to question the strict bifurcation of fact and value.  The failure of entailment is perhaps no surprise given the bifurcation.  The Aristotelian view, despite its murkiness, remains a contender.  But to be a contender is not to be a winner.

The Aristotelian view is murky because it seems to imply that a bad man is not a man, just as a bad watch is not a watch.  If it is built into the concept watch that it tell time accurately, then a watch that is either slow or fast is not  watch, which is plainly false if not absurd, implying as it does that no watch could ever need repair.  Clearly, there is nothing in the concept watch to require that a watch be accurate.  There are good watches and bad watches. Similarly, there are good men and bad men. If to be a man is to exercise the proper function of a man, then there would be no need for correctional institutions.

___________________

*A trivial argument from 'is' to 'ought' exploits the explosion principle, i.e., ex contradictione quodlibet.  If anything follows from a contradiction, then from a contradictory premise set of factual claims any normative claim follows.

Remembering Henry Veatch and Rational Man

Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl

Is It Epistemically Certain That There are Substances?

Herewith, another episode in my ongoing discussion with Lukas Novak.  Here again is his list of propositions that he claims are not only true, but knowable with (epistemic as opposed to psychological) certainty:

a) God exists.
b) There are substances.
c) There are some necessary truths, even some de re necessary truths.
d) Human cognition is capable of truth and certainty.
e) There are no contradictions in reality.

I have already explained why I do not consider God exists to be certainly knowable.  I now consider whether it is certainly knowable that there are (Aristotelian primary) substances.  

We begin with the Moorean fact that there are tables and chairs, rocks and trees, cats and dogs. We may refer to such things generally as spatiotemporal meso-particulars. My work table, for example, is at a definite location in space; it has existed uninterruptedly for a long time; and it is a middle-sized object. Our question is not whether there are things like my table; our question is whether things like my table must be 'assayed' -- this useful term is from Gustav Bergmann -- as substances in the Aristotelian sense of the term.  Thus I am not using 'substance' as a stylistic variant of 'spatiotemporal meso-particular.' Such a use would be a misuse by my standards of rigor and would paper over the legitimate question whether tables and cats and such must be understood in terms of an ontology of substances.

It might be that there are tables and cats, but no substances. But if there are substances, then tables and cats are paradigm examples of them.

My thesis is not that there are no substances, but that it is not epistemically certain that there are.  Here is one consideration among several.

Persistence

My beautiful oak table has been around a long time. I reckon it came into existence in the early '80s. It will surely outlast me before passing out of existence.  Numerical sameness over the temporal interval of its existence is a Moorean fact. Its diachronic identity is a datum. Let us say that the table has persisted for a long time.  This word is 'datanic' as I like to say and thus theoretically neutral. I use it simply to record the datum, the Moorean fact, about which there can be no reasonable dispute, that the table has remained in existence, numerically one and the same, over a long period of time.

So far, I have been doing 'proto-philosophy.'  I have been collecting and commenting upon  some obvious data.  I have not yet asked a specifically philosophical question or made a specifically philosophical assertion.  

Perdurance or Endurance?

We get to philosophical questions when we ask: In what way does my table persist? How exactly is persistence to be understood?  What is the nature of persistence? The question is not whether tables and cats persist; the question is what it is to persist.  The question is not whether there are persistents; of course there are. The question is: What is persistence?

Now we come to a fork in the road.  Two very different theories obtrude themselves upon our attention. Does a thing persist by being wholly present at each time at which it exists, or does a thing persist by merely having a proper part that is present at each time at which the thing exists?

Perdurance

Suppose the latter. Then we say that the table persists by perduring, where the latter term is theoretical unlike the pre-theoretical or datanic persists. If the table persists by perduring, then it is a whole of temporal parts with different such parts at different times. This implies that at no time during its existence is the whole table temporally present.  On the perdurance scheme, tables and cats and such are four-dimensional entities, space-time worms if you will.  If this is right, then the difference between a table and a process such as a fire is not categorially deep but superficial and a matter of how we conceptualize things.

Our natural tendency is to think of a house and a fire that consumes a house as very different, so different as to constitute a categorial difference.  We are not inclined to call a house a process or an extended event; but we do not hesitate to call a fire a process or an extended event. A fire has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It unfolds over time and can be said to have temporal parts. It is not wholly present at each time at which it exists.  It becomes present bit by bit. It is spread out in time as well as in space. When we observe a fire we are not observing the whole of it but only its present phase.  It is natural to speak of fires and storms and wars and plays as having phases. It is not natural to speak of houses and soldiers as having phases.

On the perdurance view, however, there is no fundamental categorial difference between the house and the fire. Both persist in the same way, by perduring with different temporal parts present at different times. Both have both spatial and temporal parts. Both are 4-D objects.

Endurance

On the other theory, the table persists by enduring, where the latter term is also theoretical.  If my table is an endurant, then it is not a whole of temporal parts. It does not have temporal parts at all. It is wholly present at each time at which it exists.  It is nothing like a process.  When I look at my table I see the whole of it, not the current phase of it.

What is it for a thing to be wholly present at each moment of its existence?  One can understand it negatively: it means that the thing is not a whole of temporal parts. What does it mean positively? 

Persons may provide a clue. I regret things I did long ago, things that I did, not things some earlier self or earlier person-slice of me did.  I cannot shake the thought that I am numerically the same as the person who did those regrettable things. Connected with this is my conviction that my guilt is in no way diminished by the passage of time as it would be if I were a diachronic collection of person-slices as on a perdurantist view.  My conviction is that I have persisted by enduring, not by perduring. 

Of course, my psychological conviction does not prove that endurantism is true of persons, but it does help explain what it means for persons to be endurants as opposed to perdurants.

In the case of persons we can say that to be wholly present at every time at which the person exists is to be a substance that is 'there' at every moment beneath the flux of experiences and the flux of bodily changes as the self-same substrate of these psychological and physical changes. 

If  there are substances, then perdurantism is false, and endurantism is true

I have just sketched two theories of the persistence of material meso-particulars. Both theories go well beyond the Moorean fact of persistence.  Each has its arguments pro et contra. We needn't worry about these arguments here. The fact of persistence is such that if you deny it then you are legitimately labelled 'crazy.' But there is nothing crazy about questioning the perdurance and endurance theories.

The important point for present purposes is that theose who claim that there are Aristotelian primary substance are opting for endurantism.  Finally, my argument against Dr. Novak.

My Argument

a) It is epistemically certain that there are substances if and only if it is epistemically certain that endurantism is true.

b) It is not epistemically certain that endurantism is true.

Therefore

c) It is not epistemically certain that there are substances.

Related articles

Are Any Substantive Philosophical Propositions Epistemically Certain?

Disagreement in Philosophy: Notes on Jiří Fuchs

Once More on the Bogus Aristotle 'Quotation'

The indefatigable Dave Lull delivers again.

But first Uncle Bill's lessons for the day:

1) Be skeptical of all unsourced quotations.

2) Do not broadcast unsourced quotations unless you are sure they are correct.

3) Verify the sources of sourced quotations.

4) Correct, if you can, incorrect 'quotations.'

5) Do not willfully mis-attribute!  Or, like Achmed the Dead Terrorist, I KEEL you!

6) Don't use 'quote' as a noun; it is a verb.

 

Mr. Lull send us to Aristotle and accuracy where the following comment clarifies matters:

Robin Smith said...

 

You are correct that this quotation, in the form that seems to be all over the Internet now, is not a quotation from Aristotle: it's not even a loose translation of Nicomachean Ethics 1094b23-25. The English translation from which it has descended is as follows (I'm not sure whose this is):

"It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible."

In fact, this isn't a great translation, but at least it gets the sense right. Notice that the first eight words match the beginning of the spurious quote exactly (actually, the corresponding Greek is just two words, (pepaideumenou esti), one of which (esti) means "it is" and the other one of which (pepaideumenou) is translated "the mark of an educated mind". Since it's distinctive of this translation to supply "mind" instead of "man" or "person", I'm sure that's the source. In bouncing about the Internet, Aristotle's own quote has been transmogrified into something quite different that evidently resonates with many people. Just for the record, I am an academic in a philosophy department, I specialize in Aristotle, and I've published translations of some of Aristotle's works. --Robin Smith

I believe this is the Robin Smith I met at a Plato conference back in 1980.  I am indeed blessed with, and grateful for, a good memory.  You would expect that of a Platonist, right? 

 

True Whether or Not Aristotle (or Camus) Said It

Be skeptical of all unsourced quotations. Where did the Stagirite say this?

Jumping ahead a couple of millennia, one finds the following bogus Camus quotation on several of those wretched unsourced quotation websites:

"I would rather live my life as if there is a God, and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't, and die to find out there is." ~Albert Camus

Having read and taught Camus, I can assure you that the above is not something he could have said in his own voice.  Did he put these words into the mouth of a character in one his novels or plays?

Paging Dave Lull.

 

UPDATE (5/6)

I had forgotten that I had already asked Dave about this and that he had already replied, in April of 2013:

I find no evidence that a statement of Camus' is translated thusly.  I won't bore you with the things that I did (buoyed by my high tolerance of boring activity) before I finally went to Google Books and did inauthor: "Albert Camus" searches using combinations of various keywords and short phrases from this so-called quotation and got no statement even close.  I even tried using Google Translate to translate it into French and then used combinations of various French keywords and short phrases and also got no statement even close.  I'm not surprised.  How about you?

Our hard-working researcher now provides us with the following:

 

From Giovanni Gaetani, “The noble art of misquoting Camus -- from its origins to the Internet era,” Journal of Camus Studies 2015:

2) Camus a wise gambler after Pascal's example?

‘I would rather live my life as if there is a God, and die to

find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't, and die

to find out there is’. 

Dozens of disoriented readers doubted at first glance of the reliability of this quote, but none of them was capable of solving the enigma: someone assumed that ‘maybe Camus wrote it on some private letters’, few others noticed the similarity with Pascal's wager on the existence of God. Unfortunately, the author of this quote is for sure neither Camus nor Pascal. According to Google, the actual spreading of this quote dates back to the early 2000s, when it firstly appeared in some American Christian sites25. In 2006, the Bishop T. D. Jakes even invented a ‘8 seconds prayer’ chain letter using this quote26. Anyway, I did not manage to understand how and why Camus is considered the author of this quote.

Aristotelian Categoricals and Natural Norms

 Here are some notes on Chapter Two, "Natural Norms,"  of Philippa Foot's Natural Goodness, Oxford UP, 2001.  

As I mentioned previously, Foot essays "a naturalistic theory of ethics: to break really radically both with G. E. Moore's anti-naturalism and with the subjectivist theories such as emotivism and prescriptivism that have been seen as clarifications and developments of Moore's original thought." (p. 5)  

"The main thesis of this book is that propositions about goodness and defect in a human being  -- even those that have to do with goodness of character and action -- are not to be understood in such psychological terms." (37)  Her point is that when we evaluate living things, whether plants, animals, or humans, our uses of 'good' do not need to be explained in terms of commendation or any other speech act, or in terms of any psychological attitude.  Goodness and defect in living things are intrinsic to them and not parasitic upon attitudes or stances we take up with respect to them.

On to the details.

Earlier we were discussing the peculiarities of generic statements.  A generic statement is one that is neither singular nor logically quantifiable.  'The cat is four-legged,' unlike 'The cat is sleeping,' is typically used to express a general not a singular proposition.   But 'The cat is four-legged,' typically used, is not equivalent to 'All cats are four-legged' or to any quantified statement.  One three-legged cat suffices to falsify the universal quantification, but it does not falsify the generic generalization.  The fact that many adult humans lack the full complement of 32 teeth does not falsify the generic 'Adult humans have 32 teeth.'  'Rabbits are herbivorous' is a further example.  It would seem to entail 'Some rabbits are herbivorous.'  Even so, one is saying much more with an utterance of the former than with the latter.

The following wrinkles now occur to me.  If 'some' imports present existence, then the generic 'Velociraptors are carnivorous' does not entail 'Some velociraptors are carnivorous.'  But let's not get hung up on this, or on the entailments of the presumably generic 'Unicorns are four-legged.'    But we should  note, en passant, the presumably different phenomenon of plural predication.  'Velociraptors are extinct' is not about individual velociraptors; it is not equivalent to 'Each velociraptor is extinct.'  Presumably, it is the species that is extinct, whatever exactly species are. A species goes extinct when its last specimen expires; but one cannot say that the specimen goes extinct.  Assuming that Obama is not a species unto himself, his death will not be his extinction.  Compare 'Horses fill the field' with 'Horses are four-legged.'  The first is a plural predication; the second is not.  It is false that each horse fills the field, but true that each normal horse is four-legged.   But both sentences have in common that they are not about each horse.  

But I digress.  Back to Foot.

Foot, following Michael Thompson, speaks of Aristotelian categoricals.  "The deer is an animal whose form of defence is flight" is an example. (34)  The sentence is "about a species at a given historical time . . . ." (29)  Foot is not assuming the immutability of species.  But species must have a "relative stability" if true Aristotelian categoricals are to be possible at all. (29)  "They tell us how a kind of plant or animal , considered at a particular time, and in its natural habitat, develops, sustains itself, defends itself, and reproduces." (29)

Foot, stepping beyond Thompson,  stresses the teleological aspect of Aristotelian categoricals.  "There is an Aristotelian categorical about the species peacock to the effect that the male peacock displays his brilliant tail in order to attract a female during the mating season." (31)  Not that the male strutting his stuff has any such telos in mind.  The thought here is that there is a teleology in nature that works itself out below the level of conscious mind.  The heliotropism in plants is a kind of teleology in nature below the level of conscious mind. Plants 'strive' to get into the light, but not consciously. Migrating birds are not trying to get somewhere warmer with better eats; they do not have this end in view.  And yet the migratory operation is teleologically directed.  Why do the birds head south?  In order to survive the winter, find food, and reproduce.

Can we say of an individual plant or animal that it is intrinsically good or bad independently of our interests or desires?  This is the crucial question that Foot answers in the affirmative.  Norms are ingredient in nature herself; they are not projected by us or expressive of our psychological attitudes.  Ingredient not in all of nature, but in all of living nature.  Living things bear within them norms that ground the correctness of our evaluations.  Evaluation occurs at "the intersection of two types of propositions: on the one hand, Aristotelian categoricals (life form descriptions relating to the species), and on the other, propositions about particular individuals that are the subject of evaluation." (33)

Foot is bravely resisting the fact-value dichotomy.  Values and norms are neither ideal objects in a Platonic realm apart, nor are they psychological projections.  They are intrinsically ingredient in natural facts.  How does the resistance go?  We start with an Aristotelian categorical such as 'The deer is an animal whose form of defence is flight.'  The sentence is "about a species at a given historical time . . . ." (29) The individual as a member of its species is intrinsically or naturally good if it is able to serve its species by maintaining itself in existence and reproducing. Note that an individual organism does not reproduce itself; it reproduces (usually in conjunction with an opposite sexed partner) an organism distinct  from itself, the offspring  Thus an individual's reproduction is quite unlike an individual's self-maintenance.  An individual needs ancestors but it doesn't need descendants.  The species needs descendants. Now suppose a deer is born with deformed limbs that prevent its engaging in swift flight from predators. This fact about it makes it an intrinsically or naturally bad deer.  For such a deer will not be able to serve its species by preserving itself in existence until it can reproduce.  That's my gloss, anyway.

The idea, then, is that the species to which the individual organism belongs encapsulates norms of goodness/badness for its members which the individual either meets or fails to meet.

Interim Critical Remarks

A. This naturalistic scheme strikes me as obscure because the status of species has not been sufficiently clarified.  Aristotelian categoricals are about species, but what exactly are species or the "life forms of species"?  The species peacock presumably exists only in individual peacocks, but is not identical to any such individual or to the whole lot of them. (The species is not an extensional entity such as a mereological sum, or a set.) It looks to be an immanent universal, a one-in-many.   But then it is not natural in the very same sense in which an individual peacock is natural, i.e., in space and time at a definite spatiotemporal location, and only there.  (Universals are multiply located.) So Foot's natural norms are not natural in the same sense in which the organisms of which they are the norms are natural.

So there still is a fact-norm distinction in the form of the distinction between a member of a species and the species.  This whole scheme will remain murky until it is explained what a species is and how it is present in its members.  We are in the vicinity of the ancient problem of universals.  Foot's norms are not outside of things in a realm apart, not in the mind; they are 'in' things.  But what does this 'in' mean exactly?

B. My second remark concerns an individual organism that cannot  serve its species such as an infertile human male, or a human female who cannot have children and is therefore biologically defective in this respect.  Does her biological defect make her a bad human being?  Foot would seem to have to say yes: the defective woman does not come up to the norm for her species.  She is abnormal in a normative sense and not merely in a statistical sense.  She is not a good woman!  How is this any different from the case of the lame deer?  A lame deer is a defective deer, hence not a good deer.  It is not a good deer because it cannot flee from predators thereby maintaining its life so that it can go on to procreate and serve its species by so doing.

Foot wants to bring normativity down to earth from Plato's heaven; at the same time she wants to extrude it from the mind and install it in natural things outside the mind.  This makes plenty of sense with respect to plants and non-human animals.  But of course she want to extend her scheme to humans as well.  This is where trouble starts.

Foot sees the individual organism in the light of the species: as a specimen of the species and not as an individual in its own right. This is not a problem for plants and non-human animals, with the possible exception of our pets.  But Foot wants to extend her natural normativity scheme to humans as well.  But how can what I ought to do, and what I ought not to do, and what I should be and how I should be be dictated by my species membership?  Am I just an animal, a bit of the world's fauna?  I am an animal, but I am also a person: not just a material object in a material world, but a conscious and self-conscious subject for whom there is a world.  

A Protreptic Puzzler

A curious passage from Aristotle's Protrepticus:

. . . the fact that all men feel at ease in philosophy, wishing to dedicate their whole lives to the pursuit of it by leaving behind all other concerns, is in itself weighty evidence that it is a painless pleasure to dedicate oneself wholeheartedly to philosophy. For no one is willing to engage in exhausting work for a long time. (#53, p. 24)

To set the Stagirite straight, I should like to shunt his shade into some Philosophy 101 classroom for a spell.

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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.

Potentiality and the Substance View of Persons

I suspect that Vlastimil V's (neo-scholastic) understanding of potentiality is similar to the one provided by Matthew Lu in Potentiality Rightly Understood:

The substance view of persons holds that every human being either has the potential to manifest any and all properties essential to personhood or does actually manifest them. For the adherent of the substance view of persons, "potential" does not essentially refer to some possible future state of affairs. Rather, in this conception of what I will call developmental potential, to say that an organism has the potential to manifest some property means that that property belongs essentially to the kind of thing that it is (i.e., is among the essential properties it has by nature). Whether or not a specific individual actualizes the potentialities of its nature is contingent; but those potentialities necessarily belong to its nature in virtue of its membership in a specific natural kind.

I don't understand this.  Let the property be rationality.  Let organism o belong to the natural kind human being.  We assume that man is by nature a rational animal. A human fetus is of course a human being.  Suppose the fetus is anencephalic.  It too is a human being -- it is not lupine or bovine or a member of any other animal species.  But it is a defective human being, one whose defect is so serious that it, that very individual, will never manifest rationality.  So how can every human being have "the potential to manifest any and all properties essential to personhood"?  That is my question.  Now consider the following answers/views.

A1: The anencephalic human fetus does not have the potentiality to manifest rationality.  This is because it lacks "the largest part of the brain consisting mainly of the cerebral hemispheres, including the neocortex, which is responsible for cognition." (Wikipedia)

A2:  The anencephalic human fetus does have the potentiality to manifest rationality because it is a member of a species or natural kind the normal (non-defective) members of which do have the potentiality in question.

A3:  The anencephalic human fetus does have the potentiality to manifest rationality because the natural kind itself has the potentiality to manifest rationality.

I think (A2) is the most charitable reading of the above quoted paragraph considered in the context of Lu's entire paper. Accordingly, a particular anencephalic fetus has the potentiality to manifest rationality because other genetically human members of the same species do have the potentiality in question.  This makes no sense to me.  But perhaps I am being obtuse, in which case a charitable soul may wish to help me understand.  To be perfectly honest, I really would like it to be the case that EVERY  "human being either has the potential to manifest any and all properties essential to personhood or does actually manifest them."  I would like that to be the case because then I would not  have to supplement my Potentiality Argument against abortion with other principles as I have done in other entries.

What's my problem?  Let's start with an analogy. It is narrowly logically possible and broadly logically possible that I run a four-minute mile.  It is also nomologically possible that I run a four-minute mile. For all the latter means is that the laws of nature pertaining to human anatomy and physiology do not rule out a human being's running a four-minute mile.  Since they do not rule out a human being's running that fast, they don't rule out my running that fast.

But note that the laws of human physiology abstract entirely from the particularities and peculiarities of me qua individual animal.  They abstract from my particular O₂ uptake, the ratio of 'fast twitch' to 'slow twitch' muscle fibers in my legs, and so on.  And to be totally clear: it is the concrete flesh-and-blood individual that runs, 'Boston Billy' Rodgers, for example, that very guy, not his form, not his matter, not his nature, not any accident or property or universal or subjective concept or objective concept that pertains to him. 

Now consider the question: do I, BV, have the potential to run a four-minute mile? No.  Why not?  Because of a number of deficiencies, insufficiencies, limitations and whatnot pertaining to the particular critter that I am.  The fact that other runners have  the potential in question is totally irrelevant.  What do their individual potentialities have to do with me?  The question, again, is whether I, BV, have/has the potentiality in question.  It is also totally irrelevant that the laws of human physiology do not rule out my running a four-minute mile.  Again, this is because said laws abstract from the particularities and peculiarities of the concrete individual.  Surely it would be a very  serious blunder to suppose that the nomological possibility of my running a four-minute mile  entails the potentiality of my doing any such thing. That would be a two-fold blunder: (i) potentiality is not possibility, and (ii) potentiality is always the potentiality of some concrete individual or other.

Similarly, the anencephalic individual does not have the potentiality to manifest rationality.  The fact that normal human fetuses do have this potentiality is totally irrelevant.  What do their individual potentialities have to do with the potentialities or lacks thereof of the anencephalic individual?  It is also totally irrelevant that man is by nature a rational animal, that the capacity to reason is 'inscribed' (as a Continental philosopher might say) in his very essence.  For the question is precisely whether or not this very anencephalic individual has the potentiality to manifest rationality.  My answer, as you may have surmised, is No. 

I think I can diagnose the neo-Scholastic error, if error it is.  (I hope it is not an error, for then the Potentiality Argument is strengthened and simplified.)  Take a look at (A3):

A3. The anencephalic human fetus does have the potentiality to manifest rationality because the natural kind itself has the potentiality to manifest rationality.

This, I submit, is a complete non-starter.  Whatever a natural kind is, it itself does not have the potential to be rational.  It can no more be rational than humanity in general can run.  (I once entered a 10 K event called 'The Human Race.' I did not compete against humanity in general, but against certain particular human critters.)

So it can't be the universal nature humanity that has the potential to be rational.  What about the individual or individualized nature, the human nature of Socrates, of Plato, et al.?  Could a particular individualized nature be that which has the potential to manifest rationality?  No again.  For it is but an ontological constituent of  a concrete man such as Socrates.  It is baby Socrates that has the potential to manifest rationality and excel in dialetic, not one of his ontological constituents.  Socrates is more than his individual human nature; there is also the dude's matter (materia signata) to take into consideration.  Our man is a hylomorphic compound, and it is this compound in which the potentiality to display rationality is grounded.

My diagnosis of neo-Scholastic error, then, is that neo-Scholastics, being Aristotelians, tend to conflate a primary substance such as Socrates with his individual(ized) nature. Since human nature in general includes the potential to be rational, it is natural to think that every individual(ized) human nature, whether normal or defective, has the potential to be rational.  But surely it is not the individual(ized) human nature that has the potential to be rational, but the ontological whole of which the individual(ized) human nature is a proper part.  In the case of the anencephalic fetus, this ontological whole includes defective matter that cannot support the development of rationality.  Only if one confuses the individual(ized) human nature of the anencephalic individual with the concrete anencephalic individual could one suppose that it too has the potential to manifest rationality.

The fact that Lu's paragraph above is ambiguous as between (A2) and (A3) further supports my contention that there is a confusion here.

My view, then, is (A1).  Abortion is a grave moral evil.  The Potentiality Argument, however, does not suffice as an argument against every instance of it.  This is not to say that the aborting of the anencephalic is morally acceptable.  It rather suggests that the PA requires some form of supplementation.

Related articles

Does the Potentiality Argument Prove Too Much?

Abortion and Infanticide: What's the Difference?

What is Potentiality? An Exploration

Our Czech friend Vlastimil V. writes,

I believe it is precisely the potentiality -- or the in principle capacity -- of logical thinking, free decisions, or higher emotions that makes killing human embryos morally problematic, seemingly unlike the killing of non-human embryos. This seems to me a promising hypothesis, to say the least. But I need help with settling several issues.

And then V. peppers me with a bunch of tough questions.  I'll address just the first in this entry:

 

What is potentiality or in principle capacity in general? How does it differ from (metaphysical) possibility?

 

This is indeed the logically first question.  Potentiality is widely misunderstood even by many philosophers.  No wonder they do not appreciate the Potentiality Argument.  Here the focus is not on the Potentiality Argument against abortion, but on the concept of potentiality it requires.  My task is merely to unpack it, not evaluate it.  We may begin by treading the via negativa.

 

1.  A potentiality is not the same as a possibility.  It is obviously not the same as an actualized possibility, but it is also not the same as an unactualized possibility. Potentialities are strange items and their ontological status is puzzling.  Don't assume you know what they are, and don't assume that you can learn what they are from the uses of 'potential' and cognates in English.

 

Take the fragility of a piece of glass.  Its fragility is its potentiality (passive potency, disposition, liability) to shatter in certain circumstances.  Consider two panes of thin glass side by side in a window. The two panes are of the same type of glass, and neither has been specially treated. A small rock is thrown at one, call it pane A, and it shatters under the moderate impact. The other pane, call it B, receives no such impact. We know that A is fragile from the fact that it shattered. ("Potency is known through act," an Aristotelian might say.) We don't have quite the same assurance that B is fragile, but we have good reason to think that it is since it is made of the same kind of glass as A.

Suppose that B never in its existence is shattered or in any way pitted or cracked or broken. Then its fragility, its disposition-to-shatter (break, crack, etc.) is never manifested. We can express that by saying that the manifestation of the disposition remains an unactualized possibility. That is, the shattering of pane B remains, for the whole of B's existence, a merely possible state of affairs, a mere possibility.

But that is not to say that the disposition is a mere possibility, let alone that it is unreal. The disposition is as actual as the thing that has it.  A disposition is distinct from  its manifestation. The disposition is actual whether its manifestation is actual, as in the case of pane A, or merely possible, as in the case of pane B.

So we make a distinction between the (de re) possibility of B's shattering and B's disposition to shatter.  The first is the possibility of the manifestation of the second.  The first may never become actual while the second is as actual as B.  What's more, the possibility of B's shattering is (in some sense needing explanation) grounded in B's disposition to shatter.

The point extends to potentialities: it is an elementary confusion to think of unrealized or unmanifested or unactualized potentialities as unactualized possibilia or mere possibilities. For example, a human embryo has the potentiality to develop, in the normal course of events, into a neonate. This potentiality is something actual in the embryo. It is not a mere or unactualized possibility of the embryo. What is a mere possibility is the realization of the potentiality. Just as we must not confuse a disposition with its manifestation, we must not confuse a potentiality with its realization.

One difference to note is that between a passive potentiality and an active potentiality.  The pane's potentiality to shatter is passive whereas the embryo's potentiality to develop into a neonate is active.  As for terminology, I don't see any non-verbal difference between a potentiality-to-X and a disposition-to-X. (I could be wrong.)  Some people are irascible.  They are disposed to become angry under slight external provocation.  Is that a passive potentiality or an active potentiality?  Put that question on the 'back burner.'

2.  Another difference between a possibility and a potentiality is that, while every actual F is a possible F, no actual F is a potential F.  Therefore, a possible F is not the same as a potential F.  For example, an actual cat is a possible cat, but no actual cat is a potential cat.  A towel that is actually saturated with water is possibly saturated with water; but no towel that is actually saturated with water is potentially saturated with water.  If a man is actually drunk, then he is possibly drunk; but an actually drunk man is not a potentially drunk man.  Potentiality excludes actuality; possibility does not.  But can't a man who is actually drunk at one time be potentially drunk at another?  Of course, but that is not the point.

Necessarily, if x is actually F at time t, then x is possibly F at t.  But, necessarily, if x is actually F at t, then:

a. It is not the case that x is potentially F at t

and

b. X is not potentially F at t.

Furthermore, an actual truth is a possible truth, but it makes  no sense to say that an actual truth is a potential truth.  A truth is a true proposition; propositions are abstract objects; abstract objects are not subjects of real, as opposed to Cambridge, change.  So it makes  no sense to speak of potential truths.

The actual world is a possible world; but what could it mean to say that the actual world is a potential world?

If God necessarily exists, then God actually exists, in which case God possibly exists.  But it makes no sense to say that God potentially exists.  In terms of possible worlds:  If God exists in every world, then he exists in the actual world and in some possible worlds.  But 'God exists in some potential worlds' makes no sense.

It makes sense to say that it is possible that there exist an individual distinct from every actual individual.  But it makes no sense to say that there is the potentiality to exist of some individual distinct from every actual individual. 

3.  So, to answer Vlastimil's question, potentiality is not to be confused with possibility.  And it doesn't matter whether we are talking about narrowly logical possibility, broadly logical possibility, nomological  possibility, institutional possibility, or any other sort of  (real as opposed to epistemic/doxastic) possibility.  Nevertheless, the two are connected.  If it is possible that a boy grow a beard, then presumably that possibility is grounded in a potentiality inherent in the boy.  The point, once again, is that this potentiality is not itself something merely potential, but something actual or existent, though not yet actualized.

I am now seated.  I might now have been standing.  The first is an actual state of affairs, the second is a merely possible state of affairs.  How are we to understand the mere possibility of my standing now?  Pace the shade of David Lewis, it would be 'crazy' to say that there is a possible world in which a counterpart of me is standing now.  But it seems quite sane to say that the possibility of my standing now, when in actual fact I am seated, is grounded in the power (potentiality) I have to stand up.

A mere possibility is not nothing.  So it has some sort of ontological status.  A status can be secured for mere possibilities  if mere possibilities are grounded in really existent powers in agents. 

('Potential' Puzzle.  I have the power to do X iff it is possible that I do X.  But do I have the power because it is possible, or is it possible because I have the power?  Presumably the latter.  But my power is limited.  What constrains my power it not what is antecedently possible?  Throw this on the 'back burner' too, Euthyphro!)

As I understand the Aristotelian position, real possibilities involving natural items are parasitic upon causal powers and causal liabilities ingredient in these items.  That, by the way, implies constituent ontology, does it not?  Score another point for constituent ontology.

The Aristotelian position also implies a certain anti-empiricism, does it not?  A rubber band that is never stretched never empirically manifests its elasticity; yet it possesses the dispositional property of elasticity whether or not the property is ever manifested empirically.   So dispositions and potencies  are in a clear sense occult (hidden) entities, and they are occult in a way the occult blood in your stool sample is not occult.  For the latter, while not visible to gross inspection is yet empirically detectable in the blood lab.

4. Go back to the two panes of glass.  One we know is fragile: it broke under moderate impact.  How do we know that the other is fragile?  I submit that the concept of potentiality underlying the Potentiality Argument is governed by the following Potentiality Universality Principle:

PUP: Necessarily, if a normal F has the potentiality to become a G, then every normal F has the potentiality to become a G.

To revert to the hackneyed example, if an acorn is a potential oak tree, then every normal acorn is a potential oak tree, and this is so as a matter of natural necessity. It cannot be the case that some normal acorns have, while others do not have, the potentiality to become oak trees. Potentialities are inherent in the things that have them. They are not a matter of ascription. We don't ascribe potentialities; things have them regardless of our mental and linguistic performances. And these very performances themselves realize potentialities. So if the potentialities of the ascribing mind were themselves ascribed, who or what would do the ascribing? I cannot ascribe potentialities to myself if the ascribing is itself the realization of my potentiality to ascribe.

Similarly with passive potentialities. To say of a sugar cube that it is water-soluble is to say that, were it placed in water, it would dissolve. Now if this is true of one normal sugar cube, it is true of all normal sugar cubes. Suppose you have 100 sugar cubes, all alike. There would be no reason to say that some of them are water-soluble and some are not. If one is, all are. If one is not, none are.

5. Note that the water-solubility of sugar cubes cannot be identified with the truth of the subjunctive conditional 'If a sugar cube were placed in water then it would dissolve.'  It needs to be identified with the truth maker of that conditional, namely, the passive potency to dissolve inherent in the sugar cube.

6. Potentiality as here understood brings with it further Aristotelian baggage.  

Pointing to a lump of raw ground beef, someone might say, "This is a potential hamburger." Or, pointing to a hunk of bronze, "This is a potential statue." Someone who says such things is not misusing the English language, but he is not using 'potential' in the strong specific way that potentialists -- proponents of the Potentiality Principle in the Potentiality Argument-- are using the word. What is the difference? What is the difference between the two examples just given, and "This acorn is a potential oak tree," and "This embryo is a potential person?"

The difference is explainable in terms of the difference between identity and constitution. A lump of raw meat cannot come to be a hamburger; at most it can come to constitute one. The same goes for the hunk of bronze: it cannot come to be a statue; at most it can come to constitute one. Note also that an external agent is required to shape and cook the meat and to hammer the bronze. An acorn and an embryo, on the other hand, can come to be an oak tree and a person, respectively, and indeed by their own internal agency. Potentiality in the strong sense here in play is therefore governed by the following Potentiality Identity Principle:

PIP: Necessarily, if x is a potential F, and there is a y such that y realizes, whether partially or fully, x's potentiality to be an F, then x = y.

Note that PIP does not imply that there is a y that realizes x's potential. Potentialities, after all, may go unrealized similarly as dispositions may go unmanifested. A seed's potential will go unrealized if the seed is destroyed, or if the seed is not planted, or if it is improperly planted, or if it is properly planted but left unwatered, etc. What PIP states is that if anything does realize x's potentiality to be an F, then that thing is transtemporally numerically identical to x. So if there is an oak tree that realizes acorn A's potentiality to be an oak tree, then A is identical over time to that oak tree. This implies that when the acorn becomes an oak tree, it still exists, but is an oak tree rather than an acorn. The idea is that numerically one and the same individual passes through a series of developmental stages. In the case of a human being these would include zygote, embryo, fetus, infant, child, adolescent, and adult.

Not so with the hunk of bronze. It is not identical to the statue that is made out of it. Statue and hunk of bronze cannot be identical since they differ in their persistence conditions. The hunk of bronze can, while the statue cannot, survive being melted down and recast in some other form.

Consider the Pauline verse at 1 Corinthians 13:11: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." This implies that numerically one and the same man, Paul of Tarsus, was first a child and later became an adult: it is not as if there was a numerically different entity, Paul-the-child, who passed out of existence when Paul-the-adult came into existence.

So not only is potentiality (in the strong Aristotelian sense here in play) governed by PIP, it is also governed by what I will call the Potentiality Endurantism Principle:

PEP. Necessarily, if x is a potential F, and there is a y such that y realizes, whether partially or fully, x's potentiality to be an F, then x (= y) is wholly present at every time at which x (= y) exists.

PEP rules out a temporal parts ontology according to which a spatiotemporal particular persists in virtue of having different temporal parts at different times.

Let me throw another principle into the mix, one that is implicit above and governs active potencies.  I'll call it the Potentiality Agency Principle:

PAP. Necessarily, if x is a potential F, and x's potential is to any extent realized, then the realization of x's potential is driven, not by any agency external to x, but by x's own internal agency, with the proviso that the circumambient conditions are favorable.

The notion of (strong) potentiality that figures in the Potentiality Principle and the Potentiality Argument is governed by PUP, PIP, PEP, and PAP at the very least.

7.  When Barack Obama was a community organizer was he 'potentially' president of the U. S.?  It was surely possible that he become POTUS: logically, nomologically, and institutionally: there is nothing in the Constitution that ruled out his becoming president.  And there is nothing incorrect in saying, in ordinary English, that the young Obama was 'potentially' POTUS.  But does it make sense to say that, ingredient in the young Obama, there was a potentiality that was actualized when he became POTUS if we are using 'potentiality' in the Aristotelian sense?

I don't think so.  It looks to be a violation of PUP above.  Let 'F' stand for U. S. citizen. Does every U.S. citizen have the potential to become a presidential candidate? Obviously not: it is is simply false that every normal U. S. citizen develops in the normal course of events into a presidential candidate. A potentiality is a naturally inherent nisus -- and as natural not a matter of laws or other conventions -- which is the same in all members of the class in question. But the opportunity to become president has nothing natural about it: it is an artifact of our contingent laws and political arrangements. People like Obama do not become presidential contenders in the way acorns become oak trees. 

Aristotle on the New Year

Ed sends his best wishes from London in the form of a quotation from The Philosopher:

"Since the 'now' is an end and a beginning of time, not of the same time however, but the end of that which is past and the beginning of that which is to come, it follows that, as the circle has its convexity and its concavity, in a sense, in the same thing, so time is always at a beginning and at an end". (Physics book IV  222 a28)

The saying of the Stagirite smacks of presentism.  I find presentism puzzling.  See my Presentism Between Scylla and Charybdis from almost exactly two years ago.

Theme music: Simon and Garfunkel, A Hazy Shade of Winter.

Time, time, time, see what's become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please
But look around, leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.

Substance, Accidents, Incarnation

This entry is a further installment in a continuing discussion with Tim Pawl, et al., about the Chalcedonian Christological two-natures-one-person doctrine.  Professor Pawl put to me the following question:

You ask: “Now if an accident is not the sort of item that can be crucified and bleed, how is it that an individual substance can be the sort of item that is not its own supposit or support, that is not broadly-logically-possibly independent, but is rather dependent for its existence on another substance?”

You then say: “That is tantamount to saying that here we have a substance that is not a substance.”
I don’t see that it is tantamount to . . . . And I don’t see the force of the analogy from accidents to individual substances. Could you spell out the reasoning a bit more, if you are inclined?

With pleasure.

We all agree that the accidentality of the Incarnation cannot be understood as the having by the Logos of an Aristotelian accident.  Thus we all agree that

1. The Logos, while existing in every metaphysically possible world, does not have a human nature in every world in which it exists.  That is, the Logos is neither essentially nor necessarily human.  (X is essentially F =_df x is F in every possible world in which x exists; x is necessarily F =_df x is F in every world in which it exists and x exists in every world. For example, Socrates is essentially human but not necessarily human; the number 7 is both essentially prime and necessarily prime.)

and

2. The Logos' accidentally had humanity (individual human nature) is not an Aristotelian accident of the Logos as Aristotelian substance.

And we all agree why (2) is true.  Briefly, an accident is not the sort of item that can be crucified and bleed.

So if the human nature of the Logos is not an accident of any substance, then it is a substance.  We now face an antilogism:

3. The individual human nature of the Logos is a substance.
4. Every substance is metaphysically  capable of independent existence.
5. The individual human nature of the Logos is not metaphysically capable of independent existence.

The triad is clearly inconsistent: the conjunction of any two limbs entails the negation of the remaining one. 

Limb (4) is a commitment of the Aristotelian framework within which Chalcedonian Christology is articulated, while the other two limbs are commitments of orthodox theology.

So something has to give.  One solution is to reject (4) by adding yet another 'epicycle.'  One substitutes for (4)

4*. Every self-suppositing substance is metaphysically capable of independent existence.

Under this substitution the triad is consistent.  For what (4*) allows are cases in which there are substances with alien supposits.  The individual human nature of Christ, though a substance, is not a self-suppositing substance: it is not its own supposit.  Its supposit is the Logos.  So its being a substance is consistent with its not being capable of independent existence.

If I say to Tim Pawl, "What you are countenancing is a substance that is not a substance," I expect him to reply, "No, I am not countenancing anything self-contradictory; I am countenancing a substance that is not a self-suppositing substance!"

To which my response will be: "You have made an ad hoc modification to the notion of substance for the sole purpose of avoiding a contradiction; but in doing so you have not extended or enriched the notion of substance but have destroyed it.  For a substance by definition is an entity that is metaphysically capable of independent existence.  A substance whose supposit is a different substance is not an accident but it is not a substance either.  For it is not metaphysically capable of independent existence."

Recall what my question has been over this series of posts:  Is the one-person-two-natures formulation coherently conceivable within an Aristotelian framework?

My interim answer is in the negative.  For within the aforementioned ontological framework, the very concept of a primary substance is the concept of an entity that is broadly-logically capable of independent existence.  Any modification of that fundamental concept moves one outside of the Aristotelian framework.

Appendix:  The Concept of an Accident

What is an accident and how is it related to a substance of which it is the accident?  Let A be an accident of substance S.  And let's leave out of consideration what the scholastics call propria, 'accidents' that a substance cannot gain or lose.  An example of a proprium would be a cat's being warm in virtue  of its internal metabolic processes, as opposed to a cat's being warm because it has been sleeping by a fire.

The following propositions circumscribe the concept of Aristotelian accident.

P1. Necessarily, every accident is the accident of some substance or other.  (This assumes that there are no accidents of accidents.  If there are, then, necessarily, every accident that is not the accident of an accident is the accident of some substance or other.)

P2. No accident of a substance can exist except by existing in (inhering in) a substance.  Substances are broadly-logically capable of independent existence; accidents are not.  Substances can exist on their own; accidents cannot.

P3. Accidents are particulars, not universals.  They are as particular as the substances of which they are accidents.  Thus accidents are not 'repeatable.'  If Socrates is seated and Plato is seated, and seatedness is an accident, then there are two seatednesses, not one.

P4. Accidents are non-transferrable.  Some particulars are transferrable: I can transfer my pen to you.  But accidents are not transferrable.  I can give you my coat but not my cold.  So not only is every accident the accident of some substance or other; every accident is the accident of the very substance of which it is an accident.

Related articles

More on One Person-Two Natures: Response to Timothy Pawl

Is it Coherently Conceivable that One Person Have Two Natures?

Substance, Supposit, Incarnation, Trinity, and the Heresy of Nestorius

One Person, Two Natures

Christology, Reduplicatives, and Qua-Entities

More on One Person-Two Natures: Response to Timothy Pawl

A recent argument of mine questioning the coherent conceivability of the one person-two natures doctrine of Chalcedonian Christology begins with the premise

1. If N is a nature of substance s, then s cannot exist without having N.  Natures are essential to the things that have them.  In possible worlds jargon: If N is a nature of s, then in every possible world in which s exists, s has N.  (The modality in play here is broadly logical or metaphysical.)

I pointed out that the argument's conclusion can be best resisted  by denying (1).  Professor Tim Pawl agrees.  He comments:

I think the Aristotelian who wants to maintain Chalcedonian Christology could deny 1 and affirm a nearby proposition:

1’. For any one-natured substance s, if N is a nature of s, then s cannot exist without having N.

Adding the antecedent I’ve added to your 1 here allows for us to say that 1’ remains true in the case of Christ, since the antecedent is false. 1’ does all the work that the Aristotelian would want 1 to do, since every case we think of in mundane (non-christological) situations is a case where the thing in question is single-natured. I wouldn’t think the Aristotelian has any evidence for 1 that would not count as evidence for the revised 1’ as well.

The purpose of this entry is to evaluate Tim's response.  But first some preliminaries.

Assumptions. Preliminaries, and Ontological Background

I am not questioning, let alone denying, the fact of the Incarnation.  (To insert an autobiographical remark: I am inclined  to believe it.)  Thus I am not maintaining that there is no sense in which, in a sentence from the Angelus, 'the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." My question is whether the Incarnation is coherently conceivable within a broadly Aristotelian ontological framework.  A negative answer, should one be forthcoming, does not foreclose on  the question whether the Incarnation is coherently conceivable within some other ontological framework.

By 'coherently conceivable' I mean 'thinkable without broadly-logical contradiction.'  Coherent conceivability is a notion weaker than that of (real as opposed to epistemic) possibility.  I am not asking whether the Incarnation is possible, but whether it is coherently conceivable (within a broadly Aristotelian framework).  Conceivability is tied to our powers of conception; possibility is not.

Whatever is actual is possible.  So if the Incarnation is actual, then it is possible whether or not we can coherently conceive how it is possible, whether or not we can render it intelligible to ourselves, whether or not it satisfies the exigencies of the discursive intellect. So if it should turn out that the Incarnation is not coherently conceivable, the defender of the Incarnation has a mysterian move available to him.  He can say, look, "It's the case; so its possibly the case; it's just that our cognitive limitations make it impossible for us (in this life) to understand how it could be the case."  The present topic, however, is not mysterianism.

My precise question is this:  is it coherently conceivable that one person, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word of God, the Logos, have both an individual divine nature and an individual human nature?  I will assume that a person, as per Boethius, is an individual substance of a rational nature.  I will also assume the doctrine of the Trinity.

'Substance' is elliptical for 'primary substance' or 'individual substance' or 'first substance' (prote ousia).  If abstract entities are entities that are non-spatiotemporal and causally inert, then individual or individualized natures are not abstract entities.  Some of them are spatiotemporal, and all of them are causally efficacious.  Thus the individual nature of Socrates is in space and time.  (The individual nature of the Logos is not in space and time but it is causally efficacious.)  What ties an individual substance to its individual nature is not the external asymmetrical nexus of exemplification: substances don't exemplify their natures; a substance is (identical to) its individual(ized) nature.  (See Aristotle, Metaphysics, Z.6) Socrates is not a bare particular, and his nature is not a (conjunctive) property that he exemplifies.  Of course, there is a sense in which Socrates and Plato are of the same nature in that both are human.  This common humanity, however, has no extramental reality: it is not a platonic object exemplified by the two philosophers.

The nature or essence of an individual substance is the what-it-is of the thing or as Aristotle puts it, to ti ên einai, literally “the what it was to be” of a thing, essentia, quod quid erat esse.  (Compare Hegel: Wesen ist was gewesen ist.)  It follows that the nature or essence of Socrates is not accidental to him.  The idea that the nature of an individual thing could be accidental to it is wholly un-Aristotelian, although it would make sense in an ontological scheme according to which Socrates is a bare particular and his nature is a conjunctive property the conjuncts of which are his non-relational properties.  (We find such a scheme in D. Armstrong and R. Grossmann, et al.)

It also seems obvious to me  that there is an important difference between the event or fact of the Incarnation and any theological doctrine about it.  Theology, I take it, is a type of applied philosophy: it is philosophy applied to the data of revelation.  The Incarnation is one such datum since it is God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ.  So it seems obvious to me that we ought to distinguish the datum from its doctrinal formulation.  To repeat myself, I am concerned with the latter.

Evaluation of Tim Pawl's Response

Tim makes a time-honored move in alleviation of the contradiction that issues from my reductio ad absurdum argument: he makes a distinction.  One can always avoid or remove a contradiction by making a distinction.  He distinguishes between one-natured substances and substances that have more than one nature.   He then restricts my (1) to one-natured substances.  The result of the restriction is (1').  Accordingly, it is only one-natured substances that are under the requirement that their natures be had by them essentially.  Now if we plug (1') into my argument in lieu of (1), no contradiction results.  Although a one-natured substance has its one nature essentially (in every world in which the substance exists), a multi-natured substance may have a nature that it has accidentally (in only some of the worlds in which the substance exists).

Unfortunately, this trades one problem for another.  For now the problem is to understand how an Aristotelian substance that has two natures can have one of them accidentally.   The Logos exists necessarily.  In the patois of possible worlds, it exists in every possible world.  And it is divine (has the divine nature) essentially, i.e., in every world in which it exists.  Since it exists in every world, it has the divine nature in every world.  But it has the human nature only in some worlds.  So the Logos has the human nature accidentally.

The problem is: How can any substance have a nature accidentally?  Don't forget: we are operating within an Aristotelan framework and our precise question is whether the one person-two natures doctrine is coherently conceivable within that framework.  As I said above, the nature or essence of an individual substance cannot be  accidental to it.  (The connection between a substance and its nature cannot be assayed as the external asymmetrical nexus of exemplification.)  The idea that the nature of an individual thing could be accidental to it is wholly un-Aristotelian.

To sum up.  Professor Pawl makes a distinction between single-natured substances which stand under the requirement that their natures be had essentially by them and multi-natured substances that are not subject to this requirement.  This distinction blocks the contradiction my reductio issued in.  But Pawl's distinction does not succeed in rendering the Chalcedonian formulation coherently conceivable within the Aristotelian framework because it requires a notion that makes no sense within that ontological framework, namely, the notion that a substance can have a nature accidentally.

To modify the Aristotelian framework in that way is not to extend it or enrich it in the light of new data, but to destroy it.  What the Christologist  ought to do is reject the framework.  He needn't abandon the Incarnation.  There are other approaches to it.  I hope to sketch one in a separate post. 

Related articles

Substance, Supposit, Incarnation, Trinity, and the Heresy of Nestorius

Is it Coherently Conceivable that One Person Have Two Natures?

One Person, Two Natures

Bare Particulars versus Aristotelian Substances

Accepts the Apostle's Creed, Balks at the Athanasian Creed: Second-Class Christian?

Is it Coherently Conceivable that One Person Have Two Natures?

For Shaun Deegan, who 'inspired' a sloppy prototype of the following argument hashed out over Sunday breakfast at a Mesa, Arizona hash house.

................

The Question

More precisely:  is it coherently conceivable that one person, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word of God, the Logos, have both an individual divine nature and an individual human nature?  (A person, as per Boethius, is an individual substance of a rational nature.)

This is not the same as the question: Is the Incarnation coherently conceivable?  For my concern is whether the Incarnation is coherently conceivable within a broadly Aristotelian ontological framework.  My answer:  I don't think so.  My answer leaves open the question whether the Incarnation is coherently conceivable within some other ontological framework.

The Argument

1. If N is a nature of substance s, then s cannot exist without having N.  Natures are essential to the things that have them.  In possible worlds jargon: If N is a nature of s, then in every possible world in which s exists, s has N.  (The modality in play here is broadly logical or metaphysical.)

2. The Logos L is a necessary being:  L exists in every possible world.

3. The Logos has the individual divine nature DN.

4. The Logos has the individual divine nature in every possible world. (from 1, 2, 3)

5. The Logos has the individual human nature HN.

6. The Logos has the individual human nature HN in every possible world. (from 1, 2, 5)

7. The individual human nature HN exists in every possible world. (from 6)

8. No individual human nature exists in every possible world.

9. (7) and (8) are logical contradictories.

Therefore, by reductio ad absurdum,

10.  One of the premises is false.

But which one?  Let's examine the premises.  No classical Trinitarian theist could reject (2) or (3).  And no believer in the Incarnation could reject (5).  No classical theist could reject (8) given that God might have refrained from creating a natural universe with human beings.  So it seems that someone who adheres to each of these theological commitments must reject (1), which is a plank in the Aristotelian platform.

Or, if you adhere to Aristotelian principles, it seems you must abandon the orthodox Chalcedonian line on the Incarnation.

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Substance, Supposit, Incarnation, Trinity, and the Heresy of Nestorius

Bare Particulars versus Aristotelian Substances

In this entry I will attempt to explain the difference between a bare particular and an Aristotelian primary substance.  A subsequent post will consider whether this difference is theologically relevant, in particular, whether it is relevant to the theology of the Incarnation.

What is a Particular?

Particulars in the sense relevant to understanding 'bare particular' may be understood in terms of impredicability.  Some things can be predicated of other things.  Thus being black can be predicated of my cat, and being a property can be predicated of being black; but my cat cannot be predicated of anything.  My cat is in this sense 'impredicable.'  Particulars are subjects of predication but cannot themselves be predicated.   Particulars, then, are ultimate subjects of predication.  Thus my cat is an ultimate subject of predication unlike being black which is a subject of predication, but not an ultimate subject of predication.  Particulars have properties but are not themselves properties.  Properties may be characterized as predicable entities.

Three Senses of 'Bare Particular'

1.  The first sense I mention only to set aside.  It is a complete misunderstanding to suppose that philosophers who speak of bare or thin particulars, philosophers as otherwise different in their views as Gustav Bergmann, David Armstrong, and J. P. Moreland, mean to suggest that there are particulars that have no properties and stand in no relations.  There is no such montrosity as a bare particular in this sense. 

In order to explain the two legitimate senses of 'bare particular' I will first provide a general characterization that covers them both.   A bare particular is a particular that lacks a nature or (real) essence. It is therefore quite unlike an Aristotelian primary substance.  Every such substance has or rather is an individual nature.  But while lacking a nature, a bare particular has properties.  This 'having' is understood in terms of the asymmetrical external nexus of exemplification.  A bare particular is thus tied to its properties by the external nexus of exemplification. To say that the nexus that ties a to F-ness is external is to say that there is nothing in the nature of a, and nothing in the nature of F-ness to require that a exemplify F-ness.  After all, a, as bare, lacks a nature, and F-ness, while it has a nature,  is not such that there is anything  in it to necessitate its being exemplified by a. In this sense a bare particular and its properties are external to each other.

This mutual externality of property to bearer entails what I call promiscuous combinability:  any bare particular can exemplify any property, and any property can be exemplified by any bare particular.  (A restriction has to be placed on 'property' but we needn't worry about this in the present entry.) 

David Armstrong holds that (i) there are conjunctive properties and that (ii) for each bare or thin particular there is the conjunctive property that is the conjunction of all of the particular's non-relational properties.  He calls this the particular's nature.  But I will avoid this broad use of 'nature.'  What I mean by 'nature' is essence.  Bare particulars lack essences, but not properties.  Therefore, no property or conjunction of properties on a bare-particularist scheme is an essence.  Note that it is given or at least not controversial that particulars have properties; it is neither given nor uncontroversial that particulars have essences.

I should also point out that talk of Aristotelian natures or essences would seem to make sense only within a constituent ontology such as Aristotle's.  

From the foregoing it should be clear that to speak of a particular as bare is not to deny that it has properties but to speak of the manner in which it has properties.  It is to say that it exemplifies them, where exemplification is an asymmetrical external tie.   To speak of a particular as an Aristotelian substance is also to speak of the manner in which it has properties.

Consider the dog Fido.  Could Fido have been a jellyfish?  If Fido is a bare particular, then this is broadly logically possible. Why not, given promiscuous combinability?  Any particular can 'hook up' with any property.  But if Fido is an Aristotelian substance this is not broadly logically possible.  For if Fido is a substance, then he is essentially canine.  In 'possible worlds' jargon, Fido, if a substance, is canine in every possible world in which he exists.  What's more, his accidental properties are not such as to be exemplified by Fido -- where exemplification is an external tie -- but are rather "rooted in" and "caused" by the substance which is Fido.  (See J. P. Moreland who quotes Richard Connell in Moreland's Universals, McGill-Queen's UP, 2001, p. 93)  The idea is that if Fido is an Aristotelian substance, then he has ingredient in his nature various potentialities which, when realized, are manifestations of that nature.  The dog's accidental properties are "expressions" of his "inner nature."  They flow from that nature.  Thus being angry, an accident of  Fido as substance, flows from his irascibility which is a capacity ingredient in his nature.  If Fido is a bare particular, however, he would be externally tied to the property of being angry.  And he would also be externally tied to the property of being a dog.

It follows that if particulars are bare, then all of their properties are had accidentally, and none essentially. 

We now come to the two legitimate senses of 'bare particular.'

2. The second sense of 'bare particular' and the first legitimate sense is the constituent-ontological sense.  We find this in Bergmann and Armstrong.  Accordingly, a bare particular is not an ordinary particular such as a cat or the tail of a cat or a hair or hairball of cat, but is an ontological factor, ingredient, or constituent of an ordinary particular.  Let A and B be round red spots that share all qualitative features.  For Bergmann there must be something in the spots that grounds their numerical difference.  They are two, not one, but nothing qualitative distinguishes them.  This ground of numerical difference is the bare particular in each, a in A, and b in B.  Thus the numerical difference of A and B is grounded in the numerical (bare) difference of a and b.  In one passage, Bergmann states that the sole job of a bare particular is to individuate, i.e., to serve as the ontological ground of numerical difference.

Particulars, unlike universals, are unrepeatable.  If F-ness is a universal, F-ness is repeated in each F.  But if a is F, a is unrepeatable: it is the very particular it is and no other.  One of the jobs of a Bergmannian bare particular is to serve as the ontological ground of an ordinary particular's particularity or thisness.  A Bergmannian bare particular is that ontological constituent in an ordinary particular that accounts for its particularity.  But note the ambiguity of 'particularity.' We are not now talking about the categorial feature common to all particulars as particulars.  We are talking about the 'incommunicable' thisness of any given particular.

3. The third sense of 'bare particular' and the second legitimate sense is the nonconstituent-ontological sense.  Summing up the above general characterization, we can say that

A bare particular is a particular that (i) lacks a nature (in the narrow sense lately explained); (ii) has all of its properties by exemplification where exemplification is an asymmetrical external nexus; and as a consequence (iii) has all of its properties accidentally, where P is an accidental property of x iff x exemplifies P but can exist without exemplifying P.

Note that this characterization is neutral as between constituent and nonconstituent ontology.  If one is a C-ontologist, then bare particulars are constituents of ordinary particulars.  If one is an NC ontologist who rejects the very notion of an ontological constituent, then bare particulars are ordinary particulars. 

Conclusion

I have explained the difference between a bare particular and an Aristotelian substance.  In a subsequent post I will address the question of how this deep ontological difference bears upon the possibility of  a coherent formulation of the Incarnation doctrine.

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Substance, Supposit, Incarnation, Trinity, and the Heresy of Nestorius

Substance, Supposit, Incarnation, Trinity, and the Heresy of Nestorius

I need to answer three questions.  This post addresses only the first.

1. What is the difference between an Aristotelian primary substance and a supposit (hypostasis, suppositum)?

2. Is there any non-theological basis for this distinction? 

3. If the answer to (2) is negative, is the addition of suppposita to one's Aristotelian ontology  a case of legitimate metaphysical revision or a case of an ad hoc theoretical patch job?  According to Marilyn McCord Adams, "Metaphysical revision differs from ad hoc theoretical patching insofar as it attempts to make the new data systematically unsurprising in a wider theoretical context." ("Substance and Supposits," p. 40)

The First Question

By 'substance' I mean an Aristotelian primary substance, an individual or singular complete concrete entity. Among the characteristics of substances are the following: substances, unlike universal properties, cannot be exemplified or instantiated; substances, unlike accidents, cannot inhere in anything; substances, unlike heaps and aggregates, are per se unities.  Thus Socrates and his donkey are each a substance, but the classical mereological sum of the two is not a substance.

Now what is a supposit?  Experts in medieval philosophy -- and I am not one of them, nota bene -- sometimes write as if there is no distinction between a substance and a supposit.  Thus Richard Cross: "Basically a supposit is a complete being that is neither instantiated or exemplified, nor inherent in another."  ("Relations, Universals, and the Abuse of Tropes," PAS 79, 2005, p. 53.) And Marilyn McCord Adams speaks of Socrates and Plato as "substance individuals" and then puts "hypostases or supposits" in apposition to the first phrase. (PAS 79, 2005, p. 15)

My first question, then, is:  Is there any more-than-verbal difference between a substance and a supposit, and if so, what is it?

One answer that suggests itself is that, while every substance has a supposit, some substances have alien supposits.  That is, some substances are their own supposits, while others are not their own supposits, but have alien supposits. (I take the phrase 'alien supposit' from Adams, p. 31 et passim.)  A substance has an alien supposit if and only if it is not its own supposit.  I understand Aristotle to maintain or at least be committed to the proposition that every (primary) substance is essentially its own supposit.  (I rather doubt that the Stagirite ever raised the question of alien supposition.)  If so, then no substance is possibly such as to have an alien supposit.  If alien supposition is metaphysically or broadly logically possible, however, then we have a ground for a more-than-terminological distinction between substances and supposits.  Whether the converse of this conditional holds is a further question.  For it may be that there is a ground for the distinction even if alien supposition is not possible.

Incarnation, Trinity, and the separated soul's survival between death and resurrection are theological examples of alien supposition.  Whether there are non-theological examples is a further, and very important question, one the answer to which has consequences for questions (2) and (3) above.

The Incarnation is an example of alien supposition as I will now try to explain.

The orthodox view is that God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, the Word, becomes man in Jesus of Nazareth.  Although the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us as we read in the NT, the Word does not merely assume a human body, nor does it acquire a universal property, humanity; the Word assumes a particularized  human nature, body and soul.  The eternal Word assumes or 'takes on' a man, an individual man, with an intellectual  soul and and animal body.  But now a problem looms, one that can be articulated in terms of the following aporetic tetrad:

a. A person is a (primary) substance of a rational nature. (Boethian definition)

b. There is only one person in Christ, the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity.  (Rejection of the heresy of Nestorius, according to which in Christ there are two persons in two natures rather than one person in two natures.)

c. The individual(ized) human nature of Christ is a primary substance of a rational nature.

d. Every (primary) substance is its own supposit, which implies that every substance of a rational nature has its own personhood.

The tetrad is logically inconsistent: any three limbs taken in conjunction entail the negation of the remaining one.  Thus the conjunction (a) & (c) & (d) entails the negation of (b). For if there are two primary substances of a rational nature, the Word and Christ, then there are two persons each with his own individualized nature, contra Chalcedonian orthodoxy, according to whch there is exactly one person in two natures.  The solution to the tetrad is to deny (d), the very natural Aristotelian assumption that every substance is its own supposit.  One does this by maintaining that, while the individualized human nature of Christ is a substance, it is not a substance that supports itself: it has an alien supposit, namely, the Second Person of the Trinity.

If the Incarnation as Chalcedonian orthodoxy understands it is actual, then it is possible.  If so, alien supposition is possible, which straightaway entails a distinction between substance and supposit: while every substance has or is a supposit, not every substance has or is its own supposit.  The individualized human nature of Christ is a supposited substance but is not itself a supposit.

Let me now say a bit about the Trinity.  Here too a problem looms that can be cast in the mold of an aporetic tetrad.

a. A person is a (primary) substance of a rational nature. (Boethian definition) 

e. There are exactly three divine persons, Father, Son, Holy Ghost .  (Rejection of 'Quaternity')

f.  The individualized nature of God is a primary substance  of a rational nature.

d. Every (primary) substance is its own supposit, which implies that every substance of a rational nature has its own personhood.

Again, the tetrad is inconsistent, and again the solution is to reject (d) by saying that, while the individualized divine nature is a primary substance, it is not one that supposits itself: it has three alien supposits, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

The Son is thus the alien supposit of both God's divine nature and Christ's human nature.

My first question concerned the difference between a substance and supposit.  My tentative answer is that  while only substances can be supposits, there are substances that are not their own supposits nor are they supposits for anything else, an example being the individualized human nature of Christ.

Is there a non-theological basis for the distinction?  if not, then the suspicion arises that the distinction is purely ad hoc, crafted to save tenets of orthodox Christian theology.  But this is a question for another occasion.

What's wrong with ad-hocery?

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After MacIntyre: Is and Ought

This follows up on yesterday's discussion.  Thanks to Hodges for getting me started on this, to Milos for reminding me of MacIntyre, and to Peter for agreeing with me so far.

Are there any valid arguments that satisfy the following conditions:  (i) The premises are all factual  in the sense of purporting to state only what is the case; (ii) the conclusion is normative/evaluative?  Alasdair MacIntyre gives the following example (After Virtue, U. of Notre Dame Press, 1981, p. 55):

1. This watch is inaccurate.

Therefore

2. This is a bad watch.

MacIntyre claims that the premise is factual, the conclusion evaluative, and the argument valid.  The validity is supposed to hinge on the functional character of the concept watch.  A watch is an artifact created by an artificer for a specific purpose: to tell time accurately.  It therefore has a proper function, one assigned by the artificer.  (Serving as a paperweight being an example of an improper function.)  A good watch does its job, serves its purpose, fulfills its proper function. MacIntyre tells us that "the concept of a watch cannot be defined independently of the concept of a good watch . . ." and that "the criterion of something's being a watch and something's being a good watch . . . are not independent of each other." (Ibid.)  MacIntyre goes on to say that both sets of criteria are factual and that for this reason arguments like the one above validly move from a factual premise to an evaluative conclusion.

Speaking as someone who has been more influenced by the moderns than by the ancients, I don't see it.  It is not the case that both sets of criteria are factual in the sense defined above. The criteria of something's being a good watch already contains evaluative criteria.  For if a good watch is one that tells time accurately, then that criterion of chronometric goodness involves a standard of evaluation.  If I say of a watch that it is inaccurate, I am not merely describing it, but also evaluating it.  MacIntyre is playing the following game, to put it somewhat uncharitably.

He smuggles the evaluative attribute good into his definition of 'watch,' forgets that he has done so thereby generating the illusion that his definition is purely factual, and then pulls the evaluative rabbit out of the hat in his conclusion.  It is an illusion since the rabbit was already there in the premise.  In other words, both (1) and (2) are evaluative.  So, while the argument is valid, it is not a valid argument from a purely factual premise to an evaluative conclusion.

So if the precise question is whether one can validly move from a purely factual or descriptive premise to an evaluative conclusion, then MacIntyre's example fails to show that this is possible.

But I am being tendentious on purpose for didactic reasons.  I grant that it is not perfectly evident that values and facts are mutually exclusive.  I think what MacIntyre needs is the idea that some statements are both factual and evaluative.  If (1) is both, the MacIntyre gets what he wants.

Is Man a Functional Concept?

But suppose one would be wrong to reject the (1)-(2) counterexample and that, with respect to functional concepts, the move from fact to value is logically kosher.  Then this discussion is relevant to ethics, the normative study of human action,  only if man is a functional concept.  Aristotle maintains as much:  man qua man has a proper function, a proper role, a proper 'work' (ergon).  This is a proper function he has essentially, by his very nature, regardless of whatever contingent roles a particular human may instantiate, wife, father, sea captain.  Thus, " 'man' stands to 'good man' as 'watch' stands to 'good watch' . . . ." (56)  Now if man qua man has a proper and essential function, then to say of a particular man that he is good or bad is to imply that he has a proper and essential function.  But then to call a man good is also to make a factual statement.  (57)

The idea is that being human is a role that includes certain norms, a role that each of us necessarily instantiates whether like it or not.  There is a sort of coalescence of factual individual and norm in the case of each human being just as, in Aristotle's ontoloogy, there is a sort of coalescence of individual and nature in each primary substance. 

But does man qua man have a proper role or function?  The moderns fight shy of this notion.  They tend to  think of all roles, jobs, and functions as freely adopted and contingent.  Modern man likes to think of himself as a free and autonomous individual who exists prior to and apart from all roles.  This is what Sartre means when he says that existence precedes essence:  Man qua man has no pre-assigned nature or essence or proper function: man as existing individual makes himself what ever he becomes.  Man is not God's artifact, hence has no function other than one he freely adopts.

Although Aristotle did not believe in a creator God, it is an important question whether an Aristotle-style healing of the fact-value rift requires classical theism as underpinning. MacIntyre seems to think so. (Cf. p. 57)

Interim Conclusion

If the precise question is whether one can validly move from a purely factual or descriptive premise to an evaluative conclusion, I have yet to see a clear example of this.  But one ought to question the strict bifurcation of fact and value.  The failure of entailment is perhaps no surprise given the bifurcation.  The Aristotelian view, despite its murkiness, remains a contender.

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Defending the Distinctio Realis Against Anthony Kenny

This post defends the real distinction between essence and existence.  For some background, see Geach on the Real Distinction I.

In Aquinas on Being (Oxford 2002, p. 45), Anthony Kenny writes, "Peter's continuing to exist is the very same thing as Peter's continuing to possess his essence; if he ceases to exist, he ceases to be a human being and vice versa."

What Kenny is doing in this passage and the surrounding text is rejecting the real distinction between essence and (individual) existence.  Thus in a cat, a dog, or a man, there is no distinction in reality between its essence or nature and its existence.  In general, for items of kind K, to exist is to be a K.  Thus for Socrates to exist is for Socrates to be a man; for Socrates to continue to exist is for Socrates to continue to be a man; and for Socrates to cease to exist is for Socrates to cease being a man.

The claim that for items of kind K, to exist is to be a K, is to be understood, not as a logical or metaphysical equivalence, but as an identity that sanctions a reduction: the existence of Ks just is (identically) their K-ness.  Individual (as opposed to what Kenny calls specific) existence reduces to nature.  But that is just to say that there is no real distinction in a thing between its individual existence and its nature.  For example, there is no non-notional or real distinction in Socrates between him and his existence. 

I have three objections to this broadly Aristotelian theory of existence according to which individual existence reduces to nature.

An Argument from Contingency

Socrates might never have existed.  If so, and if, for Socrates, who is a man, to exist = to be a man, then Socrates might never have been a man. This implies that a certain man, Socrates, might never have been a man, which is absurd. Therefore, it is not the case that, for Socrates, to exist = to be a man.

The first premise ought to be uncontroversial.  Speaking tenselessly, Socrates exists and Socrates is a man.  But there is no logical or metaphysical necessity that the man Socrates exist.  So, Socrates, though he exists, is possibly such that he does not exist. (This is equivalent to saying that he is a contingent being.)   So, given that to exist = to be a man, the man Socrates is possibly such that he is not a man.  But this contradicts the fact that Socrates is essentially a man.  For if he is essentially a man, then he is necessarily such that he is a man.  Therefore, it is not the case that, for Socrates, to exist = to be a man.

Convinced?  Here is another way of looking at it.  I point to Socrates and say, 'This might not have existed.'  I say something true.  But if I point to him and say, 'This might not have been a man,' I say something false.  Therefore, for Socrates, to exist is not to be a man.  Of course, he cannot exist without being a man, and he cannot BE a man without BEING.  But that is not the question.  The question is whether Socrates' being or existence is reducible to his being a man.  I have just shown that it is not. Therefore, there is a real distinction between essence and existence in Socrates.

What holds for Socrates holds for every man.  No man's very existence is reducible to his being a man.  And in general, no individual K's individual existence is reducible to its being a K.

An Argument from Reference

If for Socrates to exist is for Socrates to be a man, then, when he ceases to exist, he ceases to be a man.   But then the proper name 'Socrates' used after the philosopher's death does not refer to a man. But it does refer.  For I can make true statements about Socrates, e.g., 'Socrates taught Plato.'   And the name refers to a man.  When Socrates ceased to exist, 'Socrates' did not commence referring to some other thing, a jelly fish say, or a valve-lifter in a '57 Chevy, or more plausibly, a corpse.  A man taught Plato, not a corpse, or a pile of ashes.  Therefore, it is not the case that for Socrates to exist is for Socrates to be a man.

To understand this argument, please note that it is not being denied that, necessarily, at every time at which Socrates is alive, Socrates exists if and only if he is a man.  Socrates cannot exist without being a man, and he cannot be a man without existing.  What is being denied, or rather questioned, is the identification of Socrates' existing with his being a man.  As I have pointed out many times before, logical equivalences do not sanction reductions. 

A Third Argument

We cannot say that to exist = to be a cat, for then only cats could exist.  We, or rather the Aristotelian,  has to say that, for cats, to exist = to be a cat.  In general, for K-items, to exist = to be a K.  But why stop here?  Can we stop here?  There are no cats in general.  There are only particular cats, any two of which are numerically distinct, and each of which has its own existence. Consider Max and Manny, two cats of my acquaintance.  Each has his own existence, but they share the nature, cat.  So if each exists in virtue of being a cat, then each exists in virtue of being the very cat that it is, which is to say:  for Max to exist is for Max to be Max, and for Manny to exist is for Manny to be Manny.  But then, generalizing, to exist = to be self-identical. The theory we began with collapses into the existence =  self-identity theory.

But while each thing is self-identical  -- this is just the Law of Identity -- no contingent thing is identical to its own existence.  For if Max were identical to his own existence, then Max would necessarily exist.  If God exists, then God is identical to his own existence.  But Max is not God. Therefore, existence cannot be reduced to self-identity in the case of contingent beings.

Of course, given that contingent things exist, they must be self-identical, and they cannot BE self-identical unless they ARE or exist.  But there might not have been any contingent things at all.  So the existence of a thing cannot be reduced to the self-identity it could have only if it exists.  Get it?  If yes, then you understand the real distinction.

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Is A Primary Substance Minus its Accidents a Primary Substance?

I return to a question I was discussing back in August with John the Commenter and more recently with Lukas Novak.  The question concerns how to define 'primary substance.'  I suggested the following:  ". . .  an individual or singular complete concrete entity together with its accidents. "  But why include the accidents?  I gave the following argument:

1. Every primary substance is ontologically basic, where ontologically basic entities are those that exist
per se or independently unlike secondary substances and accidents.

2. Every ontologically basic entity is complete.

Definition:  x is complete =_df for every predicate F, either x is F or x is not F.  (This is rough since some restrictions will have to be placed on the range of the predicate F.  But it is good enough for a blog post.)  Thus either Socrates is seated at t or he is not.  If he is neither seated nor not seated at t, then he is an incomplete object at t.  But if he is an incomplete object at t, then he cannot exist at t.  Now every ontologically basic entity is possibly such that it exists.  Therefore, every ontologically basic entity is complete.  Every ontologically basic entity satisfies the predicate version of the Law of Excluded Middle.  (I don't think the converse is true, but then I am not affirming the converse.)

Therefore

3. Every primary substance is complete. (from 1, 2)

4. No primary substance minus its accidents is complete.

5. No primary substance minus its accidents is a primary substance. (from 3, 4)

Lukas Novak responds:

. . . although I concede that necessarily, Socrates has this or that accident, I deny that it follows from it that Socrates considered in abstraction from these accidents is an incomplete object. When Socrates runs, the whole of Socrates is there. When Socrates does not run, again, the whole of Socrates is there. But for any x, y, if the whole of x is there even if y is not there then y is not required for the completeness of x. So Socrates considered precisely qua Socrates, without running or not-running, is complete, and a substance – - the fact that a necessary condition of his existence is that he is connected either with the accident of running or the accident of not-running notwithstanding.

I suspect that Novak has committed an ignoratio elenchi against me.  I grant that when Socrates runs, the whole of Socrates is present, and that when he is not running, the whole of him is present.  (For when he is not running, he is walking, or skipping, or jumping, or standing still, or crouching . . . .) And so I grant that it is not necessary for the completeness of Socrates that he be running, and that it is not necessary for the completeness of Socrates that he be not running.  But -- and here is my point -- it is necessary for the completeness of Socrates that either he be running or not-running.  If he is neither, then he is incomplete, hence not a primary substance.  The same holds for all contingent accidents.

Therefore, a primary substance minus its accident is not a primary substance.

My argument above is valid.  If Novak thinks it unsound, he must tell me which premise he rejects. 

Related articles

Is Socrates a Substance or a Cross-Categorical Hybrid?

Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics

This is a really good collection of state-of-the-art essays that comes at the right time in my philosophical development.  I thank Ed Feser, editor and contributor, for sending me a complimentary copy. (I didn't ask for one, and you shouldn't either.)

Here is Dr. Feser's summary of the contents. 

And while you are at Feser's site, take a gander at his series on Alexander Rosenberg.

 

Is Socrates a Substance or a Cross-Categorical Hybrid?

0. I wanted to explore supposita in their difference from primary substances, but John the Commenter sidetracked me into the aporetics of primary substance.  But it is a sidetrack worth exploring even if it doesn't loop back to the mainline.  For it provides me more grist for my aporetic mill.

1. Metaphysics is a quest for the ultimately real, the fundamentally real, the ontologically basic.  Aristotle, unlike his master Plato,  held that such things as this man and that horse are ontologically basic.  What is ontologically basic (o-basic) is  tode ti, hoc aliquid, this something, e.g., this concrete individual man, Socrates, and that concrete individual donkey.  Such individuals are being, ousia, in the primary sense.  And so Socrates and his donkey can be called primary beings, or primary substances. Asinity there may be, but it can't be ontologically basic. 

This is clearly the drift of Aristotle's thinking despite the numerous complications and embarrassments that arise when one enters into the details.

(If you think that there is 'substance' abuse in Aristotelian and scholastic precincts, I sympathize with you. You have to realize that 'substance' is used in different senses, and that these senses are technical and thus divergent from the  senses of 'substance' in ordinary language.)

2.  But of course every this something is a this-such: it has features, attributes, properties. This is a datum, not a theory.    Socrates is a man  and is excited by the turn the dialectic has taken, and this while  seated on his donkey.  Man is a substance-kind, while being excited and being seated are accidents.  (Let us not worry about relations, a particularly vexing topic when approached within an Aristotelian-scholastic purview.)  Setting aside also the difficult question of how a secondary substance such as the substance-kind man is related to Socrates, it is safe to say that for Aristotle such properties  as being excited and being seated are theoretically viewed as accidents.  So conceptualized, properties are not primary beings as they would be if they were conceptualized as mind-independent universals capable of existing unexemplified.  Accidents by definition  are not o-basic:  If A is an accident of S, then A exists only 'in' S and not in itself.  A depends on S for its existence, a mode of existence we can call inherence, while S does not depend for its existence on A. 

3. So much for background.  Now to the problem.  Which is ontologically basic: Socrates together with his accidents, or Socrates taken in abstraction from his accidents?

What I want to argue is that a dilemma arises if we assume, as John the Commenter does, that Socrates taken together with his accidents is an accidental unity or accidental compound.  A simple example of an accidental compound is seated-Socrates.  Now I won't go into the reasons for positing these objects; I will just go along with John in assuming that they are there to be referred to.

Seated-socrates is a hylomorphic compound having Socrates as its matter and being seated as its form.  But of course the matter of the accidental compound is itself a compound of prime matter and substantial form, while the form of the accidental compound is not a substantial form but a mere accident.  The accidental compound  is accidental because seated-Socrates does not exist at all the same times and all the same worlds as Socrates.  So we make a tripartite distinction: there is a compound of prime matter and substantial form; there is an accident; and there is the inhering of the accident in the substance, e.g., Socrates' being seated, or seated-Socrates.

As Frank A. Lewis points out, accidental compounds are "cross-categorical hybrids."  Thus seated-Socrates belongs neither to the category of substance nor to any non-substance category.  One of its constituents is a substance and the other is an accident, but it itself is neither, which is why it is a cross-categorical hybrid entity.

The Dilemma

The dilemma arises on the assumption  that Socrates together with his accidents is an accidental compound or accidental unity, and the dilemma dissolves if this assumption is false.

a. Either (i) Socrates together with his accidents is a primary substance or (ii) Socrates taken in abstraction from his accidents is a primary substance.

b. If (i), then Socrates is an accidental compound and thus a "cross-categorical hybrid" (F. A. Lewis) belonging neither to the category of substance nor to any non-substance category.  Therefore, if (i), then Socrates is not a primary substance.

c. If (ii), then Socrates is not a concretum, but an abstractum, i.e., a product of abstraction inasmuch as one considers him in abstraction from his accidents.  Therefore, if (ii), then Socrates is not a primary substance.  For a primary substance must be both concrete and completely determinate. (These, I take it. are equivalent properties.)  Primary substances enjoy full ontological status in Aristotle's metaphysics.  They alone count as ontologically basic.  They are his answer to the question, What is most fundamentally real?  Clearly, Socrates taken in abstraction from his accidents is incompletely determinate and thus not fully real.

Therefore

d. On either horn, Socrates is not primary substance.   

What say you, John?

On Primary Substances and Accidental Unities

I asked genuinely, not rhetorically : What is the difference between an Aristotelian primary substance and a supposit (hypostasis, suppositum)?  The latter figures prominently in the  philosophy of the School, as some call it, and I need to get clear about what supposits are, how they differ from primary substances, and whether there are any non-theological reasons for making the distinction.  In pursuit of the first question I thought it advisable to state what I understand a primary substance to be.  So I wrote:

By 'substance' I mean an Aristotelian primary substance, an individual or singular complete concrete entity together with its accidents.  Among the characteristics of substances are the following: substances, unlike universal properties, cannot be exemplified or instantiated; substances, unlike accidents, cannot inhere in anything; substances, unlike heaps and aggregates, are per se unities. Thus Socrates and his donkey are each a substance, but the mereological sum of the two is not a substance.

I thought that was tolerably clear, but as so often happens, a commenter, ignoring my question, took issue with my set-up.  That is, he questioned my characterization of primary substance. Nothing wrong with that, of course.

In his last comment, John the Astute Commenter wrote,

. . . I *am* saying that Socrates taken together with his accidents is not strictly identical to Socrates taken in abstraction from his accidents. But that point is obvious. What I am adding is this: Socrates taken together with his accidents is not a substance, but an accidental unity of a substance and some accidents. So I deny your claim that "it is only Socrates together with his accidents that is a complete concrete individual primary substance." Socrates together with his accidents may well be the only complete concrete individual, but he is not a primary substance. Nor is he prime matter; as you say, he is a compound of prime matter and substantial form, although in conjunction with his accidents he plays the *role* of matter in the accidental unity between him and his accidents. This would seem to be a debate about Aristotelian exegesis, so I'll leave it there and not continue to hijack your discussion. As I said, I thought the discussion in Z.4-Z.6 would prove relevant to that discussion, but it would seem that I was mistaken on that score, for which I apologize.      

I will now continue in the second person.

No need  to apologize, John.  You have raised an interesting challenge which I ought to be able to meet.  But I want to avoid the labyrinth of Aristotle exegesis to the extent that that is possible, for, lacking as we do the latter-day equivalent of Ariadne's thread,  once we enter we are unlikely ever to find our way out again.

The disagreement seems to be as follows.  I claim that, from a broadly Aristotelian perspective, which is the perspective of Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham and other medievals who speak of substances and supposita, Socrates is a concrete, complete, individual, primary substance at a time t only when taken  together with his accidents at t.  I don't deny that a primary substance can be considered in abstraction from its accidents.  What I am claiming is that in concrete, mind-independent reality Socrates must have some set of accidents or other, and that, only when he is taken together with his accidents is he a primary substance.

Your claim is that Socrates together with his accidents (at a time, presumably, if I may interpret you a bit) is not a primary substance but an accidental unity, a hylomorphic compound the 'matter' of which is Socrates as primary substance and the form of which is something like the conjunction of his accidents.  To put the disagreement as sharply as possible, I am claiming that Socrates counts as a primary substance only when taken together with his accidents, whereas you are claiming that Socrates so counts only when he is not taken together with his accidents, but taken in abstraction from his accidents.  For one your view, Socrates taken together with his accidents is an accidental unity, not a primary substance.  To get beyond a stand-off we need to consider some arguments.

Argument for My View

1. Every primary substance is ontologically basic, where ontologically basic entities are those that exist per se or independently  unlike secondary substances and accidents.

2. Every ontologically basic entity is complete.

Definition:  x is complete =_df for every predicate F, either x is F or x is not F.  (This is rough since some restrictions will have to be placed on the range of the predicate F.  But it is good enough for a blog post.)  Thus either Socrates is either seated at t or he is not.  If he is neither seated nor not seated at t, then he is an incomplete object.  But if he is an incomplete object, then he cannot exist.  Now every ontologically basic entity is possibly such that it exists.  Therefore, every ontologically basic entity is complete.  Every ontologically basic entity satisfies the predicate version of the Law of Excluded Middle.  (I don't think the converse is true, but then I am not affirming the converse.)

 Therefore

3. Every primary substance is complete. (from 1, 2)

4. No primary substance minus its accidents is complete.

5. No primary substance minus its accidents is a primary substance. (from 3,4)

Argument for John's View

A. The complete individual Socrates is a hylomorphic compound of matter and form (Premise).
B. The [primary] substance Socrates is the matter of the complete individual Socrates (Premise).
C.  For all x and for all y, if x is a hylomorphic compound and y is the matter of x, then x is not strictly identical to y.
Therefore,
D. The complete individual Socrates is not strictly identical to the [primary] substance Socrates.

Read charitably, John's argument is an enthymeme the suppressed or tacit premise of which is:

S. The complete individual Socrates is an accidental unity of Socrates + his accidents. 

Without suppressed premises (S), (B) is obviously false and the argument is unsound.  But with (S), John's argument begs the question.

Here is another wrinkle.  Some accidents are said to be 'proper.'  These are accidents that are entailed by the nature (essence) of the thing that has the nature, but they are, for all that, accidents.   A proper accident of a substance is one the substance cannot exist without.  To put it paradoxically, a proper accident of a substance is an accident that is 'essential' and therefore not 'accidental' to the substance whose accident it is.  But a better way to put it would be to say that a proper accident, though no part of the essence, is de re necessary to the substance having the essence. 

To adapt an example from John J. Haldane, if my cat Max is lounging by the fire, he becomes warm.  His warmth is an accident but not a proper accident or proprium.  Max is warm both temporarily and contingently in virtue of his proximity to the fire.  But the warmth that flows from his metabolic processes is a proper accident without which Max could not exist. 

Now let's suppose that this distinction is not a mere scholastic Spitzfindigkeit but 'holds water.'  Then, clearly, and pace John, Socrates together with his proper accidents cannot be an accidental unity.  So Socrates as primary substance must include at least his proper accidents.  

Related articles

What is the Difference Between a Substance and a Supposit?

Trying to Understand Ockham on Supposita in Light of the Incarnation

Theology Wagging the Ontological Dog?

Substance and Accident: The Aporetics of Inherence

Accidents of a Substance: Simple or Complex?

What is the Difference Between a Substance and a Supposit?

I need to answer three questions.  This post addresses the first.

1. What is the difference between an Aristotelian primary substance and a supposit (hypostasis, suppositum)?

2. Is there any non-theological basis for this distinction? 

3. If the answer to (2) is negative, is the addition of suppposita to one's Aristotelian ontology  a case of legitimate metaphysical revision or a case of an ad hoc theoretical patch job?  According to Marilyn McCord Adams, "Metaphysical revision differs from ad hoc theoretical patching insofar as it attempts to make the new data systematically unsurprising in a wider theoretical context." ("Substance and Supposits," p. 40)

The First Question

By 'substance' I mean an Aristotelian primary substance, an individual or singular complete concrete entity together with its accidents.  Among the characteristics of substances are the following: substances, unlike universal properties, cannot be exemplified or instantiated; substances, unlike accidents, cannot inhere in anything; substances, unlike heaps and aggregates, are per se unities.  Thus Socrates and his donkey are each a substance, but the mereological sum of the two is not a substance.

Now what is a supposit?  Experts in medieval philosophy -- and I am not one of them, nota bene -- sometimes write as if there is no distinction between a substance and a supposit.  Thus Richard Cross: "Basically a supposit is a complete being that is neither instantiated or exemplified, nor inherent in another."  ("Relations, Universals, and the Absue of Tropes," PAS 79, 2005, p. 53.) And Marilyn McCord Adams speaks of Socrates and Plato as "substance individuals" and then puts "hypostases or supposits" in apposition to the first phrase. (PAS 79, 2005, p. 15)

My first question, then is:  Is there any more-than-verbal difference between a substance and a supposit, and if so, what is it?

One answer that suggests itself is that, while every substance has a supposit, some substances have alien supposits.  (I take this phrase from Adams, p. 31 et passim.)  A substance has an alien supposit iff it is not its own supposit.  I understand Aristotle to maintain or at least be committed to the proposition that every (primary) substance is essentially its own supposit.  If so, then no substance is possibly such as to have an alien supposit.  If alien supposition is metaphysically or broadly logically possible, however, then we have a ground for a more-than-terminological distinction between substances and supposits.  Whether the converse of this conditional holds is a further question.  For it may be that there is a ground for the distinction even if alien supposition is not possible.

Incarnation, Trinity, and the separated soul's survival between death and resurrection are theological examples of alien supposition.  Whether there are non-theological examples is a further, and very important question, one the answer to which has consequences for questions (2) and (3) above.

The Incarnation is an example of alien supposition as I will now try to explain.

The orthodox view is that God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, the Word, becomes man in Jesus of Nazareth.  Although the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us as we read in the NT, the Word does not merely assume a human body, nor does it acquire a universal property, humanity; the Word assumes a particularized  human nature, body and soul.  The eternal Word assumes or 'takes on' a man, an individual man, with an intellectual  soul and and animal body.  But now a problem looms, one that can be articulated in terms of the following aporetic tetrad:

a. A person is a (primary) substance of a rational nature. (Boethian definition)

b. There is only one person in Christ, the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity.  (Rejection of the heresy of Nestorius, according to which in Christ there are two persons in two natures rather than one person in two natures.)

c. The individual(ized) human nature of Christ is a primary substance of a rational nature.

d. Every (primary) substance is its own supposit, which implies that every substance of a rational nature has its own personhood.

The tetrad is logically inconsistent: any three limbs taken in conjunction entail the negation of the remaining one.  Thus the conjunction (a) & (c) & (d) entails the negation of (b).  The solution to the tetrad is to deny (d).  One does this by maintaining that, while the individualized human nature of Christ is a substance, it is not a substance that supports itself: it has an alien supposit, namely, the Second Person of the Trinity.

If the Incarnation as Chalcedonian orthodoxy understands it is actual, then it is possible.  If so, alien supposition is possible, which straightaway entails a distinction between substance and supposit: while every substance has or is a supposit, not every substance has or is its own supposit.  The individualized human nature of Christ is a supposited substance but is not a supposit.

Let me now say a bit about the Trinity.  Here too a problem looms that can be cast in the mold of an aporetic tetrad.

a. A person is a (primary) substance of a rational nature. (Boethian definition) 

e. There are exactly three divine persons, Father, Son, Holy Ghost .  (Rejection of 'Quaternity')

f.  The individualized nature of God is a primary substance  of a rational nature.

d. Every (primary) substance is its own supposit, which implies that every substance of a rational nature has its own personhood.

Again, the tetrad is inconsistent, and again the solution is to reject (d) by saying that, while the individualized divine nature is a primary substance, it is not one that supposits itself: it has three alien supposits, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

The Son is thus the alien supposit of both God's divine nature and Christ's human nature.

My first question concerned the difference between a substance and supposit.  My tentative answer is that  while only substances can be supposits, there are substances that are not their own supposits nor are they supposits for anything else, an example being the individualized human nature of Christ.

Is there a non-theological basis for the distinction?  if not, then the suspicion arises that the distinction is purely ad hoc, crafted to save tenets of orthodox Christian theology.  But this is a question for another occasion.

Related articles

Garrigou-Lagrange on Thomas on the Divine Persons as Subsistent Relations

Trying to Understand Ockham on Supposita in Light of the Incarnation

Mereology and Trinity: Response to Wong

E. J. Lowe on the Distinction Between Constituent and Relational Ontology

Accidents of a Substance: Simple or Complex?

Dr. Novak is invited to tell me which of the following propositions he accepts, which he rejects, and why:

0. I have reservations about an ontology in terms of substances and accidents, but anyone who adopts such an ontology needs to provide a detailed theory of accidents.  This post sketches a theory. It has roots in Aristotle, Brentano, Chisholm, Frank A. Lewis, and others who have written about accidental compounds or accidental unities. 

1. Accidents are particulars, not universals, where particulars, unlike universals, are defined in terms of unrepeatability or uninstantiability.

2. The accidents of a substance are properties of that substance.  Tom's redness, for example, is a property of him.  That there are properties is a datanic claim; that some of them are accidents is a theoretical claim. Accidental properties are those a thing need not have to exist.  I am using 'property' in a fairly noncommittal way.  Roughly, a property is a predicable entity.

3. It follows from (1) and (2) that some properties are particulars. 

4. A substance S and its accident A are both particulars.  S is a concrete particular while A is an abstract particular.  For example, Tom is a concrete particular; his redness is an abstract particular.  It is abstract because there is more to Tom than his being red.

5. Accidents are identity- and existence-dependent upon the substances of which they are the accidents.  An accident cannot be the accident it is, nor can it exist, except 'in' the very substance of which it is an accident.  Accidents are not merely dependent on substances; they are dependent on the very substances of which they are the accidents.  'In' is not to be taken spatially but as expressing ontological dependence.  If the being of substances is esse, the being of accidents is inesse.  These are two different modes of being.

6. It follows from (5) that accidents are non-transferrable both over time and across possible worlds.  For example, Peter's fear cannot migrate to Paul: it cannot somehow leave Peter and take up residence in Paul.  Suppose Peter and Paul are both cold to the same degree.  If coldness is an accident, then each has his own coldness.  The coldnesses are numerically distinct.  They cannot be exchanged in the way jackets can be exchanged.  Suppose Peter and Paul both own exactly similar jackets.  The two men can exchange jackets.  What they cannot do is exchange accidents such as the accident, being jacketed.  Each man has his own jacketedness.

Now for a modal point.  There is no possible world in which Peter's coldness exists but Peter does not.  Peter's coldness does not necessarily exist, but it is necessarily such that, if it does exist, then Peter exists.  And of course the accident cannot exist except by existing 'in' Peter.  So we can say that Peter's coldness is tied necessarily to Peter and to Peter alone: in every possible world in which Peter's coldness exists, Peter exists; and in no possible world does Peter's coldness inhere in anything distinct from Peter.  The same goes for Peter's jacketedness.  Peter's jacket, however, is not necessarily tied to Peter: it can exst without him just as he can exist without it.  Both are substances; both are logically capable of independent existence.

The modal point underins the temporal point.  Accidents cannot migrate over time because they are necessarily tied to the substances of which they are the accidents.

7.  It follows that the superficial linguistic similarity of 'Peter's jacket' and 'Peter's weight' masks a deep ontological difference: the first expression makes reference to two substances while the second makes reference to a substance and its accident.

8 If A is an accident of S, then A is not related to S by any external relation on pain of Bradley's regress.

9 If A is an accident of S, then A is not identical to S.  For if A were identical to S, then A would be an accident of itself.  This cannot be since 'x is an accident of y' is irreflexive.

10.  If A is an accident of S, then A cannot be an improper or proper part of S.  Not an improper part for then A would be identical to S.  Not a proper part of S because accidents depend on substances for their identity and existence.  No proper part of a whole, however, depends for its existence and identity on the whole: it is the other way around: wholes depend for their identity and existence on their parts.

11.  How then are we to understand the tie or connection between S and A?  This is the connection expressed when we say, for example, that Socrates is white.  It is an intimate connection but not as intimate as identity.  We need a tie that is is less intimate than identity but more intimate than a relation. 

We saw in #10 that an accident cannot be a part (ontological consituent) of its substance.  But what is to stop us from theorizing that an accident is a whole one of the proper parts of which is the substance?  This is not as crazy as it sounds.

12.  Let our example be the accidental predication, 'Socrates is seated.'  Start by giving this a reistic translation:  'Socrates is a seated thing.'  Take the referent of 'Socrates' to be the  substance, Socrates.  Take the referent of 'a seated thing' to be the accidental compound Socrates + seatedness.  This compound entity has two primary constituents, Socrates, and the property of being seated.  It has as a secondary constituent the tie designated by '+.'  Now read 'Socrates is a seated thing' as expressing, not the strict identity, but the accidental sameness of the two particulars Socrates and Socrates + seatedness.  Thus the 'is' in our original sentence is construed, not as expressing instantiation, or identity, but as expressing accidental sameness.   Accidental sameness ties the concrete particular Socrates to the abstract particular Socrates + seatedness.

13.  The accidental compound is an extralinguistic particular having four constituents:  a concrete particular, a nexus of exemplification, a universal, and a temporal index.  Thus we can think of it as the thin fact of Socrates' being seated.  'Thin' because not all of Socrates' properties are included in this fact.

14. My suggestion, then, is that accidents are thin facts.  To test this theory we need to see if thin facts have all the features of accidents.  Well, we have seen (#1) that accidents are particulars.  Thin facts are as well.  This is a case of what Armstrong calls the Victory of Particularity: a particular's exemplification of a universal is a particular.

Accidents are properties and so are thin facts: both are ways a substance is. Both are predicable entities. 'Socrates is seated' predicates something of something.  On the present theory it predicates an abstract particular of a concrete particular where the predicative tie is not the tie of instantiation (exemplification) but the tie of accidental sameness.

Accidents are abstract particulars, and so are thin facts.  They are abstract because they do not capture the whole reality or quiddity of the substance. 

Accidents depend on substances for their identity and existence.  The same is true of thin facts.  A fact is a whole of parts and depends for its identity and existence on its parts, including the substance. 

Accidents are non-transferrable.  The same holds for thin facts. 

Accidents are necessarily tied to the substances of which they are accidents.  The same goes for thin facts: the identity of a thin fact depends on its substance constituent.

An accident is not identical to its host substance.  The same is true of thin facts. Socrates' being seated is not identical to Socrates. 

An accident is not externally related to its substance.  The same is obviously truth of thin facts. 

Accidents are not parts of substances.  The same holds for thin facts. 

Finally, no accident has two beginnings of existence.  If Elliot is sober, then drunk, then sober again, his first sobriety is numerically distinct from his second: the first sobriety does not come into existence again when our man sobers up.  The same is true of thin facts.  Elliot's beng sober at t is distinct from Elliot's being sober at t*.

15.  On the above theory, an accident is a complex. It follows that an accident is not a trope, pace Dr. Novak.  Tropes are very strange animals.  A whiteness trope is an abstract particular that is also a property and is also ontologically simple.  An example is the particular redness of Tom the tomato.  I can pick out this trope using 'the redness of Tom and Tom alone' where the 'of' is a subjective genitive.  But note that  the 'of Tom and Tom alone' has no ontological correlate.  The trope, in itself, i.e., apart from our way of referring to it, is simple, not complex.  And yet it is necessarily tied to Tom. This, to my mind, makes no sense, as I explained in earlier posts.  So I reject tropes, and with them the identification of accidents with tropes.

My conclusion, then, is that IF -- a big 'if' -- talk of substances and accidents is ultimately tenable and philosophically fruitful, THEN accidents must be ontologically complex entities.  Anyone who endorses accidents is therefore a constituent ontologist. 

Bare Particulars and Lukáš Novák's Argument Against Them

In his contribution to the book I am reviewing, Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic (Ontos Verlag, 2012), Lukáš Novák mounts an Aristotelian argument against bare particulars.  In this entry I will try to understand his argument.  I will hereafter refer to Professor Novák as 'LN' to avoid the trouble of having to paste in the diacriticals that his Czech name requires.

As I see it, the overall structure of LN's argument is an instance of modus tollens:

1. If some particulars are bare, then all particulars are bare.
2. It is not the case that all particulars are bare.
Therefore
3. No particulars are bare.

On the Very Idea of a Bare Particular

'Bare particular' is a technical term in philosophy the provenance of which is the work of Gustav Bergmann. (D. M. Armstrong flies a similar idea under the flag 'thin particular.')  Being a terminus technicus,  the term does not wear its meaning on its sleeve. It does not refer to particulars that lack properties; there are none.  It refers to particulars that lack natures or nontrivial essential properties.  (Being self-identical is an example of a trivial essential property; being human of a nontrivial essential property.)  Bare particulars differ among themselves solo numero: they are not intrinsically or essentially different, but only numerically different.  Or you could say that they are barely different. Leibniz with his identitas indiscernibilium would not have approved. 

The notion of a bare particular makes sense only in the context of a constituent ontology according to which ordinary particulars, 'thick particulars' in the jargon of Armstrong, have ontological constituents or metaphysical parts.  Consider two qualitatively indiscernible round red spots.  There are two of them and thay share all their features.  What is the ontological ground of the sameness of features?  The sameness of the universals 'in' each spot.  What grounds the  numerical difference? What makes them two and not one?  Each has a different bare particular among its ontological constituents.  BPs, accordingly, are individuators/differentiators. On this sort of ontological analysis an ordinary particular is a whole of ontological parts including universals and a bare particular.  But of course the particulars exemplify the universals, so a tertium quid is needed, a nexus of exemplification to tie the bare particular to the universals. 

The main point, however, is that there is nothing in the nature of a bare particular to dictate which universals it exemplifies: BPs don't have natures.  Thus any BP is 'promiscuously combinable' with any first-order universal.  On this Bergmannian ontological scheme it is not ruled out that Socrates might have been an octopus or a valve-lifter in a '57 Chevy.  The other side of the coin is that there is no DE RE metaphysical necessity that Socrates be human.  Of course, there is the DE DICTO metaphysical impossibility, grounded in the respective properties, that an octopus be human.  But it is natural to want to say more, namely that it is DE RE metaphysically impossible that Socrates be an octopus.  But then the problem is: how can a particular qua particular 'contradict' any property?  Being an octopus 'contradicts' (is metaphysically inconsistent with)  being a man.  But how can a particular be such as to disallow  its exemplification of some properties? (116)

Thus I agree with LN that if there are bare particulars, then there are no DE RE metaphysical necessities pertaining to ordinary particulars, and vice versa. This is why LN, an Aristotelian, needs to be able to refute the very notion of a bare particular.

LN's Argument for premise (2) in the Master Argument Above

LN draws our attention to the phenomenon of accidental change.  A rock goes from being cold to being hot.  Peter goes from being ignorant of the theorem of Pythagoras to being  knowledgeable about it.  These are accidental changes: one and the same particular has different properties at different times.  Now a necessary condition of accidental change is that one and the same subject have different properties at different times.  But is it a sufficent condition?  Suppose Peter is F at time t and not F at time t* (t* later than t).  Suppose that F-ness is a universal.  It follows that Peter goes from exemplifying the universal F-ness at t to not exemplifying it at t*.  That is: he stands in the exemplification relation to F-ness at t, but ceases so to stand to t*.  But there has to be more to the change than this.  For, as LN points out, the change is in Peter.  It is intrinsic to him and cannot consist merely in a change in a relation to a universal.  Thus it seems to LN that, even if there are universals and particulars, we need another category of entity to account for accidental change, a category that that I will call that of property-exemplifications.  Thus Peter's being cold at t is a property-exemplification and so is Peter's not being cold at t*.  Peter's change in respect of temperature involves Peter as the diachronically persisting substratum of the change, the universal coldness, and two property-exemplifications, Peter's being cold at t and Peter's being not cold at t*.

These property-exemplifications, however, are particulars, not universals even though each has a universal as a constituent.  This is a special case of what Armstrong calls the Victory of Particularity: the result of a particular exemplifying a universal is  a particular.   Moreover, these items have natures or essences: it is essential to Peter's being cold that it have coldness as a constituent.  (This is analogous to mereological essentialism.) Hence property- exemplifications are particulars, but not bare particulars.  Therefore, (2) is true: It is not the case that all particulars are bare. 

I find LN's argument for (2) persuasive.  The argument in outline:

4. There are property-exemplifications
5. Property-exemplifications are particulars
6. Property-exemplifications have natures
7. Whatever has a nature is not bare
Therefore
2. It is not the case that all particulars are bare.

Premise (1) in the Master Argument

LN has shown that not all particulars are bare.  But why should we think that (1) is true, that if some particulars are bare, then all are?   It could be that simple particulars are bare while complex particulars, such as property-exemplifications,  are not bare.  If that is so, then showing that no complex particular is bare would  not amount to showing that no particular is bare.

The Master Argument, then, though valid, is not sound, or at at least it is not obviously sound: we have been given no good reason to accept (1).

Property-exemplifications, Tropes, and Accidents

But in all fairness to LN I should point out that he speaks of tropes and accidents, not of property-exemplifications.  I used the latter expression because 'trope' strikes me as  out of place.  Tropes are simples.  Peter's being ignorant of the theorem of Pythagoras at t, however, is a complex, and LN says as much on p. 117 top.    So the entity designated by the italicized phrase is not a trope, strictly speaking.  'Trope' is a terminus technicus whose meaning in this ontological context was first given to it by Donald C. Williams.  

Well, is the designatum of the italicized phrase an accident?  Can an accident of a substance have that very subtance as one of  its ontological constituents?  I should think not.  But Peter's being ignorant of the theorem of Pythagoras at t has Peter as one of its constituents.  So I should think that it is not an accident of Peter.

I conclude that either I am failing to understand LN's argument or that he has been insufficiently clear in expounding it.

A Final Quibble

LN suggests that the intuitions behind the theory of bare particulars are rooted in Frege's mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive distinction between concepts and objects. "Once this distinction has been made, it is very hard to see how there might be a genuine case of logical de re necessity." (115) The sentence quoted is true,  but as I said above, the notion of a bare particular makes no sense except in the context of a constituent ontology.   Frege's, however, is not a constituent ontology like Bergmann's but what Bergmann calls a function ontology.  (See G. Bergmann, Realism, p. 7.  Wolterstorff's constituent versus relation ontology distinction is already in Bergmann as the distinct between complex and function ontologies.)  So I deny that part of the motivation for  the positing of bare particulars is an antecedent acceptance of Frege's concept-object distinction.  I agree that if one accepts that distinction, then logical or rather metaphyscal de re necessity goes by the boards.  But the Fregean distinction is not part of the motivation or argumentation for bare particulars. 

Just what considerations motivate the positing of bare particulars would be a good topic for a separate post. 

Transitivity of Predication?

I dedicate this post to London Ed, who likes sophisms and scholastic arcana.

Consider these two syllogistic arguments:

A1. Man is an animal; Socrates is a man; ergo, Socrates is an animal.
A2. Man is a species; Socrates is a man; ergo, Socrates is a species.

The first argument is valid.  On one way of accounting for its validity, we make two assumptions.  First, we assume that each of the argument's constituent sentences is a predication.  Second, we assume the principle of the Transitivity of Predication: if x is predicable of y, and y is predicable of z, then x is predicable of z.  This principle has an Aristotelian pedigree.  At Categories 3b5, we read, "For all that is predicated of the predicate will be predicated also of the subject." So if animal is predicable of man, and man of Socrates, then animal of Socrates.  

Something goes wrong, however, in the second argument.  The question is: what exactly?  Let's first of all see if we can diagnose the fallacy while adhering to our two assumptions.  Thus we assume that each occurrence of 'is' in (A2) is an 'is' of predication, and that predication is transitive.  One suggestion  -- and I take this to be the line of some Thomists -- is that (A2) equivocates on 'man.'  In the major, 'man' means 'man-in-the-mind,' 'man as existing with esse intentionale.'  In the minor, 'man' means 'man-in-reality,' 'man as existing with esse naturale.'  We thus diagnose the invalidity of (A2) by saying that it falls afoul of quaternio terminorum, the four-term fallacy.  On this diagnosis, Transitivity of Predication is upheld: it is just that in this case the principle does not apply since there are four terms.

But of course there is also the modern Fregean way on which we abandon both of our assumptions and locate the equivocation in (A2) elsewhere.  On a Fregean diagnosis, there is an equivocation on 'is' in (A2) as between the 'is' of inclusion and the 'is' of predication.  In the major premise, 'is' expresses, not predication, but inclusion: the thought is that the concept man includes within its conceptual content the subconcept species.  In the minor and in the conclusion, however, the 'is'  expresses predication: the thought is that Socrates falls under the concepts man and species.  Accordingly, (A2) is invalid because of an equivocation on 'is,' not because of an equivocation on 'man.'

The Fregean point is that the concept man falls WITHIN but not UNDER the concept animal, while the object Socrates falls UNDER but not WITHIN the concepts man and animal.  Man does not fall under animal because no concept is an animal.  Animal is a mark (Merkmal) not a property (Eigenschaft) of man.  In general, the marks of a concept are not its properties.  But concepts do have properties.  The property of being instantiated, for example, is a property of the concept man.  But it is not a mark of it.  If it were a mark, then man by its very nature would be instantiated and it would be a conceptual truth that there are human beings, which is false.

Since on the Fregean scheme the properties of concepts needn't be properties of the items that fall under the concepts, Transitivity of Predication fails.  Thus, the property of being instantiated is predicable of the concept philosopher, and the concept philosopher is predicable  of Socrates; but the property of being instantiated is not predicable of Socrates. 

Via Platonica Versus Via Aristotelis

I have spoken more than once of the fruitful tension between Athens (philosophy) and  Jerusalem (Biblical revelation). But there is also a tension, and it is also a fruitful one, within Athens. It is depicted, if such a thing can be depicted at all, in Raphael's School of Athens.   Take a gander at the close-up below.  Plato points up, Aristotle, the younger man, points down. The Forms are, in a manner of speaking, up yonder in a topos ouranos, in a heavenly place; his star pupil would, again in a manner of speaking, bring them down to earth.  In a terminology I do not wholly endorse, Plato is an extreme, while Aristotle is a moderate, realist.

The vitality of the West is due, in part, to the fruitful tension between Athens and Jerusalem. And much of the vitality of philosophy derives from the fruitful tension between the Platonic and Aristotelian ways of thinking, not just as regards the problem of universals, but on a wide range of issues.

Another Round with Hennessey on Accidental Predication

Having had my say about what is known in the trade as Occam's Razor, and having secured some welcome agreement with the proprietor of Beyond Necessity in the combox of the aforelinked post, I am now ready to address the meat of Richard Hennessey's response to my three-post critique of what I took to be his theory of accidental predication.

There is no need to stray from our hoary example of accidental predication: 'Socrates is seated.'  I took Hennessey to be saying that in a true accidental predication of this simple form subject and predicate refer to exactly the same thing.  If they didn't, the sentence could not be true.  Here is how Hennessey puts it:

Let us take the proposition “Socrates is sitting” or the strictly equivalent “Socrates is a sitting being.” The referent of the subject term here is the sitting Socrates and that of the predicate term is one and the same sitting Socrates. . . . only if the referent of the “Socrates” and that of the “sitting” of “Socrates is sitting” are identical can it be true that Socrates is actually the one sitting.

Since Hennessey uses the word 'identity' we can call this an identity theory of accidental predication: in true predications of this sort, the referent of the subject term and the referent of the predicate term are identical, and this identty is what insures that the predication is true.  If so, then the same goes for all other true predications which are about Socrates.  So consider 'Socrates is standing' which is the logical contrary (not contradictory) of 'Socrates is sitting.'  These sentences cannot both be true at the same time, but they can be true at different times.  Suppose we ask what the truth-maker is in each case.  Given that subject and predicate terms refer to exactly the same thing, namely, Socrates, it follows that in each case it is Socrates and Socrates alone that is the truth-maker of both sentences.  When he is sitting, Socrates makes-true 'Socrates is sitting' and when he is standing Socrates makes-true 'Socrates is standing.' 

What I do not understand, however, is how these obviously different sentences, which differ in their truth-conditions, can have one and the same entity as truth-maker.  The same problem does not seem to arise for such essential predications as 'Socrates is human.'  For there is no time when he is not human, and (this is a distinct modal point), at every time at which he is human he is not possibly such as to be nonhuman.  In the case of essential predications an identity theory may be workable.  Perhaps we can say that Socrates himself is the truth-maker of 'Socrates is human,' 'Socrates is rational,' and Socrates is animal.'

In the case of accidental predications, however, it seems definitely unworkable. This is because different accidental predications about Socrates need different truth-makers. It is not Socrates, but Socrates'  being seated that is the truth-maker of 'Socrates is seated' and it is not Socrates, but Socrates' standing that is the truth-maker of 'Socrates is standing.'

Without worrying about what exactly the italicized phrases pick out (facts? states of affairs? tropes?), one thing seems crystal clear: there cannot be a strict identity of, e.g., the referent of 'Socrates' and the referent of 'seated.'  And since there cannot be a strict identity, there must be some difference between the referents of the subject and predicate terms.  Hennessey seems to show an appreciation of this in his response (second hyperlink above):

If we tweak the [B.V.] passage a bit, we can, it strikes me, improve the thesis about the referencing at work in the sentence “Socrates is sitting” so that it offers a more satisfactory support of the neo-Aristotelian thesis of anti-realism in the theory of universals, one indeed getting along “without invoking universals.” First, let us speak of “particular property” instead of “particularized property,” for the latter expression suggests, at least to me, that the property would be, prior to some act of particularization, a universal and not a particular. Let us then accept, but with a precision, Bill’s statement that “‘sitting’ refers to a particularized property (a trope),” saying instead that while the “Socrates” in our statement refers to Socrates, the person at present sitting, the “sitting” primarily refers to Socrates, the person at present sitting, and also co-refers to the particular property of sitting that inheres in Socrates. (An alternative terminology might have it that the “Socrates” in our statement denotes Socrates and the “sitting” primarily denotes Socrates, still the person sitting, and also connotesthe property of sitting that inheres in Socrates; come to think of it, I believe I recall having read, long ago, a similar distinction in the Petite logique of Jacques Maritain, a book which I no longer have, thanks to a flooded basement.)

This is definitely an improvement.  It is an improvement because it tries to accommodate the perfectly obvious point that there must be some difference or other between the worldly referents of the subject and predicate terms in accidental predications.  Hennessey is now telling us that 'Socrates' in our example refers to exactly one item, Socrates, while 'sitting' refers to two items, Socrates and the particular property (trope, accident) seatedness which inheres in Socrates.

But Hennessey is not yet in the clear.  For I will now ask him what the copula 'is' expresses.  It seems he must say that it expresses inherence.  He must say that it is because seatedness inheres in Socrates that 'Socrates is seated' is true.  Now inherence is an asymmetrical relation: if x inheres in y, then it is not the case that y inheres in x.  But there is no sameness relation (whether strict identity, contingent identity, accidental sameness, Castaneda's consubstantiaton, etc) that is not symmetrical.  Thus if x is in any sense the same as y, then y is (in the same sense) the same as x.  Therefore, Hennessey's bringing of inherence into the picture is at odds with his claims of identity.  Inherence, being asymmetrical,  is not a type of identity or sameness.  So why the talk of identity in the first passage quoted above?

Why does Hennessey say that 'seated' refers primarily to Socrates but also to the particular property seatedness?   Why not just say this: 'Socrates' refers to the primary substance (prote ousia) Socrates and nothing else; 'is' refers to the inherence relation or nexus and nothing else; 'seated/sitting' refers to the particular property (trope, accident) seatedness and nothing else.  This would give him what he wants, a theory of predication free of universals.

But this is not what Hennessey says.  He is putting forth some sort of identity theory of predication.  He thinks that in some sense the subject and predicate terms refer to the very same thing.  He tells us that 'seated' refers both to a substance and to an accident.  The upshot is that Hennessey has given birth to a hybrid theory which I for one do not find  intelligible. 

Here is the question he needs to confront directly: what, in the world, makes it true that 'Socrates is seated' (assuming of course that the sentence is true)?  Here is a clear answer: the sentence is true because seatedness inheres in Socrates.  But then of course there can be no talk of the identity of Socrates and seatedness.  They are obviously not identical: one is a substance and the other an accident.  The relation between them, being asymmetrical, cannot be any sort of sameness relation.

The other clear answer which, though clear, is absurd is this:  the sentence is true because 'Socrates' and 'seated' refer to the very same thing with the result that the copula expresses identity.  Now this is absurd for the reasons given over several posts. This was his original theory which he has wisely moved away from.

Instead of plumping for one of these clear theories, Hennessey gives us an unintelligible hybrid, a monster if you will, as we approach Halloween.

The Use and Abuse of Occam's Razor: On Multiplying Entities Beyond Necessity

Self-styled neo-Aristotelian Richard Hennessey's response to my three posts concerning his theory of accidental predication is now online. 

He graciously declines my suggestion that he make use of accidental compounds or accidental unities in his theory despite the excellent Aristotelian pedigree of these items, a pedigree amply documented in the writings of Frank Lewis and Gareth Mathews.  Following Mathews, I characterized accidental compounds as 'kooky' objects with as little pejorative intent as I found in Mathews who defends these items. Hennessey, however, apparently takes the label pejoratively:

I cannot help but agree that the seated-Socrates in question, as a being other than Socrates, is a “‘kooky’ or ‘queer’ object.” And I cannot help but wonder how anyone who rejects universals could be tempted to multiply entities and accept such a “‘kooky’ or ‘queer’ object.”

So before examing the meat of Hennessey's response to me, in a later post, we must first tackle some preliminary matters including the nature of Occam's Razor, its use and abuse, and the role of explanation and explanatory posits in philosophy.

On Brandishing the Razor

I am not historian enough to pronounce upon the relation of what is standardly called Occam's Razor to the writings of the 14th century William of Ockham. The different spellings of his name will serve as a reminder to be careful about reading contemporary concerns into the works of philosophers long dead. Setting aside historical concerns, Occam's Razor is standardly taken to be a principle of theoretical economy or  parsimony that states:

   OR. Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.

It is sometimes formulated in Latin: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. The principle is presumably to be interpreted qualitatively rather than quantitatively, thus:

   OR*. Do not multiply TYPES of entity beyond necessity.

Thus it is not individual entities that are not to be multiplied, but types or kinds or categories of entity.  To illustrate.  Some criticized David Lewis' extreme modal realism on the ground that it proliferates concreta: there are not only all the actual  concreta , there are all those merely possible ones as well.  He responded quite plausibly to the proliferation charge by pointing out that the Razor applies to categories of entity, not individual entities, and that category-wise his ontology is sparse indeed.

'Multiply' is a picturesque way of saying posit. (Obviously, there are as many categories of entity as there are, and one cannot cause them to 'multiply.')  And let's not forget the crucial qualification: beyond necessity.  That means: beyond what is needed for purposes of adequate explanation of the data that are to be explained.  Hence:

OR**  Do not posit types of entity in excess of what is needed for purposes of explanation.

So the principle enjoins us to refrain from positing more types of entity than we need to explain the phenomena that need to be explained. It is obvious that (OR**) does not tell us to prefer theory T1 over theory T2 if T1 posits fewer types of entity than T2. What it tells us is to prefer T1 over T2 if T1 posits fewer types of entity AND accounts adequately for all  the data. So there is a trade-off between positing and accounting.

Our old pal Ed over at Beyond Necessity often seems to be unaware of this.  He seems to think that simply brandishing the Razor suffices to refute a theory.  Together with this he sometimes displays a tendency to think that whole categories of entity can be as it were  shamed out of existence by labeling them 'queer.'  I picked up that word from him.  A nice, arch, donnish epithet.  But that is just name-calling, a shabby tactic best left to the ideologues. 

Hennessey is perhaps not guilty of any name-calling or entity-shaming but I note that he too seems to think that merely waving the Razor about suffices as a technique of refutation. One piece of evidence is the quotation above where he states in effect that to posit accidental compounds such as seated-Socrates is to multiply entities.  But this is to ignore the crucial question whether there is any need for the positing. 

What is offensive about Razor brandishing is the apparent ignorance on the part of some brandishers of the fact that we all agree that one ought not posit types of entity in excess of the needs of explanation. What we don't agree on, however, is whether or not a given class of entities is needed for explanatory purposes.  That is where the interesting questions and the real disagreements lie. 

Hennessey eschews universals in the theory of predication, and elsewhere.  Fine.  But he cannot justify that eschewal solely on the basis of Occam's Razor which is a purely methodological principle.  In other words, the Razor does not dictate any particular ontology.  Taken as such, and apart from its association with the nominalist Ockham, it does not favor nominalism (the view that everything is a particular) over realism (the view that there are both particulars and universals).  It does not favor any ontology over any other. 

Nor does it rule out so-called 'abstract objects' such as Fregean propositions.  I gave an argument a while back (1 August 2010 to be precise) to the conclusion that there cannot, as a matter of metaphysical necessity, be nothing at all, that there must be at least one abstract object, a proposition.  Hennessey commented on that post, Thinking about Nothing, and made the objection that I was multipying entities.  But again, the salient question is whether the entity-positing is necessary for explanatory purposes.  If my argument was a good one, then it was.  One cannot refute such an argument simply by claiming that it introduces a type of entity that is less familiar than one's favorite types.

To sum up.  Philosophy is in large part, though not entirely, an explanatory enterprise.  As such it ought to proceed according to the methodological principle formulated above as (OR**).  This principle is not controversial.  Hence it should not be presented to one's opponents as if it were controversial and denied by them.  Nor is it a principle that takes sides on the substantive questions of ontology.  Thus the following argument which is suggested by Hennessey's remarks is invalid:

1. OR**
2. Accidental compounds are a category of particular distinct from both substances and accidents.
Ergo
3. There are no accidental compounds. 

Non sequitur!  He needs a premise to the effect that the positing of accidental compounds is otiose since the explanatory job can be adequately done without them.  He needs such a premise, and of course he needs to defend it.

What I am objecting to is the idea is that by earnest asseverations of a wholly uncontroversial methodological principle one actually  advances the substantive debate.  

Accidental Sameness and its Logical Properties

I should thank Richard Hennessey for motivating me to address a topic I haven't until these last few days discussed in these pages, namely, that of accidental sameness.  Let us adopt for the time being a broadly Aristotelian ontology with its standard nomenclature of substance and accident, act and potency, form and matter, etc.  Within such a framework, how can we account for an accidental predication such as 'Socrates is seated'? 

In particular, what is expressed by 'is' in a sentence like this?  Hennessey seems to maintain that it expresses an identity which holds, if the sentence is true, between the referent of the subject term 'Socrates' and the referent of the predicate term  'seated.'  Here is what Hennessey says:

Let us take the proposition “Socrates is sitting” or the strictly equivalent “Socrates is a sitting being.” The referent of the subject term here is the sitting Socrates and that of the predicate term is one and the same sitting Socrates. Similarly, the referent of the subject term of “Plato is sitting” is the sitting Plato and that of its predicate term is one and the same sitting Plato. Here, once again, only if the referent of the “Socrates” and that of the “sitting” of “Socrates is sitting” are identical can it be true that Socrates is actually the one sitting. And, only if the referent of the “Plato” and that of the “sitting” of “Plato is sitting” are identical can it be true that Plato is actually the one sitting.

Hennessey is making two moves in this passage.  The first is the replacement of 'Socrates is seated' with 'Socrates is a seated being.' (I am using 'seated' instead of 'sitting' for idiosyncratic stylistic reasons;  the logic and ontology of the situation should not be affected.) I grant that the original sentence and its replacement are logically equivalent.  Hence I have no objection to the first move.

The second move is to construe the 'is' of the replacement sentence as expressing identity.  Together with this move goes Hennessey's  claim that ONLY in this way can the truth of the sentence be insured.  This claim is false for reasons given earlier, but this is not my present concern.  My concern at present is the second move by itself.  Can the 'is' of the replacement sentence be construed as expressing identity?

The answer to this is in the negative if by 'identity' is meant strict identity.  Strict identity, symbolized by '=,'  is an equivalence relation: it is reflexive, symmetrical, and transitive.  It is furthermore governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals (If a = b, then everything true of a is true of b and vice versa) and the Necessity of Identity (If a = b, then necessarily a = b).  Now if the referent of 'Socrates' and the referent of 'seated' are strictly identical, then this is necessarily so, true in every possible world in which Socrates exists, in which case our sentence cannot be contingently true as it obviously is.  Socrates is seated only at some of the times at which he exists, not at all such times.  And at any time at which he is seated he is possibly such as not to be seated at that time.  (The modality in question is broadly logical.)

So if Hennessey wants to construe the 'is' as expressing a type of sameness, it cannot be that sameness which is strict identity.  An option which is clearly open to him as an Aristotelian is to construe the 'is' as expressing accidental sameness.  But what is that?

It is a dyadic relation that connects one substance and one accidental compound.  (Thus by definition it never connects two substances or two compounds.)  An accidental compound is a particular, not a universal.  It is a hylomorphic compound the matter of which is a substance and the form of which an accident inhering in that substance.  It is admittedly a somewhat 'kooky' object, to borrow an epithet from Gareth Mathews.  An example is seated-Socrates.  Socrates is a substance.  His seatedness is an accident inhering in him.  The two together form an accidental compound which can be denoted by 'seated-Socrates' or by 'Socrates + seatedness.'  Seated-Socrates is neither a substance nor an accident, but a transcategorial hybrid composed of one substance and one accident, but only if the accident inheres in the substance. (An accidental compund is therefore not a mereological sum of a substance and any old accident.)

The compound is not a substance because it cannot exist on its own, but it is parasitic upon its parent substance, in our example, Socrates. It is also not a substance because it is not subject to alterational change.  Change for an accidental compound is existential change, either coming into being or passing out of being.  When Socrates sits down, seated-Socrates comes into being, and when he stands up it passes out of being.  An accidental compound is not an accident because it is not related to its parent substance by inherence, but by accidental sameness.  A key difference is that inherence is an asymmetrical relation, while accidental sameness is symmetrical.

Hennessey can say the following: 'Socrates is seated' expresses the accidental sameness of Socrates with the accidental compound, seated-Socrates.  He needs to posit two objects, not one: a substance and an accidental compound.  If he holds that the referent of 'Socrates' and the referent of 'seated' are strictly identical, then the accidentality of the predication cannot be accommodated, and all predications become essential. That was my initial objection to Hennessey's view before I figured out a way to salvage it. 

What are the logical properties of the accidental sameness relation?  Like strict identity, it is symmetrical.  This should be obvious.  If Socrates is accidentally the same as seated-Socrates, then the latter is accidentally the same as the former.  The inherence relation, by contrast, is asymmetrical: if A inheres in S, then S does not inhere in A. This is one of the differences between the accidental sameness relation and the inherence relation. 

Accidental sameness is irreflexive.  This can be proven as follows:

1. No substance is an accidental compound.
2. If a is accidentally the same as b, then either a is a subtance and b a compound, or vice versa.
Therefore
3. No object, whether substance or compound, is accidentally the same as itself.

It can also be proven that accidental sameness is intransitive.  Thus, if a is accidentally the same as b, and b accidentally the same as c, it follows that a is not accidentally the same as c.  Suppose a is a substance.  Then b is a compound.  But if b is a compound, then c is a substance, with the result that a substance is accidentally the same as a substance, which violates the definition of accidental sameness.  On the other hand, if a is a compound, then b is a substance, which makes c a compound, with the result that a  compound is accidentally the same as a compound, which also violates the definition.  So accidental sameness is intransitive.

Clearly, there is accidental sameness only if there are accidental compounds.  But are there any of the latter?  Consider a fist.  A fist is not strictly identical to the hand whose fist it is. (They have different persistence conditions.) But a fist is not strictly different from the hand whose fist it is.  But surely there are fists, and surely what we have in a situation like this is not two individuals in the same place.  So it is reasonable to maintain that a fist is an accidental compound which is accidentally the same as the hand whose fist it is.

Still, there is something 'kooky' about accidental compounds.  So I'll end with a challenge to Hennessey, enemy of universals.  Why are accidental compounds less 'kooky' than universals, whether immanent or transcendent? 

Accidental Sameness: Defending Hennessey Against My Objection

Yesterday I made an objection to Richard Hennessey's neo-Aristotelian theory of accidental predication.  But this morning I realized that he has one or more plausible responses.  By the way, this post has, besides its philosophical purpose, a metaphilosophical one.  I will be adding support to my claim lately bruited that philosophy -- the genuine article -- is not a matter of debate, as I define both 'philosophy' and 'debate.'  For have you ever been to a debate in which debater A, having made an objection to something debater B has said, says, "Wait a minute!  I just realized that you have one or more plausible ways of turning aside my objection.  The first is . . . ."?

1. 'Socrates is seated' is an example of an accidental predication.  For surely it is no part of Socrates' essence or nature that he be seated.  There is no broadly logical necessity that  he be seated at any time at which he is seated, and there are plenty of times at which he is not seated.  'Socrates is seated' contrasts with the essential predication 'Socrates is human.'  Socrates is human at every time at which he exists and at every world at which he exists.

2. Hennessey's theory is that ". . . only if the referent of the 'Socrates' and that of the 'sitting' of 'Socrates is sitting' are identical can it be true that Socrates is actually the one sitting."  The idea seems to be that accidental predications can be understood as identity statements.  Thus 'Socrates is seated' goes over into (what is claimed to be) the logically equivalent  'Socrates is (identical to) seated-Socrates.'  Accordingly, our sample sentence is construed, not as predicating a property of Socrates, a property he instantiates, but as affiming the identity of Socrates with the referent of 'seated-Socrates.'

3.  But what is the referent of 'seated-Socrates'?  If the referent is identical to the referent of 'Socrates,' namely Socrates, then my objection kicks in:  how can the predication be contingently true, as it obviously is, given that it affirms the identity of Socrates with himself?  Socrates is essentially Socrates but only accidentally seated.

4. Perhaps Hennessey could respond to this objection by saying that 'Socrates' and 'Socrates-seated' do not refer to the same item: they refer to different items which are, nonetheless, contingently identical.  This would involve distinguishing between necessary identity and contingent identity where both are equivalence relations (reflexive, symmetrical, transitive) but only the former satisfies in addition the Indiscernibility of Identicals (InId) and the Necessity of Identity (NI).  It is obvious that if a and b are contingently identical, but distinct, then these items must be discernible in which case InId fails.  It is also obvious that NI must fail for contingent identity.

5. Closer to Aristotle is a view described by Michael C. Rea in "Sameness Without Identity: An Aristotelian Solution to the Problem of Material Constitution" in Form and Matter, ed. Oderberg, Blackwell 1999, pp. 103-115.  I will now paraphrase and interpret from Rea's text, pp. 105-107.  And I won't worry about how the view I am about to sketch differs -- if it does differ -- from the view sketched in #4.

When Socrates sits down, seated-Socrates comes into existence. When he stands up or adopts some other nonseated posture, seated-Socrates passes out of existence.  This 'kooky' or 'queer' object is presumably a particular, not a universal, though it is not a substance.  It is an accidental unity whose existence is parasitic upon the existence of its parent substance, Socrates.   It cannot exist without the parent substance, but the latter can exist without it.  The relation is like that of a fist to a hand made into a fist.  The fist cannot exist without the hand, but the hand can exist without being made into a fist.Though seated-Socrates is not a substance it is like a substance in that it is a hylomorphic compound: it has Socrates as its matter and seatedness as its form.  As long as Socrates and seated-Socrates exist, the relation between them is accidental sameness, a relation weaker than strict identity. 

Accidental sameness is not strict identity presumably because  the former is not governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals.  Clearly, Socrates and seated-Socrates do not share all properties despite their sameness.  They differ temporally and modally. Socrates exists at times at which seated-Socrates does not exist (though not conversely).  And it is possible that Socrates exist without seated-Socrates existing (though not conversely). 

Are Socrates and seated-Socrates numerically the same?  They count as one and so they are one in number though not one in being.   So says Aristotle according to Rea.  After all, if Socrates and Alcibiades are seated at table we count two philosophers not four.  We don't count: Socrates, seated-Socrates, Alcibiades, seated-Alcibiades.

But I will leave it to Hennessey to develop this further.  It looks as if this is the direction in which he must move if his theory is to meet my objection.

What about essential predication?  Is there a distinction between Socrates and human-Socrates?  These two cannot be accidentally the same.  They must be strictly identical. If 'Socrates is human' is parsed as 'Socrates is identical to human-Socrates' then how does the latter differ from 'Socrates is Socrates'?  The sense of 'Socrates is human' differs from the sense of 'Socrates is Socrates.'  How account for that?  'Socrates is Socrates' is a formal-logical truth, trivial and uninformative.  'Socrates is human' is not a formal-logical truth; it is informative. 

Comments on Richard Hennessey's Neo-Aristotelian Theory of Predication

Richard Hennessey of Gnosis and Noesis sketches a neo-Aristotelian theory of predication in Another Aristotelian Basis for a Neo-Aristotelian Anti-Realism in the Theory of Universals.  Drawing as he does upon my discussion in Scholastic Realism and Predication, he has asked me to comment on his post.  I will do so with pleasure.

I first want to agree partially with something he says at the close of his post: 

. . . we have in the so-called problem of universals not a genuine problem, but merely a pseudo-problem. That is, we have a problem of universals only if we posit their existence. If we do not posit them, there is no genuine problem.

I would put the point somewhat differently.  The phrase 'problem of universals' is a misnomer. For what is in dispute in the so-called problem of universals is the nature of properties.  Not their existence, but their nature.  That there are properties is a given, a datum.  What alone can be reasonably questioned is their nature.  If you deny that sugar is sweet, then I show you the door.  But if you deny that sweetness is a universal, then I listen to your arguments.  For it is not at all obvious that the sweetness of a sugar cube is a universal. (Nor is it obvious that it isn't) That it is a universal is a theoretical claim that goes beyond the data.  It is consistent with the data that the sweetness be a particular, an unrepeatable item, such as a trope (as in the theories of D. C. Williams and Keith Campbell, et al.) or some other sort of particular. 

The correct phrase, then, is 'problem of properties,' not 'problem of universals.'  But that is not to say that there is no legitimate use for 'problem of universals.'  If one posits universals, then one will face various problems such as the problem of how they connect to particulars.  Those problems are genuine, not pseudo, given that there are universals.

In any case, Richard sees no need to posit universals, whether Platonic or Aristotelian, to explain either essential or accidental predication.  Here is the gist of Richard's theory:

Let us take the proposition “Socrates is sitting” or the strictly equivalent “Socrates is a sitting being.” The referent of the subject term here is the sitting Socrates and that of the predicate term is one and the same sitting Socrates. Similarly, the referent of the subject term of “Plato is sitting” is the sitting Plato and that of its predicate term is one and the same sitting Plato. Here, once again, only if the referent of the “Socrates” and that of the “sitting” of “Socrates is sitting” are identical can it be true that Socrates is actually the one sitting. And, only if the referent of the “Plato” and that of the “sitting” of “Plato is sitting” are identical can it be true that Plato is actually the one sitting.

What we have here could be called an identity theory of predication: if 'Socrates is a sitting being' is true, then the referent of the subject term 'Socrates' and the referent of the predicate term 'sitting being' are numerically identical.  Accordingly, the 'is' is the 'is' of identity.  ONLY on this analysis, says Richard, can the sentence be true. I rather doubt that, but first we need to consider whether Richard's theory is not open to serious objection.

If x and y are identical, then this is necessarily so. Call this the Necessity of Identity.  More precisely: for any x, y, if x = y, then necessarily, x = y.   Equivalent contrapositive: if possibly ~(x = y), then ~(x = y).  It follows that if Socrates is identical to some sitting being, then necessarily he is identical to that sitting being.  But in that case it would not be possible for Socrates not to be a sitting being.  This, however, is possible.  Sometimes he is on his feet walking around, other times he is flat on his back, and he has even been observed standing on his head.  And please note that even if, contrary to fact, Socrates was always seated, it would still be possible for him not to be seated.  The mere possibility of his not being seated shows that he cannot be identical to some sitting being.

This is an objection that Richard needs to address if his theory is to be tenable.  Note that my objection can be met without invoking universals.  One could say that 'Socrates' in our sample sentence refers to Socrates, that 'sitting' refers to a particularized property (a trope), and that the 'is' is the 'is' of predication, not identity.  Accordingly, there is not an identity between Socrates and a sitting being; the particularized property being-seated inheres in Socrates, where inherence, unlike identity, is asymmetrical.

The other claim that Richard makes is that ONLY on his theory can the truth of 'Socrates is sitting' be accommodated.  That strikes me as false.  I just gave an analysis on which the truth of the predication is preserved.  And of course there are others. 

 

How Are Form and Matter Related in Compound Material Substances?

Favoring as I do constituent ontology, I am sympathetic to that type of constituent ontology which is hylomorphic ontological analysis, as practiced by Aristotelians, Thomists, et al.  The obscurity of such fundamental  concepts as form, matter, act, potency, substance, and others is, however, troubling. Let's see if we can make sense of the relation between form and matter in an artifact such as a bronze sphere. Now those of you who are ideologically committed to Thomism may bristle at an exposure of difficulties, but you should remember that philosophy is not ideology. The philosopher follows the argument to its conclusion whether it overturns his pet beliefs or supports them, or neither. He knows how to keep his ideological needs in check while pursuing pure inquiry.  If the inquiry terminates in an aporetic impasse, then so be it.

1. Although it perhaps requires arguing, I will here take it for granted that form and matter as these terms are used by Aristotle and his followers are items 'in the real order.' 'Item' is a maximally   noncommittal term in my lexicon: it commits me to very little. Anything in whatever category to which one can refer in any way  whatsoever is an item. 'Real' is that which exists whether or not it is an intentional object of an act of mind. So when I say that form and matter are items in the real order I simply mean that they are not projected by the mind: it is not as if bronze spheres and such have  form and matter only insofar as we interpret them as having form and matter. The bronze sphere is subject to hylomorphic (matter-form) analysis because the thing in reality is made up of form and matter.   'Projectivism' is off the table at least for the space of this post. I am thus assuming a version of realism and am viewing form and matter as distinct ontological constituents or 'principles' of compound   substances.

2. The foregoing implies that the proximate matter of the bronze sphere,  namely, the hunk of bronze itself, is a part of the bronze sphere.  After all, 'ontological constituent' is just a fancy way of saying  'ontological part.'  But an argument I now adapt from E. J. Lowe ("Form Without Matter" in Form and Matter: Themes in Contemporary  Metaphysics, ed. Oderberg, Blackwell 1999, p. 7) seems to show that  the notion that the proximate matter of a compound material substance is a part of it is problematic.  The argument runs as follows.

A. If the hunk of bronze composing the sphere is a part of the sphere, then either it is a proper part or it is an improper part, where an improper part of a whole W is a part of W that overlaps every part of   W.

B. The hunk of bronze is not an improper part since it is not identical to the bronze sphere. (One reason for this is that the persistence conditions are not the same: the piece of bronze will still exist if the sphere is flattened into a disk, but the sphere cannot survive such a deformation. Second, the two are modally discernible: the hunk of bronze is a hunk of bronze in every possible world in which it exists, but the hunk of bronze is not a sphere in every possible world in which it exists.)

C. The hunk of bronze is not a proper part of the bronze sphere since there is no part of the bronze sphere that it fails to overlap.

Therefore

D. The hunk of bronze is not a part of the bronze sphere.

Therefore

E. The composition of form and matter is not mereological. (Lowe, p. 7)

This raises the question of how exactly we are to understand form-matter composition. If the proximate matter of a substance cannot  be a part of it in any sense familiar to mereology, the form-matter composition is 'unmereological,' which is not necessarily an objection except that it raises the question of how exactly we are to understand this unmereological type of composition. This problem obviously extends to essence-existence composition.

3. Now let's look at the problem from the side of form. Could the spherical form of the bronze sphere be a part of it? A form is a principle of organization or arrangement, and it is not quite clear how an arrangement can be a part of the thing whose other parts it arranges. Lowe puts the point like this: ". . . the arrangement of certain parts cannot itself be one of those parts, as this would involve the very conception of an arrangement of parts in a fatal kind of impredicativity." (p. 7)

4. In sum, the difficulty is as follows. Form and matter are real 'principles' in compound substances. They are not projected or supplied by us. We can say that form and matter are ontological constituents of compound substances. This suggests that they are parts of compound substances. But we have just seen that they are not parts in any ordinary mereological sense. So this leaves us in the dark as to just what these 'principles' are and how they combine to constitute compound material substances.

Being Dead and Being Nonexistent, or: How to Cease to Exist without Dying

In general, being dead and being nonexistent are not the same 'property' for an obvious reason: only that which was once alive can properly be said to be dead, and not everything was once alive.  Nevertheless, it might be thought that, for living things, to be is to be alive, and not to be is to be dead.  But I think this Aristotelian view can be shown to be mistaken.

1. A human person cannot become dead except by dying.

2. But a human person can become nonexistent without dying in at least four ways. 

2a. The first way is by entering into irreversible coma.  Given that consciousness is an essential attribute of persons, a person who enters into irreversible coma ceases to exist.  But the person's body remains alive.  Therefore, a human person can cease to exist without dying. 

2b. The second way is by fission.  Suppose one human person A enters a Person Splitter and exits two physically and behaviorally and psychologically indiscernible persons, B and C.  B is not C.  So A is not B and A is not C.  What happened to A?  A ceased to exist.  But A didn't die.  Far from the life in A ceasing, the life in A doubled!  So human person A became nonexistent without dying.

2c.  The third way is by fusion.  Two dudes enter the Person Splicer from the east and exit to the west one dude.  The entrants have ceased to exist without dying.

2d.  The fourth way is theological.  Everything other than God depends on God for its very existence at every moment of its existence.  If God were to 'pull the plug' ontologically speaking on the entire universe of contingent beings, then at that instant all human persons would cease to exist without dying.  They would not suffer the process or the event of dying  but would enter nonexistence nonetheless.  Because they had not died, they could not be properly said to be dead.

Therefore, pace the Peripatetic,

3.  Being dead and being nonexistent are not the same  -- not even for living things.

(Time consumed in composing this post: 40 minutes. )

Ontological Analysis in Aristotle and Bergmann: Prime Matter Versus Bare Particulars

Hardly anyone reads Gustav Bergmann any more, but since I read everything, I read Bergmann. It is interesting to compare his style of ontological analysis with that of the great hylomorphic ontologists, Aristotle and Aquinas. The distinguished Aristotelian Henry B. Veatch does some of my work for me in a fine paper, "To Gustav Bergmann: A Humble Petition and Advice" in M.S.Gram and E.D.Klemke, eds. The Ontological Turn: Studies in the Philosophy of Gustav Bergmann (University of Iowa Press, 1974, pp. 65-85)

I want to focus on Veatch's comparison of Aristotle and Bergmann on the issue of prime matter/bare particulars. As Veatch correctly observes, "all of the specific functions which bare particulars perform in Bergmannian ontology are the very same functions as are performed by matter in Aristotle . . . ." (81) What are these functions?

A Battle of Titans: Plato Versus Aristotle

It is sometimes said that there are only two kinds of philosophers, Platonists and Aristotelians.  What follows is a quotation from Heinrich Heine which expresses one version of this useful simplification.  Carl Gustav Jung places it at the very beginning of his Psychological Types (Princeton UP, 1971, p. 2.)

Plato and Aristotle! These are not merely two systems: they are also types of two distinct human natures, which from time immemorial, under every sort of disguise, stand more or less inimically opposed. The whole medieval period in particular was riven by this conflict, which persists down to the present day, and which forms the most essential content of the history of the Christian Church. Although under other names, it is always of Plato and Aristotle that we speak. Visionary, mystical, Platonic natures disclose Christian ideas and their corresponding symbols from the fathomless depths of their souls. Practical, orderly, Aristotelian natures build out of these ideas and symbols a fixed system, a dogma and a cult. Finally, the Church eventually embraces both natures—one of them entrenched in the clergy, and the other in monasticism; but both keeping up a constant feud. ~ H. Heine, Deutschland

Plato, on the left carrying The Timaeus, points upwards while Aristotle, on the right carrying his Ethics, points either forward (thereby valorizing the 'horizontal' dimension of time and change as against Plato's 'vertical' gesture) or downwards (emphasizing the foundational status of sense particulars and sense knowledge.)  At least  five contrasts are suggested: vita contemplativa versus vita activa, mundus intelligibilis versus mundus sensibilis, transcendence versus immanence, eternity versus time, mystical unity versus rational-cum-empirical plurality.

Heine is right about the battle within Christianity between the Platonic and Aristotelian tendencies.  Trinity, Incarnation, Transubstantiation, Divine Simplicity -- these are at bottom mystical notions impervious to penetration by the discursive intellect as we have been lately observing.  Nevertheless,"Practical, orderly, Aristotelian natures build out of these ideas and symbols a fixed system, a dogma and a cult."  But the dogmatic constructions, no matter how clever and detailed, never succeed in rendering intelligible the  transintelligible, mystical contents.

Aquinas on Why Being Cannot Be a Genus

At 998b22 of his Metaphysics, Aristotle argues that being cannot be a genus. Thomas Aquinas gives his version of the argument in Summa Contra Gentiles, Book I, ch. 25, para. 6. I find the presentation of the doctor angelicus clearer than that of the philosophus. After quoting Thomas' argument, I will offer a rigorous reconstruction and explanation of it. The argument issues in an important conclusion, one highly relevant to my running battle with the partisans of the 'thin' conception of being.

The Anton C. Pegis translation reads as follows:

Now, that being cannot be a genus is proved by the Philosopher in the following way. If being were a genus we would have to find a difference to contract it to a species. But no difference shares in the genus in such a way that the genus is included in the notion of the difference, for thus the genus would be included twice in the definition of the species. Rather, the difference is outside what is understood in the nature of the genus. But there can be nothing that is outside that which is understood by being, if being is included in the concept of the things of which it is predicated. Thus, being cannot be contracted by any difference. Being is, therefore, not a genus. (127)

Quod autem ens non possit esse genus, probatur per Philosophum in hunc modum: Si ens esset genus, oporteret differentiam aliquam inveniri, per quam traheretur ad speciem; nulla autem differentia participat genus, ita scilicet quod genus sit in ratione differentiae; quia sic genus poneretur bis in diffinitione speciei. Sed oportet differentiam esse praeter id quod intellegitur in ratione generis. Nihil autem potest esse quod sit praeter id quod intelligitur per ens, si ens sit de intellectu eorum de quibus praedicatur; et sic per nullam differentiam contrahi potest. Relinquitur ergo quod ens non sit genus.

I think it best to reconstruct the argument as a reductio ad absurdum. In such a style of proof one attempts to derive a contradiction (a logical absurdity) from an assumption together with premises that are believed by the producer and the consumers of the argument to be incontrovertible. The emergence of a contradiction shows that the assumption is false.

I Get a Rise Out of Aristotle

Michael Gilleland, the Laudator Temporis Acti, in his part-time capacity as 'channel' of Aristotle, submits this delightful missive:

Dear Dr. Vallicella:

You wrote:

"Society and its various coercive and noncoercive arrangements exist for the sake of the individual and not the other way around. Given that the individual is the locus of value and the reason for the being of state and society, the latter cannot be ends in themselves, whence it follows that the political life, useful as it is, cannot be the highest life."

I once argued otherwise, in my Nicomachaean Ethics 1.2.8 (tr. H. Rackham):

"For even though it be the case that the Good is the same for the individual and for the state, nevertheless, the good of the state is manifestly a greater and more perfect good, both to attain and to preserve. To secure the good of one person only is better than nothing; but to secure the good of a nation or a state is a nobler and more divine achievement."

Regards,

Aristotle the Stagirite

Dear Aristotle,

I will begin by thanking your for your interest in my humble weblog. If it were not for you and your teacher Plato -- to whom, if I may say so, you do not accord sufficient respect in your otherwise outstanding writings -- none of us epigoni would be so much as thinkable. But now to the matter at hand.

You do indeed argue that politics is the master science of the good in Book I, Chapter 2 of your excellent Nicomachean Ethics, and you do indeed state at 1094b8 that the good of the state is nobler than the good of the individual. But I must remind you of what you say in the tenth and last Book of Eth. Nic. beginning in Chapter 6 and continuing until the concluding Chapter Nine. May I be so bold as to summarize the immortal thought of these inspiring chapters?

Chapter Six: Happiness and Activity. Happiness is a an active state, not one of passivity or amusement. Happiness, as the ultimate goal of human striving, cannot be identified with pleasure as certain 19th century English blockheads thought, and certainly not with bodily pleasures. (The German philosopher Nietzsche, whom you may have heard of, once quipped, "Man does not seek pleasure, only the Englishman does." I think you would approve of that line.) Happiness is an activity of the soul, not the body, in accordance with virtue.

Chapter Seven: Happiness, Intelligence, and the Contemplative Life. Now if happiness, eudaimonia, is an activity of the soul, an ergon of the psyche, in accordance with virtue or excellence, then it ought to be an activity in accordance with the highest virtue or excellence. You wisely distinguished the moral from the intellectual virtues and gave precedence to the latter. But among the intellectual virtues theoretical knowledge or contemplation, what you call theoria, stands in first place. Thus the highest life is the bios theoretikos, the life of theory, of contemplation, of philosophy. This is what your students in the Middle Ages called the vita contemplativa.

One of the arguments you give for the superiority of the theoretical life is the argument from sufficiency (1176b25 ff.) One who practices such virtues as justice, courage, and self-control needs other people. Thus a just legislator, a just judge, and a just executive requires other people as a condition of his virtuous behavior, a fact which brings in its train a lack of self-sufficiency. But he who follows the bios theoretikos needs little beyond the necessities of life. As you put it, "a wise man is able to study even by himself, and the wiser he is the more he is able to do so."

You go on to point out that the theoretical life is legitimately regarded as an end in itself and is a life of true leisure. By contrast, those who engage in military and political pursuits live in unleisurely and servile fashion, and insofar forth can do little to advance the cause of culture. As you point out, we are busy in order to have leisure just as we wage war for the sake of peace. The vita activa is for the sake of the vita contemplativa. Have you read Josef Pieper's Leisure The Basis of Culture? He does an excellent job of expounding this idea of yours. All neg-otiation, whether econonomic or political, is for the sake of otium, leisure. Sorry to employ the inferior language, Latin, but it is nearer to me and my readers than Greek.

Your view, then, is that the contemplative life stands higher than the political life. As the first to investigate logic systematically, you will not take it amiss if I set forth your view in a syllogism:

1. The highest activity is self-sufficient, an end in itself, and productive of the highest pleasure attainable.
2. Only theoretical, but not political, activity is self-sufficient, an end in itself, and productive of the highest pleasure attainable.
Therefore
3. The highest activity is theoretical, not political, activity.

Chapter Eight: The Advantages of the Contemplative Life. The contemplative life is the happiest life since it is the life in accordance with the best in us, nous or intelligence, that in us which make us godlike and self-sufficient.

Chapter Nine: Ethics and Politics. If I may say so, this chapter, something of a grab bag of tentative considerations, does not attain the level of the chapters I have just summarized, and indeed leaves unresolved a tension that you must have felt while composing the various parts of your excellent book.

Is politics the master science of the good, as you say in Book One, so that ethics is a branch of politics? That would seem to suggest that the good of the polis is superior to the good of the individual, and that the happiness and self-realization of the individual must be subordinated to the welfare of the state. But this conflicts with your plain commitment to the thesis that the theoretical life is superior to the political life, not to mention the economic life and the pleasure-seeking life.

I don't need to point out to you that the theoretical life is the individual life par excellence. Indeed, you underscore its solitariness and self-sufficiency as key advantages of it. It is not a group life. And its thinking is not group-think. Indeed, your god, the primum mobile (pardon the Latin!) is noesis noeseos, thought thinking itself, in your beautiful phrase. And you would be the first to admit that no group of thinkers is a thinker.

So I think there is a bit of a tension here. Is politics the master science of the good, or is ethics? Which is subordinated to which? You can't have it both ways, and I would resolve the tension by giving the palm to ethics and to the happiness of the individual. And I would do so invoking your authority!

If over the centuries you have come to any further conclusions on this weighty matter, I should like to hear them, either directly, or via the good graces of your acolyte the estimable Dr. Gilleland.

Yours in the love of wisdom,

MP

Wonder: Theaetetus 155 d with Aristotelian and Heideggerian Glosses

Plato puts the following words in the mouth of Socrates at Theaeteus 155 d (tr. Benjamin Jowett): "I see, my dear Theaetetus, that Theodorus had a true insight into your nature when he said that you were a philosopher, for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder."

Aristotle echoes the Theaetetus passage at 982b12 of his Metaphysics: "It was their wonder, astonishment, that first led men to philosophize and still leads them." Martin Heidegger, commenting on both passages, writes in Was ist das — die Philosophie?:

Das Erstaunen ist als pathos die arche der Philosophie. Das griechische Wort arche muessen wir im vollen Sinne verstehen. Es nennt dasjenige, von woher etwas ausgeht. Aber dieses "von woher" wird im Ausgehen nicht zurueckgelassen, vielmehr wird die arche zu dem, was das Verbum archein sagt, zu solchem, was herrscht. Das pathos des Erstaunens steht nicht einfach so am Beginn der Philosophie wie z. B. der Operation des Chirurgen das Waschen der Haende voraufgeht. Das Erstaunen traegt und durchherrscht die Philosophie.

Retortion and Non-Contradiction in Aristotle, Metaphysics, Gamma 3, 4

Retortion is the philosophical procedure whereby one seeks to establish a thesis by uncovering a performative inconsistency in anyone who attempts to deny it. It is something like that benign form of ad hominem in which person A points out to person B that some proposition p that B maintains is inconsistent with some other proposition q that B maintains. "How can you maintain that p when your acceptance of p is logically ruled out by your acceptance of q? You are contradicting yourself!" This objection is to the man, or rather, to the man's doxastic system; it has no tendency to show that p is false. It shows merely that not all of B's beliefs can be true. But if the homo in question is Everyman, or every mind, then the objection gains in interest. Suppose there is a proposition that it is impossible for anyone (any rational agent) to deny; the question arises whether the undeniability or ineluctability of this proposition is a reason to consider it to be true. Does undeniability establish objective truth? Consider