Substance

Its Nature and Existence

Joshua Hoffman, Gary Rosenkrantz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134831357
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Storia e teoria della filosofia

Substance has been a leading idea in the history of Western philosophy. Joshua Hoffman and Gary S. Rosenkrantz explain the nature and existence of individual substances, including both living things and inanimate objects. Specifically written for students new to this important and often complex subject, Substance provides both the historical and contemporary overview of the debate.
Great Philosophers of the past, such as Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Locke, and Berkeley were profoundly interested in the concept of substance. And, the authors argue, a belief in the existence of substances is an integral part of our everyday world view. But what constitutes substance? Was Aristotle right to suggest that artefacts like tables and ships don't really exist?
Substance: Its Nature and Existence is one of the first non-technical, accessible guides to this central problem and will be of great use to students of metaphysics and philosophy.

Chapter 1
The concept of substance in history

From Aristotle to Kant and beyond, the concept of an individual substance has played a deservedly prominent role in the attempts of metaphysicians to characterize reality and to think reflectively about the terms of such a characterization. Any attempt to provide an analysis of substance should be informed by a critical awareness of the efforts of these great philosophers of the past to characterize the ordinary concept of an individual substance, and the analysis of this concept which we shall defend in Chapter 2 is indeed grounded in one of the traditional approaches to characterizing it. In this chapter, we shall survey and assess several historically important attempts to analyze the ordinary concept of an individual substance.

1 TWO ARISTOTELIAN THEORIES: SUBSTANCE AS THAT WHICH CAN UNDERGO CHANGE AND AS THAT WHICH IS NEITHER SAID-OF NOR IN A SUBJECT

The first historically important attempts to analyze substance are due to Aristotle. The notion of substance plays a self-consciously central role in his whole metaphysics.¹ According to the first of Aristotle’s characterizations of substance which we shall consider, a substance is that which can persist through change. A relevant quotation is the following:

It seems most distinctive of substance that what is numerically one and the same is able to receive contraries. In no other case could one bring forward anything, numerically one, which is able to receive contraries.²

The idea that a substance is that which can persist through change is an attractive one, since it seems to provide the basis for a distinction between substances and entities such as times, places, and (abstract) properties. Nevertheless, there are problems.

The first difficulty facing this view, a difficulty which is raised by Aristotle himself, is that entities other than substances can undergo change. Aristotle gives the example of a belief which is at one time true and at another false.³ Since a belief or a proposition is not a substance, but can undergo a change, that is, in truth-value, Aristotle’s analysis appears not to provide a logically sufficient condition of being a substance. Aristotle attempts to answer this objection by noting that:

In the case of substances it is by themselves changing that they are able to receive contraries…statements and beliefs, on the other hand, themselves remain completely unchangeable in every way.⁴

Aristotle’s reply presupposes a distinction between intrinsic and relational change, and he says that we have an instance of the former when something is “changing by itself.” Thus, while his example suggests an argument that nonsubstances such as beliefs or propositions can undergo change, his reply is that such entities, unlike substances, can undergo only relational changes. This reply to the example of changing beliefs suggests that his actual analysis of substance is in terms of intrinsic change, rather than in terms of change per se. In that case, if he is entitled to the distinction between intrinsic and relational change, then Aristotle’s reply to his own example of the changing belief is cogent.

Nevertheless, it might be argued that the distinction between intrinsic and relational change is itself unclear,⁵ and that therefore, without an analysis of it, Aristotle cannot use the distinction to reply effectively to the objection in question. Since Aristotle does not provide such an analysis, the claim that his account of substance in terms of intrinsic change calls for an analysis of the intrinsic/ relational change distinction is pertinent to the assessment of Aristotle’s analysis of substance in terms of intrinsic change. As a preliminary to such an assessment, let us explore the question of whether an analysis of intrinsic change is possible.

Following Aristotle, let us say that for something to change is for it to instantiate contrary or contradictory properties at different times,⁶ Given this, it seems natural to say that if a thing undergoes an intrinsic change, then it instantiates contrary or contradictory intrinsic properties at different times, and if it undergoes relational change, then it instantiates contrary or contradictory relational properties at different times. Some examples of intrinsic properties are being spherical, being two feet thick, and being in pain, and examples of relational properties are being five feet from Socrates, being thought of by Plato, and being shorter than Aristotle. Thus, it appears that if there is any lack of clarity in the distinction between intrinsic and relational change, this is because the distinction between intrinsic and relational properties is obscure. Can this distinction be elucidated?

A first attempt to do so might be to say that P is an intrinsic property if and only if necessarily, for any x, if P is a property acquired or lost by x, then x is a substance. A relational property could then be defined as a nonintrinsic property. This attempt is obviously viciously circular in the context of trying to define substance. Furthermore, there seem to be relational properties that are essential to anything which instantiates them, that is, could neither be acquired nor lost. For example, being diverse from Zeno and being such that 7+5=12 are essential to anything which instantiates them. If either of these examples is correct, then when one substitutes for P the property, being diverse from Zeno, or the property, being such that 7+5=12, the antecedent of the definiens is necessarily false. In that case, the definiens is vacuously satisfied, and the definition falsely implies that the relational property, being diverse from Zeno, is an intrinsic property of Anaxagoras, and that the relational property, being such that 7+5=12, is an intrinsic property of Protagoras. Hence, the foregoing definition of an intrinsic property does not provide a logically sufficient condition of being an intrinsic property. This counterexample cannot be avoided by permitting substitutions only of accidental properties, since Aristotle himself recognizes the existence of essential intrinsic properties.

A second attempt might be to try to analyze an intrinsic property as (roughly) a property that is possibly exemplified when one and only one entity exists. A relational property could then be defined as a property that is not intrinsic. The intuitive idea here is that it is possible for there to be one and only one thing, and for this thing to exemplify rectangularity (an intrinsic property), while it is not possible for there to be one and only one thing, and for this thing to exemplify being five feet (apart) from Socrates (a relational property).

This second attempt, at least in the version stated, fails to distinguish intrinsic from relational properties correctly. For it is not possible for any property to be exemplified when one and only one entity exists. Consider the previous example, where it is supposed that there is one and only one thing, and it is rectangular. Necessarily, if rectangularity is exemplified, then there exists not only a thing which is rectangular, but also rectangularity, being a shape (which rectangularity must exemplify), parts of a rectangular thing, and, arguably, times, places, a surface of a rectangular thing, and so forth. Other possible versions along the lines of this second attempt to define an intrinsic property are not likely to avoid the kind of difficulties raised here.

Given the failure of various attempts to elucidate the intrinsic/ relational distinction, its cogency might be defended by arguing that this distinction is primitive. For the sake of argument, let us grant this suggestion. Nevertheless, Aristotle’s definition of substance as that which can undergo intrinsic change is subject to refutation by counterexample.

First, consider the case of a hurricane that has different intensities at different times. It is not unnatural to say of the hurricane that it changes its intensity over time. Thus, this seems to be a case of a nonsubstance, that is, an event, which undergoes an intrinsic change. If so, then Aristotle’s definition does not provide a sufficient condition for something’s being a substance.

However, this purported counterexample implies that events, which are changes, can themselves undergo change, which seems somewhat peculiar. Perhaps the peculiarity is brought out by the following considerations. It appears to be a distinctive feature of an event that if it occurs in its entirety at a time of length l,then it occurs in its entirety at a time of length l in every possible world in which it exists. Moreover, it is a plausible principle that if any contingent entity, e, which is not necessarily eternal, begins to undergo an intrinsic change at a moment, m, then it is possible for e to have gone out of existence at m instead. These two propositions together imply that contingent events which are not necessarily eternal (such as our hurricane) cannot after all undergo genuine intrinsic change.

The premise that an event’s temporal length is essential to it can be supported by appealing to the following two propositions: (i) it is necessary for a temporally extended event to have temporal parts; and (ii) an event’s temporal parts are essential to it. Of these, (ii) is somewhat controversial. An alternative to (ii) is (iii): if an entity has temporal parts, then it cannot undergo intrinsic change. Rather, it has parts (temporal ones) which have different properties. Either (ii) or (iii), conjoined with (i), yields the desired conclusion that events cannot undergo intrinsic change.⁷ Hence, the example of the hurricane which is supposed to undergo intrinsic change is not actually a plausible counterexample to Aristotle’s definition of substance as that which can undergo intrinsic change.

A second kind of counterexample should prove to be more convincing. Consider the surface of a rubber ball, a surface which undergoes a change in shape whenever the rubber ball does. This appears to be a case of a nonsubstance, namely, a surface, undergoing an intrinsic change. And there seems to be no effective reply along the lines of the preceding discussion to this counterexample. Thus, it seems that the capacity to undergo intrinsic change is not a logically sufficient condition of being a substance.

To our counterexample of the surface of the rubber ball, Aristotle might have replied that surfaces do not really exist, not even in the attenuated sense in which entities in the ten categories other than Primary Substance exist (such as places, qualities, times, etc.). This rejection of the reality of surfaces may or may not be correct. Aristotle’s list of categories is certainly somewhat arbitrary and redundant, and it is a matter of controversy whether entities such as surfaces exist.⁸ What seems indisputable is that a criterion of substance which does not presuppose a particular ontology of entities other than substance is preferable to one which does. So at the very least, Aristotle’s definition of substance in terms of intrinsic change is not as ontologically neutral as it ideally should be.

There is another respect in which the Aristotelian definition of substance in terms of intrinsic change is implicitly not ontologically neutral. It is incompatible with even the possibility of Democritean atoms, necessarily indivisible particles which have volume and which are incapable of undergoing intrinsic change. Democritean atoms are material substances, so if atoms of this kind are even possible, then the capacity to undergo intrinsic change is not a logically necessary condition of being a substance.

As the foregoing discussion demonstrates, Aristotle’s attempt to analyze the ordinary concept of substance in terms of the possibility of undergoing change (or intrinsic change) is not entirely successful. It presupposes the unanalyzed intrinsic/relational property distinction, and, more seriously, it presupposes a rather arbitrary ontology which excludes the very possibility of entities such as Democritean atoms and surfaces.

The second of Aristotle’s definitions of individual or “primary” substance which we shall consider appears in chapter 5 of his Categories. There he says:

A substance—that which is called a substance most strictly, primarily, and most of all—is that which is neither said of a subject nor in a subject, for example, the individual man or the individual horse.⁹

In chapter 4 of the same work, Aristotle provides a list of the ten categories of being (apart from Individual Substance). The list is as follows: (Secondary) Substance; Quanti...