Michael Wedin argues against the prevailing notion that Aristotle's views on the nature of reality are fundamentally inconsistent. According to Wedin's new interpretation, the difference between the early theory of the Categories and the later theory of the Metaphysics reflects the fact that Aristotle is engaged in quite different projects in the two works--the earlier focusing on ontology, and the later on explanation.

In this chapter, we provide an opinionated introduction to contemporary trope bundle theories of substance. We assess different trope bundle theories on the grounds of their two main aims: to provide an adequate account of substances or objects by means of tropes and a reductive analysis of inherence, that is, object's having tropes as their properties. Our discussion begins by a presentation of Donald C. Williams’ and Keith Campbell's paradigmatic trope theories, which maintain that tropes are independent existents. After (...) highlighting the central problems of paradigmatic trope theories, we discuss two more recent developments of trope bundle theory that also take non-relational tropes as independent existents, Anna-Sofia Maurin's and Douglas Ehring's independence theories. Finally, we present two alternative trope bundle theories, according to which tropes are dependent existents, dependence theories, namely, Arda Denkel's Saturation theory and our Strong Nuclear Theory (SNT). Although the latter two theories introduce existential dependencies among tropes, we argue that dependence theories provide a more satisfactory account of substances dividing into natural kinds than independence theories. (shrink)

In this work I argue that Descartes was not a trialist by showing that the main tenets of trialist interpretations of Descartes's theory of substance are either not supported by the text or are not sufficient for establishing the trialist interpretation.

Aristotle's views on the fundamental nature of reality are usually taken to be inconsistent. The two main sources for these views are the Categories and the central books of the Metaphysics, particularly book Zeta. In the early theory of the Categories the basic entities of the world are concrete objects such as Socrates: Aristotle calls them 'primary substances'. But the later theory awards this title to the forms of concrete objects. Michael Wedin proposes a compatibilist solution to this (...) long-standing puzzle, arguing that Aristotle is engaged in quite different projects in the two works. The theory of Metaphysics Zeta is meant to explain central features of the standing doctrine of the Categories, and so presupposes the essential truth of the early theory. The Categories offers a theory of underlying ontological configurations, while book Zeta gives form the status of primary substance because it is primarily the form of a concrete object that explains its nature, and this form is the substance of the object. So when the late theory identifies primary substance with form, it appeals to an explanatory primacy that is quite distinct from the ontological primacy that dominates the Categories. Wedin's new interpretation thus allows us to see the two treatises as complementing each other: they are parts of a unified history of substance. (shrink)

The strongest version of the principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles states that of necessity, there are no distinct things with all their universals in common (where such putative haecceities as being Aristotle do not count as universals: I use 'universal' rather than 'property' here and in what follows for the simple reason that 'universal' is the term of art that most safely excludes haecceities from its instances). It is commonly supposed that Max Black's famous paper 'The identity of indiscernibles' (...) (2) refutes this thesis. (Armstong's [1], chapter 9 is representative here.) Black argues ([2], p. 156) that it is perfectly possible that there be a world consisting solely of two indiscernible spheres at some distance to each other and that this world constitutes a counterexample to the principle above. The strongest version of the bundle theory of substance claims that of necessity, the substances that make up the world are bundles of universals.1 It is commonly supposed that a consequence of Black's defeat of the principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles is that this bundle theory of substance is mistaken. (Again, Armstong's [1] is representative.) I shall argue that Black's thought experiment does not defeat the bundle theory and that, as a result, the bundle theory can be used to salvage the principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles. (shrink)

The central question in Aristotle' Metaphysics Zeta- Eta is "What is substance?" and Aristotle answers that substance is essence or substantial form. But it is not clear what in Zeta-Eta Aristotle is inquiring and what the conclusion implies. ;In this study I argue that in Zeta-Eta Aristotle advances a new theory of substance: he establishes a new criterion for substance and identifies substantial form as primary substance. ;The criteria for substance which I take (...) Aristotle to offer are these two. A thing is a substance if and only if its formula of essence is a definition. A thing is a substance if and only if it has no cause other than itself. The former criterion is derived from a consideration of essence and substance from the formulaic point of view, while the latter is derived from a consideration of essence and substance from the metaphysical point of view. ;However, Aristotle recognizes a problem in the logical or formulaic criterion. The difficulty is that the definition of substantial form doesn't seem to be different from the definition of a concrete particular in the composite structure of the formula. The definitions of substantial form and a concrete particular are all composed of parts. I claim that such dissatisfaction with the logical criterion is the main reason why Aristotle declares a new beginning in Zeta 17. ;In Zeta 17 Aristotle claims that it is impossible to identify the cause of the being of substantial form in the same way as the cause of the being of a concrete particular, since the thing asked about is ontologically simple. The cause of the being of a simple thing is itself. Aristotle claims that substantial form, which is the cause of the being of a concrete particular, does not have any cause other than itself. Substantial form is, therefore, primary substance on the metaphysical criterion. ;This interpretation implies that a concrete particular is not to be ranked as primary substance and that this revision can be taken as "a return to, or a renewal of sympathy with, Plato" as G. E. L. Owen described. (shrink)

The article is a critical notice of Daniel Garber, Leibniz: Body, Substance, Monad. Garber presents a developmental reading of Leibniz's metaphysics that focuses on Leibniz's evolving analysis of body and force as the key to his account of substance. Garber claims that Leibniz shifts from an early theory of body to a theory of corporeal substance in his middle years, and only develops a theory of monads in his later writings—and that even then Leibniz (...) looks not to abandon the scheme of corporeal substances but to reconcile it with that of monads. The present article considers several challenges to Garber's interpretation, questioning, among other things, Garber's claims about development and Garber's account of Leibniz's primary arguments for the theory of monads. The article concludes that while crucial elements of the standard interpretation of Leibniz as an idealist can be defended against Garber's critique, the original traditional view that takes the theory of monads as the first and most fundamental principle of Leibniz's metaphysics is no longer sustainable. (shrink)

While most of hume's criticisms of the doctrine of substance are epistemological and theory-Independent, We show that in "treatise" i.Iv.5, Hume develops a metaphysical criticism of the cartesian theory of substance. Using three of pierre bayle's arguments of his own ends, He argues that on an empiricist theory of meaning, The cartesian theory of substance is reduced to absurdity.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 437-438 [Access article in PDF] Michael V. Wedin. Aristotle's Theory of Substance: The Categories and Metaphysics Zeta. Oxford Aristotle Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii + 482. Cloth, $55.00. Michael Wedin has written the equivalent for Aristotle of what biblical scholars would call a "harmony of the gospels." It is a wonderfully rich and argumentatively dense (...) reconstruction of Aristotle's two most important treatises on substance, the Categories and Metaphysics Zeta, works that many of our most able Aristotle scholars have declared irreconcilable.The first chapter, on "the plan" of the Categories, includes a sensible account of the role in that work of the "onymies," as Wedin calls homonymy, synonymy, and paronymy. The second chapter, which focuses on "nonsubstantial individuals" in the Categories, gives the most philosophically sophisticated reconstruction known to me of how Aristotle might have conceived this white in Socrates to be a nonrecurrent particular. Having myself contributed to the glut of recent scholarship on nonsubstantial individuals in the Categories, I have personal, as well as professional, reasons to praise the rigor and insight of this chapter.In Chapter 3 Wedin tries to pin down the ontological commitment of Aristotle's Categories. Since, if there were no primary substances there would not be anything else, the fundamental ontological commitment of the Categories is a commitment to primary substances. Individual nonsubstances exist just in case there are primary substances in which they inhere. As for species and genera of substances and species and genera of the nonsubstantial individuals that inhere in them, Wedin finds Aristotle curiously indifferent to their existence.Chapter 4, a transitional chapter, takes up a range of possible views on the relation between the Categories and Metaphysics Zeta. Incompatibilism is argued against, yet the arguments for compatibilism in recent commentaries are found to be insufficient. In the next chapter Wedin moves on to his own statement of, and justification for, compatibilism.The key to Wedin's compatibilist interpretation is the distinction he draws between being a substance and being the "substance-of" something. Zeta can then be seen to be supplementing, rather than revising, let alone contradicting, the Categories, if Zeta can be understood to be about the substance-of the primary substances of the Categories (157-8).Aristotle proposes in Z3 three candidates for what the substance of, say, Socrates, is, namely, his matter, his form, and the compound of the two. Aristotle settles on form and discusses form as essence in Z4 and Z5, which discussion Wedin takes up in his own [End Page 437] Chapter 6. Then in Chapter 7 Wedin takes on the enigmatic claim of Z6, "In the case of things that are primary and spoken of per se, it is clear that the thing and the essence of the thing are the same" (1032a4-6).Wedin makes Chapter 8, which is primarily a treatment of Z10 and Z11, a discussion of Aristotle on "compositional plasticity," that is, on whether, say, the form of human being might be realized in something other than flesh and bones. "[O]ne could grant," Wedin writes, that to be a human being is just to be a member of a determinate biological species and so to have a very specific material nature, and yet insist that the form of such creatures be realizable in quite different sorts of matter. Creatures so constituted would not be human beings but they would be entities with similar functional capacities and states... From the point of view of philosophy of mind, for example, what matters are the psychological capacities, functions, and states characteristic of persons. Just what these are is determined by a form—the form that happens to be realized in human matter. (340-41) In Chapter 9 Wedin turns to Z13, which, as he acknowledges, has often been thought to be the most confounding chapter in Zeta. Wedin draws on Z16 to help resolve the aporia with which Z13 ends (roughly this... (shrink)

In this paper, we intend to offer an interpretation about the explanation of the (relative) idea of pure substance in general on John Locke’s philosophy, from Thomas Reid’s notion of ‘natural suggestion’. To achieve this aim, after contextualizing Locke’s notion of pure substance in general and distinguishing it from the idea of particular substance (section 1), we explicit that Locke’s words about the source of the idea of the former in the mind (either empirical or rational) are (...) ambiguous and inconclusive (section 2). Then, we argue that the parallels between this idea and that of ‘relation’, as well as of ‘power’ do not assist in that answer, due to some problems we identify on them (section 3). Finally, we argue that the Reidian explanation for the source of the idea of ‘mind’, from the notion of ‘natural suggestion’ allows us to i) avoid those problems and ii) inasmuch as, according to this interpretation, the idea of pure substance in general would have an empirical source, Lockian empiricism would remain intact (section 4). (shrink)

In this article i defend the claim that an individual is no more and no less than a bundle of instances of properties against the following objections: (1) the concept of an instance of a property presupposes the concept of an individual. i argue that it presupposes only that no instance of a property exists independently of other instances. (2) if a thing were only a bundle of instances of properties, then properties would qualify properties. this objection commits the fallacy (...) of composition. (3) a bundle constituting an individual needs a component which is not a property to individuate it. i argue that such a bundle individuates itself. (4) the bundle theory makes change impossible. i argue against this claim by distinguishing a thing's numerical identity from its "complete" identity. (5) the bundle theory makes all true statements about individuals analytically true. i show that, at least for one interpretation of 'analytically true', this is not so. (shrink)

This paper explores the development of Leibniz’s metaphysics of the Incarnation in the context of his philosophy. In particular it asks to what extent Leibniz’s repeated endorsement of the traditional analogy between the union in humankind of soul (mind) and body, and the union in Christ of divine and human natures, could be accommodated by his more general metaphysical doctrines. Such an investigation highlights some of the deepest commitments in Leibniz’s theory of substance as well as detect in (...) it some unresolved tensions. The paper comes to the conclusion that puzzling points of Leibniz’s metaphysics of the Incarnation, rather than being problems specific to his theology, uncover tensions in his theory of substance as such – tensions converging on the vexed question of whether there can or cannot be genuine corporeal substances in Leibniz’s mature philosophy. (shrink)

This book supports a version of the trope-bundle view of individual substances matching also with a coherent account of change, individuation and individual essences. In particular, it is argued that qualitative individuation and qualitative individual essences can be tackled within the frames of a trope account. The adoption of a trope BT together with the individuation of tropes via the bearer substance might create the feeling of circularity since tropes and substances seem mutually to individuate each other. The novel (...) solution to the problem developed here consists in showing that the individuation of concrete individual substances is independent, in crucial respects, from the fact that they are construed as bundles of tropes. Apart from metaphysician colleagues, the book is recommended for advanced students in analytic metaphysics. (shrink)

Aristotle's doctrines about accidental predication, Accidental identity, Etc., Can be understood as an attempt to state the same view as russell put forward in his theory of descriptions. "a" is predicated accidentally of b when "a to b" has the sense "something that is a is b." this permits scope distinctions which can solve puzzles like that of the masked man, And sophisms involving tense. Aristotle's claim that accidental being is akin to nonexistence resembles russell's account of the present (...) king of france as a logical fiction. (shrink)

One of the tasks of ontology in information science is to support the classification of entities according to their kinds and qualities. We hold that to realize this task as far as entities such as material objects are concerned we need to distinguish four kinds of entities: substance particulars, quality particulars, substance universals, and quality universals. These form, so to speak, an ontological square. We present a formal theory of classification based on this idea, including both a (...) semantics for the theory and a provably sound axiomatization. (shrink)

Our research concerns a formal representation of Bolzano’s original concepts of Substanz and Adhärenz. The formalized intensional theory enables to articulate a question about the consistency of a part of Bolzano’s metaphysics and to suggest an answer to it in terms of contemporary model theory. The formalism is built as an extension of Zalta’s theory of abstract objects, describing two types of predication, viz. attribution and representation. Bolzano was aware about this distinction. We focus on the consistency (...) of this formalism and the description of its semantics. Firstly, we explore the possibility to reconstruct a Russellian antinomy based on the concept of the Bolzano’s Inbegriff of all adherences. Our aim is to show limitations of his theory that prevent a contradiction when the Inbegriff consists of non-self-referential adherences. Next, we discuss two competing semantics for the proposed theory: Scott’s and Aczel’s semantics. The first one yields a problematic result, that there are no models for the considered theory, containing a non-empty collection of all adherences. This is due to the fact that Scott’s structures verify the formula on reloading abstracts in extensional contexts. We show that Aczel’s semantics does not contain this difficulty. There are described Aczel’s models with a non-empty set of all adherences. The self-referentiality of such a collection becomes irrelevant here. Finally, we show that there are Aczel’s structures verifying the formula on reloading abstracts and we exclude them from the class of models intended for our theory. (shrink)

In this paper i argue that the bundle-theory, the theory that substance is nothing but a collection of qualities, bristles with difficulties. i show that a conjunction of the so-called essential qualities would primarily yield a conception not of an individual substance socrates, for instance, but of a species, i.e., the concept 'man', and that only the addition of some uniquely determining accidental qualities to the essential ones would yield an individual substance. but, then, these (...) accidental qualities and infinite in number and are therefore only potential and unknowable. thus, the "bundle" can never be 'actualized'. nor can the notion of substance be eliminated in favor of descriptions, since these should include negative descriptions which are infinite in number because expressible in terms of the whole universe. since not all descriptions apply to a thing, where they do, they must have been antecedantly 'derived' from that thing. hence, i conclude that there are grounds for at least a limited defense of a substance ontology. (shrink)

This paper poses a dilemma for applying the category of substance given Kant's different conceptions of substance in the Critique of Pure Reason. Briefly stated, if the category of substance applies to an omnipresent and sempiternal substance, then although this would ensure that all experiences of empirical objects take place in a common spatiotemporal framework, one could not individuate these empirical objects and experience their alterations. If the category of substance applies to ordinary empirical objects, (...) however, then although one could individuate these substances and experience their alterations, the category would not pick out a common spatiotemporal framework for these experiences. I will argue that this dilemma can be overcome by examining the development of Kant's conception of substance in his final work, the Opus postumum. (shrink)

My aim in this article is to contribute to the larger project of assessing the relative merits of different theories of substance. An important preliminary step in this project is assessing the explanatory resources of one main theory of substance, the so-called bundle theory. This article works towards such an assessment. I identify and explain three distinct explanatory challenges an adequate bundle theory must meet. Each points to a putative explanatory gap, so I call them (...) the Gap Challenges. I consider three bundle-theoretic strategies for meeting these challenges. I argue that none of them goes very far. The upshot is that, absent other strategies for meeting the challenges, bundle theory involves a significant amount of stipulation. This black box makes bundle theory relatively weak with respect to its explanatory power—unless, of course, rival theories of substance are unable to do better. (shrink)

Significant scholarship has been devoted to the problem of the incompatibility of Aristotle’s accounts of substance in the Categories and in the Metaphysics. Substance, in the former treatise, is that category of being distinguished from the other accidental categories by reason of the ontological dependence of accident upon substance: every accident must be present in a substance to be present at all. Primary substances such as “Socrates” are distinguished from secondary substances such as “human being” or (...) “animal” since secondary substances are said of primary ones. Only primary substances are neither said of a subject nor present in a subject, depending upon nothing else for their existence. This assertion of the ontological primacy of the individual seems to be withdrawn by Aristotle, however, in the Metaphysics, in which substance emerges in a discussion of the hupokeimenon—the underlying subject of which everything else is predicated. This subject is to be understood in three senses: as matter, as form, and as the composite of the two. Primary substance, finally, is granted to form alone, the “most perplexing” of the candidates, according to Aristotle, and the one that turns out to refer to the same thing as essence. Since what Aristotle means by essence looks to be a form common to all individuals of a particular species, it is not surprising that commentators identify at worst a contradictory theory regarding substance, and at best a transformation of an immature theory of substance into a mature one. (shrink)

In this article I examine the compatibility of a leading trope bundle theory of substance, so-called Nuclear Theory, with trope theory more generally. Peter Simons (1994) originally proposed Nuclear Theory (NT), and continues to develop (1998, 2000) and maintain (2002/03) the view. Recently, building on Simons’s theory, Markku Keinänen (2011) has proposed what he calls the Strong Nuclear Theory (SNT). Although the latter is supposed to shore up some of NT’s weaknesses, it continues (...) to maintain NT’s central tenet, the premise that tropes are variously existentially interdependent. I argue that the central tenet of NT frustrates several important aims of trope theory. If my arguments go through, they also implicate SNT. Because of this, I largely set aside other aspects of NT and SNT and focus on their shared central tenet. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Crispin Sartwell SUBSTANCE AND SIGNIFICANCE: A THEORY OF POETRY Jean-Paul Sartre once said that what distinguishes the writer of poetry from the writer of prose is that the poet "considers words as things and not as signs."1 I think that this claim embodies a deep insight into the nature of poetry, and I want to develop it into a reasonably precise account of what poetry is. The (...) immediate problem that arises from Sartre's view is that it seems mysterious how anyone could regard words as objects without being fundamentally confused. For it is clear that Sartre thinks that the poet regards words as material objects. But a word, or a sequence of words such as a poem, is not a material object. A word or a poem can appear in many places at the same time; it can be inscribed, read, recited, or mentally traversed. The poem "itself" is not identical with any of these particular manifestations. I can burn my copy of Shakespeare's sonnets, but I cannot burn Shakespeare's sonnets; a poem is, in the phrase of Arthur Danto, "logically incombustible."2 Shakespeare's manuscript is lost; the sonnets live on. My recitation of a poem ends, say, at three o'clock, but the poem itself does not cease to exist at three o'clock. If identical objects cannot have divergent properties, then the poem is not identical with any of its particular manifestations. Nor can we identify a poem as the scattered, diffuse object consisting of all its inscriptions or recitations; to do so would be to identify the poem with a (perhaps massive) repetition of itself. A sonnet has fourteen lines, but the set of all the inscriptions ofShakespeare's "Shall I compare thee to a summer's Philosophy and Literature, © 1991, 15: 246-259 Crispin Sartwell247 day" is an item with an extraordinarily large number oflines. The poem itself does not grow as the set of its inscriptions grows. The poem, to repeat, is not a material object; rather, it is that which all the manifestations of it have in common; it is the structure or sequence which all the inscriptions and recitations share in virtue of which they are inscriptions and recitations of the poem. Now I do not intend to tackle the ontological problems surrounding poetry in any full-fledged way; to do so would strand us in extremely rugged metaphysical terrain. The ontological status of a poem might be in some ways analogous to the ontological status of a number, a property, and other purportedly "abstract" objects. And one cannot distinguish works ofpoetry from works ofprose (and, again, the project here is to make such a distinction) ontologically. Moby Dick is logically incombustible, as are, discouragingly enough, government reports. I propose, then, to adopt a familiar way of talking about the poem itself in distinction from its inscriptions, recitations, and mental traversais; I shall term a poem a type of which there are tokens. The tokens are the inscriptions, recitations, and so forth; the type is what these inscriptions and recitations have in common. The type/token terminology was first adopted by Peirce, and has been taken up by Wollheim, among many others.3 In itself, such terminology does little to disperse various ontological problems, but I am going to proceed in the touching faith that such puzzles can eventually be solved, because the theory of poetry I will develop depends on some such distinction being made out. And though the theory could perhaps be reconstructed even on a fairly thoroughgoing nominalism, I am going to treat poems as abstract entities, because as far as I can see, nominalism of the type endorsed by Nelson Goodman, for example, introduces more difficulties than it solves. Goodman identifies inscriptions ofa poem (for example) as items which display sameness ofspelling, which, relative to a system of notation, correspond exactly with regard to the sequence of letters, spaces, and punctuation marks.4 Among other things, this makes poetry (or any linguistic item) impossible to translate into different languages; it even makes it impossible to update, say, The Canterbury Tales into contemporary spelling. Now in fact there are severe and special translation problems... (shrink)

This book offers an original new account of one of Aristotle's central doctrines. Freudenthal He recreates from Aristotle's writings a more complete theory of material substance which is able to explain the problematical areas of the way matter organizes itself and the persistence of matter, to show that the hitherto ignored concept of vital heat is as central in explaining material substance as soul or form.

In this article, I argue that in his 1838 De l'habitude, Félix Ravaisson uses the analysis of habit to defend a Leibnizian monadism. Recent commentators have failed to appreciate this because they read Ravaisson as a typically post-Kantian philosopher, and underemphasize the distinct context in which he developed his work. I explore three key claims made by interpreters who argue that Ravaisson should be read as a Schellingian, and show [i] that these claims are incompatible with the text of De (...) l'habitude and [ii] how they have obscured from view the monadism at the heart of this work. This article is divided into two sections. First, I explain the importance of Victor Cousin and Maine de Biran for the development of nineteenth-century French philosophy. Second, I argue that to understand the structure of De l'habitude, it should be read as a critique of Cousin's philosophical method and a demonstration of the superiority of Biran's Leibniz-inspired introspective method. Like Biran, Ravaisson believes tha.. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of original contributions about the core knowledge in fundamental domains. It includes work on naive physics, such as formal specifications of intuitive theories of spatial relations, time causality, substance and physical objects, and on naive psychology.