The phenomenal Edward Feser. How does he do it? He teaches an outrageous number of courses at a community college; he has written numerous books; he gives talks and speeches, and last time I checked he has six children. Not to mention his weblog which is bare of fluff and filler and of consistently high quality, as witness his second in a series on sex. It concludes:
So just what is the deal with sex, anyway?Why are we so prone to extremes where it is concerned? The reason, I would say, has to do with our highly unusual place in the order of things. Angels are incorporeal and asexual, creatures of pure intellect. Non-human animals are entirely bodily, never rising above sensation and appetite, and our closest animal relatives reproduce sexually. Human beings, as rational animals, straddle this divide, having as it were one foot in the angelic realm and the other in the animal realm. And that is, metaphysically, simply a very odd position to be in. It is just barely stable, and sex makes it especially difficult to maintain. The unique intensity of sexual pleasure and desire, and our bodily incompleteness qua men and women, continually remind us of our corporeal and animal nature, pulling us “downward” as it were. Meanwhile our rationality continually seeks to assert its control and pull us back “upward,” and naturally resents the unruliness of such intense desire. This conflict is so exhausting that we tend to try to get out of it by jumping either to one side of the divide or the other. But this is an impossible task and the result is that we are continually frustrated. And the supernatural divine assistance that would have remedied this weakness in our nature and allowed us to maintain an easy harmony between rationality and animality was lost in original sin.
So, behaviorally, we have a tendency to fall either into prudery or into sexual excess. And intellectually, we have a tendency to fall either into the error of Platonism — treating man as essentially incorporeal, a soul trapped in the prison of the body — or into the opposite error of materialism, treating human nature as entirely reducible to the corporeal. The dominance of Platonism in early Christian thought is perhaps the main reason for its sometimes excessively negative attitude toward sexual pleasure, and the dominance of materialism in modern times is one reason for its excessive laxity in matters of sex. The right balance is, of course, the Aristotelian-Thomistic position — specifically, Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical anthropology, which affirms that man is a single substance with both corporeal and incorporeal activities; and Aristotelian-Thomistic natural law theory, which upholds traditional sexual morality while affirming the essential goodness of sex and sexual pleasure.
London Ed has informed me of the passing of Peter Geach. May he find the Unchanging Light that he sought through his long and productive life of truth-seeking in these shadowlands. One honors a thinker best by thinking his thoughts, sympathetically, but critically. Here is one of my attempts. Others referenced below.
…………
I have been studying Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Being (Oxford 2002). I cannot report that I find it particularly illuminating. I am troubled by the reading back of Fregean doctrines into Aquinas, in particular in the appendix, "Frege and Aquinas on Existence and Number." (pp. 195-204) Since Kenny borrows heavily from Peter Geach, I will explain one of my misgivings in connection with a passage from Geach's important article, "Form and Existence" in God and the Soul. Geach writes,
Frege, like Aquinas, held that there was a fundamental distinction in rebus answering to the logical distinction between subject and predicate — the distinction between Gegenstand (object) and Begriff (concept). [. . .] And for Frege the Begriff, and it alone, admits of repetition and manyness; an object cannot be repeated — kommt nie wiederholdt vor. (45-46)
So far, so good. Geach continues:
Understood in this way, the distinction between individual and form is absolutely sharp and rigid; what can be sensibly said of one becomes nonsense if we try to say it of the other. [. . .] Just because of this sharp distinction, we must reject the Platonic doctrine that what a predicate stands for is is some single entity over against its many instances, hen epi pollon. On the contrary: the common nature that the predicate 'man' (say) stands for can be indifferently one or many, and neither oneness nor manyness is a mark or note of human nature itself. This point is made very clearly by Aquinas in De Ente et Essentia. Again we find Frege echoing Aquinas; Frege counts oneness or manyness (as the case may be) among the properties (Eigenschaften) of a concept, which means that it cannot at the same time be one of the marks or notes (Merkmalen) of that concept. (46)
I smell deep confusion here. But precisely because the confusion runs deep I will have a hard time explaining clearly wherein the confusion consists. I will begin by making a list of what Geach gets right.
1. Objects and individuals are unrepeatable. 2. Concepts and forms are repeatable. 3. Setting aside the special question of subsistent forms, no individual is a form, and no object is a concept. 4. Frege distinguishes between the marks of a concept and the properties of a concept. The concept man, for example, has the concept animal as one of its marks. But animal is not a property of man, and this for the simple reason that no concept is an animal. Man has the property of being instantiated. This property, however, is not a mark of man since it is not included within the latter's conceptual content: one cannot by sheer analysis of the concept man determine whether or not there are any men. So there is a sense in which "neither oneness nor manyness is a mark or note of human nature itself." This is true if taken in the following sense: neither being instantiated singly nor being instantiated multiply is a mark of the concept man.
But how do these points, taken singly or together, support Geach's rejection of "the Platonic doctrine that what the predicate stands for is some single entity over against its many instances"? They don't!
It seems obvious to me that Geach is confusing oneness/manyness as the relational property of single/multiple instantiation with oneness/manyness as the monadic property of being one or many. It is one thing to ask whether a concept is singly or multiply instantiated. It is quite another to ask whether the concept itself is one or many. It is also important to realize that a Fregean first-level concept, when instantiated, does not enter into the structure of the individuals that instantiate it. Aquinas is a constituent ontologist, but Frege is not. This difference is deep and causes a world of trouble for those who attempt to understand Aquinas in Fregean terms. For Frege, concepts are functions, and no function enters into the structure of its argument. The propositional function x is a man is not a constituent of Socrates. What's more, the value of the function for Socrates as argument is not a state of affairs with Socrates and the function as constituents. The value of the function for Socrates as argument is True; for Stromboli as argument, False. And now you know why philosophers speak of truth-values. It's mathematical jargon via Frege the mathematician.
The Fregean concept man is one, not many. It is one concept, not many concepts. Nor is it neither one nor many. It can have one instance, or many instances, or no instance. The Thomistic form man, however, is, considered in itself, neither one nor many. It is one in the intellect but (possibly) many in things. In itself, however, it is neither. And so it is true to say that the form is not "some single entity over against its many instances." It is not a single entity because, considered in itself, it is neither single nor multiple.
But this doesn't follow from point (3) above. And therein consists Geach's mistake. One cannot validly move from the "sharp distinction" between individuals/objects and forms/concepts to the conclusion that what a predicate stands for is not a single entity. Geach makes this mistake because of the confusion exposed two paragraphs supra. The mutual exclusion of objects and concepts does not entail that concepts cannot be single entities.
There is another huge problem with reading Frege back into Aquinas, and that concerns modes of existence (esse). A form in the intellect exists in a different way than it does in things. But if Frege is right about existence, there cannot be modes of existence. For if existence is instantiation, then there cannot be modes of existence for the simple reason that there cannot be any modes of instantiation.
I'll say more about this blunder in another post. It rests in turn on a failure to appreciate the radically different styles of ontology practiced by Aquinas and Frege. In my jargon, Aquinas is a constituent ontologist while Frege is a nonconstituent ontologist. In the jargon of Gustav Bergmann, Aquinas is a compex ontologist while Frege is a function ontologist.
It’s a good question. Hegel and Aquinas are certainly comparable in the sense that they treated a wide variety of topics in philosophy and theology, and unified and organized them. Another similarity resides in the prominence of theology in their writings – but with the following caveat: Whereas, in the scholastic approach adopted by Aquinas, philosophy (Aristotelian, Platonic, Stoic, etc.) is the “handmaid of theology,” with Hegel the relationship is inverted: theology becomes the handmaid of philosophy.
It is certainly true that for Aquinas, philosophia ancilla theologiae, "philosophy is the handmaiden of theology," where the theology in question is a reflection on, and systematization of, the data of divine revelation, and not a branch of philosophy. But it strikes me as not quite right to say that, for Hegel, the relationship is inverted.
First of all, in what sense is philosophy a handmaiden to theology for Aquinas? Philosophy takes us some distance toward the knowledge of the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters, but not all the way, and not to the truly essential. It takes us as far as we can go on the basis of experience and discursive reason unaided by revelation But if we would know the whole truth about the ultimate matters, and indeed the saving truth, then we must accept divine revelation. We can know that God exists by unaided reason, for example, but not that God is triune. Thus, for Aquinas, theology supplements and completes what we can know by our own powers. It neither contradicts the latter, nor does it express it in a more adequate form: it goes beyond it. A second sense in which philosophy is ancillary to theology is that philosophy supplies the tools of theology, though not its data. It supplies concepts and argumentative procedures with which the data of revelation can be articulated and organized and shown to be rationally acceptable, a reasoned faith, though not a rationally demonstrable faith.
For Hegel, however, the content of theology and philosophy are the same; it is just that philosophy expresses this content in an adequate conceptual manner whereas theology expresses it in an inadequate pictorial manner. To throw some Hegelian jargon, the thinking of theology is vorstellendes Denken; the thinking of philosophy is superior: begriffliches Denken. If Hegel were Aquinas on his head, then Hegel would have to be saying that philosophy brings in new content beyond that of theology. But that's not his view. And if Aquinas were Hegel on his head, then Aquinas would have to be saying that the content of philosophy and theology is the same, but that philosophy expresses it inadequately. And that is not what he is saying.
Hegel clearly subordinates theology to philosophy but it is incorrect to say that, for Hegel, theology is the handmaiden of philosophy in the way that philosophy is the handmaiden of theology for Aquinas.
This cavil having been lodged, Kainz's piece is a useful little piece of journalism for those who don't know anything about this topic.
It does annoy me, however, that Kainz doesn't supply any references. For example, we read:
Hegel was critical of Catholicism at times, in his writings and lectures. For example, he once made a scurrilous remark about the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist . . . .
Very interesting, but what exactly does he say and where does he say it? Inquiring minds want to know. Would it have killed Kainz to insert a few references into his piece? Then a serious dude like me who has almost the whole of Hegel in German and English in his personal library could check the context and amplify his knowledge of the work of the Swabian genius.
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.
Is Thomism the 'default position' among scholastics? I suggested as much and bolstered my assertion by adverting to the fact that Aquinas is sometimes referred to as doctor communis, Common Doctor. It was then claimed by someone, one of the Czech scholastics, I think, that this appellation was made up by Thomists to refer to and promote their man and is thus not neutral.
Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, Pontifical Institute, 1952, p. 177: "God knows essences, but He says existences, and He does not say all that He knows."
Here are the makings of a good examination question for a course in Thomism: What is the Frenchman driving at? Unpack the Gilsonian bon mot.
What follows is the whole of Chapter 16 of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange's Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought. My critical comments are in blue.
Chapter 16: The Divine Persons
Person in general is a being which has intelligence and freedom. Its classic definition was given by Boethius: Person is an individual subject with an intellectual nature. [548] Hence person, generally, is a hypostasis or a suppositum, and, specifically, a substance endowed with intelligence. [549] Further, since person signifies substance in its most perfect form, it can be found in God, if it be stripped of the imperfect mode which it has in created persons. Thus made perfect, it can be used analogically of God, analogically, but still in its proper sense, in a mode that is transcendent and pre-eminent. Further, since revelation gives us two personal names, that is, the Father and the Son, the name of the third person, of the Holy Spirit, must also be a personal name. Besides, the New Testament, in many texts, represents the Holy Spirit as a person. [550].
Now, since there are three persons in God, they can be distinct one from the other only by the three relations which are mutually opposed (paternity, and filiation, and passive spiration): because, as has been said, all else in God is identical.
Comment: The persons are distinct, numerically distinct. And they are really distinct: distinct in reality, not merely relative to our thought. What makes the persons distinct given that each is God and there is only one God? What is the principium individuationis within the Godhead? The relations between them. Thus the Father is distinct from the Son because the Father stands in the paternity relation to the Son but not vice versa. It is difficult to see, however, how a relation between x and y can constitute the numerical difference between x and y. I should think that the numerical difference between x and y is a logically prior condition of their standing in any relation. So I am already having difficulty following the Thomist account.
These real relations, since they are subsistent (not accidental): and are, on the other hand, incommunicable (being opposed): can constitute the divine persons. In these subsistent relations we find the two characteristics of person: substantiality and incommunicability.
Comment: If the relations were accidental, i.e., accidents, then they would be dependent in their being on something else, and the objection I just made would hold. So they are said to be subsistent, i.e., substances in their own right. And since they are 'incommunicable,' they have two characteristics of persons. The problem, however, is to understand how the relata of the relations (of paternity, filiality, etc.) can be (identical to) the relations. Paternity and filiality are different relations. So if the Father = paternity, and the Son = filiality, then it is easy to see how the Father and the Son are distinct. But what is difficult if not impossible to understand is how the Father could be identical to paternity and the Son to filiality.
A divine person, then, according to St. Thomas and his school, is a divine relation as subsistent. [551] Elsewhere the saint gives the following definition: [552] A divine person is nothing else than a relationally distinct reality, subsistent in the divine essence.
These definitions explain why there are in God, speaking properly, not metaphorically, three persons, three intellectual and free subjects, though these three have the same identical nature, though they understand by one and the same intellective act, though they love one another by one and the same essential act, and though they freely love creatures by one and the same free act of love.
Comment: So the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father by the same act of loving. But acts are individuated by their objects. So loving the Father is a different act than loving the Son. It cannot be the same act on pain of incoherence. But Aquinas says that they love by the same act. He has to say this because he cannot admit that there are three separate unities of consciousness in the Godhead. For this would entail that there are three Gods.
Hence, while we say: The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, we also say: The Father is not the Son, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father, and the Holy Spirit is not the Son. In this sentence the verb "is" expresses real identity between persons and nature, and the negation "is not" expresses the real distinction of the persons from each other.
Comment: This is contradictory as I have explained many times before, assuming that 'nature' refers to an individual existing nature. If the 'is' is taken to be the 'is' of identity, logical inconsistency is unavoidable. If F = G and S = G. then F = S, by the symmetry and transitivity of identity. You cannot consistently with that go on to say that it is not the case that F = S.
These three opposed relations, then, paternity, filiation, and passive spiration, belong to related and incommunicable personalities. Thus there cannot be in God many Fathers, but one only. Paternity makes the divine nature incommunicable as Father, though that divine nature can still be communicated to two other persons. To illustrate. When you are constructing a triangle, the first angle, as first, renders the entire surface incommunicable, though that same surface will still be communicated to the other two angles; and the first angle will communicate that surface to them without communicating itself, while none of the three is opposed to the surface which they have in common.
Comment: Garrigou-Lagrange is fudging now. He says that the opposed relations belong to related personalities. This is not what he said before. Before he said that the persons just are subsistent relations. Well, which is it? Are the relations identical to persons, or do the relations belong to persons? This fudge is to be expected since the doctrine attempts to articulate discursively a reality that lies beyond the discursive intellect, a reality that is mystical.
Here appears the profundity of Cajetan's [553] remark: the divine reality, as it is in itself, is not something purely absolute (signified by the word "nature") nor something purely relative (signified by the name "person"): but something transcending both, something which contains formally and eminently [554] that which corresponds to the concepts of absolute and relative, of absolute nature and relative person. Further, the distinction between nature and the persons is not a real distinction, but a mental distinction (virtual and minor): whereas the distinction between the persons is real, by reason of opposition. On this last point theologians generally agree with Thomists.
Comment: Cajetan's remark is profound. The divine reality must be absolute, not relative. But it must also in some sense be personal since the reality of persons surpasses that of every other category of entity. But persons are relative to each other. So the divine reality must in some sense be multi-personal and yet absolute. As I see it, theology issues in 'necessary makeshifts' that try to articulate in coherent discursive terms a trans-discursive reality. So it is no surprise that every doctrine of the Trinity issues in problems, questions, and outright inconsistencies. The doctrines point beyond themselves to a reality that cannot be grasped in discursive terms.
This is why doctrinal fights are absurd. Some doctrines are better than others, but in the end all are untenable. The divine reality is not a doctrine!
Chapter III of Etienne Gilson's Being and Some Philosophers is highly relevant to my ongoing discussion of common natures. Gilson appears to endorse the classic argument for the doctrine of common natures in the following passage (for the larger context see here):
Out of itself, animal is neither universal nor singular. Indeed, if, out of itself, it were universal, so that animality were universal qua animality, there could be no singular animal, but each and every animal would be a universal. If, on the contrary, animal were singular qua animal, there could be no more than a single animal, namely, the very singular to which animality belongs, and no other singular could be an animal. (77)
This passage contains two subarguments. We will have more than enough on our plates if we consider just the first. The first subargument, telescoped in the second sentence above, can be put as follows:
1. If animal has the property of being universal, then every animal would be a universal. But:
2. It is not the case that every animal is a universal. Therefore:
3. It is not the case that animal has the property of being universal.
This argument is valid in point of logical form, but are its premises true? Well, (2) is obviously true, but why should anyone think that (1) is true? It is surely not obvious that the properties of a nature must also be properties of the individuals of that nature.
There are two ways a nature N could have a property P. N could have P by including P within its quidditative content, or N could have P by instantiating P. There is having by inclusion and having by instantiation.
For example, 'Man is rational' on a charitable reading states that rationality is included within the content of the nature humanity. This implies that everything that falls under man falls under rational. Charitably interpreted, the sentence does not state that the nature humanity or the species man is rational. For no nature, as such, is capable of reasoning. It is the specimens of the species who are rational, not the species.
This shows that we must distinguish between inclusion and instantiation. Man includes rational; man does not instantiate rational.
Compare 'Man is rational' with 'Socrates is rational.' They are both true, but only if 'is' is taken to express different relatons in the two sentences. In the first it expresses inclusion; in the second, instantiation. The nature man does not instantiate rationality; it includes it. Socrates does not include rationality; he instantiates it.
The reason I balk at premise (1) is because it seems quite obviously to trade on a confusion of the two senses of 'is' lately distinguished. It confuses inclusion with instantiation. (1) encapuslates a non sequitur. It does not follow from a nature's being universal that everything having that nature is a universal. That every animal would be a universal would follow from humanity's being universal only if universality were included in humanity. But it is not: humanity instantiates universality. In Frege's jargon, universality is an Eigenschaft of humanity, not a Merkmal of it.
Since the first subargument fails, there is no need to examine the second. For if the first subargment fails, then the whole Avicennian-Thomist argument fails.
This is proving to be a fascinating topic. Let's push on a bit further.
Aquinas says that any given nature can be considered in three ways: in respect of the esse it has in concrete singulars; in respect of the esse it has in minds; absolutely, in the abstract, without reference to either mode of esse. The two modes are esse naturale (esse reale) and esse intentionale. We can speak of these in English as real existence and intentional existence.
According to Schopenhauer, the medievals employed but three examples: Socrates, Plato, and an ass. Who am I to deviate from a tradition at once so hoary and noble? So take Socrates. Socrates is human. The nature humanity exists really in him, and in Plato, but not in the ass. The same nature exists intentionally in a mind that thinks about or knows Socrates. For Aquinas, there are no epistemic deputies standing between mind and thing: thought reaches right up to and grasps the thing itself. There is an isomorphism between knowing mind and thing known. The ground of this isomorphism is the natura absoluta, the nature considered absolutely. Call it the common nature (CN). It is so-called because it is common to both the knower and the known, informing both, albeit in different ways. It is also common to all the singulars of the same nature and all the thoughts directed to the same sort of thing. So caninity is common to all doggy thoughts, to all dogs, besides linking the doggy thoughts to the dogs.
My concern over the last few days has been the exact ontological status of the CN.
This morning, with the help of Anthony Kenny, I realized that there are four possible views, not three as I stated earlier:
A. The CN really exists as a separate, self-subsistent item.
B. The CN exists only intentionally in the mind of one who abstracts it from concrete singulars and mental acts.
C. The CN has Meinongian Aussersein status: it has no mode of being whatsoever, and yet is is something, not nothing. It actually has properties, but is property-incomplete (and therefore in violation of LEM) in that it is neither one nor many, neither universal nor particular, neither intentionally existent nor really existent.
D. The CN exists intentionally in the mind of God, the creator.
(A) is a nonstarter and is rejected by both me and Lukas Novak. (B) appears to be Novak's view. (C) is the interpretation I was tentatively suggesting. My thesis was that the CN must have Aussersein status, but then it inherits — to put it anachronistically — all the problems of Meinongianism. The doctor angelicus ends up with Meinongian monkey on his back.
Let me now try to explain why I reject (B), Novak's view, and incline toward (C), given that (A) cannot possibly be what Aquinas had in mind.
Consider a time t before there were any human animals and any finite minds, and ask yourself: did the nature humanity exist at t? The answer has to be in the negative if there are only two modes of existence, real existence in concrete singulars and intentional existence in finite (creaturely) minds. For at t there were no humans and no finite minds. But surely it is true at t that man is rational, that humanity includes rationality. This implies that humanity at t cannot be just nothing at all. For if it were nothing at all at t, then 'Man is rational'' at t would lack a truth-maker. Furthermore, we surely don't want to say that 'Man is rational' first becomes true when the first human being exists. In some sense, the common nature must be prior to its existential realization in concrete singulars and in minds. The common nature cannot depend on these modes of realization. Kenny quotes Aquinas (Aquinas on Being, Oxford 2002, p. 73):
Socrates is rational, because man is rational, and not vice versa; so that even if Socrates and Plato did not exist, rationality would still be a characteristic of human nature.
Socrates est rationalis, quia home est rationalis, et no e converso; unde dato quod Socrates et Plato non essent, adhuc humanae naturae rationalitas competeret. (Quodl. VIII, I, c, 108-110)
Aquinas' point could be put like this. (i) At times and in possible worlds in which humans do not exist, it is nevertheless the case that rationality is included in humanity, and (ii) the metaphysical ground of humans' being rational is the circumstance that rationality is included in humanity, and not vice versa.
Now this obviously implies that the CN humanity has some sort of status independent of real and intentional existence. So we either go the Meioningian route or we say that CNs exist in the mind of God. Kenny:
Aquinas' solution is to invoke the divine mind. There are really four, not three ways of considering natures: first, as they are in the mind of the creator; second, as they are in the abstract; theitrs, as they are in individuals; and finally, as they are in the human mind. (p. 74)
This may seem to solve the problem I raised. CNs are not nothing because they are divine accusatives. And they are not nothing in virtue of being ausserseiend. This solution avoids the three options of Platonism, subjectivism (according to which CNs exist only as products of abstraction), and Meinongianism.
The problem with the solution is that it smacks of deus ex machina: God is brought in to solve the problem similarly as Descartes had recourse to the divine veracity to solve the problem of the external world. One ought to be forgiven for thinking that solutions to the problems of universals, predication, and intentionality ought to be possible without bringing God into the picture. But this is a separate can of worms.
The following is a comment by Dr. Novak on an earlier post about Stanislav Sousedik's Thomist theory of predication. That post has scrolled off into archival oblivion, so I reproduce the comment here and add some comments in blue.
………………….
What is, for me, most striking about Bill's troubles with Sousedík's elaboration of the Thomistic theory of predication is first, that he seems to spell out precisely the questions that I regard as the most fundamental ones in all this business, and second, that these are precisely the questions that had stirred the development of the more and more elaborate late-scholastic theories of universals (or predication, for this is one and the same problem for the scholastics). In this comment, I will try just to sketch the direction in which I think the answers can be found; perhaps to elaborate on some points later.
BV: I am encouraged by LN's judgment that I have stumbled upon the most fundamental questions despite my lack of deep familiarity with late Scholasticism.
Now the core problem of course is the problem of common natures. I am afraid that there is a slight misunderstanding about the meaning of this term, and Sousedík's choice of his term – "absolute subject" – just makes it worse. It is common to talk of a common or "absolute" nature as though it were an entity or item beside universals and individuals, indeed, "jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein". Truly it seems absurd to postulate such an entity which clearly violates the principle of excluded middle.
However, despite the manner of talk of the scholastics and of Sousedík, one must resist considering an "absolute nature" as an item or entity. There is no such entity called "absolute nature". There are particulars which exist really, and there are universals which exist intentionally. And they have something in common — the "objective content" which exists both really, as individualised and identified with the particular(s), and intentionally, as abstracted and universalised, as a universal. This "something in common" is called the "common nature", but it is not something over and above the universal or the particular. We should not say – and we do not say, properly – that there is some "absolute nature". The nature can only be absolutely considered, that is, considered under a kind of "second order abstraction" – viz. under abstraction from the fact whether it is or is not considered under abstraction from individuality.
BV: I note that LN uses 'item' and 'entity' interchangeably. That is not the way I use the terms. For me, an entity is anything that has being or existence, anything that has esse. 'Nonexisting entity' is therefore a contradiction in terms. My use of 'item,' however, is ontologically noncommital. Accordingly, 'nonexisting item' is not a contradiction in terms. I am pleased to find that I use the term in exactly the same way that Daniel D. Novotny does in his paper, "Scholastic Debates About Beings of Reason" in Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic (Ontos Verlag, 2012), p. 26. 'Item' as I use it is the most inclusive term in the philosophical lexicon. Anything to which one can refer, anything that one can single out in thought, anything that can be counted as one, whether it exists or not, is an item. Nonexistent objects, impossible objects, incomplete objects — all are items.
Now the common nature, the nature considered absolutely, i.e., considered apart from both real existence and intentional existence and from the accidents that accrue to it when it exists either really (in things) or intentionally (in the mind), is clearly not an entity, but it is an item. Or so I maintain. It is not an entity because it has neither esse naturale nor esse intentionale. Here LN and I agree. But it is an item because we have singled it out in thought and are talking about it. After all, the common nature is not nothing. It is a definite item. Take felinity considered absolutely. It is distinct from humanity considered absolutely. It is not the felinity in my cat, nor the felinity in my mind when I think about the cat. It is a selfsame item that can exist in either way, or in both ways. And is is a different selfsame item than the common nature humanity that can exist either in particular humans or in minds or both.
LN says that the common nature " is not something over and above the universal or the particular." If this means that the common nature felinity is not an entity in addition to really existing particular cats and the intentionally existing universal, then I agree. It is not an entity because it has no mode of being. But surely the selfsame felinity that is in my cat and in my mind when I think about the cat, precisely because it is common, cannot be identical to the felinity really existing in cats or the felinity intentionally existing in minds thinking about cats. So in that sense it is indeed an item (not an entity) "over and above the universals or the particular."
The intended meaning of the saying that this "absolute nature" is neither one nor many, neither real nor intentional etc. is not that there is in fact some primitive constituent item out there devoid of all these properties. That would indeed be absurd. The meaning is that the nature – which in factis both many [namely according to its real existence in particulars] and one [according to its intentional existence in a universal] (note that this is not a contradiction!) — this very nature does not possess any of these two modes of being and the consequent properties "of itself", that is, necessarily, i.e. it can be consistently grasped without them or "absolutely"; and only insofar as it is thus grasped, we can say that it is neither this nor that. Just like a chemist can grasp water as water, that is, according to the properties that belong to water on the basis of its chemical constitution, and disregard whether it is for example cold or hot. He would say that water as water is neither hot nor cold, even neither hot nor not-hot – without thereby necessarily postulating some item called "absolute water" over and above the individual instances of water of various temperatures.
BV: What the foregoing implies, however, is that the common nature exists only in the mind of one who abstracts both from real existence and from intentional existence. The crucial phrase is, "only insofar as it is thus grasped, we can say that it is neither this nor that." This implies that the common nature is only as grasped by a mind. That in turn implies that common natures have esse after all — in contradiction to the theory. It also implies that common natures are universals — again in contradiction to the theory.
In this connection it is important to note that Jacques Maritain, no slouch of a Thomist, speaks of THREE esse's. (Degrees of Knowledge, p. 129, n. 115) He calls them esse naturae [sic], esse intentionale, and esse cognitum seu objectivum. The latter mode of being is the mode of being of common natures.
My cat exists outside the mind as a concrete singular. Its mode of existence is esse naturae, or esse naturale. Now my mind, in knowing the cat, does not become a cat. So the felinity in my mind when I know the thing before me as a cat cannot exist in my mind in the same way that it exists in the cat outside my mind. Rather, it exists in the mode of esse intentionale which implies that it is abstract and universal as opposed to concrete and singular. Now suppose I abstract from both of these modes of existence. So abstracting, I focus upon the common nature. About this common nature, Maritain says that it too is "abstract and universal." (Ibid.)
The fact that Maritain speaks of a third mode of esse points up the problem I am having with common natures. What Maritain says strikes as reasonable. But it contradicts what LN says is the Thomist doctrine. The official doctrine is that the common nature is neither universal nor particular. Maritain, however, quite reasonably says that the common nature is abstract and universal.
In other words: you cannot start with "absolute natures" as some elementary items and then try to build the common-sense particulars out of them. Quite the other way around: you take the familiar particulars, then you become aware that you are able to grasp them by means of universal concepts, and then you proceed to identify what the universal concept has "taken" from the particular (its "objective content") and what not (the properties of concepts /like being universal/ as opposed to their notes). That which the universal concept has captured of the particular is the "common nature"; it is something existing as really identified to the particular (or else it could not have been abstracted from there) – therefore it cannot, of itself, require universality. But it is also something capable of existing as identified to a universal concept; therefore it cannot, of itself, be incompatible with universality.
So, a common nature is not some elementary ontological item, a philosophical "atom"; it is an abstraction of an abstraction.
BV: LN's phrase 'objective content' is a felicitous one. The common nature is the objective content of my subjective concept of a cat, say, but it is also to be found in the cat existing in the mode of esse naturale. Now the dispute, as I see it, is about the exact status of these objective contents or common natures. I can think of three possibilities:
A. The common nature really exists. B. The common nature does not exist, really or intentionally, but has Meinongian Aussersein status. (This seems to be Novotny's view. See p. 34 of his article cited above.) C. The common nature exists intentionally, not really, as an object of a double abstraction.
Now both LN and I reject (A). I opt for (B). Accordingly, my thesis is that the doctrine of common natures inherits — to put it anachronistically! — all of the problems of Meinong's doctrine of Aussersein. LN seems to be opting for (C). The trouble with(C) is that it contradicts Thomist doctrine according to which the common nature is neither universal nor particular, neither one nor many, and neither really nor intentionally existent. For on (C), the common nature, as Maritain said, is "abstract and universal." It is also one not neither one nor many, and intentionally existent, not neither really nor intentionally existent.
There is more to LN's comment, but the rest will have to be addressed in a separate post or posts.
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.
Enough of politics, back to some hard-core technical philosophy. If nothing else, the latter offers exquisite escapist pleasures not unlike those of chess. Of course I don't believe that technical philosophy is escapist; my point is a conditional one: if it is, its pleasures suffice to justify it as a form of recuperation from this all-too-oppressive world of 'reality.' It's what I call a 'fall-back position.'
I have been commissioned to review the collection of which the above-captioned article is a part. The collection is entitled Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic (Ontos Verlag 2012) and includes contributions by Peter van Inwagen, Michael Loux, E. J. Lowe, and several others. My review article will address such topics as predication, truth-makers, bare particulars, and the advantages and liabilities of constituent ontology. I plan a series of posts in which I dig deep into some of the articles in this impressive collection.
Stanislav Sousedik argues for an "identity theory of predication" according to which a predicative sentence such as 'Peter is a man' expresses an identity of some sort between the referent of the subject 'Peter' and the referent of the predicate 'man.' Now to someone schooled in modern predicate logic (MPL) such an identity theory will appear wrongheaded from the outset. For we learned at Uncle Gottlob's knee to distinguish between the 'is' of identity ('Peter is Peter') and the 'is' of predication ('Peter is a man').
But let's give the Thomist theory a chance. Sousedik, who is well aware of Frege's distinction, presents an argument for the identity in some sense of subject and predicate. He begins by making the point that in the declarative 'Peter is a man' and the vocative 'Peter, come here!' the individual spoken about is (or can be) the same as the individual addressed. But common terms such as 'man' can also be used to address a person. Instead of saying, 'Peter, come here!' one can say 'Man, come here!' And so we get an argument that I will put as follows:
1. Both 'Peter' and 'man' can be used to refer to the same individual. Therefore
2. A common term can be used to refer to an individual. But
3. Common terms also refer to traits of individuals. Therefore
4. The traits must be identical in some sense to the individuals. E.g., the referent of 'Peter' must be in some sense identical to the referent of 'man.'
But in what sense are they identical? Where Frege distinguishes between predication and identity, Sousedik distinguishes between weak and strong identity. 'Peter is Peter' expresses strong identity while 'Peter is a man' expresses weak identity. "Strong identity is reflexive, symmetric, and transitive, weak identity has none of these formal properties." (254) It thus appears that strong identity is the same as what modern analytic philosophers call (numerical) identity. It is clear that 'Peter is a man' cannot be taken to express strong identity. But what is weak identity?
S. is a constituent ontologist. He holds that ordinary substances such as Peter have what he calls "metaphysical parts." Whereas Peter's left leg is a physical part of him, his traits are metaphysical parts of him. Thus the referents of the common terms 'man,' 'animal,' living thing,' etc. are all metaphysical parts of Peter. Clearly, these are different traits of Peter. But are they really distinct in Peter? S. says that they are not: they are really identical in Peter and only "virtually distinct" in him. The phrase is defined as follows.
(Def. 1) Between x, y there is a virtual distinction iff (i) x, y are really identical; (ii) x can become an object of some cognitive act Φ without y being the object of the same act Φ . . . . (251)
For example, humanity and animality in Peter are really identical but virtually distinct in that humanity can be the intentional object of a cognitive act without animality being the object of the same act. I can focus my mental glance so to speak on Peter's humanity while leaving out of consideration his animality even though he is essentially both a man and an animal and even though animality is included within humanity.
The idea, then, is that Peter has metaphysical parts (MPs) and that these items are really identical in Peter but virtually distinct, where the virtual distinctness of any two MPs is tied to the possibility of one of them being the object of a cognitive act without the other being the object of the same act.
Is S. suggesting that virtual distinctness is wholly mind generated? I don't think so. For he speaks of a potential distinction of MPs in concrete reality, a distinction that becomes actual when the understanding grasps them as distinct. (253) And so I take the possibility mentioned in clause (ii) of the above definition to be grounded not only in the mind's power to objectify and abstract but also in a real potentiality in the MPs in substances like Peter.
One might be tempted to think of weak identity as a part-whole relation. Thus one might be tempted to say that 'Peter' refers to Peter and 'man' to a property taken in the abstract that is predicable not only of Peter but of other human beings as well. 'Peter is a man' would then say that this abstract property is a metaphysical part of Peter. But this is not Sousedik's or any Thomist's view. For S. is committed to the idea that "Every empirical individual and every part or trait of it is particular." (251) It follows that no metaphysical part of any concrete individual is a universal. Hence no MP is an abstract property. So weak identity is not a part-whole relation.
What is it then?
First of all, weak identity is a relation that connects a concrete individual such as Peter to a property taken abstractly. But in what sense is Peter identical to humanity taken abstractly? In this sense: the humanity-in-Peter and the humanity-in-the-mind have a common constituent, namely, humanity taken absolutely as common nature or natura absoluta or natura secundum se. (254) What makes weak identity identity is the common constituent shared by the really existing humanity in Peter and the intentionally existing humanity in the mind of a person who judges that Peter is human.
So if we ask in what sense the referent of 'Peter' is identical to the referent of 'man,' the answer is that they are identical in virtue of the fact that Peter has a proper metaphysical part that shares a constituent with the objective concept referred to by 'man.' Sousedik calls this common constituent the "absolute subject." In our example, it is human nature taken absolutely in abstraction from its real existence in Peter and from its merely intentional existence in the mind.
Critical Observations
I am deeply sympathetic to Sousedik's constituent-ontological approach, his view that existence is a first-level 'property,' and the related view that there are modes of existence. (253) But one of the difficulties I have with S.'s identity theory of predication is that it relies on common natures, and I find it difficult to make sense of them as I already spelled out in a previous post. Common natures are neither one nor many, neither universal nor particular. Humanity is many in things but one in the mind. Hence taken absolutely it is neither one nor many. It is this absolute feature that allows it be the common constituent in humanity-in-Peter and humanity-in-the-mind. And as we just saw, without this common constituent there can be no talk of an identity between Peter and humanity. The (weak) identity 'rides on' the common constituent, the natura absoluta. Likewise, humanity is particular in particular human beings but universal in the mind (and only in the mind). Hence taken absolutely it is neither particular nor universal.
But it also follows that the common nature is, in itself and taken absolutely, neither really existent nor intentionally existent. It enjoys neither esse naturale (esse reale) nor esse intentionale. Consequently it has no being (existence) at all. This is not to say that it is nonexistent. It is to say that it is jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein to borrow a phrase from Alexius von Meinong, "beyond being and nonbeing."
The difficulty is to understand how there could be a plurality of distinct items that are neither universal nor particular, neither one nor many, neither existent nor nonexistent. Note that there has to be a plurality of them: humanity taken absolutely is distinct from animality taken absolutely, etc. And what is the nature of this distinctness? It cannot be mind-generated. This is because common natures are logically and ontologically prior to mind and matter as that which mediates between them. They are not virtually distinct. Are they then really distinct? That can't be right either since they lack esse reale.
And how can these common or absolute natures fail to be, each of them, one, as opposed to neither one nor many? The theory posits a plurality of items distinct among themselves. But if each is an item, then each is one. An item that is neither one nor many is no item at all.
There is also this consideration. Why are common natures more acceptable than really existent universals as constituents of ordinary particulars such as Peter? The Thomists allow universals only if they have merely intentional existence, existence 'in' or rather for a mind. "Intentional existence belongs to entities which exist only in dependence upon the fact that they are objects of our understanding." (253) They insist that, as S. puts it, "Every empirical individual and every part or trait of it is particular." (251) S. calls the latter an observation, but it is not really a datum, but a bit of theory. It is a datum that 'man' is predicable of many different individuals. And it is a datum that Peter is the subject of plenty of essential predicates other than 'man.' But it is not a clear datum that Peter is particular 'all the way through.' That smacks of a theory or a proto-theory, not that it is not eminently reasonable.
One might 'assay' (to use G. Bergmann's term) an ordinary particular as a complex consisting of a thin or 'bare' particular instantiating universals. This has its own difficulties, of course, but why should a theory that posits common natures be preferrable to one that doesn't but posits really existent universals instead? Either way problems will arise.
The main problem in a nutshell is that it is incoherent to maintain that some items are such that they have no being whatsoever. 'Some items are such that they have no being whatsoever' is not a formal-logical contradiction, pace van Inwagen, but it is incoherent nonetheless. Or so it seems to me.
The other day I expressed my reservations as to the coherence of the Thomistic notion of a common nature. Let's plunge a little deeper by considering the argument from Chapter 3 of Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence(tr. Robert T. Miller, emphasis added):
The nature, however, or the essence thus understood can be considered in two ways. First, we can consider it according to its proper notion, and this is to consider it absolutely. In this way, nothing is true of the essence except what pertains to it absolutely: thus everything else that may be attributed to it will be attributed falsely. For example, to man, in that which he is a man, pertains animal and rational and the other things that fall in his definition; white or black or whatever else of this kind that is not in the notion of humanity does not pertain to man in that which he is a man. Hence, if it is asked whether this nature, considered in this way, can be said to be one or many, we should concede neither alternative, for both are beyond the concept of humanity, and either may befall the conception of man. If plurality were in the concept of this nature, it could never be one, but nevertheless it is one as it exists in Socrates. Similarly, if unity were in the notion of this nature, then it would be one and the same in Socrates and Plato, and it could not be made many in the many individuals. Second, we can also consider the existence the essence has in this thing or in that: in this way something can be predicated of the essence accidentally by reason of what the essence is in, as when we say that man is white because Socrates is white, although this does not pertain to man in that which he is a man.
The argument may be set forth as follows:
1. A nature can be considered absolutely or according to the being it has in this or that individual.
2. If a nature is considered absolutely, then it is not one. For if oneness were included in the nature of humanity, e.g., then humanity could not exist in many human beings.
3. If a nature is considered absolutely, then it is not many. For if manyness were included in the nature of humanity, e.g., then humanity could not exist in one man, say, Socrates.
Therefore
4. If a nature is considered absolutely, then it is neither one nor many, neither singular nor plural.
I find this argument intriguing because I find it extremely hard to evaluate, and because I find the conclusion to be highly counterintuitive. It seems to me obvious that a nature or essence such as humanity is one, not many, and therefore not neither one nor many!
The following is clear. There are many instances of humanity, many human beings. Therefore, there can be many such instances. It follows that there is nothing in the nature of humanity to preclude there being many such instances. But there is also nothing in the nature of humanity to require that there be many instances of humanity, or even one instance. We can express this by saying that the nature humanity neither requires nor precludes its being instantiated. It allows but does not entail instantiation. This nature, considered absolutely, logically allows multiple instantiation, single instantiation, and no instantiation. It logically allows that there be many men, just one man, or no men.
That much is crystal clear. But surely it does not follow that the nature humanity is neither one nor many. What Aquinas is doing above is confusing what Frege calls a mark (Merkmal) of a concept with a property (Eigenschaft) of a concept. (See Foundations of Arithmetic, sec. 53, first publ. 1884) The marks of a concept are the subconcepts which are included within it. Thus man has animal and rational as marks. But these are not properties (Eigenschaften) of the concept man since no concept is an animal or is rational. Being instantiated is an example of a property of man, a property that cannot be a mark of man. If being instantiated were a mark of man, then the concept man could not fail to be instantiated. In general, the marks of a concept are not properties thereof, and vice versa.
A couple more examples. Three-sided is a mark of the concept triangle, but is is not a property of this concept for the simple reason that no concept is three-sided. Male is a mark of the concept bachelor, but not a property of it since no concept is male.
Aquinas has an insight which can be expressed in Fregean jargon as follows. Being singly instantiated — one in reality – and being multiply instantiated — many in reality — are not marks (Merkmale) of the nature humanity. But because he (along with everyone else prior to 1884) confuses marks with properties (Eigenschaften), he concludes that the nature itself cannot be either one or many. But surely the nature itself is one, nor many. That is consistent with holding that the nature admits of single instantiation, multiple instantiation, or no instantiation.
To put it another way, Aquinas confuses the 'is' of predication ('Socrates is a man') with the 'is' of subordination ('Man is an animal'). Man is predicable of Socrates, but animal is not predicable of man, pace Aristotle, Categories 3b5: no concept or nature is an animal. Socrates falls underman; Animalfalls withinman. Falling-under and falling-within are different relations. Animal is superordinate to man while man is subordinate to animal. But that is not to say that animal is predicable of man. Both animal and man are predicable of Socrates, which is to say: Socrates falls under both concepts. But man does not fall under animal, animal falls within man. If man fell under animal, then the concept man would be an animal, which is absurd.
For these reasons I do not find the argument from De Ente et Essentia compelling. It is based on confusions that the great logician Gottlob Frege was the first to sort out. But perhaps there is a good Thomist response.
In his SEP article, The Medieval Problem of Universals, Gyula Klima offers the following explanation of the Thomistic doctrine of common natures:
So, a common nature or essence according to its absolute consideration abstracts from all existence, both in the singulars and in the mind. Yet, and this is the important point, it is the same nature that informs both the singulars that have this nature and the minds conceiving of them in terms of this nature. To be sure, this sameness is not numerical sameness, and thus it does not yield numerically one nature. On the contrary, it is the sameness of several, numerically distinct realizations of the same information-content, just like the sameness of a book in its several copies. Just as there is no such a thing as a universal book over and above the singular copies of the same book, so there is no such a thing as a universal nature existing over and above the singular things of the same nature; still, just as it is true to say that the singular copies are the copies of the same book, so it is true to say that these singulars are of the same nature.
I am struggling to understand this. Consider the common nature humanity. When we consider it in itself, or absolutely, we abstract from its existence in material singulars (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, . . .) and from its existence in minds. When we consider it absolutely we thus consider it in abstraction from esse, whether esse naturale or esse intentionale. So considered, the common nature has no mode of esse or existence. Having no mode of existence, the common nature does not exist. This prompts my first question:
Q1. How can an item have no being or existence at all? (I am using 'being' and 'existence' interchangeably.) Would it not then be nothing? But it is not nothing; it is the very common nature that it is, one distinct from other common natures. What we have here, as it seems to me, is an anticipation of Meinong's doctrine of Aussersein, with the problems that the latter brings in its train. But having invoked Meinong I now send him back to his jungle; my present concern is merely to understand Aquinas. There is this item, humanity, which, absolutely considered, has no being, but is nonethless a definite mind-independent item. Mind-independent yet beingless. Do you not find this puzzling?
I am not suggesting that there is a narrowly-logical (purely formal) contradiction in There is an item that has no being. Some will be tempted to mount that objection since the italicized sentence certainly does smack of formal-logical contradiction: There is an x such that x is not. But the formal-logical contradiction seems to dissipate if we put it like this: Some item is beingless, where 'some' has no existential or ontological import whatsoever. The latter italicized sentence is not formally self-contradictory. Its form is Some F is G which admits of true substitution-instances.
So I see no formal-logical contradiction in the doctrine of common natures any more than I see a formal-logical contradiction in Meinong's doctrine of Aussersein. My point is not formal-logical but metaphysical. I just don't understand how something can be mind-independent without having any being at all.
Note also that this item — humanity as common nature or natura absoluta — is neither particular nor universal. It would be particular if it existed with esse naturale in singulars; it would be universal if it existed with esse intentionale in a mind. But in itself, considered absolutely, it exists in neither way and is therefore neither particular nor universal. This prompts my second question:
Q2. How can a nature be common and yet not in some sense universal? There is this item which we are considering in abstraction from its material existence in singulars and from its immaterial existence in minds. It seems that what we must say that it is universal, not particular. After all, it is common. How can an item be common to many (to many material singulars and to many acts of thinking) without being universal?
These are not rhetorical questions. I really don't understand the doctrine. (Some people have the unpleasant habit of accusing one of posing rhetorical questions when one genuinely asks questions. Isn't that what philosophers mainly do, ask questions?)
What's more, common natures are neither one nor many. In De Ente et Essentia, Thomas gives an argument for this claim, an argument I examine and reject in a separate post. At the moment I am concerned with the intelligibility of the claim, not its justification. I want to understand the claim, but so far I am finding it unintelligible. Hence my third question:
Q3. How can a common nature be neither one nor many? Must it not be one item to be common?
Klima offers an analogy. It is a commonplace that there can be many copies of the same book. Each copy is a material singular. And of course 'same book' does not refer to a material singular over and above the many copies. And yet the same information-content is expressed in each (uncorrupted) copy and is understood by each mind that reads (with comprehension) a copy. A common nature, then, is like the information-content of a book.
Unfortunately, this analogy does not help me. It seems obvious to me that the information-content is one, not neither one nor many.
To sum up. A common nature, considered absolutely, is neither one nor many, neither universal nor particular. Considered absolutely, it exists neither in singulars nor in minds. What's more, this absolute consideration, this consideration of it as it is in itself, does not make of it an abstractum that depends on a mind for its existence. And so it has some sort of mind-independent status along with its matter-independent status. Having neither esse naturale nor esse inentionale, it has no being at all. Having no being at all, we can say that common natures are ausserseiend in Meinong's sense, jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, "beyond being and nonbeing." Each of these items is a pure Sosein with no Sein.
Is this a coherent conception? I can't see that it is. But I don't claim to have refuted it. For my misgivings rest on an assumption that, while it seems intuitively obvious to me, I would be hard-pressed to justify in a non-circular way,, namely, that whatever has mind-independent status must have some mode of being or other.
