Aristotle – Page 2 – Maverick Philosopher

Felicitas Theoretica et Visio Beata: Monasticism and Christianity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conceiving the Afterlife: Life 2.0 or Beatific Vision?

‘Political’ is not a Dirty Word

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

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

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

After MacIntyre: On Deriving Ought from Is

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

1. This watch is inaccurate.

Therefore

2. This is a bad watch.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is Man a Functional Concept?

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

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

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

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

Interim Conclusion

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

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

___________________

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

Remembering Henry Veatch and Rational Man

Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl

Is It Epistemically Certain That There are Substances?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Persistence

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

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

Perdurance or Endurance?

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

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

Perdurance

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

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

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

Endurance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Argument

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

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

Therefore

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

Once More on the Bogus Aristotle ‘Quotation’

The indefatigable Dave Lull delivers again.

But first Uncle Bill's lessons for the day:

1) Be skeptical of all unsourced quotations.

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

3) Verify the sources of sourced quotations.

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

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

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

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

Robin Smith said…

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

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

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

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

True Whether or Not Aristotle (or Camus) Said It

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

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

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

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

Paging Dave Lull.

UPDATE (5/6)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

to find out there is’.

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

Aristotelian Categoricals and Natural Norms

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

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

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

On to the details.

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

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

But I digress. Back to Foot.

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

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

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

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

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

Interim Critical Remarks

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

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

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

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

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

A Protreptic Puzzler

A curious passage from Aristotle's Protrepticus:

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

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

The Tomb of the Philosopher

Supposedly found. Appropriately enough, in Stagira. How long before Islamists destroy it?

Substantial Change, Prime Matter, and Individuation

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

Change, Accidental and Substantial

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

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

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

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

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

The Antinomy of the Existence of Prime Matter

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

Prime matter exists.
Prime matter does not exist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1*. Prime matter exists together with substantial forms.

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

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

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

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

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

The Problem of the Substrate

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

1. Prime matter is the substrate of substantial change.

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

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

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

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

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

The Problem of Individuation

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

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

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

Potentiality and the Substance View of Persons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is Potentiality? An Exploration

Our Czech friend Vlastimil V. writes,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and

b. X is not potentially F at t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aristotle on the New Year

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

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

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

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

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

Substance, Accidents, Incarnation

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

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

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

With pleasure.

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

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

and

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Appendix: The Concept of an Accident

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

The following propositions circumscribe the concept of Aristotelian accident.

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

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

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

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