Scholasticism New and Old – Maverick Philosopher

Part One is here.

Some pains, though bad in themselves, are instrumentally good. You go for broke on your mountain bike. At the top of a long upgrade your calves are burning from the lactic acid build-up. But it's a 'good' pain. It is instrumentally good despite its intrinsic badness. You are satisfied with having 'flattened' that hill one more time. The net result of the workout is hedonically positive. But surely not all pains are classifiable as instrumentally good. Think of someone who suffers from severe chronic joint pain so bad that he can barely walk let alone pedal a bike. In alleviation thereof he daily ingests a cocktail of drugs with nasty side effects that make it impossible for him to think straight or accomplish anything. Surely the person's condition is evil. (But don't get hung up on the word 'evil' and don't assume that every evil is the responsibility of a finite agent. The evil of pain is a natural or physical, not a moral, evil.) Is this not a counterexample to the thesis that every evil is a privation or absence of good?　

Now pains are counterexamples to the thesis that evils are privationes boni only if they are both evil and objectively real. Therefore:

A. One might argue that pains are evil but not objectively real in that they exist only 'in the mind.' I developed this suggestion in Part One and found reason to reject it.

B. Or one might argue that pains are objectively real, but not evil. One might point to the fact that pains are often very useful warning signals that indicate that something is going wrong in the body or that some damage is being done to the body: the pains in my knees inform me that I am running too long and hard and am in danger of an overuse injury. On this suggestion, then, pains are real but not evil. Consequently, pains are not counterexamples to the thesis that evils are privationes boni.

But this response is not very convincing. There are several considerations.

1. If pains are warning signals, then they are instrumentally good. But what is instrumentally good may also be intrinsically evil. The searing pain in a burnt hand, though instrumentally good, is intrinsically evil. Its positive 'entity' (entitas in scholastic jargon) is not well accommodated on the classical doctrine that evils are privationes boni. Again, the pain is not the mere absence of the good of pleasure, but something positively bad. After all, the hand is not numb or as if anaesthetized; there is a positive sensation 'in' it, and this positive sensation is bad. So even if every pain served to warn us of bodily damage, that would not detract from the positive badness of the pain sensation. One cannot discount the intrinsic positive badness by pointing to the fact that the pain is instrumentally good.

2. If pains are warning signals, it seems that many of them could perform this function without being so excruciating. The intensity of many pains seems out of all proportion to the good that they do in warning us of bodily damage. This excruciating intensity is part of the evil of pain.

In The Human Predicament, David Benatar adduces the empirical fact that "the most intense pleasures are short-lived, whereas the worst pains can be much more enduring." (77) There is chronic pain but no chronic pleasure. Then there is the fact that the worst pains are worse than the best pleasures are good. (77). No one would trade an hour of the worst torture for an hour of the best pleasure. A third fact is that in a split second one can be severely injured, "but the resultant suffering can last a lifetime." (78)

3. It is a fact that the pain in my hand that warns me to remove it from the hot stove typically does not subside when the hand is removed. It continues to hurt. But what good purpose does this serve given that the warning has been heeded and the hand removed from the hot stove? The argument that pain is good, not evil, because it warns us about bodily damage fails to account for the pain that persists after the warning has been heeded. The pain in my burnt hand continues, of course, because the hand has been damaged; but then that pain is intrinsically and positively evil and the evil cannot be discounted in the way the pain at the time of the contact of hand with stove can be discounted.

4. There is no necessity that a warning system be painful. A robotic arm could have a sensor that causes the arm to retract from a furnace when the furnace temperature becomes damagingly high. The robot would feel nothing. We might have had that sort of painless warning system.

My interim conclusion may be set forth as follows:

Pains are natural evils

The evil of pain is not a mere absence of good

Ergo

Not all evils are privationes boni.

REFERENCES: Jorge J. E. Gracia, "Evil and the Transcendentality of Goodness: Suarez's Solution to the Problem of Positive Evils" in Scott MacDonald, ed., Being and Goodness (Cornell UP, 1991), pp. 151-176. David Benatar, The Human Predicament (Oxford UP, 2017)

Evil as Privation and the Problem of Pain, Part One (2021 Version)

For Vito Caiati. This 2021 version of a November 2010 post corrects unclarities, infelicities of expression, and outright errors in the initial entry . And the font is more legible for ancient eyes.

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When theists are confronted by atheists with the various arguments from evil, the former should not reject the premise that objective evil exists. That would eliminate the problem, but eliminativism here as elsewhere in philosophy is a shabby evasion. (Example: How does brain activity give rise to consciousness? No problem! Consciousness is an illusion!) Evil exists and it is not merely subjective. But the same is true of holes. See Holes and Their Mode of Being. Holes are not nothing, and that is objectively the case despite their being absences. You could say that holes have no positive entitative status and are only as privations. (Curiously, as argued in the linked entry, they are empirically detectable absences which is another reason to hold that they are not nothing.)

So, to accommodate the objective reality of evil we should consider whether perhaps evil has no positive entitative status and is only as a privation. In classical jargon, this is the view of evil as privatio boni. Thus Augustine, Enchiridion XI:

For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good? In the bodies of animals, disease and wounds mean nothing but the absence of health; for when a cure is effected, that does not mean that the evils which were present –namely, the diseases and wounds — go away from the body and dwell elsewhere: they altogether cease to exist; for the wound or disease is not a substance, but a defect in the fleshly substance, — the flesh itself being a substance, and therefore something good, of which those evils — that is, privations of the good which we call health — are accidents. Just in the same way, what are called vices in the soul are nothing but privations of natural good. And when they are cured, they are not transferred elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul, they cannot exist anywhere else.

If evil is a privation or absence then the ancient problem — dating back beyond David Hume to Epicurus — of reconciling the existence of God (as traditionally defined) with the existence of evil seems either to dissolve or else become rather more tractable. Indeed, if the evil-as-privation thesis is coupled with the Platonic notion alive in both Augustine and Aquinas that Goodness is itself good as the Primary Good, the unique exemplar of goodness whence all good things receive their goodness, then one can argue from the existence of evils-as-privations to the existence of that of which they are privations. But that is a separate and very difficult topic.

Without going that far, let us first note that the evil-as-privation doctrine does seem to accommodate an intuition that many of us have, namely, that good and evil, though opposed, are not mutually independent. Thus in one clear sense good and evil are opposites: what is good is not evil and what is evil is not good. And yet one hesitates to say that they are on an ontological par, that they are equally real. They are not opposed as two positivities. The evil of ignorance is not something positive in its own right: the evil of ignorance consists in its being an absence of something good, knowledge. Good is an ontological prius; evil has a merely derivative status as an absence of good. In fact, I will lay it down as a condition of adequacy for any theory of evil that evil not be hypostatized. If a (primary) substance is anything metaphysically capable of independent existence, then evil is not a substance. That way lies Manicheanism. There are no two co-equal 'principles' eternally at war, Good and Evil.

The Problem of Pain

But then how are we to think of animal and human pain, whether physical or mental? Pains are standardly cited as examples of natural or physical evils as opposed to moral evils that come into the world via a misuse of free will. Suppose you have just slammed your knee against the leg of a table. Phenomenologically, the pain is something all-too-positive. The what-it-is-like is something quite distinctive. (This hyphenated locution from Thomas Nagel.) It is not a mere absence of well-being, but the presence of ill-being. Compare an absence of sensation in the knee with intense pain in the knee. An absence of sensation, as in a numb knee, is a mere lack; but a pain is not a mere lack, but something positive in its own right. This seems to show that not all evils can be privations.

The argument in nuce is that not all evils can be privations of good because a felt pain is a positively evil sensation that is not an absence, lack, or privation of something good. And so we cannot dismiss evil as privatio boni.

The same seems to hold for mental pains such as an intense sadness. It is not merely an absence of happiness, but something positive in its own right. Hence, the evil of sadness is not merely a privation of the good of happiness. Examples are easily multiplied: Angst, terror, clinical depression, etc.

Two Possible Responses

Felt pains are counterexamples to the thesis that evils are privationes boni only if they are both evil and objectively real. Therefore:

A. One might argue that felt pains are evil but that the painfulness of a felt pain is a matter of projection. One might flesh this out as follows. There is a certain sensory quale that I experience when my knee slams into the leg of the table. Call this the experiential substratum of the pain. I am not talking about the physical damage to the knee, if any, or about anything physical. By the experiential substratum I mean the felt datum precisely and only as felt, as lived though, as experienced. I am talking about the physical pain as a phenomenal datum. The painfulness of this felt pain is something else again. On the objection now being considered, the painfulness of the felt pain is a matter of projection or interpretation or 'attitude': it is something supplied by the subject. The experiential substratum, the sensory quale, exists in objective reality despite the fact that its esse est percipi. But the painfulness, and thus the evil or badness of the sensory quale is an interpretation from the side of the sufferer.

What's more, this interpretation or projection can be altered or withdrawn entirely. Thus, with practice, one can learn to focus one's attention on a painful sensory quale and in so doing lessen its painfulness. If you try this, it works to some extent. After a long day of hiking over rocky trails, my feet hurt. But I say to myself, "It's only a sensation, and your aversion to it is your doing." "Master desire and aversion!" Focusing on the sensation in this way, and noting that one's attitude towards it plays a role in the painfulness, one can reduce the painfulness. One reduces the painfulness but without eliminating the felt pain. You still feel the sensation, but you have withheld the aversive overlay. If you try it, you will see that it works to some extent. This suggests that the painfulness is merely subjective.

Unfortunately, this response is not convincing as a general response to the problem of pain. Imagine the physical and mental suffering of one who is being tortured to death. And then try to convince yourself that the pain in a situation like this is just a matter of 'attitude' or aversion. "Conquer desire and aversion" is a good Buddhist maxim. And a good Stoic one as well. But I find it hard to swallow the notion that the painfulness of every painful sensation derives from the second-order stance of aversion.

I conclude that plenty of felt pains are not only objectively real but also objectively evil: their evilness is not a subjective addition.

B. One might argue that pains are objectively real, but not evil since they are outweighed by greater goods. But I'll leave the elaboration of this response for Part II. Brevity is the soul of blog.

Existence as Completeness? Gilson on Scotus, Thomas, and the Real Distinction

I composed this entry with Lukáš Novák in mind. I hope to secure his comments.

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Marco Santambrogio, "Meinongian Theories of Generality," Nous, December 1990, p. 662:

. . . I take existence to mean just this: an entity, i, exists iff there is a determinate answer to every question concerning it or in other words, for every F(x) either F[x/i] or ~F[x/i] holds. The Tertium Non Datur is the hallmark of existence or reality. This is entirely in the Meinong-Twardowski tradition.

In other words, existence is complete determinateness or completeness: Necessarily, for any x, x exists if and only if x is complete, i.e., satisfies the property version of the Law of Excluded Middle (tertium non datur). Now I have long maintained that whatever exists is complete, but I have never been tempted by the thesis that whatever is complete exists. My intuitions on this matter are Thomistic rather than Scotistic.

According to Etienne Gilson, Duns Scotus held that actually to exist in reality = to be complete:

. . . actual existence appears only when an essence is, so to speak, bedecked with the complete series of its determinations. (Being and Some Philosophers, Pontifical Institute, Toronto, 1952, 2nd ed. , 89)

Actual existence thus appears as inseparable from the essence when essence is taken in its complete determination. (88)

An actually existing essence is, meaning by "is" that it exists, as soon as it is fully constituted by its genus, its species, its own individual "thisness," as well as all the accidents which go to make up its being. (86)

It follows that an actually existing thing is not the result of the superaddition of existence to a complete essence, but is just an essence in its completeness. This implies that there is no distinctio realis. For if an actually existing individual essence exists in virtue of being completely determinate, then there cannot be any distinction in reality between that complete essence and its existence. If Socrates is a wholly determinate essence, then, on the Scotist view as glossed by Gilson, there is no need for anything more to make him exist: nothing needs to be added ab extra.

What we have here are two very different theories of existence. For the Scotist, existence belong in the order of essence as the maximal determinateness of essence. For the Thomist, existence does not belong in the order of essence but is situated 'perpendicular' to it. Is there any way rationally to decide between these views? Could there be complete nonexistent objects? If yes, then the Scotist view would stand refuted. If no, then the Thomist view would stand refuted.

Well, why can't there be complete nonexistent objects? Imagine the God of Leibniz, before the creation, contemplating an infinity of possible worlds, each of them determinate down to the last detail. None of them exists or is actual. But each of them is complete. One of them God calls 'Charley.' God says, Fiat Charley! And Charley exists. It is exactly the same world which 'before' was merely possible, but 'now' is actual. The difference is not one of essence, but one of existence.

So, while existence entails completeness, why should completeness entail existence?

(Other questions arise at this point which are off-topic, for example, why Charley over Barley? Why Charley over any other world? Must God have a reason? And what would it be? Would it be because Charley is the best of all possible worlds? Is there such a things as the BEST of all possible worlds? Why some world rather than no world? And so on. But these questions are off-topic. Focus like a laser on the question about the 'nature' of existence.)

The theological imagery is supposed to help you understand the ontological point. But we needn't bring God into it. It would also not be to the point to protest that God creates out of nothing, not out of mere possibles. My concern here is with the nature of existence, not with the nature of God or of divine creation. All I need for my argument is the possibility that there be maximally determinate individual essences that do not exist. If there are, then existence is not completeness. But one man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens. Can either side refute the other?

In the end the dispute may come down to a profound and irresolvable difference in intuitions.

What say you, Dr. Novak?

World + God = God? The Aporetics of the God-World ‘Relation’ (2020 Version)

This from a reader:

I just started reading Philosophy for Understanding Theology by Diogenes Allen. The first chapter is devoted to the doctrine of creation. These two sentences jumped out at me: "The world plus God is not more than God alone. God less the world is not less than God alone." Do you agree? How would you unpack them?

These are hard sayings indeed. Herewith, some rough notes on the aporetics of the situation.

I once cataloged twelve different meanings of 'world.' By 'world' here is meant the totality of creatures, the totality of beings brought into existence by God from nothing. (Don't confuse this sense of 'world' with the sense of 'world' as the term is used in the 'possible worlds' semantics of modal discourse.) Now if God is a being among beings, it would make no sense at all to say that "The world plus God is not more than God alone." For if we could add the uncreated being (God) to the created beings, then we would have more beings. We would have a totality T that is larger than T minus God. If God is a being among beings, then there is a totality of beings that all exist in the same way and in the same sense, and this totality includes both God and creatures such that subtracting God or subtracting creatures would affect the 'cardinality' of this totality. (Not wanting to fall afoul of Georg Cantor, I assume that the number of (concrete) creatures is finite.)

But if God is not a being among beings, but Being itself in its absolute fullness, as per the metaphysics of Exodus 3:14 (Ego sum qui sum, "I am who am") then there is no totality of beings all existing in the same way having both God and creatures as members. When we speak of God and creatures,

. . . we are dealing with two orders of being not to be added together or subtracted; they are, in all rigour, incommensurable, and that is also why they are compossible. God added nothing to Himself by the creation of the world, nor would anything be taken away from Him by its annihilation — events which would be of capital importance for the created things concerned, but null for Being Who would be in no wise concerned qua being. (Etienne Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, Scribners, 1936, p. 96. Gilson's Gifford lectures, 1931-1932.)

Here, I am afraid, I will end up supplying some 'ammo' to my Protestant friends Dale Tuggy, Alan Rhoda, and James Anderson. For the Gilson passage teeters on the brink of incoherence. We are told that there are two orders of being but that they are incommensurable. This can't be right, at least not without qualification. If there are two orders of being, then they are commensurable in respect of being. There has to be some sense in which God and Socrates both are. Otherwise, God and creatures are totally disconnected, with the consequence that creatures fall away into nothingness. For if God is Being itself, and there is no common measure, no commensurability whatsoever, between God and creatures, then creatures are nothing. God is all in all. God alone is.

Gilson is well aware of the dialectical pressure in this monistic direction: "As soon as we identify God with Being it becomes clear that there is a sense in which God alone is." (65) If we emphasize the plenitude and transcendence of God, then this sensible world of matter and change is "banished at one stroke into the penumbra of mere appearance, relegated to the inferior status of a quasi-unreality." (64) That's exactly right. (I will add in passing that this metaphysical conclusion underwrites the contemptus mundi of the old-time monk and his world flight.) But of course Christian metaphysics is not a strict monism; so a way must be found to assign the proper degree of reality to the plural world.

Here is the problem in a nutshell. God cannot be a being among beings. "But if God is Being, how can there be anything other than Himself?" (84) We need to find a way to avoid both radical ontological pluralism and radical ontological monism.

It's a variation on the old problem of the One and the Many. (It is important in these discussions to observe the distinction between Being and beings, between esse and ens, between das Sein und das Seiende. Hence my use of the majuscule when I refer to the former and the miniscule when I refer to the latter.)

A. If Being itself alone is, then beings are not. But then the One lacks the many. Not good: the manifold is evident to the senses and to the intellect. The plural world cannot be gainsaid. In theological terms: If God alone is, then creatures are not, even in those possible worlds in which God creates. But then what is the difference between possible worlds in which God creates and those in which he does not?

B. If beings alone are, then Being is not. But then the many lacks the One. Not good: the many is the many of the One. A sheer manifold with no real unity would not a cosmos make. The world is one, really one. It is One in itself, not merely by our conceptualization.

C. If Being and beings both are in the same way and and the same sense, then either Being is itself just another being among beings and we are back with radical pluralism, or Being alone is and we are back with radical monism.

Gilson's Thomist solution invokes the notions of participation and analogy. God is Being itself in its purity and plenitude and infinity. Creatures exist by participation in the divine Being: they are limited participators in unlimited Being. So both God and creatures exist, but in different ways. God exists simply and 'unparticipatedly.' Creatures exist by participation. These are radically different modes of existence. God and creatures do not form a totality in which each member exists in the same way. We can thus avoid each of (A), (B), and (C).

But the notion of participation is a difficult one as Gilson realizes. It appears "repugnant to logical thought" (96): ". . . every participation supposes that the participator both is, and is not, that in which it participates." (96) How so?

I exist, but contingently. That is: I exist, but at every moment of my existence it is possible that I not exist. There is no necessity that I exist at any moment of my existence. I am not the source or ground of my own existence. No existential boot-strapping! Assuming that I cannot exist as a matter of brute fact, my Being (existence) is not my own, but received from another, from God, who is Being itself. So my Being, as wholly received from another, is God's Being. But I am not God or anything else. I have my own Being that distinguishes me numerically from everything else. So I am and I am not that in which I participate.

To formulate the contradiction in a somewhat clearer form: My existence is MY existence, and as such 'incommunicable' to any other existing item AND my existence is NOT MY existence in that it is wholly derivative from Gods existence.

In terms of the One and the Many: Each member of the Many is itself and no other thing; its unity is its own and 'incommunicable' to any other thing, AND each member of the Many derives its ownmost unity and ipseity from the One without which it would be nothing at all, lacking as it would unity.

In terms of creation: Socrates is not a character in a divine fiction; he does not exist as a merely intentional object of the divine mind; his mode of Being is esse reale, not esse intentionale, AND Socrates receives from his creator absolutely everything: his existence, essence, and properties as well as his free and inviolable ipseity and haecceity that make him an other mind, a Thou to the divine I, and a possible rebel against divine authority. So Socrates both is and is not a merely intentional object of the divine mind.

Gilson does not show a convincing way around these sorts of contradiction.

The One of the many is not one of the many: as the source of the many, the One cannot be just one more member of the many. Nor can the One of the many be the same as the many: it cannot divide without remainder into the many. The One is transcendent of the many. But while transcendent, it cannot be wholly other than the many. For, as Plotinus says, "It is by the One that all beings are beings." The One, as the principle by which each member of the many exists, cannot be something indifferent to the many or external to the many, or other than the many, or merely related to the many. The One is immanent to the many. The One is immanent to the many without being the same as the many. The One is neither the same as the many nor other than the many. The One is both transcendent of the many and immanent in the many. Theologically, God is said to be both transcendent and omnipresent. He is both transcendent and immanent.

What should we conclude from these affronts to the discursive intellect? That there is just nothing to talk about here, or that there is but it is beyond the grasp of our paltry intellects? If what I have written above is logical nonsense, yet it seems to be important, well-motivated, rigorously articulated nonsense.

Frederick D. Wilhelmsen

I am presently re-reading The Paradoxical Structure of Existence (University of Dallas Press, 1970) in preparation for the existence chapter of my metaphilosophy book. Wilhelmsen's book is sloppy in the manner of the 20th century Thomists before the analytic bunch emerged, but rich, historically informed, and fascinating. Poking around on the 'Net for Wilhelmsen materials, I found this by one William H. Marshner, and I now file it in my Wilhelmsen category.

Contingency and Composition

Joe, who describes himself as "a high school student with a passion for philosophy of religion and metaphysics," asked me a long series of difficult questions. Here is one of them:

After reading [Edward] Feser's Five Proofs, I have had difficulties with the concept of sustaining causes. First, Feser argues that composites require a sustaining cause in order to "hold them together" or keep them conjoined. But this seems to presuppose that all composite things (be it physical composites or metaphysical composites) are contingent.

But why suppose that, necessarily, all composites are contingent? What is incoherent about this:

X is a necessary being (i.e. X cannot fail to exist). X has metaphysical parts A, B, and C. Each of A, B, and C are also necessarily instantiated in reality, and the relations between A, B, and C are all necessarily instantiated in reality.

Why ought we to rule out this epistemic possibility? This seems to be a necessary being which is composite. It would be a counter-example to the assumption that composition entails contingency (where contingency means can fail to exist).

If we take composition broadly enough, composition does not entail contingency. Consider the set, {1, 3, 5}. Assume that numbers are necessary beings. Then of course the set will also be a necessary being. Furthermore, the relations that hold between the members of this set hold necessarily. For example, necessarily, 3 < 5, and necessarily, 3 > 1. So if we think of sets as composite entities, then it is not the case that all composites are contingent.

But what Feser is concerned with are material particulars, or material substances, to use the Aristotelian-scholastic jargon, e..g., a horse, a statue, a man. And of course these cannot be taken to be sets of their metaphysical parts. If I understand Feser, what he is asking is: what makes a contingent being such as Socrates contingent? The question is not whether he is contingent, but what makes him contingent. What is the ground of his contingency? The answer is that Socrates is contingent because he is composite. Composition or rather compositeness is the ground of contingency. His contingency is explained by his compositeness, in particular, his being a composite of essence and existence. So at the root of contingency is the real distinction (distinctio realis) of essence and existence in finite substances.

The claim is not that every composite entity is contingent, but that every contingent substance is contingent in virtue of its being composite.

Now if a contingent substance is contingent in virtue of its being composed of essence and existence, then a necessary being, or rather, a necessary being that has its necessity from itself and not from another, is necessary in virtue of its being simple, i.e., absolutely non-partite. This is how Thomists feel driven to the admittedly strange and seemingly incoherent doctrine of divine simplicity.

If there is to be an ultimate explanation of the existence of contingent beings, this explanation must invoke an entity that is not itself contingent. The ultimate entity must exist of metaphysical necessity and have its necessity from itself. Thomism as I understand it plausibly maintains that the ground of the divine necessity is the divine simplicity. God is necessary because in God essence and existence are one and the same.

Thomas Merton’s Hostility to Scholastic Manualism and the Forgotten Fr. Hickey

As much of a flaky liberal as Thomas Merton (1915 – 1968) is, both politically and theologically, I love the guy I meet in the pages of the seven volumes of The Journals of Thomas Merton. I am presently savoring Volume Six, 1966-1967. This morning I came upon the entry of May 21, 1967, Trinity Sunday, in which he reports being "dazzled and baffled" by a new book on quantum physics by George Gamow.

The 52-year-old gushes excitedly over the accomplishments of "Niels Bohr and Co." and "this magnificent instrument of thought they developed to understand what is happening in matter, what energy really is about — with their confirmation of the kind of thing Herakleitos was reaching for by intuition." (237) Now comes the passage the vitriol of which caught my attention:

What a crime it was — that utterly stupid course on "cosmology" that I had to take here [at the Trappist monastery of Gethsemani in the 1940s] (along with the other so-called philosophy in Hickey's texts!). Really criminal absurdity! And at the time when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima! Surely there were people in the order who knew better than [to] allow such a thing! Dom Frederic, no. He couldn't help it. The whole Church still demanded this, and God knows, maybe some congregation still does. (237-238)

Now I have read my fair share of scholastic manuals, including Klubertanz, Vaske, van Steenberghen, Garrigou-Lagrange, Smith & Kendzierski, and a some others, but I was unfamiliar with this Hickey. Curious to see how bad his manuals could have been, I did some poking around but came up with very little. But I did glean some information from Benjamin Clark, O.C.S.O., Thomas Merton's Gethsemani:

We used as text the three-volume series by J.S. Hickey, abbot of Mount Melleray in Ireland 1932-1934, a text quite widely used in seminaries in the United States at the time. The text was in Latin, but English was spoken in class, unlike some seminaries in the United States at the time where the philosophy lectures were still given in Latin. Most of our students did not have enough Latin background for that, and some found even reading the text rough going at times.

Does anybody have volumes from the Hickey series? Is he willing to part with them? What about scholastic cosmology as presented by Hickey got Merton so worked up?

My desultory research also led me to a quotation from a guy I know quite well:

At any rate, a recent blog post by Bill Vallicella got me thinking about it again. The post is ostensibly about the origins of political correctness. In reflecting on that, Vallicella also had this to say:

By the time I began as a freshman at Loyola University of Los Angeles in 1968, the old Thomism that had been taught out of scholastic manuals was long gone to be replaced by a hodge-podge of existentialism, phenomenology, and critical theory. The only analytic fellow in the department at the time was an adjunct with an M. A. from Glasgow. I pay tribute to him in In Praise of a Lowly Adjunct. The scholasticism taught by sleepy Jesuits before the ferment of the ‘60s was in many ways moribund, but at least it was systematic and presented a coherent worldview. The manuals, besides being systematic, also introduced the greats: Plato, Aristotle, Thomas, et al. By contrast, we were assigned stuff like Marcuse's Eros and Civilization. The abdication of authority on the part of Catholic universities has been going on for a long time.

So, how bad was scholastic manualism?

Edward Feser counts as a latter day manualist. See his Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (Editiones Scholasticae, 2014). Here is an article by Ed in which he lays into David Bentley Hart to repel the latter's charge of scholastic manualism. Excerpt:

Menacing references to the threat of “manualism” and “baroque neoscholasticism” have long been a favored tactic in theologically liberal Catholic circles. Given Aquinas’s enormous prestige and influence within the Catholic Church, attacking some position he took has always been a tricky business. The solution was to invent a bogeyman variously called “manualism,” “sawdust Thomism,” etc. This allows the critic to identify the hated position with that and proceed as if it has nothing to do with Thomas himself. Such epithets generate something like a Pavlovian response in many readers, subverting rational thought and poisoning the reader’s mind against anything a Thomist opponent might have to say. Though neither a theological liberal nor a Catholic, Hart knows what buttons to push in order to win over the less-discriminating members of his audience.

Another Uncompelling Argument in Illustration of Our Pascalian Predicament

This relates to my earlier discussion with Dr. Novak. See articles referenced infra. A reader thinks the following syllogism establishes its conclusion:

a) What doesn't have necessity from itself is caused;

b) The contingent does not have necessity from itself;

Ergo

c) The contingent is caused.

An argument establishes its conclusion just in case: (i) the argument is deductive; (ii) the argument is valid in point of logical form; (iii) the premises are all of them objectively certain. Establish is a very strong word; it is as strong as, and equivalent to, prove.

The argument above is a valid deductive argument, and the minor is true by definition. The major, however, is not objectively certain. In fact, it is not even true. The impossible doesn't have necessity from itself, but it has no cause since it doesn't exist.

But a repair is easily made. Substitute for (a)

a*) Whatever exists, but does not have necessity from itself, is caused.

Then the argument, for all we know, might be sound. But it still does not establish its conclusion. For the major, even if true, is not objectively certain. Ask yourself:

Is the negation of the repaired major a formal-logical contradiction? No. Is it an analytic proposition? No. Does it glow with the light of Cartesian self-evidence like 'I seem to see a tree' or 'I feel nauseous'? No.

So how can Novak & Co. be objectively certain that (a*) is true? This proposition purports to be about objective reality; it purports to move us beyond logical forms, concepts, and mental states. Nice work if you can get it, to cop a signature phrase from the late, great David M. Armstrong. (For the record: I reject Armstrong's naturalism and atheism.)

I conjecture that it is the overwhelmingly strong doxastic security needs of dogmatists that prevent them from appreciating what I am saying. They cannot tolerate uncertainty, and so they manufacture a certainty that isn't there.

That being said, Dr. Novak may like my Pascalian conjecture that it is due to the Fall of Man that we are in this suboptimal epistemic predicament, the predicament of craving certainty without being able to attain it.

Is It Epistemically Certain that Whatever Begins to Exist is Caused?

I wrote that

1) Whatever begins to exist is caused

is not epistemically certain. I don't deny that (1) is true; I deny that it can be known with certainty. (As I explained earlier, truth and certainty are different properties.) And then I wrote that

If an argument is presented for (1), then I will show that the premises of that argument are not, all of them, certain.

That is to say: if you try to show that (1) is certain by producing a valid deductive argument all of the premises of which are certain, an argument that transmits the certainty of its premises to its conclusion, then I will show that the premises of that argument are not, all of them, certain. I am using 'certain' as short for 'epistemically certain.'

Lukas Novak responded:

Let us play that game. I believe I have an argument to prove (1) that can be reduced exclusively to obvious conceptual truths. Let's go step by step; you say which premise you doubt and I will produce an argument for it.

My kick-off:

(1.1) Whatever does not have a cause and yet exists, exists necessarily.
(1.2) Whatever begins to exist never exists necessarily.
Ergo etc.

Which one do you doubt?

I have no problem with (1.2). I would say, however, that (1.1) is not certain. The negation of (1.1) is: Something exists contingently without cause. This is not a formally self-contradictory proposition. So we cannot rule it out on formal-logical grounds alone the way we can rule out Something exists that does not exist. It is therefore logically possible (narrowly logically possible) that (1.1) be false.

Is (1.1) a conceptual truth as Lukas appears to be maintaining? Well, can we know it to be true by sheer analysis of the concept uncaused existent? Not as far as I can see. Analyzing that concept, all I get is: existent that is not the effect of any cause or causes. That every EFFECT has a cause is a conceptual truth, but not that every EVENT has a cause, or that every EXISTENT has a cause.

If Lukas is right, then it is epistemically certain that the physical universe, which is modally contingent (i.e., not necessary and not impossible) cannot be a brute fact. So if Lukas is right, then it is epistemically certain that the physical universe cannot exist both contingently and without a cause.

Here is where I disagree. I believe that the physical universe (together with finite minds) exists, exists contingently, and is caused. But I don't believe that we can know this to be the case with certainty.

It may be that Lukas is thinking along the lines of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange.

Garrigou-Lagrange thinks that one violates the Law of Non-Contradiction if one says of a contingent thing that it is both contingent and uncaused. He thinks this is equivalent to saying:

A thing may exist of itself and simultaneously not exist of itself. Existence of itself would belong to it, both necessarily and impossibly. Existence would be an inseparable predicate of a being which can be separated from existence. All this is absurd, unintelligible. (Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought, tr. Patrick Cummins, O. S. B., Ex Fontibus 2012, p. 65)

Suppose that a contingent existent is one that is caused to exist by a self-existent existent. If one then went on to say that such an existent is both contingent and uncaused, then one would embrace a logical contradiction. But this presupposes that contingency implies causal dependency.

And therein lies the rub. That the universe is contingent I grant. But how does one get from modal contingency to the universe's causal dependence on a causa prima? If one simply packs dependency into contingency then one begs the question. What is contingent needn't be contingent upon anything.

John Peterson’s Thomist Analysis of Change

1. The Riddle of Change. Change is ubiquitous. It is perhaps the most pervasive feature of our experience and of the objects of our experience. But is it intelligible? Change could be a fact without being intelligible. But the mind seeks intelligibility; hence it seeks to render change intelligible to it.

There is something puzzling about change inasmuch as it seems to imply a contradiction. When a thing changes, it becomes different than what it was. But unless it also remains the same, we cannot speak, as we do, of one thing changing. But how can this one thing be both the same and different? We ought not assume that there is an insoluble problem here. But we also ought not assume that a simple solution is at hand, or that some simple fallacy has been committed. We must investigate. We do well to begin with some mundane, Moorean fact.

This is because alteration (accidental change) is neither destruction nor duplication. The ripening of an avocado does not cause it to cease to exist. And it is clear that one cannot speak of change if there are two avocados, A and B, indiscernible except in respect of ripeness/unripeness, such that A is unripe at time t while B is ripe at time t* (t*> t). Alteration requires that one and the same thing have incompatible properties at different times. This is necessary for alteration; whether it is sufficient is a further question.

Thus there is an apparent contradiction: the ripe avocado is both the same and not the same as the unripe avocado. If you think this puzzle is easily solved, then you haven't understood it. You cannot understand philosophy unless you understand the problems to which its theories and theses are the responses. Philosophy may be more than aporetics, but it is at least aporetics. If you lack the 'aporetic sense' then you lack the "feeling of the philosopher" Plato describes at Theaetetus 155.

2. Reality is contradiction-free. There are no contradictions in reality, but only in our thoughts about reality. That there are no contradictions in reality is not perfectly obvious, but it is very reasonably assumed to be true, and we have to start somewhere. Now if it is true, and if, as is obvious, changes occur, then the apparent contradiction has to be removed. If the apparent contradiction cannot be removed, that is, shown to be merely apparent, then change, which obviously exists in some sense, will have to be demoted to the status of a Bradleyan appearance. (See F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, Book I, Chapter 5.)

The task, then, is to remove the apparent contradiction.

3. Avocado A, having altered, is both the same and different. How is that possible? One solution involves a distinction between numerical and qualitative sameness. A is numerically the same over the interval during which it goes from unripe to ripe, but not qualitatively the same over that interval. The sense in which A is the same is not the same as the sense in which A is not the same: A is numerically the same over the interval but not qualitatively the same over the interval. I will say no more about this solution in this post.

4. Instead of distinguishing two senses of 'same,' one can distinguish two senses of 'individual.' On an Aristotelian-Thomistic analysis, as presented by John Peterson ("Persons and the Problem of Interaction," The Modern Schoolman LXIII, January 1985, 131-137), the individual₁ is the primary substance, the avocado in our example. This primary substance is the individual substance, the individual this-such, together with its accidents. The primary substance at time t (when the ripening process begins) is the unripe avocado, and the primary substance at t* (when the process is completed) is a numerically different primary substance. It follows that the primary substance is not the substratum of change!

The substratum of change — that which stays the same throughout the change — is the individual₂, the secondary substance 'in' the individual₁. The secondary substance 'in' a primary substance is its individuated essence. Primary substances are capable of independent existence. Secondary substances, as constituents of primary substances, are not capable of independent existence. Yet these secondary substances are what ground diachronic identity. So what grounds identity over time and underlies the change and persists through it is the individuated essence.

One can see how this distinction between two senses of 'individual' removes the contradiction. It is the individual₂ (the individuated essence) that is the same over time, and the individual₁ that is different over time. There is no one concretum that is the same and different. There are two 'things' in the changing concretum.

It follows that the unripe avocado I saw on my counter a week ago is not numerically the same ripe avocado that I see on my counter today. It is a numerically different avocado.

5. The scholastic analysis can be applied to persons and the problem of their identity over time and through change. Persons are individuals₂. Thus they are individuated essences or secondary substances. Elliot drunk and Elliot sober are the same person because the same individuated essence, the same instance of humanity, underlies the change in accidents. But they are numerically different primary substances and thus numerically different human animals.

Peterson thinks this solution superior to the Cartesian view according to which a person is identified with a res cogitans. On the Cartesian view, the person is a primary as opposed to a secondary substance. As a primary substance, the person on the Cartesian view is capable of independent existence. Given that a person remains self-same through change, the res cogitans must remain self-same though change. But then how can Elliot drunk and Elliot sober be the same person? "For individuals₁, as was said, are not substrates through any change but are rather the termini in any change, that is, the terminus ad quem [endpoint toward which] and terminus a quo [endpoint from which] of a change." (p. 135)

6. Let us now consider existential or substantial change. When an avocado ripens, it acquires the property of being ripe and loses the property of being unripe. It seems as obvious as anything that alterational or accidental change requires a substratum. But when the ripe avocado becomes the stuff of guacamole, it suffers a much more radical change. The avocado ceases to exist. Can one speak here too of a substratum of change, something in the thing that remains the same through the change?

There is likewise a difference between Elliot's sobering up and Elliot's dying. When he sobers up, the substratum of the change on the Thomistic view is his individuated essence. But what is the substratum of the radical existential change which occurs when he dies? Peterson writes, "The substrate of this change, of course, cannot be a particular human essence since it is just this which has passed away." (135) The particular human essence is subject to passing away since it is a compound of form and matter. So Peterson proposes the Aristotelian view according to which "The substrate of change in the case of essential change is simply the potentiality on the part of any individual to become something essentially different from what it is." (135) This potentiality is matter. Since it is that which individuates the form, matter is an individual in a third sense. There are then three senses of 'individual':

Individual₁ = primary substance
Individual₂ = secondary substance = substrate of accidental change
Individual₃ = matter = substrate of essential or existential change

7. Possible Lines of Critique

A. Peterson's theory implies that the unripe avocado and the ripe avocado are two primary substances, not one. (Likewise for Elliot sober and Elliot drunk.) But since now there is only one, the ripe one, the unripe one must have passed out of existence. This consequence of Peterson's theory seems to collide with the Moorean fact mentioned above, namely, that alterational or accidental change does not involve the destruction of the thing that changes. If the thing that changes is the unripe avocado one sees and touches, then that thing does not remain self-same over time: it passes out of existence. What remains the same over time is the individuated essence which one does not see and which is not a substance in its own right.

B. Matter, as the substrate of essential change, is prime matter. It is very difficult to see how the notion of materia prima can be rendered intelligible.

Contingent Existence Without Cause? Not Possible Says Garrigou-Lagrange

A reader claims that "to affirm that there are contingent beings just is to affirm that they have that whereby they are, namely, a cause." This implies that one can straightaway infer 'x has a cause' from 'x is contingent.' My reader would agree with Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange who, taking the traditional Thomist position, maintains the following Principle of Causality (PC):

. . . every contingent thing, even if it should be ab aeterno, depends on a cause which exists of itself. (Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought, tr. Patrick Cummins, O. S. B., Ex Fontibus 2012, p. 62)

So even if the physical universe always existed, and therefore never came into existence, it would nonetheless require a cause of its existence simply in virtue of its being contingent. I find myself questioning both my reader and Garrigou-Lagrange. For it seems to me to be conceivable that an item be contingent but have no cause or ground of its existence. This is precisely what Garrigou-Lagrange denies: "contingent existence . . . can simply not be conceived without origin, without cause . . . ." (p. 63)

But it all depends on what we mean by 'conceivable' and 'contingent.' Here are my definitions:

D1. An individual or state of affairs x is conceivable =_df x is thinkable without formal-logical contradiction.

Examples. It is conceivable that there be a mountain of gold and a tire iron that floats in (pure or near-pure) water. It is conceivable that I jump straight out of my chair, turn a somersault in the air, and then return to my chair and finish this blog post. It is inconceivable that I light a cigar and not light a cigar at exactly the same time. As for formal-logical contradiction, here is an example: Some cats are not cats. But Some bachelors are married is not a formal-logical contradiction. Why not? Because its logical form has both true and false substitution instances.

D2. An individual or state of affairs x is contingent =_df x is possibly nonexistent/nonobtaining if it exists/obtains, and possibly existent/obtaining if it does not exist/obtain.

The contingent is that which has a certain modal status: it is neither necessary nor impossible. For example, me and my cigar are both contingent beings: neither is necessary and neither is impossible. My smoking the cigar now is an example of a contingent state of affairs: it is neither necessary nor impossible that I smoke a cigar now. The type of modality we are concerned with is broadly logical, not nomological.

Now is it conceivable that something exist contingently without a cause? It seems so! The nonexistence of the physical universe is thinkable without formal-logical contradiction. The physical universe is contingent: it exists, but not necessarily. Its nonexistence is possible. Do I encounter a formal-logical contradiction when I think of the universe as existing without a cause or explanation? No. An uncaused universe is nothing like a non-triangular triangle, or a round square, or a married bachelor, or an uncaused effect. Necessarily, if x is an effect, then x has a cause. It is an analytic truth that every effect has a cause. The negation of this proposition is: Some effects do not have causes. While this is not a formal-logical contradiction, it can be reduced to one by substituting synonyms for synonyms. Thus, Some caused events are not caused.

Contrary to what Garrigou-Lagrange maintains, it is conceivable that the universe exist uncaused, despite its contingency. If one could not conceive the uncaused existing of the universe, then one could not conceive of the universe's being a brute fact. And 'surely' one can conceive of the latter. That is not to say that it is possible. There is a logical gap between the conceivable and the possible. My point is merely that the 'brutality' of the universe's existence is conceivable in the sense of (D1). To put it another way, my point is that one cannot gain a a priori insight into the necessity of the universe's having a cause of its existence. And this is because the Principle of Causality, if true, is not analytically true but synthetically true.

Of course, if one defines 'contingency' in terms of 'existential dependence on a cause' then a thing's being contingent straightaway implies its being caused. But then one has packed causal dependency into the notion of contingency when contingency means only what (D2) says it means. That has all the benefits of theft over honest toil as Russell remarked in a different connection.

Garrigou-Lagrange thinks that one violates the Law of Non-Contradiction if one says of a contingent thing that it is both contingent and uncaused. He thinks this is equivalent to saying:

A thing may exist of itself and simultaneously not exist of itself. Existence of itself would belong to it, both necessarily and impossibly. Existence would be an inseparable predicate of a being which can be separated from existence. All this is absurd, unintelligible. (p. 65)

And therein lies the rub. That the universe is contingent I grant. But how does one get from contingency in the sense defined by (D2) supra to the universe's causal dependence on a causa prima? If one simply packs dependency into contingency then one begs the question. What is contingent needn't be contingent upon anything.

Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis

The book has been recently translated.

Unfortunately, I find myself in agreement with Josef Pieper as to the 'unreadibility' of the book: "The unfinished, and hardly readable book, Analogia Entis (1932), which he himself declares is the quintessence of his view, in fact gives no idea of the wealth of concrete material he spread out before us in those days."

Of course, the book is not strictly unreadable: I am reading it and getting something out of it. But it has many of the faults of Continental writing and old-time scholastic writing.

To make a really good philosopher you need to start with someone possessing a love of truth, spiritual depth, metaphysical aptitude, and historical erudition. Then some nuts-and-bolts analyst needs to beat on him with the logic stick until he can express himself clearly and precisely. Such a thrashing would have done gentlemen such as E. Gilson and J. Maritain a world of good. Gallic writing in philosophy tends toward the flabby and the florid.

Bare Particulars and Prime Matter: Similarities and Differences

This entry continues the discussion of prime matter begun here. That post is a prerequisite for this one.

Similarities between Bare Particulars and Prime Matter

S1. Bare particulars in themselves are property-less while prime matter in itself is formless. The bare particular in a thing is that which exemplifies the thing's properties. But in itself it is a pure particular and thus 'bare.' The prime matter of a thing is the thing's ultimate matter and while supporting forms is itself formless.

S2. Bare particulars, though property-less in themselves, exemplify properties; prime matter, though formless in itself, is formed.

S3. There is nothing in the nature of a bare particular to dictate which properties it will exemplify. This is because bare particulars do not have natures. Correspondingly, there is nothing in the nature of prime matter to dictate which substantial forms it will take. This is because prime matter, in itself, is without form.

S4. Bare particulars, being bare, are promiscuously combinable with any and all first-level properties. Thus any bare particular can stand in the exemplification nexus with any first-level property. Similarly, prime matter is promiscuously receptive to any and all forms, having no form in itself.

S5. Promiscuous combinability entails the contingency of the exemplification nexus. Promiscuous receptivity entails the contingency of prime matter's being informed thus and so.

S6. Bare particulars are never directly encountered in sense experience. The same holds for prime matter. What we encounter are always propertied particulars and formed matter.

S7. A bare particular combines with properties to make an ordinary, 'thick' particular. Prime matter combines with substantial form to make a primary (sublunary) substance.

S8. The dialectic that leads to bare particulars and prime matter respectively is similar, a form of analysis that is neither logical nor physical but ontological. It is based on the idea that things have ontological constituents or 'principles' which, incapable of existing on their own, yet combine to from independent existents. Hylomorphic analysis leads ultimately to prime matter, and ontological analysis in the style of Bergmann and fellow travellers leads to bare or thin particulars as ultimate substrata.

Differences Between Bare Particulars and Prime Matter

D1. There are many bare particulars each numerically different from every other one. In themselves, bare particulars are many. It is not the case that, in itself, prime matter is many. It is not, in itself, parceled out into numerically distinct bits.

D2. Bare particulars are actual; prime matter is purely potential.

D3. Bare particulars account for numerical difference. But prime matter does not account for numerical difference. (See Feser's manual, p. 199) Prime matter is common and wholly indeterminate. Designated matter (materia signata) is the principle of individuation, i.e., differentiation.

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.

Category: Scholasticism New and Old

What Exists Exists

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