Worry and regret form a pair in that each involves flight from the present; worry flees the present toward an unknown future, regret toward an unchangeable past. The door to Reality, however, is hinged on the axis of the Now. If access is to be had to the nunc stans it is only via the nunc movens. Past and future are but representations in comparison to the reality of the moving now.
Category: Time and Change
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.
Presentism Between Scylla and Charybdis
What better topic of meditation for New Year's Morn than the 'passage' of time. May the Reaper grant us all another year! "I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think." (Nietzsche)
…………..
If presentism is to be a defensible thesis, a 'presentable' one if you will, then it must avoid both the Scylla of tautology and the Charybdis of absurdity. Having survived these hazards, it must not perish of unclarity or inexpressibility.
Consider
1. Only what exists exists.
If 'exists' is used in the same way in both occurrences, then (1) is a miserable tautology and not possibly a bone of contention as between presentists and anti-presentists. Note that (1) is a tautology whether 'exists' is present-tensed in both occurrences or temporally unqualified (untensed) in both. To have a substantive thesis, the presentist must distinguish the present-tensed use of 'exist' from some other use and say something along the lines of
P. Only what exists (present tense) exists simpliciter.
This implies that what no longer exists does not exist simpliciter, and that what will exist does not exist simpliciter. It is trivial to say that what no longer exists does not presently exist, but this is not what the presentist is saying: he is is saying that what no longer exists does not exist period (full stop, simpliciter, at all, sans phrase, absolutely, pure and simple, etc.) He is saying that what no longer exists is nothing.
But the presentist must also, in his formulation of his thesis, avoid giving aid and comfort to the absurdity that could be called 'solipsism of the present moment.' (I borrow the phrase from Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, Simon and Schuster 1948, p. 181.) To wit,
SPM. Only what exists (present tense) exists simpliciter; nothing existed and nothing will exist.
The idea behind (SPM) is decidedly counterintuitive but cannot be ruled out by logic alone. To illustrate, consider James Dean who died on September 30th, 1955. Presentist and anti-presentist agree that Dean existed and no longer exists. (Alter the example to Dean's car if you hold to the immortality of the soul.) That is, both presentist and anti-presentist maintain that there actually was this actor, that he was not a mere possibility or a fictional being. The presentist, however, thinks that Dean does not exist at all (does not exist simpliciter) while the anti-presentist maintains that Dean does exist simpliciter, but in the past. In contrast to both,the present-moment solipsist holds that Dean never existed and for this reason does not exist at all. Thus there are three positions on past individuals. The presentist says that they do not exist at all or simpliciter. The anti-presentist says that they do exist simpliciter. The PM-solispist says that they never existed.
Clearly, the presentist must navigate between the Scylla of tautology and the Charybdis of present-moment solipsism. So what is the presentist saying? He seems to be operating with a metaphysical picture according to which there is a Dynamic Now which is the source and locus of a ceaseless annihilation and creation: some things are ever passing out of being and other things are ever coming into being. He is not saying that all that is in being is all there ever was in being or all there ever will be in being. That is the lunatic thesis of the present-moment solipsist.
The presentist can be characterized as an annihilationist-creationist in the following sense. He is annihilationist about the past, creationist about the future. He maintains that an item that becomes past does not lose merely the merely temporal property of presentness, but loses both presentness and existence. And an item that becomes present does not gain merely the merely temporal property of presentness, but gains both presentness and existence. Becoming past is a passing away, an annihilation, and becoming present is a coming into being, a creation out of nothing.
To many, the presentist picture seem intuitively correct, though I would not go so far as Alan Rhoda who, quoting John Bigelow, maintains that presentism is "arguably the commonsense position." I would suggest that common sense, assuming we can agree on some non-tendentious characterization of same, takes no position on arcane metaphysical disputes such as this one. (This is a fascinating metaphilosophical topic that cannot be addressed now. How does the man in the street think about time? Answer: he doesn't think about it, although he is quite adept at telling time, getting to work on time, and using correctly the tenses of his mother tongue.)
So far, so good. But there is still, to me at least, something deeply puzzling about the presentist thesis. Consider the following two tensed sentences about the actor James Dean. 'Dean does not exist.' 'Dean did exist.' Both tensed sentences are unproblematically true, assuming that death is annihilation. (We can avoid this assumption by changing the example to Dean's silver Porsche.) Because both sentences are plainly true, recording as they do Moorean facts, they are plainly logically consistent.
The presentist, however, maintains that what did exist, but no longer exists, does not exist at all. That is the annihilationist half of his characteristic thesis. It is not obviously true in the way the data sentences are obviously true. Indeed, it is not clear, to me at least, what exactly the presentist thesis MEANS. (Evaluation of a proposition as either true or false presupposes a grasp of its sense or meaning.) When the presentist says, in the present using a present-tensed sentence, that
1. Dean does not presently exist at all
he does not intend this to hold only at the present moment, else (1) would collapse into the trivially true, present-tensed, Moorean, 'Dean does not exist.' He intends something more, namely:
2. Dean does not presently exist at any time, past, present, or future.
Now what bothers me is the apparent present reference in (2) to past and future times. How can a present-tensed sentence be used to refer to the past? That's one problem. A second is that (2) implies
3. It is presently the case that there are past times at which Dean does not exist.
But (3) is inconsistent with the presentist thesis according to which (abstract objects aside) only the present time and items at the present time exist.
My underlying question is whether presentism has the resources to express its own thesis. Does it make it between the Scylla of tautology and the Charybdis of PM-solipsism only to founder on the reef of inexpressibility? Just what is the presentist trying to say, and can it be said?
I have long held that time is the hardest of all philosophical nuts to crack. I fear it is above my pay grade, and yours too.
Happy New Year!
Vita Brevis
This mess we are in, this predicament, the fall into time . . . leaves us no time for its solution.
The Idolatry of the Transient
It is because we want more than the transient that we cling to it.
Time Trouble
It is troubling that our lives will end. But for some of us it is even more troubling that they are constantly ending. It is not as if we are fully real now and later will not be; it is rather that our temporal mode of existence is not fully real. At each moment our lives are passing away. There is no completion, no rest, no final satisfaction, no fullness of being, in any moment. For this reason, living forever in this mode of existence is no solution at all. It is not as if what exists in time fully exists, but in time; rather it is that temporal existence is a deficient mode of existence.
Theism Meets Metaphysical Naturalism
The following is an excerpt of an e-mail from the Barcelona lawyer, Daniel Vincente Carillo. As I mentioned to him in a private e-mail, I admire him for tackling these great questions, and doing so in a foreign language. The pursuit of these questions ennobles us while humbling us at the same time. Carillo writes,
In the contest between theism and metaphysical naturalism we have only four possible scenarios:1st. An uncaused and necessary universe: It doesn't exist by another being and it cannot cease to exist (absolute and eternal universe).
BV: This is indeed a doxastic possibility. (By calling the possibility doxastic, I leave it open whether it is a real possibility.) But one ought to distinguish between omnitemporality and eternality. The omnitemporal exists at every time, and is therefore 'in time.' The eternal does not exist 'in time.' A universe that cannot cease to exist is in time and therefore not eternal. This could be a merely terminological matter.
2nd. A caused and necessary universe: It exists by another being but it cannot cease to exist (infinite series of universes).
BV: It is true that what is caused to exist is caused by another, since nothing can cause itself to exist, not even God. To say that God is causa sui, then, does not mean that he causes himself; it means that he is not caused by another. 'Causa sui,' shall we say, is a privative expression. So far, so good.
But Carillo may be conflating the necessary with the omnitemporal. To say that a universe is necessary is to make a modal claim, one that is much stronger than the merely temporal claim that the universe in question exists at every time. Suppose time is actually infinite in both past and future directions and that the universe (or a universe) exists at every time. Then the universe is omnitemporal: it exists at every time. But it doesn't follow that the universe is necessary. Metaphysical necessity is a modal, not temporal notion. The necessary is that which cannot not exist. An omnitemporal universe could well be contingent, i.e., possibly nonexistent.
In the jargon of 'possible worlds,' a necessary being is one that exists in all possible worlds. An omnitemporal being is one that exists at every time in a world in which there is time. Clearly, if x is omnitemporal, it does not follow that x is necessary.
3rd. An uncaused and contingent universe: It doesn't exist by another being but it can cease to exist (universe from nothing).
BV: But even if an uncaused universe could NOT cease to exist, it might still be contingent. Suppose that there is an uncaused universe U which is such that: if it exists, then it cannot cease to exist. U's being contingent is not ruled out. If it is necessary that U continue to exist if it does exist,it does not follow that U necessarily exists. For there might not have been that universe at all.
4th. A caused and contingent universe: It exists by another being and it can cease to exist (created universe).
BV: But again, if U exists ab alio, this is logically consistent with U's never ceasing to exist. Suppose God creates a universe which has the essential property of being omnitemporal. He creates a universe out of nothing that exists at every time. Since it exists at every time, there is no time at which it does not exist. And because there is no time at which U does not exist, it never ceases to exist. (If x ceases to exist, then there are two times, t and t*, t < t*, such that x exists at t but does not exist at t*.) So a universe can depend for its existence on God even if it cannot cease to exist.
The first three options characterize atheism/naturalism, while the last one is peculiar to theism. But are they equally rational? Definitely not.
BV: A minor point is that atheism and naturalism are not the same. The latter entails the former, but the former does not entail the latter. (The case of McTaggart, atheist but non-naturalist).
Despite my criticism above, the three naturalist options Carillo lists do seem to exhaust the possibilities if we assume that a metaphysical naturalist is also a metaphysical realist, an assumption which is quite 'natural.' But if one were a naturalist and some sort of anti-realist or idealist, that would be a further option.
Now how does Carillo exclude the third option? He writes:
It looks like the 3rd possibility is the weakest, since nothingness cannot create anything at all. The act of creation, like any other act of producing something, presupposes that the creator and the creature exist simultaneously at least in some moment. However, by its very notion, nothingness cannot exist simultaneously with the universe at any moment. Therefore, a universe from nothing is impossible . . . .
This is entirely too quick. True, nothingness cannot create anything. But someone who holds that the universe just exists as a matter of brute fact, i.e., contingently without cause or reason, is not committed to maintaining that nothingness has creative power. As I recall from Russell's debate with Copleston, Russell ends up saying that the universe just exists and that is all! That is not a good answer, in my opinion, but one cannot refute it by pointing out that nothingness cannot create anything. The whole point of naturalism is that there are neither creatures nor creator.
Ashes to Ashes; Dust to Dust
"Remember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. This warning, from the Catholic liturgy for Ash Wednesday, is based on Genesis 3, 19: In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.
How real can we and this world be if in a little while we all will be nothing but dust and ashes?
The typical secularist is a reality denier who hides from the unalterable facts of death and impermanence. This is shown by his self-deceptive behavior: he lives as if he will live forever and as if his projects are meaningful even though he knows that he won't and that they aren't. If he were to face reality he would have to be a nihilist. That he isn't shows that he is fooling himself.
More here.
Yesterday I quoted Christopher Hitchens. He's dead. In Platonic perspective, what no longer exists never truly existed. So here we have a man who never truly existed but who denied the existence of the Source of his own ephemeral quasi-existence. Curious.
Did the Universe Have a Beginning in Time?
Some of you may remember the commenter 'spur' from the old Powerblogs incarnation of this weblog. His comments were the best of any I received in over ten years of blogging. I think it is now safe to 'out' him as Stephen Puryear of North Carolina State University. He recently sent me a copy of his Finitism and the Beginning of the Universe (Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2014, vol. 92, no. 4, 619-629). He asked me to share the link with my readers, and I do so with pleasure. In this entry I will present the gist of Puryear's paper as I understand it. It is a difficult paper due to the extreme difficulty of the subject matter, but also due to the difficulty of commanding a clear view of the contours of Puryear's dialectic. He can tell me whether I have grasped the article's main thrust. Comments enabled.
The argument under his logical microscope is the following:
1. If the universe did not have a beginning, then the past would consist in an infinite temporal sequence of events.
2. An infinite temporal sequence of past events would be actually and not merely potentially infinite.
3. It is impossible for a sequence formed by successive addition to be actually infinite.
4. The temporal sequence of past events was formed by successive addition.
5. Therefore, the universe had a beginning.
Premise (3) is open to a seemingly powerful objection. Puryear seems to hold (p. 621) that (3) is equivalent to the claim that it is impossible to run through an actually infinite sequence in step-wise fashion. That is, (3) is equivalent to the claim that it is impossible to 'traverse' an actual infinite. But this happens all the time when anything moves from one point to another. Or so the objection goes. Between any two points there are continuum-many points. So when my hand reaches for the coffee cup, my hand traverses an actual infinity of points. But if my hand can traverse an actual infinity, then what is to stop a beginningless universe from having run through an actual infinity of events to be in its present state? Of course, an actual infinity of spatial points is not the same as an actual infinity of temporal moments or events at moments; but in both the spatial and the temporal case there is an actual infinity of items. If one can be traversed, so can the other.
The above argument, then, requires for its soundness the truth of (3). But (3) is equivalent to
3*. It is impossible to traverse an actual infinite.
(3*), however, is open to the objection that motion involves such traversal. Pace Zeno, motion is actual and therefore possible. It therefore appears that the argument fails at (3). To uphold (3) and its equivalent (3*) we need to find a way to defang the objection from the actuality of motion (translation). Can we accommodate continuous motion without commitment to actual infinities? Motion is presumably continuous, not discrete. (I am not sure, but I think that the claim that space and time are continuous is equivalent to the claim there are no space atoms and no time atoms.) Can we have continuity without actual infinities of points and moments?
Some say yes. William Lane Craig is one. The trick is to think of a continuous whole, whether of points or of moments, as logically/ontologically prior to its parts, as opposed to composed of its parts and thus logically/ontologically posterior to them. Puryear takes this to entail that a temporal interval or duration is a whole that we divide into parts, a whole whose partition depends on our conceptual activities. (This entailment is plausible, but not perfectly evident to me.) If so, then the infinity of parts in a continuous whole can only be a potential infinity. Thus a line segment is infinitely divisible but not infinitely divided. It is actually divided only when we divide it, and the number of actual divisions will always be finite. But one can always add another 'cut.' In this sense the number of cuts is potentially infinite. Similarly for a temporal duration. In this way we get continuity without actual infinity.
If this is right, then motion needn't involve the traversal of an actual infinity of points, and the above objection brought against (3) fails. The possibility of traversal of an actual infinite cannot be shown by motion since motion, though continuous, does not involve motion through an actual infinity of points for the reason that there is no actual infinity of points: the infinity is potential merely.
We now come to Puryear's thesis. In a nutshell, his thesis is that Craig's defence of premise (3) undermines the overall argument. How? To turn aside the objection to (3), it is necessary to view spatial and temporal wholes, not as composed of their parts, but as (logically, not temporally) prior to their parts, with the parts introduced by our conceptual activities. But then the same should hold for the entire history of the universe up to the present moment. For if the interval during which my hand is in motion from the keyboard to the coffee cup is a whole whose parts are due to our divisive activities, then the same goes for the metrically infinite interval that culminates in the present moment. This entails that the divisions within the history of the universe up to the present are potentially infinite only.
But then how can (1) or (2) or (4) be true? Consider (2). It states that an infinite temporal sequence of past events would be actually and not merely potentially infinite. Think of an event as a total state of the universe at a time. Now if temporal divisions are introduced by us into logically prior temporal wholes such that the number of these actual divisions can only be finite, then the same will be true of events: we carve the history of the universe into events. Since the number of carvings, though potentially infinite is always only actually finite, it follows that (2) is false.
The defense of (3) undercuts (2).
So that's the gist of it, as best as I can make out. I have no objection, but then the subject matter is very difficult and I am not sure I understand all the ins and outs.
John Anderson, Heraclitus the Obscure, and the Depth of Change
A. J. Baker on John Anderson: ". . . there are no ultimates in Anderson's view and in line with Heraclitus he maintains that things are constantly changing, and also infinitely complex . . . ." (Australian Realism, Cambridge UP, 1986, p. 29, emphasis added)
Change is a given. From the earliest times sensitive souls have been puzzled and indeed aggrieved by it. "I am grieved by the transitoriness of things," Nietzsche complains in a letter to Franz Overbeck. But are things constantly changing? And what could that mean?
We need to ask four different questions. Does everything change? Do the things that change always change? Do the things that always change continuously change? Do the things that change change in every respect?
1. Does everything change? The first point to be made, and I believe the Andersonians would agree, is that it is not obviously true that everything changes, or true at all. There are plenty of putative counterexamples. Arguably, the truths of logic and mathematics are not subject to change. They are not subject to change either in their existence or in their truth-value. There is no danger that the theorem of Pythagoras will change from true to false tomorrow. If you say that the theorem in question is true only in Euclidean geometry, then I invite you to consider the proposition expressed by 'The theorem of Pythagoras is true only in Euclidean geometry.' Is the truth of this proposition, if true, subject to change?
Here is an even better example. Consider the proposition P expressed by ‘Everything changes.’ P is either true or false. If P is true, then both P and its truth-value change, which is a curiously self-defeating result: surely, those who preach that all is impermanent intend to say something about the invariant structure of the world and/or our experience of the world. Their intention is not to say that all is impermanent now, but if you just wait long enough some permanent things will emerge later. Clearly, P is intended by its adherents as changelessly true, as laying bare one of the essential marks of all that exists. But then P’s truth entails its own falsity. On the other hand, if P is false, then it is false. Therefore, necessarily, P is false. It follows that the negation of P is necessarily true. Hence it is necessarily true that some things do not change. The structure of the (samsaric) world does not change. The world is 'fluxed up,' no doubt about it; but not that 'fluxed up.'
2. Do the things that change always change? I take ‘always’ to mean ‘at every time.’ Clearly, not everything subject to change is changing at every time. The number of planets in our solar system, for example, though subject to change, is obviously not changing at every time. The position of my chair, to take a second example, is subject to change but is obviously not changing at every time.
3. Do the things that change continuously change? To say that a change is continuous is to say that between any two states in the process of change, there are infinitely many – indeed, continuum-many – intermediate states. To say that a change is discrete, however, is to say that there are some distinct states in the process of change such that there are no intermediate states between them. Now although some changes are continuous, such as the change in position of a planet orbiting the sun, not all changes are continuous. If I lose a tooth or an eye, that is a discrete change, not a continuous one. To go from having two eyes to one, is not to pass through intermediate states in which I have neither two nor one. A switch is off, then on. Although a continuous process may be involved in the transition, the change in switch status — 0 or 1 — is discrete, not continuous.
Hence it cannot be true that each thing that changes continuously changes.
4. Do the things that change change in every respect? No; consider the erosion of a mountainside. Erosion of a mountainside is a change that is occurring at every time, and presumably continuously; but there are properties in respect of which the mountainside cannot change if there is to be the change called erosion, for instance, the property of being a mountainside. Without something that remains the same, there cannot be change. There cannot be erosion unless something erodes. Alterational change requires a substrate of change which, because it is the substrate of change, precisely does not change. There is no alterational change without unchange. Hence if change is all-pervasive, in the sense that every aspect of a thing changes when a change occurs in the thing, then there is no change. Compare Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Princeton University Press, 1941), p. 277.
In sum, I have given reasons to believe that (i) some things are unchangeable; (ii) among the things that are changeable, some are merely subject to change and not always changing; (iii) among the things that are always changing, only some are continuously changing; and (iv) there is no (alterational as opposed to existential) change without unchange.
Therefore, those who lay great stress on the impermanence of the world and our experience of it need to balance their assertion by proper attention to the modes of permanence. For example, if we are told that everything is subject to change, does not the very sense of this assertion require that there be something that does not change, namely the ontological structure of (samsaric) entities? And if a thing is changing, how could that be the case if no aspect of the thing is unchanging? Furthermore, how could one become attached to something that was always changing? Attachment presupposes relative stability in the object of attachment. Jack is attached to Jill because her curvacity and cheerfulness, say, are relatively unchanging features of her. If she were nothing but change 'all the way down,' then there would be nothing for Jack's desire to get a grip on. But without desire and attachment, no suffering, and no need for a technology of release from suffering.
It is a mistake to think that change is all-pervasive. So those who maintain that all is impermanent need to tell us exactly what they mean by this and how they arrived at it. Is it not onesided and unphilosophical to focus on impermanence while ignoring permanence?
If all being is pure becoming, then there is no being — and no becoming either.
Getting back to Anderson, if his claim is that things are constantly changing, what does that mean? Does it mean that everything that changes changes always, or continuously, or in every respect, or all three?
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.
Time
Time is a goddess of healing — for a time. She heals the wounds that come inevitably to those who must march to her beat. She brings us ill and makes us well again until such time as she does us in for good.
This Just Now In: There is no Now! More Bad Philosophy from a Physicist
One of the tasks of philosophy is to expose bad philosophy. Scientists pump out quite a lot of it. Physicists are among the worst. I have given many examples. Here is another one. Let's get to work. Dartmouth physicist Marcelo Gleiser writes in There is No Now,
You say, “I’m reading this word now.” In reality, you aren’t. Since light travels at a finite speed, it takes time for it to bounce from the book to your eye. When you see a word, you are seeing it as it looked some time in the past. To be precise, if you are holding the book at one foot from your eye, the light travel time from the book to your eye is about one nanosecond, or one billionth of a second. The same with every object you see or person you talk to. Take a look around. You may think that you are seeing all these objects at once, or “now,” even if they are at different distances from you. But you really aren’t, as light bouncing from each one of them will take a different time to catch your eye. The brain integrates the different sources of visual information, and since the differences in arrival time are much smaller than what your eyes can discern and your brain process, you don’t see a difference. The “present”—the sum total of the sensorial input we say is happening “now”—is nothing but a convincing illusion.
Gleiser is confusing seeing with object seen. True, light travels at a finite speed. So the word seen is the word as it was one nanosecond ago. But it doesn't follow that I am not seeing the word now. The seeing occurs now at time t, the word seen, however, is not the word as it is at t, but the word as it was at t* (t*<t).
When I glance at the sun, I see it as it was about eight minutes ago. But it does not follow that the seeing (glancing) is not occurring now, or that there is no now.
Suppose that at time t I am visually aware of a word and of a cat. I am focused on the word, but the cat is nearby in the periphery of my visual field. So the seeing of the word and the seeing of the cat are simultaneous seeings. But the word I see is the word as it was one nanosecond ago, whereas the cat I see is the cat as it was, say, 10 nanoseconds ago. So I grant that there are a couple of illusions here.
The first illusion is that if a seeing occurs at time t, then the object seen is as it is at t. This cannot be given the well-known facts that Gleiser adduces. The object seen is as it was at an earlier time t*. But if you see through (forgive the pun) the first illusion, you may still succumb to the second. The second illusion is that objects seen at the same time t are as they were at the same time t*, where t* is earlier than t. In my example, the seeing of the word and the seeing of the cat occur at the same time, call it t. But, given that word and cat are at different distances from the subject, there is no one time t*, earlier than t, such that word and cat were as they were when they were seen.
But again, that does not show that the present moment or the Now is an illusion.
Gleiser's thesis is that there is no Now, that it is a "cognitive illusion." He sums up:
To summarize: given that the speed of light is fast but finite, information from any object takes time to hit us, even if the time is tiny. We never see something as it is “now.” However, the brain takes time to process information and can’t distinguish (or time-order) two events that happen sufficiently close to one another. The fact that we see many things happening now is an illusion, a blurring of time perception.
Gleiser is just confused. There is an illusion, but it is the illusion that we see things as they are now. But that is not to say that there is no Now, or that the Now is an illusion. In fact, Gleiser presupposes that there is a Now when he says that we never see anything as it is now. Right now the Sun is in some definite state, but the physics of visual perception make it impossible to see the Sun as it is now. If it had gone supernova three minutes ago, it would appear to us now as it usually does.
Geiser confuses an epistemological claim — We never see anything distant from us as it is at the precise time of the seeing — with an ontological claim: there is no present moment.
There is other nonsense in Gleiser's piece. Take this sentence: "The notion of time is related to change, and the passage of time is simply a tool to track change." I'll leave it to the reader to sort this out. I've had enough!
Related entries:
Why Do Some Physicists Talk Nonsense about Nothing?
"We're Just a Bit of Pollution," Cosmologist Says
Is Dying an Accidental or a Substantial Change?
On animalism, I am just a (live) human animal. And so are you. But there is a reason to think that I cannot be identical to my animal body. The reason is that it will survive me. (Assume that there is no natural immortality of the soul.) Assume that I die peacefully in my bed. I went to bed, but now I don't exist: what occupies my place in the bed is a (human) corpse. A dramatic change took place in the immediate vicinity of the bed. One and the same human body went from alive to dead. This suggests that dying is an accidental as opposed to a substantial change. If I understand it, this is roughly the Corpse Objection to animalism. The objection, in a nutshell, is that I cannot be identical to my animal body because it will survive me. Me and my body have different persistence conditions.
But there is another way to look at the situation. Me and my body have the same persistence conditions. My body will not survive me. Death is a substantial, as opposed to an accidental, change. When I die, the animal body that I am ceases to exist and one or more new bodies begin to exist. (If my death is peaceful, as opposed to, say, 'Islamic,' then only one new body begins to exist.) So it is not as if one bodily substance undergoes an accidental change, going from being alive to being dead; one bodily substance ceases to exist and one or more others begin to exist. The change is not alterational but existential. This implies that the body itself did not exist while the animal was alive. As Patrick Toner puts it:
Neither the body itself, nor any of its atomic parts, existed while the animal was alive. This just follows from the account of substance I've given, according to which substances have no substances as parts, — there is only one substance here in my boundaries, and it's an animal. When the animal dies, whatever is left over is not the same thing that was there before. ("Hylemorphic Animalism" in Phil Stud, 155, 2011, pp. 65-81)
An Objection
This strikes me as problematic. Suppose dying is a substantial change and that Peter and Paul die peacefully at the same instant in the same place. Peter and Paul cease to exist and two corpses C1 and C2 begin to exist. Suppose C1 is Peter's corpse and C2 is Paul's corpse. What accounts metaphysically for C1's being Peter's corpse and opposed to Paul's, and vice versa? What makes Peter's corpse Peter's and Paul's corpse Paul's?
Why should there be a problem? Dying is a substantial change, but it is not annihilation. (At the other end, being born is a substantial change but it is not exnihilation: no animal is born ex nihilo.) Since dying is not annihilation, a corpse comes to be when Peter dies. And since the change is substantial, not accidental, the substance Peter ceases to exist and a numerically different substance, C1, begins to exist. Now every change is a change in a substratum or subject. So what is the subject of the change when Peter dies? Answer: prime matter, materia prima. This is what all the scholastic manuals tell me.
But if prime matter underlies substantial change, and provides the continuity between Peter and his corpse, then, given that prime matter is wholly indeterminate and bare of all forms, substantial and accidental, the continuity that prime matter allows does not distinguish between the change from Peter to Peter's corpse and the change from Paul to Paul's corpse. The substratum of these two changes is the same, namely, prime matter. If so, what makes Peter's corpse Peter's and Paul's corpse Paul's? That's my problem.
This problem does not arise if dying is an accidental change. For then we can say that Peter's designated matter (materia signata quantitate) which is numerically distinct from Paul's continues in existence as Peter's corpse. We have an accidental change, a change from being alive to being dead in a particular parcel of designated matter.
Toner's Reply
Patrick Toner's reply is that designated, not prime, matter accounts for the different continuities. Peter's corpse is continuous with Peter because the same designated matter is present in Peter and his corpse, but a different parcel of designated matter is present in Paul and his corpse. The fact that the matter underlying the two changes is prime, however, does not prevent the matter from also being designated. Toner in effect rejects my assumption that the substratum of a substantial change cannot be a particular parcel of designated matter.
What I had gathered from the manuals (e.g. Feser's, p. 171 et passim) was that (i) materia prima is the subject of substantial change; (ii) materia secunda is the subject of accidental change; (iii) every change is either substantial or accidental; (iv) no change is both; (v) no change is such that its subject or substrate is both materia prima and materia secunda.
But if Toner is right, I am wrong about (v).
Toner draws on Joseph Bobik's commentary on De Ente et Essentia:
When we talk about quantified matter … we are not talking about anything other than the matter which is part of the intrinsic constitution of an individual composed substance, that matter which can also be described as prime, as designated, and as nondesignated… Thus, to talk about prime matter, quantified matter, nondesignated matter, and designated matter is to talk about the same thing, but to say four different things about it, to describe it in four different ways. To speak of quantified matter, or perhaps better of matter as quantified, is to speak of what the matters of all individual composed substances have in common, namely, that in their matters which accounts for the possibility of their matter's being divided from the matters of other individual substances; it is to speak of that which makes it possible for individual composed substances to have matter in common as part of their essence. Matter as designated presupposes, and adds to, matter as quantified; and what it adds is actual circumscription so as to be just so much. To say that matter is quantified is to say that it is three-dimensionally spread out, and nothing else. To say that matter is designated is to say that it is three-dimensionally spread out and circumscribed to be just so much, just so much as is in Jack or Paul or any given individual composed substance. (148, emphasis added)
Response to the Reply
The Bobik passage implies that some one thing can be described in two different ways, as designated matter and as prime matter. But then what is the one thing that can be described in these two ways? Presumably, it is a particular parcel of designated matter, the matter of precisely Peter, say, which is numerically distinct from the matter of precisely Paul. Materia signata is matter in the concrete, and prime matter would then be an abstraction from it and from every discrete parcel of designated matter.
If prime matter is but an abstraction, how can it serve as the real substratum of any such real change as is the dying of an animal? That is a real, concrete, change. If every change is a change in something, then the something must itself be real and concrete and particular. That's one problem.
A second is that if both substantial and accidental changes are changes in a concrete parcel of designated matter, then what becomes of the distinction between substantial and accidental changes? Can every change be viewed as one or the other? Is it just a matter of the same change being described in two different ways?
This requires further development and in any case it is just the beginning of the aporetics of prime matter, something to be pursued in subsequent entries.
Conclusion
Given the extreme difficulty of the notion of prime matter, a difficulty that transfers to the notion of substantial change, I don't see that the objection I raise above has yet been adequately answered.
Patrick Toner on Hylomorphic Animalism
Herewith, some comments on and questions about Patrick Toner's fascinating paper, "Hylemorphic Animalism" (Philos Stud, 2011, 155: 65-81).
Patrick Toner takes an animalist line on human persons. Animalism is the doctrine that each of us is identical to an animal organism. A bit more precisely, "Animalism involves two claims: (1) we are human persons and (2) human persons are identical with animals." (67)
Animalism
Let's consider the second claim. Toner endorses Eric Olson's 'thinking animal' argument for (2). Based on Toner's summary, I take the argument to go as follows. I am now sitting in a chair thinking a thought T. There is also now an animal sitting in this very chair and occupying the same space. Is the animal also thinking T? There are four possibilities.
a. I am identical to the animal occupying my chair, and the thinker of my thoughts is identical to this animal.
b. I am not identical to the animal occupying my chair, but I share the space with an animal that thinks all my thoughts.
c. I am not identical to the animal occupying my chair, but I share the space with a nonthinking animal.
d. There is no animal in my chair; hence I am not not identical to it.
Of the four possibilities, Toner considers (a) to be actual. "It's the least ugly of the choices. Indeed, it's positively common-sensical, compared with the other rather nutty options." (70)
I agree that (b) and (d) can be excluded right away. But I don't see that (c) is 'nutty' and I don't see that (a) is "positively common-sensical." Common sense has nothing to say about abstruse metaphysical topics such as this one.
The Corpse Objection to Animalism
On (a), the thinker of my thoughts is numerically identical to this living human organsm with which I am intimately associated. But If I am (identically) my body, then me and my body ought to have the same persistence conditions. But they don't: when I die I will cease to exist, but (most likely) a corpse will remain. Now if a = b, then there is no time t at which a exists but b does not exist, and vice versa. So if there are times when I do not exist but my body does exist, then I cannot be identical to my body. On (a), I will not survive death, but my body will: it will survive as a corpse. Therefore I am not identical to my body.
Toner's Response to the Corpse Objection
The Corpse Objection, in a nutshell, is that I cannot be identical to my animal body because it will survive me. My body exists now before my death and it will exist then after my death. It is the same body dead or alive. Toner's response is a flat denial of survival. My body will not survive me. Death is a substantial, as opposed to an accidental, change. When I die the animal body that I am will cease to exist and one or more new bodies will begin to exist. So it is not as if one bodily substance undergoes an accidental change, going from being alive to being dead; one bodily substance ceases to exist and one or more others begin to exist. The change is not alterational but existential. This implies that the body itself did not exist while the animal was alive. As Toner puts it:
Neither the body itself, nor any of its atomic parts, existed while the animal was alive. This just follows from the account of substance I've given, according to which substances have no substances as parts, — there is only one substance here in my boundaries, and it's an animal. When the animal dies, whatever is left over is not the same thing that was there before. (71)
Two Questions
1. One question is whether, assuming that I am just this living animal body, my dying is an accidental change or a substantial change. I will suggest that it is more plausible to think of it as an accidental change.
If my dying is an accidental change, then something that exists now in one form will exist post mortem in a different form. This something could be called the proximate matter of my body. This matter is organized in a certain way and its organs and various subsystems are functioning in such a way that the entire bodily system has the property of being alive. (For example, the lungs are oxygenating the blood, the heart is pumping the blood to the brain, the pathways to the brain are unobstructed, etc.) But then suppose I drown or have a massive heart attack or a massive stroke. The body then ceases to have the property of being alive. On this way of looking at things, one and the same body can exist in two states, alive and dead. There is diachronic continuity between the living and dead bodies, and that continuity is grounded in the proximate matter of the body.
If, on the other hand, my dying is a substantial change, and I am just this living body, then at death I cease to exist entirely, and what is left over, my corpse, is something entirely new, 'an addition to being' so to speak. I cease to exist, and a corpse comes to exist. But then the only diachronic continuity as between the live body and the corpse is prime (not proximate) matter.
But what makes the corpse that comes to exist my corpse? Suppose I am just a living animal and that I die at t1. A moment later, at t2, two corpses come into existence. Which one do you bury under the 'BV' tombstone? Which is the right one, and what makes it the right one? Or suppose Peter and I die at the same instant, in the same place, and that dying is a substantial change. Peter and I cease to exist and two corpses C1 and C2 come into existence. Which is my corpse and which is Peter's? Practically, there is no problem: we look different and our looking different and having different dimensions, etc. is due to our different proximate matter, matter that is the same under two different and successive forms.
What this suggests is that dying is an accidental change, not a substantial change. It is an accidental change in the proximate matter of a human body. But if so, then the Corpse Objection holds and animalism is untenable.
There is also the very serious problem that substantial change requires prime matter, and prime matter is a very questionable posit. But I won't pursue this topic at present.
2. My second main question concerns how animalism is compatible with such phenomena as the unity of consciousness and intentionality. On animalism I am just a living human animal. The thinker of my thoughts is this hairy critter occupying my blogging chair. Is it the whole of me that is the res cogitans? Or only a proper part of me? Presumably the latter. If an animal thinks, then presumably it thinks in virtue of its brain thinking.
The animalist thus seems committed to the claim that the res cogitans, that which thinks my thoughts, is a hunk of living intracranial meat. But it is not so easy to understand how meat could mean. What a marvellous metabasis eis allo genos whereby meat gives rise to meaning, understanding, intentionality! It is so marvellous that it is inconceivable. My thinkings are of or about this or that, and in some cases they are of or about items that do not exist. I can think about Venus the planet and Venus the goddess and I can think about Vulcan even though there is no such planet. How can a meat state possess that object-directedness we call intentionality? Brains states are physical states, and our understanding of physical states is from physics; but the conceptuality of physics offers us no way of understanding the intentionality of thought.
And then there is the unity of consciousness. Can animalism account for it? At Plato's Theaetetus 184c, Socrates puts the following question to Theaetetus: ". . . which is more correct — to say that we see or hear with the eyes and with the ears, or through the eyes and through the ears?" Theatetus obligingly responds with through rather than with. Socrates approves of this response:
Yes, my boy, for no one can suppose that in each of us, as in a sort of Trojan horse, there are perched a number of unconnected senses which do not all meet in some one nature, the mind, or whatever we please to call it, of which they are the instruments, and with which through them we perceive the objects of sense. (Emphasis added, tr. Benjamin Jowett)
The issue here is the unity of consciousness in the synthesis of a manifold of sensory data. Long before Kant, and long before Leibniz, Plato was well aware of the problem of the unity of consciousness. (It is not for nothing that A. N. Whitehead described Western philosophy as a series of footnotes to Plato.)
Sitting before a fire, I see the flames, feel the heat, smell the smoke, and hear the crackling of the logs. The sensory data are unified in one consciousness of a selfsame object. This unification does not take place in the eyes or in the ears or in the nostrils or in any other sense organ, and to say that it takes place in the brain is not a good answer. For the brain is a partite physical thing extended in space. If the unity of consciousness is identified with a portion of the brain, then the unity is destroyed. For no matter how small the portion of the brain, it has proper parts external to each other. Every portion of the brain, no matter how small, is a complex entity. But consciousness in the synthesis of a manifold is a simple unity. Hence the unity of consciousness cannot be understood along materialist lines.
Conclusion
I tentatively conclude that option (c) above — I am not identical to the animal occupying my chair, but I share the space with a nonthinking animal — is, if not preferable to Toner's preferred option, at least as good as it, and not at all "nutty.' The Corpse Objection to Animalism seems like a good one, and Toner's response to it is not compelling, involving as it does the idea that dying is a substantial change, a response that brings with it all the apories surrounding substance and prime matter. Finally, it is not clear to me how animalism can accommodate intentionality and the unity of consciousness.
But perhaps Professor Toner can help me understand this better.