On the Nature of Accidents: Objections and Replies

Lukas Novak comments and I respond.

Bill, what follows is what I consider the most important objection against your theory. It seems to me that in order to keep the basic meaning of "universal" and "particular" the following definitions must be assumed:

1. A universal is that which is (truly) predicable of many particular instances.  BV: I agree if 'many' means two or more.  I would add that a universal is a repeatable entity.  But I suspect Novak will not agree with my addition.  I suspect his view is that there are no universals in extramental reality.  Universals are concepts.  Hence I would expect him to balk at 'entity.'

2. X is an instance of a given universal U iff U is predicated of X.  BV: I would say 'predicable' instead of 'predicated.'  Predication is something we do in thought and with words.  A universal can have an instance whether or not any predication is taking place.

3. U1 is subordinate to U2 iff all instances of U1 are instances of U2. This is expressed in language in the form "Every U1 is an U2" – for example, "Every man is an animal".  BV: OK.

4. Every universal has at least some possible instances, unless it is intrinsically inconsistent.  Now whiteness and color are universals. By common sense, color is  superordinate to whiteness. So, every whiteness is a color. Peter's whiteness, on the other hand, is a particular. We must assume that Peter's whiteness is an instance of whiteness, and also of color – since whiteness and color are not intrinsically inconsistent and there are no more plausible candidates to [be] their instances than Peter's whiteness, Bob's blackness etc.  BV: So far, so good!

But here comes the problem. If Peter's whiteness contains whiteness, then Peter's color contains color as its constituent.   BV:  It is true that Peter is white, and it is true that if Peter is white, then he is colored.  But it doesn't follow that there is the accident Peter's coloredness.  Accidents are real (extramental) items.  Peter really exists and his whiteness really exists.  But there is not, in addition to Peter's whiteness, the accident Peter's coloredness. 

Argument 1: It is accidental that Peter is white (or pale) due perhaps to a deficiency of sunlight.  But it is not accidental that Peter is colored.  Peter is a concrete material particular, and necessarily, every such particular has some color or other.  Therefore, being colored is not an accident of Peter. Being colored is essential to Peter.

Argument 2:  The truth-maker of 'Peter is white' is Peter's being white.  But Peter's being white is also the truth-maker of 'Peter is colored.'  Therefore, there is no need to posit in reality, besides Peter's being white, Peter's being colored.

I therefore say that there is no such accident as Peter's being colored.  Consequently, the rest of Novak's reasoing is moot. 

You may perhaps say that Peter's whiteness also contains color because whiteness contains color, but certainly color does not contain whiteness in that case (else they would coincide), and therefore Peter's color does not contain whiteness.

BV: We have to be careful not to equivocate on 'contain.'  In one sense of 'contain,' whiteness contains color or coloredness.  We could call this conceptual inclusion:  whiteness includes coloredness as a part.  In a second sense of 'contain, ' if x is an ontological constituent of y, then y contains x.  Thus the accidental compound [Peter + whiteness]  contains the substance Peter and the accident whiteness, but does not contain them in the way whiteness contains color. 

Consequently, Peter's color is not an instance of whiteness. But this contradicts the fact that Peter's color just is Peter's whiteness, because Peter's whiteness is a color (by def. 3, assuming that whiteness is subordinate to color), and there is no other color in Peter than his whiteness (let us so stipulate).

Put very simply: if Peter's whiteness is just Peter+whiteness+NE+time, then Peter's color is just Peter+color+NE+time, but then Peter's whiteness is not Peter's color. But this is wrong since whiteness is subordinate to color and so any instance of whiteness must be identical to an instance of color.    

BV: Novak's argument could be put as follows:

a. If Peter's whiteness is a complex having among its constituents the universal whiteness, then Peter's coloredness is a complex having among its constituents  the universal coloredness.  

b. These are numerically distinct complexes.

Therefore

c. Peter's whiteness is not Peter's coloredness.

d. (c) is false.

Therefore

e. Peter's whiteness is not a complex.

By my lights, the argument is unsound because (a) is false as I already explained: there is no such complex as Peter's coloredness.

Related articles
Accidents of a Substance: Simple or Complex?
Constituent Ontology and the Problem of Change: Can Relational Ontology Do Better?
Substance and Accident: The Aporetics of Inherence

Substance and Accident: The Aporetics of Inherence

1.If substance S exists and accident A exists, it does not follow that A inheres in S.  An accident cannot exist without existing in some substance or other, but if A exists it does not follow that A exists in S.  If redness is an accident, it cannot exist except in some substance; but if all we know is that redness exists and that Tom exists, we cannot validly infer that Tom is red, i.e., that redness inheres in Tom.

2. So if A inheres in S, this inherence  is something in addition to the existence of S and the existence of A.  There is more to Tom's being red than Tom and redness.  We must distinguish three items: S, A, and the tie of inherence.  S and A are real (mind-independent) items.  Presumably the tie of inherence is as well.  Presumably we don't want to say that A inheres in S in virtue of a mental synthesis on our part.

3. My question: what is inherence?  What is the nature of this tie?  That the accident of a substance is tied to it, and indeed necessarily tied to it, is clear.  The nature, not the existence, of the tie is what is in question.

4. Inherence is not an external relation on pain of Bradley's regress. 

5. Inherence is not identity.  This was argued earlier.

6.  A is not a part of S.  This too was argued earlier.

7.  Is S a part of A?   For Brentano, an accident is a whole a proper part of which is the substance itself — but there is no other proper part in addition to the substance!  Every part of the accident is either the substance or a part of the substance.  This I find bizarre.  Suppose a chocolate bar is both brown and sticky.  What distinguishes the brownness accident from the stickiness accident if both have as sole proper part the chocolate bar?  (For a very clear exposition of Brentano's theory, see R. Chisholm, "Brentano's Theory of Substance and Accident" in his Brentano and Meinong Studies.)

8.  I made a similar suggestion, namely, that S is a part of A, except that I assayed accidents as akin to facts.  This has its own difficulties.

9. Here is Dr. Novak's scholastic suggestion:

I take the connexion between S and A to be that of a receptive potency and its corresponding act. S contains an intrinsic relation of "informability" to all its possible accidents, and A contains an intrinsic relation of informing toward S. Together these two constitute an accidental whole of which they are not just parts but complementary intrinsic causes: S is its material cause and A its formal cause. They are unified in jointly intrinsically co-causing the one accidental composite.

This implies that we must distinguish among three items: the substance (Peter, say), his accidents (being hot, being sunburned, being angry, being seated etc.) and various accidental wholes each composed of the substance and one accident. 

So it seems that Novak is committed to accidental compounds such as [Socrates + seatedness] where Socrates is the material cause of the compound and seatedness the formal cause.  Moreover, the substance has the potentiality to be informed in various ways, and each accident actualizes one such potentiality.

Recall that what we are trying to understand is accidental change.  And recall that I agree with Novak that we cannot achieve a satisfactory analysis in terms of just a concrete particular, universals, and an exemplification relation.  If Peter changes in respect of F-ness, and F-ness is a universal, then of course there are two times t and t* such that Peter exemplifies F-ness at t but does not exemplify F-ness at t*.  But this is not sufficient for real accidental change in or at Peter.  For the change is not relational but intrinsic to Peter. So, whether or not we need universals, we need a category of entities to help us explain real change.  As Novak appreciates, these items must be particulars, not universals.

What we have been arguing about is the exact nature of these particulars.  I suggested earlier that they are property-exemplifications.  Novak on the basis of the above quotation seems to be suggesting that they are accidental compounds.

Suppose Socrates goes from seated to standing to seated again.  In this case of accidental change we have one substance, three accidents, and three accidental compounds for a total of seven entities.  Why three accidents instead of two?  Because the second seatedness is numerically different from the first.  (Recall Locke's principle that nothing has two beginnings of existence.)  And because the second accident is numerically distinct from the first, the first and the third accidental compound are numerically distinct.

When Socrates stands up, [Socrates + seatedness] passes out of being and [Socrates + standingness] comes into being and stays in being until Socrates sits down again.  So these accidental compounds are rather ephemeral objects, unlike Socrates.

Perhaps they help us understand change.  But they raise their own questions.  Socrates and seated-Socrates are not identical.  Presumably they are accidentally the same.  Is accidental sameness the same as contingent identity?  What are the logical properties of accidental sameness?  Is an Ockham's Razor type objection appropriately brought against the positing of accidental compounds?

Related articles
Accidents of a Substance: Simple or Complex?
Constituent Ontology and the Problem of Change: Can Relational Ontology Do Better?
Bare Particulars and Lukáš Novák's Argument Against Them
More on the Status of Thomistic Common Natures

The Morality of Suicide

There is a well-informed discussion of the topic at Auster's place.  I have serious reservations about Lawrence Auster's brand of conservatism, reservations I may air later, but for now I want to say that I admire him for his courage in facing serious medical troubles and for soldiering on in the trenches of the blogosphere.  He courageously tackles topics many of us shy away from. I hope he pulls through and carries on.

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Am I a Raving Liberal? The Problem of Ideological Extremism
The Danger of Appeasing the Intolerant

Violent Chicago

I was born in Chicago in nineteen and forty one
I was born in Chicago in nineteen and forty one
Well my father told me, "Son, you had better get a gun."

Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Born in Chicago

The problem is not guns, but liberals and blacks.  See The Real Gun Violence Problem.

Chicago is living, or rather dying, proof that draconian gun laws are merely feel-good measures that do no good, but much evil.  See Chicago's Rising Murder Rate.

For more on the sheer stupidity of liberals, see George F. Will's The Price of Moral Grandstanding.

Related articles
The Hypocrisy of the HollyWeird Gun Grabbers

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Literary Allusions

Linda Ronstadt, 1967, Different Drum.  Cf. Henry David Thoreau: "“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.  Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Byrds, Turn, Turn, Turn, 1965.  Lyrics almost verbatim from the Book Of Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8.  Pete Seeger did it first.

Bob Dylan, 1965, Highway 61 Revisited.  Genesis 22.

Fever Tree, The Sun Also Rises.  A great song  by a great but forgotten '60s psychedelic  band. The title alludes to Hemingway's 1926 novel and to Ecclesiastes 1: 1-5:

1The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. 2Vanity of vanities, said the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. 3What profit has a man of all his labor which he takes under the sun? 4One generation passes away, and another generation comes: but the earth stays for ever. 5The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to his place where he arose. 6

Jaynettes, 1963, Sally Go Round the Roses.  Based on the nursery rhyme Ring a Ring o' Roses (British)or "Ring Around the Rosie" (Stateside).

Inez and Charlie Foxx, 1963, Mockingbird.  An R & B version of the eponymous nursery rhyme.

Serendipity Singers, 1964, Don't Let the Rain Come Down.  Based on ther nursery rhyme, There Was a Crooked Man

Exercise for the reader.  Identify the Biblical references in the following Dylan songs: The Times They Are a'Changin', All Along the Watchtower, When the Ship Comes In, The Gates of Eden. 

Accidents of a Substance: Simple or Complex?

Dr. Novak is invited to tell me which of the following propositions he accepts, which he rejects, and why:

0. I have reservations about an ontology in terms of substances and accidents, but anyone who adopts such an ontology needs to provide a detailed theory of accidents.  This post sketches a theory. It has roots in Aristotle, Brentano, Chisholm, Frank A. Lewis, and others who have written about accidental compounds or accidental unities. 

1. Accidents are particulars, not universals, where particulars, unlike universals, are defined in terms of unrepeatability or uninstantiability.

2. The accidents of a substance are properties of that substance.  Tom's redness, for example, is a property of him.  That there are properties is a datanic claim; that some of them are accidents is a theoretical claim. Accidental properties are those a thing need not have to exist.  I am using 'property' in a fairly noncommittal way.  Roughly, a property is a predicable entity.

3. It follows from (1) and (2) that some properties are particulars. 

4. A substance S and its accident A are both particulars.  S is a concrete particular while A is an abstract particular.  For example, Tom is a concrete particular; his redness is an abstract particular.  It is abstract because there is more to Tom than his being red.

5. Accidents are identity- and existence-dependent upon the substances of which they are the accidents.  An accident cannot be the accident it is, nor can it exist, except 'in' the very substance of which it is an accident.  Accidents are not merely dependent on substances; they are dependent on the very substances of which they are the accidents.  'In' is not to be taken spatially but as expressing ontological dependence.  If the being of substances is esse, the being of accidents is inesse.  These are two different modes of being.

6. It follows from (5) that accidents are non-transferrable both over time and across possible worlds.  For example, Peter's fear cannot migrate to Paul: it cannot somehow leave Peter and take up residence in Paul.  Suppose Peter and Paul are both cold to the same degree.  If coldness is an accident, then each has his own coldness.  The coldnesses are numerically distinct.  They cannot be exchanged in the way jackets can be exchanged.  Suppose Peter and Paul both own exactly similar jackets.  The two men can exchange jackets.  What they cannot do is exchange accidents such as the accident, being jacketed.  Each man has his own jacketedness.

Now for a modal point.  There is no possible world in which Peter's coldness exists but Peter does not.  Peter's coldness does not necessarily exist, but it is necessarily such that, if it does exist, then Peter exists.  And of course the accident cannot exist except by existing 'in' Peter.  So we can say that Peter's coldness is tied necessarily to Peter and to Peter alone: in every possible world in which Peter's coldness exists, Peter exists; and in no possible world does Peter's coldness inhere in anything distinct from Peter.  The same goes for Peter's jacketedness.  Peter's jacket, however, is not necessarily tied to Peter: it can exst without him just as he can exist without it.  Both are substances; both are logically capable of independent existence.

The modal point underins the temporal point.  Accidents cannot migrate over time because they are necessarily tied to the substances of which they are the accidents.

7.  It follows that the superficial linguistic similarity of 'Peter's jacket' and 'Peter's weight' masks a deep ontological difference: the first expression makes reference to two substances while the second makes reference to a substance and its accident.

8 If A is an accident of S, then A is not related to S by any external relation on pain of Bradley's regress.

9 If A is an accident of S, then A is not identical to S.  For if A were identical to S, then A would be an accident of itself.  This cannot be since 'x is an accident of y' is irreflexive.

10.  If A is an accident of S, then A cannot be an improper or proper part of S.  Not an improper part for then A would be identical to S.  Not a proper part of S because accidents depend on substances for their identity and existence.  No proper part of a whole, however, depends for its existence and identity on the whole: it is the other way around: wholes depend for their identity and existence on their parts.

11.  How then are we to understand the tie or connection between S and A?  This is the connection expressed when we say, for example, that Socrates is white.  It is an intimate connection but not as intimate as identity.  We need a tie that is is less intimate than identity but more intimate than a relation. 

We saw in #10 that an accident cannot be a part (ontological consituent) of its substance.  But what is to stop us from theorizing that an accident is a whole one of the proper parts of which is the substance?  This is not as crazy as it sounds.

12.  Let our example be the accidental predication, 'Socrates is seated.'  Start by giving this a reistic translation:  'Socrates is a seated thing.'  Take the referent of 'Socrates' to be the  substance, Socrates.  Take the referent of 'a seated thing' to be the accidental compound Socrates + seatedness.  This compound entity has two primary constituents, Socrates, and the property of being seated.  It has as a secondary constituent the tie designated by '+.'  Now read 'Socrates is a seated thing' as expressing, not the strict identity, but the accidental sameness of the two particulars Socrates and Socrates + seatedness.  Thus the 'is' in our original sentence is construed, not as expressing instantiation, or identity, but as expressing accidental sameness.   Accidental sameness ties the concrete particular Socrates to the abstract particular Socrates + seatedness.

13.  The accidental compound is an extralinguistic particular having four constituents:  a concrete particular, a nexus of exemplification, a universal, and a temporal index.  Thus we can think of it as the thin fact of Socrates' being seated.  'Thin' because not all of Socrates' properties are included in this fact.

14. My suggestion, then, is that accidents are thin facts.  To test this theory we need to see if thin facts have all the features of accidents.  Well, we have seen (#1) that accidents are particulars.  Thin facts are as well.  This is a case of what Armstrong calls the Victory of Particularity: a particular's exemplification of a universal is a particular.

Accidents are properties and so are thin facts: both are ways a substance is. Both are predicable entities. 'Socrates is seated' predicates something of something.  On the present theory it predicates an abstract particular of a concrete particular where the predicative tie is not the tie of instantiation (exemplification) but the tie of accidental sameness.

Accidents are abstract particulars, and so are thin facts.  They are abstract because they do not capture the whole reality or quiddity of the substance. 

Accidents depend on substances for their identity and existence.  The same is true of thin facts.  A fact is a whole of parts and depends for its identity and existence on its parts, including the substance. 

Accidents are non-transferrable.  The same holds for thin facts. 

Accidents are necessarily tied to the substances of which they are accidents.  The same goes for thin facts: the identity of a thin fact depends on its substance constituent.

An accident is not identical to its host substance.  The same is true of thin facts. Socrates' being seated is not identical to Socrates. 

An accident is not externally related to its substance.  The same is obviously truth of thin facts. 

Accidents are not parts of substances.  The same holds for thin facts. 

Finally, no accident has two beginnings of existence.  If Elliot is sober, then drunk, then sober again, his first sobriety is numerically distinct from his second: the first sobriety does not come into existence again when our man sobers up.  The same is true of thin facts.  Elliot's beng sober at t is distinct from Elliot's being sober at t*.

15.  On the above theory, an accident is a complex. It follows that an accident is not a trope, pace Dr. Novak.  Tropes are very strange animals.  A whiteness trope is an abstract particular that is also a property and is also ontologically simple.  An example is the particular redness of Tom the tomato.  I can pick out this trope using 'the redness of Tom and Tom alone' where the 'of' is a subjective genitive.  But note that  the 'of Tom and Tom alone' has no ontological correlate.  The trope, in itself, i.e., apart from our way of referring to it, is simple, not complex.  And yet it is necessarily tied to Tom. This, to my mind, makes no sense, as I explained in earlier posts.  So I reject tropes, and with them the identification of accidents with tropes.

My conclusion, then, is that IF — a big 'if' — talk of substances and accidents is ultimately tenable and philosophically fruitful, THEN accidents must be ontologically complex entities.  Anyone who endorses accidents is therefore a constituent ontologist. 

The Ultimate Hiccup Cure

A panacea that cures all your earthly ills in a manner most definitive.

Life in the fast lane often leads to a quick exit from life's freeway.  You may recall Terry Kath, guitarist for the band Chicago.  In 1978, while drunk, he shot himself in the head with a 'unloaded' gun.  At first he had been fooling with a .38 revolver.  Then he picked up a semi-automatic 9 mm pistol, removed the magazine, pointed it at his head, spoke his last words, "Don't worry, it isn't loaded," and pulled the trigger.  Unfortunately for his head, there was a round in the chamber.  Or that is one way the story goes. 

Such inadvertent exits are easily avoided by exceptionless observation of three rules:  Never point a gun at something you do not want to destroy.  Treat every gun as if   loaded, whether loaded or not.  Never mix alcohol and gunpowder.

Perhaps I should add a fourth: Never mix dummy rounds with live rounds. Variant: Dummies should stay clear of guns, loaded or unloaded, and ammo, live or dummy.