{"id":7920,"date":"2014-06-06T15:43:09","date_gmt":"2014-06-06T15:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/06\/06\/is-dying-an-accidental-or-a-substantial-change\/"},"modified":"2014-06-06T15:43:09","modified_gmt":"2014-06-06T15:43:09","slug":"is-dying-an-accidental-or-a-substantial-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/06\/06\/is-dying-an-accidental-or-a-substantial-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Dying an Accidental or a Substantial Change?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.
<\/span><\/p>\n

But there is another way to look at the situation.  Me and my body have the same persistence conditions.  My body will not<\/em> 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:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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<\/em>, 155, 2011, pp. 65-81)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

An Objection<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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?<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/em>: no animal is born ex nihilo<\/em>.)   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<\/em>.  This is what all the scholastic manuals tell me.
<\/span><\/p>\n

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.
<\/span><\/p>\n

This problem does not arise if dying is an accidental change. For then we can say that Peter's designated matter (materia signata quantitate<\/em>) 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.
<\/span><\/p>\n

Toner's Reply<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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.  <\/em>Toner in effect rejects my assumption that the substratum of a substantial change cannot be a particular parcel of designated matter. 
<\/span><\/p>\n

What I had gathered from the manuals (e.g. Feser's, p. 171 et passim<\/em>) was that (i) materia prima<\/em> is the subject of substantial change; (ii)  materia secunda<\/em> 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<\/em> and materia secunda<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

But if Toner is right, I am wrong about  (v).<\/span><\/p>\n

Toner draws on Joseph Bobik's commentary on De Ente et Essentia<\/em>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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.<\/strong> 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)
<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Response to the Reply<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/em> is matter in the concrete, and prime matter would then be an abstraction from it and from every discrete parcel of designated matter.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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?<\/span><\/p>\n

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.
<\/span><\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>Patrick Toner on Hylomorphic Animalism<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Some Concepts of Matter<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Coming into Being and Passing Away: Two Definitions of Chisholm Examined<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. … Continue reading “Is Dying an Accidental or a Substantial Change?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[184,362,204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-death-and-immortality","category-scholasticism-new-and-old","category-time-and-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7920\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}