{"id":8580,"date":"2013-08-02T18:28:25","date_gmt":"2013-08-02T18:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/08\/02\/trying-to-understand-ockham-on-supposita\/"},"modified":"2013-08-02T18:28:25","modified_gmt":"2013-08-02T18:28:25","slug":"trying-to-understand-ockham-on-supposita","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/08\/02\/trying-to-understand-ockham-on-supposita\/","title":{"rendered":"Trying to Understand Ockham on Supposita in Light of the Incarnation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am presently working through Marilyn McCord Adams, "Aristotelian Substance and Supposits" (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society<\/em>, supplementary volume 79, 2005, 15-72).  The Czech scholastics and sometime MavPhil<\/em> commenters Novak, Novotny, Vohanka, et al. have kindly invited me to read a paper at a conference on the Trinity in Prague this September and now I am under the gun to write something worth their time and attention.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Adams writes, p. 39, "(Ockham is willing to conclude that 'A human supposit can be assumed' is true, even though 'A human supposit is assumed' is contradictory; just as 'A white can be black' is true,  even though 'A white is black' is impossible.)"<\/span><\/p>\n

My present purpose is to make sense of this quotation. <\/span><\/p>\n

I give 'A white can be black' a de re<\/em> reading as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n

1. A white thing is (logically) possibly such that it is not white.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, here is a piece of white paper.  Heeding Mick Jagger's injunction, I can paint it black<\/a>.  But I wouldn't be able to do this if it were not logically possible for this thing that is actually white to be non-white. Although, necessarily, nothing white is non-white, the piece of paper is contingently white.<\/span><\/p>\n

I give 'A white is black' a de dicto<\/em> reading:<\/span><\/p>\n

2. It is not (logically) possible that a white thing be non-white.<\/span><\/p>\n

On these readings, both (1) and (2) come out true.  (1) is about a thing (res<\/em>) and ascribes a modal property to it; (2) is about a proposition (dictum<\/em>) and ascribes a modal property to it.<\/span><\/p>\n

I give 'A human supposit can be assumed' a de re<\/em> reading:<\/span><\/p>\n

3. A human supposit is (logically) possibly such that it is assumed.<\/span><\/p>\n

From the opening page of Adams' paper, I gather that a supposit is an Aristotelian primary (individual) substance.  So Socrates and Plato are human supposits, while a donkey is a supposit that is not human.  And from her gloss on Boethius, I gather that a person is a primary substance of a rational nature.  So Socrates and Plato are persons while a donkey is not. <\/span><\/p>\n

Now if God incarnate is one person in two natures, as Chalcedonian orthodoxy has it, then God cannot assume a man.  For a man is a supposit of a rational nature, hence a person.  If God were to assume a man, then God the Son — a person — would be assuming a second person.  But pace<\/em> Nestorious, there are not two natures and two persons in Christ, but one person in two natures.  So what is assumed in the Incarnation is not a supposit but a particularized human nature.  This is why 'A human supposit is assumed' is contradictory. That is, in de dicto<\/em> terms,<\/span><\/p>\n

4. It is (logically) impossible that a human supposit be assumed.<\/span><\/p>\n

(3) and (4) can both be true.  It is impossible that a human supposit be assumed, for it it were it wouldn't be a supposit; but something that is a human supposit is possibly such that it is assumed. But this has the strange consequence that human supposits are only contingently<\/em> supposits.  So Socrates is not essentially a supposit,  and if a supposit is a primary substance, the Socrates is not essentially a primary substance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus Adams ascribes to Ockham the view that "The property of being a supposit is not essential to any creatable\/created thing, because any creatable\/created thing whatever can exist wthout it." (p. 39)  So whatever is a supposit might not have been.  Or rather whatever is a supposit might not have been its own supposit: every supposit is possibly such as to have an 'alien supposit,' namely God.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is curious here is how very specific theological doctrines are allowed to drive the general ontology.<\/span> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am presently working through Marilyn McCord Adams, "Aristotelian Substance and Supposits" (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary volume 79, 2005, 15-72).  The Czech scholastics and sometime MavPhil commenters Novak, Novotny, Vohanka, et al. have kindly invited me to read a paper at a conference on the Trinity in Prague this September and now I … Continue reading “Trying to Understand Ockham on Supposita in Light of the Incarnation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[362,288],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scholasticism-new-and-old","category-trinity-and-incarnation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8580","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=8580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}