PHL 232 tutorial notes (week 2) Daniel Walsh Email: danielwalshphilosophy@gmail.com Website: http://danielwalshphilosophy.blogspot.

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Some notes from the SEP article Substance Whats the point? Why do we care about this stuff? Here, I think are the salient ideas from the article in incomplete point-form. 1. Aristotle on substance a. A substance is a this such. i. The story is top down. ii. The form is the principle in virtue of which the substance is such (a dog). iii. The form likewise is the principle in virtue of which the matter that the substance is made of is such (flesh and blood). iv. The matter is not the substance. Its what the substance is made of. v. Neither is the composite the substance. vi. Rather, Aristotle says that the form is the substance. vii. But isnt the form a universal? And wouldnt that make all dogs the same substance? viii. One interpretation: The substance is the form individualized by the matter (the instance of the form). The informed matter is the principle of individuation. b. What explains the behaviror of substances? i. Again, the story is top down. ii. The behavior of the micro is explained in terms of the the macro. iii. Substances have natural tendencies. The acorn strives to become an oak tree. This is due to the form. iv. Questions: 1. Is the presence of the substantial form nothing other then the presence of the constitutive properties? 2. Is the presence of the form a consequence of the presence of the properties or is the presence of the form responsible for the presence of the properties? 3. If the latter, what is the form other than the properties? v. Related:

1. Do objects behave as they do because of their lower-level constitution (basic physical properties plus laws) or do they behave as they do because of their higher-level organization (the form)? vi. The traditional interpretation has been the latter. This view was rejected by the 17th century mechanists who believed that the behavior of bodies is entirely explicable in terms of the micro constitution and mechanistic laws. vii. Mechanists: The behavior of the macro is a consequence of the micro. 2. Locke on substance a. Locke seemed to think that reason demands that there be a substrate underlying the properties and things. b. But the substrate is characterless and cannot be known. c. Aristotles substantial forms are rejected. d. There is just the thing and its properties. (bottom up explanation) e. The ideas of particular sorts (species) of substances he calls sortals. f. We cannot access the real essences of things. g. We categorize things based on their observable properties and attribute to them essences. These he calls nominal essences. We assume that they correspond to real essences of things. h. This view is in some ways realist. i. The properties by which the sortals are defined are real. i. In other ways its conventionalist. i. There is nothing like a substantial form. Sortals are formed by the mind in light of the observed properties. There is likeness to be sure but the boundaries of the species are drawn in the mind. 3. Hume and Kant on Substance a. We are forced by the mind to think theres are unifying principles underlying changes. b. This is true in the case of causality. c. It is true also in the case of substance. i. We cannot have knowledge of matters of fact beyond what is given in sense experience. ii. We experience only event A at t and then event B at t+n. We do not experience As causing B. iii. We are however forced by habit formed from constant conjunction to suppose that the one metaphysically necessitates the other. d. Hume either doubts that there is causation or reduces causation just to constant conjunction. e. Likewise we do not observe underlying substance. We take objects to undergo change. But what we perceie is just bundle of properties A at t and bundle of properties B at t +

n. We are forced by the mind to think that there is a unity underlying the change (an underlying substance). f. On one understanding Hume simply doubts that there is causality and substance. On another he denies their existence outright. g. A development on this has been to reduce the reduces the former to constant conjunction and the latter to bundles of properties. h. A development on the Humean approach is to reduce the concept just to what is given directly in experience: Causality just is constant conjunction. A substance just is a bundle of properties. i. Kant: Only by imposing on the world concepts such as substance and causality are we capable of intelligible experience. Substance are thus essential, but the necessity lies not in the world but in the framework we cannot help but impose on it. 4. What distinguishes substances from other categories such as properties and events? a. A property instance cannot exist apart from the substance of which its a property. But the substance can exist apart from the property instance. There is thus an asymetry. b. This does not seem to distinguish substances from events, for some property instances belong to events and the same assymetry applies. c. Here is a proposal: The temporal parts of events are themselves events. The temporal parts (temporal phases in the existence) of substances are not themselves substances. An object is fully present in all phases of its existence. An event is not.