Flashcards
Substance
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- 1Persisting things: the basic objects of reference in language and thought. Self-standing thing; does not depend for its existence on anything else.x is a substance iff there is nothing such that y is not identical with x and x depends for its existence on y.
- 2'Aristotelian conception of substance' Something that is neither in anything else nor predicable of anything else. Something that is not 'in' things enjoys a certain kind self-standing/(ontologoical) autonomy.What is then left is genera e.g. horse, man
A primary substance should not be predicable of anything else. Something else could not be predicated with these. - 3Secondary substances are kinds or sorts of things. These are more fundamental.A particular concrete thing, e.g. Socrates, is the sort of thing that is other things and can be qualified by other things but is not itself true of other things.
Primary substances are particular things.
These make up the world (basic/fundamental consitutents of the world). - 4'What is it?' Questions When we ask this, the answer must bring us to some conclusion; answering 'tailor' does not. It needs to be taken as far as it can be.An answer that will do this will identify primary substances by determining which secondary substance it falls under, e.g. horse - daisy.
It will determine what kind of thing the substance is. - 5Particular substances belong to kinds/ secondary substances. To be a member of this is to have a certain nature/essence.1. Two substances can have the same nature/essence which makes them the same kind of thing.
2. In virtue of being the kind of thing it is, a particular thing will have characteristic properties and charcteristic behaviour.
The essential nature of the kind explains this. - 6The consequence of this is that having a shared nature will mean members of a kind share chaaracteristic properties and behaviour. The nature of a substance determines its boundaries as an individual.It can change only its non-essential properties so the essential nature of a substance determines what changes it can undergo.
An individual cannot change what kind of thing it is. - 7There is something about the nature of a substance that makes it the kind of substance that it is. Members of kinds persist through time and can undergo various changes during the course of their existence.What changes they can undergo is determined by their kind and this is fixed by their essential nature because it is this which determines the kind and other aspects of the substance itself.
- 8If you can answer a 'what is it' question, this commits you to the empirical nature of the thing itself. However, you may not know what the nature is. Yet we can track individuals of a kind without knowing the essential nature of the kind.For any given kind of a thing, there is a criterion of identity for things of that kind at a time and over time.
- 9A necessary condition for a sortal is that it provides a principle for counting individual instances.Cirteria of identity are empistemic and metaphysical. These tell us what it is for one thing to be the same as another thing. This partly explains what sort of thing something is.
- 10Someone with such a conception of a particular kind can single things of that kind out. This is because of the necessary condition in virtue of being able to cound individual things of that kind.Thus we can tell a particular thing at a particular time and can trace it through space and time.
- 11Locke and Real Species Locke supposed that if we observe a number of attributes that go together then we can form the idea of a kind of thing having just these attributes - nominal essence.Nominal essence:
Abstract idea that embodies a set of attributes that go together.
It embodies our criteria for the application of the kind name or sortal.
something is of that kind just in case it the attributes that make up the nomal essence. - 12We can suppose that there is an underlying structure, 'real essence' which recurs and explains observed attributes. This is unknowable. Locked believed this plays no fundamental role in explaining the division of things into kinds.Why?
1. Our use of the term 'water' cannot be determined by what is unknown to us.
2. Supposition of a real essence can determine no boundary to the species other than that determined by nominal essence. - 13The first claim is epistemic; even if things have an essential nature this is irrelevant to the meaning of kind terms.The second is metaphysical;
even if we could know the real essences of things these would not fix the boundaries of things. - 14However... the first claim is mistaken. What is unknown can be semantically relevant. We can have knowledge of substances without knowing what makes the substance they are. We can do this for as long as we recognise instances of the kind.Lockean conception of substances
Matter is composed of corpuscles.
Substances differ in the amount and arrangement of matter.
Sensible qualities are consequences of these features of matter and their effect on us.
Things can differ not in substance, but in structure. - 15- this would be the particular modification of their minute parts. What makes 2 things behave in the same way is that they resemble un underlying structures.Complex things have different arrangements of matter.
We group things togteher because they are similar.
We prgamatically determine substance grouping. - 16So... everything more or less resembles everything else (mutable point). Drawing boundaries is more or less drawing arbitrary distinctions. What sets the boundary of a class is the nominal essence.What fixes properties of species defines is the corpuscularian structure of individuals.
This grounds a things power to produce ideas in us.
Superficial similarities which ground nominal essences have underlying explanation; things that appear similar probably have a similar corpuscular structure. - 17The real essence is the structure that individual members of a species have in common in virtue of which they possess the properties embodied in nominal essence. The real essence is unknown but can be reasonably presumed to explain observable properties.Aristotelian essence is ontological (body focused) and Lockean epistemological (knowledge focused).
- 18For Locke, the boundaries only exist because we draw them; they do not exist in nature and reality could not provide them. It can provide only resemblances which draw no lines.The boundaries which we draw are arbitrary but reflect interests.
There could always be exceptions. - 19Individual things are indefinitely changeable. Can change kind by changing its internal structure if this then satisfies a different nominal essence. It does not destroy it.Gold and Cupellation Test
Locke: it would still be gold because it satisfies nominal essence. It is an example of the imperfection of our language.
There is a need for clarification and for refining of the nominal essence. - 20Substance is what we talk about when discussing observable properties belonging to one thing. (Underlying unity of properties assumed.) Some substraturm - wherein they do exist and from which they result. By concept of substance/thing we are referring to something unknown.Liebniz on Locke
Liebniz believed that Locke was claiming that we have ideas of qualities and we add to these an extra idea;
the idea of somethign these qualities inhere in, the thing that has the qualities. - 21If this is so, what is the nature of substance? No qualities in itself; it is what is leftover when we take away all the qualities of that thing. Yet, we cannot conceive of such a thing; scepticism about substance.This leads to Hume...
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- Metaphysics Flashcards on Substance, created by Karina De-Bourne on 13/05/2014.
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- Karina De-Bourne
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