Aristotle and the Independence of Substances Laird Addis Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Sep., 1972), 107-111. Stable URL hitp:/flinks.jstor-org/sicisici=0031-8205% 28197209%2933%3A 1% 3C107%3AAATIOS%3E2.0,CO%3B2-5 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research is currently published by International Phenomenological Society Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hup:/www,jstororglabout/terms.hml. ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hupulwww.jstor-org/journals/ips hum ch copy of any part of'a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, ISTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @ jstor.org. hupulwww jstor.org/ Fei Jun 24 18:31:58 2005,DISCUSSION ARISTOTLE AND THE INDEPENDENCE OF SUBSTANCES Aristotle held that substances exist independently, attributes de- pendently. Thus the nominalistic character of Aristotelianism-Thom- ism, not only in the sense of denying the existence of the separated universals of the Platonic doctrine, but also in denying to properties the same status as the individuals which have them. In this short piece I wish only to ask what Aristotle may reasonably be taken to have meant or what any substance philosopher may reasonably be taken to mean in maintaining that substances exist independently and attributes dependently. All the interpretations that I know of seem to me to be deficient in one way or another and I shall try to explain why. I wish to begin with Aristotle however. There are several passages in Aristotle, especially in the Cate- gories and the Metaphysics, where he at least alludes to the matter of the independence of substance or, more often, to the dependence of what is predicable of substance. But there is one crucial passage in the Metaphysics, and the one Ross uses for his interpretation of the doctrine in question, upon which I shall rest my argument. [Now there are several senses in which a thing is sald to be fist; yet substance is fret in every sense — (1) im definition, (2) in order of Knowledge, 3) in ume. For (G) of the other categories none can exist independently, but only substance.* With the exception of Ross's, the following interpretations are not specifically of this text, but of the notion of the independence of sub- stance generally in Aristotle or in the Aristotelian-Thomistic philoso- phies. But I do not think it is unfair to take this passage as generally indicative of “the meaning” of the doctrine of the independence of substance. Gustav Bergmann, who believes the notion of independence to be "Aristotle, Metaphysics Book 2 1028 a31- frqm The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited by Richard MeKeon, Random House, 191. P. 783 2 See especialy Bergman's “Russell's Examination of Leibniz Examined,” Philoo- phy of Seience, 23,1956, reprinted in his Meaning and Existence, Ualversty of Wisconsin Press, 180; "Strawson’s Ontology.” The Journal of Philosophy, 87,1960, reprinted in his Logie’ and Reality, University of Wisconsin Press, 1964; and Part I of his Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong, University of Wisconsin Press, 1967. Many other remafks on the notion of Independence are to be found throughout Bergmann’s writings. 107108 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH crucial to the understanding and the execution of the ontological enterprise, has insisted that Aristotle was maintaining that a sub- stance can exist without any attributes whereas no attribute can exist without a substance in which to inhere? Of course the Aristotelian may, upon this interpretation, grant that in actuality no substances do exist without attributes. If so, the force of his doctrine (on Berg- man's interpretation) would rest on the meaning of the modal term. In any event, Bergmann himself rejects this view as false in his own Principle of Exemplification according to which individuals (for Berg- mann, momentary and unnatured) and properties are mutually de- pendent, so that no property can exist unexemplified and no individual, can exist without properties. W. D. Rost interprets the doctrine quite differently. According to him the independence of substances is not to be understood as an independence from properties at all but rather as one from other substances’ At the same time the dependence of attributes is to be understood as that of needing substances in which to inhere. Further- more, according to Ross, substance is to be understood in the passage quoted above not as Aristotelian matter nor even as matter and form but as matter, form and attributes, that is, as the ordinary object. ‘Thus on this interpretation the independence of substances becomes the independence of ordinary objects from each other. This would be almost the Humean doctrine that there is no logical or ontological absurdity in supposing than any given ordinary object, such as a chair, could exist even if there were no other ordinary objects. Wilfrid Sellars if I understand him correctly, interprets Aristotle as saying only that (primary) substance, unlike the other categories, is predicable of nothing. On this interpretation, the independence of substances lies in the fact that they inhere in nothing, the dependence 2 Such an interpretation may derive from the fact that Platonic universals are (or ‘would be) independent in thie sense and want to treat Aristotle's view simply as the “reverse” of Plato's. The world of forms (universals) can and did exist without the world of becoming (individuals) but not vice versa for Plato, Stl, for reasons to appear Shorly, I eannot believe that Bergmann’s interpretation is correct. “See W. D. Ross, Aristotle, Meridian Books, 1989, pp. 1621683 ‘Though I shal shortly reject this interpretation, there is of course such s notion ‘of the independence of substances in the tradition. G. E. Moore even belleved that, in ‘order to secure his realism, ordinary objects had to be substances; otherwise there ‘would be no ontological guarantee of their independence from selves. For analysis and tritcism of such a procedure, see Douglas Lewis, "Moore's Realism” in Moore end Role: Two Ontologsts by Laird Addis and Douglas Lewis, Martinus Nijbof, 196. For a dis- cussion of some other ontologealy relevant notions of independence, see E. B. allaire, "Existence, Independence and Universals,” Philosophical Review, 9, 198 See his two articles “Aristotle's Metaphysics: An Interpretation” and “Substance and Form in Aristotle" both in Willd Sellars” Philosophicu! Perspectives, Charles ©. ‘Thomas, 1987ARISTOTLE AND THE INDEPENDENCE OF SUBSTANCES 109 of attributes in the fact that they do and must inhere in something. While such a doctrine need not also maintain that substances can exist without properties, so read it is somewhat reminiscent of Frege's distinction between saturated and unsaturated expressions and the ontological conception the distinction represents. There is somehow the vague idea that the names of individuals (substances, momentary particulars or whatever) can “stand alone” whereas the names of properties intrinsically "point to” a subject place in which the name of some specific individual can be placed. This is, of course, the idea of propositional functions. Each of these three interpretations has its specific defect. (I pass over their virtues.) The defect of Bergmann’s interpretations is that it ascribes to Aristotle (and others) a view which seems to be patently absurd. Are we really to believe that Aristotle thought it to be a mere accident of the world that all hitherto observed substances have attributes? Are we to believe that Aristotle considered it to be a real possibility that tomorrow we might come across a substance with no attributes? These questions, I think, answer themselves. Ross's, view suffers from a different kind of defect. His interpretation does not make the independence of substances the complement of the dependence of attributes. This results from the fact that on his inter- pretation, we are to take Aristotle to mean by substance something including at least some of the other categories in a passage in which Aristotle is explaining the difference between substance and the other categories, The defect of Sellars’ interpretation is its emptiness. It seems to be saying only that substances are substances and not at tributes. Nothing seems to be added, according to this account, in saying that substances are independent, except perhaps that they have more reality. In any event, the three interpretations have a common, major and, I believe, fatal defect so far at least as the interpretation of the specific passage is concerned. None of these interpretations makes the independence of substances have anything special to do with time. Yet it is perfectly clear from the passage that Aristotle's notion of inde pendence has something very much to do with primacy in time. With that in mind it might be tempting to fall back on an interpretation something like Bergmann’s. It might seem that Aristotle is saying that a substance is first without attributes and later gets them, But the same objection can be made here as was originally made to Berg- ‘mann, for it would commit Aristotle to the absurdity that at some time at least there are or were substances with no attributes whatso- ever. So we must look for another interpretation. My view can be stated briefly: Aristotle is pointing out that for110 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH any attribute a given substance may have, the substance can and often does “outlive” it (or “prelive” it). So, for example, a tomato which is first green and then changes to red has “outlived” its greenness (and “prelived' its redness). The substance is independent ofits attributes then in virtue of its ability to change. Put yet another way, the sub- stance can and often does exist at a time when some of its attributes do not; but the converse is not true: No attribute can exist at a time when “its” substance fails to exist This doctrine will be true however only if a certain ontological account of attributes is true as well, If we have two tomatoes both of Which are red, there are certainly two substances on Aristotle's view (Gn the relevant sense of ‘substance’). How about the red(s) in the tomatoes? Is the red one entity inhering in two substances? Or are attributes particular to the substances which have them making the red in one substance a distinct entity from the red in another? It will easily be seen that only the latter view is compatible with the doc- trine which, in the paragraph above, I ascribed to Aristotle, For if he held that properties are entities which can literally be shared by more than one substance, then it would not be true that substances are any more independent than properties, True, neither can exist Without the other, but just as a substance might continue 10 exist without being green any more, so green—the non-Platonic universal— might be exemplified by other substances even at a time when the given substance does not exist at all. In short, if properties can be literally shared by different individuals and if individuals are sub- stances, ie., entities which persist through change, then both individ- uals and properties are independent in that they can be “in” diferent states of affairs at the same or at different times? (By a state of affairs I mean am individual's having a property.) It follows that if my inter- pretation of Aristotle's doctrine of the independence of substances and the dependence of attributes is correct, Aristotle must, to be con- sistent, deny that properties are universals. Aristotle was a nominalist in yet another sense, then, This indeed I believe to be true, for while Aristotle and his followers were prepared to talk about universals, literally properties are particular to the substances which have them for such philosophers. But I cannot argue that here; 1 can only em- "On view like Beremann’s in which individuals are momentary and properties non- Platonic universals, the properties are “more” independent in that they can be “in” diferent states of affairs occurring at the same time or at diferent times. AS T char- acterize "state of afairs” a momentary individual can be in more than one state of afairs at a time by having more than one property. But being momentary, it cannot be in diferent (or even the same) state(s) Of affairs at diferent timesARISTOTLE AND THE INDEPENDENCE OF SUBSTANCES m1 phasize that my interpretation fits with and complements the usual view that attributes for Aristotle are not even non-Platonic universals. The other advantages of my interpretation should be obvious. For one, it explains the text, as none of the other interpretations do, by making time and change essential to the view. For another, it is a view which is true, if individuals are substances and if properties are particular to “their” substances, as Aristotle apparently believed. And finally, it does explain how someone might conclude from this, even if mistakenly, that somehow substances have more reality than their attributes. LAIRD ADDIS. Unversity oF Iowa.