Journal of the History of Philosophy

The Inherence Pattern and Descartes' Ideas THOMAS M. LENNON THAT DESCARTES' PHILOSOPHYRETAINEDmany and fundamental elements from the Aristotelian-scholastie tradition, long an exegetical commonplace, is a view which has recently been widely questioned. My belief is that certainly a crucial part of this tradition, viz. what has been called "the inherence pattern," persists in Descartes. Here I wish to show that an important consistency in Descartes' generally ambiguous discussion of ideas can be found in terms of this pattern, to which Descartes--in spite of his rejection of the details of its scholastic version due both to problems about relativity of sense perception and to certain modifications he thought were dictated by his new physics--nonetheless adheres. Unfortunately, what has been meant by "the inherence pattern" has not always been made clear. I shall begin, then, by spelling out its basic features (the natural introduction to which will be via a discussion of substance) as well as the peculiar twist given them by Descartes. I. Of the several invariant features of substance as conceived in the inherence pattern, the following are the two most important. First, substances are individuals. This means that substance is an ontological kind whose function it is to individuate: that in virtue of which things (which may be qualitatively identical) are numerically distinct is a multiplicity of substances. Two dogs which, let us say, have all their non-relational properties in common, are two and not one because they are in this sense different substances. Also, substances are independent in a way in which qualities are not" substances can, ceteris paribus, exist without this or that quality, but all qualities must be qualities o[ some substance. The same brown dog can become white, but there is no brownness apart from brown things. According to the dictum laid down by Aristotle (versus separated universals) and subscribed to by all in the substance tradition, all qualities must be supported by, i.e. must inhere in, some substance. Thi's is the cash value of Descartes' head-on definition of substance as that which needs nothing other than itself in order to exist.1 As Descartes points out, this definition for him literally applies only to God; yet it distinguishes substance from quality in the sense that as opposed to qualities, substance needs only divine concurrence in order to exist. Second, substances are natured. This means that the kind of quality a substance can have is determ!ned by the kind of thing it is, or, what amounts to the same, the difference between 1 Principles, L li. The Philosophical Works o[ Descartes, Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross trans. (Cambridge University Press, 1931-1934), I, 239. [431 44 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY substances is not a bare, numerical difference. Aristotle reflects this conception of substance with his doctrine of substantial forms, in terms of which, ultimately, he grounds the distinction between essential and accidental predication. Of this, more shortly; first something must be said of the tie of predication between a substance and its qualities. If the individual is analysed in terms of an ontological kind other than that of its qualities, e.g. if the individual is something more than a collection of some or all of its qualities, then the tie between it and its qualifies must be sui generis. Yet in the case of the inherence pattern, the occurrence of the tie-cure-quality is at least in part a function of the individual insofar as it is natured. In Categories,2 individuals (primary substances) are held to be the ultimate subjects of predication as being neither "present in" nor "predictable of" anything else. The individual itself, however, is a composite of matter and (substantial) form, the latter making the individual the kind of thing it is, and specifying the accidental forms it can exemplify. (Intuitively, we can think of a substantial form as a determinable specifying a range of determinates.) Thus the tie is a tie not merely between a quality and an individual, but between a quality and an individual of a certain kind. The question then arises concerning the connexion between (primary) matter and substantial form. If Owens'3 reading of...