Online research in philosophy

This book revives a neglected but important topic in philosophy: the nature of substance. The belief that there are individual substances, for example, material objects and persons, is at the core of our common-sense view of the world yet many metaphysicians deny the very coherence of the concept of substance. The authors develop a novel account of what an individual substance is in terms of independence from other beings. In the process many other important ontological categories are explored: property, event, space, time. The authors show why alternative theories of substance fail, and go on to defend the intelligibility (though not the existence) of interacting spiritual and material substances.

I argue for a strict identity interpretation of Spinoza's metaphysics. This interpretation is contrasted with two of leading interpretations of Spinoza on the relation between attribute and substance. In particular, the interpretations of Jonathan Bennett and Edwin Curley. I show that there are difficulties with both of these interpretations. In response I claim that the relation between attribute and substance in Spinoza is one of identity. Each attribute of a substance is in fact the essence of that substance. I argue that the essence of substance, for Spinoza, is identical to that substance. To explain why Spinoza claims that there is more than one attribute I appeal to Descartes' theory of distinctions. Attributes are only conceptually distinct from every other attributes as well as the one substance, thus each attribute refers to the same thing.

Primary substance for Aristotle is either the individual or form. These same two possibilities are the leading candidates for the source of unity in a substance.Thus, if we could determine what is responsible for the unity of a substance, we may well have located primary substance also. I consider the following possiblesources of the unity of form and matter in a substance:1) The unifier is a connector external to form and matter. (This connector may be itself a form, matter, or a relation that is neither formal nor material.)2) There is no need for a unifier because form and matter are simply conceptual ways of understanding a single, already-unified, concrete being.3) The unifier is an inherent aspect of form or matter.I proceed by a process of elimination and conclude that substantial form is both what unifies a substance and the better candidate for primary substance.

In the Categories Aristotle defined substance as that which is neither predicable of nor in another.1 In saying that a substance is not predicable of another, Aristotle meant to exclude genera and species from the category substance.2 A man is a substance but not man. In saying that a substance is not in another, Aristotle meant to exclude property particulars from the category. A man is a substance, not his color.3 The Categories treats substances as simples. Though a particular substance, Bucephalus the horse, has parts, it is nevertheless a single entity in the category substance and, hence, incomplex in the way a black thing or a running man are not.4 Black things and runners are complex because ..

Substance: Its Nature and Existence investigates the very nature and existence of individual substances, including both living things and inanimate objects. It provides an accessible introduction to the history and contemporary debates of this important and often complex issue. Starting with a critical survey of the main historical attempts by Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke and Hume to provide an analysis of substance, the authors present the view that a substance must satisfy an independence condition which could not be satisfied by an insubstantial entity. Throughout the book, the authors also consider problems for the notion of substance raised by the unity of the parts of organisms and explore the problem of how we can actually know what kinds of physical substance there are.

: Descartes maintained substance dualism, the thesis that no substance has both mental and material properties. His main argument for this thesis, the so-called separability argument from the Sixth Meditation (AT VII: 78) has long puzzled readers. In this paper I argue that Descartes’ independence conception of substance (which Descartes presents in article 51 of the Principles) is crucial for the success of the separability argument and that Descartes used this conception of substance to defend his argument for substance dualism from an important objection.

The categorial concepts of substance (thing) and substance (stuff) are described, and the conceptual relationships between things and their constitutive stuff delineated. The relationship between substance concepts, expressed by other count-nouns, and natural kind concepts is examined. Artefacts and their parts are argued to be substances, whereas parts of organisms are not. The confusions of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophers who invoked the concept of substance are adumbrated.

divinity in reference to substance or in some other way; and I judge that a path of inquiry should be taken from that place which is agreed to be the clear starting point of all affairs, that is from the very foundations of the catholic faith. So, if I should ask whether He who is called Father is a substance, the response would be that He is a substance. But if I should ask whether the Son is a substance, the response would be the same. And no one..

What makes a substance the same substance as an earlier substance is that its matter is the same, or obtained from the matter of the former substance by gradual replacement, while continuing to possess the essential properties which constitute its form. (Swinburne, pp. 318-319).

This article spells out the reasons for calling God a substance and argues that theism nevertheless does not require substance ontology. It is compatible with an alternative ontology which I call stuff ontology.