Aristotle's and Aquinas' ideas about Substance and Form.

Something about Aristotelean-Thomist (A-T) metaphysics bothers me, and Jon Garvey reminds me of it again in a recent post.
He says above “substance” has to do (in A-T thought) with form.

To me, this is an abuse of language and of all metaphysical intuition!
Normally, we say thing is 'substance in a form', or a thing is made out of some substance and is arranged in some form. So 'substance' and 'form' are combined (metaphysically) to make a particular thing. A substance can be arranged in many possible forms, and a given form may be made out of many possible substances. But, if we specify substance and form, then we specify a thing.

But, as Jon points out, this natural way of speaking is completely up-ended in A-T language. There 'substance' and 'form' are practically identified! They are of course completely allowed to define words how they like. But, if I were starting a new metaphysics suitable for science, that is NOT how I would proceed. It is completely bizarre!

In fact, Aristotle bears some responsibility for this. He talks of things made of matter, and then 'form' as 'everything else that makes a thing what it is'. But that leave unclear how causal powers of thing are supposed to exist: since they are not matter they must be form. This conflates (in a stupid way) the ideas of 'form' as structure and 'form as causal power'.

Then Aquinas bears further responsibility. He sees the above problem. He wants to attribute causal powers to substance (a good idea, I say). But, rather than fixing Aristotle's definition of 'form', he then conflates (in a stupid way) the ideas of 'form' and 'substance'. He has no option left. But that results in the idea of a 'substantial form'. That might be ok, except (as I point out just above), any clean new metaphysics would distinguish 'substance' and 'form'. A-T is not clean in that respect.

Essence is that which makes something what it is.
Substance is that out of which something is made.
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=812386

The format of Thomistic metaphysics then takes a somewhat dyadic structure of descending generality: (i) essence and existence, (ii) substance and accident, (iii) matter and form.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/aq-meta/ (much good Thomist presentation!)

In general, we can (must!) diverge from materialism. We can be guided by Aquinas’ insights, not to mention more general Christian insights. But that does not mean necessarily following the A-T system in all its glorious details. Instead, see my previous post for what a new kind of metaphysics could be that talks properly about substance and form.

What is Mental Substance?

There has been a debate, seemingly forever, about the nature of the mind, and what it is made of. We know that it must exist, have causal powers, have or produce consciousness, and be intimately interlinked with brain function at least most of the time.

There are very many arguments that tell us that the substance of the mind cannot be material. Mental function cannot be derived from physical causality and still depend on rationality and teleology, because physical processes are formulated not to depend on reasons or purposes. Minds must therefore be non-physical, if they are indeed to depend on rationality and purpose. But 'non-material' and 'non-physical' are negative characterizations, and do not tell us what minds actually are!

Descartes postulated that minds were 'essentially rational': that rationality was the essence of mind. Just as spatial extension was the essence of matter. However, this still does not tell us the substance of mind, or what the causal powers of minds are specifically. There obviously are causal connections between mind and body, but Descartes' characterization of 'minds as rationality' does not tell us what these are.

But now we can use the basis of ideas described in my recent posts "Mental dispositions and desires" and "Are propensities the substance of things". In the first-mentioned post, mental activity was taken to consist of the operation of persistent dispositions or desires or propensities. In the second-mentioned post, persistent propensities were taken to be the substance of which a thing would be formed.

Combining these, we conclude:

mental activity is the operation of mental substances such as the persistent mental dispositions.

This is in exact analogy to the way physical things are formed of physical propensities (like gravity, electromagnetism, etc), which makes them to be physical substances. Minds are made of persistent mental dispositions. Those dispositions are the underlying motivations, loves and desires which make the person behave the way they tend to do. This claim may be summarized as:

The mental substance is Love

More precisely: mental substances are the underlying persistent loves which cause mental activities. By 'persistent', I mean at least lasting in time from one event to the next event after some discrete non-zero time interval. Maybe persistent loves last longer, such as for a whole lifetime: that remains to be investigated.

In this account, we may take consciousness to be a feature of the operation of loves and dispositions, and not that minds is made out of consciousness as if it were a substance. I argue that consciousness cannot itself be substance, on the basis of the Aristotelean ‘metaphysical grammar’ we are following. Only something dispositional like love or power can be a substance.

There is much talk in 'consciousness studies' about how the appearances of things, qualia, are missing from current physical theories. Consciousness is then claimed to necessarily exist in addition to the physical. This last step, I suggest, is a category mistake. 'Consciousness' is an operation, not a substance. It does not 'exist' in the way substances exist, as William James long ago realized.

Love has causal powers, and can make changes in physical things (as we all know!). Love always motivates from some purpose. In humans, we think it ought to be possible to link love with rationality and foresight, in such way that purposes and reasons come to have causal powers in both the mental and then in the physical realms. But exactly how these things occur has yet to investigated. 

Note finally that, though I have following an Aristotelean logic, I have arrived a position almost of the opposite of that formulated by Thomas Aquinas. Above, I take minds to be essentially some mental substances, in some forms or structure. Aquinas, however, takes minds to be the forms of things that is conjoined with potency: material potency in the case of embodied creatures. So, is mind the substance, or is it the form? 

The resolution of this conflict will be explained later in more detail, and will depend on realizing that Aquinas, by the term 'form', refers to much more than shape or structure. In fact, he takes 'form' to refer to the general/deep causal principles that makes a thing what it is: its 'substantial form'. This, in my opinion, stretches the meaning of 'form' much too far, but is what he must do without the concept of substance I have been recently describing.

Are propensities the Substance of things?

Are propensities (powers, etc.) the right kind of thing to be substance?  Let us examine the proposal from the previous post. 

One might object that propensities do not appear to have enough being, as they appear instead always to point to an incipient state of becoming. Are they, as Armstrong (1997) claims, always packing but never arriving?  Would objects made of such substance as proposed here actually exist, or only potentially exist, or (perhaps) exist potentially?  Bird (2007) responds to this by pointing out that this objection assumes that powers or dispositions are not fully actual. Rather, he says, we should insist that powers are actual full-blooded features of objects and that what is merely potential are their manifestations. I would respond slightly differently: powers are the actual full-blooded substance of objects and are not merely the ‘features’ or ‘properties’ of objects.

Perhaps we wonder whether objects made of such substance are really ‘full-blooded’. Do such substantial objects persist as objects should?  How do they have being?  Can they be individuated properly?  Are they simple units, or can they be divided?  Could elementary particles be of such substances?  Could we be such objects and still feel our own reality?  Let us discuss some of these issues.

Do these new kinds of substance persist?  There is certainly no need for them to persist forever, but can they persist through accidental changes while maintaining their essential nature?  To answer the question about persistence, we note that dispositions are possessed even when they are not being manifested. A vase is still fragile when it is not breaking. The fragility persists for a finite duration: at least from one contact event until the next. What I am asserting is that the corresponding substance of the glass persists for at least exactly that same duration. In that duration, it may change its position, orientation or illumination. These are the variable accidental properties that vary while the underlying substance (fragility and the other dispositions) remain the same. Whether the underlying substance persists forever is the same question as whether the fragility (etc.) persists forever. That can be answered by looking at the future adventures of the vase in the world.[1] If the fragile glass ceases to exist, then the substance ends, perhaps by being changed into another kind of substance. That substantial objects might persist only for a finite time does not render them any less enduring or persistent objects during that time.

How do these substances have ‘being’?  The recent dispositional essentialists have taken all properties as ‘powers, and nothing but powers’, so we wonder if we can take all objects similarly. The claim was thought by Bird (2009) to include all properties, including all those previously thought categorical such as position, shape and structure. I do not hold such a strong view. Particular objects have both dispositional and categorical properties, once we understand how this is to be conceived. The dispositional properties are instantiated by the underlying dispositional substance, whereas the categorical properties are instantiated by the form or structure of that substance which makes up this specific object. In this way we have what Martin (1993) calls a ‘Janus-faced’ or ‘dual-aspect’ view, but of objects rather than of properties. We are thereby constructing a notion of substance wherein substantial objects legitimately have both dispositional and categorical aspects. We do not follow Jacobs (2011) in having ‘powerful qualities’ that have both dispositional and qualitative sides. Rather it is the substantial objects that have both. Now, some but not all properties are dispositional. We do not deny the semantic distinction between dispositional and categorical properties but rather reinforce it. Neither do we have a ‘neutral monism’ whereby the dispositional and categorical are ‘modes of presentation’, following Mumford (1998), of the same instantiated properties.

Many philosophers since Prior et al. (1982), and recently, Rives (2005) have argued that dispositions are ‘causally impotent’ following the argument that “if dispositions are distinct from their categorical bases, and their bases are efficacious, then the dispositions themselves are impotent.” Rives explicitly assumes that “the causal efficacy of categorical properties is not in question”. I disagree. I think categorical properties such as size, shape, structure are by themselves never causally efficacious. We saw that above. Such properties are only efficacious when they are shapes or structures of some substantial object, and this requires the participation of dispositional properties. A ‘base’ can never be a structure per se and hence never purely categorical.[2]

A summary of the new position is to say that specific objects are unions of form and power, of qualitative and dispositional aspects.[3] Objects are structures of propensity, namely forms of substance, in a good Aristotelian manner. Forms may be examined in great detail by form-al sciences such as mathematics and logic, but no natural changes can be generated by formal constructions. For example, contemporary attempts in physics to construct ‘it from bit’ (to derive existence from form) can only produce a static (timeless) universe without changes or causes of change. I would instead say that forms are the means by which dispositional powers operate, since the power-substances can only operate if they are arranged in some form or structure that allows for interaction and movement. Conversely, forms can only have an impact on the world if they are the forms of some propensity, as thereby a physical object in the world is in existence and has powers to influence others. This is why I said that objects in the world are required to be unions of form and power: they require powers to be in some form and require forms to be of some power. The resulting union has an existence that goes beyond either ingredient by itself.[4] In a natural object, the power and form are actually inseparable and only abstractly distinguishable. We can (and should) intellectually distinguish them—as recent philosophers have emphasized—but that does that mean that they can ever exist apart.

Can these substantial objects be individuated?  Can we identify individual objects made of such substance?  It certainly does not seem that we can divide powers or propensities themselves into parcels, with some for each individual object in the world. I can only see individuation proceeding via the specific forms or trope that the substance-stuff has in specific objects. That is, identifying individual objects, as forms of the underlying substance-stuff, can only proceed by identifying those particular forms used in each individual object. We may say that even the individual and specific existence of an object depends on the specific forms that inform the essential underlying powers/propensities of the substance.

Some scientists may be suspicious of the idea that there is a fundamental level where objects are composed of dispositions directly and do not have parts in substructures. Would that not be the end of science?  No, because science’s task is to first determine which is the fundamental level. Secondly, scientists try to exactly characterize and understand all those dispositions, both common and uncommon, in order to predict their exact operation. Any such claims are subject to empirical verification or revision.

Finally, we must consider the logical plausibility of this proposed identity. Grammatically, nouns in sentences are the agents of actions and refer to the bearer of causal influences. The object of an action must cooperate in the operation of those influences.[5] This is entirely consistent with the present claim that subjects and objects are themselves forms of propensity. It is the nature of powers and propensities to be causal influences, so any thing constructed from them will be the bearer of causal influences. We must agree, therefore, to a grammatical move of powers from being adjectives within predicates to being the substance of subjects and objects. Then we must envisage as nouns the forms of such powers and propensities. This seems to me to be quite feasible.

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[1] I would doubt that vases are eternal. I not believe that electrons or nuclei are necessarily eternal either.

[2]  Psillos (2006) also makes this mistake, when he argues that “fundamental properties [..] flow from some fundamental symmetries," for symmetries, as purely mathematical structures, can never physically ‘flow’, and can never produce physical objects. Rather, in our Aristotelian framework, they describe the properties of objects and, here, relations between those properties. It cannot be that “elementary particles are the irreducible representations (irreps) of a group," again because groups (or even their representations) have no causal powers.

[3]  Neither can exist by itself. No dispositions can exist except in a form, and no forms can exist except as forms of dispositions.

[4]  Ellis (2010) has recently written in support of this view of forms as being both categorical and necessary for the operation of powers.

[5] A hammer and a vase must have powers to interact with each other if fragility is to be manifested this way.

References

Armstrong, D. M. 1997. A world of states of affairs. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Bird, Alexander. 2007. Nature’s metaphysics: Laws and properties. Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press.

Bird, Alexander. 2009. Structural properties revisited. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press: Clarendon Press;.

Ellis, Brian D. 2010. Causal powers and categorical properties. New York: Routledge.

Jacobs, J.D. 2011. Powerful qualities, not pure powers. Monist, 94(1), 81–102.

Martin, C. 1993. The need for ontology - some choices. Philosophy, 68(266), 505–522.

Mumford, Stephen. 1998. Dispositions. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

Prior, E.W., Pargetter, R., and Jackson, F. 1982. 3 theses about dispositions. American Philosophical Quarterly, 19(3), 251–257.

Psillos, Stathis. 2006. What do powers do when they are not manifested?  Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 72(1), 137–156

Rives, B. 2005. Why dispositions are (still) distinct from their bases and causally impotent. American Philosophical Quarterly, 42(1), 19–31.