Citizendia
Your Ad Here

Substance theory, or substance attribute theory, is an ontological theory about objecthood, positing that a substance is distinct from its properties. In Philosophy, ontology (from the Greek, genitive: of being (part For other uses of Object see Object. In Philosophy, an object is a thing an Entity, or a Being. In modern Philosophy, Mathematics, and Logic, a property is an Attribute of an object; thus a red object is said to have the property

Substance is a core concept of ontology and metaphysics. Metaphysics is the branch of Philosophy investigating principles of reality transcending those of any particular science Indeed, philosophies may be divided into monist philosophies, and dualist or pluralist philosophies. Monism is the metaphysical and Theological view that all is one that all reality is subsumed under the most fundamental category of being or existence Dualism denotes a state of two parts The word's origin is the Latin duo, "two". Pluralism is the name of entirely unrelated positions in Metaphysics and Epistemology. Monistic views, often associated with immanence, hold that there is only one substance, sometimes called God or Being. Immanence, derived from the Latin in manere "to remain within" refers to philosophical and metaphysical theories of the divine as existing and acting within the mind God is the principal or sole Deity in Religions and other belief systems that worship one deity. Disambiguation For the Wigwam album see Being (album, for spiritual or religious beingness, see Ego (spirituality Dualist and pluralist views hold that two or more types of substances do exist, and that these can be placed in an ontological hierarchy. @@@ main@@@ - title Hierarchy@@@ keywords structure; sociology; information@@@ review@@@ - Platonism or Aristotelianism considers that there are various substances, while stoicism and Spinoza hold that there is only one substance. Platonism is the Philosophy of Plato or the name of other philosophical systems considered closely derived from it Aristotelianism is a tradition of Philosophy that takes its defining inspiration from the work of Aristotle. Stoicism, a school of Hellenistic philosophy, was founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early third century BC Baruch or Benedict de Spinoza (ברוך שפינוזה Bento de Espinosa Benedictus de Spinoza ( November 24, 1632 – February 21,

Contents

The concept of substance in Western philosophy

In the millennia-old Aristotelian tradition, as well as early modern traditions that follow it, substances are treated as having attributes and modes. Aristotelianism is a tradition of Philosophy that takes its defining inspiration from the work of Aristotle. 17th century philosophy in the Western world is generally regarded as being the start of Modern philosophy, and a departure from the medieval approach

This concept helps to explain, for instance, state transitions. Let us take a quantity of water and freeze it into ice. Substance theory maintains that there is a "substance" which is unchanged through this transition, which is both the liquid water and also the frozen ice. It maintains that the water is not replaced by the ice - it is the same "stuff," or substance. If this is true, then it must be the case that the wetness of water, the hardness of ice, are not essential to the underlying substance. (Essentially, matter does not disappear, it only changes form. )

The Aristotelian view of God considered God as both ontologically and causally prior to all other substance; others, including Spinoza, argued that God is the only substance. See also Aristotle The Aristotelian and Neo-Aristotelian views of God have been very influential in Western intellectual history Baruch or Benedict de Spinoza (ברוך שפינוזה Bento de Espinosa Benedictus de Spinoza ( November 24, 1632 – February 21, Substance, according to Spinoza, is one and indivisible, but has multiple modes; what we ordinarily call the natural world, together with all the individuals in it, is immanent in God: hence the famous phrase Deus sive Natura ("God, or Nature"). Immanence, derived from the Latin in manere "to remain within" refers to philosophical and metaphysical theories of the divine as existing and acting within the mind

Criticisms of the concept of substance

Friedrich Nietzsche and, after him, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze rejected the notion of "substance", and in the same movement the concept of subject. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15 1844 August 25 1900 ( was a nineteenth-century German philosopher and classical philologist Martin Heidegger ( September 26, 1889 &ndash May 26, 1976) (ˈmaɐ̯tiːn ˈhaɪ̯dɛgɐ was an influential German philosopher Michel Foucault ( (15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984 was a French philosopher, Historian, Intellectual, Critic and Sociologist. Gilles Deleuze ( (January 18 1925 &ndash November 4 1995 was a French philosopher of the late 20th century Not to be confused with the subiectum or Hypokeimenon in Aristotelianism For this reason, Althusser's "anti-humanism" and Foucault's statements were criticized, by Jürgen Habermas and others, for misunderstanding that this led to a fatalist conception of social determinism. Louis Pierre Althusser (Pronunciation altuˡseʁ ( October 16, 1918 – October 22, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. Jürgen Habermas (ˈjʏʁgən ˈhaːbɐmaːs born June 18, 1929 is a German Philosopher and Sociologist in the tradition of For Habermas, only a subjective form of liberty could be conceived, to the contrary of Deleuze who talks about "a life", as an impersonal and immanent form of liberty. Liberty, the freedom to act or believe without being stopped by unnecessary force Immanence, derived from the Latin in manere "to remain within" refers to philosophical and metaphysical theories of the divine as existing and acting within the mind

For Heidegger, Descartes means by "substance" that by which "we can understand nothing else than an entity which is in such a way that it need no other entity in order to be. " Therefore, only God is a substance as ens perfectissimus (most perfect being). Heidegger showed the inextricable relationship between the concept of substance and of subject, which explains why, instead of talking about "man" or "humankind", he speaks about the Dasein, which is not a simple subject, nor a substance. Heideggerian terminology Dasein is a German word famously used by Martin Heidegger in his Magnum opus Being [1]

Primitive concepts of substance theory

Two primitive concepts (i. e. , genuine notions that cannot be explained in terms of something else) in substance theory are the bare particular and the inherence relation.

Bare particular

In substance theory, a bare particular of an object is the element without which the object would not exist, that is, its substance, which exists independent from its properties, even if it is physically impossible for it to lack properties entirely. For other uses of Object see Object. In Philosophy, an object is a thing an Entity, or a Being. It is "bare" because it is considered without its properties and "particular" because it is not abstract. --> Abstraction is the process or result of generalization by reducing the information The properties that the substance has are said to inhere in the substance.

In substance theory of the mind, the objects are minds.

Inherence relation

Another primitive concept in substance theory is the inherence relation between a substance and its properties. Inherence refers to Empedocles' idea that the qualities of matter come from the relative proportions of each of the Four elements For example, in the sentence, "The apple is red," substance theory says that red inheres in the apple. Substance theory considers to be clear the meaning of the apple having the property of redness or the property of being juicy, and that a property's inherence in a substance is similar to, but not identical with, being part of the substance. Thus, Aristotle wrote:

"By being 'present in a subject' I do not mean present as parts are present in a whole, but being incapable of existence apart from the said subject. " (The Categories 1a 24-26)

The inverse relation is participation. Categories ( Lat Categoriae, Greek Κατηγορίαι Katēgoriai) is a text from Aristotle 's Organon that In Philosophy participation is the Inverse of Inherence. Accidents are said to inhere in substance. Thus in the example above, just as red inheres in the apple, so the apple participates in red.

Arguments supporting the theory

Two common arguments supporting substance theory are the argument from grammar and the argument from conception. In Logic, an argument is a Set of one or more Declarative sentences (or "propositions") known as the Premises along

Argument from grammar

The argument from grammar uses traditional grammar to support substance theory. In Linguistics, "traditional grammar" is a cover name for the collection of concepts and ideas about the structure of language that Western societies have received For example, the sentence, "Snow is white," contains a subject, "snow", and the assertion that the subject is white. The argument holds that it makes no grammatical sense to speak of "whiteness" disembodied, without snow or some other subject that is white. That is, the only way to make a meaningful claim is to speak of a subject and to predicate various properties of it. Substance theory calls this subject of predication a substance. Thus, in order to make claims about physical objects, one must refer to substances, which must exist in order for those claims to be meaningful.

Many ontologies, including bundle theory, reject the argument from grammar on the basis that a grammatical subject does not necessarily refer to a metaphysical subject. Bundle theory, originated by the 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume, is the ontological theory about objecthood in which an object consists only Bundle theory, for example, maintains that the grammatical subject of statement refers to its properties. For example, a bundle theorist understands the grammatical subject of the sentence, "Snow is white", as a referent to a bundle of properties, including perhaps the containing of ice crystals, being cold, and being a few feet deep. To the bundle theorist, the sentence then modifies that bundle of properties to include the property of being white. The bundle theorist, then, maintains that one can make meaningful statements about bodies without referring to substances that lack properties.

Argument from conception

Another argument for the substance theory is the argument from conception. The argument claims that in order to conceive of an object's properties, like the redness of an apple, one must conceive of the object that has those properties. According to the argument, one cannot conceive of redness, or any other property, distinct from the thing that has that property. The thing that has the property, the argument maintains, is a substance. The argument from conception holds that properties (e. g. redness or being four inches wide) are inconceivable by themselves and therefore it is always a substance that has the properties. Thus, it asserts, substances exist.

A criticism of the argument from conception is that properties' being of substances does not follow from inability to think of isolated properties. The bundle theorist, for example, says that properties need only be associated with a bundle of other properties, which bundle is called an object. The critic maintains that the inability for an individual property to exist in isolation does not imply that substances exist. Instead, he argues, bodies may be bundles of properties, and an individual property may simply be unable to exist separately from such a bundle.

Bundle theory

In direct opposition to substance theory is bundle theory' whose most basic premise is that all concrete particulars are merely constructions or 'bundles' of attributes, or qualitive properties:

Necessarily, for any concrete entity, a, if for any entity, b, b is a constituent of a, then b is an attribute.

The bundle theorist's principal objections to substance theory concern the bare particulars of a substance, which substance theory considers independently of the substance's properties. Bundle theory, originated by the 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume, is the ontological theory about objecthood in which an object consists only Substance theory, or substance attribute theory, is an ontological theory about objecthood, positing that a substance is distinct from its The bundle theorist objects to the notion of a thing with no properties, claiming that one cannot conceive of such a thing and citing John Locke, who described a substance as "a something, I know not what. " To the critic, as soon as one has any notion of a substance in mind, a property accompanies that notion. That is, to the critic it is not only physically impossible to encounter a bare particular without properties, but the very notion of a thing without properties is so strange that he cannot even form such a notion.

Indiscernibility

The indiscernibility argument from the substance theorist targets those bundle theorists who are also metaphysical realists. In Mathematical logic, indiscernibles are objects which cannot be distinguished by any property or relation defined by a formula. Metaphysical realism uses repeatable entities known as universals exemplified by concrete particulars to explain the phenomenon of attribute agreement. Substance theorists then say that bundle theory and metaphysical realism can only coexist by introducing an identity of indiscernibles creed, which substance theorists suggest is incoherent. The identity of indiscernibles is an ontological principle which states that two or more objects or entities are identical (are one and the same entity The identity of indiscernibles says that any concrete particular that is numerically different from another must have its own qualitive properties, or attributes.

Since bundle theory states that all concrete particulars are merely constructions or 'bundles' of attributes, or qualitive properties, the substance theorist's indiscernibility argument claims that the ability to recognize numerically different concrete particulars, such as concrete objects, requires those particulars to have discernible qualitative differences in their attributes and that the metaphysical realist who is also a bundle theorist must therefore concede to the existence of 'discernible (numerically different) concrete particulars', the 'identity of indiscernibles', and a 'principle of constituent identity'.

Discernible concrete particulars

Necessarily, for any complex objects, a and b, if for any entity, c, c is a constituent of a if and only if c is a constituent of b, then a is numerically identical with b.

The indiscernibility argument points out that if bundle theory and discernible concrete particulars theory explain the relationship between attributes, then the identity of indiscernibles theory must also be true:

Identity of indiscernibles

Necessarily, for any concrete objects,a and b, if for any attribute, Φ, Φ is an attribute of a if and only if Φ is an attribute of b, then a is numerically identical with b.

The indiscernibles argument then asserts that the identity of indiscernibles is false. For example, two different pieces of printer paper can be side by side, numerically different from each other. However, the argument says, all of their qualitive properties can be the same (e. g. both can be white, rectangular-shaped, 9 x 11 inches. . . ). Thus, the argument claims, bundle theory and metaphysical realism cannot both be correct.

However, bundle theory combined with trope theory (as opposed to metaphysical realism) is immune to the indiscernibles argument. The immunity stems from the fact that each trope (attribute) can only be held by one concrete particular, thus qualitive indiscernible objects can exist while being numerically identical and the identity of indiscernibles therefore does not hold.

Stoicism

The Stoics rejected the idea that incorporeal beings inhere in matter, as taught by Socrates and Aristotle. Stoicism, a school of Hellenistic philosophy, was founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early third century BC SOCRATES is the European Community action programme in the field of Education. They believed that all being is corporeal. Matter is commonly defined as being anything that has mass and that takes up space. Thus they developed a scheme of categories different from Aristotle's based on the ideas of Anaxagoras and Timaeus. The term Stoic Categories refers to Stoic ideas regarding Categories: the most fundamental classes of being for all things Categories ( Lat Categoriae, Greek Κατηγορίαι Katēgoriai) is a text from Aristotle 's Organon that Anaxagoras ( Greek: Ἀναξαγόρας c 500 BC &ndash 428 BC was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher famous for introducing the Cosmological Timaeus ( Greek: Τίμαιος, Timaios) is a theoretical treatise of Plato in the form of a Socratic dialogue, written

See also

External links

Bundle theory, originated by the 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume, is the ontological theory about objecthood in which an object consists only The term Stoic Categories refers to Stoic ideas regarding Categories: the most fundamental classes of being for all things Dualism denotes a state of two parts The word's origin is the Latin duo, "two". In Philosophy, hyle (ύλη (ˈhaɪli refers to matter or stuff Inherence refers to Empedocles' idea that the qualities of matter come from the relative proportions of each of the Four elements The Philosophy of materialism holds that the only thing that can be truly proven to exist is Matter, and is considered a form of Physicalism. Metaphysics is the branch of Philosophy investigating principles of reality transcending those of any particular science Monism is the metaphysical and Theological view that all is one that all reality is subsumed under the most fundamental category of being or existence In Philosophy, ontology (from the Greek, genitive: of being (part The term " Trope " is both a term which denotes figurative and metaphorical language and one which has been used in various technical senses In Metaphysics, a universal is what particular things have in common namely characteristics or qualities This article focuses on the historical models of the atom For a history of the study of how atoms combine to form molecules see History of the molecule.
© 2009 citizendia.org; parts available under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License, from http://en.wikipedia.org
 Dapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic