Study Notes of Bostock's Metaphysics Z1-3. Z1: The primary issue of Z1: is Aristotle thinking of primary substance, or of secondary substances, or being the substance of something (in particular, the substance of a primary substance)? The very first chapter of book Z is a notorious example of this problem. (44)
Issue: “We speak of X in many ways.”
Account #1 There is a single thing, X, for which we may have many words. (Ross)
Account #2 There is a single word, X, which does not mean any one thing. So here Aristotle’s claim is that the word “is” or the phrase “what is” has several meanings.
(Bostock) (45)
My question: Why should we accept Account #2? Bostock does not explain it.
Bostock offers two accounts for Z1:
Account A.
1. Being (i.e., existence) applies to all kinds of things, but (1) to primary substances in a primary way and (2) to all other things in a derivative way.
2. The substance that being applies to is basic and not further analyzable.
3. To say of any non-substance that it exists is to say that it is in some appropriate relation to a substance, which exists in the primary way.
2 1003b6-9 appears to sustain this doctrine. But no evidence shows that Aristotle espoused it.
Account B.
1. Being (i.e., existence) applies to all kinds of things. (1) It applies to “coincidental items,” which are compound, but there it simply means (a) that the one element of the compound belongs to the other, or (b) that both elements belong to some other, where in each case the “other” in question is a thing that has being in its own right. (2) It also applies to “items in their own right,” which are non-compound.
28a10-20
Issue: The phrase “what a thing is.”
Account #1 It is usually held that Aristotle very frequently employs the phrase “what a thing is” as a label for the category of substance (but, Account #2, this point has been questioned by Frede (1981)). The idiom is found as early as Topics I 103b23. Bostock defends the traditional view. Aristotle mainly has in mind are answers that give the species or genus of the subject, i.e., what he calls secondary substances, not primary substances. So it’s more on the predicates than on the particular things. (53)
Account A endorses “primary substances.” Account B: what a thing is “signifies substances,” because when we ask what a thing is we get an answer such as a man or a god: secondary substances. (54)
28a11 “Signifies,” according to Bostock, is a deliberatively vague translation.
My comment: Bostock deliberately puts a linguistic scheme, instead of an ontological scheme, on Zeta.
28a19 a narrow sense: Bostock uses affections to translate pathos, to show the contrast between what one does and what one suffers. But often in the Metaphysics pathos is used in a broader sense, “covering any property of a thing other than those properties that form part of its essence,” where Bostock translates it “attribute.”
28a20-31
Issue: what the hell underlies walking? primary substance? or secondary substance?
Aristotle offers two reasons why one might doubt that walking exists: (a) that it is not the case that walking is (by its nature) in its own right, and (b) that walking cannot be separated from substance.
Account #1 Both mean that walking exists only because there exist substances which walk.
Account #2 Bostock, in defending his Account B, maintains that Aristotle does not say that the substance (which is walking) is the same thing as the walking thing. On the contrary, he says the substance underlies the walking thing. See 28a25-27. (55)
My Question: what does the parenthesis modify?
Issue: Relation of the two different expressions, the man and the walking thing?
Account #1 The two expressions refer to the same object. Aristotelian Essentialism: the first describes that object by giving its essence, whereas the second describes it only by coincidental attribute.
Account #2 Bostock: there are at least three different kinds of entities (a) particular substances (e.g., men), (b) particular walking thing, and (c) walking itself. Bostock: (a) underlies (b).
Issue in Account #2: In what relation do (a) and (b) stand to (c)? Account A: (b) underlies (c), so then (a) underlies (c) by transitivity. Account B: particular substances (a) underlie particular walking things (b), so universal substances underlie universal walking.
28a31-b2
Issue: Are there four ways in which substance is primary, i.e. the three and “primary in being”? Or are there three ways each ways of being primary in being? (postponed)
(1) Priority in Time (28a33-34): no other predicate is separable (cf. a23-24), but only substance.
Issue: What the hell is separable?
Account#1 Aristotle means items in other categories cannot be separated from substances, whereas substances can be separated from items in other categories. So items in other categories cannot exist unless substances also exist. Therefore substances can exist without items in other categories existing. But the problem is that, for surely, if Socrates is to exist, then he must be of some definite color or so.
Account#2 Aristotle means “none of the other predicates are separable, but only substances.” So it is predicates in the category of substance, i.e. secondary substance, are being claimed to be separable. (cf. Patzig 1979) But this suggestion is not convincing, either, because many places, e.g. Z3 29a28, imply that only primary substances are separable.
(2) Priority in Definition (28a34-36)
Not until Z4 have the distinction between definition and formula not been made.
Issue: “the definition of substance” or “the definition of the appropriate substance”? Bostock: the first.
(3) Priority in Knowledge (28a36-b2)
Kinds of priority
(1) “Priority in generation” (1050a3) is standardly contrasted with “priority in nature” or sometimes “priority in time.” Yet neither of these two plays any part in Z1.
(2) Bostock reduces all into two kinds of priority.
(a) Priority in definition is said to be a variety of priority of knowledge in Delta11.
Issue: Does Delta 11 imply that priority in Knowledge is priority in perception, and thus the particular is said to be prior to the universal? Aristotle does not say so. But through the connection between priority in definition and priority in knowledge, priority in definition yields a priority that applies to our knowledge of universals, this may be contrasted with a priority that applies to our knowledge of particulars.
(b) Priority of separable existence. Priority in being/substance/nature: x is prior to y if x can exist without y existing. This is equated with the separability of X and called “priority in time” in Z1.
28b2-7
“What is being?” is simply “what is substance?” Is Aristotle asking “what things are substances?” or “what conditions must things satisfy in order to be substances” or “what is it to be the substance (i.e. essence) of a thing?
28b3
Issue: Does “always” imply the pessimistic prediction that no one will ever reach a satisfactory answer to “what is being?”
Patzig (1979) construes it as “always so far.”
Epilogue
Unfortunately Account B seems to go against the first sentence of Theta. (66-67)
Bostock concludes that “in his claim that substance has being in the primary way Aristotle is applying both Account A and Account B simultaneously.” (67-68)
Z2
28b8-15 The view that “substance seems most clearly to belong to bodies” might fairly be said to be Aristotle’s own view. The list of substances that he proceeds to give is almost exactly the same as the list of substances at De Caelo III, 298a29-32.
Z3
Four candidates for being “the substance of a thing”: (a) what being is (i.e. essence), (b) the universal, (c) the genus, and (d) what underlies.
(a) Z4-6, 10-11
(b) Z13-16
(c) Z3
(d) Z3
Z7-9 digression on “coming to be,” Z12 an editorial addition, Z17 a new start: none of these chapters are mentioned in the summaries at the end of Z11 and at the beginning of H1. This suggests a probable hypothesis that there was once a version of Z that did not include them.
Issue: Where the hell is the discussion of form?
We do not begin to hear very much about form until Z7-9. Yet, clearly Aristotle equates form and essence. So Z4-11 constitutes both the discussion of form promised at the end of Z3 and the discussion of essence implied by its opening at Z4.
Some aspects of Aristotle’s matter (72-73)
(a) Physical Works: Physics I, 7, in every change there is something that persists throughout the change, and some characteristic that it acquires or loses during the change. The word “form” and the word “matter” can cover all kinds of change. But Aristotle more usually restricts them to the case of substantial change.
(b) Logical Works: the word "form" is standardly rendered as species, in contrast to genus, and the verb “to underlie” is used primarily for the relation of subject to predicate. So “what underlies X” means “the subject of which Z is predicated.” But they can also mean form and matter.
(c) The ultimate matter thesis: The matter, e.g. bronze, is some mixture of the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire, which are come to be and cease to be out of one another. So, according to Bostock, there must be some further matter which underlies these changes. But a number of scholars do not think that Aristotle was committed to or did accept this thesis.
(d) There is nothing that matter is “in its own right,” i.e. that it has no essential properties.
28b33-36
Issue: Here the question appears to be “what is the substance of a thing?”
If so, the substances are just those things that are the substance of something-or-other. Bostock’s refutation: (a) a given thing may be said to have its own essence, its own genus, but it is very odd to speak of its universal; (b) the doctrine of the Categories is that what underlies is a substance, not that it is the substance of the thing that it underlies.
28b36-29a10
Issue: What underlies is that it is a subject of predicates and never a predicate. So what underlies is an ultimate subject.
This is precisely the definition of a “primary substance” that is given in the Categories (2a11-14), where Aristotle shows no awareness of the possibility of analyzing such primary substances as compounds of form in matter (but he does in the Physical Works). Bostock takes what the Metaphysics calls a compound of form and matter is the same thing as what the Categories had called a primary substance, e.g. a particular man. (Frede and Patzig hold a different view) (75)
So the issue should be reformulated as: in the Categories primary substance is an ultimate subject, but in the Metaphysics it is a compound of form in matter. Now what is the ultimate subject in the Metaphysics? the form? or the compound?
Account #1 Irwin (1988) suggests that we should understand the criterion for substancehood, i.e. “without predicating one thing of another” (Z4 30a10-11) as the “clearer version” of the subject criterion that Z3 desires at 29a10. Bostock: it’s wholly unreasonable, for the Z4 criterion is demanding internal simplicity, which is not at all the same as being a subject rather than a predicate.
Account #2 (Ross seems to accept this) Aristotle does not really mean to call form an ultimate subject; his thought is that it is a subject, though it is also a predicate, like the secondary substances of the Categories. But there are still some problems…
29a10-19
Issue: When all else is taken away, nothing apparent remains.
Account #1 Nothing at all remains (Schofield, 1972).
Account #2 Nothing perceptible remains (therefore matter does remain) (Ross?). But a difficulty with this interpretation, as Gill (1989) points out, is that Aristotle imagines us taking away not only the spatial dimensions of our subject and its other attributes, but also its capacities (potentiality). Surely it’s impossible to take away from any kind of matter its capacity to assume the appropriate form, while yet leaving it still matter of that same kind….
Account #3 (a) A genuine substance must be able to survive the loss of its non-substantial properties. So what remains is a genuine substance. (b) But with any supposed substance other than pure matter there will always be some non-substantial properties it cannot exist without. (c) Therefore, from (a) and (b), only pure matter will pass this test because it does not have any essential property. But there are still two problems of this account…
29a20-36
Issue: Substance is predicated of matter (29a23) (e.g. this matter is Socrates).
Account #1 It’s very commonly supposed that here by substance Aristotle means form. But this misses the point of the argument here: only matter is an ultimate subject.
Account #2 The “is” of “this matter is Socrates” is (a) not an ordinary “is” of predication, since the latter must be followed by a general term, but (b) nor is it the “is” of identity, since the same matter may persist while Socrates does not. Bostock calls this kind of “is” the “is” of constitution.
The distinction between predication and constitution may help us to distinguish between two senses of “to underlie.”
(a) Logical sense: a subject of predication is said to underlie its predicates. Any particular will qualify as such, since it is only universals that can be predicated.
(b) Physical sense: the matter of which a thing is made is said to underlie the thing so made. Only matter is an ultimate underlier.
29a26-33
But it’s impossible for matter to be substance because matter cannot be separable and cannot be “this.”
Issue: What exactly does Aristotle thinks to be impossible?
Account #1 Matter should be a substance (Owen, Burnyeat, Ackrill, Lear, Furth) But matter is affirmed to be a substance at Z10, 35a2.
Account #2 Matter should be the only substance (Kung, Irwin, Frede & Patzig, Lewis) But prime matter is evidently included as material substance at H4, 44a15-25, even though it is not a “this.”
Issue: Is this argument (29a26-33) simply incompatible with most of the rest of Z and H?
Too complicated to summarize the two possible reconciliations… Please see pp. 80-82
Separability 29a28
Issue: What does Aristotle mean by being separable?
Account #1 By this he means that it cannot occur “on its own,” but only in the form of one or another specific kind of stuff. Objection: it is not clear whether Aristotle would equally wish to say that a specific kind of stuff, say bronze, is “not separable,” on the ground that it cannot occur without some definite shape, even thought no particular shape is essential to it. This account may also lead to the consequence that no material substance can be separable.
Account #2 H1, 42a26-31…
Thisness 29a28
Issue: Does “a this” in the Metaphysics mean “a particular” as the Categories suggests (3b10-23)?
Usage #1 It is applied to a particular as opposed to a universal.
Usage #2 Perhaps because the only particulars that Aristotle recognizes are in the category of substance, he also uses “a this” simply as a label for that category as opposed to others.
Usage #3 It is applied to a form or essence: (a) sometimes the form is called a this in contrast to the privation; (b) more often the contrast is between form and matter; (c) occasionally it is the essence that is called a this as opposed to the coincidental attribute. (My comment: (c) is too Kripkean: an essential but barren property of an individual).
Account #1 “A this” is something definite and determinate.
Account #2 Analysis Posteriori I, 4, 73b7 (Bostock believes that this is the only occurrence of “a this” in the Logical Works that does not simply mean a particular): the demonstrative this introduces a subject of predication. It leads to the consequence that the expression “X” signifies “a this” (84). That is to say that it is essences which are thises. This also explains why Aristotle calls a form this (since the form and essence are commonly identified). But this account does not give us a single conception of thisness.
Account #3 (Bostock) There is no better way of introducing our subject than by an expression such as “this matter” (e.g. this bronze or this water). That is to say, matter is in fact just as much “a this” s form is.
To sum up, Aristotle considers that substances, which are the fundamental existents, should be (a) things that ultimately underlie, and (b) thises, and (c) separable.
Study Notes of Burnyeat's Map.
1. “For the aim of Aristotle’s procedure is to show that each of his hour starting points leads independently to the same conclusion: substantial being is form” (4-5).
2. “Within each of the four independent sections there is a definite movement from one level of discourse to another” (6). The first level of discourse is logical, and the second metaphysical.
3. “They indicate the goal of the inquiry begun in Z is to settle controversial questions about non-sensible being(s)” (13).
4. “Z’s central question is in the causal terms used at the end of E: What is the cause of a substantial being’s being in the primary way? What makes a substantial being a substantial being?” (14).
5. “But Z3 has moved on from question (a) to question (b). The suggestion now before us is that being a subject is constitutive of a substantial being” (15).
6. “Form and composite would seem to be substantial being more than matter is, not rather than matter” (16). (Notice Bostock: more than; Ross: rather than). “Both Aristotle and his opponents admit grades of substantial being” (16).
7. Burnyeat suggests not reading the discussion of essence as from the start a discussion of form. “Form, as the thing we are not yet familiar with, will be found at the end of Z4-6, not at the beginning. Even if the paragraph in Z4, that (some) essence is form is a conclusion to be arrived at, not a premise to set out from” (18).
8. “To be familiar with form as a principle of explanation in physics, the stud of the changing enmattered world of nature, is not yet to understand the being of form in the way that first philosophy aspires to do. Not until Z10-11 will we find an account of form in itself to set beside the account of matter in itself at Z3.1029a20-21. Not until H will the being of form be explained in terms of actuality.” (18)
