Michael J. Loux

Aristotle on the Transcendentals

n this paper, I want to examine two claims found in Aristotles Metaphysics: (A) the claim that notions like being and unity do not constitute genera and (B) the claim that such notions are not univocally predicable of all things. I want, in particular, to consider the view (expressed by Porphyry, William of Ockham, and J. L. Ackrill) that (A) entails (B). I shall argue that the alleged entailment cannot hold since while (A) is true, (B) is false.

The Bundle Theory

The first objection, we have seen, insists that since he identifies substances with the properties associated with them, the bundle theorist is committed to the view that substances are necessary beings. The claim here is that since the bundle theorist takes all of the constituents of ordinary objects to be necessary beings, he is forced to construe the wholes which they comprise as necessary. Now, when it is expressed in these terms, it becomes clear that the first objection involves the fallacy of composition, the fallacy of assuming that if each object entering into the constitution of a complex exhibits a certain property, the resulting complex must exhibit that property as well. But while the argument underlying this objection may be fallacious, there clearly are ways of parsing the “bundling” metaphor at work in traditional formulations of the view which have just the consequences the first objection reads into the bundle theory. If, for example, the bundle theorist tells us that an ordinary object is a bundle of properties in the sense that it is to be identified with the set of properties we associate with it, then it seems plausible to suppose that his account forces us to construe substances as necessary existents. It is unclear whether all sets are necessary beings; there are genuine grounds for doubting whether a set at least one of whose members is a contingent being is itself a necessary being. However, where a set is composed exclusively of necessary beings, it is plausible to think that the set itself is necessary.

Abstract Reference and Universals

The upshot of the previous three chapters is that the realist cannot establish the existence of universals merely by an appeal to the phenomena of predication and resemblance. Of the traditional approaches to universals, then, we are left with that based on the phenomenon of abstract reference. If the realist is to convince us that we should embrace the ontological framework he recommends, he will have to base his case on the claim that the truth of sentences which appear to involve devices for referring to universals actually presupposes the existence of those universals. Our discussion so far suggests that the most plausible sentences to examine here are sentences like ‘Triangularity is a shape’ and ‘Red is a color’ which incorporate what have been called abstract singular terms; but before we confront the issue of the referential role of abstract terms, we ought to consider an argument for the existence of universals which is found in the later writings of W. V. Quine.

Predication and Universals

The contention that the phenomenon of predication commits us to a realistic ontology has a long and distinguished history. Typically, the contention is expressed in the claim that predicate-expressions must be construed as standing in some referential relation to universals. While the view is suggested in Plato’s writings, it receives its first explicit formulation in Aristotle’s De Interpretatione where after telling us that a predicate-expression is “a sign of something said of something else,”1 Aristotle defines the universal as “that which is of such a nature as to be predicated of many objects.”2 Medieval Aristotelians generally accepted Aristotle’s contention that predicates are referentially linked with universals; and in more recent times, we find Frege endorsing the view as well. Frege tells us that concepts are the referents of predicate-expressions, and he identifies concepts with the properties of objects.3 Russell also echoes the traditional theme that predicates refer to universals when he tells us that “substantives, adjectives, prepositions, and verbs,” the expressions which serve as predicate-terms, “stand for universals;”4 and in the past few decades we find philosophers as different as Gustav Bergmann and P. F. Strawson following Russell here. Thus, Bergmann tells us that primitive predicates name universals, so that whoever “admits a single primitive predicate admits properties among the building-stones of his world;”5 and Strawson, invoking a rather different terminology, claims that the use of a predicate-expression within the context of a subject-predicate sentence has the effect of “introducing” a universal “into discourse.”6

Towards a Realistic Ontology

The argument of the previous chapter is disarmingly straightforward. I began the argument with the reflection that expressions like ‘wisdom’, ‘triangularity’ and ‘redness’ occur in true sentences. As they occur in such sentences, I argued, they appear to be functioning as singular terms referring to universals. Then, I examined the various accounts of abstract reference provided by the nominalist and extreme nominalist. Finding none of those accounts satisfactory, I concluded that it is plausible to assume that abstract singular terms play just the roles they appear to be playing. But if they are playing those roles, then the truth of the sentences into which they enter presupposes the existence of the objects they take as their referents. Since it is obvious that abstract singular terms enter into many true sentences, I concluded that it is plausible to assume that universals exist.

Two Theories of Substance

In this section of the book, I want to investigate the topic of substance. It is notorious that philosophers have employed the term ‘substance’ in a variety of ways. My use of the term will be tied to a long tradition (one stemming from Aristotle) in which the term ‘substance’ is used in contrast with the term ‘attribute’, so that substances are particulars that can exemplify attributes, but cannot themselves be exemplified. In this tradition the paradigmatic substances are familiar concrete objects — material bodies, plants, animals, and human beings.1 They are contingent beings: they come into being, persist through time, and then pass out of existence. Furthermore, they take up space, and they are subject to a variety of changes through which they remain numerically the same. Philosophers in this tradition have sometimes wanted to extend the term ‘substance’ to apply to objects with no corporeal characteristics at all; sometimes they have even claimed that God is a substance, although in an analogous sense of that term. But while philosophers in this tradition may have occasionally extended the concept in these ways, they have been in general agreement that the things an account of substance should in the first instance characterize are ordinary objects of the spatio-temporal sort. In what follows, I shall limit my use of the term ‘substance’ to the familiar objects that provide the paradigms for the traditional Aristotelian notion of substance.

Towards a Substance-Theory of Substance

For the past three chapters, we have been examining two accounts of the ontological structure of substances. According to one, substances are wholes whose constituents are simply properties; whereas, the other account takes substances to incorporate an additional constituent, a substratum. Now, for epistemological reasons, we were initially inclined to accept the bundle theorist’s account of substance; but we found the substratum theorist pointing to four supposed flaws in the bundle theory, each of which, he claimed, could be overcome only by the appeal to a substratum ontology. The first difficulty was that since substances are contingent beings, they cannot be constituted exclusively by necessary beings. According to the substratum theorist, the contingency of ordinary objects is accounted for only if we admit among their constituents entities that are themselves contingent — substrata. The second difficulty was that the bundle theorist cannot account for identity through change; the possibility of identity through change, we were told, presupposes that each substance incorporates among its constituents a principle of permanence — again, a substratum. The third difficulty was that the bundle theorist is forced to construe all true sentences in which we attribute properties to substances as tautological; to explain the non-tautological truth of such sentences, the substratum theorist insisted that we take substances to incoporate a constituent which, while capable of serving as the possessor of properties, is ontologically independent of the properties which can be predicated of it; and once again the additional constituent was identified with substratum.

Resemblance and Universals

Although the phenomenon of resemblance does not play the central role in the history of realism enjoyed by the phenomenon of predication, distinguished realists have contended that the analysis of resemblance provides us with the resources for constructing an argument for the existence of universal. In fact, we find a number of such arguments in the writings of realists. In this chapter, I want to examine three of them. The first argument I shall consider played an important role in the debate over universals in the early part of this century; the locus classicus for this argument is Chapter IX of Russell’s Problems of Philosophy.

Attribute-Agreement and the Problem of Universals

A pervasive feature of our experience is a phenomenon I shall call agreement in attribute, agreement in things like properties, kinds, and relations. So pervasive is attribute-agreement that language provides us with a multiplicity of devices for expressing the phenomenon. Thus, we can say of two shirts from the same dye lot that they are the same shade of blue; but we can also say that they have the same color, that the color of the one matches the color of the other, that the color of the one is just like the color of the other, or, more straightforwardly, that both shirts are, say, lavender.