What is a ' substance ? '

[Linusthe2nd]

We do our returns in June.

As the conversation is getting so fragmented, I’ll try to draw it back together.

Everyone since the first caveman has observed that specimens which look similar tend to have similar behavior, and this is one of the standard definitions of the word nature - the collection of inherent/inherited traits of something, it’s innate character. As such the word denotes a category, and we can all agree that it’s a reasonable way to categorize.

Now suppose someone got the wrong end of the stick, and thought that natures are real in themselves. He would argue that even though natures can’t be observed, they must be real because things which look similar have similar behavior!!!

To show that you’re not just someone who got the wrong end of the stick, you need to give evidence or logic as to why. You’ve also given no evidence that Aristotle meant anything more by natures than that first caveman, anymore than a common intuition.

Yes, that was the mistake of Plato. And Idealists like Descartes and Kant made equally egregious errors. Aristotle was a realist, he accepted reality as he saw it. He showed that it is the intellect which abstracts the universals of essences or natures from the data received from extra mental reality. These essences were the universal natures of which Plato defined as " Eternal Ideas, " existing alone outside the world. But for Aristotle, they existed in the mind, having been abstracted from reality itself. Confronted by these universals, the intellect judges individual substances to be particularized examples of these universals. Thus, we get man, animal, dog, cat, gold, etc.

Even if we were to imagine that natures are objectively real, you’ve given no reason to think such Aristotelian notions would be useful to science. Take any research paper you like, rewrite it in your mix of Aristotelian and modern terminology, and I bet it will be twice as long and twice as difficult to understand.

I think it would be satisfactory if it convinced some popularizers of science that they should not insist that science was the only source of truth. And the place to start this education is to re-introduce some philosophical instruction into science classrooms, just a few basic ideas.

Stream can mean a mist or aerosol of liquid H[sub]2[/sub]O, but ask any physicist or chemist what the gaseous phase of H[sub]2[/sub]O is called, and they will tell you it is steam. Look it up - the OED and Wikipedia.

The boiling point of H, when it goes from liquid to gas, is -253 C.
The boiling point of O, when it goes from liquid to gas, is -183 C.
The boiling point of H[sub]2[/sub]O, when it goes from liquid to gas, is 100 C.
Your “virtual” concept tells us nothing except that at room temperature two of them are in the gas phase and the other in the liquid phase. Well, so what? It’s just another unnecessary confusion.

As long as we have a molecule of H2O, we have water. When H goes off by itself and when O goes off by itself, we have two gasses, two different substances, two natures that are identifiable, scientifically and philosophically. Your confusion on this point illustrates how philosophy can be of assistance to science. I don’t expect you to agree .

Energy is given out when H and O combine, and has to be put back to split them again - you yourself said energy is required for electrolysis.

Not sure why you keep referring to hydrogen as H2 when its symbol is H.

Sorry, force of habit.

In the final quote above, the mistake I was referring so was your strange idea from post #191 that “there must also be other " virtual " elements in water because a great deal of energy has been applied in electrolysis so a great deal of energy has been expended or given off. Is all this energy retained in the resulting oxygen and hydrogen? Seems doubtful to me”

Because I am not a scientist. I thought that perhaps some other element was given off as energy. And energy certainly is something, so when it is bound up in the molecule it is " virtual. " When it is given off it becomes some type of substance, with a nature of its own.

The concepts are dead simple as long as they’re kept separate from modern science. Each of the errors you made above, in what is after all only high school level science is, I think, testimony to the total confusion which reigns when you try to force Aristotelian terminology into modern science.

There we disagree.

I can’t even make a stab at what you might mean here.

I mean as long as we have the substance water, hydrogen and oxygen do not exhibit their nature as gases, they are only virtual or potential substances - in my opinion and in the opinion of some philosophers.

Well, I think we have about exhausted this topic. Don’t you think so?

Linus2nd.

 

[inocente]

Yes, that was the mistake of Plato. And Idealists like Descartes and Kant made equally egregious errors. Aristotle was a realist, he accepted reality as he saw it. He showed that it is the intellect which abstracts the universals of essences or natures from the data received from extra mental reality. These essences were the universal natures of which Plato defined as " Eternal Ideas, " existing alone outside the world. But for Aristotle, they existed in the mind, having been abstracted from reality itself. Confronted by these universals, the intellect judges individual substances to be particularized examples of these universals. Thus, we get man, animal, dog, cat, gold, etc.

Congratulations are in order, I’m honored to talk to an internet poster who has proven the philosophies of Plato, Descartes and Kant are all wrong.

Oh hang on though, you’re still just making assertions without any evidence or proof.

I think it would be satisfactory if it convinced some popularizers of science that they should not insist that science was the only source of truth. And the place to start this education is to re-introduce some philosophical instruction into science classrooms, just a few basic ideas.

No point introducing Plato, Descartes or Kant, as you just proved them wrong. Come to think of it, one internet poster or another has probably proven every philosopher wrong.

Or, you could let professors decide what they want to teach, and let students decide what they want to study, and let authors decide what they want to write, and let readers decide what they want to read. Or has an internet poster disproved that philosophy as well?

*As long as we have a molecule of H2O, we have water. When H goes off by itself and when O goes off by itself, we have two gasses, two different substances, two natures that are identifiable, scientifically and philosophically. Your confusion on this point illustrates how philosophy can be of assistance to science. I don’t expect you to agree . *

According to you, assisted by your personal philosophy, H[sub]2[/sub]O is a liquid, while H and O are gases.

While the rest of the world, unassisted by your personal philosophy, knows that depending on temperature, H[sub]2[/sub]O, H and O are solid, liquid or gas.

And since the rest of the world is correct, this isn’t a great advertisement for your personal philosophy.

Because I am not a scientist. I thought that perhaps some other element was given off as energy. And energy certainly is something, so when it is bound up in the molecule it is " virtual. " When it is given off it becomes some type of substance, with a nature of its own.

This is only high-school level science. Sounds like your confusion comes from Aristotle, who had fire as one of his elements, but no, energy isn’t an element, see E=mc[sup]2[/sup]. Yet another reason why it would be a very bad idea to teach this confusing and wrong “philosophy” in science classes.

I mean as long as we have the substance water, hydrogen and oxygen do not exhibit their nature as gases, they are only virtual or potential substances - in my opinion and in the opinion of some philosophers.

I doubt the last six words there.

Well, I think we have about exhausted this topic. Don’t you think so?

Only too pleased, see you around.

 

[Hunho]

But God created man and breathed life into him. He didn’t create a body and add a soul, he breathed life into his body. And the Church teaches that man is a unit, a single being composed of body and soul. So it is not just a matter of what theologians think. It is a matter of what God revealed and what the Church teaches.

Linus2nd

Actually, Linus2nd, the Catechism says that that is exactly what He did do.

362 The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language [emphasis added] when it affirms that "then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."229 Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.
229 Gen 2:7.

Man’s nature consists of two separate substances, a body (matter) and soul (spirit).

 

[Aloysium]

. . . Man’s nature consists of two separate substances, a body (matter) and soul (spirit).

Maybe it’s quibbling about semantics but these fundamental natures, while different, are not separate in the unity that is the person.
Before the resurrection, although in heaven, we are incomplete.
As you quote:
“Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.”

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Actually, Linus2nd, the Catechism says that that is exactly what He did do.
Man’s nature consists of two separate substances, a body (matter) and soul (spirit).

I was arguing against what Blase6 who seemed to be saying, that man was reducible to the dualism of Descartes. He was right when he said man was the person, but he explained that in terms of dualism, or at least it seemd so to me.

The Catechism does not teach that the body and the soul were created separately. The Bible seems to imply that, but the Church has never defined or taught exactly how man comes to be. The prevailing opinion seems to be that the human soul is infused at the moment of conception. Does that mean the body came first? I interpret that to imply that God creates the soul at the moment of conception. In which case it would seem to be the case that the body and the soul arose together, at the same moment.

What ever the case, I was arguing against the concept that man was reducible to the material, that the soul was a separate substance in its own right. Thomas describes the soul as the substantial form of man and not as a substance in its own right. In other words man is not composed of two separate substances, that would be ontological dualism.

When I said that man " was not a part of the world, " I meant that he was not reducible to the material world. I guess I didn’t express myself very well.

But I am glad you brought the subject back. Because it is important to realize that man is a unified subject, a living supposit with a single nature, a single hypostasis. He is not composed of two natures. He is composed of matter and form, as a single nature, a single supposit which is a hypostasis.
Linus2nd

 

[thinkandmull]

You’ve said Linus that you haven’t read Descartes, but I have. He doesn’t say anything contrary to Aquinas of soul vs body. “And Idealists like Descartes and Kant made equally egregious errors.” Neither of them were idealists actually.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

You’ve said Linus that you haven’t read Descartes, but I have. He doesn’t say anything contrary to Aquinas of soul vs body. “And Idealists like Descartes and Kant made equally egregious errors.” Neither of them were idealists actually.

Most serious philosophers would disagree with you.

iep.utm.edu/descarte/#SH7b

However, a final point should be made before closing this section. The position sketched in the previous couple of paragraphs is not the prevalent view among scholars and requires more justification than can be provided here. Most scholars understand Descartes’ doctrine of the real distinction between mind and body in much the same way as Elizabeth and Gassendi did such that Descartes’ human being is believed to be not one, whole thing but two substances that somehow mechanistically interact. This also means that they find the mind-body problem to be a serious, if not fatal, flaw of Descartes’ entire philosophy. But the benefit of the brief account provided here is that it helps explain Descartes’ lack of concern for this issue and his persistent claims that an understanding of the union of mind and body would put to rest people’s concerns about causal interaction via contact and motion.

Linus2nd

 

[levinas12]

What does the term ’ substance ’ mean to you? How would you apply and use it?

How have you used it in the past?

When did you first become aware of its meaning or meanings?

Can you give some examples of how you use the term?

Is there one meaning that you think especially apt?

Linus2nd

 

[levinas12]

However, a final point should be made before closing this section.
Linus2nd

Don’t close it just yet.

A substance is a type of intelligibility. And thus substance is bridge between ontology and epistemology.

What is mysterious about substance as a type of intelligibility is that it can be shared.

For example, I can make a reference to a chair and you can understand what I mean.

It’s this aspect of sharing that is hard to explain.

If an intelligibility were simply a private idea inside my head, how can I share that private idea with you - how can I talk to you about it - it’s private.

The same quandary applies to hard science and mathematics. If an intelligibility cannot be shared, then these activities are quite impossible…

The condition of possibility for such sharing is something like “substance” as the intelligibility of a “reference”.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Don’t close it just yet.

A substance is a type of intelligibility. And thus substance is bridge between ontology and epistemology.

What is mysterious about substance as a type of intelligibility is that it can be shared.

For example, I can make a reference to a chair and you can understand what I mean.

It’s this aspect of sharing that is hard to explain.

If an intelligibility were simply a private idea inside my head, how can I share that private idea with you - how can I talk to you about it - it’s private.

The same quandary applies to hard science and mathematics. If an intelligibility cannot be shared, then these activities are quite impossible…

The condition of possibility for such sharing is something like “substance” as the intelligibility of a “reference”.

What we share is the " idea " of a particular substance we agree to call a chair. The substance itself is a real thing. We share our idea of it. An interesting thread which discusses " How we come to know things. " has been going on for some time now. Perhaps you would be interested. forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=947002 Imelahn is the one you want to pay attention to, he is a professional philosopher in the Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition. I think you will find what he has to say interesting.

Linus2nd

 

[levinas12]

What we share is the " idea " of a particular substance we agree to call a chair. The substance itself is a real thing. We share our idea of it. An interesting thread which discusses " How we come to know things. " has been going on for some time now. Perhaps you would be interested. forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=947002 Imelahn is the one you want to pay attention to, he is a professional philosopher in the Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition. I think you will find what he has to say interesting.

Linus2nd

I’ll definitely check it out.

What I was trying to say is that substance is the condition of possibility for us to be able to refer to something in a conversation with someone else. Both myself and my interlocutor have to have “access” to the same thing in order for the reference to succeed.

“Substance” secures the sameness of the “intelligibility” that we share - somehow the “intelligibility” is outside our consciousness because otherwise it couldn’t be shared - and what is outside our consciousness is the “substance”.

Private ideas can’t be shared - how would we know that two private ideas inside two different heads refer to the “same” thing?

“Intelligibility” has to be public, not private; as the X-Files put it, intelligibility is “out there”.

In this way, the ontology of “substance” is foundational for the theory of knowledge.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I’ll definitely check it out.

What I was trying to say is that substance is the condition of possibility for us to be able to refer to something in a conversation with someone else. Both myself and my interlocutor have to have “access” to the same thing in order for the reference to succeed.

“Substance” secures the sameness of the “intelligibility” that we share - somehow the “intelligibility” is outside our consciousness because otherwise it couldn’t be shared - and what is outside our consciousness is the “substance”.

Private ideas can’t be shared - how would we know that two private ideas inside two different heads refer to the “same” thing?

“Intelligibility” has to be public, not private; as the X-Files put it, intelligibility is “out there”.

In this way, the ontology of “substance” is foundational for the theory of knowledge.

Of course the chair exists outside our minds and the reason we can talk about it is that we have the same " idea " about it. We are exchanging our ideas about this one substance. Our words are signs of what we mean by that object, and they represent the idea of that object we have our mind. I think you are identifying that which is intelligible with the idea we have in our mind about the object which exists outside our mind.

But ’ intelligibility ’ and the ’ intelligible ’ have very specific meanings in philosophy. I A/'T philosophy the ’ intelligible ’ is the nature of things, man, dog, chair, etc., which can be applied to specific objects which exist outside our mind.

Linus2nd

 

[levinas12]

Of course the chair exists outside our minds and the reason we can talk about it is that we have the same " idea " about it. We are exchanging our ideas about this one substance. Our words are signs of what we mean by that object, and they represent the idea of that object we have our mind. I think you are identifying that which is intelligible with the idea we have in our mind about the object which exists outside our mind.

But ’ intelligibility ’ and the ’ intelligible ’ have very specific meanings in philosophy. I A/'T philosophy the ’ intelligible ’ is the nature of things, man, dog, chair, etc., which can be applied to specific objects which exist outside our mind.

Linus2nd

There is a problem with talking about “ideas” in our minds - especially if these mental entities are thought to be “what” we are conscious of. Once we are locked into secret cabinets of private ideas, we can never escape to the “outside” where reality lives.

“Intelligibility” is not a private idea. It is out there in the world at large. This is what I meant when I said that “intelligibility” is public. Because it is publicly available, an intelligibility can be “shared”.

That’s why it is misleading to say we share ideas. As Wittgenstein pointed out, I cannot compare the beetle in my box with the beetle in your box - we cannot share our beetles.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Thats no question, just dead wrong opinion, this is fact…

google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPlanck%25E2%2580%2593Einstein_relation&ei=K2LeVN_APIi9ggTi1oJ4&usg=AFQjCNEw4pbdd815rn3Sygmhn8EZMCdnXg

The article has simplistic understanding much correct, what its speaking of is.

Its completely in line with where we are at.

Just tell me in declaritive sentences what you are trying to say. Because, at the moment, I don’t have any idea what you are trying to say. No need to be fancy, just the unadorned facts.

Linus2nd

 

[Linusthe2nd]

There is a problem with talking about “ideas” in our minds - especially if these mental entities are thought to be “what” we are conscious of. Once we are locked into secret cabinets of private ideas, we can never escape to the “outside” where reality lives.

“Intelligibility” is not a private idea. It is out there in the world at large. This is what I meant when I said that “intelligibility” is public. Because it is publicly available, an intelligibility can be “shared”.

That’s why it is misleading to say we share ideas. As Wittgenstein pointed out, I cannot compare the beetle in my box with the beetle in your box - we cannot share our beetles.

I guess I just don’t understand what you are trying to say. I don’t understand what you mean by " intelligibility." I think you might get more out of the other thread.

Linus2nd

 

[Hunho]

Don’t close it just yet.

A substance is a type of intelligibility. And thus substance is bridge between ontology and epistemology.

What is mysterious about substance as a type of intelligibility is that it can be shared.

For example, I can make a reference to a chair and you can understand what I mean.

It’s this aspect of sharing that is hard to explain.

If an intelligibility were simply a private idea inside my head, how can I share that private idea with you - how can I talk to you about it - it’s private.

The same quandary applies to hard science and mathematics. If an intelligibility cannot be shared, then these activities are quite impossible…

The condition of possibility for such sharing is something like “substance” as the intelligibility of a “reference”.

**levinas12,

** My dictionary says that “intelligibility” is a measure of how understandable something is.
Are you saying, then, that a substance is a measure of how understandable something is?
And please explain how a substance can be shared?

 

[levinas12]

**levinas12,

** My dictionary says that “intelligibility” is a measure of how understandable something is.
Are you saying, then, that a substance is a measure of how understandable something is?
And please explain how a substance can be shared?

A substance has a form that can be understood by many minds. That’s the sense of sharing - you and I can know the same form. But it’s an unusual sharing because it doesn’t diminish what is shared.

It is this “intelligibility” that allows us to “refer” to an entity in our conversations with others. The condition of possibility for this ability to refer is that the forms of things are “publicly” accessible to human beings.

And when I say that the intelligibility (the form) is “public”, “out there”, I mean that it is “in” the thing itself, not a construct manufactured in the privacy of our minds.

 

[levinas12]

I guess I just don’t understand what you are trying to say. I don’t understand what you mean by " intelligibility." I think you might get more out of the other thread.

Linus2nd

It’s the problem with Cartesian representationalism. If my mind is directly aware only of private representations inside my head, then how do I know whether these representations resemble the things outside my head. I can’t compare the representations with the things themselves (because I don’t have direct access to the things themselves).

That’s why Thomas Aquinas distinguishes between the id quo (that by which I know - which can include the activities of the brain) and the id quod (what I know). What I directly know is the id quod, i.e., the form which is “in” the thing itself. I am not immediately aware of the id quo (which is inferred).

The form is the intelligibility or the logos of the thing.

 

[levinas12]

I have to clarify (which means correcting myself).

I have been incorrectly reducing substance to form only. Primary substance is the individual (form, matter and esse). The form plus matter is the essence, and then esse is “added” to the essence.

There is in Thomas the notion of signate matter which has some of kind of determinateness (but not the determinateness of the form).

This is where I am having some difficulty. Is the intelligibility of Socrates simply “rational animal” = species? Or does “Socrates” involve a further intelligibility (“Socrates qua Socrates”) that is added to the intelligibility of the species (“rational animal”)?

And what is the relation between the signate matter and this additional intelligibility?

 

[thinkandmull]

Most serious philosophers would disagree with you.

iep.utm.edu/descarte/#SH7b

However, a final point should be made before closing this section. The position sketched in the previous couple of paragraphs is not the prevalent view among scholars and requires more justification than can be provided here. Most scholars understand Descartes’ doctrine of the real distinction between mind and body in much the same way as Elizabeth and Gassendi did such that Descartes’ human being is believed to be not one, whole thing but two substances that somehow mechanistically interact. This also means that they find the mind-body problem to be a serious, if not fatal, flaw of Descartes’ entire philosophy. But the benefit of the brief account provided here is that it helps explain Descartes’ lack of concern for this issue and his persistent claims that an understanding of the union of mind and body would put to rest people’s concerns about causal interaction via contact and motion.

Linus2nd

I didn’t deny Descarte made a distinction between mind and body. He was an idealist though. Matter was real for him, as for Kant. Read there writings, not commentators