Human Nature

2

Substance

1. Substances: things

Human beings are animate substances - sentient, space-occupying, spatio-temporal continuants of a certain animal kind. They possess a distinctive array of powers, some characteristic of animal kind in general, others unique to rational natures. Their powers of action include a wide range of efficient causal powers to bring about or prevent change by acting on objects in their environment, as well as powers to make other people do things by affording them compelling (obliging) reasons. The categorial concepts of substance, causation, power and agency provide a large part of the general framework for our thought about the world and about ourselves. For substance concepts, concepts pertaining to the active and passive powers of inanimate and animate agents, and causal concepts provide a large part of the intricately woven network that constitutes our conceptual scheme. The first task is to clarify this general framework. This chapter is concerned with elucidating the concept or, more accurately, the concepts of substance, and extirpating their degenerate offshoots. (There is nothing novel about the latter project, but the task of weeding in the gardens of philosophy never ends.)

We conceive of the natural world as populated by relatively persistent material things of many different kinds. These are spatiotemporal continuants consisting of matter, occupying space, excluding other things of the same kind from the space they occupy, and standing in spatio-temporal relations to each other. They come into existence, exist for a time, and then pass away. We locate them relative to landmarks and to other material things in the landscape which they, and we, inhabit. We characterize them as things of a certain kind, and identify and re-identify them accordingly (fig. 2.1). The expressions we typically use to do so are, in the technical terminology derived from Aristotle, names of substances.1 To be sure, Aristotle was hunting a different quarry from ours. What we are concerned with is isolating a category of nouns and noun phrases that play an important and distinctive role in our conceptual scheme - not with identifying the ultimate structure and constituents of reality, as was Aristotle. But precisely because Aristotle typically began his reflections with meticulous observations on 'what is said', his ideas shed valuable light on our present concerns, and provide a convenient point of departure for my purposes.

Figure 2.1. Categories of space-occupants

The term 'substance' has two distinct, but importantly linked, meanings. In the Aristotelian sense, a substance (more accurately, 'a primary substance') is a concrete individual thing of a given kind, such as a particular human being (Socrates), a given tree (Gautama's Bo-tree) or a certain gemstone (the Kohinoor). The general kind (the 'secondary substance' in Aristotle's terminology) to which the individual substance belongs is specified by a substance name ('human being', 'pipal tree' (ficus religiosa), 'diamond'). Individual substances are the basic objects of reference and subjects of predication in our conceptual scheme. They are things of one kind or another (specified by a substance name, as when we say that Socrates is a man). They are qualified by numerous properties, specified by non-substantial predicates. So we may say, for example, that Socrates is in the agora, is snub-nosed, or is a philosopher. But Socrates cannot be said to qualify anything (as opposed to being like Socrates, which is a relational property that some rare people may have). Nor can the proper name 'Socrates' be said to be true of anything (as opposed to the identifying phrase 'is Socrates', which is true of the teacher of Plato and tells us who he is), and the proper name does not signify a quality of anything.

Characterizing an individual as a thing of a given kind by using such a (secondary) substance name answers the question of what the thing is. Grasp of the substance name implies knowledge of what being a such-and-such consists in, in so far as that is logically (or, in the extended sense of the term, grammatically) determined. The substance name provides a covering concept for statements of identity concerning individual things of the relevant kind (Tully is the same man as Cicero, Hesperus the same planet as Phosphorus, Zeus the same god as Jupiter). To have an adequate grasp of what a thing is - that is, that it is such-and-such a substance, is to know (in more or less detail) how to distinguish one such thing from substances of other kinds. It is typically, but by no means uniformly, to know how to count such things - and so to differentiate one such thing from others of the same kind. It is also commonly to know, sometimes as a result of a scientific discovery that has led to a conceptual change, what kinds of change or metamorphosis any individual of the kind in question can undergo compatible with its continued existence and persistent identity (e.g. that maggots turn into flies). How much of such information is to be deemed constitutive of the meaning of the substance term is often indeterminate.

Substances lend themselves to hierarchical classification. Human beings are a kind of anthropoid ape, anthropoid apes a kind of mammal, mammals, in turn, being a kind of vertebrate. If a species name (such as 'human being') applies to an individual substance, and a generic name applies to the species (as 'animal' applies to human beings), the generic name also applies to the individual (primary) substance. Generic names, no less than their subordinate species names, signify kinds of substance. But the species name is more specific and hence more informative than the generic one. The specific differentia signified by the species name characterize the nature of members of the species.

Figure 2.2. Varieties of count nouns

Substance names are a subclass of concrete (as opposed to abstract) count nouns (see fig. 2.2). For we must distinguish between 'tinker', 'tailor', 'soldier', 'sailor', which are concrete count nouns but not substance names, and concrete count nouns that are substance names, such as 'man', 'dog', 'cabbage'. One difference is that a non-substantial count noun may cease to apply to an individual thing, without the thing ceasing to exist, whereas a substance name cannot. So, for example, NN can cease to be a tinker or a tailor, yet continue to exist and be the very same human being; but he cannot cease to be a human being and continue to exist. Another is that non-substantial count nouns that apply to substances are themselves explained in terms of the substance name. So, a tinker is a man, who repairs pots and pans; a tailor is a man, who makes clothes; neither noun signifying a species of man as 'man' (a substance name) signifies a species of animal. Nouns such as 'tinker', 'tailor', 'soldier', 'sailor' attribute to a substance - a human being - the property of engaging in, or being qualified to engage in, a certain activity. Some non-substantial count nouns that apply to substances are explicitly or implicitly relational - for example, 'ancestor (or, descendant) of X', 'mother of Y', 'a parent', 'a grandfather'; but substance names are not, in any such sense, relational. Concrete count nouns such as 'man', 'horse' or 'tree' have both singular and plural forms, take number words as adjectives, and their plural forms take the quantifiers 'many', '(a) few', 'several', as well as phrasal quantifiers such as 'a great number of' and 'a large number of' (see table 2.1 on page 36).

Artefacts (if we admit them among substances, as I shall urge we should) are similarly classifiable. A chaise longue is a kind of settee, a settee a piece of furniture made for sitting or reclining on, pieces of furniture are a kind of artefact.

Scientific classification aims to be systematic, guided by clearly statable and applicable principles of classification. These, wherever possible, aim to ensure exclusion of cross-classification, and to determine categories that are fruitful for explanatory purposes and scientific generalization. Non-scientific classification is typically less systematic, guided by a multitude of different purposes, often non-explanatory ones, characteristic of human societies. Even when the purposes are explanatory, the forms of explanation may not be those of the sciences, but pertinent to one form or another of human practice (cuisine, agriculture, manufacturing, architecture, etc.) or to social concerns and interests (including those of morality, criminology and law). These are no less substance-invoking than the explanatory vocabulary of the sciences.

With respect to any substance, we can typically distinguish between properties that are essential for the thing to be the kind of thing it is and properties that are inessential (the accidents), even though we may be forced to recognize a degree of indeterminacy...