Substance and Separation in Aristotle

Substance and Separation in Aristotle Substance and Separation in Aristotle LYNNE SPELLMAN University of Arkansas CAM...

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Substance and Separation in Aristotle

Substance and Separation in Aristotle LYNNE SPELLMAN University of Arkansas

CAMBRIDGE

UNIVERSITY PRESS

Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1 RP 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1995 First published 1995 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Spellman, Lynne, 1948Substance and separation in Aristotle / Lynne Spellman. p. cm. ISBN 0-521-47147-8 1. Aristotle — Views on substance in philosophy. 2. Substance (Philosophy) 3. Aristotle - Views on separation of substances. 4. Separation (Philosophy) I. Title. b491.s8s64 1995 HIM -dc20 94-31450 CIP A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-521-47147-8 hardback

for James

Contents

Acknowledgments

page ix

Introduction I The Separation of Platonic Forms II Referential Opacity in Aristotle III A Theory of Substance IV Substance and Aristotle's Epistemology V The Separation of Substance VI Substance and Teleology

1 5 21 40 63 83 100

Bibliography Index

123 129

vn

Acknowledgments

In the course of the argument of this book I draw heavily on recent scholarship. I have been aided in understanding the contemporary debates by the Ancient Greek Philosophy Workshops at the University of Texas, the Conference on Aristotle's Metaphysics at Florida State University in 1983, the Institute on Aristotle sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Council for Philosophical Studies in 1988, and an academic year at Cambridge University as the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College in 1990-91. I am grateful to the University of Arkansas and Lucy Cavendish for the year abroad, as well as, in the case of Arkansas, for support for the academic year 1985-86, during which work was begun. Chapters II and III are revisions of two published papers, "Referential Opacity in Aristotle," History of Philosophy Quarterly 7 (1990), and "Specimens of Natural Kinds and the Apparent Inconsistency of Metaphysics Z-H," Ancient Philosophy 9 (1989), and I thank the editors of these journals for permission to reuse this material. Much of Chapter V was presented at the meeting of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy held in conjunction with the American Philosophical Association, Central Division, in the spring of 1994. Finally, thanks are owed to James Spellman, who read the aforementioned papers in many versions, for his philosophical insight and unfailing support for the project, and to the referees for Cambridge University Press for their helpful comments on the penultimate draft of the manuscript.

Introduction

We are sufficiently assured of this, then, even if we should examine it from every point of view, that that which entirely is is entirely knowable. (Republic 477a) 1

This is a study of Aristotle's theory of substance, more precisely of his theory of sublunary substance. Although some philosophers, upon reading the Metaphysics, see the influence of Aristotle's biology,2 others and I am one of them - see Plato. Indeed (although Aristotle would not have put the point in this way), I would go so far as to say that Aristotle can be seen as attempting to offer a defensible version of Platonism. What I mean when I say "a version of Platonism" is that for Aristotle, as for Plato, there is something which is first in knowledge, definition, and time, and that for Aristotle, as for Plato, whatever is knowable must be eternal and unchanging. In the case of Plato, it is, of course, the Forms which are intended to meet these requirements. But Aristotle finds the Forms problematic on both metaphysical and epistemological grounds, and while Plato himself certainly struggled with some of the difficulties that Aristotle complains of, Aristotle believes that Plato's solutions fail, chiefly on account of separation. Specifically, Aristotle seems to believe that separation creates a gap that recollection cannot fully bridge and that Plato's blurring of the distinction between universality and particularity not only leads to regress but casts doubt upon the very intelligibility of Forms. What I intend to argue, however, is that despite all his criticisms Aristotle's own account of substance is nevertheless very like Plato's Theory of Forms but for the denial - or more accurately, the reassessment - of separation. 1 All quotations from Plato follow the translations in Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, eds., The Complete Dialogues of Plato (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961). Emphasis in all quotations follows the sources cited unless otherwise indicated. 2 This view was most recently explored in Furth (1988).

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SUBSTANCE AND SEPARATION IN ARISTOTLE

In Chapter I, a chapter that lays the groundwork for Aristotle's theory, I examine Aristotle's criticism of Plato for separating the Forms, arguing that by 'separation' Aristotle has in mind numerical distinctness, and I cite passages to show that he believes that the numerical distinctness of the Forms from sensible objects causes insoluble metaphysical and epistemological problems. To see Aristotle's theory as a response to Plato inevitably raises questions about the accuracy of Aristotle's presentation of Plato's Theory. Even though in Chapter I and elsewhere I do from time to time sketch, in a very broad way, various interpretations of Plato's own views, in a sense the question is irrelevant to my project - if Aristotle's theory is a response to what he took Plato to be saying, the impact on his own views will be the same regardless of his skill as an interpreter. Nevertheless I must admit that upon reading Plato and Aristotle, I find the view that Aristotle misunderstood or failed to appreciate Plato's Theory to be largely false. Rather, I agree with those3 who say that it is just inherently implausible that one of the finest philosophers who ever lived should, after twenty years in Plato's company, have failed to grasp his views and the issues that underlie them. But, as I have said, the cogency of my project does not depend on agreement with this claim. Having discussed Aristotle's criticisms of Plato in Chapter I, I turn to Aristotle's own views in the subsequent chapters. If Aristotle is to say, as his criticism of Plato makes it plausible that he should, that substances are not numerically distinct from sensible objects, one might reasonably expect that he holds them to be identical with sensible objects. But it has to be remembered that, like Plato, Aristotle wants substances to be unchanging if they are to be epistemologically fundamental. One might suppose that if substances are forms and if forms are universals this requirement could be met. But then again Aristotle wants substances to be ontologically fundamental as well, a fact that seems to argue for their being objects, not properties. In Chapter II I discuss the problem of referential opacity in Aristotle, claiming that Aristotle uses a distinction between numerical sameness and identity to address many sorts of metaphysical problems, and in Chapter III I argue that this distinction is the key to Aristotle's theory of substance. What I hold is that substances are for Aristotle specimens of natural kinds, where specimens, as particular forms lacking the accidents introduced by matter, are numerically the same as sensible objects yet not identical with them. While specimens of kinds are not eternal, within a kind they are indistinguishable from one another, with the result that unlike sensible objects they are knowable. 3 One of them is Russell Dancy, to whom, as a result of a conversation in the summer of 1988, this description of the stance and my confidence in its reasonableness are in part owed.

INTRODUCTION

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Thus by the conclusion of Chapter III, an account of substance has been given which, despite the denial of separation, makes it possible for Aristotle to say that substances are knowable objects. But, of course, when Aristotle objects to Plato's Theory of Recollection, his difficulty is not with the knowability of Forms in this sense - Forms are, after all, eternal and unchanging in a way that even specimens of kinds are not. His complaint is rather that it is by no means assured that Plato's Forms can now be known by us. In Chapter IV I consider Aristotle's epistemology, that is, his account of the progression from perception to knowledge, and argue that what supports it is precisely a theory of substance of the sort I have proposed, namely, one characterized by rejection of the Platonic separation of form. Indeed I argue here too that Aristotle's lack of concern for certain skeptical questions can be explained quite naturally by the fact that his epistemology is addressed specifically to Platonic problems arising from separation. Yet even if it is agreed that Aristotle intends substances to be specimens of natural kinds and even if it is conceded that specimens are not only knowable but such as to make possible a credible account of the acquisition of knowledge, there remain two problems. The first is that, although I have tagged separation as the crux, Aristotle himself says that substances must be separate. In Chapter V I address this question, suggesting that by 'separation' what Aristotle endorses is what I call the ontological counterpart of separation in definition. That is to say, while he wants more than separation in definition (something only conceptually separate from sensible objects could hardly be ontologically more fundamental than they), the separation of Aristotle's substances is not, I argue, the numerical distinctness characteristic of the Forms. Finally, in Chapter VI, I address what has to be the most serious internal challenge for my interpretation. The problem is just that it is by no means obvious that specimens of natural kinds will be ontologically fundamental, as Aristotle's criteria for substance require. Here I take on the question and argue that Aristotle does believe, contrary to our inclinations, that specimens of natural kinds are more fundamental than sensible objects. The argument in this chapter is admittedly more speculative in that it attempts to assess how it is, if I am right about his theory, that Aristotle could think that something like a specimen of the kind lion is more fundamental than a given individual lion in all its peculiarity, that sensible object with which it is numerically the same. In this chapter I argue that the grounds for Aristotle's view are teleological, a case I try to make more plausible by drawing some parallels with art before embarking on a general discussion of Aristotle's agentless teleology and the understanding of the good which sustains it. To summarize, the project is to defend the following claims:

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(i)

Rejection of Platonic separation is the starting point for Aristotle's account of substance. (ii) In order to avoid separation while keeping the Platonic criteria according to which substances must be first in knowledge, definition, and time, Aristotle distinguishes between numerical sameness and identity. (iii) Having done so, he holds that substances can be specimens of natural kinds.

Yet even as I have been writing, others have also, and the two most recent accounts of substance in Aristotle, Michael Loux's Primary 'Ousiai' (Cornell University Press, 1991) and Frank Lewis's Substance and Predication in Aristotle (Cambridge University Press, 1991), came after I had essentially completed this manuscript. As it happens, both Loux and Lewis argue for forms as universals while my argument requires them to be particulars, yet I have not attempted to provide an exhaustive examination of all the texts that bear on this long-standing controversy. Instead I have tried to consider a somewhat different cluster of issues in such a way that they illuminate one another. For what I want to contend is that, if read as criticism and revision of Plato in the way I propose, Aristotle has a coherent view which, even if different from our own, is nevertheless a philosophically challenging response to the experienced world.

I The Separation of Platonic Forms

And Socrates gave the impulse to this theory, as we said before, by means of his definitions, but he did not separate them from the particulars; and in this he thought rightly, in not separating them. This is plain from the results; for without the universal it is not possible to get knowledge, but the separation is the cause of the objections that arise with regard to the Ideas. (Metaphysics XIII 9 1086b2-7)1

That Aristotle criticizes Plato for separating the Forms is a fact known to every reader. However, what exactly it is that Aristotle wants to criticize has, until recently, seldom been discussed explicitly and at length, and indeed as exploration of the question has occurred, views have differed considerably. It has been proposed by some interpreters that when he criticizes Plato for separating the Forms, by 'separation' Aristotle means their independent existence,2 that is, their capacity for existing even if there were no sensible objects. But other interpreters have held that he means their numerical distinctness from sensible objects,3 and some writers have thought that he means both of these.4 Thus despite the considerable importance Aristotle places on Plato's separation of the Forms, there is disagreement about just what he is objecting to. Moreover, besides our uncertainty about what Aristotle meant, there is a further problem. For even as he criticizes Plato, Aristotle tells us that substances must be separate (Metaphysics VII 1 1028a34). Only after an account of Aristotle's theory of substance is 1 Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from Aristotle follow The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984). The page, column, and line numbers have where necessary been corrected against the edition of the Greek text prepared by Immanuel Bekker for the Berlin Academy, published in 1831. Emphasis follows Barnes except where indicated. 2 Fine (1984); Hardie (1936), 73; Irwin (1977), 154. 3 Mabbott (1926). See also Morrison (1985), esp. 138-39 and 149-50. 4 Allen (1970), 131-32.

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given will it be possible to decide whether the separation he intends to assert is the same as that he intends to deny and, if so, whether in light of his criticism of Plato, the assertion of it is problematic. These tasks will be undertaken in later chapters. In this chapter, however, I want to try to clarify what Aristotle means when he says Plato separated the Forms and why he should think it a cause for objection. For I plan to take seriously the idea that what Aristotle rejected in Plato's Theory was principally the separation of the Forms5; indeed, as I have said, my overall argument will be that Aristotle's account of substances can best be seen as an attempt to preserve much that is Platonic by rethinking separation. I In Prior Analytics 111 Aristotle says, "For there to be forms or some one thing apart (para) from the many is not necessary if there is to be demonstration; however, for it to be true to say that one thing holds of many is necessary" (77a5-7). In addition to the many passages such as this where Aristotle implicitly criticizes Plato for separating the Forms, there are, fortunately, several where he tries to explain why Plato separated the Forms and two where he explicitly describes the priority of Forms over phenomena, a relation that has sometimes been thought to explain what is meant by separation. I will begin with the latter group. At Metaphysics V 11 in the course of a number of definitions of priority, Aristotle says: Some things then are called prior and posterior in this sense, others in respect of nature and substance, i.e. those which can be without other things, while the others cannot be without them, - a distinction which Plato used. (1019al— 4; emphasis added; boldface indicates Barnes's emphasis) This sense of priority - the priority of whatever can exist without other things which in turn cannot exist without it - seems to be illustrated at Eudemian Ethics I 8 in Aristotle's discussion o f the Form o f the Good. There he says: We must then examine what is the best, and in how many senses we use the word. The answer is principally contained in three views. For men say that the good per se is the best of all things, the good per se being that whose property is to be the original good and the cause by its presence in other things of their being good; both of which attributes belong to the Idea of good (I mean by 'both' that of being the original good and also the cause of other things being good by its presence in them); for good is predicated of this Idea most truly (other things being good by participation in and likeness to this); and this is the 5 Morrison (1985) suggests a similar line. See 149-50. See also Mabbott (1926).

SEPARATION OF PLATONIC FORMS

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original good, for the destruction of that which is participated in involves also the destruction of that which participates in the Idea, and is named from its participation in it. But this is the relation of the first to the later, so that the Idea of good is the good per se\ for this is also (they say) separable [choristen] from what participates in it, like all other Ideas. (1217b 1-16; emphasis added) Following Gail Fine, let us call the capacity to exist without the existence of some other thing the capacity for independent existence with respect to that thing.6 Citing the passage just quoted, Fine argues that when Aristotle talks of 'separation' he means a capacity for independent existence7 and thus that in his criticism of Plato he (in the main, wrongly, as she sees it) attributes to Plato the view that Forms are separate from sensible objects in the sense that they are able to exist independently of them. She says: Aristotle is probably correct to say that at least some Forms, in some dialogues, are separate. But he and others are incorrect to suggest that Plato, beginning with the Phaedo, heralds separation as a new feature of Forms. On the contrary, so far from this being the case, Plato never even says that Forms are separate; it proves surprisingly difficult to uncover any commitment to separation; and commitment to it emerges in unexpected ways and in unexpected cases.8 Fine understands Plato's Forms to be universals, and thus when she denies that the independent existence of Forms is a key component of Plato's Theory of Forms, what she is denying is that it is especially important to Plato that the Forms be able to exist uninstantiated. But whatever Forms are, Fine's conclusion about the role of separation is, as she admits, very surprising. T. H. Irwin, for example, who agrees that Forms are universals, thinks that even though Plato does not formulate it clearly and even though his arguments justify only the claim that Forms are not defined in terms of sensible properties and are not identical with such properties (which leaves open the possibility that they might be identical with nonsensible properties of sensible objects), he does in fact believe that he has established their capacity for independent existence.9 Since my concern is with the nature of separation, Irwin's conclusion need be pursued only if it is plausible to hold that Forms are universals 6 Fine (1984), 35. 7 See Fine (1984), 33. 8 Fine (1984), 33-34. According to Fine the most likely candidates for separate Forms are Forms of artefacts (as in the Cratylus and Republic X) since there would have been a time when they existed which was prior to the work of human artisans, that is to say, they would have existed in the absence of instances (76). If the account of creation in the Timaeus is taken in such a way that, while Forms have always existed, there was a time at which there were no sensibles, then, says Fine, many Forms are separate (79). However, even in that case not all Forms would be so. For even before creation there are some Forms that would have instances; traces of fire are found in the chaos, the demiurge exemplifies justice and goodness, and so on (79). 9 See Irwin (1977), 154-55.

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and that * separation' does in fact mean a capacity for independent existence. That Forms are not universals will be argued in a later chapter. But as to the question of whether a capacity for independent existence is what 'separation' means, it seems to me that the case has not been proved. In Metaphysics V 11 natural priority is defined in terms of independent existence and then the definition is illustrated by an appeal to Plato, that is to say, by the Forms, and there is no mention at all of separation. Admittedly, in Eudemian Ethics 18 when independent existence and natural priority are said to be characteristic of the Form of the Good, that the Idea of the Good is also said to be separable is added in a way which suggests its connection with these other notions. But the difficulty is that 'separation' need not mean a capacity for independent existence for separation and natural priority to be linked; rather, if a capacity for independent existence were merely entailed by the nature of the Forms, that is to say, by the attributes that Forms are able to have in virtue of being separate, the connection between separation and the natural priority of the Forms would also follow.10 I have argued against Fine that neither Eudemian Ethics I 8 nor Metaphysics V 11 clearly identifies a capacity for independent existence with separation. But there is also another reason for holding that a capacity for independent existence is not what Aristotle means. For if one takes Aristotle to attribute to Plato the separation of the Forms, meaning by that their capacity for independent existence, then Aristotle seems to attribute to Plato an argument for separated Forms which would have no persuasiveness at all. That is to say, as will be made clear in the passages to be discussed in Section II of this chapter, Aristotle takes flux to be Plato's primary motive for the postulation of separated Forms. Whether he is right in this assessment is disputed.11 But if being in flux is supposed to be an obstacle to being knowable and indeed fully real, then given that there are in fact things that meet these criteria, 10 For example, in his commentary on 12l7bl4-15 Woods (1992), 68, refers the reader to his discussion of 1218al—15 where he says of separation: "[Unlike Nicomachean Ethics I 1096a34-b5, in Eudemian Ethics I 8] there is mention also of the status of the Form as something separate. Does that mean that it does not depend for its existence on particulars? Or is it rather that it has to be conceived of as a distinct good? The argument does seem to assume that the Form of the Good is itself a good, and argue from that that it will be a good after a different fashion from other goods, and hence not the common character" (80). 11 Owens (1963), 199, cites Plato's concentration on definitions. Cornford (1939), 74, and, more cautiously, Burnyeat (1979), 59, cite recollection as the motive; Mabbott (1926), 74, thinks that separation is entailed by the fact that Forms are originals of which phenomena are copies. However, if the reason the originals must be separate is that only in this way can they be perfect, for example, and if, as Plato sees it, whatever is perfect and thus a suitable object of definition must be eternal and unchanging, then it seems that Aristotle is still right: the basis for the separation of the Forms is the argument from flux. As will become clear in Chapter IV, I take recollection to be a consequence of the inaccessibility of Forms to our present experience.


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what is proved is that there exist some things that are not in flux. That is to say, what has been proved is, at most, that there are things that exist besides - in addition to - those that are in flux. Whether they would exist even if those that are in flux did not do so is clearly another question. In short, I have no inclination to deny that Plato intended the Forms to have a capacity for independent existence and indeed neither would I deny that Aristotle thought that this was Plato's intention. But if a capacity for independent existence is what is meant by 'separation', then it would seem that Aristotle must attribute to Plato an argument for the existence of Forms which is flagrantly invalid. In fact Fine offers a way to avoid this conclusion. What she suggests is that Aristotle did not take Plato to be arguing directly from flux to Forms capable of existing independently but rather to be using the assumption that there is knowledge despite the existence of flux to establish only that there are Forms which are universals, not that they are separate. Recalling that separation is taken by Fine to be a capacity for independent existence, why then would Aristotle accuse Plato of separating the Forms? What Fine proposes is that these universals or Forms are, in Aristotle's interpretation of Plato's ontology, the only available candidates for substances, and substances, so Aristotle holds, are separate.12 Thus as Fine understands it, the argument for the separation of the Forms - which, if Forms are universals and 'separation' means a capacity for independent existence, is, as I have said, just an argument that universals can exist uninstantiated - need not after all be invalid; it is not so because the need for something which is not in flux is not by itself supposed to be sufficient to establish that Forms are separate. Yet even if the argument is not invalid, neither is it in Aristotle's view sound. Rather what Aristotle holds, according to Fine, is that Plato errs in his belief that Forms, being universals, can be substances. In fact I would agree with Fine that Aristotle believes that universals cannot be substances. Nevertheless I disagree with her understanding of separation and in consequence with her construal of how, from the fact of flux, Aristotle supposes Plato to have arrived at separate Forms. Indeed the passage in Metaphysics XIII 9 from which the quotation at the head of the chapter was taken and upon which Fine founds her argument would not seem most naturally to support her interpretation. Aristotle says: as regards those who believe in the Ideas one might survey at the same time their way of thinking and the difficulties into which they fall. For they at the same time treat the Ideas as universal, and again as separable [choristas] and individual. That this is not possible has been shown before. The reason why 12 Fine (1984), 51-53.

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those who say substances are universal combined these two views in one, is that they did not make them the same13 [autas] with sensible things. They thought that the sensible particulars were in a state of flux and none of them remained, but that the universal was apart [para] from these and different. And Socrates gave the impulse to this theory, as we said before, by means of his definitions, but he did not separate them from the particulars; and in this he thought rightly, in not separating them. This is plain from the results; for without the universal it is not possible to get knowledge, but the separation is the cause of the objections that arise with regard to the Ideas. His successors, treating it as necessary, if there are to be substances besides the sensible and transient substances, that they be separable, had no others, but gave separate existence to these universally predicated substances, so that it followed that universals and individuals were almost the same sort of thing. (1086a31-bll) Passages such as this will be mined for another purpose in Chapter V. At present, however, my point is that when Aristotle says that Forms are both separate and universal, his diagnosis of Plato's error would seem to be not, as Fine claims, that he made the Forms universals while, if they are to be substances, they must be separate and therefore particular. Rather Aristotle's complaint is that Plato failed to make Forms the same as sensible things (1086a36). To be sure, this claim could mean that he failed to make them the same in kind - in other words, that he failed to make them particulars - but since in fact Aristotle here also says that Plato makes Forms both particular and universal, this would be, to say the least, a peculiar complaint and, anyway, the manner in which he continues suggests a different explanation. For if the reason for postulating something not the same as sensibles is that the latter are in flux, this reason tells neither for nor against the universality or particularity of Forms - it counts only for the postulation of something that does not have the property of being in flux. Thus their numerical distinctness from things in flux would seem to be what is asserted. II Even though Plato's Forms do have the capacity to exist independently, as I have argued, a capacity for independent existence would not seem to be what Aristotle has in mind when he says that Plato's Forms are separate. Rather, as I see it, the attribution of a capacity for independent existence to the Forms is an assertion of the ontological priority they have over the phenomena from which they are held to be separated. But if this is so, it is necessary to establish what 'separation' does mean, and I have already given a reason for favoring numerical sameness. In Metaphysics I 6 987a32-blO when Aristotle gives his account of the 13 Barnes (1984) has 'identical'. My reason for preferring 'same' will become apparent in Chapter II.


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origin of Plato's Theory of Forms and addresses the question of separation, he says: For, having in his youth first become familiar with Cratylus and with the Heraclitean doctrines (that all sensible things are ever in a state of flux and there is no knowledge about them), these views [Plato] held even in later years. Socrates, however, was busying himself about ethical matters and neglecting the world of nature as a whole but seeking the universal in these ethical matters, and fixed thought for the first time on definitions; Plato accepted his teaching, but held that the problem applied not to any sensible thing but to entities of another kind - for this reason, that the common definition could not be a definition of any sensible thing, as they were always changing. Things of this other sort, then, he called Ideas, and sensible things, he said, were apart from these, and were all called after these; for the multitude of things which have the same name as the Form exist by participation in it. (emphasis added) The same story seems to be told in Metaphysics XIII 4 1 0 7 8 b l 2 - 1 0 7 9 a 4 where Aristotle begins by saying: The supporters of the ideal theory were led to it because they were persuaded of the truth of the Heraclitean doctrine that all sensible things are ever passing away, so that if knowledge or thought is to have an object, there must be some

other [heteras] and permanent entities, apart [para] from those which are sensible; for there can be no knowledge of things which are in a state of flux. (1078bl2-17; emphasis added) After a discussion of Socrates, Aristotle then explains the difference between his views and those of Plato: For two things may be fairly ascribed by Socrates - inductive arguments and universal definition, both of which are concerned with the starting-point of science. But Socrates did not make the universals or the definitions exist apart [chorista]; his successors, however, gave them separate existence, and this was the kind of thing they called Ideas. (1078b27-32) What are we to make of these passages? I have argued against Fine that Eudemian Ethics I 8 does not show 'separation' to mean a capacity for independent existence and that, because an argument from flux to independent existence (unless taken in something like the way in which Fine takes it) would be invalid, a capacity for independent existence is not likely to have been what Aristotle meant. Of course, it is possible that Plato's argument for the separation of the Forms, assuming that Aristotle is right about the origins of the Theory, just is invalid. Nevertheless, as I have already said, the difficulty with the proposal that Plato argues from the need for something that is not in flux to the need for something that can exist without the existence of whatever is in flux is that the two notions seem too obviously unconnected for fallacious argument to occur. Besides, further and, I think, decisive evidence

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against the supposition that a capacity for independent existence is what is meant by 'separation' is found as XIII 4 continues. Aristotle says: Therefore it followed for them, almost by the same argument, that there must be Ideas of all things that are spoken of universally, and it was almost as if a man wished to count certain things, and while they were few thought he would not be able to count them, but made them more and then counted them; for the Forms are almost more numerous than the groups of sensible things, yet it was in seeking the causes of sensible things that they proceeded from these to the Forms. For to each set of substances there answers a Form which has the same name and exists apart [para] from the substances, and so also in the other categories there is one character common to many individuals, whether these be sensible or eternal. (1078b32-1079a4) The passage is parallel to Metaphysics I 9: But as for those who posit the Ideas as causes, firstly, in seeking to grasp the causes of the things around us, they introduced others equal in number to these, as if a man who wanted to count things thought he could not do it while they were few, but tried to count them when he had added to their number. For the Forms are practically equal to or not fewer than the things, in trying to explain which these thinkers proceeded from them to the Forms. For to each set of substances there answers a Form which has the same name and exists apart from the substances, and so also in the case of all other groups in which there is one character common to many things, whether the things are in this changeable world or are eternal. (990a34—b8) What Aristotle intends to attribute to Plato when he says that the Forms exist apart from sensible things becomes in this cheap shot at his predecessor very clear. If Plato's Theory is almost as if a man wished to count certain things, and while they were few thought that he would not be able to count them, but made them more and then counted them, separation - the target of Aristotle's ridicule — must be the supposed numerical distinctness of Forms from sensible things.

Ill In considering those passages in which Aristotle criticizes Plato for separating the Forms, I have argued that, while Plato did take the Forms to be capable of independent existence and while Aristotle thought that he did so, such is not the basis of the latter's complaint. Rather, what the argument from flux, the argument that Aristotle cites as the origin of the Platonic Theory, can reasonably be supposed to show — and what Aristotle takes it to be supposed to show - is that Forms are numerically distinct from sensibles. But if this is so, then when Aristotle objects to


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Plato's (as opposed to Socrates') view of Forms, it is most plausible to conclude that by 'separation' Aristotle means numerical distinctness.14 Of course I have not tried to prove that Aristotle's interpretation of Plato, as I understand it, is correct, and it would take me far beyond the scope of this work to try to do so. Nevertheless since it is prima facie more plausible to suppose that Aristotle did understand Plato's theory than that he did not, it cannot be denied that Plato's actual views are relevant, and although Fine denies that separation is a central tenet of Plato's Theory, even she concedes that her stance is unusual. More troublesome therefore is the fact that interpreters of Plato who do take separation to be important do not always have the same thing - or even one thing - in mind when they say that the Forms are separate. Richard Patterson, for example, says of the Form of the Good, "First, the Good is separate from all sensible things. It is not located where they are, not contaminated by any admixture with them, nor dependent on them for being what it is."15 None of these characteristics is, as it happens, what Fine suggests Aristotle takes the separation of the Forms to mean; however when Gregory Vlastos argues that Plato's proposal that the Forms exist "themselves by themselves" is equivalent to Aristotle's claim that Plato's Forms exist separately16 he goes on to endorse Fine's interpretation.17 Yet what is to be noticed is that all the features mentioned by both Patterson and Vlastos could be seen as consequent upon the nature of separated Forms if 'separation' were understood as numerical distinctness. One of Vlastos's concerns can make this point clear. When he argues that the separation of Forms means that Forms can exist even if uninstantiated, Vlastos finds some difficulty in the fact that Plato also wants to hold that the relation between Forms and phenomena is asymmetric,18 something that independent existence as such does not entail; the soul, which is said to be separate from the body, can exist without the body, and the body, for a short time at least, can also exist without the soul.19 But if separation means, as I have suggested, numerical distinctness, the symmetric relation found in the case of body and soul is unproblematic, while what needs to be said of the asymmetric character of the relation between the Forms and phenomena is that it is not to be accounted for by separation as such. Rather just as with a capacity for 14 Numerical distinctness seems also to have a part in the passage quoted from Woods (1982), 80, in my n. 10. That is, if the Form of the Good is "a distinct good" and "good after a different fashion from other goods, and hence not the common character," it is hard to see how it could be anything other than numerically distinct. 15 Patterson (1985), 123; see also 129. Spatial separation may also be found in Else (1936). 16 Vlastos (1991), 256. 17 Vlastos (1991), 265. 18 What Vlastos (1991), 259-60, says is that the relation is "antisymmetric." What he seems to have in mind is a modal formulation of asymmetry according to which x can exist without y and not conversely. 19 Vlastos (1991), 260.

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independent existence, it is at precisely this point that there must be appeal to other facts about Forms, that they are necessarily eternal or that they are models, for example. But if this is so, then even when interpreters argue for - or assume - a different account of separation, there seems to be nothing in such views that is inconsistent with the claim that numerical distinctness from phenomena is what the separation of the Forms means. To return then to Aristotle, we have seen that Aristotle says quite clearly that separation is the cause of the objections that arise with regard to the Ideas. (In Metaphysics XIII 4 and I 9 the term in question is para, often translated as ''exists apart." Where chbristos does occur, as in the passages from Metaphysics VII 1 and Eudemian Ethics I 8, there is no reason to think any different sort of separation is intended; Metaphysics XIII 9, as we have seen, uses both.20) Of course, I certainly do not contend that every criticism of the Theory of Forms Aristotle offers is connected with the separation of the Forms. To take only Metaphysics I 9, Aristotle there objects that Plato will be saddled with Forms of negations, that there are unacceptable consequences to taking Forms to be numbers, and so on. Nevertheless Aristotle repeatedly indicates that separation is the crux, in the sense that it is peculiarly characteristic of Plato's Theory and peculiarly troublesome. Thus if I am right that separation is numerical distinctness, the question that must be considered is just this: Why, exactly, should Aristotle think the numerical distinctness of Forms from phenomena to be objectionable? IV When Aristotle wants to object to the numerical distinctness of Forms from sensibles, what he sometimes says is that whatever is numerically distinct will be particular and therefore unknowable; at other times he offers a variation on this objection, arguing that Forms, being knowable, must be universals, in which case if they are also particulars, there results incoherence ("this is not possible" (1086a34)). That whatever is numerically distinct is particular is a claim Aristotle more often asserts than argues for; perhaps it is thought to follow from the very concept of numerical distinctness. But the claim leads to some harsh descriptions of Plato's Theory. For example, at Metaphysics III 2 997b5-12 Aristotle says: the most paradoxical thing of all is the statement that there are certain things besides those in the material universe, and that these are the same as sensible things except that they are eternal while the latter are perishable. For they say there is a man-in-himself and a horse-in-itself and health-in-itself, with no further 20 So does Metaphysics XI 2. See 1060a3-b2.


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qualification, - a procedure like that of the people who said there are gods, but in human form. For they were positing nothing but eternal men, nor are they making the Forms anything other than eternal sensible things, (cf. VII 16 1040b32-34) This complaint is summarized in Nicomachean Ethics I 6 in a way that makes the consequences clear: And one might ask the question, what in the world they mean by 'a thing itselF, if in man himself and in a particular man the account of man is one and the same. For in so far as they are men, they will in no respect differ; and if this is so, neither will there be a difference in so far as they are good. (1096a34-b3) Thus Aristotle, beginning from their numerical distinctness, takes Forms to be particulars and proposes that, if intelligible at all, Forms are no more than eternal sensibles. Moreover in the Third Man Argument he seems to claim that the numerical distinctness of Forms will lead to an infinite regress as well. Although the Third Man Argument is no more than alluded to in Metaphysics I 9 (990bl7), there is a brief discussion in the Sophistical Refutations. There Aristotle says: "Again, there is the argument that there is a third man distinct from man and from individual men. But 'man', and indeed every general predicate, signifies not an individual, but some quality, or quantity or relation, or something of that sort" (178b36-39). Even though the steps leading to the troublesome third man are not spelled out, it seems evident that Aristotle believes that for Plato 'man' signifies a particular and that this is cited as the cause of a regress of distinct Forms. But since a lengthier version of the Third Man Argument as given in his lost essay Peri Idem is preserved in Alexander of Aphrodisias's commentary on the first book of the Metaphysics, I will turn to the presentation of the Third Man Argument in Alexander. At 84, 22-85, 3 Alexander records the following objection to the Theory of Forms: If what is predicated truly of more than one thing is also [some] other thing apart from the things of which it is predicated, being separated from them (for this is what those who posit the Ideas think they are proving; for the reason why, according to them, there is something, man-himself, is because 'man' is predicated truly of particular men, who are more than one, and is other than particular men) - but if this is so, there will be some third man. For if [the 'man'] predicated is other than those of whom it is predicated and subsists by itself, and 'man' is predicated both of particular men and of the Idea, there will be some third man apart from both particular men and from the Idea. And in this way there will be still a fourth man, the one predicated of the third man and of the Idea and of particular men, and similarly a fifth, and so on ad infinitum.2X 21 Pages 121-22 of the Dooley translation of Alexander of Aphrodisias (1989). The bracketed material is supplied by Dooley.

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It has sometimes been found puzzling that in this argument, unlike the 'Third Man" of the Parmenides, separation is one of the premisses. But the explanation, it seems to me, is just that since the goal of the argument is to establish that Plato's Theory leads to regress, there is no reason not to begin with Plato's desired conclusion, namely, the existence of a (first-level) Form for man, numerically distinct from sensible particulars.22 Moreover if the humanity shared by individual human beings is supposed to lead to the conclusion that the Form for man is something numerically distinct from phenomena and if to be a numerically distinct human being is to be a particular, then something like self-predication seems at least a plausible charge. To be sure, the Third Man Argument has been analyzed in immense detail, and some interpreters think that what has been called self-predication need not be part of it.23 But even if they are right, as long as it is agreed that Aristotle believes that Plato can be forced to admit that his views about the Forms will result in regress, the connection between the Third Man Argument and my claim that * separation' means numerical distinctness clearly remains. Following an argument in Section III for the conclusion that when Aristotle criticizes Plato for separating the Forms what he has in mind is their numerical distinctness from sensible objects, I have in this section considered passages where Aristotle links the numerical distinctness of Forms from sensibles with their particularity and that with the Third Man Argument. But particularity, Aristotle thinks, also creates another problem, namely, the unknowability of the Forms. This difficulty will be the subject of the next section.

In Metaphysics VII 15 Aristotle says: As has been said, people do not realize that it is impossible to define in the case of eternal things, especially those which are unique, like the sun or the moon. For they err not only by adding attributes after whose removal the sun would still exist, e.g. 'going round the earth' or 'night-hidden' . . . but also by the mention of attributes which can belong to another subject; e.g. if another thing with the stated attributes comes into existence, clearly it will be a sun; the formula therefore is general. But the sun was supposed to be an individual, 22 Aristotle's objection at 990b 15 to Ideas of relations, as explained in Alexander, also begins with Forms: "Again, if the equal is equal to an equal, there would be more than one Idea of the equal; for the equal-itself is equal to the equal-itself, for if it were not equal to anything it would not be equal at all" (83, 26-28). Dooley, trans. (1989), 120. For competing explanations of the presence of separation in the premisses of the Third Man Argument, see Fine (1982), 161-69, and Code (1985), 104-10 and 323-26. 23 See Code (1985), 106, and Lewis (1991), 15-24, 33-43.


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like Cleon or Socrates. Why does not one of the supporters of the Ideas produce a definition of an Idea? It would become clear, if they tried, that what has now been said is true. (1040a27-b4) Aristotle's support for the claim that particulars are unknowable is in part the alleged impossibility of counterexample: Just try to produce a definition of Cleon or the sun or an Idea. But, of course, one reason a definition of Cleon cannot be produced is that Cleon is transitory. Earlier in the same chapter Aristotle has said: there is neither definition nor demonstration of sensible individual substances, because they have matter whose nature is such that they are capable both of being and of not being; for which reason all the individual instances of them are destructible. If then demonstration is of necessary truths and definition involves knowledge, and if, just as knowledge cannot be sometimes knowledge and sometimes ignorance, but the state which varies thus is opinion, so too demonstration and definition cannot vary thus, but it is opinion that deals with that which can be otherwise than as it is, clearly there can neither be definition nor demonstration of sensible individuals. (1039b27-1040a2)

Certainly the correlation found in this argument between different states of mind - knowledge, opinion, and ignorance - and distinct objects is reminiscent of Republic V.24 For Aristotle as for Plato, what is knowable must be necessary, eternal, and unchanging (e.g., Posterior Analytics 7lb9-16, 73a21-3, 74b6, 88b30-89al0; Nicomachean Ethics 1139bl8-23, 1140a31-b3), constraints that, as we will see, significantly affect his account of substance. But it is hard to see that this sort of objection affects the knowability of either the sun, which, unlike Cleon, is supposed to be eternal and unchanging, or of Platonic Forms; indeed even in the case of the sun, the removal of accidents contemplated in Metaphysics VII 15 would seem to be counterfactual. Moreover, whatever one says about the sun, it is not clear that one can use such a reason - namely, the presence of attributes that might, even if only in imagination, be removed - to claim that Forms are unknowable.25 In short, in the case of Forms, it seems most reasonable to suppose the obstacles to definition arise not from the possible removal of attributes but rather from the fact that any attributes one gives could belong to more than one thing - not just individually, for that would not be troublesome, but taken together. In other words, the complaint seems to be that if one gives a definition, that definition might be 24 Although Aristotle, like Plato, moves freely between knowledge of eternal truths (for example, that the diagonal is incommensurable) and knowledge of objects, in the Metaphysics it is evident that it must be the knowledge of objects - of substances that is fundamental. 25 One would, of course, be able to "remove properties" if Forms were described in a sufficiently peripheral way, for example, "the first Form recollected by the slave," but perhaps Plato could say that such descriptions do not correspond to properties of the Form.

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satisfied by more than one thing. That this is so would seem to be confirmed in yet another passage in VII 15: Nor is it possible to define any Idea. For the Idea is, as its supporters say, an individual, and can exist apart; and the formula must consist of words; and he who defines must not invent a word (for it would be unknown), but the established words are common to each of a number of things; these then must apply to something besides the thing defined; e.g. if one were defining you, he would say 'an animal which is lean' or 'white', or something else which will apply also to some one other than you. (1040a8-14) If the name or the definition of the Form can apply to only one thing, its name is like inventing a word - or to put the point another way, its name would be a proper name. I have argued that Aristotle seems to believe separated Forms are particulars that in virtue of their uniqueness would be unknowable. Of course to suppose as Aristotle does that the name would apply only to the Form overlooks - or contests - the supposed relation of likeness between Forms and sensible particulars. But that much of the rest of Aristotle's epistemological attack on the Theory also hinges, directly or indirectly, on separation is apparent. In Metaphysics I, for example, he says: "But again [Forms] help in no way towards the knowledge of the other things (for they are not even the substance of these, else they would have been in them) . . ." (991al2-13). His concern, expressed in Nicomachean Ethics I 6, about the unattainability of the Form of the Good and its uselessness even for knowledge of attainable goods illustrates the general problem. Here Aristotle says: And similarly with regard to the Idea; even if there is some one good which is universally predicable of goods or is capable of separate and independent existence, clearly it could not be achieved or attained by man. . . . Perhaps, however, some one might think it worth while to have knowledge of [the Form of the Good] with a view to the goods that are attainable and achievable; for having this as a sort of pattern we shall know better the goods that are good for us, and if we know them shall attain them. This argument has some plausibility, but seems to clash with the procedure of the sciences; for all of these, though they aim at some good and seek to supply the deficiency of it, leave on one side the knowledge of the good. Yet that all the exponents of the arts should be ignorant of, and should not even seek, so great an aid is not probable. (1096b311097a8) While numerical distinctness alone would not explain the unattainability of The Good (goodness in carpentry is distinct from goodness in music and both are attainable), the difference in nature between phenomena and separated Forms can plausibly be said to offer such an explanation; after all, even though Forms are said to be patterns for phenomena, nevertheless if they are to be eternal, they must in significant ways be unlike them. Moreover, having doubted the usefulness of knowledge of


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the Form of the Good on the grounds that craftsmen do not use it, Aristotle then seems to suggest that their lack of attention to the Form should undermine our confidence in its existence. In the two passages just cited, Aristotle uses the separation of Forms as grounds for doubting that knowledge of Forms, even should there be such, would yield knowledge of the sensible world. But in Metaphysics I 9 he also mounts a general attack on the acquisition of knowledge of the elements of things, an attack that seems to be aimed at Forms: And how could we learn the elements of all things? Evidently we cannot start by knowing something before. For as he who is learning geometry, though he may know other things before, knows none of the things with which the science deals and about which he is to learn, so is it in all other cases. Therefore if there is a science of all things, as some maintain, he who is learning this will know nothing before. Yet all learning is by means of premises which are (either all or some of them) known before, - whether the learning be by demonstration or by definitions; for the elements of the definition must be known before and be familiar; and learning by induction proceeds similarly. But again, if the science is innate, it is wonderful that we are unaware of our possession of the greatest of sciences.

Again, how is one to know what all things are made of, and how is this to be made evident? This also affords a difficulty; for there might be a conflict of opinion, as there is about certain syllables; some say za is made out of s and d and a, while others say it is a distinct sound and none of those that are familiar. Further, how could we know the objects of sense without having the sense in question? Yet we should, if the elements of which all things consist, as complex sounds consist of their proper elements, are the same. (992b24-993al0; emphasis added; boldface indicates Barnes's emphasis) The problems attendant to the Theory of Recollection will be considered in Chapter IV. But it is already apparent that in arguments such as these Aristotle is contending, in effect, that in addition to all the metaphysical problems of the Theory, the Forms cannot accomplish what he believes to be Plato's aim, namely, to explain how there can be knowledge of anything in a world that seems to be full of flux. Yet even if Plato's Theory is thought by Aristotle to fail, the questions it was intended to answer remain, and it is from within their presuppositions that Aristotle too has to wrestle with problems of universality, particularity, ontological priority, and knowability. As he says in Metaphysics III: If [the first principles] are universal, they will not be substances; for everything that is common indicates not a 'this' but a 'such', but substance is a 'this'. And if we can actually posit the common predicate as a single 'this', Socrates will be several animals - himself and man and animal, if each of these indicates a 'this' and a single thing. - If, then, the principles are universals, these results follow; if they are not universals but of the nature of individuals, they will not be knowable; for the knowledge of anything is universal. (1003a7—15)

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Thus it is that Aristotle also will try to say what substances or forms are and how they have the universality and particularity he claims is necessary. Likewise he will try to explain what the relation between substances or forms and sensibles is, and how, by encountering sensible objects, one knows substances. The examination of his views in the chapters to come will test my contention that what separates Plato and Aristotle is - separation.

II Referential Opacity in Aristotle

At the beginning of Metaphysics VII 6 Aristotle inquires whether each thing and its essence are the same or different, an inquiry that, he claims, is of use for the investigation of substance. In Chapter III I will argue that VII 6 does indeed tell us much about substance. What is of relevance in this chapter, however, is Aristotle's preparedness to raise such a question. What Aristotle says of the inquiry into the sameness of each thing and its essence is that each thing is thought to be not different from its substance and that the essence is said to be the substance of each thing (1031al5-19). It is easy enough to suppose that 'is not different from' means 'is the same as* and that 'is the same as' means 'is identical with'. If this assumption is made,1 there would not seem much need for inquiry: If each thing is identical with its substance and its substance is identical with its essence, then obviously each thing is identical with its essence. Nevertheless Aristotle does inquire about the relation between each thing and its essence, a way of proceeding that suggests that the sort of sameness that interests him may in fact not be identity. It is because problems of sameness are made evident by the occurrence of referential opacity that we focus on that concept in this chapter.2 After presenting several responses to referential opacity in Aristotle, I offer my own analysis of why, in Aristotle, failures of substitutivity occur. In Chapter III I will consider the significance of referential opacity for Aristotle's 1 It needs also to be assumed that Aristotle does not intend to make a distinction between 'substance' and 'substance of. I believe that he does not, for reasons that will become apparent in Chapter III. 2 Though I couch the discussion in terms of referential opacity, my intention is to give a description of certain problems without making any assumptions that would prejudge questions about the kinds of sameness to be found in Aristotle. That is to say, I do not intend that 'referential opacity' be denned in the manner of Lewis (1991), 90: "A context, A, is referentially opaque at a given position, if and only if for expressions a and (3, such that a and 0 denote the identical entity, a context, A', is like A except that A contains a in that position but A' contains /3 there, and A and A' do not denote the same thing (or if A and A' are sentences, A and A' do not have the same truth value)."

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alternative to Plato's Theory of Forms, namely, the account of substance given in Metaphysics VII-VIII.

It is W. V. O. Quine who seems to have introduced the term 'referential opacity'. In "Reference and Modality" he points out that a name may occur in a statement, for example, 'Tully' in Tully denounced Catiline', and yet not occur referentially in a longer statement which is formed by embedding the statement in the context 4s unaware that . . .' or 'believes that . . .', as for example in 'Philip is unaware that Tully denounced Catiline'. Quine proposes that we speak of contexts such as 'is unaware that . . .' as "referentially opaque," 3 and because substitutivity is to be expected where there is identity, referential opacity can be puzzling. As Quine says: One of the fundamental principles governing identity is that of substitutivity — or, as it might well be called, that of indiscernibility of identicals. It provides that, given a true statement of identityy one of its two terms may be substituted for the other in any true statement and the result will be true.4

Not all failures of substitutivity are, of course, genuinely problematic. Though 'Cicero' and 'Tully' refer to the same person, in " 'Cicero' contains six letters" replacement of one name with the other changes the sentence from true to false,5 yet here the paradox is not deep; it need only be said that the statement is not about Cicero at all but about a word that is a name for him. But the difficulty is that the opacity found in modal and intentional contexts is not so easily dismissed. After all, if a and b are identical, all the properties of a would seem to be properties of b, and if all the properties of a are properties of b, then surely it does seem reasonable that in any true statement in which something is predicated of a, if what is predicated of a had been predicated of by truth should be preserved. This is not the place to describe contemporary solutions, except insofar as they also have been proposed for the interpretation of Aristotle. But the problem of referential opacity itself is of major significance in Aristotle just because there are so many contexts - and such important ones - that seem to be opaque. To take some examples, we can know Coriscus but fail to know the masked man (who is Coriscus); Socrates 3 Quine (1953), 142. Quine says that the term 'referentially opaque' is roughly the opposite of Russell's 'transparent' in Appendix C to Principia Malhematica, 2d ed., vol. I. 4 Quine (1953), 139. See also Carnap (1947), 98, who gives a clear statement of the principle even though he rejects it. He says: "If two expressions name the same entity, then a true sentence remains true when the one is replaced in it by the other; in our terminology: the two expressions are interchangeable (everywhere)." 5 Quine (1953), 139.

REFERENTIAL OPACITY IN ARISTOTLE

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is accidentally the same as the seated man, but Socrates, and not the seated man, is essentially the same as his essence or form; the builder is a cause of the house, and the musician is not (even if the builder is a musician); the man, but not the pale one, becomes cultured. This list - to which could be added '. . . is a substance', '. . . is per se [roughly, '. . . is necessarily'] F', '. . . is a species o f . . . ' , ' . . . is the genus of. . .', and so on, as well as \ . . moves', '. . . builds', * . . . sculpts', and all other action verbs - includes not only the modal and propositional attitude contexts that many philosophers besides Aristotle have thought to be opaque, but also contexts that might seem to be paradigm cases of the transparent and contexts involving Aristotle's technical vocabulary. So far I have explained what is meant by 'referential opacity' and I have described why, where identity is concerned, failures of substitutivity would seem to be problematic. But in fact whether Aristotle had such a notion as identity is disputed. In the Topics, he himself expresses what appears to be the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals or, as it is often called, Leibniz's Law: Moreover, examine them in the light of their accidents or of the things of which they are accidents; for any accident belonging to the one must belong also to the other, and if the one belongs to anything as an accident, so must the other also. If in any of these respects there is a discrepancy, clearly they are not the same. (152a33-37) Or again: Speaking generally, one ought to be on the look-out for any discrepancy anywhere in any sort of predicate of each term, and in the things of which they are predicated. For all that is predicated of the one should be predicated also of the other, and of whatever the one is a predicate, the other should be a predicate as well. (152b25-29) These passages and others from the Topics (for example, 132a2728) are usually taken as good evidence that, at least at the time of that treatise, Aristotle held a standard view of identity.6 But there is also reason to have qualms. At De Interpretatione 1121a 7-14, for example, Aristotle says: 6 In his definition of 'numerical sameness' in Topics I 7, Aristotle distinguishes three senses of the expression, namely, sameness where there is an alternative name or definition ("its most literal and primary use"), second, sameness rendered by a nonessential property peculiar to that kind of thing, and third, sameness drawn from accident, as in describing Socrates as "the creature who is sitting" (103a23-31). While these senses may seem to foreshadow later distinctions, 152a33-37 and 152b25-29, just quoted, make it clear that, with regard to substitutivity, no use is made of them in the Topics. Moreover Aristotle's example of the first and most literal sense is at least peculiar since the example (doublet and cloak) is not, as it stands, an example of numerical sameness.

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Of things predicated, and things they get predicated of, those which are said accidentally, either of the same thing or of one another, will not be one. For example, a man is white and musical, but * white' and * musical' are not one, because they are both accidental to the same thing. And even if it is true to say that the white is musical, * musical white' will still not be one thing; for it is accidentally that the musical is white, and so 'white musical' will not be one.

Moreover in Sophistical Refutations 24 Aristotle clearly says that numerical sameness is not sufficient for substitutivity, a claim that raises serious problems of interpretation. Nicholas White, for example, holds that Aristotle's grasp of identity weakens7; Gareth Matthews argues that, on the contrary, the restrictions Aristotle introduces show that he is moving toward an understanding of the notion.8 What is clear is that Aristotle thinks or comes to think that there are two varieties of numerical sameness, essential sameness and accidental sameness {Metaphysics V 9 10l7b27-1018a9), such that substitutivity is said to hold in the first case in certain contexts where it fails in the second. The problem therefore is this: If numerical sameness just is identity, as elucidated by Leibniz's Law, what can the distinction between essential and accidental sameness come to and how can it be used to explain certain failures of substitutivity? On the other hand, if either accidental sameness or essential sameness (or both) is other than identity, what is their relation to identity? II One strategy for dealing with failures of substitutivity is that of Frege. When we are presented with a belief context or a modal context in which substitutivity seems to fail (for example, 'it is necessary that the Morning Star is the Morning Star' is true but 'it is necessary that the Morning Star is the Evening Star' is false), Frege's response is to say that, in such sentences, 'the Morning Star' does not, despite appearances, refer to the Morning Star and 'the Evening Star' does not, despite appearances, refer to the Evening Star. That is, in modal and belief contexts, Frege claims, 'the Morning Star' refers not to the ordinary referent of the expression 'the Morning Star' (namely, Venus) but rather to the sense of that expression.9 Since 'the Morning Star' in 'it is necessary that the Morning Star is the Morning Star' does not, on Frege's view, refer to the Morning Star but to its sense and since the sense of 'the Morning Star' is different from the sense of 'the Evening Star', it is hardly surprising that substituting one for the other fails to preserve 7 White (1971), 177. I will not argue against White's view that, after the Topics, Aristotle confuses 'X and Y are the same' with 'X and Y are one', where the latter is taken to mean that both X and Kmake up a single entity (see 187). However both Miller (1973) and Matthews (1982), 230-35, do so effectively. 8 Matthews (1982), 233. 9 See Frege (1952), 67.


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truth. Thus, on Frege's view, Leibniz's Law is preserved; the Morning Star and the Evening Star do indeed have all the same properties. Even if the sorts of referents Frege suggested are not suitable, the idea that when failures of substitutivity occur the referents are distinct can be found in Aristotelian scholarship as well. Frank Lewis, for example, argues that substitutivity fails in sentences of the sort described just because there is not an identity between, for example, Socrates and the generous (the generous one); the generous one, claims Lewis, is a different entity from Socrates. Specifically, when the generous one is said by Aristotle to be accidentally but not essentially the same as Socrates, what this means, according to Lewis, is that the generous one is an accidental compound of which Socrates is a constituent.10 As Lewis says, ''When we do ontology, we can set Socrates down as one, single object, and discover later that there remains a second object to be counted, namely, Socrates + pale."11 Although Matthews is more cautious than Lewis and says that Socrates and Socrates seated "are not two people, nor, indeed, two of anything else,"12 pointing out that for Aristotle there is not even a univocal sense of the verb 'to be' in which they can both be said to be, in the end he too argues along similar lines, saying: For [Aristotle], after all, 'Coriscus' and 'the masked man' are not really coreferential expressions at all. The one picks out a kooky object [that is, an accidental unity] that perishes when Coriscus takes off his mask; the other doesn't. To be sure, the masked man is accidentally the same as Coriscus. But accidental sameness is not identity and accidental sameness does not guarantee that every attribute of Coriscus is an attribute of the masked man.13 That Aristotle continues, as Lewis admits he does continue, to consider essential and accidental sameness varieties of numerical sameness would seem to be at least puzzling on the view Lewis presents.14 Moreover, the ontology Lewis and Matthews attribute to Aristotle may itself seem surprising. Despite Aristotle's talk of compounds as coming into being and passing away when attributes are gained and lost (Physics I 7 190a20), the usual explanation of Socrates' becoming pale is not that some numerically distinct entity comes into being or ceases to exist but that an enduring entity, Socrates, has undergone a qualitative change. However, what needs to be considered is whether on such an account failures of substitutivity can be explained. 10 Lewis (1982), 2, 4-5, 7, 24. Accidental compound theory is developed further in Lewis (1991), 85-140. 11 Lewis (1982), 22. 12 Matthews (1982), 226. 13 Matthews (1982), 227-28. 14 Lewis (1982), 17. Matthews seems to acknowledge that Aristotle's claim that accidental sameness is a variety of numerical sameness is problematic. See Matthews (1982), 239.

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I have described a view that explains away referential opacity by the claim that, where substitutivity fails, the referents of the terms in question are distinct entities, at least one of which is an accidental unity. These accidental unities include both objects that are referred to by the conjunction of a proper name and some property (for example, Socrates seated) and objects referred to simply by means of the property had (such as the seated one), where the latter are to be analyzed in terms of the former. But there is also an alternative account according to which Socrates and the seated one (where Socrates is seated) are not in any way distinct objects; 'the seated one' just refers to Socrates. On this view, which can be found in Richard Sorabji, Julius Moravcsik, Fred Miller, Christopher Kirwan, J. L. Ackrill, and others, accidental unities turn out to be sensible objects to which reference is fixed by means of a definite description.15 That only certain claims are illuminating or explanatory in the way that seems to Aristotle proper for science is, they hold, the reason why so many contexts in Aristotle are opaque. In the Physics (195a32-35), Aristotle argues that, properly speaking, it is the sculptor that is the cause of the statue and not Polyclitus (or, as Aristotle would think worse still, a musician), even if the sculptor is, in a given case, Polyclitus (who is also, let it be supposed, a musician). That is to say, it is in virtue of his skills as a sculptor that Polyclitus is able to sculpt; for sculpting, his musicianship is irrelevant. As Sorabji explains: The cause of some statue may be specified by naming the sculptor, Polyclitus. But it is not because Polyclitus is Polyclitus that he produced a statue, and it is only indirectly explanatory to refer to him. For it is only so long as we can assume other things about Polyclitus (e.g. that he is a sculptor) that we get an explanation of the outcome.16 Likewise, Aristotle says that the doctor might cure himself but that it is not insofar as he is a patient that he possesses the art of medicine (192b23-26). That is, the patient, in a given case, may happen to be a doctor, but having the skills of a doctor is not part of what it is to be a patient. As a consequence, these attributes are not always found together (192b26-27). (Compare Metaphysics VI 1026b35-1027al2.) That 'the builder builds' is true in all possible cases of building may seem enough to justify Aristotle's preference. Whether all referentially opaque contexts in Aristotle could be similarly accounted for, however, is surely problematic. Besides, there is also a more serious problem. For to say only that 'the builder builds' is explanatory and that 'the musician builds' is not does not settle the status of 'the musician builds'. That is 15 Sorabji (1980), 5; Moravcsik (1975), 633; Miller (1973), 484; Kirwan (1971), 181; Ackrill (1981), 38-39. 16 Sorabji (1980), 11. See also Kirwan (1971), 181.


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to say, is 'the musician builds' supposed to be false or merely, from the perspective of a demonstrative science, imperspicuous? This question is of crucial importance. For if 'the musician builds' is imperspicuous but nonetheless true, there is no referential opacity to be explained. On the other hand, if 'the musician builds' is false, to say that the claim is not explanatory fails to get to the source of the problem. If 'the musician builds' is false, why is it so? That is to say, if, as this account presupposes, the musician is identical with the builder, how could 'the musician builds' be false? To this point I have considered two sorts of proposals. According to one, 'the builder', 'Socrates seated', and other similar expressions are said to refer to accidental unities, where accidental unities are entities that are numerically distinct from sensible objects, thus explaining away the opacity. On the alternative view these expressions refer to sensible objects such as Socrates. But as we have seen, the second proposal, taken by itself, does nothing to remove the problematic character of failures of substitutivity. But there may be yet another possibility. For some philosophers have thought that referential opacity in Aristotle could be explained and explained without the multiplication of entities found in Lewis's view. According to Russell Dancy, for example, Socrates and a given just thing are numerically the same yet formally distinct. What it means to say that Socrates and that just thing are formally distinct, Dancy tells us, is that what it is to be x is not what it is to be y.17 Dancy's account is suggestive, but one may still wonder why, exactly, entities that are formally distinct should be such that substitutivity fails. Irwin suggests a solution, namely, that Aristotle can claim that things are identical but differ in being if he means "not that the being of this sculptor is different from the being of this baker, but that the being of sculptor differs from the being of baker."18 That is to say, on Irwin's view, this baker and this sculptor do not differ in properties where Callias, say, does both sculpting and baking (the being or essence of both is the same, namely, what it is to be a human being), and so as regards reference to Callias there is no referential opacity to be explained. Nevertheless on Irwin's interpretation Aristotle's remarks do seem at least misleading. The reason is that, whereas the sculptor and the baker, being in fact this sculptor and this baker, should be essentially the same, this is just what Aristotle appears to deny, while, on the other hand, the essence of sculptor and the essence of baker are, like sculpting and baking, too obviously different to make Aristotle's assertion that they are different necessary. We have now seen several proposals for understanding referentially opaque contexts in Aristotle. In the course of a discussion of agency 17 Dancy (1975), 367.

18 Irwin (1986), 73.

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and patiency in Physics III, Aristotle himself seems to offer an explanation. Here he says: Nor is it necessary that the teacher should learn, even if to act [to teach] and to be acted on [to learn] are one and the same, provided they are not the same in respect of the account which states their essence (as raiment and dress), but are the same in the sense in which the road from Thebes to Athens and the road from Athens to Thebes are the same. . . . For it is not things which are in any way the same that have all their attributes the same, but only those to be which is the same. (202bl0-16; cf. 202al8-20) However, as has already been said with regard to Dancy's presentation of it, the problem with Aristotle's explanation of referential opacity, namely, that only to things the same in definition do all the same properties belong, is that it seems to be nothing more than a restatement of the difficulty; that is, there are cases in which a is apparently identical with b where substitutivity fails. In what way is the road from Athens to Thebes the same as the road from Thebes to Athens? In the next section I propose an answer to this question. Ill We have examined several proposals for understanding referentially opaque contexts in Aristotle, including Lewis's and Matthew's suggestion that in such cases the referents are in fact not the same. In a passage of the sort noticed by Lewis and Matthews, Aristotle says: For to be a man is not the same as to be unmusical. One part survives, the other does not: what is not an opposite survives (for the man survives), but notmusical or unmusical does not survive, nor does the compound of the two, namely the unmusical man. (Physics I 7 190al7-21; cf. Prior Analytics I 47b2934, and On Generation and Corruption I 319b25-31)

Aristotle seems to want to say that the unmusical human being's ceasing to exist is something distinct from a human being's ceasing to be unmusical; the unmusical (that is, this case of it) does not survive and the unmusical human being does not survive. On the other hand, that the accidental is "obviously akin to not-being" (Metaphysics VI 2 1026b21) and "practically a mere name" (1026bl3-14) is said to be shown by the fact that, although unmusical Coriscus ceases to exist, there is no process by which he does so (1026b22-24). Thus what seems to be needed is a view that is intermediate between saying, on the one hand, that accidental unities are entities numerically distinct from the sensible objects that have the accidents in question and saying, on the other hand, that they just are those sensible objects, inappropriately described. When Coriscus comes to be musical, Aristotle seems to think there comes to exist not just an instance of the quality musicality but


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musical Coriscus, which is something objectlike. Similarly, what ceases to exist as a result of the changing characteristics of Coriscus is not just the instance of the quality unmusicality; something objectlike, we are told, also ceases. The identification of a subsidiary object does, of course, occur elsewhere in Aristotle, for example, in his account of geometry, and what I want to argue is that what Aristotle says about geometrical entities is useful here. Geometry, Aristotle says at Physics io,4a9-ll, "investigates natural lines but not qua natural [lines]" (cf. 1077bl7-34). The concern of the geometer, in other words, is not so-called mathematical entities but rather, for example, doors and tables. Nevertheless the geometer considers these things only with regard to their boundaries — their shape is relevant while their color, their condition, their use, and so on are ignored. We might say that not everything true of a certain wooden structure qua door is true of it qua rectangle; as Jonathan Lear says in his discussion of mathematics in Aristotle, 'qua' is a "filter" for the elimination of irrelevant properties. 19 To be sure, Lear's metaphor is not entirely apt for all referentially opaque contexts in Aristotle since in some, as will become apparent, properties are gained as well as lost. What is to be emphasized, however, is Aristotle's insistence that the geometer investigates natural lines even though a rectangle would cease to exist should a door become warped, the world does not contain both doors and rectangles. Indeed any temptation to multiply entities should be diminished by the realization that 'qua ' is detachable; that water qua water is not transparent {De Anima II 7 418b7) 20 is equivalent to 'water is not transparent qua water' and to 'it is not qua water that water is transparent'.21 To generalize then from mathematical contexts to passages of the sort that interest Lewis and Matthews, it seems that Aristotle can deny that there is anything numerically distinct from Socrates and Callias and so on to which 'the musician' refers, while still referring to both Socrates and the musician. Just as a geometer refers to rectangles as well as (although not qua geometer) to tables, so, for example, a psychologist researching the nature of musical talent can refer to musicians as such. Moreover if our language had no expressions such as 'rectangle' and 'musician', such reference could be accomplished using 'qua', as in 'this door-qua-rectangular object' or 'this human being-qua-musical one' 19 Lear (1982), 168. For 'qua' as a creator of opacity, see Wiggins (1967), 23-4. Compare Aquinas, who argues in Summa Theologica III Q. 16, Art. 10 that 'Christ as man is a creature' [Christus secondum quod homo, est creatura] is true even though 'Christ is a creature' is false. I want to thank my colleague Sandra Edwards for directing me to several medieval discussions. 20 I will cite De Anima by its more commonly used Latin title rather than the English On the Soul, its title in the Barnes edition of Aristotle's works. 21 I owe this point to Richard Grandy.

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(where the hyphens indicate that now 'qua' is part of a referring expression), and because 'qua' when used referentially is a filter of properties, the result again is generality. That is, just as it is true that rectangles have four right angles regardless of the color and age of the tables, in other words, that for purposes of geometry two tables are, assuming their size to be irrelevant or the same, indistinguishable, so it is as well in other cases. Since 'Socrates-qua-musician' abstracts from all the properties of Socrates except musicality and 'Callias-qua-musician' does the same, then even though they are, in virtue of being numerically the same as two different sensible objects, two specimens, Socrates-quamusician and Callias-qua-musician are qualitatively indistinguishable. In short, on the account which I am proposing, Socrates and Socrates-qua-builder are numerically the same. They are not, however, identical. Because not all the properties of a are true of a-qua-0, in a move which is of crucial importance for his theory of substance, there is a distinction to be made between numerical sameness and identity. Postponing until later chapters all questions regarding the status of kinds and the naturalness of any given kind, I want to call x-qua-0 a specimen of the kind 0, and what I am suggesting is that what Aristotle calls "accidental unities" are in fact specimens of kinds. That is to say, what I take Aristotle to hold is that Callias is numerically the same as the musician (and also musical Callias). Nevertheless Callias is not identical with either of these, and it is just because 'the musician' and 'musical Callias' refer not to Callias but in both cases to a specimen of the kind musician, where a specimen of a kind has only the properties essential to members of that kind, that failures of substitutivity occur. I have contended that 'the builder', 'Socrates seated', and other such expressions for accidental unities are not, for Aristotle, definite descriptions that fix the reference to someone (namely, Socrates) who is short, snub-nosed, a philosopher, and also a builder and seated. On the other hand, I have also claimed that to deny that 'the seated one' refers to Socrates does not have to mean that the seated one is, as Lewis thinks, an entity numerically distinct from Socrates, even though Socrates and the seated one (where Socrates is seated) differ in properties and so are nonidentical. To be sure, the seated one (that is to say, Socrates-qua-one-seated) is identical with what it is to be one seated, and this is what provides the generality required for explanation. But from the fact that Socrates-qua-one-seated is identical with what it is to be one seated, it of course cannot be concluded that Socrates and what it is to be one seated are so. Likewise it does not follow that the definition of the kind, even though it is a kind to which the sensible object can be said to belong, is necessarily the definition of the sensible object. If Socrates, for example, belongs to the kind (it is to be remembered that I am not committed to supposing that it is a natural


31

kind) seated thing, then Socrates-qua-one-seated is a specimen of the kind seated thing, but the definition of the kind seated thing, though the definition of the specimen of that kind, is not the definition of Socrates. To return then to Aristotle's examples in Physics III, if the road from Athens to Thebes is a specimen of the kind road uphill and the road from Thebes to Athens a specimen of the kind road downhill, then the road from Athens to Thebes is numerically the same as but not identical with the road from Thebes to Athens. It is for the same reason true that the teacher may teach someone who learns, but even if the activities of teaching and learning are the same, a specimen of the (event) kind teaching is not a specimen of the (event) kind learning.22 Admittedly, I have not given a defense on philosophical grounds for the distinction I think Aristotle makes between sensible objects and specimens of kinds; though I have hinted that it will be at the core of Aristotle's account of substance, a metaphysics that confounds counting is, to say the least, problematic. In fact the task of defense is, in large part, outside the scope of this project. But in Chapter VI I will show an interesting use that a contemporary philosopher has found for a distinction between sameness and identity, a strategy I hope is sufficient to establish that the distinction may be of philosophical as well as, if I am right, historical interest. Moreover, as it happens, the same example will prove suggestive of grounds for maintaining, as Aristotle certainly would, that some kinds are ontologically more fundamental than others and also for a defense of what I will take to be his claim that specimens of natural kinds are ontologically more fundamental than the sensible objects with which they are numerically the same. Now, however, I want to argue that sameness, causal, and knowledge contexts, all of which are opaque, can also be successfully analyzed in terms of reference to specimens of kinds. IV In Physics III, as we have seen, Aristotle says that it is not things that are in any way the same that have all their attributes the same, but only those to be which is the same (202bl4-16). But that this is so will, of course, affect substitutivity in statements to the effect that essential sameness or accidental ("in some way") sameness itself obtains. Thus if, as I have claimed, descriptions that occur in opaque contexts are names for specimens of kinds, that is to say, for entities that are numerically the same as but not identical with sensible objects, and if the properties of specimens of kinds are limited to those contained in or entailed by the definition of the kind, it is easy to see why, for claims 22 Charles (1984), 10-15, 29, claims that for Aristotle processes having different definitions are nonidentical members of an equivalence class.

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of essential sameness, sameness in definition is required to preserve truth. In 'Socrates is essentially the same as a specimen of the kind human being' and (tautologously) 'the builder is essentially the same as a specimen of the kind builder9, reference to specimens prevents substitution for either term flanking 4is essentially the same as', unless what is substituted is the same in definition as that which it replaces (for example, 'the kind rational animaV for 'the kind human being9). In the case of accidental sameness, the analysis is more complicated but similar. As we would expect, that (1) 'Socrates is accidentally the same as a specimen of the kind human being9 is false. That (2) 'Socrates is accidentally the same as a specimen of the kind builder9 is true, and likewise that (3) 'Socrates is accidentally the same as a specimen of the kind philosopher9 is true. However, just as a contemporary philosopher might assert that John may in fact believe both that Cicero denounced Catiline and that Tully did but that his having one belief cannot be inferred from his having the other, so because of the restrictions on substitution which reference to specimens introduces, (3) is unobtainable by inference from the fact that Socrates is both a builder and a philosopher and (2). Of course Aristotle sometimes presents the relation of accidental sameness as holding not between, say, Socrates and a specimen of the kind builder, but between two specimens of such kinds, for example, the housebuilder and the fluteplayer (Physics II 5 197al4-15). Since I have said that specimens of kinds have only the properties given in the definition of the kind, such examples of accidental sameness may seem to undermine my view that accidental unities just are specimens of kinds. However, I believe that it does not do so. Rather, it is sufficient to dissolve the problem to say that in Aristotle there are really two kinds of accidental sameness, one a relation between a sensible object and a specimen of a kind and another a relation between a specimen of one kind and a specimen of another kind, where both specimens are accidentally the same as the same sensible object. Though, as we would expect, he analyzes it in terms of compounding, Lewis has suggested just such a distinction between accidental sameness and what he calls accidental sameness*, respectively.23 Whether, as Lewis thinks, accidental sameness* is a relation between two entities both of which are compounds or, as I think, between entities both of which are specimens of kinds, that Aristotle holds not just that Coriscus is accidentally the same as the musician but that the housebuilder is accidentally the same* as the musician is clear. As he says, Things are said to be (1) in an accidental sense, (2) by their own nature. (1) In an accidental sense, e.g., we say the just is musical, and the man is musical and 23 Lewis (1982), 9.


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the musical is a man, just as we say the musical builds, because the builder happens to be musical or the musical happens to be a builder; for here 'one thing is another' means 'one is an accident of another*. So in the cases we have mentioned; for when we say the man is musical and the musical is a man, or the white is musical or the musical is white, the last two mean that both attributes

are accidents of the same thing 1017b27-28; emphasis added)

(Metaphysics V 7 1017a7-16; cf. 1015bl6-27,

In this section I have analyzed the relations of essential sameness, accidental sameness, and accidental sameness*. However, it is also the case that Aristotle's remarks about causation can be understood in terms of these relations. The builder builds' is true and self-explanatory because specimens of the kind builder are essentially the causes of building. 'Socrates builds' is imperspicuous (because Socrates is not essentially the cause of building) but true (because Socrates is accidentally the cause of building, that is to say, he is accidentally the same as that which is essentially the cause of building, namely, the builder). The fluteplayer builds' is likewise imperspicuous (because the fluteplayer is not essentially the cause of building) but true (because the fluteplayer is accidentally the same* as that which is essentially the cause of building in virtue of the fluteplayer's being accidentally the same as Socrates, where Socrates is accidentally the same as the builder). Finally my account of accidental sameness provides an explanation of Aristotle's treatment of knowledge claims in Sophistical Refutations. There, in the Masker Paradox, Aristotle says that we know Coriscus but not the one approaching, even though the one approaching is Coriscus. Aristotle's explanation is brief and cryptic: "For only to things that are indistinguishable and one in substance [that is to say, one in essence] does it seem that all the same attributes belong" (Sophistical Refutations i7ga37-39). The similarity between Aristotle's solution to the Masker Paradox and his remark in Physics HI 3 that ". . . it is not things which are in any way the same that have all their attributes the same, but only those to be which is the same" (202bl4-16) is plain. Moreover, as in the Physics, Aristotle's rule in Sophistical Refutations 24 raises a number of questions. What is the substance of the one approaching, if not Coriscus? Which expressions can be substituted for one another in contexts involving knowledge and which cannot? And, even more important, why should substitutivity be limited if the terms substituted refer to the same entity? In fact, of course, it is hard to know why the paradox is, for Aristotle, a paradox. If, as Aristotle usually thinks, all that can be known of individuals is their essence as given in the definition and the definition of Coriscus is what it is to be a human being, such a definition, while enough to distinguish him from some things that might be approaching (for example, a dog), is not enough to distinguish him from other ap-

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proaching human beings.24 But this problem does not affect the general structure of the solution I propose. For even if contrary to Aristotle's usual view, there were some way to know Coriscus as Coriscus and even if the kind were not approaching thing but something so narrow that the only approaching thing which could be a member of that kind would be Coriscus (perhaps something like the kind thing now within sight and approaching the viewer from the only direction from which he can now be

approached),25 still, as long as being a member of this kind is not Coriscus's essence, to know a specimen of this kind is not to know that Coriscus is the same as this specimen. In short, despite the peculiarity of the paradox, how my account of accidental unities would deal with knowledge contexts is clear. Coriscus is a specimen of the kind approaching thing, and we can know what it is to be a thing approaching. But since the definition of what it is to be approaching is not the definition of Coriscus, to know Coriscus is not to know that it is he who is approaching.

I have argued that certain failures of substitutivity in Aristotle can be explained on the supposition that many opaque contexts involve predicating something of specimens of kinds rather than of the sensible objects with which they are accidentally the same, and I have proposed to use instances of 'x-qua-' to refer to specimens of kinds, which specimens would have only the properties essential to the kind. That Lewis believes that musical Coriscus, the musical one, and so on are accidental compounds, entities constructed from individuals and their accidents and therefore not identical with the individuals in question, has already been said. In the Masker Paradox and likewise in Aristotle's accounts of change, persistence, and causality, there is no need, Lewis argues, to suppose that reference is made not to Coriscus but, in the manner of Frege, to the sense of the name Coriscus; rather where there is 24 Aristotle's claim that knowledge is only of the universal (or, as I will argue, of what is equivalent to it) is discussed in Chapters III and IV. 25 As I have not committed myself to the claim that all kinds are natural kinds, any group of things collected by virtue of a common property will be a kind. However I do not seriously intend to include, as here, kinds which can have only one member. That, as I have said, is made necessary in the case of the Masker Paradox not because of anything having to do with failures of substitutivity but only because, contrary to his usual view, Aristotle here considers the possibility of knowing Coriscus in a way that, once he is in sight, would make a difficulty of our not knowing that it is he who is approaching. It should be noted also that, as I interpret it, there is no equivocation between "knowledge by acquaintance" and "knowledge that" in either the Paradox or its solution. The knowledge involved is always knowledge of an entity, either Coriscus or a specimen of some kind, and thus is knowledge by acquaintance.


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accidental sameness substitutivity fails just because identity does not obtain.26 But since Lewis also considers - and rejects - the proposal that, by isolating the intensional component of the sentence, 'qua' (as in 'the doctor qua doctor heals') might provide yet another alternative, I want to make it clear that there is a difference between what I have advocated and the approach Lewis criticizes. Specifically, what Lewis concludes is that, since 'qua' cannot be eliminated without the occurrence of intensionality in the proposed paraphrase, there is no advantage in its introduction.27 Nevertheless my account is unlike the case Lewis has in mind. For I have made use of 'qua' not in an attempt to reconcile referential opacity with the ontology of common sense but to refer to a specimen of a kind, an entity which is not identical to the sensible object with which it is nonetheless numerically the same. To summarize the concerns of this chapter, it may be said that when faced with referential opacity there seem to be roughly four options: (1) to deny that some things true of a subject really are properties, (2) to introduce new nonidentical referents for the expressions in question while not distinguishing numerical sameness from identity, (3) to revise one's understanding of identity, and (4) to postulate varieties of numerical sameness other than identity. The first alternative might look promising for predicates such as '. . . is a substance', but it seems implausible for, say, '. . . builds'. The second alternative has been illustrated by Frege and, in the case of the interpretation of Aristotle, by Lewis and Matthews. Ways of accomplishing the third option are varied and problematic; Dancy's suggestion, mentioned earlier in this chapter, that things numerically the same might be formally distinct, may be an example.28 It is likely that another is offered by Irwin when he says that in Metaphysics VII 6 Aristotle intends to assert the identity of the individual and the particular form, an identity eased by including in Socrates' essence or form properties of his character and personality which distinguish him from Callias.29 Here it seems clear that Irwin wants to distinguish such properties from others - that Socrates is tenth in line for the theater or that he has a bit of lint on his sleeve, for example. But if this is so, that is to say, if Irwin would agree that not every trivial property of Socrates is a property of Socrates' essence or soul, then the identity Irwin asserts to obtain between Socrates and Socrates' soul is not identity, as usually understood. 26 See Lewis (1991), 131-40, 199-221. 27 Lewis (1991), 208; for the entire discussion, see 199-210. 28 Dancy (1975), 367, says: "So Aristotle would not say, simply, that in some sentences the substitutivity of identity fails because those sentences are referentially opaque: he would have things to say about identity." 29 Irwin (1988), 255. See also 252.

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Thus it would seem that Irwin too attributes to Aristotle a nonstandard concept of identity;30 Sandra Peterson may do so as well. What Peterson argues is that Aristotle's handling of opaque contexts is close to that of Carnap, in whose system a distinction is made between identity of extension and identity of intension.31 For Carnap substitution in modal contexts requires sameness in intension, that is, sameness in all state descriptions, while substitution in propositional attitude contexts requires both intensional equivalence and intensional isomorphism. 32 Aristotle does not make the latter distinction. Nonetheless he does claim that essential sameness (that is, the sort of numerical sameness in which there is sameness in definition) is required for substitutivity to hold in modal and propositional attitude (knowledge) contexts, and that, Peterson believes, is enough to justify the comparison. However, if my interpretation is correct, the views of Aristotle and Carnap are not especially close. In the first place, while Carnap's individual concept Socrates - the referent of modal contexts in which there is seeming reference to Socrates - includes that which distinguishes Socrates from Callias in all state descriptions, on Aristotle's account, as we have seen, Socrates-qua-human being and Callias-quahuman being turn out to be qualitatively indistinguishable. Moreover, where Carnap would consider 'the fluteplayer' and 'the housebuilder' (in a given state description) as extensionally equivalent definite descriptions, Aristotle would, I have argued, take them to refer to specimens of different kinds. Finally even though whatever is true of Socrates is true of that which is numerically the same as a specimen of the kind human being or a specimen of the kind builder, to refer to Socrates-quahuman being or to the builder is not to refer to Socrates but to a specimen of a given kind, where, as I have said, what is characteristic of specimens is that they (unlike the sensible objects with which they are numerically the same) have only the defining characteristics of the kind. But if this is so, then the numerical sameness that holds between Socrates and Socrates-qua- is not identity, and Aristotle's distinction 30 Hartman (1977) may be yet another example. He says: "As his use of qua suggests, Aristotle distinguishes entities according to their descriptions; thus an entity under a certain description is not fully identical to what would normally be considered the same entity under a different description. In effect, Aristotle makes mutual logical dependency a requirement for true identity . . . " (73). To distinguish between true or full identity, on the one hand, and accidental identity (still said not to involve numerical distinctness) (75), on the other, would seem to revise our understanding of identity. 31 Peterson (1969), 145-50. Hussey (1983), 69-70, argues that Aristotle's treatment of referential opacity anticipates parts of Frege's, but Hussey's account is still like Peterson's. Hussey says: "Aristotle's point is that . . . 'Leibniz's Law' need not be true unless there is sameness 'in being' or 'in definition', on top of ordinary identity" (69). 32 See Carnap (1947), 46-59, 9-11, 100.


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between essential sameness and accidental sameness is not a distinction between types of identity. I have just described three ways of understanding referentially opaque contexts. The fourth option, namely, that there are varieties of numerical sameness which are distinct from identity is of course the one that I have argued best describes Aristotle's position. In particular, what I have claimed is that both substances and accidental unities should be understood to be specimens of kinds, where specimens of kinds are numerically the same as but not identical with sensible objects and thus that, when substitutivity fails, it does so because what has been referred to is not a sensible object but a specimen of a kind. Where the specimen is a specimen of a kind whose definition is also the definition of the sensible object with which it is numerically the same, the relation between the sensible object and the specimen is that of essential sameness; in the case of a specimen of some other kind, there is accidental sameness. However, not even essential sameness is identity, and, as will become apparent, for both essential and accidental sameness failures of substitutivity can occur. Of course, since specimens of kinds have only the properties given in the definition of the kind, and since, in the case of accidental sameness, that definition is not the definition of the sensible object with which the specimen in question is numerically the same, it is not surprising that for accidental sameness there are far more contexts in which substitutivity fails. VI At the beginning of this chapter, I said that Aristotle's grasp of identity had been brought into question and understandably so, for, as we have seen, there are many contexts in Aristotle which are referentially opaque. In the course of the chapter, however, I have proposed to explain a number of these by claiming that many opaque contexts involve predicating something of specimens of kinds rather than of the sensible objects with which they are accidentally the same. Of course insofar as it is numerical sameness without identity that explains failures of substitutivity in Aristotle, no reason has been provided to agree that Aristotle's grasp of the indiscernibility of identicals weakens. On the other hand, if numerical sameness, not identity as determined by Leibniz's Law, has become the more common use of 'is' in Aristotle, there would seem to be truth to the idea that Aristotle loses interest in identity. Yet how much truth there is in the claim that identity loses importance for Aristotle depends on whether my belief that essential sameness too is numerical sameness without identity is correct. When Aristotle says in the Physics that only to things to be which is the same do all the

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same properties belong (202bl5-16), his primary concern seems to be to explain away certain cases of referential opacity involving accidental sameness. Whether there are other cases of referential opacity - that is, whether his conditions are sufficient for substitutivity or only necessary - is a question that does not get asked. Yet it may be that it is answered nonetheless in Metaphysics VII 6. Here Aristotle argues: But in the case of so-called self-subsistent things, is a thing necessarily the same as its essence? E.g. if there are some substances which have no other substances nor entities prior to them - substances such as some assert the Ideas to be? If the essence of good is to be different from the Idea of good, and the essence of animal from the Idea of animal, and the essence of being from the Idea of being, there will, firstly, be other substances and entities and Ideas besides those which are asserted, and, secondly, these others will be prior substances if the essence is substance. And if the posterior substances are severed from one another, there will be no knowledge of the ones and the others will have no being. (By 'severed' I mean, if the Idea of good has not the essence of good, and the latter has not the property of being good.) For there is knowledge of each thing only when we know its essence. (1031a28-b7) Toward the end of the chapter he restates the point: The absurdity of the separation would appear also if one were to assign a name to each of the essences; for there would be another essence besides the original one, e.g. to the essence of horse there will belong a second essence. (1031b28-30) If the thing and its essence are not the same, then its essence must itself be an individual and thus has itself to have an essence, which, because it is not the same as the essence of the thing, is itself another individual, and so on, resulting in regress. Read as an objection to Plato, this argument seems very strange; Aristotle has given us no reason to conclude that a Form and its essence are not identical. But Aristotle uses his argument to lead us to a different conclusion. The argument, he tells us, does not apply to Platonic Forms alone; each primary and self-subsistent thing is one and the same as its essence (1032a4-6; cf. 1031bl2-14). As he puts it, "Yet why should not some things be their essences from the start, since [or if] essence is substance?" (1031b31-32). To put the point another way, if the distinctness of a thing and its essence can for some cases be denied, why introduce Platonic Forms at all? On the other hand, because for Aristotle as for Plato things with accidents and in flux cannot be known, apart from Platonic Forms, what sorts of things could Aristotle be thinking of? What sorts of things, in other words, can Aristotle hold to be the same as their essences? It might seem that the answer is to be found at the end of Metaphysics VII 6 itself; Aristotle, after all, says: "Now the sophistical objections to this position, and the question whether Socrates and to be Socrates are


39

the same thing, are obviously answered in the same way . . ." (1032a68). Yet if this is his answer to the question, it is an answer which proves elusive. For that the question is to be answered in the same way does not, unfortunately, tell us what the answer is; some interpreters have thought that Aristotle means us to conclude that Socrates and to be Socrates are the same,33 and others that they are not.34 But since Socrates has many accidental properties, if (as I take VII 6 to assert) he is the same as his essence, then in this case, which is certainly a case of essential sameness, there will nevertheless be a failure of substitutivity. A defense of the claim that, though not identical, Socrates and his essence are the same - and with it an interpretation of substance in Metaphysics VII-VIII - is the subject of the next chapter. 33 See, for example, Hartman (1977), 57-87, esp. 63; Sellars (1967), 115; Rorty (1973), 402; Irwin (1988), 218. 34 See Furth (1985), 114.

Ill A Theory of Substance

Aristotle's account of substance involves yet another case - indeed the most central case - of his use of numerical sameness without identity, and in this chapter I offer an interpretation of Aristotle's views about substance which depends on that distinction. The task of interpreting VII-VIII has, of course, been undertaken many times, and yet nothing approaching a consensus has been reached. My strategy is to argue that Aristotelian substances are specimens of natural kinds, where such specimens are numerically the same as but not identical with sensible objects. I maintain that, if a distinction between numerical sameness and identity is posited, Aristotle's view is consistent, his claim about the separation of substance is intelligible, and his requirement that substances have ontological and epistemological priority is satisfied. This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the Categories and proceeds to consideration of how Aristotle's position in that work is affected by the demand in the Metaphysics for the epistemic priority of substances; separation and ontological priority will be considered in later chapters. I In the Categories, an early work, Aristotle makes a distinction between what is present in a subject, what is said of a subject, what is both, and what is neither (la20-lb6). Although this classification is unclear with respect to whether the properties present in a subject are or are not particulars, that dispute need not be entered into here.1 For to give an 1 For the claim that the properties present in a subject are particularized, see Anscombe (1961), 8; Ackrill (1963), 74-5; and Heinaman (1981a). For alternatives, see Owen (1965) and Frede (1987a), 58. I will assume that properties in the Categories are not particularized or that, if they are, Aristotle has abandoned this view by the time of the Metaphysics. However, should this assumption be false, my views about substances could be reconstructed by saying that although properties are particulars (and hence collectible into kinds), since the existence of properties depends on the existence of substances, properties are dependent particulars while substances are specimens of independent natural kinds.

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account of substance it is the "what is neither" which is of importance. That is to say, for Aristotle that of which things are said or in which they are present is a subject, for example, an individual human being or horse, and such things, we are told, are substances, "most strictly, primarily, and most of all" (2all-12). It seems then that subjects can be identified by what we call count nouns (although not all count nouns would refer to such subjects), and they are such that the grounds for counting or individuating them make no reference to things other than themselves. For example, if one tile were set alongside another of exactly the same color, despite the sameness of color, there are still two things, namely, two tiles; likewise Socrates and Callias standing arm in arm are still two human beings. Thus sortal terms carry with them criteria for individuation - to know what it is to be a human being, for example, is to know how much of a clearly viewed and uncrowded perceptual field counts as one human being2 - and they make it possible for Aristotle to distinguish between subjects, on the one hand, and what is present in them (and, in the case of differentiae, said of them), on the other. Yet as the preceding example illustrates, it is also true that individuation requires classification, and therefore the question of the relation of such particulars to one another cannot be ignored. Of Callias and Socrates, Aristotle says in the Metaphysics that they are the same not in number but in kind (1034a7-8). But that this is so leads only to further questions, namely, what is a kind? And what is it for two individuals to be of the same kind? In the case of Socrates and Callias, what we want to say, of course, is that both are members of the same biological species. But not all objects are living things. Some are artefacts, and others are chunks of stuff or what Aristotle would regard as combinations of substances and their properties, such as philosophers (human beings who engage in a certain activity) and even white things (white rabbits, white tables . . .). Aristotle of course gives primacy to living things, and some reasons for his preference will be given in a later chapter. Here, however, I want to focus on what all sortals have in common, namely, that similar particulars are gathered together. That is, while admitting that for Aristotle only some kinds will be natural (with the result that their members are neither said of nor present in a subject), I want in this section to restrict attention to the features of kinds simply in virtue of their being kinds. Like a class, a species - and, more generally, a kind - would seem to have members and to be some sort of collection of those members, 2 There are some count nouns that do not carry internal criteria of individuation — 'patch', for example. But insofar as patches can be counted, it is just because they are physically separated, as for example, two patches of white paint on an otherwise blue surface. That is to say, for patches to be distinguishable, their shapes have to be made definite by what surrounds them.

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for which reason it might be suggested that kinds just are classes or sets. But even if this were so, not all classes would be kinds. For a class is commonly defined as any collection of objects, 3 while at the very least, not any arbitrary collection could be a kind; the members of a kind need be alike with respect to certain nontrivial properties. Some classes, of course, do meet this condition. All members of the class of white things are white; all members of the class of human beings are rational. Yet I would argue that this fact disguises a fundamental difference. For whereas the identity of any class or set is solely a function of its membership, the identity of a kind, by contrast, would not seem to depend upon its extension; 4 that for Aristotle kinds could have had other members seems beyond doubt. But if this is true, then even if, for example, the class of human beings includes all past, present, and future human beings, it would not be the same as the kind human being. More generally, for any kind, it seems that there could have been other members of that same kind.5 I have said that if kinds are not arbitrary collections there must be some grounds that determine which objects are members of a given kind. In fact what would seem to determine membership in a kind is the presence in any object of certain properties; Socrates, for example, is a member of the kind human being in virtue of his being rational or two-footed. But - and this is crucial - even though both the kind and the properties that determine membership in it are counted by Aristotle as said of a subject, a kind is not identical with the properties essential for membership in that kind. Laboring without the advantage of an indefinite article (which is lacking in Greek), in the Categories, Aristotle explains how kinds are both like and unlike properties. He says: Every substance seems to signify a certain 'this' [tode ti\. As regards the primary substances, it is indisputably true that each of them signifies a certain 'this'; for the thing revealed is individual and numerically one. But as regards the secondary substances, though it appears from the form of the name - when one speaks of man or animal - that a secondary substance likewise signifies a certain 'this', this is not really true; rather, it signifies a certain qualification \poion ti\ - for the subject is not, as the primary substance is, one, but man and animal are said of many things. However, it does not signify simply a certain qualification [poion ti], as white does. White signifies nothing but a qualification [poiori], whereas the species and the genus mark off the qualification of substance they signify substance of a certain qualification (3b 10-21). 3 See Massey (1970), 355. See also Mates (1965), 29. 4 To be sure Quine (1970), 8, thinks otherwise. He says: "There is no call to reckon kinds as intensional. Kinds can be seen as sets, determined by their members. It is just that [because not all classes or sets are such that their members share certain properties] not all sets are kinds." 5 See Wolterstorff (1970), 258.

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When Aristotle says that man or animal is poion ti but not simply poion ti (or not simply poion, according to some manuscripts) (3b 18), the grounds for the distinction are as follows: since its name is applicable to many things, a species is not a particular, yet because of the relation between species and their members, species are nevertheless not properties. Even if it is too much to claim that any ontology involving objects and properties must be committed to the existence also of collections, the reasonableness of Aristotle's distinguishing kinds from essential properties and including both in his ontology cannot be denied. To this point I have said that, since like a class a kind can have members, a kind would seem to be some sort of collection. Moreover as it is a collection whose membership is determined by the presence of certain properties, there could have been other members of the same kind.6 Finally, because a kind is a collection, it is easy to see that most properties of its members will not be characteristic of the kind. Of course, given that Aristotle distinguishes between properties and kinds, it will follow also that, while for Aristotle there are many human beings, each with the property rationality, there would be, on his view, no property man.1 Rather, as we have seen, 'man' ('human being') is the name for a kind,8 and a kind is not a predicable universal but a collection. II We have examined the distinction between kinds and properties which underlies the ontology of the Categories. Within this ontology, as we have seen, Aristotle identifies that which is neither said of nor present in anything else as primary substance. That is to say, primary substances, 6 Compare Mondadori (1978), 37, who accommodates the shifting membership of natural kinds into possible world semantics as follows: "the view according to which natural kind terms (rigidly) designate the corresponding kind (or species, or substance) can be represented in modal semantics by assigning as extension to a given natural kind term / the corresponding kind (or species, or substance), and as intension a constant function taking each possible world into a kind (a species, a substance). The latter, in turn, can be represented by means of a function taking each possible world into a set of objects (the set of tigers, or lemons, or samples of gold, as the case may be)." As a result of this two-step definition, Mondadori can say both that natural kind terms are rigid designators and that the class of tigers in one possible world is different from that in another (see 38). 7 To be sure, Aristotle in De Interpretation 7 offers "man" as his example of a universal (that which is of such a nature as to be predicated of many subjects), but the distinction between properties and kinds is not made (or needed) in that context. 8 Pellegrin has marshaled evidence to show that in the biological works and elsewhere, genos and eidos can function at very different levels of generality. If this variability affects Aristotle's metaphysical views, it seems to me to complicate but not undermine the account of substance which I want to give. That is to say, I will argue that substances are specimens of natural kinds; if natural kinds can for Aristotle equally well be set at various levels of generality, specimens of those kinds will vary in level accordingly. See Pellegrin (1986), esp. ch. 2.

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in this scheme, are the ultimate subjects. In the Metaphysics, however, the ultimate subjecthood of the individual human being or the individual horse is threatened by matter. Matter (concerning which more will be said in Chapter V) is introduced in the Physics and is opposed to form. The problem for the Metaphysics is that if the matter of the horse underlies the horse in something like the way in which the horse underlies its attributes, it would seem that, unless substance is matter, being a subject is no longer the criterion for being a substance. Yet even though Aristotle may find it necessary to refine his understanding of being a subject, that that which underlies a thing primarily is thought to be in the truest sense its substance is reiterated in VII 3 (1029al). On the other hand, it seems that matter cannot be substance because substances, as we are told (1029a27-28), have both separability (chdriston) and thisness (tode ti).9 Thus the need to accommodate the distinction between matter and form is one difference between the Categories and the Metaphysics. It is not the only difference, however; the role of substance in Aristotle's theory has expanded as well. In the Categories substance was said to stand in a relation of priority to the other categories in such a way that they are said to depend on it (and not conversely), while in the Metaphysics the priority is explicitly said to be not only ontological but epis temological. In fact views of the relation between the Categories and the Metaphysics have varied widely, ranging from Montgomery Furth's claim that the Categories is a model of Aristotle's metaphysical theory using "a cutdown and simplified conceptual apparatus"10 to Daniel Graham's claim that the discontinuities are so great as to comprise two incommensurable systems.11 Between these extremes, Michael Loux has argued that even in the Categories Aristotle's essentialism threatens the asymmetry between individuals (thought to be primary substances in virtue of being unanalyzable subjects) and their species, thereby encouraging a different account of substance in the Metaphysics,12 while Lewis offers what he calls a "reconciliationist" view.13 Though nothing in the Metaphysics exactly fits the subject criterion of the Categories,14 in the Metaphysics Aristotle's plan, claims Lewis, is "to knit together the earlier criteria on substance . . . with the new ontology of form and matter"15 by "modifying the old ingredients of his metaphysical thinking from the Categories and moulding them to fit the requirements of their new metaphysical context."16 9 In the Complete Works of Aristotle (1984) Barnes translates 'tode ti* as "individuality." Smith (1921) argues that to be tode ti is to be both singular and possessed of a universal nature, a view that would also suit my interpretation. 10 Furth (1988), 4. 11 Graham (1987), esp. 84-118. 12 Loux (1991), 48. 13 Lewis (1991), 267 and 269, n. 12. 14 Lewis (1991), 274. 15 Lewis (1991), 267. 16 Lewis (1991), 269.

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Of course one's view of the relation between the Categories and the Metaphysics depends in large part on what one takes Aristotle's theory of substance in the Metaphysics to be. What I myself want to claim is that, apart from the addition of the matter of which objects are composed, there is a certain continuity between Aristotle's ontology in the Categories and the Metaphysics. However, since in the Metaphysics 'sub-

stance' ipusia) is an honorific title to be awarded to whatever is first in knowledge, definition, and time (1028a32-33), even that claim, supposing that it is correct, does not answer the question "what is to count as substance?" Nevertheless to discover that on a given interpretation Aristotle's ontology in the Metaphysics provides a candidate that meets the criteria for substance would be some evidence in favor of attributing that ontology to Aristotle; to discover, moreover, that the same element in that ontology disarmed in a plausible way the charge of inconsistency would provide further evidence in favor of that ontology and the candidacy of that element. My strategy in this chapter will be to begin by offering an account of substance in the Metaphysics. In Section V I will then suggest that even in the Categories what Aristotle says of substance is more subtle and less at odds with the Metaphysics than might at first be supposed. In Metaphysics VII 3 Aristotle offers a list of candidates for substance; in this chapter the essence, the universal, the genus, and the substratum are said to be the substance of each thing. But substratum can in turn be understood as matter, form, or the composite. Having dismissed matter (at least as matter is understood in VII 317) as neither tode ti nor choriston and the composite as posterior and obvious, of this trio there remains the form or essence, for these are identified with one another in VII 7 (1032bl-2).18 The claims of the universal, including the genus, will be addressed in the course of the present discussion, and more will be said about both the composite and matter in later chapters. But as for form, it seems to me that in VII-VIII there are several senses of the term (including its synonyms such as 'formula' and 'shape'). In VII 4 only the form of the genus is said to have an essence (1030all-12); in VII 8 Socrates and Callias are said to be the same in form (1034a8). These I, along with some (but not all) other interpreters, take to be examples of form as species. However by 'form' Aristotle more often means not the species or, more broadly, the kind, but rather, as in VII 12 where the last differentia is said to be the form (1038a26), the properties that enable something to be a member of a given kind. The being glued of 17 How matter in VII 3 is to be understood has generated controversy that need not be considered here. For two recent discussions see Loux (1991), 54-71, and Lewis (1991), 282-99. 18 This claim too is controversial, but see Irwin (1988), 239-40.

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the book or the blending of honey water (1042bl6-18), the principles that make the elements a and b a syllable and fire and earth into flesh (1041bl2-19) - in short the arrangement of the matter - each of these I take to be an example of form as the differentia (1042b32), that is, of form as a thing's essential properties. It seems reasonable then to think that 'form' sometimes means the kind, that is, a collection of similar particulars which could have had other members, and sometimes its defining properties. Yet that the existence of collections depends on the existence of objects that are members of the collection is evident, 19 while properties are said to be themselves not separable entities (1028a23-25) but to exist pros hen (1030a35-bl). Thus because substances are supposed to be first in knowledge, definition, and time, and in order to be first in time, to be tode ti and choriston (that is, to have thisness and separation), and because substance is said to be form (1033bl7; 1037a29), if Metaphysics VIIVIII is to make sense, it must be the case that 'form' sometimes has neither of these meanings. Rather, if in VII 6 Socrates is said to be in some sense the same as his essence (and form is, as I have said, the essence), the term 'form' must in this case refer in some way to Socrates.20 That is to say, Aristotle's strategy, as I see it, is to argue that members of kinds can in some way be both first in time and first in knowledge. I have proposed that in Metaphysics VII Socrates is said to be the same as his essence or form, in which case 'form' must sometimes mean neither the kind nor its defining characteristics but, in some way, a member of that kind. The problem, however, is that since any member of a kind, such as Socrates, has characteristics that are unknowable, if the particular form of Socrates were thought to include the accidental features that distinguish him from other human beings, Socrates' form would be no more knowable than Socrates. This implication has been denied by David Balme and accepted (but softened) by Irwin, but neither of their proposals seems to me satisfactory. What Balme suggests is that Socrates is a process which, when considered at a moment of time, has no matter, so that Socrates at tn (Socrates' form) can be known by grasping a complete description of 19 For the dependence of kinds, consider for example a club: while it need not have any of its actual members, it could hardly be said to exist if it had no members. 20 Although it is not for the present purpose significant, there is also a fourth sense. In VII 7 the building art is said to be the form of a house (1032bl3-14), and the form of health is said to be found in the mind of the doctor (1032b22-23). In these cases 'form' seems to mean something like a set of rules or ideas that govern the production of something. In saying that there are three or even four senses of 'form', I do not mean that the term is simply ambiguous. When the term 'lion' is used of individual lions, the kind lion, and even pictures of lions, it is so used not because of ambiguity but because of the relations among these things. With 'form' (and 'substance') the situation is similar.

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every detail at that moment.21 Irwin, on the other hand, concedes that particular forms are only indirectly objects of knowledge but argues that this is acceptable. He says, "Aristotle cannot . . . allow that the particular is in itself an object of definition and scientific knowledge; but he can still fairly insist that scientific knowledge and definition apply to a particular form."22 "On this view," he continues, "particular forms partly satisfy the requirements for being objects of knowledge. Not being universals, they are not the primary objects of knowledge; but they are among the objects that scientific knowledge applies to. We might say they are what science is about, though not what it is o/]"23 That Balme's proposed ontology is not Aristotle's seems clear. As for Irwin's proposal, the difficulty is that it leaves Aristotle with the dilemma he identifies in Metaphysics III 6: universals are knowable but are not substances while particulars are not knowable (1003a5-17). To put the point another way, if particulars are primary ontologically and universals are most fundamental epistemologically, there is nothing that meets the requirements for substance. I have argued that if Socrates' form includes accidental features such as Socrates' snub-nosedness, Socrates' form will not be knowable. On the other hand, if Socrates' form does not include, for example, being snub-nosed,24 then it is open to Aristotle to distinguish what is true of Socrates and what is true of Socrates' form in such a way that the latter is knowable. However, if he is to avoid Platonism, Aristotle must at the same time deny (and if Socrates and to be Socrates are said to be the same, he does deny) that Socrates and to be Socrates are numerically distinct entities. I will now argue that the notion of a specimen of a kind, introduced in the preceding chapter as a solution to the general problem of referential opacity, shows how this can be accomplished. Ill Earlier I proposed to use the expression 'Socrates-qua-musician' in such a way that by abstracting from all properties of Socrates except musicality it designates a specimen of the kind musician. Though my use of 4 Socrates-qua-' to designate a specimen of a kind is an interpreter's term of art, it is one clearly derived from Aristotle. Indeed there are many occurrences of 'qua' in Aristotle; some typical examples are: It is not qua water or qua air that water or air is transparent (De Anima II 21 See Balme (1984), 5. 22 Irwin (1988), 263. 23 Irwin (1988), 263-64. 24 For a view of particular forms such that Socrates and Callias do not have qualitatively different forms, see Frede (1987a), 63-71 and (1987b), 78. Sellars (1967), 112, says that the particular form of this bronze sphere is the bronze sphere itself simply qua sphere; see also Sellars (1957), 698. Hartman (1977) holds that the particular form of Socrates is Socrates qua man. See 57-87.

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7 418b7),25 "what produces the impression is a signet of bronze or gold, but not qua bronze or gold" (De Anima II 12 424a20-21), "but neither is there friendship towards a horse or an ox, nor to a slave qua slave" (Nicomachean Ethics VIII 11 1161b2-3), "but if anyone actually thought of [the snub not qua snub but] qua hollow he would think of it without the flesh in which it is embodied" (De Anima III 7 431bl3-15), "firstly and in the proper sense [there is friendship] of good men qua good" (Nicomachean Ethics VIII 4 1157a30-31), and, most famously, "being as [qua] being" (1003a21). As these examples show, the expression that follows 'qua' can be a mass term, an adjective, a sortal term, or an abstract noun, and while in some cases the same term either occurs twice or is replaced by another term definitionally related to it (e.g., 'snub' and 'separately existing hollow'), in others this is not so. For example in Physics III 1 Aristotle says: It is the fulfilment of what is potential when it is already fulfilled and operates not as itself but as movable, that is motion. What I mean by 'as' is this: bronze is potentially a statue. But it is not the fulfilment of bronze as bronze which is motion. For to be bronze and to be a certain potentiality are not the same. (201a27-32) Clearly it is not part of what bronze is that it serve well for statuary ("to be bronze and to be a certain potentiality are not the same"), though were bronze not suitable for statues, the qua relation could not hold. Likewise in the case of Socrates, the applicability of 'qua human being' to some true statements about him reflects the fact that Socrates is identical with a given human being and not, say, a given elephant. Of course there are also cases such as "[friends] wish well alike to each other qua good" (Nicomachean Ethics VIII 3 1156b8-9) in which what follows 'qua' is adjectival. However in such cases - to return to my example, let us suppose the adjectival case to be 'qua musical' clearly the point is to consider neither musicality (for here 'qua' would serve no purpose) nor musical Socrates (for in this case the goal of knowability would be defeated). Rather the expression 'Socrates qua musical', by abstracting from all properties of Socrates except one, leaves us with 'Socrates qua musician', an analysis that, it can be seen, depends on the distinction between kinds and properties drawn in Section I of this chapter. In short, Socrates qua musician is Socrates as - and only as - a member of the kind musician. More generally, any particular as and only as a member of some kind is a thing having only the properties given in the definition of that kind, which definition is necessarily true of all 25 Barnes {Complete Works of Aristotle, 1984) translates: "Neither air nor water is transparent because it is air or water."

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its members. Such a thing - that is, a particular as a member of some kind - is what I have been calling a specimen of a kind. As for the nature of specimens, in the preceding chapter two further points were made. The first, and here I appealed to Lear's metaphor of 'qua' as a filter, was that whatever is true of 'Socrates-qua-musician' is true of 'Callias-qua musician'; put generally, whatever is true of any specimen of a given kind is true of every specimen of that same kind. The second point was that, even though 'Socrates-qua-human being' refers to a specimen of the kind human being, if identity and numerical sameness are distinguished, the use of 'qua' need not introduce a multitude of entities. Of course if Socrates-qua-human being is for Aristotle a substance, then certainly Socrates-qua-human being exists and indeed, so Aristotle seems to think, exists in a more fundamental way than Socrates. How Aristotle might defend such a claim is the subject of Chapter VI. Nevertheless since Socrates and Socrates-qua-human being are not numerically distinct, even in this case, it will be true that there do not exist two entities, Socrates and Socrates-qua-human being. To recapitulate, on my account Socrates, Socrates-qua-builder, Socrates-qua-human being, and so on are numerically the same. Nevertheless - and this is the point of the hyphenated expressions - x and xqua-0 are not identical; not all the properties of x are true of x-qua-. That this is so is what makes specimens of kinds different from simply members of kinds. Socrates is a member of the kind human being (and the kinds philosopher, builder, and so on); Socrates-qua-human being and Socrates-qua-philosopher are specimens of those kinds, respectively. As it happens, there is a distinct expression to refer to Socrates-quahuman being, namely, 'Socrates' soul'. What Aristotle says in Metaphysics VIII 3 is that Socrates' soul and Callias' soul are distinct but not as souls distinguishable; soul and to be soul (Aristotle can in this case mean "identical") are said to be the same (1043b2). As for man, in other words, a given human being such as Socrates, and to be man, Aristotle tells us that they are not the same (1043b3), unless Socrates and his soul are identified. To put the point another way, not everything said of Socrates is said of Socrates-qua-human being salva veritate. A similar example is given in the summary at the end of Metaphysics VII 11: but in the concrete substance, e.g. a snub nose or Callias, the matter also will be present. And we have stated that the essence and the individual thing are in some cases the same; i.e. in the case of primary substances, e.g. curvature and the essence of curvature, if this is primary. (By a primary substance I mean one which does not imply the presence of something in something else, i.e. in a substrate which acts as matter.) But things which are of the nature of matter or of wholes which include matter, are not the same as their essences, nor are

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accidental unities like that of Socrates and musical; for these are the same only by accident. (1037a32-1037b7) Of course Aristotle does not mean that curvature exists without matter. The point is rather that, since its matter is not part of what it is, between curvature, that is to say, the geometrical shape, and its essence, there will be identity. But like a snub nose, on the other hand, Socrates is a whole that includes matter. Therefore although Socrates is essentially the same as what it is to be a human being and accidentally the same as the musical, in neither case is there identity. I have defended the thesis that, as a result of the restrictive function of 'qua', it is possible to refer not only, for example, to Socrates, but also, by using the expression 'Socrates-qua-human being', to a specimen of the kind human being. I have argued too that, despite the differences between any two members of the same kind, since specimens of a kind include no accidental properties there is no difference at all in the qualities had by specimens of the same kind. But of course it is just this indistinguishability that makes specimens of kinds, unlike the sensible objects with which they are numerically the same, knowable. For at least in the Metaphysics,26 the goals of science and metaphysics are limited to the necessary and the universal. The result is that even if for Aristotle the ideal candidates for knowledge would be the Platonic Forms, understood as eternally existing, necessarily unchanging patterns whose properties are all essential, specimens of kinds can be an acceptable approximation of the Forms without their separation. I have argued that Socrates-qua-musician is knowable for Aristotle because there is, in some sense, a definition for what it is to be musical; of course, to say that x-qua-0 is a knowable object is not necessarily to say that x-qua-0 is first in knowledge. Yet even though Aristotle would say that qualities (and hence specimens of kinds derived from qualities) have an essence and a definition in a secondary sense (VII 4), I have as yet given no criteria that would establish that musician is a kind derived from the properties of human beings, rather than conversely. To do so would make it apparent that the requirement for epistemological priority is not one that is independent; to be not just knowable but first in knowability will turn out to be, in other words, a characteristic not of specimens of just any kind. Only specimens of natural kinds can be specimens that are first in knowledge because it is only they that are ontologically fundamental. 26 In fact Aristotle did realize that certain features not common to all members of a species can be genetically transmitted. For a clear discussion of how this fact affects the notion of form and the limits of knowability in the biological works, see Sharpies (1985), esp. 120-22.

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IV Although Aristotle says often enough that knowledge is belief about things that are universal and necessary (e.g., Nicomachean Ethics VI 6 1140b31-32), in Section III I argued that for Aristotle substances specimens of natural kinds - are not universals but nevertheless are knowable just because they, as it were, mimic the universal. However if this is so, the inconsistency of Metaphysics VII-VIII can be resolved. That in VII-VIII Aristotle asserts that substance is form, that form is universal, and that no universal is substance, there is no doubt. 27 Some philosophers have believed that the inconsistency cannot be overcome, and others, taking Aristotle's approach to be aporetic, have supposed that he might not be committed to all three claims. But most have sought to avoid these conclusions either by reinterpreting one of the three statements or by declaring one of the three constituent terms to be ambiguous. While every permutation has probably been tried, 28 recent solutions have tended either toward particular forms or toward taking some universals to be substance. My view, that forms are specimens of natural kinds, has evident affinity to the view that there are particular forms, 29 although also to a view according to which substances are neither particulars nor universals.30 An alternative takes form (substance) to be a universal, perhaps something like a formal cause, 31 thereby denying Aristotle's apparent claim in VII 13 that no universal is substance. What Aristotle says in VII 13 is, in part, as follows: For it seems impossible that any universal term should be the name of a substance. For primary substance is that kind of substance which is peculiar to an individual, which does not belong to anything else; but the universal is common, since that is called universal which naturally belongs to more than one thing. Of which individual then will this be the substance? Either of all or of none. But it cannot be the substance of all; and if it is to be the substance of one, this one will be the others also; for things whose substance is one and whose essence is one are themselves also one. (1038b8—15) He then goes on to claim that substance means that which is not predicable of a subject but that the universal is predicable of some subject 27 For a list of relevant passages, see Lesher (1971), 169. Lesher does not distinguish between passages that say only that the substance of a thing is form and those that

say that it is substance which is form. 28 For an overview of various interpretations, see Lesher (1971). For discussion of more recent papers, see Lewis (1985), 65-7. 29 See Sellars (1967) and (1957); Hartman (1977), 57-87; Frede (1987a), 63-71, and (1987b). 30 See Owens (1963), esp. 347-99, 426-34. 31 See, for example, Driscoll (1981); Lewis (1985) and (1991), esp. Pts. III-IV; Code (1986); Loux (1979); and Furth (1988), 192-201.

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always (1038bl5-16), and later concludes, "If, then, we view the matter from these standpoints, it is plain that no universal attribute is a substance, and this is plain also from the fact that no common predicate indicates a 'this', but rather a 'such' " (1038b34-1039a2), a conclusion he repeats in VII 16 at 1040b23-24. 32 It might appear that VII 13 is decisive evidence in favor of a view, such as mine, which denies that forms are universal. Nevertheless John Driscoll, Alan Code, and both Loux and Lewis, among others, have argued that the VII 13 claim is limited to universals that are predicated of particulars while substances or forms are universals that are predicated of matter,33 in which case substance can be universal after all. As Driscoll says, "Since the formal cause or essence taken without any material substrate is definable, it cannot be a particular (cf. Z, 15, 1039b20-22, 1040a5-7), and since it cannot be a particular, it must be a universal in the broad sense that every nonparticular is a universal."34 Though the arguments of Loux's and Lewis's recent books have more complexity than I can here do justice to, I will indicate some points where there is disagreement. What Loux argues is that in the Categories primary substances are the familiar concrete particulars that belong to substance-kinds; a certain horse and a human being such as Socrates are his examples. As Loux says: The fact that a basic subject falls under its species cannot rest on or be grounded in some prior instantiation of the said-of or the present-in relation; and, as I have said, these two relations exhaust the tools Aristotle has at his disposal in the Categories for ontological analysis or reduction. But, then, the result of the interaction of [the basic-subject criterion for ousiahood and the doctrine of essentialism] is that a basic subject's falling under or belonging to its lowestlevel substance-kind is a primitive, bedrock fact about the world, a fact not susceptible of further analysis. For want of a better name, let us call this result the Unanalyzability Thesis.35

However, in the Metaphysics an analysis of the unanalyzable is, Loux thinks, just what occurs. Indeed in the Metaphysics the subjects of the Categories are found to be analyzable composites of matter and form, and it is form that in the Metaphysics is primary substance. As Loux says, "It is, then, because form is the only thing that is both the ousia of other things and its own ousia that the thesis that form is ousia is the dominating claim of the middle books." 36 He continues: 32 Loux (1991), 203,findsseven arguments in VII 13, but of these thefirst(1038b9-

15) gets most of his attention. His interpretation of it is discussed later in this chapter. 33 See Driscoll (1981), 150-52; Code (1986), 413; Loux (1979), 23; and Lewis (1985), 66-67. This way of reading VII 13 is derived from suggestions in earlier papers: Woods (1967), 216, and Albritton (1957), 705. 34 Driscoll (1981), 151. 35 Loux (1991), 35. 36 Loux (1991), 159.

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Were it not a necessary fact about a thing that what it is to be that thing and the thing itself are one and the same, it could not play the kind of explanatory role that the Aristotle of Z and H37 wants to reserve for form. Form is to provide us with a final answer to the question why things are what they are, and only if a thing is necessarily the same with what it is to be that thing do we have the requisite guarantee that there is no explanation in terms of something else for that thing's being what it is, for its being the kind of thing it is. Only if a thing is its own essence can it be its own ousia. For a thing of this sort, the question, Why is it that kind of thing? has a ready answer that precludes the possibility of any further questions. It is the kind of thing it is because it is one and the same as being that kind of thing; and it could not be otherwise.38

Loux distinguishes form predication and species predication in such a way that a substance species is predicated of its instances, this being the less fundamental sort of predication, while form is predicated of matter,39 a view that allows him to come to the conclusion about VII 13 already described, namely, that Aristotle's intent in that chapter is only to exclude universals predicated of particulars from the ranks of primary substances.40 But this conclusion having been reached, Loux also offers other arguments, both philosophical and textual, against particular forms. These include claims that ousiai explanations are inherently general, that the metaphysics of particular forms is "bizarre," and that if individual forms come into being and pass away universal forms will still be needed in which case individual forms do no work in the theory.41 His textual argument is that there is no passage in VIIVIII that demands a reading of forms as particulars; the statement in V 18 that Callias is kath* hauto Callias and what it is to be Callias (1022a26-27) and also the claim in XII 5 that your matter and form and moving cause are different from mine but the same in universal formula (1071a27-29) can, he says, refer to the general form.42 As for Lewis's interpretation, he shares Loux's account of VII 1343 and the distinction between kinds of predication which makes it possible, arguing for the even stronger conclusion that because in the Metaphysics kinds have no "independent" place in Aristotle's theory sentences that apparently assign an individual to a kind can be understood in terms of the predication of form of matter.44 37 In Aristotle's works books are referred to sometimes, as I have done, by numbers and sometimes by letters of the Greek alphabet. In the case of the Metaphysics, correlation is complicated by the fact that Book I is A and Book II a. Thus Z and H refer to Books VII and VIII, respectively. 38 Loux (1991), 159-60. 39 Loux (1991), 109-46. 40 Loux (1991), 202-10. 41 Loux (1991), 225, 227-28. 42 Loux (1991), 230, 233. 43 Lewis (1991), 309-21. 44 Lewis (1991), 190-91; see also 184, n. 22, where Lewis argues against Frede and Patzig's analysis of VII 8 1033a28—31, which they believe shows that a form can be metaphysically predicated of the composite.

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Thus in both Loux and Lewis we find a thoroughgoing defense of the claim that substance is form and form universal, a defense made possible by an interpretation of VII 13 according to which forms, being predicated of matter, are not the target of the chapter. The chief advantage of this view, it seems to me, is that it makes it easy to explain how forms can be knowable. Yet I have argued that particular forms that are qualitatively indistinguishable from one another are also knowable, and if this is right, it seems to me that this approach is to be preferred. For there is a serious difficulty with the interpretation according to which forms are universal, namely, that on such a view that which expresses a form is, as Loux says, in its "depth logic" adjectival.45 That a form is "how" its matter is46 is something Loux does not take to be a problem. Recognizing that form is said to be a this (that is to say, not metaphysically predicated of anything else), Lewis, on the other hand, proposes that in the Metaphysics what counts as a this (Jtode ti) changes47 in such a way that some universals are thises, not just derivatively or "by courtesy" (that is, in virtue of their relation to what is properly called a this), but rather because being a "such" is to be restricted to things that are universal in relation to thises,48 something that forms, being universal in relation to matter, are not. Thus Lewis uses his account of predication to explain how form can be called a this. Yet I do not find his explanation of how form is to be a this, in other words, a subject of which everything else is predicated (VII 3 1029a27-30, VIII 1 1042a28-29) convincing, and Lewis himself admits that it is problematic. He says: In general, then, form is that in virtue of which the compound substance works out its characteristic style of life. This influence manifests itself in two distinct ways. The fact that form is predicated of matter explains how the creature is a member of its kind in the first place: this gives matter as one kind of subject. But the fact that a compound substance is a member of a kind is what makes it a fit subject for accidents. It is thanks to form, then, that the subjects that properly Have49 accidents can do so. This gives a second class of subjects, namely, compound material substances. All of this can make it seem that - without too much exaggeration - almost anything except form can count as a subject. But it may be possible to manufacture out of these materials a somewhat precarious sense in which form too is a subject. Form has a central role in placing a thing in its kind, so that the thing is a suitable subject for accidents. Indirectly, then, and in a suitably extended sense, form too perhaps is a subject. I do not claim tofindthis reasoning fully convincing. But, outside of the hypothesis of individual form, it is one of 45 Loux (1991), 8. 46 Loux (1991), 8. 47 Lewis (1991), 325. 48 Lewis (1991), 327-29. 49 The capitalized 'Have' for indicating accidental predication follows the terminology of Paul Grice and Alan Code.

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the only two ready alternatives I know of for explaining Aristotle's express assertion that forms are subjects.50 In short it seems to me difficult to see how if form is universal, form is a this in any way that allows it to be ontologically fundamental. Moreover it may be that there is also another problem. For in Chapter V it will be noted that some interpreters have argued that matter in Aristotle is such that its having the form it has is essential to it and even that, as matter, matter has no properties other than its potential for form. Although both Loux and Lewis respond by suggesting that Aristotle may have had more than one way of thinking about matter,51 insofar as such views of matter have plausibility, Loux's and Lewis's claim that form is predicated accidentally of matter is in jeopardy. Having considered Loux's and Lewis's defense of the claim that~form is universal, let us return to the problem with which this section began, namely, that of the apparent inconsistency of Metaphysics VII-VIII. If one reads VII 13 in such a way that forms are universals predicated of matter, it is clear how inconsistency has been avoided; substance is form, form is universal, and some universals, namely, those that are predicated of matter, are substances after all. But if, as I argue, substances are specimens of natural kinds, the inconsistency is to be resolved rather by reinterpretation of the claim that form is universal. Of course, because substance is said to be form, and because there is, or so I have conceded, a sense of 'form', namely, the differentia, in which form is a universal, the triad could also be made consistent by maintaining that substance is formj while form2 is universal. Nevertheless, as I see it, Aristotle intends his argument to be more cohesive than a solution that appeals to equivocation would produce. For Aristotle's point in saying that form is universal is that substances must be knowable, and I have argued that, even though Socrates, the sensible object with which Socrates-qua-human being is numerically the same, is not knowable, Socrates-qua-human being is knowable. That is to say, on my proposal, it is, strictly speaking, false that form (in the appropriate sense of the term) is a universal. Likewise it is false that the form - a given specimen of a kind - does not come into being and pass away, though, of course, it is true that the species does not do so. What is true (and what is intended by the claim that form is universal) is that particular forms have in virtue of their indistinguishability the epistemic virtues of universals. V I have been arguing that in the Metaphysics Aristotle takes substances to be specimens of natural kinds that are numerically the same as but 50 Lewis (1991), 303-4. 51 See Loux (1991), 180-83, and Lewis (1991), 250-58.

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not identical with sensible objects, and I have claimed that specimens of kinds are, as for Aristotle they need to be, knowable. Indeed it seems to me an interesting fact that even in the Categories, where there are no epistemological issues, Aristotle offers as examples of primary substances neither (as we might have expected) 'Bucephalus' and 'Socrates' nor even 'this horse' and 'this human being' but the very general ho tis hippos and ho tis anthropos (lb4-5) - an individual horse and an individual human being. To be sure, most interpreters of the Categories, including, as we have just seen, Loux, take Aristotle to intend by primary substances ordinary sensible objects such as Socrates, objects which in the Metaphysics are considered to be composites of matter and form and not primary substances. Yet I am far from sure that the Categories is so straightforward. Of course I would not claim that at the time of the Categories Aristotle had already worked out the implications of distinguishing a human being as such from Callias, Socrates, and so on; clearly if he had done so he would have found it necessary to distinguish the subject of which something is said from the subject of which some things are said and in which others, namely, accidents, are present. Rather, the point is just that even in the Categories the differences among individual horses or individual human beings seem not to be of importance. But if in the Categories the differences between one human being and another are taken to be less interesting than the similarities and in the Metaphysics it cannot be otherwise as there substances are supposed to be knowable, what I want to conclude from this fact is, as I have said, that Aristotle differs from Plato chiefly in rejecting the numerical distinctness of Forms from sensible objects. Whether for Aristotle a thing and its essence or form are numerically distinct from one another is, as I indicated at the end of the last chapter, the question of Metaphysics VII 6; indeed it is well known that G. E. L. Owen once argued that in VII 6 Aristotle rejects what is usually called the Nonidentity Assumption in cases of strong (essential) predication, thereby providing an answer to the Third Man Argument. In fact there does seem to be a connection between the Third Man Argument (or more generally, the Theory of Forms) and VII 6; specifically, if 'separation' means, as I argued in Chapter I, numerical distinctness, a denial of numerical distinctness would just be the rejection of one of its premisses. According to Owen, however, the rejection of the Nonidentity Assumption leads Aristotle to "embarrassment": [for Aristotle] if we take any primary subject of discourse and say just what it is, we must be producing a statement of identity, an equation which defines the subject. And this in turn helps to persuade him that the primary subjects of

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discourse cannot be individuals such as Socrates, who cannot be defined, but species such as man.52 M. J. Woods reached a similar conclusion: When we use a proper name like 'Socrates' to pick out an individual man, what we pick out is always the form; though we pick it out as it occurs in a particular piece of matter. The essence of Socrates is simply the form man, an essence which he shares with Callias.53 Again, Woods says: "the essence of Callias will be the essence of the species man, which, by the doctrine of Z, will be identical with the species itself."54 But if I am right, the result of rejecting the premiss that produces separated Forms (and that conjoined with other assumptions results in a regress of them) need not be as Owen and Woods suppose. For I have argued that what Aristotle wants to say of Socrates is that he is a member of the species human being and that he is numerically the same as but not identical with a particular form that is a specimen of the kind human being.

To say that Aristotle had a certain understanding of Plato's Theory and its problems is not, of course, to say that Plato held the view Aristotle attributes to him, and, as the interpretation of Plato's Theory of Forms is as difficult and as much disputed as anything in Aristotle, it is certainly outside the scope of this work to investigate the issue. Nevertheless, here as in Chapter I where the question of separation already arose, I will say again that I do not find it intrinsically plausible to suppose that Aristotle misunderstood Plato's Theory, or that, in a matter so central to his own concerns, he intentionally caricatured it. Therefore that some mainstream interpretations of Plato are not only in accord with Aristotle's criticisms of the Forms, discussed in Chapter I, but can be shown to be such that my claim about the relationship between Platonic Forms and Aristotle's substances are sustained would be important. VI Although Tlatonism' in philosophy and mathematics has come to stand for realism about universals - for any theory, that is, which postulates the existence of universals that are extramental and such that they exist even if uninstantiated - the view that Forms are universals is problematic and has, furthermore, been held in several quite different versions. According to one account, Plato began by conceiving the Forms as Socratic universals, came to think of them as separate paradigms, and 52 Owen (1966), 136-37. 54 Woods (1975), 168.

53 Woods (1975), 177.

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never unraveled the confusion.55 More recently, the opposite sequence has seemed more promising. According to this view, Plato began by thinking of Forms as particulars, that is, as exemplars, paradigms, or perfect instances of universals, and also, however incompatibly, as universals. In the Third Man Argument he uncovers his error and thereafter abandons the notion that Forms are paradigms and along with it the Theory of Recollection. As Colin Strang says, "In the interval between the second act and the third, which begins with the Parmenides, the paradigmatic eidos and its brother, recollection, have been unmasked as imposters and quietly buried."56 If Strang and others are right, in the late dialogues Forms are straightforwardly universals, universals that are (perhaps) still separate in the sense of being such that they exist even if uninstantiated, and they are known through dialectic.57 But that Plato's Theory of Forms is a theory of universals at any point has proved more difficult to reconcile with the texts than Strang thinks; it requires that the Timaeus be a middle dialogue as well as the explaining away of certain undeniably late references, such as Statesman 286a, to Forms as paradigms.58 Nevertheless Patterson has offered an interesting solution to this difficulty. According to Patterson's view, Plato at all periods intended the Theory of Forms to be a theory of abstract separate essences, and his describing sensible objects as "images" should be understood as a metaphor for emphasizing how unlike their models sensible objects are.59 Despite Patterson's efforts, however, the view that Plato's Theory just is a realist theory of universals remains, I think, problematic. In the first place, Plato's own terminology vacillates between the abstract noun - Largeness - and a construction that consists of the article plus adjective or common noun - The Large Itself. At Phaedo 65d4-13, for example, Plato uses both the adjectival expressions Just, Beautiful, and Good and the abstract nouns Largeness, Health, and Strength for referring to Forms. Second, if Forms are straightforwardly universals, the Third Man Argument should not even be interesting. Assuming that Plato was not himself very confused, what reason could there be for his having Parmenides suppose that Shuttlehood is a shuttle or that Justice is just, and why should he have Socrates agree to it? Or is one to suppose that, while Plato himself was not confused, Aristotle was? But if that were the case, why did Plato not do more to answer the Third Man Argument? Terminology and the Third Man Argument then are two reasons for doubting that the Forms are universals. A third reason is that such a 55 See Ross (1951), 35-36. 56 Strang (1963), 162. 57 See Strang (1963), 162, and Owen (1953). 58 See Cherniss (1957), 248-49, and Rees (1963), esp. 170-73. 59.Patterson (1985), esp. 25-62, 145, 159-64.

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view would require explaining away Plato's exploitation of the language of patterns and images; the descriptions in the Phaedo of phenomena as falling short, for example, are hardly suggestive of universals. Similarly, the lover of sights and sounds in Republic V seems to be someone who does not simply mistake one thing for another but who makes mistakes about ontological status. Indeed the metaphor of ascent is emphasized not only in the Republic's Divided Line and Cave, but also in the Symposium, Moreover, in a passage whose echo in the Statesman has already been mentioned, the Phaedrus at 250a-d says that some Forms such as Beauty have clear visual images, while others, such as Justice, do not, even though they too have likenesses. Then too, however it is dated, there remains the Timaeus, where the demiurge looks to the Forms as patterns for the created world. In short the metaphor of patterns and copies is pervasive, and it is difficult to suppose, as the view that Forms are universals requires, that such passages could be part of an analogy for understanding the relation between universals and particulars. In his account of the defectiveness of phenomena, what Patterson says is that the point of the image analogy is that an image of F is not an F at all;60 a reflection of a shuttle is not a shuttle. This seems right, and for Plato it means that a phenomenal shuttle is not really a shuttle. Nevertheless there is a difficulty with Patterson's understanding of the image analogy. On his interpretation, the Form for shuttles, which in terms of the analogy should be that which really is a shuttle, turns out to be the essential nature of a shuttle and not a shuttle at all. At the same time ordinary shuttles, which by the logic of the metaphor should be relational entities, on Patterson's interpretation are not so. That is to say, that element in the metaphor which is an independent particular is, as Patterson understands the application of the metaphor to Plato's theory, universal,61 and that element in the metaphor which is a relational entity is, in its application to Plato's theory, a particular. In light of the problems with understanding Forms as universals, it is not surprising that many interpreters have understood Plato's theory not to be a theory of universals at all. R. E. Allen, for example, denies that Forms are what he calls commutative universals on the grounds that universals "clearly cannot be identified with standards and paradigms; for the latter are things characterized, not characters." 62 Likewise, P. T. Geach suggests that it is The Lion, The Bed, and The Master, not Lionhood, Bedhood, and Mastery, which are Platonic Forms,63 and 60 Patterson (1985), 33. 61 Patterson (1985) declines to identify what he calls Plato's essential natures with universals, but his point seems to be that Forms are not just any separated universals but only those determined by the Form of the Good. See 134-35, 155. 62 Allen (1960), 157. 63 Geach (1956), 75.

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R. S. Bluck understands a Form to be not a determinate universal but an instance of a determinate universal.64 If Forms are understood as paradigm cases, that is to say, as perfect examples of the properties or sorts in question, it is easy to see how the Third Man Argument might arise.65 On the other hand, in the case of many Forms, it is clearly impossible for them to have the relevant properties of phenomena. For example, The Large Itself cannot be of any size for, like all Forms, it is not in space. Nor can The Shuttle Itself be of any given shape or size or color, and even to say that it falls within a range of sizes and shapes is problematic. Yet if The Shuttle Itself lacks these characteristics, how can it be an instrument for weaving? I have sketched the problems that arise on the one hand in taking Forms to be universals and then, on the other, in supposing that they are particulars. To deny that The Shuttle is a shuttle may seem a return to the view that Forms are universals after all, but it is possible to make a distinction that avoids this conclusion. For a universal is such as to be predicated; that is, for a universal to exist is for it to be possible for something to be F, even if in fact the universal exists uninstantiated. What can be said of Forms, however, is that, though the Form for Fness is not an F (Plato's reply to the Third Man Argument), it is nevertheless itself the preeminent F and not predicable of other Fs, but rather something like a type.66 That is to say, if Forms are types, they do indeed straddle the distinction between universal and particular, and it is not perplexity or even imprecision but rather ontology that leads Plato to use '/ness' and 'The F' indiscriminately to designate a Form.67 Were this primarily a study of Plato's Theory of Forms, much more would need to be said by way of clarification and evaluation of the proposal that Forms are not universals but patterns that do not have but are that for which they are the Forms.68 Here, however, I will restrict myself to three points. The first is to note the similarity of what I have said to Harold Cherniss's view that the Form for x is "what is x". As 64 Bluck (1957), 121. 65 Geach (1956), 74, and Allen (1960), 151, avoid it by means of the Wittgensteinian claim that the standard yard is not a yard long since it is that against which things a yard long are to be measured; Allen then argues that phenomena are resemblances of Forms. See 155. 66 For types, see Peirce (1933), 423, and Wollheim (1968), 64-68. 67 For the charge of perplexity, see Vlastos (1954). I disagree too with Penner (1987), who argues that Plato wants to oppose reductively identifying Forms (for example, what Beauty is) with sensible objects (things that are beautiful), but that otherwise he has no precise account of the sort of abstract entities he wants Forms to be. See 60, 72-73, 89, 94-95. 68 Of course, Plato's most central examples of Forms are not The Bed and The Shuttle - plausible candidates for types - but The Beautiful and The Equal. Nevertheless when Geach (1956), 76, suggests that The Equal is a pair of equal things, presumably the point of 'things' is to abstract from the sorts of things — equally long sticks, equally heavy stones - which can be equal, thereby minimizing the difference.

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he says: "of any character or property, x, that a particular has, the reality is ho estin x, which it could not be if it were had by anything and which therefore must be independent or 'separate' from all manifestations of itself as a property."69 The second is that, once Forms are so described, what is striking is the degree to which, but for Plato's inclusion of Forms for properties, Plato's Forms so understood would indeed be similar to Aristotle's substances, except as regards separation. Finally, the third is to suggest that it is at least arguable that Aristotle is right about the consequences of separation, that is to say, that Cherniss's assessment notwithstanding,70 Aristotle's criticisms are very much on target after all. Of course to say that Plato's Theory can, not implausibly, be taken as straddling the distinction between particular and universal is not to say that this is how Aristotle took it, anymore than to say that this is how Aristotle understood the Theory shows Plato's intent. Nevertheless that such an interpretation of Plato is not implausible and that it is remarkably compatible with Aristotle's allegations, discussed in Chapter I, remains to the point. Indeed in Metaphysics VII 14 there is what I would claim is an acute analysis (at the level of the genus) of the problem with types, if these are understood as real and yet, as Plato supposes, numerically distinct from their tokens: For if the Forms exist and animal is present in man and horse, it is either one and the same in number, or different. . . . If there is a man-in-himself who is a 'this' and exists apart, the parts of which he consists, e.g. animal and two-footed, must indicate a 'this' and be things existing apart and substances; therefore animal too must be of this sort. Now if animal, which is in the horse and in man, is one and the same, as you are one and the same with yourself, how will the one in things that exist apart be one, and how will this animal escape being divided even from itself? Further, if it is to share in two-footed and manyfooted, an impossible conclusion follows; for contrary attributes will belong at the same time to it although it is one and a this. (1039a26-b4) In short, as I understand Aristotle, the crux of his proposal, worked out in his own theory of substances as a response to the Theory of Forms, is just this: that the straddling of universal and particular which is characteristic of Plato's Forms, and indeed which is necessary if what is ontologically fundamental is also to be knowable, can be made unproblematic only if Plato's separation of Forms from sensible objects is rejected. However, if Platonic separation is rejected, so Aristotle argues, forms, though particular in virtue of their numerical sameness with different sensible objects, have on account of their indistinguishability the knowability characteristic of universals. In this chapter I have argued for understanding Aristotle's substances as specimens of natural kinds and have claimed that, so understood, 69 Cherniss (1957), 261. See also 260.

70 See Cherniss (1944), esp. 211.

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Aristotle can be seen as responding to the Theory of Forms by denying the numerical distinctness of forms from sensible objects. However, since substances are also not identical with sensible objects, it remains to be seen whether this solution is tenable and whether it will in fact solve the problems Aristotle identifies as consequent upon separation. For example, even if it is the case that Aristotle's specimens (having a sort of generality in virtue of being indistinguishable within a kind) are knowable objects, there remain questions about whether they can be known by us, a desideratum without which Aristotle could not count his theory a significant advance. In the next chapter I will first explore the difficulties of describing the relation between Platonic Forms and sensible objects in such a way that from our experience of the latter a plausible account can be given of how knowledge can be had of the Forms. Then I will argue that Aristotle's explanation of how we come to have knowledge is addressed to Plato's problems and matched to his own account of substances as specimens of natural kinds. The ontological aspects of Aristotle's view will be examined in the final chapters.

IV Substance and Aristotle's Epistemology

On the interpretation of Aristotle's account of substance I have just offered, substances are specimens of natural kinds that are numerically the same as sensible objects without being identical with them. Further, in virtue of their indistinguishability from one another (within the same kind), specimens of kinds have the knowability characteristic of the Forms without the separation; indeed it would not mischaracterize Aristotle's theory to say that it treats each specimen of the kind human being as if it were The Human Being - each specimen of a kind, in other words, as if it were the Platonic Form. But even if specimens of natural kinds meet the requirement set forth in Metaphysics VII 1 that substances must be first in knowledge and definition, mere knowability on the part of substances does nothing to establish that they can be known by us. After all, one of the most serious difficulties with the Theory of Forms is that even though Forms are said to be eternal, unchanging, and the objects of definition, knowledge of them remains problematic. I contend that Aristotle believes his rejection of the separation of Forms can address this issue also - that is to say, he believes that his view enables him to explain how it is that there is knowledge. I begin with Plato's Theory. I Besides the metaphysical problems concerning the nature of Plato's Forms (see Chapters I and III), there are, as Plato himself recognizes, epistemological problems as well. Given that our experience now is not of Forms, how are Forms to be known? This problem is, of course, addressed by Plato in the Theory of Recollection.1 1 In the Phaedo (73a-76e), but not the Meno, Plato allows for remembering by unlikeness, the transition to knowledge seems not to occur in stages, and recollection begins from sense experience. I will assume that Plato intends these to be additions to the Theory, but for a more critical discussion, see Gulley (1954), 197—99. Although Forms do not explicitly appear in the Meno, the problems discussed there are obviously relevant to the Theory and certainly Aristotle took them to be so.

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In the Meno Plato is faced with the paradox of discovery; how, the dramatic character Socrates asks, paraphrasing a complaint raised by Meno, can one try to discover either what he knows or what he does not know? One would not seek what he knows, for since he knows there is no need of inquiry, nor what he does not know, for in that case he does not even know what he is to look for (80d). Plato's answer is to argue that we seek what we in some sense know. Plato illustrates his proposal, the theory of recollection, by eliciting from an uneducated slave knowledge of geometry. Challenged to find a way to double the area of a square, the slave twice proposes procedures that give the wrong result, is led by Socrates to see that these are wrong, and then, having conceded that he does not know, is able to follow Socrates' explanation, worded as an interrogation, of how it is to be done. This knowledge, the knowledge the slave comes to have, is said to result not from teaching but from questioning (85d). Plato's claim that Socrates does not teach the slave can look tendentious, but perhaps it is not so, given that it is intended to cover a priori and not empirical knowledge; if Socrates supplies the solution to the problem, he nevertheless expects the slave to see why what he proposes concerning squares is true.2 To be sure, the example also suggests that the recovery of knowledge may require a guide, and even at that what is recollected may at first have a "dreamlike" quality (85c). Nevertheless, Socrates says, "if the same questions are put to him on many occasions and in different ways, you can see that in the end he will have a knowledge on the subject as accurate as anybody's" (85c-d) - he will be able to produce the proof himself and to see why it is to be done in this way. His true opinions, Socrates tells us, will then have been turned into knowledge (86a). In fact it seems that not only will he have knowledge but he will then know that he knows. With the doctrine of recollection Plato has produced a solution to the paradox of discovery - he has claimed that we in fact know what we do not now seem to know - but it is a solution beset by a variety of difficulties. On any theory of knowledge there is need to explain acquisition and verification, yet that the objects of knowledge are for Plato not now readily available for inspection causes special problems. In the Meno it is said that the soul, since it is immortal and has seen all things both here and in the other world, has learned everything that is (81c); in the Phaedrus Socrates speculates that our souls were then like charioteers and their horses that rushed after the gods through the heavens and saw the Forms along the way (246a-248b). But it is interesting that in the Phaedrus Plato himself worries that we might have been unable to attend properly to our experiences (248b), a state of affairs that 2 See Moravcsik (1971), esp. 65, and Vlastos (1965).

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would doom at the outset the prospects for successful recollection. Retention, which is mentioned in the Theaetetus, presents related difficulties; if our minds are like soft or crowded wax (194e-195a), what we experienced may not wholly govern what remains.3 Whether we did acquire knowledge and whether we did retain what we learned are serious questions whose answers cannot be ascertained without criteria for verification. How do we know that what we recollect - that which purports to be knowledge - is after all knowledge and not error? Perhaps in the Phaedo (72e-76e) Plato hoped that it was sufficient to say that knowledge is like remembering; to maintain that what we have within us is a trace of previous experience can, after all, be seen as a causal - that is to say, an externalist - justification of the belief. Or perhaps the fact of remembering is being supposed to be supplemented by some recognition that provides assurance that one is remembering correctly. White, for example, says of Plato's view: "sometimes one simply has the feeling (if 'feeling' is the appropriate word) that one is remembering, which one trusts as a warrant for saying that one has correctly recollected what has come to consciousness accompanied by that feeling."4 Yet that what is accompanied by the feeling can nevertheless be wrong is a fact too obvious for Plato to have overlooked, and in the degrading of images impressed upon soft wax Plato himself has given a reason why one should not trust such a feeling. Norman Gulley too believes that recollection is meant to guarantee what is recollected, but he is vaguer about just what provides the guarantee. He says: The fact that this process is described as a process of recollection presumably means that it is anamnesis which provides the recognition that 'this assumes that* or 'this follows from that'. It must also guarantee the finality of the results of analysis by affording the recognition that they are thus final in their correspondence with reality: this completes the conversion from opinion to knowledge.5

"Once the final truth is recognized," Gulley adds, "it cannot 'run away'. We know that we have found the truth."6 Problems about the acquisition of knowledge and its verification arise, as I have said, on any account of knowledge; they are hardly unique to Plato. But the point is that because for Plato the objects that we are said to know are not now experienced and because, indeed, we for the most part are not even aware of having knowledge of them, the 3 Guthrie (1978), 113, claims that in the Theaetetus Plato cannot be thinking of the Theory of Recollection because at 197e he says that the aviary is empty at birth. I take this to be a feature of the story which is without philosophical significance for determining Plato's overall concerns. 5 Gulley (1954), 195. 4 White (1976), 51-52. 6 Gulley (1954), 195.

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means of verification for what is recollected are diminished. Moreover, as we have just seen, what is crucial and yet uniquely difficult for Plato's Theory is how retrieval of what we learned of Forms "in a previous life" can be made to happen. In the Theaetetus at 197b-d, Socrates proposes that one can have knowledge in the sense of possession (what are sometimes now called unactivated beliefs) without having access to or control of that knowledge (activated beliefs).7 But if that knowledge is to be of the Forms, then, just as in the earlier dialogues, it is necessary to explain how the first sort of knowledge can become the second. To be sure, if there are enough activated beliefs on the part of either the inquirer or a teacher to serve as a starting point, inquiry seems possible; given enough pieces of knowledge, dialectic might produce more. On the other hand, where prior control over all relevant knowledge is lacking, inquiry - that is to say, investigation of a predetermined topic - seems impossible. Even though one might come to have some piece of knowledge, there is no procedure for coming up with a given piece. Philosophical activity at least at the outset will be like reaching blindly into a birdcage. Though I have argued that Plato's views about the Forms undermine inquiry, one might take issue with this assessment. After all, even if one has no occurrent knowledge of a given Form, still there are present experiences of phenomena, and surely these (as is emphasized in the Republic and the Symposium as well as in the account of recollection in the Phaedo) may serve as cues. On the other hand, phenomenal images are transitory, and the nature of space is such that the representations of the Form which can exist in that medium bring no assurance of knowledge. Certainly one and the same Form can be variously mirrored. For all these reasons, it is little wonder that phenomena are by different observers judged differently - that is to say, are judged to be images of different Forms - and little wonder if, beginning with such faulty images as phenomena, Forms are imperfectly recollected. In the Phaedo even as Plato says that recollection begins from sense experience, he says also that the senses are hindrances and distractions to the soul in its search for reality (65a-67b; cf. 81b-d, 82d-83b). How we are to have knowledge of Forms is, of course, a problem Plato addresses again and again. Whether the part of the dialectical process known in the later dialogues as "collection" begins from Forms or sensibles is controversial,8 yet only those interpreters who believe that Forms in these dialogues are no longer separate can suppose that collection and division have replaced recollection.9 But sometimes Pla7 See, for example, Goldman (1986), 202. 8 Gulley (1954) seems to think that it begins with sensibles. See 201. Guthrie (1975), 428-29, believes that it is Forms which are collected. 9 See Gulley (1954), 209-10, for a refutation of the replacement view. See also Rees (1963), 173-74.


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to's attempts at a solution are more wide-ranging. In the Cratylus Plato seems to consider whether ideal names might not be more satisfactory than phenomena as cues. In Statesman, he suggests that Forms without visible images might be known by analogy; weaving might provide perceptual cues for understanding statesmanship, for example. Yet since ordinary language is not perfect, the route of the Cratylus seems quite as inaccessible as its goal, and that the problems with perceptual cues would only be compounded by their use in analogy is evident. The obstacles to knowledge posed by the Theory of Forms would be irrelevant to my topic unless Aristotle too identified them. But of this there is no doubt. We have already come upon his claim that craftsmen do not look to the Forms - as well as his biting remark that if the science is innate, it is "wonderful" that we are unaware of our possession of it, after which he adds: "Again, how is one to know what all things are made of, and how is this to be made evident?" (992b34-993a3). Likewise at Prior Analytics 67a22-26 Aristotle explicitly criticizes the Theory of Recollection when he says: "For it never happens that a man has foreknowledge of the particular, but in the process of induction he receives a knowledge of the particulars, as though by an act of recognition. For we know some things directly; e.g. that the angles are equal to two right angles, if we see that the figure is a triangle. Similarly in all other cases" (cf. Posterior Analytics 71al7-b8). Thus from passages such as these, it becomes apparent that Aristotle does see a problem with retrieval. Indeed as D. W. Hamlyn says of the passage in the Prior Analytics: Seeing a triangle is ipso facto knowing that it is afigureof a certain general kind. If we put this into relationship with the exposition of the doctrine of recollection in the Meno, we can see that Aristotle is construing the problem presented in that dialogue as how one comes to recognise that particular figure as the one which . . . (that square as the one which has an area twice that of a given square).10 That is to say, even supposing that the slave somehow has knowledge of geometry, his knowledge is of the universal and not of this square in the dust; how then does he use this square in the dust to activate his knowledge of squares - without which he cannot see that a square drawn on the diagonal is the solution to the problem? Of course, where geometry is concerned, the relation between token and type is unusually transparent, and Aristotle's own example reflects this fact. Nevertheless, as we have seen, the question remains: How out of all one's knowledge is one able to access a triangle (or to return to the example of the Meno, how is the slave able to access the correct square)? While Aristotle himself agrees that knowledge of the instances comes by recognizing something as an instance of a given type, he rejects the thought that foreknowledge is either necessary or sufficient for 10 Hamlyn (1976), 170. See also McKirahan (1983).

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recognition. Rather he seems to believe that an account of human knowing can be given which has an immediacy - and also a credibility lacking in Plato's. In the sections that follow, Aristotle's account will be examined. II The goal of the Theory of Recollection is to explain how learning occurs. Plato chiefly proposes that, starting from perceptual cues, we regain access to knowledge already within us. In Posterior Analytics II 19 Aristotle himself attempts to explain how, beginning from the perception of sensible particulars, scientific knowledge - that is to say, knowledge of universals resting on indemonstrable first principles - can be attained. That his target is the Meno is plain from the outset. In the first chapter of Book I at 71a 24-30, he has said: Before the induction, or before getting a deduction, you should perhaps be said to understand in a way - but in another way not. For if you did not know if it is simpliciter, how did you know that it has two right angles simpliciter? But it is clear that you understand it in this sense - that you understand it universally - but you do not understand it simpliciter. (Otherwise the puzzle in the Meno will result; for you will learn either nothing or what you know.) Although the goal is said to be knowledge of "first principles," whether by first principles Aristotle means primitive concepts or indemonstrable propositions, or whether he vacillates between them, is unclear. But, as several interpreters have recently pointed out, since a first principle is for Aristotle a definition and a definition is the articulation of a concept, it really makes no difference.11 Having argued that knowledge of principles is not, on the one hand, innate (Posterior Analytics II 19 99b26-7) and that, on the other, it is impossible for such knowledge to come about if we are ignorant of it and have no capacity for it at all (99b30-32), Aristotle concludes that we must have some capacity from which to derive our knowledge of the principles (99b3234). Of this capacity, he says: And this evidently belongs to all animals; for they have a connate discriminatory capacity, which is called perception. And if perception is present in them, in some animals retention of the percept comes about, but in others it does not come about. Now for those in which it does not come about, there is no knowledge outside perceiving (either none at all, or none with regard to that of which there is no retention); but for some perceivers, it is possible to grasp it in their minds. And when many such things come about, then a difference comes about, so that some come to have an account from the retention of such things, and others do not. (99b34-100a3) 11 See Modrak (1987), 161-64, Kahn (1981), 387-97, and Barnes (1975), 249, 259-60.


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Aristotle then continues by considering the steps leading from retention to the account: So from perception there comes memory, as we call it, and from memory (when it occurs often in connection with the same thing), experience; for memories that are many in number form a single experience. And from experience, or from the whole universal that has come to rest in the soul (the one apart from the many, whatever is one and the same in all those things), there comes a principle of skill and of understanding - of skill if it deals with how things come about, of understanding if it deals with what is the case. (100a3-9) Next he stakes out the difference between his position and Plato's, offering what has become a famous simile. He says: Thus the states neither belong in us in a determinate form, nor come about from other states that are more cognitive; but they come about from perception - as in a battle when a rout occurs, if one man makes a stand another does and then another, until a position of strength is reached. And the soul is such as to be capable of undergoing this. (100al0-14) Finally Aristotle repeats and amplifies the simile as follows: What we have just said but not said clearly, let us say again: when one of the undifferentiated things makes a stand, there is a primitive universal in the mind (for though one perceives the particular, perception is of the universal - e.g. of man but not of Callias the man); again a stand is made in these, until what has no parts and is universal stands - e.g. such and such an animal stands, until animal does, and in this a stand is made in the same way. Thus it is clear that it is necessary for us to become familiar with the primitives by induction; for perception too instils the universal in this way. (100al4— 100b5) The simile of ending a rout is far from transparent. W. D. Ross and Jonathan Barnes do not even attempt to correlate it in any detail with the progression from perception to knowledge. 12 Hamlyn points out that it is certainly irrelevant that the movement is a regrouping; otherwise knowledge would be recollection, after all. 13 Richard McKirahan says of it: This simile has favorably struck some commentators and has given rise to much speculation over the circumstances imagined in the simile and its precise application to the matter at hand. However, like some other famous similes of Aristotle's, this one does nothing to make the ideas clearer.14 Deborah Modrak, however, attempts an analysis. She says: Both the cognitive process and the rout involve a movement from discrete individuals considered as such to an orderly arrangement of individuals in which individual differences are irrelevant. During the rout, each soldier is an isolated 12 See Ross (1949), 673-78, and Barnes (1975), 252-56. 13 Hamlyn (1976), 178. 14 McKirahan (1992), 244.

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individual, as are sensible particulars when they are initially apprehended in perception. When the reversal of the rout begins and some soldiers have resumed their battle positions, an orderly whole begins to emerge of which the soldiers are constituents. Similarly, the generalization that is grasped through experience orders a number of individual phantasmata - at least to the extent of specifying similarities. When the battle formation is completely restored, the formation can be fully specified in terms of the number, position, and location of the soldiers; individual soldiers of the same type are interchangeable. 15 In Modrak's account it is the formation, the orderly whole, which comes to be fully specified, and its specification is achieved by detailing the relevant features of the soldiers; that is to say, on her account it is the formation that comes to be known and therefore corresponds to the universal. She continues: The battle formation under a general description constitutes an ordering of individuals and thus is analogous to a universal principle. The cognition of a universal principle orders the particular states of affairs that are subsumed under the universal, and the peculiar features of the phantasmata that embody these states of affairs are irrelevant to their role in the cognition (cf. Metaphysics 1078a22-31, [De Memoria et Reminiscentia] 450al-4). There is no battle formation without soldiers, nor is there a noetic apprehension of a universal without the sensory representation of (some of) its instances; nonetheless, the first member of each pair cannot be reduced to the second member. 16 It may be that W. K. C. Guthrie agrees. He says: The process is illustrated by a vivid simile: it is as in a battle, when an army has been routed, if one man has the courage to turn and make a stand, his example fires another and then another, until their original order (arche) is restored. From our earliest years we are bombarded with a confused mass of sensations. A great many we forget at once: they slip away and flee from us. But there comes a time when one remains in our memory, then more and more. Gradually we are becoming experienced. Finally, being creatures possessed of reason, we become aware of the arche, which is nothing more or less than the 'one beside the many' [hen para to polla], a universal of which all the separately remembered particulars are examples, and are enabled to produce that definition which is one of the archai of the scientific or apodeictic syllogism. (90b24) 17 What is first to be noticed is that on any interpretation of the simile it has to be agreed that Aristotle has told us nothing about how the transition from perception to knowledge is to take place, how, that is to say, it comes about that the soldiers start not just running around but (re)grouping. Yet while the simile presents the activity entirely in relation to the achievement of its result, it is precisely the possibility of that achievement, the critic can seemingly protest, which remains so puzzling. To put the point another way, if Aristotle can get away with 15 Modrak (1987), 169-70. 17 Guthrie (1981), 182.

16 Modrak (1987), 170.


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saying, as he does at 100al3-14, that the soul is such as to be able to reach the universal, why should not Plato, with equal justification, say, "the soul is such as to be able to recollect"? Perhaps in Aristotle's defense it can be said that his remark to the effect that the soul just is able to extract the universal is intended to make only the point that not all creatures have knowledge (animals do not). Yet the absence of a psychological mechanism is not the only or seemingly even the most serious problem for interpreting the simile. Guthrie, as we have seen, chooses not to specify what in the metaphor corresponds to the universal (the one beside the many), while Modrak claims that it is the formation that does so. Indeed since definitions are the archai of the scientific or apodeictic syllogism (90b24) and definitions are of the essence or universal, if what is reached or restored is an arche, it is natural to suppose, as she does, that what is known is the collection of individuals in a certain arrangement. However, knowledge, as Aristotle understands it, is of what it is to be a human being, for example, and what it is to be a human being is something that exists within each individual human being, while on the other hand the formation is not in each soldier but just is, as I have said, a collection of them. Thus although I agree with Modrak that the interchangeability of individual soldiers is important, the reason why it is so, it seems to me, is that it is the soldiers engaged in the characteristic activities of soldiers and not, as Modrak concludes, the formation that needs to be what is known. One can see the point more clearly if one applies the metaphor to itself so that what is to be learned is what a soldier is. In a rout the soldier is not functioning as a soldier; yet even though (in the case of a hoplite), for soldiering the formation is required, nevertheless in coming to know what it is to be a soldier, it is not the formation that is what is to be known. In short, if the analogy is to be useful, what the formation has to correspond to, it seems to me, is not what is known but simply the state of having reached a condition of knowledge. What is needed from Aristotle's comparison with the ending of a rout, that is to say, is an awareness of each particular in such a way that one is aware of it in its typicality. Whether the analogy can be so interpreted, however, is a question that I will not pursue. Yet even if, as McKirahan says, the metaphor is just not helpful, nevertheless from Posterior Analytics and De Anima I think it can be seen why Aristotle believes he can respond to Plato's epistemological problems in a way that is successful. Ill In De Anima II 6 Aristotle tells us that the proper objects of perception are sense qualities or sensible forms. These qualities, if unique to a

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particular sense (as color is to sight), are called proper sensibles; if distinguished by two or more senses (as are motion and shape), they are called common sensibles. Objects such as this man and this horse are said by Aristotle to be perceived incidentally. Sense perception, whether of qualities or objects, is of the individual (Posterior Analytics I 18 81b6; De Anima II 5 4l7b22). Yet as Analytics Posterior II 19 makes clear (cf. Metaphysics I 1), we proceed from sensation to memory (sensation retained in a phantasm), to the unification of memories in experience, and then to a grasp of the universal. However, if the starting point is sense perception or, even more narrowly, the sensation of colors, shapes, and the like, sensory input may seem insufficient for knowledge; in the gap between perception and knowledge there is much to be explained. One solution would be to hold that when we perceive, for example, Callias, besides perceiving certain colors and shapes, we perceive him as a human being. Of this Barnes says: Yet it is not clear how we are to apprehend man in the first place. Aristotle's theory of perception divides the objects of perception into two classes, essential and incidental (cf. An [De Anima] B 6). Essential objects are either proper to a given sense (e.g. colours to sight, sounds to hearing) or common (e.g. motion, shape, size). Incidental objects cover everything else; if X is an incidental object of perception, then I perceive X only if there is some essential object Y such that I perceive Y and Y is X. Individuals are the prime examples of incidental objects (An B 6, 418a21; T 1, 425a25). There is very little evidence for man but what there is makes it an incidental object (An T 6, 430b29); and it is in any case hard to see how man could be either a proper or a common sensible. Man, then, is not directly implanted in our minds by our senses, as Aristotle's words in B 19 suggest; but in that case we need an account, which Aristotle nowhere gives, of how such concepts as man are derived from the data of perception.18 Charles Kahn repeats Barnes's concerns: As Barnes has noted, the full account of aisthesis in De an. II makes it difficult to understand how we could properly perceive a universal like man at all - or even an instance of this universal. The proper objects of perception are aistheta, sense qualities or sensible forms, and these are of two types: (1) qualities unique to a particular sense (color for sight, sound for hearing, hot-cold, wet-dry, and others for touch, plus the various tastes and smells), and (2) the "common sensibles" distinguished by two or more senses: motion, rest, number, figure, and magnitude (De an. II 6). These are the only properties that are sensible per se, recognized by sense perception as such. All other information received through the senses, such as the recognition that this pale shape is a man or the son of Diares, is only an incidental object of sense: "one perceives this incidentally, because this property happens to belong to the white object one perceives. Hence the perceiver (i.e. his sense of vision) is not acted upon at all by the incidental sense object as such." (418a21-24)19 18 Barnes (1975), 255.

19 Kahn (1981), 401-2.


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Both Barnes and Kahn cast doubt on the idea that for Aristotle we can know what a human being is by perceiving Callias and others as human beings. Aristotle's psychology does not, they believe, allow Callias to be perceived in such a highly conceptualized way. But in that case how do we come to know what a human being is? Kahn's suggestion is that for Aristotle it is the active intellect that permits us to learn from experience, by acting on us so as to actualize our potential intellect.20 Indeed, according to Kahn, far from being a version of empiricism, Aristotle's alternative to Plato is "superrationalism." As he says, As far as the active intellect is concerned, the rationalist doctrines of innate ideas and infallible intuition convey too weak a picture of its complete and unwavering grasp of all noetic truth. As far as we are concerned, however, the rationalist model simply does not fit, since our potential intellect is not stocked at birth with noetic principles and does not acquire them by any act of direct intuition that we can perform. One may, if one wishes, speak of the active intellect as continuously intuiting the forms and essences of the natural world. But we can enjoy such an intuition only to the extent that we succeed in realizing its activity in our own thought and knowledge.21 Despite the fact that, as Kahn understands Aristotle, we have no innate ideas, "if the intellect can grasp the noetic forms and essences in the phantasms provided by experience, that is because it already knows or is these very forms before experience." 22 Thus Kahn's view of Aristotle can, I think, not unfairly be called Platonic - the forms can be known from experience because the forms were known before experience. Nevertheless if Kahn is right about the role of the active intellect and if he is right to suppose the active intellect to be something apart from us,23 how is it that the knowledge had by the active intellect comes to be ours as well? What Kahn offers on Aristotle's behalf falls very short of being an explanation. He says: And this process of learning and exercising science, although it has a metaphysical cause and even a metaphysical guarantee in the super-rationalism of the active intellect, must be achieved in our own experience by the ordinary processes of induction and hard work: there is no epistemic button we can push in order to tune in on the infallible contemplation of noetic forms by the active intellect.24

If Kahn's interpretation is correct, then in the De Anima as much as in Posterior Analytics II 19, how Aristotle's view is an improvement over Plato's is hard to see. We engage in the hard work of epagoge - but 20 Kahn (1981), 410. 21 Kahn (1981), 411. 22 Kahn (1981), 407. 23 See Guthrie (1981), 322-30, for a summary of the evidence on both sides of this question. 24 Kahn (1981), 411.

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what is the connection between that and the engagement of the active intellect on our behalf? Whether the forms are buried within our memories or whether they are known by an active intellect that is distinct from us, the problem of access is the same. Nevertheless it must be remembered that the problem the involvement of the active intellect is intended to solve arose because Kahn, in rejecting the idea that we can perceive Callias as a human being, takes Aristotle to be committed to a perceptual content of only proper and common sensibles. But some interpreters believe Aristotle intends a more generous perceptual content than that which Kahn allows. One such proposal will be the subject of the next section. IV According to Kahn's account of the movement from perception to knowledge, incidental objects of perception fall outside the scope of perception. Modrak, however, uses Aristotle's remark that though one perceives the particular, perception is of the universal to suggest a way in which universals might be grasped through perception after all. She says: [At 100al5-b3 Aristotle makes] the crucial point that there is a sense in which universals are grasped through perception. The universals in question are those that determine the features of the sensible particular; these include features perceived kata sumbebekos as well as those perceived kath * hauta. Indeed, in the case of substances, the single most important universal, namely, the substance sortal that the particular falls under, is perceived kata sumbebekos. What is incidental at one cognitive level becomes essential at another (cf. 89a33-37). The essential features of a concrete particular are general characteristics. Hence the perceptible individual is not only the object of perception but is also the vehicle for the apprehension of the universal.25 She explains how for Aristotle this is possible: The sensible particular is a token of a type, and we apprehend the type in virtue of apprehending the particular. In Aristotle's metaphysics, the substance type is ontologically prior to the token; the essential characteristics of an individual human being are determined by the substance type, the species anthropos. We perceive a particular man (i.e., a token of a certain type or species), but the perception is of man (i.e., the type is the ultimate determinant of the content of the perception). Many of the distinctive perceptible features of a particular object are type-dependent. For instance, the difference between a cat and a dog is more easily recognized through perception than the difference between one cat and another, (cf. Physics 184a24-bl4)26 One might conjecture that Barnes and Kahn would find Modrak's view problematic; Kahn, it will be recalled, doubted that we could per25 Modrak (1987), 168.

26 Modrak (1987), 168.


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ceive either a universal such as man or an instance of the universal. What should be noticed, however, is that the position Barnes and Kahn explicitly contest is stronger than the one Modrak defends. Both Barnes and Kahn deny that Aristotle is entitled to say, "we perceive Callias as a man." But Modrak does not say that we do. Rather what Modrak claims is that many of the distinctive perceptible features of a particular object are type-dependent. That is to say, it is consistent with Modrak's view to say merely that on various occasions we perceive similar clusters of proper and common sensibles. In short, some interpreters try to find middle ground between perceiving colors and shapes and perceiving Callias as a human being.27 In fact it seems to me not implausible to suppose that Aristotle thinks that without knowing what a human being is we perceive a cluster of qualities that belong to a particular human being and that this is a sufficient starting point for coming to know what it is to be a human being. In fact Barnes's definition of incidental perception (if X is an incidental object of perception, then I perceive X only if there is some essential object Y such that I perceive Y and Y is X) seems to contain just such a suggestion. To say that Y is X is not to say that I know that Y is X or even that I perceive Y as an X, the latter being the claim that Barnes himself finds problematic. I have argued that Barnes's definition presents a more modest and defensible view of incidental perception than that which Barnes himself criticizes Aristotle for holding. But given a more modest interpretation, Kahn's remarks, quoted in Section III, to the effect that it is difficult to understand how we could properly perceive a universal, that man is only an incidental object of sense, that the perceiver is not acted upon at all by the incidental sense object as such, and that the sense faculty cannot

be directly affected by properties that are not sensible in the strict sense (all the italics are mine) would seem to be either vacuously true - incidental perception is not nonincidental perception - or tendentious. That is to say, Kahn has said nothing to show that incidental perception of the sort prescribed in Barnes's definition is not available to Aristotle. On the contrary, such a view would seem to be required by what Kahn himself says of Aristotle's understanding of even animal awareness: "[sense perception] permits a dog to recognize its master and distinguish its master from the master's horse, without knowing that its master 27 Others who have attempted to find middle ground include Ross, Sorabji, and Cashdollar. Ross (1949), 678, says of this passage: "we perceive an individual thing, but what we perceive in it is a set of qualities each of which can belong to other individual things." Sorabji (1992), 197, argues that for Aristotle some perceiving is propositional (we perceive that something is the case), in other words that "perceiving that" need not be described as an inference of reason. As he puts it, "Coincidental does not mean inferential." Cashdollar (1973), 156, 161, argues that incidental perception, even though predicative, is nevertheless a case of perception.

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is a man or that the horse is a horse."28 Nor has Kahn shown that (for suitable perceivers) from such a beginning the universal cannot be attained. Thus I want to agree with Modrak that Aristotle uses incidental perception to explain how perceptible particulars can be the vehicle for knowledge of the universal and that it is reasonable for him to do so. Specifically, what Modrak argues is that it is the capacity for representation which allows us to reach knowledge of the universal from sensory awareness of particulars. When the content of a perception is retained in a phantasm or memory image, the image, being an image of Callias, will include some of his accidental features. Nevertheless once images of other human beings and other images of Callias are retained as well, then (in the human soul) it is possible for even the essence to be derived. This progression need not, Modrak contends, involve a superimposition of the images into a confused general image; that, she maintains, is a view that is neither philosophically plausible nor true to Aristotle. 29 Rather, the proposal is that any of these particular images can be reused to represent the others. She says: if Callias is perceived as tall, thin and balding, the phantasma of Callias employed in thinking about the essence of human beings would include (some of) these idiosyncratic characteristics, but the thought would ignore them. To grasp an intelligible form is to reinterpret the content of an appropriate phantasma. Nevertheless, the phantasma is a necessary component of the thought. Just as in the extramental world essences inhere in matter, essences-in-thought inhere in the phantasmata that serve as their material substrata.30 We have seen that on Modrak's view the gap between the phantasm, which is still particular, and knowledge of the universal is closed by the capacity for representation. That is to say, it is representation that takes us from the phantasm to thought (432al2-14). In this it seems to me that she is right. I will not pretend that no philosophical problems arise in understanding how representation is supposed to work, nor will I try to determine whether Aristotle wants to appeal to a general image. 31 But what needs to be emphasized, I think, is the connection between 28 Kahn (1981), 402. Aristotle's motive for considering incidental perception to be a case of perception seems in fact to be animal intelligence; animals, he wants to hold, lack reason and yet they respond appropriately. At Metaphysics I 980b25-27, a passage not unlike Posterior Analytics II 19, Aristotle claims: "The animals other than man live by appearances and memories, and have but little of connected experience." Of this passage Ross (1949), 677, says: "I.e. experience is a stage in which there has appeared ability to interpret the present in the light of the past, but an ability which cannot account for itself; when it accounts for itself it becomes art." Sorabji (1992), 195209, has an excellent account of the problem posed for Aristotle and other ancient philosophers by animal intelligence. 29 Modrak (1987), 166. 30 Modrak (1987), 169. 31 D. Frede (1992), 291, seems, unlike Modrak, to believe that Aristotle does make use of a general image and that his doing so is not unsatisfactory.


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Aristotle's metaphysics and his epistemology. I will argue next that the fit between Aristotle's epistemology and his metaphysics, on the interpretation of the theory of substance which I have offered, should be taken as a reason for thinking that interpretation to be correct.

I have argued that Aristotle wants his substances to be as much like Plato's Forms as possible, but for separation, and that Plato's Forms can best be seen as types. But although metaphysical issues fall outside the scope of her book, in an earlier paper cited in it Modrak gives an account of substances which, though it may differ to some degree from the view I want to propose, nevertheless illustrates why there should be said to be a close connection between Aristotle's metaphysics and his epistemology. For what Modrak claims is that Aristotelian substances are types. Specifically, she suggests that the relationship between the form and the individuals having that form is like that between a word and its occurrences; the form is like 'cat' as the arrangement of the letters 'c,a,t', while the individual is that form or formula in matter, as in the ink marks on the page. Similarly in the case of the human form and human individuals, the form is the functional organization characteristic of human beings and the individual is a particular organized body such as Socrates.32 I myself am not entirely comfortable with Modrak's examples. Although she says that the form, being that which provides individuation, is not a property, nevertheless "the arrangement of the letters 'c,a,t' " and likewise functional organization are propertylike ('c' is to the left of 'a'); thus I would contend that even the formula in itself must be the letters arranged (not, of course, inked letters arranged) and not their arrangement, if one is to preserve the ontological priority required of substances. But of course in its standard use the distinction between types (for example, The Grizzly Bear and The American Flag) and tokens (grizzly bears and American flags) is such that what types are derived from are sortals. My point is that, if Modrak's examples were made to conform to her suggestion that forms are types, Aristotle's intention would, I believe, be clear. That Aristotle would think that The Grizzly Bear - that is to say, the Form supposed to be numerically distinct from sensibles cannot exist is undeniable. Yet I maintain that the goal of his metaphysics and epistemology is to achieve the virtues of Plato's Forms without separation and that this goal is accomplished by the postulation of specimens of kinds that are numerically the same as sensible objects 32 Modrak (1979), 375-76.

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but do not have the accidental properties of the latter. However, to say that Aristotle proposes that substances are, as it were, unseparated types and thus that he must explain how there can be knowledge of these would be to hold the same view. Moreover, the result of the process that Modrak has described, namely, the reuse of a phantasma to arrive at knowledge of the universal, or more precisely, at knowledge of an unseparated type, is just knowledge of a specimen of a kind. Thus Aristotle's epistemology, as Modrak describes it, would match his metaphysics as I understand it to be. In Aristotle's account of the movement from perception to knowledge, it has often been noticed that he does not address skepticism of the sort that concerns us - or even Plato. As his starting point, for example, Aristotle claims that in perception the perceiving and the object perceived are the same (431b20-432al); having postulated that in perception the form of the object is taken in without the matter in something like the way a piece of wax takes on the imprint of a signet ring (424al7-24), Aristotle does not then concern himself with whether there might not really be a surface to be seen or whether the white human-shaped surface might nevertheless not be a human being. In other words, Aristotle never doubts that we have knowledge. But if he is addressing the problems introduced by Plato's Theory of Forms, the otherwise puzzling limits of his epistemological interests make sense. To start from experience and assume it to be experience of something outside oneself is to do no more than Plato did in granting us awareness of the phenomenal world. The difference between Plato and Aristotle arises rather in the relation between what is in flux and what is unchanging. If, contrary to Plato, what is perceived is numerically the same as what is to be known, then, Aristotle believes, the world is such that what is perceived is also, in a way, what is both knowable and known. That is to say, if what is perceived is numerically the same as what is to be known, then Plato's peculiar problem of retrieval on the basis of vague and ambiguous phenomenal cues vanishes, making inquiry - rational investigation from a base of experience - possible. As T. EngbergPederson explains Aristotle's theory, ''[One can attend to] particular cases with the consequence that insight into some universal point is acquired."33 Thus even if we may go wrong on a particular occasion, even if nous is not presumed to guarantee the truth of whatever is grasped,34 by his claim that substances are numerically the same as sensible objects, Aristotle believes that he has eliminated reasons of the sort that confront Plato for doubting that we can and do know that which is ontologically fundamental. To put the point another way, in not considering Cartesian 33 Engberg-Pederson (1979), 305. 34 See Engberg-Pederson (1979), 308, and Lesher (1973), esp. 58-65.


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grounds for doubt, it can fairly be said that Aristotle just assumes that there is an intelligible world and that we can have knowledge of it. Nevertheless what needs also to be said is that as a consequence of these assumptions, Aristotle takes it to be a criterion for a successful metaphysical theory that it propose a world where such knowledge can plausibly be obtained and that by his rejection of separation he believes that this is just what he has done. VI I have agreed with Modrak that Aristotle's account of the acquisition of knowledge depends on the reuse of a phantasm in such a way that any human being can represent any other. Of course, there are many features of Aristotle's epistemology and philosophy of mind which I have not considered. Nevertheless I believe that I have said enough to show that his epistemological view is encouragingly parallel to the metaphysical account of substance given in earlier chapters. For there I had argued that, as a result of the restrictive function of 'qua', it is possible to refer not only to Socrates but also, by using the expression 'Socratesqua-human being', to a specimen or paradigm of the kind human being. I had argued too that since accidental properties are eliminated there is no qualitative difference among specimens of the same kind, with the result that for Aristotle substances are knowable despite not being universals. Now I have argued in this chapter that, in the extraction of the knowable from perception, what are known are in fact specimens of kinds. But if the metaphysical grounding of Aristotle's epistemology is as I have argued it to be, then contrary to what is sometimes thought, Posterior Analytics II 19 and the parallel account of perceiving and thinking in the De Anima are consistent with what Aristotle says in Metaphysics XIII 10. In that chapter Aristotle describes the limits of knowability, saying: The statement that all knowledge is universal, so that the principles of things must also be universal and not separate substances, presents indeed, of all the points we have mentioned, the greatest difficulty, but yet the statement is in a sense true, although in a sense it is not. For knowledge, like knowing, is spoken of in two ways - as potential and as actual. The potentiality, being, as matter, universal and indefinite, deals with the universal and indefinite; but the actuality, being definite, deals with a definite object - being a 'this' [tode ti], it deals with a 'this'. But per accidens sight sees universal colour, because this individual colour which it sees is colour; and this individual a which the grammarian investigates is an a. (1087al0-21) The contrast between potentiality and actuality in this passage is admittedly problematic. Walter Leszl supposes that it is the contrast

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between, say, Socrates' knowledge of geometry when he has studied the subject but is not now thinking about or contemplating geometrical theorems (potential knowledge) and his now thinking, accurately, about geometry (actual knowledge). 35 Yet Robert Heinaman, on the other hand, has argued that the relevant contrast between potentiality and actuality is not this familiar one; rather by 'potential knowledge' he takes Aristotle in this context to mean having knowledge of one object (Heinaman says one proposition) in virtue of having knowledge of some other object (or proposition). 36 Heinaman calls the contrast between dispositional and occurrent knowledge of the same object a contrast between potentiality! and actuality! and the contrast where the objects differ that between potentiality 2 and actuality 2. His claim then is that it is a distinction between potentiality 2 and actuality 2 which is at issue in XIII 10, and in this it seems to me that he is right. However his application of this distinction is less persuasive. What Heinaman says is: The problem Aristotle is concerned to answer in M 10 is the problem of how principles (substantial forms) can be known if they are not universals. And if we understand his answer in terms of the distinction between actual2 and potential*, knowledge he must be saying the following: the knowledge of the universal constitutes potential knowledge of the individual principles, the individual substantial forms. So, for example, the knowledge of the universal human soul constitutes potential knowledge of Socrates' soul, Plato's soul, etc.37 He concludes: In M 10 Aristotle is not giving up his belief that knowledge of the individual requires knowledge of the universal (cf. 1036a8, 1086b5-6, 32-7), for the individual is known by actual2 knowledge which is the actuality of the potential., knowledge which consists in knowing the universal. Rather, Aristotle is denying that this fact entails that the universal which is known is a substance. So in order to know that Socrates' soul is ABC I must know that the universal definition of human soul is ABC. But knowledge of the universal is not knowledge of a substance, except potentially. It constitutes potential., knowledge of individual substances.38 The difficulty with Heinaman's view is that it is hard to see how, on his account, the individual - not the universal - has epistemological priority.

To be sure, Heinaman can say that the relevant universals cannot themselves be objects of actual2 knowledge since there are no other propositions knowledge of which could constitute potential knowledge of them.39 Nevertheless this seems, if anything, to establish their priority, not their lack of it. 35 Leszl (1972), 312. 37 Heinaman (1981b), 70. 39 Heinaman (1981b), 70, 67.

36 See Heinaman (1981b), 67, 70. 38 Heinaman (1981b), 75.


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Thus if one is to preserve the priority of the individual, it seems necessary to suppose that what Aristotle is saying is that, even though the numerical distinctness of specimens of the same kind prevents claiming that in actually 2 knowing any individual of a given kind one actually 2 knows the others, one does potentially 2 know those others and that to do so just is what it is to know potentially 2 the universal and indefinite. This view, it seems to me, is consonant with Aristotle's earlier discussed criticism of the Meno on the grounds that knowledge of the instances comes along with epagbge. In any case, of the argument in XIII 10 itself, Joseph Owens says the following: The form as seen in the thing is not universal. It is this definite form. That same form, however, is seen in other singular things, indefinitely numerous. Yet the knowledge of the form as seen in the one definite instance in a singular, is able to be applied indefinitely to all things in which that form happens to be found. 40 A given a may be written with ink or chiseled in stone; it may be scrawled or flourished. Yet if it is to be known in such a way that to know it is potentially to know all other a's, it must be known as and only as an a, that is to say, as a member of its kind. 41 Letters of the alphabet are, of course, hardly substances. Nonetheless the analogy between knowing a's and knowing individual human beings is clear. If one knows the universal by knowing an a as an a, so with Socrates and Callias; Socrates may be a snub-nosed, penniless, exasperating yet inspiring Athenian philosopher, but to know what it is to be a human being, that is to say, potentially to know Callias and others by knowing Socrates, one must know Socrates (and indeed on the whole, for Aristotle this is the only way in which one can know an individual human being) just as a human being. Thus, even though in Metaphysics XIII 10 Aristotle says that actual knowledge is of the individual, that Socrates is not in all his peculiarity a knowable object is, I think, as true in this chapter as in the Posterior Analytics. The point of Aristotle's account of substance, however, is that, having admitted as much, one need not agree with Leszl, for example, when he says: "As to the 'this' which is supposed to be known, it is something individual and is not the actual content of knowledge (which is the universal, or rather the universal connection, which it instantiates), but rather what knowledge is about." 4 2 For even given that for Aristotle 40 Owens (1963), 429. 41 At De Anima 4l7a24-29 also, Aristotle uses the example of letters: the person who has a knowledge of grammar has a potentiality in the sense that he can reflect when he wants to, while the person who is already reflecting is a knower in actuality of this A. In other words, the former has knowledge of the letter type, where this is potential knowledge of a token of that type. However what Aristotle says in De Anima is only half the story; what De Anima II 6 and Posterior Analytics II 19 address is the other half, namely, how knowledge of the letter type comes to be. 42 Leszl (1972), 307.

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universals do not exist apart from individuals, to hold as Leszl does that the content of knowledge is the universal is to preserve what Cherniss has called "the discrepancy between the real and the intelligible,"43 and, as I said in Chapter I, it is this very discrepancy that Aristotle worries about in the aporia in Metaphysics III. His solution, I have claimed, is that Socrates' form, a specimen of the kind human being, is, by virtue of being numerically the same as Socrates, a particular and yet knowable just because it is indistinguishable from other specimens of the same kind. But if knowledge is of the universal only in the sense that it is indeterminable which specimen of a given kind it is that one knows, then Metaphysics XIII 10 and the passages in Posterior Analytics and De

Anima which have been discussed are consistent. In this chapter I have argued that Aristotle attempts to show that a plausible account of coming to know can be had once Platonic separation is abandoned. Even if he is vaguer than we would like in his description of the psychological process by which knowledge is attained, clearly Aristotle does believe that we move from our perception of Socrates to knowledge of what it is to be a human being. Specifically, for Aristotle we can come to have knowledge of Socrates-qua-human being (and thus potentially also Callias-qua-human being and so on) because the individual human beings that our phantasms represent are numerically the same as specimens of the same kind. Yet to argue, as I have done, that Aristotle's substances are like Platonic Forms without separation - that is to say, that the rejection of separation is the keystone of Aristotle's metaphysics and epistemology - presents two problems. The first is that even if, as I maintain, Aristotle takes separation to be the chief fault of Plato's Theory of Forms, as I acknowledged in Chapter I, Aristotle himself says that substances must be separate. The second concerns ontological priority. Aristotle may want to say that, as learning proceeds from what is less knowable by nature to that which is more knowable, it also proceeds from that which has little or nothing of reality to that which has reality (1029b4-12; cf. Posterior Analytics 7lb33-72a5); he may want to hold that the use of 'qua' in describing what comes to be known is strictly speaking not abstraction from the real but the extraction of it.44 Nevertheless it is by no means clear that specimens of natural kinds can plausibly be said to be ontologically prior to the sensible objects with which they are numerically the same. These objections will be addressed in the two chapters remaining. 43 Cherniss (1944), 340. 44 See Guthrie (1981), 190.

V The Separation of Substance

In the interpretation of Aristotle's account of substance I have proposed thus far, I have claimed that Aristotle believes that by denying separation he can uphold the epistemological, and, as I will argue in Chapter VI, ontological priority of substances, where those requirements are understood in very Platonic terms. I have claimed further that my interpretation of the motivations for Aristotle's view of substance makes understandable his account of how we come to have knowledge. Nevertheless, as I said in Chapter I, even as Aristotle criticizes Plato for separating the Forms, he says of substances that they must be separate. In Metaphysics VII 1, for example, Aristotle says: Now there are several senses in which a thing is said to be primary [proton]; but substance is primary in every sense - in formula, in order of knowledge, in time. For of the other categories none can exist independently [choriston], but only substance. And in formula also this is primary; for in the formula of each term the formula of its substance must be present. And we think we know each thing most fully, when we know what it is, e.g. what man is or what fire is, rather than when we know its quality, its quantity, or where it is; since we know each of these things also, only when we know what the quantity or the quality is. (1028a31-b2)

For Fine that Aristotle should claim separation for his substances while criticizing Plato for separating the Forms in no way presents a problem. Platonic Forms, as Fine understands Plato, are universals, and, according to her, are thought by Aristotle to be so.1 Aristotle's objection to Plato, as she sees it, is that universals should not be said to have a capacity for independent existence. Substance, on the other hand, which is understood by Fine to be for Aristotle the composite, can be said to have just this characteristic, existing independently of other substances as well as of accidents.2 1 Fine was discussed in Chapter I. For Forms as universal, see (1984), esp. 45. 2 Fine (1984) argues that independent existence can apply to the composite in the sense that composites are separate from their attributes. By this she means that although

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But Charlotte Witt also takes substance to be the composite and holds that for Aristotle substances are separate while nonsubstances are not; she understands the separation of substances to mean that nonsubstances and only they exist in subjects, thereby making nonsubstances ontologically dependent on substances.3 If Witt also believes that Platonic Forms are universals (a question on which she offers no opinion), then one can assume that she would find no conflict between Aristotle's criticism of Plato for separating the Forms and his views about the separation of substance. That is to say, if Forms are such as to be predicable, then Aristotle is justified in saying that they too must exist in subjects, while substances do not. Fine and Witt therefore offer views on which there is no difficulty about the fact that Aristotle both criticizes Plato for separating the Forms and, in the same sense, claims separation for his substances. However, on my interpretation, as has no doubt become apparent, Aristotle's claim to separation in the case of substances is problematic. For what I have said is that Aristotelian substances, being forms in the sense of specimens of natural kinds, are in fact rather like Platonic patterns except as regards separation. I will need to propose, therefore, a way of understanding the separation of substances which is different from the separation had by Platonic Forms. To do so will be the task of this chapter.

As we saw in Chapter I, Aristotle's claim that Plato separates the Forms has been understood in several ways. Fine appeals to Metaphysics V 11 - a definition of natural priority - in order to argue that independent existence is what is meant,4 while I have claimed that what Aristotle disapproves of in Plato's Theory is the numerical distinctness of the Forms from sensibles. But some of the same disagreements arise when Aristotle says that substance is separate. When Aristotle says in Metaphysics VII 1 that none of the categories except substance is choriston (1028a34), Barnes translates this as ''can exist independently," and indeed, support for Fine's view of separation can be found in the fact Socrates cannot exist without matter or accidents, he need not have the exact matter or accidents that he has. Morrison (1985), 132-33, claims that substances must be separate from other substances and criticizes Fine by arguing that Socrates is not separate from the sun since he cannot exist without it. Fine responds by agreeing that each substance should be said to be separate from every other substance and argues that Socrates is in fact separate from the sun as he can exist briefly without it. See Fine (1985), 163, for discussion both of her original view and its clarification. 3 Witt (1989), 48, 51. Substances might seem to exist in matter and thus to lack separation, but Witt argues, and I agree, that the relation of the composite to matter is not the same as that between accidents and their underlying substance. See 53. 4 Fine (1984), 35.

SEPARATION OF SUBSTANCE

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that VII 1 makes use of the categories and in the Categories an appeal to independent existence is found: "Thus all the other things are either said of the primary substances as subjects or in them as subjects. So if the primary substances did not exist it would be impossible for any of the other things to exist" (2b4-6). Thus VII 1 alludes to some doctrines from the Categories. On the other hand, there are problems with importing views about separation from the Categories into the Metaphysics. In the first place, while the view expressed in the Categories clearly states the priority of substance, it does not state that substance could exist without the other categories, only that they cannot exist without it, and if the former claim is intended, it is hard to see how it can be sustained. In the second place, whatever the view in the Categories and whatever its justification, it cannot be assumed that Metaphysics VII 1 is simply a restatement of it; in the Categories, after all, views about substances were uncomplicated by matter. For both these reasons, therefore, it seems that we cannot rely on the Categories to explicate VII 1. It is likewise with Physics i85a31-32, where Aristotle says, "For none of the others can exist independently except substance; for everything is predicated of substance as subject"; since in Metaphysics VII 3 matter, form, and the composite are all said to be a sort of substratum (1029a2-3), appeal to that notion does not clarify the meaning of 'separation'. It seems then that there is no recourse but to determine from the Metaphysics itself what the separation of substances can be,5 yet in the Metaphysics exegesis of the sense in which substances must be separate is complicated by Aristotle's own terminology. Although Aristotle sometimes distinguishes separation in space from separation in definition,6 and the latter from simple or unqualified separation (VIII 1 1042a2831), at other times he just says 'separation' (1028a33-34). In VII 3 matter is rejected as a candidate for substance on the ground that it is neither tode ti nor choriston (1029a27-28). Nevertheless here too what that which is separate7 is to be separate from and in what way it is to be so are not clarified. 5 Metaphysics XIII 10 1086b 14-20 might seem promising. Aristotle says: "Let us now mention a point which presents a certain difficulty both to those who believe in the Ideas and to those who do not. . . . If we do not suppose substances to be separate, and in the way in which particular things are said to be separate, we shall destroy that sort of substance which we wish to maintain; but if we conceive substances to be separable, how are we to conceive their elements and their principles?" But unfortunately, how particular things are to be separate is, as we have seen, itself disputed. 6 De Anima 4i3bl4-15, 429al 1-12, 432*20; Metaphysics ioi6b2-3, 1048bl5, 1052bl7; On Generation and Corruption 32ob24, 320b 12-14; Nicomachean Ethics no2a28-31; Physics i93b4-5. 7 Some interpreters prefer to translate choriston as 'separable' rather than separate. I do not find it necessary or useful to make a distinction here, but some of the varieties of separation that I consider would be described by others as varieties of separability.

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To be sure, if one thinks that Aristotle's successful candidate for substance is the composite, it is not hard to suppose that all the senses of 'separation' commonly put forward - independent existence, numerical distinctness, or spatial discontinuity - apply. If, on the other hand, as I think, substance is form, it is difficult to think that any of these could capture whatever Aristotle intends. In Chapter III, it will be recalled, I argued that, when Aristotle says that substance is form, what this means is that substances are specimens of natural kinds that are numerically the same as but not identical with sensible objects, and the question at issue is how substances, so understood, could possibly be separate. On the other hand, consider, for example, Aristotle's remarks about the whole line and the half. Aristotle says that in actuality the whole line is prior to the half line and substance to matter (Metaphysics V 11 1019a8-10). But since, as we saw in VII 1, one of the conditions offered for priority is separation, it follows that the whole line is also separate from the half, as is substance from its matter. Here separation can hardly mean independent existence or numerical distinctness or spatial separation. In short, I want to claim that the separation of the whole line from the half cannot be understood in terms of any of the senses of 'separation' already discussed. To be sure, one might think it reasonable to suppose that the way in which the whole line is separated from the half is only that it is separate in definition, another variety of separation which, as we have seen, Aristotle mentions. But were this the only way in which it is so, the analogy to substance and matter would have no ontological force; more specifically, neither substance nor the whole line could be used to illustrate priority "in respect of nature" (1019a2). Yet if we suppose the separation of the whole line to be the ontological equivalent to separation in definition, this problem would be resolved. That is to say, to be separate in definition, so Aristotle tells us, is to be such that in a definition of A no reference is made to B - that is, in saying what A in itself is we do not need to say that it is (a) B. Likewise what it means for A to be separate from B, if separation is the ontological correlate to separation in definition, is that A would be such that B is not at any time (part of) what A in itself is. What I now want to argue therefore is that, when he says that substances must be separate, by 'separation' Aristotle in fact has in mind the ontological correlate of definitional separation. The variety of separation just defined I am going to call "independent being" (I mean this to be something different from "independent existence"); what I need now to try to say is what has this sort of separation from what. Independence in being - that is to say, separation, as I believe it should be understood - will obtain among many entities, including, of course, entities that are at the same ontological level. In


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saying of this chair what it is, one need not say of the coat lying on the chair what it is; having a coat thrown on it is not part of what a chair in itself is. But for both Plato and Aristotle, the more interesting issue is, as it were, the "vertical" separation of what is ontologically and epistemologically fundamental from what is in flux, and it is on this relation that I will focus in explicating and defending my interpretation. That Plato's Forms have "independent being" in relation to phenomena is clear enough. To say what The Shuttle Itself is one need not - and indeed cannot - refer to its phenomenal images. The problem with Plato's Theory, I take Aristotle to be arguing, is that Plato erroneously supposes that that which has independent being in relation to phenomena must also be numerically distinct from them. This point is made most clearly, I believe, in Metaphysics VII 6. Beginning with the Platonic Forms, Aristotle proceeds in VII 6 to undercut the case for the Forms by arguing that each self-subsistent thing and its essence are the same. The argument is as follows. If the essence of good is to be different from the Idea of Good, there will be substances besides those postulated - that is to say, the essence of the Idea of the Good will be a substance numerically distinct from the Idea of the Good and prior to it (1031a31-b3). Using the example of the essence of horse, Aristotle also expands the argument in VII 6 in such a way as to create a regress. If the essence of the essence of horse is different from the essence of horse (and if the essence of horse is different from horse, on what grounds would the essence of the former not be different from it?), the same result namely, the existence of substances prior to presumed substances - will again obtain (1031b28-30). But regress, Aristotle tells us, is not the only difficulty. For if the Idea of the Good, for example, is numerically distinct from its essence, it will be unknowable (1031b4). That is to say, whatever we know, we will not know the Form (the presumed knowability of which was one of the chief motives for its postulation), but something else, its essence. In the case of the Forms, since there is nothing that is a property of the Form and not a property of its essence or conversely, to deny the numerical distinctness of a Form and its essence is to assert their identity. Presumably to do so is the course Plato would want to take. But, Aristotle claims, his argument need not apply to Forms alone. That is to say, whether there are Platonic Forms or not, all primary and selfsubsistent things are, Aristotle claims, the same as their essences (1032a4-6), a position that, if defensible, would seem to eliminate the need for Forms. Nevertheless it is clear that if Aristotle intends, as I think he does, to imply that Socrates and to be Socrates are the same (1032a8), they cannot be identical; unlike a Platonic Form and its es-

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sence, Socrates and to be Socrates must differ in properties if to be Socrates is to be any more knowable than Socrates. Thus what the argument in VII 6 shows, as I see it, is that Aristotle himself needs both to assert and to deny separation. That is to say, even as he in VII 6 denies the numerical distinctness (and independent existence) of what is most real and most knowable from what is changing, he must assert along with Plato that there is, in some sense, separation of what is ontologically and epistemologically fundamental from what is in flux. To put the point in the terms that I have been urging, a specimen of a kind, although numerically the same as a given sensible object, is separate from that sensible object; to define what a horse is, one need not refer to any given horse. Of course, even though specimens of kinds are separate from sensible objects in the sense of having independent being, the converse does not hold, and this is just what should be the case if Aristotle's claim of the ontological priority of substance is to be sustained. To take an example, any given horse is not separate from a specimen of the kind horse; to say what Secretariat is, one must say that he is a horse, where what it is to be a horse - the essence of any individual horse - is, I have argued, not a property but a specimen of the natural kind horse. I have argued that specimens of kinds have independent being with respect to sensible objects while sensible objects do not have independent being with respect to those specimens. On the other hand, both Secretariat and a specimen of the kind horse are separate in this sense from Secretariat's accidental properties. Secretariat may be brown, but in saying what Secretariat is, brownness is not part of what he is, nor, of course, is it part of what it is to be a horse. Conversely, nonsubstances such as colors have independent being only in a derivative way. That is to say, brownness has an essence, but the definition of any property will make it clear that properties are properties of substances (or other objects) (1030b4-13). Finally a specimen of a kind is not separate, even in the sense of independence in being, from its essence nor is its essence separate from it; indeed just because in this case there is no difference at all in properties, the relation is one of identity. But having read Aristotle's critical remarks in VII 6 about Platonic Forms, that, of course, is just what we would expect. II I have described the relation of separation which I take to hold between sensible objects and the essence or substance of those objects as "independent being." But that it is possible to understand 'separation' in this way can perhaps also be seen from Aristotle's discussion of matter. To be sure, any attempt to understand the sort of separation matter is


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said to lack is complicated by disagreement among interpreters of Aristotle on how the notion of proximate matter is to be understood. One might suppose that the bronze of the statue - I do not mean the bronze from which a statue can be made, that is, the preexisting matter, but the bronze from which an existing statue has been made - is an example of matter and that as such it has various familiar properties, including size, weight, hardness, color, location, and, of course, shape. Nevertheless this view may in fact not be Aristotle's. For many recent interpreters, including Balme, Dancy, and Michael Frede, believe that matter as such has no properties. As Dancy explains it: In Z 3, we could turn directly to the bronze, which is something (the elements mixed in the ratio X:Y) in its own right, but thinking of it that way is not thinking of it as the material cause of both the statue and the lump into which the statue is beaten. Thinking of it in this latter way is not thinking of it in its own right at all, but as what used to be pale and charioteer-shaped and is no longer either. When we consider the transmutation of fire into air, the case is clearest. For here, there is no answer to the question "what is it that used to be hot and dry and is now hot and wet?" at all: there can be no question of turning directly to the stuff and discussing its essential structure. But this is relatively unimportant. It was at the top of Aristotle's hierarchy that the distinctness of form was clearest; still, it was distinct from the matter all the way down. So also here, at the bottom of the hierarchy, the inseparability of the matter is clearest; yet it is inseparable all the way up.8 If one wonders why Aristotle might have wanted to say that it is not the bronze as such which is matter but rather the bronze understood in relation to the statue, the motivation would seem to come from cases where it is not so easy to identify the matter of the composite with the preexisting material. Ackrill explains the problem that arises if one tries to apply a distinction readily made in the case of many artefacts to living things: The timber, hinges, and screws can still be seen when the cupboard is built, but the eggs and sugar are lost in the cake. If, as a result of cooking, a and b combine to form a homogeneous stuff c, a and b are no longer there to be picked out. We can refer to the a and b we started with, and perhaps we can recover the a and b again by some process. But a and b are present now, if at all, only potentially. Actual bricks constitute an actual wall, though those very same bricks might not have done so. But here is quite a different story: potential a and b are 'in' actual c, though they might have been actual a and b. Chemical change, in short, which yields a new sort of stuff, cannot easily accommodate an account tailor-made for other operations. . . . This is the difficulty for Aristotle with the basic living materials such as flesh and bone. They are produced, as he explains in detail in the biological works, by processes like cooking. . . .9 8 Dancy (1978), 408.

9 Ackrill (1973), 132.

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In the case of living things, as Ackrill says, *'until there is a living thing, then, there is no 'body potentially alive'; and once there is, its body is necessarily actually alive."10 Moreover, that the matter in the thing cannot be isolated from its structure leads naturally enough to another way of dividing matter from form, such that the form is function. When Aristotle says, "Suppose that the eye were an animal - sight would have been its soul" (412b 18-19), sight is a property of a structured object. That is to say, the structure that in simple cases seemed to be form, in opposition to the matter, now seems to be a property of the matter, in opposition to the form. Ackrill once saw these complexities as deep sources of trouble,11 but if matter as matter has no properties in its own right, it is possible after all to give a uniform account of the matter of various sorts of entities. Bronze has various properties and bronze is the matter of the statue (that is, the bronze understood as matter), but the matter that can come to be the statue or that already is so does not itself have these properties. The same can be said of the matter of living organisms. In both cases the matter is matter only in relation to the form; in both cases matter is potentiality for that form. I have said that a number of interpreters have argued that proximate matter must be understood not as stuff, existing before, in, and after the object into which it is formed, but as a potentiality for form and so as not having properties "in its own right." Not everyone entirely agrees. Mary Louise Gill has claimed recently that there are in fact three concepts of matter in Aristotle. First, there is the preexisting matter, for example, bronze, which Gill believes to have, as matter, the various properties of bronze. On Gill's view Aristotle comes to think that preexisting matter survives in the object only as a property; thus the statue, for example, is said to be bronzen, a condition in which the matter is, Gill says (this being Aristotle's second concept of matter), generic or indefinite. The third concept of matter is functional matter, as in the living body of an organism, and Aristotle's functional matter, Gill agrees, is defined in terms of form.12 In short, although a more thorough consideration of matter leads far from the topic at hand, it can fairly be said that many interpreters believe that the matter of an object, as matter, does not have properties except in relation to the form. It is to be noticed, moreover, that such 10 Ackrill (1973), 132. Recently Ackrill's influential paper has played a prominent role in the debate over whether Aristotle is in some broad sense a functionalist; however it has been cited on both sides of the question. For the antifunctionalist view, see Burnyeat (1992); on the other side, see Cohen (1992), Wilkes (1992), and other papers in the same volume. 11 Ackrill (1973), 133. Ackrill (1981), 76-77, offers a quite different account of body and soul. 12 See Gill (1989), 96-97, 128-30, 149-63, esp. the summary on 163.


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a view fits well with the account of separation I want to give. For, as we have seen, in VII 3 Aristotle rejects matter as a candidate for substance on the grounds that it is neither tode ti nor chbriston. One might suppose that by 'not separate' he means that it is not numerically distinct from the composite, and On Generation and Corruption I 5 ("It is therefore better to suppose that in all instances of coming-to-be the matter is inseparable, being numerically identical and one, though not one in definition" (320bl2-14; cf. 320b22-25)) seems to suggest as much. But Dancy says of Aristotle: "when he talks about separability he need not be, and generally is not, thinking about questions of individuation, divided reference, or countability, about whether or not stuff can occur in the absence of 'things'."13 Rather, according to Dancy, what is inseparable about matter is that, as matter, there is nothing that it is "in its own right."14 As the potential for change in something, matter does not "stand on its own";15 in other words, there is nothing that it is. But if not having an essence is the ground for the inseparability of matter as matter, then the sort of separation that matter is said to lack, the sort of separation that is had by substance, would seem again to be the ontological correlate of separation in definition. Ill In the first section of this chapter I argued that the separation of substances, which I have taken to be specimens of natural kinds, could be understood as independence in being, a sort of separation not had by attributes, matter, and (except in relation to accidents) the composite. If this account of separation is right, the dispute between Plato and Aristotle is not over whether what is ontologically fundamental is, in some sense, separate, but over the implications of requiring separation in the sense of independent being of that which is ontologically fundamental. In the case of the Forms, Aristotle tells us that Socrates sought definitions but that it was Plato who was responsible for separation. Of course, from the Socratic dialogues we learn that Socrates regularly rejected definition by example, and in the Euthyphro he is even made to talk of what he is seeking not just as what is common to all cases but as that by which pious things are pious and that to which we can look as a standard (6d-e). Nevertheless, even if we assume that Socrates made claims such as these, it seems not implausible to believe that he left it unclear what he meant by them;16 that it was Plato, not the historical 13 Dancy (1978), 401. 14 Dancy (1978), 407. 15 Dancy (1978), 400. 16 Thus I disagree with Allen (1970), 133-36, 147, 149. That Socrates did not separate the forms might, he says, mean that Socrates did not distinguish forms from their sensible instances or that, although he distinguished them, he did not regard them as individuals or even that though he took them to be individuals he did not regard them as independent of and prior to their instances. What Allen argues is that forms were for Socrates separate in all these ways and that Socrates differed from Plato only in that separation did not for Socrates make sensibles deficient.

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Socrates, who attempted to clarify the characteristics had by a standard just in virtue of its being the standard seems entirely credible. Specifically, by holding that Forms must be eternal, unchanging, intelligible paradigms, it seems that Plato does contend that the existence of something in addition to - something numerically distinct from - what is in flux is necessary in order to meet the Socratic requirements. Thus I accept Aristotle's account according to which it is Plato who separated the Forms, and I have argued that what is meant by this claim is that he postulated eternal paradigms, numerically distinct from sensibles. However, to separate the Forms in this way is, Aristotle argues, a fundamental error. That is to say, Plato's error, according to Aristotle, is to think that, in order for there to be something knowable and unchangeable in the midst of flux, there must be something additional, something numerically distinct from sensibles, something that exists besides (para) particulars (1086b8) and that given its nature could exist even if they did not do so. Indeed as I understand Aristotle, one might say that Aristotle returns to a more Socratic view of separation. Yet to say this does not do justice to Aristotle's thought, as he does not and could not return to Socrates' unconcern about the ontological question. Rather Aristotle must argue that, while being ontologically and epistemologically fundamental does require independent being, entities such as what is horse can have independent being without numerical distinctness or independent existence from sensible objects, and I believe that the central books of the Metaphysics contain such an argument. To summarize, Aristotle believes there is a legitimate and an illegitimate sense in which substances might be held to be separate. What he thinks separation needs to be, so I have argued, is independent being - the ontological correlate of separation in definition. But Plato believes that this weak sense of separation implies a stronger sense, namely, numerical distinctness (a distinctness that, in the case of Plato's Forms, is coupled with a capacity for independent existence) while Aristotle denies the implication. Thus on my interpretation Aristotle assigns to Plato not the blatant error of arguing from flux to independent existence but rather what he takes to be the more subtle error of supposing that, in order for something to be different from what is in flux, it must be numerically distinct from what is in flux. Another virtue of my view is that it allows Aristotle's own understanding of the separation of substances to stand in direct competition with Plato's. That is to say, where Plato asserts numerical distinctness, Aristotle denies it. Yet, for both Plato and Aristotle, how there is to be something real and knowable in a world in which what we experience is in flux must be explained. That is to say, for Aristotle too there must be separation between the real and the knowable, on the one hand, and what is in flux, on the other. The difference between Plato and Aristotle on this point, therefore, comes


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to this: that Aristotle believes that the separation of what is real and knowable from flux can be achieved without its numerical distinctness from what is in flux. IV My interpretation of separation in Aristotle differs from Fine's with regard to the sort of separation that Aristotle attributes to Plato and also the sort that is had by substances. My view also stands in sharp contrast to the interpretation of the separation of Aristotelian substances offered by Donald Morrison. Morrison argues that in Aristotle separation should be understood in terms of being outside the "ontological boundaries" of something else - or, equivalently, according to Morrison, as numerical distinctness from another thing.17 But if a thing is separate from that which is outside its ontological boundaries, it is separate from that in relation to which it does not have ontological influence. If this is so, then, as Morrison says, what substances are separate from is other substances; they are not, that is to say, separate from the accidents that inhere in them.18 On Morrison's view, therefore, separation as it applies within Aristotle's ontology is what I have called a horizontal relation; it is the separation, as it were, of cats and dogs, and indeed of one dog from another. Moreover, because a substance is naturally prior to its accidents but is not separate from them while it is on the other hand separate from every other substance but not prior or posterior to them, the connection for Morrison between separation and natural priority is more accurately a connection between natural priority and nonseparation. On my view, by contrast, since substances are said to be separate in the sense of having independence in being from matter and accidents and the composite, it is easy to see why, for Aristotle as for Plato, being separate and being prior should be linked. Indeed, as I said at the close of Section III, my interpretation makes Aristotle's view satisfyingly parallel to Plato's. For Aristotle recognizes that substances do need to be separate from sensible flux, and he disagrees with Plato not about the need for separation but about its nature. Thus my account, unlike Morrison's, preserves the link between separation and priority as well as making evident the connection between the Platonism Aristotle deplores and the Platonic requirements he nevertheless endorses. There is also another difference. For it follows from his account of the nature of separation that, as Morrison says, 17 Morrison (1985), 128, 138-39.

18 See Morrison (1985), 139-44. It should be noticed that by 'substance' Morrison at this point in his exposition has in mind the composite, even though he says that the other criteria for substance point in the direction of form. His claim, for reasons that will become apparent below, is that the use of separation as a criterion for substance "leads to significant strains within the theory" (126).

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"[Aristotle's] claim that primary substance, form, is separate because it is separate in definition, is a philosophical dodge that borders on being a cheat." 19 He explains: The situation Aristotle has gotten himself into is this: he has argued himself into the view that the form is primary substance. The form is not separate, yet a part of his goal is to show that whatever is substance satisfies all of his initial criteria of substance. Ready to hand is the criterion 'unity of definition', another name for which is 'separation in definition'. This latter criterion, form satisfies. Thus by appealing to the notion 'separation in definition', Aristotle is able to say that the form is separate, after all. However, if I have been right about the way separation was supposed to function as a criterion of substance, Aristotle's victory is only verbal. 'Separation' has become ambiguous, and form has been shown to be 'separate' in a sense quite different from the original sense in which substance was held to be separate.20 As Morrison understands Aristotle, form, being prior in definition, has in this regard a better claim than the composite to be primary substance, yet because it is in matter, form lacks the ontological boundaries in terms of which separation is to be understood. The result is that Aristotle is forced, so Morrison thinks, to attribute to form a different sort of separation, separation in definition, which, not being the real (ontological) separation characteristic of the composite, is a kind of cheat. Though not everyone is so blunt as to call it a cheat, certainly Morrison is not alone in his conclusion about the sort of separation had by form. Guthrie says: Yet here in the Metaphysics too, where essence becomes primary substance, the requirement [of separate existence] is maintained, and in [Z] ch. 6 he argues that a thing and its essence are the same, the essence being the substance of the thing. We cannot get out of it that way. Lack of separability, after all, was the main reason for rejecting the claim of matter to be substance. In what way does essence possess it? It does so by being 'conceptually separate', separate in thought or by definition. The difference is brought out at Metaphysics H 1042a26-31: "The substratum is substance, i.e. in one sense matter, potentially but not actually a 'this', in another the logos or form, which as a 'this' can be separated conceptually, and thirdly the product of the two, which alone undergoes generation and perishing, and is separate without qualification." The difference [from matter] is real. As essence is substance understood as the object of scientific knowledge, so it counts as separate because, being intelligible and definable, it can be abstracted mentally and thought of by itself.21 19 Morrison (1985), 154. 20 Morrison (1985), 155. 21 Guthrie (1981), 219-20. Code (1991), 6, sees the same problem but holds that for Aristotle only god is a separately existing form. He says: "However, the substantial forms of perceptible things, despite the fact that they can be denned without reference to the matter in which they are instantiated (and hence are dejinitionally separate), nonetheless cannot exist without their matter. Thus, contrary to the Platonist position, the forms of perceptible things are not capable of separable existence." On my interpretation there is an important sense in which substances in the biological world are separate and therefore truly substances after all.


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Loux takes a similar view. He says: But the cluster of themes surrounding the idea that the composite is separate and subject to the "this something" schema is simply inapplicable in the case of form. Substantial forms are not particulars and so cannot be individual subjects for the metaphysical predication of other things; unlike substance-kinds, they are not predicated essentially of anything but themselves. A form is how its matter is, not what it is; consequently, it does not exhibit the sortal logic of substance-kinds. It does, however, have a determinate conceptual content, and that content can be identified without reference to anything else. Accordingly, we can say that form is separable in formula.22 A few lines later Loux explains why he believes that Aristotle could find this sufficient: The idea that form is separable in formula is the familiar one that, if it is to be the primary reality, form must be a fundamental essence, one that can be defined without reference to other essences. And the idea that form is "this something" is tied up with its status as the primary ousia of things to which instances of the "this something" schema in its primary sense are applicable. But, then, Aristotle's insistence that both form and composite be separable and subject to the "this something" schema brings out the two dimensions of priority underlying the use of the term 'ousia' in the two cases. Form has the priority in essence its role in ousia explanations requires; composite particulars have the kind of factual or existential priority that makes them the central point of focus in our everyday commerce with the world.23 Thus Loux claims that the separation had by form is not, as Morrison thinks, a cheat, but "an essential component in the theory of ousia explanations and in the account of essences as constituting a structured framework with a secure foundation."24 On my view, on the other hand, the separation of form is not conceptual abstraction, but an ontological notion, and it is one that allows Aristotle to deny the divergence between "priority in essence" and "existential priority" that on all these accounts divides the intelligible from the real. If what separation is for Aristotle is the ontological correlate of separation in definition, it is clear that form rather than the composite is what has it most of all. Therefore, if separation is the ontological correlate of separation in definition, Aristotle can distinguish what he believes to be his successful theory of substance from what he takes to be Plato's unsuccessful theory.

I have argued that, when Aristotle criticizes Plato for separating the Forms, he is arguing that Plato makes them numerically distinct from 22 Loux (1991), 263. 24 Loux (1991), 262, n. 28.

23 Loux (1991), 263-64.

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sensibles, a move that, Aristotle claims, ontological and epistemological priority do not require. There can be separation from flux without numerical distinctness from what is in flux; for independence in being - the ontological correlate of definitional separation - it is enough to deny that there is identity between substance or form and sensible objects. Nevertheless there is an objection to my view which must be addressed. It concerns passages in Physics II (193b4-5) and Metaphysics VIII 1 where Aristotle says of the form that it is separate in definition (or only in definition). This problem is most acute in VIII 1 where Aristotle says not just that form is separate in definition but that the composite is separate without qualification (choriston haplos) (1042a2831). In addition there are passages, mostly in De Anima, where Aristotle asks, as if the dichotomy were exhaustive, whether the parts of the soul are separate in definition or spatially separate {De Anima 42galO-b22, 413bl3-32, 432al9-b7); though in the last of these cases even the question of separation in definition is quickly abandoned, in the others Aristotle argues that only separation in definition applies, except, in all likelihood, to that part which is capable of knowledge of the eternal. Whatever Aristotle wants to say about the parts of the soul, nevertheless it seems clear that in general the dichotomy between separation in definition, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, spatial separation is not meant to be exhaustive; moreover, even in De Anima, there may be another way to interpret separation in definition - that is to say, as the ontological correlate to it. Indeed two passages from De Anima and the Nicomachean Ethics are suggestive. In the first Aristotle says: that which is the instrument in the production of movement is to be found where a beginning and an end coincide as e.g. in a ball and socket joint; for there the convex and the concave sides are respectively an end and a beginning (that is why while the one remains at rest, the other is moved): they are separate in definition but not separable spatially. (433b21-25)

Again at Nicomachean Ethics I 1102a26-32 he argues: Some things are said about it, adequately enough, even in the discussions outside our school, and we must use these; e.g. that one element in the soul is irrational and one has a rational principle. Whether these are separated as the parts of the body or of anything divisible are, or are distinct by definition but by nature inseparable, like convex and concave in the circumference of a circle, does not affect the present question. The convex and the concave, which in the Ethics are compared to the relation between the parts of the soul, are like the road up and the road down of Physics III. That is to say, because the convex and the concave surfaces of the joint can be said to be an end and a beginning, at rest and moving, there are contexts in which 'the convex' and 'the concave' will not be substitutable for each other, a state of affairs that


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is characteristically said by Aristotle to be indicative of a difference in being. I have argued that "separation in definition" does not exclude its ontological correlate; indeed, insofar as Aristotle is serious about an ontology of specimens of kinds that includes even accidental unities, it may actually be implied. There remains, however, the contrast in Metaphysics VIII 1 between separation in definition and separation haplos, said to be true of the composite. What can be said first of all with regard to VIII 1 is that it is in any case an anomalous passage as nowhere else does Aristotle say 'chbriston haplos\ Moreover, it is to be noticed that although Aristotle seems clearly in VIII 1 to be contrasting kinds of separation, it is still the form, not the composite, which is said to be tode ti, a characteristic of substance given along with separation in Metaphysics VII 1.

To be sure, there are elsewhere in Aristotle plenty of cases where 'haplbs* does mean what is most truly or properly X. There is, for example, simple incontinence as opposed to incontinence by analogy (1149al-3); essence and definition belong simply to substance and to the other categories in virtue of their relation to substance (1030b47). It is also true that there are cases where 'haplos' is contrasted with the relative or the conditional - as in the good simply versus the good for a particular person (1152b26-27). Nevertheless it is clear that 'haplos* is sometimes used in ways that are not so obviously evaluative. A word such as 'earth' having no parts that signify (1457a31-32), is simple, not compound; in similes (1412b35-1413a4), the simple is opposed to the complex. Thus if separation haplos likewise is not, with respect to the question "What is substance?" a preferred sort of separation, then even in VIII 1, Aristotle's remarks about separation are compatible with my view that the separation characteristic of the sublunar substances of the central books of the Metaphysics is independence in being. VI Thus if Aristotle argues against Plato that there can be separation in being without numerical distinctness, it can be true that substance is form, despite the fact that Aristotelian forms - specimens of natural kinds - are entities that are not numerically distinct from sensible objects. Moreover the plausibility of understanding the separation of substance as independent being, that is to say, as the ontological correlate of separation in definition, in turn offers support for my interpretation of substance as specimens of natural kinds; the views fit together. But if the existence of specimens of kinds depends on the existence of sensible objects, as I understand Aristotle's alternative to Plato to assert, Aristotle's further claim that it is specimens of natural kinds and

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not sensible objects that are ontologically fundamental may seem, at best, arbitrary or contrived. After all, in the second chapter I argued that there are not two distinct things in the universe, Socrates and Socrates-qua-human being, and if Socrates-qua-human being has to be a fictitious or psychological entity as the common rendering of 'qua' as "considered as" suggests, the claim that Socrates-qua-human being is a substance would not be at all credible. In the next chapter I will argue that in fact there are in Aristotle the materials for a defense against such charges. At this juncture, however, my point is rather to emphasize the need for a defense. For Aristotle must deny that his account of substance is inherently psychologistic or linguistic; it is not open to him to adopt the sort of view taken in the philosophy of science by Frederick Suppe, for example: Scientific theories have as their subject matter a class of phenomena known as the intended scope of the theory. The task of a theory is to present a generalized description of the phenomena within that intended scope which will enable one to answer a variety of questions about the phenomena and their underlying mechanisms; these questions typically include requests for predictions, explanations, and descriptions of the phenomena. The theory does not attempt to describe all aspects of the phenomena in its intended scope; rather it abstracts certain parameters from the phenomena and attempts to describe the phenomena in terms of just these abstracted parameters. . . . As such the theory assumes that the phenomena are isolated systems under the influence of just the selected parameters.25

Although Suppe, like Aristotle, takes science to provide descriptions, explanations, and predictions, that is to say, to provide knowledge, they must differ over the relative ontological status of the objects of knowledge and the objects of experience. For Suppe, since actual phenomena are rarely in fact isolated systems, theories do not give an accurate characterization of actual phenomena. As he says, "what the theory actually characterizes is not the phenomena in its intended scope, but rather idealized replicas of those phenomena." 26 Clearly Suppe does not intend that his replicas be Platonic Forms. But whatever they are - mental objects or fictional entities - the important point is that Aristotle's substances cannot be such. To suppose that Aristotle thinks that accidental unities such as the musical one (Socrates-qua-musician) are fictitious entities might seem only charitable, though even in this case, as we have seen, Aristotle's remarks about coming to be and passing away would suggest that the supposition may be wrong. But whatever exactly one takes Aristotle to hold about the ontological status of accidental unities, I have argued that specimens of natural kinds are substances, and that mental or fictional entities 25 Suppe (1974), 223.

26 Suppe (1974), 224.


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would not be substances is clear. Indeed that Aristotle's view is far from Suppe's is very evident if a claim of Owen's is correct. For what Owen says is that in Aristotle it is a man or a plant that is a prime example of substance, where a man and a plant "carry no namely-rider such as Viz. Socrates or Callias or . . ,',"27 and this proposal is, I think, much the same as the position which I have defended; Socrates-qua-human being and Callias-qua-human being, being indistinguishable, might very well be described as x-qua-human being - entities that are, that is to say, without a "namely-rider." To be sure, Owen's rendering appears no less paradoxical than mine; that 'a man' means 'some man' and that 'some man', if taken to refer at all, must refer to Callias or to Socrates or to whomever seems as certain as that 'Socrates-qua-human being' refers to Socrates. And, of course, in a way it does. Nevertheless Aristotle, unlike Suppe, has reason to resist the impulse toward ontological reduction. What I intend 'Socrates-qua-human being' to exhibit is not that specimens of kinds are psychological entities, in other words, ways of thinking about things and thus idealizations or abstractions from them, but rather that specimens of kinds are not Platonic entities, existing in addition to sensible objects. Of course it is one thing to say that in Aristotle's ontology it is entities such as 'a human being' which are substances, that these are numerically the same as but not identical with sensible objects, and indeed that they are ontologically more fundamental than the latter; it is another thing to show that such a view is defensible or even intelligible. How can there be numerical sameness without identity? Then too, even if one grants that there are natural kinds, how can Aristotle take specimens of these kinds to have ontological priority over the sensible objects with which they are numerically the same? In the next chapter I will begin by presenting a contemporary example of numerical sameness without identity which is also suggestive for addressing the second of these questions. 27 Owen (1978), 20. Owen's suggestion is endorsed by Lennox (1985), 83, in a paper written from the perspective of the biological works.

VI Substance and Teleology

In this book I have argued that the assumption that Aristotle distinguishes numerical sameness from identity provides a wide-ranging explanation of referential opacity in his works and makes possible an interpretation of substance that sees Aristotle's theory as a response to what he takes to be the flaws in Platonism. I have not attempted to defend distinguishing between numerical sameness and identity on philosophical grounds or even to consider the philosophical implications of such a view; as I said in Chapter II, the logic of a metaphysics that confounds counting has to be, to say the least, problematic. It may be, of course, that Aristotle adopted a position that cannot be made coherent or attractive, although such a conclusion would be disappointing. Although I will not in this final chapter try to offer a philosophical analysis or defense of the distinction, I will nevertheless describe an interesting occurrence of it in the recent philosophical literature. But the primary goal of this chapter is to argue that substances, understood as specimens of natural kinds, can defensibly be said to be ontologically prior to the sensible objects with which they are numerically the same, and for that argument too the example now to be offered will prove useful.

I In an extraordinarily interesting book in the philosophy of art, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, Arthur Danto puzzles about the re-

lation between works of art and physical objects, putting the problem into its sharpest focus by considering works of art that are perceptually indistinguishable from ordinary things. To take Danto's example, Duchamp's Fountain is perceptually indistinguishable from a urinal. Following Danto, let us call the sensible object, in this case a given urinal, 100

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the "material counterpart" to the work of art.1 The question then is this: What is the relation of a work of art to its material counterpart? In the case of Duchamp's Fountain, Danto says: But the question is whether the artwork Fountain is indeed identical with that urinal, and hence whether those gleaming surfaces and deep reflections [properties of porcelain] are indeed qualities of the artwork. . . . But certainly the work itself has properties that urinals themselves lack: it is daring, impudent, irreverent, witty, and clever.2

What "detaches objects from the real world" and makes them part of the art world, according to Danto, is that art works belong to a world of interpreted things or representations, and the properties of a work of art are just those that contribute to its interpretation. 3 For example, whether gleams, a property of the porcelain, is a property of Fountain would depend upon its relevance to Fountain's representational content; even whether Fountain has a color is, according to Danto, to be decided on the same grounds.4 In the present context it is not necessary to consider what properties are lost and gained in the "transfiguration" of mere things into art or even whether Danto's theory of art is correct. What is interesting to me is that Danto distinguishes the properties of Fountain from the properties of its material counterpart. Fountain is witty, daring, and irreverent, but the urinal is not; the urinal is white, but Fountain may or may not be so. It must be emphasized that such differences will arise regardless of whether the material counterparts are everyday objects such as a urinal or (another of his examples) a snow shovel5 - that is, objects that have a use outside art - or simply painted canvases and chunks of marble. Examples of the former sort contribute a certain vividness to Danto's presentation of his theory, but that is all. If a work of art and its material counterpart differ in properties, the relation between them - a relation that Danto dubs the 'is' of artistic identification6 - is not identity, given that Leibniz's Law is taken to define that relation. Whether one describes it as a nonstandard identity relation of some sort or whether one says that there are relations of numerical sameness other than identity is perhaps not a matter of extreme importance. However, in specifying the extent to which for Danto a work of art and its material counterpart differ, it is important to notice that he has taken a stance that is more radical than the nonstandard 1 Danto (1981), 104. See also 99. 2 Danto (1981), 93-94. 3 Danto (1981), 135; see also 125. Danto argues that art works are distinguished from other representations (for example, maps) by "[their use of] the means of representation in a way that is not exhaustively specified when one has exhaustively specified what is being represented" but which, in addition, "expresses something about [their] content" (148). 4 Danto (1986), 38. 5 Danto (1986), 26. 6 Danto (1981), 126.

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identity advocated by Allan Gibbard, for example, who uses the same sort of case to argue that contingent identity can obtain between the referents of proper names. What Gibbard maintains is that Goliath (a statue) and Lumpl (a piece of clay), which come into existence simultaneously (by sticking two halves of the statue together) and cease to exist simultaneously (by being smashed), are identical. Nevertheless, Gibbard says, the identity is contingent. This is so because, although the objects in question in fact begin and come to an end simultaneously, had, for example, the wet clay once stuck together been squeezed into a ball, the times at which the statue and the piece of clay ceased to exist would have been different. That is to say, because Goliath could have been destroyed while Lumpl survived, Goliath and Lumpl differ in modal properties.7 Certainly Danto and Gibbard do not disagree merely about how the relationship between Goliath and Lumpl, in the circumstances Gibbard has described, is to be labeled. Rather what is evident is that Danto would take issue with Gibbard's description of the case. Although Gibbard has said that Goliath and Lumpl have all the same actual properties, for Danto, as we have seen, only Goliath would have representational properties, and, furthermore, Goliath would have only representational properties. On the other hand, in describing the relation between the work of art and its material counterpart, Danto is no Platonist.8 Thus since he does not take the work of art and its material counterpart to be two distinct things and yet he denies their identity with each other, Danto has offered a contemporary example of numerical sameness without identity. The comparison between Danto and Aristotle will bear pressing. But first it is useful to notice that, despite the term 'material counterpart', if matter in Aristotle is understood as "in its own right" lacking properties, Danto's material counterpart is not, in Aristotle's sense, matter; the material counterpart, so Danto tells us, has properties that are not properties of the form and are unrelated to its potentiality for form. On the other hand, there seems to be no reason why the material counterpart should not be said to be a sensible object. In the case of the urinal and the snow shovel, that it is so is obvious. To be sure, the material counterpart of a painting is not assignable to any ordinarily recognized kind since were it said to be a painting, it would have the representational properties Danto denies to it. But even if the fact that painting is a kind dependent on certain practices that endow its members with (indeed on Danto's view with only) a very unusual sort of properties, namely, representational ones, means that what the painted canvas must be said to be is just a painted canvas and even if, as a result, the material 7 Gibbard (1975), 190-91.

8 See Danto (1981), 33-34, 153.


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counterpart does not quite correspond to what in Aristotle's ontology is called the composite, that it is a sensible object is still true and sufficient for my purposes. II Danto's 'is' of artistic identification is a contemporary example of the usefulness of numerical sameness without identity. What makes comparison with Danto especially attractive, however, is that the relation that Danto believes to hold between works of art and their material counterparts is suggestive also of arguments to which Aristotle can appeal to establish the ontological priority of specimens of natural kinds. Suppose, for example, that it is true of a painted canvas that it is 2272 X 29 inches. In such a case, the canvas is a specimen of the kind thing that is 22lA X 29 inches, just as, given that it has certain other properties, it is a specimen of the kind (indeed the only specimen of the kind) La chambre de Wan Gogh a Aries. I do not, of course, claim that thing that

is 22lA X 29 inches is a natural kind. The point is rather quite the opposite, namely, that at least a partial explanation of why kinds are not all of the same status can now be given. For what can be seen as significant is that the properties of a specimen of the kind thing that is 22V2 X 29 inches do not determine as many of the properties of the sensible object with which it is numerically the same as does being a specimen of the kind La chambre de Van Gogh a Aries. Indeed it would seem to be because it is a specimen of the kind La chambre de Van Gogh a Aries that the sensible object is 22^2 X 29 inches and thus a specimen of the kind thing that is 22V2 X 29 inches, and not conversely. Of course the reason a specimen of the kind La chambre de Van Gogh a Aries is prior to the sensible object as well as to the specimens of whatever other kinds that same sensible object is a specimen of is that Van Gogh worked on the canvas as he did in order to bring La chambre de Van Gogh a Aries into being. Indeed it is sometimes said that in the best works of art the artist could not have changed anything - not a single word or note or brushstroke - without diminishing the work. No doubt this is an exaggeration. Nevertheless to say that it is as a byproduct of the artistic process that the material counterpart is, say, a specimen of the kind thing that is 22lA X 29 inches is not unreasonable. Indeed even many properties that are not entirely determined by the artist's actions, for example, that a given canvas is now in the Musee d'Orsay, can be seen to be consequent upon them. Since its being a specimen of the kind thing in the Musee d'Orsay is not what was aimed at by Van Gogh in the course of creation but is merely made possible by what he did then, the specimen of the kind thing in the Musee d'Orsay

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which is numerically the same as a given painted canvas also is not ontologically prior to it. I have argued for the priority of a work of art over its material counterpart on the grounds that properties of the work of art govern many of the properties of the material counterpart (and therefore many of the other kinds to which the material counterpart belongs) in virtue of the artist's intention. Of course one might object that the painting exists only because the canvas was painted; indeed, some reductionistminded philosopher might want to say that a painting just is a piece of painted canvas. Still, it seems to me that there is a case to be made for having it the other way around. The painted canvas, one can maintain, exists just because the painting does so; after all, it was because a painter wanted a certain artistic result that he put these colors on a canvas of this size and that he put them on it in this way. As the grounds for the priority of specimens of one kind over another will become important for my interpretation of Aristotle, I want to restate what has been claimed. If Socrates is a builder, Socrates is a specimen of the kind builder as well as a specimen of the kind human being. About the consequences of this fact, some philosophers might be happily egalitarian. H.-N. Castaneda, for example, holds that sensible objects are bundles of guises,9 a guise being, like a specimen of a kind, a particular having nothing but the properties specified in the definition (for example, 'the round blue thing on the table' refers to the guise "the thing which alone has nothing but the following properties: being round, being blue, being on the table").10 For Aristotle, however, neither builder nor round blue sitting on a table thing would be a natural

kind. Thus if for Aristotle sensible objects can be said to be composed from specimens of kinds, they must be said to be composed not from specimens of just any kinds, but from specimens of natural kinds - that is to say, from specimens that are ontologically prior to the sensible objects in question just because they are specimens of kinds that are natural. Specimens of these kinds are, I have claimed, substances. Thus human being is for Aristotle a natural kind and builder is not. Of course there is nothing about the relation of numerical sameness without identity as such that justifies this claim; indeed the 'is' that occurs in saying that Socrates is a specimen of this or that kind does not necessitate any distinction between natural kinds and others, much less tell us by what criteria the naturalness of any given kind is to be assessed. Nor can the relation even show that a given sensible object cannot constitute a specimen of more than one natural kind. To turn once more to the analogy with art, by substituting the viewer's understanding for the artist's intention as what is determinative of the prop9 Castaneda (1977), 322.

10 Castaneda (1977), 315.


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erties of a work of art, one could say that many different works of art are artistically identified with the same material counterpart, as many as there are interpretations. Nevertheless, even though the 'is' of artistic identification does not mandate any distinction concerning priority and does not make the selection, as we have seen, it does provide some grounds for doing so. In particular, because the properties of the work of art and the properties of its material counterpart are related so as to make plausible the claim that certain properties of the one are explanatory of and indeed determinative of certain properties of the other in light of the artist's intention, where art is concerned it is reasonable to say that specimens of the kinds whose defining properties are of the first sort are ontologically prior. In this section the relation between a work of art and its material counterpart has been used to explore the relation of being numerically the same as but not identical with, a relation that I believe Aristotle takes to hold between specimens of kinds and sensible objects, and to consider the possibility that, given such a relation, one might be justified in holding that ontological priority lies with specimens of certain kinds. What I have said about the maker's intention determining the properties of a work of art could be said of any more ordinary artefact, of course; the reason for using art as my example has been only that Danto in his discussion of that subject actually proposes a relation of numerical sameness without identity. To be sure, there are limits to the analogy - even if a work of art or a specimen of some artefact-kind can be prior to the sensible object that is numerically the same as it, works of art and specimens of artefactkinds are hardly ontologically prior simpliciter. Nevertheless, the implications are clear. If Aristotle could claim that some properties, more precisely, the essential properties, of sensible objects are determined by the properties of specimens of certain kinds, he could reasonably maintain that specimens of those kinds are ontologically prior to the sensible objects with which they are numerically the same and also to specimens of other kinds, in other words, to accidental unities. In particular, if such an argument were successful, Aristotle might be able to conclude, for example, that specimens of the kind human being are and that specimens of the kind builder are not ontologically prior to individuals such as Callias and Socrates.11 But, of course, on Aristotle's account, nature is rather like a work of art - or at least like an artefact 11 Though his account of substance is different from mine, Irwin (1988) too makes a case for the ontological priority of some subjects over others. He says: "If we see the connexion between potentialities and persisting subjects of change, we can also see why some subjects (e.g. men) are more genuine subjects than others (e.g. musical men). A persistent subject needs a persistent potentiality explaining the changes that happen to it. If we find that rather little is explained by reference to permanent potentialities of musical men as such, and more is explained by reference to permanent

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- in being itself teleological, even if it is teleology without agency. In the remainder of this chapter therefore, I want to explore Aristotle's account of teleological explanation, arguing that Aristotle sees teleology as justifying the ontological priority of specimens of natural kinds and that, on a certain view of goodness, teleology can in fact do so, even in the absence of agency. Ill For Aristotle there are final causes for the parts or organs of living things, the behavior of organisms, and also the development of the organism from a seed or embryo to a mature functioning member of its kind. But even though Aristotle's reliance on teleological explanation in nature is explicit and defended, his use of it presents the interpreter with several fundamental problems. One is to determine what is meant by a final cause since teleology in Aristotle, like teleological explanation in modern biology, has been analyzed in many ways. A second problem is to determine the relation for Aristotle between final and material causes, and a third concerns the soundness of whatever arguments Aristotle offers in defense of his use of final causes. These issues and their relevance for the ontological primacy of specimens of natural kinds will be discussed in this and the sections which follow. In his summary of teleological explanation at Parts of Animals I 1 640a33-b4, Aristotle says: The fittest mode, then, of treatment is to say, a man has such and such parts, because the essence of man is such and such, and because they are necessary con-

ditions of his existence, or, if we cannot quite say this then the next thing to it, namely, that it is either quite impossible for a man to exist without them, or, at any rate, that it is good that they should be there. And this follows: because man is such and such the process of his development is necessarily such as it is; and

therefore this part is formed first, that next; and after a like fashion should we explain the generation of all other works of nature, (emphasis added) As this passage and many others make clear, the presence of teleological claims in Aristotle's writings is undeniable. However, the analysis potentialities of men as such, we have some reason for thinking that men are more genuine subjects than musical men are. Aristotle claims in Metaphysics vii 4-6 that some, but not all, apparent subjects are thises and primary subjects, identical to their

essences. If the persistence of explanatory potentialities determines the basic subjects and essences, an account of potentialities should help us to see which essences and which subjects satisfy his conditions. For these reasons we expect the essence of a persistent subject to be at least partly constituted by its persistent potentialities for change. If, then, the primary subjects that are substances are identical to their essences, they should be at least partly identical to their persistent potentialities. Moreover, if form is to be identified with essence and subject, it should be some sort of potentiality" (224).


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and justification of teleological claims in biology is a subject still in dispute. The difficulty is that teleological claims appear to ascribe intentional states where none seem to be present. If John goes to the store in order to get bread, presumably John desires bread and believes that the store is a place from which to obtain it. If the spider is said to spin a web in order to catch flies, does the spider desire flies and believe that web spinning will promote its coming to have them? If a hammer is for pounding nails, presumably someone designed it with that in mind, but if the heart is for pumping the blood, can the same be said? There have been some scholars, of course, who have thought that Aristotle's views about teleology are to be explained by an appeal to a valuing mind, in which case teleology in nature is not very unlike the purposiveness of human actions and the functions of artefacts. On this view processes in nature are supposed to be guided, if not by intentions, at least by unconscious desires. For example, the developing embryo might be thought to be an unconscious agent that guides the development of its matter toward maturity. R. G. Collingwood exemplifies this tradition when he says: The seed only grows at all because it is working at becoming a plant; hence the form of a plant is the cause not only of its growing in that way but of its growing at all, and is therefore the efficient as well as the final cause of its growth. The seed grows only because it wants to become a plant. It desires to embody in itself, in material shape, the form of a plant which otherwise has a merely ideal or immaterial existence. We can use these words 'want' or 'desire' because although the plant has no intellect or mind and cannot conceive the form in question it has a soul or psyche and therefore has wants or desires, although it does not know what it wants.12 Yet literally internalist interpretations of Aristotle - that is to say, analyses of teleology which rely on the ascription of intention - such as that given by Collingwood, have fallen into disfavor in recent years. Perhaps in part this change has been motivated by the thought that Collingwood's view would make Aristotle's teleology less interesting to us, but it is also true that on the whole Aristotle, like most contemporary biologists, seems to want to avoid speaking of nature's striving or desiring. When Aristotle says that nature is like shipbuilding but like shipbuilding without a shipbuilder (199b28-30), he seems to be doing something more radical than just considering the shipbuilder as part of the ship. Thus it seems likely that Aristotle's teleological explanations do not depend on an appeal to agency. Of course even some philosophers who reject a literally internalist notion of teleology in nature have held that teleological claims occur as a result of metaphorical associations with 12 Collingwood (1945), 84-85.

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human activities and artefacts. But the view that teleological claims are metaphorical is often also the starting point for unpacking and justifying their explanatory worth in terms of features other than the presence of a mind. Working from the assumption that for Aristotle intention or mind is to be excluded from the account, in the remainder of this section I will consider one such externalist account, 13 that of Larry Wright, in order to see how it might be adapted to Aristotle's needs. Wright, who takes himself to be giving the content of what he says is a dead metaphor, analyzes goal statements as follows: S does B for the sake of G iff 1) B tends to bring about G 2) B occurs because (i.e., is brought about by the fact that) it tends to bring about G.14 Thus, for example, spiders spin webs for the sake of catching flies if and only if spinning webs tends to bring about the catching of flies and spinning webs occurs because it tends to bring about the catching of flies. Function statements are analyzed in similar fashion: The function of X is Z iff: 1) Z is a consequence (result) of X's being there 2) X is there because it does (results in) Z.15 But Aristotle, as we have seen, also thinks of organic development teleologically; still for such cases it seems that Wright's schema could be extended in the following way: E exists for the sake of O iff: 1) E tends to develop into O 2) E exists because it tends to develop into O. Wright's analysis, according to which "X is there because it results in Z," sounds not unlike Aristotle's claim that the fittest mode of explanation is to say that such and such parts are necessary for an organism's existence. Additionally, Andrew Woodfield argues persuasively that, since externalists such as Wright in their talk of goal-directed systems identify only some outcomes as G or Z (for example, those that contribute to the survival of the organism), the outcomes in question have been assumed to be good. 16 In fact Wright does talk of "resultant advantage," 17 and, as we will see, that Aristotle would hold that goodness cannot be a coincidental feature of the outcome is beyond doubt. Thus, for an analysis at least of Aristotle, something about goodness needs to be added to the schemata, along the following lines: 13 The distinction between internalist and externalist analyses comes from Woodfield (1976), 104-6. 14 Wright (1976), 39. 15 Wright (1976), 81. 16 See Woodfield (1976), 100-11, 113-23, 130-40, 203-6. 17 See Wright (1976), 85.


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S does B for the sake of G iff: 1) B tends to bring about G 2) B occurs because it tends to bring about G 3) B tends to bring about G because G is beneficial to S.18 Again, The function of X is Z iff: 1) Z is a consequence of X's being there 2) X is there because it does (results in) Z 3) X results in Z because Z is beneficial to S.

As for the case of organic development, since the very notion of development seems to assume the worth, at least from some point of view, of the resulting organism, although one could add as a third claim "E develops into O because its development into O is good," one could argue also that it is not necessary. It is one thing, of course, to produce an analysis of how an author uses teleological claims, another to agree that he is entitled to use them as he has. In Wright's analysis, this question turns on whether 'because' is justified. Woodfield attributes our willingness to say that X occurs because it results in Z to our imagining practical reasoning to have occurred.19 Wright himself, on the other hand, justifies its use on the ground that explanation is contextual.20 But neither of these justifications is available to Aristotle, who argues, after all, that teleological explanation is for nature the fittest mode of explanation. Nor is the currently popular evolutionary justification of teleology available to him,21 given his belief in the permanence and unchangingness of species (Generation of Animals II 1 731b24-732al).22 To be sure, it could be that Aristotle's attempt to make nature purposive in the absence of purpose in fact fails. However, in the following sections I will argue that Aristotle is aware of the need to justify teleological explanation in nature and addresses himself to the question in a way that, given certain assumptions about goodness, is successful. In Section IV I will consider how benefit and agency are connected in the craft analogy. 18 Cooper (1982), 197, says: "[Aristotle] understands by a goal (hou heneka) whether natural or not, something good (from some point of view) that something else causes or makes possible, where this other thing exists or happens (at least in part) because of that good." 19 Woodfield (1976), 135. 20 See Wright (1976), 61. 21 See Millikan (1984), 17-49. The same is true also of Bigelow and Pargetter (1987) insofar as their propensity theory (". . . what confers the status of a function is not the sheer fact of survival-due-to-a-character, but rather, survival due to the propensities the character bestows upon the creature" (192)) is superimposed on the assumption of biological change across generations. 22 See Cooper (1982), esp. 202-5.

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IV Although Aristotle knows that teleological explanations in nature at least appear to imply agency, he seems to reject the implication. In Physics II he says: Now action is for the sake of an end; therefore the nature of things also is so. Thus if a house, e.g., had been a thing made by nature, it would have been made in the same way as it is now by art; and if things made by nature were made not only by nature but also by art, they would come to be in the same way as by nature. The one, then, is for the sake of the other; and generally art in some cases completes what nature cannot bring to a finish, and in others imitates nature. If, therefore, artificial products are for the sake of an end, so clearly also are natural products. The relation of the later to the earlier items is the same in both. This is most obvious in the animals other than man: they make things neither by art nor after inquiry or deliberation. (199al 1-21)

Again, he declares: It is absurd to suppose that purpose is not present because we do not observe the agent deliberating. Art does not deliberate. If the ship-building art were in the wood, it would produce the same results by nature. If, therefore, purpose is present in art, it is present also in nature. The best illustration is a doctor doctoring himself: nature is like that. (199b26-32)

Since crafts are practiced by agents with conscious desires and plans and since this is precisely the sticking point in the application of teleology to nature, the comparison of nature to craft is usually dismissed as unhelpful. But recently Sarah Broadie has argued that the analogy could be made interesting if it were agreed that craft is not animated by desire. Just as a tree that desired to be a tree would be more than a tree, so, the analogy goes, a builder qua builder already pursues the builder's ends.23 On this view of it, the purpose of the analogy is not to attribute desire to nature but rather, having denied its presence in craft, to show that nature like craft exhibits regularity and also that it makes correct moves - that craft qua craft does not err.24 Thus Broadie defends the craft analogy from the usual charge against it. She also contends, however, that even so, the comparison fails. The reason why it fails, she argues, is that Aristotle in his use of craft to illuminate nature has so distorted the notion of craft that it is almost unintelligible; whereas the real craftsman aims at a good that answers some human need or interest recognized as a result of practical wisdom or reflection and refines his product accordingly,25 to serve the purpose of the analogy, craft knowledge must be thought of as developed with a view to its purpose only and not as a capacity that could be put to 23 Broadie (1987), 43-44. 25 Broadie (1987), 48.

24 Broadie (1987), 42-43.


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other use or exceed what is needed.26 Indeed if one thinks of craft as static or achieved in the way Aristotle for the sake of the analogy must, craft becomes, so Broadie argues, nothing but an automaton.27 In short, Broadie wants to deny that the main issue in Aristotle's teleology is whether it introduces mind into nature. One might object that to describe depsychologized craft and thus also nature as enddirected automata would seem, if that description is taken seriously, to reintroduce intentionality since the automata familiar to us (setting aside nature on the grounds that what is at issue is whether nature should be so called) are manufactured by beings who do have such ends in mind. But be that as it may, Broadie's concern that if there is no context of human needs and interests there will be no grounds for judging the effectiveness and value of the activity is a charge to which it is necessary to see whether Aristotle can reply. It must be admitted that there are certain kinds of background to which Aristotle does not appeal. For example, if each kind of organism were said to contribute to a larger ecosystem, how the existence of the organism would be a good is evident; nevertheless, on the whole, Aristotle does not move in this direction, and anyway such a move might be said merely to invite the question anew. Nor does Aristotle offer external validation in the manner of Plato, when the latter argues that the Forms that exist are those that participate in the Form of the Good; indeed Aristotle claims in Nicomachean Ethics I 6 that a uniform notion of goodness across the categories is not even possible (1096al7-29). Yet despite these self-imposed limitations, it is undeniable that Aristotle wants to discuss the good for kinds. To take an example, the good for human beings is to lead a fully human life and in the Ethics Aristotle tries to say what that would be; that he would also think that it is good for dogs to lead dogs' lives there is little reason to doubt. That it seem to cats or to human beings or even to dogs good that dogs lead dogs' lives is not of course necessary; likewise whether the good for dogs is good for cats or human beings or anything else (except dogs) seems not to be the point. To summarize, what Aristotle holds, I think, is a view of the good that is objective, noninstrumental, and nonrelational. Admittedly such a view is, to say the least, problematic. For example, a scalpel is good for doctoring (it contributes to good doctoring). But that something is good for doctoring - or even that one is a good doctor - is independent of the question whether doctoring is a good. Picklocks can be good for thieving - and one can be good at thievery - without thievery being a good. More generally, we can distinguish between what is good for Xing and even being a good x, on the one hand, and, on the other, whether 26 Broadie (1987), 43.

27 Broadie (1987), 49.

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Xing is a good. Indeed when Broadie criticizes the craft analogy on the ground that without a context of human needs and interests there is no background against which to judge the value of the craft activity, perhaps her point can be put by saying that, insofar as the craft analogy is intended to be its support, Aristotle's appeal to final causes in nature fails; without a context, nature too becomes no more like good doctoring than like bad doctoring and no more like doctoring of any sort than like thievery. But even if the craft analogy is not very helpful for the justification of his use of teleological explanation in nature, the ways in which the notion of craft must be stretched in order for there to be an analogy are themselves illuminative, and it is not self-evident that Aristotle's view of nature is false. The health of an oak tree is, after all, something that is objectively determinable, and insofar as health (over a certain span of years) is the norm and disease often overcome, surely nature, in this case the nature of oaks, can be said to be more like good doctoring than like inept or corrupt doctoring. Of course, it might be objected that, since healthy ivy flourishes at the expense of trees, in the case of ivy nature is rather like thievery, but even here it is not clear that Aristotle would have no recourse. For thieves are persons who work against the flourishing of their fellow human beings and indeed, on an Aristotelian view, against the flourishing of their own true selves, while ivy is just doing what ivy flourishes by doing; though thieves have an unactualized good, ivy is not separated from the good for ivy. To put the point another way, only if thieves were, like human beings, dogs, and ivy, a natural kind would the objection be well taken. I did not promise a defense of Aristotle's view that there are natural kinds, and beyond what was suggested in the second section of this chapter I could not deliver on such a promise; neither do I have any novel criteria for judging of any given kind whether it is natural. But that Aristotle thinks there are natural kinds, that he gives some thought to which they might be (even if he does not give us entirely successful criteria), and that we in reading him can see, at least for many cases, what kinds he thought natural is true nonetheless. Metaphysics VII 4 is a case in point. There Aristotle, needing to say what sorts of things have an essence, distinguishes compounds such as white man from things that are something in their own right (kath' hauto) and tries to explain what is characteristic of the former. He says: One kind of predicate is not said of a thing in its own right because the term that is being defined is added to something else, e.g. if in denning the essence of white one were to state the formula of white man; another because something else is added to it, e.g. if 'cloak' meant white man, and one were to define cloak as white; white man is white indeed, but its essence is not to be white. (1029b311030a2)


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To say that one classifies wrongly if to a subject in its own right something is added (this being what Aristotle would no doubt say of ' thief) or omitted may not seem helpful. After all it is an explanation that depends on one's having already a grasp of which sorts of things are subjects. But Aristotle does at least tell us how the determination ought not to be made. For what one cannot do, he says, is simply to follow language; even if there were a single word 'cloak' (defined, let it be imagined, as "white man") cloak would not be a natural kind. What Aristotle goes on to argue in VII 4 is that it is species of a genus which have an essence (1030al 1-13). In the Metaphysics perhaps it is a bit unclear whether he wants to limit natural kinds to biological species; that is to say, it is hard to be certain whether he intends the bronze sphere (VII 8) and other such products of art to be merely simplified models for illustrating the relation between matter and form or whether he really counts specimens of such kinds among the substances. But that the paradigm cases of natural kinds in the sublunary world will be biological there is no doubt. Indeed, as we have seen, the clearest indication of the naturalness of these is the capacity of their members to reproduce - to produce, that is to say, other members like themselves. In this and the last section I have argued that Aristotle's use of final causes involves neither agency nor metaphor nor evolution but rather is tied to his claim that there are natural kinds. However, even as I have emphasized that the good for Aristotle is both objective and internal to a kind, it cannot be denied that he sometimes explicitly takes a broader view. At On Generation and Corruption II10 336b27-29 Aristotle says, for example, that nature always desires what is better and that being is better than not being. Once Aristotle has said that the realization of the life for which members of a kind are suited is, objectively, their good, it is not surprising if their realizing their good is sometimes taken to be a good. In short, whether goodness is occasionally applied more broadly or whether it remains entirely internal to kinds, that an organism undergoes change (in part) because of what is good for it seems to be for Aristotle incontrovertible.28 Kahn, for example, puts the point in this way: It is true that Aristotle also speaks of actuality (energeia, entelecheia) as the goal in teleological contexts, and we can give a partial explication of his notion of telos in terms of degrees of actuality, as the more or most complete realization of a thing's potentialities. But this strategy can give an adequate account of 28 Gotthelf (1988) dissents, believing that the account of what it is to be an end can be given in terms of Aristotle's conception of an actuality alone, that is to say, without reference to the good. See 115.

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Aristotle's conception only if we build into the analysis of actualization the required normative component.29

I will argue next for an interpretation of Aristotle's argument from chance to teleology which supports Kahn's view, a conclusion I will thereafter claim has implications for the relation between final and material causes and, ultimately, for what I have claimed is the ontological priority of specimens of natural kinds.

In Physics II, as we have seen, Aristotle says that the accidental includes the conjunction of a substance and an accidental property (the musical man) or of a pair of properties (musicality and housebuilding), as well as the causal connection between an agent described by means of some conjoined property and an outcome (the fluteplayer builds a house). As he says of this last case, 'Tor just as a thing is something either in virtue of itself or accidentally, so may it be a cause. For instance, the housebuilding faculty is in virtue of itself a cause of a house, whereas the pale or the musical [human being] is an accidental cause" (196b2427). But chance too, Aristotle thinks, is part of the accidental (198a5-7) since it involves both causation and conjunction. More specifically, Aristotle classifies chance as that part of the accidental where there is an outcome that is unintended but beneficial. As he says, "Hence it is clear that events which belong to the general class of things that may come to pass for the sake of something, when they come to pass not for the sake of what actually results, and have an external cause, may be described by the phrase 'from chance"' (197bl8-20). Unlike the narrower category of luck (he tuche), for something to occur by chance (to automaton) it is not necessary that it be done by or happen to a being capable of choice; if a man goes to the marketplace and happens to meet his debtor, that is luck (196b33-197a3), but if a tripod falls and lands upright (197bl6-18) or a stone falls and strikes someone (197b30-32), it is chance.30 With this analysis of chance, Aristotle is ready to argue against those who claim that the structure of plants and animals is due to the random 29 Kahn (1985), 197. 30 Though like Ackrill (1981), 36-41, I prefer 'luck' and 'chance', it should be noted that the Greek terms are variously translated. Barnes (1984), uses 'chance' where there is a being capable of choice and 'spontaneity' for the broader category where there need not be. Charlton (1970) contrasts 'luck' with 'the automatic'. I find 'luck' very natural for the case involving an agent; however, I am less happy with either 'the automatic' or 'the spontaneous' for the broader category because neither captures the central point: that something has happened which because it has a good result has the appearance of having been done for the sake of that result.


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arrangement of matter. For Empedocles, the existence of viable organic combinations is the result of the random interactions of elements; by nature there were man-faced ox progeny as well as human beings and oxen, but only the latter survive (198b29-32). 31 Aristotle replies by considering the distribution of a given feature in a population: "For teeth and all other natural things either invariably or for the most part come about in a given way; but of not one of the results of luck or chance is this true" (198b34-36). Thus the combination of human faces on human bodies or ox faces on the bodies of oxen, if they were infrequent, could be said to be by chance, but being frequent they cannot be so. More generally, since invariable or normal outcomes cannot in any case be attributed to chance, then, when those outcomes are also good, teleology is needed. It has seemed to many readers that the argument of Physics II is obviously inadequate; why does Aristotle not consider the possibility that mechanical, in other words, material, necessity might be enough to explain the results he attributes to teleology? It is hard to believe, however, that such an evident omission could simply be an oversight; after all, Aristotle knows that iron is hard, that water is clear and fluid, and so on. What is more likely, I think, is that Aristotle believes that mechanical necessity is not the right sort of explanation to be considered - in other words, that, as Aristotle sees it, mechanical necessity could (at most) explain the occurrence of an invariable outcome, but not that what has occurred is something that is good. As he says in his discussion of his predecessors in Metaphysics I 7: For surely it is not likely either that fire or earth or any such element should be the reason why things manifest goodness and beauty both in their being and in their coming to be, or that those thinkers should have supposed it was; nor again could it be right to ascribe so great a matter to chance and luck.32 When one man said, then, that reason was present - as in animals, so throughout nature - as the cause of the world and of all its order, he seemed like a sober man in contrast with the random talk of his predecessors. (984bll-18) In its concern that goodness be explained, this passage is, of course, reminiscent of Socrates' view in the Phaedo. There it is said that upon hearing of Anaxagoras's contention that it is mind that produces order and is the cause of everything, Socrates had expected that by assigning a cause to each phenomenon separately and to the universe as a whole Anaxagoras would make clear what is best for each and what is the 31 In his explanation, Empedocles seems to have failed to account for regularity across generations - why are the offspring of dogs generally dogs and not cats or trees or monsters? The survival of viable individuals does not explain why their offspring should be in nearly all respects like the parents. 32 Barnes (1984) has 'spontaneity' and 'luck'. For the reasons for 'chance' and 'luck', see note 30.

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universal good, a hope in which he was disappointed (97c-98b). But if such passages are relevant to the discussion of teleology in Physics II, the point has to be that there is something about the structure, behavior, and development of organisms which earth and fire - mechanical necessity - cannot explain. Just as Socrates says that it is absurd to try to understand his sitting in prison in terms of the rigidity of bones and the contraction and relaxation of sinews while neglecting to mention that Athens thought it better to condemn him and that he thought it better to submit to whatever penalty the city ordered (98c-e), so also in nature, both Plato and Aristotle believe, it is true that explanation which appeals only to the material cause can be obtuse. Thus while Aristotle does not suppose that teleological explanation is to be understood in terms of the workings of a Anaxagorean Mind, and indeed neither does Plato, nonetheless there is for Aristotle in nature a good for kinds, and it is, I would claim, his counterpart to Plato's Form of the Good. For Plato the Forms and phenomena that are exist and are as they are (in part) because of their relation to the Form of the Good. The Form of the Good is the explanation of their existence and nature in the sense of being their metaphysical ground; likewise without appeal to the Form of the Good there cannot be an adequate explanation of phenomena and Forms in the sense that there cannot be adequate understanding. Of course, in Aristotle forms are not separated in the way that the Forms are for Plato. Nevertheless it remains true that what is good is (in part) metaphysically explanatory of the behavior, structure, and development of living things and that to fail to appeal to it is to fail to have an adequate understanding of them. To be sure, unlike mechanical necessity (Socrates' *'bones and sinews"), in calling something luck or chance there is also an acknowledgment of goodness. But the difficulty with citing chance is that it is not really an explanation - as Aristotle says, chance is not the cause without qualification of anything (197al4). To put the point another way, in the case of chance what happens is beneficial, but it does not happen because it is beneficial and its being so is not (and cannot be) explained. I have argued that the intended conclusion of the argument from chance is that, where there is regularly a good outcome, teleological explanation is required. This is so because material causes cannot explain the goodness of it, and where the outcome occurs regularly, chance is not an adequate substitute for explanation. However if chance is but a pseudo-explanation of the goodness of some outcome whose occurrence (not its goodness) may in fact be explicable in other terms, then it is also true that a charitable analysis of the argument from chance - one that does not accuse Aristotle of simply denying or neglecting mechanical necessity - is possible, and for understanding the role of


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teleology in Aristotle this fact is important. For it has long been noticed that Aristotle frequently offers two explanations, one involving the characteristics of matter, the other those of form. For example, he says that the deer sheds its horns both for relief and because of their weight {Parts of Animals III 2 663bl2-14), that human heads are hairy both for protecting the brain from excessive heating and chilling and because of the fluidity of the brain and the sutures in the skull, which are such that heat and fluid produce the outgrowth of hair (II 14 658b2-10), and that eyelashes exist for the protection of the eyes and because they are located at the end of small blood vessels where moisture comes off (II 15 658bl4-26). Likewise he holds that the ability of serpents to turn their heads backward enables them to guard against attacks from the rear and is a necessary consequence of their cartilaginous and flexible vertebrae (IV 11 691b31-692a5) and that the webbed feet of waterbirds are useful in enabling them to swim and are a necessary consequence of their residual earthy substance (IV 12 694a23-bl2). These examples and others are too numerous to be ignored. Nevertheless from such passages alone it is unclear exactly what Aristotle takes the relation between the two explanations to be. For example, if the fluidity of the brain is a sufficient explanation for eyelashes, could it not be objected that even if eyelashes did not serve the animal's good, they would exist anyway? But if it were true that eyelashes would exist regardless of their usefulness, then, even given that eyelashes are in fact useful, the appeal to benefit would seem to have no force. To this objection - namely, that where there is a sufficient material condition, the value of the result is causally irrelevant - there are several possible lines of reply. That Aristotle intends teleological explanation to be, like chance, compatible with mechanical necessity and yet, unlike chance, more fundamental than explanation in terms of matter will be argued in the next section. There I will argue also that it is final causality that grounds the ontological priority of specimens of natural kinds.

VI In response to the worry that given a necessitating material cause the teleological explanation is not really explanatory, Martha Nussbaum at one time proposed that double explanations are pragmatic. Against his mechanist predecessors she imagined that Aristotle would have argued along the following lines: "If you were a shepherd in charge of the flocks, which account [Democritus's or Homer's] would give you more information that was relevant to your plans and precautions? From eight lines of Homer I learn more that is general and valuable about the

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behavior of lions than I would from two volumes of detailed atomcharts."33 Other interpreters have solved the problem by supposing that material causes, since they are said by Aristotle to be hypothetical (200al3), are in fact not necessitating. Balme, for example, at one time suggested that matter (the stuff which is the matter) itself sometimes behaves erratically,34 in which case, given that there is regularity in nature, something else is needed to explain that regularity, and teleology comes to hand. If Aristotle does believe that matter is erratic, his reason for thinking final causes ineliminable would be evident. However I am inclined to doubt that Aristotle does hold that view. Besides, the assumption that teleology can be effective - that is to say, that it can have more than a pragmatic role - only if material causes are not necessitating has itself been challenged; according to David Charles, even given the existence of independent physical conditions sufficient to necessitate the occurrence of psychological or biological phenomena, Aristotle would still rightly - think that teleological explanation is explanatory.35 Only explanation in terms of goals, Charles claims, picks out those features of the goal or end-state which are essentially or directly connected to the survival of the organism; in addition, explanation in terms of goals and only it - can select certain stages in a developmental causal story as significant and explain the appropriateness of the route from the desire or potentiality to the goal.36 Moreover, he argues: Since desires [potentialities] are essentially goal-directed states . . ., they cannot be type-identical with a type of physical state which is not essentially goaldirected. Further, in Aristotle's account it follows from the failure of typeidentity that there is no token-identity between (e.g.) this desire and this physical state.37

But Aristotle does not believe merely that final and material causes are compatible (assuming that he does believe them to be so); he believes teleological explanations to be more fundamental than material explanations. That is to say, beyond holding that the features explained by a physical account and the features explained by a teleological account are distinct, Aristotle claims further that material necessity is hypothetical; it is because the organism is what it is that it must be made of matter having certain characteristics. Of Aristotle's view Charles says: 33 Nussbaum (1978), 71. 34 Balme (1939), 137-38. See also Cooper (1982), 211. 35 Charles (1988), 38. Charles falls roughly into the functionalist camp (even if physical states are sufficient for the outcome the behavior could in principle have been differently realized). Concerns of the sort Ackrill (1973) presents need not undermine this view. See Chapter V, n. 10, of the present book. 37 Charles (1988), 40. 36 Charles (1988), 38-39.


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