The Refutation of Aristotle in Mary Louise Gill and Gordon Clark In 1989 a conference was held at Oriel College, Oxford entitled ‘Aristotle’s Metaphysics’. Top educators that specialized in Aristotelian Philosophy gathered at the time focused on a primary subject: How do we understand unity and identity in Aristotle’s doctrines of substance, matter and form? Mary Louise Gill delivered a devastating expose of the impossibility of determining an individuating principle in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Not surprisingly, Dr. Clark had beaten her to the punch in his first Wheaton Lecture given in November 1965; though Gill’s expose’ gives far more detail than Dr. Clark’s Lecture. Theodore Scaltas also contributed his ”Substantial Holism” to the Oriel College conference which I will give attention to. Individuation Dr. Clark’s primary emphasis is given on page 30 of The Philosophy of Gordon H. Clark A Festschrift, ed. Ronald Nash (Philadelphia, PA: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1968) “Aristotle’s first category is substance or reality. In fact this is a double category, for there are primary realities and secondary realities. The following analysis will expose a difficulty in this first category, will show that the other categories are confused, and will concluded that Aristotle fails to arrive at the law of contradiction by his empirical method (pg. 30)…Instead of the rock as a part of Mt. Blanca, let us examine the mountain range of which Mt. Blanca is a part. This massive mountain stands at the southern end of the Sangre de Cristo range. Is it then really a thing, an individual, a primary reality? Or is it but part of an individual, and hence not a reality?...Which then is the individual: rock, mountain, or range?... (pg. 31)…He [Aristotle-DS] insists that the most distinctive mark of substance or reality is its numerical unity throughout qualitative change. This insistence, however, only leads to greater difficulties. How can Aristotle determine whether the changing composition of the blood stream is a qualitative change through which the animal remains, or whether it is a substantial change by which a new animal replaces a previous animal? In the face of such questions we may be pardoned for suspecting a vicious circle. It seems that Aristotle sometimes determines numerical unity by a prior knowledge of what a substance is, and at other times identifies substance by its numerical unity.” (pg. 32) Clark continued to show on page 33 that if you have two men who are the exact same weight, 200 pounds, are they then not alike quantitatively? Is then 200 pounds a relation between a man and a unit of weight? Likeness would then fall under the category of relation. To demonstrate another ambiguity in Aristotle’s distinctions between substance, quality, relation and quantity: Aristotle’s Metaphysics Book 5, Part 14 says “‘Quality’ means (1) the differentia of the essence, e.g. man is an animal of a certain quality because he is two-footed, and the horse is so because it is four-footed; and a circle is a figure of particular quality because it is without angles,-which shows that the essential differentia is a quality.-This, then, is one meaning of quality-the differentia of the essence, but (2) there is another sense in which it applies to the unmovable objects of mathematics, the sense in which the numbers have a certain quality, e.g. the composite numbers which are not in one dimension only, but of which the plane and the solid are copies (these are those which have two or three factors); and in general that which exists in the essence of numbers besides quantity is quality; for the essence of each is what it is once, e.g. that of is not what it is twice or thrice, but what it is once; for 6 is once 6.” Dr. Clark complains, “This very nearly equates quality with form or substance, especially because Aristotle frequently uses ‘two-footed’ as the definition of man. To press this would imply that man is a quality…also raises the question whether it is actually possible to define a substance.” (Thales to Dewey, pg. 98) This destroys Aristotle’s distinction between quality and relation. Aristotle even admits that some things can be both qualities and relations. Yet the categories are supposed to be grasped by an infallible intuition arising from sensible particulars. So in summary: 1. The categories cannot be distinguished among themselves. Quantity, quality and relation was just shown indistinguishable. 2. Primary realities cannot be identified. Some of these issues are taken up by Gill and Thedore Scaltas in Unity, Identity, and Explanation in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). All subsequent quotations from Gill and Scaltas will be from this book. Gill’s article is titled “Individuals and Individuation in Aristotle.” Gill begins by giving an expose’ of Aristotle categories. Primary substances are what predicates attach to. Predicates have no existence of their own but inhere in the subject. Gill says, “Both types of predicables depend for their existence on the individuals they determine or characterize; remove the individuals, and everything else is removed as well [The same is said of the form (pg. 64)-DS]. In addition to the ultimate subjects, which Aristotle, calls primary substances, he mentions another group of individuals, which include the individual white and the individual knowledge of grammar…Both types of individuals-substantial and non-substantial- are described as ‘indivisible’ and ‘one in number’. Aristotle claims that ‘without qualification, things that are indivisible and one in number are not said of a subject, but nothing prevents some from being in a subject-for the individual knowledge of grammar is among the things in a subject.” (pg. 55) Aristotle then clearly understands the substance as being determined by numerical unity. Gill continues to show that Scholars are not agreed on whether predicates are individuals as “tokens of types [non-repeatable particular-DS] or as fully determinate types, which are repeatable. [Inheres in one or more subjects-DS]”. (pg. 56) So what makes this composition one thing? There have been three major theories of individuation. 1. Immanuel Kant’s version individuates by determining if an object was or was not at that place at that time. (Position in space and time) 2. John Locke (Aristotle): Two things because two different substances. 3. Infima Species-Platonic/Leibnizian: In classical logic, terms are ordered with respect to generality; that is essential difference in qualities. In decreasing order an example would be a series such as: thing, body, organism, animal, horse. The infima species is the lowest limit or final difference in qualities between things of a similar nature. Kant's view is inconsistent with Christianity in that our spirits are not subject to space even on his own Empirical view. Locke/Aristotle’s view suffers from an admitted lack of coherency. Aristotle said in Metaphysics Book 7 part 3, “By matter I mean that which in itself is neither a particular thing nor of a certain quantity nor assigned to any other of the categories by which being is determined.” Locke refers to it as “that which I know not what.” In Metaphysics Book 7 part 4 Aristotle says, “Nothing, then, which is not a species of a genus will have an essence-only species will have it” and again in Book 7 Part 12 “If then the genus absolutely does not exist apart from the species-of-a-genus”. You see in Aristotle, abstract concepts or genera are not strictly speaking, real. Dr Clark explains Aristotelianism, “The species is more truly real than the genus because it is more closely related to individual things: In answer to the question, What? more information is conveyed by stating the species than by stating the genus. To be told that the thing growing out of the ground is an olive is more satisfying than to be told that it is a plant.”(Clark refer the reader to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, 1042a21, 1053b 21 “where genus is removed from the category of substance”) (Thales to Dewey, pg. 95-96) With Clark, I believe the Platonic/Leibnizian view is the correct view. According to this view a person is a collection of thoughts or system of consciousness and no one has the exact same set, therefore, he is individuated. Gill says, “Aristotle denies that the four elements-earth, water, air, and fire-are substances, ‘Because’, he says’ none of them is one thing, but like a heap, until they are worked up and some one thing comes to be from them’ (1040 b 8-10). In Z. 17 he claims that form is responsible for making the constituent material into some definite object, for example, these materials into a house or those into a human being (1041 b 4-9).” (pg. 56) She explains the Aristotelian dilemma, “What differentiates the matter of Socrates from that of Callias? Must we presuppose the particularity of the feature that accounts for individuation? If we do, we can individuate one object by means of another, but the account is not explanatory, since it presupposes the particularity it aims to explain. If the uniqueness of the individuator is secured by something else, for instance, a particular quantity of matter by its spatio-temporal location, then matter is not the principle of individuation, and the new principle-spatio-temporal location-is subject to the same question. In a relativistic universe, like Aristotle’s and our own, what accounts for the uniqueness of spatio-temporal locations? Notoriously, the task of individuating the individuator generates a circle-for instance, a piece of matter individuated by its spatio-temporal location, and the spatio-temporal location individuated by the body contained at that location. So the dilemma is this: either the account of particularity is explanatory but applies to all particulars indifferently without illuminating their difference, or the account differentiates the particulars but is not explanatory, because it presupposes the very thing that it is meant to explain.” (pg. 59) In despair she admits, “My first objection to the debate about individuation, then, is the apparent futility of attempts to explain it. My second objection is that the evidence used in the Aristotelian debate is undetermined. To my knowledge, no text demonstrates that Aristotle defended matter or form as the principle of individuation-something that guarantees the uniqueness of the object whose matter or form it is.” (pg. 59) She subsequently walks us through attempts at individuation: Some have tried to use matter and quantity as the principle of individuation. Gill replies, “this criterion will not work for identical twins, two drafts of water from the same fountain, or Max Black’s pair of spheres, which have qualitatively identical matter.” (pg. 62) Another attempt has made material continuity the principle of individuation. Gill speaks to this issue on page 66, “If two statues of Socrates are made out of the same bronze at different times, the statues are distinct because the time during which the matter constitutes the two is interrupted. In the interval the bronze survives the destruction of the first statue and the generation of the second…If this is Aristotle’s answer to the puzzle about material migration, then continuity of matter is not sufficient even to account for weak individuation. Continuity of time is also required.” Some have taken the form to be the principle of individuation. Gills states, “The favorite passage for the defence of particular forms is Met. Δ. 5, where Aristotle states that different substances have different causes and elements. He says, ‘The causes and elements of things in the same species are different, not in species but because the cause of particulars is different-your matter and form and moving cause and mine-but they are the same in universal account’ (1071 a 27-9). …But it is not very good evidence…Some defenders of the thesis will respond that the forms of Callias and Socrates differ because they are realized in different parcels of matter. But then form is not after all the principle of individuation, since the matter, rather than the form, differentiates the particulars. Alternatively, one might argue that the spatio-temporal history of the form determines its distinctness. Again, the form fails to be the source of individuality.” (pg. 68-69) Earlier Dr. Clark had mentioned Aristotle’s problems of generation and qualitative change. Clark said, “He [Aristotle-DS] insists that the most distinctive mark of substance or reality is its numerical unity throughout qualitative change. This insistence, however, only leads to greater difficulties. How can Aristotle determine whether the changing composition of the blood stream is a qualitative change through which the animal remains, or whether it is a substantial change by which a new animal replaces a previous animal? In the face of such questions we may be pardoned for suspecting a vicious circle. It seems that Aristotle sometimes determines numerical unity by a prior knowledge of what a substance is, and at other times identifies substance by its numerical unity.” (pg. 32)” Gill comments on this issue, “Z.8 has been arguing that a composite is generated when a form is imposed on matter. Since the matter pre-exists the generation and survives the destruction, it can exist on its own apart from the form of the object it temporarily constitutes. This treatment gives Aristotle reason to think that when the same indivisible form is realized in two discontinuous parcels of matter, the individuals are distinct because of their matter. It therefore seems reasonable to construe the passage at the end of Z.8 as treating matter as the source of plurality (pg. 64)…As the continuant through substantial change, matter is the basic subject. Both the form and the compound, in their different ways, depend for their existence on it…But as we have seen, because matter serves as continuant in substantial change, it cannot successfully account for even the numerical identity and plurality of physical objects. If matter can migrate from one object to another, and if the two objects share the same indivisible form, they will be identical unless something other than matter accounts for their difference. In the Physics Aristotle differentiates the two items, not by appeal to particular forms, but by appeal to the discontinuity of time. This treatment suggests that his project of individuation is more ad hoc than is commonly believed, involving different criteria in different cases. Horses and men are differentiated by their forms, Callias and Socrates by the discontinuity of their matter, and duplicate objects, composed at different times of the same matter, by the discontinuity of time. We may be disappointed by Aristotle’s appeal to temporal discontinuity to account for recalcitrant cases. But we should be seriously troubled by the various passages in which he appeals to matter as the source of numerical unity and plurality. Not only will the proposal not work, but it implies that matter is ontologically basic in Aristotle’s system…I also suggest that it is a view he ultimately rejects.” (pg. 70-71) Earlier Dr. Clark had stated, “It seems that Aristotle sometimes determines numerical unity by a prior knowledge of what a substance is, and at other times identifies substance by its numerical unity”. I would like to supplement this argument. On page 64 Gill states, “Let us now consider the passage quoted above from Met. Δ.6. Here Aristotle says that things are one in number whose matter is one. He goes on to say that things one in number are also one in form or species (1016 b 36). The passage, though similar to that in Top. I.7, in distinguishing numerical, specific, and generic unity, is more helpful, because it mentions unity of matter as the source of numerical unity.” (pg. 64) That is the exact confusion that Clark exposed. Scaltas supplements this. On page 121 he says, “Realizing that a particular substance depends on the substantial form for what it is, without that substantial form being a distinct constituent of that substance, is the key to understanding Aristotle’s account of the unity of a substance…the substance is posterior to the form, as asserted by Aristotle at Met. 1029 a 30-2.” The Simplicity of a Substance Theodore Scaltas also contributed his ”Substantial Holism” to the Oriel College conference and to his discourse we now turn. Gill refuted the idea that Aristotle has a principle of individuation. Scaltas takes up the issue of how a composite of things can be a simple substance in Aristotle. I have added this to supplement the readers understanding of Aristotle on this fundamental point of his Metaphysics. Scaltas admits that there is no consensus on this issue among Scholars when he says, “An attempt must be made to understand why it is that this relation can deliver such fundamental and rather spectacular-denigrated as ‘magical’ by its critics-metaphysical results.” (pg. 107) Scaltas’ proposed solution is “that the unity of a substance is not achieved by relating its components to one another; rather, unity is achieved by dissolving the distinctness of each of the substances components.” (pg. 107) Scaltas explains, “Is the aggregate argument telling us anything more than that a whole is over and above its elements by a relation, which is not an element in the whole, but an item of a different ontological type?...this is not what Aristotle is driving at here. The reason is that he identifies that extra item with the substance of the resulting whole, and we know that for Aristotle, substance is not relation. Otherwise, the category of substance would reduce to the category of relation, which would make nonsense of Aristotle’s metaphysics.” (pg. 113) In Dr. Clark’s Thales to Dewey he says of Aristotle’s categories, “And the category of substance is basic because there can be no quality or quantity unless there is a substance that it is the quality of.” (pg. 90).. Although these ten are called categories or predicates, substance in its primary sense is not a predicate at all. The primary and basic realities are individual things, such as Socrates or Mt. Olympus, and these are always subjects and never predicates.” (pg. 95) When I pressed this quotation to called to Communion’s Bryan Cross, he said in reply “No, just because accidents are not substances, it does not mean they aren’t real. Otherwise there would be only one category instead of ten…We do not sense only individuals; we also sense their qualities, such as color, taste, smell, texture, sound, temperature, shape, etc., and all the other accidents. See Aristotle’s work “On the Soul.” When Cross said, “We do not sense only individuals” his problem is, there is nothing else to grasp outside of an individual. So on their view universality = particularity. Scaltas’ whole point is that everything becomes dissolved into the unity of the simple substance in Aristotle. Not only that, he fails to mention that there are other ways to understand how the composition is unified in the substance, and Aristotelian Scholars are not all agreed on how this happens. Potentiality and Actuality Scaltas says, “The problem Aristotle was facing is difficult. On the one hand, the aggregate argument requires him to posit an extra item as a unifier of all the diverse elements that constitute a substance. But Aristotle knew only too well what the consequence would be of positing a cause of being for a substance which is other than the substance itself. Whether the cause of being is a separate entity or a part of the concrete substance makes no difference; so long as it is distinct from the concrete substance and it is possible to relate the concrete substance to its cause of being by some kind of causal relation, an infinite regress ensues. The reason is that if the essence of something is a distinct entity, different from that thing, then the essence will itself have a distinct essence, and so on ad infinitum (1031 b 28 – 1032 a 4). So positing a substantial form (as a unifier of the substance’s components) as the aggregate argument requires would threaten to open the gate to an infinite regress. Furthermore, the substance would then be a related whole of distinct components, namely the form and the matter. This is so because the aggregate argument requires the positing of the form in a substance, and physical continuity in change requires a substratum surviving in the substance. But then the substance would be a plurality (as related wholes are), not a unified whole. Yet Aristotle wants to show that a substance enjoys a far higher unity than that of a related whole of distinct components. So it seems that on the one hand he needs different components to perform different functions in the substance, but on the other, he does not want the plurality of these components to undermine the unity of the substance. The resolution of the dilemma is a measure of Aristotle’s genius. It rests on the introduction of the notion of potentiality, which allows for something to be present without being present! The potentiality is present although that which determines the nature of the potentiality, namely the actuality, is not present. Hence, what is shared between the potential and the actual cannot be a component they possess in common…Similarity is not the shared presence of a component , nor is change the replacement of a component in a substance…through the potential-actual relation, Aristotle is introducing identity dependence in place of copresence of components: the components of a substance are identity-dependent on what the whole is, and therefore cannot exist severed from the whole…Thus a substance’s components are (only) potentially the substantial whole.” (pg. 119-121) So how are these components dissolved into the unity of the whole? Scaltas says, “They exist before merging into the whole, but not in the whole. It is not that these components vanish into thin air when incorporated into the substance; rather, it is that they lose their boundaries and hence their distinctness.” (pg. 122) Dr. attacks this very notion when he says, “Corpuscles, if not teeth, seem to have some claim to being individual organisms with a life span of their own. In any case, since the constituent parts of animal bodies, the corpuscles, the cells, and even the teeth, replace themselves with observable rapidity, the reality of the animal cannot be identified as a particular set of parts, unless one wishes to say that the bear today is not the same individual that he was yesterday. ” (The Philosophy of Gordon H. Clark, pg. 31) The Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines corpuscle as “a living cell; especially : one (as a red or white blood cell or a cell in cartilage or bone) not aggregated into continuous tissues”. Scaltas says, “According to Aristotle, dividing a substance up into concrete components produces items that are not present in the substance: he says: ‘we shall define each part, if we define it well, not without reference to its function…[the parts of the body] cannot even exist if severed from the whole; for it is not a finger in any state that is the finger of a living thing, but the dead finger is a finger only homonymously’ (1035 b 16-25). The dead finger is not a substantial component, but has disintegrated into matter (1035 b 21). It is a finger in name only, not in the account that states what it is. According to the homonymny principle, then, separation from a substantial whole involves the reidentification of the emerging components. In conclusion, then, the substantial components are never distinct; they exist only bound together seamlessly in the substance, like the water drops in the water.” (pg. 122-123) Dr. Clark attacked this point when he said, “Suppose a head lies severed on a battlefield. Although a head is always the head of somebody, it is not a relative because we can know a severed head without knowing whose head it is. The head therefore is a substance and a primary reality. This explanation, unfortunately for Aristotle, does not clearly avoid making a head a relative. For, although we do not know whose head it is on the battlefield, we could not know that a head is a head unless we knew its relation to a body. The meaning of head consists precisely in that relation. Furthermore this example of the head reinforces a previous difficulty. If head, hand, and corpuscles are primary realities, how can the man and the bear retain the numerical unity of a primary substance if they themselves are composites of primary substances?” (The Philosophy of Gordon H. Clark, pg. 33) Dr. Clark also said in his article Special Divine Revelation as Rational “Three criticisms will be mentioned. First, Thomism cannot survive without the concepts of potentiality and actuality, yet Aristotle never succeeded in defining them. Instead he illustrated them by the change of phenomena and then defined change or motion in terms of actuality and potentiality.” (pg. 3) In explaining the problem of generation Dr. Clark says, “All becoming, they argued [previous philosophers to Aristotle-DS], must arise out of being or out of non-being; but being cannot arise out of being, for it already is and need not arise; not can it arise out of non-being because something must be present as a substratum…Aristotle’s solution to this paradox is that the being from which anything comes to be is both being and non-being, but in different senses…that is…matter, and matter is one of the four causes.” (Thales to Dewey, 116) Scaltas had mentioned, “The resolution of the dilemma is a measure of Aristotle’s genius. It rests on the introduction of the notion of potentiality, which allows for something to be present without being present! The potentiality is present although that which determines the nature of the potentiality, namely the actuality, is not present. Hence, what is shared between the potential and the actual cannot be a component they possess in common” Dr Clark summarizes the problem: "But to explain why bronze can become a statue, the statement that bronze has such a potentiality does not increase our knowledge. To assert that a certain matter is potentially a certain form means only that similar matter in the past has become that form. This is a statement of fact; it is not an explanation of the fact."(Thales to Dewey, 108) Asserting that something has happened in the past therefore it is a potentiality does not explain how the potential became actual. Regarding the initial definitions of potentiality and actuality, the difficult point surfaces that motion cannot be defined as either pure potentiality or pure actuality. To assert that a certain thing is capable of becoming a certain size does not mean that it is in motion, but merely capable of motion. Moreover, if a certain thing actually is a certain size it is not in motion either, for it is not becoming something, it is something. For example, the actualization of the buildable house is not a house, because a house is not buildable, the house is built. Therefore, the actualization of something must be a combination of the two in a process. Therefore, motion is an attribute of a thing when in this process. Again, this cannot be defined but only described by induction and analogy. What Can Be Defined? Definition is impossible. Dr. Clark says, “Emphasis on the individuality of what is real involves its own difficulties. If the Real is truly individual, it can have no parts; it cannot have Realities as its components, for then it would not be one thing. But, if it is one thing, it cannot be defined. True it was previously argued that only Realities could be defined; but there is no escape from the fact that individual objects do not submit to definition. For all components of matter and form-and every individual is at least theoretically analyzable into matter and form-suffer genesis and dissolution. There was a time when this lamp did not exist; it was manufactured and now exists; but, because of the labor of illuminating this dark subject, it may collapse and no longer be a lamp. Since, then, any concrete object is contingent and uncertain, it cannot be the object of definition, for the object of definition and demonstration is necessary, and the definition conveys true knowledge. Yet the alleged definition of an individual becomes false upon its collapse or dissolution (pg. 183)…Whenever we undertake to define something, the something turns out to be a class of objects, not an individual.” Aristotelians will appeal to types and tokens at this point. I deal with this issue in my subsequent dialogue Bryan Cross below. Universals
“Realizing that a particular substance depends on the substantial form for what it is, without that substantial form being a distinct constituent of that substance, is the key to understanding Aristotle’s account of the unity of a substance…the substance is posterior to the form, as asserted by Aristotle at Met. 1029 a 30-2.” Scaltas’ proposed solution is “that the unity of a substance is not achieved by relating its components to one another; rather, unity is achieved by dissolving the distinctness of each of the substances components.” (pg. 107) So how are these components dissolved into the unity of the whole? Scaltas said earlier, “They exist before merging into the whole,
but not in the whole. It is not that these components vanish into thin air when
incorporated into the substance; rather, it is that they lose their boundaries
and hence their distinctness.” (pg. 122) .. According to the homonymny
principle, then, separation from a substantial whole involves the
reidentification of the emerging components. In conclusion, then, the
substantial components are never distinct; they exist only bound together
seamlessly in the substance, like the water drops in the water.”
(pg. 122-123) If then universals inhere in the particular and everything that inheres in the particular has lost its boundaries and its distinctness is dissolved, a universal is then by definition impossible. Universals cannot even be grasped by the Aristotelian because man never has a universal experience. No one ever experiences every table that has ever existed, therefore by definition he cannot grasp the universal of tableness through experience. The Reformed Forum did a discussion about this titled An Introduction to Universals. The Reformed Forum guys who think they are Thomists tried to vindicate the use of universals with their Materialist Aristotelianism and they failed miserably. At 28-30 minute mark Bob LaRocca touches on universals and exposits what it means for a universal to be in an individual. This is not to be understood as a spatial “in”. Right at the 29 min. mark he denies that the universal is an “ethereal realm” but in a thing. Next he says (29:40) that the universal of humanity “is every human taken as a whole”. In the context of the whole discussion this means that the universal is simply a collection of particulars. This is nonsense. Then it is not a universal! He mentions nothing of Philo Judaeus’ construction of the Universals in the mind of God. He mentions Augustine held to this though. At 38:20 he admits that God has ideas of universal humanity in his mind. He says it again at 46:20. First, how can he deny that the universal is anywhere else but in the individual and then turn around and assert it is in the mind of God? Second, How is positing the universal in the mind of God Plotinian? Plotinus denied ideas and thinking to the One. In an exposition of Plotinus’ One Clark says, “These Ideas, however, this Divine Mind, is still not the highest principle of all. For in this realm duality remains. Since the Ideas are distinct from each other, there is multiplicity. In knowledge there is always a subject and a predicate, a knower and an object known, and hence duality. But duality is secondary to unity. Therefore it still remains to climb the steep ascent of heaven to the source, the One. The climbing of the ascent and the resting of the summit, let it be noted, are not the same thing. The rational process of philosophic dialectic demonstrate the necessary existence of the One. He who has felt the urge to unity can never rest in plurality, and is forced to posit a source superior to all diversity. But if we are to know that source and not just infer it, we must experience the One in mystic trance…the ordinary conditions of consciousness are suspended and, having become oblivious of self and the world, the soul sees the One alone. The soul no longer knows whether it has a body, and cannot tell whether it is a man, or a living being, or anything real at all. …The vision is a direct contact with the One, a divine illumination. All knowledge is rather like our sight of sense objects on a cloudy day; in the vision we see the Source of the light which made knowledge possible, and we see it directly in all its brilliance. ..This experience is not abnormal, it is but the exercise of a faculty which all have though few use…The experience itself cannot be written down, it can only be experienced ”. (Hellenistic Philosophy [Appleton-Century-Crofts: New York, 1940], 229-230) At 51:35 it is asserted by Bavinck that the universal is not in some independent realm but in the thing; not by innate ideas. Then he does a 180 and he asserts universal Ideas in God’s mind at 54:20-30. I was like, “stop the train!”. Did we not just establish that the Van Tilian and Scholastic idea of universals is only in individual things? The most erroneous point that I find in this whole forum is the idea that Neoplatonism teaches that the ultimate principle has universal Ideas. The whole reason why Plotinus rejected thinking to his One was because thinking requires distinctions and his Monad was completely simple. The way a Scripturalist says we know universals is by our being made in God’s image. Innate forms. To supplement, participation is simply saying that the particular man is patterned after the Idea. Here is how Clark described the universal of humanity, in The Biblical Doctrine of Man (The Trinity Foundation: Jefferson, Maryland, 1984), “Realism of course asserts the real existence of the human genus. This is an idea in God’s mind and it is a real object of knowledge. But it is hard to imagine and Realist identifying the perfect eternal idea with a temporal and imperfect individual. The relationship of Adam to the Idea is precisely the same as the relationship of any other individual man to the Idea. The individuals ‘participate’ in or are all ‘patterned after’ the Idea; but the notion that one individual is ‘physically and numerically one’ with the Idea, or that any other individual is ‘physically and numerically one’ with Adam is enough to send poor Plato to his grave in despair. This misunderstanding of Realism vitiates much of Hodge’s argumentation.” (pg. 49) Isn’t that simple and easy to understand? The universal is in the mind of God. The particular is patterned after the Universal; End of Discussion. These guys were so tangled up around each other in this discussion it ended up being pretty heated and no one could agree if universals are even a part of scriptural teaching. What a joke!
Application
I attempted to apply Dr. Clark’s primary refutations of Aristotle to a debate I had with a Roman Catholic Apologist Bryan Cross in his article Imputation and Infusion: A Reply to R.C. Sproul Jr. These are some of the more important exchanges: [DS] Is then 200 pounds a relation between a man and a unit of weight? [BC] Weighing two hundred pounds is an accident. Both men have the same accident type, not the same accident token….[Later Bryan says] Likewise, when two substances have the same accident type, this does not reduce that accident to a relation. When we speak of relation, in that case, we are talking about formal unity of the accident both substances have, i.e. both men are white, or both men are bald; we’re not speaking of the category of relation. Formal unity is not the same thing as the category of relation. [DS] I am not saying they have the same accident type as in all men have weight. I am saying they are both 200 pounds. I am not saying both men have weight. I am saying they are the exact same unit of weight. [End Quote] Having weight is not something essential to man. Did Paul have weight when he was taken to the Third Heaven in 2 Cor 12 when he was out of the body? Secondly, he doesn’t tell us what the token is. Weight could be a type and the exact unit of weight the token. So what does he mean? Thirdly, as Gill already pointed out Gill Scholars are not agreed on whether predicates are individuals as “tokens of types [non-repeatable particular-DS] or as fully determinate types, which are repeatable. [Inheres in one or more subjects-DS]”. (Gill, pg. 56) Fourthly, the Aristotelians cannot even get far enough into knowledge to develop a type, or class concept because sensation can never be defines and shown how it produces perception and abstract ideas. A type is a class concept while the token is a particular example of the type. The point that Dr. Clark has made numerous times is that abstraction can never be produced by empiricism. Why (?), because Aristotle took genus out of the category of substance. Empiricism is a theory of demonstration where man moves through space and locates created natures through sensation that he believes can by a method of induction, give knowledge. Perception is inferred from sensation. And passing from perception, memory images that have remained from a previous sensation are through abstraction used to produce an abstract Idea. Now can it be proved that all men have remaining images? I can close my eyes and “see” the face of my family members. I can close my eyes and picture my bedroom. I can “hear” a number of tunes voluntarily. However, I cannot voluntarily call up images of things I have smelled. I cannot call up images of things I have felt. I cannot call up things I have tasted. Even in my dreams I can only recall things I have seen and heard. By my own “experience” I can attest that I do not have all 5 types of images. Some have denied that they have images at all. British scientist Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911), rejected the idea that all men have imagery (Gordon H. Clark, Clark Speaks From The Grave [Jefferson, Maryland.: The Trinity Foundation, 1986], 23; See also Dr. Clark’s Lecture Empiricism). There is no such thing as a sub-consciousness to appeal to for these images because the term is a logical contradiction. Your either conscious or you’re not. Can someone suffer pain without feeling it? The concept is logically absurd. Moreover, this theory would require a method of determining a valid from an invalid inference. Dr. Clark says, “if there were, and if perception were an inference from sensation, it would be necessary to show which inferences are valid and which are invalid. Blanshard very carefully gives many examples of possible inferences; but he nowhere shows how to distinguish a true perception from a fallacious inference (pg. 132)...The theory is that perceptions produce images which remain after the perception ceases. By a process of abstraction, concepts are formed or extracted out of these images (pg. 134)...Did not Russell say that only a madman could deny it? (That is that all have images)...Brand Blanshard not only shows the futility of images for people who have them, but also brings before us a group of scientists and literary men, all well educated, who have no images whatever ( pg. 135)...the process by which concepts are allegedly abstracted from images is unintelligible. Aristotle simply gives an analogy. It is like an army in rout: one soldier makes a stand, than a second, and so on, until the army is in order again. This analogy is worse than most. It is unintelligibility raised to an unimaginable power (pg. 135)...Empiricism with its nominalism cannot produce concepts, such as...general conic, of vertebrate animals (Or of Liliaceae)...Propositions, not concepts, are the objects of knowledge because only propositions can be true. (pg. 135)...Urban distinguishes between signs and symbols. If this distinction be accepted, words are signs. Even if his onomatopoeic words are symbols, it does him little good, for there is no inherent quality in the sound of dog, chien, or Hund to make them mean a certain type of animal (pg. 139)...Nor could any such sheet of white paper extract any universal law of logic from finite experience. No universal and necessary proposition can be deduced from sensory observation. Universality and necessity can only be a priori. (pg. 139)...How can sensationism produce a sound that conveys a meaning from one mind to another? Since my sensation is never yours, how can you ever know what the sensation is to which I attach a sound or ink mark? The empirical apologists usually evade this problem (pg. 142)...Animals have more acute sensations than human beings; but they know no mathematics, construct no syllogisms, nor do they write narratives. Sensation does not help them in these matters. (pg. 143)” (Language and Theology) Thomism is the theory that “The Knowledge of God comes Only by the Creature”. In this case knowledge is a created similitude to what is real. This created light stands in a middle position between God and Man. Aquinas says in his Summa, “The created intellect sees the Divine essence (Divine Simplicity; Absolute Monad) not according to the mode of that same essence, but according to its own mode which is finite.” (Summa, Q. 93, article 3) On this view comprehension is a relational activity not a propositional activity. This relationship is called analogy. Comprehension has two sides an objective and a subjective. The degree of comprehending is on the subjective side of the relation; it need not be on the objective side of the relation. On the subjective side is the analogical predication. On the objective side is the One the absolute Monad. Comprehension on the human side is analogical to the reality on the divine side. Our knowledge in this life is modulated and as seen in a mirror darkly, but after death there is something more. Clark says, “Thomas…Summas Theologiae:…’For this reason the human mind knows in a composite way things that are themselves simple…In Heaven…that vision will not take the form of a proposition, but of a simple intuition’...[Dr. Clark says] If God is so simple as not to be a proposition, so simple as not to be a subject with predicates, how can he turn into a subject and predicate when he enters a human mind? Or otherwise, if our propositional knowledge of God be true, what becomes of this truth in Heaven? Does it become false?...Yet God is the truth, and his mind, his omniscience, is the totality of all truths.” (What is Saving Faith? by Gordon Clark (The Trinity Foundation: www.trinityfoundation.org, 1972, 1989) pg. 26-27) Therefore, a divine mind with ideas is not the ultimate principle, just like in Plotinus. Also, just like in Plotinus, Thomists can never explain how distinction extends from a monad. They can never explain how a monad can become a subject with predicates in the intellect of man. [BC] For Aristotle, accidents are real; those nine categories are categories of being, not categories of non-being. Only if one assumes that the only category of being is substance could one conclude that accidents, for Aristotle, are not real. [DS] Well you will not get me to defend either view because Dr. Clark’s theory is a criticism of the categories of being and the whole “what’s real” question. On Clark’s view everything is real. The question is: what is it? On your view, you begin with sensation. One never senses a universal quality or abstract concept. All you sense is individuals, therefore they are all that’s real. [DS] We do not sense only individuals; we also sense their qualities, such as color, taste, smell, texture, sound, temperature, shape, etc., and all the other accidents. See Aristotle’s work “On the Soul…Just because something is in some sense a part of something else, does not mean that it is not real.” [DS] It does if only sensible particulars are the realities and that is what Aristotelianism is. [BC] That’s a misunderstanding of Aristotelianism. Aristotle acknowledges that parts of substances exist. He even wrote a book called Parts of Animals. [End Quote] [DS] Again you can never distinguish between the part and the matter on which the form is applied. [BC] Sure I can. The matter is what endures through the changes. But a person who loses an arm has lost not that matter that endures through his accidental changes, but an integral part. [End Quote] Gill destroyed this when she said, “Z.8 has been arguing that a composite is generated when a form is imposed on matter. Since the matter pre-exists the generation and survives the destruction, it can exist on its own apart from the form of the object it temporarily constitutes. This treatment gives Aristotle reason to think that when the same indivisible form is realized in two discontinuous parcels of matter, the individuals are distinct because of their matter. It therefore seems reasonable to construe the passage at the end of Z.8 as treating matter as the source of plurality (pg. 64)…As the continuant through substantial change, matter is the basic subject. Both the form and the compound, in their different ways, depend for their existence on it…But as we have seen, because matter serves as continuant in substantial change, it cannot successfully account for even the numerical identity and plurality of physical objects. If matter can migrate from one object to another, and if the two objects share the same indivisible form, they will be identical unless something other than matter accounts for their difference. In the Physics Aristotle differentiates the two items, not by appeal to particular forms, but by appeal to the discontinuity of time. This treatment suggests that his project of individuation is more ad hoc than is commonly believed, involving different criteria in different cases. Horses and men are differentiated by their forms, Callias and Socrates by the discontinuity of their matter, and duplicate objects, composed at different times of the same matter, by the discontinuity of time. We may be disappointed by Aristotle’s appeal to temporal discontinuity to account for recalcitrant cases. But we should be seriously troubled by the various passages in which he appeals to matter as the source of numerical unity and plurality. Not only will the proposal not work, but it implies that matter is ontologically basic in Aristotle’s system…I also suggest that it is a view he ultimately rejects.” (pg. 70-71) [DS] Are you making the parts all secondary substances? [BC] No [DS] Are you seriously saying that a bear is numerous primary substances? [BC] No. But for Aristotle, parts are potential substances. Each integral part of a primary substance has its own unity, and its thus its own subordinate form, but it does not exist as an actual primary substance. Yet for Aristotle parts nevertheless exist and are real; they exist as parts of substances. [End Quote] So then there is just one primary substance. The parts are neither primary nor secondary substances. Sclatas pointed out that parts are only potential if they get severed. Scaltas makes that clear. Integral parts do not have their own unity. That is Scaltas’ whole point. Scaltas says, “According to Aristotle, dividing a substance up into concrete components produces items that are not present in the substance: he says: ‘we shall define each part, if we define it well, not without reference to its function…[the parts of the body] cannot even exist if severed from the whole; for it is not a finger in any state that is the finger of a living thing, but the dead finger is a finger only homonymously’ (1035 b 16-25). The dead finger is not a substantial component, but has disintegrated into matter (1035 b 21). It is a finger in name only, not in the account that states what it is. According to the homonymny principle, then, separation from a substantial whole involves the reidentification of the emerging components. In conclusion, then, the substantial components are never distinct; they exist only bound together seamlessly in the substance, like the water drops in the water.” (pg. 122-123) [DS] So you are walking through a battlefield, and you see a severed head. Do you have to know whose head it belongs to, to know it’s a head? No. You know it’s a head by itself. [BC] Correct. [DS] Therefore it is a substance and a primary reality. [DS] That conclusion does not follow from your premises. It is a part of a primary substance, but not itself a primary substance. [End Quote] But as we just saw from Scaltas Aristotle’s whole point here is to show that something severed is no longer part of the substance. Now that it is severed it is potential. To prove that Aristotelianism posits the individual as the reality I have provided the following quotes from Aristotle’s Metaphysics: First, Dr. Clark defines Aristotle’s categories, “a category is a predicate; or, more precisely, the ten categories are the ten types of possible predicates. For example, of Socrates it may be said that he is a man, he is ugly, he is wise, he is short, he is heavy, and perchance he is a musician. But of these, the predicate man holds a favored position. Heavy and musical are accidental predicates; that is, it is not necessary or essential to being a man that one should be heavy or musical…These predicates and other accidental predicates fall under the categories of quality, quantity, relation and others. But the predicate man, when one says that Socrates is a man, is no accident: Man is what Socrates essentially is. The predicate man falls under the category of substance or reality. And the category of substance is basic because there can be no quality or quantity unless there is a substance that it is the quality of (Thales to Dewey, pg. 90)…All expressions that are not composite (Aristotle means nouns and verbs, each standing alone and not in a sentence) signify substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, or affection. A man and horse are substances; two feet long is a quantity; white is a quality; double is a relation; sitting is a term of position; shod or armed is a state; to cauterize is an action; and to be cauterized is an affection. The most important of these is substance or reality.” (Thales to Dewey, pg. 95)… “Although these ten are called categories or predicates, substance in its primary sense is not a predicate at all. The primary and basic realities are individual things, such as Socrates or Mt. Olympus, and these are always subjects and never predicates.” (Thales to Dewey, pg. 95) Metaphysics, Book 1 Part 1 “(The reason is that experience is knowledge of individuals, art of universals, and actions and productions are all concerned with the individual; for the physician does not cure man, except in an incidental way, but Callias or Socrates or some other called by some such individual name, who happens to be a man. If, then, a man has the theory without the experience, and recognizes the universal but does not know the individual included in this, he will often fail to cure; for it is the individual that is to be cured.)” Book 7 Part 4 “Or has ‘definition’, like ‘what a thing is’, several meanings? ‘What a thing is’ in one sense means substance and the ‘this’, in another one or other of the predicates, quantity, quality, and the like. For as ‘is’ belongs to all things, not however in the same sense, but to one sort of thing primarily and to others in a secondary way, so too ‘what a thing is’ belongs in the simple sense to substance, but in a limited sense to the other categories. For even of a quality we might ask what it is, so that quality also is a ‘what a thing is’,-not in the simple sense, however, but just as, in the case of that which is not, some say, emphasizing the linguistic form, that that is which is not is-not is simply, but is non-existent; so too with quality.” “We must no doubt inquire how we should express ourselves on each point, but certainly not more than how the facts actually stand. And so now also, since it is evident what language we use, essence will belong, just as ‘what a thing is’ does, primarily and in the simple sense to substance, and in a secondary way to the other categories also,-not essence in the simple sense, but the essence of a quality or of a quantity.” Book 7 Part 4 “Nothing, then, which is not a species of a genus will have an essence-only species will have it” Book 7 Part 12 “If then the genus absolutely does not exist apart from the species-of-a-genus” Book 7 Part 3 “Now the substratum is that of which everything else is predicated, while it is itself not predicated of anything else. And so we must first determine the nature of this; for that which underlies a thing primarily is thought to be in the truest sense its substance….By matter I mean that which in itself is neither a particular thing nor of a certain quantity nor assigned to any other of the categories by which being is determined. For there is something of which each of these is predicated, whose being is different from that of each of the predicates (for the predicates other than substance are predicated of substance, while substance is predicated of matter). Therefore the ultimate substratum is of itself neither a particular thing nor of a particular quantity nor otherwise positively characterized; nor yet is it the negations of these, for negations also will belong to it only by accident.” Dr. Clark explains, “What would remain of an individual thing if the other categories did not exist? It could not be white, two feet long, seated, seated, shod or cauterized. Could it be anything? Aristotle further asserts that every primary substance is just as real as every other…And still further no single substance admits of degrees of reality within itself…This is one distinguishing characteristic of substance as opposed to quality, for obviously one man can be more or less heavy than another and than himself at another time. In a secondary sense, species and genera, and nothing else, are substances; for example man and animal, or olive and plant, for only these define a primary substance. Other statements such as Socrates is white, are irrelevant to the definition. The species is more truly real than the genus because it is more closely related to individual things: In answer to the question, What? more information is conveyed by stating the species than by stating the genus. To be told that the thing growing out of the ground is an olive is more satisfying than to be told that it is a plant.”(Clark refer the reader to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, 1042a21, 1053b 21 “where genus is removed from the category of substance”)[Huge point: DS] (Thales to Dewey, pg. 95-96) In light of Gill’s comprehensive refutation of the possibility of individuation in Aristotle, and Dr. Clark’s similar arguments, I must conclude with Clark, “if sensory experience cannot deal with mountains and bears, much less can it account for Plato’s favorite examples: the ethical concept of justice and the mathematical concept of cube. Therefore the conclusion is that the sensory epistemology of Aristotle is a failure.” (The Philosophy of Gordon H. Clark, pg. 34)
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