Substances.

Heil, John

Abstract

The paper takes up a conception of substances according to which substances are simple property bearers, properties being modes, particular qualitative ways individual substances are. What a substance does or would do is determined by its qualities. Efficient causation is to be understood as the manifesting of powers possessed by substances owing to their qualitative natures. Although complexes, entities with substantial parts, are not substances, they would be no less real, no less participants in the causal fray. What the substances and properties are is an empirical matter, however, to be settled, if at all, by physics. For all we know, the substances might be particles, or fields, or the universe as a whole. Efficient causation appears to require pluralism: distinct interacting substances. In a non-pluralistic universe, causal truths would be relegated to the manifest image: true still, but made true by non-causal features of the universe perhaps revealed by the scientific image. There remains the final reflection, how shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly. (Whitehead (1929 Whitehead, A. N. 1929. Process and Reality: an Essay in Cosmology. London: Macmillan.

Citation

Heil, J. (2018). Substances. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 26(5), 645-658. https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2018.1542276

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Dec 6, 2018
• Publication Date: 2018
• Deposit Date: Aug 16, 2019
• Journal: International Journal of Philosophical Studies
• Print ISSN: 0967-2559
• Electronic ISSN: 1466-4542
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Volume: 26
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 645-658
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2018.1542276
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1295052