It is difficult to hold (a) Aquinas’ idea that in transubstantiation the accidents of bread and wine continue existing after the bread and wine have perished together with (b) the idea that accidents are truthmakers for predications.
For if the accident of the whiteness of the bread is a truthmaker for the proposition that the bread is white, then it is (absurdly) true to say that the bread is white even after transubstantiation, since when the truthmaker exists, the proposition it makes true is true.
So, if one wants to hold on to the logical possibility that accidents could outlast their substance, one has to modify the thesis that accidents are truthmakers for predications. Instead, perhaps, one could say that the truthmaker for the proposition that x is F is x’s Fness together with x. This solves the problem of the bread being white after transubstantiation, since after transubstantiation there is no bread, and so if the truthmaker is the accident of whiteness together with the bread, then after transubstantiation the bread part of the truthmaker doesn’t exist. So all is well.
But here is a further puzzle. Intuitively, if God can detach the bread’s accidents from the bread when the bread ceases to exist, why can’t God detach the bread’s accidents from the bread while the bread continues to exist? But if God could detach the bread’s accidents from the bread while the bread continued to exist, then God could detach, say, the whiteness W of a bread from a bread B, and then the bread could be dyed black. Were that possible, it couldn’t be true that W and B are a truthmaker for the proposition that the bread is white, since W and B could continue to exist without the bread being white any more.
So, holding that the substance and its accident is a truthmaker for the predication, while accepting the logical possibility of Aquinas-style transubstantiation, requires one to hold that God can only detach the bread’s accidents from the bread while annihilating the bread. That seems counterintuitive.
Another move is this. Posit an “attachment” trope. Thus, when x is F, there are three particular things: x, x’s accident of Fness, and an attachment trope between x and x’s accident of Fness. Further, posit that in transubstantiation the ordinary accidents continue to exist, but the attachment tropes perish. And now we can say that the truthmaker of “The bread is white” is B, W and the attachment trope between B and W. (There is no infinite regress, since we can suppose that the attachment trope cannot exist detached.) But God can make W exist without the attachment trope, and either with or without B.
But it is an unpleasant thing that the attachment trope is a metaphysical ingredient posited solely to save transubstantiation. Moreover, the attachment trope would be a counterexample to the Thomistic principle that God can supply whatever creatures do. For it is essential to the story that the attachment trope cannot possibly exist in the absence of bread.
Probably, the Thomist’s best move is to deny that accidents (whether with or without the underlying substance) provide truthmakers for predications. If we did that, then a nice bonus is that we can have accidents moving between substances, which would provide a nice metaphysical account of why it is that flamingos turn pink after eating pink stuff.
9 comments:
Maybe I'm just not well-educated enough for this one, but it seems to me that "the whiteness of the bread" is a description of an existing piece of bread, and therefore obviously and trivially ceases to describe anything if the bread is annihilated. The new thing that the bread transformed into does not have "the whiteness of the bread"; it is just similarly white. The whiteness of the new thing is an accident of the new thing; not of the non-existent bread.
Again, I may just be unschooled here, but I don't see the problem. The accident of flamingos being pink is a description of them only. If the cause of that is the pinkness of something they ate, that still doesn't mean that "pinkness of algae" and "pinkness of flamingo" are the very same accident. They are clearly distinct descriptions.
I am not sure I see the problem. The Thomist wants the bread "with" the accident to be a truth-maker. However, once the accident is removed from the bread and the bread acquires a new accident, the bread is no longer "with" the accident. So, to avoid the truthmaker, God would not need to annihilate the bread.
In other words, the mere sum of "bread" and "accident" isn't acting as a truthmaker for the Thomist. Rather, it is something a lot more like the accident "as a constituent of" the bread that acts as a truthmaker. Something like that. And the accident is not a constituent of the bread once it is removed, so the bread can remain with its new color and there is no problem.
Michael:
But a truthmaker for p is an entity or a plurality of entities such that if the entity or plurality exists, then p must be true. So, this isn't a case of there being a truthmaker.
Pruss: If truthmakers must be entities or pluralities of entities, then (b) is just straightforwardly false. Accidents are often just properties of an entity; not separate entities in and of themselves.
Michael:
On standard Aristotelian ontology, accidents are a kind of trope (forms are another) and tropes are entities.
Wow. I've tended to agree with Aristotle on lots of matters, but I definitely part ways here. Why on Earth should we regard the whitness of bread as a distinct entity?
Well, one reason is that it seems to contribute causal powers to the bread. Another is that it might help provide a truthmaker for the claim that the bread is white. And another is that it would be nice to be able to quantify over properties.
The bread's being white surely affects its causal powers, but they are its causal powers.
The bread's being white is itself a truthmaker for that statement. There is nothing in our normal conceptual or linguistic scheme in English corresponding to "the bread must be white because it has whiteness".
I think quantifying over properties is part of the problem. If I can express the exact same thought without individuating a property as though it were a substance, then perhaps the other way of wording it just gives a misleading impression, no? "The bread has whiteness" is identical in meaning to "the bread is white", but the latter doesn't have any room to quantify over anything except the bread itself.
Alex:
In response to your truthmaker point, I think different Thomists would respond in different ways, but, in general, they would agree that the truthmaker of "x is F" is not simply the existence of x and the existence of F but rather the existence of an accidental being - something like the white-bread, e.g. Importantly, the accident is a constituent of the accidental being so that, if it is separated from the substance, it would no longer be a constituent of the accidental being and the accidental being would cease. In such a separation case, the accident would exist, the substance would exist, but the accidental being wouldn't, so there is no truthmaker and no problem.
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