I do not see any way to avoid the conclusion that the correct ontology includes more than just simple substances. This is depressing and exhilarating. I think there are modes of substances. Very weird. I entertained the thought that it might come to this, but didn't expect it to be so soon (I didn't disbelieve in modes, but I also didn't believe in them). But I had to either believe in modes of substances, or parts of substances, or regions of spacetime, and modes of substances seem the most innocent. I need either parts or regions to make sense of claims like: "This person is red on his left side and green on his right side." But the kinds of regions I need—thanks to an argument by Josh Rasmussen—are regions that travel with a substance, because the person who is red on his left side and green on his right side doesn't change color as he moves through space. And the only way I see to define such regions is with the parts or powers of substances. So I had to believe in parts or powers. But parts are very mysterious, while I already believed that substances were powerful. So to believe in their powers seems the better move. And powers are modes. This makes Eucharistic theology a touch more straightforward, too.
3 comments:
But the kinds of regions I need—thanks to an argument by Josh Rasmussen—are regions that travel with a substance, because the person who is red on his left side and green on his right side doesn't change color as he moves through space.
It doesn't seem to matter whether he changes colors from one location to another. What if he is the very same color here as there, but that's only because he tokens two instances of the same color. If one token is replaced with another (of the same color), that's no different from one color being replaced with another. Indeed, on the other hand, there is little doubt that the color he instantiates here is not quite the color he instantiates there (though there is no practical difference), since the colors are inevitably, imperceptibly changing over location.
Some time ago I heard PvI give a paper in which he said, grudgingly, that properties exist. The argument was from the truth of sentences like "there is something which ants and ladybugs have in common" namely the property of having six legs, plus Quinean views of ontological commitment ("to be is to be the value of a variable"). Is that basically the same argument that you are running?
Mike:
I guess that's right.
Heath:
Yeah, though I find the argument for properties less compelling than the one for modes.
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