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Full Idea
Wittgenstein is the most renowned modern proponent of substance, and argued that sense must be determinate ...and that any conceptual scheme which genuinely represents a world cannot contain infinite backward chains of meaning.
Gist of Idea
We accept substance, to avoid infinite backwards chains of meaning
Source
report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (works [1935]) by Michael Potter - Set Theory and Its Philosophy 03.3
Book Ref
Potter,Michael: 'Set Theory and Its Philosophy' [OUP 2004], p.40
A Reaction
This is a key idea for explaining the somewhat surprising revival of the notion of substance in modern times, when it appeared to have been buried by atomism in the seventeenth century. The new argument is a semantic one.
| 599 | We may have to postulate unobservable and unknowable substances [Aristotle] |
| 16629 | By comparing qualities and features, reason can gradually infer the nature of substance [Grosseteste] |
| 5639 | Spinoza implies that thought is impossible without the notion of substance [Spinoza, by Scruton] |
| 12704 | Aggregates don’t reduce to points, or atoms, or illusion, so must reduce to substance [Leibniz] |
| 10710 | We accept substance, to avoid infinite backwards chains of meaning [Wittgenstein, by Potter] |
| 13042 | If dependence is well-founded, with no infinite backward chains, this implies substances [Potter] |