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8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 8. Properties as Modes

[properties as simply ways of existing]

17 ideas
Whiteness can be explained without man, but femaleness cannot be explained without animal [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Whiteness can be explained without man, but femaleness cannot be explained without animal.
     From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1030b28)
     A reaction: This has to be a key basic distinction in any discussion of properties. But does the difference in explanation entail a difference in fundamental nature? Femaleness is structural.
The features of a thing (whether quality or quantity) are inseparable from their subjects [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: It is impossible to separate [affections/accidents], both in respect of quantity and of quality - of quantity, because there is no minimum magnitude, and of quality, because affections are inseparable.
     From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 188a11)
     A reaction: This is an aspect of his famous view that universals, if there are such, are inherent in objects, and can't float free. It was important for scholastic philosophers, who need accidents to float free for the doctrine of Transubstantiation.
The perceived accidental properties of bodies cannot be conceived of as independent natures [Epicurus]
     Full Idea: The shapes, colours, sizes and weights which are predicated of body as accidents, ...and are known by sense-perception, must not be thought of as independent natures (for that is inconceivable).
     From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 68)
     A reaction: I take this to be an anti-platonist remark, though he is not denying that the accidental properties may have some universal character. I'm struck by how close the basic metaphysics of Epicurus is to that of Aristotle.
Accidental properties give a body its nature, but are not themselves bodies or parts of bodies [Epicurus]
     Full Idea: Accidental qualities are not non-existent, nor are they distinct corporeal entities inhering in the body, nor parts of it. We should think that the whole body throughout derives its permanent nature from these properties, though not as a compound of them.
     From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 69)
     A reaction: 'Permanent' nature sounds more like essential than accidental properties. This is uncomfortably negative in its attempt to pin down what accidental properties are. The last bit seems to deny the bundle view of objects. Would he like tropes?
Accidents are diminished beings, because they are dispositions of substance (unqualified being) [Henry of Ghent]
     Full Idea: Accidents are beings only in a qualified and diminished sense, because they are not called beings, nor are they beings, except because they are dispositions of an unqualified being, a substance.
     From: Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], XV.5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 10.4
     A reaction: This is aimed to 'half' detach the accidents (as the Eucharist requires). Later scholastics detached them completely. Late scholastics seem to have drifted back to Henry's view. The equivocal use of 'being' here was challenged later.
Accidents always remain suited to a subject [Bonaventura]
     Full Idea: An accident's aptitudinal relationship to a subject is essential, and this is never taken away from accidents….for it is true to say that they are suited to a subject.
     From: Bonaventura (Commentary on Sentences [1252], IV.12.1.1.1c)
     A reaction: This is the compromise view that allows accidents to be separated, for Transubstantiation, while acknowledging that we identify them with their subjects.
Properties have an incomplete essence, with definitions referring to their subject [Aquinas]
     Full Idea: Incidental properties have an incomplete essence, and need to refer in their definitions to their subject, lying outside their own genus.
     From: Thomas Aquinas (De Ente et Essentia (Being and Essence) [1267], p.93)
     A reaction: These are 'incidental' properties, but it is a nice question whether properties have essences. Presumably they must have if they are universals, or platonic Forms. The notion of being 'strong' can be defined without specific examples.
Whiteness does not exist, but by it something can exist-as-white [Aquinas]
     Full Idea: Whiteness is said to exist not because it subsists in itself, but because by it something has existence-as-white.
     From: Thomas Aquinas (Quodlibeta [1267], IX.2.2), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 10.2
     A reaction: It seems unavoidable to refer to the whiteness as 'it'. It might be called the 'adverbial' theory of properties, as ways of doing something.
There are entities, and then positive 'modes', modifying aspects outside the thing's essence [Suárez]
     Full Idea: Beyond the entities there are certain real 'modes', which are positive, and in their own right act on those entities, giving them something that is outside their whole essence as individuals existing in reality.
     From: Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 7.1.17), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 13.3
     A reaction: Suárez is apparently the first person to formulate a proper account of properties as 'modes' of a thing, rather than as accidents which are separate, or are wholly integrated into a thing. A typical compromise proposal in philosophy. Can modes act?
A mode determines the state and character of a quantity, without adding to it [Suárez]
     Full Idea: The inherence of quantity is called its mode, because it affects that quantity, which serves to ultimately determine the state and character of its existence, but does not add to it any new proper entity, but only modifies the preexisting entity.
     From: Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 7.1.17), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 13.3
     A reaction: He seems to present mode as a very active thing, like someone who gives it a coat of paint, or hammers it into a new shape. I don't see how a 'mode' can have any ontological status at all. To exist, there has to be some way to exist.
Modes of things exist in some way, without being full-blown substances [Gassendi]
     Full Idea: Modes are not nothing but something more than mere nothing; they are therefore 'res' of some kind, not substantial of course, but at least modal.
     From: Pierre Gassendi (Disquisitions [1644], II.3.4), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 260
     A reaction: This is the great modern atomist talking pure scholastic metaphysics. He's been reading Suárez. Gassendi seems to accept more than one type of existence.
If matter is entirely atoms, anything else we notice in it can only be modes [Gassendi]
     Full Idea: Since these atoms are the whole of the corporeal matter or substance that exists in bodies, if we conceive or notice anything else to exist in these bodies, that is not a substance but only some kind of mode of the substance.
     From: Pierre Gassendi (Syntagma [1658], II.1.6.1), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 22.4
     A reaction: If the atoms have a few qualities of their own, are they just modes? If they are genuine powers, then there can be emergent powers, which are rather more than mere 'modes'.
Accidents are just modes of thinking about bodies [Hobbes]
     Full Idea: An accident is a mode of conceiving a body.
     From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.02)
     A reaction: In contrast to the other thinkers who followed Suárez on modes in the early 17th century, Hobbes thinks they are just ways of 'conceiving' bodies, rather than actual features of them.
A 'mode' is an aspect of a substance, and conceived through that substance [Spinoza]
     Full Idea: By 'mode' I understand the affections [affectiones] of substance, or that which is in another thing through which also it is conceived.
     From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 5)
     A reaction: The attributes actually make up the essential consitution of the thing, and then the modes are entirely dependent on that essence. This is thoroughly Aristotelian, even though 'substantial forms' had been given up by this date.
Everything that exists is either a being, or some mode of a being [Malebranche]
     Full Idea: It is absolutely necessary that everything in the world be either a being or a mode [maničre] of a being.
     From: Nicolas Malebranche (The Search After Truth [1675], III.2.8.ii), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 13.4
Modes are beings that are related both to substances and to universals [Lowe]
     Full Idea: Modes are real beings that stand in non-contingent formal ontological relations both to individual substances and to immanent universals.
     From: E.J. Lowe (An essentialist approach to Truth-making [2009], p.212)
     A reaction: Not sure I understand this, but I pass it on. 'Modes' seem to invite the Razor, if we already have substances and universals. I am no clear about 'instantiation' because I now have the word 'mode' to play with.
The biggest question for scholastics is whether properties are real, or modes of substances [Pasnau]
     Full Idea: Among scholastics the primary agreement is that what primarily exist are substances. The primary disagreement concerns the nature of their changeable properties. Are they real accidents, or mere modes of substance?
     From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 13.1)