In the history of thought, substance has been regarded as a uniform and unchanging ‘substrate’ that is the basis of all variety and change. A motive to the introduction may have been the thought that one way of understanding is an explanation of the complex in terms of the simple. However, in Metaphysics, substance and the possibility that substance can play this explanatory role—or a reductive role—is found deficient but not merely deficient: it is logically impossible. Mind and matter are important ideas and mind is especially important in the present narrative. However, in their common meaning which includes their typical philosophical and scientific meanings, mind and matter cannot be primary or fundamental substances. The influence of substance metaphysics remains strong and the habits of substance thinking are deeply ingrained as a result, not only of the weight of substance philosophy, but also of the constancies of the world that are part of common experience. Analysis of the idea of substance is important to see precisely where the fallacies of substance thought lie and, since it is often implicit, to ferret out and attempt to eradicate substance thought where its use is fallacious. The idea of substance may never have arisen if the idea were completely absurd, if it had no application at all. However, as observed, the idea of substance is implicit in the constancies of common experience. It will therefore be important to resolve any apparent conflict between common experience and much of the philosophical tradition on the one hand and, on the other, the metaphysics to be developed. It will emerge that the metaphysics to be developed is not a substance metaphysics—for it cannot be—but that it may reduce to substance metaphysics in normal realms
Since substance cannot provide the foundation that is sought, it might be natural to ask what the essence of things may be. This raises the immediate questions whether things have essences and if they do why the essence should be distinct from the thing itself. The idea of essence is clearly related to that of substance and, if there is no substance, perhaps there are no essences. This as well will turn out to be the case. However, the idea of essence may implicitly motive a search for a foundation and the discovery that there are no essences may negate the possibility of foundation or re-vision it and perhaps make for a foundation that is deeper than an essence-foundation could be. This as well will turn out to be the case
Substance. Mind and matter. A first suggestion as to essences is the concept of substance. One of the first theories of substance was that of Thales of Miletus who suggested that the fundamental substance was water. Since then, ‘substance theory’ has seen many mutations. However, two important characteristics of Thales’ idea are that substance is simple and that it is of the world. A third characteristic of Thales’ idea, that appears to follow from the simplicity of water is its intelligibility. Simplicity, worldliness, and intelligibility, then, appear to be desirable characteristics of substance. It is, of course, not asserted that it was these or only these characteristics that Thales may have had in mind. However, the proposed characteristics appear to be reasonable and are some of the main characteristics that have appeared to be desirable in the history of substance theory—from Thales to the modern time
In the scholastic era, the idea of God assumed ultimate proportions and ‘the nature of substance was that it exists in itself, independently from another being. While accidents are in another, substance is in itself. Substance is what underlies the accidents, persists even if these are changing. Substantial forms are not substances, with the one exception of the human soul, which, however, is when separated from the body only an incomplete substance.’ The quotation from the second edition of Dagobert D. Runes' Dictionary of Philosophy, 1983, shows the use of ideas to found Christian and theological (pre) conceptions. It may have been inevitable that the ideas should have been stretched beyond the bounds of reason. It remains true however, that the scholastic speculations may have useful content—it may be productive of thought to examine whether the scholastic thoughts on substance have valid interpretation in terms of the system to be developed in Metaphysics
An importance of simplicity lies in the idea that a satisfactory understanding of the world may be in explaining the variety and complexity of the world in something simple. That substance is or should be of the world enhances explanation of the complex in terms of the simple for it requires no reference to something unseen, hidden or occult. It is not essential that substance should be of the known world for true substance may, at a given time, be undiscovered. However it is essential that substance should be of the world—universe—if the concept of the world or universe is that there is nothing outside it. In science where explanation is perhaps more important than simplicity, substances may, at least in their introduction, be hypothetical. In philosophy, however, simplicity and explanation may be independent values and the ideal is that substance should be simple and of the world. Since interest lies not only in the possibilities of the world regardless of their knowability, intelligibility is important and though, perhaps, related to simplicity, it is not guaranteed by simplicity. From Aristotle to the present time, many kinds of thing have been suggested as substances including matter, atoms and continua, mind, ideas and forms, the Aristotelian substances—one for each kind of being, process, fact, proposition, value, sentences, words, sounds, God and others. Not all—proposed—substances are physical substance as is water, matter and material atom. Mind is not a physical substance only on the assumption that mind is not material. Interpreted with sufficient generality, substances are essences. Form is a substance in Plato’s thought since Plato’s forms reside in an ideal world. In lying in an ideal world and as what is universal common to many actual things, Plato found forms rather than things intelligible. However, as in the developments initiated in Being and realized in Metaphysics, Form has a non-substance interpretation—at least in that Form is not other than thing, i.e., in that Form is immanent in the world; to say that is not to prove the viability of this kind of concept of form—that is left for the development
From the ideal of simplicity, the ideal substance is uniform and unchanging. This kind of substance invariably runs into the problem of explaining how variety and change arise. Atomism has the problem that if atoms are not ultimately simple they are not true substances but if they are ultimately simple there is the problem of explaining how they combine. Dualism, the position that the number of substances is more than one, has an additional problem—that of the interaction of two altogether different kinds. If the kinds, e.g. mind and matter, do interact, how can they be distinct? Even if the individual Aristotelian substances are simple the collection of them is not. Additionally, if horses and wolves have different substances as is the case for Aristotelian substances, a proper account may require that every individual entity should have its own substance. This is, of course, possible if every entity is its own substance but then substance would appear to have no significance
The treatment here is not—yet—complete with regard to the meanings of substance and its kinds in philosophy. However, there is some novelty of the present approach that culminates in Metaphysics. A metaphysics may, among other modalities, be committed or uncommitted to substance. To be uncommitted to substance is not to say that there are no substances—or that there are—but to allow the question of substance to emerge, if possible, from necessity. It is not given in advance that such an approach, though clearly possible as an endeavor, should be productive in addressing the question of substance, i.e., of essence. However, it turns out to be the case that the uncommitted approach, as deployed in the narrative, is productive of the substance issue and the outcome is that there are no substances in a ‘strict’ sense and, yet, that a non-relativist metaphysics—roughly one that has a foundation—emerges that is of a nature that is ultimate in senses that emerge as part of the development
Simplicity, worldliness and intelligibility remain important. In the metaphysics to be developed, simplicity and worldliness emerge in a natural way. Intelligibility is addressed in the following way that is stated approximately at this point. In considering the forms of experience below, certain objects will emerge as being necessarily intelligible. Other objects, more particular in nature, will have an intelligibility that is contingent on the nature of the knower. The character of such intelligibility may be restated in Kantian terms by saying that such objects are a joint product of the world and the knower. Whether the necessary and the contingent objects cover the universe of possible objects, and whether the Kantian picture implies ultimate limits to what can be known are questions that are deferred to Metaphysics and Objects
The resolution of the problem of substance is left to Metaphysics where it is found that there are and can be no fundamental substances in the stricter meanings of substance. If there are no substances there remains the—potential—problem that there are no simple explanations. Of course, if this is the way things are then it is not a true problem. What, however, could function as a basis of explanation yet not be a simple substance?