As we have seen, the theological problem of the Eucharist naturally gave rise to the intensional problem of the interpretation of the Aristotelian notion of the inherence of accidents. Particular philosophical problems concerning the distinction of specific kinds of accidents from each other as well as from their subject, however, tended to give rise to a number of more specific extensional problems of the necessity and sufficiency of the Aristotelian division.
The framework of the medieval discussion concerning the distinction of specific kinds of accidents was provided by Aristotle’s distinction of the ten categories, namely, distinguishing substance from the nine categories of accidents: quantity, quality, relation, action, passion, time, place, position, and habit. One fundamental question concerning the distinction of the categories was precisely what sort of items these categories classify. Are they words, or the concepts expressed by these words, or are they the entities themselves already fitted into the broader framework of the Ontological Square by Aristotle?
Various authors handled these issues variously in their interpretation of Aristotle, but few would have subscribed to a simplistic ‘‘mirroring’’ idea, namely, the idea that the ten classes of simple words ‘‘mirror’’ ten classes of simple concepts, which in turn ‘‘mirror’’ the ten fundamental classes of entities there are in reality.
In the first place, that the relationship between words and concepts is more complicated is clear from the phenomena of equivocation (one word expressing several concepts) as well as synonymy (several words expressing the same concept) and translatability (different words in different languages expressing the same concept) or from the fact that a simple word may express a complex concept and a complex phrase may occasionally convey a simple concept (Buridan 2001:xxxvii-xxxix).
In the second place, the relationship between concepts and things is quite complicated as well: universal concepts comprehend several particular things (even if several particular things of the same kind), but even the same (kinds of) things may be conceived in terms of radically different concepts (as for example, all triangular things may also be conceived as trilateral and vice versa).
Thus, even the medieval modistae, who insisted that the modes of signifying of words (modi significandi) follow upon our ways of understanding things (modi intelligendi), which in turn reflect the ways things are (modi essendi), would not have subscribed to the simplistic mirroring view of semantic relations; and, a fortiori, such a view would have been rejected by their late-medieval, especially, nominalist critics (Marmo 1999). But still, especially in the thirteenth-century literature on Aristotle’s Categories and Metaphysics, there were various speculations about the sufficiency of Aristotle’s classification (in the so-called sufficientiae literature), trying to establish that his ten categories comprehend all entities, sorting them into their ten and only ten most universal essential kinds (McMahon 2002; Gracia and Lloyd 2006).
However, apart from the issue of the sufficiency of the categories to classify all entities into their essential kinds, there was also the intriguing question of the necessity of Aristotle’s categories, as far as the classification of real entities is concerned. For nobody seems to have denied the usefulness of Aristotle’s classification of predicable terms and the concepts they express in the ten genera he distinguished, establishing a certain system of them all; but there were serious doubts as to whether this classification is at the same time the classification of the essential, natural kinds of all entities there are. Are there really (at least) ten classes of really distinct, essentially different entities in the universe?
One consideration that prompts this conclusion is the following piece of reasoning, which may be dubbed the argument from separability:
1. Any entities that can exist without each other are
Distinct from each other
2. The entities in distinct categories can exist without
Each other
3. Therefore, the entities in distinct categories are distinct
From each other
If this argument is sound, then the ten categories provide a mutually exclusive (and hopefully also exhaustive) tenfold classification of all entities.
However, in this argument, a great deal depends on the interpretation of its second premise. The obvious justification for this premise is the fact that accidents are ‘‘separable’’ from their subject as well as from each other in the sense that a subject may continue to exist while its accidents come or cease to inform it, independently from each other. (Of course, this natural “separability” of accidents must not be confused with the question of their supernatural separability in continued existence discussed above.) After all, on Porphyry’s description of accident, ‘‘accident is what comes and goes without the destruction of the substrate’’ (Spade 1994:11). For example, the white sheet of paper that turns black when dipped in ink certainly continues to exist, while its whiteness is gone, and the same goes for its other accidents in the other categories.
We need not be detained here too much by the issue of naturally inseparable accidents discussed by Porphyry, such as the blackness of a crow (to use his example),
Which are inseparable only assuming the present course of nature, but could be separated from their subject (without preserving them in continued existence) in a different system of nature, simply on account of their nonessentiality. So, in a different system of nature, with different laws in force, the same subjects could be present without their actually naturally inseparable accidents. For instance, in a different system of nature, there could be white crows. (Indeed, we could actually produce them even in this system of nature by dipping them in hydrogen peroxide, but Porphyry apparently did not think of this cruel possibility. Thus, a better example of a naturally inseparable accident in his sense might be the yellow color of pure gold.) By contrast, in a different system of nature, the same subjects could not be present without their essential properties, because then they would just not be the same things. We certainly could not have crows that are not crows or animals or bodies (or gold that is not an element or does not have atomic number 79).
However, the justification of premise (2) above in terms of the Porphyrian definition clearly presupposes that what we are referring to by means of the abstract term ‘‘whiteness,’’ namely, the accident that verifies the corresponding concrete term ‘‘white’’ of this sheet, cannot cease to be referred to by this term unless it ceases to exist, that is to say, that this abstract term is an essential predicate of this accident. For, if the term were not an essential predicate of this thing, or would not refer ‘‘rigidly’’ to this thing, to use the contemporary jargon, then the thing could cease to be referred to by the term ‘‘whiteness,’’ i. e., it could cease to be whiteness, without ceasing to exist. And so, even if the white sheet were identical with its whiteness, it could cease to be white without its whiteness ceasing to exist, for its whiteness could just cease to be whiteness without ceasing to be.
To be sure, in the case of this example, one may have the intuition that the thing that is called ‘‘whiteness’’ cannot cease to be whiteness without ceasing to be. However, consider another example in the category of quality, in the species of shape, such as straightness. Scholastic ‘‘realists’’ (for the significance of the quotes see Klima 2008) committed to the essentiality of abstract terms in this species would have to claim that when, say, a piece of wire is straight, then this is because the matter of this piece of wire is informed by the quality of straightness, and so when the wire is bent, its straightness is destroyed while the wire itself continues to exist, which clearly indicates that the wire and its shape are not the same thing.
However, what if this shape is not construed as a simple quality essentially named “straightness”? After all, for the wire to be straight is just for its extremes to be maximally distant; thus, the wire’s shape is nothing but the way its quantity is extended, indeed, one may say, it is just this quantity extended this way. But of course when the wire goes from straight to bent, its quantity does not cease to exist; it just goes from existing in one way to existing in another. However, these ‘‘ways,’’ that is, modes of being of this quantity are not further things added to this quantity: they are the quantity itself arranged one way or another, on account of which it once can be called straight and then bent. Therefore, straightness is nothing but the quantity of the wire arranged in a certain way, not a thing really distinct from this quantity. Indeed, if quantity-terms can be analyzed along similar lines, then its quantity can also be identified with a material substance, for again, then the dimensions ofthe substance are nothing but the substance itself, its matter being arranged in a certain way.
This is precisely the gist of the idea of Ockham’s nominalist program of ‘‘ontological reduction,’’ whereby he sought to get rid of all sorts of ‘‘weird entities’’ to which his realist opponents were apparently committed (see Klima 1999a, B). Perhaps, the best illustration of the kind of ontological commitment Ockham wanted to eliminate can be found in the following passage, coming from the auspiciously titled treatise, ‘‘A Very Useful and Realist Logic of Campsal the Englishman Against Ockham’’:
Indeed, the realist author of this treatise is willing to go as far as to claim that denying the real distinction of individuals in the ten categories would lead to the destruction of philosophy and science:
The most important point in these passages is that our realist author would take the categories as well as their subordinate genera and species to be essential predicates of their particulars. But this is precisely the assumption that allows ‘‘the argument from separability” to go through, thereby generating a ‘‘Porphyrian forest’’ consisting of distinct Porphyrian trees (the arrangement of genera and their subordinate species) in each category. Consequently, it is no wonder that this is precisely the assumption that Ockham’s and his followers’ new semantic conception would systematically undermine, allowing them to cut down what they took to be the realists’ ‘‘Porphyrian forest,’’ leading to commitment to all sorts of ‘‘weird entities’’ in one’s ontology, causing all sorts of apparently insoluble problems in one’s logic, metaphysics, and physics (for some of Ockham’s particular arguments see Klima 1999a).
The gist of the Ockhamist idea, as I have indicated above, was that abstract terms in the accidental categories can be analyzed in terms of their nominal definitions, revealing the complex conceptual structures ‘‘covered-up’’ by the syntactic simplicity of these terms. But within the Ockhamist semantic framework, the revelation of this complex conceptual structure at the same time reveals that the corresponding term is a nonessential predicate of its particulars, which means that ‘‘the argument from separability’’ cannot stand in the way of identifying this particular with one in another category. Thus, providing such ‘‘eliminative definitions’’ could become a powerful analytic tool for carrying out the Ockhamist program of reducing the really distinct ontological categories to two (substance and quality - as was Ockham’s original program) or three (substance, quality, and quantity - as was Buridan’s program).
Indeed, this conceptual tool in principle could have been used to eliminate all real accidents, even in the category quality, leaving only substances whose matter being arranged in different ways is what causally accounts for their various properties classifiable in the system of the categories, in the framework of an atomist physical theory. Buridan, however, who was well aware of this possibility (explored by his contemporary John of Mirecourt), rejected atomism as ‘‘an obscure and dangerous’’ doctrine (Buridan 1989:122), and argued for the real distinction of some species of quality, quantity, and substance (for more on this, see Klima 2003).
However, despite the nominalists’ charges to the contrary, authors working in the older semantic framework did not have to be committed to a full blown ‘‘Porphyrian forest.’’ Even if they did not have the systematic analytic tool of ‘‘eliminative nominal definitions’’ that the nominalists could apply in eliminating unwanted ontological commitment to distinct entities in the accidental categories, these authors could still use other conceptual means to identify or ‘‘quasi-identify’’ entities across categories, provided they could abandon on principled grounds the crucial assumption of the essentiality of abstract terms in accidental categories.
One such conceptual tool was the distinction between two types of relations: relations in being (relationes secundum esse) and relations in speech (relationes secundum dici). It is only abstract relational terms of the former type of that would be essential predicates of distinct relation-things; abstract relational terms of the latter type would just be relative denominations of absolute things in other categories. Apparently, some authors would identify this distinction with the distinction between real relations (relationes reales) and merely conceptual ones (relationes rationis). However, Cajetan insisted that the former distinction is one to be applied within the realm of real relations.
But similar considerations allowed the identification or quasi-identification of items in other categories. For instance, Aquinas would often cite Aristotle’s authority to endorse the identification of action and passion with the same motion, or a location with the dimensive quantity of the locating thing. In all such cases, what allows the identification of items across categories is the consideration that the terms referring to these items need not be their essential predicates, which neutralizes the force of the argument from separability. But the conceptual device of allowing the nonessentiality of abstract terms in accidental categories in and of itself would only produce the recognition of conceptual distinctions of otherwise really identical items in one’s ontology, just like the merely conceptual distinctions produced by the nominalists’ eliminative definitions.
Another important conceptual tool among non-nominalists, combined with allowing the nonessentiality of abstract terms, but also emphasizing the mind-independence of some distinctions, involved tweaking the notions of unity and distinctness. This is how Henry of Ghent’s intentional distinction or Scotus’ formal distinction, or later Suarez’s modal distinction were all capable of providing a way to ‘‘quasi-identify’’ items across categories without, however, fully identifying them. The best description of this strategy can be found in Suarez’s presentation of his modal distinction, as being somehow halfway between a full-blown real distinction and a mere conceptual distinction:
Created things a certain actual distinction which is found in
Nature prior to any activity of the mind, and that such
Distinction is not so great as the distinction between two altogether separate things or entities. This distinction, to be sure, could be designated by the general term 'real,' inasmuch as it is truly verified in reality, and is not merely an extrinsic denomination issuing from the intellect. However, to differentiate it from the other, namely the major real distinction, we can call it either a 'distinction from the nature of the case,' thus applying to this imperfect distinction a term that is in common use, or more properly a 'modal distinction.' For, as I shall explain, this distinction is invariably found to intervene between a thing and its mode (Suarez 1947:27).
So, what is a mode? Suarez is well aware of the fact that Modes are not his invention. He mentions Giles of Rome, Durand of Saint-Pourcain, and especially Petrus Fonseca, as his forerunners on this issue; although he could have mentioned even earlier figures, such as John Peter John Olivi or Peter Auriol. Indeed, even earlier, Albert the Great tended to refer to all accidents as the modes of substance, but he probably did not have in mind the specific notion of a mode in Suarez’s sense, which, following Fonseca, Suarez carefully distinguished from the broader senses of the term.
In this specific technical sense, a mode of something ‘‘is something affecting [it] and, as it were, ultimately determininG its state and manner of existing, without adding to it a proper new entity, but merely modifying a pre-existing entity’’ (Suarez 1947:28).
So, modes are something real, indeed, as Suarez insists, mind-independently distinct from the things of which they are the modes, and yet they are not as distinct as one thing from another, as a real accident would be distinct from a substance. Indeed, they are not sufficiently distinct to be separable even by divine power; thus modes could not be sustained in separation in the way accidents can in the Eucharist. Therefore, modes in this strict sense constitute a genuinely new category wedged ‘‘between’’ the categories of substance and accident.
Of course, this characterization of modes and their Distinction from the substances and accidents of which They are the modes makes the problem of the sufficiency of the division of being into substance and accident return with a vengeance. Suarez valiantly struggled with the problem, trying to save the idea of sufficiencY, but his solution may have just added to the sense of later generations that the distinction is radically flawed. Indeed, the conceptuaL tools introduced by late-medieval realists and nominalists discussed above opened up the possibility of totally eliminating the distinction, which, after a flourishing of talk about modes of substances instead of their real accidents, is basically what happened in the early modern period.
See also: > Being > Boethius > Categories > Essence and Existence > Henry of Ghent > John Buridan > John Duns Scotus > Marsilius of Inghen > Parisian Condemnation of 1277 > Siger of Brabant > Terms, Properties of > Thomas Aquinas > William of Ockham
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