"Substance" in Philosophical Discourse

Wayfarer

There’s an important distinction that often gets glossed over in discussions of philosophy, especially when dealing with early modern or classical sources. That is, the difference between substance in the philosophical sense, and substance in everyday usage.

These meanings are quite different but easily conflated—with unfortunate consequences. As the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes, "‘substance’ entered modern languages as a philosophical term, and it is the everyday use that has drifted from the philosophical uses." This shift carries subtle but significant implications that are often overlooked.

So this post aims to make a start on analysing that distinction.

Origin of the Term

The philosophical term "substance" originates from Latin translations of Aristotle, especially The Categories, Physics, and Metaphysics. Aristotle’s original term was ousia (οὐσία), which is closer in meaning to “being” than to “stuff” or “matter.”

The origin of "substance" in philosophical discourse was from Latin translations of the Greek texts:

The term οὐσία is an Ancient Greek noun, formed on the feminine present participle of the verb εἰμί, eimí, meaning "to be, I am", so similar grammatically to the English noun "being". There was no equivalent grammatical formation in Latin, and it was translated as 'essentia' or substantia. Cicero coined "essentia" and the philosopher Seneca and rhetorician Quintilian used it as equivalent for οὐσία, while Apuleius rendered οὐσία both as "essentia" or "substantia". In order to designate οὐσία, early Christian theologian Tertullian favored the use of "substantia" over "essentia", while Augustine of Hippo and Boethius took the opposite stance, preferring the use of "essentia" as designation for οὐσία. — Ouisia, Wikipedia

Aristotle’s original term was ousia (οὐσία), which is closer in meaning to “being” than to “stuff” or “matter.” One of the arguments I will often seek to defend is that this conception of being as "I Am" carries an implicit first-person perspective—a subjective dimension of being that much of modern philosophy, with its emphasis on objectivity, tends to suppress or bracket out. (For more on this, see Charles Kahn’s The Greek Verb To Be and the Concept of Being. I think this also maps against worldview—particularly the turn from participatory knowing to a detached, third-person model grounded in objectivity - perhaps one of the reasons why this distinction is controversial.)

In this view, being is not merely a feature of things “out there” in objective space, but something intimately tied to the standpoint of the subject—lived, known, and experienced.

Another important point about "substance" in traditional use is that it describes the ultimate constituents of reality. But in traditional and early modern philosophy, these ultimate constituents were still regarded as subjects, emphatically not as the objective existents posited by early modern science (such as atoms. For this point, see 17th Century Theories of Substance.)

Much of the pre-modern writing about being, essence, substantia and essentia, was in the province of scholastic theology, most of which could nowadays be regarded as arcane - save for the shadow of René Descartes, whose "substance dualism" turns out to have taken, and radically transformed, the concept of "substance" as it had been previously understood in philosophical discourse, with considerable consequences for modern culture.

The Ghost in the Machine

It is practically common knowledge (something unusual in philosophy!) that René Descartes divided the world into two separate and incommensurable substances: that of

* matter (res extensa) which was extended, massive and utterly lacking in intelligence, and
* the soul (mind or psyche, res cogitans) which was rational, intelligent, and incorporeal.

Here is where the modern conception of substance begins to take root. Descartes' model treats res cogitans as a kind of "thinking thing"—a ghostly, ethereal substance—somehow meant to interact with extended matter. It is this conception, I believe, which underwrites the famous criticism of Descartes' "res cogitans" as the "ghost in the machine" by Gilbert Ryle among others.

Edmund Husserl, founder of phenomenology, also critiqued Descartes' res cogitans, but in a rather more perceptive way. Husserl admired Descartes and saw in him a founding genius of modern philosophy. But according to scholar Dermot Moran:

Husserl, both in Cartesian Meditations and later in The Crisis of the European Sciences, criticizes Descartes for treating the pure subject as a residuum of the world rather than as the basis of meaning. In Moran’s words, Descartes “treated the ego as a ‘little tag-end of the world’ (ein kleines Endchen der Welt… CM §10, p. 24) — a real entity rather than the condition for the possibility of unified experience and a domain of meaning-constitution”

I think this is where the "flattening" that is so characteristic of modern ontology shows up. By treating the mind (res cogitans) as a "thinking thing" (which is the literal translation!), Descartes inadvertently situates the mind as kind of denizen of the natural world, rather than realising its transcendental nature as the ground of meaning (per Kant and later by Husserl.) This "flattening" is central to the process of "objectification" which characterises the shift in modern thinking. And here is where I think the confusion about "substance" begins to manifest, as the philosophical term becomes conflated with the everyday sense of "substance" as (1) "a particular kind of matter with uniform properties" and (2) "the real physical matter of which a person or thing consists and which has a tangible, solid presence".

Conclusion

So, when talking about "substances" in relation to such topics as "substance dualism" or "philosophical monism" it is important to bear in mind these historical shifts in meaning. We naturally nowadays tend to adopt a "thing ontology" rather than a "being ontology", as it were - whatever the fundamental constituents of reality are, they must be amenable to objective description (and quantification where possible). This tends to colour the way we think about "substance" in all these debates.

Has the confusion between philosophical and everyday meanings of “substance” something you've encountered in your own reading or forum conversations? How do you think it affects how we talk about mind, matter, or metaphysics more generally?

References and Sources

Substance Theory (Wikipedia)
Ouisia (Wikipedia)
Substance, SEP
Substance, IEP
17th Century Theories of Substance (relevant to early modern philosophy)
The Greek Verb 'To Be' and the Problem of Being, Charles H. Kahn
Husserl's Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction, Dermot Moran

javra

↪Wayfarer

A very good - and might I add substantial :wink: - OP!

How do you think it affects how we talk about mind, matter, or metaphysics more generally? — Wayfarer

Personally, given its modern connotations, in my own writings I tend to reserve the term "substance" for "stuff" - be it mental (e.g., ideas, thoughts, paradigms, etc.) or else material. Whereas ouisia - being - I instead address via the term "essence".

I find that so doing allows me to specify awareness as being (as essence) and all that is non-aware (be it an idea one entertains or else a rock one sees) as a different type of being (a different type of essence) - and this without importing the baggage of "stuff", else of "thingness" (ideas are things as well), nowadays too often associated with the term "substance" into the concept of awareness's being.

T Clark

↪Wayfarer

More and more these days, and thanks to you, I find myself quoting “The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science” by E A Burtt. This came to mind while I was reading your OP.

“In particular it is difficult for the modern mind, accustomed to think so largely in terms of space and time, to realize how unimportant these entities were for scholastic science. Spatial and temporal relations were accidental, not essential characteristics. Instead of spatial connexions of things, men were seeking their logical connexions; instead of the onward march of time, men thought of the eternal passage of potentiality…

…Instead of treating things in terms of substance, accident, and causality, essence and idea, matter and form, potentiality and actuality, we now treat them in terms of forces, motions, and laws, changes of mass in space and time, and the like. Pick up the works of any modern philosopher, and note how complete the shift has been...”

180 Proof

↪Wayfarer

You've omitted Spinoza from your survey of "shiting meanings"; what do you think of his (post-Aristotlean/post-Cartesian) conception of substance?

e.g.
~~https://medium.com/thedialogues/spinoza-on-why-there-can-only-be-one-substance-f86842057158~~

https://iep.utm.edu/substanc/#H3

Wayfarer

↪T Clark

Very good and right on point!

↪180 Proof

That ‘only one subject’ rings truer to me. It’s not exactly right but conveys a dimension of meaning that ‘substance’ tends to occlude.

T Clark

Very good and right on point! — Wayfarer

Being very much a resident of the 20th and 21st centuries and an engineer to boot, I find myself very much at home with Burtt’s understanding of modern science. I struggle with imagining the world in the terms of scholastic science, including substance has described in your OP.

Metaphysician Undercover

I tend to look at "substance" as what provides for, or gives, reality to something, anything, and everything. So when someone asserts that such and such is real, we can ask for the substance which supports that claim. We can ask for the substance which supports the claimed reality of physical objects, and likewise we can ask for the substance which supports the claimed reality of abstractions, ideas and concepts.

In this way, matter or energy is commonly cited as the substance of physical objects, and the physical world in general, while meaning or mind, may be cited as the substance of ideas and concepts. Since these two supporting substances appear to be very different, I think that substance dualism is the best way to understand the reality of world.

180 Proof

↪T Clark

:up:

↪Metaphysician Undercover

It's less inconsistent and more parsimonious, it seems to me, to conceive of "physical" and "mental" as two properties – ways of describing / modeling – substance than positing them as "two substances" (which do not share a medium by which to interact with one another). Property dualism, for example, does not have "substance dualism's" interaction problem.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism#Arguments_against_dualism

Wayfarer

Whereas ouisia - being - I instead address via the term "essence". — javra

Good choice. I didn't really notice, until composing this post, the interchangeability of 'essence' and 'substance', but I think the former is far less prone to equivocation. We still use 'essence' (as in, 'the essence of the matter') in a way that is more in line with the earlier use.

I struggle with imagining the world in the terms of scholastic science, including substance has described in your OP. — T Clark

I'm not that conversant with the intricacies of scholastic philosophy. And I don't think that there's any 'going back' to an earlier time. What interests me is the point about how we (unconsciously?) depict substance in objective terms, which in my view renders it oxymoronic (e.g. as 'thinking stuff'). Something very important has been lost in translation, as it were.

↪Metaphysician Undercover

hmmm. I can see the sense of that. It's pretty much in line with the original meaning.

It's less inconsistent and more parsimonious, it seems to me, to conceive of "physical" and "mental" as two properties – ways of describing / modeling – substance than positing them as "two substances" — 180 Proof

However this begs the question 'properties of what', doesn't it? Some kind of reality that is neither physical nor mental, but exhibits both properties? So whatever that 'substance' is, is neither physical nor mental in nature. I think I can probably go along with some form of that.

The Wiki article you linked is also quite a good source.

Janus

It's less inconsistent and more parsimonious, it seems to me, to conceive of "physical" and "mental" as two properties – ways of describing / modeling – substance than positing them as "two substances" (which do not share a medium by which to interact with one another). Property dualism, for example, does not have "substance dualism's" interaction problem. — 180 Proof

:up: Spinoza's model also resonates with me. It allows us to think of substance as "fundamental stuff" which can be both extended stuff and thinking stuff. The idea that thinking stuff is a contradiction only stands on the basis of thinking of matter as incompatible with thought because the latter is understood as an "immaterial" activity. This thinking reflects an entrenched Cartesian/ Newtonian prejudice.

Wayfarer

From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism#Arguments_against_dualism

...the question of how the interaction takes place, where in dualism "the mind" is assumed to be non-physical and by definition outside of the realm of science. The mechanism which explains the connection between the mental and the physical would therefore be a philosophical proposition as compared to a scientific theory. For example, compare such a mechanism to a physical mechanism that is well understood. Take a very simple causal relation, such as when a cue ball strikes an eight ball and causes it to go into the pocket. What happens in this case is that the cue ball has a certain amount of momentum as its mass moves across the pool table with a certain velocity, and then that momentum is transferred to the eight ball, which then heads toward the pocket. Compare this to the situation in the brain, where one wants to say that a decision causes some neurons to fire and thus causes a body to move across the room. The intention to "cross the room now" is a mental event and, as such, it does not have physical properties such as force. If it has no force, then it would seem that it could not possibly cause any neuron to fire. However, with Dualism, an explanation is required of how something without any physical properties has physical effects.

That’s exactly the kind of confusion I was pointing to in the OP. This kind of criticism of dualism misunderstands the category that mental causation belongs to. It assumes causation must be modeled on physical causation—like billiard balls transferring momentum—so it looks for some kind of “mental force” that pushes the body in an analogous way. But that’s already a misstep.

A mental event—like the intention to cross the room—isn’t analogous to a physical force in that sense. It doesn’t cause motion by exerting force in space. Rather, it operates at the level of intentionality and subjective orientation. Treating mental events as if they must function like physical ones is a category mistake (as Ryle points out). The mind isn’t a ghostly thing pushing on the body; it’s a way of being and acting in the world not reducible to physical mechanisms (and so not describable in purely physical terms).

To clarify further, I’d refer back to the Aristotelian concept of psuchē—often translated as “soul,” but better understood as the form or organising principle of the body. (“The soul is the form of the body,” in Aristotle’s famous phrase.) On this view, what we now call “mental events” are inherently intentional in a way that physical forces are not.

This sidesteps the Cartesian problem entirely. The psuchē isn’t a ghost in the machine—it’s what makes the organism a living being in the first place. Mental activity, from this perspective, doesn’t stand out as a causal anomaly in a mechanical world, but emerges as the mode of intelligibility appropriate to beings like us.

That is a succinct illustration of the sense in which hylomorphic differs from Cartesian dualism, and one of the reasons for the so-called 'revival of Aristotelianism' in the biological sciences.

T Clark

I'm not that conversant with the intricacies of scholastic philosophy. And I don't think that there's any 'going back' to an earlier time. What interests me is the point about how we (unconsciously?) depict substance in objective terms, which in my view renders it oxymoronic (e.g. as 'thinking stuff'). Something very important has been lost in translation, as it were. — Wayfarer

I remember thinking that the world is fundamentally human, or at least half human. Theoretically, there is a world out there, but our only access to it is through our interactions with it. We can’t really separate ourselves and what we know from the world and we can’t really separate the world from ourselves and what we know. I think that’s why Taoism felt so familiar to me when I came across it.

jgill

In mathematics, a theory has substance when it is deemed important or significant in some way by a community of scholars.

Janus

↪T Clark

The world as experienced by humans is obviously "half human". Likewise, the world as experienced by animals is "half animal". This is in line with Spinoza's idea that matter or substance can be both extended and cogitative, both perceived and perceiving.

Wayfarer

I think that’s why Taoism felt so familiar to me when I came across it. — T Clark

Sure, totally get that. Taoism is after all non-dualist in some fundamental way (even if the term is generally more associated with Indian rather than Chinese philosophy.)

In mathematics, a theory has substance when it is deemed important or significant in some way by a community of scholars. — jgill

Right. That's more in keeping with the traditional use of the term. 'Substantial', as are 'men of substance' or 'matters of substance'. //And what's interesting about that is the connection with meaning (as in "import" or "significance"), which is absent from the normal meaning of "substance".

JuanZu

↪Wayfarer

When you speak of principle it reminds me a little of Hegel for whom the spirit is an active principle or process of reality as opposed to the concept of substance as something immobile and static, codified and subsistent by itself.

The movement with respect to the scholastic philosophic is precisely the introduction of notions such as event, process, active principle, etc. From the static to the dynamic, from the cosified to the processual.

But I don't think it changes much about the hard problem of consciousness either. Because we want to be physicalists about something that seems to escape this kind of descriptions. The question is: if it is no longer dualism of subtances what is the ontology that best suits this difference between the mental and the physical?

Wayfarer

When you speak of principle it reminds me a little of Hegel for whom the spirit is an active principle or process of reality as opposed to the concept of substance as something immobile and static, codified and subsistent by itself. — JuanZu

Totally. But then, Hegel was a representative of the grand tradition of philosophy. That 'active principle' is again reminiscent of the original Aristotelian insight, which hardened into dogmatic scholasticism. Perhaps Hegel was re-capturing the spirit of the original! I'm sure he would have liked to think so.

The question is: if it is no longer dualism of substances what is the ontology that best suits this difference between the mental and the physical? — JuanZu

Well, there's the million dollar question. Probably another whole thread, I think. I posted this one as a kind of reference topic, as the subject of 'substance' and 'substance dualism' comes up all the time, but without awareness of these double meanings.

180 Proof

↪Janus

:up: :up:

Metaphysician Undercover

It's less inconsistent and more parsimonious, it seems to me, to conceive of "physical" and "mental" as two properties – ways of describing / modeling – substance than positing them as "two substances" (which do not share a medium by which to interact with one another). Property dualism, for example, does not have "substance dualism's" interaction problem. — 180 Proof

I don't see the purpose of your proposal. Substance dualism does not deny a medium of interaction. The medium is the third element proposed by Plato in his "tripartite soul". This is the world we live in, the world of interaction between the two distinct forms of substance. The world we know, is the medium.

By claiming that the physical and the mental are two distinct types of properties, instead of two distinct substances interacting, you try to make the medium itself, into the substance. This is untenable by our current principles of knowledge and understanding. As demonstrated by the failure to detect the aether which supports electromagnetic waves, we do not have the required principles to understand both mental and physical as the properties of one underlying substance. Our knowledge does not substantiate that claimed substance.

Therefore until we have the elusive "theory of everything", we need to understand reality according to the principles which we do have. These principles support an understanding of two distinct substances which interact, rather than two distinct types of properties of one substance. All we have as evidence is the interaction, not the substance which ties the two together. The "ideal" of a single substance is just an unsubstantiated "pie-in-the-sky". And it's inherently self-contradictory to assume an unsubstantiated substance.

That's the point of "substance", it has to be what supports, gives reality to our principles, ideas, and logic, as what substantiates them. It cannot be a speculative ideal, which may or may not be true, because this cannot provide any true foundation for the reality of being. So we must assume the "substance" which actually supports our knowledge until it is demonstrated, proven, to be incorrect. Currently our knowledge is supported by two distinct and separate substances.

↪Wayfarer

Strong OP, thanks. As I thought over your questions, I realized that I don't often use "substance" in my philosophical thoughts because, as you pointed out, it's gotten so entangled with physical substance -- "stuff" or "matter" -- in ordinary usage. But your historical clarifications are excellent. Also a good example of how to use ordinary-language philosophy to bring out important aspects of our conceptual structures.

Sometimes I prefer the neutral term "item" when discussing a putative entity or event or property. This is perhaps the closest non-technical way of indicating "whatever it is that's capable of being talked about in this discourse." At least it avoids words like "thing" or "object", which have those materialistic connotations.

this conception of being as "I Am" carries an implicit first-person perspective—a subjective dimension of being that much of modern philosophy, with its emphasis on objectivity, tends to suppress or bracket out. — Wayfarer

Back to Kimhi and Rodl! I am more and more intrigued by this.

A mental event—like the intention to cross the room—isn’t analogous to a physical force in that sense. It doesn’t cause motion by exerting force in space. Rather, it operates at the level of intentionality and subjective orientation. Treating mental events as if they must function like physical ones is a category mistake (as Ryle points out). The mind isn’t a ghostly thing pushing on the body; it’s a way of being and acting in the world not reducible to physical mechanisms (and so not describable in purely physical terms). — Wayfarer

I'm almost sure we share the same philosophical picture here, but with respect, I think we have to get clearer about our ignorance. A mental event doesn't cause motion by exerting force in space -- very good. But it "operates"? What is that? Isn't this a placeholder term for something we don't yet know how to talk about? The mind doesn't push on the body -- right. But it's "a way of being and acting"? Well . . . OK, but are we really saying anything, by saying this?

As you perhaps can tell from other posts of mine, I think causality is the completely wrong model with which to understand the relation of the mental and the physical. There's only one "item" going on here, which is experienced differently depending on whether you're "it" or not!

Taoism is after all non-dualist in some fundamental way — Wayfarer

And so is the supervenience approach to the so-called mind/body dualism. But I'm in danger of taking back what I said a few paragraphs ago, and acting like we have some real understanding of how all this works! Not yet . . . but we will.

Mww

↪Wayfarer

Given that substance dualism immediately supposes Descartes’ “First Principles…for philosophizing in an orderly way”, 1644, is found the definitions by which such dualism is meant to be understood, re: 1, 7-9; 1, 51-54.

“…. Some philosophers don’t see this, but that’s because they haven’t done their philosophizing in an orderly way, and haven’t carefully enough distinguished the mind from the body. They may have been more certain of their own existence than of the existence of anything else, but they haven’t seen that this certainty required that ‘they’ were minds. Instead of that, they thought that ‘they’ were only bodies—the bodies that they saw with their eyes and touched with their hands, the bodies that they wrongly credited with the power of sense-perception. That’s what prevented them from perceiving the nature of the mind….”
(P. P., 1, 12)

Hence the partial qualifier** for the Kantian classification of “problematical idealism” attributed to him, insofar as if he’d only thought to make it clear, that ‘they” were not only bodies (objects) but also subjects, rather than also minds, then his definition of substance itself would have been far easier to argue, that is to say, far easier left to itself as a mere category, while the idea of dualism would have been unaffected.
—————-

(**)…another being….

“… At all events it is certain that I seem to see light, hear a noise, and feel heat; this cannot be false, and this is what in me is properly called perceiving (sentire), which is nothing else than thinking….”
(Meditations, 2, 9, 1641)

…the conclusion, of course, being disastrously false according to subsequent versions of idealism which retain their respective ground in a universal and necessary dualism.
—————-

Me, here and now, I think he infused into the notion of substance more, or other, than I would grant, but if I was a 1644 philosophy peer, I might not disagree so much. Terminology aside, in principle, logically, he wasn’t that wrong.

ChatteringMonkey

Aristotle’s original term was ousia (οὐσία), which is closer in meaning to “being” than to “stuff” or “matter.” One of the arguments I will often seek to defend is that this conception of being as "I Am" carries an implicit first-person perspective—a subjective dimension of being that much of modern philosophy, with its emphasis on objectivity, tends to suppress or bracket out. (For more on this, see Charles Kahn’s The Greek Verb To Be and the Concept of Being. I think this also maps against worldview—particularly the turn from participatory knowing to a detached, third-person model grounded in objectivity - perhaps one of the reasons why this distinction is controversial.)

In this view, being is not merely a feature of things “out there” in objective space, but something intimately tied to the standpoint of the subject—lived, known, and experienced. — Wayfarer

Has the confusion between philosophical and everyday meanings of “substance” something you've encountered in your own reading or forum conversations? How do you think it affects how we talk about mind, matter, or metaphysics more generally? — Wayfarer

Yes, and I think we need to go back even a bit further.

In Heraclitian metaphysics, becoming is the only thing that 'is', or being is becoming.

If being is becoming, then being is a fiction because being implies something that does not become but stays the same. In our experience of becoming we cognize a thing, and then later re-cognize a similar thing that is not exactly the same and give it the same name. X=X, identity strips becoming of its duration... it freezes it in time.

Being as a product of cognition, implies 1) a being that has some motivation for splitting pieces of becoming, but also 2) a view from a certain point in becoming.

1)

Donkeys would prefer hay to gold. — Heraclitus

2)

The way up and the way down are one and the same. — Heraclitus

We necessarily view things from a certain perspective and valuations differ. That is not to say that we don't all point to the same reality of becoming. Our senses do not lie, in the sense of our perceptions being merely appearance and not the thing in itself. They are selective and partial, but real enough.

There is no thing in itself, and thus no appearances... only perspectives on the totality of the one becoming.

Count Timothy von Icarus

I like Joe Sach's translation of the category of substance as "thinghoood," although this is perhaps confusing if one thinks of it in terms of the "particles" that were the self-subsistent, fundamental things of 19th century metaphysics. Maybe "beinghood" would work better (with organisms as self-determining whole being most properly "beings"). Something is a thing to the extent that it is one, the Problem of the One and the Many being the core idea that defines the epistemology and metaphysics of the Physics. The loci of thing's intelligibility is things, their form, which is necessarily intellectual.

In this context, Descartes, Spinoza, and Deleuze's concerns over interaction just don't make sense. I have tried to trace the historical path by which Descartes ends up with his "substance," without much luck finding a good source. It seems very different from high scholasticism.

As IEP notes:

According to this third use, a substance is something that underlies the properties of an ordinary object and that must be combined with these properties for the object to exist. To avoid confusion, philosophers often substitute the word “substratum” for “substance” when it is used in this third sense. The elephant’s substratum is what remains when you set aside its shape, size, colour, and all its other properties

But how did this sea change occur? I can only suppose it has to do with nominalism, such that what makes a thing anything at all can no longer be its intelligible eidos (form), which maybe also explains how "matter" also transforms from "potency" to primarily "substrate." Of course, "matter" was always used to mean "substrate" to some degree, but the idea was that the substrate was a certain sort of substrate on account of its form (act), and things were "material" in that they had the potential for substantial change, local motion, etc. Prime matter, i.e. pure matter was nothing at all.

Obviously, the IEP quote shows how substance was being called in for the essence/existence distinction, and I suppose the univocity of being (also related to nominalism) is a relevant historical precedent here. Deleuze speaks of immanent/transcendent substance, which makes even less sense in the original context, although I suppose it has some precedent in the debates over ousia versus hypostasis for God.

My guess is, as universals became "names" some way to tie properties back to things had to be developed. The "names" come from us, but they have to have some cause in things, else we have no knowledge of them. No notion of participation or inherence could be called upon, so substrate has to expand beyond being mere potential (which would explain why substance and matter collapse towards meaning the same thing, when before they are almost opposites, a substance being what a thing is and matter its potential to be something else).

javra

If being is becoming, then being is a fiction because being implies something that does not become but stays the same. — ChatteringMonkey

"Being" is however a verb, a process, that is treated as a noun conceptually, the same as "becoming" is in philosophical circles.

This cultural reification of being into something that is fixed and hence not process, I'll argue, may have something to do with the metaphysical notion of an ultimate goal or telos of being (as verb) which could, for one example, be equated with the Neoplatonic notion of the "the One" - which ceases to be a striving toward but instead is the ultimate and final actualization of all strivings.

One can note that the term "becoming" can also easily raise the question "becoming what?" And, unlike many a modern interpretation of the process theory of becoming - which, to my mind, again seems to in some way reify becoming at large into a static thing, or else "something that always stays the same" - becoming does not logically entail a completely permanent relativism wherein there is nothing for all of this becoming to eventually become.

Heraclitus, or at least his known fragments, are not very explicit about the philosophical working which Heraclitus espoused. Nevertheless, one will find in Heraclitus in quite explicit manners the notion of something which is - i.e., some being per se - which is not in duality with its opposite and hence is not in a state of perpetually changing:

(65) The wise is one only. It is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus. R. P. 40. — https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fragments_of_Heraclitus#Fragment_32

(19) Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which all things are steered through all things. R. P. 40. — https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fragments_of_Heraclitus#Fragment_41

It then seems plausible enough to infer from his total known fragments that for Heraclitus becoming has at its ultimate end this addressed "wisdom" which is "one only" and can go by the name of "Zeus" (although imperfectly).

ChatteringMonkey

This cultural reification of being into something that is fixed and hence not process, I'll argue, may have something to do with the metaphysical notion of an ultimate goal or telos of being (as verb) which could, for one example, be equated with the Neoplatonic notion of the "the One" - which ceases to be a striving toward but instead is the ultimate and final actualization of all strivings. — javra

I think it may have come from the transition of a predominantly oral tradition to writing. If something is written down it is not a person telling something to another person in a specific context anymore, but something that is abstracted from its original context to be read be someone who doesn't necessarily knows anything about that.

It then seems plausible enough to infer from his total known fragments that for Heraclitus becoming has at its ultimate end this addressed "wisdom" which is "one only" and can go by the name of "Zeus" (although imperfectly). — javra

Zeus is the totality of becoming, the one thing that is, the thing that cannot be named, the logos etc. I think he was using common used terminology of the time to convey to his contempories what he was getting at.

Man is not rational; there is intelligence only in what encompasses him. — Heraclitus

A dry soul is wisest and best. (or) The best and wisest soul is a dry beam of light. — Heraclitus

I think he saw this becoming, the universe as patterned to some extend, and cognition of man driven by desire or attachment as distorting. We are rational insofar we are part of it, and can intuit or sense it if we are not overly driven by desire (dry soul). This is very similar to how they see it in eastern traditions like Daoism for instance.

javra

Zeus is the totality of becoming, the one thing that is, the thing that cannot be named, the logos etc. I think he was using common used terminology of the time to convey to his contempories what he was getting at. — ChatteringMonkey

While I agree with the second sentence, I don't think Heraclitus can be pinned down to what you say in the first.

There are passages such as this:

(1) It is wise to hearken, not to me, but to my Word, and to confess that all things are one.[18] R.P. 40. — Heraclitus

... but, then, the "all things are one" motif is readily open to interpretation - it can be found in multiple traditions and can at least in some such be easily interpreted to stipulate a priority monism {... which thereby connects all otherwise disparate existent things - this so as to result in statements such as "everything is one" or else "we are all one"}.

Whereas fragments such as these following are harder to assimilate into this notion of "Zeus is the cosmic totality of becoming as the only thing that is one":

(97) Man is called a baby by God, even as a child by a man. R. P. 45.

(98, 99) The wisest man is an ape compared to God, just as the most beautiful ape is ugly compared to man.

(110) And it is law, too, to obey the counsel of one. R. P. 49 a. — Heraclitus

Especially when analyzing the last given fragment - and in assuming that Heraclitus was not an ignoramus in his aphorisms - in which way can one make sense of "and it is law, too, to obey the council of [the cosmic totality of all that is]"?

The totality of all that exists is itself fire, perpetual transformations of constant strife between opposites. It so far to me makes no sense to then affirm that it too is law/logos (itself here appearing unchanging) to obey the counsel of "dyadic opposites in strife in their cosmic totality" (in contrast to obeying some aspects of the total at expense of others - or, what still seems to me more likely, obeying "Zeus" / God (per the quotes above) as that only given which is nondualistic and hence one)

Can you then make sense of how one goes about obeying the council of "the cosmic totality of dyadic opposites in perpetual strife (of which one oneself is an aspect of)"?

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At any rate, I don't see how my previously offered inference can be ruled out via Heraclitus's own fragments. Again, so far finding the inference offered plausible, albeit not the only one possible.

180 Proof

Substance dualism does not deny a medium of interaction. The medium is the third element ... — Metaphysician Undercover

If so, what is it? (i.e.bad hoc substance(s) like e.g. aether? phlogiston? divine will?) Btw, "the third element" means something other than – more than – "substancce dualism". Multiply(ing) entities beyond necessity (Ockham). :roll:

ChatteringMonkey

becoming does not logically entail a completely permanent relativism wherein there is nothing for all of this becoming to eventually become. — javra

This universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been is, and will be -- an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures. — Heraclitus

It doesn't logically entail it no, but Heraclitus seems to have thought otherwise.

Heraclitus, or at least his known fragments, are not very explicit about the philosophical working which Heraclitus espoused. Nevertheless, one will find in Heraclitus in quite explicit manners the notion of something which is - i.e., some being per se - which is not in duality which its opposite and hence is not in a state of perpetually changing: — javra

The boundary line of evening and morning is the Bear; and opposite the Bear is the boundary of bright Zeus. — Heraclitus

Dyēus seems to reference the sky-father/God. What that exactly means for Heraclitus I'm not sure, but you may be right that it's not necessarily the totality of becoming.

Human nature has no real understanding; only the divine nature has it.

Listening not to me but to the Logos, it is wise to acknowledge that all things are one.

Wisdom is one and unique; it is unwilling and yet willing to be called by the name of Zeus.

Wisdom is one ---- to know the intelligence by which all things are steered through all things. — Heraclitus

Does the personification mean anything, in the sense of having agency or will? Or is it rather a naturalistic/pantheistic god?

"unwilling and yet willing"?

Wayfarer

A mental event doesn't cause motion by exerting force in space -- very good. But it "operates"? What is that? Isn't this a placeholder term for something we don't yet know how to talk about? The mind doesn't push on the body -- right. But it's "a way of being and acting"? Well . . . OK, but are we really saying anything, by saying this? — J

Excellent question. You're right to question "operates"—it is a placeholder. But that’s because our vocabulary is constrained by a model of causation that evolved to describe levers and collisions, not meaning and intention. To speak of "a way of being and acting" is to point to an integrated form of life, not a discrete event or causal vector.

I'll refer to Steve Talbott, a philosopher of biology with whom I became acquainted through his essays in The New Atlantis. He tackles this problem in an essay (or book chapter), From Physical Causes to Organisms of Meaning:

We commonly explain occurrences by saying one thing happened because of — due to the cause of — something else. But we can invoke very different sorts of causes in this way. For example, there is the because of physical law (The ball rolled down the hill because of gravity) and the because of reason (He laughed at me because I made a mistake). The former hinges upon the kind of necessity we commonly associate with physical causation; the latter has to do with what makes sense within a context of meaning.

'Within a context of meaning' is the key term. Physics per se negates or brackets out context so as to arrive at an exact formulation describing the motions of bodies universally (regardless of context). That is why physicalism posits that the universe as 'devoid of inherent meaning' - it has set it aside or bracketed out context and meaning so as to arrive at the putative 'view from nowhere' which seeks explanations solely in terms of mechanical causes (which has been undermined by the 'observer problem' which is precisely one of context and meaning, but we'll leave that aside here.)

(Galiliean) science was born from the decision to objectify, namely to select the elements of experience that are invariant across persons and situations. Its aim is to formulate universal truths, namely truths that can be accepted by anyone irrespective of one’s situation. Therefrom, the kind of truths science can reach is quite peculiar : they take the form of universal and necessary connections between phenomena (the so-called scientific laws). — Michel Bitbol, On the Radical Self-Referentiality of Consciousness

And, as Wittgenstein observes (TLP 6.371), 'At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.'

That's the issue in a nutshell. But this 'separation' hasn't yet occured in Aristotle, for whom final causation provides another level of causal relationship, and precisely in the context of meaning-making In Aristotle’s schema, final causes are not mystical but intelligible—explanations in terms of ends, purposes, or functions. The question “What is it for?” is a valid form of causation, but that’s precisely what modern physics has trained itself not to ask.

What I’m proposing is that reasons operate as causes, not by exerting force, but by shaping intentionality within a context of meaning. This kind of causation isn’t mechanical but rational: it explains action by appeal to what makes sense to an agent, not what impinges on a body.

Hence the category mistake implied by wondering how res cogitans can, say, 'make my arm move'. It puts the mind on the same level as the objects of physics - reduces it, in other words.

javra

becoming does not logically entail a completely permanent relativism wherein there is nothing for all of this becoming to eventually become. — javra

This universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been is, and will be -- an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures. — Heraclitus

It doesn't logically entail it no, but Heraclitus seems to have thought otherwise. — ChatteringMonkey

In all references I so far know of (e.g. 1; and e.g. 2), the Heraclitus fragment you've mentioned is devoid of the hyphenation between "be" and "an". This can change tthe meaning of the fragment significantly - so that the fragment can indeed be aligned to a notion of priority monism: All that is is therefore not made by any man or god - both being aspects of the logos/fire - such that for as long as the universe/existence is "it always has been is and will be an ever-living fire (etc.)". This with the "one" previously mentioned yet referencing its ultimate origin in a priority monism fashion.

But please do reference the fragment with the given hyphenation inserted if you believe the hyphenation is original, or else essential, to Heraclitus's fragment.

I haven't read Heraclitus's fragments in full for some time, BTW, but I don't remember reading anything that would contradict this plausibility of him being a priority monist. That said, I might of course be wrong.

Does the personification mean anything, in the sense of having agency or will? Or is it rather a naturalistic/pantheistic god?

"unwilling and yet willing"? — ChatteringMonkey

It's again speculative inference - a best conjecture based on his fragments - but if Heraclitus in fact did have in mind a priority monism, then this "God / Zeus' he addresses would not be any deity whatsoever but, instead, would be in general keeping with what the Neoplatonists addressed as the One as the source of all things.

Metaphysician Undercover

If so, what is it? — 180 Proof

Exactly as I said:

The world we know, is the medium. — Metaphysician Undercover

There are two distinct aspects of the world we know, one being known as material bodies, the other as mind and ideas. Each requires a distinct "substance" to support logically (justify), its reality. The world we know, as we know it, is the interaction, therefore the medium, between these two substances.

"Substance" in Philosophical Discourse

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