Skip to main content

Hypokeimenon and the concreta

Thinking about hypokeimenon in Aristotle and the need for something that hooks whatever exists to something concrete (a material aitia). Substance - as opposed to, say, actual entities - is not enough to hook anything to concreta as abstract things can be substantial (as they are for Aristotle) and mere permanence under variations in time is not enough to make anything a proper concrete object (Leibniz had substances without proper concrete objects). In fact, I believe hypokeimenon should be thought of as something that breaks the Leibniz's law. It should in fact enable indiscernibles to be different. I would venture that a conception of substrata that is compatible with Leibniz's law (specifically with the identity of indiscernibles) is not doing justice to what substrata should be. The appeal to matter as an hypokeimenon (mentioned by Aristotle himself in the Book Alpha) is an attempt to appeal directly to what is concrete. If properly understood, it enables indiscernible to be different because matter cannot be translated into properties, the material constitution of something is not a property (and this is why Kripke takes "this table" to be necessarily tied to its material constitution - its material constitution is not a description that can be different in a different possible world, in another possible world the table has to have the same material hypokeimenon).

Other accounts of the hypikeimenon seem to do the same trick. Duns Scotus' haecceitas appeals to demonstratives while a Kripkean take would appeal to proper names. In both cases, it is clear that only among concreta there are particulars that could have logical demonstratives and logical proper names (in the sense that these things would not be explained away by descriptions or bundles of properties). Leibniz, to be sure, would have Adam, for example, as no more than an abbreviation for a collection of properties - including, famously, being a sinner. Proper names and demonstratives are part of a vocabulary that doesn't make sense outside the realm of concreta - the realm of being situated, of being indexed, of being in a place with respect to whatever else exists. This is the realm where to be is to meet whatever else there is. Situation is crucially concrete, it is an affair of objects and ultimately alien to properties as such (the time of objects is irrevocably A-ist, while properties, in that sense, can have a temporality that is reduced to a B-series).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hunky, Gunky and Junky - all Funky Metaphysics

Been reading Bohn's recent papers on the possibility of junky worlds (and therefore of hunky worlds as hunky worlds are those that are gunky and junky - quite funky, as I said in the other post). He cites Whitehead (process philosophy tends to go hunky) but also Leibniz in his company - he wouldn't take up gunk as he believed in monads but would accept junky worlds (where everything that exists is a part of something). Bohn quotes Leibniz in On Nature Itself «For, although there are atoms of substance, namely monads, which lack parts, there are no atoms of bulk, that is, atoms of the least possible extension, nor are there any ultimate elements, since a continuum cannot be composed out of points. In just the same way, there is nothing greatest in bulk nor infinite in extension, even if there is always something bigger than anything else, though there is a being greatest in the intensity of its perfection, that is, a being infinite in power.» And New Essays: ... for there is nev
1 comment
Read more

Talk on ultrametaphysics

 This is the text of my seminar on ultrametaphysics on Friday here in Albuquerque. An attempt at a history of ultrametaphysics in five chapters Hilan Bensusan I begin with some of the words in the title. First, ‘ultrametaphysics’, then ‘history’ and ‘chapters’. ‘Ultrametaphysics’, which I discovered that in my mouth could sound like ‘ autre metaphysics’, intends to address what comes after metaphysics assuming that metaphysics is an endeavor – or an epoch, or a project, or an activity – that reaches an end, perhaps because it is consolidated, perhaps because it has reached its own limits, perhaps because it is accomplished, perhaps because it is misconceived. In this sense, other names could apply, first of all, ‘meta-metaphysics’ – that alludes to metaphysics coming after physics, the books of Aristotle that came after Physics , or the task that follows the attention to φύσις, or still what can be reached only if the nature of things is considered. ‘Meta-m
Post a Comment
Read more

Memory assemblages

My talk here at Burque last winter I want to start by thanking you all and acknowledging the department of philosophy, the University of New Mexico and this land, as a visitor coming from the south of the border and from the land of many Macroje peoples who themselves live in a way that is constantly informed by memory, immortality and their ancestors, I strive to learn more about the Tiwas, the Sandia peoples and other indigenous communities of the area. I keep finding myself trying to find their marks around – and they seem quite well hidden. For reasons to do with this very talk, I welcome the gesture of directing our thoughts to the land where we are; both as an indication of our situated character and as an archive of the past which carries a proliferation of promises for the future. In this talk, I will try to elaborate and recommend the idea of memory assemblage, a central notion in my current project around specters and addition. I begin by saying that I
Post a Comment
Read more