annas, j, individuals in aristotle's categories - two queries, 1974

7/30/2019 Annas, J, Individuals in Aristotle's Categories - Two Queries, 1974

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Individuals in Aristotle's"Categories":

Two Queries

JULIA ANNAS

r. Barrington Jones, in his recent article in Phronesis,11 has sugges-

teda new way of solving the standing debate about the nature of

non-substance individuals in the Categories. Mr. Jones' article

suggests some exciting new approaches to the Categories, but I would

like to put forward two difficulties I find with the way he proposesto cut through the main problem.

In theCategories,

but nowhereelse,

there seem to be individuals in

non-substance categories, corresponding to primary substances. What

sort of thing are these non-substance individuals? According to

Ackrill2 they are non-repeatable individual instances of (for example) a

property. An example would be the particular instance of white

exhibited by this paper: it is peculiar to this piece of paper and will

perish when it does. According to Owen3 they are the most specific

types of (for example) a property. The white exhibited by this pieceof paper and all the paper in the same batch would be an example: it

can continue to exist when this piece of paper perishes, as long as some

other piece of paper from the batch continues to exhibit it.

I shall not go into the controversy that has arisen over these dif-

fering interpretations of Aristotle. I have the more limited objectiveof examining the way Jones proposes to restate the terms of the debate.

If Jones is right the alternatives just sketched represent a false dicho-

tomy : the new solution supersedes them both. It is merely the proffer-ed new solution that is my concern.

Jones begins from the fact that "the term 'individual' is glossed as`what is one in number"',4 and goes on to explain this in terms of

Aristotle's analysis of "one" in Metaphysics 1.5 In I Aristotle analyses


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"one" by reference to counting, and in the process gives a clear sense

to his statements elsewhere that number is relative. The one or unit

that is the basis of enumeration is relative to the number that is

counted. A one or unit is some object taken as a unit in counting (as

one decides what is to be a unit of measurement), and one can countdifferent numbers depending on the unit one takes.7

7(The many

interesting problems raised by the I analysis must likewise be left

aside for now).

If the I analysis is applied to the Categories problem, we seem to get

illumination at once. Take an instance of which Jones

translates "literacy". What sort of item is an individual instance of

literacy? If we bear the I analysis in mind, the question we are directed

to is: How can we court instances of literacy? And this question, as,Jones points out, can only be answered by counting literate people.I can only conclude that there are two instances of literacy in this

room rather than one if there are two literate people rather than one.

"The basis of the individuality of nonsubstantial individuals is to be

sought in the individuality of the substantial individuals in which

they are present".8 But the type of non-substantial individuals is

something not necessarily unique to one individual. While this instance

of literacy is one in number because it is found in one man, it is literacy

because it is a type of item that can recur in more than one man.

With Jones' analysis, the problems of the traditional debate as it

stands melt away, or rather they are superseded. There is a sense in

which non-substantial individuals are, and a sense in which they are

not, particular to individual substances; so to debate whether they

are or not is mistaken. This new solution to an old problem is obviously

very attractive, and also very Aristotelian in spirit. There are two

points, however, at which I feel dubious.


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1. Can the I analysis be aPPlied to the Categories?

Jones assumes that "one in number", used to "gloss" the term "indi-

vidual", can be taken as a definition of "individual", or at least some

kind of analysis of what "individual" is to be taken to mean. But thetext of the Categories does not seem to offer enough suppoit for this.

At 1 b 6-7 and 3 b 12 Aristotle talks about items that are indivisible

and one in number, with no indication that "one in number"

alone suffices as an explanation of what "individual" means. At

4 a 10-21 substance is said to be distinguished by being able to receive

contraries while remaining numerically one and the same. Again,

however, there is no indication that the two parts of this can be taken

separately, that individuals in non-substance categories will be

numerically one though not able to receive contraries. So the Categoriesitself offers insufficient grounds for maintaining that being numerically

one is any kind of criterion for being an individual in any category.

But even if the Categories text does not itself suggest the I analysis,

might it still not be appropriate to apply it to the Categories ? Mightit not be a genuinely Aristotelian solution, though not one that Aristo--

tle puts forward in so many words? I do not think that it is, for two

reasons.

Firstly, while Aristotle's analysis of "one" in I does contain theabove analysis of "one in number" in terms of counting, Aristotle

nowhere distinguishes this problem from another problem about being

"one", namely, what it is to be unitary. In I and in A 6, the entry in

his philosophical lexicon for "one", he discusses the two problems

together without the faintest attempt to separate them. Being one in

number is never distinguished from being one in genus, or one in kind,

although the latter two concern a thing's unity, not its countability,

and the two are logically quite distinct.9 No doubt the use of the Greekword ev was partly responsible for Aristotle's failure to see that "one

in number" is quite different from his other senses of "one", which


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concern a thing's unity. In Greek it is not at once obvious .that the

question, "Is this thing ev?" could be asking for two quite different

types of answer: that the thing is one of something (and so a unit for

counting), or that the thing is unitary in some way. Aristotle's failure

to distinguish the two types of question comes out very clearly when

he asks the Platonists, "In virtue of what are (ideal) mathematical

magnitudes one?"10 He compares the ideal magnitudes unfavourablywith animate substances in respect of "being one":

It is reasonable for things round us to be one in virtue of soul or part of

soul or something else - otherwise there is not one but many, and the thingis divided up. But these objects are divisible and quantitative. What can

be responsible for their being one and holding together?

Aristotle is conflating two criticisms here: i) animate substances have

a clear principle ofunity (soul) which is lacking for ideal magnitudes. ii)with substances we know clearly when we have one and when we have

two, i.e. they have clear conditions of individuation which are lacking

in the case of ideal magnitudes. The problems of countability and of

unity are completely conflated as the problem of "being ev".

This suggests that Aristotle was most probably not aware of the

potentialities of the I analysis for solving the problem of what it is to

be a reidentifiable individual. In I, where he is thinking about the

problem of being ev, he achieves an analysis of what it is to be one in

number which is still interesting; but he never succeeds in making a

clear aPPlication of this particular analysis, distinct from the problems

of unity which he also considers under the heading of being sv.

It is certainly puzzling, to an unprejudiced philosophical observer,

that Aristotle never makes the sort of application of the I analysis

that Jones wants to make. Why does Aristotle never apply this

powerful tool of analysis, when the results are so illuminating, andobviate a difficult and perhaps undecidable problem? Moreover, not

only the Categories problem but difficulties in the Metaphysics over

individuation would have yielded to such an application of the I

analysis. Yet it never occurs to Aristotle. Part at ileast of the explanation

of this must lie in the fact that Aristotle never consciously distinguishes

questions of unitariness from questions of numerical oneness."


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But this makes it somewhat dubious to apply the I analysis

to the Categories problem as if this were a solution that Aristotle

envisaged or could have envisaged; for the application Jones wants to

make concerns only numerical oneness and is quite separate from

questions of unity.

The second reason for doubting whether the I analysis can be applied

to the Categories problem is that Aristotle does once consider the latter

problem, somewhat inconclusively, and the solution he toys with has

no reference to the I analysis.

At 1089 b 24-8 Aristotle takes up the problem of individuals in

non-substance categories.

In the case of the other categories, there is another difficulty in the ques-

tion ofhow there can be many items. Because they are not separable, itis through their underlying subject's coming to be and being many that

qualities and quantities are many. But there ought to be a type ofmatter

for each category, except that it cannot be separated from the actual ob-

jects (substances).

Here Aristotle says that, in effect, items in non-substance categories

are individuated via the individuation of substances. His words are

unfortunately vague enough to leave room for dispute as to which of

the traditional rival interpretations they support. The interestingpoint is that Aristotle clearly thinks that the problem should be

solved with the aid of the concept of matter.12 Insofar as he is aware of

the problem Jones deals with, he proposes to deal with it, not in Jones'

way by applying the I analysis, but by using the concept of matter.

This is in spite of the fact that "matter" becomes a rather unclear

notion, to say the least, outside the category of substance. (What sort

of thing could the matter of properties, or of relatives, be?) The fact

that in this

passage,

in which the

theoryof

categories

is

being putto


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polemical work, Aristotle never thinks of applying the I analysis

strongly suggests that it is not right to solve the Categories problem

by appeal to I.?3.

2. Paronymy.

Jones claims that his solution of the Categories problem also makes it

possible to appreciate the true importance of paronymy, and under-

stand it as something genuinely co-ordinate to homonymy and syno-

nymy, as chapter 1 of the Categories suggests.14 Paronymy is the

relation between two items when one is referred to by a noun and the

other by an adjective inflected from the noun, (or a cognate verb).The property named by the noun is "in" the items to which the ad-

jective inflected from the noun applies.

Jones links paronymy with his analysis of the dependence of the

individuation of non-substance individuals on that of individual sub-

stances. "The point of paronymy .. is to licence the inference from a

certain number of literate individuals to that number of literacies".?5

Paronymy makes it clear how "one in number" as an account of what

an individual is, can apply to non-substance individuals. An individual

instance of literacy exists in an individual who can be called literate,

and the two are paronyms.

However, as Aristotle presents paronymy in the Categories, any

inference-licence would seem to go the other way. According to Aristo-

tle (1 a 12-15) the literate man is so called from literacy, the brave


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man from bravery. So far from being able to infer to an instance of

bravery f rom being able to call a man brave, the suggestion is that if

anything we call a man brave because we can "name" bravery, which

is present in him. It is not even certain that Aristotle has in mind

that we can "name" the instance of bravery in a man (in that case,

paronymy would presuppose an account of the individuation of non-

substances, rather than licencing one, but there would be a connexion).

It is possible that paronymy has no connexion at all with this problem,

and that Aristotle is simply not aware of the problem that if we

"name" a brave man from bravery we are more likely to have an

instance of the property in mind (the bravery in him) than the prop-

erty itself.

Whichever of these alternatives is right, it is certainly the case thatwherever paronymy is mentioned in Aristotle the "direction of deriv-

ativeness" is from noun to adjective, not from adjective to noun as

Jones' account would require. 16 There is one exception, at Physics

207 b 8-10, where Aristotle says that perhaps "three", "two" and all

other number-terms are 7tOCP

annas, j, individuals in aristotle's categories - two queries, 1974

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