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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