Extract

Arkadiusz CHRUDZIMSKI

University of Szczecin

In this paper I am going to analyze Ingarden’s concept of substance. Ingarden shares a good deal of broadly Aristotelian intuitions, but some aspects of his theory make it more similar to the doctrine of Duns Scotus. According to Ingarden substances are not mere bundles of properties. He argues that the very form of property requires a bearer; and the bearer is not a bare substrate, but is qualitatively determined by its constitutive nature.

The notion of substance

In this paper I use the word “substance” in the broadly Aristotelian sense. Aristotle understood substances as basic particulars, enjoying a distinguished kind of ontological independency, and his paradigm examples of this category are living organisms such as cats, horses, and human beings. Of course the full blown Aristotelian concept of substance – more precisely: his concept of the “first substance” – depends in many respects on his particular metaphysical decisions. So, as Aristotle didn’t believe in platonic, free floating universals, substances have in his system the strongest possible kind of being. They are claimed to be instantiations of natural kinds (Aristotelian “substantial forms” or “second substances”). Their principium individuationis isn’t based on any qualitative characteristics, but rather on a certain puzzling, non qualitative, metaphysical principle called “the first matter”, encapsulating in his system both potentiality and variability.

But beside these idiosyncratic features of the Aristotelian concept of substance there are without doubt some common-sense intuitions constituting...