Aristotle, The Categories | Primary and Secondary Substance | Philosophy Core Concepts
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- Опубликовано: 11 июл 2024
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This video focuses on Aristotle's work, the Categories, and examines his distinction in chapter 5 of the distinction between primary and secondary substances. Primary substances are existing individual things, which function as the underlying subjects that other things either are in or are predicated of. Secondary substances include species and genera, and are not substances in a full sense of the term.
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Hi Gregory, I'm taking a philosophy 101 course online right now and I just wanna say that these videos have saved my life, thank you for speaking like a person and not a confusing old book lol
You're very welcome!
Incredibly helpful. You are a very good teacher. Thank you!
You're very welcome!
You are also a very good teacher, Matt!
I feel like half of my philosophy profs don't actually want us to figure this stuff out. They often word it in a way that is more confusing than the text and I genuinely don't understand why. You make everything so clear!
Well, that might be a sign that they themselves don't understand what they're teaching
@@GregoryBSadler As a Psychology student, I can confirm that this is the case.
@@E-H_Psychology_Student You can confirm it's the case for the small sample you've encountered so far
@@GregoryBSadler Absolutely, I can't wait to encounter many more professors who specialize in Philosophy & Theology. Thank you so much for posting these videos. They are a wellspring of joy!
Thanks a lot Greg! Great explanations!!! God bless!!
You're welcome!
Hey, I’m taking Coursera’s Aristotle course, and this has deacribed and helped so well. My brain works on concrete examples, but the overused man and white was not enough, but your lecture helped. THANK you!!! 🌟
Glad the videos are helpful for you. I'll actually have a course on the Categories coming out this summer
Thank you. This is helpful.
Glad to read it
Thank you sir
You're welcome!
Thank you
You’re welcome, Mark
Hi professor,
Something that’s stumped me for a while is the characterization of ‘species’ as having a fixed character (i.e., being once removed from the primary substance). Going back to your ‘hammer’ example, if there were to be a specialization of the practice of hammering, thus resulting in various kinds of hammers (e.g., sledge, ball-peen, claw, etc.) would these, then, become species? If so, wouldn’t ‘hammer’ then become a genus?
Does Aristotle or anybody after him deal with this problem?
Thanks for the video!
Sure, they can be sub-species then, right?
Hi Gregory. Do you believe this theory of substance still has any remaining worth? Or has Locke's substratum made it redundant?
You're asking whether I think the overall Aristotelian conception of substance has any remaining worth? If it doesn't it certainly isn't because Locke's conception is a better one.
But, yes, I'd say it's something plausible, and well worth studying
No, you misunderstand me. The shortfalls of Locke's empty substratum appears to apply to Aristotle--making them both redundant. Seems like quite a hard thing to defend.
I understood what you wrote in your first post. You might have intended to say something quite different, as you succeeded in articulating in your second.
Defend it, don't defend it - that's up to you. I'm more interested in understanding, and then presenting, in these videos
hi gregory, but what is aristotle's aim when he is diving substances to primary and secondary? if there is not any aim then I don't understand how we can adapt this information into our lives, into our understanding of the world etc. ? it seemed to me like it is diving unicorns to 2 different groups :D
If that's really your view, then don't bother with this text
Hello Dr. Sadler. If primary substance is this human and secondary substance is human as a species or animal as a genus does that mean that I'm made of 2 substances, both my own primary substance and the secondary substance of human? Does that mean each thing is a composite of 2 substances ?
Nope
If I should not make this question, please let me know, but I am curious.
If primary substances are one while secondary substances are many(because the rest are instances or predicates of that substance), what does that play with the notion of Being? I understand that's not Aristotle's scope, but I wonder how both philosophical views play alongside each other? If all entities are a fragmentation of a unitarian Being, per the pre-socratics, and the "beingness" of entities is because of a participation of Beingness Itself, then Being Itself would be the primary substance, and the rest secondary substances, would they not?
How does that play along with, for example, individual human beings? Am I a primary substance(which is how I seem to myself) or am I a secondary substance in relation to Being Itself as the primary and One substance(as it seems to me, following both lines of thought).
Hey Dr. Sadler, how can there be such a thing as secondary substance if substance can't be in or of something?
Hey Benjamin, start by reading the text.
@@GregoryBSadler I read the text, honestly, I think it's a bit contradictory.
"A substance-that which is called a substance most strictly, primarily, and most of all-is that which is neither said of a subject nor in a subject, e.g. the individual man or the individual horse."
Aristotle is saying that substance is something that is neither in nor of something, so how exactly can a substance be contained in a secondary substance?
@@Benjamin-ml7sv I think you probably don't yet understand the term 'secondary".
So then would wood itself be a primary substance? And what if the wood is turned into a table would that still be a primary substance? Or would the tree were both generated from be the primary substance and then wood and the table be secondary substance?
You're mixing up the concepts. A block of wood would be a primary substance. So would a table be
So the whole tree leading to the table would be a primary substance? Or the tree just up to the wood?
Wait, so everything would be a primary substance because it is all originating from the tree? Meaning that it's not using any other let's say "atom" to change it completely
@@lesleyflores4917 No. First step: read and reread the text. Second: don't overcomplicate the ideas by trying to make them into something Aristotle doesn't say.
Primary substances are individual objects. That's there in the text
Ohh okay okay, thank you
Great lecture.
Pretty funny mistranscription by RUclips at 2:00 - 2:13…
“…species and genera these are actually coming from Latin terms in a spec AIDS and gayness which are translating a dose and
gayness and these these are going to be used quite a bit.” Like, what?!?!
That last idea confused me: whether if one human being left in the universe would be both the species and the individual, both the same thing. You said that an individual human is not the same thing as the species and that we could at least conceive of other human beings existing or remember that they had existed in the past. But earlier, regarding the Dodo, you mentioned that using such mental constructs of the species is not the same thing as the actual species because it’s something that describes the species and is not the species itself. I’m confused as to whether it’s plausible for the last remaining individual substance of its kind to become both individual and species.
It’s an individual of that species. There could potentially be more or even none. Try not to confuse yourself
I have not yet formally studied Aristotle, however I can say he is the only philosopher that I look up to, i.e., the only one who has built a complete and logically coherent system starting from a point of view that he and I (and all individuals) have in common: common sense. Most great philosophers start on the level of abstractions, while Aristotle starts with the senses. Starting from the senses, Aristotle moves in one direction to theoretically explain reality, and in the opposite direction to explain man's practical relationship to reality. Understanding that much about Aristotle, here is my comment on this video presentation.
I personally think that primary substance is--to put it in modern terms--what we call energy, it is that which exist absolutely, as the unmoved mover. Secondary substance is energy as manifested as structure and action which is what we today call matter. We understand energy to be that which is "in" the thing, or what Aristotle called the "species". Matter, unlike energy, admits to having the attributes of quality, quantity, place, displacement, change, relationships and other Aristotelian categories. These categories then used for identifying a thing, i.e., for differentiating one thing from another. What we call "knowledge", is to speak of the identity of material things as the "predication of the subject". What is in the subject is its energy. But what is predicated/knowable of the subject, is the identification of its attributes.
Consciousness is a process of identifying the attributes of things that exist in reality. The identity of a thing which does not exist is to falsify reality. And even though we cannot know a thing "in" itself as it exist in reality, we can, nevertheless know a thing by its categories: its quality, its quantity, its position, its displacement, and its relationships with other things. In short, we can know how it manifest itself.
A thing's qualities identify its species in reality and its differentiation in the mind. It's quantities identify its genera in reality and it's integration in the mind. It's place and displacement identify it's action in reality and it's potential behavior as predictable in the mind. Thus, what can be said about a thing, (i.e., predicated about a thing) is something about it's "being" or about it's "action" which correlates with reality. Identifying the "being" of a thing is mostly a process of deductive logic (mental acts of prior knowledge). Identifying the "action" of a thing is mostly a process of inductive logic (mental acts of posterior knowledge).
Of course, my interpretation is only the effort of a beginner, but the purpose of my comment is to demonstrate that understanding Aristotle requires one to think for himself. Yet, all other philosophers require the student to enter into that philosopher's mind while leaving one's own mind behind.
I'd say that while the view you've taken from somewhere about other philosophers, Aristotle, and common sense, is certainly one that's out there, it's pretty off. You'll discover that as you spend time studying philosophers. And I say that as someone who really does consider Aristotle a great philosopher.
What you’ve described sounds more like Thomas Reid in some ways than Aristotle
Still dont understand what the secondary substance is
Well, you've got the text and the video, and there's plenty of other resources online, so if it's something you want to understand, and you keep at it, I'm sure you will.
If you're interested in 1-on-1 tutorials, here's my page for that - reasonio.wordpress.com/tutorials/
Gregory B. Sadler Nevermind i think i kinda understand it. I was wondering if you can explain this: So according to Aristotel substance is created from form and matter. 1)The mix between form and matter are stuff which we see every day (basic physical objects). 2) Just matter (prime matter) is nothing because it doesnt have a form. 3)And the pure form or actuality is what? Ideas maybe?
@King Nevermore
1.) Yes, any object that you can grasp with your senses are primary substances.
2.) Prime matter is not 'nothing' strictly speaking, it's a theoretical notion used, although not explicitly, by Aristotle to think dialectically about the consequences that would logically follow if one were to assert that 'matter' (the underlying subject of qualitative change or 'becoming' in primary substance) constituted Substance in itself, or what it means 'to be', which Aristotle considers in Book Zeta of the Metaphysics. However, the 'matter' you're likely talking about is not separable in existing objects; primary substances cannot have their matter or form separated or they would cease to be. Rather, you separate them in thought in order to analyze them. Even in thought though, matter is not nothing relative to the substance it constitutes as a part, otherwise it would not make sense to include it. Matter rather constitutes the object as part of its nature and the source of its capacity (potential) to change its state (actuality) through its own natural development, outside causes, or itself insofar as it is other (for example, if I considered myself in thought as requiring food, I am in the process of causing a change in myself).
3.) There are only 'pure' forms in thought, and even then they would not be considered 'pure' in the Kantian sense, for example. Moreover, there's no transcendent realm in which Forms exist in themselves for Aristotle, that's the sort of 'Platonism' that he tries to combat in other books. Forms exist as 'actual' insofar as they subsist as an active or present state in the substances that they are predicated (said) of, and forms exist as potential insofar they have the potential to become active due to them being something that the nature of the substance makes it capable of (e.g. I am capable of having long hair, but I don't right now). Finally, the 'Form' of a thing may be considered its 'essence' (the 'what it is') and once again only exists in the things themselves, even though we can define the essence scientifically either in thought or expressed in writing, for example.