Joachim Darjes: Elements of metaphysics 1 - Forceful being

We have been studying what Darjes calls primary philosophy, but we finally come to his ontology, when we see his definition of an entity (ens). In effect, by an entity Darjes means something that is not accident, that is, which can be in itself. What this being in itself means, according to Darjes, is at least that in the same place as one entity exists, no other entity can exist. Thus, impenetrability of an entity is an ontological characteristic for Darjes, while accidents might share the same place by occurring in same entity. An entity need not exist, but it can be a merely possible entity. If it does exist, Darjes calls it a substance.

Darjes notes that all substances can contain something which is a reason for something else being what it is. In other words, they are forces that can act on other things. Now, because this activity is an essential part of what substances are, they can also be divided according to their level of activity. The highest kind of substance is completely active and needs at most something to remove obstacles from its way to start acting – they are what Darjes calls an effective conatus. At the lowest rang of substances are completely passive substances, which require some efficient reason to make them act – these are what Darjes calls bare potentia. Between these two extremes fall cases where substances are in some sense passive and in some sense active – these substances Darjes calls either ineffective conatuses or potentias with conatus (it is difficult to say whether Darjes means these two to be separate groups, depending on whether the emphasis is on the active or the passive side of the substance or whether they are just two names for the same thing).

Darjes does not just distinguish between different kinds of forces or substances, but also between different kinds of actions these substances can make occur. The actions might happen within the substances or be intrinsic to it – these would be immanent actions. Then again, the actions might also be extrinsic to the substance – these would be transitive actions. Of course, Darjes also admits that some actions might be partially immanent and partially transitive.

Like all Wolffians, Darjes is a nominalist who insists that no universals can exist. Hence, all substances must be individuals. Although substances cannot then be divided into universals and individuals, Darjes does divide them into complete and incomplete substances, depending on whether a substance acts or not. He also notes that a substance can be variably or contingently complete, if it sometimes happens to act and sometimes not. Even if a substance would be contingently complete, it still might be a necessary existent, since there is no necessity that a necessary existent would always act.

A notion near to completeness is the subsistence of a substance. Darjes defines subsistent substance as a complete substance that is not sustained by something else. Here, sustaining means a relation in which one force determines another to act in a precise manner. Thus, subsisting substance would act and not be acted upon by other substances.

Darjes goes on to define states of an entity. In effect, these are nothing more than collections of some determinations that the entity has. For instance, being a substance or substantiality and subsistence are states that some entity might have. Depending on the determinations making up the state, the state can be internal, external or mixed, and it can be necessary or contingent. For instance, if there are some entities existing absolutely necessarily, then they have an absolutely necessary state of substantiality. With contingent entities, on the other hand, their state of substantiality is also contingent and in fact depends ultimately on some absolutely necessary substance.

Darjes does not remain on mere level of definitions, but tries to determine some general characteristics true of all substances, based mostly on the principle of sufficient reason. The most important conclusion is that all substances must persevere in their state of action or non-action, until some further reason makes them change their state. Thus, an action continues, until something comes to impede it.

Darjes also spends some time considering how to quantify forces. His idea is to measure forces through the actions they can make happen. For instance, if two passive substances have the same quantity of force is they are as quick in producing same actions, then they will produce same action in same time. Thus, by checking what the substances can achieve and how quickly they do it, one can compare the quantity of their forces with one another.

Baumgarten: Metaphysics – Definition of existence

One of the most perplexing parts of Wolff's ontology is his notion of determination – something that can be affirmed of a thing. Are these determinations subjective or objective? The definitions appear to support the former reading, but the way Wolff actually uses these determinations to define possible things seems to support the latter reading. Furthermore, it is unclear whether these determinations should be universals or abstract particulars, i.e. tropes. The most faithful reading would perhaps be to deny that determinations are either, since both universals and particulars are defined through the determinations. Still, they seem more like universals, since unlike with particulars, they could be joined with other determinations.

Whatever these determinations are, Baumgarten accepts the notion, although he defines it in a somewhat different manner. Something is determinate, Baumgarten says, when it has been posited as A or not-A. The term ”posited” might seem rather strange, and indeed it is so – it is not quite clear whether Baumgarten wants to say that something is affirmed as A or not-A or whether it merely is A or not-A or perhaps both. Still, what is posited in something determinate is then a determination. If the posited determination is positive, it is a reality, otherwise it is negation. Since it seems objectively quite hard to say, which predicates should be called positive and which negative, the division appears rather arbitrary – yet, it should not be just subjective, since Baumgarten clearly distinguishes cases, in which e.g. seemingly positive determinations are actually negative.

Baumgarten's manner of distinguishing various determinations appears familiar from Wolffian ontology. Determinations can belong to a thing either as the thing is in itself – then it a question of absolute or internal determinations – or then as the thing is with respect to other thing – then it is a question of relations or external determinations. The internal determinations of a thing are either ground for all other internal determinations – then they are essentials, sum of which forms an essence – while other internal determinations are affections. Affections are then either wholly grounded in essentials – then they are attributes – or not – then they are modes.

Now, Baumgarten notes that a possible thing must be something that can be regarded in itself or without any relations to other things – that is, a possibility must be something with at least a minimal identity, by which to regonise it. This is quite a remarkable suggestion that is not included, at least explicitly, in Wolff's ontology. The important consequence of this suggestion, on the other hand, is something that we find from Wolff. If something is possible, it must have some internal determinations, because without them we could not speak about anything, and since these determinations must be grounded on something, the possible thing must have an essence. In other words, all possible things should have an essence.

Clearly a thing with some essence could also be merely possible, since e.g. centaurs do have an essence without existing – this is something Wolff agrees upon. A natural question then is what makes something possible into something actual or existent. Wolff's answer is, briefly put, that it ultimately has something to do with God's decision to create just this particular world, but that it also lies beyond complete understanding of human beings. In this matter, Baumgarten deviates considerably from Wolffian example, although almost no one has recognised it.

Baumgarten almost equates the essence of a possible thing with its possibility. What about the rest of the internal determinations of a thing, especially its modes, which are not determined by mere essence? Simple, they are part of existence. More determinately, it is the sum of all the internal determinations that supposedly forms the existence of a thing. In other words, while all actual things clearly cannot have any more determinations and are in that sense complete, all possible things should also be in some measure incomplete or indeterminate.

Baumgarten's theory is remarkably curious, although even more curious is that Wolff has been considered to endorse this theory, at least implicitly. True, Wolff says that actual things are completely determinate, but he never affirms that all completely determinate things would be actual. In fact, Wolff identifies complete determination with another ontological notion, or individuality. As Wolff, for instance, accepts the existence of haecceitas, which might be described as an analogy of essence in individuals, it seems quite unreasonable to suppose that Wolff would have thought all individuals are actual.

Baumgarten, on the other hand, makes this bold move and declares all individuals to be existent, thus denying the possibility of merely possible individuals. One explanation might be that he has been led astray by the notion of positing in his definition of determinations. True, we human beings can posit some thing to be completely determinate, only if we can experience it and thus know that it exists. Yet, this does not mean that God with his infinite capacity of thinking – something which Baumgarten himself should believe in – could not think of a completely determinate individual, which still would not exist. It is then Baumgarten who has fallen for the old trick of confusing capacities of human understanding with the capacities of divine understanding – something, of which Kant was to later accuse his rationalist predecessors.

Fully determined individuals

In a couples of posts ago, I compared Wolffian things or possibilities with coherent lists of predicates or determinations, as Wolff calls them. Now, he also mentions the possibility that such a thing would be fully or in every possible manner determined. Wolff doesn't really explain what this means, but one might put it like this. Think the aforementioned lists as answers to multiple choice questionnaires, in which one can, with each question, choose one among many possibilities or leave the question unanswered. Clearly, there is the distinct possibility that all the questions of the questionnaire would be answered – then the answers would describe a fully determined entity.

This simile undoubtedly hinges on the assumption that all possible predicates in such lists could be ordered in the form of such a questionnaire – in effect, a space of possible predicates a thing can fulfill. Wolff himself just innocently accepts this possibility, and I shall also not pursue the question whether the assumption is as innocuous as it looks. Indeed, there is no need, as the notion of fully determinate list of predicates could be characterised even without the notion of such a questionnaire. Just think what adding a new predicate to a fully determined list would do: either it would contradict some combination of the other predicates in the list or then be deducible from such a combination. One need then only to take this characteristic as the defining feature of a fully determined thing.

Being fully determined is then what defines an individual thing, according to Wolff. In addition, being fully determined is also a necessary characteristic of all actual things, and indeed, one rarely sees e.g. otherwise featureless birds flying around. In effect, Wolff is here showing his nominalist leanings. Then again, Wolff clearly is not committed to the idea that full determination would define actuality, as some of his successors were to do. This leaves open the possibility of merely possible individuals that are not actualised (say, a person just like me, except with red hair).

Now, Wolff notes that one need not list all the predicates of an individual to define him. Just think of a triangle with all angles equal – we do not need to tell anymore that its sides are also equal, because this follows from the equality of its angles. Clearly then we could have a minimal set of predicates defining an individual entity – indeed, we could probably have many of them or it wouldn't be a unique set or list (for instance, in case of the triangle, the implication goes both ways, so we could as well begin with the equality of the sides). Such a minimal list would then define what could be called an individual essence, but which Wolff prefers to call by the medieval name haecceitas.

Just as we can distinguish those questionnaires that are fully completed, we can also talk about incomplete questionnaires or lists of predicates that can still be consistently augmented by truly new predicates. If a complete determination defined individuals, incomplete determination then defines genera and species. Wolff apparently doesn't use the modern idea of genera and species as sets of individuals or extensions of certain concepts. Instead, Wolffian genera might be called ”incomplete individuals”: we add some determinations to our would-be individual, but leave it otherwise hazy and vague. Of course, such a vague entity cannot really exist, just like there's no generic triangle, but it might be actualised in various individuals that have the exact properties this vague object is supposed to have. We might say the generic entities are fictional, but they are useful for bringing out the various groupings of individuals. Such a vague entity then has some essence, just like individual had its haecceitas: essence is similarly a minimal list of predicates for such a generic entity.

The genera and species or universals form then a hierarchy, arranged according to their level of determination. The ultimate bottom of this hierarchy is formed by individuals, the only truly actual aspect of the hierarchy. Furthermore, Wolff suggests that in well-planned hierarchy the genera correspond not just with some accidental combinations of characteristics, but reveal how the things are produced. In other words, individuals corresponding to same generic entity should have a similar genesis, just like two humans share some points as to how they have been generated. Furthermore, belonging to a certain genus should determine not just some determinate characteristics of a thing, but also all the possible manners how the thing can be modified.

So much for individuals, next time we shall consider Wolff's notion of necessity.

Christian Wolff: Remarks on Reasonable thoughts on God, the world and the human soul, also on all things in general - Fragments of ontology

It's hard to do commentary on another commentary – you are twice removed from the real meat of the problematic, and because the commentary itself has no clear organisation, there usually is no guiding thread to connect the various points. Thus, after reading the chapter on ontology I was left with mere crumbs that by themselves would not have the required length of a blog post. Still, I didn't want to make the time spend with Wolff's commentary go to waste, so I present some of these crumbs in a fragmentary fashion.

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One key point in the atheism dispute has been the notion of modalities: if Wolff says that events in the world are hypothetically necessary, doesn't this make his theory Spinozistic? Wolff's consideration of modalities here reveals his own belief – Wolff has to define modalities in this manner to avoid Spinoza's fatalism. That is, Spinoza could say only that possibility means something that has existed, will exist or does exist, which would make all possibilities become actual someday. Wolff's definition of possibility as non-contradictoriness allows the extension of possibility to be larger than the extension of past, present and future actuality. Thus, the only truly necessary thing for Wolff is God, who has no external cause, while other things require some previous cause for their actualisation. Interestingly, the tide of philosophy was to go backwards. What is true sense of possibility and necessity for Wolff, will be disparaged by Kant as a mere formal notion of modalities, while the mere hypothetical necessity and possibility in a world of Wolff are raised to the status of real or ontologically substantial modalities by Kant.

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Connected with the Wolffian theory of modalities is his notion of essences, which he clarifies in his commentary through a helpful simile: if I want to determine what a triangle is like, I need to only determine its essence, that is, two of its sides and the angle between them, because the rest of the triangle is determined through these measures. Unexpectedly, this very same example occurs in Hegel, when he explains how the sensuous side of a thing (say, a triangle) contains lot of surplus material that could be summarized through a lot simpler structure (in this case, through the three quantities). I suspect that Hegel didn't bother to read that much Wolff, so the coincidence is even more surprising.

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Wolff's nominalism is a feature I did not emphasize the first time around: he explicitly says that universals or genera and species are mere summaries for similarities between things (A and B are both ostriches  because they resemble one another and all the other ostriches . An interesting question is then how the similarity is to be defined, and in general, how things are distinguished from one another. Now, in some places Wolff appears to admit at least the possibility or conceivability that two spatially separated individuals of the same species might be identical in every other respect, thus going against Leibnizian principle of the identity of indiscernibles. Then again, Wolff also subscribes to the definition of individuals as fully determinate in comparison to incompletely determined universals – we noted in case of Thümmig that this definition appears to naturally lead to the Leibnizian principle, because two distinct individuals couldn't on account of this definition be completely similar, because they would then belong to a genus defined by all their characteristics – contradiction, because this genus would then be a completely determinate universal. One possible solution might be that the complete determination of individuals would not consist of mere qualities, but also of quantitative and spatial determinations. Indeed, Wolff says ambiguously that individuals are determined by what we can perceive in them, which might include also their position in space.

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Next time it's on to psychology!

Ludwig Philipp Thümmig: Institutions of the Wolffian philosophy provided for the use of academics - Fully determinate individuals

The difference of individuals and universal properties has been recognized at least since the time of Aristotle. Indeed, it is obvious that the universal genus of horse is not an individual horse, although on some reading Plato had treated the genus just as one individual among others. Despite the familiarity of the distinction, it is quite hard to say what exactly differentiates universals from individuals.

Now, Thümmig suggests the rather curious definition that individuals are fully determinate in every way, while universals are still further determinable. The idea behind the strange definition is actually rather simple. Take some general class of things, such as vertebrates. Now, if we know that an animal is a vertebrate, we know something of it – at least that it has a vertebra. Still, many other characteristics of the said animal are completely undetermined by its being a vertebrate, for instance, whether it flies or not. Universal vertebrate is thus determined through this collection of properties shared by all vertebrates. This collection does still not determine any concrete individual, because a particular vertebrate has still some characteristics not included in the collection.

Similarly, all concrete individuals must be completely determined in respect of all possible characteristics (presumably there's an infinity of such possible characteristics). In other words, we cannot have an individual thing that would neither have a certain characteristic nor not have it: the individual must be determinately one or the other. Furthermore, nothing but a completed determination of possible characteristics could individuate a particular thing. One might object that it could still be possible that an individual is identifiable through some incomplete list of characteristics – for instance, George Washington can be plucked out from the rest of the humanity by him being the first president of United States, even if we didn't knew what he was called. But the objection forgets that in Wolffian philosophy we are allowed to look at other possible worlds. Thus, there could be another possible world where the first president of United States was a man called Thomas Jefferson, and the given description would not distinguish the two possible first presidents. Note that while an individual is determinate in all aspects, we might not be able to determine all its aspects.

Some universals and no individuals are then clearly indeterminate in some respect, but Thümmig's definition suggests also that all completely determinate things are individuals, but never universals. This is a far more uncertain proposition. Suppose for instance that we would know a particular rock and all its characteristics completely. Now, if we could then copy the rock and its exact characteristics, we would have two different individuals with the exactly same characteristics. In fact, the list of these characteristics would be completely determined - this was the presupposition - but it would also define a universal class containing several individuals (the two rocks).

Thümmig's definition thus clearly presupposes the idea that no two individuals could have a matching set of characteristics. This principle of the identity of indiscernibles originates actually from Leibniz, who according to a story once challenged courtiers to look for two exactly similar leaves just to prove the principle. Indeed, the principle might well be empirically sound, but as the thought experiment shows, it shouldn't be really accepted as an incontestable axiom of pure reason – and certainly it should not be hidden within a definition. Still, Thümmig's mistake is small when compared to what Baumgarten later did with the same notions – more on this later.

Next time we shall look on animal psychology.