a summary of russell dancy’s paper

8/8/2019 A Summary of Russell Dancy’s paper

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A Summary of Russell Dancy’s paper:

On Some of Aristotle’s First Thoughts About Substances (With Reference and Additions

from Russell Dancy’s paper: On Some of Aristotle’s Second Thoughts About Substances).

It will be the aim of this paper, to critically analyze and summarize Dancy’stext on Aristotle’s conception of the idea of Substances. For the purpose of capturing

the intention behind the text, one can look at Dancy as being concerned, primarily,

with one or two overbearing questions – from which – smaller enquiries are toemerge. In this case, the primary concern, reveals itself to be with Aristotle’s notion

of substance and realities. Eventually, this question will be streamlined into the formof how Aristotle conceives subjects as possessing an independent claim to reality

and finally, what is Aristotle’s means of identifying a true subject.

Dancy begins his text with an explanation of how Aristotle possibly evolved

his formulation of reality and substance, as a reply to Platonic theory – and howlarge parts of it had its origins in argument against the same. His intentions,however, are to keep banter pertaining to Platonic theory in the background and

directly confronting the question (and how Aristotle answers it) “What aresubstances” in the fore. The idea of substance and reality for Aristotle has

undergone some evolution – changes and adaptations have been made – and these

become evident when one compares the version found in Organon – which containsno reference to matter ‐ and as found in the Metaphysics1 – where it has gone

suitable alteration to accommodate that same concept. Dancy works under theassumption that the reason why there is no mention of matter in the Organon –

when in his view, there very will should be, is because the notion was simply not

available to Aristotle.i According to the former, substances are equated withsubjects, of which other things are predicated – these have the strongest claim to an

independent reality2. However, once the idea of matter is introduced, the same

notion begins to look unwieldy. As mentioned earlier, Dancy engages himself withthe same notion of substance, are subjects upon which things are predicated as

possessing the strongest claim to an independent reality.

The next step for Dancy then naturally becomes to ask the question, what was

in Aristotle, the legitimate manner to identify a true subject. Aristotle’s conceptionof a subject was not as a grammatical subject ii. The sense in which he used it,

involved – to some extent – an implied feel. In the sentence “The pale thing is a stick”

– ‘Stick’ provides the subject – however, in the statement ‘The educated thing is pale’does not provide a true subject – as that is a man. However, Dancy feels that there is

no need to overcomplicate matters and a simple reason for why Aristotle’s idea of atrue subject does not refer to a grammatical subject can be found in the fact that

they are not words, but things signified by words‐things signified by the

1 Metaphysics Zeta θ 2

It is also worth noting that this is a tool that is critical in it’s role as a rejection of Platonic theory.



grammatical subjects of straightforward predications. That is to say, true subjects

are the grammatical subjects of straightforward predications.iii

Aristotle’s concern however, is neither with words nor with semantics – but instead with “things that are” – and this notion gives as much importance to

predicates as it does to the subjects involved. Dancy here delves into the categories,in order to comprehend better, Aristotle’s method, by analyzing Homonyms,Synonyms and Paronyms3.iv The reason he does this is stated by Dancy, as follows:

This sort of phenomenon, especially as it turns up among paronyms, will occupy us later; the

point for now is that Aristotle may well want to classify the things expressions signify, but still

give the expressions that signify them a role, sometimes an essential one, in classifying them. And

I think the situation is about the same with the distinctions we are trying to draw among subjects

and predicates: the fact that Aristotle wants to classify the "things that are," which are signified

by the subjects and predicates of simple sentences, does not make it irrelevant to look at the

sentences, their grammatical subjects, and their grammatical predicates.

In order to better understand what is implied by Aristotle’s notions of Substance, herefers to the source that first states that substances and independent realities are

actually subjects. This is in Categories 5 – and the definition found implies a number

of things – but most notably the distinction that is found between something that issaid of a subject and that something, which is in a subject. According to the

definition in Categories 5 – a substance is something that is neither said of anysubject nor in any subject – and not every subject is a substance. The section that

follows at this juncture is an elaborate explanation of the same definition. Dancy

spends a considerable amount of time and energy on it, for it eventually deliverssome insight into sorting ‘things that are’. v

The general requirement, as per the definition, for qualification of something being asubstance, is quite simply that it not be in any subject. Categories 2 contains the

demarcation of being said of a subject and being in a subject. It involves things that are being separated into four groups: some things are said of a subject, but not said

of any; some are both; and some are neither. With this quarter part separation one

reaches a clearer idea of what are primary substances: those that are neither – andsecondary substances are said of them, but in nothing. It becomes more than evident

at this point that a great deal of clarification is required in terms of distinctions

between various concepts – especially the difference between ‘being said of’ and‘being in’ – however in Dancy’s view, Aristotle has left this need unattended to and

he spends the next few sections attempting to shed light upon what it means to “bein” a subject. Dancy does this by highlighting various features of the categories that

may, with some analysis, serve as features or definitions of the aforementioned.

The first of these being Inseparability as the mark of being in – which involves the

3 Paronyms are [things] that derive the word by which they are called from something, differing in

syntactic form from it; for example, the literate [person derives] from literacy, the courageous fromcourage.



idea that a subject denotes that which belongs in something not as a part but (as)

incapable of being apart from that in which it is. Dancy claims this to be a circularargument and he attempts to shift the focus solely on the inability of that to exist

apart from that within which it is. However, the problem hasn’t been solved, as it does not shed any light on the distinction between being in and being said of . The

reason this emerges as a point of contention, is because Aristotle claims that everything else is either said of or in primary substances that in the absence of primary substances there would be nothing at all . In Dancy’s view, where he adds Owens’s

agreement, when Aristotle concludes this, he is motivated by something that is

objectionable to a Platonist. What the Platonist finds objectionable is not the ideathat without Primary substances, there would be nothing – but instead the thesis

that primary substances are things such that everything else is either said of themor in them. In the concluding parts of this section, Dancy commits himself to the

idea that, for the moment at least, the concept of ‘being in’ as a heuristic and

classificatory device – “an indication of the sort of thing Aristotle means”.

Dancy now aims to provide an alternative account of being in. He asks the reader toanalyze of Aristotle’s examples, flowing from the idea that man is said of particularmen. “Socrates is a man” and “Callias is a man.” – Knowledge and Literacy are in men

‐ or are predicated to their souls – however these statements cannot clearly beequated with “Socrates is Knowledge” or “Callias is Literacy”. However, statements

of the form “Callias is Literate” and “Socrates knows something” – and these

examples, according to Dancy, clearly conform with the idea of straightforwardpredication (as found in the analytics). His alternative thesis involves the idea that

the predicate of any simple sentence is something that is said of its subject. What isin the subject is the abstraction associated with that predicate. In the sentence,

“Socrates is literate”, what is meant by ‘Literate’ is said of Socrates. What one can

also say is that the predicable of Socrates is said in that sentence. “Literacy is theabstraction or property correlated with the predicate “literate”; it is in Socrates if it

is true that Socrates is literate. Dancy proceeds in this section, with the feeling that

his formulation involves the same difficulties Aristotle faced – and hopes to gainbetter insight into the same. He claims that each category is a classificatory tree –

the lower members are subjects of which the higher ones are said – and asmentioned before – the category of substance is the only tree, which has

nothing/neither – and primary substances are the lowest members of the tree.

Secondary substances are said of them.

It is useful at this juncture to briefly mention the conventional understanding of this

system. Dancy here mentions, Ackrill’s, which claims that one thing cannot be said of another unless both are in the same category, so that secondary substances are said

of primary ones. Dancy, however, is suggesting that many non‐substances beyonddifferentiac are said of a subject. He concludes his section with the idea that the

confusion that arises from predicates being equated with a subject arise from

misconstruing what are really paronyms.



This brings the reader to the concluding section of Dancy’s paper, which involves a

final and total elaboration on the Category of Substance. He understands Substancesto never be in things what is in a thing is the abstraction correlated with the

predicate of a simple sentence that has that thing for its object and in most cases,but not without exception, that abstraction will be the root of a list of paronyms, one

of which will be predicable signified by the predicate in that sentence – and asmentioned before Secondary substances are the predicables represented by thepredicates of simple sentences that may be used to answer simple questions asked

pertaining to primary substances like “what is that?”

What is different and other from substance show a duality that allows abstraction as

well as predictability that is marked by paronymy. That is to say, from one standpoint, the category of quality is a classification of abstractions such as ‘whiteness,

literacy and justice’ and from another, it is a classification of a number of things a

subject might be: white, literate, just. This being the difference between qualitiesand qualia. What truly separates this category then, is that within it, there are no

abstractions; no substance is in a subject; there is no root‐paronym distinction inthat category; the predicable in “Socrates is a man” is not derivative, paronymouslyor from any abstraction. That is to said: Socrates is a man, though he is not a man

because he has in him what makes things men.

i Organon – On Aristotle’s Second Thoughts About Substances – R.Dancy

iiPosterior Analytics A22 83a4‐7

iii“II “Subjects” and Sentences – On Aristotle’s First Thoughts About Substances ‐ R.Dancy

ivCategories I : Homonyms are things that share a name under different definitions (I .I ai ‐2); synonyms share a name

under the same definition (ia6‐7; compare 5. 3b7‐8).5

v“III Being In and Being Said Of” – On Aristotle’s First Thoughts About Substances – R.Dancy

Sahil Warsi

M.A Philosophy (I)

a summary of russell dancy’s paper

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