The incoherence of Spinoza's mode ontology

According to Spinoza, I am a mode and God is the only substance. But I am not directly a mode of God. I am a mode of a mode of a mode of … a mode of God, with infinitely many “a mode of” links in between.

This is incoherent. It is an infinite chain with two ends, one being me and the other being God. But any infinite chain made of direct links has at most one end: it would have to be of the form 1:2:3:4:…, with one endpoint, namely zero. We can stick on another chain running in the other direction, like …:iv:iii:ii:i, and get the two ended sequence 1:2:3:4:…:iv:iii:ii:i. But this two-ended sequence is not a chain, because there is no connection between any of the arabic numbered nodes and any of the roman numbered nodes.

Two attempts at deriving internal time from the causal order of modes

It would be nice to define the internal time of a substance in terms of the causal order of its accidents.

For each mode (i.e., accident or substantial form) α that a finite substance x has, there is the event c_α of α’s being caused. Causal priority provides a strict partial ordering on the events c_α.

Perhaps the simplest theory of the internal time of the substance x is that the moments of internal time just are the events c_α and their order just is the causal priority order.

This has the consequence that internal time need not be totally ordered, since one can have cases where α ≠ β but there is no priority relation between c_α and c_β. This consequence is welcome and unwelcome. It is welcome, as it allows one to give a nice account of bilocation involving the bifurcation of internal time. It is unwelcome, as intuitively time is linear. Let’s see if we can do something to reduce the unwelcome consequence.

Let’s suppose—as per causal finitism—that causal interactions are discrete. Then we can define a fundamental distance between the moments of internal time: d(c_α, c_β) is the length of the longest unidirectional causal priority chain between c_α and c_β. One might reasonably hypothesize that d(c_α, c_β) is something of the order of magnitude of the temporal distance between c_α and c_β in the rest frame of the substance in units of the order of Planck time. (Note that d is not a metric because of the unidirectionality constraint on the chains.)

This lets us have a second way of defining the internal time of a substance x. Let f be x’s substantial form. Then we can define “the start time” of a mode α as d(f, α): the length of the longest internal causal priority chain from c_f to c_α. Now likely some modes will have a simultaneous internal start time—they will have the same distance to c_f.

For this to define an intuitively plausible time sequence, we need the substance to have lots of interconnections between its accidents. Ordinary substances do seem to have that.

And perhaps some accidents won’t have an internal start time—if God turns me blue right now, my blueness won’t have an internal start time. But nonetheless that blueness can be “attached” to my internal temporal sequence by noting that it will be close according to d to some of my near-future accidents. For that miraculous blueness will interact with some of my other accidents to produce new accidents that are properly in my middle age. For instance, it will interact with my memories of observations of things not turning blue to generate the accident of surprise.

The usefulness of having two kinds of quantifiers

A central Aristotelian insight is that substances exist in a primary way and other things—say, accidents—in a derivative way. This insight implies that use of a single existential quantifier ∃x for both substances and forms does not cut nature at the joints as well as it can be cut.

Here are two pieces of terminology that together not only capture the above insight about existence, but do a lot of other (but closely related) ontological work:

1. a fundamental quantifier ∃u over substances.

2. for any y, a quantifier ∃_yx over all the (immediate) modes (tropes) of y.

We can now define:

• a is a substance iff ∃u(u = a)

• b is a (immediate) mode of a iff ∃_ax(x = b)

• f is a substantial form of a substance a iff a is a substance and ∃_ax(x = f): substantial forms are immediate modes of substances

• b is a (first-level) accident of a substance a iff u is a substance ∃_ax∃_xy(y = b & y ≠ x): first-level accidents are immediate modes of substantial forms, distinct from these forms (this qualifier is needed so that God wouldn’t coount as having any accidents

• f is a substantial form iff ∃u∃_ux(x = f)

• b is a (first-level) accident iff ∃u∃_ux∃_xy(y = b).

This is a close variant on the suggestion here.

Aristotelian perdurance

The perdurantist thinks that we are four-dimensional beings made up of three-dimensional slices, temporal parts, from which we inherit our changing properties such as thinking. One good reason to deny perdurance is that implies that our thinking is derivative from another entity's thinking, namely from the part's thinking, pace Andrew Bailey's very plausible thesis that our thinking does not derive from another entity's thinking. Another issue is that perdurance has at most a 50% chance of being true for me: since the slice thinks the same thoughts as the four-dimensional being, I have at least a 50% chance of turning out to be the slice--contrary to perdurance.

But there is an interesting Aristotelian version of perdurance. I am a four-dimensional being, but I have a sequence of special accidents D_t corresponding to the times t at which I exist. Then all my changing features are grounded in features of these accidents. For instance, I am thinking at t provided that D_t is thinking*, where thinking* is whatever feature of an accident D_t that makes the possessor of D_t be thinking. For categorial reasons, thinking* isn't thinking: only substances think, but non-divine substances think in virtue of having an accident that in turn is thinking*.

What are the D_t accidents? One option is that they are the accident of existing at t. But perhaps there is a more Thomistic option: perhaps in the case of material substances they can be identified with something like Thomas's accidents of dimensive quantity. Thomas thought that material substances had a special accident, a dimensive quantity, and all their other accidents were in turn accidents of its dimensive quantity. This is a very similar role to that played by D_t. Or, perhaps, we could take D_t to be an accident of occupying such-and-such a three-dimensional region of four-dimensional space. There is room for further research here (and if anybody wants to work more out and co-author, they are very welcome).

There is a major difference in outlook between this and typical perdurance pictures. On typical perdurance views, the slices are prior to the four-dimensional whole. On this Aristotelian perdurantism, the D_t accidents are, like all accidents, posterior to the substance, which is four-dimensional. Apart from this, the view might not be that distant from standard perdurantism. I have proposed in another post that an Aristotelian could identify parts with certain kinds of accidents. On that identification, the D_t accidents could turn out to be parts. But the difference in outlook remains: the parts really are just accidents of the whole. And the parts don't have the same features as the whole does. They have features for which we have no names, features we can only identify as that feature of the accident that grounds the substance as being F.

This post is really just a combination of this and this.

A reversed adverbial account of temporary intrinsics

It seems that I am bent and straight. Minutes earlier, when I was standing up, I was straight. Right now, however, I am sitting and writing this post, bent at an ergonomic 135 degrees. But no one can be both bent and straight. The presentist has no problem here: I am bent, but I was straight. Eternalists, however, have to work harder to remove the appearance of contradiction. One of the stock solutions is adverbial:

• I am straight at t₁ and I am bent at t₂.

I am not fond of the adverbial solution. After all, just as it is a contradiction to be standing still and running, it is a contradiction to be standing still patiently and running calmly. It is not clear why adding adverbs to contradictory predicates should remove a contradiction, unless the adverbs are truth-canceling or alienans ("I am bent and straight" is contradiction, but if I qualify "bent" with the truth-canceling adverb "apparently", the contradiction disappears). And positing truth-canceling adverbs all over the place is unattractive.

But there is a reversed adverbial account. Rather than taking the temporal qualification as the adverb, one can turn it into a predicate and turn the apparent predicate into an adverb. Thus:

• I exist at t₁ straightly and I exist at t₂ bently.

All appearance of contradiction disappears. There is no more contradiction here than in thinking quickly and running slowly, or eating elegantly and writing sloppily.

An ontology that naturally corresponds to this resolution is a nested mode ontology. I have a mode of presence at t for every time t at which I exist. (This mode might be directly an accident of me, though I prefer the view that it is a mode of my human nature.) Each of my temporary intrinsics then corresponds to a mode of the mode of presence at t.

Accidents outlasting their substance

At least as traditionally philosophically understood, the Catholic understanding of transsubstantiation insists on the persistence of (at least some) of the accidents of bread and wine after the bread and wine have ceased to exist. But how can accidents exist without their substance?

Well, imagine a very long rattlesnake—say, a billion kilometers long—all stretched out in space. Suppose that the snake rattles its rattle at noon for a second, and one second after the end of the rattling a prearranged array of blasters simultaneously annihilates the whole snake.

Let R be the accident of the snake's rattling. A simple relativistic calculation shows that there is an inertial reference frame in which the rattling occurs after the vast majority of the snake—including all of the snake's vital organs (which I assume are placed much as in a normal snake)—has been annihilated. But an animal is dead, and hence non-existent (barring afterlife for animals; let's stipulate there is none), after all its vital organs have been annihilated. Thus, there is a reference frame in which the accident R exists after the substance S of the snake has been annihilated.

So special relativity gives us good reason to think that accidents can survive the destruction of the substance, at least in some inertial reference frames. But all inertial reference frames are supposed to be on par.

I suppose an opponent of transsubstantiation could insist that while an accident can survive the destruction of a substance in some reference frames, it cannot survive the destruction of the substance in all reference frames (as it would have to in the case of the Eucharist). But that requirement sounds a little ad hoc.

So, relativity theory gives us good reason to reject one of the most famous objections to transsubstantiation.

Are parts modes?

There are two variations on Aristotelian ontology. On the sparser version there are substances and their modes (accidents and essences). On the more bloated version there are substances, modes and (proper) parts. I want to argue that the more bloated version should be reduced to the sparser one.

Parts in an Aristotelian ontology are unlike the parts of typical contemporary ontologies. They are not substances, but rather they are objects that depend on the substance they are parts of. At least normally when a part, say a finger, comes to be detached from the substance it is a part of, it ceases to exist—a detached finger is a finger in name only, as Aristotle insists.

This makes the parts of Aristotelian ontology mode-like in their dependence on the whole. Ockham's razor then suggests that rather than supposing three fundamental categories—substances, mode and parts—we will do better to posit that a part is just a kind of mode. Thus, I really do have a heart, but my heart is just much a mode or accident of me—my cardiacality—as my knowing English is. Both my heart and my knowledge of English confer on me certain causal powers and causal liabilities (knowing English makes me liable to having my feelings hurt by uncomplimentary assertions in English!)

This is not an elimination of parts. Some of my accidents are parts and others are not. Which ones? I do not know. Maybe those accidents that occupy space are parts and those accidents that do not are not. My knowing English doesn't occupy space, while my cardiacality is somewhat vaguely but really located located in space.

Perhaps we need a finer distinction, though. Consider the strength of my arm. This isn't a part of me, but it seems to be located in my arm. I suggest that we distinguish between three ways that a mode can get a location. It can (a) inherit a location from a subject, or (b) it can inherit a location from its own modes, or (c) it can be located in its own right. I suggest that a mode is a part if and only if it has a location of type (b) or (c). The strength of my arm inherits its location from its subject—my arm—and hence is not a part. (It's important to the full development of this ontology that modes can nest. Thus, my arm is a mode of me, and the strength of that arm is a mode of this mode. Both I and my arm are subjects of the strength of the arm.)

I think the distinction between type (b) and type (c) parts is worth thinking about. Maybe matter, that mysterious ingredient in Aristotelian ontology, can be identified with type (c) parts?

A perdurantism without temporal parts

Standard perdurantism holds that we are four-dimensional worms made up of three-dimensional temporal parts. Many of the changing properties that we think of ourselves as having directly, we actually have derivatively from the temporal parts. Thus, I am typing a post in virtue of having a temporal part typing it up, and I am conscious of the screen in front of me in virtue of a temporal part of me being conscious of it.

Standard perdurantism has many problems, for instance:

1. Perdurantism commits one to proper parts, and implausibly thin and hyperplanar ones.
2. Surely I am that entity which is non-derivatively consciously rather than that entity which is derivatively conscious.
3. Perdurantism normally comes along not just with slices, but thicker temporal parts. But then Merricks argues that we cannot know how old we are. For all I know, I might be the temporal part from five minutes ago until now (in which case I am five minutes old), or from ten minutes ago until now (in which case I am ten minutes ld), and so on. Only a handful of temporal parts containing my present stage have the age I think myself to have, so probably I don't have the age I think myself to have.

There is, however, a perdurantism without any of these problems, if one accepts the right kind of trope theory. Suppose I exist at t. Then my existing at t is a trope of me, call it e_t. At least unless t is the first moment of my existence, e_t is an accidental trope: if I perished before t, then I wouldn't have had e_t. (If essentiality of origins holds, then it is an essential property of me that I exist at the first moment of my existence.) Note that I am not committing myself to the controversial thesis that existence is a property. Even if existence isn't a property, it is plausible that existence in a location—i.e., spatial locatedness at x—is a property. And if so, then why shouldn't temporal locatedness at t be a property?

I now suppose that I am a four-dimensional entity that has (where the "has" is not tensed) all of the e_t tropes (where t is a time during my existence): it is true to say that I exist at all these times. But many of the temporally qualifiable predicates, like "is conscious" and "is bent", that apply to me apply in virtue of e_t itself having certain tropes. Thus, I am now bent or conscious in virtue of e_now having a certain bendedness or consciousness trope.

Strictly speaking, it's not e_now that is bent or conscious, but it has the kind of trope which makes that substance that has the e_now trope be bent or conscious. Compare this: If I am gorging myself, then that happens in virtue of an eating trope itself having a gorging trope. But the eating trope isn't gorging itself. It is I who am gorging myself. So the gorging trope is a trope of eating such that any substance that has the eating trope with the gorging trope gorges itself. The gorging trope, thus, makes me—the substance—be a gorger and makes my eating trope be not a gorger, but gorgingly. This is linguistically tricky.[note 1]

On standard perdurantism, I persist over time in virtue of having temporal parts that exist at various times. On this trope perdurantism, I persist over time in virtue of having temporal locatedness tropes.

On this theory, the temporal locatedness tropes e_t play the role of the temporal parts of standard perdurance. But they aren't parts. So we aren't committed to parts, much less implausibly thin and hyperplanar ones.

We also do not have the problems in (2) and (3). For while I am conscious at t in virtue of e_t having a certain consciousness trope c_t, that consciousness trope doesn't make e_t be conscious. So while I am conscious in virtue of something other than me—namely, e_t—being a certain way, I am not conscious in virtue of something other than me being conscious. Thus, I do not derive my consciousness from the consciousness of anything else, and so I am non-derivatively conscious. I do derive my consciousness from something else being a certain way, but when that something else is a trope of me, that's quite innocent. Thus, (2) is not an issue here.

Nor is (3), for the obvious reason that a fusion of e_t-type tropes, even if there is such a fusion (which I very much doubt), doesn't think. It's substances that think, and they think in virtue of having certain tropes. The tropes don't think, and neither do their fusions.

I don't think this is the whole story. If I were seriously defending this story, I wouldn't say that I have the trope e_t directly. I might say that I have the trope e_t as a trope of my humanity, where my humanity may well be the only trope I have directly (see the paper of mine here).

I don't know if the above story is true. I am a bit sceptical of the thinness and hyperplanarity, as it were, of the e_t tropes—they don't seem to me to be very natural. And I am not 100% sure I want to commit to tropes. But this version of perdurantism might be true.

Note, also, a neat thing. Normally the perdurantist needs to argue why perdurance is preferable to exdurance. But I do not think there is any plausible trope exdurantism paralleling this trope perdurantism.

Objection: The trope e_t is a part of me, so this devolves to a more standard perdurantism.

Response: Maybe in some sense my tropes are parts of me. But they are different sorts of parts from the kinds of parts that standard perdurantism invokes. For tropes depend, at least for their identity, on that which they are tropes of. But the whole is constructed out of the temporal parts on standard perdurantism. So trope perdurantism reverses the order of grounding.

A theory of time

This isn't meant to be a very good theory, but it's a start. The primitive notion I want to explicate is this notion of temporal priority between events: A is at least in part earlier than the start of B. I will abbreviate this to "A is earlier than B". And then we say that A is earlier than B if and only if there is a chain of at least partial causation starting at A and ending at B.

A consequence of this theory is that it is not possible to have simultaneous causation: if A causes B, then A is earlier than B. That's a count against it, but perhaps not a fatal one.

Another consequence of this theory is that it gives no account of simultaneity between events. That may not be such a bad thing.

A limitation is that we have no notion of a time, just of temporal ordering of events. That may be fine. But the costs are adding up.

I am more troubled by the fact that this rules out time travel and, more generally, temporally backwards causal influences. This makes me want to reject the theory.

But I can reprise the theory, not as a theory of the temporal priority between events, but of the temporal priority between accidents (or maybe just modes?) of a single substance. Just say that an accident A of a substance S is earlier than an accident B of S if and only if there is a chain of at least partial causation between accidents of S starting at A and ending at B.

We still have to rule the possibility of temporally backwards causation within the life of a single substance. But that's less costly, I think, than ruling out temporally backwards causation between events in general.

We still have the problem of not having simultaneous causation or any account of simultaneity for that matter. And no notion of times.

We can introduce times as follows. In some worlds, it will happen that there are nomic relationships between the accidents of a substance that are simply parametrized in terms of some parameter t such that accident A is earlier than accident B (in the above causal sense) if and only if t(A)<t(B). In such a case, we can call values of this parameter times. In worlds where there is no such neat parametrization, there may be temporal priority, but no times.

We get divine internal atemporality now as a corollary of the claim that God has no accidents.

But there are still a lot of costs. For one, the lack of a notion of simultaneity makes it hard to make sense of the transcendental unity of apperception. Maybe that's just too bad for that unity?

There is something other than simple substances, I think

I do not see any way to avoid the conclusion that the correct ontology includes more than just simple substances. This is depressing and exhilarating. I think there are modes of substances. Very weird. I entertained the thought that it might come to this, but didn't expect it to be so soon (I didn't disbelieve in modes, but I also didn't believe in them). But I had to either believe in modes of substances, or parts of substances, or regions of spacetime, and modes of substances seem the most innocent. I need either parts or regions to make sense of claims like: "This person is red on his left side and green on his right side." But the kinds of regions I need—thanks to an argument by Josh Rasmussen—are regions that travel with a substance, because the person who is red on his left side and green on his right side doesn't change color as he moves through space. And the only way I see to define such regions is with the parts or powers of substances. So I had to believe in parts or powers. But parts are very mysterious, while I already believed that substances were powerful. So to believe in their powers seems the better move. And powers are modes. This makes Eucharistic theology a touch more straightforward, too.