Form, substance, and mechanism

Philosophical Review 113 (1):31-88 (2004)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Philosophers today have largely given up on the project of categorizing being. Aristotle’s ten categories now strike us as quaint, and no attempt to improve on that effort meets with much interest. Still, no one supposes that reality is smoothly distributed over space. The world at large comes in chunks, and there remains a widespread intuition, even among philosophers, that some of these chunks have a special sort of unity and persistence. These, we tend to suppose, are most truly agents and subjects, and are what exist in the most proper sense of the term. We believe, in other words, in substances.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

    This entry is not archived by us. If you are the author and have permission from the publisher, we recommend that you archive it. Many publishers automatically grant permission to authors to archive pre-prints. By uploading a copy of your work, you will enable us to better index it, making it easier to find.

    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 104,641

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Understanding films.Jason Southworth - 2012 - The Philosophers' Magazine 56 (56):95-99.
Substance.Howard Robinson & Ralph Weir - 2024 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Aristotle’s Theory of Predication. [REVIEW]William Haines - 2001 - Review of Metaphysics 54 (4):903-903.
Substance and the Primary Sense of Being in Aristotle.Angus Brook - 2015 - Review of Metaphysics 68 (3):521-544.
Which brain mechanism cannot count beyond four?Pieter R. Roelfsema & Victor A. F. Lamme - 2001 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (1):142-143.
Bentham on Public and Private Ethics.J. Brenton Stearns - 1975 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 5 (4):583 - 594.

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
371 (#82,184)

6 months
25 (#130,980)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Robert Pasnau
University of Colorado, Boulder

References found in this work

Leviathan.Thomas Hobbes - 1968 - Harmondsworth,: Penguin Books. Edited by C. B. Macpherson.
Language, truth and logic.Alfred Jules Ayer - 1936 - London,: V. Gollancz.
The philosophical writings of Descartes.René Descartes - 1984 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Critique of Pure Reason.I. Kant - 1787/1998 - Philosophy 59 (230):555-557.
A Treatise of Human Nature.David Hume & A. D. Lindsay - 1958 - Philosophical Quarterly 8 (33):379-380.

View all 91 references / Add more references