This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
Aristotle writes both of sameness and of unity, and, though it is not clear that the terms can be used interchangeably, the accounts of each are too similar to ignore and so I shall move freely between the two notions.
It is worth pointing out that a correlate of ‘object’ or ‘thing’ does not standardly appear in Aristotle’s Greek descriptions of such cases. Greek allows the nominalization of any adjective merely by prefixing a definite article to it. Thus Aristotle, had he used this example, would have written in effect of the sun and “the brightest.” An important upshot of this for our purposes is that, contrary to what a translation may suggest, Aristotle may not here be speaking of accidental sameness between two substances. I return to this issue below (v.i. Section 4).
I shall focus here on Topics I. 7 and on Meta. V. 6.
Topics I. 7, 103a6–15. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
Note that moderns would likely be inclined to describe this situation rather differently, perhaps by saying that, though robe and cloak are identical, the words ‘robe’ and ‘cloak’ are, of course, not. We tend to speak in the formal mode where Aristotle uses the material. This will be an important theme in the sequel; v.i. esp. Section 4.
Topics I. 7, 103a30–1. On accidental sameness as the “third” sense of numerical sameness see note #10.
Aristotle sometimes adds oneness or sameness by analogy to the list. I shall ignore this notion here.
Note again also Aristotle’s material mode where we should be more at home in the formal mode.
Meta. V. 6, 1016b31–1017a1.
A definition is an account signifying the essence of a thing. See e.g. Meta. VII. 4, 1030a6–7.
Aristotle speaks variously of sameness in “being” (εἶναι: Physics III. 3, 202b5 etc.), sameness in “account” or “formula” (λόγῳ: Meta. X. 3, 1054a32 etc.) and sameness in “substance” (οὐσίᾳ: SE 24, 179a26 etc.). I shall treat these as equivalent. The other two sorts of numerical sameness that Aristotle countenances in the Topics passage (other, that is, than accidental sameness) do not seem to lead to this phenomenon. For the other sorts of cases look to involve things that do have the same definition and thus things that would be the same in being.
Physics III. 3, 202a18–b16.
Admittedly, it seems false in this case to suppose that these two roads just happen to coincide. Nevertheless, if talk of accidental sameness is appropriate wherever essences of those same things diverge, then we may indeed with some justice speak here of the two roads’ being accidentally the same. W. D. Ross, Aristotle: Physics (Oxford: Oxford University, 1936) describes this sort of case by saying that there is “one thing definable in two ways” (p. 361); note how he slips into the formal mode.
SE 24, 179a26–b6 (trans. after Pickard-Cambridge).
V.i. Section 5.
Cf. here Ignacio Angelelli, “Friends and Opponents of the Substitutivity of Identicals in the History of Logic,” in Matthias Schirn, ed., Studien zu Frege (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1976), Vol. II, pp. 141–66.
But, again, I should like to emphasize that my criticism of Aristotle is internal to his account. There is, to be sure, a lot of disagreement over how to understand Aristotle’s notions of numerical and accidental sameness. But my claim will be that, no matter how we understand these notions, Aristotle’s official account is inconsistent. V.i. Section 5.
See e.g. Frank Lewis, “Accidental Sameness in Aristotle,” in Philosophical Studies, Vol. 42, No. 1 (1982); Gareth Matthews, “Accidental Unities,” in Malcolm Schofield and Martha Craven Nussbaum, eds., Language and Logos (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1982), pp. 223–240; and S. Marc Cohen, “Aristotle and Individuation,” in New Essays on Aristotle, Supplementary Vol. 10. (1984) etc.
V.i. also the footnote on p. 15.
See e.g. Meta. VII. 12, 1037b29 ff. This does present us with a difficulty, however, since Aristotle’s discussion here is of substance, and so it may make no sense to speak of the definitions of other sorts of objects, most especially the accidental entities with which we have been recently dealing. This is the subject of the next section.
Or, perhaps, their forms; see Meta. VII. 4, 1030a11–12.
Frank Lewis, Substance and Predication in Aristotle (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1991), p. 88.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for this point.
I am indebted at this point also to Michael Wedin.
The same anonymous referee finds this claim dubious, but it seems to be the leading view; cf. Paul Studtmann’s Stanford Encyclopedia article on Aristotle’s Categories.
I am once again indebted to the same anonymous referee.
This kind of attempt at re-packaging Aristotle’s doctrines is, indeed, a common phenomenon. And formalized versions of Aristotle’s ideas are often not equivalent to their material counterparts. There would hardly be any point to the re-packaging if they were.
Cf. here in particular the Russellian Aristotle of C. J. F. Williams, “Aristotle’s Theory of Descriptions,” in Philosophical Review, Vol. 94, No. 1 (1985) as attacked by Gareth Matthews, “On Knowing How to Take Kooky Objects Seriously” (unpublished) and by Greg Damico, “A Man Unmasked: Was Aristotle a Proto-Russellian?” (unpublished).
Lewis, op. cit., is one of the most detailed and most important pieces from those who say ‘no’; David Charles, Aristotle on Meaning and Essence (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000) is one of the most detailed and most important pieces from those who say ‘yes’. See also Angelelli, op. cit.
Lots of folks do not go in for the exoticism of such alleged possibilities, of course. But the only point I am trying to make here is that whether things accidentally the same are identical in the modern sense is, strictly speaking, irrelevant to present concerns.
Let us, then, make neither!
I take it to be uncontroversial that sameness in being entails sameness in species. Thus, if we prove that sameness in species entails sameness in being, the two notions would thereby be shown to be equivalent.
So Christopher Hughes, On a Complex Theory of a Simple God: An Investigation in Aquinas’ Philosophical Theology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1989): “It is better to assume that, when Aquinas says that the road from Thebes to Athens and the road from Athens to Thebes differ secundum rationem, he means that we conceive of the road from Thebes to Athens and the road from Athens to Thebes differently. To put this another way, our road-from-Thebes-to-Athens-concept or ratio differs from our road-from-Athens-to-Thebes-concept or ratio; so that the road from Thebes to Athens and the road from Athens to Thebes, which are really just one thing (idem secundum rem), differ with respect to, or according to, their concept (differunt secundum rationem)” (p. 222). I find this issue fascinating, but it is for another time.
Strictly speaking, of course, the inconsistency comes about only upon supposing that there are things one in number, that there are things two in definitional account and that there are things accidentally the same. I shall not bother to defend these extra suppositions.
See Topics I. 7, 103a23–5. Cf. Meta. V. 6, 1016b6–10.
Again, the details may be tricky. Socrates’s ostensible definition is, presumably, derived from the definition of the species man, while the seated thing may have no definition at all. (Or, if it does, its definition would, one supposes, similarly be derived from some general kind—seated, perhaps, but in any case something surely distinct from man, since what it is to be seated has nothing to do with being a man.)
Meta. V. 6, 1016b31–6.
We are in the neighborhood of a still-very-much-alive issue, viz. the question of Aristotle’s principle of individuation. On this see esp. Lloyd (1970), Charlton (1972), Miller (1973), Regis (1976). Though I am moving freely between the notions of sameness in number and sameness in matter, I do not see that I am committing myself to any particular resolution of this thorny issue, since I have not taken any stand on how any of these Aristotelian notions relates to our notion of identity.
Of course, kinds are themselves arranged hierarchically: Species have genera above them, and so whatever belongs to a species will belong also to more general kinds. Hence my use of the word ‘primary’ here. Each thing will of course belong to many kinds (Socrates is (i) a man, but also (ii) an animal, (iii) an animate substance, (iv) a natural substance etc.), but only to one that is primary or most specific. In Socrates’s case, this primary kind is man.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This paper grew out of a question I asked Michael Wedin quite a number of years ago. I am in his debt.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Damico, G.A. 2014 Rockefeller Prize Winner: Sameness in Being Is Sameness in Species: Or: Was an Aristotelian Philosophy of Identity Ever Credible?. J Value Inquiry 48, 335–347 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9438-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9438-9