Dear all,
This Wednesday at Serious Metaphysics, Professor Justin Broackes will be
speaking on "Substance: Embarrassment over an Aristotelian Idea" (abstract
below). We'll be meeting as usual at 4:30pm in the Philosophy Faculty Board
Room, and we'll go for a quick drink afterwards.
I hope to see many of you there.
Best, Emily
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ABSTRACT
The notion of a First Substance, a bearer of qualities, a thing like
Fido the dog or Tibbles the cat, has caused great embarrassment,
particularly for empiricists. I shall speak briefly about the
reasons for keeping hold of the notion (as Strawson and Kit Fine
do), and discuss the special difficulties of the main rival
conception (which treats objects as bundles of qualities or of
tropes instead). And then I will focus on Locke's changing views on
the matter. In early work// he uses two reductive strategies for
getting rid of Aristotelian substances; in later work (after the
/Essay/), by contrast, he affirms the need for substances, for
Aristotelian reasons. And in the middle, in the /Essay/ itself, he
veers unsteadily between embarrassment and affirmation. The
particular way he came to reaffirm substances is extremely
interesting---it shows Locke backtracking on some of his earlier
empiricism---but it causes troubles of its own---which I think it
takes careful work to be able to escape.
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