The Philosophical Quarterly Vol. No.

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ideas which according to Potters own account were so far from Russells way of
thinking that he never understood what they were.
In a letter to Russell of June , WittgensteinThe Scots
remarks
that Principias
Philosophical Association
Reducibility | :(f ): x x f!x is only a schema, and that
theUniversity
real ofPp
ought to be
and the
St Andrews
| :. ():(f ): x x f!x, and where would be the use of that?. Potter writes that The
first kind of ambiguous assertion, although strictly incorrect, is innocuous because by
prefixing the formula with a universal quantifier we can turn the real variable into
an apparent one. The second kind is not innocuous, because no corresponding
manuvre is available to us (p. ). Restoring schematic type indices, Potter seems
to have the following in mind: | :. ((t)):(f (0)): (t)x0 x0 f (0)!x0 . This cannot work,
since Principia does not count (t)x0 as well formed for t > . Potter is quite right that
whether a variable is typically ambiguous has nothing to do with whether it is real
or apparent (p. ). He thinks that Wittgenstein was fumbling towards formulating an objection against using schematic type indices to express that a theorem
holds in all the types. He also thinks Wittgenstein was inept in failing to object to
their use in the quantification theory of * of Principia (p. ). But Potter misses
Wittgensteins intent. Comprehension, not quantification theory, is precisely what
makes logic a genuine science. For comprehension to do its work, it must (unlike
quantification theory) use schematic letters for ws (or in modern cumulative types,
it may use free variables and a rule of uniform substitution). Wittgenstein objects to
the ineliminable schematic in the comprehension principle of Reducibility because
he holds that logic is contentless.
These many issues do not undermine the book. Indeed, no scholar of Russell or
Wittgenstein can aord to miss contributing to the fiery debate they should provoke.
I shall therefore end with a curiosity. Potter says that Wittgenstein read little beyond
Principias Introduction (p. ), and was so little engaged with the formal logic
of Principia that some of his comments about it are inept in the extreme (p. ). In
contrast, he says that Wittgenstein had a profound engagement with Freges conception of logic (p. ). Yet Potter thinks that Freges published works (even the
informal Grundlagen) had comparatively little impact on Wittgenstein and that he was
able to absorb from their few visits important insights implicit in Freges Posthumous Writings (pp. , ). Potter seems to mean that Wittgensteins engagement
was neither with Freges bewildering technical philosophical logic of extension,
number, ancestral, etc., nor with the presentation of these concepts in Principia, but
with the philosophical parts of Grundgesetzes Introduction (concerning, for example,
assertion and truth). What is now curious is that Potter unintentionally leaves the
Tractatus itself inept in the extreme.
University of Iowa

G L

Real Essentialism. B D S. O. (London and New York: Routledge, .

Pp. xii + . Price ..)
David Oderbergs new book is, as far as I know, the only comprehensive booklength exposition, defence and application of Aristotelian essentialism written from
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the perspective of modern analytic philosophy. It is a major intellectual achievement, which will repay close reading and re-reading by friends and foes of
essentialism alike. The real in the books title is there to mark the distinction
between this truly Aristotelian conception of essence and that emanating from
versions of essentialism inspired by the possible worlds approach to metaphysical
modality, whose modern fountain-head was Saul Kripkes Naming and Necessity.
Oderbergs approach to essence has something in common with that of Kit Fine,
whose work he cites with approval and discusses extensively, but he is most strongly
influenced by the original texts of Aristotle and Aquinas. He is above all concerned
to defend essentialism in the context of a thoroughgoing commitment to hylemorphism
the doctrine that all substances are combinations of matter and form and thus to
a fundamental ontology of substance and accident. Although he recognizes, with
Aristotle, a relative notion of matter, he is also committed explicitly to the notion of
prime matter, as well as to the Aristotelian association of matter with potentiality and
form with actuality.
The book moves from very general metaphysical and epistemological problems
concerning the nature and knowability of essence, through more specific issues in
ontology concerning substance, matter, form, identity, existence, powers, laws,
accidents and properties, and finally to the application of hylemorphic essentialism
to questions in the philosophy of nature, especially in the field of biology. The long
chapter on biological species, which is extremely well informed from a scientific
point of view, is in itself a major contribution to the metaphysics of biology, presenting an important challenge to much contemporary scientific and philosophical
thought concerning biological taxonomy. The book ends with a chapter on human
personhood, defending once more an Aristotelian dualism of matter and form, quite
opposed to any kind of neo-Cartesian psychophysical dualism but equally opposed
to mainstream contemporary physicalism in the philosophy of mind.
In a short review, it is impossible to do justice to this books richness of ideas and
arguments. Oderberg, although he draws extensively on Aristotelian insights, is a
highly original thinker in his own right and an extremely independent one. He never
shies away from or waters down an opinion merely because it is currently unfashionable, but always proceeds resolutely in whatever direction he takes the force of
evidence and argument to lead him in. He is adamant that a priori metaphysical
considerations have an important bearing on which scientific theories we should be
prepared to endorse, but at the same time he is no mere armchair philosopher,
insisting that empirical enquiry is indispensable for any adequate knowledge of the
essences of things existing in the natural world. In what remains of this review, I
shall simply register some doubts about certain aspects of Oderbergs position, partly
with a view to conveying more fully the flavour of his approach. None of these
doubts, however, diminishes in the least my estimate of the importance of Oderbergs overall achievement, which is a remarkable one. I should add that the doubts
may well reflect failures on my own part to understand the subtleties of Oderbergs
position, more than any genuine flaws in his views or arguments.
On the matter of essence, Oderberg dissents from Fines view that, for example,
it is no part whatever of Socrates essence that he is distinct from the Eiel Tower or
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is the member of singleton Socrates (the set whose sole member is Socrates).
Oderberg maintains instead that these are virtual parts of Socrates essence, giving
as his reason for this that [Socrates] essence being a rational animal virtually
contains the categories of being a material object and being an entity of some sort or other, to
which necessary distinctness and singleton membership apply, respectively, as parts
of these essences formally stated (p. ). I confess that I do not entirely understand this
line of reasoning, because while I am happy enough to say that it is part of Socrates
essence that he is a material object and that he is an entity of some sort or other, I
simply do not see how this provides any essential connection at all between Socrates
and the particular entities in question the Eiel Tower and singleton Socrates
nor, indeed, even with the sorts of things that they are (a building and a set,
respectively).
The problem is that I do not really understand Oderbergs distinction between
parts of an essence formally stated and virtual parts of an essence, notwithstanding his attempt to explain the latter notion as follows: being F is a virtual part
of the essence G of an object x if and only if xs being G logically presupposes xs
being F (p. ). Does Socrates being an animal, or his being rational, logically
presuppose his being distinct from any building and, in particular, being distinct
from the Eiel Tower? Oderberg tells us that he understands logical presupposition
to be a species of entailment, according to which the thing entailed is implicit in
the thing that entails (p. , n. ). This seems, appropriately enough, to exclude the
weak sense of entail in which any necessary truth is entailed by any truth whatever,
and thus one obvious but irrelevant sense in which Socrates is an animal clearly
does entail Socrates is distinct from the Eiel Tower (assuming the latter to be a
necessary truth). But unfortunately I do not understand in what sense of implicit it
can be at all plausibly said that Socrates is distinct from the Eiel Tower is implicit
in Socrates is an animal, nor therefore the sense in which Oderberg himself takes
the entailment to hold. I can see how the essence of an animal and the essence of
iron might very plausibly be supposed to be such that no animal can be identical with
any building made of iron, and hence why Socrates (who is essentially animal) must
be distinct from the Eiel Tower (which, let us suppose, is essentially made of iron).
But then this necessary truth seems to flow from two independent essences taken
together, not from Socrates essence taken by itself.
I also, and perhaps more importantly, have doubts about Oderbergs own
preferred characterization of Socrates essence, formally stated, which (as we have
just seen) he takes, in true Aristotelian style, to be rational animal. Oderberg is fully
committed to the Aristotelian notion of essential definition per genus et dierentiam. To
state somethings essence, on this view to say what it is is always to say what kind
of thing it is and in what respect it diers specifically from other things of that kind,
thereby identifying which species of that kind (or genus) it belongs to. Unsurprisingly, Oderberg is, as a consequence, very favourably disposed towards a
taxonomy of nature along the lines of the tree of Porphyry, however old-fashioned
that might seem to modern scientists and especially to evolutionary biologists (whose
systems of classification he severely criticizes in his interesting chapter on the
subject). I only say here that I find the suggestion that a natural-kind term, or its
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referent, can be defined per genus et dierentiam deeply problematic, for logical reasons.
This, basically, is because I do not believe that complex terms of the form A that is
F, where A is a kind term and F is a predicate, can properly be regarded as
genuine semantic units with an identifiable semantic value or reference. Thus, for
example, human and animal that is rational do not, very arguably, behave logically in the same way, whence it is dicult to maintain that the latter in any sense
provides a definition (even a real or essential definition) of the former a general
point, incidentally, made long ago by another philosopher broadly sympathetic
towards Aristotle, Peter Geach, who said that complex terms of this form are a sort
of logical mirage.
An indication, perhaps, of the deep water that Oderberg seems in danger of
getting into through his enthusiasm for definition per genus et dierentiam is provided by
his response to the question of what we should say were we ostensibly to discover
other animal species besides ourselves to be rational beings dolphins, perhaps, or
alien creatures from Mars. His answer is that we would in fact be obliged to regard
these creatures as humans, like ourselves, and thus not in reality members of a
dierent animal species (see pp. ). This is because they would be, like us,
rational animals, which he takes to be what humans, by definition, are. My own
intuitions in such matters accord entirely with those of Locke, as displayed in his
discussion of the famous example of the rational parrot. This parrot would be a
person, surely, but not a man. Like Locke, I do not think that person is a biological
term at all, in contrast with man (or human) and parrot, which denote kinds of
living organism. Being animal is, very arguably, at least part of our nature (or
essence), as is being (potentially, at any rate) rational. But I think it must be wrong to
connect these two aspects of our nature in the manner in which Aristotle and
Oderberg do, through their strict adherence to the doctrine of definition per genus et
dierentiam a doctrine which obliges us to regard one of these aspects as being a
genus and the other a dierentia which determines a unique species of that genus. If
indeed we belong essentially to any species or kind of animal, then the kind of
animal that we actually are human is surely not the same, by any reasonable
standard, as that of any putatively rational animal whose natural bodily form is
avian or cetacean, let alone extra-terrestrial. Hence human surely cannot simply be
defined as rational animal. Rather, its proper application should take into account
specific features of our distinctively mammalian, and more particularly primate,
body-plan, life-cycle and behaviour. Perhaps, on the other hand, there is a broader
sense of human, in which were such a thing possible we should admit as an
equal to the company of humankind an intelligent and emotionally endowed robot
or cyborg. However, human even in this putative sense is, obviously, no more
definable as rational animal than is human in the previously discussed sense.
On a more purely metaphysical note, I have already mentioned that Oderberg is
committed to the doctrine of prime matter, which I confess to finding deeply
mysterious, to say the least. Even more dicult, however, do I find his advocacy of
the Thomist doctrine that it is matter that individuates a substance that, for instance,
Socrates is individuated by his matter (see pp. ). In response to the obvious
objection that Socrates is a substance of such a kind that he can exchange his matter
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with another substance of the same kind, such as Callias, Oderberg replies that it is
his matter indexed to a time that individuates Socrates, pointing out that no two
substances of the same kind can share the same matter at the same time. But then I
do not see why the reference to matter does not simply drop out of Oderbergs
account of the individuation of substances altogether, for it is equally true (very
plausibly, anyway) that no two substances of the same kind can exist in the same
place at the same time a claim which Oderberg himself is keen to endorse; so why
do we not just say that a substance is individuated by its place indexed to a time,
given that this must be unique to any substance of its kind, with the advantage that a
substances place is much easier to identify than its matter? In fact I do not think
that we should say this, because a substances place at a time is, in general, entirely
accidental but then, so too, typically, is its matter at a time: both proposals
accordingly fail if, as I think is strongly arguable, an entitys individuator must be a
thing or things on which it depends for its very identity. Furthermore, it also seems
plausible that places and times are themselves ultimately individuated by substances,
which would make both proposals circular. For what it is worth, I do not think that
we can ultimately say anything more informative than that each substance individuates itself, and indeed that this is one of the principal hallmarks of true substances, as
opposed to entities of dependent kinds, such as accidents (tropes) and events, which
are individuated at least partly by the substances bearing or participating in them.
Limitations of space here preclude further detailed discussion of Oderbergs
thoroughly fascinating and very fine book. But I can particularly recommend, for
those interested in such matters as many metaphysicians presently are his very
well informed discussion of powers and laws of nature, which raises important
objections to many current accounts of these.
Durham University

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E.J. L