Inherence

Author(s): G. E. L. Owen
Source: Phronesis , 1965, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1965), pp. 97-105
Published by: Brill

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4181760

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Brill is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Phronesis

This content downloaded from

193.225.200.92 on Tue, 13 Oct 2020 09:26:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Inherence

G. E. L. OWEN

O ften in the Categories and once in the Topics Aristotle draws a

distinction between being in a subject and being said, or predicated,
of a subject (Cat. 1a20-b9, 2a11-14, 2a27-b6, 2b15-17, 3a7-32,
9b22-24; Postpred. 11 b38-12 a 17, 14a 16-18; Top. 127b 1-4). Elsewhere
he makes no use of the distinction, at least in this form. Once in the
Categories he blankets it under the formula belonging to something
(11b38-12a17). But it has earned a good deal of attention, and there
is a fashionable dogma about it that I should like to nail. Hints of the
dogma can be seen in older writers such as Porphyry and Pacius. Its
modern exponents are Ross, Aristotle p. 24 n. 1; Jones, Phil. Rev. 1949
pp. 152-170; and most recently Miss Anscombe in Three Philosophers
pp. 7-10, and Mr. Ackrill in Aristotle's 'Categories' and 'De Interpre-
tatione' pp. 74-5, 83, 109.
For a start let us mark out an area of agreement. Set aside the
question whether Aristotle thinks of a predicate primarily as an
expression, or as what an expression stands for, or as both indifferently:
let us for grammatical convenience have predicates in quotation marks
and reserve the right to shift on occasion into the material mode. Then
it is generally agreed that for 'X' to be predicable of Y, in the sense
required by the Categories, it must be proper to say 'Y is X' (or 'is an X'
or 'is a kind of X'). If Socrates is a man, what is predicable of him is
'man' and not 'manhood'; it would be absurd, or a stretch of language,
to say that Socrates is (or is a kind of) manhood. (One sin of the old
Oxford translation was its writing 'manhood' for 'man' at 3al2-13.)
Jones is virtuous: 'virtuous' is his predicate, but what is in him is
virtue (or, not to beg the later question, some virtue). If 'virtue' is to
be predicated its subject must be not a man but a virtue, such as
breviloquence.
Again it is agreed that for Aristotle this is only a necessary condition
of predicability. It is not a sufficient condition, for Aristotle will not
allow the designation of a primary substance to occur in the predicate-
position. To say that the man with no shoes is Socrates is not to
predicate (or, in the concessive phrase of APr. 43a34-5, it is only to
predicate kata sumbebekos). Why not? Aristotle gives no rule. But his

97

This content downloaded from

193.225.200.92 on Tue, 13 Oct 2020 09:26:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
reason is commonly taken to be that to predicate of an individual is not
to name or, in a strong sense, to identify that individual. It is to
classify it or to bring it under some general description. I hope
agreement goes as far as this.
Now in introducing his distinction Aristotle says: "Some things are
in a subject but not said of any subject. By 'in a subject' I mean what
(a) is in something not as a part, and (b) cannot exist separately from
what it is in. For example, some particular linguistic knowledge is in a
subject, viz. the mind, but it is not said of any subject; and some
particular light colour is in a subject, viz. the body (for every colour is
in a body), but it is not said of any subject" (la23-29). Leukon ti, 'a
particular light colour', not 'a particular white': people may forget or
deny that there are different particular shades of white. Leukon covers
all light colours as melan covers all dark colours: that is why the
commonplace that all colours range between or are composed of
leukon and melan (Cat. 12a17-19, Phys. 188b3-5, DA. 442al2-13) is
sense and not the nonsense that translators usually make of it. In
default of any single English equivalent for leukon I shall use 'pink'.
I take the point to be this. Compare the predicate 'animal' with the
predicate 'colour'. 'Animal' is predicable of man, and 'animal' and
'man' are in turn predicable of Socrates the individual. His individuality
is just that he, or his name, is not predicable of anything less general;
and further, since he is an individual substance, that he is not found in
any individual in the way that colours and shapes and sizes are found
in their possessors. 'Colour', on the other hand, is predicable of pink,
and 'colour' and 'pink' are in turn predicable of any particular shade of
pink - any of those shades of which Aristotle is ready to prove that
only a finite number is discriminated by sight (Sens. 445b20-446a20).
Call the specimen shade 'vink'. Then vink is an individual in the
category of quality, analogous to Socrates in the category of substance.
(Miss Anscombe's claim that "Aristotle never calls what exists in
something else an individual, but reserves that term for substances",
p. 8, repeated on p. 9, seems to come from a misreading of 1 b6-9.
Mr. Ackrill gives the usual and, I think, correct interpretation: "Things
that are individual and numerically one are, without exception, not
said of any subject, but there is nothing to prevent some of them from
being in a subject".) The analogy is just that vink, or its name, is not
predicable of any less general shade of colour. To say 'That shade is
vink' is to name the shade, not to bring it under a wider class of
colours: vink is a wholly determinate specimen of its class. (Of course

98

This content downloaded from

193.225.200.92 on Tue, 13 Oct 2020 09:26:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
'vink' may have another use as a colour-adjective and can then be
predicated, but predicated of coloured things and not of colours.
Aristotle recognizes this in the case of leukon, 2a27-34, cf. 3al5-17.
The use that concerns us is its use as the name of a colour - the use
which Aristotle takes to be shown by its definition, 2a29-34.)
Similarly with the particular linguistic knowledge. (Ross's 'a
particular piece of grammatical knowledge' is happier than Miss
Anscombe's 'such-and-such grammarianship'.) 'Linguistic knowledge'
can be predicated of its branches, such as the knowledge of French
(or, if you like, the knowledge of languages having a certain degree of
inflexion). And just as Socrates is a particular specimen of man and
vink a particular specimen of the colour pink, so the knowledge that
the third person plural present of 'voir' is spelt 'voient' is a particular
specimen of the knowledge of French and more generally of linguistic
knowledge. Nothing could fall under the general description 'know-
ledge that the third person plural, etc.', for the good reason that there
is no such general description. The phrase picks out an item and not a
branch of knowledge. Exercises and displays of the knowledge do not
fall under it: Aristotle never subsumes the dunamis-energeia (or for
that matter the type-token) distinction under the distinction of
species and specimen.'
To say that vink is a particular colour is to say that it, or its name,
cannot be predicated: it is not to say that it cannot be found in more
than one subject. Any particular shade of colour is of course repro-
ducible. Any bit of linguistic knowledge can of course lodge in more
than one head. Aristotle does not for a moment contemplate denying
this. His commentators saddle him with the denial, and this is the
dogma I set out to examine.
If there is any evidence for the dogma it is a half-sentence in the
Categories. Aristotle says "By 'in a subject' I mean what (a) is in
something not as a part, (b) cannot exist separately from what it is in"
(la24-5). It is (b) that has seemed to entail the odd consequence,
namely that the only item from any category that can be present in an
individual subject, in the requisite sense of 'in', is one that is not only
quite determinate but non-recurrent: a unit property in Russell's sense.
For suppose that the hue of Smith's face could be found in Jones as
well: then it could exist separately from Smith, and for that matter it

I Met. 1087 a 10-25 is another matter: for one interpretation which disarms it cf.
Cherniss ACPA i pp. 340-8.

99

This content downloaded from

193.225.200.92 on Tue, 13 Oct 2020 09:26:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
could exist without either of them. So to have condition (b) Smith's
shade of purple must, logically must, be different from Jones's.
Aristotle, to be sure, does not draw these corollaries. He does not
conclude, as Stout did, that it must be misleading to say that Smith and
Jones have just the same colouring: that at best they have irreducibly
different colourings between which some philosophical relation of
exact similarity obtains. But, whatever he says, the dogma commits
him to holding that to identify any particular colour, or generally
any individual other than a substance, involves identifying the
individual substance which is its sole proprietor. And it commits him
to something more surprising. It entails that any non-substance whose
identification does not carry this condition, say the colour pink or the
knowledge of Greek, can not be said to be in any individual subject at
all (Ackrill, p. 74). Pink is in body but not in Smith's or any one else's
body; for it can exist without Smith's body but not without body.
General attributes are not in individuals, particular attributes are not
in more than one individual.
This cannot be what Aristotle means. Let us list some objections and
then look again at the words that seemed to entail the dogma.
First, then, Aristotle never explicitly follows, and often flatly
contradicts, the rule he is supposed to have laid down. It is not just
that he does not mention its implications. In the very passage in which
it is supposedly introduced he gives .'in the soul' as the locus of both a
particular linguistic knowledge and knowledge in general (1 a 25-26,
lb 1-2). Here if anywhere it would seem important to distinguish the
first subject from the second as being not merely in the soul but in a
particular soul; but he does not do so either here or elsewhere. Nor is it
open to a dogmatic to read 'in the soul' as either meaning or even
implying 'in a particular soul', otherwise the second example is a
mistake.
These are negative signs: what are the positive contradictions?
When Aristotle remarks that an expression such as 'pink' is predicable
of the body in which pink is present (2a29-34) he flouts the rule if he
has particular subjects in mind, Smith's body as well as body. That he
does is clear from the context in which he repeats the point (3a7-17);
but it is put beyond question by the lines which follow the remark
(2a36-b3). These lines deserve quotation, for by themselves I think
they settle the issue. Aristotle draws a careful parallel between
predication and inherence: "'Animal' is predicated of man, conse-
quently 'animal' must also be predicated of the particular man; for if

100

This content downloaded from

193.225.200.92 on Tue, 13 Oct 2020 09:26:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
it were not predicated of any particular man it would not be predicated
of man at all. And colour is in body, consequently it is in a particular
body; for if it were not in any of the individuals it would not be in
body at all." With respect, it is mere despair to write off the second
half of this as 'compressed and careless' or to represent Aristotle as
merely "speaking as if, because colour is in body, colour is in an
individual body" (Ackrill, p. 83). The unwanted consequence lies at the
heart of Aristotle's parallel. And the parallel is subsequently taken for
granted, e.g. at Postpred. 11b38-12a17, where Mr. Ackrill would
prefer not to see the old distinction at all (p. 109).
Then there is the paradox of the breakdown of categories. The
dogma says that each particular item in categories other than sub-
stance must be identified as the such-and-such quality (or quantity,
or whatever) of so-and-so. The consequence is that members of the
subordinate categories are seconded in one sweep to the category of
relative terms. At any rate they satisfy Aristotle's criteria for relatives,
including the last and strongest, quite as well as his own examples
(8a35-8b15). According to him, double is relative because any par-
ticular double can only be known to be so by knowing just what it is
the double of: and if one thinks of any large even number, doubts
arise. But there are no doubts with the dogma: any particular colour
(or size or shape, etc.) can only be known for the colour it is by
knowing just what individual it is the colour of. Conceded, some such
reduction may lie behind EN 1096a20-23, though I think the dis-
tinction there has another origin. But it is very odd that Aristotle
should say nothing of it in the Categories, for instance when he argues
that knowledge is relative but not the 'particular knowledges' which
entitle their possessors to be called 'knowledgeable' (11a20-36). It
can hardly be lurking behind the abrupt admission that something
might fall under the category of relation as well as that of quality
(11 a 37-38).
And there is the paradox of implication. If X is an individual, the
statement that a particular Y (say a particular colour) is in X will not
entail but actually preclude saying that Y without qualification is in X.
You ask me what colour there is in Socrates' body: I reply meticulously
'Socrates' pink'. You may find this to some extent uninformative; but
when I try to isolate the informative element for you I founder. If I say
"The colour in Socrates' body is pink", the dogma rules out what I say
as ill-formed. Alternatively, 'pink' may be supposed to stand for a
different colour with each different individual subject; but Aristotle

101

This content downloaded from

193.225.200.92 on Tue, 13 Oct 2020 09:26:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
never suggests this (except perhaps at SE 165alO-13? Contrast Met.
1006a31-blO), and he knew an argument that could be turned against
it. It is an Academic argument reported by Alexander, pretty certainly
from Aristotle's early essay 'On the Ideas' (Alex. in Metaph. 81.12-18).
"When a man denies something of a number of things his denial must
refer to something single: for in saying 'man is not white (leukos!),
horse is not white...' he is not denying some separate thing of each of
them - he refers to one and the same thing and this is what he denies
all through, viz. white. If so, then a man who asserts something of a
number of things must also be asserting one and the same thing and
not something different of each of them: e.g. he asserts man, referring
to one and the same thing. For what holds good of denying holds good
of asserting too." The argument is about predication, but it can readily
be brought to bear on inherence. If I say you are one of the people in
whose eyes there is no green I am not saying that your eyes lack the
green proprietary to them: ex hypothesi there is no such green. Nor,
therefore, does the contradiction of my statement mention any
proprietary shade of green. The argument evidently applies to determi-
nates as well as determinables and to other categories as well as quality.
Perhaps, indeed, it is when the dogma is extended to other categories
that it becomes a joke: so that two things cannot be said to have the
same particular size when they are both six feet tall, or cannot be said
to occupy the same particular place at different times. Aristotle's
account of place in the Physics rests squarely on the assumption that
A can move into the identical place vacated by B.
Hence friends of the dogma slip from Aristotle's own examples to
supplying him with others. Miss Anscombe relies on the idea of a
particular surface (pp. 8-10): plainly my desk cannot be said to have
the same (as against the same sort of) surface, or edges or corners, as
any other. But just this is why Aristotle is exercised by the old question
whether surfaces and other boundaries of a body should count as sub-
stances (Met. 1002a4-14, cf. 1017bl7-21); and why he treats surface
as the primary subject in which there is colour (5b6-8, Ph. 248b22-23,
Met. 1022al6-17, cf. Bz. Index 282a30-32); and why finaly such
boundaries are given no niche in his account of the categories - they
appear as the standard possessors of dimensional properties, but are
not themselves such properties nor apparently anything else (4b23-24).
What I can share with you or take over from you is an intriguing
question: your aches? your limbs? your memories? But shapes and
sizes and colours are not among these problematic items.

102

This content downloaded from

193.225.200.92 on Tue, 13 Oct 2020 09:26:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Give Aristotle his examples. What could persuade him or us that
A's colour or knowledge of the past participle in French cannot be just
the same as B's? He might have thought, as a matter of experience,
that some difference is bound to reveal itself on a closer inspection.
Some people believe, wrongly, that Plato argued on these lines in the
Phaedo. But one who thought this would equally expect to find
differences of colour within any one surface, and then the particularity
of Socrates' pink is lost. More probably if Aristotle held the view his
reasons were of another kind. Plato for instance had argued (Tht.
209b-c) that the snubness of Theaetetus' nose, and "everything else
that made up" Theaetetus, must be peculiar to him: how else could he
be known for the individual he was? But Plato was mistaken, and
Aristotle knew at least part of the mistake (Top. E 1, relative and
temporary properties). And when we try to prop the dogma with other
arguments we fare no better.
No one would defend it by the plea that I can talk or think of A's
colour or knowledge of Greek without talking or thinking of B's: in
this way one can as well prove that Shakespeare was not the author of
Cymbeline. But some one might point out that A's colour (or size, or
whatever) can change without any change in B's, however much they
may have been said to be just the same colour at the start. Still this
will not do. In this use 'A's colour' does not stand for any determinate
colour: all that is said is that A can change colour, that from having
one determinate colour it can come to have another. The first colour
no more suffers change in the process than twelve o'clock changes when
it gives way to later times. In any event, if Aristotle had such an
argument in mind he would have suggested, around 4a14-15, that a
particular colour could be both light and dark because the colour of a
man's face can darken.
"But the particular purple on A's face may vanish (or, more pre-
tentiously and less revealingly, cease to exist) when what is called just
the same purple on B's face survives." This too can be rephrased
without loss: the same shade of purple may stay on one face when it
has left another. And the legitimacy of the rephrasing shows how
misconceived it would be to construe this on the model of "One of these
identical twins may die and the other survive".
A last defence. A's knowledge of French is necessarily distinct from
B's knowledge where 'A's knowledge of French' does duty for a noun-
clause: the reason for A's appointment was his knowledge of (that he
knew) French; they're hanging Danny Deever for the colour of his

103

This content downloaded from

193.225.200.92 on Tue, 13 Oct 2020 09:26:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
hair. Yes, but Aristotle's leukon is the wrong word for this job, as
'white' or 'pink' would be in English. What we need is the whiteness
of A, the leukotes which does not appear until 4b 15. If you doubt this
try substituting noun-clauses in la25-b3.
Aristotle tries none of these bad arguments for the dogma, and what
he says elsewhere in the Categories rules it out. So the sentence on
which it is alleged to rest calls for review. And on review it reveals its
ambiguity. Aristotle says: "By 'in a subject' I mean what (a) is in
something not as a part, (b) cannot exist separately from what it is
in". (The importing of '(a)' and '(b)' is of course mine, but not I think
unfair: all the commentators known to me, from Porphyry and
Simplicius on, distinguish the conditions in this way.) Commentators
hasten to supply the concrete instance: there is some colour in Socrates,
so condition (b) must be read as requiring that that colour cannot
exist apart from Socrates. That is, to use a handbook idiom, they read
both (a) and (b) as governed by the same quantifier: if Z is in some
subject, in the prescribed sense of 'in', then there is an x such that Z
is in x and Z is no part of x and Z cannot exist apart from x. But,
condensed as Aristotle's formula is, it is open to another interpretation.
It can indeed be read as saying "Z is in something... and Z could not
exist without this thing to contain it", but it can equally well be read
as saying "Z is in something... and Z could not exist without something
to contain it". That is, the phrase "separately from what it is in" can be
taken generally, in a way that is matched by the familiar phrasing of
Aristotle's other complaints at Plato's separation of the universal.
When Aristotle argues that the universal cannot exist separately from
the particulars of which it is predicated (first perhaps in the diagnosis
of the Third Man in De Ideis, Alex. in Metaph. 84.22-23, cf. 999a17-21,
1033bl9-21, 1040b25-30), or when, still more reminiscently of our
text, he objects that if the Idea is a substance it cannot exist separately
from that of which it is the substance (991 b 1-3 = 1079b35-1080a2),
these idioms ought to provoke the friends of the dogma. For the
particulars of which 'man' is predicated are Socrates, Plato ... Smith;
so by the original argument Aristotle must be implying that there
could not be man if there were not Socrates or... or Smith. But
Aristotle knew quite well that there might have been men even
without Socrates. And the grammatical singular in "that of which it is
the substance" does not, in this context anyhow, carry the suggestion
that the Idea could not be the substance of more particulars than one
(cf. 991 a 12-14, 992 a 26-27). To say that there could not be man apart

104

This content downloaded from

193.225.200.92 on Tue, 13 Oct 2020 09:26:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
from the particulars called 'men' is to say that man's existence entails
that some (and perhaps more than one) individual is a man. To say
that if the Idea of man is a substance it cannot exist apart from that of
which it is the substance is to say that its existence requires (indeed
consists in) the existence of at least one individual falling under the
classification human. And to say that pink or a particular shade of
pink cannot exist apart from what contains it is to say, as Aristotle
always says against Plato, that something must contain it if it is to
exist at all.

Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

105

This content downloaded from

193.225.200.92 on Tue, 13 Oct 2020 09:26:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms