Substance

Definition

"Substance is a persisting and somehow basic object of reference that is there to be discovered in perception and thought. This is an object whose claim to be recognized as a real entity is a claim on our aspirations to understand the world."

Aristotle’s First Account of Substance

"The idea of a substance begins its serious philosophical life in Aristotle’s Categories. A primary substance is something that is neither in anything else nor predicable of anything else."

Hume’s Objection to Notion ‘Substance’

“We have no idea of substance distinct from that of a collection of particular qualities… The idea of a substance as well as that of a mode is nothing but a collection of simple ideas that are united by the imagination and have a particular name assigned them, by which we are able to recall …either to ourselves or others that collection.” (A Treatise of Human Nature)

A Question to Hume’s Objection

"How else can a set of qualities cohere together than by being properties of one and the same subject?"

Cartesian Dualism

"Substance dualism states that there are two kinds of foundation: mental and body. This philosophy states that the mental can exist outside of the body, and the body cannot think.

Descartes holds that the mind is a nonphysical - and therefore, non-spatial - substance."

SOURCES

Philosophy 1. A Guide through the Subject. Ed. by A.C. Grayling. Oxford University Press. 2012

Millican P. Cartesian Dualism. http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/43-cartesian-dualism