SCI-Arc Spring 2019 Graham Harman & Daniel Tovar Philosophy ✓ Solved

SCI-Arc Spring 2019 Graham Harman & Daniel Tovar Philosophy

SCI-Arc Spring 2019 Graham Harman & Daniel Tovar Philosophy 1 Essay Prompts Instructions: Choose one prompt below to address. Each prompt should be answered by returning to and carefully re-reading the text. You may consult the primary text from which a reading selection was taken, but you are highly discouraged from consulting any other material. If you need clarification, feel free to search the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy or the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Note that whatever you look at, you must cite. Do not plagiarize. Writing a bad paper that nonetheless passes, or even one that doesn’t pass, is never worth the risk of plagiarizing. Note about style & citing primary sources: you are required to cite all of your sources, including the primary text that your chosen prompt directs you to write on. Thus, if you are writing on Plato, you must cite the Plato excerpt in Reality when necessary (or, if you’re relying on the primary source excerpted in Reality, that primary source). If you use sources other than Reality (or the respective primary text), you must also include a works cited page. The citations and works cited care which. I just care that it follows some style guide. The prompts cover ancient, medieval, rationalist, empiricist, and Kant topics. Ancient prompts: 1) What is the divided line analogy and what is the allegory of the cave? How do they relate and/or differ from each other? 2) Aristotle's account of substance via the "said of" vs. "present in" distinction. 3) Compare and contrast Plato and Aristotle's views on substance. Ancient & Medieval prompts: 4) Plato’s account of the forms and what biblical content Augustine adds to Plato’s theory. 5) Aquinas’s criticism of Aristotle with respect to existence. Rationalists: 6) Descartes: "I think, therefore I am" and the argument for God. 7) Spinoza: choose one proposition from the four and explain how Spinoza argues for it. 8) Leibniz: what is substance in Monadology 2 and why must it be simple. 9) Leibniz: discuss Monadology 17 about perception. Empiricists: 10) Locke: substance? 11) Berkeley: the only kind of substance; primary qualities. 12) Hume: Hume’s skeptical argument and its relation to natural laws. Kant: 13) What is substance for Kant? 14) Phenomena vs noumena; why phenomena might imply noumena. 15) Hume’s skeptical challenge and Kant's response. DPH 485 Social Media Assignment: Answer the questions below for EACH social media campaign listed on Canvas: 1) Was the campaign segmented for a certain population? If so, who was it for? 2) Was the campaign action-orientated? If so, what behavior was being promoted? 3) If the campaign was more knowledge-orientated, what changes could be made to the messaging to promote behavior change? 4) Was the content easy to understand? Do you think if a person had limited literacy skills, they would be able to understand what was being discussed in the posts/tweets? 5) Were the graphics appropriate (For Facebook campaigns only)? 6) Did the posts/tweets encourage readers to take a particular action or learn more? 7) Do you see where there could be improvements in the campaign to appeal to the target population?

Paper For Above Instructions

The present essay selects and addresses one of the ancient prompts: a careful comparison of Plato and Aristotle’s views on substance. The aim is not merely to recount their positions but to illuminate how each philosopher conceives what ultimately “substance” is, and how that conception structures their accounts of universals, change, and explanation. Central to this comparison are the ways Plato and Aristotle treat form, matter, and the status of universals, as well as the methodological implications of their theories for how we identify and speak about what truly exists.

For Plato, substance is intimately tied to the theory of forms. The Platonic account holds that the sensible world we experience through the senses is permeated by imperfect copies of eternal, perfect, immutable forms that exist in a separate, intelligible realm. These forms are the true realities, and the particular things we encounter in daily life participate in or imitate these forms. In this sense, substance for Plato consists of the enduring, universal patterns (the forms) that confer intelligible being on the changing, sensible instances. The allegory of the cave and the divided line illuminate this ontology: the visible realm provides mere appearances, while grasping the forms yields real knowledge of what things truly are. Substances, in Plato’s framework, belong to the transcendent realm of forms, and particular objects are only shadows or imitations of the realities that stand in the world of forms. Thus, for Plato, the ultimate substrata of reality are the forms themselves, which are independent of the sensory processes that generate change in the material realm (Plato, Republic).

By contrast, Aristotle rejects the notion that universals exist independently in a separate realm. He introduces the concept of ousia, or substance, as the primary category of being. For Aristotle, a substance is that which exists independently and serves as the substrate for predicates. He distinguishes between primary substances (individuals such as this man or this horse) and secondary substances (the species and genera to which individuals belong). A central methodological tool in Aristotle’s account is the said-of vs. present-in distinction: predicates are said of a subject, whereas the subject itself bears a presence of form and matter. When we say “the man is tall,” the predicate is said of the subject (the man). Yet the underlying reality of the individual—its form and its material substrate—remains the primary ontological unit, and predicates presuppose the existence of that subject. Aristotle thus locates substance within the immanent world: it is the concrete, particular thing that unifies matter and form and endures through change, even as its accidental properties may vary (Aristotle, Metaphysics; Aristotle, especially Book VII).

These two accounts yield different implications for universals and explanation. In Plato’s system, universals (forms) are more real than their particular manifestations; intelligibility resides in grasping the forms, and knowledge is a turn toward the immutable. The sensible world yields appearances; the forms alone provide stable grounds for truth. In Aristotle’s system, universals are real in a somewhat different sense: secondary substances (the species and genera) are real, but they do not exist apart from sensible particulars; rather, universals are instantiated in individuals and can only be known through the analysis of substances and their accidental properties. Consequently, Aristotle’s account emphasizes causality, essence, and the unity of form and matter within a single concrete entity (ousia). The Platonic emphasis on separation of realms contrasts with Aristotle’s synthesis of form and matter in the same ontological space (Aristotle, Metaphysics; Plato, Republic).

Change, explanation, and knowledge thus diverge across the two theories. Plato’s forms provide a static, epistemically privileged standpoint from which universals are known; the sensible world participates in those universals but does not itself possess “substance” in the same sense. Aristotle’s ontology allows for explanation in the natural world via teleology, hylomorphism (form and matter), and a more integrated account of how substances persist through flux. For Aristotle, the continuity of a thing through change rests on underlying matter receiving form; for Plato, the continuity rests on enduring, unchanging forms above the sensible realm.

Despite these differences, both thinkers share a concern with the status of universals and the problem of predication: how do we speak meaningfully about what is real and how can predication reflect a stable basis for knowledge? Both engage questions about which aspects of experience amount to genuine substance and which are epiphenomena of more fundamental realities. Yet they diverge on where the ultimate ground of being resides: in a transcendent realm of immutable forms (Plato) or in the immanent, concrete entities of the natural world with their composite matter and form (Aristotle). These divergent replies capture a fundamental divergence in the history of ontology and continue to inform contemporary debates about universals, realism, and the nature of existence (Plato, Republic; Aristotle, Metaphysics).

In closing, Plato’s substance-as-forms and Aristotle’s substance-as-ousia reflect two complementary, yet fundamentally opposed, paths in the history of philosophy. Plato’s theory elevates the forms to the status of ultimate substances, accessible only through intellectual ascent and dialectical inquiry. Aristotle’s theory treats substances as the core of reality themselves, where form and matter knit together in concrete beings that can be studied, explained, and understood through observation and analysis. The lineage from Plato to Aristotle marks a crucial shift from a transcendent to an immanent account of what exists, shaping two enduring models for thinking about universals, change, and the nature of substance in philosophy.

References

• Plato. Republic. Translated by Grube and Reeve. Hackett, 1997.
• Aristotle. Metaphysics. Translated by W. D. Ross. Clarendon Press, 1924.
• Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Cambridge University Press, 1998.
• Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. Translated by John Cottingham. Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Spinoza, Baruch. Ethics. Translated by Edwin Curley. Penguin, 1996.
• Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Monadology. In Monadology and Other Philosophical Writings, translated by Robert Latta. Prometheus Books, 1992.
• Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Oxford University Press, 1975.
• Berkeley, George. A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. Reprint: Hackett, 1986.
• Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Clarendon Press, 1888.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Substance. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance/