However, this doctrine was rejected by Pope Paul VI in his encyclical Mysterium fidei. But Johnston’s notion of a ‘principle of unity’
turns out to be so generous that his theory almost collapses into
Lewis’s. As we shall see, the idea that there is a real unity that is passed on
through the life of an object or through any principle of organisation
is something that what is substratum Hume criticises and rejects. The positions, sequences, structures, and properties of these residues create a very specific chemical environment within the active site. A specific chemical substrate matches this site like a jigsaw puzzle piece and makes the enzyme specific to its substrate. In biochemistry, the substrate is a molecule upon which an enzyme acts.
He maintained that two of these are mind and body, each being distinct from the other in their attributes and therefore in their essence, and neither needing the other in order to exist. So each monad reflects the whole system, but with its own perspective
emphasised. If a monad is at place p at time t, it will contain all
the features of the universe at all times, but with those relating to
its own time and place most vividly, and others fading out roughly in
accordance with temporal and spatial distance. Because there is a
continuum of perspectives on reality, there is an infinite number of
these substances. Nevertheless, there is internal change in the
monads, because the respect in which its content is vivid varies with
time and with action. Indeed, the passage of time just is the change
in which of the monad’s contents are most vivid.
More from Merriam-Webster on substrate
The indiscernibles argument then asserts that the identity of indiscernibles is violated, for example, by identical sheets of paper. All of their qualitative properties are the same (e.g. white, rectangular, 9 x 11 inches…) and thus, the argument claims, bundle theory and metaphysical realism cannot both be correct. Philosophers following this line of thought
included Fine (1999, 2010), Johnston (2006), Lowe (2011), Koslicki
(2008), Rea (2011) and Jaworski (2011, 2012). It is difficult to
provide a compact account of these philosophers’ positions, as
it can seem that all they have in common is a belief in some form of
restricted composition and a sense that the Aristotelian label
’hylomorphism’ helps to give their theories a pedigree.
- Because there is a
continuum of perspectives on reality, there is an infinite number of
these substances. - The distinction has led
some commentators to talk of Aristotle’s ‘two
systems’, containing two radically different conceptions of
substance (Graham 1987). - This
latter concern will lead on to a consideration of the connection
between substance and teleology. - As a result, our mind creates a substratum (or substance) for these objects, into which it groups related qualities.
- The potential for a stronger realism in Locke has been exploited by
Putnam and Kripke in their development of a modern, essentialist
conception of natural kind terms.
Any feature of it can, of course, be regarded as a
property, but that does not render an object nothing but a collection
of properties. There seems to be a clash of intuitions at this point
about what makes sense. An opponent of the deflationary view will say
that properties, however understood, must be components of objects,
conceptually or formally speaking. If they are not the only components
in this sense, one must say something about the nature of the rest.
Of course, it is not an accident that
nature works that way, but neither is it a conceptual requirement. Wiggins’s original proof was a priori, and it should allow no
exceptions. Wiggins’s response to this example (in personal
communication) is that the sword-stick ceases to exist when it loses
its ability to function as a sword and is replaced by a walking stick. It embodies the principle
that if anything is both an F and a G, where
F and G are normally ordinary sortals, then it is
really an F/G and ceases to exist if it loses either
its F or its G features and is replaced by something
that is either just an F or just a G. The most obvious is
that it does not, as stated, distinguish between substances and
events.
What are specific substrates?
If it is
not natural to think of objects as having objects as their temporal
parts, this seems to commit one to thinking of objects as wholly
present at all times of their existence, strange though this form of
expression may also be. F. Strawson (1959, 1966), this
framework of necessity is taken in a more common-sense and realist
spirit. The world must possess such enduring objects for it to be
intelligible for us—indeed, for us to be part of it, for we are
essentially stable bodies amongst other stable bodies. The important
point for both Strawson and Kant is that there must be substances for
there to be a coherent empirical, spatio-temporal world. Substance has become a formal concept of central
importance—that is a concept with a special central role in the
structure of our conceptual scheme—rather than being the name
for certain kinds of important things in the world. This distinction,
however, is one that has to be handled carefully, especially within a
realist Kantian framework, such as Strawson provides.
We have seen that Locke’s particular substances are
kinds of things, and because they are kinds they correspond
to Aristotle’s secondary substances. But we have also
seen that the boundaries between these kinds are largely a matter of
convention, which is not true of Aristotle’s secondary
substances. In so far as their individuation is dependent on human
convention, they are not ultimately real in their own right.
By contrast, in any kind of structure of parts this identity
is not lost; the parts are merely organised in a certain way. The account given in these five points has the advantage that it is
compatible with the fact that most identities involving
reidentification are categorisable under sortals, but that there are
other cases—such as ‘piece of…’, ‘hunk
of…’—where this is not so. It also avoids the need
to employ the ‘“is” of constitution’ to link
sortals and particulars, like lumps and hunks, rather than just mass
terms, such as ‘clay’ or ‘gold’.
Substrate
But failure to meet these standards is not
carelessness on Plato’s part. It reflects his emphasis on
criterion (i), together with his particular view about the way in
which forms are basic. If one is not satisfied with a bundle theory of substance, so that one
thinks that an individual substance is more than a collection of
properties, how is one to understand this ‘more’? The
deflationary answer is that a substance is a thing which has
properties, and that is all one needs to say (see, for example, Crane
and Farkas 2004, 143f, and Chisholm 1969). An object is not composed
of properties and some further ingredient—the
‘thingy’ bit—an object is something that simply has
properties.
Examples of substratum
But the concept of substance is essentially a philosophical term of
art. Its uses in ordinary language tend to derive, often in a rather
distorted way, from the philosophical senses. But such ‘individual substances’ are
never termed ‘substances’ outside philosophy. There are certain kinds of counter-example that Wiggins does not
discuss in print.
It might seem natural to think—and it was formerly a
well established maxim—that there can be only one solid physical
thing at one place at a given time. Someone impressed by the idea that
two bodies cannot be in the same place at the same time might think it
more natural to say that there are two different ways of
conceptualising the material presence at that point, than that there
are two material things. That way it is easy to see why two ten pound
objects need not add up to twenty pounds when put together.
Words Near Substratum in the Dictionary
Fat and the others are described as being
in because they pick out a constituent feature that could be said
to be, in a logical though not a physical sense, part of, or
in him. This association of substance with kinds carries
over into a use of the term, which is perhaps more scientific,
especially chemical, than philosophical. This is the conception
according to which substances are kinds of stuff. Examples of this usage are water,
hydrogen, copper, granite or
ectoplasm.
More from Merriam-Webster on substratum
There is one important context, however, where Locke does not appear
to talk in a conventionalist way about sortal identity, but in a way
that seems to be reminiscent of substantial forms. As such, any change of particle
constitutes a new object, for a mereological sum is individuated by
its parts and a change of parts means a change of the object
constituted by those parts. Treating ordinary, non-living, bodies as
complex enduring objects is a matter of convention determined by the
concepts we happen to possess.
Accepting, for these purposes,
that Locke believed in substratum, we can apply these tests both to
substratum, and to his ‘ideas of particular sorts of
substance’. Locke’s doctrine of sortals is in some respects realist and in
some conceptualist or conventionalist. The starting material (other than enzyme or coenzyme) for an enzymatic chemical reaction. A substance to which another substance is applied we call a substrate. For example, rock is a substrate for fungi, a page is a substrate on which ink adheres, and NaCl is a substrate for the chemical reaction. The substrate is a molecule on which an enzyme functions in biochemistry.