Toward a Reconstruction of Fundamental Metaphysical Categories
Abstract
This paper develops a transcendental argument from the actuality of change to the existence and necessary characteristics of its conditions. Change is first established through manifest experience and then defended against radical skepticism through a Consequentia Mirabilis: the active formation of the supposition that nothing changes itself involves a cognitive transition. The paper subsequently examines alteration as a paradigmatic form of change, deriving its necessary conditions: difference, succession, diachronic identity, a persisting subject, possibility, actuality, and privation. It distinguishes two functions of transcendental reasoning: establishing the actuality of necessary conditions and determining their nature through the precise necessities they fulfill. The resulting account reconstructs central elements of Aristotelian metaphysics while remaining neutral on stronger claims about substantival time, substantial forms, intrinsic causal powers, and the metaphysics of persistence.
I. The Actuality of Change
1. The Manifest Argument
- Change is manifest in experience.
- Whatever is necessarily presupposed by an actual phenomenon must itself obtain.
- Therefore, the necessary conditions of change actually obtain.
The first premise establishes our starting point. The second expresses the governing principle of transcendental reasoning.
Let C signify that change occurs and N that some necessary condition obtains. Then:
C, □(C → N) ∴ N.
The inference is valid. Its substantive philosophical work consists in establishing that N really is necessary for C.
The actuality of change therefore provides a basis for investigating the fundamental conditions of its possibility.
2. The Consequentia Mirabilis of Change
A radical skeptic might deny the actuality of change itself. Yet the actual performance of this denial presupposes the very phenomenon it attempts to exclude.
- Suppose that no change occurs.
- Actively forming this supposition involves a transition from not supposing to supposing.
- This transition constitutes a change in the reasoning subject.
- Therefore, the actual formation of the supposition that no change occurs itself presupposes change.
- Consequently, the performed denial of change is self-defeating.
The argument exhibits the structure of the Consequentia Mirabilis:
¬C → C; ∴ C.
Its precise interpretation requires care. The supposition’s propositional content does not itself entail change. Rather, an actual episode of forming that supposition involves a transition of cognitive state.
The argument therefore refutes the universal absence of change in any situation in which such discursive activity actually occurs. If you’re supposing or asserting anything, you are implicitly relying on a prior notion of change to do so.[1]
The conclusion is sufficient for the present investigation: change actually occurs.
II. The Transcendental Conditions of Alteration
Having established change, we can investigate its necessary conditions.
Our immediate object is alteration: the acquisition or loss of a determination by a persisting subject. This restriction is important. Not every form of change necessarily involves a persisting subject in precisely the same sense; generation and destruction, for example, require separate analysis.[2]
Consider a subject S that changes from determination A to determination B.
1. Difference
Alteration requires a difference between the subject’s initial and subsequent determinations.
If no relevant determination differs, no alteration has occurred.
A ≠ B.
Thus, distinguishability is a necessary condition of alteration.
2. Time and Succession
Alteration requires that the differing determinations occur successively.
A subject cannot possess incompatible determinations simultaneously in the same respect, but it may possess them at different times.
Therefore, alteration presupposes a distinction between ordered positions in which different determinations obtain.
Since alteration actually occurs, the requisite temporal structure actually obtains.
This establishes time minimally as a structure permitting ordered succession. It does not establish absolute time, a particular temporal metric, or the independent existence of time apart from changing things.[3]
3. Diachronic Identity
Alteration requires that the subject possessing the initial determination and the subject possessing the subsequent determination be numerically the same.
Otherwise, we would have described two different things rather than one thing undergoing alteration.
Thus:
S(t₁) = S(t₂).
The equality signifies numerical identity of the subject, not identity of all its determinations.
Consequently, alteration presupposes diachronic identity: sameness of subject through difference of state.
This conclusion does not decide whether persistence is best explained by endurance, perdurance, or another metaphysical account. It establishes the identity required by alteration while leaving the metaphysics of persistence open.[4]
4. Subject and Substance
Alteration must be predicated of something that alters.
The subject remains identifiable while its determinations vary.
Therefore, alteration presupposes a persisting bearer of changing determinations.
We may designate this bearer a substance in the minimal sense of a subject of alteration.
The stronger Aristotelian conception of substance—as possessing a determinate essence, substantial form, or independent ontological status—requires additional argument.
Nevertheless, the existence of an actual persisting subject is established wherever alteration of such a subject actually occurs.[5]
5. Potentiality
If a subject actually becomes B, becoming B must have been possible.
An impossible alteration cannot occur.
Thus:
Alteration(S,A,B) → ◇B(S).
Here possibility is understood relative to the relevant prior conditions, not as the claim that B already obtains.
Alteration therefore presupposes a realizable possibility: the subject can become otherwise.
This establishes potentiality in a minimal modal sense. Whether such possibility must be grounded in an intrinsic causal power belonging to the subject is a further question.[6]
6. Actuality and Actualization
Alteration involves more than the possibility of a different determination, but its realization.
The subject actually acquires that determination.
Accordingly, alteration involves the realization of a possibility.
The distinction between potentiality and actuality is therefore necessary for describing the structure of alteration.
In this respect, the analysis converges with Aristotle’s account of change in terms of dynamis and energeia. Yet Aristotle’s more specific definition of motion as the actuality of what is potential insofar as it is potential concerns the actuality of the process itself, not merely the completed acquisition of its terminus.[7]
7. Determinacy and Privation
For a subject to acquire determination B, it must previously lack B in the relevant respect.
The initial state therefore includes a privation relative to the acquired determination.
The alteration requires:
- A subject capable of receiving a determination.
- The prior absence of that determination.
- Its subsequent acquisition.
This reconstructs, at a minimal level, the Aristotelian distinction between subject, privation, and form.
It does not establish that every difference involves contrariety, or that privation must be understood as a separate independently existing entity.[8]
III. The Transcendental Determination of Nature
Transcendental reasoning can establish more than the existence of necessary conditions.
By examining precisely why each condition is necessary, we can determine some of the properties it must possess.
The method therefore has two stages.
First, the derivation of actuality. If a phenomenon actually occurs, its necessary conditions must actually obtain.
Second, the determination of nature. If a condition must fulfill a particular role for the phenomenon to be possible, that role discloses necessary structural features of the condition.
For example, alteration requires succession. We therefore establish not only that time obtains, but that it must permit the ordered differentiation of states.
Likewise, alteration requires identity through difference. We establish not merely that identity obtains, but that the identity of a persisting subject is compatible with variation in its determinations.
The same method discloses the minimal character of the subject of alteration, the distinction between possibility and actuality, and the relation between privation and acquisition.
We may formulate the general principle:
The actuality of a phenomenon establishes the actuality of its necessary conditions; the precise necessities governing that phenomenon disclose the necessary properties of those conditions.
This does not entail that every property of a condition can be derived from a single phenomenon. The conclusion is limited to the properties genuinely required by the phenomenon’s possibility.
Nor does the argument automatically establish an independently existing entity corresponding to every conceptual distinction. Its ontological commitments must be assessed individually.
The method nevertheless offers a systematic means of investigating fundamental metaphysical categories.
IV. The Structure of Alteration
The preceding derivations can be integrated into a single account.
A persisting subject S:
- Possesses an initial determination A.
- Is capable of acquiring a different determination B.
- Undergoes an ordered transition.
- Actually acquires B.
- Remains numerically the same subject across the alteration.
Schematically:
S(A,t₁) → S(B,t₂), where t₁ ≺ t₂.
The subject persists; its determinations differ; their occurrence is ordered; and a realizable possibility becomes actual.
We may therefore characterize alteration as follows:
Alteration is the actualization of a possible difference in a persisting subject through ordered succession.
This formulation brings together time, difference, identity, substance in the minimal sense, potentiality, actuality, and privation.
It is not intended as an exhaustive definition of every kind of change. Rather, it expresses the necessary structure of alteration in a persisting subject.
V. Conclusion
Change is manifest in experience. Its actuality is further defended against radical skepticism through the Consequentia Mirabilis: the active formation of the supposition that no change occurs itself involves a change of cognitive state.
Having established change, we investigated the necessary conditions of alteration.
The resulting analysis establishes the necessity of distinguishable determinations, ordered succession, diachronic identity, a persisting subject, realizable possibility, actualization, and privation.
Because alteration actually occurs, these necessary conditions must actually obtain.
Moreover, by examining the precise necessities through which they make alteration possible, we can determine some of their essential structural properties.
The method extends beyond alteration. Physical motion, for example, presupposes spatial distinctions, while other phenomena may disclose further necessary metaphysical conditions. Such extensions must establish their own necessity premises.
The central conclusion is therefore both ontological and methodological:
The actuality of a phenomenon entails the actuality of its necessary conditions; transcendental investigation of those conditions can disclose their necessary nature.
This provides a foundation for a systematic transcendental reconstruction of fundamental metaphysical categories, beginning with change and proceeding through the structures without which change could not occur.
Notes
[1] Compare Aristotle, Metaphysics IV.4, 1006a11–1007a20; Barry Stroud, “Transcendental Arguments,” The Journal of Philosophy 65, no. 9 (1968): 241–256.
[2] Aristotle, Physics I.7, 189b30–191a22; III.1, 200b26–201a9.
[3] Aristotle, Physics IV.10–14, especially IV.11, 219b1–2.
[4] David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), chapter 4; Katherine Hawley, How Things Persist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Theodore Sider, Four-Dimensionalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001).
[5] Aristotle, Physics I.7; Metaphysics VII.3; Benjamin Morison, “The Complexity of the Subject in a Change: Physics I 7, Part 1,” in Aristotle’s Physics Alpha: Symposium Aristotelicum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 229–261.
[6] Aristotle, Metaphysics IX.1–5; Stephen Mumford, Dispositions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
[7] Aristotle, Physics III.1, 201a10–11.
[8] Aristotle, Physics I.7, 190a13–191a22; Hendrik Lorenz, “The Principles of Natural Things—Two or Three? Physics I 7, Part 2,” in Aristotle’s Physics Alpha: Symposium Aristotelicum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 262–285.
References
Aristotle. Metaphysics. Books IV, VII, and IX.
Aristotle. Physics. Books I, III, and IV.
Hawley, Katherine. How Things Persist. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. 1781/1787.
Lewis, David. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.
Lorenz, Hendrik. “The Principles of Natural Things—Two or Three? Physics I 7, Part 2.” In Aristotle’s Physics Alpha: Symposium Aristotelicum, 262–285. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Morison, Benjamin. “The Complexity of the Subject in a Change: Physics I 7, Part 1.” In Aristotle’s Physics Alpha: Symposium Aristotelicum, 229–261. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Mumford, Stephen. Dispositions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Sider, Theodore. Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001.
Stroud, Barry. “Transcendental Arguments.” The Journal of Philosophy 65, no. 9 (1968): 241–256.
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