Artifacts, Substances, and Transubstantiation: Solving a Puzzle for Aquinas’s Views

The Thomist 71 (2007): 89-112 ARTIFACTS, SUBSTANCES, AND TRANSUBSTANTIATION: SOLVING A PUZZLE FOR AQUINAS'S VIEWS CHRISTOPHER M. BROWN The University ofTennessee at Martin Martin, Tennessee THOMAS AQUINAS REFERS to composed beings that are unqualifiedly one as substances. But just what kinds of things in our experience enjoy this sort of unqualified unity? Certainly, any human person provides us a good example. Although I am composed of parts insofar as I am (at least under normal circumstances) an embodied being, I am also one object in the strongest sense of that expression. I am not identical to some aggregate of material objects-for example, the fundamental particles that constitute my body at a time-for I endure through the changes that my body invariably undergoes on a daily basis with respect to such parts. If I were identical to some aggregate of fundamental particles, then I would not endure through my body's changing with respect to those fundamental particles. Neither is my unity merely a function of someone-least of all myself-believing that I am one thing. Despite the fact that I am composed of parts (of various kinds), and despite the fact that I am something that is constantly changing, I am a perfect example of a being in the strongest sense of that term, a fundamentally unified "center of action,"1 a substance. It seems reasonable to suppose that when it comes to questions about unity, what goes for me also goes for any other members of my kind. So any human person presents us with a perfect example 1 This is W. Norris Clarke's apt phrase in The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics (Notre Dame, Ind.: The University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 67. 89 90 CHRISTOPHER M. BROWN of a being that is unqualifiedly one. In fact, it seems that all living organisms are good examples of unified objects in an unqualified sense. Moreover, there are presumably instances of nonliving object-kinds that are unqualifiedly one as well, for example, water molecules and carbon atoms. But what kind of being and unity do the other kinds of composed objects that make up such an integral part of our world enjoy? In particular, what about artifacts, objects such as bikes, computers, and guitars? Are artifact-objects unqualifiedly one? And if they are, are they one in the same way that persons and living organisms are one? To put this question in Thomistic terms, are artifacts substances? Aquinas defends the view that no artifacts are substances. He does so in a number of places throughout his corpus, sometimes only implicitly,2 at other times explicitly.3 Many contemporary philosophers find such a position on the ontological status of artifacts counterintuitive.4 Such philosophers suppose that (at least some) artifact-objects are just as real as the instances of natural kinds. For my present purposes I want to set aside the question whether or not Aquinas's views on artifacts are, in fact, counterintuitive.5 It seems that Aquinas himself has ample reason for thinking that some artifacts are substances. His own understanding of the Eucharistic doctrine oftransubstantiation has it that at the consecration in the Mass the substances that are some bread and some wine are miraculously transformed into the substances that are the Body and Blood of Christ. But the 2 See, e;g., ScG IV, c. 35; I Physic., lect. 12, n. 109; II Physic. lect. 1, nn. 142 and 145; II Physic., lect. 2, nn. 149 and 154. 3 See, e.g., De Prin. Nat., c. 1 (6); II De Anima, Iect. 1, n. 218; II De Anima, lect. 2, nn. 235-37; I Physic., lect. 2, n. 14; I Physic., lect. 12, n. 108; II Physic., lect. 2, n. 149; VII Metaphys., lect. 17, n. 1680; STh ill, q. 2, a. 1. 4 See, e.g., Lynne Rudder Baker, Persons and Bodies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and E. J. Lowe, The Possibility ofMetaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) for two recent, representative examples of the view that artifacts are just as real as organisms. 5 For an argument that Aquinas's views on...