The Dispute Regarding Accidents of Universals – The Fifth Premise | Part I Chapter 73 (7) | Guide for the Perplexed 162 (Auto Translated)

Fifth Premise of the Kalam: Accidents as a Condition for the Existence of Substance

Review of the Fourth Premise and the Innovation in the Fifth

We are at the fifth premise of the Kalam. We learned that the fifth premise is actually the most important innovation, or the most important definition in relation to the fourth premise. Indeed, it should precede the fourth premise in some sense, or as they would write here — that it is simply a condition in the fourth premise.

The fourth premise was that every substance has accidents — that was the Rambam’s formulation, that there are accidents, that accidents exist. And regarding this, the Rambam said: this is also agreed upon by the philosophers. That is, that there is substance and there are accidents.

The Addition of the Mutakallimun to the Philosophers

But they add to this. We explained a bit that this stems from a completely different understanding of the concept of substance and accidents, but one point they added to this, to what the philosophers also agree that there are accidents, is that every substance must have an accident or the opposite of the accident.

Two Foundations for This Addition

The First Foundation: Denial of the Difference Between Contrariety and Contradiction

The reason for this is connected to two things. It is connected, first, to the fact that they think that everything is contrariety and there are no contradictions in the world. We remember the difference between contrariety and contradiction: contrariety is like heat and cold, contradiction is like being and non-being.

For it is true philosophically as well that heat is the contrary of cold, and therefore if something receives heat and cold, then it is always either hot or cold, or its degree of heat is also its degree of cold. These are simply two sides of the same thing, we could say, what we would call — its temperature.

The Meaning of Denying Contradiction

That’s one thing, and then they deny this. They deny that there is contrariety and there is contradiction. Whereas, for example, contradiction would be something like being and non-being, or whether it has color at all. Say something that doesn’t receive color, or say something dead, that has no life at all — something that is not in the category of life, not a dead person, but a stone, which is not dead. According to their view it is indeed dead, because they think that life and death are contradiction, they are contrariety and not contradiction.

The Connection to Denying Generation and Corruption

And this is actually connected — why is it connected? It is connected, say, for example, to the fact that they think there is no generation and non-generation, this is connected to their denial of generation and corruption. They think that everything is atoms and accidents of atoms, and therefore, as we learned, there is no generation and corruption at all, there is only aggregation and separation.

So from this, I think it somewhat follows that all the accidents, which are accidents of the atoms, are not atoms themselves, but the accidents will also always be contraries. It’s always a question of how much of something there is, or which side of the contrariety you have. There is never such a thing as non-being.

This is connected to the fact that they think there are no Forms at all, there are no things that either are, or are not. There is only substance and accident.

The Second Foundation: The Theological Motive — God as the Sole Agent

That’s one thing. This is also connected to something theological. Of course, the Rambam claims that theology here always precedes philosophy, but this is connected to something theological, that they want God to do everything.

The Problem: How to Say God Does Everything Without Intermediate Causes

And they translate “will do everything” to “will make substances and accidents,” because they are not satisfied with just saying “does everything” without relation. They say this with a certain scientific explanation, which is substance and accidents. And then they get stuck, because they cannot say “God makes the stone not alive” without recognizing that making the stone not alive is also making something.

So how is this making something? It would have the contrary, the opposite — or according to them contrariety and opposite are the same thing — of the accident of life.

This will be the third premise, which is the very being of substance and accident, and their addition, which already begins to show us the difference between their substance and accident and the substance and accident of Aristotelian philosophy.

The Absurdity: A Stone That Has the Property of Not Being Alive

I think the Rambam already intended to mock this, because it sounds somewhat illogical to say that a stone has the property of not being alive. The accident of a stone is that it is also not alive and also not wise and also all sorts of these things. Apparently it sounds like there are indeed things that are things, therefore a person can be foolish or wise, but a stone cannot be neither foolish nor wise, because it is not that kind of thing.

According to their view there is no such thing as “kinds of things,” therefore a stone must be foolish.

The Connection to Miracles and Regularity in Nature

This also helps with miracles, of course, meaning that according to them there are no miracles, in the true sense — everything is miracles, or everything is accidents. But this helps them with something more fundamental than miracles. Miracles are a problem, according to those who believe there is nature, so there is a question of what to do with miracles.

They stand at a more preliminary stage. They want God to be the ultimate agent in everything, the sole agent. And in order to be the sole agent, there must not be another answer, as I saw.

Example: “Who Really Made the Sea?”

Some supervisor said, that he is really amazed, that everyone is such heretics today, because one child asked his father: “Dad, who made the sea?” So he said: “Okay, God made it.” So he says: “Okay, but who really made it?”

Which is a very good understanding. The child understands that if you say “ah, God does it” — okay, but you did it. Or it’s called an intermediate cause. It’s not called that there is an answer, there is another answer to the question “who did this,” besides the question that God did it, which is the ultimate answer, in the sense of a remote cause, as he explained in chapter 69.

The Mutakallimun Want There to Be No Other Answer

But the Mutakallimun very much want that supervisor to be right, that indeed the only answer to everything would be that God did it. And therefore they must truly deny that there are — there are what we call intermediate causes.

But this includes many things. We don’t grasp how much this includes. If you think about it you understand that this includes that there are no things. That a stone can live, cannot live, and also the word cannot be foolish and wise — this is because there is a kind of thing with the stone, which is an additional answer to God making the stone foolish in a direct sense.

One could say “God made a stone, and a stone is a kind of thing that is neither foolish nor wise, and therefore the stone…” — this already introduces the additional thing, an additional cause to what God made.

Denying “Kinds of Things” So That God Will Be the Sole Agent

And they want to organize the world in such a way that it would be logical to say “God did it” and nothing in between. And therefore they say: no, there is no such thing as “stone” — there are only atoms and accidents.

So before the miracle — the miracle stems from this, because conversely, they need to explain why there is regularity in nature. They will say, but we’ll get to this in a moment, sometime later.

For because of this, yes, like Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa who said: “He who said to oil that it should burn will say to vinegar that it should burn.” So the question of course is how to understand that statement, but they very much write for the miracle.

They are at the very fundamental stage where they want to say that there is no other answer to the question of why, to any natural question in the world, except the answer is “God did it.” That is, there is no science — there cannot be natural science.

The Fifth Premise Itself: Accidents Exist Only in Atoms

Now like this, that was the fourth premise. The fifth premise is actually a refinement of — it is already included, I think, in what I explained, because I think the fifth premise is very necessary in order to understand what they are trying to say. But the Rambam divides this in order to show us each thing separately, how their concept of accidents is a strange concept or a concept different from sense and also different from intellect.

And he is also going to explain some absurdity that already follows from this distinction.

The Rambam’s Language

And then he says like this: The fifth premise, is their saying that this particular substance is sustained in its existence by those accidents and cannot escape from them.

Which says that the substance — what they mean to say, that the substance is that which can exist only when it has accidents, and cannot, cannot be without accidents.

The Central Point: Accidents Exist in Atoms, Not in Generality

What he means to say, and he explained, what he means to say is that accidents exist in atoms and not in any generality that is aggregated from them. This is the most important point.

This follows from what I keep saying, that according to them there are no things, but in the sense of the Rambam’s form of explanation I introduced it later, because it seemed more fundamental to me. But with the Rambam this is a certain premise.

The fifth premise is that the substance — this is how it should be emphasized — that the substance is that which has accidents upon it.

The Rambam’s Explanation of the Premise

And he explains: And the illustration of this premise and its meaning. So the explanation of this premise is like this, that they will say — so he first said this in a sentence, that the particular substance is that which is sustained in its existence by accidents, and then he explains — that they will say that these particular substances, which God creates — those substances that God creates, apparently, He creates them all the time — each particular substance of them, possesses accidents.

Accidents Are Borne Upon the Particular Substance

Examples of Accidents and the Problem of Quantity

And what about an example of accidents? Like appearance, color and smell and motion or rest, which is the contrary of motion, except for quantity. Quantity, they don’t think it is an accident. Aristotle, because he has large things, so the part accident or certain property of essence, is that it has an accident, quantity. That is, quantity is just a word they invented from the question how much, how much of this is there. I ask how much of this is there, I mean how large is this body, or if it’s a more liquid body, doesn’t matter, how much of this body is there, how large is this body of water or of wood or something.

But according to them quantity is not an accident, because, they already said in the first premise, because every substance of them does not possess quantity, right? For them the substance does not possess quantity, right? Therefore they entered into this perplexity of how, where does quantity come from when two substances join, right? Is there now two? But as I understood all along, so apparently the answer for them is, they said more than this that it is not a body at all, right? But, meaning that it is not quantity, not possessing size at all, right? And this apparently, this is what leads them to the problem, because a condition for being a body is to possess quantity, right? Meaning, possessing a certain size. A corporeal thing without size doesn’t sound like a body, so therefore they got stuck.

But according to them, quantity can only be quantity of how many atoms there are, right? But there is no atom, for because the basic unit of what truly exists is the atom, so this atom cannot possess quantity, except for their system that said yes, that the atom possesses quantity, possesses a certain size, very small or something like that. But because quantity for them will not be called an accident and they will not comprehend the meaning of accident in it, but they don’t understand that quantity is only an accident of a thing. They think that quantity is, yes, they get a bit stuck in the problem of explaining quantity, but according to them quantity is simply how many of the atoms there are in the end. But in any case, this introduced us again to the problem he already mentioned in the first premise.

The Central Principle: Accidents Exist in Particular Substances, Not in the General Body

But the important point is that the particular substance is that which has accidents upon it. Now he is going to derive from this the direct conclusion. According to this premise, according to this premise they will see that all accidents that are found in a body among bodies, all the accidents found in one body among bodies, it will not be said or it will not be said that the accident of them is particular to the body in general, there is no accident that exists in generality in the entire body, but rather that accident according to them exists in each particular substance of the substances from which that body is composed.

The accident must be not, if I see a tree, then the color of the tree is not in the tree, it is in each one of the substances composing the tree. So yes, that’s how it should come out from this matter. As if one tree has many, many atoms that are in the form of a tree, as if? There is no such thing as a tree. What makes the tree a tree, he is not yet speaking about a tree, he is speaking about accidents of a tree, that’s how it begins, right? A tree is, it has a certain color, but a tree, a tree has a certain color, but the color is not found in general in the tree, the color is found in each and every atom in the tree, because there is no other place to put the color or any other accident.

The Parable of the Snow

Yes, and he gives a parable, a very clear parable, and the parable in it, yes, he gives a parable. This piece of snow, if I look at a piece of snow. We normal people, say that snow is white, but those people don’t say that snow is white. Is not the whiteness found in its entirety alone. Cannot say that this snow, this entire piece of snow, or a large piece of snow, is white. But each and every substance of the substances of this snow is white.

For whiteness is an accident, right? Whiteness is not, there is no whiteness in itself, whiteness is a property of other things that bear the whiteness upon them, right? So because we don’t have things, right? There is no such thing as snow, there are only substances that compose the snow, right? And somehow in these substances there must be the thing, what we call the accident, that which distinguishes it from every other substance, right? Meaning, makes it snow and makes it white etc. etc., right? There is no other place at all to put this. So the whiteness of the snow is not found in the snow, it is found in each and every substance of the atoms composing the snow.

Why Must the Accident Be Found in All the Atoms?

So one should ask a question here, why do they need it to be in each and every one? Why not, say, in 30% of them, and that’s enough? And the zero makes a percentage in the middle. No, it appears later that he thinks this was in all of it. As if, there are things that they indeed said are perhaps only in part of the atoms in the body, but most of them said it’s in all of them. And the reason is apparently simple, because we don’t say, we don’t think that only part of the snow is white, the snow in its entirety is white. So all of it must be white.

So if you have an entirety that is separate from every part and part composing it, and we don’t believe at all in atoms composing things, then we have no problem. The whiteness is found in its entirety, but not in every part of its parts, there are no parts at all. But if you have nothing but these parts, the whiteness must be in each one of the parts, because it is true that the entirety is white. Yes, snow is not a thing in which there is whiteness, it is a thing that is entirely white.

The Example of the Moving Body

So, and so they said also regarding a moving body, every body that moves, so again, there is no body at all that moves, but rather each particular substance of its substances is moving, and therefore, and for this it all moves, it appears that it all moves, simply because the motion, which is an accident that distinguishes, that particularizes the substance, is found in each and every one of the atoms of this substance.

And they said regarding a moving body, right? We actually already saw this regarding the question they had about this millstone, the circle, right? That the wheel, that they the motion, that they said that its outer part moves faster than the inner, why? Because it disintegrates. And this is understood, because the motion is found in each and every atom, and not in the wheel in its entirety, right?

Life, Sense, Intellect and Wisdom as Accidents

And so, but he is going to emphasize that this must be, to go to this, in the end he goes over every single accident, right? An accident is simply this thing that makes this substance different from another substance, right? And so, life, so is found according to them in each and every part of the substances of the living body, right? There are living bodies and there are dead bodies, right? And we learned that even the dead bodies, actually have an accident of being dead, it’s not only life. In any case, so what about the living thing must be alive? Each and every substance of the living body must have a property or accident of life, because otherwise it cannot live, there is no other place.

And so sense, perception, each particular substance in the general that senses, it senses according to them, the same thing, and he senses this, because this is for him one of the greatest absurdities, because life, and sense, and intellect, and wisdom, are for them accidents like drunkenness and whiteness, as follows from their views, right?

The Absurdity: Metaphysical Equality Between Life and Whiteness

For being alive, and being possessed of sense, sensing, perceiving things from outside, through the senses, or being possessed of intellect, or being possessed of wisdom, which is not only possessed of intellect, right? This is wisdom itself, wisdom in actuality. All these things, according to them, are simply accidents, they are things similar metaphysically, they are of the same metaphysical order as whiteness and drunkenness, right? These are things that distinguish things from other things. And as we will explain, he is going to speak about them even more.

The Problem of the Soul and Its Immortality

Now, there is indeed something problematic for them, the soul, right? The soul is actually this thing that makes life into life. There is apparently a problem here, because presumably these righteous ones believe in the immortality of the soul.

The Paradox: A Heretical System That Became Theology

I think this is indeed somewhat of a problem, because I didn’t see this now, but we said that the Kalam takes a very heretical theory and turns it into the most faithful theory according to them, right?

For atomism is the system of Epicurus or of Democritus before him, but Epicurus is the one who drew the Epicurean conclusions so to speak from this in a very explicit manner. Right? Because for them everything is atoms and void and according to Epicurus this means that everything is chance, there is no order in the world at all. The problem is, and therefore as he already mentioned in the first premise, the atoms of Epicurus are eternal, there is some infinite number of atoms that collide with each other in dark space like this, without any guidance, without any direction, and by chance we are in a corner of the world where all sorts of atoms aggregated and made mountains and rivers and people and all the weary things we see, but it’s all fake. That’s what Epicurus and Democritus and others said.

The Kalam, actually adopts the same picture of reality, with the single difference that for them there is no chance but the opposite, everything is by will or choice or direction of the Creator, of God, who is for them the Creator. But essentially their world looks exactly like the world of Epicurus, except with the addition of God who can do what He wants, precisely because of this, because there is no physical constraint before Him to do what He wants, right?

A Different Interpretation of the Concept “Omnipotence”

This is very, they have a very different interpretation of the concept omnipotence, right? “Is the Lord’s hand shortened,” all these words, according to Aristotle, the Rambam also believes in this, he believes, yes, despite the fact that there is the custom of the world, God can do what He wants. They say, no, no, the world is built in such a way that God can do what He wants, right? Therefore they expand greatly, for them there are really no miracles.

The Materialistic Problem: Absence of Abstract Things

The small problem is the soul, I think, I didn’t see this explicitly now, but surely the soul is a problem for them, why? Because they want to believe in a kind of soul, separate at least, when it is separated from the body, and perhaps also eternal, or at least its life in time, they have the world to come, all sorts of such things, and this is not something that follows from the atomic system, right?

So therefore, apparently, I’m just thinking, apparently they simply need to say that there is a group of atoms, or a kind of aggregation of atoms, aggregation is already a problem, one atom that God decides will be a soul and it will live and it will survive the death of the body, right? In the end, meaning in the end, there is another problem here.

A Materialistic System That Contradicts the Existence of Forms

Because they need to be, this is also a problem, I said, there is one strange thing that they adopted the most accidental system, but gave them the role of being the organizer so to speak, not that this really answers the order, of being this, therefore they think that God has freedom to do what He wants.

So there’s another problem here, the additional problem is that according to the atomistic worldview, there are no abstract things in the world at all, right? This is part of it, right? Atomism is a materialistic system of a certain type, right? True, the atoms of the world at least are almost not bodies, so the question is how much can we call this materialistic, but in any case this is a system that contradicts the existence of Forms, even non-separate Forms, even those of Aristotle, all the more so separate Forms like Plato and so on.

God and the Angels as Bodies

So yes, so God Himself, there really is a problem. That He is not a body, but this is not a problem, because God transcends all definitions, okay, fine. And everything created in the end, according to their view, is corporeal, right? The Rambam says this explicitly, even the angels are made of atoms.

And therefore, a separate soul, which according to all the philosophers, right? Yes, there is a question indeed what Aristotle’s position is, but the Rambam certainly thought that according to Aristotle there is some separate soul that is also perhaps eternal and so on, this is not really the explanation of soul according to the system of the Kalam, right, the soul for them is just another body.

Historical Examples: Rav Saadia Gaon and the Stoics

I think this is quite explicit, the system of Rav Saadia Gaon for example, Rav Saadia does not believe in a separate soul, in this sense, even though he is not an atomist, so this is a bit of a problem, but he does think like, yes, there were for example, but they are not complete atomists, what are they called? The Stoics thought that God is a body, right? That God is the body of the entire world.

In any case, but God is a body because they really don’t believe in abstract things. So they really drew this conclusion, that God too is a body, and the gods are bodies. True, they also have intellect, there are problems here, but the Kalam, they really have no place for the existence of intellects or Forms or all these things. On the contrary, as they say, intellect is an accident of a certain atom, which also what they happen to do, that you should have intellect.

The Soul as an Accident of a Body

Therefore also the soul, it must be an accident of a body, and therefore in the end they have no separate soul, they cannot have a separate soul, but of course they have a problem, because they are religious people, who want to believe in a separate soul and in a soul that is judged in the World to Come and so on, so this is really a problem. I don’t know enough now about the questions of what they do with the problem, yes.

Resurrection of the Dead versus Separate Soul: The Dispute with the Philosophers

Of course, the idea of resurrection of the dead, which itself was part of the dispute once between the philosophers and the Kalamists, the theologians, also in Islam, right? And Ibn Sina said that part of the heresy that already, not Ibn Sina, Al-Ghazali counts as one of the heresies of the philosophers that they don’t believe in resurrection of the dead, but instead they believe in an abstract separate soul, right? Also the Rambam, as is known, there was a problem about this.

So in any case, but the soul for them is only that which rises in resurrection of the dead, and there cannot be a separate soul. We are very accustomed to being religious people who specifically have a philosophical conception of the soul. And therefore we really don’t need resurrection of the dead. But well, I’ve already jumped to many places.

Epicurus and the Negation of Fear of Death

I’m just saying that the soul is a problem, and therefore certainly there is a religious problem here regarding the soul, because the religious people, even though they also want a soul that has a connection with the body, because of this matter of resurrection of the dead, which perhaps really stems from a non-abstract conception of the soul, and still they want it to survive the death of the body, right?

So Epicurus certainly doesn’t believe in a soul, right? Yes, his whole idea is to say, yes, in a very declared sense, part of the atomistic system among the Epicureans is to nullify the fear of death, right, they say, you are just atoms, so what does it matter in what configuration of atoms there is, there is nothing to fear, and if you die, if there isn’t, then there isn’t, then there is no one to fear and so on, this is a very famous theory of Epicurus.

The “Strong” Solution of the Kalam: The Soul as an Accident in One Individual Atom

So in any case, the Kalam, if they have a problem with the soul, then they dispute it. Indeed the soul, they dispute it. They have a problem, there is confusion how to explain the soul.

The Rambam brings all this only to show that it is absurd, right? And the strongest of their statements, right, the strongest, meaning, the strongest he thinks perhaps is best according to their system, or perhaps most accepted among them, is that it is an accident existing in one individual body from among the atoms that are called upon man.

Explanation of the Example: Whiteness in Snow

Yes, this is what I said, that there are things that are indeed not in all the atoms of man, because after all everyone can see that not all the atoms of the body survive death, not even life, right? We are constantly losing materials and so on. But the soul is the thing that is not lost, so they said that the soul is an accident of… yes, after all an atom cannot distinguish between soul and body, from the rest of the body, because all atoms are the same thing. But the soul is one of the… it is an accident that exists in one atom out of the body.

For example, and it is called, so therefore why do we say that for the whole, so we return to the cause, why do we say that whiteness is found in every piece, not in every piece, in every atom that composes the piece of snow, because we say that it is all white.

The Problem in Calling Man “Possessor of a Soul”

So actually according to their view, that we say about a man or a living being that he is a possessor of a soul is not entirely accurate, because not all of him possesses a soul, it is called entirely possessor of a soul because of the existence of that individual atom in it. Because you have one of the, I don’t know, in one-tenth of a million atoms there is one atom that possesses a soul, so we call the whole by its name a possessor of a soul.

Even though this is really a problem, because after all they also cannot explain that this soul imparts life to all the rest, as we shall see, no accident does anything, there is no causality between atom and atom and between accident and accident, everything, each one is like its own monad, right, it has no, it has no connection to the rest of the world, so that we call the whole a possessor of a soul, we just call it that. Really something problematic emerges.

Alternative View: The Soul Composed of Fine Atoms

So this is one system, the strongest system among them, and among them are those who said, there were others who said something else, that the soul is composed of fine atoms, that the soul is not…

The System of “Fine Atoms” Regarding the Soul

This system says that the soul is made of several fine atoms. But the Rambam says, according to your system, that an atom is not distinctive, so it must be an accident, and the atoms are undoubtedly possessors of one accident by which they were distinguished and became a soul, right?

So the Rambam draws the conclusion for them, according to their view, according to their strongest principle, that there is nothing that distinguishes one thing from another except the accident — it must still be that even if you say that the soul is not just an accident in one atom, but rather several atoms that gathered and became a soul, still, in total it is that they all have the accident of being a soul, right? And after all an accident is only in one atom by itself, so not really as if.

But they said, the same system, they said that those atoms are mixed with the atoms of the body, right? This system, I think Rav Saadia has a system that sounds very similar. They want after all to distinguish between soul and body, but they have no concept of an abstract thing, so they say, there is a body, a body is made of many atoms, right, and within it are mixed atoms — they call them fine atoms, perhaps atoms of another type, meaning, that have another accident which is the soul, right? And when we say that the soul is separated from the body, this is simply the separation of this atom from that atom.

And the Rambam says, this doesn’t help you much for the same reason. Here he concludes, according to all these systems, according to the systems he mentioned, the matter of the soul will not escape being one accident. In the end the truth remains that the soul is an accident in atoms, whether in one atom, whether in many atoms, it doesn’t matter.

The Problem Regarding Intellect and Knowledge

So this is regarding the soul, right? So he in total brings us all this confusion in order to tell us that this principle that all things are accidents and all accidents are in atoms, really holds for them also according to the system of… also regarding the soul, right? Even the soul does not deviate from this principle.

The Intellect

And he continues that also the intellect — indeed regarding the intellect they agreed, meaning in this there is no dispute at all, that the intellect is an accident in an individual atom from the whole of the one who intellects, right. There is no one who says that intellect, right, intellect meaning the power of intellection, that I can think, I can understand, for everyone they agree that it is an atom, that it is an accident in one of the atoms composing the whole that intellects.

Knowledge — Actual Knowledge

And what about knowledge? Right, knowledge is not the intellect, what happened before this was wisdom, right, yes, knowledge and wisdom, here the same word. Knowledge, meaning, not the intellect which is that I can think, but the thought itself, right, the knowledge itself. The knowledge itself, so they will have confusion, right, again they have an argument and there are two sides here:

Whether it is an accident existing in every atom, and an atom from the atoms of the whole does not know, right, or that the knowledge is in every atom — here we say about a person that he has knowledge, right, that he has knowledge already, right, that he has actual knowledge, this is a distinction, right? He already knows something, but we say about the person that he knows. This is the same question.

And because we have a necessity that we cannot place things except within an accident, so it comes out that we only have this option, either to say that in every single atom of the body that knows, of the whole that knows, there is knowledge — and then something repugnant emerges, as he concludes in both things, there is something repugnant. I think one can understand simply, right, something repugnant that emerges from this is that my fingernail has knowledge, right? Because after all knowledge exists in every single atom of the intellecting body.

So it comes out that the fingernail has knowledge, which sounds very strange. Or that we say that in one atom alone, right? And then it comes out that my brain has no knowledge, right? My head has no knowledge, only some one atom in which there is knowledge.

And from both these things repugnant things emerge, right? Repugnant, meaning absurd, strange. But in any case, this all stems from their premise that everything is an accident of an atom.

Interim Summary: Abstract Things Trapped in the Premise

Now, this already showed us, right, so let’s return, to summarize. Their premise is that there are no accidents except in an atom, except in an individual atom, and therefore an absurdity of one type follows from this, which the Rambam has now gone over, that it comes out, that also abstract things, right, like soul, like life, like sense, like intellect, like knowledge, they are stuck in the same premise, and as we see, or he hinted, he didn’t bring us what is repugnant, but I complete and one needs to search to see more what actually the arguments are here, but from all this repugnant things emerge. I mentioned a very great confusion for anyone who says among soul, really something very strange emerges here.

The Objection of Color: Grinding Stones and Metals

And now he is going to mention something simpler, more basic, because a simpler objection to the assumption that all things exist within, all accidents exist within the atoms, within the atoms, and not within the whole ever. So they had an objection.

The Phenomenon: Color that Disappears in Grinding

And when it was presented to them, so it was presented to them, in our finding the metals and many stones, many of the solids in the world, possessing a strong appearance, they have a strong color, right, it is black, it is white, it is red. But when they are ground, we grind that stone or that metal, that appearance departs. So suddenly the appearance goes away.

For example, when we grind the green emerald, some very green precious stone, it is very green, it has a very strong green, but suddenly we grind it, it becomes white dust.

The Problem for the Kalam System

So from where? There is now a very simple problem. If you say, as Aristotle says, that the white exists as it were on its surface, its color exists in its entirety, right? So there is no problem. The entirety went away, you ground it, so there is no longer the entirety of the emerald, so now it is white, because its smaller parts are white or something like that.

But if you must say that in every single atom from the large body there is its appearance, its color, then the simplest test should have been, cut it into small parts and see that indeed they are also green, but they are not.

And it was seen that this was an accident, its existence is possible in the whole, not in a part of it. Yes, I think there is a simple answer here, so I don’t know what is so difficult here, right?

Discussion of Possible Answers

What is the answer? When can it appear together? As if, the answer, I would have thought, just, maybe this is not the case he is thinking about, I would have thought, okay, maybe indeed the color is only in the external atoms of the thing. And when you grind it, then true there is still color, but it is simply nullified, because there are many more atoms without color. Something like that.

I don’t have an answer, I have an answer. That there shouldn’t be? Because he changes his will. He changes, I don’t know what really happens. Maybe indeed inside there is no color, and when you grind it, then it goes from outside, it is too small, after all there is here, only a very very small layer of the outside is needed in order for there to be color, and maybe it is really microscopic, it is really very small, and therefore when you grind it, then you show the majority which is not possessing color.

The Modern Approach: Subjectivism of Color

This doesn’t seem to me, I think this is also maybe indeed this is what happens sometimes. But here there is, so I don’t know, this is… Right, right, so meaning, one needs to think like this, that I say that the majority causes this to appear possessing color, actually I introduced here a very modern system, a system that says that color indeed essentially or mostly exists within my gaze, in my perspective, right? But no one here thought about this yet.

This would be another answer indeed to their question. The answer of the later ones indeed is this answer. The later ones also believe, like the Kalam, that all accidents, or that there are no accidents, or that color is not an accident at all, that there are no accidents, what are called Secondary Accident or Secondary Attributes. Color is not a thing, color is only how the particular collection of atoms and so on appears to us. And indeed, this would be another answer that introduces subjectivism, the idea that color is only apparent.

Why the Mutakallimun Don’t Use This Answer

They will also say something like this in the end, they also say a principle like this that our eyes deceive, but they don’t use this to answer this question. Why? Because they think we need to reconcile this in the thing itself. And they say, okay, but is it all white or not all white? After all when I see it, or I don’t see that only the external layer is white, I see that it is all white.

The Remaining Problem: When Exactly Does the Change Occur?

And perhaps they are also talking about this emerald stone, when I divide it into large parts, then also inside it is white, right? It is not true that only outside it becomes white, right? But if I cut it in half, then it is still green, right? Only when I grind it into very small parts, right? So when exactly does it happen that suddenly it is not white, that suddenly it is not green?

Emergent Properties and the Objection from Life

Also for us, in our language, the Rambam is going to say himself that there are stronger examples, stronger connections. I think in contemporary language they speak about emergent properties, right, emergent properties, which means, for example, the wetness of water, right? One atom of water is not wet, because wet is in total a description of how water behaves when it meets another body, but one atom of water is not wet.

So therefore there is indeed a dispute among the later ones, because the later ones say, there are two systems, there are those who say that there is no wetness in the world at all, but this is not the system of the Kalam, because the Kalam do believe in accidents, and also in accidents of this type, right, they don’t say like Descartes and others, who said that indeed there are only, there are no accidents in the world, right, Descartes says that real accidents are only quantity, right, only what is called here quantity, or that something happens extension, right, to have a certain size in the three dimensions, this is the only accident that a body really has.

Descartes’ System and Modern Science: Reduction of Qualities to Quantity

All the other accidents, like color and like smell and taste and all these things, they are relations between us and them, right, or things that exist in our mind and not in the things themselves, right? And this is how we also teach in science classes in school today, right? Color is simply, I don’t remember, the configuration of matter that causes light to be reflected in a certain way, right? But there is really no color in things, all the more so taste and all these things.

So meaning, in the end we do a reduction of properties of this type to quantity, right? To how the matter itself is organized, right, without, there is really no red color in the world, there is only the… how do you say, the length of the waves that meet it and so on. Yes, and length is quantitative, right, therefore all our science turns everything into quantity, right, it doesn’t believe in qualities.

The Philosophical Critique of Denying Qualities

There are also in our time philosophers who say that this is a very weak description, because after all you just, you have a question what is a quality, what is color, and you decided that there is no such thing as color, okay, and this is always the best answer to every question, there isn’t, so you don’t need to explain. But here there is color, and when you say that color is only in our head, then you simply changed the place of the problem. Instead of troubling to understand how things have qualities, you say, okay, trouble to understand how our head has qualities, right?

After all this is not explained. Why do we call, why do we distinguish in this wavelength green color and red and so on? This is not explained, this becomes just, okay, this is how our brain works. Why does it work this way? What does it mean that it works this way? What is the meaning of this? Really not explained in this system.

Return to Emergent Properties and the Philosophical Problem

And therefore there are those who say that we can indeed show that there are what are called emergent properties, there are properties of the whole that are not properties of their particulars. And now there is really a philosophical problem from where this comes, right? If we think an atomistic worldview, that at the foundation of what exists are atoms, in the smallest parts, then there is really a question, there is really a question of how there are things, how there are properties of the world that cannot be reduced to atoms, and then we return to Aristotelian answers, right? This is a property of the Form, all kinds of such things.

So this is at least one of the options existing today in philosophy, and this is actually, if I understand correctly, this is actually the argument found here, right?

Return to the Color Example: Is It Strong Enough?

We say, yes, perhaps his example is not good enough, right? The example of wetness, for example, is a better example. Because wetness is really a thing, right, because about color I can invent the answers I said, that maybe it is simply a weak color, and then it mixes, but I think that perhaps philosophically also there there is the difficulty, because we distinguish color, we don’t distinguish, right?

We are very accustomed that in our science it says there is no color, there are only numbers, right? Also my computer doesn’t recognize color, it recognizes red, green, white and so on, as numbers from 1 to 255, and then when I see a light blue color, I say, ah, this is simply a compound of these light waves, right? But this is not really a good answer, because then you are not talking about color at all.

When I talk about color, I am indeed talking about something existing, which is exactly, right? You want to tell me how they do this in the case, when I want to do this with my brush, how does this do? Okay, this can be, but still there is such a thing that this color itself is some thing, and this the new science did not solve at all, not at all, it simply ignored it.

The Problem with the Percentage Answer

But if we do want to say this about it, then we find ourselves in the same problem. I’m just saying that my answer is to say that okay, there’s a certain percentage of green color and a percentage of white, and not such a good answer, because color is not a matter of percentages, color is something that exists in the whole, unless we deny the reality of color, as indeed the later philosophers said, or perhaps also the Mutakallimun, like some of the ancient atomists did.

But if you don’t deny the reality of color, meaning you don’t replace the reality of color with numbers of how much color and how much of this color, then indeed this is exactly the same question of emergent properties, of things that seem very clearly to exist in the whole and not in the particular. And then we have a question, is there a whole? So we must say there is a whole, and not just atoms, right? That’s the point, and that will be the matter here.

The Stronger Example: Life

Now, yes, I explained his question well from this thing. The Rambam brings a truly better example, right? I think the second example with him, his, he himself says he saw as better, and more explained than this, right? Clearer than this, is the subject of life, right?

Parts cut from a living thing are not alive. Yes, on one hand, even my fingernail is alive as long as it is connected to me, right? It is part of the comprehensive life of the body. But the moment you cut it, even if you cut the hand of a living creature, then the hand already stops living, right?

Life as a Property of the Whole

And he saw that this is the matter, its existence is perfected in its entirety, not in each part of it, to be alive, that we say, the hand is alive, but it is alive as part of the totality called a living body. It is not alive in that each and every atom within the hand is alive, because that is not true. For if that were true, then it should be possible to cut off the hand and the hand would continue to live.

Yes, we need to think here, because this difficulty too can be said, as it were, perhaps it really just needs to receive the ability to live from the heart, or whatever, from some other part that gives it life, right? And here too perhaps we’ll play the same game and go through this and see that it won’t be a good answer.

The Independence of the Hand as Part of the Whole

Because my hand is truly alive as my hand, but only as a hand of the whole body, right? As part of the whole, and not that it is a part, but not a part in the sense that I can cut it off and it will continue to live. But as long as it is indeed a part, it is indeed an independent hand, right? Independent in the sense that there is life in this hand. It is not only moved by my moving it in my head, and it is now already dead. That would be something very strange to say, right.

Summary of the Difficulties with the Atomistic System

So now, these are two very great difficulties with the system that says there are accidents only in atoms, yes, and as I mentioned, this is indeed a living controversy, right. We are very accustomed, in school they really teach the system of the Kalam, that indeed all accidents are found in the atom, and not only that, but as the later, later philosophers said that most accidents don’t exist, there is only quality, only quantity, right? Which is even an extremification of the atomistic system, as we learned, that quantity is simply the number of atoms, the number of parts. Even the Kalam didn’t say this.

The Kalam’s Answer: The Accident Does Not Exist

Now, the Kalam, they had another answer to my question, or perhaps a similar answer, but with God, right? They, they always have a joker, they, they have God who solves all their problems for them, and not only that, this is the whole function of this science, that we need God in order to solve very basic problems.

The Sixth Premise: The Non-Existence of the Accident

So they said another answer, they said, and they said in answer to the explanation of the difficulty it will be marketed when, Rav Amar quotes here, when the Kalam raised difficulties against themselves where did the green color go when we ground the emerald, they said a simple answer, the accident has no existence, and indeed it is always created as departed from their knowledge in the premise of the entrances.

This is the sixth premise, it is the answer to the difficulty that arises from the fifth premise. They have a sixth premise, which we will learn next week, which is that the accident does not exist. One can connect this also to what they said that time does not exist, but in any case they said, without this, they said that the accident does not exist.

The Accident as Continuous Momentary Creation

An accident is something that exists only one moment, each time, and then God constantly creates another accident anew. By accident, also not by accident, but by accident God usually acts to create the same type of accident in the same atom, and therefore it seems to us that there is continuity in matter, in the bodies we see, right?

We don’t see that suddenly, usually we don’t see that suddenly the green becomes red, but sometimes we do see, right? For when we grind the green, suddenly it becomes white. It’s not that the same thing that was green,

The Continuous Creation of Accidents

But what? He constantly creates the accident every moment anew. And there is a custom, God is accustomed to a custom, that when they grind the emerald, then He really stops creating the green accident, He begins to create another accident of white.

Of course this is not caused by the grinding — we will see this in the seventh premise, more clearly. It’s simple, God does this, we don’t do this. In the sixth premise we will see this explicitly. God does this.

But this is their answer to problems of this type, right? This is a very extreme answer, but it is really part of their system, that the accident does not endure, so this is a good answer.

I said that I can answer this with a modern answer, to simply say that the accident does not exist. But they say something similar — they don’t say it doesn’t exist, they say it doesn’t exist for more than one second, or what they think, the basic unit of time.

The Negation of Causality and Science

So therefore they say this is not a problem. That you see something that was yesterday green and now it is white, this is not proof that the… the proof is, yes, for in fact they also deny in this every possible proof, in a test, right?

All experiment cannot work according to the Kalam, in a true way, only in order to discover the custom. But in a true way no test can work, because simply what was yesterday, that the same thing was yesterday green and now green, these are two different things. This didn’t cause, this doesn’t cause this. That it was a moment ago green, this is not what makes it be now green, but rather God does this directly all the time.

And therefore, if sometimes it really was green and now it is white, there’s no problem, yes, God decided to make it white. Why does He always decide? There is no reason. There cannot be a reason, and this is also not connected to our actions.

Critical Evaluation of the System

So this is their system, and this is how they really answer all questions of this type. Of course this is a kind of answer that is worse than the question, right? It makes all science superfluous and impossible, but this we will already see in the next premise.