Aristotle's Theory of Descriptions

Abstract

Aristotle has a doctrine, or series of doctrines, of predication, being, unity and sameness, which scholars have recently illuminated by reference to problems in the philosophy of logic. (See references below to papers by Gareth Matthews, Nicholas White and Alan Code.) But they have not so far found a single key to the understanding of these doctrines. The key can, I believe, be found by comparing Aristotle's doctrines with Russell's Theory of Descriptions. Russell's theory is couched in the formal mode of speech: it is concerned with distinguishing amongst expressions which rank grammatically as subjects of sentences those which alone are true subjects. Aristotle's theory is couched for the most part in the material mode: he speaks of unities or beings as though they were a subclass of entities, in a way which has allowed Gareth Matthews recently to talk of this doctrine as a doctrine of kooky objects.' The doctrine of or per accidens predication, appearing as it does in Aristotle's works, has a more linguistic ring, and perhaps it is this which has prevented it from being used to illuminate his use of the term accidental (kata symbekikos) to headline his more metaphysical doctrines of sameness, unity and being. When one examines the doctrine of per accidens predication, however, one is forcibly struck by the similarity between the way in which Aristotle describes this phenomenon and the way in which Russell analyzes propositions containing definite descriptions. Aristotle's kooky objects are near relations of Russell's logical fictions. And the use to which Russell puts his theory in solving problems of intentionality turns out to be strongly reminiscent of the use to