PHIL 2010H Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Other Minds
2 May 2017
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A substance is a kind of basic stuff out there out of which things are made. For descartes, there are two kinds of substance--- mind and matter. For berkeley, there is only one substance--- mind. For materialists there is only one substance--- matter. An accident is a property of a bit of a substance. Accidental properties are called accidents because they can change. For example, the property of brownness is an accident of the stuff making up the table in peabody 220. It could be replaced by a different color without the table ceasing to be a table. Some properties are essential, though, and cannot change. For example, having a flat top is an essential property of a table. We would not call something with a conical top a table. The terms material substance and matter are meaningless (part i, paragraphs 16 and 17)
