Another appeal to me of the turn to expression is that it accords nicely with Deleuze’s insistence that the priority afforded to ‘what is…?’ questions in philosophy have been massively detrimental to the whole enterprise:

“What is…? This noble question is supposed to concern the essence, and is opposed to vulgar questions which only refer to the example or the accident. Thus you do not ask who is beautiful, but what is the Beautiful. Not where and when there is justice, but what is the Just. Not how “two” is obtained, but what is the dyad. Not how much, but what… And yet this privilege of the What is…? is itself revealed to be confused and dubious, even in Platonism and the Platonic tradition.

For the question What is? in the end only animates the so-called aporetic dialogues. Is it possible that the question of essence is that of contradiction, and that it itself throws us into inextricable contradictions? As soon as the Platonic dialectic becomes a serious and positive thing, we see it take other forms: who? in the Politics, how much? in the Philebus, where and when in the Sophist, in what case in the Parmenides”. (Deleuze, The Method of Dramatisation).

This leaves open the question, what does substance express?

Sub stance expresses under standing.

The idea I believe is that the modes express substance and that substance is nothing other than its expression in the modes.

Sub stance expresses under standing. — Janus

You lost me.

Yes, this is to say that substance is not 'something' over and above relation or process. Identity is likewise not other than difference.

Sub=under
Stance= standing
(I hate explaining jokez).

:clap:

Do you think this metaphysics of expression admits of different degrees of expression?

The star is shiny -> The star shines -> the star luminesces with brightness X and frequency spectrum Y.

Or are expressions only discretised into the presence or absence of a modality?

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Do you think this metaphysics of expression admits of different degrees of expression? — fdrake

Yes, but I think exactly what this means would need to be carefully specified. It's not that the star luminesces more or less brightly, but that the star itself qua luminescent has more or less a degree of being. Again, the danger to watch out for is in ascribing degress of expression to this or that property of a subject, and not the thing itself. Exactly what this means is, I think, something open to different readings: Spinoza thought about such degrees in terms of conatus, for example (the 'striving for a thing in its persistence', roughly), while Nietzsche will think of it in terms of differential wills-to-power (which everything 'is'). I use these examples because I think it helps show that the two different approaches to ontology are just that - approaches, which can be cashed out in different ways (just as 'posessive ontology' has undergone many permutations thoughout its history).

Deleuze and Agamben are two others I would fit in this lineage of expressive ontology as well, although they too differ radically in the detail of how that is worked out.

The idea I believe is that the modes express substance and that substance is nothing other than its expression in the modes. — StreetlightX

This points the conversation in the right direction - towards an immanent, emergent, process view - but it doesn't really deal with the ontological issue of how modes get expressed and individuation becomes a substantial fact.

One has to continue on all the way to a contextual or constraints-based view of causality, where it is the limitation on possibility that is the story of individuation. The essence of something is defined by the information that limits the variety of its fluctuations. And so then any individual thing is a hylomorphic mix of that limited state and then the further fluctuations which haven't been suppressed because they don't matter, given the general purpose or form in play.

So the Aristotelian four causes/hylomorphic view of substantial being or individuation was pretty much correct after all. His logical talk picks out a hierarchy of predication. It sounds like he is talking about substances with properties. And indeed, that logical atomism is a pretty handy model of reality if you just want the quick and dirty reductionist approach. It does the job when you are living in a Cosmos that is mostly large and cold, and being is in fact in its most highly developed or concrete state.

But behind that post-substance model of being - objects with properties - is the pre-substantial or developmental story. And here it is a case of top-down constraints in interaction with bottom-up degrees of freedom.

Instead of individuation being some kind of simple expression - a reversion to monistic thinking - it is the complex product of a historical or contextual repression. Possibilities get constrained in some globally general fashion. And then particulars exist as differences that don't make a difference - to the purpose or form of the thing.

A horse could be white, brown or black. From a species point of view, these are unconstrained genetic possibilities. Melanocytes offer these basic degrees of freedom. They are differences that don't make a difference when it comes to being able to breed. And so a property of being horse comes to include this range of hide colour as a matter of accidental expression. But a horse - as defined by the constraints of a genetic lineage, the information of an evolutionary history - is strictly limited in its likelihood of expressing other identities, like possum, or tiger, or goat.

So Aristotle is great because two ontological models can be found in his metaphysics. There is the simple reductionist model that is atomism, where being is already substantial and possesses inherent properties. This is the upward construction or composition based ontology that normal predicate logic talk picks out.

Then there is the other holistic or systems view of ontology that is the four causes/hylomorphic model. Substance develops into crisply individuated being by the imposition of downward constraints that limit the possibilities for the accidental. And essentially that is an open-ended view of being as a limitation of the accidental is not the elimination of the accidental. Indeed, this becomes an ontology where the accidental is also something that is ontically fundamental. As Peirce put it, the synechism or continuity of constraints is matched by the tychism or spontaneity of pure chance.

A complete ontology of nature thus has two useful models. Reductionism and holism. We can understand reality in mereological terms as an atomistic collection of individuals, or instead as a complex developmental story of individuation.

Again, the move from possession to expression is too simple a shift in emphasis. It only gets us to the first step of arguing for emergence. And that remains inherently mysterious as it does not explain why individuation should take some general mode.

If the goal is to account for essence and accident in some fashion more sophisticated than subject and predicate, then you actually need to continue on to the full-blown holism of a constraints-based ontology.

It might be worth considering the Buddhist criticism of substance ontologies in this regard. As is well-known, Buddhists ‘deconstruct’ the notion of an underlying subject [or substance] that possesses attributes. This deconstructive approach is why modern phenomenologists [e.g. Varela and Maturana, among others] have often looked to the Buddhist analysis of ‘dependent origination’ for a more dynamic appraisal of the nature of being. Actually it is quite in keeping with your own analysis, in that the Buddhist attitude is roughly that all of what we call ‘attributes’ are more like habits [technically, ‘sankhara’], which through constant repitition assume certain forms - which are then mistaken by the ‘substance ontologists’ for truly existing realities, where they’re really more like dynamic patterns of action and reaction.

Of course, you had to start this topic when I'm on page 21 of the book... :shade:

Agamben's actually piqued my interest a little in Buddhism, insofar as he's been referencing - although sparingly - a couple of Brahmic texts in some of his recent work. One of his recent books was even titled karman in reference to, well, you should know. I'm not sure I'll have time anytime soon to look into it very deeply, but it does seem like there is some cross-over with the ideas at stake here.

:sweat: