Adapted for the Internet from:

Why God Doesn't Exist

    Although closer in intentions to the genuine definition of object, the substance ontologists have never really offered a valid
    alternative. The substance version is a circular definition: a synonym. The substance theorist uses synonyms such as thing,
    entity, medium, substance, body, something, corporeal, structure, physical, and material to characterize the mysterious ‘bare
    particular.’  

    The substance argument is that the word swan is circumscribed to the ‘substance’ without wings or white or swim:

    “ ‘Substance’ here means what something is in itself…A hat's shape is not the hat
       itself, nor is its colour the hat, nor is its size, nor its softness to the touch, nor anything
       else about it perceptible to the senses. The hat itself (the "substance") has the shape,
       the colour, the size, the softness and the other appearances, but is distinct from them.
       Whereas the appearances, which are referred to by the philosophical term accidents
       are perceptible to the senses, the substance is not.”  [1]

    “ A formal theory about substance …is essentially incomplete if it does not address
       time.”[2]

    “ 1. Substance is not something outside the process but is in it. It is not timeless but has
            the form of duration, as has the process.
      2. Substance is not the process itself but something that, though in process, resists it
           and persists.
      3. Substance is both persistence and the substratum of persistence. What kind of
           substratum it is cannot be ascertained a priori.
      4. There is no valid argument in support of an absolutely persisting 'something'.
           Whatever the substratum may be, it is always only relatively persistent”   [3]

    [Dear, oh dear! What could it be? Is it a bird? Is it a plane?]

    But then, if an object is a substance stripped of all its qualities, what is left? If it is not timeless, what is the prosecutor referring
    to? Should we conclude that a substance is that which we can see, touch, smell, or hear (proof)? If not, is a substance that
    which we can think about? Are we going to prove the definition of substance with another object? We could go on forever
    questioning what these words mean, not so much to play extreme devil’s advocate for the fun of it, but because the substance
    ontologist attempts to weasel out of the deal by relying on circular reasoning. If the substance argument has not prevailed after
    all these years it is because the proponents have not provided a definition. The substance theorists have offered no alternative
    to bundle theory. All they have proposed for the last 3,000 is a long list of questions. The substance philosophers are still
    banging their heads trying to figure out this formidable word.
Is an object
a substance?
You stupid fool! If the giant
was just an insubstantial
concept in my head, would it
have the power to knock me
off my horse?


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        Copyright © by Nila Gaede 2008