(in a chair)

 At one point in his Metaphysics, Aristotle discusses the sorts of "puzzles" with which this branch of philosophy is concerned. He mentions, by way of example, the problem of "whether Socrates and Socrates seated are the same." (Reeve translation throughout.)

I was immediately reminded of an episode from my childhood. A friend and I were playing the Star Wars Trivial Pursuit board game. He asked me a question from one of the cards that was decisive for whether or not I would win the game. The question was something like: "Whom does Luke levitate by using the Force on the Forest Moon of Endor?" 

I gave the answer immediately: "C-3PO," I said. But my friend started shaking his head. "No! Wrong!" I was flummoxed. "What do you mean? It's obviously C-3PO," I said. "No," my friend repeated. "It's C-3PO—in a chair." He showed me the card. The answer did indeed include the detail about C-3PO's posture. The full answer read: "C-3PO (in a chair)."

I'll never know why the writers of that card felt the need to include the detail about the item of furniture. To my recollection, no other card in the game included any information about whether a character was seated or standing, or on what object if so. Perhaps they felt that it was relevant here, because arguably the chair was what was being levitated, and C-3PO was merely inside it. 

But I of course protested that I had obviously won the game. My answer was correct. Yet, my friend was equally insistent. Apparently, his view of the riddle Aristotle poses is that "Socrates" and "Socrates seated" would in fact be two different things—since he thought that "C-3PO" and "C-3PO in a chair" are not the same. So—who was right? 

Aristotle would side with me in this dispute. The fact of C-3PO being in a chair is the sort of quality that the great philosopher would characterize as an "accident" (the Reeve translation uses the term "coincident" to mean the same thing). These are the sort of traits that must be disentangled from the "essence," which Aristotle at times uses interchangeably with the "substance" of a thing. 

But how are we to know which aspects of C-3PO are merely "accidents" and which are of the essence? One answer would be that "being in a chair" is a predicate of C-3PO, whereas Aristotle would say the essence of something is that of which these sorts of things are predicated. In this sense, he also describes the essence as the "what-it-is" or the "definition" of a thing. 

Yet, here we encounter another difficulty. For what is C-3PO, what is the "definition" of C-3PO, other than a collection of predicates—thus, a set of "accidents." When I try to define C-3PO, after all, I am likely to say: "He is gold; he is a droid; he is a character in Star Wars," etc. And at some point, the list of predicates becomes long enough that they could only refer to one individual. 

Once the individual has been pinned down in this way, we have our "essence." But why is the predicate "is gold" part of the essence of C-3PO, but "(in a chair)" is not? 

Aristotle would say that being gold is true of C-3PO "always or for the most part," so it is an essential trait. What makes being seated an "accident" or a "coincident," by contrast, is that it is not true of C-3PO all or most of the time. Rather, it is true only occasionally—only "as-luck-would-have-it," to use Aristotle's phrase (at least as Reeve translates it). 

But what if C-3PO stopped being gold? What if he were repainted silver, like the droid in Cloud City who insults him with the cryptic phrase "Ee-chutta"? Would he then cease to be C-3PO? Surely not. So, there must be some essence to C-3PO that makes him a unity, an identity, that lies deeper than one trait of this sort. Yet, as we have seen, all we can do to find it is to list a set of similar traits. 

Whenever we try to get to the "essence" or the "substance," therefore, it slips through our fingers. We have said—convincingly—that the essence must be something other than a mere "accident" or happenstance trait of a being; but as soon as we try to define what it is, all we can come up with is still more traits that prove to be equally accidental. 

One might be tempted at this point to resort to the idea that there must be some sort of preexisting Form of C-3PO, an idea perhaps in the mind of some universal consciousness, to which C-3PO as we know him merely corresponds. But Aristotle expressly rejects this approach, arguing that it only serves to complicate things without solving the underlying problem. 

After all, even if we posit the existence of the Forms, he suggests in one passage, that still doesn't tell us in what sense their earthly embodiments "participate" in the Forms. So all we have done is to suppose a second layer of unnecessary entities. As Reeve suggests in the notes, Aristotle was appealing here to a sort of Occam's Razor avant la lettre. 

Perhaps we can bite the bullet and say all our concepts are merely creations of the human mind with no objective existence outside us. We only construct them to serve certain purposes. In this sense, "Socrates" and "Socrates seated" would not be "the same." They would be one person if our purpose were "identify the person." But they are not one thing if our purpose is to "define the state of Socrates." 

But in that case, my friend all those years ago may have been right. My answer "C-3PO" may not in fact have been correct. It depends, crucially, on what purpose we were engaged upon at the time. If the card read "whom did Luke levitate," then I was right. But if the card read "what did Luke levitate," then my friend may have had a point. 

I'll have to go find that card again.