AI and “locus classicus”

can you assist in finding a locus classicus for a given idea or claim

ChatGPT said:

Absolutely—I’d be happy to help track down a locus classicus. A “locus classicus” is the earliest or most authoritative passage where a particular idea, term, or argument is laid out. To get started:

1. Specify the idea or claim you have in mind.
2. If possible, give any context—field (philosophy, science, literature), approximate era, keywords or phrases used.
3. Let me know if you’d like secondary sources or commentaries that discuss its importance.

Once I have that, I can suggest candidate primary texts, pinpoint passages, and, where helpful, bring in scholarly references. What’s the idea or claim you’re interested in?

o4-mini

You said:

in philosoph, what is the locus classicus for a distinction between a substance and a process

ChatGPT said:

Thought for 4 seconds

A good place to start—and the traditional “locus classicus” in Western metaphysics—is Aristotle, who in two key works sets out (a) what a substance is and (b) how change or process (kinesis) must be understood as distinct from substance:

1. Substance (ousia)
   • Categories, Chapter 5 (ch. 8 in some editions): “Substance” is treated as the primary category—“that which is neither predicated of a subject nor present in a subject” (cf. 1a 9–10).
   • Metaphysics, Book Ζ (Zeta, Book VII), especially 1028a–1030a: a more developed account of substance as “that which underlies and remains constant through change.”
2. Process / Change (kinesis)
   • Physics, Book III, Chapter 1 (201a 11ff.): Aristotle defines motion (kinesis) as “the actuality of what is potential, insofar as it is potential,” and distinguishes different kinds of change (substantial, quantitative, qualitative, etc.).
   • Metaphysics, Book Θ (Theta, Book IX), especially 1048a–1049a: the famous discussion of actuality (energeia) versus potentiality (dunamis), which grounds the very notion of process or activity.

Together, these passages lay down the classic contrast between ousia (a stable bearer of properties) and kinesis/energeia (the dynamic unfolding or actualization of potentials). If you’re tracing subsequent debates, virtually every medieval and early-modern author (from the Peripatetics through Aquinas and on to Leibniz) will take these Aristotelian loci as their starting-points.

o4-mini

You said:

what about Broad’s distinction

ChatGPT said:

Thought for 7 seconds

In Broad’s own work the classic statement of the distinction between substances (“things” or “continuants”) and processes (“events” or “occurrents”) is found in

C. D. Broad, Examination of McTaggart’s Philosophy, Vol. I (Cambridge University Press, 1933), Chapter VII, §§ “Independent Discussion of the Notion of Substance.”

In that section Broad notes that in ordinary language there are two fundamentally different kinds of “substantive names”:

1. Thing-names (continuants/substances) – e.g. “table,” “rock,” “river” – which naturally take what he calls “dispositional” adjectives (poisonous, fusible, massive) but reject many process-oriented modifiers.
2. Process-names (occurrents/events) – e.g. “sneeze,” “flash of light,” “concert” – which take adverbial or temporal modifiers (quickly, at noon) but reject most substance-oriented predicates.

Broad’s strategy is to show that certain predicate-phrase + substantive-name combinations are grammatical (and hence intelligible) only with one class or the other, and that this linguistic fact points to a real ontological distinction:

“In Indo-European languages, at any rate, there are at least two kinds of substantive-name, viz., thing-names and process-names. … There are several different kinds of adjective-phrase which can be conjoined with thing-names to give intelligible sentences. If any of these be joined with process-names the result is nonsense. Similarly …”
  —Broad, Examination of McTaggart’s Philosophy, Vol. I, ch. VII (pp. 132–138) DitextDitext

He labels the former “continuants” or “things,” and the latter “occurrents” or “events.” This passage has become the standard reference whenever contemporary metaphysicians discuss the continuant-occurrent (substance-process) distinction.