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(a) distinctness with respect to quantity (distinctio quantitativa): Quantity first gives its substance quantitative unity, "which consists in its being the case that one substance exists under quantitative limits distinct from those of another substance, in such a way that the one is not continuous with the other by a proper continuity of quantity." Suarez has already argued that quantitative unity presupposes the individual unity of the substance it modifies and hence cannot be the ground for that individual unity.
(b) distinctness with respect to position or place (distinctio situalis): Quantity then (i.e., later in the order of nature) makes it the case that "one substance exists outside the position or place of another." The corresponding sort of unity is obviously extrinsic to a material substance, since such a substance can change its place without ceasing to exist as the same individual.
(c) numerical distinctness: the contrary of numerical unity, the sort we have been talking about.
His claim is that (c) is prior to (a) and (b). Indeed, this account of the relation between individual or numerical unity, on the one hand, and quantitative and positional unity on the other leaves open at least the following conceptual possibilities: that a material substance should exist without any quantity at all, i.e., without determinate dimensions; that a material substance should exist without being in a place; that a material substance should exist at one and the same time in two discontinuous places; that two material things should exist in exactly the same place. As a matter of fact, Suarez has theological reasons for thinking that God can actualize each of these possibilities. But even someone who is sceptical on that point can at least appreciate the fact that there are distinct concepts involved in the three sorts of distinctness and that we can ask coherently whether, say, two distinct material bodies can occupy the same place, or whether one material substance can simultaneously be in two distinct places. Suarez ends this section by accusing Soncinas and Ferrariensis of conflating the transcendental unity which is the subject of the present disputation and the categorial unity or oneness which is conferred by a substance's quantity and which, as we have seen, presupposes transcendental unity.
The ensuing discussion becomes fairly complicated, but is interesting because it gets to the heart of Aristotelian anti-reductionism. To see this, ponder the following question: What is it that distinguishes a unified living organism at the instant of its generation from an agglomeration of the preexisting substances that provide the new substance's matter? On an Aristotelian view, the general ontological answer to this question is that at that instant the matter in question is informed directly and primarily by the new organism's substantial form or form of the whole. It is this principle which unifies the substance and to which all its characteristics, dispositions, and powers are subordinated. But in order for this to be the case, and in order for it to be the case further that the accidents of the new organism are primarily its accidents and not the accidents of the other substances from which it was formed, we must conceive of the matter that is so informed by the substantial form as being, at the instant of generation, a materia nuda that is wholly receptive and wholly non-resistive with respect to the form. We should note immediately that this does not entail that it is naturally possible that just any substantial form should inform the matter at that instant, since, as Suarez puts it, there is "a natural sequence by which this agent here and now is determined by a natural ordering to introduce this form, immediately after this alteration." Nor does it entail that materia nuda can ever exist on its own as such. Nonetheless, if substantival generation is indeed possible, it must be the case at the instant of generation that (i) the previous substances, now altered in such a way as to prepare for the generation of the new substance, cease to exist as such, along with their accidents, and that (ii) the matter of the old substances comes directly under the unifying function of the new substantial form.
Thesis 1: "Thus, first of all, speaking of the principle that constitutes the individual in reality and from which is truly taken the individual difference that contracts the species and constitutes the individual, this position denies that designated matter is the principle of individuation."
Thesis 2: "Second, this position claims that matter is the principle and root of the multiplication of individuals among material substances."
Thesis 3: "Third, this position claims that matter signed by quantity is the principle and root of--or at least the occasion for--the production of this individual as distinct from the rest."
Thesis 4: "Fourth, this position adds that 'matter signed by sensible quantity' expresses the principle of individuation with respect to us, since it is through this principle that we have cognition of the distinction of material individuals from one another."
(a) Is matter the explanation for the fact that in a given instance of efficient causality, it is this rather than that actual individual that is produced?
(b) Is matter the explanation for the fact that in a given instance of efficient causality, it is this rather than some other possible individual, whose essence would include just the same matter, that is produced?