Substance theory

Substance theory is the view, that objects are something over and above their properties. In substance theory, substance can exist or be distinguished from their properties and relations. Even if it is impossible for the substance not to inhere anything, we can speak of it as a separate being.

If we attribute a property to an object, like ``a banana is yellow'', there is a subject, the banana, and we say of it that it has a property, being yellow. It makes no sense to speak of yellowness alone, without any subject. We therefore refer to a substance, and attribute it with a property. Whatever a property is of is the substance.

Another problem of substance theory is the inherence relation. For an object to have a property is definitely different than the property being a part of the object. So the question is, what this inherence relation between substances and properties actually is. A common answer to this is that inherence is a primitive concept: it cannot be explained any further, but it does not have to be explained further, too. One can understand inherence a priori.

Substance theory refers to some things without properties, bare objects. But whenever something comes to our mind, we think of some property or relation of it. It is absolutely impossible to find a bare object somewhere in the world. And we do not have any notion at all for such objects.