I: The Ghost in the Furniture

The Senior Common Room at St Anselm’s had acquired the warm stillness peculiar to late afternoon. Rain traced idle paths down the windows while books accumulated around armchairs in arrangements suggesting either scholarship or geological process.

Professor Quillibrace sat beside the fire examining a biscuit with faint suspicion.

Mr Blottisham had just completed a large gesture with his teacup.

"No, no, I simply cannot see the difficulty," he declared. "The world consists of things. Perfectly straightforward. Trees, rocks, chairs, people. Things are obviously there."

Professor Quillibrace looked up.

"Obviously?"

"Entirely obviously."

"I see."

Blottisham leaned back with the satisfaction of a man who had mistaken the opening move for victory.

Miss Elowen Stray looked up from her notebook.

"Perhaps," she said carefully, "the interesting question is why it feels obvious."

Blottisham frowned.

"Because I can see them."

Quillibrace nodded gently.

"Indeed. Though one notices that many ideas become invisible precisely because they become successful."

Blottisham blinked.

"Ideas?"

"Substance," said Quillibrace. "The assumption that reality is fundamentally composed of self-contained things."

Blottisham stared.

"My dear Quillibrace, things are not assumptions."

"No? Then tell me: why do we suppose that a thing remains the same thing through change?"

Blottisham waved vaguely.

"Because it does."

Quillibrace waited.

Blottisham shifted.

"It simply... remains itself."

"Ah."

Quillibrace returned his attention to the biscuit.

"That answer turns out to conceal rather a lot."

Miss Stray leaned forward.

"The problem isn't trivial," she said. "Take a tree. Across years almost everything changes. Leaves come and go. Branches alter. Cells die and regenerate."

"Still the same tree," said Blottisham immediately.

"Yes," said Miss Stray. "But what exactly remains?"

Blottisham opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Opened it again.

"The... tree part."

Silence briefly settled over the room.

Quillibrace regarded him thoughtfully.

"The tree part."

"Yes."

"The essential treeness."

"The very thing."

"And what is that composed of?"

Blottisham frowned.

"No, you've gone too fast."

Quillibrace placed the biscuit down.

"This was precisely the historical problem. Change seemed to require some underlying continuity. If characteristics altered while identity remained, then perhaps something deeper persisted beneath appearances."

Miss Stray nodded.

"And that became substance."

"A hidden carrier," said Quillibrace. "Something remaining stable while properties changed."

Blottisham looked relieved.

"There we are then."

"There we are where?"

"Problem solved."

Quillibrace folded his hands.

"Except for a minor difficulty."

Blottisham looked suspicious.

"What difficulty?"

"What precisely is this substance?"

Blottisham blinked.

"The thing underneath."

"Underneath what?"

"The properties."

"I see. And how do we describe it?"

Blottisham frowned.

"Well..."

He paused.

"By the properties it supports."

Quillibrace watched him quietly.

Miss Stray tilted her head slightly.

Blottisham looked from one face to the other.

"Oh, damn."

Quillibrace nodded approvingly.

"Quite."

Blottisham sat down heavily.

"So substance becomes the thing we invent to explain properties, but which we can only explain using properties."

"Very good."

"That's rather annoying."

"Philosophy often is."

Miss Stray had begun drawing circles and arrows in her notebook.

"There is another difficulty too," she said.

Blottisham looked wary.

"If things exist independently first, and relations come afterwards, then relations become secondary additions."

"Naturally."

"But many things do not seem to work that way."

Blottisham frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"Language, for example."

She looked up.

"Does language exist independently of speakers?"

"Well..."

"Do speakers exist independently of language?"

Blottisham hesitated.

"Hm."

"Or individuals and societies," she continued. "Or meanings and systems of distinction."

Quillibrace smiled faintly.

"The supposedly independent entities begin behaving rather badly."

Blottisham stared into the fire.

"So we begin with things because they seem obvious..."

"Yes," said Quillibrace.

"...but perhaps they only seem obvious because we inherited a way of solving a very old problem."

Quillibrace nodded.

"The solution eventually became part of the furniture."

Blottisham looked around the room uneasily.

"I dislike the suggestion that reality may contain conceptual furniture."

"Oh, it almost certainly does."

Silence again.

Rain tapped against the windows.

At length Blottisham said:

"So if one abandons substance..."

Quillibrace raised an eyebrow.

"...one does not lose trees?"

"No."

"Or mountains?"

"No."

"Or chairs?"

"No."

Blottisham looked relieved.

"Good heavens."

Miss Stray smiled.

"The question simply shifts."

"To what?"

She considered.

"Not 'What things exist?'"

A small pause.

"But rather: 'What patterns of relation make distinguishable things possible?'"

Blottisham stared into the middle distance.

"Good Lord."

Quillibrace resumed inspecting his biscuit.

"Yes," he said quietly. "One occasionally discovers that what looked like solid ground was merely an extremely old answer."