First, consider substratum.
For Marcuse, we must look to "the substratum of the outcasts and outsiders, etc," for any social change (MacIntyre 1970 877).
This quality-less substratum is what Aristotle referred to simply as matter, or as it is often called, Prime Matter, in order to avoid confusion with the macroscopically identifiable, quality-laden, homogenous portions of everyday objects.
For example, according to Nicholas Jolley, Locke employs the concept of a real essence when he is addressing issues of scientific explanation and he appeals to substratum when he is discussing the general concept of what it is to be a thing (as opposed to a property or mode) (see Jolley 1999, pp. 70 78).
Among the many features that mainstream neutral monism inherits from its empiricist roots is an aversion to substance (in the sense of a substratum).
In that case we will have to grant emptiness as existing independently of conventionally real entities, as their underlying substratum.
On the other hand, as the filling of that space, it serves as the neutral underlying substratum from which a particular, once characterized in some way, is constituted.
A substratum, for Hartmann, is the argument of a possible relation.
Both confront the problem of a substratum or substance in general, one that Locke notoriously finds vexing.[26] Newton dispenses with the problem more easily.
There is therefore no fundamental ontological difference between a substratum (dravya) and the qualities (guṇa) that inhere in it, contrary to the view that is e.g. held by the Naiyāyikas.
To speak of the self and its properties in terms of substratum and quality is perfectly acceptable, as long as we do not assume that such talk is based on a distinction with an ontological grounding.
