Aristotle's Metaphysics
I decided to start a new discussion rather than continue in the thread on the hard problem.
In that thread @Paine said:
The Metaphysics begins where we begin with man:
Aristotle begins by marking a limit or end. We begin by being confronted with an important but troubling question - how much of what Aristotle will say is something known?
But rather than introducing these principles and causes Aristotle takes an unexpected turn:
Why the detour into our opinions of the wise man? Two questions arise: Is Aristotle wise? Can he teach us these principles and causes? He will identify four causes, but this is not sufficient for making us wise regarding knowledge.
To be continued.
In that thread @Paine said:
I think Aristotle is framing eternity as a limit that we cannot approach without seeing our condition as unable to think about it past a certain point.
The Metaphysics begins where we begin with man:
All men naturally desire knowledge. (980a)
... it is through experience that men acquire science and art ... (981a)
Aristotle begins by marking a limit or end. We begin by being confronted with an important but troubling question - how much of what Aristotle will say is something known?
... experience is knowledge of particulars, but art of universals ...
Nevertheless we consider that knowledge and proficiency belong to art rather than to experience we assume that artists are wiser than men of mere experience (which implies that in all cases wisdom depends rather upon knowledge);and this is because the former know the cause, whereas the latter do not. (981a)
In general the sign of knowledge or ignorance is the ability to teach, and for this reason we hold that art rather than experience is scientific knowledge; for the artists can teach, but the others cannot. (981b)
Thus it is clear that Wisdom is knowledge of certain principles and causes. (982a)
But rather than introducing these principles and causes Aristotle takes an unexpected turn:
Since we are investigating this kind of knowledge, we must consider what these causes and principles are whose knowledge is Wisdom. Perhaps it will be clearer if we take the opinions which we hold about the wise man. (982a)
Why the detour into our opinions of the wise man? Two questions arise: Is Aristotle wise? Can he teach us these principles and causes? He will identify four causes, but this is not sufficient for making us wise regarding knowledge.
To be continued.
Comments (223)
Quoting Nichomachean Ethics
Put another way, practical wisdom is manifested in virtuous action, not simply in verbal description. The old saw, 'actions speak louder than words'. (Incidentally, I am presuming the reference to 'incontinence' is actually to celibacy or lack thereof.)
You got it incorrectly. It's not "the opinion of the wise man". It is "the opinions which we hold about the wise man". Big difference. That's why you got lost there for a second.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, Aristotle was wise, and yes he could teach us the principles and causes. The four causes are supposed to be the complete explanation of everything there is. He was a teacher after all -- educated in almost everything in the academy.
Thanks for pointing that out. I corrected it. Not the wise man's opinions but opinions about the wise man.
Quoting L'éléphant
Not lost. Jut a typo. The question about whether Aristotle is wise is related to the question of our opinions about the wise man. I will have a bit more to say about this.
So, is this a thread about Aristotle's metaphysics, addressing what he actually wrote, or is this just a thread about our opinions of Aristotle, as a supposed wise man. You can see how we could discuss the latter without any knowledge about what he actually wrote. But what's the point of blind character assassination?
What is generally assumed is not necessarily what is true. Aristotles method is to begin with opinions. At this point he neither affirms or denies this opinion. The question of whether this is what wisdom is remains open. Although he will focus on the primary causes and principles, we should be open to the possibility that the underlying reason for his discussion is not simply to disclose causes and principles but to address the assumption of what wisdom is.
If Aristotle is wise, then, according to what is generally assumed, not only does he know the primary causes and principles, he can teach them. Given his discussion of causes and principles he certainly does give the impression of being wise. But does his discussion teach us to be wise?
Starting where Aristotle does, with man, do we know what it is to be a man? What is the final cause, the telos of man? The question asks us not simply to give an opinion or account of it, but to know it by having achieved it, by the completion of our telos. Aristotle begins by saying that all men by nature desire to know. Is the satisfaction of that desire our telos?
The question of the telos of man is the question of self-knowledge. Socrates said his human wisdom is knowledge of ignorance. This is not expressed as an opinion but as something he knows. Is Aristotles wisdom, like that of Socrates, human or is it divine?
If it is through experience that men acquire science and art, then can there be knowledge of what does not come from experience? Our knowledge and experience is limited. We are somewhere between the beginning and the end. Without knowledge of the beginning Aristotle cannot know that the world is or is not eternal. If it comes to be then like all that comes to be it too will perish. He does not know what always was or always will be. Not knowing this he does not know how it was or will be.
So why does Aristotle make so many theological claims? I think the answer has something to do with the difference between opinion and knowledge, what can be taught and learned, and the competition between theology and philosophy. Aristotle was able to give his listeners and readers opinions that they could hold as true, but he could not give them knowledge of such things. As if to be told is to know.
Based on what is generally assumed about wisdom, Aristotle appears to be wise.
What does so far as it is possible mean? How far is it possible to know all things? Without the possibility of knowledge of beginnings and ends the wise mans knowledge falls short of knowledge of all things. But the theologian claims to have and teach knowledge of all things.
The paragraph ends:
There is then an important political dimension to the Metaphysics. The battle between the philosopher and the theologian is a continuation of the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy. Aristotles strategy in this quarrel is the same as Platos. Just as Plato presents a philosophical poetry, Aristotle presents a philosophical theology. It is better for these opinions to be generally assumed rather than some others. It is better to hold these opinions then succumb to misologic and nihilism. Better to give the appearance of knowledge than reveal our absence of knowledge.
The wisdom that Aristotle teaches through arguments that confound us is human rather than divine wisdom, knowledge of our ignorance. But it is not always wise to reveal our ignorance.
None of this is meant to suggest that attempting to understand the Metaphysics is a waste of time. Aristotle does teach those who attempt to work through his arguments how to think, but if there is a failure to learn it is our failure not his. In addition, the limits of our knowledge does not preclude knowledge of how to inquire into those things that lie between the beginning and end.
He said,
He did not consider knowledge to belong to experience (the particulars). Knowledge, as he attributed to art has the form of a universal, conceptual, or non-concrete occurrence. Similar to Platonic forms.
Edit: lol. I misread the quote. My mistake.
One implication is that teleology is not determinism. All that happens in the world does not come to be as the result of a determinate end. The teleology of the acorn is to become the oak tree, but not every acorn becomes an oak. To ask why is to examine accidental causes.
More generally, the implication is that the cosmos cannot be understood simply as teleological. The world is not as it is because it acts to fulfill some end. Because there are accidental causes, the world is indeterminate and does not yield a final account.
Aristotle is in agreement with Platos Timaeus in making the distinction between two kinds of cause, one intelligible and one unintelligible.
as a world of Love and Strife. In Aristotles more prosaic but no less inventive terms, a world in the constant movement he calls in his neologism entelechia. It is the never ending activity or work of an ousia to persist or continue to be what it is or is to be. The constant active struggle of the telos of a living being against its dissolution.
"Nobody would call one just who does not enjoy acting justly." (NE, I, 1099a, 15-20).
This is in what being a philosopher consists.
The incontinent man (the akrat?s) is one who desires correctly but does not act correctly. For example, the alcoholic who wishes to be sober but, overcome by his bad habits, is unable to act thusly. Nowadays we think of akrasia as relating to psychology, but for Aristotle it was central to ethics.
Some of the other proximate categories are helpful in situating the idea. The depraved man (akolastos) desires incorrectly and acts in accord with his desires. Then comes the akrat?s, described above. Then comes the continent man (enkrat?s), who desires correctly and acts correctly, but only with difficulty or effort. Then comes the temperate man (sophron), who desires correctly and acts correctly (primarily in relation to pleasures), and without difficulty or effort. At the further extremes, even apart from considerations of pleasure, stand the bad man (kakos) and the man of practical wisdom (phronimos). The commonality between the akrat?s and the enkrat?s is that they are both divided internally, at odds with themselves. Contrariwise, the akolastos and the sophron are both internally unified, acting as they see fit without internal contradiction.
The way this is stated it seems as though wisdom is something like an object to be found.
Why do you call phronesis an extreme?
Because he is inquiring into wisdom, and rather than artificially stipulate a definition of wisdom, he looks at what we already mean by it, and who we call 'wise'. In the subsequent section he assesses these widespread opinions about the wise man.
If Aristotle is wise then why artificially stipulate a definition of wisdom?
If knowledge differs from opinion then why not start by telling us what the wise man knows rather than with our opinions of the wise man?
I just explained to you why he doesn't do that. You seem to wish he had.
I wish to inquire what he may be up to. I take it that if he doesn't he has good reason why he doesn't. I don't think that not wanting to artificially stipulate a definition of wisdom gets at what is at issue. In my opinion the reader must play an active role. The reader does so by asking questions and looking to see how the text might address these questions.
If he is inquiring into wisdom does that mean he does not know what it is to be wise? If he is not wise can he determine whether others are? If others are not wise what it the value in discussing the opinions we hold about the wise man?
If Aristotle is wise then why doesn't he impart his wisdom to others? He does say that:
(981b)
What role might examining the opinions of others play in teaching others? Does he teach them to be wise?
Perhaps he does have something to teach us about being wise. Perhaps what that is is not simply a matter of what is generally assumed, that is, that what is called Wisdom is concerned with the primary causes and principles (981b)
Your line of approach reminds me of the Meno:
There are several things at issue here. The opinions we hold about the wise man (982a) refers, on the one hand, to those who desire to be wise and on the other, more generally to common opinion. Those who seek wisdom should know the opinions of the many about the wise man in order to avoid the fate of Socrates.
At the end of this paragraph he says:
((982a)
There is a political dimension that the philosopher must deal with. This for his own sake, for the sake of philosophy, and for the sake of the polis.
Another aspect of the problem can be stated as follows: what is our opinion about the extent to which Aristotle or anyone else is wise and can teach us to be wise.
In this extremely compact section Aristotle also says:
What does so far as it is possible mean? What are the limits of human knowledge?
[Added: More to follow]
In his recent translation of Metaphysics, Joe Sachs says the Greek term arche, is
and that it most often refers to a being rather than a proposition or rule.
He translates it as 'source'.
In more contemporary terms Aristotle's inquiry into the arche or source of things is ontological rather than epistemological.
It seemed wrong that what is first and primary should be some proposition or rule. What is first is being and beings not something someone, even someone regarded as wise, says about being.
Would you be willing to try and clarify it a bit?
I am not well acquainted with the entirety of the text, by any means...but, I am familiar with the first few bits as it relates to another interest. This might be a good opportunity to dig into it a bit more.
He begins by noting the desire to know. This raises several questions regarding wisdom and the possible limits of what is and can be known.
1. Humans have an innate desire to know
2. This knowledge takes different forms
3. Regardless of the form, knowledge begins from the senses
According to Aristotle, philosophy begins when we look at the world around us with a sense of wonder. This sense of wonder he characterized as a desire to know why things happen as they do, and not simply how things happen. The latter of these two forms of knowledge is, according to Aristotle, primarily concerned with utility, and is given to us through the senses. We see how things occur, and over time, through the use of our memory, we can say how they will likely occur in the future. With this knowledge, we can predict and manipulate future events by recreating past conditions. Knowledge of why things occur is ancillary in some sense, contributing little in terms of utility. Therefore, this form of knowledge, which Aristotle called wisdom was only sought once humans had afforded themselves comfort and security from the harshness of nature. Knowing why a seed grows into a tree isnt required to know that it will, and you only need the latter to grow an orchard.
This kind of knowledge, Aristotle calls connected experience, which is when we call many experiences under a single theory, and form a judgment regarding a class of objects, as opposed to an individual object, and attempts to explain why they occur by appealing to causes and principles.
He then notes the differing thoughts philosophers (or wise men) have held regarding the first cause and principles of reality.
He notes that the first philosophers thought that these principles were only matter; that is, there was an original matter that changes and modifies itself through time and eventually became all we see today. They thought the universe was eternal, and had within it all the matter already, with no more being created or destroyed.
He then notes that despite various opinions of this sort, none agree on exactly how many original causes there are. Some thought there was one, others that there must be two primary types of matter that became everything we see now...others thought four and folks like Democratus that thought the primary matter was atoms of differing shapes and sizes that connect together to form macroscopic objects thought there was countess primary atoms.
Aristotle then criticizes each of these and offers his own take on the number and nature of the original causes or principles that lead to macroscopic reality.
-----
Quoting Fooloso4
But, you're right given the historical evidence. We know that Aristotle was wrong, and an idea more akin to Democratus' was more right...there is serious concern regarding the method Aristotle employs to reach "metaphysical knowledge". He uses reason to try and challenge other ideas, and furnish his own account, and it lead us in the wrong direction for generations until folks like Descartes, Bacon, Newton began challenging Aristotle's ideas and considering the atomic mechanical principle of his predecessors.
The sense of what is "metaphysical" knowledge is not presented as the anti-thesis to "material" causes. The beginning of the discussion is how the inquiry into the way of knowledge is distinguished from using theoria to learn specific natures and their causes:
Speculation about first things is not knowledge. The reason is simple. We have no experience of the beginning or origins. Knowledge begins with the senses, aided by memory in some animals, and by art and reasoning in the case of human beings. Knowledge and art result from experience. (981a)
Quoting 013zen
Democritus gave a more plausible account of material causes but Aristotle's inquiry extends to the good of each thing and the whole of nature. (982b) A full account should not only address the good of each thing and the whole, but it should be good, that is, beneficial to human beings. Even if the account fails to satisfy the former it can aim to satisfy the latter.
Aristotle points out that knowledge of such things is not productive, and concludes:
(983a)
Between these statements he questions whether such knowledge is appropriate for human beings. It is divine knowledge, both in the sense that it is knowledge of the divine as cause and knowledge that a god alone or most of all would have. Above the entryway to the temple of Apollo are inscribed the words "know thyself". One way in which this was understood is that man should know his place. He is not a god and does not possess knowledge of the gods in the double sense of knowing the gods and knowing what the gods know. Knowledge of the source and cause of the whole is not something that human beings possess. We do not even know if the divine is a cause or if the divine knows the cause.This should be kept in mind when Aristotle turns to theology.
I'm not an Aristotle expert, but I do refer to his ideas on Metaphysics whenever discussions about philosophical "hard problems" --- as contrasted with scientific empirical problems --- come up. Perhaps Ari is saying that in order to divine*1 First Principles, penetrating wisdom (insight) is more important than mere superficial observation.
For example, I just began reading Steven Strogatz' 2003 book Sync, How Order Emerges From Chaos. His first example is fireflies (lightning bugs) in Asia that gather in the thousands, and begin to spookily blink in rhythm : all on, all off. The mere observation was that this orchestrated behavior is not normal for "glow-worms". So some mathematical principle was sought to explain this "spontaneous order" without a conductor, and without faster-than-light communication.
That it should be explainable by a general "principle" was implicit, because other cases of order out of chaos have been observed, as in the steady rhythm of the heartbeat, with thousands of cells contracting simultaneously. Actually, a mathematical theory of order-out-of-chaos*2 was constructed by merging the observations & insights of many scientists over several years ; not by instant revelation. In fact, the search continues after many decades of effort*3.
The author doesn't mention Metaphysics, but he does attribute the progress toward a Principle of Order to the collective wisdom of many observers. Presumably, each instance of emergent Order from normal Disorder is caused by some "trigger". And that Causal Principle should be describable in mathematical symbols. But understanding the metaphysical meaning of those abstract numbers & symbols will require some philosophical wisdom. :smile:
*1. To divine : gain knowledge by nonlinear insight or intuition, as if by revelation, instead of by logical linear reasoning
*2. Order out of Chaos : Chaos is random -- no rules -- but Order is regulated by logical/mathematical rules. But what triggers the change? Don't ask me; I just started the book.
*3. Complexity Systems Science : The Santa Fe Institute was established in 1984 to study some of the "hard problems" that emerged from Quantum Physics.
Interesting comment on one sense of divine, but he is talking about divine beings.
Quoting Fooloso4
Knowledge does begin with the senses, but it does not end there. As Aristotle says:
"Such and so many are the notions, then, which we have about Wisdom and the wise. Now of these characteristics that of knowing all things must belong to him who has in the highest degree universal knowledge; for he knows in a sense all the instances that fall under the universal. And these things, the most universal, are on the whole the hardest for men to know; for they are farthest from the senses. And the most exact of the sciences are those which deal most with first principles; for those which involve fewer principles are more exact than those which involve additional principles, e.g. arithmetic than geometry. But the science which investigates causes is also instructive, in a higher degree, for the people who instruct us are those who tell the causes of each thing. And understanding and knowledge pursued for their own sake are found most in the knowledge of that which is most knowable (for he who chooses to know for the sake of knowing will choose most readily that which is most truly knowledge, and such is the knowledge of that which is most knowable); and the first principles and the causes are most knowable; for by reason of these, and from these, all other things come to be known, and not these by means of the things subordinate to them. And the science which knows to what end each thing must be done is the most authoritative of the sciences, and more authoritative than any ancillary science; and this end is the good of that thing, and in general the supreme good in the whole of nature. Judged by all the tests we have mentioned, then, the name in question falls to the same science; this must be a science that investigates the first principles and causes; for the good, i.e. the end, is one of the causes."
Wisdom is the knowledge of universals, which are the furthest from the senses and therefore hardest to know.
But, knowledge of first principles and causes, Aristotle says are most knowable.
Quoting Fooloso4
I also quoted that passage because, you're right, Aristotle does classify the "good" as something tangible, accounting for reality to some degree. But, one should wonder if a metaphysical account of reality ought to include any account of the "good" in our times. Obviously, it's still relevant and insightful to work in ethics.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yea, this is a good point, and one that I didn't notice before. It's weird then because immediately after saying this, he goes into what wisemen have speculated the first causes are. So, does he believe that knowledge of such things is or isn't suitable for the human mind to comprehend?
The book I'm currently reading points to the origin of metaphysics, with Parmenides 'prose-poem', saying that after the introductory section, written in first person, the substance of the remainder is indeed given to Parmenides by the Goddess:
[quote=Eric D. Perl, Thinking Being, p13]Since the rest of the poem is presented as the speech of the Goddess, this grasp of the whole is received as a gift, a revelation from the divine. The very first full-fledged metaphysician in the western tradition, then, experiences his understanding of being in religious terms, as an encounter with divinity. It is no surprise, therefore, that, according to the Goddess, the road Parmenides takes is outside the tread of men (B 1.27). Thus the Goddess draws a sharp distinction between the untrembling heart of well-rounded truth on the one hand, and the opinions of mortals on the other. The implication is that truth, as distinct from mere human seeming, is divine. We may be reminded of Heraclitus dictum, Human character does not have insights, divine has.[/quote]
But 'divine inspiration' is also central in Plato. In the Phaedrus, Plato discusses the souls journey and the role of divine madness in achieving true insight and wisdom. This divine madness is considered a form of inspiration from the gods, enabling the soul to recollect the Forms and the ultimate truths of existence. In the Symposium, Plato also emphasizes the role of the divine in the pursuit of wisdom through Diotimas ladder of love, which ultimately leads to the contemplation of the Form of Beauty, a divine and eternal truth.
Later Neoplatonists like Plotinus and Proclus build upon Platos ideas, emphasizing the One or the Good as a transcendent source of all reality. Their interpretations, deeply rooted in Platos works, highlight the divine and mystical dimensions of his philosophy. These were to have considerable influence on the formation of Christian theology (and are nowadays deprecated on that account, I would contend). Whereas much contemporary philosophy, with its naturalistic and generally materialistic tendencies, tends to reinterpret ancient texts to fit modern frameworks.
It might appear as if he is saying that these are things that we can know. That we can be wise. But we are not wise. We do not know these first principles and causes. Perhaps the gods do.
In the Phaedrus Socrates says:
(278d)
and:
(277e)
I know this is an old thread, but if you only got around to the Metaphysics, this is really discussed most in detail in Book X of the Ethics. It isn't a long book, but if you're just curious on this question you could probably get away with just reading Book I and Book X. Aquinas has a very good commentary on Book X.
But, with some caveats, the answer to the bolded is "yes." There are many ways to live a good, flourishing life, but the life of contemplation is highest and most divine.
Is the life of contemplation one that is suitable or even desirable for all men? However attractive this might appear to be to would be philosophers, it is not the telos of all men. Even for those who do desire such a life, it is not clear that the desire to know is satisfied by contemplation.
The contemplative life requires either self-sufficiency or having someone else do the work in order to afford your leisure. Human beings, unlike the gods, are not self-sufficient.If the good man requires a proper education and training, then some form of community and legislation must be in place. From
the height of the contemplative life Aristotle moves, as the philosopher in the Republic must, back to the necessities and demands of city/cave.
Yup, he addresses those precise issues. They are why the answer is a qualified "yes." I think his reasoning is fairly straightforward, so it's probably best to let him speak for himself in Book X.
I do think there are some holes there that Aquinas fills in in the "On the Human Good," section of the Summa Contra Gentiles, but that is not as straight forward of a read (I personally dislike Thomas' style) or as short.
I don't. I think his reasoning is dialectical and aporetic. The attentive reader is not led to conclusions but to questions and problems without answers.
Ari did seem to assume the existence of some kind of supernatural beings, beyond the limits of human senses*1. But to me his "unmoved mover" sounds more like an abstract Nature-God than the Judeo deity, who walks in the garden with his creatures, and communicates his divine Will in no uncertain terms. In any case, I was using the term "to divine" in a colloquial metaphorical sense, not to be taken literally.
More to the point, I'll address your question "Is Aristotle wise?". I suppose the answer depends on whether you agree with Ari on the requirements for wisdom : one being the knowledge of Causes. In the quote below*2 though, he sets a high standard : "knows all things". But also admits to limits : "as far as possible". One cause of the limitation on human knowledge may be the aloofness of the deity, who gave humans the ability to "divine" via intuition & reason, instead of by direct revelation & slavish acquiescence.
Socrates opined that Wisdom begins in wonder", and Ari's treatise on Phusis reveals a sense of encyclopedic inquisitiveness. Both of those paragons of sagacity also paradoxically expressed doubt about their own wisdom*3. So, Wisdom seems to require childish curiosity constrained by adult skepticism. :smile:
*1. What does Aristotle say about the divine?
Here Aristotle bases his doctrine of God on his cosmology. He conceives of an unmoved mover or first cause, eternal, invisible and unchangeable, who initiates all change in the universe by his attractive power, by arousing the desire to be like him in those heavenly beings which most nearly resemble him.
https://academic.oup.com/book/26477/chapter-abstract/194921046?redirectedFrom=fulltext
*2. The wise man knows of all things, as far as possible, although he has no knowledge of each of them in detail. Aristotle
*3. Why did Socrates say I know nothing?
The meaning of Socrates' reflections in the phrase all I know is that I know nothing consisted of two paradoxical things. Firstly, Socrates doubted his own wisdom's superiority over other people's wisdom.
https://www.thecollector.com/all-i-know-is-that-i-know-nothing-socrates/
I cannot say whether or not he assumed that there are supernatural beings, but it is clear not only that many believe and others speak and write about them.
Quoting Gnomon
His is not the God of the Bible.Talk about Aristotle's unmoved mover usually assumes a single entity, but Aristotle says:
(Book Xll, Chapter 8)
In order to set down how many he looks to the heavens and finds that there are many independent things. That is, things not dependent on any other.
Quoting Gnomon
Yes. My argument is that those limits are determined by our experience, particularly our lack of experience of the source of the whole.
Quoting Gnomon
Such doubt is an essential element of their wisdom.
Quoting Gnomon
Yeah, something like that.
One question on the link to note 3: where does Socrates say he knows nothing? I think it is a misquotation but would be glad to be shown that I am wrong.
He probably didn't say that in so many words. But the common quote attributed to the "wise man" is an English paraphrase of the Greek original, intended to indicate that it's wise to not be too cocky about your all-knowingness. Especially on philosophy forums, where you will be called to account. :wink:
Socratic Paradox :
"I know that I know nothing" is a saying derived from Plato's account of the Greek philosopher Socrates: "For I was conscious that I knew practically nothing..." (Plato, Apology 22d, translated by Harold North Fowler, 1966).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing
Metaphysics connects the concerns stated in Nichomachean Ethics and Politics by asking if it is wrong to pursue the primary causes:
The search for causes is theological in the context of how it challenges other views of what our place is as humans. Asking what is good by nature is at odds with other ideas of justice.
But then it what sense can we call some person wise, as Aristotle does?
I think in the case of Socrates there is a great deal more to it. It is not enough to acknowledge that you are ignorant. Human wisdom means to know how best to live while being ignorant of what is best.
(Apology 21d)
(982a 20)
It should be noted that he does not simply say that this is what wisdom is, but "of these" that is,the accepted opinions about wisdom. We might ask:
Why he does not just tell us what wisdom is? Does he know? Is he wise? Can we know if he or anyone else is wise if we are not?
Your translation is slightly different than mine :razz:
But, in the quote you reference, I take Aristotle to be saying:
"We say wise people have qualities x,y,z...of these qualities y is the most crucial"
Namely, knowledge of universals or what is common to all particular instances.
It seems as though Aristotle is telling us what he takes wisdom to consist in.
While I agree, recall that modern culture is generally nominalist and empiricist. There are still advocates of scholastic realism and hylomorphism but they're mainly Catholic philosophers or specialised academics. (See this index.) As far as the mainstream of philosophy is concerned, Aristotelian metaphysics was retired pretty well around the same time as Aristotelian physics, with the scientific revolution and the abandonment of geocentrism.
This is a theme I have been pursuing but I'm woefully under-prepared to really tackle it. But it's based on my belief that the decline of scholastic metaphysics was a momentous and generally calamitous change in Western culture. I'm always harking back to the supposedly spiritual elements of Greek philosophy but they get pretty short shrift on this forum and elsewhere.
I am using Joe Sachs. From his introduction
For convenience I sometimes copy and paste from the online translation from Perseus:
Those opinions, as he goes on to discuss, vary. They cannot all be his opinions. We should not take any of them to be his opinion in more than a tentative and preliminary way, subject to further consideration.
The problem of universals is taken up in book VII, Chapter 13. What is universal is not some additional thing separate and independent of those things that come under it. The central question of the Metaphysics is the question of being, or ousia. Being is not a universal.
(1038b)
In other words, what is first is not a universal.
This is a sharp contrast from the language of "participating in Forms." As he says a little further:
This focus on the limits of what can be known through distinctions of kinds is evident in the discussion of actual being contrasted with potential or capacity:
Yes, but immediately following that he says:
"Such in kind [20] and in number are the opinions which we hold with regard to Wisdom and the wise. Of the qualities there described the knowledge of everything must necessarily belong to him who in the highest degree possesses knowledge of the universal, because he knows in a sense all the particulars which it comprises."
Notice how he says "Of the qualities described..."... it seems to be that he is articulating what he takes to be the essential aspect of the qualities previously described. It's like if I were to say, "people say a "good general" is brave, intelligent, and loyal; its therefore necessary that a good general be a good person". Idk I admit I could be misreading it, but that's how I always took it.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, but as he says:
"It is clear that we must obtain knowledge of the primary causes, because it is when we think that we understand its primary cause that we claim to know each particular thing. Now there are four recognized kinds of cause. Of these we hold that one is the essence or essential nature of the thing (since the "reason why" of a thing is ultimately reducible to its formula, and the ultimate "reason why" is a cause and principle); another is the matter or substrate; the third is the source of motion; and the fourth is the cause which is opposite to this, namely the purpose or "good";for this is the end of every generative or motive process. We have investigated these sufficiently in the Physics".
To obtain knowledge of a universal or to know each particular that falls under it without need of experience, we must know primary causes. Aristotle lists four, one of which is matter.
Indeed they were, but that's not to say that there is nothing that can be learned from Aristotle. I don't think he's wrong here...universal knowledge, which draws many particulars under a single concept is what we are after; that's what Newton did with his laws of motion, and what we continue to do by articulating laws. But, its even what we do when we understand something, in general. But, anyways, his notion of the actual primary causes, and what they entail is totally outdated; but the reasoning has always seemed sound to me (everything isn't made of fire, water, earth, air for example).
Quoting Wayfarer
I'd be interested to hear more. Do you say this because you think that something was lost in the transition?
As it happens, the very first post I entered on the predecessor forum to this one, was about what I now understand to be Platonic realism, i.e. that abstracta (in that case numbers), are real but not materially existent. I've discussed and debated the issue many times but I find that it's neither well understood nor widely supported - principally because it is obviously incompatible with physicalism.
In any case, after much more reading and deliberation, I decided that some form of scholastic realism - realism concerning universals - simply must be true, for the reasons you've sketched out. What I'm referring to as the calamity of the decline of Greek metaphysics is subject of some influential books. One is Ideas have Consequences, which was a surprise best-seller by a Uni of Chicago English professor in the post-war period. It is all about the longer-term consequences of the decline of metaphysics:
[quote= Richard Weaver] Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.[/quote]
(This book is rather unfortunately nowadays associated with American political conservatism, with which I have no affinity, but I believe his basic argument still stands.)
Another more recent book is The Theological Origins of Modernity, Michael Allen Gillespie, around 2008. THere's a snynopsis here.
Then there are Lloyd Gerson's books, the most recent being Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy. Gerson's books are not very approachable for the lay reader as they are aimed very much at his academic peers, but he too supports Aristotelian or scholastic realism. But his main argument is to the incompatibility of Platonism and Naturalism, and the contention that Platonism is coterminous with philosophy proper. (Rather a good online lecture on this book here.)
Finally an essay called What's Wrong with Ockham - actually the source of that Weaver quote - which is on Academia (originally published on a now extinct website.) It too is a dense scholarly work, but the concluding section on what was lost with the Aristotelian 'aitia' (fourfold causation) is important:
I am surprised to have discovered these sources, because they're mainly associated with Catholicism - Edward Feser and author of that last paper are Catholic professors - but I'm myself not Catholic. But I like to think of it as a uniquely Western manifestation of the philosophia perennis, which apart from the kinds of sources I've referred to, is nowadays mainly lost and forgotten.
Sorry about such a long and dense post, but it's a very large topic.
We have disagreed over Gerson in the past. As a devoted student of Plotinus, I cannot fault his view of Plato since Gerson follows Plotinus' reading.
But I object to Gerson's picture of Aristotle as an anti-naturalist. It elides Plotinus' criticism of Aristotle.
Gerson's version of materialism ignores the limits of the universal that Aristotle discusses in the Metaphysics, which my quote above is taken from.
When one goes to the first page of the search for Gerson, the comments I made there are some arguments against his view. Further in the past, I expressed differences with Gerson's interpretation of De Anima unrelated to this thesis.
As time has passed, I have been thinking about his thesis as a "philosophy of history" that searches text to find the steps he is looking for. Up to now, I was mostly approaching it as a competing interpretation of the text.
I will think about how to expand upon the historicist angle.
Perhaps for Gerson it came down to the question of either including or excluding Aristotle from Ur-Platonism, and the rest follows from being unable to exclude him.
This is very interesting...
I've heard a line of reasoning that reminds me of this....I think it might have been Searle? Well, regardless...they made a case that there are things that are:
1. Epistemically objective
2. Epistemically subjective
3. Ontologically objective
4. Ontologically subjective
Something could be ontologically subjective which has a different mode of existence than ontologically objective things. But, this is not to say that they cannot also be epistemically objective.
I don't know if this helps or is similar to your line of thinking, but it reminded me of it, and thought it might help.
As for the rest of the post...Ill admit, its a bit out of my element, but from what I gather, Im interested, or at least have been doing a lot of thinking, on a tangential problem myself. What I mean is, it seems like in part aspects of the debate you pointed out are focused on the gutting of traditional metaphysics starting from around the time of Ockham, Bacon, and Descartes, which came to a head around the end of the 1800s, reducing metaphysics to nonsense, and our access to reality almost nonexistent.
But, interestingly enough, I believe that the metaphysicians won that debate... I think the general population simply hasnt caught up yet so to speak. There is always a tidal effect as knowledge populates through a population, and words change meanings. Classical conceptions need to be updated, but its difficult to see how something thought of in one fashion could be intuitively and defensibly wrong, but in another acceptable and informative.
But, truthfully, I think a modern notion of forms is defensible. The forms are simply the arrangement of quarks, leptons, and bosons that make up protons and neutrons, or the form that a carbon atom takes, etc
This is very true, and I believe it's a key point toward understanding Aristotle's metaphysics. The teleological aspect of biology necessitates that there is a sort of "form" which is temporally prior to the material existence of a living body, as the cause of its being an organized body. This implies an immaterial form which the Greeks knew as the soul.
The second point, I believe is to understand the distinction between the immaterial "form" which is prior in existence to a material body, as cause of that body being the unique body which it is, and the "form" as we know it, in the sense of the formula of our understanding. This produces a duality of "form" in Aristotle, as one sense is proper to final cause, and the other is proper to formal cause. The revival of Aristotelian principles which you refer to, as displayed in this forum by participants like @Dfpolis and @apokrisis, commonly does not reflect this distinction, and it is common to find a conflation of these two distinct senses of "form".
Quoting Paine
The difference between Neo-Platonist interpretations of Plato, and Aristotelian interpretations of Plato, I have described to Wayfarer in the past. The problem with Pythagorean idealism which Plato exposed, is that the theory of participation, which is the theory that supports the reality of these separate Ideas, makes these Ideas passive, and does not allow that the independent Ideas are active in the real world. Today this is known as the problem of interaction. Plato introduced "the good", as a principle of action.
What Aristotle did was define "form" as the active aspect of reality, and then he showed the need for independent active "Forms" as causal in the sense of teleologically causal, final cause, to account for the reality of the role of "the good" in the world, demonstrated by the free will.
The Neo-Platonists, as demonstrated by Plotinus, did not follow this principle, and adhered more to Pythagorean participation, but turned participation around to be emanation. However, the first principle "the One" is pure potential, passive, and so this cannot account for the act, the cause of emanation. In this way the Neo-Platonist metaphysics hits a dead end, the first principle is purely potential, and not actual. That contradicts Aristotle's cosmological argument. Christian theologist like Augustine and Aquinas, turn to the active "Form" of Aristotle, to account for the reality of the free will, and of God in general, as the first cause.
In other words, we may call things "forms" not because they are the same as the form of a body, but because they either cause that form, or are caused by that form.
Forms can be "prior" in two ways:
In addition, there are "posterior" forms, which are the (1) (incomplete) neural representations and (2) the consequent concepts that result from the action of informed bodied on our nervous system and our awareness of these representations respectively.
In the Aristotelian tradition, forms are neither Platonic Ideas nor physical arrangements, but the actuality of what was potential (hyle -- poorly translated "matter"). Since "elementary particles" are not immutable, but can interact and decay to form other particles, they themselves are a combination of form (actuality = what they are now) and hyle (potentiality = what they can become). Their potential aspect is imperfectly described by the laws of physics (e.g. quantum electrodynamics and chromodynamics). See my article, "A New Reading of Aristotle's Hyle"
We have to be careful, though. The use of the word "decay" isn't being used in the traditional sense of say a uranium atom decaying and releasing an alpha particle or something of the sort. When elementary particles decay, they transform into other elementary particles, like an up quark becoming a down quark. There is no internal relation shifting or loss of constituents in the process. It's merely a potential transition into another actuality.
Quoting Dfpolis
I downloaded it! I'll work through it here and there. :smile:
This misunderstands both Aristotle and the history of science. Aristotle was wrong in part. So were Newton and Einstein. Atomism (the belief in permanent, indivisible fundamental particles) is dead as a door nail. Bacon did not invent the scientific method (Robert Grosseteste did).
What specific error did Aristotle's method cause in his metaphysics? What is wrong with reason (aka logic)? Aristotle almost always applies it to observations. I am not saying that his metaphysics is flawless, just that it is well-founded and profound -- and cannot be dismissed by hand waving.
There are a couple of articles showing that Aristotle was the father of mathematical physics and knew more about motion in viscous fluids than Newton. His much criticized relation between force and velocity is taught in every freshman physics course as the power law (P=fv). In comparison, Descartes's physics is laughable.
This is not to deny advances have been made, but to say that more respect should be given to those on whose shoulders we stand.
Elementary particles can do the same. Neutrons decay with about a 13 minute half-life into a proton, electron, and electron anti-neutrino. (This implies a change in quarks as well.) Neutral pions can decay into 2 gamma rays, destroying the quarks constituting it. Running the reaction backwards implies that 2 gamma rays can combine to produce a neutral pion with its associated quarks.
Still, it does not matter, philosophically. What matters is the combination of potentiality and actuality that impermanence implies. Things are not only what they are (form), but a determinate tendency to become what they will be (hyle). (They can't become just anything). That is the meaning of hylomorphism.
I was struck about a year ago when I cracked open the physics and metaphysics for the first time since undergrad, and saw within the texts a thinker working through many similar problems as we are today. The notion of love and strife being elementary aspects of reality as equally but opposed interactions isn't so far off from how we think things work - its simply a difference usage of terms, and understandings, but ultimately they accomplish similar work.
I also agree that as I read the history of science, I am rarely confronted with ideas that are wholly wrong or wholly "right". Rather, I see thinkers taking this aspect and that aspect and reworking this and throwing out that...so many concepts come into fashion and are considered in one way, and then lose popular opinion only to reemerge with a new paint job considering contemporaneous information. That was my point regarding the atomic theory, not that the exact literal same ideas of corpuscles of differing shapes and sizes mechanically clumping together due to shape is right, but rather a more modern conception involving elementary particles. The bones of the idea were always strong, so to speak.
Quoting Dfpolis
Well, neutrons are made up of quarks, and its the quarks being transformed into either up or down and what not that induces the "decay" of the proton into that of a neutron. So, again, it's not so much "decaying" as the constituents of the proton spontaneously becoming another elementary constituent.
Quoting Dfpolis
Yes, they cannot become just anything, they can only take on some certain predetermined forms. It's like if I had a quantum "die" that could "roll" any number between 1-10. While the form is indeterminant until it becomes one of the forms, those forms along with the potential to be any one of them constitutes the "die's" actuality. If we are disagreeing, I don't see exactly where.
Hi Df. Can you clarify this idea for me? How can you conceive of a form of causality which does not involve temporal priority? Suppose God's intention to create (God's Will) is a cause of what He creates. How can this intention to create be a cause of the creation, and yet not be temporally prior to God's creation?
If we compare God's Will with the human will, we see that the human will is temporally prior, and acts as a cause. However, we understand the human will as "free", therefore not caused to act the way that it does. The idea that the human will is an uncaused cause does not imply that the human will is unchanging and timeless. How do you get to the point of concluding that God is unchanging and timeless?
What I am asking is how are you relating "intention" to "unchanging" and "timeless"? You appear to be saying that if God is unchanging and timeless, then God's Will cannot be temporally prior to God's creation. Since we know a lot about the nature of intention, from human intention, and that intention is temporally prior, isn't it logical to conclude therefore that God, who acts intentionally, is not unchanging and timeless?
And isn't this the conclusion of Christian theologists like Aquinas, as well? They conclude that God is a "Form", pure act. And to say that something which is "pure act" is unchanging and timeless, would be contradictory. Therefore we ought to conclude that this notion of God, as "unchanging and so timeless", is incorrect.
Before going into the details of what Aristotle said or did not say, I would like to think about Rorty as the poster child for what Gerson militates against. Rorty is baldly "historicist" in his description of the 'end of philosophy'. I agree with Gerson that Rorty is too general and reductive in how the practice is conceived. But is Rorty the best exemplar of what Gerson opposes? I have been questioning the unity imparted by Gerson upon classical texts in previous discussions. The assumed unity of what is being opposed by Gerson needs some consideration.
Taken too broadly, this battle of the books will make no distinction between the differences between different models. To pluck out one among many, will the argument about what is innate versus what is developed through events in life hinge only upon the categories by which they are described? Or will the process lead to discoveries yet unknown by studying them?.
That prompts the question of how Aristotle was searching for something new or not. And that is different from asking how a set of propositions, defended (and opposed) centuries later, relates to contemporary activities.
'Objective' always tends to mean 'mind independent'. 'Subjective' tends to mean 'in the mind, mind dependent.' It seems natural to depict it this way as we see ourselves as subjects in a domain of objects.
But what this doesn't see, is the sense in which the objective realm is also mind-dependent. And that comes into relief when you consider things like the role of mathematics in physics and science generally. On the one hand, the phenomena of the natural sciences are independent of observation - they continue to exist independently of being observed. But on the other hand, in order to analyse them and incorporate them in theory, we are highly dependent on theoretical constructs which in some important sense (as Einstein said) dictate what it is we are seeing. The distinction which seems so clear-cut, is not actually so, because we're not actually outside of or apart from the world that natural science seeks to know. That has become evident in science in the observer problem in physics, but it's also manifest in many of the analyses of philosophy of science.
So, I wonder if real numbers are either subjective or objective. I mean, they're not to be found anywhere in the world, as such. Nor are they products of the mind, as they are the same for all who can count. That is the sense in which 'intelligible objects' are transcendent - they transcend the subject/object division. And not seeing that is part of the consequences of the decline of realism. The culture doesn't have a way of thinking about transcendentals. From an article on What is Math that I frequently cite in this context:
Speaks volumes, in my opinion.
Quoting 013zen
I think that was the view defended by D M Armstrong, 'Materialist Theory of Mind'. But I think it's a reification, an attempt to understand ideas in a quasi- or pseudo-scientific framework and fit them into the procrustean bed of naturalism. My somewhat revisionist interpretation of the forms or ideas, is that they're more like principles - perhaps logical principles, like the LEM, for example (or the principle of triangularity or circularity, for others). In what sense can these principles be said to exist? Only as an 'object of intellect', in the Greek sense (that is, they are real as noumenal objects). Our thinking is suffused with and dependent on these kinds of principles in order to make sense of experience, but again, they're not 'out there' in the world. They're not objective, but we rely on them to determine what is objective. But again, the culture we're in doesn't have a way of framing transcendentals, because of the historic rejection of metaphysics. (Not for a minute claiming there should be a 'return' to traditionalism, but a re-interpretation of these fundamental issues.)
Yes, good point.
Quoting Paine
It seems to me that Gerson is not assuming a unity in what he opposes. I have understood your critique to be different, namely the claim that he mistakenly assumes the unity of what he proposes (e.g. Aristotle's inclusion). UR is a (overly?) complex thesis, but given that it consists of five "anti's" I don't think it envisions a unified opposition.
Quoting Paine
I may not be fully grasping your point here, but it would seem that for Gerson that difference between Plato and Aristotle (innate versus developed) is an accidental difference, especially when compared to what someone like Rorty is doing. Presumably for Gerson the analogous difference between Descartes and Locke is also not a difference that would place either one of them outside Platonism/philosophy. Aristotle and Locke (and Descartes) were searching for something new, but within certain boundaries.
Aristotle and the Scholastics distinguish two kinds of efficient causality: accidental, which is the time sequence by rule Hume and Kant discuss, and essential. Accidental causality involves two events separated in time. Because they are separated, an intervening event can prevent the cause from bringing about the effect. Hence Hume was correct in arguing that time-sequenced causality lacks necessity.
In essential causality there is one event, and cause and effect are concurrent. Aristotle's paradigm case is a builder building a house. The cause is the builder building. The effect is the house being built. Yet, the action of the builder building the house is identically the passion of the house being built by the builder. As there is only one event, no intervention is possible, and this kind of causality (the actualization of a potential by the concurrent action of an agent) has intrinsic necessity. Since potentials are not yet operational, they cannot actualize themselves. So, something else that is already operational (actual) must work to actualize any potential. That is one of the most fundamental insights of Aristotle's metaphysics.
Since God is unchanging, and time is the measure of change according to before and after, God is timeless. So, there is no separation of plan and execution in God. Thus, God's will for a being to exist creates the being. As would be the case when the builder stops building, if God were to stop willing the being of a creature, the effect (the existence of the creature) would cease. Thus, creation is not a launch and forget process, but an on-going activity.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Because God is the end of the line of concurrent explanation (essential causality). Since He is the end of the line there is nothing prior to actualize any potential He may have. So, God can have no potential. That means that God is pure act = fully actualized being. Change is the actualization of a potential insofar as it is still in potency. Since God has no unactualized potential, He cannot change. Since he cannot change, there is no before and after in God => God is timeless.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I am using Brentano's analysis of intentionality as characterized by aboutness. We do not just know or will, we know or will something, which is what the acts are about. Creation is about what it produces, so it is an intentional act. Intentional acts need not involve intrinsic change. My continuing to know a theorem or love a person does not require a change in my state.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, knowing and willing (both acts) all being at all times requires no change.
Aristotle would use his potency and act model, and answer that philosophy makes explicit (actual) what we know implicitly (potential).
The world acts on us, projecting its power into us, and so making itself present. When we attend to the resulting experience we know that the world can act as it does act on us, and knowing that is knowing something of the nature of the world -- for its nature is the specification of its possible acts. Thus, true knowledge is awareness of the world as it projects its power into us.
This is why the identity of action and passion is so critical to Aristotle's philosophy. (A acting on B is identically B being acted on by A.) Here, the object informing the subject is identically the subject being informed by the object. In modern parlance, our neural state being modified by a sensed object is identically the sensed object modifying our neural state. That is why direct realism is inescapable.
Of course, our neural state is the result of many such actions, and it requires reflection and analysis to sort them out. Still, human knowledge reflects how the world interacts with us, and not how it is abstractly. We cannot know the world without interacting with it, so it is a contradiction in terms to think of knowing objects in themselves, as not interacting with a knower.
I do not agree with this interpretation. Aristotle did not distinguish accidental efficient causation from essential efficient causation in the way you describe. Nor did the scholastics. Aristotle classed luck and chance as accidental causation, and the four commonly referred to causes are the essential conditions for change. Efficient causation is an essential condition, described by Aristotle as "the primary source of change" and it follows the time sequence described by Hume.
It is from the perspective of the effect that the efficient cause is apprehended as necessary. If the building has been built, it is necessary that there was an act of building.
Quoting Dfpolis
Here you conflate final cause with efficient cause to create a new concept which you call "essential cause". This is not Aristotelian. The efficient cause of the house is the action of the builder, the act of building. The cause of the builder building, what you call "the passion" of the builder, is the final cause. Why is the builder building? Because the builder desires a house. This is just like Aristotle's example. Why is the man walking? He is walking because he desires health. The final cause of the builder's activity of building is the desire for a house, just like the final cause of the walker's activity of walking is the desire for health. That is the nature of "intention" which is how we understand "final cause".
When final causation is given it's proper position, instead of conflating it with efficient causation, the temporal succession is evident. The desire to build (intention, final cause) is temporally prior to the activity of building, which is the efficient cause of the house.
Quoting Dfpolis
And this is not quite correct either. The action of the agent is volitional therefore there is no intrinsic necessity to that act. Yes, in hindsight the final cause (will) of the agent is necessary, just like the efficient cause is necessary, in hind sight. But, we cannot distinguish one from the other in the way that you propose, as one being essential, and the other accidental. They are both essential conditions of the house, as are the material and the formal cause as well.
However, I agree that you are correct to say that something else, which in this case is the intentional act of the agent, (final cause), is necessary as the act which actualizes a potential, causing what we know as activity. And, I agree that this was a great achievement by Aristotle. But I do not like your characterization of this cause of activity, as "essential efficient causation". Since efficient causation is activity itself, then characterizing the cause of this activity as a further efficient causation, would just create an infinite regress of efficient causation. That's what the idea "concurrent action" as simultaneous cause and effect induces, an infinite regress of action.
Aristotle put an end to that infinite regress with "final cause". So conventional interpretation, as well as Scholastic interpretation, understands the cause of the builder's activity of building as final cause, the will to have a house. Likewise, God's activity of creating is caused by the final cause known as God's Will. Why did God create the earth? He saw that it was good.
Quoting Dfpolis
This is not valid logic. Time is stated as the measure of change, it is not stated as change itself, or even derived from change. Since time is the measure of change it must transcend all change. That which transcends change cannot be timeless, or time itself would be timeless. Therefore even if God is unchanging, this does not mean that God is timeless.
Quoting Dfpolis
I agree with this, in a way. But the classical Christian conception of God is as a trinity, so we can still consider a separation, in principle, between plan and execution, in God. Augustine compared the trinity of God to the trinity of the human intellect, which consists of memory, reason (understanding), and will. If the plan exists in memory, then there is a separation in principle, between the plan and the execution. It may be the case that the act of God is inseparable from God's Will, but this would mean that God is changing in accordance with His Will. Therefore we could not say that God is unchanging.
Quoting Dfpolis
This is where your interpretation becomes problematic. The end of the line of efficient causation is known under Aristotelian principles as final cause. The terms "end" as what is intended, and "final" in final causation are not merely coincidence. We agree that God can have no potential, and is pure act, but this does not mean that he does not change. That "change is the actualization of a potential", is your condition, produced from your interpretation, which appears to be a little bit faulty.
According to Aristotle change is the result of causation, and causes are of four principle types. One of these types is final cause, and we find examples in acts of free will. That the will is free implies that it causes a type of change which is not dependent on potential.
You need to do more research.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The necessity is bilateral and in the present tense. There can be no builder building without a building being built and vice versa.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Baloney. The builder is an efficient cause, and that is the only cause I discussed.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Read what I said. I said it is a passion of the house being built. It is not a passion in the emotional sense, but in the technical sense of suffering an action.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If I do not wish to build now, I will not build now. Planning may be prior, but the commitment to act now is concurrent with acting now.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I did not deny that because I did not discuss final causation, but efficient causation. The analysis also applies to cases in which the agent is not a person, e.g. acid eroding metal now is identically metal being eroded by acid now.
Again, there can be no building a house now without a house being built now. So, unlike time-sequenced causality, an essential cause produces its effect necessarily, and the effect, which is a passion, requires a concurrent cause, because no potency can actualize itself. Bricks do not become a house without a builder.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is just what the Scholastics called it -- a name, not something to be liked or disliked.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You cannot measure what does not exist. So, if there is no change, there is no number associated with it, and time is the number we assign to change. So, there is no time. Measures are derived from what we measure.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The Trinity does not entail separation. It reflects internal relations in God as Source (Father), Self-Knowledge (Logos = Son) and Self-Acceptance (Love = the Holy Spirit). Since both God's Self-Knowledge and Self-Acceptance are complete they are identical to their Source.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Since God is unchanging and timeless He has no past to remember. Everything is present to Him.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, God willing a changing world can be and is done without a change in God. Again, God has no unactualized potential, and so cannot change.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There is no reason God cannot be both.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I quoted Aristotle's definition of change, not mine.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, it implies that it is not predetermined by potential. Potential is the ability to become other. If something cannot become other than it is, it cannot change.
Leaving aside my (or other people's) objections to Gerson's idea of Ur-Platonism, Gerson certainly seems to group the 'naturalists' as unified in their opposition to what he supports:
Quoting Gerson, Platonism and Naturalism
But I take your point that a collection of five "anti's" has problems asserting a clear thesis. That highlights a difference with other critiques of the modern era.
[quote=Gerson, Platonism vs Naturalism] Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. This is because in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. Among other things, this means that you could not think if materialism is true . Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.
.the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too. [/quote]
It is also central to Aquinas' epistemology:
[quote=Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Man, by Robert E. Brennan] ...if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality.[/quote]
The necessity is not bilateral because from the perspective of the builder, to build is a freely willed choice. The so-called necessity of "a building being built" is a feature of the way that you describe the agent, as "a builder". If the agent decided to do something other than build, this would not negate the existence of the agent, it would negate the descriptive term "builder".
So the relation of "necessity" between builder and building involves two distinct senses of "necessity" and the conclusion that "the necessity is bilateral involves equivocation. From the perspective of seeing an existing building, or even a building being built, it is logically necessary that there is a builder. But from the perspective of the builder, the building is "necessary" in the sense of something needed, desired as an end. These two senses of "necessary" are very distinct. The builder is a "builder" whether that person decide to work on this particular project or not therefore there is no logical necessity between the builder and the project, from the builder's perspective..
Furthermore, it is very clear, from the nature of planning, that there truly is a builder acting on the project, by preparing for the possibility of it, "without a building being built". That is to say that the builder acts on the project before the project even exists, and this is a matter of gaining experience.
This is proven by the fact that plans are most often general, and the general plan for a type of building, a house, preexists actual building of the particular house. Therefore the builder is building, studying general plans and building codes, for some time before there is actually a building being built.
To deny the temporal priority of the general formula, or plan, for a house, in relation to a particular house being built, is to completely ignore the principal problem being dealt with by Aristotle in his Metaphysics. This is the issue brought forth in Plato's Timaeus, the question of how it is that a general idea, a universal form, in its temporal priority, acts to determine the form of the particular, when that particular comes into being. To take Aristotle's example of the potential of an acorn, the general form, or universal type of "oak tree" precedes the growth of the seed, and determines the type of thing which the particular will be, prior to the existence of the particular.
Your way of portraying the actions of the agent as concurrent with the effects of those acts, and as a bilateral necessity, completely obscures this issue, of how it is that an intentional agent can work with universal principles, a general formula, to create particular individuals of that type.
Quoting Dfpolis
You described an instance of the act of building, and this act is caused by final causation, intention, as per Aristotle's description of the four senses of "cause". That you call this "efficient cause" only indicates that you do not understand Aristotle.
Quoting Dfpolis
The act of building is prior to the house, as efficient cause, and the will or intent to build is prior to the act of building as the final cause. If we look backward, at the house's coming into being through a causal chain of efficient causes, the end of that chain (which is the beginning in time) is the final cause, the intent of the builder. That is how a freely willed act works, the agent desires something and causes (through final causation) the efficient causes which are seen as required, as the means to that end.
Quoting Dfpolis
No, this is a false description. The act follows the commitment (decision) which is prior to, as cause of the act. The two are not "concurrent". I decide to walk, and the activity of walking is the effect which follows from this cause. The person may deliberate, and decide to act at a very specific time, but the physical (observable) act is posterior to the mental (unobservable) decision to act.
Quoting Dfpolis
Your failure to take into consideration the role of final causation is what produces the faulty description that there is a "bilateral necessity" and that the acts of the builder, and the building being built, are concurrent. They are very clearly not concurrent because the planning of the building is an act of the builder which is prior to any building being built. If you would take into account the role of final causation you would understand that there is no such bilateral necessity, and no concurrency. In reality, if you just look at the actions of the builder, you might not even know that there is "a building being built", until the builder is well into the project. You refer to the end, the final cause, "the building" when you say that there is "a building" which is being built. So you refer to final causation yet claim you do not discuss final causation.
Quoting Dfpolis
Yes there is activity of the builder as "builder" of a house, now, without a house being built because the planning, which requires understanding of general principles, is a part of the activity of building which is prior to the activity that is referred to as "a house being built". This is the difference between what is observable and what is not observable. The planning is a part of the builder's activity of building which is prior to the observable activity which is described as "a house being built. That the two are distinct is true and proven from the fact that the planning may be generic, while "a house being built" is particular. And learning the general principles is a necessary part of "building a house" while it is not a part of "a house being built, because the former refers to the general and the latter refers to the particular. Therefore it is very clear that there is activity of the builder which is prior to, cause of, and necessary for, the particular instance of "a house being built".
Quoting Dfpolis
That would require a reference.
Again, you are missing the point. The necessity is not in the decision to build, but in the relation between the act of building as cause and the passion of being built as effect.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The concurrent necessity between building and being built is being asserted, not a necessity in the choice to build.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
First, it is Aristotle's insight, not mine. Second, you are thinking of the wrong problem. Yes, the intentional or potential form of the effect is temporally prior to the actual effect in nature (in cases where there is change). That does not mean that the activity of producing the effect (e.g. building) is prior to the passion of the effect being produced (e.g. being built). In the case of planning, the activity of producing a plan is concurrent with the effect of the plan being produced.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Try assuming that I know what I am talking about and see if you can make your interpretation of my words fit that assumption. When I say I am only discussing efficient causality, I mean that I am only discussing that one of the four causes. I do not mean that there are no other causes. It is only by looking for ways in which I might be wrong that these two ideas can be confused.
If you recall, you asked a question about efficient causality and how it could be concurrent. You did not ask about free will.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Making a commitment is not an isolated event. It sets up a committed state. If I am walking and decide to stop, that commitment (the state of being committed to walking) ends, as does my walking.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So, you are claiming that building and being built are not concurrent? If so, we have no common basis for continuing.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I never claimed that any and all acts of the builder are concurrent with being built, but only the act of building. Please do not extend what I say to make it wrong. I never denied that builders plan or have free will.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, it does not. I do not have time to deal with your negativity. You can take my word for it or Google it.
We discussed the activity of mind in relation to individuals two years ago. I had drawn the distinction between Plotinus' and Aristotle's views of the soul in this comment. I replied to your comment about personal identity here.
The different views of the soul shape how one is to understand hylomorphism. The role of universals as a cause was addressed earlier in this discussion by Fooloso4 when he said:
The central question of the Metaphysics is the question of being, or ousia. Being is not a universal.
I responded to that by noting the limit of the universal in revealing the nature of things that come into being. The limit puts us at a greater distance from the life of forms. The relationship between actual and potential being is something that can be conceived through analogy but not as something known as itself.
I, perhaps, suffer from the opposite problem where everything in the discussion remains where it last stopped.
Responding to your added text, the idea of transjective constituents would count as antithetical to what Gerson required.
Yes, I believe this is the problem of theory ladeness, right? That is, that our theory in some sense precedes our experience of the phenomena as such. This is why as Kuhn states our paradigms shift, as though we are seeing the same phenomenon through different lenses, so to speak. But, I take the problem of theory ladeness to not imply that objective reality is in any sense dependent upon our observation; rather, it is our understanding that hinges on our theory.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yea, this was a huge debate in mathematics (and still is to a lesser degree today) in the 1900s...formalism vs platonism....I've thought about it a bit myself, and while I haven't come down on either side of the topic, I do tend to wonder how intractable the problem truly is. I mean, it's as you say, why should we suppose that either options of the dichotomy are correct.
When, for example, scientists articulate that force is equal to the mass times the acceleration of some object, and plug in the numbers, in what sense do the numbers correspond to reality? They, certainly, give us information...Well, assuming two things:
1. Reality exists as it does regardless of experience
2. Reality is uniform (Things like energy are conserved)
You can imagine that if you develop a uniform system of fine enough granularity that you could compare reality to, since they are both uniform systems, the granularity of one is informative if superimposed onto the other.
If, I pour water into a jug, and measure how much water is in there, I can measure it in liters, or ounces, or weight and regardless of the differing "numbers" which represent the amount of water, that amount never changed. The trick is, we only get information relative to what we apply the system to. So the information gained is in some sense due to an intermingling between real and subjective.
I believe I know of Pigliucci...I read the first quarter of his book Answers for Aristotle awhile ago. I'm pretty sure I've listened to some debates he's been involved in...regarding this quote, I don't quite agree that its as slippery as that slope, but I can appreciate his point and where he's coming from. But, my point is there feels like there is an equivocation going on between the question:
1. Did we invent math
2. Is the information gained by applying math invented?
The difference is the system and the information gained from the application of that system. The latter relies on reality existing as it does to furnish any information. We didn't invent the length, so to speak, but we did invent the ruler.
This doesn't make any sense Df. Passion is emotion, feeling. The phrase "the passion of being built doesn't make sense. You claim "passion in the technical sense", but Google doesn't even come up with any such thing.
If we remove "passion", then all we have is "the act of building", and "being built". But these two are exactly the same thing. Of course they are concurrent, as they are two different ways of saying the same thing. But there is no cause and effect here, they are one and the same thing. If we add "passion" into the scenario, then we are talking about the passion of the builder, and this acts as a cause, not an effect. And, the ambition to build is prior in time in relation to the acts of building which follow from it.
Quoting Dfpolis
The only necessity here is that these two expressions "building", and "being built", both refer to the exact same thing. Look: "we are 'building' a house", or "a house is 'being built'. They are both just different ways of referring to the exact same thing, the house that we are building. There is no cause or effect here, just one thing, described as a house being built, or the house that we are building. In one case "builders" are implied and in the other "builders" are explicit.
If you want to separate cause from effect, you separate "builders" from the act of building, as the cause of that act, or the act of building from the house, as cause of the house. But you cannot divide the act into "building" and "being built", and say that one is cause and the other effect, because they both refer to the very same thing. And the fact that they refer to the same thing is the reason why you can say that they are concurrent. But it's also the reason why they are not cause and effect.
Quoting Dfpolis
Again, you are speaking nonsense, attributing "passion" to "being built". Passion is a human emotion, feeling. In no intelligible sense, is "passion" used to refer to what "being built", or "being produced" feels like.
Quoting Dfpolis
How can I possibly assume that you know what you are talking about when you use "passion" in that way? Please, at least try to explain what "the passion of being built" could possibly mean. The only way that you separate the act of building from the act of being built, to say that being built is the effect of building, as a cause, is by saying that being built is a passion. Clearly though, you have this backward. The builder has a passion for building, and as such passion is a cause in the building process, not an effect.
Quoting Dfpolis
But it is not concurrent, it is prior. The state of being committed to walking ends before the walking ends, even if it's only a fraction of a second, it's still prior, and causal.
Quoting Dfpolis
The activity of the builder, as builder, is prior to the activity which is the house being built. This is because the builder must study and understand general principles (and this qualifies as activity of a builder) prior to the activity which is the particular house being built.
I see we have no common basis for continuing. You insist on nonsensical use of "passion" which makes passion the effect of the builder building rather than use a true description which recognizes passion as a cause of the builder building. And you assert that what you argue is Aristotelian.
Quoting Dfpolis
OK, have it your way, only the acts of the builder which are identical to the acts described as being built, are concurrent. Of course, they are one and the same thing. So there is no cause/effect here.
Quoting Dfpolis
You claimed to have quoted Aristotle's definition of change. A quote requires a reference.
This is out of context, and misapplied by Df. What is described in your quoted passage is the difference between accidental and essential properties of things. How Df is using the term is as a property of an activity, "the passion of being built". Df states that being built is something which has the property of being acted on (passion). That is a category mistake.
Df is not saying that there is a house which is being acted on, and this "being acted on" is a passion of the house, because there is no house, the house does not yet exist, it is being built. What there is, is a project, a goal, intention, or end, which is being acted on. Df takes this final cause, and attempts to convert it into an efficient cause, through the category mistake mentioned above.
Df applies Aristotle's distinction between accidental and essential properties of things, to activities of causation, to create the appearance that acting and being acted on are two separate properties of a single activity which is called "building" or "being built" depending on whether the subject is the builder (building), or the house (being built). But the house is not yet built, it exists as a goal, and that goal acts as a final cause. Therefore the house cannot be described as a thing being acted on (having a passion). What is "being acted on" is the project, or goal, the end.
If you can make sense of what Df is saying, other than as the category mistake I describe above, then I would be very grateful to see your explanation. Df simply reasserts what has been said, which makes no sense to me because it appears as a category mistake.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/passion Def 3.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You have left out the builder and the house. The builder building is the cause. The house being built is the effect. Of course they are concurrent. That is the whole point.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Ta-da! Since they refer to the identical event, the act of the builder building (cause) and the passion of the house being built (effect) are necessarily linked. But, building is not being built. so the cause is not the effect.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You do. I don't. In essential causality they are inseparable. In accidental causality (time-sequence by rule) they are separate. That is why there are two kinds of efficient causality. The first is necessary, the second is not.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The act of the builder building is not the passion of the house being built. Still, they are inseparable because they are aspects of one and the same event.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
By referring to a good dictionary when you see a term used in a way that is new to you.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
When willing to walk ends, I am no longer walking willingly. I may continue mechanically because of inertia, but that is not walking voluntarily.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, they don't. You may want a reference, but they take time, and you have not shown an openness that makes me want to devote that time.
Yes, I am but I am not saying it is a completed house, but a house under construction.
My point was rather that they are inter-woven and that the separation of subject and object is not so clear cut.
We find in Thomism, the expression of the 'union of knower and known' which harks back to Aristotle. For Aristotle, perception of the intelligible forms was distinct from the processing of sensory perception, including the use of imagination and memory, which other animals can do. As a theory of predication, it is foundational to how the intellect sets definitions in a consistent and communicable way. By virtue of this, we see types, kinds, similarities and differences and the many other elements which are foundational to the exercise of reason.
Quoting 013zen
The 'maths invented or discovered' is as you say a perennial debate. Best I can tell is that there are elements of both. But I think the uneasiness over the question goes back to the underlying sense that we have, of 'the world' being divided between 'the mind' (in here) and 'reality' (out there) - to put it in very blunt terms. The difficulty for naturalism is the difficulty of discerning the sense in which number can be located in an empirical sense, as Piggliuci says: numbers (and so on) stand over and above time and space. And empiricism can't cope with that, as he says: it has to ground knowledge in sensory experience, and whatever can't be understood that way must be in the mind. Again, the supposed separation or dichotomy of mind and world is pre-supposed by this. Whereas the way I think of it is that number (and the like) are 'transjective', which is rather an awkward neologism, but is meant to designate 'transcending the subject/object distinction'. They are elements of a kind of transpersonal faculty, viz, reason.
You might find this essay of Jacques Maritain informative, The Cultural Impact of Empiricism in which he argues for the continuing relevance of universals as follows:
Why is it that only Thomists (and therefore, presumably, mainly Catholics) possess a philosophical framework which enables this distinction between the rational and empirical, and which recognises the foundational role of universals? Seems to me that Thomas Aquinas preserves an element of the Greek 'philosophia perennis', as represented in Aristotle, which has subsequently been rejected or lost to the philosophical culture of the West, to its overall detriment.
What if the Aquinian view misrepresented the role of universals in previous philosophy?
As I explained, "the builder building", and "the house being built" are just two different ways of describing the exact same thing. There is no distinction of cause and effect here, and that is why there is concurrency, there is not separation. They are the same.
Quoting Dfpolis
Yes, "building" is "being built". Why can't you comprehend this? The two are the very same, identical activity, described in two different ways. As I said in my reply to Tim, "building" has the builder as the subject, and "being built" has the house as the subject. So the two are just different ways of describing the exact same activity. One way is to describe a builder building, and the other way is to describe a house being built. But both are descriptions of the exact same activity. There is no separation of cause and effect because there is only one activity being described.
Further, since "the house", as subject does not yet have any existence, it cannot suffer any passion, or have any properties at all. And that's why your claims make no sense. At the time of "being built", the house exists only as a plan, a goal or end. This is why "the house" which is implied as the subject of "being built, can only be referred to as a final cause at this time, not an efficient cause. The house exists in the mind of the builder only, as a goal or end, and the cause of the builder building. This is just like Aristotle's example of final causation, where "health" exists in the mind of the man walking, as the cause of him walking.
Quoting Dfpolis
Now you are just being ridiculous. If the cause is inseparable from the effect, then how do you know that "being built" is not the cause, and "building" is not the effect? And maybe it constantly switches back and forth, with the two continually changing places, each being sometimes the cause and other times the effect. If the cause is inseparable from the effect, then there is no principle by which you can say one is cause and the other effect.
Do you see why I say that your claim is ridiculous? You claim to be able to distinguish "building" from "being built", one the cause the other the effect. Yet you also claim that the two are concurrent and the cause is inseparable from the effect. Therefore whenever you describe the scenario, there is no way to know whether the description is of the builder building, or the house being built. In reality though, it is just one activity, and you've devised this elaborate way to say that it is two distinct activities, one cause and the other effect. And when it comes to telling me how to distinguish one from the other, you admit that the cause cannot be distinguished from the effect, "they are inseparable".
Quoting Dfpolis
I referred to my OED, and "passion" is said to be a noun. The nearest definition to fitting your usage was: "4a strong enthusiasm (has a passion for football). b an object arousing this." There is nothing anywhere similar to your usage in my OED. However, there are definitions of "passive" which are similar. For example: "1 suffering action; acted upon." I think maybe you confused words, and meant "passive". However, if you tried to talk about the passiveness of the house being built, this would more clearly reveal the nonsense of your expressions. So you try to hide it behind a strange use of "passion".
Quoting Dfpolis
OK, let's ignore all our differences, and start here, where we agree. Do you agree that at the construction site, there is not a house, there is activity which we can call "the construction of a house", or, "a house under construction". Both these phrases refer to the exact same thing, and "the house" only exists as a plan, a goal, or the end of that construction project. Do you agree that to talk about causation here, we need to include "final cause"?
Quoting tim wood
How does this "make perfect sense to you"? The passion is in the builder, not the thing being built. And even if we take "passive", which means "suffering action; acted upon", instead of "passion", the passivity is in the materials which the builder works with. The "thing being built" doesn't even exist, it is an idea, a goal in the builder's mind.
Quoting tim wood
You're missing the point tim. The house does not exist, it is a goal in the builder's mind, existing as a formula. The accidental properties of the house only come into being after each part of the house is built.
Interesting response. I will think about it.
Now you are claiming that builders are houses.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Again, that is the point. Actions are identically passions from a different perspective. That does not make causes (builders building) the same as effects (houses being built).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Again, exactly the point. There can be no separation, and so there is necessity. Still, the cause is not the effect, it is just inseparable from the effect.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The house has some existence = a partial existence as a work in progress. Once building has begun, the house has a partial existence. If you do not like the term "house," substitute "house in progress." The logic works as well as it depends on the facts.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Because the first is the action that makes a potential house (the materials) into an actual house. Doing is causing and being done to is being effected.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
All the rest of us are able to distinguish builders building from houses being built even though they are inseparable. Distinction is mental, not physical, separation. You have already admitted the inseparability. Are you now denying the difference between builders building and houses being built?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I have never said there are "two activities". There is one action/passion that has two inseparable aspects: a cause (the builder building) and an effect (the house being built).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You are confusing separation, which is dynamical, from distinction which is mental. The matter and form of a body are inseparable, but still distinct.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I am tired of your lame excuses. Both Tim and I had no problem finding the definition of "passion" I am using. Tim also pointed you to its use in Categories. We all make mistakes. It is not a character fault unless you are unwilling to admit it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If we were discussing causation completely, yes. However, you asked about efficient causes and that is what I am explaining here.
To actualize a potential here and now requires an agent operating here and now. No potential can actualize itself, because what is potential is not yet operational. So potentials are incapable of the operation of self-actualization.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
"House" is being analogically predicated. It does not mean the completed house, but the work in progress, which does exist.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26170042
You continue to be ridiculous. In the hypothesized scenario there is a builder building a house and there is a house being built. A proper description refers to both, but this obviously does not imply that builders are houses. In that hypothesized scenario, the description of a builder building refers to the very same situation as the description of a house being built.
Quoting Dfpolis
The effect of the builder building is a house, and the house is posterior in time to the builder building. The effect of the builder building is not a house being built, as these are one and the same thing. The effect is the house.
You are stipulating a separation between the "builder building" and the "house being built", in order to claim that there are causes and effects which are simultaneous and not chronologically ordered. I disagree, and so I am demonstrating that your argument is simple sophistry. Your argument amounts to employing two distinct descriptive styles to describe the very same activity, and then claim that one description is of the cause, and the other is of the effect, when both descriptions are really descriptions of the very same thing.
Quoting Dfpolis
Perhaps we can make some progress here, by breaking down the coming into being of the house, into parts. Do you agree, that when each part comes into existence, it does so as an effect, from the prior activity of the builder which is a cause of it, and the activity of the builder is always prior in time to the existence of the part? So, for instance, the foundation comes into existence, and it only exists after specific activities of the builder. There is no simultaneity of cause and effect here, the effect, which is the existence of the part, is always posterior in time to the cause, which is the activity of the builder. Can you agree to this simple principle?
Quoting Dfpolis
Right, but "being done" implies finished, complete, the end. And "being built" implies unfinished, and this is completely incompatible with "being done". Further the concept of, "being done to", "being effected", as is your claimed meaning of "passion", which is really "passive", requires an object which the action is being done to. In the hypothesize scenario, this object is supposed to be the house. But the house does not exist, and this is why your proposal is nonsensical and impossible to understand. If you would propose a passive object which the action is being done to, then we'd have a place to start. However, you insist that the passive object which supposedly suffers the passion, is the activity of "being built", and this is nonsense.
Quoting Dfpolis
That's unabashed bullshit. Provide for me an accurate description of a house being built which does not involve builders building. The only difference is as I explained earlier. Since "builders building" is more general, there is no necessity that the builders building are building houses, yet there is necessity that houses being built involves builders building. This, as I explained to you, is the nature of final cause, the free willing agent has choice, which is most general, and decision moves toward the more specific without necessity. So there is no necessity between cause and effect in this direction. But when we look from the direction of the more specific, "houses being built", there is the necessity of builders building.
Quoting Dfpolis
There is no such thing as efficient causation in which the cause and effect are simultaneous, concurrent. You simply use a sophistic trick of description in an attempt to prove that there is.
Quoting Dfpolis
So the object which suffers the passion is a predicted object? How can it suffer the effects of the activity it doesn't even exist, and is only predicted to exist?
Quoting Dfpolis
If you believe that this text is consistent with your claims, then provide some references from it. I think you and Duns Scotus are talking about two different things, but using the same terms. You have an odd way with terms, as is evident from your use of "passion".
The completed house is a cumulative effect. The immediate effect is progress toward completion = the house being built. If there were no immediate effect, the house would never come to be.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I never made such a stipulation and I deny any such separation. They are not physically separate, but logically distinct. The builder cannot build unless something is being built, and nothing can be built unless there is an agent building it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, there is one event which can be described as a action or a passion. The two descriptions describe one and the same process (= the identity of action and passion). What is different is that the builder (not the house) builds and so is the cause of building, and the house (not the builder) is being built and so is the effect of building.
I am not claiming that either description is the cause or the effect. Both describe a process. In that process, one element (the boulder building) is source of actualization of the materials' potential to be a house and so the cause, and the other element (the house being built) is the result of the actualization, and so the effect.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, but that is thinking in terms of the other kind of efficient causality (accidental causality = time sequence by rule). Its effect (the existence of new part of the house) is the result of a building process. Essential causality looks at the process, not the end result, and sees that that process (building) involves two concurrent aspects (the builder building as cause, and the house being build as effect).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
"Being done" means finished, but that is not what I said. "Being done to" means an on-going activity.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I have already addressed this. When my houses were being built, my wife and I went to see our "house," and spoke of it. No one was confused by the term, because they knew it could refer to a house under construction. Please do not quibble about this again. It is unbecoming.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I have spent enough time explaining this to you. As with our previous discussions, you either cannot, or refuse to, see what is clear to most.
How can an agent actualize a potential without the potential being simultaneously actualized?
Perhaps there are cases in which "essential causality" is being used equivocally, but that does not mean that, defined as an agent actualizing a potential, it can other than simultaneous with the effect of actualizing that potential.
Disclaimer : not erudite on Aristotle, Plato, or Kant. But I think they were onto something, even when I can't say exactly what it is.
I suppose the issue you raise here is what prompted Kant to develop the tricky concept of Transcendental Idealism. Plato's Ideal Forms seem to be implicitly supernatural, so how do we natural beings know anything about them? Kant placed such imaginary things off-limits to human experience, in the heavenly realm of ding an sich. So, we cannot "know" them via empirical experience, but only "imagine" them as abstract concepts. From that perspective, Numbers are not "real" in any natural sense, but "ideal" in the sense that we abstract those bare bones (ding an sich) from fleshly experience with multiple objects. Numbers are transcendental place-holders for abstract values. Those ideal tokens are not "products of any one mind", but are universal truths that logical minds have access to.
Therefore, "transcendentals" are "intelligible objects" that are not perceptible to the senses. Hence, their questionable status of "reality". Yet, like verbal viral Memes, such unreal abstractions can be exchanged from one mind to another carrying some non-monetary value. In math, transcendental numbers (like PI) are defined as non-algebraic. Which means they can only be written down with symbols, qualifiers & modifiers to indicate their abstraction, infinitude & unreality*1. As a judge once said about Pornography : "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it". When we encounter an abstract bare-bones concept like "Beauty", we can't define it in a few words, but we can mentally put imaginary flesh on the metaphorical bones.
Some animals, such as crows*2, seem to be able to extract numbers from their concrete experience. So the ability is natural, even if the dings are somehow super-natural, or transcendental. I suspect that the general universal concepts that philosophers create in their minds are representations of the dings that Aristotle discussed in his Meta-Physics (lit. beyond physical) addendum to his book on Physics. However, as I disclaimed above, I don't know what I'm talking about, but I know it's not pornography. Maybe it's above & beyond vulgar Physics*3. :smile:
*1. Transcendental Numbers :
More formally, a transcendental function is a function that cannot be constructed in a finite number of steps from the elementary functions and their inverses.
https://www.mathsisfun.com numbers transcendental-...
Note --- A Function is an abstract relationship between two or more objects or quantities. We can't see it, but we can infer it.
*2. Can crows recognize numbers? :
Crows can use and even make tools, reason via analogies, and have been said to rival monkeys in cognitive capacity. They also seem to have a remarkable ability to understand numeric values.
https://www.audubon.org/news/crows-can-count-aloud-much-toddlers-new-study-finds
*3. Aristotle's Transcendent Reality :
[i]In Plato's theory, material objects are changeable and not real in themselves; rather, they correspond to an ideal, eternal, and immutable Form by a common name, and this Form can be perceived only by the intellect. . . . .
The relationship between form and matter is another central problem for Aristotle. He argues that both are substances, but matter is potential, while form is actual. . . .
Thus Aristotle's conception is full of paradoxes.[/i]
https://www.sparknotes.com/biography/aristotlebio/section7/
Note --- Did Ari really (actually) know what he was talking about?
Aristotle ruled out "prime matter" as an incoherent concept with his cosmological argument.
Quoting Dfpolis
"Progress" is a judgement in relation to the final cause. So you continue to conflate final cause with efficient cause.
Quoting Dfpolis
If "the builder building", and "the house being built" are not physically separate, then they are one and the same, as I've been saying. So we agree here. You say they are logically distinct, and I've said that the distinction is that "the builder building" is more general than "the house being built". This is because the builder building is not necessarily building a house. Would you agree with this logical distinction?
Suppose we say "the builder is building a house", and "a house is being built". Would you agree that the logical distinction is that in one case, "the builder" is the subject, and in the other case, "the house" is the subject. But now there is a problem, the house, as the subject does not yet exist, it's existence is, as you say, predicted. Do you agree, that "the house" as the goal or end, is the final cause, just like in Aristotle's example, the goal of health is the final cause of the man walking? So when we say "a house is being built", we are talking about final causation, because what indicates that "a house" is being built, is reference to the intended goal of the project, the end.
Therefore the logical difference between "the builder building", and "a house being built", is that the former is a description of efficient causation, and the latter is a description of final causation. "The builder building" refers only to the physical activities of the person putting things together, while " a house being built" refers to the goal, end, or intention of the person putting things together.
Quoting Dfpolis
I would disagree with this because the house is not yet built. Therefore it cannot be the effect described as "a house being built". It is only the effect after the house is built. Only after the house has been built can we say that the house is the effect.
Prior to the project being completed, the house is an idea, a plan, or goal, and as the goal or end, it is the cause of the builder building, in the sense of final cause. So, to explain what I am saying, consider that the material house comes from potentially existing, to actually existing, through the the activity of building (the means to the end). When the material house potentially exists, it is actually an idea, or goal in the builders mind, and therefore acts to inspire the builder to build, as final cause.
Therefore the builder is the cause of building, as you say, but only as final cause, not efficient cause. Building, itself, is an efficient cause, but if we say the builder is the cause of building, we are referring to the freely willed choice of the builder, to build, and this is final cause.
Quoting Dfpolis
I completely agree with this, and I believe that you and I both have a good understanding of Aristotle on this point. However, where we seem to disagree is that I think that under Aristotelian principles, what you describe as "source of actualization of the materials' potential to be a house" is final cause, while you seem to argue that it is a type of efficient cause.
Quoting Dfpolis
This still makes no sense to me. All you are saying is that there is two different ways to describe the same physical activity, There is no logical reason given to conclude that one is cause and the other effect. In fact, the affirmation that they are concurrent seems to negate the possibility of a cause/effect relation.
Quoting Dfpolis
Sure, but the point is that there is no house in existence to be having anything done to it. And if we look at the raw material as having something done to them. there is no "effect" in this description, just something being done.
Quoting Dfpolis
Of course no one is confused when we speak of the things which only exist as goals, because final causation is an integral part of our lives, and influences all sorts of conversations.
You ask me not to quibble about this, but it is key to understanding Aristotle's thesis on causation. To understand the reality of change we must recognize the difference between "the house" as a goal in people's minds, and "the house" as a completed material object. Do you agree that "the house as a goal in the minds of people, is a cause of action, and "the house" as a completed material object is the effect of that same action?
Quoting tim wood
I know what passive means, it's Df's usage which makes no sense. If you think it does make sense, then explain how Df's expression "the passion of being built" makes any sense to you.
Quoting tim wood
As I said, the two are one and the same, "identical", when it is the actualization which is being discussed. It is Df who wants to cast one part of the actualization as cause, and another part of the actualization as effect, and say that these two, the causal part and effectual part of the actualization are concurrent. But that is not Aristotle at all.
I would agree with that description, although not with the equivocation with ding an sich. That is owed to Kants confusing equivocation of thing in itself with noumenal which actually have two different meanings.
There is an expression in classical philosophy the eye of reason, which refers to that kind of insight - things which can only be grasped by a rational mind. (Theres also the eye of the heart which is higher again but this is more associated with esoteric philosophy.)
The common error with understanding these principles, is to try and imagine their objects as existing somewhere. They dont exist in the sense that sensible objects exist. And as todays culture is overwhelmingly oriented to sense-experience (empiricism), then they dont exist at all. This is why empiricist philosophers reject Platonic realism - their metaphysical framework has no conceptual space to allow for the reality of anything other than sense-objects or mathematical abstractions that are grounded in them. They have a flat ontology which cant deal with levels of being. (This is what Vervaeke refers to by levelling up.)
Theres a book called Thinking Being: Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition, Eric D. Perl. Its expensive and out-of-print but theres an online copy posted here.. See Chapter 2: Plato, Section 3 The Meaning of Separation which succinctly explains the meaning of forms and why they must not be understood as inhabiting a separate realm (as distinct from a separate level of being, which is completely different. Again, it is a problem of trying to transpose an hierarchical to a flat ontology.)
[quote=Eric D Perl, op cit] Is there such a thing as health? Of course there is. Can you see it? Of course not. This does not mean that the forms are occult entities floating somewhere else in another world, a Platonic heaven. It simply says that the intelligible identities which are the reality, the whatness, of things are not themselves physical things to be perceived by the senses, but must be grasped by thought. If, taking any of these examplessay, justice, health, or strengthwe ask, How big is it? What color is it?How much does it weigh?we are obviously asking the wrong kind of question. Forms are ideas, not in the sense of concepts or abstractions, but in that they are realities apprehended by thought rather than by sense.[/quote]
Quoting Gnomon
Do you know what he was talking about? Actually as far as a synopsis of his metaphysics of form and matter, the above title provides quite a good synoptic overview.
Not so. Aristotle did not rule out the concept of prime matter as incoherent with his cosmological argument. In fact, prime matter is a fundamental concept in his metaphysics.
Aristotles concept of prime matter (hyl?) refers to the underlying substratum that has no form or qualities of its own but can receive various forms. It is pure potentiality, capable of becoming any form. This is crucial to his hylomorphic theory, where everything in the natural world is a composite of form (morph?) and matter (hyl?).
In his cosmological argument, particularly in the Physics and Metaphysics, Aristotle posits the existence of an unmoved mover, a necessary being that causes motion* without itself being moved. This unmoved mover is pure actuality**, having no potentiality. The concept of prime matter, in contrast, is pure potentiality and plays a different role in his metaphysical framework.
Thus, far from ruling out prime matter as incoherent, Aristotle integrates it as a core component of his explanation of change and substance. The cosmological argument addresses the existence of a first cause, which is separate from the notion of prime matter but does not negate it.
*Motion in Aristotle means something different than modern physics velocity. Aristotles notion of motion is broader and more encompassing, dealing with the transition from potentiality to actuality in various aspects, not limited to spatial movement. This understanding of motion as a change of state is a fundamental difference from the modern physics definition, which typically focuses on the change in an objects position over time (velocity).
** Pure actuality can be traced back to Parmenides vision of what is as being above or beyond the change and decay of concrete particulars. As modified first by Plato and then Aristotle, ideas are eternal and changeless, in which particulars participate. Unlike Plato, Aristotle did not posit a separate realm of Forms but argued that the form and matter coexist in the same substance. However, he maintained that the highest forms of being, such as the unmoved mover, are pure actuality, embodying eternal and changeless existence.
Clearly, you know much less about Aristotle than you would like to believe. Further, you are not open to learning. So, once again, I leave you to your own beliefs.
You might be interested in my "A New Reading of Aristotle's Hyle" Modern Schoolman 68 (3):225-244 (1991)
Yes, something is being acted on, and that is the raw materials. The form of the materials changes due to the activity called "building". That is how Aristotle described change. The problem with Df's representation is that he portrays the house as that which suffers the passion, by saying "the passion of being built". And this is incoherent because there is no house in existence, to undergo a change of form, only the raw materials undergo that change, as described above. But the raw materials are not "being built", the house is. But the house does not yet exist. It exists only as a goal or end, and as such it is the final cause of the builders activity. So in this way, Df represents what Aristotle would name as the final cause, as some sort of "necessary efficient cause".
Quoting Wayfarer
This has been a subject of debate for some. But a thorough reading of the "Metaphysics" ought to display to you that he actually does rule out prime matter. He discusses it thoroughly, treating it as if it might possibly be a viable concept, because it was accepted by many, only to reveal in the end, that such a thing is impossible. To put it simply, prime matter would be pure, absolute potential. And any potential requires an actuality to act as cause to bring about anything actual from it. The concept of pure, absolute potential, does not allow for any actuality, and therefore could not actualize itself. So if there ever was pure absolute potential (prime matter), this would always be the case, and there would never be anything actual. But observational information reveals to us that there is something actual. Therefore "prime matter" is ruled out.
This is basically the argument against being coming from nothing. Pure potential, prime matter, is actually nothing. It is assumed as an original chaos or some absolute disorder, what some called apeiron. From this complete and absolute randomness, organized actual existence (form), is supposed to come into being by some chance occurrence. Apokrisis presents this as symmetry-breaking. You can see how this is illogical, to assume that formed being springs spontaneously from absolute potential, prime matter.
Quoting Wayfarer
Actually, what Aristotle reveals in his Metaphysics, is that the true underlying substratum is actually formal. That it is material is just an illusion produced from the assumptions of empirical sciences. This is why Aristotle is truly idealist rather than materialist, as "form", being what is actual, becomes the first principle. You'll see this principle taken up by Christian theologists like Aquinas, choosing actuality as the first principle over the "pure potential" of the Neo-Platonists.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is good, but if you look closely you'll see that the concept of "pure actuality" excludes the possibility of "pure potentiality", and vise versa, because "pure" excludes the other category. So, when you see that the assumed unmoved mover is pure actuality, you know that pure potentiality is ruled out. Therefore, "pure potentiality" is the ontology which he is refuting. This is the position of the Pythagoreans, and those that Aristotle refers to as "some Platonists", those who adopt pure potentiality as a first principle.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, Aristotle distinguish two types of change, change of place (locomotion), and internal change, which is change of a thing's form. Modern science, with its propensity toward dividing objects into smaller parts, reduces all change to change of place. What was internal change, or change of form, is now change of place of the parts. However, as we get to smaller and smaller parts, we reapproach the problem of the ancient atomists, which Aristotle had to deal with.
We cannot assume infinite divisibility of the parts, because this leaves us with nothing, no substratum at the base of things. So the atomists proposed fundamental parts, and these fundamental parts must be unchangeable or else they'd be divisible into further parts. The fundamental parts would be prime matter, that which all things are composed of. However, this creates the need for a completely different perspective. There is a requirement for a 'force' of actuality which organizes the fundamental parts, and this 'force' must be internal to the objects we know. The 'force' becomes the principle for actual existence, organized being. Then by Aristotle's refutation, the cosmological argument, the fundamental parts (atoms) as prime matter, get ruled out, and we are left with this 'force' as the fundamental substratum of all being. Aristotle's primitive representation is the divine activity, the thinking, thinking on thinking.
Quoting Dfpolis
You, Dfpolis, are unable, or simply unwilling to engage with teleology, the foundational aspect of Aristotle's ontology. Instead you incessantly attempt to represent the intentional activity of final causation as some sort of necessary efficient cause, refusing to engage with the true Aristotelian principles.
Again, you spout nonsense. See my "Evolution: Mind or Randomness?" Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 22 (1-2):32-66 (2010)
Posterior Analytics II, 12, 95a14-35 discusses simultaneous and time ordered causality.
Cf. In an essentially ordered series of causes, both the existence and causal function of the effect are caused and preserved by the simultaneous coexistence of the cause. Juan Carlos Flores, Accidental and essential causality in John Duns Scotus treatise On the first principle, Recherches de Théologie et de Philosophie Médiévale 67, no. 1 (2000): 97f.
Yes, that's a fair point. The five points converge on anti-naturalism.
Quoting Paine
I don't know too much about Vervaeke, but I don't think he would see it this way. There is an interesting question about whether the overcoming of the subjective/objective division existed before modernity. I am currently reading John Deely's book on Heidegger and he would say that it did exist, albeit in a qualified and seminal way.
Thanks. But, can you clarify Kant's "equivocation" for me? If the ding an sich is not Phenomenal, is it not then Noumenal by default? Is there a third category of Being : things vs dings vs (?) ? Or more than two ways of Knowing : sensation vs imagination vs (?) ?
I usually think of dings as existing in a Platonic Ideal Realm, or God's Mind, beyond the reach of the human meat-mind --- except as inferred by Reason from the inherent Logic of the Real World : Concept vs Percept. How did Kant know about dings, if not by sensory observation or rational imagination/representation? Did he know by Direct Revelation or by Inner Vision (clairvoyance)?
The Noumenal vs Phenomenal dichotomy*1 seems to be intended to avoid ambiguity. But I suppose later philosophers have analyzed that black vs white meaning into a variety of nit-picky interpretations. For example, I just noticed the definition of ding an sich below*2. Neither sensory "observation" nor mental "representation", but perhaps some spooky third category of being & knowing. :smile:
*1. What is the difference between noumenal and phenomenal?
The phenomenal world is the world we are aware of; this is the world we construct out of the sensations that are present to our consciousness. The noumenal world consists of things we seem compelled to believe in, but which we can never know (because we lack sense-evidence of it).
http://people.wku.edu/jan.garrett/303/kant120.htm
Note --- "Compelled to believe", by what power?
*2. Thing-in-itself
In Kantian philosophy, the thing-in-itself (German: Ding an sich) is the status of objects as they are, independent of representation and observation.
https://en.wikipedia.org wiki Thing-in-itself
That is an interesting question contrasting the ancient against the modern. I don't know how to think about Gerson's thesis in that context. My retort was to say that the "transjective"t sounded like a case of "having one's cake and eating it too" that Gerson objected to. A compromise between "materialists" and "idealist"; A position upon the history of philosophy as practiced now combined with an interpretation of ancient text.
The difference between Plotinus and Aristotle that I have argued for is not put forward with that design. The ideas seem different to me.
This is a thread about Aristotle's Metaphysics. There are two fairly recent threads on Kant which might be more suitable for discussion of that isssue:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14993/kant-and-the-unattainable-goal-of-empirical-investigation/p1
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14616/kant-on-synthetic-a-prior-knowledge-and-experience
Perl's book, mentioned above, traces the origin of the Platonic forms or ideas with Parmenides and how it is developed first by Plato and then Aristotle. Kant is much later and belongs to the modern period.
I will say something about my understanding of 'noumenal' but within that context. According to the Wiki article on noumenon, it is derived from 'object of nous', 'nous' being that seminal word in Greek philosophy translated as 'intellect'. But like a lot of those basic terms of philosophy the connotations and implications have shifted over the centuries. 'Nous' in the Aristotelian sense has a much more active role.
From the wiki article on nous
From David Bentley Hart:
Within this context, 'noumenal' means, basically, 'grasped by reason' while sensible means 'grasped by the sense organs'. In hylomorphic dualism, this means that nous apprehends the form or essence of a particular - what is really is - and the senses perceive its material appearance. That's the interplay of 'reality and appearance'. Again from the article on Noumenon:
[quote= Honderich, Ted, ed. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy] Platonic Ideas and Forms are noumena, and phenomena are things displaying themselves to the senses... This dichotomy is the most characteristic feature of Plato's dualism; that noumena and the noumenal world are objects of the highest knowledge, truths, and values is Plato's principal legacy to philosophy.[/quote]
According to Aristotelian philosophy (and others may correct me here if I'm wrong) animals, generally, only see the material forms of things as they lack reason, which is the ability to see the forms, principles or essence of things. (Hence Aristotle's designation of humans as 'rational animals'.) This is of course nowadays regarded as archaic and superseded. I believe there's a valid distinction being made but this is a constant source of controversy, not to mention repeated references to the cleverness of Caledonian crows.
Everything that can be affected demonstrates the capacity of being able to change. The components of the house are forced into a situation that "natural" products do not experience.
But what makes change possible is treated as applicable to both activities. .
[quote=Aristotle's Revenge, Edward Feser, p 54-55]The Aristotelian tradition draws a distinction between three basic types of living substance. These form a hierarchy in which each type incorporates the basic powers of the types below it but also adds something novel of its own to them. The most basic kind of life is vegetative life, which involves the capacities of a living thing to take in nutrients, to go through a growth cycle, and to reproduce itself. Plants are obvious examples, but other forms of life, such as fungi, are also vegetative in the relevant sense. The second kind of life is animal life, which includes the vegetative capacities of nutrition, growth, and reproduction, but in addition involves the capacities of a thing to take in information through speciali]ed sense organs and to move itself around, where the sensory input and behavioral output is mediated by appetitive drives such as the desire to pursue something pleasant or to avoid something painful. These distinctively animal capacities are not only additional to and irreducible to the vegetative capacities, but also transform the latter. For example, nutrition in animals participates in their sensory, appetitive, and locomotive capacities insofar as they have to seek out food, take enMoyment in eating it, and so forth.
The third kind of life is the rational kind, which is the distinctively human form of life. This form of life incorporates both the vegetative and animal capacities, and adds to them the intellectual powers of forming abstract concepts, putting them together into propositions, and reasoning logically from one proposition to another, and also the volitional power to will or choose in light of what the intellect understands. These additional capacities are not only additional to and irreducible to the vegetative and animal capacities, but transform the latter. Given human rationality, a vegetative function like nutrition takes on the cultural significance we attach to the eating of meals; the reproductive capacity comes to be associated with romantic love and the institution of marriage; sensory experience comes to be infused with conceptual content; and so forth.[/quote]
Hey, thanks for the reference Dfpolis. I checked it out, and I think you are vindicated to an extent. Aristotle does discuss this simultaneity of cause and effect, but I still think this concept is misapplied by you in your example.
Aristotle gives two examples of the way in which the cause is simultaneous with the effect in this way. The first is an eclipse of the moon. The moon was eclipsed because the earth intervened. It becomes eclipsed when the earth intervenes. It is eclipsed when the earth is intervening, and it will be eclipsed when the earth will intervene. The other example is the freezing of water. Ice forms when a failure of heat is occurring, it has formed when there was a failure of heat, and it will form if a failure of heat occurs.
The reason why I still think you misapply this concept, is because "the builder building", and "the house being built" both refer to the very same activity, as you agree. In both of Aristotle's examples, there are two distinct things, one the cause of the other. The earth intervenes with the light from the sun, and the effect is the eclipse of the moon. Two distinct things. There is a lack of heat, and the effect is that the water freezes. Two distinct things. And careful scientific analysis reveals that Aristotle was wrong, there is a time difference for each of these, as the effect does not actually occur instantaneously. Your example however, is not even similar because there is not two distinct things, only one activity described in two ways.
Quoting Dfpolis
Well then, why don't you accept what I've been telling you, that "being built" is a predication which implies the thing being built, "the house" as its subject. And, the house exists only as a goal or intention (final cause) at this time of being built. The house is not an existing thing affected by the activity of being built, it is created intentionally by being built..
Yes, the differences between the activities of nature and artifice are clearly drawn. But how everything is capable of change or not is whatever it is regardless.
If you acknowledge intention as causal, in the sense of final cause, then you would see that "house being built", as referring to the intention of the project (the end), is the (final) cause of "builder building". Therefore you have things reversed when you say "builder building" is the cause of "being built" which is the effect.
This is very consistent with what Aristotle says in the context of your reference, Posterior Analytics 94b 7-26. "E.G. why does one take a walk after dinner? For the sake of one's health." Your example is comparable. Why is the builder building? Because there is a house being built.
Do you agree, if we adhere to Aristotelian principles (regardless of what Duns Scotus says), "house being built" is the cause, as referring to the intentional project, the end, and "builder building" is the effect?
"The difference is this much, that causes which are actually at work and particular exist and cease to exist simultaneously with their effect, e.g. this healing person with this being-healed person and that
housebuilding [20] man with that being-built house; but this is not always true of potential causesthe house and the housebuilder do not pass away simultaneously." (Physics III, 3, 195b16-21)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Because "house" can be and often is analogically predicated of a house under construction.
Again, the point is that we are discussing efficient, not final, causality and digressing into final causality only leads to confusion.
Thanks. That summary is in agreement my own understanding of the Real/Ideal and Phenomenal/Noumenal dichotomy. But my question was about your characterization of Kant's "equivocation" of that neat two-value division of the knowable world*1. Of course, in philosophical discourse, that "interplay" can get complicated, to the point of paradox.
I have the general impression that both Plato (real/ideal) and Aristotle (hyle/morph) also divided the philosophical arena of discourse into Sensory Observations and Rational Inference. So, I was wondering if Kant had posited a different analysis of the Things & Dings that philosophers elaborate & logic-chop into such tiny bits of meaning. Physical things can be reduced down to material atoms by dissection. And Metaphysical dings (ideas about things), presumably can be analyzed down to conceptual atoms. But does the distinction between Physical & Meta-Physical remain in effect?
That said, your comment about Kant's "confusing equivocation" raised the question in my simple mind : is there a third (non-quibbling) Ontological category of knowledge, other than Phenomenal (sensory) & Noumenal (inference) : perhaps Intuition (sixth sense) that bypasses both paths to knowledge? Is a ding an sich Phenomenal or Noumenal or something else? :smile:
*1. Quote from this thread :
"I would agree with that description, although not with the equivocation with ding an sich. That is owed to Kants confusing equivocation of thing in itself with noumenal which actually have two different meanings."
___ Wayfarer
PS___ Post posting, I found this summary of Ways of Knowing. I don't know where it came from, or if it's even relevant to Aristotle's Metaphysical Ontology.
It is not only that "form and matter coexist in the same substance." The nature of change in the realm of coming to be and passing away is different than movement in eternal things because the latter are not subject to coincidental causes. The relationship between the 'acting' and the 'acted upon' requires a
specific understanding of the actual and the potential as emerge in beings:
So, this "difficult to visualize" aspect of matter as potential being returns us to the beginning of the book:
In esoteric philosophy there are said to be forms of gnosis or Jñ?na or direct insight. They're very difficult to assess for pretty obvious reasons, as esoteric philosophy is, well, esoteric. I sometimes have the intuition that there is a missing element in Kant's philosophy corresponding to an absence of this kind of insight, but I'm not able to really pinpoint or articulate it as after all we're dealing here with some of the most difficult questions of philosophy.
That table is from the wikipedia article on the analogy of the divided line in the Republic. It is in the section adjacent to the Parable of the Cave. Its certainly relevant, but it was Platos rather than Aristotles.
Thanks, that is a difficult passage, although something that comes to mind is Werner Heisenberg's appeal to Aristotle's 'potentia' as a way to understand the nature of the sub-atomic realm. See Quantum Mysteries Dissolve if Possibilities are Realities (although I won't comment further for fear of dragging the thread into the insoluble conundrums of modern physics, other than to say that said conundrums show that metaphysics is far from dead.)
The problem though, is that "house", referring to something not yet built, is a final cause. You refuse to acknowledge this, and keep trying to portray this final cause, the goal of building a house, a house being built, as an efficient cause. So your attempt to simplify the intentional action of building, to describe it as consisting solely of efficient causation, when final causation is obviously involved, produces a false representation of the activity.
"A house being built" refers to a project, an end, a final cause. The builder is affected by that project and has the passion to build. Therefore the builder building is the effect of that final cause which is the project of "the house" which is being built.
Quoting tim wood
I've grown accustomed to ignoring your questions which appear to be completely irrelevant. If you would explain to me why you are asking something which looks really stupid, like do I believe it is possible to build a house, and why you think this is relevant, I might see the need to answer it.
I will answer this one. Aristotle describe four principal ways "cause" is used, material, formal, efficient, and final. Also he outlined two accidental uses, which are not to be understood as proper causes. These are luck and chance.
It comes from Plato. In the Republic (509d511e) he lays out the taxonomy of thought using the analogy of a divided line. The line is first divided into ???? (opinion), reflecting the sensible world, and ???????? (knowledge), reflecting the intelligible world. Each half is subdivided on the basis of clarity. Opinion is sub-divided into ??????? (conjecture/illusion), reflecting shadows and reflected images, and ?????? (belief/science), reflecting mutable bodies. Knowledge is partitioned into discursive thought (???????) and understanding (??????). Discursive thought uses images (sensible reality, e.g. as in geometry) while understanding does not (510b).
"Efficient cause" refers to the particular action which leads to the existence of the item. But "the skills" refers to something general. Therefore the skills are not the efficient cause.
Quoting tim wood
Sorry tim, I just can't understand this at all. It's not the Aristotle that I know.
Quoting tim wood
The builder is building a house. But a material thing in the condition of becoming, being created or produced, has no material existence until after it is produced. These are some of the issues which Aristotle dealt with in his discussions of "change", the difference between the prior condition and the posterior condition.
Quoting tim wood
The final cause is the house as a goal, an end, the intent, that is how Aristotle describes final cause, as "the end", and this signifies what we call the goal or objective. Take a look at Aristotle's example, the final cause of the person walking is the goal of health.
The goal, or end is the cause of the person's activities. The activities themselves are the efficient causes, as the means to that end. The person has choice, not only in the decision as to which ends are desired, but also in the determination of the means (efficient causes) required to produce the end. However, since the specified means are often seen as the only way to produce the desired end, there is often a logical necessity linking the means with the end.
Quoting tim wood
In the case of an intentional act, that is almost what I said, but not quite. Bob is affect by the goal, or end, which is to have the window broken. So he breaks it. His action is a passion caused by that goal or end (not by the window itself, but the goal of breaking it), as his action is the effect of that final cause. Why is this so hard for you to understand? Are you not affected by your goals? And does this affection not cause passion within you? Do you have any understanding of the concept of "affection" at all?
Unfortunately, we can't see "purpose" in the non-self world with our physical senses, but we can infer Intention from the behavior of people & animals that is similar to our own, as we search for food or other necessities, instead of waiting for it to fall into our mouths. Some of us even deduce Teleology in the behavior of our dynamic-but-inanimate world system, as described by scientific theories. If there is no direction to evolution, how did the hot, dense, pinpoint of potential postulated in Big Bang theory manage to mature into the orderly cosmos that our space-scopes reveal to the inquiring minds of the aggregated atoms we call astronomers. Ironically, some sentient-but-unperceptive observers look at that same vital universe, and see only aimless mindless matter moving by momentum.
The current Philosophy Now magazine has several letters on the topic of Time. One says : "If time is subjective, an observer is needed to make the distinction between past & future, and so to turn a probabilistic quantum phenomenon into a known result." Another responded to Tallis' comment that "the most successful organism is the non-conscious cyanobacteria" with : "Humanity's domination of the planet is so extensive that evolution must be redefined." The next letter notes : "from the outside, reality is matter, from the inside, it's mind".
Aristotle knew nothing of gargantuan galaxies full of whirling worlds, or indeterminate quantum probability, or progressive novelty-creating evolution, or brainless bacterial objectives, but he could "see" that his primitive pre-industrial world was purposeful. "Everything has a function or purpose and its essential nature is to grow and achieve its purpose." https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/__unknown__/ :smile:
Teleonomy : a sign of Aristotle's Final Cause : the End or Purpose
This essay brings to mind Terrence Deacons Incomplete Nature, FWIW. On what we observe as teleonomy: unrealized future possibilities appear to be the organizers of antecedent processes that tend to bring them into existence,
https://medium.com/@mmpassey/this-essay-brings-to-mind-terrence-deacons-incomplete-nature-fwiw-83a7e2a4b1a7
This is to conflate two different ideas in Aristotle. What's usually translated as 'function' is 'ergon', the special nature of what is named, e.g. a knife cuts, humans engage in soul-based rational consideration. This is different to 'telos' or 'end', the purpose of an activity.
Thanks. Yet I think Aristotle did associate both ideas in his discussion of Natural Purpose.
The "everything has a purpose" quote combines several words & meanings into a definition of Teleology*1 : essential nature (phusis) + work (ergon) => ultimate aim (telos). However, the universal Purpose (telos) of Nature is not the local purpose (ergon) of any particular element.
Instead of postulating Intelligent Design*2 though, he used more abstract & impersonal terms like First Cause & Final Cause. The initial Cause can also be interpreted as "design intent", which produces Essential Nature, which is processed by the teleological work of Evolution, to eventually result in the ultimate Goal : the Final Cause. Hence, Teleology is the Intentional Logic inherent in progressive Evolution.
Of course, Ari probably had only a rudimentary notion of Natural Progression*3, but his First Cause could do the Darwinian Selection, and the Formal Causes (natural laws) would produce the physical novelty (mutations) in the Material Cause (elements) necessary to fabricate the intended Final Form of Nature-in-general. Ari didn't specify, and we moderns still don't know, what that ultimate state will be. But we can, like Aristotle, recognize the signs of Intention (Prohairesis) in the progression of Nature from hot-dot to comfortably-cool-Cosmos. Physics (machine) needs Meta-Physics (intention) in order to evolve from Big Bang to Poetry to Philosophy. :smile:
*1. télos, lit. "end, 'purpose', or 'goal'") is a term used by philosopher Aristotle to refer to the final cause of a natural organ or entity, or of human art.
*2. Did Aristotle believe in intelligent design?
Which means that Aristotle identified final causes with formal causes as far as living organisms are concerned. He rejected chance and randomness (as do modern biologists) but unlike Dembski did not invoke an intelligent designer in its place.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/32/Design_Yes_Intelligent_No
*3. Aristotle's Evolution :
The concept of evolution is as ancient as Greek writings, where philosophers speculated that all living things are related to one another, although remotely. The Greek philosopher Aristotle perceived a ladder of life, where simple organisms gradually change to more elaborate forms.
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/biology/biology/principles-of-evolution/history-of-the-theory-of-evolution
However, Aristotle's fourfold causality - formal, final, material and efficient - was assumed to be operative at the level of organisms and in the activities of human agents such as builders, was it not?
A Brief Excursion into the History of Ideas.
There's a succint description of telos in an IEP article on Aristotle's 'telos', from which:
Notice that 'everything' in the above discussion seems to include only things made by humans (artifacts) and plants and animals. The concept is extended to the inorganic realm, in Physics, Book II, particularly chapters 1-3 and 8. This is where Aristotle argues that natural processes and objects have intrinsic purposes. For example, he discusses how natural elements like earth, water, air, and fire have natural places to which they move. This is where the now-infamous claim is made that stones 'prefer' to be nearer the earth. Earth moves downward, while fire moves upward, each seeking its natural position in the cosmos. This movement towards their natural places is considered their telos.
This is the aspect of Aristotelian physics that was overturned (or demolished!) by Galileo and the scientific revolution. Galileo, through his experiments and observations, demonstrated that the motion of inanimate objects could be explained without reference to inherent purposes or final causes. For instance, he showed that objects fall at the same rate regardless of their composition (when air resistance is negligible) and that an object in motion remains in motion unless acted upon by an external force, laying the groundwork for Newton's first law of motion (inertia).
This shift marked the transition from a teleological view of nature, where purpose and final causes were central, to a mechanistic view, where natural phenomena are explained through efficient causes and mathematical laws. The mechanistic approach focuses on the material and efficient causes, emphasizing the interactions and forces that bring about motion and change without invoking intrinsic purposes. The broader context was the corresponding demolition of the Ptolmaic cosmology and the earth-centred universe, the collapse of the great 'medieval synthesis'.
But then the pendulum swung too far the other way. From everything being 'informed by purpose', modern science declared that nothing is. In the physicalist view, all biological processes, including those that seem goal-directed, are ultimately reducible to physical interactions and can be fully explained by the laws of physics and chemistry. From this standpoint, teleological language (such as "purpose" or "goal") is generally seen as a shorthand for describing complex processes that can, in principle, be fully understood in non-teleological terms, and specifically in mechanistic terms. Never mind that in reality, machines are only ever built by intelligent agents - Newton's deist god was sufficiently removed from the action to be practically [s]imperceptible[/s] insignficant. It was only a matter of time until God became 'a ghost in his own machine', so to speak. (This is the subject of Karen Armstrong's excellent 2009 book A Case for God.)
Anyways, teleology proved indispensable for biology, so it made a comeback under the neologism teleonomy, the Wiki article on which (attached) is replete with hair-splitting distinctions between 'actual' and 'apparent' intentionality (which, notice, is also the keyword that kick-started the entire phenomenological tradition.)
As Etienne Gilson noted, philosophy always seems to live long enough to bury its undertakers.
This is from Physics book 2:
I can make an argument that per se causes can't possibly be identical with the effect (I thought it's obvious but ok):
First of all, it's a title of a chapter in Physics VII: "It is necessary that whatever is moved, be moved by another." Another is not identical. Unless you say that Aristotle says that beside the immediate mover there is yer another cause of an effect which is identical with the effect.
Second Aristotle admits chains of per se causes. Multiple things can't be identical. The prime mover is a per se cause of all movement. Are you to suggest that the prime mover is identical to every movement? That would be ridiculous in Aristotle.
Also the amount of people with their own completely ignorant interpretation is saddening. It's not you, you make sense and the essential/simultaenous distinction is subtle and it's a wide problem in the litterature). The definition you quoted concerns Scotus, not all scholastics definitely. Aquinas and Suarez wouldn't agree. And they're taken to be the orthodox Aristotellians, Scotus' doctrines are controversially Aristotellian.
As to the non--simultaneity of immediate cause and effect - ok I just found a passage in Aquinas' commentary to Posterior Analytics touching just on this issue:
It seems you're right - an immediate mover must be simultaneous with the actualization. But it's not identical. Also there are per se causes which are not simultaneous with the effect. (consider a transformation of an element, an efficient cause ceases to be once the effect is in actuality).
Werner's observation is interesting.
I directed my comment more at the objections I have made over the years addressing Gerson's argument about "naturalism" as an antipode to the eidetic.
You have made much of the difference between ancient and modern ideas of the physical. How comparisons of that sort are made rely heavily upon what is understood by specific text that talks about that sort of thing.
Challenging Gerson's reading of the text is not equivalent to challenging what Gerson makes of it. Without that distinction, we could all be talking about anything we like.
The important aspect to recognize in understanding Aristotle's teleological metaphysics, is that the goal, end, or objective, is intermediary between the human being and the material world. The human being only affects the material world through the means of intentions, goals, ends or objectives, and likewise, material world only affects the human consciousness through the intermediary which is the person's intention.
The idea of an intermediary is derived from Plato who solved the interaction problem of idealism through the introduction of a third aspect "passion", which is the intermediary between the mind and body. The well disposed, tempered individual, has control over one's body, directing it toward the good, through the medium of passion. However, in the the ill-tempered individual the role of passion is reversed, such that the body influences the mind's goals and objectives in a bad way, through the means of passion. The latter is the case in your example, when Bob's mind is affected by his passion he desires to break the window, and this is an ill-tempered act.
The nature of the intermediary is what Aristotle addresses in that part of Posterior Analytics which Df referred to 94-95. In the case of final causation the role of the intermediary is reversed from that of efficient causation.
94b 22-25
Im very interested in history of ideas. That is not as vague a term as it sounds, it is an actual academic discipline, usually associated with comparative religion departments. The book which is said to have given rise to that discipline is The Great Chain of Being by Arthur Lovejoy (1936 - turns out to be rather a turgid read, but anyway ) Im pursuing the theme of how physicalism became the ascendant philosophy in Western culture and what the changes were in ways of understanding that gave rise to that. Platonism and how it developed is obviously central to that.
For example - Werner Heisenbergs adaption of Aristotles potentia (as noted above). As it happens, Heisenberg was a lifelong student of philosophy, he was known for carrying around a copy of the Timeaus in his University days. His Physics and Philosophy and some of his other later writings are very philosophically insightful in my opinion.
I dont want to expound on the minutiae of divergences between Aristotle and Plotinus, for example, as Im not equipped to do so, and, as I said, Im considering the issues at a high level. And I will generally defer on any close readings of the text, to those who have familiarity with them, although I might take issue with matters of interpretation from time to time.
Thank you for your comments.
I did not discuss this distinction, which I agree with. I discussed the difference between simultaneous and time-sequenced efficient causality, which are called "essential" and "accidental" causes in the Scholastic tradition.
"All causes, both proper and accidental, may be spoken of either as potential or as actual; e.g. the cause of a house being built is either a house-builder or a house-builder building." (Physics III, 3, 195b4f).
...
"The difference is this much, that causes which are actually at work and particular exist and cease to exist simultaneously with their effect, e.g. this healing person with this being-healed person and that
housebuilding [20] man with that being-built house; but this is not always true of potential causesthe house and the housebuilder do not pass away simultaneously." (Physics III, 3, 195b16-21)
Quoting Johnnie
Please ignore claims that I am identifying causes and effects. I am not. What is identical is the action of A actualizing the potential of B and the passion of B's potential being actualized by A. Clearly, a builder building is not a house being built. Still, they are inseparable because there is no builder building without something being built, and vice versa .
Quoting Johnnie
No, but as the ultimate source of actualization here and now, the Prime Mover is inseparable from (not identical with) potential being actualized here and now.
Quoting Johnnie
Some of Aquinas's proofs for the existence of God (in the Summa Contra Gentiles and in the Summa Theologiae) assume and require essential causality to work.
It is now generally acknowledged that St. Thomas is as much Neoplatonist as Aristotelian. The commentary tradition he received distorted Aristotle in an attempt to reconcile him with Plato.
I have read one book on Scotus and claim no expertise. I quoted the article on Scotus because that is what I could find with Google, but I believe I first learned the distinction from a Thomist author I can't recall in an article about Aristotle's proof of a prime mover.
Quoting Johnnie
I am not sure what you are trying to illustrate.
Then this example is irrelevant to what we are discussing, the intentional activity of building. Also, the noun "passion" is related to this activity, only as the emotion of the one carrying out the activity. There is no coherent meaning for "the passion of being built".
Quoting Wayfarer
Plato's "tripartite soul", as described in The Republic, allows for causation in both directions, mind ruling the body, and body influencing the mind. The intermediary between mind and body is commonly translated as spirit, or passion. By Plato's description, virtue occurs when the passion or spirit is allied with the mind, in ruling over the body. However, poor disposition allows that the spirit may ally with the body, to overwhelm the mind, when the person is overcome by emotion or sensation. So the well-tempered individual rules the body with the mind through the medium of spirit or passion, while the ill-tempered has a mind which is often overwhelmed by passion, thereby having one's mind improperly moved by the appetites and sensations of the body.
Plato extends this principle by analogy to the existence of the State. The State is healthy when the relations between the three classes. rulers, guardians, and working class, is ordered such that rulers rule with good philosophical principles. The guardians, in honour, are subordinate to the rulers, and the trades and activities of the workers are governed by the guardians. There is a principle associated with each of the three classes, rulers-intellectual, guardians-honour, workers-material goods. In the corruption of the State described by Plato, the honour of the guardians becomes tainted, and they turn toward the money of the class associated with material goods, rather than staying true to the intellectual principles of the ruling class.
How this relates to the difference between "the physicalist view", and the "informed by purpose" view, is the reversal of causation which the physicalist view has imposed on us. Ever since Newton's first law was established as the base for understanding cause and effect, the cause of change has been understood as necessarily external to the body which is changed. This principle, which sets the foundation for determinism, excludes the possibility of the source of change being internal to the human body, in the way that free will, intention, and final causation, was traditionally understood. The role of "purpose" is thereby excluded from this view.
The modern scientific view holds that causation is always sourced externally. The acts of human sensation are described as the external world having an effect on the body. the body then has an effect on the mind, in a chain of efficient cause. You can see how this perspective allows only for the existence of the ill-tempered soul (by Plato's principles). The virtuous, well-tempered soul is described by causation in the other direction, final cause, with the mind ruling the body, and causing it to do what is good, rather than being caused to do whatever the external world forces it to do through efficient causation.
Quoting Dfpolis
You are ignoring the middle term, C. Aristotle uses a middle term, and if you include it, it becomes evident that you have reversed the representation to make final cause appear as efficient cause. The action of A is caused by the goal, C, the intended end, "a house". A is the means to the end. And, B, "the house being built", is nothing other than the end being actualized by the activity A.
In the particular instance in which a house is being built, the builder building is a house being built. The two are exactly the same. This is why we need the third term, "the house", which refers to the intended end of the activity. Otherwise you are simply insisting that the more general statement "a builder building" is different from the more specific "a house being built". But this is just a semantic difference which provides no information relative to causation.
We have both quoted 1066 in this discussion. Perhaps 1046 provides the most succinct expression of active and passive potentiality:
In such cases, the potentialities of both the 'agent' and the 'patient' need to be actualized together for change to happen. The unity of the moment described at 1066 does not cancel the different kinds of potential that come into being:
While the house as it being built, each change is necessary as relates to what can be changed:
What is possible to be made is bounded by the potentiality of all the components involved. The art involved brings about necessary changes through a series of different processes (plus accidental changes such as bonehead decisions and weather). When the house is completed, the result is just as necessary and accidental as it was the day it started. Those components do not share the telos of the builder. They are only what they are for. The house as a whole has come into being. The changes can stop.
That's possible, but I understand Wayfarer's implicit source (John Vervaeke) to be using "transjectivity" to uphold Platonism and oppose naturalism.
Quoting Paine
Good posts. I agree with what you say about Aristotle in them. I would have to go back to see what you've said about Plotinus.
I am not familiar with Vervaeke. Can you hook me up with a bit of text where he presents this view of Platonism?
I agree with your reading that passion is a compliment of action. I also agree that Aristotle uses grammar to illustrate the condition.
But I also think Aristotle is trying to introduce some views of causality that are counter intuitive. What makes the 'crushable' crushable belongs to the being as something that could happen anytime when it is in close proximity with the active being. The being-acted-upon is made actual as a result of its given potential together with the other being's potential to act. This leads to Aristotle arguing for a view he expresses as reached as a matter of no recourse, perhaps even reluctantly.
I read this passage as completing the journey began in Theta 3:
Getting from dispensing with one view out of hand to replacing it with a better one turned out to be a lot of work.
Youll find a thread that Ive created about him here.
:ok:
I waffled a bit when I wrote "and oppose(s) naturalism." I think it is clear that Vervaeke is a Platonist, but his relationship with naturalism seems a bit complicated. Maybe it would be better to say that he wishes to redirect naturalism away from its anti-Platonist history. It may all come down to the question of how Plato and Vervaeke understand God and transcendence. At the very least I would say that Vervaeke is opposed to the standard, reductionist tropes of naturalism, such as materialism. What do you think?
I have been thinking a lot about how the components making up a 'philosophy of history' relate to statements about existing conditions. For instance, Plotinus' view of what is happening in his moment is pretty darn ahistorical. As it was, is now, and forever shall be.
Hegel's view, by contrast, argues we cannot know what is happening outside of the process of human changes we have undergone.
The advantage of the ahistorical approach is that we are who we are, including our past experiences. The disadvantage of it is that we pop up out of nowhere.
The advantage of the historical approach is that a view of genealogy is possible. The disadvantage is that the past becomes the servant of the narrative of what is changing.
I accept that many series of events led to me thinking what I think now and it was different in the past. But there is a 'paradise lost' aspect to your versions of the history of ideas that I do not subscribe to. The view is entangled with how to read specific texts in the past.
Quoting Paine
It's not so much 'paradise lost' as 'forgotten wisdom'. That there was an 'sapiential wisdom teaching' that was original to Western culture, that has been occluded by scientistic technocracy and 'the instrumentalisation of reason'. But again, maybe better discussed in the other thread than this one.
I think the matter belongs to a discussion of what Aristotle intended. Folding his efforts into an omlette of other ideas is what I am challenging.
On that point, the 'forgotten wisdom' idea was central to Plato's Statesman, where the idea of time moving backwards or forwards moved us closer or further from the true stuff.
And did you learn that something which doesn't exist yet can be acted on? Or, did you learn that it is really a project (goal or intention) which was being acted on, and not the non-existent thing which is being acted on? I learned the latter, when the mentioned object has no material existence, and is being built, it is a project which is being acted on.
Quoting tim wood
For me, no object which does not yet have material existence is ever acted on. You cannot act on a thing unless it exists materially. However, a project, goal, or final cause, is acted on. But this is a case of an individual being moved by the project (having passion for it), not a case of the project being moved by the individual.
Can you point to some place in the text where this is claimed? Where do beings move from the not-material to the material?
And as I've said, I'm interested in Aristotle in the context of the history of ideas, which is the study of an omelette. It is nearer to what John Vervaeke is covering in his course materials.
I guess my challenges are meaningless in that context.
To wit: There are these ideas and they are what they are because that is what said of them.
That is not the anti-Protagoras view argued continuously throughout the book.
They're really not. I will always read the texts that are presented with interest. It's more that my interests are tangential to the topic and I'm ever mindful of derailing a discussion.
I do not understand this "tangential" relationship you describe. For my part, people say stuff and other people say other stuff. Your stuff is one of the things described.
That is called "generation", or "coming to be", when a thing changes from not being to being. It's discussed at length by Aristotle in a number of different places. A good discussion of the principles of generation can be found in Metaphysics Bk 7, principally Ch 6-8. He distinguishes coming to be by nature, by art, and spontaneously, and discusses how the matter receives the form which it gets, in each of these circumstances.
I take your point that generation is the counter example of the productive arts.
But you were making a claim about when beings actually existed 'materially'.
By art is one type of generation, by nature is another type.
Quoting Paine
Yes I was. "Being" for Aristotle implies having both matter and form. We cannot attribute properties of "a house" to matter which is does not yet have the properties of a house. The house is not being acted on because the matter being acted on does not have the form of a house when the matter does not yet have the properties required for it to be a house. When the house is being built, what is acted on is matter in the form of something else, stones, cement, boards, etc. A house is not being acted on at this stage, because the matter does not have the form of a house. And when the matter does have the form of a house, the house is no longer being built, it is already built.
That is a deficiency of language, not a deficiency of action. And Aristotle has much respect for that type of sophistry which issues forth from this deficiency. Consider the following problem which Aristotle pointed out.
If at t1 the sate of being is describable as A, and change (becoming) occurs, so at t2 the state of being is describable as B, then there must be something which occurs between t1 and t2 which is signified by the term "change". If we propose another describable state of being, C, as the middle, between A and B, then change must occur between A and C, and C and B. Therefore we'd have two more describable states of being, D between A and C, and E between C and B. This leads to an infinite regress of distinct describable states of being, where the actual change between the states never gets described.
Aristotle used this argument to show how we must allow for either a violation of the law of non-contradiction, or a violation of the law of excluded middle, in order to account for the reality of change, becoming. The issue is that becoming is distinctly incompatible with being, and if we adhere to those formal laws of logic, the sophists (like Zeno, and you), can prove absurdities. Aristotle insisted that we maintain the law of non-contradiction, and allow for a violation of the law of excluded middle, with the concept of "matter". Matter, being potential, allows for the reality of what may or may not be. And this is why dualism is required to understand the nature of reality. "Form" refers to the intelligible aspect of reality, while "matter" refers to the unintelligible aspect.
So it is not the case that it is impossible for a house, or anything else, to come to be (be built), as your sophistry concludes. It is simply the case that there are aspects of this process which we cannot describe, as they are unintelligible to us. And you seize on the reality of this failure of the human intellect and the language which enables it, to conclude that because we cannot describe it, it cannot occur.
You are the one who used language to come to the absurd conclusion, that houses cannot be built. So it's your thinking which needs to be rethought. I believe that houses are being built all the time. However, much of the process remains unintelligible and indescribable to us, because it consists of things we do not adequately understand, namely the relationship between final cause and material cause.
You made that conclusion that a house cannot be being built, not I, and you did so because you misunderstood me. I said that when we say "a house is being built", we refer to a project, not to a particular house. And the subject "house" is a goal, objective, or end, not a material object. You appear to be fooled by the deficiencies of human language, into believing that "house" in this context refers to a material object when it really does not. It refers to an idea.
The way to reveal your mistake is to distinguish between the particular and the general, or universal. "A house" refers to something general, a universal concept, not a particular which has material existence. So "a house is being built" clearly does not refer to any particular material object. Furthermore, if in an attempt to refer to a particular house, we say "the house" is being built, or "my house" is being built, then we see very quickly that the particular house referred to, which is being built, exists only as an idea, a plan, or goal, not as a material object.
As I explained, Aristotle's description is like this. At t1 there is not-being of the house. At t2 there is being of the house. The time in between involves change, becoming. Becoming is incompatible with being, and cannot be described in the same logical terms, (subject/predicate). This is because we need to allow that the thing which is becoming either violates the law of non-contradiction (both is and is not at the same time), or it violates the law of excluded middle (neither is nor is not). Aristotle opted for the latter, becoming violates the law of excluded middle, and proposed that the concept of "potential" could account for the reality of that which neither is nor is not.
We could proceed to discuss the relationship between Aristotle's proposal of a violation of the law of excluded middle, and some modern day metaphysics like dialetheism and dialectical materialism, which following Hegel, propose a violation of the law of non-contradiction, if you could obtain an adequate grasp of this problem.
Quoting tim wood
Wow, I don't think you've read Aristotle, if you think his writings are "plain language". Why do you think there has been endless discussions as to what he meant, for thousands of years, if his writing is "plain language?
Since it relates to the topic of the OP (regarding the Unmoved Mover), I will take make my argument from the horse's mouth:
The mention of Pythagoras is important because that is a pivot for Aristotle regarding how souls are embodied:
The issue of the receptivity of matter raises the question of how there can be "natural" beings in a world where necessary events occur in conjunction with accidental ones. The view leads to an argument about the nature of actuality and potentiality (as I refer to upthread). What I have seen in Gerson overlooks the importance of the 'material' in Aristotle's pursuit of the natural.
Coincidentally, it is interesting that Plotinus chides Aristotle as a poor Platonist when the role of Necessity is an important part of the Timaeus.
Edited to remove unnecessary meta-afterword.
Do you accept that a claim of ancient wisdom is largely dependent upon a description of what those old people were saying?
Okay thanks, I think I sort of see where you are coming from. It is something like the idea that Gerson fails to recognize Aristotle's naturalism insofar as he overlooks the importance of the 'material' in Aristotle's thought. For Aristotle the specific matter in question must be receptive to the form it holds, and an undue emphasis on form will tend to neglect this thesis. Is it something like that?
I don't quite understand how the quote from Plotinus fits in. Presumably it highlights a Platonic critique of Aristotle, in which the formal principle(s) is clearly seen to overpower the material principle(s)? That for the pure Platonist Aristotle's matter will not be sufficiently determinate or explanatory?
No. Different epochs (and that is what they are) are characterised by different ways of being. There were of course many aspects of ancient life which are rightly condemned by todays standards but the insights preserved in the classical texts have been preserved for good reason. Also many of these texts are from the Axial Age, which has a special significance, and which deserves a thread in its own right, although Im not going to post one as Im taking a spell from forums for a while.
Thank you for considering the argument.
It will take me several days to respond to your questions. They present challenges I do not want to minimize or treat off the cuff.
This intrigues me; are you saying that claims that (some of) the ancients were wise depend on current interpretations of what they have written? The problems of anachronism and hermeneutics?
It looks like we will have to agree to disagree. For the time being, anyway.
Yes.
Or at least we do not have a method that does not rely heavily upon self-identified methods of interpretation. I favor some over others, but I cannot argue for an authority beyond that.
How will the "pursual by interpretation of evidence" ever be independent of specific methods of interpreting ancient texts? This is a particularly pertinent question when the matter is the 'lost wisdom' topic Wayfinder puts forward. The idea of replication seems out of the question.
Another way to put the same sort of point is as follows. There is a relationship between claims about the forest and claims about the trees, and claims about the forest depend on knowledge of the trees in the forest. Because of this, disputes about one or more trees can and do have an effect on theses about the forest in which those trees reside. Forest-theses are not immune to tree-theses. ...at the same time, theses about the forest often involve much more than mere tree data (i.e. overarching theses can pull together philosophy, history, economics, religion, etc.).
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- Sounds good.
The distinction is between a logical subject, and a material object. A material object necessarily exists, as an essential aspect of what it means to be a material object, is to have existence. The logical subject on the other hand has no necessity of existence, and this is what allows us to talk about fictional things. So when someone talks about "the house" they may be talking about a material object which stands over there, or they may be using "the house" as a logical subject, in which case it doesn't necessarily correspond with a material object. When we judge for truth, in the sense of correspondence, we look for correspondence between the subject and the object.
Quoting tim wood
The builder is doing something with the raw materials, wood, concrete, whatever. That is the action of the builder, working with materials, and the passive aspect is the materials which are being worked with.
In Aristotle's teleological ontology, "the house", as subject, is the end, the goal, therefore final cause. As the final cause it is active, not passive. The goal, or end, represented as "the house", moves the builder to act, to build, as an active cause, the final cause. "The good" represented by Aristotle as "that for the sake of which", is the desired end, and it acts as final cause to move the person to act in a way apprehended as the means to the end. These actions of the person are efficient causation. Efficient cause is the immediate cause of the effect, and final cause is prior, as the cause of the efficient cause.
Take, for example, the debates over how Plato understood the ontology of Forms. I (and others) have challenged Cornford's interpretation that there is a monolithic Theory of Forms that is higher and prior to texts that do not fit into that view.
Some of those references are to Cornford's opinions and others are to his translations. I propose that they are integrally connected.
I used three sentences.
I think we have to distinguish between the means and the end. The end is the goal itself, and that is final cause. What happens with the plans, is that they consist of individual ends subordinate to the final end, parts required for the whole. So each aspect of the plan is an end in itself, but in carrying out that particular aspect it is actually a means to the final end. In Aristotelian philosophy there is a distinction between the end as final cause, and the formula, or formal cause, as designated means to the end.
Quoting tim wood
Ideas exist, sure. But the idea of a house does not imply that there is a corresponding existing material object. In other words, the idea of a house, exists as an idea, not as a house.
Quoting Leontiskos
I will start by noting that both Aristotle and Plotinus make use of Plato's text in ways that shape what a 'Platonist' is said to be. Plato did not have a chance to challenge their interpretations. A central train station of departures in these matters is the Timaeus, where many of the discussions began. The bit I quoted above is Plotinus comparing Metaphysics Book Lambda with the Timaeus account. Before comparing with Aristotle, let's listen to some of what Plotinus says about matter:
Quoting Plotinus, III. 6. 9
Quoting ibid. III. 6. 10
Quoting ibid. III. 6. 11
Several conditions pop out immediately from these accounts.
The experience of a body is different from 'matter as itself' and so belongs within the 'intelligible realm'. That could be expressed, as you said, as "formal principle(s) clearly seen to overpower the material principle(s) but the more consequential difference is that the composition of a particular individual, joining ???? and ?????, no longer represents a unity standing as the whole being from which to ascertain its parts.
I will stop here before saying more.
Okay, I can see your point. There is here a very strong opposition from Plotinus to Aristotle's "hylemorphism."
I am responding to your comment in the Griffin thread in this one because it concerns the current discussion of how "matter" is to be understood in the works of Aristotle and Plotinus.
In the Gerson review of Johansen, Aristotle's treatment of the "receptacle of creation", introduced at Timaeus 49A, is said to be:
I don't know if this account corresponds to Johansen's text but it leaves out a critical context in the dialogue. The "receptacle" is introduced at the start of a new beginning:
Quoting Plato, Timaeus, translated by Horan
I take Gerson's point that a "likely account" does not refer to its "probabilistic" sense. The difficulty described by Timaeus is that the language of correspondence does not serve us as readily as it did in the other two models. The other difficulty is that third entity is prior to the other entities as fundamental ground of natural being. The new beginning is in that sense a second sailing as taken in the Phaedo (to which Fooloso4 often refers to.
A scholar who takes that perspective seriously is John Sallis. He takes exception to how ???? is referred to as "space" in the sense of extension in (as expressed in Gerson's review) and even greater exception to Aristotle equating ???? with "place" (?????):
Thank you for considering the matter.
Edit to add: removed gratuitous remark that might diminish the gratitude.
A careful reader who needs to be read carefully. Not for the casual reader but highly recommended. His "Chorology" was helpful in my attempt to understand the Timaeus. Results of that attempt can be found in the thread Shaken to the Chora
A bit more from that thread on the "bastardly discourse" that Sallis refers to:
Your expansion upon "bastard reasoning" helps put the 'lack of something to compare to' I referred to into context. Whether one agrees or not with Sallis' thesis as a whole, he puts the burden upon others to find an alternative explanation for this expression.
The combining of the "divine craftsman's" role as a producer with that of being the progenitor is another way to frame the problem of origin.
The difference between what is generated by nature and produced artificially in the frame of our experience is said to not be a difference for the cause of our existence. An idea without a readily available image.
Sallis does require work. But in one way, he is economical. He deals with text in a direct fashion, pitting words against other words, something the reader can confirm (or not) for themselves.
Quite different from the coma some academic writing induces.
The role of a divine craftsman plays off this difference. Is what is made by the craftsman by nature or is nature made by the craftsman or is there something eternal, unmade and ungenerated at the source?
The divine craftsman is said to be "poet and father" (28c) Is he a product, something made by a poet? My suspicion is that Timaeus, is the father and poet of this likely story of things made and unmade.
Sallis is economical and direct. This is part of what makes him difficult to read. His work on Plato is one aspect of the larger scope of his work on reason and imagination.
I am reluctant to accept the second paragraph. I recognize the literary parallel played out by Timaeus as a poet talking about poetry. But I also think the wonder, the theomazien, unites Plato and Aristotle, as brothers, in a way that pisses them both off.
I will look at Sallis beyond this discussion. I am not familiar with it.
You are right with regard to the lack of an explanation.
Copying from the Chora thread:
Quoting Paine
Plato probably creates Timaeus, so the divine craftsman would be Plato's creation. Perhaps a creation engendered by wonder. Aristotle says philosophy begins with wonder. If the question of origins cannot be answered definitively, then philosophy is a kind of poetry.
But I won't insist. Perhaps this is just my non-philosophical poetic image of philosophy.
Okay. I see how the language of being shaken has to be heard with the other descriptions.
This just keeps getting more difficult. I used to read it as a fairy tale of sorts.
Yes. I think our inability to make sense of the dialogue reflects our inability to make sense of the world. No doubt Platonists would not agree. [Edit: To them] The idea that the world is not intelligible seems not just wrong but disconcertingly so.
Couldnt classical philosophy ascribe the unintelligibility of the world to the treachery of the senses? It wouldnt have regarded the world as possessing intrinsic intelligibility in the first place, would it?
What is at issue here is something else. @Paine points to the problem in the passage he quotes from the Sophist in the thread on Gerson and Platonism. The question arises:
(243d-e)
The underlying problem of what 'is' is that we cannot give a proper account of what is without giving a proper count. Most encompassing of "any pairs" are motion and rest.
(250c)
Are all things one - the Whole or All
or two - motion and rest
or three - being, motion, and rest
or five - being, motion, rest, same, and different
(254e-255a)
I think the counting here is for the sake of discussing how participation (????????) in forms is supposed to work now that the Stranger has brought the sharp separation between being and becoming into question. This leads to the discussion of "blending" forms which wraps up as:
Quoting ibid. 254b
To no small degree, the issue is a problem of grammar that has to be solved in order to defeat the ways sophists use words and ideas. The different ways of speaking of being (?????) are central to the effort. This essay by Ackrill does an excellent job showing how the difference between "is" as a copula and the "is" as identity is expressed by Plato. Along the way he shows the consistency of the use of terms that does not easily come to the fore through translation.
Quoting Wayfarer
In the context of the Sophist, the question of intrinsic intelligibility is what the battle between the giants is about. The Stranger situates a view of being that does not give the advantage to either side:
Quoting ibid. 247d
Edit to add: removed personal reactions to Cornford.
This is exactly the case. Plato, in his mind/body distinction claims that the body, along with its sensations misleads us, away from the good. The good is the source of intelligibility. So unintelligibility is proper to the world which the senses provides for us. This is Heraclitus' world of becoming, change and movement, where nothing "is". Aristotle goes further, to name a specific principle at the base of unintelligibility, "matter". Matter is placed in the category of "potential" what may or may not be, and this violates the law of excluded middle.
Quoting Paine
I find that Socrates' best attempt at describing "participation" is when he explains how a form is like the day. I believe its in the Parmenides. It does not matter how many different places do or do not participate in "the day", the day is still the day, and participation by all these different places, no matter where they are, or how many there are, does not alter the day in any way.
Ultimately though, I think the theory of participation does not hold up to analysis.
As it regards the current discussion of the Sophist, the statements made in Parmenides are closely linked to the other work:
Quoting Ibid. 131b
it is interesting that Parmenides does not introduce the sail metaphor as a rebuttal of Socrates' statement but as a description of it. The dramatic element of the dialogue presents the possibility of this being a younger Socrates accepting what the older Socrates might not have let ride. One of those things we will never know.
But another element from the older Eleatic connected to the new one is this:
That is the cue for the Stanger in the Sophist to speak of the comingling of forms.
I believe that what Parmenides does with the sail metaphor is convert Socrates' temporal description to a spatial description. By the temporal description, we can say that it is the very same time in many different places, therefore one and the same time, in many different places. The sail, produces a spatial description, where each place has a different part of the sail. So I think that Parmenides really alters the image by switching from a temporal representation to a spatial one.
Yes. So why was this difference not seized upon in the moment?
That's a difficult question, concerning a difficult subject. Space and time were not well understood back then, and still aren't. Notice even today, the common convention is space-time, which considers time to be a dimension of space. Under such conceptions time is not separable from space. It could even be the case the examples were presented by Plato as a way of demonstrating a difference between space and time. Aristotle gave principles to understand space and time separately.
I was thinking of the difference as something Plato, the author, has two of his characters say at a particular moment. It would have been a different work if the argument went elsewhere than it did.
That is a constant question when reading Plato that does not come up in theories presented directly by others.
I think this is something which really needs to be respected when talking about "Platonism". For the most part, Plato, following the Socratic method, worked to expose problems. He offered very little in the way of theories presented as a means of resolution to the exposed problems. So what we have is Plato analyzing the theories of others, and poking holes in them. The reader has a very challenging task of understanding his logic, and why the holes are holes, in order to understand why the theories analyzed are deficient.
This leads to a big difference in interpretation, and a corresponding difference in proposed resolutions which follow, such as the difference between Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism. I believe the true test, for determining the most accurate, or "best" interpretation, is to look for the places where Plato actually presents some direction for resolution of the problems in knowledge, exposed by Socrates.
There is a number of such places, such as in The Republic, and in The Timaeus. The offerings are generally metaphorical, as the pathway to resolution is very unclear to Plato, and metaphor provides a broad route due to an even wider range of possible interpretations. Some examples are the comparison of "the good" to the light of the sun, and the related cave allegory, in The Republic, along with his discussion of "matter" as the recipients of the Forms, in The Timaeus.
I believe That Aristotle demonstrates a better understanding of these principles than the classical Neoplatonists such as Plotinus. He provides a proper representation of "the good", as "that for the sake of which", final cause, and does much work on this subject in The Nicomachean Ethics, and Metaphysics. This principle allows for activity, actuality, within the realm of Ideas and Forms, breaking the interaction problem of idealism. Participation theory renders the Forms as inactive, and cannot explain how Form is an active cause in the generation of individual material beings.
You'll notice in Aristotle's Metaphysics, (much of this being material produced from his school, after his death), how the Aristotelians distance themselves from those other Platonists, whom we call Neoplatonists. The other Platonists adhere more strongly to Pythagorean idealism, not understanding the problems of participation theory, revealed by Plato. They understand "the One" as the first principle, and try to make this consistent with Plato's "the good". Aristotle's Metaphysics shows how "the One" is really just a first Form, and cannot be "the good" itself; "the good" being something beyond the realm of Forms, as cause of the intelligibility of intelligible objects. So we commonly see modern day Neoplatonists representing "the good" of Plato as "the idea of good", or "Form of good", when Plato talks of "the good" itself. And the ancient Neoplatonists, such as Plotinus, claim that "the One" is something which transcends the realm of Forms, as an attempt to make it consistent with "the good". But the Aristotelians show that "the One" cannot be anything other than a first Form, and Aristotle continues onward to address "the good" in its causal relation with the Forms, as distinct from the Forms, like it is described in Plato's Republic.
Do you have a source that touches on how Aristotle's text was produced? Are you suggesting that when "Platonists" are mentioned in Aristotle that others are speaking in his name?
It is likely that when Aristotle uses "Platonists", he is referring to his old pals at the Academy. It is unlikely that they shared all the views of Plotinus, a Neo-Platonists who wrote hundreds of years later in Rome.
While we can guess the first Academicians would have taken issue with Aristotle challenging the separate land of the forms, it is unlikely they would have disagreed with Parmenides who sharply protects the boundary between the divine and the world of becoming that we muck about in:
Quoting Plato, Parmenides, 133e, translated by Horan
This is a far cry from the mono-logos of Plotinus where the divine is a continuity from the highest reality to the lowest. The dialectic descends into the silence of contemplation.
I did some quick Google research for you, and dug up the following. References are at the bottom.
What is called "Metaphysics" is a collection of works, which were taught in a school in Rhodes. This was a separate school from Aristotle's school the Peripatetic school in the Lyceum at Athens. These papers were put together into a single collection, "Metaphysics" some time (a couple centuries I believe) after Aristotle's death by Andronicus of Rhodes. It is not known how much of the material was produced by Aristotle himself, because Andronicus provided no indication of how he authenticated the individual writings he collected together under that title.
Apparently, the writings now known as "Metaphysics" were in the possession of one of Aristotle's students, Eudemus of Rhodes, after Aristotle's death. The writings were unpublished and Eudemus supposedly had the only copy. Eudemus and Theophrastus were two of Aristotle's top students. Aristotle appointed Theophrastus to head his Peripatetic School, and Eudemus went back to Rhodes (supposedly with the only copy of what is now known as the Metaphysics) to open his own school.
You can see why there would be much debate concerning the authenticity of the Metaphysics, as truly Aristotelian writings. Eudemus of Rhodes apparently provided no solid evidence to support his claims that this material he taught was actually authored by Aristotle. It is commonly believed that this material was notes taken by Eudemus, from Aristotle's teaching.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-commentators/supplement.html
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andronicus-of-Rhodes
https://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/event/workshop-in-ancient-philosophy-thursday-week-4-tt21
https://www.philosophie.hu-berlin.de/de/lehrbereiche/antike/mitarbeiter/menn/editors.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudemus_of_Rhodes
https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Eudemus/
Quoting Paine
You'll notice that much of the material which Eudemus of Rhodes taught was derived from notes taken from Aristotle's teachings, and this is probably the case with the Metaphysics. I believe that at the time when Aristotle was teaching, the divisions between different schools of Platonism had not yet been established. Eudemus is well known for his work on mathematics and principles of geometry, and Plato's academy was a school of skepticism. In the metaphysics, where there is a pronounced separation from the other Platonists it has to do with the nature of mathematical and geometrical ideas, forms. Iam not familiar with Eudemus' famous works on mathematics, so I cannot confirm this speculation.
Quoting Paine
This boundary is exactly what is attacked in Aristotle's De Caelo. The eternal circular motions of the heavenly bodies are supposed to support the eternal existence of the divine. But Aristotle demonstrates how anything which moves in a circular motion must be a body composed of matter, and is therefore generated and will be destroyed. This effectively breaks the boundary between the divine (eternal) and the earthly world of becoming.
Quoting Paine
Very true, and this indicates the separation between Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism very well. This passage forms the foundation for Aristotle's hylomorphism. Each individual material thing has a form specific to itself (the law of identity), as well as its matter:
Quoting Plato, Parmenides, 133e, translated by Horan
Thank you for the links.
We have differed in the past on what the consequences of De Caelo are on the divinity of the celestial sphere and I remember you do not accept the account of divinity in Metaphysics book Lamda. So, I will leave all that be.
I am glad we could find common ground on the role of forms in the dialectic.
Do you not agree, that in De Caelo Aristotle begins by agreeing with those who promote it, explaining that eternal circular motion is a valid concept, and a real logical possibility. However, he then proceeds to assert that anything moving in a circular motion must be a material body, and as a material body it must have been generated and will be destroyed. If you agree with these two aspects of De Caelo, you ought to also agree that what Aristotle has done is that even though he has accepted the logic of eternal circular motion as a valid logical possibility, he has dismissed eternal circular motion as 'physically impossible'.
Quoting Paine
Yes, I agree that is an accomplishment. But the significant issue is the direction which Plato points us. And since Plato appears to be pointing in a number of different directions, people can take up a number of different ontological, or metaphysical positions, and claim the position to be Platonic. This we see in the difference between Aristotle and Plotinus for example. Aristotle argues that the first principle, i.e. anything that is eternal, must be something actual. Plotinus assumes the first principle "the One" to be pure potential. Notice above, that the eternal circular motions are for Aristotle, possibilities whose actuality is denied.
To me, the direction taken by the Neoplatonists which gives priority to mathematical objects, in the manner of maintaining Pythagorean idealism, is a dead end. The inquiring in this direction culminates with Plotinus, who meets the brick wall of assuming the first principle "the One" as a pure potential, because then he has no principle of causation to account for the emanation or procession of Forms and beings from the One, in a hierarchical order. The hierarchical order is very good, and well thought out and constructed, but the problem is with the first principle, pure potential provides no source of causation.
Aristotle, on the other hand effectively refutes Pythagorean idealism, and those Platonists who follow that path, by demonstrating that anything eternal must be actual, and showing that mathematical, and geometrical forms, like the one, and the circle, exist only as potential, prior to being discovered by the human mind. Therefore such forms cannot be eternal. Notice that Christian theology, following Aquinas, represents God as pure act.
I don't view the differences as schools of thought as you do. The expression the "One" has a different life in different texts as do so many other ideas and perspectives.
I will leave your statements unchallenged as an expression of your theology.
Have you read how these differences are explained in the Metaphysics, especially Bk3, ch4 and BK13, ch6? The issue I think, is that all of the different ways which "the One" is held to be first principle, are unacceptable.
I started a thread on Plato's metaphysics a few years ago in which I discussed this. From that thread: