The relationship of the statue to the clay

Reply to frank Hmm... Tricky. The role of the potter is more relevant than it appears in the book.

I don't think the statue is really attached to the clay in terms of form and content. Although it is true that Bob went to a potter, a statue can be made of different material, such as marble or gold. Bob expected to receive a form of something, but he received a lump of clay. Bob can easily go to another artist and ask for a marble statue instead. So, no, they are not attached to each other. But what about the artist, so-called the potter? I see a dependent relationship between him and the content but not form. Potters only work with clay, so everything that is put on his hand will be made of it. Then, I think clay is more dependent upon the potter (which is the main cause of the existence of his job) than the statue itself.

Quoting frank

What is this thing that Bob paid for? We could call it form. In the world of art, form goes hand in hand with its brother: content. Form is actual shapes molded into the clay. It's the technique that shows up, the style, whether medieval or modern. The content is something beyond the form: it's the meaning of the statue, which doesn't have to be something that can be put into words, although it could be. In the case of a statue, the content could be the way it makes us feel.

Bob received an Ikea statue - assembly required - but he ordered a fully assembled statue.

Quoting frank

What is this thing that Bob paid for?

Bob received a blob of clay. What he ordered but didn't receive was the work required to turn that clay into a statue as well as the artists skill and vision.

Reply to frank Bob was robbed! Typical. Avant guard artists are prone to passing off indifferent blobs as somehow inspired works of art. Rubbish!

What Bob desired was an artist who understood the meaning of 'statue' (even if it meant a vulgar gnome). Michelangelo didn't send a block of granite to market with the title of "David". He expended his talent and labor to extract an actual, detailed representation of "David" from the block of rock.

The artist who Bob was dealing with also submitted a heap of gravel to the Museum of Modern Art, for which he was praised by idiot savants in the art world.

There are certainly good, great, and very great artists working today, but there are also operators who are flim flam artists passing off crap as art.

Any material can be employed to express an idea, but it takes labor and talent to achieve the expression,

Quoting javi2541997

I don't think the statue is really attached to the clay in terms of form and content. Although it is true that Bob went to a potter, a statue can be made of different material, such as marble or gold.

You're saying Bob paid for the form, not the clay. It sounds like you're saying we can separate the two. As you say, the same form can appear with different materials. But where is the form if it's separate? In a special realm? In people's minds?

Reply to BC :grin:

Quoting T Clark

Bob received a blob of clay. What he ordered but didn't receive was the work required to turn that clay into a statue as well as the artists skill and vision.

So you're saying it's not the form Bob paid for, but labor costs?

Quoting frank

So you're saying it's not the form Bob paid for, but labor costs?

That's not what I wrote.

Quoting frank

What is this thing that Bob paid for? We could call it form. In the world of art, form goes hand in hand with its brother: content. Form is actual shapes molded into the clay.

One reference point that comes to my mind is Aristotle's form (morphe) and substance (hyle). Now there's a complicating factor here, because 'hyle' - derived from the word for timber - has a different meaning to 'substance' as that is used in translations of Aristotle's metaphysics. 'Hyle' refers to the underlying potentiality or material aspect of a particular, while morphe (form) refers to the actualizing structure or organization. Hyle, in this case, is more about potential than about an actual material substance with uniform properties like timber or lumber. It is what is capable of taking on form, a kind of indeterminate potentiality that becomes something specific when combined with morphe.

In Greek philosophy, I think the form would be presumed to be the work of a mind, e.g,. Plato's demiurge in the Timaeus. In Aristotle’s biology there is a kind of proto-concept of self-organization. For Aristotle, natural things have an internal telos or goal-directedness—an internal principle of motion and rest. While Aristotle didn’t propose self-organization in the modern sense, he did argue that living organisms have an inherent purpose and organization that arises from their nature, not from the imposition of an external mind.

I don't think the Greeks shared the conception of self-organisation that is associated with modern biological theory.

So a formless lump of clay would be, in this scheme, merely a potential something, it would have no identity. Bob has paid for a lump of clay, let's hope at the market rate.

However, form and content has a slightly different meaning to form and substance. 'In art and art criticism, form and content are considered distinct aspects of a work of art. The term form refers to the work's composition, techniques and media used, and how the elements of design are implemented. It mainly focuses on the physical aspects of the artwork, such as medium, color, value, space, etc., rather than on what it communicates. Content, on the other hand, refers to a work's subject matter, i.e., its meaning' ~ Wikipedia. Form and content is a more characteristically modern expression, although the lineage of the idea might be traced back to the earlier form and substance. But even in that case, a lump of clay really has no form, and so, no meaningful content, other than as raw material. Again, it looks like Bob has been ripped off.

Quoting Wayfarer

I don't think the Greeks shared the conception of self-organization that is associated with modern biological theory.

Aristotle considered the matter through developing different ideas about seeds. That some bits of material were ready to become something else is in direct opposition to the Pythagorean idea of forms impressing themselves into matter like a seal pressed into wax.

Think it this way. A house requires an architect who designs it. A builder who constructs it using the materials from the supplier.

A pile of building materials is not a house.

Reply to frank He is not saying that apparently but I would. PLUS the level of skill and the cost of materials. I would pay an incompetent potter less or rather not even bother hiring them for their service.

Goods and Services. The potter is providing a service not a good (their knowledge and skill).

People pay for two things:
- The Practical use of an item.
- The Aesthetic quality of the item.

The lump of clay is neither of any practical use in its current form nor of any real aesthetic quality either. It is just raw material with potential use for creating something beautiful and/or useful.

Additional Edit: Why is this a curious question for you? Show us what interests you. There are clearly many different paths that could be explored here.

Quoting frank

You're saying Bob paid for the form, not the clay. It sounds like you're saying we can separate the two

Exactly.

Quoting frank

As you say, the same form can appear with different materials.

Yes, the same statue can be made of marble or even wood. It is all on Bob's taste.

Quoting frank

But where is the form if it's separate? In a special realm? In people's minds?

Good questions. I admit that I didn't think that deeply in the form but only in the content because it seemed (at least to me) that clay was key to the statue, and that's not true. I can only say that form is mind-dependent, and I agree with you. This is why I think the material is not relevant. Bob wanted a statue of his beautiful dog (for example). Does it really matter if it is made of clay or marble?

Quoting I like sushi

Why is this a curious question for you?

This was in John Perry's book about personal identity, as I recall. It's about the relationship between form and matter (matter being defined as something formless.) It's just examining the way we think.

Quoting javi2541997

I can only say that form is mind-dependent, and I agree with you.

So when you look out at the world, are we seeing mind-dependent forms all over the place?

Reply to frank Yes, I think so. Forms and shapes are observed and processed by us. I mean, the sun is not aware that it is a sphere. Our mind just processed the sun in such a shape. I think this is what happens to Bob. He wants a statue, a form that is only in his mind and desire. The potter is not guilty because he only works with clay.

Quoting frank

How are the clay and the statue related?

Through the form.

Reply to frank

In The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger critiques the idea that form and content can be treated separately, as though form were something imposed on a thing, or content were ‘beyond’ form and style.

Quoting Joshs

In The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger critiques the idea that form and content can be treated separately, as though form were something imposed on a thing, or content were ‘beyond’ form and style.

I first encountered Heidegger in a book about the philosophy of beauty. Some secondary source told me that Heidegger thought that we experience form and matter in a relationship of dynamic tension. We broadcast the form outward onto the world, and pull sensations in (as in listening more closely, squinting to see). That broadcasting versus drawing in (which is also yin and yang, btw), is what a thing is. Supposedly he said that the original greek word for subjectivity meant core, as in the unchanging idea of a thing, like the center of a solar system. Cool, huh?

Quoting MoK

Through the form.

:up:

Quoting frank

I think both form and content are missing from the blob Bob received.

You mean that intended, desired or expected form and content are missing. The blob is still a form and generates content for Bob. If it didn't have form or content, as the thing he knows should be otherwise, Bob wouldn't know what he received.

Bob's blob would be more interesting if it were a story entry. Bob watches The Blob after receiving the blob. The unformed blob now terrorizes Bob, makes him feel nauseous because he cannot grasp its form or content. It becomes for Bob a mentally pernicious all consuming entity. Bob must form it himself, must tame the clay, to calm an agitation or cure his ill. The newly fired figure he makes works for a while but serves as memory of its origin. Bob is contaminated by endless spontaneous content of the blob and is driven into madness and ends his life.

Bob's ashes happen to be dispersed into a clay deposit, from which an artist of a future period takes source material.

Quoting frank

How are the clay and the statue related?

The matter is the clay; the general arrangement of the matter is the statue;
The matter contains all forms possible from the substance of the matter; the form necessarily contains no other substance than that of the matter from which it is arranged;
When both are given, without regard to either the constituency of the matter, nor the causality of the arrangement, the relation between them reduces to a modality, the primary schemata of which are change, re: a statue from clay, origination, re: this statue from clay, and necessity, re: this statue from clay.

Under the stated conditions, in which Bob paid for a certain arrangement, given as necessarily contained in the matter, but received back only the matter exhibiting no formed arrangement at all, relegates the relation, not to between the clay that exists and the statue that doesn’t, but to between Bob and the clay, which is still modality and still primarily the schema of change, in this case, the absence of it. The schema of necessity, on the other hand, becomes mere possibility, re: the clay still contains the possibility of arrangement into a statue.

So it is proper that the relation between the clay and the statue, and the relation between Bob and the clay, reduces to time, the only negotiable connection between that which changes and that which does not.

Bet you never saw that one comin’, dija???
(Charlie Chaplin-esque exit, stage right, or…guy gets his Mr. Smartypants ass yanked by giant hook, thrown out the backstage side door)

Quoting LuckyR

A pile of building materials is not a house.

Some pile of building materials is possibly a house somewhere. An unfinished house can be a house. Lots of things that were not designed to be houses are houses, for example, caves, trees, cars, boats, old factories.

Other houses remain uninhabited when too expensive or when used as a financial investment.

Does it matter whether an object is designed by intent?

In an aleatoric process, forms are discovered, not created. Or they're "created" by being discovered and used in new ways.

Quoting Nils Loc

The blob is still a form and generates content for Bob.

Yep. There really isn't any such thing as the Formless. It's just that once you start talking about forms, you have to have something that received the form. It's more about the way we divide up the world. It's something built in to the way we think.

Reply to jkop
I am lucky enough to live in the house I remade for myself. So, both made and found. The 'made' is also a matter of finding in regard to what I could afford. I regret some of those choices but I cannot cohabit the place of the one who made them.

As a worker in the trades, I have diligently attempted to carry out designs and fell short to varying degrees. People still live in those places, living with my work. When I visit extremely designed spaces, I see the shadows of my life in peculiar details another investigator might miss.

I have encountered those who have a different relationship to their work than I have developed. I will not opine upon that. I am pretty sure it is different.

Quoting frank

There really isn't any such thing as the Formless.

Cosmology shows there are enormous amounts of formless matter scattered throughout the Universe. And that's only the matter that can be seen!

Quoting Wayfarer

Cosmology shows there are enormous amounts of formless matter scattered throughout the Universe. And that's only the matter that can be seen!

But we imagine that if we had eyes small enough, we would see particles down there. It's not really formless, is it?

Reply to frank We're able to impose form on it by way of analysis of the chemical composition, spectroscopic analysis, etc. But in another sense, there are vast clouds of interstellar matter that are formless.

Which brings to mind the Pinter analysis - that form is precisely what is brought to bear by cognition so as to navigate the environment.

Quoting jkop

In an aleatoric process, forms are discovered, not created. Or they're "created" by being discovered and used in new ways.

I agree. But it is very difficult to find an example where forms are discovered, not created. Maybe it is just our perception when we use the form we already know in different ways. I think it would be difficult for a potter to mould a triangle or cube if he is not aware of these shapes or forms...

Or could he mould it by chance, as it suggests that link? Hmm... interesting. Time to throw a block of clay in my pot, let's see what destiny is preparing for me this Friday.

Quoting Paine

I am lucky enough to live in the house I remade for myself. So, both made and found. The 'made' is also a matter of finding in regard to what I could afford.

Interesting :up: I've recently built a house for myself too. The ground is remade, but the house is made from scratch. In the design and construction process you both make and find parts and their features relative to a whole.

Like drawing a picture, where there are too many details to draw, too many decisions to make, so you leave some parts blank/unbuilt until the drawn or built parts give you sufficient reason to complete the picture/building.

Quoting javi2541997

But it is very difficult to find an example where forms are discovered, not created.

New forms and properties are discovered now and then. See for example aperiodic tiling.

Can we say that the form is something that can be observed directly through empirical methods as it exists physically. Whereas the content is something that cannot be observed directly through empirical methods.

If this distinction between form and content is true, it can be said that content is something that can be represented through the use of form and form here acts as a tangible matter which has empirical value and, it's existence can be confirmed by others.

Reply to Wayfarer

Quoting Wayfarer

Which brings to mind the Pinter analysis - that form is precisely what is brought to bear by cognition so as to navigate the environment

It’s not just humans who bring form to bear on an environment. This is precisely what all living systems do. And we don’t have to stop there. The non-living world subsists in itself as configurative phenomena. Matter ‘comes to matter’ within intra-actively changing agential configurations.

Quoting Joshs

Matter ‘comes to matter’ within intra-actively changing agential configurations.

What now?

Quoting frank

I think both form and content are missing from the blob Bob received. Can we take a closer look at the relationship between these things?

Ironically, I had just read a book review in Philosophy Now magazine, before I noticed this post. The book author discusses the "neoliberal consumerist worldview", and the reviewer noted : "in postmodern culture the value of art is financial rather than aesthetic". The illustration showed a stainless steel sculpture by Jeff Koons, which sold for $91 million dollars in 2019. What did the buyer get for his financial fortune : a> a tchotchke to put on a shelf for the aesthetic amusement of his friends, or b> a steel object emulating a child's plastic balloon? Is "The Rabbit" merely a material thing (Hyle), or an aesthetic idea (Morph) in the form of a visual joke : steel art emulating plastic plaything?

Aristotle's Hylomorphism*2 has been interpreted in various ways. The Hyle (wood) component is obviously a material object, but the Morph (Form) component is defined philosophically as "immaterial". Yet Materialists may not distinguish between the tangible (stuff) of the Thing and the Idea (meaning) of the Thing. Is the aesthetic value of the Rabbit in the stainless steel, or in the irony of a child's toy on a museum pedestal? Did the buyer pay for the physical Matter or the metaphysical Form? Which is the "content", the steel or the joke? :joke:


*1. A financial investment, or a sight gag (wink, wink)?


2. Hylomorphism is a philosophical doctrine developed by the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, which conceives every physical entity or being as a compound of matter and immaterial form, with the generic form as immanently real within the individual. ___Wikipedia

*3. Steel Manufacturer Pays More Than $100 Million to Reduce Emissions from its Dearborn, Michigan Facility
https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/steel-manufacturer-pays-more-100-million-reduce-emissions-its-dearborn-michigan


PS___
a> Does the stainless steel Rabbit have more or less Content (material or financial or aesthetic value) than the plastic inflatable Rabbit?
b> The language on such topics gets confusing. Is the steel mill (*3) paying for negative Material (hyle ; pollution) and positive Content (form ; ethics ; purity ; public image ; legal status )?

Reply to Gnomon
I love most of Koons' stuff. But yea, investment is like accounting: it's a bizarre other world. S&P500 futures make about as much sense as a giant balloon dog.

Reply to jkop

If this was an exercise in all of the possible definitions of "house", then yes. But in exploring the agreements between the homeowner and the contrators, no.

Reply to LuckyR

Ok, but my point is not that 'house' can have many definitions, but that the form of a house is insignificant for its definition.

A homeowner and a contractor can agree to build a house in the form of a pile of building materials as long as it can be used according to the building regulations (e.g. provide shelter, possibilities for cooking, toilet, shower etc).

There is no form shared by all houses. Instead, there are some functions shared by all houses.

Reply to Wayfarer

We're able to impose form on it by way of analysis of the chemical composition, spectroscopic analysis, etc. But in another sense, there are vast clouds of interstellar matter that are formless.

Which brings to mind the Pinter analysis - that form is precisely what is brought to bear by cognition so as to navigate the environment.

If the mind is imposing a form on "clouds of interstellar matter," that lack it, why does it impose one form over any other? Why would this imposed form be helpful if it doesn't have to do with something that exists in the "cloud of matter?" And then what causes this imposition of form?

For my part, it seems like the causes must be traced, at least in part, to the things, in which case things can be said to poses form.

Reply to frank

But we imagine that if we had eyes small enough, we would see particles down there. It's not really formless, is it?

I suppose it depends on how we use the term "form." In Artistotle, and the classical metaphysical tradition more generally, the form is responsible for all of a thing's "whatness," quiddity. Without eidos, form, there is nothing to say about a thing. And there is a strong phenomenological thread ancient and medieval thought, so this would also amount to saying that formless matter cannot be experienced as anything (cannot be a noema in Husserl's terminology, a target of intentionally.) Prime matter, matter without form is only known as speculative abstraction.

St. Gregory of Nyssa takes this up in "On the Making of Man." Apparently, a common argument at the time was to say that matter must be coeternal with God (a view based on the Timaeus) because God, as pure act, would lack the properties of matter (which must come from somewhere). But as St. Gregory points out, having removed all form, all whatness, from matter, one is left with nothing, no attributes at all—so there is nothing to "lack" in a "lack of potency." (This is also how Aristotle's Prime Mover(s) or Plotinus' One cannot be said to suffer from any privation through being pure act).

So all observed matter would have some form, but not all things would be beings (i.e., having a telos, an internally organizing principle). Clay, rocks, etc. are just bundles of external causes. Statues, being artifacts, have their forms determined by the minds of men.

Now, if form is rather something created by/imposed by the mind, it almost seems to counterintuitively dislodge the phenomenological side of the understanding of eidos, since now the whatness of things is no longer essential to what they are but is rather something produced in one corner of the world, for some perceiving subject.

Reply to Joshs

The non-living world subsists in itself as configurative phenomena. [/Quote]

What does this mean? Are there non-configurative phenomena as a constant?

[Quote]
Matter ‘comes to matter’ within intra-actively changing agential configurations.

"Agent" as the term is used in chemistry, e.g anything affecting change, or "agent" as the term is often used in the social sciences, as an entity that makes intentional decisions/choices?

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

If the mind is imposing a form on "clouds of interstellar matter," that lack it, why does it impose one form over any other?

Because 'cloud' is a familar cognitive trope. But do clouds possess form at all? I think in the strict sense that it is questionable. They fall under this description:

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Clay, rocks, etc. are just bundles of external causes.

(That question is anticipated in the Parmenides, when Socrates asks if there are forms for hair, dirt and mud.)

In any case, the fact that forms are artefacts of the cognitive system, does not undermine their objective (or would that be transjective) reality. It doesn't say that they're solely the product of the mind, but that they arise in the relationship between observer and observed. Biological phenomenology such as enactivism sees such cognitive artifacts as co-arising as a consequence of the interaction between organism and environment. For the pre-moderns, obviously forms could have 'eternal reality in the mind of God' but that is generally not an option for modern philosophy, but we could plausibly say that the idea of forms arose from an intuitive grasp of this co-dependency.

Quoting Wayfarer

(That question is anticipated in the Parmenides, when Socrates asks if there are forms for hair, dirt and mud.)

This is an issue where Aristotle's argument about the inseparability of form and matter comes into play. The call for a comprehensive causality means not being able to choose who shows up for the party.

Reply to Paine Ah, ok. Makes sense!

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

St. Gregory of Nyssa takes this up in "On the Making of Man." Apparently, a common argument at the time was to say that matter must be coeternal with God (a view based on the Timaeus) because God, as pure act, would lack the properties of matter (which must come from somewhere). But as St. Gregory points out, having removed all form, all whatness, from matter, one is left with nothing, no attributes at all—so there is nothing to "lack" in a "lack of potency." (This is also how Aristotle's Prime Mover(s) or Plotinus' One cannot be said to suffer from any privation through being pure act).

That's interesting. One of the books I read about Plotinus suggested that he was an eliminative idealist (like a reflection of an eliminative materialist). Though we talk about the privation of the good (or mind), it's not really an independent thing. It's also part of the One, though apparently the part where Plotinus explains this is squirrelly.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Now, if form is rather something created by/imposed by the mind, it almost seems to counterintuitively dislodge the phenomenological side of the understanding of eidos, since now the whatness of things is no longer essential to what they are but is rather something produced in one corner of the world, for some perceiving subject.

I suppose that goes well with panpsychism. I've leaned pretty far into the skepticism about metaphysics these days. Don't have much to say about it, but I could go on and on forever about the dramas that Form and Formlessness play out in the psyche. Cool stuff.

Quoting frank

It's also part of the One, though apparently the part where Plotinus explains this is squirrelly.

Does this source quote from a specific text from Plotinus?

Reply to Count Timothy von Icarus Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

?Joshs

The non-living world subsists in itself as configurative phenomena.

What does this mean? Are there non-configurative phenomena as a constant?

Matter ‘comes to matter’ within intra-actively changing agential configurations.

"Agent" as the term is used in chemistry, e.g anything affecting change, or "agent" as the term is often used in the social sciences, as an entity that makes intentional decisions/choices?

There are no non-configurative phenomena. All events take place within some larger pattern of relations. Agency here does not refer to an entity, but to the organizational capacities of reciprocally affecting relational processes.

Reply to Wayfarer

Quoting Wayfarer

If the mind is imposing a form on "clouds of interstellar matter," that lack it, why does it impose one form over any other?
— Count Timothy von Icarus

Because 'cloud' is a familar cognitive trope. But do clouds possess form at all? I think in the strict sense that it is questionable. They fall under this description:

Clay, rocks, etc. are just bundles of external causes.
— Count Timothy von Icarus

And the concept of external cause is not itself a form (Wittgenstein would say form of life)? What is it we are doing when we split an observer off from an observed, and then go on to declare the observed as lacking any form in itself?

Quoting Wayfarer

In any case, the fact that forms are artefacts of the cognitive system, does not undermine their objective (or would that be transjective) reality. It doesn't say that they're solely the product of the mind, but that they arise in the relationship between observer and observed

If forms arise in the relationship between observer and observed, isn’t this also true of what supposedly lies outside of the experience of the observer? This gets to the issue of the basis of the reality-appearance distinction questioned by writers like Wittgenstein (seeing something as something) and Nietzsche.

Quoting Joshs

What is it we are doing when we split an observer off from an observed, and then go on to declare the observed as lacking any form in itself?

I don't think I suggested that. I am suggesting that the notion of 'formless matter' is meaningful. From the perspective of classical philosophy, 'formless matter' refers to matter that lacks a specific form or structure, awaiting the imposition of form to become a particular. In this sense, formless matter is a potentiality that can take on various forms through natural processes or external causes. From that perspective, clouds of interstellar gas could be considered formless matter in a metaphysical sense, as they are raw material that, under the right conditions (e.g., gravitational forces, fusion processes), can form stars, planets, or other celestial bodies. For that perspective, 'form' (morphe) refers not just to shape but to the organizing principle that gives a substance its identity.

As @frank points out, from a scientific perspective, interstellar gas and dust are not really formless, as they are subject to physical laws and composed of atoms which have regular structures. They are subject to processes of condensation, fusion, and gravitational collapse, enabling the formation of structures like stars or planets. In this sense, the term "formless" would not strictly apply, since even gas clouds have properties (mass, temperature, charge) and follow patterns like the formation of stars in nebulae. However, they could be seen as chaotic or unstructured compared to highly organized systems such as life-bearing planets and human artefacts.

Quoting Joshs

If forms arise in the relationship between observer and observed, isn’t this also true of what supposedly lies outside of the experience of the observer?

What do we suppose does lie outside all experience? Can that even be meaningfully discussed?

What I'm wrestling with are two senses of 'form'. There's the Aristotelian sense of morphe which informs matter. That is the classical view, which to all intents became absorbed into Christian theism. As such it's a kind of no-go for a lot of people, if it suggests anything like intelligent design or the 'divine intellect'.

Then there's the enactivist approach, which considers form as both an emergent principle, on the one hand, and also a cognitive function, where forms serve as gestalts, the unitary wholes which enable the mind to recognise particulars [s]as part of a species[/s].

As far as forms being emergent principles, there is still some resonance of the Aristotelian morphe in that, as it is preserved in the current lexicon as morphology and its derivatives. Both Terrence Deacon and Alice Juarrero acknowledge a revised Aristotelian element in their books.

As far as the 'observer and observed' are concerned, that's a whole other topic. I've started trying to draft an essay on it but it is wide and deep.

Reply to Wayfarer
Maybe form and formlessness are dependent on one another for meaning. It's one concept.

Reply to frank Yes. That’s a rather Taoist way of looking at it.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

(This is also how Aristotle's Prime Mover(s) or Plotinus' One cannot be said to suffer from any privation through being pure act).

But Plotinus' "One" is pure potency rather than pure act. This is the principal metaphysical difference between Aristotelianism and Neo-Platonism.

Quoting Paine

This is an issue where Aristotle's argument about the inseparability of form and matter comes into play.

This claimed "inseparability" needs to be qualified as unidirectional. Matter cannot be separated from form, to produce "prime matter", but form is separable from matter. In principle this is how sensing, and abstraction is explained. The human mind receives the form of the object without the matter.

This understanding of abstraction created a problem for the ancients (exposed by Plato and Aristotle), because the form in the mind (the abstraction) is not precisely the same as the form in the material object. Aristotle explained this difference with the concept of "accidents", the form which the material object has is complete with accidents, while the abstracted form consists only of the essence of the object. The problem, well demonstrated by Plato in The Timaeus, is that if the form which comes to be in the human mind is an abstraction, an essence, it is categorized as a universal, yet the individual material object has a "form" which is particular to itself, complete with the accidentals which makes it a unique thing. Now, the question was, how does an object come to have a unique form, when "forms" as they are known to the human mind, are universals. So Plato grappled with the question of how universals produce particulars.

The solution presented by Aristotle, with reference to a further premise, the law of identity, is that the form of a material object must preexist the object's material existence. So in BK 7 of Metaphysics Aristotle discusses how an artist gives matter the particular form which it has, in the case of a work of art, by putting the form into the matter. He then proceeds to explain why natural objects must be generated in a similar way, the form preexists the material object, and is put into the matter.

This principle validates the separation of form from matter, in the sense that pure form is prior in time to matter. That is the principle which Aquinas and other Christian theologians exploit, claiming God to be pure Form, pure act, and Creator of matter. This representation is derived from Aristotle's so-called cosmological argument, which shows that since it is necessary that the form of an object preexists its material presence, there must be a form which preexists all material presence. Then we must conclude that matter comes into existence from this primordial Act, and must always have form, making matter inseparable from form.

Reply to Wayfarer

Because 'cloud' is a familar cognitive trope. But do clouds possess form at all?

In the older sense of eidos, yes. Clouds are intelligible and sensible. If they lacked form they couldn't be experienced as clouds.

(That question is anticipated in the Parmenides, when Socrates asks if there are forms for hair, dirt and mud.)

Yes, it's a problem crying out for clarification. Aristotle has the distinction between "things that exist by, [i.e. according to their], nature"—beings which possess a telos—and things that exist "from causes." But I don't think Aristotle's distinction gets at the full scope of the problem here. Plato's forms, at least if taken in terms of some "two worlds Platonism," where forms exist subsitently and not in relation with one another, is also problematic because things are not wholly intelligible in isolation, e.g. "redness" as set off from "color" and all the other colors. For example, you can't really explain what a "tree" is without reference to the air, the sun, the soil, water, etc. Forms are not intelligible in isolation.

Aristotle doesn't do much with this second problem but it is addressed in later thinkers, St. Maximus the Confessor being a prime example of an advanced synthesis that is able to distinguish between the unity that contains all ideas/forms (the Logos) and their dynamic instantiation in the created world. Hence, even "number," "hardness," etc. are dynamic in precisely that they only exist instantiated in created things, but exist according to their "logoi," which is ideas "at work" in the world. The idea of species as all being differentiated expressions of a unifying genus progressing towards the unity/whole and goal of the genus would then be a further working out of this idea.

For the pre-moderns, obviously forms could have 'eternal reality in the mind of God' but that is generally not an option for modern philosophy, but we could plausibly say that the idea of forms arose from an intuitive grasp of this co-dependency.

It's not an option for good reasons or out of bias? "Thou shalt not explain ideas in terms of the transcedent or absolute," yet one can apparently offer up explanations of anything, and indeed everything, that bottom out in brute facts, "it just is," and "for no reason at all." And things even seem to be allowed to bottom out as brute facts isolated in the sui generis powers of finite minds, such that the mind "just is," the source of all sorts of things in the world, including Goodness, Truth, and Beauty.

IDK, this strikes me not so much as contemporary philosophy being opposed to positing God as part of an explanation as contemporary philosophy wanting to make man [i]take the place of God[/I]. (But of course, a voluntarist God, whose freedom is defined in terms of power and potency.)

In any case, the fact that forms are artefacts of the cognitive system, does not undermine their objective (or would that be transjective) reality. It doesn't say that they're solely the product of the mind, but that they arise in the relationship between observer and observed. Biological phenomenology such as enactivism sees such cognitive artifacts as co-arising as a consequence of the interaction between organism and environment.

I don't see how enactivism would require that forms are "artefacts of the cognitive system." This sounds like something leaning more towards representationalism, forms as "constructed intelligible likenesses," that must be created "in the mind" to be experienced. But of course, if things are already likenesses of themselves and if we're talking about an enactivist perspective, there is no need for having there be secondary likenesses "constructed for the mind." E.g., the idea of the cognitive/sensory system as a lens we "look through," as opposed to producing images we "look at."

Perception arises in the relationship between observer and observed. It seems another step to say that form would arise from this interaction, since it would imply that the world is unintelligible and without causes before the human mind steps to the plate and declares "let there be light! Or form, or anything at all." And of course, we can never get behind this act of the mind to explain it in terms of causes, for all causes and intelligibility start with the mind.

Like I said, this strikes me as not that different from approaches that invoke the divine, except man is fills the role of God.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

But Plotinus' "One" is pure potency rather than pure act. This is the principal metaphysical difference between Aristotelianism and Neo-Platonism.

Correct, stoic-inspired omnipotence. But the One wouldn't have a strictly Aristotlean potency, since this would entail mutability, change, and parts. I probably should have phrased that better; point being lack of mutability is not a privation.

Or maybe we would say "beyond act and potency," (as all discursive reason) but we can apophaticaly negate "mutable" of the One. Luckily, in English we have "power" and "potency" to (sort of) distinguish what Eriugena terms "nothing through excellence," (pure, immutable power beyond any defining actuality) and the nothing of prime matter (a "nothing on account of privation"). Or at least, translators seem to use "power" more for Plotinus, which I think works better.

Reply to Wayfarer

Quoting Wayfarer

I am suggesting that the notion of 'formless matter' is meaningful…

clouds of interstellar gas could be considered formless matter in a metaphysical sense, as they are raw material that, under the right conditions (e.g., gravitational forces, fusion processes), can form stars, planets, or other celestial bodies. For that perspective, 'form' (morphe) refers not just to shape but to the organizing principle that gives a substance its identity…

…from a scientific perspective, interstellar gas and dust are not really formless, as they are subject to physical laws and composed of atoms which have regular structures. They are subject to processes of condensation, fusion, and gravitational collapse, enabling the formation of structures like stars or planets. In this sense, the term "formless" would not strictly apply, since even gas clouds have properties (mass, temperature, charge) and follow patterns like the formation of stars in nebulae. However, they could be seen as chaotic or unstructured compared to highly organized systems such as life-bearing planets and human artefacts.

It is possible to make distinctions between different kinds of formative agencies without needing to derive formative agency from formless matter, or separating the two into different conceptual realms (mind vs world , or mind-body vs world). Instead of placing the inorganic under the category of efficient cause and the organic under the category of complex dynamical systems, and then trying to make the latter’s forming agency ‘ emerge’ from the former, formative agency can be accorded to the inorganic as well as the organic. We simply have to move way from the concept of ‘unstructured’, ‘chaotic’ efficient cause with regard to the physical.

I should add that what you’re identifying as formative
capability in humans is not a passive picture of the world created by an observer, but a performative activity, a set of practices involving mind, body and environment in a dance of interaffection. Form is not our stance toward the world but a pattern of material interactions with it, in the midst of it.

Quoting frank

How are the clay and the statue related?

By minds.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Luckily, in English we have "power" and "potency" to (sort of) distinguish what Eriugena terms "nothing through excellence," (pure, immutable power beyond any defining actuality) and the nothing of prime matter (a "nothing on account of privation"). Or at least, translators seem to use "power" more for Plotinus, which I think works better.

The idea of pure immutable power, is what Aristotle took issue with. Such a power would not have the capacity to actualize anything. If absolutely anything is possible, then there is nothing actual to cause anything, and the situation will always remain the same, as absolutely anything is possible. That is why Aristotle assumed an actuality which is prior to all potential, and the logical need to assume this actuality negates the possibility of pure immutable power. The prior actuality is the cause which accounts for the reality of this particular existence, which consists of limited possibility, rather than an endless existence of infinite possibility, or power.

Plotinus sort of grasped this problem and tried to deal with it by portraying the pure power, the One, as something other than a cause. So the reality which we know emanates from the One, rather than being caused by the One. But this description fails in the capacity to explain how any particular thing could come into being from a pure potency, or power. We need something to account for this existence rather than some other existence, a choice, and this is an actuality such as a will.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

IDK, this strikes me not so much as contemporary philosophy being opposed to positing God as part of an explanation as contemporary philosophy wanting to make man take the place of God.

And I’d concur. ‘Anything but God’. That was part of the firewall built by the Enlightenment. It’s more than just a bias, although it’s also that.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't see how enactivism would require that forms are "artefacts of the cognitive system."

Caution required here. I’m not tying to provide a psychological explanation. It's more aligned with Charles Pinter's book Mind and the Cosmic Order:

Everything you see, hear and think comes to you in structured wholes: When you read, you’re seeing a whole page even when you focus on one word or sentence. When someone speaks, you hear whole words and phrases, not individual bursts of sound. When you listen to music, you hear an ongoing melody, not just the note that is currently being played. Ongoing events enter your awareness as Gestalts, for the Gestalt is the natural unit of mental life. If you try to concentrate on a dot on this page, you will notice that you cannot help but see the context at the same time. Vision would be meaningless, and have no biological function, if people and animals saw anything less than integral scenes.

Note, people and animals. As Joshs says, forms that are co-emergent in the relationship with the environment.

Quoting Joshs

Instead of placing the inorganic under the category of efficient cause and the organic under the category of complex dynamical systems, and then trying to make the latter’s forming agency ‘ emerge’ from the former, formative agency can be accorded to the inorganic as well as the organic.

It only begins to meaningfully show up in the form of living beings. Otherwise, whether it was 'there' or not, there'd be nobody to debate it!

Quoting Joshs

I should add that what you’re identifying as formative capability in humans is not a passive picture of the world created by an observer, but a performative activity, a set of practices involving mind, body and environment in a dance of interaffection. Form is not our stance toward the world but a pattern of material interactions with it, in the midst of it.

Quite. From another discussion:

Quoting Wayfarer

The 'transjective' refers to the dynamic, participatory relationship between the subject and the world, in which meaning arises through interaction rather than being either imposed by the subject ('in the mind') or existing outside ('in the world'). Vervaeke argues that the objective/subjective distinction presents a false dilemma because it overlooks how humans are always embedded in a web of relationships and processes within which meaning arises. The 'transjective' thus highlights the co-emergence of perception and reality, suggesting that meaning is neither purely personal nor purely external but is co-constituted through engagement with the world. And that applies to meaning in all the different senses of that word, from the utilitarian to the aesthetic, which arise along a continuum, from a spider spinning a web to a poet spinning a sonnet.

However I would question that these can be seen only in terms of 'material interactions', unless you want to advocate panpsychism.

Reply to creativesoul By whose minds? The clay is strictly related to the statue if it is necessary to be made by the potter. But this is not necessary. Bob can go to another artist, and ask for a marble statue instead. I thought along this thread that the clay is only in the potter's mind.

Reply to creativesoul

Agreed, in principle. With the (entirely personal) caveat that any comprehensible notion of mind, as such, is necessarily conditioned by time, reflected in all the relations a mind constructs, including between matter and form in general, clay and statue as instances thereof.

Quoting frank

Maybe form and formlessness are dependent on one another for meaning. It's one concept.

Yes. In Mind and the Cosmic Order, Charles Pinter seems to be making the point that Reply to Wayfarer is suggesting : that common sense equates the Material Object with its Meaning. "This is quite an amazing insight, and it demonstrates how far our native intuition can diverge from reality. We are convinced beyond a shadow of doubt that every material object has substance and form. That is, an object's form inheres in the object itself, and is an aspect of the matter of which the object is made. Once again, we are misled by common sense. Actually, an object's form is an aspect of the object as an undivided whole, viewed from outside the object." Pinter also summarizes : "Form does not inhere in brute matter but emerges in Gestalt observation".

A Gestalt (holistic) observation sees not just the superficial object, but its internal structure and its interdependent context (the big picture). But Common sense --- e.g. Flat Earth and Materialism --- sees the obvious, but is blind to the implicit meaning or significance or value. On the other hand, a holistic perspective (philosophical sense?) sees the logical structure within the superficial substance, and its conceptual context. If so, then as Wayfarer implies, the isolated object, apart from its interrelationships, is Formless. However, a Gestalt view will observe both formless shape and enformed meaning. :smile:

Note : The modern definitions of Substance and Form are influenced by post-enlightenment reductive Materialism. Their ancient philosophical meanings were more holistic.

Reply to Gnomon
makes sense :up:

Quoting Wayfarer

What I'm wrestling with are two senses of 'form'. There's the Aristotelian sense of morphe which informs matter. That is the classical view, which to all intents became absorbed into Christian theism. As such it's a kind of no-go for a lot of people, if it suggests anything like intelligent design or the 'divine intellect'.

For Aristotle, moving away from the idea of 'participating' in forms involves the particular individual coming into being as an event of ousia that the universal or genos cannot provide a sufficient explanation for. The issue is at the center of the disruptive quality of Metaphysics Zeta 13. Here is an SEP article that puts it in a nutshell:

Quoting SEP Aristotle's Metaphysics

?.13 therefore produces a fundamental tension in Aristotle’s metaphysics that has fragmented his interpreters. Some maintain that Aristotle’s theory is ultimately inconsistent, on the grounds that it is committed to all three of the following propositions:

(i) Substance is form.
(ii) Form is universal.
(iii) No universal is a substance.

The authors of the article make some reasonable arguments to resolve the issue. I tend to look at it as an ongoing issue of how to understand the role of all the causes needed for particular creatures to come into being. Since the forms don't have their own real estate outside the convergence of causes, a new concept of the soul is needed.

There is a parallel consideration taking place in Plato's Sophist, where the sharp division between Being and Becoming is brought into question. It is interesting that Aristotle's Physics (nature) spends so much time and effort into pressing a thumb into the eye of the Eleatics.

The different role of matter in Plato and Aristotle is difficult to fully draw out but the expression "morphe which informs matter" is a product of later Platonism where matter is the empty husk that Soul attempts but fails to completely fill. Aristotle rejects that view in De Anima when he dispenses with the Pythagoreans' concept of soul.

Reply to Wayfarer

From your post I see a triad of three things: substance - a raw material with the potential to take on form (I note that a raw material has an innate inclination towards taking on a form that expresses its nature: this is Aritsotle’s recognition of chemistry: the innate form of gold differs from the innate form of lead); a form that expresses an organizing principle imparting a specificity of shape and function to a substance (an iron hammer); content - an implicit narrative about the natural world received by a comprehending mind (the Madonna with child statue conveys the role of women as nurturers and protectors of children).

Form and content are distinct from substance because they are closer in proximity to mind.

Reply to ucarr Fair, although note the ambiguity in the use of the term 'substance' in these conversations. In normal speech 'substance' is 'a material with uniform properties' (e.g. bronze, timber), whereas in philosophy 'substance' is 'a bearer of attributes', used to translate the Greek 'ouisia' which is nearer in meaning to the english 'being'.

Reply to Paine Many thanks

Apologies, but I haven't read much of tthis thread.
Quoting frank

How are the clay and the statue related?

Simply, like footprints in sand on a beach, "the statue" (pattern) is a secondary quality and "the clay" (material) is a primary quality; thus, unlike the latter, the former is not physically conserved.

Reply to 180 Proof
It seems that Bob paid for the statue rather than the clay, though. Did Bob pay for something that isn't physical?

Reply to frank Bob paid for the sculptor's work.

Reply to Paine
Quoting SEP Aristotle's Metaphysics

?.13 therefore produces a fundamental tension in Aristotle’s metaphysics that has fragmented his interpreters. Some maintain that Aristotle’s theory is ultimately inconsistent, on the grounds that it is committed to all three of the following propositions:

(i) Substance is form.
(ii) Form is universal.
(iii) No universal is a substance.

I find that the way to resolve this apparent problem is to understand that in Aristotle there is two distinct senses of "form", just like there is "substance" in the primary sense and in the secondary sense. Notice, if substance is form, and there are two distinct senses of "substance" then there must be two distinct senses of form to correspond. This is what allows for two distinct types of actuality, and what makes Aristotle the dualist who resolved the interaction problem, following Plato's revelations concerning the deficiencies of "participation" theory.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover
So, is that to say my version of the story is an error?

Reply to Paine
No, I don't think your version is in error, more like incomplete. So I'll address specifically some aspects of your post with suggestions as to how I think it can be filled out better.

Quoting Paine

The authors of the article make some reasonable arguments to resolve the issue. I tend to look at it as an ongoing issue of how to understand the role of all the causes needed for particular creatures to come into being. Since the forms don't have their own real estate outside the convergence of causes, a new concept of the soul is needed.

The "new concept of the soul" is the one Aristotle proposes as a form which is the first actuality of a living body. The powers of a living being were understood as potencies, and this would lend itself to the idea of the soul as a power, or potency. But Aristotle showed that since the potencies of the living body are not always active, there is a need to assume an actuality which activates them when they become active. This is the soul, instead of a potency, it is an actuality.

Further study of his metaphysics reveals that this form, or actuality, "soul", must be prior to the body, as the cause of it being the particular body which it is, and not something else. By the law of identity, a thing must be what it is. However, it being what it is, is still contingent on a cause, and this is the prior form. In the case of a living body, it's the soul. Simply put, potencies are possibilities, and something must select (acting as cause) which possibilities will become actual (making the body, the body which it is rather than something else). This cannot be random chance, because the body is an organized body, so the cause is that form, (actuality), which is prior to the body.

Quoting Paine

There is a parallel consideration taking place in Plato's Sophist, where the sharp division between Being and Becoming is brought into question. It is interesting that Aristotle's Physics (nature) spends so much time and effort into pressing a thumb into the eye of the Eleatics.

The Greeks were principally scientists, focused on becoming, while the Eleatics were more like philosophers, considering the nature of being. The incompatibility between being and becoming is strongly discussed in Plato's Theatetus, I believe. In my interpretation of The Sophist, the Eleatics are treated as sophists by Plato. But Plato is very careful to explain that it is a fine line, even an undistinguishable line, between a sophist and a philosopher. That seems to be a main point in the dialogue, to determine how to distinguish a sophist from a philosopher or vise versa. So Socrates claims high respect for the Eleatics, but also demonstrates that their philosophy is sophistry.

I think It's pretty clear that Aristotle treats the Eleatics as sophists, especially Zeno. At one point he explains how sophists, by adhering rigidly to the law of excluded middle, in cases of becoming, can prove absurdities. This is why there is a need for the concept of "potential" which violates the law of excluded middle (as what may or may not be), to account for the reality of becoming.

That being and becoming are incompatible is demonstrated by Aristotle in the following way. Suppose there is a change form state-of-being A to state-of-being B, between these two is a case of becoming. If we posit a further state-of-being, C, as the intermediary between A and B, to account for A becoming B, then we have a succession of the following states-of-being, A, C, and B. But now there is a case of becoming between A and C, and also between C and B. Therefore we would need to posit further states of being here, and this becomes and infinite regress of states-of-being without ever accounting for the reality of change, or "becoming", which is supposed to happen between two distinct states-of-being.

It's very similar to the question of real numbers, and the number line. The real number is a point, and there is assumed to be a line between two points. There is always more points, (real numbers), to an infinite regress, and we never account for what the line is, which supposedly exists between points.

The reason why Aristotle is so dismissive of the Eleatics ought to be evident. Zeno for instance, describes motion and change with states-of-being (the arrow is at point A at t1, and point B at t2 for example), and then proceeds from those premises to demonstrate that motion, is impossible. That's Zeno's mode of argumentation, to proceed from assumed states-of-being to show that things like motion and becoming are impossible.

The problem is that there is something very intuitive about states-of-being, so we cannot simply dismiss the concept as unreal. That's why dualism becomes necessary, to account for the reality of both. Then, from dualist premises, becoming and change, being supported by empirical evidence, (sense observation), is subject to skepticism. So we go around, and the inquiry is never ending.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover
I disagree with your depiction of the Eleatics as sophists. Plato wrote the Sophist having a student of Parmenides overturning a critical tenet of his teacher. Aristotle (almost reluctantly) confirms Plato's descriptions of sophistry as a way to "say what is not." Pretty darn Parmenidean.

What strikes me about Aristotle's Physics is how his rejection of the Eleatics makes no reference to Plato's objections to them in the Sophist (or Plato's Parmenides). That makes it likely there is some portion of the work he likes well enough to make his own.

Your version of 'being' and 'becoming' gives a place for "potential" to hang out in between times of actuality. That does not fit well with Aristotle speaking of potential as something we can only apply by analogy. We need experience to use the idea. In a parallel fashion, I read the tension created in Metaphysics Zeta 13 to point to the complexity of causes beyond being able to recognize "kinds" (genos).

Quoting Paine

I disagree with your depiction of the Eleatics as sophists. Plato wrote the Sophist having a student of Parmenides overturning a critical tenet of his teacher. Aristotle (almost reluctantly) confirms Plato's descriptions of sophistry as a way to "say what is not." Pretty darn Parmenidean.

I don't understand what you are saying here. Parmenides is Eleatic. And then you say "Pretty darn Parmenidean", as if you are confirming that Parmenides was sophistic.

Anyway, I agree that we ought not classify the Eleatics altogether as sophists, nor do I think Plato or Socrates was doing such. That's why there was such a long discussion about how exactly to identify the sophist, so that we might separate the sophist from the philosopher, by reference to the individual, not to the type. Within the Eleatics, Zeno stands out as sophistic, using logic to prove things like motion is impossible.


Quoting Paine

Your version of 'being' and 'becoming' gives a place for "potential" to hang out in between times of actuality. That does not fit well with Aristotle speaking of potential as something we can only apply by analogy. We need experience to use the idea. In a parallel fashion, I read the tension created in Metaphysics Zeta 13 to point to the complexity of causes beyond being able to recognize "kinds" (genos).

There is much said about "potential", and "potency" in Aristotle's Metaphysics, especially Bk.9, and most is not said by analogy. So I do not know where you get that idea from. It is a concept which is developed by use, and he uses it in relation to actual. So "potential" is a word which derives its meaning in relation to the meaning of actual. Since "actual" has two distinct senses, just like "form" and "substance" each have two distinct senses, this allows potential to be the concept which relates these two. This is how "matter" provides the relation between "form" as universal, and "form" as particular, which is also the difference between "primary substance" as the individual, and "secondary substance" as the species. Matter partakes of one, but not the other.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I don't understand what you are saying here. Parmenides is Eleatic. And then you say "Pretty darn Parmenidean", as if you are confirming that Parmenides was sophistic.

I was referring to Aristotle's comments in Sophistical Refutations. The formulation of Plato in that case references statements influenced by Parmenides' language. Aristotle charges the Eleatics of being 'eristic' more often than Plato does. It does not always mean something is 'sophistical.' I think it is safe to say that Aristotle does not hold Parmenides in the same high esteem expressed by Socrates in Theaetetus.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

There is much said about "potential", and "potency" in Aristotle's Metaphysics, especially Bk.9, and most is not said by analogy.

Aristotle, Metaphysic, Theta 6, 1048a34, translated by CDC Reeve:What we wish to say is clear from the particular cases by induction, |1048a35| and we must not look for a definition of everything, but be able to comprehend the analogy, namely, that as what is building is in relation to what is capable of building, and what is awake is in relation to what is asleep, |1048b1| and what is seeing is in relation to what has its eyes closed but has sight, and what has been shaped out of the matter is in relation to the matter, and what has been finished off is to the unfinished. Of the difference exemplified in this analogy let the activity be marked off by the first part, the potentiality by the second. |1048b5| But things are said to actively be, not all in the same way, but by analogy—as this is in this or to this, so that is in that or to that. For some are as movement in relation to a capacity [or a potential], and the others as substance to some sort of matter.

There is more in Book Lamda drawing the same distinction, but I remember that you have excluded that from your canon.

Quoting frank

Maybe form and formlessness are dependent on one another for meaning. It's one concept.
4 days ago
Wayfarer
22k
?frank Yes. That’s a rather Taoist way of looking at it.

Also western.

Quoting Mww

Agreed, in principle. With the (entirely personal) caveat that any comprehensible notion of mind, as such, is necessarily conditioned by time, reflected in all the relations a mind constructs, including between matter and form in general, clay and statue as instances thereof.

:smile:

If the statue is clay, then there is another relationship between them... also related in minds. One of elemental constituency and perhaps also existential dependency.

:wink:

All experience presupposes space and time. On that we are in full agreement. I'm good with calling that intuition...

Quoting Paine

I think it is safe to say that Aristotle does not hold Parmenides in the same high esteem expressed by Socrates in Theaetetus.

I think we have to be very careful in what it means to say that Socrates held so and so in high esteem. Socrates was very respectful of all his interlocuters in Plato's dialogues. That was his mode of inquiry, show great respect for the individual philosopher, and great interest in his philosophy, so that the philosopher would explain and reveal as much as possible. Then after learning the information Socrates would address the weaknesses. So I think that if Socrates held Parmenides in high esteem in Theatetus, this doesn't really mean much relative to the question of whether Plato came to regard Parmenides as a sophist.

Quoting Paine

There is more in Book Lamda drawing the same distinction, but I remember that you have excluded that from your canon.

That looks exactly as I said, we learn what "potential" means through its relations to "actual":

" what is building is in relation to what is capable of building"
"what is awake is in relation to what is asleep"
" what is seeing is in relation to what has its eyes closed but has sight"
"what has been shaped out of the matter is in relation to the matter"
"what has been finished off is to the unfinished"
" some are as movement in relation to a capacity [or a potential]"

Your translation says "analogy", I would prefer "comparison", to describe how Aristotle explains these relations which give meaning to words like "potential", and "actual", because "analogy" has slightly different connotations in modern usage.

Notice also, that your quoted paragraph, is from BK 9 Ch. 6, where he is discussing the word "actuality", after he has already discussed "potential" in the prior chapter. The paragraph states that it is the meaning of "actual", that we learn by analogy, not the meaning of "potential".

It's easy to invert what Aristotle says, to suit one's purpose, because his writing is full of inversions. But in the big picture, to understand him clearly, it's better to adhere strictly to what he says, and not be swayed to create your own inversions. This will help to reveal inconsistencies like those in Book Lambda, which betray inauthenticity.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The paragraph states that it is the meaning of "actual", that we learn by analogy, not the meaning of "potential".

It does not say that. It includes both terms in relation to each other. It goes out of its way to make that clear.

Quoting creativesoul

…..also related in minds. One of elemental constituency and perhaps also existential dependency.

……and I’m good with calling those correlations.

Quoting Mww

also related in minds. One of elemental constituency and perhaps also existential dependency.
— creativesoul

……and I’m good with calling those correlations.

A nice clear point of disagreement.

Reply to Paine
I suggest you read more carefully. Ch. 5 discusses potency, then chapter 6, starts out with the following sentence:

"Since we have treated of the kind of potency which is related to movement, let us discuss actuality ---what, and what kind of thing, actuality is."

The issue in this chapter, is that there are different senses of "actual", and he wants to distinguish a special sense of "actual". So he says that we understand the difference between these senses of "actual" by the way that they each relate to "potential". He wants to distinguish the special sense, which is what is meant when we say that something "actually exists", (or what is "actual"), from another sense which is "active", or "movement". This specific sense of "actual", as we say, "what is real", is what his analysis intends to bring out.

Your quoted paragraph refers to how we must relate "actual" to "potential", in order to determine what sense of "actual" is actually being used. At the end of that paragraph he makes the following statement:

Here is your quoted translation from Reeve:

"But things are said to actively be, not all in the same way, but by analogy—as this is in this or to this, so that is in that or to that. For some are as movement in relation to a capacity [or a potential], and the others as substance to some sort of matter."

Here is the translation of W. D. Ross:

"But all things are not said in the same sense to exist actually, but only by analogy---as A is in B or to B, C is in D or to D, for some are as movement to potency, and others as substance to some sort of matter.

So we have two principal senses of "actual" being discussed, movement which is related to potency (understood as active), and substance which is related to matter (seemingly passive as 'being', but still "actual"). The chapter ends with an interesting distinction between "actuality" in the present tense, as being active, moving, and "actuality" in the past, as what has been is "actual" in the sense of real, but it is not currently active.

"But it is the same thing that at the same time has seen and is seeing, or is thinking and has thought. The latter sort of process, then, I call, an actuality, the former, a movement."

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover
Your reading overlooks the role of analogy as a response to what cannot be defined. The Greek of 1048a35 is:

Quoting Theta 1048a35

??? ?? ??? ?????? ???? ?????? ???? ??? ?? ???????? ???????

The ???? sharply separates the 'seeking the boundaries of all things' from 'being able to see through analogy'. The separation is reiterated at 1048b10:

Translated by Hugh Tredennick, Loeb Edition:But things are not all said to exist actually in the same sense, but only by analogy—as A is in B or to B, so is C in or to D; for the relation is either that of motion to potentiality, or that of substance to some particular matter.

Not being able to define actuality and potentiality more precisely echoes Aristotle wanting to move past Empedocles in Delta:

ibid. 1015a1:Of nothing that exists is there nature, but only mixture and separation of what has been mixed; nature is but a name given to these by men.

ibid 1015a6, emphasis mine:Hence as regards those things which exist or are produced by nature, although that from which they naturally are produced or exist is already present, we say that they have not their nature yet unless they have their form and shape. That which comprises both of these exists by nature; e.g. animals and their parts. And nature is both the primary matter (and this in two senses: either primary in relation to the thing, or primary in general; e.g., in bronze articles the primary matter in relation to those articles is bronze, but in general it is perhaps water—that is if all things which can be melted are water) and the form or essence, i.e. the end of the process of generation. Indeed from this sense of “nature,” by an extension of meaning, every essence in general is called “nature,” because the nature of anything is a kind of essence.

From what has been said, then, the primary and proper sense of “nature” is the essence of those things which contain in themselves as such a source of motion; for the matter is called “nature” because it is capable of receiving the nature, and the processes of generation and growth are called “nature” because they are motions derived from it. And nature in this sense is the source of motion in natural objects, which is somehow inherent in them, either potentially or actually.

Aristotle yokes together these two senses of natural being without reducing them further. Notice that it is the same pair of terms which get used analogically in Theta 6.

Quoting Paine

Your reading overlooks the role of analogy as a response to what cannot be defined. The Greek of 1048a35 is:

The point is, that in the chapter you quoted, Aristotle says we refer to analogy to understand the sense of "actual" which is implied in a particular instance of usage. We refer to analogy by determining what sense of "potential" is referred to in the usage. So sometimes "actual" is related to a potency, a power, and in this sense "actual" means active, or movement. But at other times "actual" is related to the potential of matter, and in this sense "actual" means what is substantial, what is real, or what exists.

Notice your quoted paragraph, from 1048b: "for the relation is either that of motion to potentiality, or that of substance to some particular matter" These are the two senses of "actual" which we distinguish by determining the related sense of potential (analogy).

Quoting Paine

Aristotle yokes together these two senses of natural being without reducing them further. Notice that it is the same pair of terms which get used analogically in Theta 6.

No it is not the same pair of terms. He is not talking about "natural being" in the section we are discussing, he is talking about "actual", and its two distinct senses which we distinguish through the type of "potential" which is related in the particular instance of usage. The issue is whether "actual" means movement, or active, as when it is related to potency, or whether "actual" means real, existent, or substance, as when it is related to the potential of matter. These are the two distinct senses of "actual" which he is describing, and he says that we distinguish one from the other through the use of analogy

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover
We will have to agree to disagree. In any case, I will say no more here.

Quoting frank

How are the clay and the statue related?

There is no general agreement on how to shape a pile of clay for it to be a sculpture. Especially in a culture characterised by artistic individualism. Anyone can single-mindedly declare that a pile of clay is a sculpture, But that's uninteresting.

What's interesting is that when we work with clay, shapes begin to appear that we may find worth elaborating, and eventually our work has transformed the pile into a sculpture. In this sense, the clay is related to the sculpture by having properties that make it easy to shape. We can test shapes, revise them, and accumulate knowledge on how to proceed until we're satisfied with the result. The sculpture is related to the clay e.g. by having degrees of detail and textures that are possible to achieve with clay.

Quoting Paine

The ???? sharply separates the 'seeking the boundaries of all things' from 'being able to see through analogy'. The separation is reiterated at 1048b10:

Your interpretation of "sharply separates", when Aristotle is talking about the difference between a definition, and understanding by analogy, is a fabrication by you. Please, stay true to a respectable translation, rather than making up your own translation, to suit your purpose.

Your post makes no sense Paine. You seem to be completely confused as to what Aristotle is explaining in Bk 9 Ch 6. You start out by saying that Aristotle is talking about sharply separating different ways of understanding meaning, then you end the post by saying that he "yokes together the two senses".

What he is saying about the two senses of "actuality" discussed in Ch 6, is that they are different meanings for "actuality", and these meanings are explicitly separable. But the difference in meaning is not one understood by referring to two different definitions, rather it is understood through analogy. The "analogy" spoken about involves reference to the related senses of "potential".

Please, try reading the entire chapter, beginning to end, then decide whether you still disagree with me. The chapter is not long, and although it is somewhat difficult, so it needs to be read slowly, it's not extremely difficult

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover
Since you are compelled to undermine my reputation as a scholar, I will give the matter one last go:

The original translation I quoted from CDC Reeve agrees with HG Apostle, and Hugh Tredennick, who I quoted above from the Loeb Edition. Tredennick is also the translator of the English version at Perseus where I got the Greek text from.

In the text preceding Theta 6, different senses of how potentiality was present in a motion or a being was discussed. Theta 6 begins by addressing the difference between how actuality and potentiality can be said to be present:

ibid. 1048a30, emphasis mine:“Actuality “means the presence of the thing, not in the sense which we mean by “potentially.” We say that a thing is present potentially as Hermes is present in the wood, or the half-line in the whole, from potentiality. because it can be separated from it: and as we call even a man who is not studying “a scholar” if he is capable of studying. That which is present in the opposite sense to this is present actually. What we mean can be plainly seen in the particular cases by induction; we need not seek a definition for every term, but must comprehend the analogy: that as that which is actually building is to that which is capable of building, so is that which is awake to that which is asleep; and that which is seeing to that which has the eyes shut, but has the power of sight; and that which is differentiated out of matter to the matter; and the finished article to the raw material. Let actuality be defined by one member of this antithesis, and the potential by the other.

The antithesis is what will have to be applied analogically. The precise terms of actuality and potentiality are supplied in the text as ratios. That statement is not saying:

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

So he says that we understand the difference between these senses of "actual" by the way that they each relate to "potential".

The passage does relate how specific senses of actuality relate to specific potential activities but it uses the clearly stated antithesis between actuality and potentiality to do so.

Edit to Add for Aquinas Fans:

Quoting Aquinas, Commentaries on Metaphysics, LESSON 5 Actuality and Its Various Meanings ARISTOTLE’S TEXT Chapter 6: 1048a 25-1048b 36

1825. Now actuality (769).

Second, he establishes the truth about actuality. First, he shows what actuality is; and second (1828), how it is used in different senses in the case of different things (“However, things”).

In regard to the first he does two things. First, he shows what actuality is. He says that a thing is actual when it exists but not in the way in which it exists when it is potential. (a) For we say that the image of Mercury is in the wood potentially and not actually before the wood is carved; but once it has been carved the image of Mercury is then said to be in the wood actually. (b) And in the same way we say that any part of a continuous whole is in that whole, because any part (for example, the middle one) is present potentially inasmuch as it is possible for it to be separated from the whole by dividing the whole; but after the whole has been divided, that part will now be present actually. (c) The same thing is true of one who has a science and is not speculating, for he is capable of speculating even though he is not actually doing so; but to be speculating or contemplating is to be in a state of actuality.

1826. What we mean (770).

Here he answers an implied question; for someone could ask him to explain what actuality is by giving its definition. And he answers by saying that it is possible to show what we mean (i.e., by actuality) in the case of singular things by proceeding inductively from examples, “and we should not look for the boundaries of everything,” i.e., the definition. For simple notions cannot be defined, since an infinite regress in definitions is impossible. But actuality is one of those first simple notions. Hence it cannot be defined.

1827. And he says that we can see what actuality is by means of the proportion existing between two things. For example, we may take the proportion of one who is building to one capable of building; and of one who is awake to one asleep; and of one who sees to one whose eyes are closed although he has the power of sight; and “of that which is separated out of matter,” i.e., what is formed by means of the operation of art or of nature, and thus is separated out of unformed matter, to what is not separated out of unformed matter. And similarly we may take the proportion of what has been prepared to what has not been prepared, or of what has been worked on to what has not been worked on. But in each of these opposed pairs one member will be actual and the other potential.

And thus by proceeding from particular cases we can come to an understanding in a proportional way of what actuality and potency are.

Now, that will be my last word. I leave your Church of the Only Aristotle. It is nice outside.

OK, if I still have your attention Paine, I will continue.

Quoting Paine

In the text preceding Theta 6, different senses of how potentiality was present in a motion or a being was discussed.

Right, this is the point I was making, the different senses of potentiality. That is what had been pointed to in Ch 5. One sense is related to movement, the other sense is related to being.

Quoting Paine

Theta 6 begins by addressing the difference between how actuality and potentiality can be said to be present:

Now, in Ch 6, he proceeds to discuss the two principal senses of "actuality" which are related to those two senses of potentiality.

Quoting Paine

The passage does relate how specific senses of actuality relate to specific potential activities but it uses the clearly stated antithesis between actuality and potentiality to do so.

Of course it uses the the antithesis between actuality and potentiality, you and I always agreed on that. But the significant point, the importance, of the chapter is the two distinct senses of "actuality" which correspond with the two distinct senses of potentiality, in the relation of antithesis. What I said already is that he states that we must use this relation between potential and actual as the means for determining which sense of "actual" is being referred to by the word.

You seemed to be ignoring, or simply denying, the substance of Ch 6 which is the distinction between two separate senses of "actual". He is saying that since there are two distinct senses of potential, if we maintain the antithesis, there must be two distinct senses of actuality. This is the analogy, wherever the analysis of "potential" has led us (to two distinct senses), so we must follow with "actual", to maintain the antithesis.

So, according to my Ross translation, Ch 6 progresses in this way.
"...let us discuss actuality..." 1048a,26
"...we not only ascribe potency to that whose nature it is to move something else...but also use the word in another sense..." 1048a, 27-29
"Actuality ,then, is the existence of a thing not in the way that we express by 'potentially'". 1048a, 30
"Let actuality be defined by one member of this antithesis and potential by the other. But all things are not said in the same sense to exist actually...for some are as movement to potency and others as substance to some sort of matter." 1048b, 4-8
"Since of the actions which have a limit none is an end but are relative to an end...but that movement which the end is present is an action. ... At the same time we are living well and have lived well, and are happy and have been happy. ... Of these processes, then, we must call the one set movements, and the other actualities." 1048b ,18-28
"The latter sort of process, then, I call an actuality, and the former a movement." 1048b, 34

The final statement above is how he closes out the chapter.

He has distinguished two principle senses of actual, corresponding by analogy to the two senses of potential distinguished earlier . One sense of "actual" describes what exists relative to the type of potential which is known as potency, and this is movement, activity, and it exists relative to an end. The other sense of "actual" describes what exists relative to the type of potential known as matter. This is substance, "actuality", and it has the end within itself.

Notice, that in his conclusion, he has not only distinguished these two principal types of actuality, but he has even gone so far as to have given one of them a different name "movement". This allows him to proceed with clarity as to what kind of thing "actuality" is, having been separated from activity and movement. "Actual" describes what exists as substance in relation to the potential which is known as matter. We know have "actual" in the sense of being, as distinguished from motion (what we call "activity") in the sense of becoming.

After having distinguished "actual" from "movement" in this way, he proceed to question which is prior, "the actual" (substance), or "the potential" (matter). He concludes by the so-called cosmological argument that the actual must be prior to the potential, and since he has separated "actual" from "movement" in this way, it is logically consistent to designate the actual as eternal, having been separated from the concepts of time and movement.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover
The effort you have put into placing me outside of the conversation does not address the distinctions that Aquinas also understood.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

it is logically consistent to designate the actual as eternal, having been separated from the concepts of time and movement.

The passage in question is not claiming that result.

Quoting Paine

The effort you have put into placing me outside of the conversation does not address the distinctions that Aquinas also understood.

I didn't see any need to comment on the Aquinas quote. He was explaining what you and I both agreed upon, that Aristotle said we understand the meaning of actuality in its relation to potentiality. The aspect of the passage from Aristotle which I was interested in, what I would call the content, or substance of that chapter, was the distinction between the two different senses of "actual". This is what I said is the key to resolving the problem you indicated earlier here:

Quoting SEP Aristotle's Metaphysics

?.13 therefore produces a fundamental tension in Aristotle’s metaphysics that has fragmented his interpreters. Some maintain that Aristotle’s theory is ultimately inconsistent, on the grounds that it is committed to all three of the following propositions:

(i) Substance is form.
(ii) Form is universal.
(iii) No universal is a substance.

I replied, that the way to resolve this issue is to understand that Aristotle distinguishes two senses of "form". "Form" is understood as "actual", and in Ch 6, Bk 9, Aristotle is clearly distinguishing two distinct senses of "actual". Understanding this is the way toward resolving the problem which you quoted from SEP.

Quoting Paine

The passage in question is not claiming that result.

That's right, as I said, after finishing that chapter, with the clear conclusion and distinction made between "movement" and "actuality", as the two types, "movement" being related to the type of potential known as "potency", and "actuality" being related to the type of potential known as matter, he proceeds from that conclusion. So the result which you refer to follows later in Bk 9, when he demonstrates that actual is prior to potential in an absolute sense.