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. — Leontiskos

Since it relates to the topic of the OP (regarding the Unmoved Mover), I will take make my argument from the horse's mouth:

Aristotle says that the first existence is separated from sense objects and is an intelligible existence. But when he says that "it thinks itself," he takes the first rank away from it. He also asserts the existence of a plurality of other intelligible entities in a number equal to the celestial spheres, so that each of them might have its principle of motion. About the intelligible entities, therefore, Aristotle advances a doctrine different from that of Plato, and as he has no good reason for this change, he brings in necessity.
Even if he had good reason, one might well object that it seems more reasonable to suppose that the spheres as they are coordinated in a single system are directed towards the one end, the supreme existence. The question also might be raised whether for Aristotle the intelligible entities from one originating principle or whether there are several originating principles for the intelligible entities. If the intelligible entities proceed form on principle, their condition will be analogous to that of the sense spheres where each contains and dominates all the others. In this case, the first existence will contain all the intelligible entities and be the intelligible world. Just as the spheres in the world of senses are not empty, - for the first is full of stars and each of the others has its stars,- so their movers in the intelligible world will contain many entities, being that are more real than sense things. On the other hand, if each of the movers is an independent principle, their interrelation will be subject to chance. How then will they unite their actions and agree in producing that single effect which is the harmony of the heaven? What also is the reason for the assertion that the sense objects that are in heaven equal in number their intelligible movers? Further, why is there a plurality of movers since they are incorporeal, and no matter separates them from on another?
Thus those among the ancient philosophers who faithfully followed the doctrines of Pythagoras, of disciples, and of Pherecydes, have maintained the existence of the intelligible world. — Plotinus, Ennead V, i, 9, translated by Katz

The mention of Pythagoras is important because that is a pivot for Aristotle regarding how souls are embodied:

[9] There is another absurdity, however, that follows both from this account and from most of the ones concerning the soul, since in fact they attach the soul to a body, and place it in a body, without |407b15| further determining the cause due to which this attachment comes about or the condition of the body required for it. Yet this would seem to be necessary. For it is because of their association that the one acts, whereas the other is acted upon, and the one is moved, whereas the other moves it. None of these relations, though, holds between things taken at random. These people, however, merely undertake to say what sort of thing the soul is, but about the |407b20| sort of body that is receptive of it they determine nothing further, as if it were possible, as in the Pythagorean stories, for any random soul to be inserted into any random body, whereas it seems that in fact each body has its own special form and shape.96 But what they say is somewhat like saying that the craft of {13} carpentry could be inserted into flutes, whereas in fact the |407b25| craft must use its instruments, and the soul its body. — De Anima, 407b10, translated by C.D.C Reeve

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.

Note to add: I realize that we all have been largely replicating the discussion in the original Fooloso4 thread. Sometimes I feel like I am the only one with institutional memory of what has happened before.

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'.

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.

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.

For me, no object which does not yet have material existence is ever acted on. — Metaphysician Undercover

Can you point to some place in the text where this is claimed? Where do beings move from the not-material to the material?

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.

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.

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.

But the cause of this is that the potentiality of which it is the activation is incomplete.1234 And because of this it is difficult to grasp what movement is, since it must be posited either as a lack or as a potentiality or as an activity that is unconditionally such. But evidently none of these is possible. And so the remaining option is that it must be what we said, both an activity and not an activity |1066a25| in the way stated, which, though difficult to visualize, can exist. — ibid. 1066a20

I read this passage as completing the journey began in Theta 3:

There are some people—for example, the Megarians—who say that a thing is capable of something only when actively doing it, and that when not actively doing it, it is not capable. For example, someone |1046b30| who is not building is not capable of building, but someone who is building is capable if and when he is building, and similarly in the other cases. But it is not difficult to see that the consequences of this are absurd. — ibid. 1046b28

Getting from dispensing with one view out of hand to replacing it with a better one turned out to be a lot of work.

I am not familiar with Vervaeke. Can you hook me up with a bit of text where he presents this view of Platonism?

We have both quoted 1066 in this discussion. Perhaps 1046 provides the most succinct expression of active and passive potentiality:

For one kind is a potentiality for being acted on, i.e. the principle in the very thing acted on, which makes it capable of being changed and acted on by another thing or by itself
regarded as other. — translated by Barnes

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:

In a sense the potentiality of acting and of being acted on is one (for a thing may be capable either because it can be acted on or because something else can be acted on by it), but in a sense the potentialities are different. For the one is in the thing acted on; it is because it contains a certain motive principle, and because even the matter is a motive principle, that the thing acted on is acted on ... for that which is oily is inflammable, and that which yields in a particular way can be crushed; and similarly in all other cases. But the other potency is in the agent, e.g. heat and the art of building
are present, one in that which can produce heat and the other in the man who can build. — ibid. 1046a19

While the house as it being built, each change is necessary as relates to what can be changed:

Since that which is capable is capable of something and at some time in some way –with all the other qualifications which must be present in the definition–, ... as regards potentialities of … [those things that are non-rational; e.g. the fire] ... when the agent and the patient meet in the way appropriate to the potentiality in question, the one must act and the other be acted on ... For the non-rational potentialities are all productive of one effect each. — ibid. 1047b35

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.

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.

** ‘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. — Wayfarer

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:

The cause of movement’s seeming to be indefinite, though, is that it cannot be posited either as a potentiality of beings or as an activation of them. For neither what is potentially of a certain quantity nor what is actively of a certain quantity is of necessity moved, and while movement does seem to be a sort of activity, |1066a20| it is incomplete activity. But the cause of this is that the potentiality of which it is the activation is incomplete. And because of this it is difficult to grasp what movement is, since it must be posited either as a lack or as a potentiality or as an activity that is unconditionally such. But evidently none of these is possible. And so the remaining option is that it must be what we said, both an activity and not an activity |1066a25| in the way stated, which, though difficult to visualize, can exist. And that movement is in the movable is clear, since movement is the actualization of the movable by what can move something. And the activation of what can move something is no other. For there must be the actualization of both, since it can move something by having the potentiality to do so, and it is moving it by being active. But |1066a30| it is on the movable that the mover is capable of acting, so that the activation of both alike is one, just as the intervals from one to two and from two to one are the same, or as are the hill up and the hill down, although the being for them is not one. And similarly in the case of the mover and the moved. — Metaphysics, Kappa 9, translated by CDC Reeve

So, this "difficult to visualize" aspect of matter as potential being returns us to the beginning of the book:

These people, then, |985a10| as we say, evidently latched on to two of the causes we distinguished in our works on nature, namely, the matter and the starting-point of movement.91 But they did so vaguely and in a not at all perspicuous way, like untrained people in fights.92 For these too, as they circle their opponents, often strike good blows, but |985a15| they do not do so in virtue of scientific knowledge, just as the others do not seem to know what they are saying, since they apparently make pretty much no use of these causes, except to a small extent. — ibid. Alpha 4

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.

In regard to the various ways building a house has come up, it has been presented by Aristotle as a contrast to natural causes. It is a poster child of the artificial.
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. .

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.

Your premise that it was a weak and petty case needs to overcome the decision by twelve people who do not agree.

Your expectation that the case will be overturned on appeal is another opportunity to possibly encounter disappointment.

But if we assume it occurs, I'm not sure it makes much difference. It won't change anyone's mind, domestically or in other countries. — Relativist

Perhaps it will change the mind of the convict.

He could turn to writing poetry and title the collection: My Imprisonment.

Interesting response. I will think about it.

What if the Aquinian view misrepresented the role of universals in previous philosophy?

I have been a juror 4 times in the New York State court system. It is very difficult. The knife edge of 'reasonable doubt' is very sharp.

On all counts

deleted by myself.

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.

I recognize an archeological perspective in Wittgenstein, using language to uncover experiences we do not have a clear view of. That element seems to make the boundary between the personal and the social more arbitrary. The distinction serves some purposes but conceals others.

I don't offer that as a rebuttal to your description of the work as a moment of philosophical history. But it does leave out what I find most interesting. We do not know what we are doing.

It is funny to hear the self-identified champion for Trump complain about the nefarious consequences of excessive litigation.

I have seen bad faith actions in U.S. corporate culture.

Some of it happened in the context of managers competing for resources. But they are limited if they burn those resources at the same time.

Then there are patterns of not compensating labor and production. The latter, though, has the effect of poisoning the water. Cats who do that either have to relocate or fold their operation into another one. NYC construction has a long institutional memory.

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.

Again, thinghood [ousia] is what not attributed to any underlying thing, but the universal is always attributed to some underlying thing.
(1038b) — Metaphysics

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.

Well, from what I have observed in the world of work and personal interactions, little else matters.

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. — Leontiskos

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:

In other words, Platonism (or philosophy) and naturalism are contradictory positions. Someone who recoils from naturalism burdens herself with all the elements of Platonism; conversely, someone who rejects one or another of these elements will find herself sooner rather than later in the naturalist’s camp, assuming, of course, that consistency is a desideratum. If I am right, the history of modern philosophy has been mostly the history of misguided attempts at compromise among Platonists and naturalists. They have been doomed efforts to ‘have one’s cake and eat it, too’. — 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.

And these criteria are not individual (psychological, or “self”) interests (or feelings, being persuaded), but all our history of human lives of distinguishing and identifying and judging, i.e., what is essential to us about a practice, the various reasons that count with/to it. — Antony Nickles

The difference between psychology and philosophy is expressed this way in Philosophy of Psychology:

113. I observe a face, and then suddenly notice its likeness to another.
I see that it has not changed; and yet I see it differently. I call this expe-
rience “noticing an aspect”.
114. Its causes are of interest to psychologists.
115. We are interested in the concept and its place among the concepts
of experience. — Philosophy of Psychology - a Fragment

That places the two activities in closer contact than the sharp lines drawn in Tractatus.

4.1121 Psychology is no more closely related to philosophy than any other natural science.
5.641 What brings the self into philosophy is the fact that ‘the world is my world’.
The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world—not a part of it.
Thus there really is a sense in which philosophy can talk about the self in a non-psychological way. — ibid.

But the remark about causes in PoP 114 does show a continuity with the limits of induction laid out in Tractatus:

6.363 The procedure of induction consists in accepting as true the simplest law that can be reconciled with our experiences.
6.3631 This procedure, however, has no logical justification but only a psychological one.
It is clear that there are no grounds for believing that the simplest eventuality will in fact be realized. — ibid.

These approaches to experience are an exploration of "the world is my world". I don't understand what you mean by "our history of human lives" in the context of the distinction made by Wittgenstein.

I have claimed the primary focus in the PI is to examine why philosophy wants certainty (“purity”), and, even more, to learn something about ourselves in the process. — Antony Nickles

That is a predominantly psychological observation. Where does the philosophy start? Or not?

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.

In regards to the problem of 'totalizing' propositions, there is an interesting historical comment made in the Tractatus:

6.371 The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.

6.372 Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages.

And in fact both are right and both wrong: though the view of the ancients is clearer in so far as they have a clear and acknowledged terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained. — ibid.

This supports my previous contention that choosing not to couch his arguments in the context of other writings does not mean he was unaware of them. The discussion of solipsism, for example, surely sounds like a debate with Kant, even though it is not presented that way.

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.

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.

This is a sharp contrast from the language of "participating in Forms." As he says a little further:

And in general it follows—if the human |1038b30| and whatever is said of things in that way are substance—that none of the things in their account is substance of any of them or is separate from them or in something else. I mean, for example, that there is not some animal—or any other of the things in the account—beyond the particular ones. — Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1038b30, translated by CDC Reeve

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:

Activity, then, is the existence of the thing not in the way in which we say that it exists potentially. And we say, for example, that Hermes exists potentially in the wood and the half-line in the whole, because it could be abstracted from it, and also we say that even someone who is not contemplating is a scientific knower if he is capable of contemplating. And by contrast we say that other things exist actively. 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. — ibid. 1048a30

I appreciate your willingness to continue the conversation. I apologize for my intemperate comment.

If I can pull together a response, I will put it in your thread since this comment is a continuation of what is said there.

What is your native language?

This sounds like an AI generated thing.

I am challenging your description of what the writing is about. If it is not worthy, just ignore it.