That a universal concept, such as triangle, exists by definition, (i.e., the existence of the concept of triangle is dependent on the definition of triangle), does not provide an argument that the concept is not dependent on "some process occurring in the brain". Any definition requires interpretation, and this is done by a brain. What is non-physical, is the content within the brain, which the brain is using, in the process of interpretation, the thoughts, and ideas, which are used for interpretation. This appears to produce an infinite regress, because some non-physical thoughts are required to interpret physical definitions etc.. But it need not lead to infinite regress if we accept that the non-physical, which is prior to, and necessary for the physical brain activity of interpretation, is something other than concepts. Then we allow, as Aquinas does, that human concepts are inherently tied to bodily existence, without negating the non-physical existence which is necessary for the existence of concepts. — Metaphysician Undercover
What is this 'something other', according to Aristotle and Aquinas? — Wayfarer
“EVERYTHING in the cosmos is composed of matter and form. Everything is concrete and individual. Hence the forms of cosmic entities must also be concrete and individual. Now, the process of knowledge is immediately concerned with the separation of form from matter, since a thing is known precisely because its form is received in the knower. But, whatever is received is in the recipient according to the mode of being that the recipient possesses. If, then, the senses are material powers, they receive the forms of objects in a material manner; [this is 'body'] and if the intellect is an immaterial power, it receives the forms of objects in an immaterial manner [this is 'intellect']. This means that in the case of sense knowledge, the form is still encompassed with the concrete characters which make it particular; and that, in the case of intellectual knowledge, the form is disengaged from all such characters. To understand is to free form completely from matter.
Moreover, if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality.
The separation of form from matter requires two stages if the idea is to be elaborated: first, the sensitive stage, wherein the external and internal senses operate upon the material object, accepting its form without matter, but not without the appendages of matter; second the intellectual stage, wherein agent intellect operates upon the phantasmal datum, divesting the form of every character that marks and identifies it as a particular something.
Abstraction, which is the proper task of active intellect, is essentially a liberating function in which the essence of the sensible object, potentially understandable as it lies beneath its accidents, is liberated from the elements that individualize it and is thus made actually understandable. The product of abstraction is a species of an intelligible order. Now possible intellect is supplied with an adequate stimulus to which it responds by producing a concept.
Abstraction, which is the proper task of active intellect, is essentially a liberating function in which the essence of the sensible object, potentially understandable as it lies beneath its accidents, is liberated from the elements that individualize it and is thus made actually understandable.
“EVERYTHING in the cosmos is composed of matter and form. Everything is concrete and individual. Hence the forms of cosmic entities must also be concrete and individual.
EVERYTHING in the cosmos is composed of matter and form. Everything is concrete and individual. Hence the forms of cosmic entities must also be concrete and individual.
I too read this as saying that each particular thing has a particular form associated to it. — Samuel Lacrampe
The existence of the form “sight,” by which the eye sees, may be some positive presence in the nature of things (which biologists can describe in terms of the qualities of a healthy eye that gives it the power to see), but the existence of the form blindness in the blind eye need be nothing more than the nonexistence of sight ‒ the 'form' of blindness is a privation of the form of sight and so not really an additional form at all.
In general, distinguishing and qualifying the different ways there can “be” a form present in a thing goes a long way toward alleviating the apparent profligacy of the realist account of words signifying forms. Arguably such qualification of modes of being, and not theological discourse, is the real theoretical crux of Aquinas’s views on the “analogy of being.”
Aquinas’s famous thesis of the unicity of substantial forms is an example of another strategy: linguistically I may posit diverse forms (humanity, animality, bodiliness) to account for Socrates being a man, an animal, and a body, but according to Aquinas there is in reality just one substantial form (Socrates’ soul) which is responsible for causing Socrates to be a man, an animal, and a body. In this and other cases, ontological commitment can be reduced by identifying in reality what, on the semantic level, are treated as diverse forms. As Boethius had seen, what the mind is capable of logically distinguishing need not be actually distinct in the nature of things.
In principle, any number of strategies for reducing overall ontological commitment are available within the framework of realist semantics, so that in general, the kind of form that fulfills the required semantic function did not need to be the kind of form that has a distinct and positive metaphysical presence in the nature of things.
Bob’s your uncle. — Samuel Lacrampe
Understanding is grasping how the data of sense (or of consciousness) are interrelated; it is adding to the manifold of the mere presentation a complex of relations, a meaning, that reduces the manifold to unity. When this happens, the mind is able to pronounce the interior word that the tradition calls 'the concept'. — Bernard Lonergan
However, even from your summary of the argument, a dualism can be discerned, namely that of an idea and it's representation. In this case, it's a 'ship, 3 masted, Greek, arrives after noon', and the various ways it is represented. I have been attempting to show that this resembles, in some sense, the Platonic meaning of 'an idea', even though the example is a specific idea, and not a general form. — Wayfarer
The Platonic meaning of "idea" is that if you take away the material representations, the eternal idea remains — Andrew M
the physical representation might be totally different — Wayfarer
Of course numbers have a causal effect on things. Take for instance the numbers in a recipe. If the recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper and you put 10, the food will give the consumers a serious case of heart burn, not to mention mouth-burn. — Harry Hindu
But not only because we are rational agents, but also because we have senses that take in information about the world, one of which is numbers. How could you know anything about numbers, what they mean, or how to use them, without having first acquired that information at some point in the past? Numbers take the shape of squiggles on a sheet of paper and sounds in the air which have to be seen and heard in order to associate them with other things that aren't squiggles and sounds, but are the ideas those squiggles and sounds generate in the mind, which then influence behavior. This is why I don't get the division between the rationalists and empiricists. In order to be rational, your rationality has to take some form and the form it takes is the forms of our sensory perceptions.In such cases, numbers are causally efficient only because human agents act on the basis of an instruction. The fact that numbers are able to influence human behaviour, is because humans are rational agents. — Wayfarer
Right. Thanks to the differences in our brains - thanks to the way we are "designed".Right. That is simply the empiricist argument - that all knowledge comes from experience. However humans have linguistic and rational abilities that animals don’t - they’re born with that, as per Chomsky’s ‘universal grammar’. — Wayfarer
Sorry, but I think your last two paragraphs do not at all represent or paraphrase the passage that we're referring to. But it has been a helpful discussion, for me at least. — Wayfarer
I too read this as saying that each particular thing has a particular form associated to it. But I could be misreading it, because my understanding is that forms are generals, not particulars. E.g., particular rocks participate in the one form of rock-ness, and particular rivers participate in the one form of river-ness. — Samuel Lacrampe
2) By the law of identity, the information stripped of its container is not merely a copy in each separate container, but is in reality one and the same thing, because all the properties that make the information is the same in all containers. The same info is acquired whether it is obtained from a book, an ebook, or an audiobook. — Samuel Lacrampe
Information is matter and energy yes? Therefore is physical right?
Each thought is made up of electro-chemicals, and electricity; along with a pattern of nueral pathways. They have short lifespans, I don't see any part of the thought that is not physical.
The same goes for information within computers: across a chalk board, or on a sheet of papper.
Gods, ghosts, and spirits as far as I've seen have anatomical and physical decriptions within the classic religious scriptures. I was always under the assumption that energy, and or plasma, would be the most likely canidate substance for such things, but even if they are made of something yet to be discovered, they would still be physical, is a god even considered meta-physical? How can something exist without being physical, if God exists as a sentient being, then he would have to be physical(wether made of matter, energy, or plasma); otherwise there would only be thoughts of god, writings of god, therories if god, all of which are physical.
Even a thoery may be a physical thing; if you destroy all writings, and physical descriptions of a theory, does that theory still exsist?
If physics includes the study of other dimensions then won't anything discovered within those demensions become part of physics?
So, what's the argument? — Πετροκότσυφας
Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. This is because in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. Among other things, this means that you could not think if materialism is true… . Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.
….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too.
Information is matter and energy yes? — “XanderGrey”
The mechanical brain does not secrete thought "as the liver does bile," as the earlier materialists claimed, nor does it put it out in the form of energy, as the muscle puts out its activity. Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.
thanks to the way we are "designed". — Harry Hindu
It all hangs on the meaning of the word ‘exists’ (in this case, ‘remains’.) My example of the ship, is indeed a particular instance. But more general forms, such as geometrical and arithmetical forms, might be ‘awaiting discovery’ as it were - any rational being in the Universe would discover such forms. The same could be said in the case of logical laws, such as the law of the excluded middle and so on. — Wayfarer
Say in the case of ‘the idea of the Good’, I would think this is something entirely transcendental, i.e. can’t be represented materially at all. — Wayfarer
Aristotle discusses the Forms of Good in critical terms several times in both of his major surviving ethical works, the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle argues that Plato’s Form of the Good does not apply to the physical world, for Plato does not assign “goodness” to anything in the existing world. Because Plato’s Form of the Good does not explain events in the physical world, humans have no reason to believe that the Form of the Good exists and the Form of the Good is thereby irrelevant to human ethics. — Wikipedia
I think there’s some merit in what you’re saying, but I do wonder you’re trying to squeeze Aristotle’s ‘moderate realism’ into the Procrustean bed of modern empiricism. — Wayfarer
Since the common thread for Aristotle is that universals can only be grounded in material particulars — Andrew M
In the introduction, he says that a professor of his once noted that ‘everyone is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian’. I think by temperament, I’m the former. — Wayfarer
But, according to A's 'hylomorphic dualism', particulars are always composed of matter (hyle) and form (morphe) - and the form is what is grasped by the intellect. Both the intellect (nous) and form (morphe) being immaterial. — Wayfarer
My argument for the sense in which information is NOT physical can be illustrated with respect to the following thought-experiment.
There is a sentry in a watchtower, looking through a telescope. The watchtower stands on top of a headland which forms the northern entrance to a harbour. The sentry’s job is to keep a lookout.
When the sentry sees a ship on the horizon, he sends a signal about the impending arrival. The signal is sent via a code - a semaphore, comprising a set of flags. — Wayfarer
It just occurred to me that the sentry and the receiver of the sentry's signals could both be computers. — Janus
Can you cite any text — Janus
Even better though one could be like Aquinas, both Platonist and Aristotelian. — Metaphysician Undercover
Computers are human instruments. They could replace flags and morse code, but the same arguments apply. It's similar to the point that Apokrisis often makes about the fundamental difference between physical and semiotic systems. — Wayfarer
You do realise that in many of your responses to that issue, you have taken a position which is basically nominalist, i.e. opposing the A-T analysis? — Wayfarer
Do you recognize the distinction of passive intellect and active intellect? — Metaphysician Undercover
I've justified my responses by referring directly to what Aristotle wrote — Metaphysician Undercover
Do you not recognize, that in both these cases, our agreement to call objects by a specific name, "X", or "Y", says something about our capacity to agree on this type of thing, rather than something about the objects themselves? — Metaphysician Undercover
We call things wet. I say water is wet, you agree that water is wet. We agree that certain things are wet, and that certain things are not wet. But this does not produce the conclusion that "wetness" has essential properties, it just means that we agree about which things we should call wet and which things we should call not wet. — Metaphysician Undercover
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