No, things do not place themselves in species, nor was that my claim. I said that species are defined by objective commonalities. We decide which commonalities define a category, but, having decided that, whether a new object is an instance of the category is an objective question, with a right and wrong answer. — Dfpolis
This is a confused, as it is on the basis of intrinsic properties that an organism fits or does not fit into one of the categories we have defined. If it has 6 legs and a segmented body, it is an insect. If it has scaled wings, it belongs to the order lepidoptera, etc. — Dfpolis
Nothing can have contradicting properties. Either it has a property, or if does not. — Dfpolis
If we have two things with the identical form, they are two (different) in virture of being made out of different instances of stuff. If we take a batch of plastic and make different kinds of things with it, they are not different because they are plastic, but because they have different forms. — Dfpolis
Don't you realize that this kind of hostile language, with the implication of bad faith, is what discourages dialog with you? You have insights to share, but the tone of many of your posts invites defensiveness and counterattack rather than an open exchange of views. We can disagree in good faith.an effective evasion, instead of addressing the question head on — Metaphysician Undercover
It is simple. For example, if we encounter an organism with four or eight legs instead of six, or without a segmented body, it would be wrong (an intellectual, not a moral, error) to "assign it" to the insect category because it does not meet the agreed upon definition. The judgement of error depends on comparing (1) the conventional (human generated) definition of "insect" with (2) the objective (intrinsic) properties of the organism, e.g. having eight legs.I mean how would you ground the supposed "right and wrong" of your claimed objectivity? — Metaphysician Undercover
Here is the source of confusion. Aristotle's eidos ("form") has two meanings. One is a being's actuality (as opposed to its hyle/potency), the other is the universal concept this actuality elicits. Thus, when he says that Callias and Socrates are “the same in form; for their form is indivisible” (Metaphysics VII, 8, 1034a5), he does not mean they have the same actuality, or the same Platonic Idea, but that they elicit the same concept, <human>.If it's the former, then you are just saying the same thing as me, the "form" which is "the species", is a construct of human convention. — Metaphysician Undercover
Of course. I made no contrary claim.Any property which inheres within a thing is intrinsic to that thing, even if it is accidental in relation to the category or species that the thing is judged as being in. — Metaphysician Undercover
That is what I said -- here and in my Studia Gilsoniana articles.We judge the category by what is deemed as essential to that category. — Metaphysician Undercover
No. It is essential that the classification be based on intrinsic properties once the category is defined. If it were not, there would be no connection between the organism and the category.Therefore, that the properties are intrinsic to the organism is accidental to the judgement. — Metaphysician Undercover
No. For a correct classification, the description must not merely exist, it must be accurate -- reflecting intrinsic properties as they are.All that is relevant is the description of the organism and the definition of the species. — Metaphysician Undercover
What you are talking about is contrary, not contradictory, properties. Contradictories negate each other. Contraries are opposites, but do not rule each other out.What I said was that "members" can have contradicting properties. So, for example I can have a property which is contradictory to a property which you have — Metaphysician Undercover
Yes.If you and I are both judged to have those essential properties, we are members of that species, regardless of all the various properties which are said to be intrinsic to you, and intrinsic to me. — Metaphysician Undercover
Again, the confusion is the result of the two meanings of form (see above). While no two things have the same actuality. Two things may elicit identical ideas.There is no such thing as two things with the same form. — Metaphysician Undercover
It is not, but believe whatever you need to. I will leave it there. — Fooloso4
It’s the use of the word ‘substance’ especially when said to ‘immaterial substance’ . That’s what I say is oxymoronic. But then, ‘substance’ is not the word that Aristotle would have used. (Actually wasn’t it in this context where the word ‘dunamis’ was used?) — Wayfarer
Aristotle used ousia in numerous places regarding the 'immaterial',if you are suggesting they were always connected with matter. — Paine
There is a potential for "1" or "2" or any number of things only as long as you or someone else is able to count and there is something to be counted and those things are visible and each one distinguishable. Counting them actualizes the potential. — Fooloso4
From this we can say that Aristotle has demonstrated that the entire universe is composed of natural bodies, and is itself a natural body. There are no unnatural, or divine bodies, nothing in the universe is moving in an eternal circular motion, because all has been generated and will be destroyed, consisting of natural bodies. — Metaphysician Undercover
The primary science, by contrast, is concerned with things that are both separable and immovable. Now all causes are necessarily eternal, and these most of all. For they are the causes of the divine beings that are perceptible. — Metaphysics, 1026a10
Whose concept would that be you are talking about? — Heiko
Counting them actualizes the potential.
— Fooloso4
As to me this sounds like a duplication of the idea. — Heiko
Don't you realize that this kind of hostile language, with the implication of bad faith, is what discourages dialog with you? You have insights to share, but the tone of many of your posts invites defensiveness and counterattack rather than an open exchange of views. We can disagree in good faith. — Dfpolis
It is simple. For example, if we encounter an organism with four or eight legs instead of six, or without a segmented body, it would be wrong (an intellectual, not a moral, error) to "assign it" to the insect category because it does not meet the agreed upon definition. The judgement of error depends on comparing (1) the conventional (human generated) definition of "insect" with (2) the objective (intrinsic) properties of the organism, e.g. having eight legs. — Dfpolis
Here is the source of confusion. Aristotle's eidos ("form") has two meanings. One is a being's actuality (as opposed to its hyle/potency), the other is the universal concept this actuality elicits. Thus, when he says that Callias and Socrates are “the same in form; for their form is indivisible” (Metaphysics VII, 8, 1034a5), he does not mean they have the same actuality, or the same Platonic Idea, but that they elicit the same concept, <human>. — Dfpolis
Still, Aristotle seems not to recognize that the same organisms can elicit different species concepts. As I explained in my two Studia Gilsoniana articles on metaphysics and evolution, there are at least 26 different ways of defining biological species and at least five ways of defining philosophical species. Each has a basis in, but is not dictated by, reality. Rather, the taxonomist chooses what type of properties to base classification on.
Different objective taxonomic schemes are possible because organisms are intelligible, rather than instances of actual (Platonic) ideas. When humans actualize potentials, we further specify them. We decide what to chisel from the marble or mold from the clay. We also choose which notes of intelligibility in an organism, or in a collection of organisms, to attend to and so actualize. The notes of intelligibility are the organism's. The choice of which to actualize is ours. So, the resulting concept (e.g. a species concept) is both objective and subjective. — Dfpolis
No. It is essential that the classification be based on intrinsic properties once the category is defined. If it were not, there would be no connection between the organism and the category. — Dfpolis
No. For a correct classification, the description must not merely exist, it must be accurate -- reflecting intrinsic properties as they are. — Dfpolis
What you are talking about is contrary, not contradictory, properties. Contradictories negate each other. Contraries are opposites, but do not rule each other out. — Dfpolis
This separation of what is natural from what is divine runs counter to the way ousia is presented as different in kind but all connected to the same ultimate cause and the reason we can speak of 'being as being'. — Paine
It does, however, put you in the position of explaining away discussions of ousia where the difference in kind is focused upon. For example, Metaphysics Book Epsilon:
The primary science, by contrast, is concerned with things that are both separable and immovable. Now all causes are necessarily eternal, and these most of all. For they are the causes of the divine beings that are perceptible.
— Metaphysics, 1026a10 — Paine
If then all natural things are analogous to the snub in their nature---e.g. nose, eye,face, flesh, bone, and, in general, animal; leaf root , bark, and, in general, plant; (for none of these can be defined without reference to movement---they always have matter), it is clear how we must seek and define the 'what'' in the case of natural objects, and also that it belongs to the student of nature to study even soul in a certain sense, i.e. so much of it as it is not independent of matter.
Aristotle's eidos ("form") has two meanings. One is a being's actuality (as opposed to its hyle/potency), — Dfpolis
The term "being" ... denotes first the " what " of a thing, i.e. the individuality ... when we describe what it is, we say ... that it is "a man" or "a god" (1028a)]
Aristotle refers to different kinds of ousia. You said that there was a division between kinds that was a critical departure from the holistic view Aristotle seems to aspire to. — Paine
You might look at it this way: there are some items we cannot see or touch in a dark room. How many items are there? Potentially there might be any number of things. — Fooloso4
There are no unnatural, or divine bodies, nothing in the universe is moving in an eternal circular motion, because all has been generated and will be destroyed, consisting of natural bodies. — Metaphysician Undercover
The primary science, by contrast, is concerned with things that are both separable and immovable. Now all causes are necessarily eternal, and these most of all. For they are the causes of the divine beings that are perceptible.
— Metaphysics, 1026a10 — Paine
Your thesis of a mortal Kosmos is so sharply different from Aristotle's' account of different kinds of ousia (substances) that the contradiction itself requires an explanation. — Paine
We answer that if there is no substance other than those which are formed by nature, natural science will be the first science; but if there is an immovable substance, the science of this must be prior and must be first philosophy, and universal in this way, because it is first. — 1026a, 27-28
What is it that I am counting there? — Heiko
The idea of "twoness" which makes two things countable — Heiko
Your thesis of a mortal Kosmos is so sharply different from Aristotle's' account of different kinds of ousia (substances) that the contradiction itself requires an explanation. — Paine
It is equally reasonable to assume that this body [primary body] will be ungenerated and indestructible ... (270a)
The reasons why the primary body is eternal and not subject to increase or diminution, but unaging and unalterable and unmodified, will be clear from what has been said to any one who believes in our assumptions. (270b)
We must show not only that the heaven is one,’ but also that more than one heaven is impossible, and, further, that, as exempt from decay and generation, the heaven is eternal. (277b)
That the heaven as a whole neither came. into being nor admits of destruction, as some assert, but is one and eternal, with no end or beginning of its total duration, containing and embracing in itself the infinity of time, we may convince ourselves not only by the arguments already set forth but also by a consideration of the views of those who differ from us in providing for its generation. (283b)
No more need be said. :)So I'm sorry for the tone, and I'm glad you appreciate insight. — Metaphysician Undercover
"To err is human." Still, the fact that we can recognize errors, means that we can grasp the truth. That is why science has a repeatability criterion. Results that can be repeatedly attained are not likely to be errors.This does not suffice. There are exceptions, mutations, and other problems which lend themselves to error. — Metaphysician Undercover
No, intrinsic properties are not descriptions. They are what we seek to describe. If they were descriptions, descriptions would describe themselves, not aspects of nature. That is the error of Locke by a different name.the important point is that (2) is a description — Metaphysician Undercover
We may do so if we trust the observer, but first-rate scientists much prefer to see the data, or even better, the object. When my brother Gary, a world-renowned biologist, wished to confirm the species of a scorpion (his specialty), he did not send a description, or even a picture, of the organism to the taxonomist, but the organism itself.we take a description and compare the description — Metaphysician Undercover
I cannot agree. I associate Kant with profound and damaging confusion. He seems not to have read Aristotle or the Aristotelian Scholastics, for he does not know or comment on Aristotle's argument that knowledge requires the identity of knower and known: The knower being informed by the known is identically the known informing the knower. In more contemporary terms, the brain state encoding information about a sensed object is identically the modification of the brain by the action of the sensed object. This allows no separation of knower and known. (I made this point in the paper we are discussing.)There is no direct connection between the organism and the category. That is the point of Kantian metaphysics. — Metaphysician Undercover
No, it is not. It is the action of the sensed object on the sensing subject. Action is inseparable from the agent acting. E.g. when the builders stop building, building stops.The "phenomenon", or how the organism appears to the sensing subjects as observers, is intermediary. — Metaphysician Undercover
This reflects a long line of increasing confusion, starting with the Muslim commentators on Aristotle introducing the concept of representations, passing through Aquinas's intelligible species, Locke's ideas and ending in Kant's phenomena. It fundamentally misunderstands the nature of knowing as a partial identity between knower and known.Again, this is the Kantian point. We have no access to the intrinsic properties "as they are", all we have is "as they appear to us". Therefore the best we can get is to be consistent with how the properties appear to us. — Metaphysician Undercover
We cannot understand forms unless they inform us, and they inform us, not directly as Plato thought, but via sensation. So, reasoning is based on information derived from sensation. Logic does not provide its own content. In fact, it, itself, is derived a posteriori, from sensory data.he first thing to recognize is that there is a realm of intelligible forms, as the actuality of the thing itself, which we must come to understand directly through reasoning rather than through sensing. — Metaphysician Undercover
Read Aristotle on contraries.Contradictory properties are opposing properties, like red and not red. — Metaphysician Undercover
As I said, eidos has two meanings: actuality (De Anima II, 1, 412a10) and the essential idea. e.g. <human>.Form is the being at work of an ousia. Form acts on, it actualizes a thing's potential. The form, the "what- it -is" of Socrates is not Socrates. Socrates is the ousia, not the form. The form, the what it is of Socrates, is man. — Fooloso4
I won't repeat last year's argument concerning your interpretation of De Anima Book 1. I will just leave this discussion by observing that it does not fit with Aristotle's view of Astronomy: — Paine
For the nature of the stars is eternal, because it is a certain sort of substance, and the mover is eternal and prior to the moved, and what is prior to a substance must be a substance. — Paine
A few quotes from On the Heavens that support your claim: — Fooloso4
The common name, too, which has been handed down from our distant ancestors even to our own day, seems to show that they conceived of it in this fashion which we have been expressing. The same ideas, one must believe, recur in men's minds not once or twice but again and again. And so, implying that the primary body is something else beyond earth, fire, air, and water, they gave the highest place a name of its own, aither, derived from the fact that it 'runs always' for an eternity of time. Anaxagoras however scandalously misuses this name, taking aither as equivalent to fire. — 270b, 16-20
We have now shown that the body which moves in a circle is not endless or infinite, but has its limit. — 273a, 5
That the heaven as a whole neither came. into being nor admits of destruction, as some assert, but is one and eternal, with no end or beginning of its total duration, containing and embracing in itself the infinity of time, we may convince ourselves not only by the arguments already set forth but also by a consideration of the views of those who differ from us in providing for its generation. (283b)
Therefore the movement of that which is divine must be eternal. But such is the heaven, viz. a divine body, and for that reason to it is given the circular body whose nature it is to move always in a circle. (286a10)
That there is one heaven, then, only, and that it is ungenerated and eternal, and further that its movement is regular, has now been sufficiently explained. (289a8)
Still, the fact that we can recognize errors, means that we can grasp the truth. — Dfpolis
No, intrinsic properties are not descriptions. They are what we seek to describe. — Dfpolis
hen, (2) by the identity of knower and known which is knowledge, they may exist in an observer as an integral set of concepts. — Dfpolis
We may do so if we trust the observer, but first-rate scientists much prefer to see the data, or even better, the object. When my brother Gary, a world-renowned biologist, wished to confirm the species of a scorpion (his specialty), he did not send a description, or even a picture, of the organism to the taxonomist, but the organism itself. — Dfpolis
The knower being informed by the known is identically the known informing the knower. In more contemporary terms, the brain state encoding information about a sensed object is identically the modification of the brain by the action of the sensed object. This allows no separation of knower and known. (I made this point in the paper we are discussing.) — Dfpolis
No, it is not. It is the action of the sensed object on the sensing subject. Action is inseparable from the agent acting. E.g. when the builders stop building, building stops. — Dfpolis
It fundamentally misunderstands the nature of knowing as a partial identity between knower and known. — Dfpolis
We cannot understand forms unless they inform us, and they inform us, not directly as Plato thought, but via sensation. — Dfpolis
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