But there is nothing out of which this body can have been generated. And if it is exempt from increase and diminution, the same reasoning leads us to suppose that it is also unalterable.
On all these grounds, therefore, we may infer with confidence that there is something beyond the bodies that are about us on this earth, different and separate from them ; and that the superior glory of its nature is proportionate to its distance from this world of ours. (269b 14)
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
There are some who say that chance is a cause both of this heaven and of everything that is in the ordered universe; for they say the vortex came to be by chance, and so did the motion which separated the parts and caused the present order of the universe. And this is very surprising; for they say, on the one hand, that animals and plants neither exist nor are generated by luck but that the cause is nature or intellect or some other such thing (for it is not any chance thing that is generated from a given seed, but an olive tree from this kind and a man from that kind, and on the other hand, that the heavens and the most divine of the visible objects were generated by chance, which cause is not such as any of those in the case of animals or plants. — Aristotle, Physics, 196a25, translated by HG Apostle
There is no single science that deals with what is good for all living things any more that there is single art of medicine dealing with everything that is, but a different science deals with each particular good. The argument that man is the best of all living things makes no difference. There are other things whose nature is much more divine than man's: to take the most visible example only, the constituent parts of the universe. — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 114a25, translated by Martin Ostwald
Your response does not support your original point, which was that we could not know intrinsic properties because of the possibility of error. Only errors resulting in the false apprehension of intrinsic properties need concern us, and to know that they are actual errors, we must have a true apprehension.I don't think that this follows. This is because error, and mistake may be relative to some pragmatic principle of success. — Metaphysician Undercover
We cannot describe anything without first judging what categories its propertied belong to. For example, I cannot say "the organism is six-legged," without judging that it has appendages, that the relevant appendages are legs, and that the count of those legs is 6. So, the apprehension and classification of properties is necessarily prior to any description.You said that intrinsic properties are what is compared to the definition. This is incorrect, the description is what is compared. — Metaphysician Undercover
The two senses of "form" are not equivocal, but analogous by an analogy of attribution -- in the same way that food is said to be "healthy," not because it, itself, is alive and well, but because it is a cause of health in those who consume it. Thus, the form of the known object, is a cause of knowledge in the knower.What exists in the mind of the knower is "form" in the sense of the abstraction, and what exists in the material individual is "form" in the sense of of the actuality of the individual. Yet you insist that the form in the knower is somehow the form of the known. They are two distinct senses of "form", how do you reconcile this? — Metaphysician Undercover
The question is not whether we end up describing the object, but what steps are required to do so. I have already shown that we cannot describe before we apprehend.Answering question like this is just a form of description. — Metaphysician Undercover
Read De Anima on sensing and knowing.This is not Aristotelian. — Metaphysician Undercover
My assertion is that our knowledge is specified by the form of the object. The form of the object also specifies much that we do not, and may never, know. I am not claiming that our knowledge is exhaustive, only that it grasps aspects of (a projection of) the object's form.your assertions that the form in the knower is the same as the form in the object is not consistent with this. — Metaphysician Undercover
I have no problem with that. In sensing, the object is the efficient cause of the neural effect. The effect it causes (a modification of our neural system), is specified by the form of the object, which can act on us in some ways, but not others. So, the effect carries information (the reduction of possibility -- for of all the ways we could be affected, we are affected in this specific way). This information is intelligible, and its intelligibility derives from the form of the object.you need to acknowledge that there are two types of causation involved. — Metaphysician Undercover
It means that the object's action on our sense is only one aspect of (part of) the object's actuality. That action is identical with our sense being acted upon by the object. Further, our sense being acted upon by the object is not the whole of our actuality. So, while the relevant action and passion are identical, they are not the whole of either the subject or the object.Oh, now you've revised it to a "partial identity". What could that even mean? — Metaphysician Undercover
No, I am not. I have explained the kinds of causation above.You are assigning all causation to the object, as that which informs. — Metaphysician Undercover
You are confusing first and second actuality. The soul is the first actuality or "being operational" of a potentially living body. It is not the second actuality or operation of the body. So, in sensation, the capacity to sense is an aspect of the psyche, but actually sensing is due to the sensible object acting on the sense -- e.g. light being scattered into the eye, or a hot object heating the skin.the organism must have the capacity to sense. And, under Aristotelian conceptual space, the soul, as the source of internal actuality, or activity, must actualize that capacity. — Metaphysician Undercover
On all these grounds, therefore, we may infer with confidence that there is something beyond the bodies that are about us on this earth, different and separate from them ; and that the superior glory of its nature is proportionate to its distance from this world of ours. (269b 14)
For it is not insofar as something is water or insofar as it is air that it is visible, but because there is a certain nature in it that is the same in both of them and in the [eternal] body above. — Aristotle, De Anima, DA II 7 418b7–9, translated by C.D.C. Reeve
For what is visible is color, and it is what is on [the surface of] what is intrinsically visible—intrinsically visible not in account, but because it has within |418a30| itself the cause of its being visible. — ibid. 418a30
And light is the activity of this, of the transparent insofar as it is transparent. But whatever this is present in, so potentially is darkness. For light is a sort of color of the transparent, when it is made actually transparent by fire or something of that sort, such as the body above. For one and the same [affection] also belongs to it. — ibid. 418b10
Not everything is visible in light, but only the color proper to each thing; for some things are not seen in the light but bring about perception in the dark, e.g., those things . . . such as . . . scales, and eyes of fish ... (419a 1-6)
On all these grounds, therefore, we may infer with confidence that there is something beyond the bodies that are about us on this earth, different and separate from them ; and that the superior glory of its nature is proportionate to its distance from this world of ours. (269b 14)
Aristotle does not want simply to inform us or give us our opinion, he wants us to grapple with problems, to think. — Fooloso4
This is completely consistent with what I've been arguing. — Metaphysician Undercover
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
Your response does not support your original point, which was that we could not know intrinsic properties because of the possibility of error. Only errors resulting in the false apprehension of intrinsic properties need concern us, and to know that they are actual errors, we must have a true apprehension. — Dfpolis
We cannot describe anything without first judging what categories its propertied belong to. For example, I cannot say "the organism is six-legged," without judging that it has appendages, that the relevant appendages are legs, and that the count of those legs is 6. So, the apprehension and classification of properties is necessarily prior to any description. — Dfpolis
Thus, the form of the known object, is a cause of knowledge in the knower. — Dfpolis
Your, Locke's, and Kant's views miss the identity of sense and sensible, and of intellect and intelligibility, Aristotle discusses at length in De Anima: (1) the sense organ sensing the sensible is identically the sensible being sensed by the sense organ and (2) the intellect knowing the intelligible object is identically the intelligible object being known by the intellect. Your responses continue to ignore these essential points. — Dfpolis
In each case, a single act actualizes two potencies. In sensing, the sensible object is actually sensed in the same act in which the sense organ's ability to sense is actualized. In knowing, the intelligible object is actually known in the same act as the intellect's ability to be informed is actualized. Since there is one act or event in each case, the lack of causal necessity argued by Hume does not apply. Why? Because he is analyzing a different kind of causality: one involving two events following one another by rule. It is possible for some disruptive influence to intervene between two events, but one event has no "between" in which an intervention might occur. — Dfpolis
My assertion is that our knowledge is specified by the form of the object. The form of the object also specifies much that we do not, and may never, know. I am not claiming that our knowledge is exhaustive, only that it grasps aspects of (a projection of) the object's form. — Dfpolis
I have no problem with that. In sensing, the object is the efficient cause of the neural effect. The effect it causes (a modification of our neural system), is specified by the form of the object, which can act on us in some ways, but not others. So, the effect carries information (the reduction of possibility -- for of all the ways we could be affected, we are affected in this specific way). This information is intelligible, and its intelligibility derives from the form of the object. — Dfpolis
In the act of awareness, we are the agent. The object does not force its intelligibility on the intellect. Rather, we must choose to attend, and in attending, the agent intellect acts to make what was merely intelligible (the neurally encoded information) actually understood. Here the object, via its neural effect, is the material cause. It limits the possible result (for information is the reduction of possibility), but it does not actualize it. The result, of course, is our awareness of the intelligibility specified by the form of the object. — Dfpolis
It means that the object's action on our sense is only one aspect of (part of) the object's actuality. That action is identical with our sense being acted upon by the object. Further, our sense being acted upon by the object is not the whole of our actuality. So, while the relevant action and passion are identical, they are not the whole of either the subject or the object. — Dfpolis
You are confusing first and second actuality. The soul is the first actuality or "being operational" of a potentially living body. It is not the second actuality or operation of the body. So, in sensation, the capacity to sense is an aspect of the psyche, but actually sensing is due to the sensible object acting on the sense -- e.g. light being scattered into the eye, or a hot object heating the skin. — Dfpolis
You have ignored my critique of Kant's epistemology. — Dfpolis
I appreciate your recognition that what you present is at odds with the text, as testimony. — Paine
It is not. Have you forgotten what you have claimed? — Fooloso4
The small parts which are not consistent are best disregarded rather than trying to work them into the overall consistency because this would be an impossible task. — Metaphysician Undercover
In the text, the matter is immediately cast into the language of actuality and potentiality. Something causes change. Something else is changed. — Paine
The object of sight is the visible, and what is visible is color and a certain kind of object which
can be described in words but which has no single name
Some objects of sight which in light are invisible, in darkness stimulate the sense; that is, things that appear fiery or shining. This class of objects has no simple common name, but instances of it are fungi, flesh, heads, scales, and eyes of fish. (419a 1-6)
In none of these is what is seen their own proper' color. Why we see these at all is another question.
If that is your argument, you need to rethink it. Possibilities do not imply actualities.You seem to have inverted the conditional. My argument is that if it is possible that we err in our knowledge, then our knowledge is not of the properties which are intrinsic to the thing known. — Metaphysician Undercover
No, you are not. Judging makes description possible, but it is not actual description. You are confusing potency and act. An actual description articulates a whole set of judgements in words or some other medium. Each individual property judgement is being aware (aka knowing) that the organism elicits the property concept. Judgement is not expression of a judgement.When I judge that the organism has appendages, and that the appendages are legs, and that the count of the legs is 6, I am describing the organism. — Metaphysician Undercover
You may define your technical terms as you wish, but if you do not say "By 'description' I mean what most other people call 'judgement'," then the result can only be confusion and misunderstanding.And if I repeat these conclusions later, by writing them down, or telling someone else, I am just repeating the description I've already produced. — Metaphysician Undercover
In essential causality, the operation of the cause and the creation of the effect are one and the same event -- and so identical. The builder building the house is identically the house being built by the builder. Please do not confuse this with accidental, or Humean-Kantian, causality, which is the succession of separate events by rule.Good, the form of the known is a cause of the form in the knower is much better than that they are identical. — Metaphysician Undercover
It shows (1) the subject sensing is inseparable from the object being sensed, and (2) the subject knowing is inseparable from the object being known. This means that there is no possibility of an intervening factor such as Aquinas's intelligible species, Locke's ideas, Kant's phenomena or your descriptions."The sense organ sensing the sensible" is just another way of saying "the sensible being sensed by the sense organ". This makes no analysis of the relationship between the sensation and the sensible, which is what we are discussing. So how do you think it says anything significant? — Metaphysician Undercover
II am not claiming that the whole object is identical with the subject's concept. Rather, in sensing, there is an identity between the object's action on the sense (action is an accident inhering in the acting substance) and the subject's passion of having its sense organ modified by that act (passion is also an accident -- inhering in the substance acted upon). In knowing, the identity is between the aspect of the object's intelligibility actualized (a property or accident of the object), and the agent intellect (an aspect of the knower) actualizing that intelligibility -- which is the corresponding concept.The law of identity clearly puts identity of the thing within the thing itself, therefore not in the caused form in the knower. — Metaphysician Undercover
if you still think that he uses identity in this way, bring me the direct quotes of the precise places where you find this. — Metaphysician Undercover
I am sorry that you cannot see that one and the same act makes the object's intelligibility known and the mind informed. I cannot make it any clearer than I have: the subject knowing is inseparable from the object being known.It is wrong to characterize this as a single act. — Metaphysician Undercover
Then, you do not understand the texts I cited.This is what I insist is not Aristotelian — Metaphysician Undercover
The agent intellect is an efficient cause and essential to the other operations you enumerate. Unless we can know intelligibility, none of the other operations can succeed.The issue though, is that in relation to final cause, intention, judgement, and choice, which is the type of activity proper to the soul, efficient cause is secondary, as the means to the end. — Metaphysician Undercover
It is entirely relevant, as your Kantian commitments prevent you from understanding Aristotle, and through him, the nature of knowledge.i didn't see it as relevant to our discussion of Aristotle. If you reject Kant, then I cannot use him as a reference, that's all. — Metaphysician Undercover
There are too many places where the eternal is interwoven with the temporal for your theory of matter to explain away. — Paine
You like to make objections against my interpretation without any real support, like pointing to what exactly is wrong with my interpretation. — Metaphysician Undercover
You didn't address the post. — Metaphysician Undercover
If that is your argument, you need to rethink it. Possibilities do not imply actualities. — Dfpolis
No, you are not. Judging makes description possible, but it is not actual description. You are confusing potency and act. An actual description articulates a whole set of judgements in words or some other medium. Each individual property judgement is being aware (aka knowing) that the organism elicits the property concept. Judgement is not expression of a judgement. — Dfpolis
To judge <A is B> we must be aware that the entity eliciting the concept <A>, say <this something>, is identically that eliciting the concept <B> grasping some property. Were this not the case, if a <A> were elicited by one thing, and <B> by another, the judgement would be unsound. Thus, the eliciting of concepts is a prerequisite for any sound judgement about an entity. So we have the following operations in sequence (1) sensing, (2) conceptualization, (3) judgement, and then, possibly, (4) expression in a description. — Dfpolis
The very expression "compare judgements" is deeply confused, because a judgement is an act of comparison. So, we could not compare judgements without first making the comparison that is the judgement we are comparing. — Dfpolis
In essential causality, the operation of the cause and the creation of the effect are one and the same event -- and so identical. The builder building the house is identically the house being built by the builder. Please do not confuse this with accidental, or Humean-Kantian, causality, which is the succession of separate events by rule. — Dfpolis
It shows (1) the subject sensing is inseparable from the object being sensed, and (2) the subject knowing is inseparable from the object being known. This means that there is no possibility of an intervening factor such as Aquinas's intelligible species, Locke's ideas, Kant's phenomena or your descriptions. — Dfpolis
This selection should suffice. If not, read R. C. Koons, (2019) "Aristotle's formal identity of intellect and object: A solution to the problem of modal epistemology," Ancient Philosophy Today 1, pp. 84-107. — Dfpolis
I am sorry that you cannot see that one and the same act makes the object's intelligibility known and the mind informed. I cannot make it any clearer than I have: the subject knowing is inseparable from the object being known. — Dfpolis
It is entirely relevant, as your Kantian commitments prevent you from understanding Aristotle, and through him, the nature of knowledge. — Dfpolis
That is not a fair accounting. I have quoted Aristotle extensively where I think he does not support your thesis. — Paine
I am no expert in the matter. It is obvious that we both have read a lot of primary text. I appreciate anyone who has made that effort. I am not making accusations but saying why your view does not make sense to me. — Paine
I gave up at ‘there’s a unique form for every particular’. — Wayfarer
I gave up at ‘there’s a unique form for every particular’. — Wayfarer
This is modal nonsense. Possible errors do not imply actual falsity.You quoted only one premise of the argument, the other stated the actuality. If X then Y. (Possibility). X (Actuality). Therefore Y (conclusion). — Metaphysician Undercover
No. First, there is knowing by acquaintance. It is not judgement, but an inchoate awareness of intelligibility. Second, we may parse or divide that awareness, abstracting property concepts. Judgement is a third movement of mind in which we reunite what we have abstracted, to form propositional knowledge. Thus, the abstraction (or knowing) of intrinsic property concepts is a necessary precondition for judgements about objects, and it is these abstracted concepts we compare to definitions in category judgements.Each bit of knowledge is a judgement, and a description involves a bunch of judgements. But this doesn't really affect the issue. The description is still a matter of judgement, but instead of being one judgement it's a multitude of judgements, which is really what i meant anyway. I didn't mean to imply that an entire description consists of only one judgement. — Metaphysician Undercover
Nonsense. We judge <This something (what I am experiencing) is a scorpion>. The concept <What I am experiencing> is not the concept <scorpion>. Similarly, we might judge <This something is six-legged> on our way to judging <This something is an insect>.We never judge "A is B" in any unqualified way. We say "A is A", and "B is B", but not "A is B" because these two are different. — Metaphysician Undercover
No. Knowledge as acquaintance is not propositional knowledge. It is prior to the act of judgement and the consequent propositional knowledge.As per your definition of judging, every bit of knowledge is a judgement — Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, we need knowledge as acquaintance to make judgements. So we need to know intrinsic properties prior to judging their type. This does not undermine my account of descriptions.We need to allow that "judgement" requires knowledge, and can only be made after knowledge has accumulated, but this would undermine your argument of how judgement relates to description. — Metaphysician Undercover
That is why I defined it for you. It is an essential concept in classical metaphysics, developed by Aristotle, not me. The terminology is Scholastic. You can look it up in my book.Sorry, I cannot grasp this at all. I've never heard of "essential causality". — Metaphysician Undercover
To help you understand how humans actually come to know.But what's the point to this? — Metaphysician Undercover
That is unfortunate. No one can make you see it. Either you can understand it, or you cannot.I don't see how it shows that at all. — Metaphysician Undercover
The same reasoning applies to both, as both instantiate the identity of action and passion discussed in Physics III, 3. I can show and explain Aristotle's insights. I cannot make you understand or accept them.Obviously he is talking about intelligible objects here, not sensible objects — Metaphysician Undercover
I suggest that you reflect on the state of mind called "invincible ignorance" in which the will closes the mind to evidence that would undermine a prior belief.if Koons makes the same sort of error of equivocation, I'm not interested — Metaphysician Undercover
I never claimed that the subject as a whole becomes the object as a whole. So, these statements present no problem for me. On the other hand, the statements of intellectual identity are incompatible with your Kantianism.The quotes support the distinction which I claim. This one for example: "and yet the distinction between their being remains." and this one: "identical in character with its object without being the object." — Metaphysician Undercover
Nego.you are equivocating between 'intelligible' object and 'sensible' object. — Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, it does, because the vehicle of intelligibility is the phantasm or neural state encoding sensory content -- and it is identically the action of the sensible on our nervous system. So, it is the form or first actuality of the object, as expressed in the object's action (its second actuality), that the intellect grasps.this says absolutely nothing about the knowing subject's relation with the sensible object. — Metaphysician Undercover
It is the first time I've seen you appealing to Kant. Had you done so earlier, I would have pointed it out earlier. Do you prefer "closet Kantian"?Wow, that's the first time I've been called a Kantian. — Metaphysician Undercover
Inconsistency can do that.it's a strange world we live in. — Metaphysician Undercover
In this thread, you haven't really indicated what it is I am saying which doesn't make sense to you. — Metaphysician Undercover
There is nothing to indicate that the world might be eternal. and everything indicates that there is potentiality and actuality. So that possibility, that the world is eternal and there no potentiality or actuality is easily excluded as unreal. — Metaphysician Undercover
Possible errors do not imply actual falsity. — Dfpolis
No. First, there is knowing by acquaintance. It is not judgement, but an inchoate awareness of intelligibility. Second, we may parse or divide that awareness, abstracting property concepts. Judgement is a third movement of mind in which we reunite what we have abstracted, to form propositional knowledge. Thus, the abstraction (or knowing) of intrinsic property concepts is a necessary precondition for judgements about objects, and it is these abstracted concepts we compare to definitions in category judgements. — Dfpolis
Your Lockean prejudices — Dfpolis
our Lockean prejudices make you think that we know ideas, rather than objects, in the first instance. Yet, <This something is six-legged> is not a comparison of concepts, but of the source of concepts. The judgement means that the object that elicits the concept <This something> is the identical object that elicits <six-legged> -- not that the concept <This something> is identically the concept <six-legged>. — Dfpolis
So we need to know intrinsic properties prior to judging their type. — Dfpolis
I suggest that you reflect on the state of mind called "invincible ignorance" in which the will closes the mind to evidence that would undermine a prior belief. — Dfpolis
Yes, it does, because the vehicle of intelligibility is the phantasm or neural state encoding sensory content -- and it is identically the action of the sensible on our nervous system. So, it is the form or first actuality of the object, as expressed in the object's action (its second actuality), that the intellect grasps. — Dfpolis
It is the first time I've seen you appealing to Kant. Had you done so earlier, I would have pointed it out earlier. Do you prefer "closet Kantian"? — Dfpolis
I hate this piecemeal sort of reply. — Paine
I did so here in response to: — Paine
This does not make sense of much of what Aristotle has said. I am getting off the merry-go-round now. You do not recognize my efforts as efforts. I will make no more of them. — Paine
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.