But, you're right given the historical evidence. We know that Aristotle was wrong, and an idea more akin to Democratus' was more right...there is serious concern regarding the method Aristotle employs to reach "metaphysical knowledge". He uses reason to try and challenge other ideas, and furnish his own account, and it lead us in the wrong direction for generations until folks like Descartes, Bacon, Newton began challenging Aristotle's ideas and considering the atomic mechanical principle of his predecessors. — 013zen

This misunderstands both Aristotle and the history of science. Aristotle was wrong in part. So were Newton and Einstein. Atomism (the belief in permanent, indivisible fundamental particles) is dead as a door nail. Bacon did not invent the scientific method (Robert Grosseteste did).

What specific error did Aristotle's method cause in his metaphysics? What is wrong with reason (aka logic)? Aristotle almost always applies it to observations. I am not saying that his metaphysics is flawless, just that it is well-founded and profound -- and cannot be dismissed by hand waving.

There are a couple of articles showing that Aristotle was the father of mathematical physics and knew more about motion in viscous fluids than Newton. His much criticized relation between force and velocity is taught in every freshman physics course as the power law (P=fv). In comparison, Descartes's physics is laughable.

This is not to deny advances have been made, but to say that more respect should be given to those on whose shoulders we stand.

We have to be careful, though. The use of the word "decay" isn't being used in the traditional sense of say a uranium atom decaying and releasing an alpha particle or something of the sort. — 013zen

Elementary particles can do the same. Neutrons decay with about a 13 minute half-life into a proton, electron, and electron anti-neutrino. (This implies a change in quarks as well.) Neutral pions can decay into 2 gamma rays, destroying the quarks constituting it. Running the reaction backwards implies that 2 gamma rays can combine to produce a neutral pion with its associated quarks.

Still, it does not matter, philosophically. What matters is the combination of potentiality and actuality that impermanence implies. Things are not only what they are (form), but a determinate tendency to become what they will be (hyle). (They can't become just anything). That is the meaning of hylomorphism.

I actually, personally, agree with you in terms of overall thesis. I think Aristotle's application of reason was both insightful and also not entirely wrongheaded.

I was struck about a year ago when I cracked open the physics and metaphysics for the first time since undergrad, and saw within the texts a thinker working through many similar problems as we are today. The notion of love and strife being elementary aspects of reality as equally but opposed interactions isn't so far off from how we think things work - its simply a difference usage of terms, and understandings, but ultimately they accomplish similar work.

I also agree that as I read the history of science, I am rarely confronted with ideas that are wholly wrong or wholly "right". Rather, I see thinkers taking this aspect and that aspect and reworking this and throwing out that...so many concepts come into fashion and are considered in one way, and then lose popular opinion only to reemerge with a new paint job considering contemporaneous information. That was my point regarding the atomic theory, not that the exact literal same ideas of corpuscles of differing shapes and sizes mechanically clumping together due to shape is right, but rather a more modern conception involving elementary particles. The bones of the idea were always strong, so to speak.

Neutrons decay with about a 13 minute half-life into a proton — Dfpolis

Well, neutrons are made up of quarks, and its the quarks being transformed into either up or down and what not that induces the "decay" of the proton into that of a neutron. So, again, it's not so much "decaying" as the constituents of the proton spontaneously becoming another elementary constituent.

Still, it does not matter, philosophically. What matters is the combination of potentiality and actuality that impermanence implies. Things are not only what they are (form), but a determinate tendency to become what they will be (hyle). (They can't become just anything). That is the meaning of hylomorphism. — Dfpolis

Yes, they cannot become just anything, they can only take on some certain predetermined forms. It's like if I had a quantum "die" that could "roll" any number between 1-10. While the form is indeterminant until it becomes one of the forms, those forms along with the potential to be any one of them constitutes the "die's" actuality. If we are disagreeing, I don't see exactly where.

God's intention to create whatever he creates, which is in the order of primary (metaphysical) causality, and not temporally prior because God is unchanging and so timeless. — Dfpolis

Hi Df. Can you clarify this idea for me? How can you conceive of a form of causality which does not involve temporal priority? Suppose God's intention to create (God's Will) is a cause of what He creates. How can this intention to create be a cause of the creation, and yet not be temporally prior to God's creation?

If we compare God's Will with the human will, we see that the human will is temporally prior, and acts as a cause. However, we understand the human will as "free", therefore not caused to act the way that it does. The idea that the human will is an uncaused cause does not imply that the human will is unchanging and timeless. How do you get to the point of concluding that God is unchanging and timeless?

What I am asking is how are you relating "intention" to "unchanging" and "timeless"? You appear to be saying that if God is unchanging and timeless, then God's Will cannot be temporally prior to God's creation. Since we know a lot about the nature of intention, from human intention, and that intention is temporally prior, isn't it logical to conclude therefore that God, who acts intentionally, is not unchanging and timeless?

And isn't this the conclusion of Christian theologists like Aquinas, as well? They conclude that God is a "Form", pure act. And to say that something which is "pure act" is unchanging and timeless, would be contradictory. Therefore we ought to conclude that this notion of God, as "unchanging and so timeless", is incorrect.

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.

"As it happens, the very first post I entered on the predecessor forum to this one, was about what I now understand to be Platonic realism, i.e. that abstracta (in that case numbers), are real but not materially existent. I've discussed and debated the issue many times but I find that it's neither well understood nor widely supported - principally because it is obviously incompatible with physicalism.
— Wayfarer

This is very interesting...

I've heard a line of reasoning that reminds me of this....I think it might have been Searle? Well, regardless...they made a case that there are things that are:

1. Epistemically objective
2. Epistemically subjective

3. Ontologically objective
4. Ontologically subjective

Something could be ontologically subjective which has a different mode of existence than ontologically objective things. But, this is not to say that they cannot also be epistemically objective. — 013zen

'Objective' always tends to mean 'mind independent'. 'Subjective' tends to mean 'in the mind, mind dependent.' It seems natural to depict it this way as we see ourselves as subjects in a domain of objects.

But what this doesn't see, is the sense in which the objective realm is also mind-dependent. And that comes into relief when you consider things like the role of mathematics in physics and science generally. On the one hand, the phenomena of the natural sciences are independent of observation - they continue to exist independently of being observed. But on the other hand, in order to analyse them and incorporate them in theory, we are highly dependent on theoretical constructs which in some important sense (as Einstein said) dictate what it is we are seeing. The distinction which seems so clear-cut, is not actually so, because we're not actually outside of or apart from the world that natural science seeks to know. That has become evident in science in the observer problem in physics, but it's also manifest in many of the analyses of philosophy of science.

So, I wonder if real numbers are either subjective or objective. I mean, they're not to be found anywhere in the world, as such. Nor are they products of the mind, as they are the same for all who can count. That is the sense in which 'intelligible objects' are transcendent - they transcend the subject/object division. And not seeing that is part of the consequences of the decline of realism. The culture doesn't have a way of thinking about transcendentals. From an article on What is Math that I frequently cite in this context:

scholars—especially those working in other branches of science—view Platonism with skepticism. Scientists tend to be empiricists; they imagine the universe to be made up of things we can touch and taste and so on; things we can learn about through observation and experiment. The idea of something existing “outside of space and time” makes empiricists nervous: It sounds embarrassingly like the way religious believers talk about God, and God was banished from respectable scientific discourse a long time ago.

Platonism, as mathematician Brian Davies has put it, “has more in common with mystical religions than it does with modern science.” The fear is that if mathematicians give Plato an inch, he’ll take a mile. If the truth of mathematical statements can be confirmed just by thinking about them, then why not ethical problems, or even religious questions? Why bother with empiricism at all?

Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York, was initially attracted to Platonism—but has since come to see it as problematic. If something doesn’t have a physical existence, he asks, then what kind of existence could it possibly have? “If one ‘goes Platonic’ with math,” writes Pigliucci, empiricism “goes out the window.” (If the proof of the Pythagorean theorem exists outside of space and time, why not the “golden rule,” or even the divinity of Jesus Christ?)

Speaks volumes, in my opinion.

I think a modern notion of forms is defensible. The forms are simply the arrangement of quarks, leptons, and bosons that make up protons and neutrons, or the form that a carbon atom takes, etc — 013zen

I think that was the view defended by D M Armstrong, 'Materialist Theory of Mind'. But I think it's a reification, an attempt to understand ideas in a quasi- or pseudo-scientific framework and fit them into the procrustean bed of naturalism. My somewhat revisionist interpretation of the forms or ideas, is that they're more like principles - perhaps logical principles, like the LEM, for example (or the principle of triangularity or circularity, for others). In what sense can these principles be said to exist? Only as an 'object of intellect', in the Greek sense (that is, they are real as noumenal objects). Our thinking is suffused with and dependent on these kinds of principles in order to make sense of experience, but again, they're not 'out there' in the world. They're not objective, but we rely on them to determine what is objective. But again, the culture we're in doesn't have a way of framing transcendentals, because of the historic rejection of metaphysics. (Not for a minute claiming there should be a 'return' to traditionalism, but a re-interpretation of these fundamental issues.)

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. — Paine

Yes, good point.

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. — Paine

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.

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. — Paine

I may not be fully grasping your point here, but it would seem that for Gerson that difference between Plato and Aristotle (innate versus developed) is an accidental difference, especially when compared to what someone like Rorty is doing. Presumably for Gerson the analogous difference between Descartes and Locke is also not a difference that would place either one of them outside Platonism/philosophy. Aristotle and Locke (and Descartes) were searching for something new, but within certain boundaries.

Can you clarify this idea for me? How can you conceive of a form of causality which does not involve temporal priority? Suppose God's intention to create (God's Will) is a cause of what He creates. How can this intention to create be a cause of the creation, and yet not be temporally prior to God's creation? — Metaphysician Undercover

Aristotle and the Scholastics distinguish two kinds of efficient causality: accidental, which is the time sequence by rule Hume and Kant discuss, and essential. Accidental causality involves two events separated in time. Because they are separated, an intervening event can prevent the cause from bringing about the effect. Hence Hume was correct in arguing that time-sequenced causality lacks necessity.

In essential causality there is one event, and cause and effect are concurrent. Aristotle's paradigm case is a builder building a house. The cause is the builder building. The effect is the house being built. Yet, the action of the builder building the house is identically the passion of the house being built by the builder. As there is only one event, no intervention is possible, and this kind of causality (the actualization of a potential by the concurrent action of an agent) has intrinsic necessity. Since potentials are not yet operational, they cannot actualize themselves. So, something else that is already operational (actual) must work to actualize any potential. That is one of the most fundamental insights of Aristotle's metaphysics.

Since God is unchanging, and time is the measure of change according to before and after, God is timeless. So, there is no separation of plan and execution in God. Thus, God's will for a being to exist creates the being. As would be the case when the builder stops building, if God were to stop willing the being of a creature, the effect (the existence of the creature) would cease. Thus, creation is not a launch and forget process, but an on-going activity.

How do you get to the point of concluding that God is unchanging and timeless? — Metaphysician Undercover

Because God is the end of the line of concurrent explanation (essential causality). Since He is the end of the line there is nothing prior to actualize any potential He may have. So, God can have no potential. That means that God is pure act = fully actualized being. Change is the actualization of a potential insofar as it is still in potency. Since God has no unactualized potential, He cannot change. Since he cannot change, there is no before and after in God => God is timeless.

What I am asking is how are you relating "intention" to "unchanging" and "timeless"? — Metaphysician Undercover

I am using Brentano's analysis of intentionality as characterized by aboutness. We do not just know or will, we know or will something, which is what the acts are about. Creation is about what it produces, so it is an intentional act. Intentional acts need not involve intrinsic change. My continuing to know a theorem or love a person does not require a change in my state.

And to say that something which is "pure act" is unchanging and timeless, would be contradictory. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, knowing and willing (both acts) all being at all times requires no change.

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. — Paine

Aristotle would use his potency and act model, and answer that philosophy makes explicit (actual) what we know implicitly (potential).

The world acts on us, projecting its power into us, and so making itself present. When we attend to the resulting experience we know that the world can act as it does act on us, and knowing that is knowing something of the nature of the world -- for its nature is the specification of its possible acts. Thus, true knowledge is awareness of the world as it projects its power into us.

This is why the identity of action and passion is so critical to Aristotle's philosophy. (A acting on B is identically B being acted on by A.) Here, the object informing the subject is identically the subject being informed by the object. In modern parlance, our neural state being modified by a sensed object is identically the sensed object modifying our neural state. That is why direct realism is inescapable.

Of course, our neural state is the result of many such actions, and it requires reflection and analysis to sort them out. Still, human knowledge reflects how the world interacts with us, and not how it is abstractly. We cannot know the world without interacting with it, so it is a contradiction in terms to think of knowing objects in themselves, as not interacting with a knower.

Aristotle and the Scholastics distinguish two kinds of efficient causality: accidental, which is the time sequence by rule Hume and Kant discuss, and essential. Accidental causality involves two events separated in time. Because they are separated, an intervening event can prevent the cause from bringing about the effect. Hence Hume was correct in arguing that time-sequenced causality lacks necessity. — Dfpolis

I do not agree with this interpretation. Aristotle did not distinguish accidental efficient causation from essential efficient causation in the way you describe. Nor did the scholastics. Aristotle classed luck and chance as accidental causation, and the four commonly referred to causes are the essential conditions for change. Efficient causation is an essential condition, described by Aristotle as "the primary source of change" and it follows the time sequence described by Hume.

It is from the perspective of the effect that the efficient cause is apprehended as necessary. If the building has been built, it is necessary that there was an act of building.

In essential causality there is one event, and cause and effect are concurrent. Aristotle's paradigm case is a builder building a house. The cause is the builder building. The effect is the house being built. Yet, the action of the builder building the house is identically the passion of the house being built by the builder. — Dfpolis

Here you conflate final cause with efficient cause to create a new concept which you call "essential cause". This is not Aristotelian. The efficient cause of the house is the action of the builder, the act of building. The cause of the builder building, what you call "the passion" of the builder, is the final cause. Why is the builder building? Because the builder desires a house. This is just like Aristotle's example. Why is the man walking? He is walking because he desires health. The final cause of the builder's activity of building is the desire for a house, just like the final cause of the walker's activity of walking is the desire for health. That is the nature of "intention" which is how we understand "final cause".

When final causation is given it's proper position, instead of conflating it with efficient causation, the temporal succession is evident. The desire to build (intention, final cause) is temporally prior to the activity of building, which is the efficient cause of the house.

As there is only one event, no intervention is possible, and this kind of causality (the actualization of a potential by the concurrent action of an agent) has intrinsic necessity. Since potentials are not yet operational, they cannot actualize themselves. So, something else that is already operational (actual) must work to actualize any potential. That is one of the most fundamental insights of Aristotle's metaphysics. — Dfpolis

And this is not quite correct either. The action of the agent is volitional therefore there is no intrinsic necessity to that act. Yes, in hindsight the final cause (will) of the agent is necessary, just like the efficient cause is necessary, in hind sight. But, we cannot distinguish one from the other in the way that you propose, as one being essential, and the other accidental. They are both essential conditions of the house, as are the material and the formal cause as well.

However, I agree that you are correct to say that something else, which in this case is the intentional act of the agent, (final cause), is necessary as the act which actualizes a potential, causing what we know as activity. And, I agree that this was a great achievement by Aristotle. But I do not like your characterization of this cause of activity, as "essential efficient causation". Since efficient causation is activity itself, then characterizing the cause of this activity as a further efficient causation, would just create an infinite regress of efficient causation. That's what the idea "concurrent action" as simultaneous cause and effect induces, an infinite regress of action.

Aristotle put an end to that infinite regress with "final cause". So conventional interpretation, as well as Scholastic interpretation, understands the cause of the builder's activity of building as final cause, the will to have a house. Likewise, God's activity of creating is caused by the final cause known as God's Will. Why did God create the earth? He saw that it was good.

Since God is unchanging, and time is the measure of change according to before and after, God is timeless. — Dfpolis

This is not valid logic. Time is stated as the measure of change, it is not stated as change itself, or even derived from change. Since time is the measure of change it must transcend all change. That which transcends change cannot be timeless, or time itself would be timeless. Therefore even if God is unchanging, this does not mean that God is timeless.

So, there is no separation of plan and execution in God. Thus, God's will for a being to exist creates the being. As would be the case when the builder stops building, if God were to stop willing the being of a creature, the effect (the existence of the creature) would cease. Thus, creation is not a launch and forget process, but an on-going activity. — Dfpolis

I agree with this, in a way. But the classical Christian conception of God is as a trinity, so we can still consider a separation, in principle, between plan and execution, in God. Augustine compared the trinity of God to the trinity of the human intellect, which consists of memory, reason (understanding), and will. If the plan exists in memory, then there is a separation in principle, between the plan and the execution. It may be the case that the act of God is inseparable from God's Will, but this would mean that God is changing in accordance with His Will. Therefore we could not say that God is unchanging.

Because God is the end of the line of concurrent explanation (essential causality). Since He is the end of the line there is nothing prior to actualize any potential He may have. So, God can have no potential. That means that God is pure act = fully actualized being. Change is the actualization of a potential insofar as it is still in potency. Since God has no unactualized potential, He cannot change. Since he cannot change, there is no before and after in God => God is timeless. — Dfpolis

This is where your interpretation becomes problematic. The end of the line of efficient causation is known under Aristotelian principles as final cause. The terms "end" as what is intended, and "final" in final causation are not merely coincidence. We agree that God can have no potential, and is pure act, but this does not mean that he does not change. That "change is the actualization of a potential", is your condition, produced from your interpretation, which appears to be a little bit faulty.

According to Aristotle change is the result of causation, and causes are of four principle types. One of these types is final cause, and we find examples in acts of free will. That the will is free implies that it causes a type of change which is not dependent on potential.

I do not agree with this interpretation. — Metaphysician Undercover

You need to do more research.

It is from the perspective of the effect that the efficient cause is apprehended as necessary. If the building has been built, it is necessary that there was an act of building. — Metaphysician Undercover

The necessity is bilateral and in the present tense. There can be no builder building without a building being built and vice versa.

Here you conflate final cause with efficient cause — Metaphysician Undercover

Baloney. The builder is an efficient cause, and that is the only cause I discussed.

what you call "the passion" of the builder — Metaphysician Undercover

Read what I said. I said it is a passion of the house being built. It is not a passion in the emotional sense, but in the technical sense of suffering an action.

The desire to build (intention, final cause) is temporally prior to the activity of building, which is the efficient cause of the house. — Metaphysician Undercover

If I do not wish to build now, I will not build now. Planning may be prior, but the commitment to act now is concurrent with acting now.

The action of the agent is volitional therefore there is no intrinsic necessity to that act. — Metaphysician Undercover

I did not deny that because I did not discuss final causation, but efficient causation. The analysis also applies to cases in which the agent is not a person, e.g. acid eroding metal now is identically metal being eroded by acid now.

Again, there can be no building a house now without a house being built now. So, unlike time-sequenced causality, an essential cause produces its effect necessarily, and the effect, which is a passion, requires a concurrent cause, because no potency can actualize itself. Bricks do not become a house without a builder.

I do not like your characterization of this cause of activity, as "essential efficient causation". — Metaphysician Undercover

It is just what the Scholastics called it -- a name, not something to be liked or disliked.

This is not valid logic. Time is stated as the measure of change, it is not stated as change itself, or even derived from change. — Metaphysician Undercover

You cannot measure what does not exist. So, if there is no change, there is no number associated with it, and time is the number we assign to change. So, there is no time. Measures are derived from what we measure.

But the classical Christian conception of God is as a trinity, so we can still consider a separation, in principle, between plan and execution, in God. — Metaphysician Undercover

The Trinity does not entail separation. It reflects internal relations in God as Source (Father), Self-Knowledge (Logos = Son) and Self-Acceptance (Love = the Holy Spirit). Since both God's Self-Knowledge and Self-Acceptance are complete they are identical to their Source.

If the plan exists in memory — Metaphysician Undercover

Since God is unchanging and timeless He has no past to remember. Everything is present to Him.

this would mean that God is changing in accordance with His Will. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, God willing a changing world can be and is done without a change in God. Again, God has no unactualized potential, and so cannot change.

The end of the line of efficient causation is known under Aristotelian principles as final cause. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is no reason God cannot be both.

hat "change is the actualization of a potential", is your condition, produced from your interpretation, which appears to be a little bit faulty. — Metaphysician Undercover

I quoted Aristotle's definition of change, not mine.

That the will is free implies that it causes a type of change which is not dependent on potential. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, it implies that it is not predetermined by potential. Potential is the ability to become other. If something cannot become other than it is, it cannot change.

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.

There's a passage I quote frequently from this paper, which has always seemed significant to me, but mostly elicits shrugs:

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. — Gerson, Platonism vs Naturalism

It is also central to Aquinas' epistemology:

...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. — Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Man, by Robert E. Brennan

The necessity is bilateral and in the present tense. There can be no builder building without a building being built and vice versa. — Dfpolis

The necessity is not bilateral because from the perspective of the builder, to build is a freely willed choice. The so-called necessity of "a building being built" is a feature of the way that you describe the agent, as "a builder". If the agent decided to do something other than build, this would not negate the existence of the agent, it would negate the descriptive term "builder".

So the relation of "necessity" between builder and building involves two distinct senses of "necessity" and the conclusion that "the necessity is bilateral involves equivocation. From the perspective of seeing an existing building, or even a building being built, it is logically necessary that there is a builder. But from the perspective of the builder, the building is "necessary" in the sense of something needed, desired as an end. These two senses of "necessary" are very distinct. The builder is a "builder" whether that person decide to work on this particular project or not therefore there is no logical necessity between the builder and the project, from the builder's perspective..

Furthermore, it is very clear, from the nature of planning, that there truly is a builder acting on the project, by preparing for the possibility of it, "without a building being built". That is to say that the builder acts on the project before the project even exists, and this is a matter of gaining experience.

This is proven by the fact that plans are most often general, and the general plan for a type of building, a house, preexists actual building of the particular house. Therefore the builder is building, studying general plans and building codes, for some time before there is actually a building being built.

To deny the temporal priority of the general formula, or plan, for a house, in relation to a particular house being built, is to completely ignore the principal problem being dealt with by Aristotle in his Metaphysics. This is the issue brought forth in Plato's Timaeus, the question of how it is that a general idea, a universal form, in its temporal priority, acts to determine the form of the particular, when that particular comes into being. To take Aristotle's example of the potential of an acorn, the general form, or universal type of "oak tree" precedes the growth of the seed, and determines the type of thing which the particular will be, prior to the existence of the particular.

Your way of portraying the actions of the agent as concurrent with the effects of those acts, and as a bilateral necessity, completely obscures this issue, of how it is that an intentional agent can work with universal principles, a general formula, to create particular individuals of that type.

Baloney. The builder is an efficient cause, and that is the only cause I discussed. — Dfpolis

You described an instance of the act of building, and this act is caused by final causation, intention, as per Aristotle's description of the four senses of "cause". That you call this "efficient cause" only indicates that you do not understand Aristotle.

Read what I said. I said it is a passion of the house being built. It is not a passion in the emotional sense, but in the technical sense of suffering an action. — Dfpolis

The act of building is prior to the house, as efficient cause, and the will or intent to build is prior to the act of building as the final cause. If we look backward, at the house's coming into being through a causal chain of efficient causes, the end of that chain (which is the beginning in time) is the final cause, the intent of the builder. That is how a freely willed act works, the agent desires something and causes (through final causation) the efficient causes which are seen as required, as the means to that end.

If I do not wish to build now, I will not build now. Planning may be prior, but the commitment to act now is concurrent with acting now. — Dfpolis

No, this is a false description. The act follows the commitment (decision) which is prior to, as cause of the act. The two are not "concurrent". I decide to walk, and the activity of walking is the effect which follows from this cause. The person may deliberate, and decide to act at a very specific time, but the physical (observable) act is posterior to the mental (unobservable) decision to act.

I did not deny that because I did not discuss final causation, but efficient causation. — Dfpolis

Your failure to take into consideration the role of final causation is what produces the faulty description that there is a "bilateral necessity" and that the acts of the builder, and the building being built, are concurrent. They are very clearly not concurrent because the planning of the building is an act of the builder which is prior to any building being built. If you would take into account the role of final causation you would understand that there is no such bilateral necessity, and no concurrency. In reality, if you just look at the actions of the builder, you might not even know that there is "a building being built", until the builder is well into the project. You refer to the end, the final cause, "the building" when you say that there is "a building" which is being built. So you refer to final causation yet claim you do not discuss final causation.

Again, there can be no building a house now without a house being built now. — Dfpolis

Yes there is activity of the builder as "builder" of a house, now, without a house being built because the planning, which requires understanding of general principles, is a part of the activity of building which is prior to the activity that is referred to as "a house being built". This is the difference between what is observable and what is not observable. The planning is a part of the builder's activity of building which is prior to the observable activity which is described as "a house being built. That the two are distinct is true and proven from the fact that the planning may be generic, while "a house being built" is particular. And learning the general principles is a necessary part of "building a house" while it is not a part of "a house being built, because the former refers to the general and the latter refers to the particular. Therefore it is very clear that there is activity of the builder which is prior to, cause of, and necessary for, the particular instance of "a house being built".

I quoted Aristotle's definition of change, not mine. — Dfpolis

That would require a reference.

The necessity is not bilateral because from the perspective of the builder, to build is a freely willed choice. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, you are missing the point. The necessity is not in the decision to build, but in the relation between the act of building as cause and the passion of being built as effect.

From the perspective of seeing an existing building, or even a building being built, it is logically necessary that there is a builder. — Metaphysician Undercover

The concurrent necessity between building and being built is being asserted, not a necessity in the choice to build.

Your way of portraying the actions of the agent as concurrent with the effects of those acts, and as a bilateral necessity, completely obscures this issue, of how it is that an intentional agent can work with universal principles, a general formula, to create particular individuals of that type. — Metaphysician Undercover

First, it is Aristotle's insight, not mine. Second, you are thinking of the wrong problem. Yes, the intentional or potential form of the effect is temporally prior to the actual effect in nature (in cases where there is change). That does not mean that the activity of producing the effect (e.g. building) is prior to the passion of the effect being produced (e.g. being built). In the case of planning, the activity of producing a plan is concurrent with the effect of the plan being produced.

You described an instance of the act of building, and this act is caused by final causation, intention, as per Aristotle's description of the four senses of "cause". That you call this "efficient cause" only indicates that you do not understand Aristotle. — Metaphysician Undercover

Try assuming that I know what I am talking about and see if you can make your interpretation of my words fit that assumption. When I say I am only discussing efficient causality, I mean that I am only discussing that one of the four causes. I do not mean that there are no other causes. It is only by looking for ways in which I might be wrong that these two ideas can be confused.

If you recall, you asked a question about efficient causality and how it could be concurrent. You did not ask about free will.

I decide to walk, and the activity of walking is the effect which follows from this cause. — Metaphysician Undercover

Making a commitment is not an isolated event. It sets up a committed state. If I am walking and decide to stop, that commitment (the state of being committed to walking) ends, as does my walking.

Your failure to take into consideration the role of final causation is what produces the faulty description that there is a "bilateral necessity" and that the acts of the builder, and the building being built, are concurrent. — Metaphysician Undercover

So, you are claiming that building and being built are not concurrent? If so, we have no common basis for continuing.

They are very clearly not concurrent because the planning of the building is an act of the builder which is prior to any building being built. — Metaphysician Undercover

I never claimed that any and all acts of the builder are concurrent with being built, but only the act of building. Please do not extend what I say to make it wrong. I never denied that builders plan or have free will.

That would require a reference. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, it does not. I do not have time to deal with your negativity. You can take my word for it or Google it.

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.

Thanks, I recall those exchanges! I do admit I have a tendency to trot out the same well-worn quotes from my scrapbook when the opportunity arises. The theme I'm exploring is the idea of universals as transjective constituents of rational ideation.

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.

But on the other hand, in order to analyse them and incorporate them in theory, we are highly dependent on theoretical constructs which in some important sense (as Einstein said) dictate what it is we are seeing. — Wayfarer

Yes, I believe this is the problem of theory ladeness, right? That is, that our theory in some sense precedes our experience of the phenomena as such. This is why as Kuhn states our paradigms shift, as though we are seeing the same phenomenon through different lenses, so to speak. But, I take the problem of theory ladeness to not imply that objective reality is in any sense dependent upon our observation; rather, it is our understanding that hinges on our theory.

So, I wonder if real numbers are either subjective or objective. I mean, they're not to be found anywhere in the world, as such. Nor are they products of the mind, as they are the same for all who can count. — Wayfarer

Yea, this was a huge debate in mathematics (and still is to a lesser degree today) in the 1900s...formalism vs platonism....I've thought about it a bit myself, and while I haven't come down on either side of the topic, I do tend to wonder how intractable the problem truly is. I mean, it's as you say, why should we suppose that either options of the dichotomy are correct.

When, for example, scientists articulate that force is equal to the mass times the acceleration of some object, and plug in the numbers, in what sense do the numbers correspond to reality? They, certainly, give us information...Well, assuming two things:

1. Reality exists as it does regardless of experience
2. Reality is uniform (Things like energy are conserved)

You can imagine that if you develop a uniform system of fine enough granularity that you could compare reality to, since they are both uniform systems, the granularity of one is informative if superimposed onto the other.

If, I pour water into a jug, and measure how much water is in there, I can measure it in liters, or ounces, or weight and regardless of the differing "numbers" which represent the amount of water, that amount never changed. The trick is, we only get information relative to what we apply the system to. So the information gained is in some sense due to an intermingling between real and subjective.

Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York, was initially attracted to Platonism—but has since come to see it as problematic. If something doesn’t have a physical existence, he asks, then what kind of existence could it possibly have? “If one ‘goes Platonic’ with math,” writes Pigliucci, empiricism “goes out the window.” (If the proof of the Pythagorean theorem exists outside of space and time, why not the “golden rule,” or even the divinity of Jesus Christ?)

I believe I know of Pigliucci...I read the first quarter of his book Answers for Aristotle awhile ago. I'm pretty sure I've listened to some debates he's been involved in...regarding this quote, I don't quite agree that its as slippery as that slope, but I can appreciate his point and where he's coming from. But, my point is there feels like there is an equivocation going on between the question:

1. Did we invent math
2. Is the information gained by applying math invented?

The difference is the system and the information gained from the application of that system. The latter relies on reality existing as it does to furnish any information. We didn't invent the length, so to speak, but we did invent the ruler.

deleted by myself.

Again, you are missing the point. The necessity is not in the decision to build, but in the relation between the act of building as cause and the passion of being built as effect. — Dfpolis

This doesn't make any sense Df. Passion is emotion, feeling. The phrase "the passion of being built doesn't make sense. You claim "passion in the technical sense", but Google doesn't even come up with any such thing.

If we remove "passion", then all we have is "the act of building", and "being built". But these two are exactly the same thing. Of course they are concurrent, as they are two different ways of saying the same thing. But there is no cause and effect here, they are one and the same thing. If we add "passion" into the scenario, then we are talking about the passion of the builder, and this acts as a cause, not an effect. And, the ambition to build is prior in time in relation to the acts of building which follow from it.

The concurrent necessity between building and being built is being asserted, not a necessity in the choice to build. — Dfpolis

The only necessity here is that these two expressions "building", and "being built", both refer to the exact same thing. Look: "we are 'building' a house", or "a house is 'being built'. They are both just different ways of referring to the exact same thing, the house that we are building. There is no cause or effect here, just one thing, described as a house being built, or the house that we are building. In one case "builders" are implied and in the other "builders" are explicit.

If you want to separate cause from effect, you separate "builders" from the act of building, as the cause of that act, or the act of building from the house, as cause of the house. But you cannot divide the act into "building" and "being built", and say that one is cause and the other effect, because they both refer to the very same thing. And the fact that they refer to the same thing is the reason why you can say that they are concurrent. But it's also the reason why they are not cause and effect.

That does not mean that the activity of producing the effect (e.g. building) is prior to the passion of the effect being produced (e.g. being built). — Dfpolis

Again, you are speaking nonsense, attributing "passion" to "being built". Passion is a human emotion, feeling. In no intelligible sense, is "passion" used to refer to what "being built", or "being produced" feels like.

Try assuming that I know what I am talking about and see if you can make your interpretation of my words fit that assumption. When I say I am only discussing efficient causality, I mean that I am only discussing that one of the four causes. I do not mean that there are no other causes. It is only by looking for ways in which I might be wrong that these two ideas can be confused. — Dfpolis

How can I possibly assume that you know what you are talking about when you use "passion" in that way? Please, at least try to explain what "the passion of being built" could possibly mean. The only way that you separate the act of building from the act of being built, to say that being built is the effect of building, as a cause, is by saying that being built is a passion. Clearly though, you have this backward. The builder has a passion for building, and as such passion is a cause in the building process, not an effect.

Making a commitment is not an isolated event. It sets up a committed state. If I am walking and decide to stop, that commitment (the state of being committed to walking) ends, as does my walking. — Dfpolis

But it is not concurrent, it is prior. The state of being committed to walking ends before the walking ends, even if it's only a fraction of a second, it's still prior, and causal.

So, you are claiming that building and being built are not concurrent? If so, we have no common basis for continuing. — Dfpolis

The activity of the builder, as builder, is prior to the activity which is the house being built. This is because the builder must study and understand general principles (and this qualifies as activity of a builder) prior to the activity which is the particular house being built.

I see we have no common basis for continuing. You insist on nonsensical use of "passion" which makes passion the effect of the builder building rather than use a true description which recognizes passion as a cause of the builder building. And you assert that what you argue is Aristotelian.

I never claimed that any and all acts of the builder are concurrent with being built, but only the act of building. Please do not extend what I say to make it wrong. I never denied that builders plan or have free will. — Dfpolis

OK, have it your way, only the acts of the builder which are identical to the acts described as being built, are concurrent. Of course, they are one and the same thing. So there is no cause/effect here.

No, it does not. I do not have time to deal with your negativity. You can take my word for it or Google it. — Dfpolis

You claimed to have quoted Aristotle's definition of change. A quote requires a reference.

Passion is emotion, feeling. — Metaphysician Undercover

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/passion, #3.
"The state or capacity of being acted on by external agents or forces."
Also, here
https://www.google.com/search?q=aristotle%27s+accidents&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS976US976&oq=aristotle%27s+accidents&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIICAEQABgWGB4yCAgCEAAYFhgeMg0IAxAAGIYDGIAEGIoFMg0IBBAAGIYDGIAEGIoFMg0IBRAAGIYDGIAEGIoFMgoIBhAAGIAEGKIE0gEINDI2OGowajeoAgiwAgE&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
"The nine kinds of accidents according to Aristotle are quantity, quality, relation, habitus, time, location, situation (or position), action, and passion ("being acted on").

Simply unaccountable you don't know that meaning of passion.

This is out of context, and misapplied by Df. What is described in your quoted passage is the difference between accidental and essential properties of things. How Df is using the term is as a property of an activity, "the passion of being built". Df states that being built is something which has the property of being acted on (passion). That is a category mistake.

Df is not saying that there is a house which is being acted on, and this "being acted on" is a passion of the house, because there is no house, the house does not yet exist, it is being built. What there is, is a project, a goal, intention, or end, which is being acted on. Df takes this final cause, and attempts to convert it into an efficient cause, through the category mistake mentioned above.

Df applies Aristotle's distinction between accidental and essential properties of things, to activities of causation, to create the appearance that acting and being acted on are two separate properties of a single activity which is called "building" or "being built" depending on whether the subject is the builder (building), or the house (being built). But the house is not yet built, it exists as a goal, and that goal acts as a final cause. Therefore the house cannot be described as a thing being acted on (having a passion). What is "being acted on" is the project, or goal, the end.

If you can make sense of what Df is saying, other than as the category mistake I describe above, then I would be very grateful to see your explanation. Df simply reasserts what has been said, which makes no sense to me because it appears as a category mistake.

This doesn't make any sense — Metaphysician Undercover

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/passion Def 3.

all we have is "the act of building", and "being built". But these two are exactly the same thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

You have left out the builder and the house. The builder building is the cause. The house being built is the effect. Of course they are concurrent. That is the whole point.

The only necessity here is that these two expressions "building", and "being built", both refer to the exact same thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ta-da! Since they refer to the identical event, the act of the builder building (cause) and the passion of the house being built (effect) are necessarily linked. But, building is not being built. so the cause is not the effect.

If you want to separate cause from effect — Metaphysician Undercover

You do. I don't. In essential causality they are inseparable. In accidental causality (time-sequence by rule) they are separate. That is why there are two kinds of efficient causality. The first is necessary, the second is not.

But it's also the reason why they are not cause and effect. — Metaphysician Undercover

The act of the builder building is not the passion of the house being built. Still, they are inseparable because they are aspects of one and the same event.

How can I possibly assume that you know what you are talking about when you use "passion" in that way? — Metaphysician Undercover

By referring to a good dictionary when you see a term used in a way that is new to you.

But it is not concurrent, it is prior. — Metaphysician Undercover

When willing to walk ends, I am no longer walking willingly. I may continue mechanically because of inertia, but that is not walking voluntarily.

A quote requires a reference. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, they don't. You may want a reference, but they take time, and you have not shown an openness that makes me want to devote that time.

Df is not saying that there is a house which is being acted on — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, I am but I am not saying it is a completed house, but a house under construction.

If you can make sense of what Df is saying, — Metaphysician Undercover

Df is far better able to speak for himself than I am for him.

Imo, an error you're making is thinking that Aristotle is a scientist doing science. That is, trying to understand via test - I do not know if he had the concept of a scientific experiment. Thus, while he might have liked to have thought and written in terms of apodictic proof and certainty, and I think he knew how, in terms of his accounts of the world, his approach seems essentially descriptive, and when he can he offers an account of the description, his reasoning mainly rhetorical. Moreover, in many places in many ways he assures us his conclusions while more likely than not, are equivocal.

And to be sure his language mostly is straightforward. When he says the builder is building a house, there can be no doubt as to what he means. And he calls the activity of the builder an action. And continuing, corresponding to the action of the builder building, is the passion of the thing being built. And all of this makes perfect sense. If you saw a builder building, you might ask what he is doing and on being told he's building, you might ask what it is that he is building. And you're told, "A house." You might then ask, well, where is the house? And the answer must be that it is being built. And just this the passive voice, which the Greek knows very well.

The substance, then, is the house. The accident applied to it in this case is passion. Not that the house is doing anything, but rather something is being done to the house: it is being built.

And any claim that is impossible because the house, being not yet completed, is not a house, defies common usage, denies Aristotle's own example, defies the kind of sense Aristotle usually tries to make, and would make the building of anything a Zeno-esque impossibility. .

I take the problem of theory ladeness to not imply that objective reality is in any sense dependent upon our observation; rather, it is our understanding that hinges on our theory. — 013zen

My point was rather that they are inter-woven and that the separation of subject and object is not so clear cut.

We find in Thomism, the expression of the 'union of knower and known' which harks back to Aristotle. For Aristotle, perception of the intelligible forms was distinct from the processing of sensory perception, including the use of imagination and memory, which other animals can do. As a theory of predication, it is foundational to how the intellect sets definitions in a consistent and communicable way. By virtue of this, we see types, kinds, similarities and differences and the many other elements which are foundational to the exercise of reason.

1. Did we invent math
2. Is the information gained by applying math invented?

The difference is the system and the information gained from the application of that system. The latter relies on reality existing as it does to furnish any information. We didn't invent the length, so to speak, but we did invent the ruler. — 013zen

The 'maths invented or discovered' is as you say a perennial debate. Best I can tell is that there are elements of both. But I think the uneasiness over the question goes back to the underlying sense that we have, of 'the world' being divided between 'the mind' (in here) and 'reality' (out there) - to put it in very blunt terms. The difficulty for naturalism is the difficulty of discerning the sense in which number can be located in an empirical sense, as Piggliuci says: numbers (and so on) stand over and above time and space. And empiricism can't cope with that, as he says: it has to ground knowledge in sensory experience, and whatever can't be understood that way must be in the mind. Again, the supposed separation or dichotomy of mind and world is pre-supposed by this. Whereas the way I think of it is that number (and the like) are 'transjective', which is rather an awkward neologism, but is meant to designate 'transcending the subject/object distinction'. They are elements of a kind of transpersonal faculty, viz, reason.

You might find this essay of Jacques Maritain informative, The Cultural Impact of Empiricism in which he argues for the continuing relevance of universals as follows:

For Empiricism there is no essential difference between the intellect and the senses. The fact which obliges a correct theory of knowledge to recognize this essential difference is simply disregarded. What fact? The fact that the human intellect grasps, first in a most indeterminate manner, then more and more distinctly, certain sets of intelligible features -- that is, natures, say, the human nature -- which exist in the real as identical with individuals, with Peter or John for instance, but which are universal in the mind and presented to it as universal objects, positively one (within the mind) and common to an infinity of singular things (in the real).

Thanks to the association of particular images and recollections, a dog reacts in a similar manner to the similar particular impressions his eyes or his nose receive from this thing we call a piece of sugar or this thing we call an intruder; he does not know what is sugar or what is intruder. He plays, he lives in his affective and motor functions, or rather he is put into motion by the similarities which exist between things of the same kind; he does not see the similarity, the common features as such. What is lacking is the flash of intelligibility; he has no ear for the intelligible meaning. He has not the idea or the concept of the thing he knows, that is, from which he receives sensory impressions; his knowledge remains immersed in the subjectivity of his own feelings -- only in man, with the universal idea, does knowledge achieve objectivity. And his field of knowledge is strictly limited: only the universal idea sets free -- in man -- the potential infinity of knowledge.

Why is it that only Thomists (and therefore, presumably, mainly Catholics) possess a philosophical framework which enables this distinction between the rational and empirical, and which recognises the foundational role of universals? Seems to me that Thomas Aquinas preserves an element of the Greek 'philosophia perennis', as represented in Aristotle, which has subsequently been rejected or lost to the philosophical culture of the West, to its overall detriment.

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

Probably that case can be made. I'm the first to admit that I don't have deep or extensive knowledge of the field of scholastic philosophy. I'm only speaking at a high level of generalisation: simply that numbers, universals, and other kinds of what used to be called 'intelligible objects' are real. They're not the product of the mind but can only be grasped by reason. That's what makes this a metaphysical question! In that, I'm agreeing with the argument that Maritain articulates in the essay I linked. Again, I'm first to admit I'm not well-read in Jacques Maritain, but the general drift of his argument about the deprecation of universals by empiricism is what interests me. (He says at the outset 'I myself am an Aristotelian', hence the relevance to Aristotle's metaphysics.)

The builder building is the cause. The house being built is the effect. Of course they are concurrent. That is the whole point. — Dfpolis

As I explained, "the builder building", and "the house being built" are just two different ways of describing the exact same thing. There is no distinction of cause and effect here, and that is why there is concurrency, there is not separation. They are the same.

But, building is not being built. so the cause is not the effect. — Dfpolis

Yes, "building" is "being built". Why can't you comprehend this? The two are the very same, identical activity, described in two different ways. As I said in my reply to Tim, "building" has the builder as the subject, and "being built" has the house as the subject. So the two are just different ways of describing the exact same activity. One way is to describe a builder building, and the other way is to describe a house being built. But both are descriptions of the exact same activity. There is no separation of cause and effect because there is only one activity being described.

Further, since "the house", as subject does not yet have any existence, it cannot suffer any passion, or have any properties at all. And that's why your claims make no sense. At the time of "being built", the house exists only as a plan, a goal or end. This is why "the house" which is implied as the subject of "being built, can only be referred to as a final cause at this time, not an efficient cause. The house exists in the mind of the builder only, as a goal or end, and the cause of the builder building. This is just like Aristotle's example of final causation, where "health" exists in the mind of the man walking, as the cause of him walking.

You do. I don't. In essential causality they are inseparable. In accidental causality (time-sequence by rule) they are separate. That is why there are two kinds of efficient causality. The first is necessary, the second is not. — Dfpolis

Now you are just being ridiculous. If the cause is inseparable from the effect, then how do you know that "being built" is not the cause, and "building" is not the effect? And maybe it constantly switches back and forth, with the two continually changing places, each being sometimes the cause and other times the effect. If the cause is inseparable from the effect, then there is no principle by which you can say one is cause and the other effect.

Do you see why I say that your claim is ridiculous? You claim to be able to distinguish "building" from "being built", one the cause the other the effect. Yet you also claim that the two are concurrent and the cause is inseparable from the effect. Therefore whenever you describe the scenario, there is no way to know whether the description is of the builder building, or the house being built. In reality though, it is just one activity, and you've devised this elaborate way to say that it is two distinct activities, one cause and the other effect. And when it comes to telling me how to distinguish one from the other, you admit that the cause cannot be distinguished from the effect, "they are inseparable".

By referring to a good dictionary when you see a term used in a way that is new to you. — Dfpolis

I referred to my OED, and "passion" is said to be a noun. The nearest definition to fitting your usage was: "4a strong enthusiasm (has a passion for football). b an object arousing this." There is nothing anywhere similar to your usage in my OED. However, there are definitions of "passive" which are similar. For example: "1 suffering action; acted upon." I think maybe you confused words, and meant "passive". However, if you tried to talk about the passiveness of the house being built, this would more clearly reveal the nonsense of your expressions. So you try to hide it behind a strange use of "passion".

Yes, I am but I am not saying it is a completed house, but a house under construction. — Dfpolis

OK, let's ignore all our differences, and start here, where we agree. Do you agree that at the construction site, there is not a house, there is activity which we can call "the construction of a house", or, "a house under construction". Both these phrases refer to the exact same thing, and "the house" only exists as a plan, a goal, or the end of that construction project. Do you agree that to talk about causation here, we need to include "final cause"?

And continuing, corresponding to the action of the builder building, is the passion of the thing being built. And all of this makes perfect sense. — tim wood

How does this "make perfect sense to you"? The passion is in the builder, not the thing being built. And even if we take "passive", which means "suffering action; acted upon", instead of "passion", the passivity is in the materials which the builder works with. The "thing being built" doesn't even exist, it is an idea, a goal in the builder's mind.

The substance, then, is the house. The accident applied to it in this case is passion. Not that the house is doing anything, but rather something is being done to the house: it is being built. — tim wood

You're missing the point tim. The house does not exist, it is a goal in the builder's mind, existing as a formula. The accidental properties of the house only come into being after each part of the house is built.