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
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
Neutrons decay with about a 13 minute half-life into a proton — Dfpolis
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
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
"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
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?)
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
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
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
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
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
How do you get to the point of concluding that God is unchanging and timeless? — Metaphysician Undercover
What I am asking is how are you relating "intention" to "unchanging" and "timeless"? — Metaphysician Undercover
And to say that something which is "pure act" is unchanging and timeless, would be contradictory. — Metaphysician Undercover
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 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
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
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
Since God is unchanging, and time is the measure of change according to before and after, God is timeless. — Dfpolis
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
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
You need to do more research.I do not agree with this interpretation. — 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.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
Baloney. The builder is an efficient cause, and that is the only cause I discussed.Here you conflate final cause with efficient cause — 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.what you call "the passion" of the builder — 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 desire to build (intention, final cause) is temporally prior to the activity of building, which is the efficient cause of the house. — 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.The action of the agent is volitional therefore there is no intrinsic necessity to that act. — Metaphysician Undercover
It is just what the Scholastics called it -- a name, not something to be liked or disliked.I do not like your characterization of this cause of activity, as "essential efficient causation". — 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.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
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.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
Since God is unchanging and timeless He has no past to remember. Everything is present to Him.If the plan exists in memory — 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.this would mean that God is changing in accordance with His Will. — Metaphysician Undercover
There is no reason God cannot be both.The end of the line of efficient causation is known under Aristotelian principles as final cause. — Metaphysician Undercover
I quoted Aristotle's definition of change, not mine.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
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.That the will is free implies that it causes a type of change which is not dependent on potential. — Metaphysician Undercover
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
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
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
...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
Baloney. The builder is an efficient cause, and that is the only cause I discussed. — Dfpolis
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
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
I did not deny that because I did not discuss final causation, but efficient causation. — Dfpolis
Again, there can be no building a house now without a house being built now. — Dfpolis
I quoted Aristotle's definition of change, not mine. — Dfpolis
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.The necessity is not bilateral because from the perspective of the builder, to build is a freely willed choice. — Metaphysician Undercover
The concurrent necessity between building and being built is being asserted, not a necessity in the choice to build.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
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.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
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.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
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.I decide to walk, and the activity of walking is the effect which follows from this cause. — Metaphysician Undercover
So, you are claiming that building and being built are not concurrent? If so, we have no common basis for continuing.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
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.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
No, it does not. I do not have time to deal with your negativity. You can take my word for it or Google it.That would require a reference. — Metaphysician Undercover
Again, thinghood [ousia] is what not attributed to any underlying thing, but the universal is always attributed to some underlying thing.
(1038b) — Metaphysics
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
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
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?)
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
The concurrent necessity between building and being built is being asserted, not a necessity in the choice to build. — Dfpolis
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
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
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
So, you are claiming that building and being built are not concurrent? If so, we have no common basis for continuing. — Dfpolis
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
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
Passion is emotion, feeling. — Metaphysician Undercover
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/passion Def 3.This doesn't make any sense — 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.all we have is "the act of building", and "being built". But these two are exactly the 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.The only necessity here is that these two expressions "building", and "being built", both refer to the exact same thing. — 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.If you want to separate cause from 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.But it's also the reason why they are not cause and effect. — Metaphysician Undercover
By referring to a good dictionary when you see a term used in a way that is new to you.How can I possibly assume that you know what you are talking about when you use "passion" in that way? — 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.But it is not concurrent, it is prior. — 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.A quote requires a reference. — Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, I am but I am not saying it is a completed house, but a house under construction.Df is not saying that there is a house which is being acted on — Metaphysician Undercover
Df is far better able to speak for himself than I am for him.If you can make sense of what Df is saying, — Metaphysician Undercover
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
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
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.
The builder building is the cause. The house being built is the effect. Of course they are concurrent. That is the whole point. — Dfpolis
But, building is not being built. so the cause is not the effect. — Dfpolis
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
By referring to a good dictionary when you see a term used in a way that is new to you. — Dfpolis
Yes, I am but I am not saying it is a completed house, but a house under construction. — Dfpolis
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
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
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