Which brings to mind the Pinter analysis - that form is precisely what is brought to bear by cognition so as to navigate the environment — Wayfarer
Ironically, I had just read a book review in Philosophy Now magazine, before I noticed this post. The book author discusses the "neoliberal consumerist worldview", and the reviewer noted : "in postmodern culture the value of art is financial rather than aesthetic". The illustration showed a stainless steel sculpture by Jeff Koons, which sold for $91 million dollars in 2019. What did the buyer get for his financial fortune : a> a tchotchke to put on a shelf for the aesthetic amusement of his friends, or b> a steel object emulating a child's plastic balloon? Is "The Rabbit" merely a material thing (Hyle), or an aesthetic idea (Morph) in the form of a visual joke : steel art emulating plastic plaything?I think both form and content are missing from the blob Bob received. Can we take a closer look at the relationship between these things? — frank
We're able to impose form on it by way of analysis of the chemical composition, spectroscopic analysis, etc. But in another sense, there are vast clouds of interstellar matter that are formless.
Which brings to mind the Pinter analysis - that form is precisely what is brought to bear by cognition so as to navigate the environment.
But we imagine that if we had eyes small enough, we would see particles down there. It's not really formless, is it?
The non-living world subsists in itself as configurative phenomena.
Matter ‘comes to matter’ within intra-actively changing agential configurations.
If the mind is imposing a form on "clouds of interstellar matter," that lack it, why does it impose one form over any other? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Clay, rocks, etc. are just bundles of external causes. — Count Timothy von Icarus
(That question is anticipated in the Parmenides, when Socrates asks if there are forms for hair, dirt and mud.) — Wayfarer
St. Gregory of Nyssa takes this up in "On the Making of Man." Apparently, a common argument at the time was to say that matter must be coeternal with God (a view based on the Timaeus) because God, as pure act, would lack the properties of matter (which must come from somewhere). But as St. Gregory points out, having removed all form, all whatness, from matter, one is left with nothing, no attributes at all—so there is nothing to "lack" in a "lack of potency." (This is also how Aristotle's Prime Mover(s) or Plotinus' One cannot be said to suffer from any privation through being pure act). — Count Timothy von Icarus
Now, if form is rather something created by/imposed by the mind, it almost seems to counterintuitively dislodge the phenomenological side of the understanding of eidos, since now the whatness of things is no longer essential to what they are but is rather something produced in one corner of the world, for some perceiving subject. — Count Timothy von Icarus
↪Joshs
The non-living world subsists in itself as configurative phenomena.
What does this mean? Are there non-configurative phenomena as a constant?
Matter ‘comes to matter’ within intra-actively changing agential configurations.
"Agent" as the term is used in chemistry, e.g anything affecting change, or "agent" as the term is often used in the social sciences, as an entity that makes intentional decisions/choices? — Count Timothy von Icarus
If the mind is imposing a form on "clouds of interstellar matter," that lack it, why does it impose one form over any other?
— Count Timothy von Icarus
Because 'cloud' is a familar cognitive trope. But do clouds possess form at all? I think in the strict sense that it is questionable. They fall under this description:
Clay, rocks, etc. are just bundles of external causes.
— Count Timothy von Icarus — Wayfarer
In any case, the fact that forms are artefacts of the cognitive system, does not undermine their objective (or would that be transjective) reality. It doesn't say that they're solely the product of the mind, but that they arise in the relationship between observer and observed — Wayfarer
What is it we are doing when we split an observer off from an observed, and then go on to declare the observed as lacking any form in itself? — Joshs
If forms arise in the relationship between observer and observed, isn’t this also true of what supposedly lies outside of the experience of the observer? — Joshs
(This is also how Aristotle's Prime Mover(s) or Plotinus' One cannot be said to suffer from any privation through being pure act). — Count Timothy von Icarus
This is an issue where Aristotle's argument about the inseparability of form and matter comes into play. — Paine
Because 'cloud' is a familar cognitive trope. But do clouds possess form at all?
(That question is anticipated in the Parmenides, when Socrates asks if there are forms for hair, dirt and mud.)
For the pre-moderns, obviously forms could have 'eternal reality in the mind of God' but that is generally not an option for modern philosophy, but we could plausibly say that the idea of forms arose from an intuitive grasp of this co-dependency.
In any case, the fact that forms are artefacts of the cognitive system, does not undermine their objective (or would that be transjective) reality. It doesn't say that they're solely the product of the mind, but that they arise in the relationship between observer and observed. Biological phenomenology such as enactivism sees such cognitive artifacts as co-arising as a consequence of the interaction between organism and environment.
But Plotinus' "One" is pure potency rather than pure act. This is the principal metaphysical difference between Aristotelianism and Neo-Platonism.
I am suggesting that the notion of 'formless matter' is meaningful…
clouds of interstellar gas could be considered formless matter in a metaphysical sense, as they are raw material that, under the right conditions (e.g., gravitational forces, fusion processes), can form stars, planets, or other celestial bodies. For that perspective, 'form' (morphe) refers not just to shape but to the organizing principle that gives a substance its identity…
…from a scientific perspective, interstellar gas and dust are not really formless, as they are subject to physical laws and composed of atoms which have regular structures. They are subject to processes of condensation, fusion, and gravitational collapse, enabling the formation of structures like stars or planets. In this sense, the term "formless" would not strictly apply, since even gas clouds have properties (mass, temperature, charge) and follow patterns like the formation of stars in nebulae. However, they could be seen as chaotic or unstructured compared to highly organized systems such as life-bearing planets and human artefacts. — Wayfarer
Luckily, in English we have "power" and "potency" to (sort of) distinguish what Eriugena terms "nothing through excellence," (pure, immutable power beyond any defining actuality) and the nothing of prime matter (a "nothing on account of privation"). Or at least, translators seem to use "power" more for Plotinus, which I think works better. — Count Timothy von Icarus
IDK, this strikes me not so much as contemporary philosophy being opposed to positing God as part of an explanation as contemporary philosophy wanting to make man take the place of God. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't see how enactivism would require that forms are "artefacts of the cognitive system." — Count Timothy von Icarus
Everything you see, hear and think comes to you in structured wholes: When you read, you’re seeing a whole page even when you focus on one word or sentence. When someone speaks, you hear whole words and phrases, not individual bursts of sound. When you listen to music, you hear an ongoing melody, not just the note that is currently being played. Ongoing events enter your awareness as Gestalts, for the Gestalt is the natural unit of mental life. If you try to concentrate on a dot on this page, you will notice that you cannot help but see the context at the same time. Vision would be meaningless, and have no biological function, if people and animals saw anything less than integral scenes.
Instead of placing the inorganic under the category of efficient cause and the organic under the category of complex dynamical systems, and then trying to make the latter’s forming agency ‘ emerge’ from the former, formative agency can be accorded to the inorganic as well as the organic. — Joshs
I should add that what you’re identifying as formative capability in humans is not a passive picture of the world created by an observer, but a performative activity, a set of practices involving mind, body and environment in a dance of interaffection. Form is not our stance toward the world but a pattern of material interactions with it, in the midst of it. — Joshs
The 'transjective' refers to the dynamic, participatory relationship between the subject and the world, in which meaning arises through interaction rather than being either imposed by the subject ('in the mind') or existing outside ('in the world'). Vervaeke argues that the objective/subjective distinction presents a false dilemma because it overlooks how humans are always embedded in a web of relationships and processes within which meaning arises. The 'transjective' thus highlights the co-emergence of perception and reality, suggesting that meaning is neither purely personal nor purely external but is co-constituted through engagement with the world. And that applies to meaning in all the different senses of that word, from the utilitarian to the aesthetic, which arise along a continuum, from a spider spinning a web to a poet spinning a sonnet. — Wayfarer
Yes. In Mind and the Cosmic Order, Charles Pinter seems to be making the point that is suggesting : that common sense equates the Material Object with its Meaning. "This is quite an amazing insight, and it demonstrates how far our native intuition can diverge from reality. We are convinced beyond a shadow of doubt that every material object has substance and form. That is, an object's form inheres in the object itself, and is an aspect of the matter of which the object is made. Once again, we are misled by common sense. Actually, an object's form is an aspect of the object as an undivided whole, viewed from outside the object." Pinter also summarizes : "Form does not inhere in brute matter but emerges in Gestalt observation".Maybe form and formlessness are dependent on one another for meaning. It's one concept. — frank
What I'm wrestling with are two senses of 'form'. There's the Aristotelian sense of morphe which informs matter. That is the classical view, which to all intents became absorbed into Christian theism. As such it's a kind of no-go for a lot of people, if it suggests anything like intelligent design or the 'divine intellect'. — Wayfarer
Ζ.13 therefore produces a fundamental tension in Aristotle’s metaphysics that has fragmented his interpreters. Some maintain that Aristotle’s theory is ultimately inconsistent, on the grounds that it is committed to all three of the following propositions:
(i) Substance is form.
(ii) Form is universal.
(iii) No universal is a substance. — SEP Aristotle's Metaphysics
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