Thank you also for responding,

Still, I do not see that anything you said resolves the three issues I raised. Did I miss something?

Thank you for your comment,

While I agree that we have an immaterial aspect that makes us subjects in the subject-object relation of knowing (a soul), the fact that each of us is a different subject, with unique experiences, makes it difficult for me to lend credence to the notion of a collective soul. I do think that there is an immaterial God, and that we can be aware of God via rational proof and direct, mystical experience.

How does Aristotle treat what we now understand as established entirely subjective predications? — Mww

Aristotle does not talk much about subjective decisions, except for his discussion of proairesis. Proairesis is the process leading to a decision. He sees it very rationally, proceeding iteratively. If we want A, we have to effect B, If we want B we have to effect C, etc., until we come to something we can do now to get the process started -- and that is what we should do now. He sees the goal of human behavior as happiness, and ethics as studying the means for attaining happiness.

His general view of ethical reasoning is that it is very imprecise and it is an error to expect it to be as exact as the other sciences.

He also had agents in the field with Alexander the Great, documenting the "constitutions" of the nations encountered -- in other words, how they ruled themselves. In so doing, he placed political science on an empirical footing. That suggests to me that he wanted to find out what worked rather than approaching the subject more theoretically as Plato seems to have done.

I will have to admit to being more interested in his views on metaphysics, nature, and epistemology than in his work on ethics, art and politics.

I don’t suppose a real thing such as a man, to be passive stuff upon whom is imposed a form of justice, that shapes him in some way? Wrong kind of shape? — Mww

I think we become just by actively willing to make just decisions.

Guess the explains why there are no statues based on the inverse square law. — Mww

Yep

Can we say matter can be passive in its reception of an imposed form? — Mww

Well, if we understand matter as stuff we can, and the kind of matter that is passive is stuff that is shaped in some way -- like rubber of marble. In a natural process, the matter (hyle) is never a thing or a stuff. It is always a tendency (what Aristotle calls a "desire" in Physics i, 9).

How is the form imposed? Where does the imposed form originate? What forces are in play to impose the form? — Mww

Since this is the artificial case, the form comes from the artificer. In the natural case it is implicit in law-like tendencies that anticipate the later idea of laws of nature.

I hope you're not assuming that I ever thought you were reasonable. — Terrapin Station

I had no such expectation.

That would only be the case if you give all of this up and focus on watching TV or something. — Terrapin Station

I am happy to dialog with reasonable people, even if we disagree. Constant equivocation and twisting what is said is not reasonable.

So how about trying to start off with something really simple and obvious (in your view) that you think we could agree on? — Terrapin Station

I am done wasting my time.

So, this is what I mean by Aristotle making a mistake about this. You misunderstood my language, but this was what I was saying. Aristotle separates them so that they're not identical. That's a mistake. They're identical. It's incoherent to suppose them to be otherwise. — Terrapin Station

You refuse to understand that you are using Aristotle's language equivocally. I tried to explain this, but you ignored my explanations.

What something has the potential to become is never identical with what it is. — Dfpolis

This is wrong. Even putting aside your wonky ontology of potentials/possibles, which I don't at all agree with, what something is is necessarily identical with something it has the potential to be, otherwise it couldn't be what it is. — Terrapin Station

You are so fixed on justifying your ideas that you are not even reading what I wrote. I said has "the potential to become," not "the potential to be what it is."

Things are not NUMERICALLY IDENTICAL through time. "Dynamic continuity" is not identity. — Terrapin Station

You will not even allow me to define my own terms.

You're right. You are not open to what others say, so we will never agree.

Is this not the same or very similar to noting the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic final causes? Because I have heard/read him make mention of that. — AJJ

It is analogous, but has different implications.

Just in case we don't get to this, nothing is literally/objectively identical through time. — Terrapin Station

You are equivocating yet again. The identity here is not immutability. It is numerical identity or dynamic continuity.

Also, Aristotle is quite aware of the difference. Accidental changes do not affect numerical identity, but substantial changes do.

At any moment, the matter and the form are identical — Terrapin Station

No, they never are. What something has the potential to become is never identical with what it is. The problem is that you are using your notion of matter (which is a poor translation of hyle), not Aristotle's. For him, hyle is always potential -- active in natural objects and passive in artifacts.

The mistake of this sort of view is that it sees matter as something that can be given, or can have taken away, properties, while still being the same matter. That's incorrect. — Terrapin Station

Really?? So the rubber injected into the ball mold is not the rubber in the ball?

Edward Feser’s book on Aquinas. It clarifies the distinction between matter and form (substance and properties) very well I’d say — AJJ

Feser, following Aquinas, does not pay enough attention to the difference between artifacts (which have their form imposed from without), and natural objects (which have their form as a result of internal principles of motion). Matter can be passive in the reception of an imposed form, but it has to be active to generate a new natural form. That is the point of my hyle article,

The material beginning with "the whole remains . . . " is presumably about ontology, right? — Terrapin Station

If you take it so. It can also be about what we perceive. As Aristotle is not distinguishing the two (as he is not a post-Kantian), it is not meant as an ontological vs a phenomenological claim. That distinction is an anachronism you are imposing.

Meanwhile, it turned out that "the whole remains" was saying something about, or that hinged on, definitions. — Terrapin Station

Which properties are essential hinges on our definitions because Aristotle defines essence as the basis in reality for a certain kind of definition. Whether Socrates survives turning blue or or a weight gain does not depend on a definition.

No, it is about what we see. — Dfpolis

So then of what relevance is it to a discussion about Aristotle's ontology? — Terrapin Station

You are the one confusing the analyses in the Organon with ontology.

"Aristotle famously contends that every physical object is a compound of matter and form."

Matter and form are not a compound. The "two" are inseparable in all respects--logical, physical, conceptual, etc. They're the same thing. — Terrapin Station

I am sorry that "compound" confuses you. It may not be the best term. I discuss the relation of matter and form in my article, "A New Reading of Aristotle's Hyle," The Modern Schoolman LXVIII (1991), 3, pp. 225-244. Briefly, "form" (eidos or morphê) names what a thing actually is while hyle (conventionally and poorly translated "matter") names its tendency/potential (Aristotle calls it a "desire" in Physics i, 9) to become something else. Clearly, these are not the same and also are present in all physical objects. "Compound" names this mentally distinguishable, but ontologically inseparable, co-presence.

Re your extended SEP quotation:

The Physics is not, for the most part, a book on "natural science" as we now define it. It is a philosophical analysis of nature.

Among other issues, Socrates turning blue, putting on pounds, etc. ARE substantial changes. — Terrapin Station

Only if you equivocate on Aristotle's use of the term, He explains:

As regards one of these simple 'things that become' we say not only 'this becomes so-and-so', but also 'from being this, comes to be so-and-so', as 'from being not-musical comes to be musical'; as regards the other we do not say this in all cases, as we do not say (1) 'from being a man he came to be musical' but only 'the man became musical'.

When a 'simple' thing is said to become something, in one case (1) it survives through the process, in the other (2) it does not. — Physics i 7

So, your absurd claim is that Socrates does not survive being dyed blue or gaining weight.

And the accidental distinction is subjective--it depends on one's concept — Terrapin Station

No, it is not subjective. A substance is an ostensible unity (tode ti). When Socrates dies, he does not continue as a unity but decays into constituents which are no longer a unified organism.

The material beginning with "the whole remains . . . " is presumably about ontology, right? — Terrapin Station

No, it is about what we see. Aristotle has not yet turned to the analysis of the relation between what is perceived and what is. He does that in De Anima iii. Here he is prescinding from that sort of analysis, and discussing how we use language to describe experience. He is not saying that experience revels being, nor is he denying it. It just isn't what he's discussing.

Descartes's confusion of knowledge and belief, and Kant's confused musings about phenomena and noumena had not occurred yet, and so are not part of the problematic he had to deal with.

My understanding is that the notion of a substance without properties serves to demonstrate that such a thing cannot exist, and it’s that which makes it necessary to have properties (form) as part of the metaphysical picture together with substance (prime matter). I think Aquinas presents it that way; perhaps Aristotle does also. — AJJ

I think they both would see substances (ostensible unities) as givens, not requiring an argument. Then, on mental analysis, we find and name various aspects of the whole (logical accidents) and rejoin them with the whole in judgements expressed by predication.

The idea that as we abstract properties from wholes we remove them, like picking the raisins out of a pudding, leaving behind an empty, unintelligible matrix which is substance, is an absurd misunderstanding of the Aristotelian doctrine.

And I was referring to the notion of substance sans properties. — Dfpolis

Which is another way of saying "mentally separable" — Terrapin Station

No, it is not. An Aristotelian substance is always a whole. Properties are what we separate mentally.

You just wrote this: "The point made by Aristotle is that some properties can change, and the whole remains the same kind of thing (fits the same definition) — Terrapin Station

This statement can be taken phenomenologically or ontologically, but it it certainly does not mean "the whole remains simpiciter." Some aspect of it no longer remains. Still, ostensible unities have a phenomenological continuity to from before to after phenomenological changes. Or, are you denying that?

knowledge is the reception and processing of intelligible information — Mww

I am saying we have no actual knowledge until we are aware of the processed information.

Physical possibility: always derived from experience — Mww

I'd say that physically possibility is prior to our experiencing/knowing it.

Each part of the matter of reality is existentially independent, even if not necessarily ontologically independent. — Mww

I don't know what the difference between ontological and existential would be.

Logical possibility is thought, physical possibility is experience — Mww

Experience informs thought. Uninformed thought can have no impact on what is logically possible.

everything must relate to how a human understands it. — Mww

There is no reason to reject the existence of things to which we do not relate. It is just that our knowledge is human knowledge, which is to say knowledge of how reality relates to us.

Parsimony dictates, therefore, that the form reside internally and it be that to which the impressions on our perception relate. — Mww

I think that, since reality constantly surprises us, it is more than an internal mental state, The reason for this is that no state is truly mental unless we are aware of it. A state can be potentially mental (intelligible) without awareness, but it can't be actually mental sans awareness.

all the same in kind as Aristotle’s forms, except for their location. — Mww

No, not their location, but their very dynamics differ. Anything "internal" in the sense of "mental" is an object of awareness. Most Aristotelian forms are not. Most are intelligible, but not actually known. That makes them radically different, and gives them an explanatory value internal forms necessarily lack.

I can easily know a presence and surmise there to be a content in it, without knowing what the content is. — Mww

Agreed.

So you're saying that Aristotle is doing ontology "The whole remains..." by analyzing language. Which is something I said above that you disagreed with. — Terrapin Station

I did not say "the whole remains," you did. I said that some properties could change and the substance would still satisfy the definition. That is a linguistic claim.

That is not Aristotle's idea, but yours. — Dfpolis

I was referring to "mentally, not ontologically separable — Terrapin Station

And I was referring to the notion of substance sans properties. Aristotle never speaks of it. That is why it is your idea. The reason substances are not accidents is that accidents do not exhaust substances, not because substances can exist (even mentally) without accidents.

There's no sense in which essential versus accidental properties are objective/extramental. — Terrapin Station

The point made by Aristotle is that some properties can change, and the whole remains the same kind of thing (fits the same definition). That relates to extramental reality, but not not exclusively, because it is humans who define things.

Now you're telling me what I'm referring to. I'm referring to being logically separable. The idea of substances sans properties is incoherent. That's the whole point (that I already made). — Terrapin Station

That is not Aristotle's idea, but yours. Aristotle sees substances as wholes.

Still substances are not properties. — Dfpolis

Which means they're separable=they're not identical, but this is wrong. — Terrapin Station

No, 'Separable' means that they could have an independent being, which Aristotle explicitly denies. They are distinguishable -- mentally, not ontologically separable.

By the way, not that there are any real accidental versus essential properties. That's confusing how someone thinks about things --specifically, with respect to the concepts they've constructed --with the world independent of us. — Terrapin Station

This depends on how you define "essential." Aristotle is clear that by "essential" in this regard, he is speaking of species-defining properties.

Accidents are properties. If properties are "other things" then substances are not necessarily properties. — Terrapin Station

I used "thing" in an analogous sense -- not to refer to wholes (substances), but to refer to whatever can be predicated. Still substances are not properties. Aristotle also states that clearly. Properties are aspects of substances, which cannot exist apart from them.

There's no phenomenon of self. — Terrapin Station

It depends on how one defines "phenomenon." What is your definition?

how is that about substances and whether they're separable from properties? — Terrapin Station

Because in this translation "subject" and "substance" mean the same thing. A substance is what other things (including accidents) are predicated of.

Also, try this from i, 5: "To sum up, it is a distinctive mark of substance, that, while remaining numerically one and the same, it is capable of admitting contrary qualities, the modification taking place through a change in the substance itself." In other words, accidental changes are changes to the substance itself, not to something separate.

Being patronizing will surely help the discussion. — Terrapin Station

When people make absurd claims categorically, they need to be called out.

I haven't read much Aristotle in about 30 years. So, since you're an expert on him, could you quote some passages about substances and properties that show that (a) he's pretty clearly positing substances as necessarily having properties, and (b) he's clearly not making claims about language use? — Terrapin Station

Try Categories i, 2: "By being 'present in a subject' I do not mean present as parts are present in a whole, but being incapable of existence apart from the said subject [italics mine]." It is clear from the context that he is speaking of accidents as present in a subject.

With regard to linguistic analysis and ontology, it is you who are confused. His discussion of substance and accidents occurs in the Categories, which is not an ontological work, but one of linguistic analysis -- part of the Organon, which is a collection laying the logical and linguistic foundations for more specific investigations. If you want ontology, read the Metaphysics.

If you don't realise how far ahead of Aristotle Terrapin Station is, well, you haven't been paying attention. — Wayfarer

Of course.

I see no reason why you would make such a claim. — Dfpolis

For example, he [Aristotle] separates substance(s) and properties, which is incoherent. — Terrapin Station

Obviously, you have a third- or fourth-hand hearsay acquaintance with Aristotle. I know of no text in which he separates (as opposed to mentally distinguishing) substance(s) and properties. He does distinguish ostensible unities (tode ti = "this something") from the aspects we predicate of them,(symbebecon [if memory serves] = things that "stand together" aka "accidents"), He states clearly that the things that stand together have no separate existence, but inhere in the substances that we predicate them of. So, you are spouting prejudicial nonsense.

Arguably he also seems to conflate ontology and linguistic analysis. — Terrapin Station

Really? Then why haven't you argued it -- starting with an actual text?

in my view Aristotle's metaphysics is a mess that doesn't really make any sense/isn't really coherent — Terrapin Station

I see no reason why you would make such a claim. There are some things he missed, but the framework is quite solid.

Information is the reduction of possibility. If we do not know it, it reduces physical possiblity. — Dfpolis

. “It” in this instance, the “it” we don’t know, is information. So we end up with...... if we don’t know information, information reduces physical possibilities. Which makes not a lick of sense — Mww

I meant "even if we do not know it, it reduces physical possibility." The reduction of physical possiblity is not conditioned on our knowing or not knowing it, despite the talk about Schrodinger's cat. I think you agree, as you said, " the more reality is specified the fewer reality’s remaining possibilities."

it stands to reason there is a ton of reality unspecified. — Mww

Agreed.

It follows that any information we come to know specifies that particular part of reality, thus reducing the physical possibilities remaining to it. — Mww

The physical possibilities are already reduced by the way it is. What is reduced in coming to know is what we see as possible, which is logical possibility.

Does an Aristotelian mean to say information reduces possibilities even if we have no idea what that information contains? — Mww

Yes, Aristotle sees the forms of things as making the possibilities latent in their matter actual. Matter is open to many possible forms, but only one actual form at a time. That is true independently of our knowing the form matter has taken.

Let me tell ya....a Kantian, or any reasonable empiricist for that matter, will certainly grant that information reduces possibilities, but only if such information is present to cognition and intelligible. — Mww

If they do, they are confusing logical and physical possibility. This is the whole point of the intelligiblity debate I am having with @Terrapin Station. I hold that things have definite forms prior to our knowing then and that those forms are the basis in reality of our knowledge. We may not be able to know the forms exhaustively, but what we do know of things, we know because their forms are at least partly intelligible to us.

(Note that Aristotelian forms always belong to individual things. There are no universal forms except in our thought.)

Information could in fact be present to cognition, which makes the presence of the information known, and still be unintelligible — Mww

The is a contradiction in terms. To be known, something has to be knowable (aka intelligible) which means it can't be unintelligible. We could however, know something and realize that we do not, and cannot, know all there is to that thing.

The reason we know that there is information is because we see open possibilities being closed by experience.

Seems like the information we don’t know increases the physical possibilities, not reduces — Mww

The information we do not know is still a specification of reality. The more it is already specified, the fewer its remaining possibilities.

Might there be an edit in the works here? — Mww

To wit? Have I missed an error?

What I am taking about is knowing data as opposed to having and/or processing data. — Dfpolis

You'd have to make the difference clear. — Terrapin Station

Really? What confuses you?

Information is the reduction of possiblity. — Dfpolis

? That's just introducing more confusion. Now we'd need to get into the ontology of possibility, too. — Terrapin Station

You seem easily confused. Something is possible if it does not contradict a contextualizing set of propositions. So, for example, something is logically possible if it does not contradict what we already know.

it's a major hurdle for me that you seem to be talking about "intelligibililty" (I'm not even a fan of that word, really, because it seems to be used for a wide number of different things in philosophy) as if it's something that occurs objectively. There's no way I'd agree with that. — Terrapin Station

Is there a basis in reality for calling new beetle an insect? If so, what do you call that basis? If not, how do you know it is a beetle and not a cucumber?

There's you isn't there? — bert1

On the occasions in question, no. Not phenomenally. — Terrapin Station

This is nonresponsive and evasive. Either you are present, or you are not. Which is it?

The examples you're using for this are not examples where I'd say that you're sensing without awareness. It's rather that there are different "levels" or "degrees" of awareness. Awareness isn't simply off or on, full or nothing. There's a continuum. Is it possible to sense without awareness? Maybe, but such as the driving examples wouldn't work for that. — Terrapin Station

This merely shows that we are defining "awareness" in different ways. What I am taking about is knowing data as opposed to having and/or processing data. Either we know it, or we don't. There is no middle ground.

I'm not a fan of the word "information" in discussions like this. I'd need to clarify the definition you're using. — Terrapin Station

Information is the reduction of possiblity. If we do not know it, it reduces physical possiblity. If we know it, it also reduces what is logically possible.

Let's do one point at a time. — Terrapin Station

Fine. Look at the section beginning with "Ah ha!" and see if that does not resolve our differences.

Aristotelian-Thomistic moderate realist — Dfpolis

Substance dualism included? — jorndoe

I follow Aristotle and Aquinas in rejecting substance dualism. We define "substance" (ousia) as "this something" (tode ti) -- in other words, we see primary realities as ostensible unities. The mental distinction between physical and mental acts does not make humans two things. Rather, we are unities that can act both physically and intentionally.

As we are not two things, there aren't two things to interact. Instead, intentional commitments are law-like realities that guide physical realizations. As the laws of physics determine purely mechanical motions, so they and our commitments determine human motions.

Last paragraph.....well spoken. — Mww

Thank you.

For socially redeeming value, which is more anthropology or empirical psychology than speculative metaphysics proper, one needs examine the second and third critiques. — Mww

I sympathize with many of Kant's objectives. I just disagree on his mode of execution.