I guess we can make all sorts of claims about gods — Tom Storm

And devils.

When my son was young he used to blame "the little Santa".

This vaguely reminds me of arch-elitist Leo Strauss' advocacy of indispensible "political myths" & "noble lies". — 180 Proof

This is, of course, from Plato's Republic. See the quote from Cicero above.

It is also standard political practice today even in democratic regimes such as the U.S. Whether it is possible or advisable for a government to be transparent is both an ideological and practical question. A social experiment whose consequences are unknown and unpredictable.

Strauss continues to be a polarizing figure. It is as if his critics and advocates are talking about several different people. Elitist? Yes, in the sense that he maintains that with regard to both philosophical and active pursuits, some are better suited to lead than others. But this does not translate into matters of privilege or degrees of worth.

From The Intellectual Legacy of Leo Strauss:

At the root of all specifically modern obstacles to understanding Strauss is the suspicion that his thought endangers liberalism and liberal democracy. Is not liberal democracy a product of modern thought? Does not questioning the superiority of modern thought lead to questioning the goodness of liberal democracy and the importance of the innovations in politics that allowed its emergence? Does not Strauss's thought involve “a radical critique of liberalism” (Strauss 1965, p. 351)? What Strauss's critics do not grasp is that this critique enabled, not hindered, Strauss's defense of liberal democracy against its enemies, at a time when many intellectuals yielded to the attraction of modern tyrannies because of their dissatisfaction with liberal democracy.

These premises clearly give the conclusion that there is in nature some bodily substance other than the formations we know, prior to them all and more divine than they. (269a 30)
— Fooloso4

A bodily substance is not immaterial. — Dfpolis

Right. What MU won't accept is Aristotle's claim that there is "some bodily substance other than the formations we know". Why? I don't know. Maybe an inability to admit he is wrong. Maybe some need for things to be "just so". In any case, I think it points to the reason Plato wrote dialogues. The character of interlocutors, that is, psychology, is not separate from philosophy.

This is very consistent with what I've been telling you. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is not, but believe whatever you need to. I will leave it there.

I read the whole section and did not find it. — Metaphysician Undercover

Out of concern that others might be reading this and be misled, I will give you the benefit of doubt and not assume that your inability to find it is due to willful blindness.

De Caelo

These are direct quotes from the text, not my interpretation.

These premises clearly give the conclusion that there is in nature some bodily substance other than the formations we know, prior to them all and more divine than they. (269a 30)

And the concluding sentence of Book 1, part 2:

On all these grounds, therefore, we may infer with confidence that there is something beyond the bodies that are about us on this earth, different and separate from them; and that the superior glory of its nature is proportionate to its distance from this world of ours. (269b 14)

... and so we ignore the achievements of the Enlightenment at our peril. — Steven Pinker

I read this as a warning rather than complacency. The success we enjoy against

war, scarcity, disease, ignorance, and lethal menace — Steven Pinker

is not a permanent victory. Although the Enlightenment program, the conquest of nature, is not unproblematic, it is only by continued concerted effort that the progress that has be made against war, scarcity, etc. will be sustained.

A picture emerges of a world that can be poetically described in Empedocles’s words
as a world of Love and Strife. In Aristotle’s more prosaic but no less inventive terms, a world in the constant movement he calls in his neologism ‘entelechia’. It is the never ending activity or work of an ousia to persist or continue to be what it is or is to be. The constant active struggle of the telos of a living being against its dissolution.

I am moving the discussion of chance causes here

No doubt it will ruffle the feathers of those who desire a "just so" universe.

In both the Physics and Metaphysics Aristotle introduces accidental causes. What are the implications of Aristotle’s accidental cause?

One implication is that teleology is not determinism. All that happens in the world does not come to be as the result of a determinate end. The teleology of the acorn is to become the oak tree, but not every acorn becomes an oak. To ask why is to examine accidental causes.

More generally, the implication is that the cosmos cannot be understood simply as teleological. The world is not as it is because it acts to fulfill some end. Because there are accidental causes, the world is indeterminate and does not yield a final account.

Aristotle is in agreement with Plato’s Timaeus in making the distinction between two kinds of cause, one intelligible and one unintelligible.

You have either forgotten why the question of accidental causes arose or you are moving the goal posts. You claimed:

It is made very clear by Aristotle, that accidents are part of a thing's form ...

If the difference were not formal we could not perceive them as differences ...

So chance is not a cause at all, it's just the way we portray and represent our own ignorance. — Metaphysician Undercover

You went from denying that chance is a cause at all to saying it is not a proper cause to quoting Aristotle that it is an incidental cause.

That a man is skinny is not due to the formal cause. What it is to be a man is not to be skinny. If the skinny man becomes fat this is not due to the formal cause. He is the same man whether skinny or fat.

I see you went silent regarding the eternity and material of the heavens. It would have been better to have admitted you were wrong, but better to be silent then attempt to argue your way out. If only you had used such good judgment with the rest of your tendentious arguments. I think it is time for me to once again join the ranks of those here who, for good reason, ignore you.

Heidegger — Heiko

Heidegger is an important figure in helping to shape our current understanding of Aristotle. He taught a generation of students how to do a close reading of an ancient text, paying careful attention to the original language rather than relying on Latin translations.

For first the substance of each thing is special to it, in that it does not belong to anything else. — Metaphysics, 1038b9, translated by CDC Reeve

As I understand this, in simplest terms, one ousia or being is not any other. The translation "substance' easily misleads us unless we keep in mind that a substance means a particular being. It can also be misleading if we think of a substance as being of a thing, as if they are not the same.

When I say "For every natural number X there exists a number X+1" — Heiko

If we are still talking about Aristotle then there is no natural number "X". An number is always a number of something, a number of what it is that is being counted. The shift to symbolic notation occurs later.

Once, I received a big protest from a female interlocutor because I a had used the word "he" . — Alkis Piskas

Once, a student came up to me after class and complained because I had used "she". As if just another example of women being blamed by men. I pointed out that I had been switching back and forth between 'he' and 'she' so as to be inclusive. If this had occurred more recently I might have used 'they'. I read somewhere that this was at one time accepted usage but fell out of favor.

But it is still used in that sense. — Alkis Piskas

It is. What has changed is that some now assume that the term 'man' is sexist and so whoever uses it is sexist.

In fact, "a human" is even the first meaning that you find in some dictionaries. — Alkis Piskas

Even the term 'human' retains 'man'.

For that reason, a professional and/or serious translator, would chose "people" over "men". — Alkis Piskas

In the not too distant past, the term 'man' was not assumed to be used in a gendered way. For example, 'mankind' is not used in distinction from 'womankind'. But even the term 'woman' retains a trace of sexism. Most would not accuse someone of sexism for using the term woman.

There was, and maybe still is, a contentious argument about changing the gendered language of the story of Genesis.

And God saith, `Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness , and let them ...
And God prepareth the man in His image; in the image of God He prepared him, a male and a female He prepared them.

Attempts to neuter the language hide some of what is at issue. The word translated as man is Adam. Note that there is a switching back and forth between between the singular 'man' and dual 'them', male and female. But it is not just the human beings who are talked about in this way but God as well.

The issue here is whether there is some bodily substance other than the formations we know. MU says no, Aristotle says yes. The underlying issue is the eternity of the heavens.

Plato on causation is not clear at all, and I don't agree with your interpretation here. — Metaphysician Undercover

He is quite clear about the two kinds of cause. All of this can be cited in the text. I have discussed this in more detail shaken to the Chora

But chance and spontaneity are also reckoned among causes: many things are said both to be and to come to be as a result of chance and spontaneity. (Physics, 195b)
— Fooloso4

This opinion strikes right to the very heart of the issue. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is Aristotle's opinion. It is a quote from the text. He calls it a cause.

Aristotle dismissed chance as not properly a cause — Metaphysician Undercover

Where does he say that it is not properly a cause?

Notice in your quote, "many things are said...to come to be as a result of chance". This is what I mean about the need to be careful to distinguish between the ideas of others which Aristotle is rejecting, and the ideas which he is actually promoting. He rejects chance and luck as properly causal. — Metaphysician Undercover

He gives a sustained argument that chance is a cause. He concludes:

Spontaneity and chance are causes of effects which, though they might result from intelligence or nature, have in fact been caused by something accidentally. (198a)

I read through this section and could not find your reference. — Metaphysician Undercover

http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/heavens.1.i.html
about 9 lines above part 3

I don't see how this is relevant. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is relevant because at least part of your confusion seems to be based on the translation of the term ousia.

You are obviously making wild, outlandish, and completely irrelevant assumptions because you think they might support your position. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is not me but Aristotle who you are accusing:

... for the actually existent is always generated from the potentially existent by something which is actually existent—e.g., man by man (1049b)

How and why this similarity occurs is studied in the science of biology, through chromosomes and genetics. — Metaphysician Undercover

Once again, you demonstrate that not even Aristotle could convince you that you are wrong. Man by man according to Aristotle because of the form 'man'.

I would not say that any of these problems were solved by Aristotle.

Such as?

... the whole Platonic tradiition merely ends with questions that can never be answered — Wayfarer

It could be said that this is where it begins and does not end.

Well, to claim that they can never be answered is to presume a kind of answer. This is one difference between Socratic and modern skepticism. While the latter makes claims about what we cannot know the former sticks with what we do not know.

Are you excluding yourself? Or someone else?

In my opinion, the wisdom of Socratic philosophy has to do with the articulation of problems that defy solution.
— Fooloso4
I'm not sure I get this right. Can you expand it a little? — Alkis Piskas

Most briefly, human wisdom is knowledge of ignorance. Philosophy, as described in Plato's Symposium is the desire to be wise. Aristotle begins the Metaphysics:

All men naturally desire knowledge.

In both cases there is not only an awareness of something lacking but a desire to obtain it, but
we have found no way to move past the aporia raised in these texts.

Timaeus identifies two kinds of cause, intelligence and necessity, nous and ananke. Necessity covers such things as physical processes, contingency, chance, motion, power, and the chora. What is by necessity is without nous or intellect. It is called the “wandering cause” (48a). It can act contrary to nous. The sensible world, the world of becoming, is neither regulated by intellect nor fully intelligible.

From the standpoint that Socrates is a distinct and different individual from Calias, it is necessary to answer that the difference between the two is a difference of form. — Metaphysician Undercover

They are two different ousia with the same form, man. There difference is not with regard to form but with regard to accidents.

But formal cause cannot account for the accidents. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is correct.

Therefore the cause of the individual, natural thing's form, must be peculiar and unique to the individual itself. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is precisely why the individual is not a form.

The cause of accidents is chance:

But chance and spontaneity are also reckoned among causes: many things are said both to be and to come to be as a result of chance and spontaneity. (Physics, 195b)

This is in general agreement with the two kinds of cause in the Timaeus.

What is beyond the bodies is properly immaterial — Metaphysician Undercover

He does not say beyond the bodies but:

something beyond the bodies that are about us on this earth, — Fooloso4

They are a different kind of body. As I previously quoted:

These premises clearly give the conclusion that there is in nature some bodily substance other than the formations we know, prior to them all and more divine than they. (On the Heavens Book 1, part 2)

This is Aristotle's conclusion, not a summary of the opinion of others.

Read Metaphysics Bk7 please. Substance is form. — Metaphysician Undercover

We have been over this. From the introduction to Joe Sachs translation of the Metaphysics:

By way of the usual translations, the central argument of the Metaphysics would be: being qua being is being per se in accordance with the categories, which in turn is primarily substance, but primary substance is form, while form is essence and essence is actuality. You might react to such verbiage in various ways. You might think, I am too ignorant and untrained to understand these things, and need an expert to explain them to me. Or you might think, Aristotle wrote gibberish. But if you have some acquaintance with the classical languages, you might begin to be suspicious that something has gone awry: Aristotle wrote Greek, didn't he? And while this argument doesn't sound much like English, it doesn't sound like Greek either, does it? In fact this argument appears to be written mostly in an odd sort of Latin, dressed up to look like English. Why do we need Latin to translate Greek into English at all? (https://www.greenlion.com/PDFs/Sachs_intro.pdf)

The word translated as substance is ousia. It always refers to something particular, whether an individual or a species.

Independent from human universals, each form is the form of an individual. — Metaphysician Undercover

We have been over this before. If each individual is a form and each individual form is different then how do you account for the fact that human beings only give birth to human beings? There is something by nature common to all human beings that at the same time distinguishes them from all else that is not a human being. What that is is the form man or human being.

As I keep saying, there's much more wisdom in ancient Greek philosophopy than what we can remember in our times, after all the changes in and the evolution of the human thought. — Alkis Piskas

In my opinion, the wisdom of Socratic philosophy has to do with the articulation of problems that defy solution.

In my opinion, this is not a convincing argument for the existence of God.

However, there's a difference between the ancient Greek word "phantasia" and its literal translation in English from modern Greek, "imagination. — Alkis Piskas

The problem is even more complex since the concept of 'imagination' through the Latin imaginatio has itself undergone changes.

In Aristotle's On the Soul the question is posed:

If phantasia is that according to which we say that a phantasma comes to be in us, is it a power or a condition by which we judge and are correct or incorrect? (428a)

For Aristotle too there is there is the treachery of images.

I don't think that's what 'form' means. Socrates truly is the form 'man' but the form 'man' is common to all men. Likewise for forms generally. I'd like to hear Fooloso4's view on that, though. — Wayfarer

See my response to MU above.

Sorry, you need to explain yourself better, I don't see your point. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think it is all quite clear. The formal cause is by nature. It is at work. Your claim is that it is a concept.

The early part of "On the Heavens" is spent discussing the opinions of others. — Metaphysician Undercover

The discussion in Book 1, part 2 is not a discussion of the opinions of others. It concludes:

On all these grounds, therefore, we may infer with confidence that there is something beyond the bodies that are about us on this earth, different and separate from them; and that the superior glory of its nature is proportionate to its distance from this world of ours.

This is not the opinion of anyone other than Aristotle. As I said, not even Aristotle could convince you that you are wrong about Aristotle.

"Each thing itself, then, and its essence are one and the same in no merely accidental way.. — Metaphysician Undercover

First, this contradicts your earlier claim:

The true form of the thing consists of accidents, — Metaphysician Undercover

Second, the term 'essence' means 'what it is to be'. It is a Latin term that was invented to translate the Greek 'ousia'. So, yes, what each thing is and what it is to be that thing are one and the same.

This is why Aristotle has a primary substance (the form of the individual), and a secondary substance (the form of the species). — Metaphysician Undercover

The primary ousia (substance) is not a form. A primary substance is a particular thing, both form and matter. To be Socrates is not to be a form. The secondary substance is not a form either, it is a universal, what all men have in common that distinguishes them from all else.

Now of actual things some are universal, others particular (I call universal that which is by its nature predicated of a number of things, and particular that which is not ; man, for instance, is a universal, Callias a particular) .(On Interpretation, 17a38)

What is true of Callias is not true of all men, but what is true of all men is true of Callias. What all men have in common is not a universal. What all men have in common is a form. It is because of the form that there is the universal.

What matters is the fact that there is existence. Existence is not a property of things. Things are properties of existence. — EnPassant

Is existence something that has properties? It is clear that things that exist have properties, but existence is not something that exists.

It would be quite difficult to bring the painting (tableau) itself in here, wouldn't it? — Alkis Piskas

But a discussion of Aristotle on phantasia would not be too difficult to bring in here.

Actually, "Lassie" is not a dog. It's a name of a dog. :smile: — Alkis Piskas

In that case, Alkis Piskas is not a person. And, as he says, Magritte's pipe is not a pipe. Nor is it La Trahison des images, The Treachery of images. So what is La Trahison des images? Nothing more than the name of a painting?

@Metaphysician Undercover

There are two important points that you have ignored:

1.

The formal cause, what it is to be a man, is what each and every man is. This is by nature not by concept. — Fooloso4

2.

On the Heavens, Book 1, part 2:

"These premises clearly give the conclusion that there is in nature some bodily substance other than the formations we know, prior to them all and more divine than they."

Your argument, based on perishable matter, fails to account for this divine substance. — Fooloso4

Book 2, part 1:

"That the heaven as a whole neither came into being nor admits of destruction, as some assert, but is one and eternal, with no end or beginning of its total duration, containing and embracing in itself the infinity of time, we may convince ourselves not only by the arguments already set forth but also by a consideration of the views of those who differ from us in providing for its generation." — Fooloso4

Added: These are quotes from the text of On the Heavens.

Even with my very limited knowledge of Aristotle, I’m sure this isn’t so. — Wayfarer

And you are, of course, right. As our friend Joe Sachs puts it:

Lassie is an ousia, and the ousia of Lassie is dog.

(https://www.greenlion.com/PDFs/Sachs_intro.pdf)

He seems to have a fondness for dogs.

He goes on to explain:

... being-what it-is does not have the same meaning as what-it-is-for-it-to-be. Lassie's being a dog is not the same thing as dog, and the latter is what she is.

Another thought on the active intellect:

How is it that Aristotle is mortal but his active intellect is not? Well, we still read Aristotle. His intellect is at work on us.

It is the question of continuity that led me to the distinction. But a continuity from life to death is puzzling.

Perhaps a distinction can be made between the active intellect at work and the active intellect when there is nothing for it to act on, that is, at death with the cessation of the passive intellect.

However, he says that anything which is moving in a circle must be composed of matter, and material things are generated, are corruptible, and will corrupt. — Metaphysician Undercover

On the Heavens, Book 1, part 2:

These premises clearly give the conclusion that there is in nature some bodily substance other than the formations we know, prior to them all and more divine than they.

Your argument, based on perishable matter, fails to account for this divine substance.

Metaphysics 1026a:

The primary science, by contrast, is concerned with things that are both separable and immovable. Now all causes are necessarily eternal, and these most of all. For they are the causes of the divine beings that are perceptible.

The primary science, what he calls theology, is about things that are separable from matter and not moved both in the sense that there is nothing moving them and in that they do not change. These divine beings that are perceptible are the heavenly bodies. Divine beings are not corruptible.

Book 2, part 1:

That the heaven as a whole neither came into being nor admits of destruction, as some assert, but is one and eternal, with no end or beginning of its total duration, containing and embracing in itself the infinity of time, we may convince ourselves not only by the arguments already set forth but also by a consideration of the views of those who differ from us in providing for its generation.

He showed that in each case it is a type of form. But, as he explained, the form of the individual is completely different from the form of the universal. — Metaphysician Undercover

Right, the universal and the particular are not the same, but the universal is not a concept. The form man, and not simply a particular man who is tall or is Socrates, is at work on every particular man. It is the formal cause and not a concept that does the work. The formal cause, what it is to be a man, is what each and every man is. This is by nature not by concept.