Soc, you posted this early this morning:
soc:
I have not so carelessly abandoned Aristotleās ideas of substance and accidents. Iām comparing these great concepts with those of Sophist philosophers opposed to him, known as Atomists. Letās have these Aristotelians and Atomists combatants battle it out in the cageā¦
The āAtomistsā are already addressed and dismissed as inadequate. That happened 3 thousand years ago, although in this āaccidentalā and material age the idea is again popular.
The āatomistā position was also dismissed hundreds of posts ago on this thread, Soc. That primitive position was included in my very first post, post #644, page 44. Here part of that post is again: try to recognize the atomist idea highlighted in red:
toaslan;3478622
said:
The material cause of a thing is its matter
āwhat it is made of, as particular atoms in particular modes make up particular molecules: and down the line, as the wood is the cause of the cross or the boat.
b.
The agent cause of a thing is the trigger or operator whose action brought about the thing: as a father is the cause of his son, and the boatwright the cause of the boat.
c.
The formal cause is its definitionāthe essence or nature of a thing: as
Rational Animal causes me to be human as opposed to a member of the fish kingdom
d.
The final cause is its purposeāthe end for which it exists: so, because this poster is meant for heaven, I am designed/composed such that I have the appetite, skills and potential to go there.
- Accidents inhere in substances.
- Substance inheres in nothing, but underlies every accident.
- God is pure substanceābeingāactuality. There is no potency in God.
- Substantial change is going from potency to actāwhat is already present and real though only potential becomes unpacked, unfolded, worked-outāactual. An example is the change from zygote to elderly man named Joeāthoughout his lifetime from womb to deathbed, Joe is the same, one unique individual known fully only to God. A sign of this sameness is Joeās DNAāwhich remains identical throughout. A sign of the reality of the change is that the zygote looks nothing like the old man.
- Substantial change was the great puzzle of the pre-Aristotelians. To preserve the self-evident truth that the baby Joe IS the man Joe, given the continuum inbetween, some thinkers decided that all the apparent changes are nothing but accidentalāso that change itself is an illusion, and that the reality is that all actually remains the same.
The other side of the controversy decided, in order to preserve the self-evident radicalness of such change as that from embryo to man, that everything changes, nothing remains the same, and that all attempt to identify anything *as itself *is futileāthus nothing has any definition or any nature; all things are each other, all differences are illusion, and that thus in reality all is in random flux.
Aristotle separated out the notion of Substantial Changeāwhich preserves BOTH the underlying sameness of the substance through all its changes AND the concrete reality of the changes. He discovered that there must be an unchanging essence or substrate underlying all the apparent/observable/measurable changes which changes he then called accidental (as opposed to substantial).
- The nature of a thing is its essenceāits definitionāits Formal Cause.
ā¦
Soc is right that,** in the sense of material cause**, the snowball is its atomsābut not in the higher senses of cause.
The āatomistsā held that each thing is really just its particles. So the rock is the baby is the tree is the river. So their apparent differences are only ACCIDENTALānot real, not SUBSTANTIAL. For them, a thingās persisting āSamenessā throughout real change was not real. So the baby is not the man. A violation of common sense.
The other pre-Socratics held that each thing is really its essence, and any particles composing it are irrelevantāsuch particles would be accidental absolutely, as if not in any sense ācausingā the natural thing. For them Change was not real. So the difference between baby Joe and man Joe is not real. A violation of common sense.
What mankind needed to be able to say is that a thing can truly change while remaining itself.
In order to be able to say that, we needed to develop the thought past that of the pro- and anti-atomists.
**We needed a coherent theory of SUBSTANTIAL CHANGE. A theory as to how a thing can truly, substantially change while remaining truly, substantially itself throughout the change. **
Aristotle argued that both
essence
and
matter potential to that essence
cause the natural thing.
BOTH atoms so formed AND the essence that forms them ARE the natural thing.
Both are true causesāand there are two more causes, agent and final.
Otherwise, sigh, again, Soc is his macaroni and cheese.
Otherwise, again, I am my least excellent component, the one which least defines me.
Otherwise, I am my matter, not
This-Rational-Animal-Nicknamed-Toaslan.
Otherwise, also, I am just as much other things as I am myself. I am your macaroni and cheese. Get it?
Any of this getting through?
Iām really not looking for a fight. I do, however, think that contrasting the two philosophies will facilitate discussion. Please tell me why definitions (A2) and (B2) are not true.**A2. The individual substances of a physical object are atoms. These atoms, when bonded together to form the physical object, give the physical object observable properties. The physical object can gain and lose some atoms whilst itself enduring, but it can never exist without any atoms.**B2. The substance of a physical object is being as in the whatness underlying or causing the physical object. It is the atoms of that object, which together are its form, definition, essence and nature. Accidents inhere in the physical object; it inheres in atoms.