And just what is life?

[polytropos]

In what sense will they be accounted for with the proposed essences? Will they be accounted for in the same way that me kicking a ball accounts for its motion?

No. You’re reading the accounting as an efficient/agent cause, but it is a formal cause.

Is the account a proposed explanation such as a falsifiable hypothesis?

It depends. Particular essences, such as that of the electron and those delivered by research in biology, is certainly falsifiable. That man is rational (a hylemorphist would claim) is something that can be established by demonstrative philosophical argument. There is not a single empirical test for essence as such, but different methods of inquiry appropriate to different objects will be suited to gain knowledge of their natures.

I read over your quote a few times and I didn’t see anything to substantiate the claim that it is possible to determine essence by any means. You gave a reason for why you think it would be good to have essences, but not an actual demonstration for the possibility of determining their existence.

Regarding the next part of your post: What is an “ontological unity”? All that came up on Google was a single Catholic site that was talking about something unrelated.

I take it as an empirical premise (one of the more certain deliverances of physics) that electrons have determinate natures and that their properties are unified (ie. an electron’s being a particular mass and having a negative charge are not accidentally related). I have also argued that convention and reduction do not sufficiently (even in principle) account for the unity of electrons (or other similarly unified substances), so there is an ontological principle of their unity (by that I only mean that we have an ontological commitment to the reality of their structure as something that fixes their nature). But if there there is a determinate principle of unity in electrons, then there is natural candidate for an essence.

I’ve always been curious: What is the primary means of investigation in ontology? Deductive reasoning? Inductive reasoning? Do the metaphysical results inform our understanding of physics, or does it typically work the other way around? I ask because you seem to have arrived at many conclusions with varying degrees of certainty, and I’m wondering if this is because you use a mixture of approaches.

There is a combination of methods. It depends on the object of inquiry (as in any field of study). General principles can be determined deductively, but their application is often inductive.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . Yes, every science makes classifications. But as I’ve pointed out numerous times, making a classification is not equivalent to making an existential claim. When chemists divide compounds into organic and inorganic varieties, this is not meant to be interpreted as a claim about the existence of intangible objects. There is no “essence of inorganic matter” being posited, for example. . .

Let’s take an example of how real science works.
A pharmaceutical company is funding research into a better antidepressant: more effective, fewer side-effects, better selling.
A complex molecule is created with a similar structure to a common, current drug.
Tests are conducted to determine how it interacts with receptors known to be present in the human body. Animal tests follow, and after much other work, it is ready for human trials.
People rate their mood, thinking, sleep, energy level, concentration etc before and after they take the drug.
Now placebo works about 40% of the time, and let’s say this drug helps 60% of the time. Now this would be enough to make it effective, but there are many others that do the same or better, so this drug fails the test - it won’t sell.
Now it is noted that in 75% of people, their concentration is better, other things being the same.
After a series of further investigations, eureka! a new ADDH drug is discovered.

Whether or not I understand the ideas of essences correctly, there really exists:
drugs, a nervous system, people, moods, sleep, concentration and productivity, wealth, corporations, success.
The problem with splitting relationship into object and subject leads to absurdity.
These “structures” are really out there.

Back to the original question, I was wondering whether life is a what or a who. The question being, “Just who is life?” I guess “life” is an idea, but life itself seems very personal. I get easily confused tho’.

 

[utunumsint]

From “The Way Toward Wisdom: An Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Introduction to Metaphysics” by Benedict M. Ashley

It is true that our sense first show us the properties of substances as their regular way of behaving, and it is through these properties that we comes to know that a substance is a certain species of thing. Because we observer that an existing thing has many interrelated properties, we are stimulated to analyze them so as to find their interrelationships and to explain how and why these are unified. We hope that this may finally lead us to understand the unity of these properties as the necessary effects of the real nature or essence of the thing. Thus Marie Curie studied all the various properties of radium until she understood not only its property of radioactivity but how all its other properties manifested its specific unified structure. Then she and other scientists became able to formulate a real definition of this substance that located it in the periodic table of the elements: Ra, atomic number 88, most stable isotope 226, having a nucleus of 88 protons and an equal number of neutrons, surrounded by an equal number of electrons, with a valence of 2. After that, she could reverse this process of inductive (or “abductive”) discovery and give a theoretical, logical deductive explanation of how the properties of radium are caused by its specific atomic structure.

We need, therefore, to distinguish between the via inventionis, or way of research and discovery, from the* via demonstrationis*, or way of scientific explanation, as opposite to each other. In seeking to understand a real object we observe it properties as these are accessible to our senses or can be inferred from sense observation. A sensed object has many properties; for example, H2O has specific freezing and boiling points, a specific weight, and so on. Once these properties are determined, however, analysis shows that they have interrelations that unify them and can server to identify the kind of object that possesses them. This **unified **character of the object that explains its properties is all that Aristotle meant by its “essence” (eidos), not some exhaustive grasp of some hidden mystery.

I hope this helps.

God bless,
Ut

 

[Linusthe2nd]

They assume the structure that has been corroborated by generations of experimentation, yes.

I meant the underlying metaphysical structure, its matter and its form, which compose the essence or nature from which all the properties of a substance flow, including its peculiar physical elements and structure.

Yes, every science makes classifications. But as I’ve pointed out numerous times, making a classification is not equivalent to making an existential claim. When chemists divide compounds into organic and inorganic varieties, this is not meant to be interpreted as a claim about the existence of intangible objects. There is no “essence of inorganic matter” being posited, for example.

Oh, I agree. Making a classification is not equivalent to making an existential claim ( I think you mean, science is making no claim about the underlying metaphysical reality of matter and form which compose the essence or nature of a particular substance ). And I agree they are not positing the existence of any essence, organic or inorganic. However, that is not the point. The point is that there would be nothing to catelogue at all without the reality of the underlying metaphysical reality of the matter and form structure, which gives rise to a really existing substance, with a very specific nature or essence.

Again, going back to the chemistry example: A chemist would say that organic compounds exhibit different properties than inorganic ones because they have carbon (by definition). Likewise, the substance is called organic because it contains carbon. No intangible entity needs to be postulated to account for the differences.

Oh, I agree. But but getting down to the species and difference is where we find the actually existing substances which contain the carbon. And for all of these there is a definite underlying matter - form structure from which flows a categorized substance having a specific nature or essence. You see, I don’t think there is an organic entity which is in pure carbon, but if there is, it itself has a matter - form structure giving rise to a substance ( pure carbon ), which has a definite essence or nature.

Linus2nd

 

[Oreoracle]

No. You’re reading the accounting as an efficient/agent cause, but it is a formal cause.

I’m not sure that science is really in the business of formal causation. It seems to me that to accept the existence of formal causes would amount to accepting your position outright, so naturally the need for formal causes seems every bit as counterintuitive as the need for essences.

I don’t expect you to sympathize with this, so I’ll ask the following: Have scientists ever predicted the outcome of an experiment by using these metaphysical ideas, rather than with the usual inductive method characteristic of science? In other words, have formal causes alone been used to predict effects in the same way that, as I suppose you would say, “efficient causes” have? This all seems rather detached from the goal of natural science.

My suspicion is that formal causation is really just logical implication in disguise, which isn’t really “causation” in the conventional sense at all. For instance, one could say that being a triangle causes a polygon to be 3-sided, but it’s just as legitimate to say that being 3-sided causes the polygon to be a triangle. There is no real “causation” occurring, it’s simply a tautology.

There is not a single empirical test for essence as such, but different methods of inquiry appropriate to different objects will be suited to gain knowledge of their natures.

So you would agree that a statement such as “Essences exist” is not a hypothesis with regard to the scientific method, correct? Consequently, to be part of science at all, it would have to be assumed from the outset since it cannot be demonstrated empirically?

I have also argued that convention and reduction do not sufficiently (even in principle) account for the unity of electrons (or other similarly unified substances), so there is an ontological principle of their unity (by that I only mean that we have an ontological commitment to the reality of their structure as something that fixes their nature). But if there there is a determinate principle of unity in electrons, then there is natural candidate for an essence.

I don’t see how one gets from “electrons have the properties they do by virtue of their structure” to “something must be ‘causing’ (but not in a cause-and-effect way) this structure”. Why can’t the electrons simply have this structure to begin with?

Based on your explanation of the terminology, I suppose I agree with the “principle of unity”, but I don’t think this amounts to admitting the existence of something intangible.

I meant the underlying metaphysical structure, its matter and its form, which compose the essence or nature from which all the properties of a substance flow, including its peculiar physical elements and structure.

What evidence do you have that scientists typically agree with this assessment? I admit that I haven’t gone very far into any branch of science. I am a math major however, and we often use examples in science to motivate our discussions. I have been taught by several professors who took/taught higher-level physics courses. I have never heard this doctrine that scientists supposedly adhere to.

The point is that there would be nothing to catelogue at all without the reality of the underlying metaphysical reality of the matter and form structure, which gives rise to a really existing substance, with a very specific nature or essence.

The problem is that you’re attempting to explain something physical with something non-physical, which doesn’t really achieve much. I could ask you where all of these metaphysical entities come from, and then you would need a meta-metaphysics to account for them, and so forth ad infinitum. And even if we could consider such an infinite hierarchy of disciplines, would we really have learned anything more about physics?

 

[MPat]

I didn’t actually state that I just disagreed anywhere in that quote. I simply gave reasons for why the analogy isn’t appropriate.

Which would be worth something, if you would understand what was being said (and you admit you do not)…

Which is why at the moment I advise you to concentrate on understanding the opposing position and to ignore everything else.

Honestly I find this tactic of yours terribly confusing.

Once again, if you are confused, try to understand, do nothing else for now.

You guys spent the majority of this thread maintaining that numbers don’t have essences and that the math analogies are woefully inadequate. You say that the discovery of an essence isn’t comparable to posing a definition. So then I gave you a golden opportunity to explain your position and to show me an essence.

So what do you do? You turn toward a math analogy and compare the act of defining an operation to the discovery of essences. What am I to make of this? Could it be that such comparisons are what led to my initial “confusion” to begin with?

The bottom line is this: If you don’t want me to think that the recognition of an essence amounts to settling on a definition, then don’t compare it to that. It’s that simple.

Yes, I say that numbers are not substances and have no essences. And I say that doing addition (note that it is not the addition itself, nor a number) relates to laws of commutativity or associativity as doing science relates to all this talk about essences.

I don’t think I am able to explain it in any clearer way. If you do not see that those statements are different, then there is no point in even presenting any arguments.

The position isn’t clear because the act of defining something is very different than asserting the existence of an intangible object that is tied to the physical world somehow. The former is arbitrary, but the latter requires substantiation.

That would make the position “badly supported”, perhaps even “wrong”, not “unclear”.

OK, can you at least confirm that a wrong statement like “Two and two is five.” is clear, understandable to you? That you understand what it (wrongly) says? Or are we using even the word “clear” differently…?

I was going to give you some examples of “immaterial” or “intangible” things that, however, affect material things (for example, debt is immaterial), to try to overcome your difficulties with imagination. But I guess there is little point in trying that any more…

 

[polytropos]

I’m not sure that science is really in the business of formal causation.

Of course it is. Quite a few scientific theories are specified in non-causative (and by that I mean non-efficient-causative) terms. Quantum physics, for example. Formal structures are indispensable to scientific explanations.

For what it’s worth I would also say that science is in the business of final causes, since it is concerned with dispositions immanent to form.

I don’t expect you to sympathize with this, so I’ll ask the following: Have scientists ever predicted the outcome of an experiment by using these metaphysical ideas, rather than with the usual inductive method characteristic of science? In other words, have formal causes alone been used to predict effects in the same way that, as I suppose you would say, “efficient causes” have? This all seems rather detached from the goal of natural science.

Again, I would say: of course. Many scientific theories get by without having a complete efficient causal account.

My suspicion is that formal causation is really just logical implication in disguise, which isn’t really “causation” in the conventional sense at all. For instance, one could say that being a triangle causes a polygon to be 3-sided, but it’s just as legitimate to say that being 3-sided causes the polygon to be a triangle. There is no real “causation” occurring, it’s simply a tautology.

Well, you say that you suspect that formal causation is logical implication, and then you give an example from mathematics, in which of course logical implication takes place, because mathematics proceeds by way of deduction. Sort of a stacked example.

So you would agree that a statement such as “Essences exist” is not a hypothesis with regard to the scientific method, correct? Consequently, to be part of science at all, it would have to be assumed from the outset since it cannot be demonstrated empirically?

Yes. (Though I would also argue that science, as it is practiced today, is largely committed to essences anyway. It is a search for non-accidental, mind-independent natures of things. I’d also say that the considerations which motivate essentialism pre-scientifically can also motivated it in the context of scientific discoveries. Some gravitate toward essentialism because it is realist or matches relatively well with common language usage, but the recent scientific essentialists and causal dispositionalists, like Brian Ellis, Nancy Cartwright, and Stephen Mumford, are probably motivated by scientific results more than anything. And the original revival of essentialism in the 20th century was carried out by Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam, who definitely emphasized scientific results and the need for a posteriori necessities.)

I don’t see how one gets from “electrons have the properties they do by virtue of their structure” to “something must be ‘causing’ (but not in a cause-and-effect way) this structure”. Why can’t the electrons simply have this structure to begin with?

Well in many cases I would say that form is structure (though I don’t mean that definitionally–I would define form more generally), and that we are ontologically committed to structure precisely because reductionism is (as I’ve argued) a priori inadequate.

I apologize for the very brief explanations. I am a bit preoccupied these days.

 

[Oreoracle]

Which would be worth something, if you would understand what was being said (and you admit you do not)…

I admitted that I didn’t understand what your idea of “essence” is. Then you offered an explanation, and I pointed out that it doesn’t make sense. So either you do have a coherent notion of “essence” and you didn’t explain it well, or you didn’t have a coherent notion from the outset.

Yes, I say that numbers are not substances and have no essences. And I say that doing addition (note that it is not the addition itself, nor a number) relates to laws of commutativity or associativity as doing science relates to all this talk about essences.

Analogies are helpful in certain circumstances, but I’m afraid that nothing can replace an existential statement, except perhaps another existential statement. Any analogy that doesn’t involve objects that are not really regarded as existent (such as numbers) will fail.

Thus, if that analogy is the best you can do, I’m afraid we’ll have to agree to disagree.

I was going to give you some examples of “immaterial” or “intangible” things that, however, affect material things (for example, debt is immaterial), to try to overcome your difficulties with imagination. But I guess there is little point in trying that any more.

Debt really doesn’t affect the physical world unless someone acts to collect a payment of debt. I never denied that humans invent concepts, use them, and act on them. The point, though, is that the concepts do not suddenly take on lives of their own and start disrupting the physical world like poltergeists. Any physical change purportedly caused by an immaterial thing (debt) can be explained in terms of material things (the act of collecting debt).

Of course it is. Quite a few scientific theories are specified in non-causative (and by that I mean non-efficient-causative) terms. Quantum physics, for example. Formal structures are indispensable to scientific explanations.

What is your definition of a “formal cause”? I ask because the typical definitions I’ve found are things like “the structure, essence, or pattern that a fully realized thing embodies” or “a form which, when present, makes matter into a particular type of thing”. Now I’m assuming that these definitions can’t be what you had in mind, because these seem like synonyms of “essence”, so to argue for essences on the basis of formal causes would be circular.

In other words, by those definitions, saying “we must account for formal causes” is equivalent to saying “we must assume the existence of essences”.

I apologize for the very brief explanations. I am a bit preoccupied these days.

That’s perfectly fine.

 

[utunumsint]

The way I see it, metaphysics does not have its own data. It analyzes data from all the other hard and soft sciences. In a sense, a better way of defining metaphysics in our day and age would be to call it meta-science. It starts with observations derived from the natural sciences, the first of which defines the overarching essence of metaphysics, which is that all things in the material universe are changeable. You can break down that analysis of change into the fact that we always come to know things first in its actuality, then we can come to know what its potentiality is by way of observations about how that thing changes. The natural sciences do this very well when it is used to break things down into its constituent properties in order to come to a definition of what they are individually. Once the potentialities in a substance are known, or its properties, we can provide an adequate definition of that substance’s essence.

Does metaphysics help us to do science? I would rather say that good science helps us to do better metaphysics. Although the faulty science of Aristotle and Aquinas’ day does not invalidate their metaphysics (meta-science), the natural sciences need to be given priority so that when we reason meta-scientifically we are doing it from a solid scientific foundation.

The question about whether essences exist and would you use them in science seems reversed to me. Science helps us to determine the unified essence of a thing by its analysis of that things properties. Only when we have determined its properties, and we see how these properties are interrelated, can we accurately define the essence of a thing.

But to reduce the definitions of all essences to physics seems equally wrong headed. meta-science uses the data from physics, biology, chemistry, psychology, and mathematics.I think this is the real issue at hand. The idea that all sciences can ultimately be reduced to physics and that all essences are better explained by an emphasis on its individual properties without reference to how those properties are unified in the essence of things that exist and that are intelligible.

God bless,
Ut

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I’m not sure that science is really in the business of formal causation. It seems to me that to accept the existence of formal causes would amount to accepting your position outright, so naturally the need for formal causes seems every bit as counterintuitive as the need for essences.

I don’t expect you to sympathize with this, so I’ll ask the following: Have scientists ever predicted the outcome of an experiment by using these metaphysical ideas, rather than with the usual inductive method characteristic of science? In other words, have formal causes alone been used to predict effects in the same way that, as I suppose you would say, “efficient causes” have? This all seems rather detached from the goal of natural science.

My suspicion is that formal causation is really just logical implication in disguise, which isn’t really “causation” in the conventional sense at all. For instance, one could say that being a triangle causes a polygon to be 3-sided, but it’s just as legitimate to say that being 3-sided causes the polygon to be a triangle. There is no real “causation” occurring, it’s simply a tautology.

So you would agree that a statement such as “Essences exist” is not a hypothesis with regard to the scientific method, correct? Consequently, to be part of science at all, it would have to be assumed from the outset since it cannot be demonstrated empirically?

I don’t see how one gets from “electrons have the properties they do by virtue of their structure” to “something must be ‘causing’ (but not in a cause-and-effect way) this structure”. Why can’t the electrons simply have this structure to begin with?

Based on your explanation of the terminology, I suppose I agree with the “principle of unity”, but I don’t think this amounts to admitting the existence of something intangible.

What evidence do you have that scientists typically agree with this assessment? I admit that I haven’t gone very far into any branch of science. I am a math major however, and we often use examples in science to motivate our discussions. I have been taught by several professors who took/taught higher-level physics courses. I have never heard this doctrine that scientists supposedly adhere to.

The problem is that you’re attempting to explain something physical with something non-physical, which doesn’t really achieve much. I could ask you where all of these metaphysical entities come from, and then you would need a meta-metaphysics to account for them, and so forth ad infinitum. And even if we could consider such an infinite hierarchy of disciplines, would we really have learned anything more about physics?

For my part here I will point out that science and metaphysics study the reality in different ways for different purposes. Science studies physically existing beings with the object of learning what their physical composition is along with their physical causes, properties and the mathematical relationships these beings with a view to predicting new relationships. Philosophy, on the other hand studies all existing reality, physical and non-corporeal in so far as they exist with a view to understanding the ultimate causes of reality and what this means. In other words, each has a different object of study and different purposes. There is no conflict between the two.

Linus2nd

 

[utunumsint]

I would also suggest that the hard sciences might reconsider the use of formal and final causality. It seems to me that a case can be made that in many ways they are already being used unconsciously. For example, in biology, the purpose of the heart is to pump blood. Or the purpose of the nervous system is to coordinates voluntary and involuntary actions and transmits signals between different parts of a body. Final causality also seems very well suited to solve some of the mind body dilemmas we have inherited from substance dualists. polytropos has suggested ways in which formal causality is already being used.

God bless,
Ut

 

[Oreoracle]

Science helps us to determine the unified essence of a thing by its analysis of that things properties. Only when we have determined its properties, and we see how these properties are interrelated, can we accurately define the essence of a thing.

And that has been my contention throughout the thread. Classifications are based on definitions that are motivated by observations. They are certainly not made on an a priori basis, and there is no “correct” classification, just as there is no correct way to partition a group of objects.

In other words, each has a different object of study and different purposes. There is no conflict between the two.

So you would agree that we don’t really need metaphysics to complete our knowledge of physics, since the two have fundamentally different goals?

If not, would you concede that we would also need a meta-metaphysics to complete our knowledge of metaphysics?

 

[utunumsint]

And that has been my contention throughout the thread. Classifications are based on definitions that are motivated by observations. They are certainly not made on an a priori basis

Agreed. But I would also add that based on the effects we see in observable material things, we can reason a posteriori to immaterial causes.

I am not sure what you mean by this:

and there is no “correct” classification, just as there is no correct way to partition a group of objects.

I would agree that scientific knowledge does tend to shift from time to time as new discoveries are made, for example from Newton to Einstein.

God bless,
Ut

 

[Linusthe2nd]

And that has been my contention throughout the thread. Classifications are based on definitions that are motivated by observations. They are certainly not made on an a priori basis, and there is no “correct” classification, just as there is no correct way to partition a group of objects.

So you would agree that we don’t really need metaphysics to complete our knowledge of physics, since the two have fundamentally different goals?

If not, would you concede that we would also need a meta-metaphysics to complete our knowledge of metaphysics?

For my part I would say that science needs the truths that metaphysics has but that it does not need to reflect on these consciously. But I would also add that if it did reflect on them that science might prevent itself from making certain errors and perhaps gain insights to the physicality of the material universe. I could not immediately comment on what these might be though I know of some authors who may provide more light - for example, Fr. John A. Weisheipl, Fr. William A. Wallace.

Linus2nd

 

[MPat]

I admitted that I didn’t understand what your idea of “essence” is. Then you offered an explanation, and I pointed out that it doesn’t make sense. So either you do have a coherent notion of “essence” and you didn’t explain it well, or you didn’t have a coherent notion from the outset.

Well, I do not claim I am very good at explaining that. That’s why I can ask you to put a little more effort to decipher my explanations and to establish that we use the terms in the same way.

Also, the analogy you disagree with simply is not an explanation of what essences are supposed to be. It is an explanation of relationship between talk about essences and doing science, which is what you had asked me at that time.

Analogies are helpful in certain circumstances, but I’m afraid that nothing can replace an existential statement, except perhaps another existential statement. Any analogy that doesn’t involve objects that are not really regarded as existent (such as numbers) will fail.

Thus, if that analogy is the best you can do, I’m afraid we’ll have to agree to disagree.

Let’s look at that part again:

Yes, I say that numbers are not substances and have no essences. And I say that doing addition (note that it is not the addition itself, nor a number) relates to laws of commutativity or associativity as doing science relates to all this talk about essences.

I don’t think I am able to explain it in any clearer way. If you do not see that those statements are different, then there is no point in even presenting any arguments.

So, where do you see that “existential statement”…? I would expect it to claim that something exists, but those statements do not seem claim that anything exists (well, I suppose it could be reasoned that they imply that “talk about essences” exists - but we are clearly talking about them now and I doubt you will disagree about that).

Also, at the moment I would prefer to get an acknowledgement that you do see that those two statements do not contradict each other, as they talk about different things, since you seem to have claimed that they do contradict.

Debt really doesn’t affect the physical world unless someone acts to collect a payment of debt. I never denied that humans invent concepts, use them, and act on them. The point, though, is that the concepts do not suddenly take on lives of their own and start disrupting the physical world like poltergeists. Any physical change purportedly caused by an immaterial thing (debt) can be explained in terms of material things (the act of collecting debt).

There was no need to answer that - it was not even meant to be an argument, just an exercise to get your imagination in shape (since you have claimed you can’t even imagine such things - and, by the way, seemed to present it as an argument that they are impossible). And I didn’t present it fully anyway, just documented that I considered such approach and rejected it.