More "Forms" Questions

[fakename]

In my continuing perplexity regarding the forms, I’d like to have my own dialogue right here to end this madness.

Now do Forms exist?

I’ll argue yes and others can argue no.

So here are my arguments:

(1) the world is made of things visible and invisible and things mutable and immutable, and when we think about Objective Truth we are obviously thinking about things that are invisible and immutable. And what is invisible and immutable is most divine and the divine subsists above things. So Forms exist.

(2) When someone is older or taller, etc. they become older or taller by participating in the form of oldness or tallness, for if it were otherwise then the small becomes big by smallness which is absurd.

(3) Aquinas himself admits of participation in one of his proofs for God and he admits the existence of transcendental forms. So if there were no forms then these proofs are wrong but that’s impossible.

But let me also contribute some counter-arguments to get the ball rolling: the Ideal cannot exist the way I think because then all science would be the science of ideals and not concrete things, or again there would be no material forms, that is, forms that could dissipate into non-being.

OK so argue with me about why there are no forms.

 

[Sacred_Heart_1]

In my continuing perplexity regarding the forms, I’d like to have my own dialogue right here to end this madness.

Now do Forms exist?

I’ll argue yes and others can argue no.

So here are my arguments:

(1) the world is made of things visible and invisible and things mutable and immutable, and when we think about Objective Truth we are obviously thinking about things that are invisible and immutable. And what is invisible and immutable is most divine and the divine subsists above things. So Forms exist.

(2) When someone is older or taller, etc. they become older or taller by participating in the form of oldness or tallness, for if it were otherwise then the small becomes big by smallness which is absurd.

(3) Aquinas himself admits of participation in one of his proofs for God and he admits the existence of transcendental forms. So if there were no forms then these proofs are wrong but that’s impossible.

But let me also contribute some counter-arguments to get the ball rolling: the Ideal cannot exist the way I think because then all science would be the science of ideals and not concrete things, or again there would be no material forms, that is, forms that could dissipate into non-being.

OK so argue with me about why there are no forms.

Are you talking about the Theory of Forms where there exists a perfect form and everything on earth is just a shadow of that perfection? Like the perfect chair?

I agree with you in this regard that there are forms. I believe in Heaven, everything is perfect and its form is the highest concerning ours which is lesser.

 

[fakename]

user "Sacred_Heart":

Are you talking about the Theory of Forms where there exists a perfect form and everything on earth is just a shadow of that perfection? Like the perfect chair?

I agree with you in this regard that there are forms. I believe in Heaven, everything is perfect and its form is the highest concerning ours which is lesser.

I am talking about the Theory of Forms.

But I don’t believe in it (and I don’t think the Church accepts it in its fullest form either) but yet I’ve never gotten an argument that disproved their existence in the appropriate (most direct) way. That is, I know reductio ad absurdae against forms but I don’t have an alternative explanation that both renders Plato’s arguments in Phaedo impossible and coheres well with other parts of theology.

 

[Khalid]

1. I hold to moderate realism, that is, Aristotelian metaphysics.
2. Extreme realism (that is, Platonism) is notoriously hard to argue against, and many a good logician and rhetorician have been ground to dust trying. I don’t think any argument has successfully been advanced against it in 2,400 years. There’s a reason why Aristotle was considered a lousy philosopher and a poor successor to Plato for all of classical antiquity.

 

[fakename]

user "Khalid":

1. Extreme realism (that is, Platonism) is notoriously hard to argue against, and many a good logician and rhetorician have been ground to dust trying. I don’t think any argument has successfully been advanced against it in 2,400 years. There’s a reason why Aristotle was considered a lousy philosopher and a poor successor to Plato for all of classical antiquity.

well I think there are good arguments against platonism but I have yet to find an argument that establishes a coherent opposite hypothesis.

For instance, if platonism was true, then there would be no per se science; for all science would be ideal science and not sciences of the things before us. In a real way, we could not claim that the light of forms made us any less ignorant about the empirical world.

Also if platonism was true, then we would know things by reading the mind of God which is impossible for we don’t know God in his essence.

 

[Khalid]

Those are arguments from the truth of revelation not arguments against Platonism, per se (“Because pure Platonism holds not, but Christian theology has established as true, we can never know the essence of God, and since all things are illumined by the Form of the Good, that is, God, we can never see anything in truth”). Plotinus tried to work around this and through Augustine, had a great impact on that very Christian theology.

In Platonism, empirical science can never be perfect (just as it never is in reality), as it can only observe more-or-less imperfect instantiations of universal forms. But it can exist.

Or, conversely, because there is a form, “empirical science”, and our sciences are just imperfect instances of it.

 

[Borz]

Every time I see this Platonic “ideal” or “perfect” concept, I imagine a trip into this “ideal” never-never land. First, we encounter the “ideal” chamber pot, filled to the brim with the “perfect” excrement - we can only produce a weak imitation of this substance. As we try to sneak by undeterred by the “ideal” stench (phew!), we see the “perfect” bullet, which can penetrate any armor, and right next to is the “ideal” armor, which can withstand the impact of any bullet. At that point I advise to leave this idiotic, nonexistent area, and return to reality.

 

[tonyrey]

(1) the world is made of things visible and invisible and things mutable and immutable, and when we think about Objective Truth we are obviously thinking about things that are invisible and immutable. And what is invisible and immutable is most divine and the divine subsists above things. So Forms exist.

1. Facts are certainly intangible, invisible and immutable
2. Universals like “truth” and “purpose” are not fictions but facts
3. If facts don’t exist we are thinking about nothing!
4. Therefore materialism is false
5. Plato’s theory of Forms is not entirely misguided but his concept of “participation” seems to be of doubtful value

 

[azerty]

"Or, conversely, because there is a form, “empirical science”, and our sciences are just imperfect instances of it. "

isn’t it what Karl Popper exactly shows ? Science will always be imperfect and this is why it will always progress. A theory is always “false” but that doesn’t mean it is useless, it’s goal is to reduce reality, to simplify it in order to make it more intelligible. Then when it has been tested and proved false, it is replaced by a better one.
In other words science can only grasps a part of reality. Reality is basically “infinite” (not infinite like God and therefore perfect but more like undetermined, impredictible, unfinished and therefore imperfect - Nicolas of Cusa used the word “interminatum”-.
Indeed physical science only studies matter and things that can be quantified and measured, but the principle of reality is metaphysical (the form or the essence that is a metaphysical principle that cant be studied by science) and therefore always ignored by science which is why it is “imperfect” in a platonician view.

Popper is a realist and a rationalist who has showed that scientism and positivism were dangerous utopies for science. With these ideologies theories (that are reductions of reality) become dogmas. Science will never be perfect and a theory will never tell us how reality exactly is. But this is exactly why it will always progress.

Sorry if i’m out of subject, but Popper is important to counter the new-atheist movement -Dawkins etc- which is a stupid version of the 19th century materialism)

 

[fakename]

user "Borz":

Every time I see this Platonic “ideal” or “perfect” concept, I imagine a trip into this “ideal” never-never land. First, we encounter the “ideal” chamber pot, filled to the brim with the “perfect” excrement - we can only produce a weak imitation of this substance. As we try to sneak by undeterred by the “ideal” stench (phew!), we see the “perfect” bullet, which can penetrate any armor, and right next to is the “ideal” armor, which can withstand the impact of any bullet. At that point I advise to leave this idiotic, nonexistent area, and return to reality.

This would be an effective counter-argument but it seems to be a straw-man; an ideal is something which is highest in being and so as far as something exists then it has a form. So poo could have a form in so far as it has form and not so far as it is a waste product (which lacks form).

 

[fakename]

user "azerty":

"Or, conversely, because there is a form, “empirical science”, and our sciences are just imperfect instances of it. "

isn’t it what Karl Popper exactly shows ? Science will always be imperfect and this is why it will always progress. A theory is always “false” but that doesn’t mean it is useless, it’s goal is to reduce reality, to simplify it in order to make it more intelligible. Then when it has been tested and proved false, it is replaced by a better one.
In other words science can only grasps a part of reality. Reality is basically “infinite” (not infinite like God and therefore perfect but more like undetermined, impredictible, unfinished and therefore imperfect - Nicolas of Cusa used the word “interminatum”-.
Indeed physical science only studies matter and things that can be quantified and measured, but the principle of reality is metaphysical (the form or the essence that is a metaphysical principle that cant be studied by science) and therefore always ignored by science which is why it is “imperfect” in a platonician view.

Popper is a realist and a rationalist who has showed that scientism and positivism were dangerous utopies for science. With these ideologies theories (that are reductions of reality) become dogmas. Science will never be perfect and a theory will never tell us how reality exactly is. But this is exactly why it will always progress.

Sorry if i’m out of subject, but Popper is important to counter the new-atheist movement -Dawkins etc- which is a stupid version of the 19th century materialism)

The empirical sciences can be certain because like all sciences they proceed from axioms and they are proved by syllogisms. Plus induction yields the universal reality so w/finite experience one would eventually reach complete truth. I think that would be closer to the Aristotle-realist-empiricist view instead of the modern-empiricist view (which is more skeptical).

 

[azerty]

from a metaphysical point of view reaching absolute knowledge is impossible. And i doubt this is what Aristotle thought.
First : one cannot know, using discurcive knowledge (dianoia), the very essence of things (in thomist philosophy the esse which is ontologically superior to the form/essence is what constitutes the ens as a substance. Directly caused by God, the esse is the sign of the presence of God in everything. The esse cannot be reduced to anything that exists)
As Gilson says with St Thomas, the universe truly is a miracle, a theophany.

Like Heidegger would say “thought which calculates” (that “enframes” things) does not get into the essence of things, it is superficial, it objectifies, reduces everything to measurable quantity or calculable value. This thinking is useful but it is not essential.
The domination of this kind of thought that that tend to reject other fundamental dimensions of life and deem them as “irrational” and useless (like spirituality, art, poetry, meditative thinking etc) simply leads to nihilism.
Max Weber who died in 1920 predicted that the western civilisation dominated by “specialists without spirit” would lead the western civlisation to “mechanised petrification” ,(Leo Strauss Natural right and history ch II).
Beings also have a being we need to remember this. They are not just things that can be reduced and then confined in a concept. Reality is extremely complexe, open, it’s an infinite field of investigation.

Even if you are not a thomist, an heideggerian or whatever, i honestly think only a naive scientist can believe that science will reach absolute knowledge.

I believe it’s good to know that our rational knowledge will always be imperfect and “that all life is problem solving” as Popper said. This protects us from all totalitarisms which are attemps to submit reality to simple and absolutised paradigmas.

I’m not talking about ultra relativists like Paul Feyerabend who make no difference between true science (like physics) and fake science like astrology, between rational and irrational thinking, but no modern rationalist and realist epistemologists like Popper, Lakatos, Chalmers etc believe that science can reach “absolute” knowledge. It’s a myth that comes from the 19th century and which sadly tends to dominate the common sense.
And not only epistemologists, but also scientists P Duhem, H Pointcarré, Eddington and Shrodinger contributed to defeat this idea that all reality was rational and that science could enventually understand it all.

As for inductivism, it is based on a circular argument (tautology). To prove that induction “works”, you have to use induction. As Hume showed the justification for inductivism is circular. Inductivism does not procede from an axiome but it presupposes itself.
All in all it’s poor methodology for many other reasons. (For the problem of induction : See Alan Chalmers “What is thing called science”)

 

[Borz]

This would be an effective counter-argument but it seems to be a straw-man; an ideal is something which is highest in being and so as far as something exists then it has a form. So poo could have a form in so far as it has form and not so far as it is a waste product (which lacks form).

You missed the real point for the fun stuff…** it is impossible to have both an “ideal bullet” and an “ideal armor” - they contradict each other**. Also what would an “ideal” chamber pot be like? Something that can be used by everyone? By some hypothetical beings, who have 1000 elimination orifices, each 100 yards apart from the others? This whole “ideal” thing is just a crock of … excrement. And if the waste product would lack a “form”, then what good is postulating a “form”?

 

[Sacred_Heart_1]

I am talking about the Theory of Forms.

But I don’t believe in it (and I don’t think the Church accepts it in its fullest form either) but yet I’ve never gotten an argument that disproved their existence in the appropriate (most direct) way. That is, I know reductio ad absurdae against forms but I don’t have an alternative explanation that both renders Plato’s arguments in Phaedo impossible and coheres well with other parts of theology.

But the idea in it that the incorruptible and the corruptible may share the same form is not invalid. For instance, the incorruptible body is perfect and the corruptible body is imperfect. The idea that the perfect exists opposed to the not perfect can be acknowledged in form.

Heaven is the realm of the perfect and earth is the realm of the imperfect. An oak tree in heaven is an oak tree on earth (theory of forms). The oak tree in heaven is just the higher and perfect form since it is incorruptible. That’s all the Theory of Forms is. It’s just a philosophical concept of perfection–that the imperfect comes from/reflects from the perfect.

 

[sean1i0]

As an aside, the Church does not hold to any one philosophy. Pope John Paul II said that there are some philosophies which do not work as well with the Christian faith, i.e. Marxism, Sartreian existentialism, positivism, etc., but he also specifically says that the magisterium’s job does not include picking a particular philosophy: It’s job is to be the custodian of revelation. In short, if you are convinced by the theory of forms, then as long as you are orthodox in terms of faith and morals, you are not only fine, but you are in good company. St. Augustine is obviously the most famous Christian platonist, but there is also Pseudo-Dionysius, St. Anslem, and many more. Pope Benedict XVI is much more Augustinian than John Paul II for that matter. Now, as for myself, I tend towards Thomism, but I am also enamored by Augustinian platonism. Aristotle had two arguments against the theory of forms though. The only one I can remember right now is that the forms do not simplify experience, but only make it more complicated, i.e. Ockam’s razor. Now, having said that, the razor has been misused probably more times than it has used correctly and I am almost certain that Plato would have had a retort to that, but I seem to recall that he was dead when Aristotle argued against his theories. (That is quite the way to win an argument!)

 

[fakename]

user "sean1i0":

As an aside, the Church does not hold to any one philosophy. Pope John Paul II said that there are some philosophies which do not work as well with the Christian faith, i.e. Marxism, Sartreian existentialism, positivism, etc., but he also specifically says that the magisterium’s job does not include picking a particular philosophy: It’s job is to be the custodian of revelation. In short, if you are convinced by the theory of forms, then as long as you are orthodox in terms of faith and morals, you are not only fine, but you are in good company. St. Augustine is obviously the most famous Christian platonist, but there is also Pseudo-Dionysius, St. Anslem, and many more. Pope Benedict XVI is much more Augustinian than John Paul II for that matter. Now, as for myself, I tend towards Thomism, but I am also enamored by Augustinian platonism. Aristotle had two arguments against the theory of forms though. The only one I can remember right now is that the forms do not simplify experience, but only make it more complicated, i.e. Ockam’s razor. Now, having said that, the razor has been misused probably more times than it has used correctly and I am almost certain that Plato would have had a retort to that, but I seem to recall that he was dead when Aristotle argued against his theories. (That is quite the way to win an argument!)

I always thought that Aeterni Patris basically said that all Catholics should accept the 24 thesis of Aquinas’s philosophy?

We don’t have to be satisfied with Thomism as a historical antique but we should use it as a living philosophy, right?

 

[fakename]

user "Borz":

You missed the real point for the fun stuff… it is impossible to have both an “ideal bullet” and an “ideal armor” - they contradict each other. Also what would an “ideal” chamber pot be like? Something that can be used by everyone? By some hypothetical beings, who have 1000 elimination orifices, each 100 yards apart from the others? This whole “ideal” thing is just a crock of … excrement. And if the waste product would lack a “form”, then what good is postulating a “form”?

Good points too.

 

[fakename]

user "Khalid":

Extreme realism (that is, Platonism) is notoriously hard to argue against, and many a good logician and rhetorician have been ground to dust trying. I don’t think any argument has successfully been advanced against it in 2,400 years. There’s a reason why Aristotle was considered a lousy philosopher and a poor successor to Plato for all of classical antiquity.

Actually I recently discovered a few good counterarguments and opposite explanations:

Counter-arguments: 1) as I wrote, Ideal Forms=Ideal (and not real) science. 2) If nature is just an imitation and stale copy of Forms then nature is inherently flawed since the sense world is pointless and superfluous and a hindrance to the spirit world and therefore nature is irrational, which is impossible. 3) If man is man only by participation, and man only gets knowledge from forms then there is no inherent reason why the soul is connected to the body, so man’s existence is accidental. 4) If the soul is less than the eternal Forms than we cannot fathom the forms, but we do understand universals, so either we are eternal (wrong) or we see don’t see the Forms.

Opposite story: Forms are just “this-ness”. But what something is, is sometimes a jumble of matter. So Forms are sometimes non-spiritual and mutable. Our minds modify our experience of these things so that they become universal ideas in us; for our souls are immortal forms and we see by them. But all existing forms don’t exist before matter and our soul cannot be predicated of many since it is an individual thing. At best, Forms exist as God and probably as far as anything made had its form est. by the exemplar idea of the maker. I suppose this is where the analogy of being and therefore of participation can be concluded; but not substantial participation but participation as simple likeness.

 

[sean1i0]

Sorry it’s taken so long for me to reply. I just saw that the thread had moved on today. Well, as I understand the way that Aeterni Patris has been taken by the Church, it is most certainly an exhortation to follow Thomas as a philosopher in that we must have the same care for order and systematizing thought that he did, the same love and respect for all that has come before us as he did, and have the same love of truth and conviction about truth’s perennial value that he did. Now, certainly the encyclical was very complimentary of Thomism (which I tend to be philosophically), but it did not (and, in fact, cannot as John Paul II says in Fides et Ratio) force the faithful to hold the 24 Thomistic theses, i.e. a philosophical position. Having said that, it has caused Thomism to be the primary philosophical school taught in seminaries, so in that way it can be thought of as “official” in some sense, but that is the extent of it.

If you get a chance, read “Fides et Ratio” by JP2. He was a Thomistic Personalist and just an amazing philosopher, but that encyclical’s value goes far beyond any of his personal philosophical contributions. It is a charter for how, as Catholics, we are to live the intellectual space occupied by theology and philosophy.

Now, having said all of this, I think that everyone should study Thomism. I think that the 24 Thomistic theses are brilliant expositions on the nature of everything. What is interesting though, is that the Thomistic idea of Forms is not all that different than the Platonic notion. In fact, I would say that it is completely reconcilable with the Theory of Forms, especially if it is understood through a Plotinian/Augustinian lens.

 

[sean1i0]

Opposite story: Forms are just “this-ness”. But what something is, is sometimes a jumble of matter. So Forms are sometimes non-spiritual and mutable. Our minds modify our experience of these things so that they become universal ideas in us; for our souls are immortal forms and we see by them. But all existing forms don’t exist before matter and our soul cannot be predicated of many since it is an individual thing. At best, Forms exist as God and probably as far as anything made had its form est. by the exemplar idea of the maker. I suppose this is where the analogy of being and therefore of participation can be concluded; but not substantial participation but participation as simple likeness.

I just wanted to point out that Thomism, at least as understood by Fr. Norris Clarke (one of the most brilliant modern Thomists in my opinion) does accept the idea of participation. It also accepts the idea that forms are real (in a sense): The form of something is a philosophical co-principal with its matter if it is corporeal. The form should also be understood as its nature and as its actualizing principle. Since something that is not actualized is merely potential and, thus, non-being everything must have a form. (Now, God is pure act, so to understand the idea of God having form must be done analogically. This is one of the reasons that Plotinus says that God is “beyond being” - because to Plotinus all that is “being” must be limited, which God clearly is not. So, actually, Plotinus and Pseudo-Dionysius are not saying anything substantially different than Thomas says after reading them.)

In Thomism though, the primary participation is one of being. I exist, because I participate in pure existence who is God. Again, though, I would argue that Augustine’s idea of the forms being “ideas” in the divine mind rings as particularly true to me and compatible with Thomism as a whole.

Well, that’s my 2 cents for now.