Teleology important for science

[thinkandmull]

It no longer has the form of a human being, but all the matter still has form (cells, molecules, atoms, or what have you).

ye but it still is the same body so it is its own substance.

 

[Wesrock]

The soul doesn’t make the body do things. That’s the difference. It’s a principle that defines the mode of existence for matter.

Anyway, I think other readers at least understand now that Thomists object to being lumped in with Cartesian dualism. Not saying everything is explained and clear, but I just had to be sure that was at least on the radar.

 

[Wesrock]

ye but it still is the same body so it is its own substance.

You use substance differently than Thomists. The remaining matter still has form. It is not now formless. You can’t have matter without form. It just no longer has the form of a human being.

 

[MPat]

Substance dualism says that the soul is simple and the body is not the soul. Same as Aquinas. Matter and form has to do with the body, not a distinction between the soul and the body

To illustrate, Aquinas is affected by the “interaction problem” as any Cartesian

you can’t logically deny that the soul and the body are substances if they exist separate.

Look at “Summa Theologica”, First Part, Question 76 “The union of body and soul” (newadvent.org/summa/1076.htm). Article 1 is just about what you are talking about.

To deny that St. Thomas Aquinas taught that soul is a form of the body is completely unreasonable.

Also, Catechism agrees. 365 paragraph (vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s2c1p6.htm): “The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body:234 i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.”.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Substance dualism seems to follow this picture:

-------------------------------- soul

-------------------------------- body

while you are saying that the soul is more in the body. My point is that this is just an imagination issue and has no substance in philosophical terms, as I showed in my last post. I don’t read fesser on these issues. Its goblidigosh

Perhaps you SHOULD read Feser on these issues. He adds a great deal of clarity.

From an Aristotelian point of view, the Cartesian conception of human nature grotesquely distorts it in several ways.

First, it abstracts from matter its mathematically definable features – ignoring aspects that are not so definable, such as substantial form, immanent teleology, and secondary qualities-- and then reifies this abstraction, redefining “matter” as that kind of stuff which has these mathematically definable features, and only those features.

Second, the Cartesian abstracts from human nature its mental aspects and then reifies them, resulting in the notion of a “thinking substance.”

Third, whereas the Aristotelian sees what is distinctive about our minds as their intellectual capacities, such as their capacity for grasping universally shared concepts, the Cartesian tends to focus on conscious awareness, understood as something private, directly knowable only via introspection.

Fourth, the Cartesian then slaps together his desiccated notion of matter and his reification of introspected conscious thought and calls the resulting aggregate a “human being.” For the Aristotelian, this is a little like squeezing every last drop of juice out a certain piece of fruit, peeling off the skin, drying it out and throwing away the pulp – then putting the dried out skin next to a glass of the juice and saying “An orange is what you get when you put this dried skin next to the glass.”

The materialist, meanwhile, lops off the one abstraction (the thinking substance), keeps the other (the mathematicized redefinition of matter), and insists that only what is reducible to the latter is real. He **is like the man who says “No, no, an orange is just the dried out skin by itself,” considers this a great advance in understanding (backed by Ockham’s razor, no less), and accuses those who disagree with him of holding that an orange is an unwieldy composite of dried skin and glass of juice. ** The right view, of course, is that an orange is what you had before the juice and pulp were squeezed out, and for the Aristotelian what a human being is (and indeed what natural substances in general are) are what we had before Cartesians and materialists got hold of them. (Contemporary property dualism is essentially a middle ground position between materialism and Cartesianism, accepting their desiccated view of matter, and tacking on to it the “juice” but without the “glass.”)

edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2013/08/eliminativism-without-truth-part-i.html#more

 

[thinkandmull]

You have a far greater interaction problem than I do. How can a simple soul form a kidney with prime matter alone?

 

[thinkandmull]

Desacartes does not deny secondary substance, nor does he abstract thinking from humanity. Thinking is the substance of the soul, as it was for Duns Scotus. The Catechism is ambiguous on its use of the term “matter”. Does it mean prime matter? Or does it mean the body? Either way is an acceptable interpretation of the CCC.

On the side: If you have a syllogism that proves that there is a difference between prime matter and form in any physical thing, please provide. Otherwise its just picturesque thinking

 

[MPat]

You have a far greater interaction problem than I do. How can a simple soul form a kidney with prime matter alone?

How can a cuboid form a brick with clay alone?

Also, soul is not form of the kidney, but of whole man.

Desacartes does not deny secondary substance, nor does he abstract thinking from humanity. Thinking is the substance of the soul, as it was for Duns Scotus. The Catechism is ambiguous on its use of the term “matter”. Does it mean prime matter? Or does it mean the body? Either way is an acceptable interpretation of the CCC.

I’m afraid I can’t follow you here…

On the side: If you have a syllogism that proves that there is a difference between prime matter and form in any physical thing, please provide. Otherwise its just picturesque thinking

“Syllogism”? Why specifically that?

I won’t give you a syllogism, but I will give you a Wikipedia article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomer. Isomers are just molecules with the same matter and different forms.

 

[thinkandmull]

My point was that Fesser was mistaken when he said Descartes has more trouble than Aquinas in explaining how the simple can act of the physical

 

[thinkandmull]

People who study Aquinas, I have noticed, get very confused by matter and form. Form is not the shape something is in. Take a brick. It has a shape but its “form” is supposed to be its brickness plus its prime matter. Two principles converging to make the brick. Most people just think its a brick and I think that is correct. One can get used to thinking that Aquinas’s view is correct, but although there is a lot of ink spilt talking about it, there is no demonstration of its truth. In fact, I think the opposite can be proven. Take a building. If people live in it it has “houseness”, then if animals move in instead it has “barness”. It is not reasonable to say the form can flip back and forth depending on what is in it. A more cogent argument is as follows. Take a metal ball. How many forms does it have? Split it in two. Are there now two forms? Hold the two pieces together. One form? These questions are ridiculous so the conclusion must be that a ball is a ball. It doesn’t have ballness connected to a prime matter-only-in-potentiality or whatever it is. It IS a ball, it IS its own ballness.

 

[Peter_Plato]

My point was that Fesser was mistaken when he said Descartes has more trouble than Aquinas in explaining how the simple can act of the physical

:ehh:

How the simple can act of the physical?

I would surmise that anyone would have trouble comprehending that, let alone explaining it.

 

[Peter_Plato]

People who study Aquinas, I have noticed, get very confused by matter and form. Form is not the shape something is in. Take a brick. It has a shape but its “form” is supposed to be its brickness plus its prime matter. Two principles converging to make the brick. Most people just think its a brick and I think that is correct. One can get used to thinking that Aquinas’s view is correct, but although there is a lot of ink spilt talking about it, there is no demonstration of its truth. In fact, I think the opposite can be proven. Take a building. If people live in it it has “houseness”, then if animals move in instead it has “barness”. It is not reasonable to say the form can flip back and forth depending on what is in it. A more cogent argument is as follows. Take a metal ball. How many forms does it have? Split it in two. Are there now two forms? Hold the two pieces together. One form? These questions are ridiculous so the conclusion must be that a ball is a ball. It doesn’t have ballness connected to a prime matter-only-in-potentiality or whatever it is. It IS a ball, it IS its own ballness.

Perhaps you are confused by matter and form.

You said: "It has a shape but its ‘form’ is supposed to be its brickness plus its prime matter.”

Is it?

I wouldn’t suppose that the ‘form’ of anything is merely what people think it is (your building example), but rather what it is in reality. People thinking this or that isn’t what determines what a thing essentially is.

Perhaps the issue is you bringing to A-T metaphysics what you suppose is to be found there rather than trying to comprehend what actually is found there.

The giveaway is that you are supposing that what people think is what endows form onto things. That isn’t, as far as I understand, the view that either Thomas or Aristotle present.

First, from the notion of a soul in general; for it belongs to the notion of a soul to be the form of a body. Now, either it is a form by virtue of itself, in its entirety, or by virtue of some part of itself. If by virtue of itself in its entirety, then it is impossible that any part of it should be matter, if by matter we understand something purely potential: for a form, as such, is an act; and that which is purely potentiality cannot be part of an act, since potentiality is repugnant to actuality as being opposite thereto. If, however, it be a form by virtue of a part of itself, then we call that part the soul: and that matter, which it actualizes first, we call the “primary animate.”

Secondly, we may proceed from the specific notion of the human soul inasmuch as it is intellectual. For it is clear that whatever is received into something is received according to the condition of the recipient. Now a thing is known in as far as its form is in the knower. But the intellectual soul knows a thing in its nature absolutely: for instance, it knows a stone absolutely as a stone; and therefore the form of a stone absolutely, as to its proper formal idea, is in the intellectual soul. Therefore the intellectual soul itself is an absolute form, and not something composed of matter and form. For if the intellectual soul were composed of matter and form, the forms of things would be received into it as individuals, and so it would only know the individual: just as it happens with the sensitive powers which receive forms in a corporeal organ; since matter is the principle by which forms are individualized. It follows, therefore, that the intellectual soul, and every intellectual substance which has knowledge of forms absolutely, is exempt from composition of matter and form.

Summa Theologica, First Part, Question 75, Article 5

Apparently, “every intellectual substance which has knowledge of forms absolutely” is NOT a composite of matter and form. This means human beings, which are composites of matter and form are corporeal, as opposed to incorporeal substances.

That does not mean matter is a substance on its own.

Incorporeal substances are form without matter; corporeal substances are composites of matter (potentiality) and form (actuality).

Matter is not a substance, as you seem to claim here:

you can’t logically deny that the soul and the body are substances if they exist separate.

The body cannot exist “separate” from the soul.

The soul is the form of the body and the body is simply the act of existing of the soul(actuality)/matter(potentiality) composite.

Matter is not a substance. The soul and body and not two substances, they are one composite substance.

See (green portion in extract from Thomas): ”…for a form, as such, is an act; and that which is purely potentiality cannot be part of an act, since potentiality is repugnant to actuality as being opposite thereto" because “…it is impossible that any part of it [soul] should be matter, if by matter we understand something purely potential."

 

[thinkandmull]

You didn’t address what I wrote, but simply misrepresented me. I said matter is supposed by Thomists to be composed of matter and form, instead of simply being, not prime matter, but what every child believes matter to be

 

[thinkandmull]

nor did i say that the soul was material. Your post makes statements but I asked for an argument and I got one. My argument of the metal ball seems conclusive. I think people get so mixed up by A/T on this question that they forget how the saw the world before they started philosophy

 

[Peter_Plato]

You didn’t address what I wrote, but simply misrepresented me. I said matter is supposed by Thomists to be composed of matter and form, instead of simply being, not prime matter, but what every child believes matter to be

Since when has “what every child believes” become the standard for philosophical debate or useful to settle metaphysical questions?

Admittedly, I am having trouble addressing what you write because what you write seems confused and your responses aren’t helpful in clearing up the confusion.

So, if Thomists write things which seem contrary to what every child believes, the problem with that is what, precisely?

If you said – and apparently you did – that "matter is supposed by Thomists to be composed of matter and form” you would be incorrect. Corporeal entities are composed of matter and form, but to claim matter is composed of matter and form would be confused and confusing, and misrepresenting what Thomists suppose.

 

[Peter_Plato]

nor did i say that the soul was material. Your post makes statements but I asked for an argument and I got one. My argument of the metal ball seems conclusive. I think people get so mixed up by A/T on this question that they forget how the saw the world before they started philosophy

A more cogent argument is as follows. Take a metal ball. How many forms does it have? Split it in two. Are there now two forms? Hold the two pieces together. One form? These questions are ridiculous so the conclusion must be that a ball is a ball. It doesn’t have ballness connected to a prime matter-only-in-potentiality or whatever it is.*** It IS a ball, it IS its own ballness.***

Admittedly, it is a cogent argument – and apparently “conclusive.”

It is just very puzzling with respect to which “conclusion” can be drawn and whether that conclusion has anything whatsoever to do with A-T metaphysics.

*** It IS a ball, it IS its own ballness.***

The mixed-up metaphysical world has, thereby, been entirely straightened out and set back in its proper orbit where we saw it before starting philosophy.

Just one question…

…What is “ballness” and how do we know for sure if any object has it?

 

[thinkandmull]

A dog is just a dog, like we all knew growing up. There is no need to postulate prime matter + a form, or a combination of 7 principles made up by someone else

 

[Wesrock]

A dog is just a dog, like we all knew growing up. There is no need to postulate prime matter + a form, or a combination of 7 principles made up by someone else

So you’re telling me that there is something that you can categorize into a genus called dog and it’s made of matter? And there can be multiple members of this genus, all falling into the same category but being made of different matter?

 

[Peter_Plato]

A dog is just a dog, like we all knew growing up. There is no need to postulate prime matter + a form, or a combination of 7 principles made up by someone else

And what is a dog or “dogginess?"

Presumably not the same thing as a ball or ballness, correct?

So what is the difference between them, how is that difference determined and how can we know for sure?

Oh, never mind.

That will cause you to forget how you saw the world before you started philosophy.

Risky business that.

Carry on.

 

[thinkandmull]

If someone says a ball is round, there is an ambiguity here. To describe the ball with roundness sounds to put the ball and roundness in two categories. Just as to say the ball has existence, as Thomists do. The ball can’t own existence because that separates the ball from some ephemeral “existence”. A ball exists, a ball is a particular roundness.