The fallacy of the interaction problem

[polytropos]

The problem here is the ambiguity to the phrase “change in form”.

This bit was meant to disambiguate:

Man’s soul is still the rational aspect of man, not rationality in the abstract. Forms are static because they are abstracted universals. But they are abstracted. Forms do not change, but substantial forms, which are instances of forms, can change qua substances, though their forms do not change. As Oderberg says, “the substantial form of the person is the rational nature of that person” (emphasis mine).

Consistently I have held that forms do not change and substantial forms, as instances of forms, change only qua substances.

What I meant was that the form itself doesn’t change, what you are saying is that a substance can change it’s form, by which (I think) you mean that a substance can lose it’s current form and acquire another one.

No. The soul does not lose its form and acquire another one when it changes. A human substance changes. Its form remains the same.

This logic, however, is not applicable to the argument I raised, because when I become a better or worse person, my current soul is not being discarded and “my substance” acquiring a completely new soul, rather, there is a change in my soul itself. I’m still the same person, so I’m still the same soul. My soul has simply undergone a change.

I think you are reading a more Platonist notion of form into the hylemorphist account. In hylemorphism, substances are ontologically primary composites. When we talk of something like rationality or human nature, we are talking about form as abstracted. Forms only exist as they are instantiated in substances. The only reason one speaks of the human soul as a form is because human nature is essentially rational and so essentially immaterial. There is an immaterial aspect to human substance. When one becomes morally better or worse, the form of humanity is not changing, but the immaterial aspect of man’s substance (what the form of humanity, in the abstract, refers to and is determined by) is. (I have not said that one’s substance acquires a new form. I said that a substance retains its form through change, unless it is destroyed. A change in your moral dimension is not the destruction of one form and the creation of another; it is just a change to your substance.)

To summarize: Changes to the soul are changes to substance, not to form. In hylemorphism, forms do not exist apart from substances. Even a soul separated from a body is still a substance.

 

[SentinelofTruth]

polytropos:

Consistently I have held that forms do not change and substantial forms, as instances of forms, change only qua substances.

All the more credit for my the first premise of my argument.

polytropos:

No. The soul does not lose its form and acquire another one when it changes. A human substance changes. Its form remains the same.

KBAM! ! That red sentence there is proof! My soul doesn’t remain the same, therefore it’s not my form.

 

[polytropos]

All the more credit for my the first premise of my argument.

KBAM! ! That red sentence there is proof! My soul doesn’t remain the same, therefore it’s not my form.

This completely ignores what I said in #21 about what it means for one’s soul to undergo a change:

I think you are reading a more Platonist notion of form into the hylemorphist account. In hylemorphism, substances are ontologically primary composites. When we talk of something like rationality or human nature, we are talking about form as abstracted. Forms only exist as they are instantiated in substances. The only reason one speaks of the human soul as a form is because human nature is essentially rational and so essentially immaterial. There is an immaterial aspect to human substance. When one becomes morally better or worse, the form of humanity is not changing, but the immaterial aspect of man’s substance (what the form of humanity, in the abstract, refers to and is determined by) is.

Your original misunderstanding was based on the thought that hylemorphists are committed to some contradictory identity “soul = universal, changeless form”. But as I’ve emphasized, they’re not, and the relationship is far more nuanced.

Such an idea is obviously incompatible with hylemorphic dualism since forms do not exist apart from substances. If the soul were just a form, then it could not exist apart from the body. The fact that Thomistic hylemorphists hold that it does exist apart from the body should imply that a simplistic “soul = form” identity won’t suffice to refute their position.

 

[Bahman]

Why is it that in all the philosophical material I’ve read, whether in a book or on the internet, the main argument given against dualism is the assertion “things must be of the same nature in order to interact”? There are no grounds for this assumption whatsoever. Besides, why does nobody ever raise this objection against the idea of God doing miracles? He’s an immaterial substance, so if he can interact with physical stuff, why can’t our souls?

That is a valid question. The first important question is what really matter is? The second question is what really soul is and how it could possibly interact with matter if its nature is different from matter? This applies to God as well, namely how God could possibly interact with matter and our souls knowing the fact that he has different nature from matter and our soul?

 

[SentinelofTruth]

Bahman:

That is a valid question. The first important question is what really matter is? The second question is what really soul is and how it could possibly interact with matter if its nature is different from matter? This applies to God as well, namely how God could possibly interact with matter and our souls knowing the fact that he has different nature from matter and our soul?

Why should matter and soul need to be of the same nature to interact? It’s completely unrgrounded. But in regard to your first question: matter is phantom reality. Souls are substantive, immaterial beings, which have been given power by God to control certain parts of the phantom universe (their bodies). Since God created both matter and souls, there is no question as to how God could give souls power to interact with matter.

polytropos:

Your original misunderstanding was based on the thought that hylemorphists are committed to some contradictory identity “soul = universal, changeless form”. But as I’ve emphasized, they’re not, and the relationship is far more nuanced.

Such an idea is obviously incompatible with hylemorphic dualism since forms do not exist apart from substances. If the soul were just a form, then it could not exist apart from the body. The fact that Thomistic hylemorphists hold that it does exist apart from the body should imply that a simplistic “soul = form” identity won’t suffice to refute their position.

Form, in hylomorphism, is defined to be the set of a things properties. Properties, clearly, are abstract.

 

[polytropos]

Form, in hylomorphism, is defined to be the set of a things properties. Properties, clearly, are abstract.

No. Forms are not sets of properties (although some non-hylemorphic varieties of essentialism do hold that essences are defined by sets of properties). Forms are unitive principles of substances. They can be abstracted and we can understand them in the abstract (redness, for instance), but the property of an object being red is not itself abstract, but actual (and, in such an example, material). To quote Oderberg again:

[Form] is a radical or fundamental part of the substance in the sense of constituting it as the kind of substance it is. It is a principle in the sense of being that from which the identity of the substance is derived - that by virtue of which the substance is what it is. It is incomplete in the sense that it does not and cannot, contra Platonism, exist apart from instantiation by a particular individual.

(Although it’s unrelated to the point I’m making in this post, note the last sentence above. Hylemorphists do not hold that souls are only forms, since they do not hold that forms can exist independently of anything. Souls are the aspect of man’s substance to which the form essentially refers, ie. the rational part.)

Properties are not abstract. Properties are a species of accident which flow from a substance’s form (as opposed to accidents which are inessential and do not flow from a substance’s form):

But it is not part of the essence of human beings to manifest a certain range of powers, for these are properties of humans flowing from their specific difference of rationality, not part of the human essence.

Here Oderberg is speaking of essence (real definition) rather than form (a constitutive, unitive principle of a substance), but essence is (to speak generally) often given by form. It is not the form of man to think; rather, rationality is the form of man. To make one moral decision or another is something which a substance does; it is not part of man’s form. Whether one acts rationally or not, one still has the form of rationality.

I have not read this article (I am quoting from Oderberg’s book Real Essentialism), but I imagine it might clarify some of these issues.

 

[SentinelofTruth]

polytropos:

No. Forms are not sets of properties (although some non-hylemorphic varieties of essentialism do hold that essences are defined by sets of properties). Forms are unitive principles of substances. They can be abstracted and we can understand them in the abstract (redness, for instance), but the property of an object being red is not itself abstract, but actual (and, in such an example, material).

Redness is a property, and abstract is the opposite of substantive, not actual.

polytropos:

Properties are not abstract.

Redness is pretty abstract.

 

[polytropos]

Redness is a property, and abstract is the opposite of substantive, not actual.

Redness is pretty abstract.

I did not deny that redness can be abstracted:

Forms are unitive principles of substances. They can be abstracted and we can understand them in the abstract (redness, for instance), but the property of an object being red is not itself abstract, but actual (and, in such an example, material).

But an apple’s redness, for instance, is not abstract.* An apple’s substance is red. We can abstract the form of redness from it only because its substance is red.

*Not all apples are essentially red, but particular species of apples are, so those apples that are red have redness as a property.

 

[SentinelofTruth]

polytropos:

I did not deny that redness can be abstracted:

Yeah, you did:

polytropos:

But an apple’s redness, for instance, is not abstract.*

Being abstract and being abstractable are the same.

polytropos:

An apple’s substance is red. We can abstract the form of redness from it only because its substance is red.

When you say “an apple’s substance is red”, what you mean is “an apple’s substance has the form of redness”. Redness is a property that substances can have, it is not a substance itself. Here’s another way to see how it’s abstract: it’s not in causal relation to anything.

 

[polytropos]

Yeah, you did:

Being abstract and being abstractable are the same.

An apple’s redness (an accident of the apple) is not abstract. Redness qua redness is abstract (and does not exist on its own in the world). They are two different things, in the same way that your being rational is distinct from rationality in the abstract. Properties are essential accidents of substances, from which a universal form can be abstracted. But the form that is abstracted is not the same thing as the property.

When you say “an apple’s substance is red”, what you mean is “an apple’s substance has the form of redness”. Redness is a property that substances can have, it is not a substance itself. Here’s another way to see how it’s abstract: it’s not in causal relation to anything.

I have not said that redness is a substance, but the apple’s redness (which is distinct from the form of redness itself) is an accident, which is a category of being which is ontologically dependent on and determined by substances. (What it means to say that redness is a property of the apple is that redness is a necessary accident, ie. an accident that necessarily follows from anything with the form of an apple.) So the apple’s redness is in causal relation to the apple.

 

[SentinelofTruth]

polytropos:

An apple’s redness (an accident of the apple) is not abstract. Redness qua redness is abstract (and does not exist on its own in the world). They are two different things, in the same way that your being rational is distinct from rationality in the abstract. Properties are essential accidents of substances, from which a universal form can be abstracted.

Redness is a form. A form is a property. Undeniably, properties are abstract.

polytropos:

But the form that is abstracted is not the same thing as the property.

What am I abstracting from a red object if not redness?

polytropos:

So the apple’s redness is in causal relation to the apple.

What event in the apple has been “caused” by it’s redness?

 

[polytropos]

Redness is a form. A form is a property. Undeniably, properties are abstract.

What am I abstracting from a red object if not redness?

Have you ever seen redness in itself? You have seen red things. You have not seen the form of redness, although you have abstracted it and can consider it separately from the substances in which redness is instantiated.

Accidents are not abstract. Like substances, they have forms but aren’t forms themselves. Properties are by definition essential accidents; as just another species of accidents, properties have forms but aren’t forms themselves.

What event in the apple has been “caused” by it’s redness?

The apple’s form is the formal cause of its accidents, ie. why its particular matter is one way rather than another. It is not an “event.”

 

[SentinelofTruth]

polytropos:

Have you ever seen redness in itself? You have seen red things. You have not seen the form of redness, although you have abstracted it and can consider it separately from the substances in which redness is instantiated.

No, I have not, because it’s abstract. I have seen red things, and that is how I have an idea of redness. Because these things are instantiations of redness.

polytropos:

Accidents are not abstract.

Then what are they?

polytropos:

Like substances, they have forms but aren’t forms themselves.

Forms can’t have form.

polytropos:

Properties are by definition essential accidents; as just another species of accidents, properties have forms but aren’t forms themselves.

What form, then, does the property of redness have? Surely not redness…

polytropos:

The apple’s form is the formal cause of its accidents, ie. why its particular matter is one way rather than another. It is not an “event.”

“Formal cause” is just a horribly misleading term that only a fool like Aristotle could have invented. A “cause” is by definition something that makes an event occur. When I said that redness is not causally related to the apple, I meant, quite self-explanatorily, that neither redness nor the apple causes anything in the other.

 

[polytropos]

No, I have not, because it’s abstract. I have seen red things, and that is how I have an idea of redness. Because these things are instantiations of redness.

So the form of redness is not the same as a thing’s particular redness. A thing’s particular redness only instantiates the form. But the fact that there are red things seems to invalidate the argument that particular redness is abstract. What are we seeing when we see a red thing? We are seeing the red thing, and when we consider it qua red, the red we see is not abstract. It is when you abstract redness away that you learn the form of redness as a universal, only because it exists instantially.

Then what are they?

Accidents are a category of being which are ontologically dependent on the substances in which they inhere.

Forms can’t have form.

I said, “They have forms but aren’t forms themselves.” You said, “Forms can’t have form.” Since I said they aren’t forms, your response that forms can’t have form does not meet what I said.

What form, then, does the property of redness have? Surely not redness…

Yes, the property of redness has the form of redness. Accidents are categories of being that are ontologically dependent on the substances in which they inhere. It simply doesn’t follow that a thing’s redness just is the form of redness, in the same way that it doesn’t follow that you, as a human, are humanity.

“Formal cause” is just a horribly misleading term that only a fool like Aristotle could have invented. A “cause” is by definition something that makes an event occur. When I said that redness is not causally related to the apple, I meant, quite self-explanatorily, that neither redness nor the apple causes anything in the other.

But even that is not true. The apple is red because it actualizes matter in a certain way. The red accident depends on the apple’s substance and form. If its matter constituted a substance with a different form, it might not be red.

Whether you agree with Aristotle or not is not really what is at issue. It is whether your criticism of hylemorphism actually responds to hylemorphism. The criticism was that if a soul is just a form, then the soul can’t change. But to argue that accidents, for instance, are just forms would seem to cause problems for your argument anyway, since accidents can change while a substance remains in existence; I can skin an apple and it would no longer be red, but it would be an apple in a reduced state. It would not have lost the form of appleness, and it certainly would not have changed the universal of appleness; it would just instantiate it less well (or, perhaps, the substance would be destroyed altogether). So your thought that you can change your moral alignment does not touch hylemorphism, since it would change only the immaterial aspect of your substance, not the universal of rational animality itself.

 

[SentinelofTruth]

polytropos:

So the form of redness is not the same as a thing’s particular redness. A thing’s particular redness only instantiates the form. But the fact that there are red things seems to invalidate the argument that particular redness is abstract. What are we seeing when we see a red thing? We are seeing the red thing, and when we consider it qua red, the red we see is not abstract. It is when you abstract redness away that you learn the form of redness as a universal, only because it exists instantially.

Perhaps it would help to define “abstract”. By that term what I mean is “insubstantive”.

polytropos:

Accidents are a category of being which are ontologically dependent on the substances in which they inhere.

You were distinguishing them from abstracts, but, since, abstracts are (at least in my above definition) not substantive, this is not true.

polytropos:

I said, “They have forms but aren’t forms themselves.” You said, “Forms can’t have form.” Since I said they aren’t forms, your response that forms can’t have form does not meet what I said.

This too should clarify itself in light of the above definition of abstract.

polytropos:

Yes, the property of redness has the form of redness.

This is incoherent. A form is a property.

polytropos:

But even that is not true.

Yes, it is. The redness doesn’t make (the causal sense) the apple red, it constitutes (logical sense) the apple’s redness.

polytropos:

But to argue that accidents, for instance, are just forms would seem to cause problems for your argument anyway, since accidents can change while a substance remains in existence; I can skin an apple and it would no longer be red, but it would be an apple in a reduced state.

But the redness wouldn’t change. The redness is the form, and the apple is losing that form, the form is not changing.

polytropos:

So your thought that you can change your moral alignment does not touch hylemorphism, since it would change only the immaterial aspect of your substance, not the universal of rational animality itself.

This is exactly the misunderstanding you said you weren’t under. My soul is (according to hylemorphism) my form, but my soul is not ceasing to be instantiated in my substance and a new form beginning to be instantiated.

 

[polytropos]

Perhaps it would help to define “abstract”. By that term what I mean is “insubstantive”.

You were distinguishing them from abstracts, but, since, abstracts are (at least in my above definition) not substantive, this is not true.

This too should clarify itself in light of the above definition of abstract.

By abstract I mean something that is abstracted from one of the categories of being. The form of redness is abstracted from particular red things, ie. what is fundamental to redness but does not exist in itself, independent of another substance.

“Insubstantive” would be too broad for a hylemorphic understanding of “abstract.” Substances and accidents are both categories of being, ie. components of the hylemorphic ontology. However, substances are ontologically independent while accidents depend on substances for their existence. If you define that to mean “abstract,” then fine, but then one would not be able to differentiate between the redness that an apple has by virtue of its form and redness as generalized by the intellect, which seems limited, since they are not the same thing merely because neither is a substance.

Universals in hylemorphism only “exist” as abstracted from particular substantial forms.

This is incoherent. A form is a property.

If you mean to be speaking from the hylemorphic perspective (I can’t tell), then no, a form is not a property.

Substances and accidents are categories of being. Properties are defined as essential accidents, ie. the accidents that characterize the essence (real definition) of a substance and necessarily follow from its form. As such, properties (in hylemorphism) are a species of accident. An example of a property would be a man’s rationality, since it is an accident that is essential to his essence (rational animality).

Forms are not properties. If one is speaking of property in the loose sense of characteristics, then a form is not something that is “added to” a substance and which is inessential to it. It is the unitive, actualizing principle of that substance. It is when a substance loses its form that it ceases to exist. In the strict sense of the term property, to say forms are properties would be a category mistake. Properties are accidents and so have forms which can be abstracted, but they are not forms themselves.

(Forms are also not bundles of properties, or a list of characteristics that are necessary and sufficient for a thing to be a particular kind, although I don’t think that is what you meant.)

Yes, it is. The redness doesn’t make (the causal sense) the apple red, it constitutes (logical sense) the apple’s redness.

I did not say that redness made the apple red. I said, “The apple is red because it actualizes matter in a certain way. The red accident depends on the apple’s substance and form” (the “it” in the first sentence clearly referring to “the apple” rather than “redness”).

But the redness wouldn’t change. The redness is the form, and the apple is losing that form, the form is not changing.

Yes, the apple does lose the form (or instantiate it less well). The change is to the substance, not to the form, which is the case with your changing of moral alignment as well.

This is exactly the misunderstanding you said you weren’t under. My soul is (according to hylemorphism) my form, but my soul is not ceasing to be instantiated in my substance and a new form beginning to be instantiated.

I have not said that the form changes, nor have I said that the your substance ceases to instantiate your form. The apple might cease to instantiate its form, but you can’t cease to instantiate your form, since your substance, as essentially immaterial, cannot be destroyed. You can instantiate your form less well, however, which is what happens when you make a morally bad decision. You are still a rational animal; rational animality has not changed. (We might say that rational animality has not changed, but your substance qua rational animal has.) The immaterial aspect of your substance - that which the human form essentially actualizes - has changed.

 

[polytropos]

A worthwhile quote from David Oderberg, which is commenting on a separate issue (what it means for forms to be material vs. immaterial) but makes some distinctions relevant to our discussion:

Lest it be thought that hylemorphic dualism commits itself to a self-contradictory position concerning the immateriality of what are purely material objects such as tables and chairs, or dogs and cats, it must be emphasized that the theory is not one only about universals but about particulars as well. As abstract objects, universals such as chairness and felinity, and even humanity, are immaterial; they are essences construed metaphysically. If it is correct to say that universals are wholly present wherever and whenever they are instantiated, we are compelled to assign to universals a kind of spatio-temporal location that must still be compatible with their essential immateriality.

Their immateriality, however, does not entail that they can exist without their instances…

Even more important for present purposes, however, is the point that every particular instance of a universal is distinct from the universal itself: the hunger of Felix is a mode (trope) of hunger. Property instances are concrete entities, not abstract ones, and as such are not essentially immaterial, even construed metaphysically. (To call tropes ‘abstract particulars’, as trope theorists do (e.g. Campbell 1990), should be taken to reflect not their immateriality but their being abstractions from the substances in which they inhere.)

… As possessed by a substance, the substantial form is particular, not universal, and concrete, not abstract. If it is immaterial, it will not be because it instantiates an immaterial universal, e.g. human nature or felinity, but rather because there is something about the instances of the relevant universal such that they themselves are properly to be regarded as immaterial. In the human case, this is the idea that the human intellect is immaterial in its essential operations, hence that the physical essence of the human being is immaterial.

I think there is some looseness in how the terms are usually used. But an instance of rationality is different from rationality as a universal (what I have meant by saying “rationality in the abstract”). When one speaks of the soul as the substantial form of the body, one means the substantial form of a particular body as a particular, and as such one is tacitly referring to the aspects of the substance which are essential to its substantial form, ie. its immaterial rational operations. (One is not referring to a Platonic Form that exists independently of the substance.) Universals certainly do not change, and a theory in which they did should rightly be tossed.

 

[Bahman]

Why should matter and soul need to be of the same nature to interact? It’s completely unrgrounded. But in regard to your first question: matter is phantom reality. Souls are substantive, immaterial beings, which have been given power by God to control certain parts of the phantom universe (their bodies). Since God created both matter and souls, there is no question as to how God could give souls power to interact with matter.

The interaction is crucial part of beings in the same nature. Consider matter for example, we know we at lease have four forces without them our universe has different shape like a gel. It is through these forces that a part of matter can interact with another part, things could move and have firm shape etc. The question of interaction between soul and matter then looks very valid since since it is a valid question for being in the same nature and because without that one cannot affect another one and vice versa.

 

[polytropos]

The interaction is crucial part of beings in the same nature. Consider matter for example, we know we at lease have four forces without them our universe has different shape like a gel. It is through these forces that a part of matter can interact with another part, things could move and have firm shape etc. The question of interaction between soul and matter then looks very valid since since it is a valid question for being in the same nature and because without that one cannot affect another one and vice versa.

What SentinelOfTruth is asking, I think, is why we should suppose that different types of substances (say, material versus immaterial) cannot usually interact, when the only example of this seems to be the soul/body. What is the basis for regarding the interaction problem as a problem? You have, if I am reading you right, just reaffirmed what he is questioning.

 

[Bahman]

What SentinelOfTruth is asking, I think, is why we should suppose that different types of substances (say, material versus immaterial) cannot usually interact, when the only example of this seems to be the soul/body. What is the basis for regarding the interaction problem as a problem? You have, if I am reading you right, just reaffirmed what he is questioning.

This is rather simple to explain. There are two facts that one should consider to see what is the problem related to duality of soul and body: 1) Soul cannot be detected, 2) what intervene between soul and body can be neither be from nature of soul nor body.

This second entity unfortunately has the same problem that soul has, following the argument we end up with infinite regression.