What does, " the nature of a thing " mean?

[balto]

For the reason given by Newton. He refused to speculate on the nature of gravity since he had no evidence for what that nature might be. It didn’t stop him describing how it works, in modern notation:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...00px-NewtonsLawOfUniversalGravitation.svg.png

So gravity is proportional to the product of the masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. If you like you can call that the nature of gravity, but doing so doesn’t tell you anything new. If you like you can speculate on what the nature of the gravitational constant G might be, but it’s just an empirical value which you dial in to make the predictions come out right, you don’t need to get into any metaphysics.

I’m a little confused as to how one could claim to not be interested in speculating on the nature of gravity and then immediately proceed to speculate on its nature by offering a mathematical equation describing its behavior . As an aside, I would not argue that gravity is a “thing” at all but a power that is present in objects in as much as they are extended in space and massive. But that would be a metaphysical question.

OK, ask the metaphysical question “what is a thing?”. When Captain Kirk tells Scotty to beam him up, how does the matter transporter know that Kirk means his clothes and boots as well as him? If he’s covered in mud, is the mud part of Kirk? The sweat on his brow? The air in his lungs? The thought in his head? The disease he just caught? Our brain takes lots of shortcuts and ignores many details, whereas rigorously working out what is Kirk and is not-Kirk, thing and not-thing, is really complicated. But if instead Scotty sends a shuttle to pick up Kirk, no one needs to ask the question, let alone answer it. Science is for practical guys who like to get the job done. Metaphysics doesn’t get Kirk home in time for supper.

Ironically, proposing that essences are a real feature of existents is an attempt to avoid the kind of problem you discuss. Denying essences and making no attempt to offer anything in its place has led to these kinds of issues where we cannot determine what objectively makes a thing a specific thing, leading to widespread nominalism which is incompatible with a realist view of science. Saying that natures are not real, but then acting like they are real for the purposes of science makes science’s success magical because there is no objective reason why anything should behave in regular patterns.

I don’t know that Aristotle would agree. Would he think you are divorcing the notion from his entire system of thought to try to give it a modern interpretation? I’m not sure.

As Skeptic92 pointed out, Aristotle specifically rejected Platonic realism about forms and universals in favor of a moderate realist version which the posters on this thread have been defending. It is true that Aristotle did not defend essences because that was a development made in his thought by Aquinas nearly two millennia later.

 

[balto]

But no, metaphysics comes after science. Your cell phone is a product of the scientific method. It works. QED

It’s strange, considering that whenever we interact with something for the purposes of a scientific experiment the first thing we grasp intellectually is that something exists. The next thing we grasp is that it is a specific type of thing, i.e. it has a nature. The next thing we notice is that it behaves in regular patterns, such that something in its nature is directed at these specific ends rather than others, i.e. that it has specific potencies based on the kind of thing it is that can become actualized. If you don’t accept that then you need to have some alternate explanation for its regular behavior in place of act/potency. Look how much metaphysics we have done and needed to do before we even got to the physics! That all of this is done unconsciously nowadays does not mean that it is unnecessary.

I’ve seen this argument before, but to me it wants to call anything and everything metaphysics. Effect following cause is knowable by dropping a bowling ball on our foot, we don’t need a metaphysician to aid us in drawing our conclusion. Richard Feynman had a little joke about this:

youtube.com/watch?v=X8aW…o&noredirect=1

Do we need metaphysics to cook a tasty paella or to build a fine house or to paint a beautiful picture? If not for them then why for science?

If I may speculate, you seem to be confusing metaphysics with rationalism. No one on this thread is defending rationalism to my knowledge. Metaphysics is not armchair scientific theorizing without doing empirical tests. Drop a ball on your foot and you have empirical proof that effects follow from causes. But apparently you are not able to ask the question why it is the case that certain effects regularly follow from certain causes. I don’t know how it makes sense to turn around and criticize people who are attempting to answer this question and make sense out of science while refusing to offer any suitable explanation in return.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

An SEP article has a good discussion of what Scholastics might have meant:

“The Scholastic concept of essence, or what is more properly called a ‘substantial form’, is of an imperceptible, immaterial essence that imposes order onto the matter that it is joined with and makes it a member of a natural species or genus, imbuing it with all of its relevant characteristics, i.e., its essential properties. Essential properties are those features that tell us to what species or genus an object belongs, e.g., being warm blooded is an essential property of mammals, being rational is an essential property of humans, being yellowish and heavy are essential properties of gold. Each of these essential properties is caused by the substantial form that is conjoined with the matter of the substance to make it what it is.” - plato.stanford.edu/entries/real-essence/

The article contrasts that with Locke, who makes a distinction between how we see the world subjectively and how the world really is objectively. I don’t know whether the Scholastics could make that distinction, in a world before accurate measurements, machines and independent testing.

These days it seems clear that an essence or substantial form describes the mental picture which aids us in classifying and naming things, and that’s the only reason why it’s imperceptible and immaterial - it’s inside, not outside, our head.

Sorry I missed this. The SEP article is correct, that is what I have said in several places. The Second Substance is a composit of matter and substantial form. This underlying composit is the essence or nature which gives rise to all the properties science and ordinary people see, touch and meaure, etc. It is true that the substantial form is the defining factor for the composite. It determines what kind of thing the composite will be and that it will be, exist. Existence comes to the composite through the substantial form ( sometimes just called form ).
It is the form which is abstracted by the intellect from the actually existing nature or essence of many individuals. So the form exists in the mind as a form or essence we know, but it exists actually in all the individuals which have that form… In the mind we have an idealized concept of the nature which is individualized in particular real things.

Sorry I don’t know much about Lock. I know Feser wrote a book on him. You are right in saying the form is a mental picture, Thomas and the Scholastics call it a Universal because it has been abstracted from many actually existing individuals which have the that form in an individual way in all the individuals of a species and genus. But Scholastics would say the Universal is in our heads only because it exists in individuals in a particular way.

I can have an idea of a Sphinx but it does not exist in reality. That is just a pure idea.

Thank you.

Linus2nd

 

[Skeptic92]

Sorry I missed this. The SEP article is correct, that is what I have said in several places. The Second Substance is a composit of matter and substantial form. This underlying composit is the essence or nature which gives rise to all the properties science and ordinary people see, touch and meaure, etc. It is true that the substantial form is the defining factor for the composite. It determines what kind of thing the composite will be and that it will be, exist. Existence comes to the composite through the substantial form ( sometimes just called form ).
It is the form which is abstracted by the intellect from the actually existing nature or essence of many individuals. So the form exists in the mind as a form or essence we know, but it exists actually in all the individuals which have that form… In the mind we have an idealized concept of the nature which is individualized in particular real things.

Thank you.

Linus2nd

Some quick points to clarify understanding, because this isn’t quite right I believe. You have to frame Essence/Existence, & Form/Matter in the context of the Problem of Universals. Which is how it is treated by Cajetan in his Commentary on Being and Essence, appear implied in On Being and Essence by Aquinas, and the Problem of Universals was central to the Scholastics. The problem is in fact the question that appears to separate many of the Scholastic schools.

Substance is a universal, when you identify a substance you identify a relation to a universal. When you conceive of a rational animal (a human being) you are not identifying and analysing an individual existent, but how an existent relates to a universal nature, or essence (secundum quid, in a qualified, strict, sense). The substantial form/essence of a thing adheres in a substance; which is a composite union of Act/potency. Potency; the principle which determinates and limits the actuality/form. When we are analysing a quiddity, or an essence taken in the widest sense, which is an essence (simpliciter, or simply) of an individual existent; we are analysing the composite union of Form determined by its essential properties, we are still examining a common relation and not an individual existent.

We must note that a quiddity, or essence taken simply, is not yet by nature particular/individual. It is more proper to say that it is common, as it is common to many that exemplify these properties, and determinates of being. It also appears that this quiddity is in potency to its existence in contingent existent beings. Once actualised by its efficient-formal cause (see; Being and Some Philosophers, Etienne Gilson) it is united to its individual act of being or Existential Act unifying the common with the individual. Explaining how individuals exemplify universals without contradiction, or Platonic error.

This all relies upon some Metaphysical and Methodological presuppositions upon by behalf. I have sneaked in analogous predication, which actually underpins the argument for why the unity of ‘common’ and ‘particular’ are not contradictory but contraries.And, an explanation for what exactly I mean by 'efficient-formal cause; please ask me and I can explain if it isn’t clear.

 

[inocente]

You have not demonstrated why Parmenides problem is wrong, in fact it is a problem that is suffered by modern Metaphysical Naturalism (cf Fr Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange God his Existence and His Nature, Jacques Maritain Introduction to Philosophy). The solution is simple enough; distinguish the consequent. This renders the argument;

If there is motion it is motion from being-in-potency to being-in-act
There is motion
Therefore it is motion from potency to act

As potency and act are contrary principles, an application of the Law of Non-contradiction renders the following principle of causality;

That which is in potency can only be reduced to act, by a being that is itself in act. A further expansion of this would have to go into the divisions of act and potency and the nature of the Four Causes.

And No, Metaphysicians know exactly what their subject matter (Being qua Being) is. Positivism just likes to say what it doesn’t do, and calls that Metaphysics. Which is very ad-hoc.

The SEP article which says metaphysics has trouble defining itself was written by a Christian (Episcopalian?), Peter van Inwagen, the John Cardinal O’Hara Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.

Science can’t arbitrate between competing metaphysical claims unless they can be put into the form of falsifiable hypotheses - a claim must make at least one empirical prediction. In previous discussions no one has been able to put the “from being-in-potency to being-in-act” claim into that form, and unless you can do so it is what’s called not even wrong. The OP’s “Nature is the principle of motion and rest in those things which are such, per se” seems to rest on that.

 

[inocente]

I’m a little confused as to how one could claim to not be interested in speculating on the nature of gravity and then immediately proceed to speculate on its nature by offering a mathematical equation describing its behavior . As an aside, I would not argue that gravity is a “thing” at all but a power that is present in objects in as much as they are extended in space and massive. But that would be a metaphysical question.

I’m a little confused as to why you think the equation speculates (speculation means not based on knowledge) or why it is the nature. If instead I had said gravity is the bending of spacetime, would that be its nature? What’s the point of claiming that things have natures if there’s no test for what really is a nature or even for what constitutes a thing?

Ironically, proposing that essences are a real feature of existents is an attempt to avoid the kind of problem you discuss. Denying essences and making no attempt to offer anything in its place has led to these kinds of issues where we cannot determine what objectively makes a thing a specific thing, leading to widespread nominalism which is incompatible with a realist view of science. Saying that natures are not real, but then acting like they are real for the purposes of science makes science’s success magical because there is no objective reason why anything should behave in regular patterns.

The matter transporter scenario involves objectively determining what is and isn’t Kirk, what is and isn’t thing. The claim that there is an objectively existing “essence of Kirk” doesn’t say anything if you can’t specify how the transporter would recognize it.

As Skeptic92 pointed out, Aristotle specifically rejected Platonic realism about forms and universals in favor of a moderate realist version which the posters on this thread have been defending. It is true that Aristotle did not defend essences because that was a development made in his thought by Aquinas nearly two millennia later.

No one has yet connected the dots between the OP’s “Nature is the principle of motion and rest in those things which are such, per se” and modern usage such as Oxford Dictionary and Merriam-Webster.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Some quick points to clarify understanding, because this isn’t quite right I believe. You have to frame Essence/Existence, & Form/Matter in the context of the Problem of Universals. Which is how it is treated by Cajetan in his Commentary on Being and Essence, appear implied in On Being and Essence by Aquinas, and the Problem of Universals was central to the Scholastics. The problem is in fact the question that appears to separate many of the Scholastic schools.

Substance is a universal, when you identify a substance you identify a relation to a universal. When you conceive of a rational animal (a human being) you are not identifying and analysing an individual existent, but how an existent relates to a universal nature, or essence (secundum quid, in a qualified, strict, sense). The substantial form/essence of a thing adheres in a substance; which is a composite union of Act/potency. Potency; the principle which determinates and limits the actuality/form. When we are analysing a quiddity, or an essence taken in the widest sense, which is an essence (simpliciter, or simply) of an individual existent; we are analysing the composite union of Form determined by its essential properties, we are still examining a common relation and not an individual existent.

We must note that a quiddity, or essence taken simply, is not yet by nature particular/individual. It is more proper to say that it is common, as it is common to many that exemplify these properties, and determinates of being. It also appears that this quiddity is in potency to its existence in contingent existent beings. Once actualised by its efficient-formal cause (see; Being and Some Philosophers, Etienne Gilson) it is united to its individual act of being or Existential Act unifying the common with the individual. Explaining how individuals exemplify universals without contradiction, or Platonic error.

This all relies upon some Metaphysical and Methodological presuppositions upon by behalf. I have sneaked in analogous predication, which actually underpins the argument for why the unity of ‘common’ and ‘particular’ are not contradictory but contraries.And, an explanation for what exactly I mean by 'efficient-formal cause; please ask me and I can explain if it isn’t clear.

To be honest I have to review " the problem of universals, " but I don’t believe I have said anything incorrect from a Thomistic point of view. I think it is a question of interpretation. I will lay aside any further comment until I have more time.

Linus2nd

 

[inocente]

It’s strange, considering that whenever we interact with something for the purposes of a scientific experiment the first thing we grasp intellectually is that something exists. The next thing we grasp is that it is a specific type of thing, i.e. it has a nature. The next thing we notice is that it behaves in regular patterns, such that something in its nature is directed at these specific ends rather than others, i.e. that it has specific potencies based on the kind of thing it is that can become actualized. If you don’t accept that then you need to have some alternate explanation for its regular behavior in place of act/potency. Look how much metaphysics we have done and needed to do before we even got to the physics! That all of this is done unconsciously nowadays does not mean that it is unnecessary.

Again, you could say the same about any human activity. We grasp the answers to these kinds of questions by trial and error when we’re small children. By trying to make metaphysics say everything you’re in danger of making it say nothing. btw I don’t know anyone who intuitively thinks in terms of that ugly potencies/actualities notion.

If I may speculate, you seem to be confusing metaphysics with rationalism. No one on this thread is defending rationalism to my knowledge. Metaphysics is not armchair scientific theorizing without doing empirical tests. Drop a ball on your foot and you have empirical proof that effects follow from causes.

If I may speculate, you seem to be confusing empiricism with science. And I think another poster on this thread called your last sentence circular reasoning yesterday, although I don’t see how. We have strong evidence that effect always follow cause, that’s the null hypothesis, but I wouldn’t say the bowling ball is proof for all events for all time.

But apparently you are not able to ask the question why it is the case that certain effects regularly follow from certain causes. I don’t know how it makes sense to turn around and criticize people who are attempting to answer this question and make sense out of science while refusing to offer any suitable explanation in return.

I never said that. I said “the philosopher can go beyond the science to say what she thinks it means”. But there is also a need to protect intellectual freedom from received dogma, whether it is any particular existing philosophy (as in Newton vs. Descartes) or theology (as in another famous case ).

 

[inocente]

Sorry I missed this. The SEP article is correct, that is what I have said in several places. The Second Substance is a composit of matter and substantial form. This underlying composit is the essence or nature which gives rise to all the properties science and ordinary people see, touch and meaure, etc. It is true that the substantial form is the defining factor for the composite. It determines what kind of thing the composite will be and that it will be, exist. Existence comes to the composite through the substantial form ( sometimes just called form ).
It is the form which is abstracted by the intellect from the actually existing nature or essence of many individuals. So the form exists in the mind as a form or essence we know, but it exists actually in all the individuals which have that form… In the mind we have an idealized concept of the nature which is individualized in particular real things.

Sorry I don’t know much about Lock. I know Feser wrote a book on him. You are right in saying the form is a mental picture, Thomas and the Scholastics call it a Universal because it has been abstracted from many actually existing individuals which have the that form in an individual way in all the individuals of a species and genus. But Scholastics would say the Universal is in our heads only because it exists in individuals in a particular way.

I can have an idea of a Sphinx but it does not exist in reality. That is just a pure idea.

Thank you.

I don’t know much about Locke either, except for some politics.

Thanks for the description. It seems to me that Aristotle grapples with what is physics and what is psychology but without our modern understanding he misplaces some things. His physics isn’t very good of course, it’s been replaced, but I’ve a lot of time for him on psychology, the hylomorphic body-soul and so on. He might not be right but he doesn’t end up in substance dualism and the overall systematic treatment is fascinating.

So for me what he sees as the natures of things is about how we perceive them, our unconscious and so on up to the intellect, how we make sense of the world, rather than things as they really are, whatever that might mean.

 

[Skeptic92]

The SEP article which says metaphysics has trouble defining itself was written by a Christian (Episcopalian?), Peter van Inwagen, the John Cardinal O’Hara Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.

Science can’t arbitrate between competing metaphysical claims unless they can be put into the form of falsifiable hypotheses - a claim must make at least one empirical prediction. In previous discussions no one has been able to put the “from being-in-potency to being-in-act” claim into that form, and unless you can do so it is what’s called not even wrong. The OP’s “Nature is the principle of motion and rest in those things which are such, per se” seems to rest on that.

Falsificationism and Verificationism are abandoned schools of epistemology; because they are self refuting. For example; can you verify that the Scientific method is valid for the acquisition of knowledge, using only empirical means? Unfortunately this question is nonsensical, as any answer you give will be circular, and therefore invalid. The validation of the Scientific Method requires recourse to Metaphysics. You are yourself here asserting an Epistemology which presupposes Metaphysical naturalism without argument; which would do nothing but beg the question against the Aristotelian. Rather than actually refute the Aristotelian Metaphysics.

To be honest I have to review " the problem of universals, " but I don’t believe I have said anything incorrect from a Thomistic point of view. I think it is a question of interpretation. I will lay aside any further comment until I have more time.

Linus2nd

You didn’t say anything that was wrong, or misrepresented the Thomistic view. I just felt further explanation might help with clarity in understanding the divide of Essence/Existence & Form/Matter. As put into the context I just done helped me immensely in understanding how the two things relate.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I don’t know much about Locke either, except for some politics.

Thanks for the description. It seems to me that Aristotle grapples with what is physics and what is psychology but without our modern understanding he misplaces some things. His physics isn’t very good of course, it’s been replaced, but I’ve a lot of time for him on psychology, the hylomorphic body-soul and so on. He might not be right but he doesn’t end up in substance dualism and the overall systematic treatment is fascinating.

So for me what he sees as the natures of things is about how we perceive them, our unconscious and so on up to the intellect, how we make sense of the world, rather than things as they really are, whatever that might mean.

 

[balto]

I’m a little confused as to why you think the equation speculates (speculation means not based on knowledge) or why it is the nature. If instead I had said gravity is the bending of spacetime, would that be its nature?

Because the equation is an attempt to characterize gravity and say that it always behaves in a certain way. That would be a comment on the nature of gravity. If instead you said that gravity is the bending of spacetime, you would be commenting on the nature of spacetime (i.e. that when it is bent gravity results)

What’s the point of claiming that things have natures if there’s no test for what really is a nature or even for what constitutes a thing?

Because denying the existence of natures makes everything incoherent. How can you claim that the bending of spacetime leads to the effect known as gravity and gravity is always characterized by a specific equation if spacetime has no nature? It could behave anyway it wanted to without a nature. The only way to rescue us from this absurd conclusion is to just state matter-of-factly that it is simply a “law” that gravity holds, but now you have to somehow come up with a way to make this viewpoint coherent. What is a law? Does it have independent existence from the matter that follows it (it would certainly seem so). How exactly does the law cause matter to “behave itself?” Nobody seems willing to offer an answer for any of these questions.

The matter transporter scenario involves objectively determining what is and isn’t Kirk, what is and isn’t thing. The claim that there is an objectively existing “essence of Kirk” doesn’t say anything if you can’t specify how the transporter would recognize it.

Again, I am not claiming that essences exist in their own right. There’s no such “thing” as an “essence of water” that is floating around in a third realm waiting to metaphysically react with matter to produce a body of water. Part of what it means to be a “thing” is that it is a specific type of thing, i.e. it has an essence. We all know that Kirk is a specific type of thing, his shirt is another specific type of thing, and the fly buzzing around his head is a specific type of thing. I don’t see the difficulty in having a transporter recognize this since we all know what each object is. Denying essences is a way to pretend that we don’t know what each object is.

No one has yet connected the dots between the OP’s “Nature is the principle of motion and rest in those things which are such, per se” and modern usage such as Oxford Dictionary and Merriam-Webster.

Well I don’t think it was the OP’s intention to get into a semantic discussion over how ancients and medievals used the term “nature” and how moderns use the term “nature.” I think he was trying to defend the Scholastic understanding of nature.

 

[balto]

Again, you could say the same about any human activity. We grasp the answers to these kinds of questions by trial and error when we’re small children. By trying to make metaphysics say everything you’re in danger of making it say nothing.

I recognize the importance of scientific inquiry so I’m not saying that everything is metaphysics. But it is important to know what metaphysical positions to which one is committed.

btw I don’t know anyone who intuitively thinks in terms of that ugly potencies/actualities notion.

Everybody most likely accepts it without thinking about it or using the terms act and potency. Otherwise you’d either be committed to the Parmenidean position that all change is an illusion or the Heraclitean position that change involves a series of instantaneous creation/destruction events. I don’t know too many people that are committed to either of those positions and they seem to be the only ones available after you reject act/potency or some variant thereof.

If I may speculate, you seem to be confusing empiricism with science. And I think another poster on this thread called your last sentence circular reasoning yesterday, although I don’t see how. We have strong evidence that effect always follow cause, that’s the null hypothesis, but I wouldn’t say the bowling ball is proof for all events for all time.

I don’t think I am not confusing science with empiricism, although I think a lot of modern people do confuse the two. I don’t think Skeptic92 was denying that we can have empirical proof of things but that scientism and/or logical positivism are self-refuting. You can be a proponent of science while recognizing the framework in which it operates.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I don’t know much about Locke either, except for some politics.

Thanks for the description. It seems to me that Aristotle grapples with what is physics and what is psychology but without our modern understanding he misplaces some things. His physics isn’t very good of course, it’s been replaced, but I’ve a lot of time for him on psychology, the hylomorphic body-soul and so on. He might not be right but he doesn’t end up in substance dualism and the overall systematic treatment is fascinating.

So for me what he sees as the natures of things is about how we perceive them, our unconscious and so on up to the intellect, how we make sense of the world, rather than things as they really are, whatever that might mean.

Yes, physics as Aristotle defines it, was more widely applied than the science of today conceives it. But don’t be misslead by that fact, I can assure you there is more there than one thinks. Science had to start somewhere, so it is good to understand how it actually began and Aristotle is the beginning. I’ve read it and it is a challenge but worth while.

His psychology is very reasonable. Thomas Aquinas adopted it with necessary corrections. You can read Thomas’ Commentary on A’s De Anima here: dhspriory.org/thomas. You can also read Thomas’ full blown psychology in the S.T., Part 1, ques 75-86 and S.C.G., Book 2, chapters 47- 90.

Aristotle would say the senses receive information from the external world which the intellect sorts out and organizes into ideas or concepts which are called Universals because they represent a universal and perfect concept of what actually exists imperfectly and with modifications in numerous individuals of an given species and genus. Because these universal ideas are instantiated in individuals, Aristotle calls them natures, essences or substances which are the source or principle of motion/change and rest in those things which are natural, as opposed to those things which are mere compounds or made by man.

I would like to address one comment you made in post # 65. You said, "

" Science can’t arbitrate between competing metaphysical claims unless they can be put into the form of falsifiable hypotheses - a claim must make at least one empirical prediction. In previous discussions no one has been able to put the “from being-in-potency to being-in-act” claim into that form, and unless you can do so it is what’s called not even wrong. The OP’s “Nature is the principle of motion and rest in those things which are such, per se” seems to rest on that. "

Aristotle accepts nature as a self-evident fact. As such it cannot be " falsifiable, " it is either accepted or it is not. As I said before, there has to be an organizing source to the activity, powers, etc of a substance. This Aristotle calls a nature. You either accept it or you don’t. And the " from being-in-potency to being-in-act " is derived from that. For Aristotle observed that some things change, that they moved from being in one state, or from being one substance to another. Indeed, today we would say this is absolutely true of every thing. Every thing is moving from potentiality to actuality. That is a self evident fact. It is hard to see how it can be reasonably rejected.

Linus2nd

 

[Bahman]

To me science deals with systemic methods that acquire knowledge composed thing from what is simple. Philosophy in another hand deals with systematic methods that acquire knowledge of simple thing from what is composed. These are completely two different area of studies with the overlap so called metaphysics. This is very much related to the fact that what is objective and what is subjective. Consider a system S with subjective properties SP={sp1, sp2,…} consist of entities E={e1,e2,…} with known objective properties OP={op1, op2,…}. To me studying subjective properties SP related to objective properties OP is subject of filed of science. Now consider a system S with known objective properties OP={op1, op2,…} consist of entities E={e1,e2,…} with subjective properties SP={sp1, sp2,…}. To me studying subjective SP related to objective properties OP is subject of filed philosophy. By objective property I mean the property that can be measured simply so we can consider them as a substrate that subjective property is derived from.

 

[inocente]

Falsificationism and Verificationism are abandoned schools of epistemology; because they are self refuting. For example; can you verify that the Scientific method is valid for the acquisition of knowledge, using only empirical means? Unfortunately this question is nonsensical, as any answer you give will be circular, and therefore invalid. The validation of the Scientific Method requires recourse to Metaphysics. You are yourself here asserting an Epistemology which presupposes Metaphysical naturalism without argument; which would do nothing but beg the question against the Aristotelian. Rather than actually refute the Aristotelian Metaphysics.

You keep saying this and I keep saying it is sufficient that your cellphone works.

We take it that cellphones will still work tomorrow as a matter of fact. No one can prove that cellphones will work tomorrow. No one can prove that cause will still follow effect tomorrow, although experience leads us to believe it will. No one can prove that the scientific method will continue to work tomorrow, although experience leads us to believe it will. Metaphysics doesn’t help validate experience.

 

[inocente]

Because the equation is an attempt to characterize gravity and say that it always behaves in a certain way. That would be a comment on the nature of gravity. If instead you said that gravity is the bending of spacetime, you would be commenting on the nature of spacetime (i.e. that when it is bent gravity results)

This is playing with words. Which isn’t a putdown, it’s perfectly valid for armchair philosophers to play with ideas just as mathematicians play with symbols, but it cannot produce new knowledge about the world.

Because denying the existence of natures makes everything incoherent. How can you claim that the bending of spacetime leads to the effect known as gravity and gravity is always characterized by a specific equation if spacetime has no nature? It could behave anyway it wanted to without a nature. The only way to rescue us from this absurd conclusion is to just state matter-of-factly that it is simply a “law” that gravity holds, but now you have to somehow come up with a way to make this viewpoint coherent. What is a law? Does it have independent existence from the matter that follows it (it would certainly seem so). How exactly does the law cause matter to “behave itself?” Nobody seems willing to offer an answer for any of these questions.

You’re still conflating what you know with what is real. Prior to Einstein, when space and time were considered separate, you would have argued that space has a nature and time has a nature. Two separate natures. Now, because you know of spacetime, you argue that it has a nature. The number of things and their natures varies according to what you know. As such they only tell us about what you know.

Again, I am not claiming that essences exist in their own right. There’s no such “thing” as an “essence of water” that is floating around in a third realm waiting to metaphysically react with matter to produce a body of water. Part of what it means to be a “thing” is that it is a specific type of thing, i.e. it has an essence. We all know that Kirk is a specific type of thing, his shirt is another specific type of thing, and the fly buzzing around his head is a specific type of thing. I don’t see the difficulty in having a transporter recognize this since we all know what each object is. Denying essences is a way to pretend that we don’t know what each object is.

I don’t feel that you have risen to the challenge bro. It was to put all of that into an algorithm such that a device could sense and distinguish Kirk from non-Kirk to a level where it transports Kirk, the whole Kirk and nothing but the Kirk. Metaphysically, I don’t believe the notion of Kirk can be defined to that level of precision (leaving aside that some would say transporting only his molecules would turn Kirk into a philosophical zombie).

Well I don’t think it was the OP’s intention to get into a semantic discussion over how ancients and medievals used the term “nature” and how moderns use the term “nature.” I think he was trying to defend the Scholastic understanding of nature.

I’m saying that essences and natures are not of the world, they should be understood as theoretical constructs for highly complex unconscious operations going on inside our heads by which we make sense of the world.

 

[inocente]

Everybody most likely accepts it without thinking about it or using the terms act and potency. Otherwise you’d either be committed to the Parmenidean position that all change is an illusion or the Heraclitean position that change involves a series of instantaneous creation/destruction events. I don’t know too many people that are committed to either of those positions and they seem to be the only ones available after you reject act/potency or some variant thereof.

I believe we naturally think the ball is here and could be over there. That’s trivial, we learn it as a matter of experience at a very young age.

But we don’t naturally divide them up and say the ball is part act and part potency. Even if we did, we’d expect to be able to quantify them, as in potential energy and kinetic energy. But the act/potency model doesn’t let us do that, even though it says potency can be zero, leaving only act. It’s contrived, ugly.

I don’t think I am not confusing science with empiricism.

I was joshing.

 

[Skeptic92]

I believe we naturally think the ball is here and could be over there. That’s trivial, we learn it as a matter of experience at a very young age.

But we don’t naturally divide them up and say the ball is part act and part potency. Even if we did, we’d expect to be able to quantify them, as in potential energy and kinetic energy. But the act/potency model doesn’t let us do that, even though it says potency can be zero, leaving only act. It’s contrived, ugly.

You realise you have just contradicted yourself right?

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Inocente,

You said, " I believe we naturally think the ball is here and could be over there. That’s trivial, we learn it as a matter of experience at a very young age.

But we don’t naturally divide them up and say the ball is part act and part potency. Even if we did, we’d expect to be able to quantify them, as in potential energy and kinetic energy. But the act/potency model doesn’t let us do that, even though it says potency can be zero, leaving only act. It’s contrived, ugly. "

It is clear that since all things in the universe are in a constant process of change, yet remain the same substances, except in the case of creation and substantial change, that all substances have a potency principle and an actuality principle. That each substance is composed of act and potency. But the potency principle is not " zero. " The matter in a substance is the principle of potency and it is clear that matter is not " zero. "

To say that matter is the potency principle simply means that it is that from which new forms are educed.

The form, on the other hand, is the actuality principle in each substance. It makes each substance to be the kind of substance it is at this moment. But it can be modified or replaced all together. And when this happens we have either a change or a modification of the nature of the substance.

Your objection concerning " potential energy " and " kinetic energy " is inchoherent. Do you mean that a Ball has potential energy which can become kinetic energy? The proper way to view this is to say that the ball has such a nature that it can be modified so that it can accept and store an impetus which allows the ball to move and continue moving. Exactly how this capability would be translated into scientific explication is something science whould have to do. Are you saying you are qualified to make that explication?

The principle of act and potency is not trivial. Certainly we can go through life without giving it a thought. But it has great significance in improtant theological discussions ( as your comments about psychology indicate ). It also happens to be one of those things science accepts without acknowledgement. If substances lacked these principles, they could not change.

Linus2nd