John West has already replied to this, but I'll confirm (and clarify another point or two):

seigneur wrote:

If it were true that human form is a mere intellectual abstraction without independent existence, the soul would be non-existent after death. Reading (and following) Feser, the soul is in a "radically diminished state" after death. Whatever that means, it doesn't mean "without independent existence" and it seems to mean somehow apart from the human substance.

No, it doesn't mean "apart from the human substance." The human substance persists after bodily death, but without its corporeal aspects (and thus as an "incomplete substance," as John rightly says). True, that's as close as that substance can come to "pure form" and still exist at all, but it's still not form apart from and independent of substance. (Even an angel, which is entirely incorporeal, isn't just a pure "form." An angel is a substance that has a substantial form.)

I also don't object entirely to the statement that form confers powers on a substance. Basically I'm objecting to the idea that we start with some matter that lacks the relevant form, and somehow add an independently pre-existing form to it.

When a human being is created, what's created is a substance. Once the substance exists, there's nothing wrong with saying that it's the substantial form that "makes" it what it is, any more than there's anything wrong with saying the "nature" of a dog is what "makes" the dog what it is. But that doesn't mean that the form is something ontologically independent that comes along and "adds" powers to otherwise uninformed matter. The human being, the human substance, is created with those powers. Like all powers, they come primarily from God, and some of them come secondarily from other substances. But in the relevant ontological sense, they don't come "from" the substantial form. The substantial form just is those powers, considered in abstraction by an intellect.

(A female cat has the power to give birth to more cats. The power to confer the substantial form of a cat on some matter isn't something over and above that power; it just is that power. The mother cat gives birth to kittens, not to substantial forms that then go on to "make" kittens.)

Last edited by Scott (8/10/2015 12:00 pm)

seigneur wrote:

In Metaphysics, Aristotle defines substance as form and matter[.]

Indeed he does. But Aquinas (which is, after all, who we're discussing) is not Aristotle, and Aquinas allows for the existence of immaterial substances -- e.g.the aforementioned angels.

Last edited by Scott (8/12/2015 4:49 pm)

seigneur wrote:

Scott wrote:

Indeed he does. But Aquinas (which is, after all, who we're discussing) is not Aristotle, and Aquinas allows for the existence of immaterial substances -- e.g.the aforementioned angels.

 So I can concur with the OP, "I feel like I'm not understanding something basic about it." Except that I am fairly well acquainted with the system and my conclusion is that there are better systems.

In which case it behoves you to spell them out...?

Edit: the sentiment of that message may be misinterpreted. You and anyone else are of course welcome nay encouraged to criticise aspects of Thomism you find insufficient (I’m planning to make a topic specifically for this but do go ahead and pre-empt me there if you wish) but please, please give arguments in support of these criticism and any proposed solutions.  
 

Last edited by DanielCC (8/13/2015 6:53 am)

Hi seigneur,

seigneur wrote:

And if there are immaterial substances, then how are they accounted for? Because, if I understood you rightly saying, the form is a human abstraction from instances, then how do you assert the existence of angels (immaterial substances) as anything other than human abstraction?

This is part of the reason I was careful to distinguish between corporeal and incorporeal components of a substance, not material and immaterial components of a substance, to help people avoid conflating different senses of the word matter. The angel has an incorporeal substance, presumably with incorporeal matter to go along with its form.

Hi seigneur,

seigneur wrote:

You can also use the words "potentiality" and "actuality" to make it merrier, but the idea should be to clarify the relations of the concepts used.

No, you can't. That's my point. Matter can be corporeal or incorporeal. There's a distinction between the corporeal and matter that you're not making. 

As to the "intellectual abstraction" line, all Scott is saying is that the form is ontologically dependent on the matter, and the matter is ontologically dependent on the form. The form can't exist apart from matter, nor matter apart from a form.

**Having written this and checked to make sure, it looks like Aquinas's view—against later scholastics, who posited the aforementioned spiritual matter—is that angels are incorporeal because they have no matter. They still, however, are a substance, which on the scholastic view is “a being whose essence requires it to exist in itself; ens per se; ens in se; a being that has existence in itself by virtue of itself as an ultimately distinct subject of being” (Wuellner. Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophy). Since Aquinas held matter to be the principle of individuation, it's for this reason that Aquinas's angels had to each be a unique species; for him, matter wasn't there to do the job so their essence or substantial form had to (presumably the form still couldn't exist independently of a substance even if for Aquinas matter isn't involved, which is what Scott would mean in calling the form an intellectual abstraction in relation to angels. I'm sure he'll correct if I have him wrong.)

If you have further concerns on other levels, it would be especially good if you could unpack those. There's no replying to a sneer.

Last edited by John West (8/13/2015 9:10 pm)