(That should be "the form of a spiritual substance," not "substances." There's a technical problem editing my post and I'm not going to rewrite the entire thing just for that correction.)

John West wrote:

There's a distinction between the corporeal and matter that you're not making. 

But the distinction is yours to make, inasmuch as A-T (as you understand it) is your position. I only ask questions about it. To me "corporeal" and "matter" are identical and that's why I ask.

John West wrote:

...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.

Mutually dependent but not identical would mean opposites like black and white. And if neither is superior to the other (which should be the case when you say "A can't exist apart from B nor B apart from A" just like black and white), then this is a totally unrecognisable theory of forms to me, and forms in such a theory are not causes in any way.

John West wrote:

There's no replying to a sneer.

So, you don't think I am asking in good faith? In that case I have no further questions. 

Scott wrote:

Aquinas rejected universal hylemorphism and accounted for spiritual substances by his famous "real distinction" (adopted from Avicenna) between esse and essentia: the form of a spiritual substances is in potency to the substance's existence, and the substance itself is not just a form but a compound of the form and the act of existence to which that form is conjoined.

In other words, spiritual substance is potency(=form=essence)+act(=existence) rather than form+matter? This is a rather subtle workaround. It prompts the question what Aquinas takes potency to be, so that he can posit it to be the very essence of angels (provided that I am reading you right).

Scott wrote:

(Some other Scholastics were universal hylemorphists and did think spiritual substances were form/matter composites; they just thought such substances were made of "spiritual matter" rather than "corporeal matter." Obviously they didn't think spiritual substances were just forms either.)

This is a given, insofar as they relied on Aristotle. This is precisely where I see metaphysical speculations end up when one accepts Aristotelian theory of forms.

seigneur wrote:

In other words, spiritual substance is potency(=form=essence)+act(=existence) rather than form+matter? This is a rather subtle workaround.

It's not a workaround, and there's nothing "rather than" about it. One of Aquinas's best-known claims, for which he famously argued in De Esse et Essentia, is that everything (including of course form/matter composites) is ultimately essence + existence, there being (in all cases except God's) a "real distinction" (à la Ibn Sina) between the two and the former being in potency to the latter. In fact I take this view (as Ed does) to be foundational to his own versions of the Five Ways.

Again, Aquinas was not a universal hylemorphist, and it's pretty fundamental to his outlook that the act/potency distinction is prior to and broader than the form/matter distinction. He accepted Aristotle's form/matter account of material/corporeal/physical reality, but (like any other Christian theologian) he didn't think that was all there was. Neither, of course, did the other Christian theologians who instead preferred to extend the concept of "matter" to include "spiritual matter." And in no case did any of them think a spiritual substance was pure form and nothing but -- nor, therefore, that what survived the death of the human body was just a form rather than a substance (albeit, at least in Aquinas's case, an "incomplete" one).

I think Aquinas has much the better of the argument here; your mileage may vary. But be that as it may, your original objection was surely answered long ago. If you want to discuss the merits (or otherwise) of Aquinas's real distinction, that's probably better done in another thread. Unless Mark has further questions, I'm inclined to take it that his original question about Aquinas has been addressed.

Last edited by Scott (8/14/2015 11:17 am)

seigneur wrote:

My original objection was to the claim that form (and soul) is an intellectual abstraction.

Your original objection was, "If it were true [on Aquinas's view; you specifically told us not to bother about yours] that human form is a mere intellectual abstraction without independent existence, the soul would be non-existent after death," and Ed wouldn't have claimed that "the soul is in a 'radically diminished state' after death."

That objection was answered just as I said it was, and I'll put the answer more bluntly here: you were just wrong that Aquinas couldn't regard a human being as any sort of "substance" after bodily death, because you were just wrong that Aquinas believed every substance to be a composite of form and matter, when even for purely material substances this isn't his fundamental distinction.

That's a rookie error, and one that belies your claim to have "specified" any "problems with the A-T metaphysics." If you don't understand how fundamental Aquinas's real distinction between existence and essence (which he regards as a special case of the distinction between act and potency) is to that metaphysics, as it appears you don't:

seigneur wrote:

I don't think it's been answered except by adding terminological distinctions where there's no material, conceptual or logical difference.

. . . then you're not in any way qualified to identify any such "problems." (Perhaps that's why I can't find any posts in which you've actually spelled any out.)

seigneur wrote:

Maybe I will ask again some other year.

I think that's a good call. In the meantime perhaps you'll learn to recognize an answer when you receive one.

(Again, if there's to be further discussion of not just the content but the merits of Aquinas's views on this subject -- which of course is welcome in and of itself -- I think it's better taken to another thread.)
 

Last edited by Scott (8/27/2015 10:28 am)