Thanks iwpoe, I assumed it was that essay you had in mind - I was going to reply about starting up a separate thread about it later on (sleep deprived atm). I will print out and read that essay over the next couple of days and thence hopefully come back with something.
 
One point: on its own the statement that Plato reified universals is meaningless as a criticism, akin to complaining to an atheist that they don’t include God in their ontology.
 

Scott wrote:

iwpoe wrote:

I've picked this specifically because Thomism takes the "Problem of Universals" to be a keystone[.]

"Thomism" arguably might, but Thomas didn't. As I've said elsewhere, the problem Thomas was trying to solve was how universal concepts were related to particular, individual substances; for that purpose, he didn't need to resolve (and didn't claim to resolve) the question whether there was something that was literally common to two instances of a kind. (I also think that he did think there was something thus common, and that in any case he was committed to that view by his other principles, but this conclusion wasn't necessary to his main work and later Scholastics disagreed about whether it was true.)

In modern terms, some versions of medieval "moderate realism" could be (and by some writers have been) classified as nominalism. I don't think Aquinas was a nominalist in those terms, but I also think it wouldn't have affected his main account of concepts if he were.

Devils Advocate says that the implication is that Thomas agreed with Aristotle (yes, this just pushs the problem back a stage) and thus saw no need to make further comment on that problem.

Last edited by DanielCC (8/12/2015 2:54 pm)

@Poe,
 
I’m just importing this from the prelude to this discussion for ease of clarification re the post which will hopefully follow.

iwpoe wrote:

Yes, but consider explaining my friend John: it is not as if the collection of his "real properties" isn't a legitimate category of explanation and thus a kind of "cause (causa)". It is easy to see how you could conflate this sort of explanation with one that appeals to the "Universal", but historically Platonism distinguishes them. The point then is that you can separate off two sorts of explanation of a thing off and categorize them as 1 formal and 2 paradigmatic.

Putting aside the universal question for a moment I'm happy to agree that the two can be called species of Cause in the more muscular classical sense and that the two (property instantiation and kind instantiation) differ, however I still hold they can be subsumed under a common heading

Scott wrote:

What does Devil's Advocate say Thomas thought Aristotle thought?

One can only shrug – classicists have been arguing over the niceties of that for centuries. I think we’re safe with the minimalist thesis that it included there being universals (somewhere) and that said universals don’t exist unless there is at least one instance of a particular falling under them.

(I’m consciues that I’m really knocking the problem of interpretation back a stage here as Ockham sometimes thought he was doing the same)

Scott wrote:

And on what basis does Devil's Advocate say Thomas agreed with what he thought Aristotle thought?

On the basis that Thomas saw himself at least partly as commenting on and developing Aristotle's though and thus if he deviated from it (felt the need to correct it) on such a fundamental matter would have said so.

Scott wrote:

Does Devil's Advocate say Thomas was right to think that?

Ah ha difficult! If Thomas view is taken to imply that universals are actually immanent to their possessors then partly* Yes, if however it's understood in the way some of the Neo-Scholastics were keen on i.e. that universals only exist in the mind which contemplates groups of particulars then No. Despite the former’s rather feeble protestations to the contrary I suspect that both Oderberg and Ed are committed to the stronger thesis on the influence of the New Essentialist movement,  whilst Haldane evinces something like the weaker position, at least on his Blackwell Companion to Metaphysics article.
 
*I say partly because I think any satisfactory theory of universals must be able to account for necessary propositions like 'Orange is closer to Red than Blue' holding in all possible worlds regardless of whether there are any instances of those colours. Pure Aristotelianism, at least as normally understood can't deliver this, but the Augustinian side of Scholastic thought which treats universals as having an eternal existence as Divine Exemplars hopefully can. If not I'll opt for Constituent Platonism plus Theistic Activism and try to fix the problems with that latter through Divine Simplicity.

Last edited by DanielCC (8/13/2015 1:13 pm)

iwpoe wrote:

Sure, just as a matter of notation. Clearly, however, the distinction would matter quite heavily to someone trying to both interpret Plato and avoid the tendency in Aristotle's corpus to not highlight the intelligible realm. I suppose that's, at least to me (I can't speak for historical Platonist motives here, since I don't yet know a direct discussion on the motive for the two names), the primary value of the two names- particularly if one has taken the four-cause analysis to deny a causal place for Platonic form, and I think one might.

Okay, I'll grant that. In the past I've distinguished between Formal and Exemplary Causes as a way of getting at the same distinction. My only gripe there would be that properties e.g. Yellow or Courage require as much of an exemplary aspect as kinds e.g. Gold or Man. 

I think we need to be careful to distinguish the historical reasons that motivated Platonists to make this distinction and applicability of said distinction to modern discussions (and by ‘modern’ I’m extending that to modern Scholastic thinkers and their kin). In order to learn about philosophy we must of course study Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus but in order to philosophise we must study what they themselves studied and set our conceptual vocabulary to best help us express this. So while I have considerable sympathy with the Harmonist interpretation of Aristotle for instance I think we needs must use terms like ‘Platonist’ and ‘Aristotelean’ in the loose pop sense most non-specialised philosophers understand them.

(Note: sorry not to have got back with feedback on this essay. I’m very busy August/beginning of September and it’s hard to steal the necessary time for much indepth philosophising. I do want to respond though as Universals are one of my topics of special interest.)
 

Last edited by DanielCC (8/15/2015 8:14 am)

iwpoe wrote:

​
It occurs to me to say at least provisionally that a black cat has as it's pridigmatic cause Cat-as-such and as it's formal cause that collection of properties that make it the cat it is, black, amongst them, and that, further, cat-as-such doesn't include black. It also occurs to me that you might then turn to this property black and ask of it, itself, what its paridigmatic cause is, and it seems that the answer would be black-as-such etc

Another quick response I'm afraid: the above sounds like the distinction between properties and property-instances/tropes. We can differentiate between this instance of Black, the cat's Blackness, which is particular and dependent on that substance e.g. the cat though not identical to it, and the universal Black which is instantiated in that instance.

iwpoe wrote:

​Are they distinctions exclusively pertinent to the immediate historical context or more generally pertinent? If the former, they may not be applicable to modern discussion, but see below. If the latter, then they seem genuinely applicable.

 I agree. In some instances comparing the ancient understanding of a given problem with the modern presents us possible avenues to resolve it – to give an example there’s much to be gained from accepting the more muscular classical understanding of Causation which incorporates facts about substance, dispositions and universals as opposed to the weaker modern understanding with corresponds only to Efficient Causation. In other cases like the one we’re discussing here it may well be purely a matter of phraseology whether we talk of Exemplary or Paradigmatic Causes (or even if we assume that role is incorporated in the Formal Cause) – the key thing here is that all parties understand one another.  

iwpoe wrote:

​If they are mainly pertinent to their historical context, is that historical context itself sufficiently rich to demand exploration? Consider, for instance, that as people interested in scholastic philosophy we are tacitly committed to an interest in a philosophical school that was most active between, what, 1100 and 1400 or so in Western Europe? Some modern contemporary analytic philosophers (and many dead ones) might query 'Why not simply start afresh with modern tools and methods? What do these hoary conversations between venerable dead Latin speakers have to do with anything?' I like Hegel, like Heidegger, and in a certain respect, like Plato, Aristotle, and (though in a radically different way) the Scholastics, think that dialog with the dead *is* doing philosophy.

 I am fine with this, though would emphasise that what we’re exploring and trying to highlight are these philosophers ideas not necessarily the terminology which they used to express them. I myself would rather translate the ideas of said dead Latin speakers into modern Analytic vocabulary primarily because it will allow us and others a clearer understanding of them and thus a better ground on which to access their merits. After all one of the main reasons these ideas were lost in the first place was because of their obscurity.

There are also instances where a given philosopher's use of a term is frankly deceitful and ought to be discouraged. We might think of Kant’s attempts to deny that his epistemology was subjectivist by claiming that the necessities involved were ‘transcendental’. Some of these problems afflict our very way of talking about philosophy – for instance in the use of terms such as ‘Rationalist’ and ‘Empiricist’; this, I’m fairy sure, is what you’re referring to when you mention the Harmonist interpretation of Aristotle. Unfortunately these terms have become so ingrained it’s easier to try to avoid their usage altogether and to coin a further term for the position one is discussing.

iwpoe wrote:

Heidegger taught me that popular vocabulary often hardens and perpetuates paths of thought: I myself consider the sharp distinction between Aristotelianism and Platonism to mark the path of thought that drives one to favor naturalism. The very moves is typically made on the basis of the simple scandal, in the minds of thinkers, that Plato refer to these "strange" "unsupported" "otherworldly" ('Hinterwelt' and its pejorative connotations is actually the psychological core of Nietzsche's anti-Platonism) beings and the hope Aristotle might seem to save us from that. The next move in this path of thought is to exorcise the ghosts from Aristotle as well and end in something like empiricism or scientism. That's a prime motive for me to push against the popular distinction.

 This may* be true but isn’t that really a different subject altogether i.e. the history of ideas rather than the ideas themselves? That’s not to say it’s not a worthy study but I don’ think trying to change how people view the historic Aristotle and Plato is going to effect the reception of their ideas. After all a lot of what you mention, being sheer pejorative, cannot be argued with philosophically. 

*I say 'may' because I think many of the early modern precursors to Scientism saw themselves as returning to Plato in as much as they liked to think of themselves on the model of the Pythagorean elite, the mathematician-sage who possessed privileged noetic access to the true structure of reality and the mind of God. The deep problem – or ‘metaproblem’ given the fact that their views were generally wrong – was that belle letre-ism and shallow, ‘group’ thinking prevented them seeing this view was blatantly incompatible with Nominalism.

Last edited by DanielCC (8/16/2015 5:27 am)