RomanJoe wrote:

Drovot wrote:

Theoretically I could explain the pig as a pig by tracing the individual motions of each particle of matter in accordance with physical laws.

I also take issue with this.

Even if this could be proved, it does nothing to show that forms don't exist. Even if you could track each particle's motion and watch as they all--following certain physical laws--collapse into each other to form a specific structure, it still would not follow that what results from the physical motion of these particles is not an actually existing form we call a pig. What if I could track every particle from their primordial beginning in the core of a star to you? Would this mean that somehow you are not you, that you aren't of a specific kind? Do you think that, ideally, for you to exist as the kind of thing your are (rational animal) you needed to have popped into existence, your matter contrived out of nothing, not obeying or determined by physical laws? Do you think that forms need to unify matter by going against the laws of physics? This seems dubious. AT wouldn't deny that the material world is governed by physical laws--but it would deny that this somehow makes the notion of form obsolete. 

Then why does AT see form as a principle of unity if we can explain the operations, movements, and structures of particles by physical laws? 

SR wrote:

I happen to agree with you that prime matter can be dispensed with. But not form.
 

I'm curious why you think this. Do you posit just some sort of secondary matter instead? Do you think potency does not need some substratum and can be attributed to a thing's form? The reason why I'm asking these questions is because I've been struggling with understanding prime matter. From what I can grasp, it's posited as a substratum that acts as the seat of potentiality in all material beings--it's a correlative basic material that form actualizes. I still don't understand why we can't just appeal to some sort of secondary matter or attribute potentials for new existences to the form of a substance. 

Perhaps I could open this up into a separate thread if it begins to deviate from the OP too much.

Perhaps this may help Drovot (although I'm just a beginner, so maybe I'm misstating this or being unhelpful).  A materialist may say, "This chemical only has the property it has because of the arrangement of the atoms that make up its molecule, and the atoms only have the properties they have because of the arrangement of the subatomic particles," but in that case, "arrangement" is only another word for "form."

RomanJoe wrote:

SR wrote:

I happen to agree with you that prime matter can be dispensed with. But not form.
 

I'm curious why you think this. Do you posit just some sort of secondary matter instead? Do you think potency does not need some substratum and can be attributed to a thing's form? The reason why I'm asking these questions is because I've been struggling with understanding prime matter. From what I can grasp, it's posited as a substratum that acts as the seat of potentiality in all material beings--it's a correlative basic material that form actualizes. I still don't understand why we can't just appeal to some sort of secondary matter or attribute potentials for new existences to the form of a substance. 

Perhaps I could open this up into a separate thread if it begins to deviate from the OP too much.

I will respond in your "Is prime matter necessary for change and limitation?" thread. 

Drovot wrote:

A good reason to privileged the subatomic over the macroscopic? The macroscopic wouldn't exist without the subatomic. The subatomic is the epicenter of any object, be it a pig, human, car, whatever. Take away the subatomic and they disappear. This should be proof that the subatomic is doing all the work. It's not that the macroscopic features rely for their existence on the quarks, it's just that the quarks are all there is. 

You mention that common sense requires us to view the pig top-down. Well, at first glance, common sense would tell us that the sun rises and sets, that it moves. There are many instances where science has undermined common sense. Science has undermined our common sense notion of form with regards to the pig by showing that the pig is, at its base level, a collection of quarks arranged in, what we impose onto the quark storm, a pigish form. 

​But this just begs the question. Whether or not the microscopic can explain all is exactly what is in question. Aside from what has been brought up in this thread, there are a ot of anti-reductionist arguments out there. For example, macroscopic objects have properties that microscopic objects don't. It is famously hard for the reductionist to explain just how these properties can be reduced to the properties of atoms, let alone subatomic particles, without just relying on vague terms, like emerging, or explaining the properties away. This is related to the vexed issue of qualia, which materialists have huge problems accounting for.

​Anyway, to point to the microscopic pig particles to pick out a pig seems circular, because we need to know these particles belong to a pig, to begin with, to call them pig particles. What defines them as pig particles is their belonging to a pig. 

​There are reductionist and nominalist responses to this, which move the process on a step to other qualities and eventually try to make it a matter of human judgement which particles are pig particles and which aren't. But you are still left with the basic issue of why humans would group things in particular ways and why some groupings seem more objective than others - why the category pig seems more objective than that of people taller than me or of things in the corner of my living room - not to mention the other problems with nominalism, like some I suggested above.

​Also, as I said above, it wouldn't disprove A-T realism, or some other varieties, to suggest that the only true substances are subatomic particles. I think it implausible, but you would still have the substantial forms of quarks, etc., and things like pigs and humans would presumably be accidental forms of these.