Johannes wrote:

God: So you claim that the very form, in a hylomorphic sense of course, of the camel resides in your intellect? Well, I will make a camel according to that form. Let's start with DNA. Give Me the aminoacid sequence.

There is an issue here - most, if not all of us don't know the essence of a camel, instead we know at best the essence of an animal substance complete with certain accidents e.g. furry, tooth-bearing, ill-tempered - at best we might know certain properties (taken in the scholastic sense of 'proper accidents') which relate to one of the higher genus under which the camel falls.

Let us instead pursue the same scenario with Man defined as Rational Animal: here we do have the essential characteristic and thus can truly say our minds are informed by the form 'Man'. Does it follow that from said essence we should be able to read off some feature of the human DNA sequence? No, because the fact that rational animals are compose this way is only contingent – If Oderberg’s thesis that any rational animal is ‘metaphysically human’ is correct, then it follows that God could presumably create a rational animal with entirely different biological features.
 
Let’s ignore even that option though, suppose we don’t raise the question of other rational animals. I still wouldn’t say that knowing the essence of man would entail we must know all the details of some biological feature e.g. DNA. What it does entail is that we must know what Rationality (and Animality) is, what it means to reason, and not whatever mechanisms in the material world maybe correlated with this process.
 

Last edited by DanielCC (8/07/2015 4:45 pm)

Problems with Form are akin (though mind this being merely an analogy) to the functionalist problematic in that, for instance, man has multiple realizations (as addition does for functionalism).

Scott wrote:

A substance has a substantial form, of course, but it also has numerous accidental (sub)forms; you seem to be conflating the two. Similarly, a substance has an essence, but it also has numerous essential properties that flow from that essence but with which that essence is not to be identified; you seem to be conflating those as well.

This seems a very convenient approach, whereby you, a bedouin, and the world's foremost expert on camels all know the substantial form/essence of a camel but just differ in the knowledge of the camel´s accidental (sub)forms/essential properties. So the Thomist in my fictional dialog can get away by replying: "Lord, the number and shape of the camel's teeth are not part of the camel's substantial form/essence but one of its accidental (sub)forms/essential properties. I know the camel's substantial form/essence, not its accidental (sub)forms/essential properties." If this is the case, then what is in the camel's substantial form and what is in its accidental (sub)forms? What is part of its essence and what is part of its essential properties?

It seems to me that the structures of the camel's digestive system and of its skeleton are both part of its substantial form, not accidental subforms.

Scott wrote:

But there doesn't for that reason seem to be anything problematic about my intellect's having received the form in the first place.

Of course, by stripping the form down enough you can always claim that your intellect has received the form.

Scott wrote:

Finally, even if it were the case that having the form of X in one's intellect meant that one could simply rattle off all the facts about X at will, it still wouldn't follow that Ed (or Aristotle or Aquinas) was wrong to hold that "when the intellect comes to understand some object, what this essentially involves is the form that makes the object what it is coming to reside in the intellect itself" (emphasis mine). At most we might conclude that an intellect that couldn't rattle off such facts hadn't come to understand X (at least fully, and perhaps at all).

We must distinguish between having the information to make X and knowing all the consequences of that information. You may know exactly what a triangle is, so that a triangle can be made from the form in your intellect, and at the same time not know explicitely all the properties of the triangle. You may know all the technical data of a car, so that the car can be built from the form in your intellect, and at the same time not know the maximum speed that said car can reach. Lastly, in order to build a living organism you must know its genetic code, but you do not need to know the range of ambient temperatures under which the organism can survive. The properties of a triangle such as the relations between its sides and angles, the maximum speed of a car, and the acceptable ambient temperature range for an organism are all consequences of the essence of the respective entity, not part of that essence. Maybe the right term for those consequences is "essential properties", but lacking academic training in philosophy, I defer the terminology to the experts.

Bottom line: the issue lies in the definition of what is in the form of an entity X. You can define the form stripped enough of all specifics so that you can say that it resides in your intellect when you just have a minimum knowledge of X. Or you can define the form full enough so that you can say that it resides in your intellect only when X can be made from what you know about it.

Which ends the discussion, because definitions are not to be argued about, but to be decided by authority or consensus. If the consensus in the Thomistic school is that an entity's substantial form is defined in the first way I described above, then that's it.

To note, the forms that really matter in metaphysics, namely angelic essences and human souls, are simple enough that they can be fully described: spiritual forms endowed with intellect and free will. Therefore the issue under discussion does not really matter in metaphysics.