In other words, the standard scholastic realist answer. 

No, realism just implies that they are real in some way. Whether they subsist in God's head or elsewhere.

Shade Tree Philosopher wrote:

Is it realism? I used to think ideas in the mind of God were realist (enough), but isn't realism on universals the thesis that they exist with at least some independence? To put it crudely, God, angels, *and* Forms hang out together?

In discussions about universals, scholastic realism is the position that universals exist only in things that instantiate them or in intellects, including the Divine Intellect (see here and here).

(It's also sometimes used to contrast generally “realist” scholastic metaphysicians, like Aquinas, Scotus, Chatton, etc., with Ockham et al. in history texts.)

Shade Tree Philosopher wrote:

Dennis and iwpoe:

Heh, my problem is I don't see a problem. I'm not boasting about that, and I should speak more formally. Still, every house needs a Stove, maybe? Stoked with a little Feyer in the abend? I slay me.

Ahem.
I shouldn't say there is *no* problem. Rather, the problem can be solved by using ordinary Aristotelian philosophy:
(1) The substantial form is what gets reproduced in general; the matter is the culprit of corruption.

What? You originally insisted that forms are not produced - which is correct. A form in part helps justify our logical thinking in regards to being and change: something either is or is not. A house under construction is not a house. Form as such - as you earlier correctly pointed out - is not, itself, ever "produced." Certainly not in A-T. Or what was the point of your tirade against iwpoe's point about alluding to form as a principle of activity? You insisted it was not form but substances that did things.

When I draw a circle, I most definitely do not produce circularity. When irrational animals copulate, they don't produce (or even reproduce) their own forms, anymore than the coupling of a man and a woman "produces" humanity. The thing is absurd to suggest.
 

Last edited by Timocrates (3/30/2016 11:01 pm)

Timocrates wrote:

When I draw a circle, I most definitely do not produce circularity. When irrational animals copulate, they don't produce (or even reproduce) their own forms, anymore than the coupling of a man and a woman "produces" humanity. The thing is absurd to suggest.
 

Absolutely. Your drawing instantiates Circularity, it does not produce it. Circularity itself is a timeless universal, with the newly drawn circle, or strictly speaking the form of the newly-drawn circle, being one particular instance of it.

A pair of animals reproducing may instantiate another form from that of their own; they do not create it.