Drovot wrote:

Hi, I am a struggling Catholic. I've recently become familiar with the Scholastic tradition through Feser and Oderberg.

I suspect what I'm about to say will seem silly or at best a representation of my own failure to engage with the hylemorphic system on a more metaphysical level. Nonetheless, these objections have been in my mind for awhile and I'm interested in seeing whether or not someone can poke substantial holes in them.

So from what I understand there are few significant reasons why the scholastic believes in the physical instantiation of forms. First there is the view that forms help to explain the seemingly universal patterns found in physical beings. There are tulips and then there is the universal and abstract form of the tulip which resides in our minds. However, why can't the reductionist just claim that in the material world there are fluctuations of particles that resemble each other? Like when you drop a rock into a pond the water molecules will predictably ripple out, each ripple resembling the last insofar as it is a similar fluctuation of molecules.

There's also the argument that form helps to explain why some particles unify in a particular manner and exhibit a unified behavior. But, again, isn't it theoretically possible that we could trace the motions of chemical, molecular, and atomic and subatomic particles from a primordial ooze and watch as they eventually coalesce into, say, DNA, bacterial organisms, simple life forms, fish, etc. And the movements and coalescing of these particles is due simply to natural forces. If they lump together and eventually structure a pig, or a human, we could explain this lumping together of particles by following backwards its deterministic path. We don't need to adhere to some notion of form in order to explain why matter is brought together into certain patterns.

Material is subject and can be made into or changed into things. For there to be concrete things (actualities) there must be something other than matter, otherwise we get an infinite regress.

Contrary to what crazy people say, there are such things as things; that is, definite beings. Those things cannot be the matter of something else. You do not literally make human beings as material of something else, for example: for things to change there must be something that can change and into that which it changes/becomes.

For example, what can I make Justice into? I can make play-doh into many shapes. But when do I use Justice in this way? I can make X into Y; but the Y itself is not material. But since when was Justice like play-doh or whatever? It is real and actual: it either exists or does not; but no one ever thought of trying to make a brick out of justice or melting justice or putting it under any other kind of material process.

Last edited by Timocrates (1/25/2018 3:22 am)

UGADawg wrote:

Drovot wrote:

UGADawg wrote:

I thought Crawford Elder's argument Ed and Oderberg have referenced is interesting here. If the pig is nothing but a bunch of particles arranged pig-wise, how do we quantify over the right particles? It can't be with reference to the pig itself (because circular), but it doesn't seem there's any other option, and in particular there's no relation among particles one could name that would pick out the pig, and only the pig.

How is this circular? What do you mean by quantifying over the right particles?

It would be circular because one is explaining the pig in terms of the set of particles, and explaining the relevant set of particles in terms of the pig. 

Regarding your latter question I just mean you have to pick out the relevant set of particles; you can't leave it undefined.

Couldn't one just conclude that evolutionarily our brains have been wired in such a way as to pick out certain swarms of atoms in order to avoid, stay close to, or eat them? I mean it seems like the discovery that all physical substances depend on their microscopic structures (their macroscopic features being totally reliant on the microscopic level) should be enough to jettison the archaic notion of form. So, if we have gotten that far, there probably is a perfectly good alternative explanation for why we seem to rely on some idea of forms routinely.

I feel like one could easily appeal to evolutionary wiring to explain why we impose forms onto an otherwise chaotic flux of subatomic motion.

Also the qualia problem is not as complex as it seems I suspect. There are thousands of different colors you eyes perceive when you watch a movie. In reality those colors are composed of tiny pixels in repeated three color patterns. Microscopic features can give rise to seemingly simple features that the microscopic doesn't bear itself. It's a rather mundane reality that I think is over complicated by some philosophers.

And, yes, perhaps fundamentally it is quarks that have a form insofar as they have a whatness to them. This is perfectly acceptable but it doesn't entail that other things have to have forms.

Last edited by Drovot (1/26/2018 4:40 am)

Drovot are you a swarm of quarks?  Quarks don't have intelligence. Adding one hundred, one million or one trillion or more unintelligent  quarks together can't produce intelligence. So, how is it that you're capable of argumentation if you're just a swarm of quarks?

Last edited by RomanJoe (1/26/2018 1:27 pm)

Drovot wrote:

Couldn't one just conclude that evolutionarily our brains have been wired in such a way as to pick out certain swarms of atoms in order to avoid, stay close to, or eat them? I mean it seems like the discovery that all physical substances depend on their microscopic structures (their macroscopic features being totally reliant on the microscopic level) should be enough to jettison the archaic notion of form. So, if we have gotten that far, there probably is a perfectly good alternative explanation for why we seem to rely on some idea of forms routinely.

​Pick out which swarms of atoms and why? And what is doing the picking out? If you can explain that without in some way appealing to the kinds of general categories and qualities such an account would be trying to explain, I would be truly amazed. 

​Also, to say something depends on something else doesn't necessarily mean we should jettison the former. Property dualists think that the mental supervenes on material - that is, the mental has no causal role and all causation is physical. But they still believe there are irreducible mental properties. Even if it were true, which you haven't proved, that the macroscopic were totally causally dependent on the microscopic, this wouldn't mean macroscopic qualities were necessarily reducible to the microscopic.

​Finally, it is still not clear what your position is. Are you disputing all realism? Or just the A-T version? Or even just the A-T version when it comes to granting substantial forms to macroscopic objects? You seem most animated about the latter, but your appeals to evolution seem thoroughly nominalist.