Posted by RomanJoe  4/03/2018 5:28 pm | #1 |
Is it necessary to posit something like prime matter to act as the principle of potency and consequently to explain change (rather than distinct actualities that are constantly created and annihilated), if we take an emergentist account of matter? The naturalist could just claim that the change when a cat is burned to ashes is a result of basic particles aggregating and producing an emergent effect of a ashness. On this view of matter the powers of prime matter are relegated to the concrete particles of matter, becoming emergent properties. If this is possible, then we wouldn't need to posit prime matter as a solution to substantial change.
The difficulty of fundamental material particles accounting for the multiplicity of being, and its ability to take on new forms of existences, is only a difficulty if matter is conceived as a brute material substrate--a singular kind of thing like an atom or a quark. But if one introduces aggregate forms that have emergent effects (conscioussness, redness, sensation) then one can avoid having a principle like prime matter in their metaphysics.
I'm not advocating this view and I don't know if I think it plausible. I'm merely wondering whether or not it could act as a substitute for prime matter.
Last edited by RomanJoe (4/03/2018 5:34 pm)
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Posted by Miguel 4/04/2018 2:06 am | #2 |
Not a full critique and I'm tired right now, but that just seems to me to be a needlessly complex and even convoluted hypothesis to explain change, persistence etc. Instead of just positing prime matter, which can then structured in multiple forms, we are supposed to posit that "basic particles" all somehow have powers to produce emergent properties of the most varied kinds. And I find the whole notion of "emergence" to be deeply mysterious, similarly to the obscure talk of "supervenience" which naturalists often go on about. It's not for no reason that many naturalists still insist on reductionism, even though it is notoriously problematic. I don't even know if I can make sense of the idea of higher properties somehow "emerging" from basic particles apart from any hylemorphic view.
It just seems to me that hylemorphism's postulation of prime matter and forms is a much simpler and better theory.
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Posted by seigneur 4/04/2018 3:59 am | #3 |
RomanJoe wrote:
The difficulty of fundamental material particles accounting for the multiplicity of being, and its ability to take on new forms of existences, is only a difficulty if matter is conceived as a brute material substrate--a singular kind of thing like an atom or a quark. But if one introduces aggregate forms that have emergent effects (conscioussness, redness, sensation) then one can avoid having a principle like prime matter in their metaphysics.
I'm not advocating this view and I don't know if I think it plausible. I'm merely wondering whether or not it could act as a substitute for prime matter.
Let's see. In addition to singular material forms like atom and quark, one would posit also aggregate forms, and they in turn result in emergent effects like consciousness. What would those aggregate forms be aggregates of? Would they be chemical compounds or something else? What else?
If nothing else, then how is this thinly emergentist account different from straightforward materialism/physicalism?
In scholastic metaphysics, the so-called principles are favoured over other positums precisely because they (the principles) are maximally simple with maximal explanatory power. This is in accord with the requirement of explanatory economy (Ockham's razor).
Positing aggregates and emergent effects do not yield a solid metaphysical account, but depending on what your aims are, they may be a step towards such account.
