Thread 24844063

After seeing the catfights go on over the past year, I decided to read the book for myself. Joe Sachs translation. Fantastic book. The autist in me loved Metaphysics Delta in particular. But I felt like I left with more questions than answers.

I feel like the topic that Aristotle dealt with goes beyond what it means for something to be universal or particular, and it seems like Aristotle thought that essence is a form that is neither universal nor particular. But Aristotle made it clear that boilerplate Platonism does not logically work, although Sachs makes an effort in his footnotes to point out that something like Platonism can still be salvaged.

I also don't know how we can think of the active intellect aka the unmoved mover as the pure being-at-work of thinking with its object being itself. How can it be akin to wakefulness or meaningfully compared with anything we call thinking when our own wakefulness relies on a capacity or a power to be moved, something that the unmoved mover does not have? It seems like such an austere concept that we might as well treat it as the thinnest, brute fact aspect of being that we were looking for all along.

Idk. Thoughts?

>>24844063 (OP)
My only real goal, if I had any, in writing such rude and outrageous posts about Aristotle's nominalism, was the hope that some anon or other would get curious enough to study the thing for themselves and stop presuming on what they've heard about it. So glad to see some madman actually did it.

>essence is a form that is neither universal nor particular
That's a classic reading, one that I've argued against. You probably noticed that the word 'essence' (the formulae so translated) has multiple meanings, which are not disambiguated in Delta. On the one hand a thing really IS an "x", a cat, a table, and this is essence. And this is not the same as a universal, a concept in our own minds, which as you know Aristotle completely rejects as subsistent. On the other hand, the particular "x", this cat, this table, is also said to have its own essence. So the debate revolves around reconciling these two things. But if you've been following the catfight stuff you know what I think and the passages I can marshal in my support. As far as I'm concerned that passage in Meta 13 basically solves the whole issue. The relation between the particular and the universal is immediate. I don't even want to pretend that the other side (this cat is a cat because of its felinity) has a leg to stand on, it is just Platonism and it falls to all of Aristotle's arguments against Platonism. The only reason it has had such staying power is 1.) the obscurity of the Metaphysics; 2.) the influence of Platonist Church Fathers.

I'm not sure what it means for 'something like Platonism' to be salvaged, this could be true or false depending on what he means. Is Aristotle's God 'something like Platonism'? Yes, and also no lol. (cont'd)

>>24844063 (OP)
>I also don't know how we can think of the active intellect aka the unmoved mover
>recognizing that the active intellect is God, not a 'faculty' of consciousness
Gooddddd, gooodddddd.... you are not a Thomist. I think you are absolutely correct but if any of the resident tradcath zoomers shows up they will start copy-pasting lines from the Summa against you. If they even know enough about their OWN adopted stance to recognize how opposed you are to them in saying this, which they likely won't.
> How can it be akin to wakefulness or meaningfully compared with anything we call thinking when our own wakefulness relies on a capacity or a power to be moved, something that the unmoved mover does not have? It seems like such an austere concept that we might as well treat it as the thinnest, brute fact aspect of being that we were looking for all along.
Yeah Aristotle is shy to talk about theology. But the 'thinking' of God isn't like our thinking, it's not discursive, in understanding one thing (himself) God understands everything. So it's not really meant to be austere, Aristotle's God is very much a God of life. But it is something about which Aristotle did not think much could be said.

>>24844063 (OP)
>being-at-work for ἐνέργεια
Gay, sounds too continental, also implies a hard distinction between ἐνέργεια and ἐντελέχεια when they are nearly synonyms. You might as well say together-name for synonym and out-standingness for existence. Also last time I checked the word 'activity', the normal translation, already means being at work.

>>24844324
Yes some people like to fuss over the translation of philosophical terms but it's a mug's game because they're already technical jargon that are not being used as they would have been in the original language. As long as the translator is consistent it shouldn't matter whether you translate Hegel's Geist as spirit or mind (even if the former is obviously better), or Aristotle's ousia as Being or substance (here again the former is probably a bit better). Or to ti en einai as "what it was to be" or "essence", it just doesn't matter much at all. If the reader is attentive they will understand, if not then it won't matter how the word was translated.

>>24844350
>it shouldn't matter whether you translate Hegel's Geist as spirit or mind
The latter is completely retarded anon. The Geist of Athens was not a mind. He also says right in the preface that he takes Geist from modern religion; but in a religious context, Geist means something like spirit, not mind. If someone thinks it should be translated 'mind' you can practically discount anything else they have to say. Minds are individual, Geist is not an individual.

>>24844063 (OP)
I like Aristotle a lot better than Plato. Plato sucks. But with these guys, I always have to remind myself that they felt slavery was justified and essentialist. What'd you think about those parts?

>>24844376
The problem with translating it spirit is that then you have retards thinking he's talking about some sort of Spiritual Being.

>>24844421
Didnt Hegel eat a lot of yummy food and write a bunch of fancy shmancy bullshit while most people worked really hard so he could keep doing that? I dont think it matters much what Geist is interpreted as. It might as well mean "poo poo"

>>24844421
Sorry but Hegel is talking about God. It might be a 'philosopher's God' but it's still God. If you don't understand this, you're basically just another Pure Insightfag.

>>24844095
>That's a classic reading, one that I've argued against. You probably noticed that the word 'essence' (the formulae so translated) has multiple meanings, which are not disambiguated in Delta.
Yes, and since I read Sachs's translation, he translates "ousia" as "thing" and "to ti en einai" as "thinghood" (as opposed to essence). And sometimes the thinghood is composite (as the thing or ousia is defined by form and matter), sometimes thinghood is meant to isolate *just* the form, and controversially sometimes the ousia/thing itself is immaterial so there is only ever form to worry about in the first place.

At least, if I understood that correctly, that's what seems to be the thing there.

>The relation between the particular and the universal is immediate.
The thing is, it is hard to understand what it means for a relationship to be immediate, unless we are talking about something that is brute fact without prior explanation (so like some indemonstrable axiom like the principle of non-contradiction) or if there is a kind of mechanical cause and effect or mathematical formulaic thing going on here. Most relationships are mediated through something in at least a loose sense.

>But if you've been following the catfight stuff you know what I think and the passages I can marshal in my support. As far as I'm concerned that passage in Meta 13 basically solves the whole issue.
Honestly if you took the time to recapitulate your points and refresh my memory, I'll look into the book today and see what the Sachs translation says. Bekker numbers would be much more helpful though lol, but I won't be picky and I'll do my own work.

>I'm not sure what it means for 'something like Platonism' to be salvaged, this could be true or false depending on what he means. Is Aristotle's God 'something like Platonism'? Yes, and also no lol. (cont'd)
If I understand Sachs correctly, it's that forms writ large exist from the unmoved mover but they themselves don't inhere in themselves nor exist independently for reasons that Aristotle shared. But honestly this was not a train of thought I pursued with enough rigor, despite my interest. It took me months to finish the book, 20 pages at a time, and I left with more questions than answers in my annotations. It deserves another rereading or 5.

>Gooddddd, gooodddddd.... you are not a Thomist
Kek I like what I've seen but obviously there are problems with Thomism. But Alexander's/Caston's argument to link the two together seems irreproachable.

>Aristotle's God is very much a God of life. But it is something about which Aristotle did not think much could be said.
Was that the hidden punchline you were hinting at? =p

>>24844324
Read Sachs's preface and dictionary. He chooses that translation as being-at-work precisely because energeia and entelecheia are closely related and thinks that it helps get to the shared root meaning better.

>>24844445
I mean this is bait but this is usually what you hear about Hegel. People could just be honest, "Hegel is very demanding but I'm interested in other shit, I have no idea what he's talking about, I don't want to spend 1-2 years reading nothing but Hegel I have other philosophical interests". But instead they have to pretend that he wasn't saying anything worth reading in the first place. This is exacerbated by Hegel's being the "yes AND no" guy. So his answer to many issues is 'you're both right and you're both wrong' and that doesn't give you much to grab onto, as an outsider, it seems like a cheap trick without knowing his logic. Then maybe they take a peak in the Phenomenology and come across some passage like:
>The living substance, further, is that being which is truly subject, or, what is the same thing, is truly realised and actual (wirklich) solely in the process of positing itself, or in mediating with its own self its transitions from one state or position to the opposite. As subject it is pure and simple negativity, and just on that account a process of splitting up what is simple and undifferentiated, a process of duplicating and setting factors in opposition, which [process] in turn is the negation of this indifferent diversity and of the opposition of factors it entails. True reality is merely this process of reinstating self-identity, of reflecting into its own self in and from its other, and is not an original and primal unity as such, not an immediate unity as such. It is the process of its own becoming, the circle which presupposes its end as its purpose, and has its end for its beginning; it becomes concrete and actual only by being carried out, and by the end it involves.
And their response again instead of "I'm not sure what he's saying, I'm simply not interested enough to find out," is, "it's heckin' gibberish!!! What midwit reads this shit???"

Heidegger himself described Hegel as the 'end' of the philosophical project that starts with Plato. He synthesizes German idealism and Aristotle/neoplatonism, he is incredibly based and interesting. But yes steep learning curve, he talks about how philosophy demands that ordinary consciousness stand on its head, and the fruity language accurately reflects this.

>>24844557
>ousia as thing
That's radical, I like it. As you know from Delta it has multiple meanings but concrete thinghood is the real base. This is something tradcath zoomers will never understand, because for them the concrete thing is not first but depends on a ((universal)) essence.

One issue I'm sure you noticed re: separated substances is that Aristotle wants them to be intellects. But the passages in De Anima that are relevant here are extremely brief and obscure - why would a form, on its own, if such a thing is even possible, be an intellect? That's one of the questions that moves later Aristotelianism as far as I can understand from my pseud vantagepoint. Aquinas' take here is neoplatonist and I think it's wrong. Or, at any rate, it's definitely not something Aristotle himself would have endorsed. There's this sort of fad right now of saying 'maybe Aristotle really was basically a Platonist after all!' and that is what I'm attacking. It's not even mainstream but in online communities it is overrepresented because of chud/cultural factors. Just as the neoplatonists tried to circle the wagons and say all of these philosophers were really saying the same thing, the same sort of pressure drives chud/traditionalist types to a similar syncretism.
>The thing is, it is hard to understand what it means for a relationship to be immediate, unless we are talking about something that is brute fact without prior explanation (so like some indemonstrable axiom like the principle of non-contradiction) or if there is a kind of mechanical cause and effect or mathematical formulaic thing going on here. Most relationships are mediated through something in at least a loose sense.
Immediate relationships are everywhere, like between a limit and what is limited by it.
>Honestly if you took the time to recapitulate your points and refresh my memory, I'll look into the book today and see what the Sachs translation says. Bekker numbers would be much more helpful though lol, but I won't be picky and I'll do my own work.
I'm thinking of Meta 13 toward the end, where he directly addresses the problem of universals. That'd be the keystone, but also what he says about primary/secondary substance in Categories, what he says about universals as affections of the soul in de int 1, what he says about reproduction in gen an 4, and actually all sorts of shit I feel there's an overwhelming amount of evidence for my position frankly. Like the entire section in Meta Z where he refutes the subsistence of universals. The tradcaths want to say "there's this universal essence that somehow does not fall under those criticisms" and it just doesn't make sense, this is why the medieval nominalists won and the realists only live on in Church-funded Dominican troll farms. (cont'd)

>>24844557
>If I understand Sachs correctly, it's that forms writ large exist from the unmoved mover but they themselves don't inhere in themselves nor exist independently for reasons that Aristotle shared. But honestly this was not a train of thought I pursued with enough rigor, despite my interest. It took me months to finish the book, 20 pages at a time, and I left with more questions than answers in my annotations. It deserves another rereading or 5.
Yeah this is Aquinas' take too and many others, I think it is correct. God is not an intellect thinking a bunch of discrete things, but whatever it is that he is thinking, i.e. himself, is somehow everything in one. This is also basically what Plotinus says in that one kataphatic treatise in 6, I can't remember the exact citation. So this means - yes, there are indeed Forms? No, it means the world is intelligible and it's intelligible because it's caused by an intellect, which isn't the same thing.

The problem with Aquinas is that he was artificially anointed as the True Philosopher of a major world religion in the mid-19th century, this inevitably creates distortions. That's why you have retards on /lit/ pretending that Occam was le evil bad and scaryman, it's straight propaganda and as you have maybe seen these kids haven't even read Aristotle and don't understand the problem of universals in Aristotelianism. For me Aquinas was just too much of a Platonist. There are no Occamists any more because literally everyone is an Occamist, except for the Thomists.

>>24844598
>But the passages in De Anima that are relevant here are extremely brief and obscure - why would a form, on its own, if such a thing is even possible, be an intellect? That's one of the questions that moves later Aristotelianism as far as I can understand from my pseud vantagepoint.
I think the main question is whether reality is intelligible or not. And if there is no stable basis for intelligibility, then 1) philosophy & the sciences are pointless to a great extent; and 2) it's a miracle that anything & anybody could be understood at all. So, maybe intelligibility is another axiom? Lol.

Anyway, I like the way Aristotle seems to bypass the mind-matter dualism of the early moderns by making ousia into the underlying neutral monism that unites the two. You do bring up a good point though. How is something that is purely form possible? And the conclusion I came to is that just like something being pure matter aka pure potency is problematic, something being pure act is also problematic because it seems like it cannot have any relation with anything else. It's closed off and isolated.

>'maybe Aristotle really was basically a Platonist after all!'
Meh, I am not even sure that Plato is even a "Platonist", at least not the boilerplate Platonism that is ascribed to him, since he is the originator of the most devastating critiques of such a system in the first place. That's why Plato is the GOAT, but I digress. I prefer Gerson's understanding of "ur-Platonism" as Platonism, because at least a more sophisticated Platonism, or even a reconciliation between Plato & Aristotle (where the latter is mostly dominant), can prevail without one-over-many problems.

>Immediate relationships are everywhere, like between a limit and what is limited by it.
Even that example is susceptible to a Zeno-style paradox. Though, I'd love to pick your brain about a few more examples of immediate relationships. I suppose even a limit and what is limited by it are united by the underlying whole though, right? So perhaps its not immediate (since there is something mediating it). But again, there are probably Aristotelian opinions on this from Physics which I have not read yet lol.

>So this means - yes, there are indeed Forms? No, it means the world is intelligible and it's intelligible because it's caused by an intellect, which isn't the same thing.
Honestly, I'm glad that you are giving Aquinas some credit. It shows that you're not partisan. But Aristotle is very much "ousia-first" because Being is too equivocal without some foundation from which to derive every possible aspect of reality that one can pinpoint. I always felt that it was better to think of forms as attributes that one can "peel away" from the UM-AI, which is the actual thing that subsists by itself, or something like that.

It is still very strange that there can be any kind of multiplicity in an otherwise simple & immaterial structure though. Again, there's no underlying potential so no parts.

>>24844598
>The tradcaths want to say "there's this universal essence that somehow does not fall under those criticisms" and it just doesn't make sense, this is why the medieval nominalists won and the realists only live on in Church-funded Dominican troll farms.
>There are no Occamists any more because literally everyone is an Occamist, except for the Thomists.
You hear the most deranged and schizo nonsense on this site.

>>24844625
The funny thing about the theological-political narrative about Ockham and nominalism ruining everything... is that it is entirely besides the point. You can be a tranny Platonist (for reasons that are quite obvious). You can be a based nominalist (aka de Maistre). You can make metaphysical arguments for virtually any political position, and we see political movements gravitate to either/or, sometimes at the same time, depending on what can advance their political agenda. So why fixate over it?

>>24844673
I was exaggerating for keks.
>>24844672
Yes you have noticed something important about Aristotle, he assumes intelligibility. This is a first principle for him. You probably remember from Meta 4 his arguments against the skepticism amount to "but then the world wouldn't make any sense, I couldn't distinguish one thing from another", etc. One big shift from Aristotle -> German idealism is that the idealists take the skeptics seriously where Aristotle more or less dismisses them.
>Anyway, I like the way Aristotle seems to bypass the mind-matter dualism of the early moderns by making ousia into the underlying neutral monism that unites the two.
Yeah and this comes back to life with Kant, as strange as that may sound, given how intensely dualistic/representationalist Kant's language is. I think of German idealism as picking up where the scholastics left off, I see a lot of continuity between the two traditions, as have others.
>How is something that is purely form possible? And the conclusion I came to is that just like something being pure matter aka pure potency is problematic, something being pure act is also problematic because it seems like it cannot have any relation with anything else. It's closed off and isolated.
Yeah and now you're bringing up a good point. As far as I can see, Aristotle's justification of there being separated substances is grounded in physics, there simply have to be such substances for the world to exist, as in physics 8, and he repeats the same arguments in meta 12. But he's heckin' shy about metaphysical speculation, he doesn't get into the weeds on this. But there is a bridge here that can help one understand a bit, which is our human intellect as passive intellect. The separated substances are a sort of inversion of our own intellects, where we passively 'take up' knowledge, they're actively 'creating' it in some way. This is how I (and others, but not Thomists) read De Anima 3.5.
>Meh, I am not even sure that Plato is even a "Platonist", at least not the boilerplate Platonism that is ascribed to him, since he is the originator of the most devastating critiques of such a system in the first place. That's why Plato is the GOAT, but I digress. I prefer Gerson's understanding of "ur-Platonism" as Platonism, because at least a more sophisticated Platonism, or even a reconciliation between Plato & Aristotle (where the latter is mostly dominant), can prevail without one-over-many problems.
Agreed, no one really knows what Plato thought. You can read the Parmenides as pointing toward something like Aristotelianism. The view the tradcaths want to give to Aristotle, though, is more like a crude Platonism, the one over many - "How could I think this was a cat... were it not for Catness Itself??" (cont'd)

>>24844694
The frustration for me is that these people all think Aristotelian nominalism is a sort of radical skepticism + egoism when it simply isn't. Nominalism is important because it helped direct our thoughts toward the here and now, the concrete 'this', away from completely empty metaphysical abstractions like 'equinity'. Nominalism gave us modern science and I know the chuds here think anything modern is le bad but I'm glad I can go see a doctor and I recognize that, philosophically, nominalism paved the way to this. And as you say I don't see how realism per se would prevent these various bad things, contraception and trannies and black people in the library and whatever else they're upset about. Nominalism and realism are not two realities they're two ways of thinking about the SAME reality, these are what Hegel calls 'after-thoughts', they don't have concrete bearing. A realist could absolutely justify 'bad things' just as much as a nominalist could.

>>24844672
>Even that example is susceptible to a Zeno-style paradox. Though, I'd love to pick your brain about a few more examples of immediate relationships. I suppose even a limit and what is limited by it are united by the underlying whole though, right? So perhaps its not immediate (since there is something mediating it). But again, there are probably Aristotelian opinions on this from Physics which I have not read yet lol.
Oh man I thought about going into this when writing the post and decided not to. But yes nothing is truly and absolutely immediate, everything is related to other things; that's almost trivially true though Aristotle doesn't say it as I recall. But take form and matter - is there a middle between your soul and your body? Of course not, they're a unity. But on the other hand the soul is 'mediated' insofar as it is part of the composite. But there's no middle between the form and the matter and in that sense the relationship is immediate. Another example would be subalterns, like the kinds of color. There's red, there's blue, but is there a middle between them, an explanation for their being? That's a bad example because you could get into the physics of it I guess. But you see at some point you reach an immediate, this is something he hammers home in Post An. Why is one and one two? It just is, it's immediate, it's simply the definition of two. Aristotelian realists think there needs to be a middle term between the universal and the particular and I'd say 'no', and I think Aristotle also says 'no' to this many times. What sort of thing could this be which is supposed to be neither particular nor universal? Entia non sunt multiplicanda.

>>24844672
>It is still very strange that there can be any kind of multiplicity in an otherwise simple & immaterial structure though. Again, there's no underlying potential so no parts.
There you go, that's another Big Issue in the development of Aristotelianism. You're hitting on all of them with the power of your own brain. Why does the UM-AI create, why does it need to be an end, why doesn't it just enjoy its own perfection? And you have many answers, from Plotinus - "Being is power, Being always overflows and expresses itself in something lesser", and so on - all the way down to Fichte, "This question is in principle unanswerable."

>>24844714
>But there is a bridge here that can help one understand a bit, which is our human intellect as passive intellect. The separated substances are a sort of inversion of our own intellects, where we passively 'take up' knowledge, they're actively 'creating' it in some way.
Wouldn't it make more sense to think of the knowledge as already created by the UM-AI? There would be no genesis of something eternal. It just is.
>Aristotelian realists think there needs to be a middle term between the universal and the particular and I'd say 'no', and I think Aristotle also says 'no' to this many times.
So, either we have a brute fact relation, or we have some kind of underlying and unifying thing, aka the substance itself. But that's where it gets weird, because the substance itself is what unifies and is also particular, but the form itself is a universal. I guess the form-at-work as essence (excuse my poor imitation of Sachs) is neither universal nor particular? Maybe that's the solution? I don't know how something can be neither universal nor particular though. It's like saying that something is neither true nor false.
>>24844768
Well, the fact that it is its own end seems credible enough. But why is there difference that emerges/unravels/overflows from the UM-AI, it beats me.

What the hell the acronym UM-AI stand for besides the meaning of it as Being qua being?

>>24844965
It's just my shorthand for unmoved mover-active intellect to indicate that we're treating it as the same thing.

>>24844914
Yeah I was using temporal language metaphorically there. But you see the mirror reflection Aristotle is going for. We understand the world and in understanding the world understand God. God is the active side of the equation, in de anima.

This isn’t a “brute fact” relation, like a bad smell we have to put up with. Post A shows why we must reach immediate relations and what sorts of relation are immediate. These immediates are better known than what they ground, not less.

Form is actuality. So it’s NOT universal. Don’t get confused, an Aristotelian form is not a Platonic idea.

Hegel would say the issue here is that God and the world aren’t two separate poles at all. Diversity of the world and oneness of God are interdependent. You can see this movement from the abstraction of Plato, to the astro-theology of Aristotle, to the humanistic pantheism of Hegel. Or the humanistic theism of Kant and Fichte.

I’m phone posting that’s all I got good luck bro <3

>>24845082
Which parts of Post An deal with immediate vs. mediate relations? I'll have to look into that.

Otherwise, I just feel kind of empty at this point. Tbh I miss the Thomist troll farm.

bampin' (pic semi-unrelated, basic Neoplatonic schema on the Soul)

>>24844063 (OP)
>Thoughts
metaphysics is a waste of time
>t. descartes

>>24845082
>>24845145
Also, since I'm here, why did you think that ousia translated as thing was so radical? And also, on the topic of religious interpreters, what do you think of Duns Scotus?

bump

>>24844768
I think Plotinus' Absolute is an Active Potential, that provides Actuality for Active Actuality, but that's neither here or there, especially in an Aristotelian thread, though it is a solution however illogical it may be, to the question of why Being is Power and why Being doesn't rest in its perfection.

>>24845145
It's one of the main themes of the book. So right at the start when he talks about how the 'chain' of reasons must stop somewhere, this 'ultimate' is immediate. And also at the end, the whole bit on noesis is about immediate propositions. He talks about it all over the place really. Or the famous proof around lectio ~17 of book 1 iirc, that demonstration must come to a stop, is all about this.
>>24846451
To translate ousia as 'thing' means to recognize that for Aristotle the concrete this is what's really real, is what's most real. Thoughts, universals, are not somehow 'more real' than the actual thing. God himself is a 'this' like this, not some sort of "unity in itself" or any abstraction. I'm sure you remember those discussions in Metaphysics though he talks about it in a few places. Substance is just as radical I suppose, a substance, what underlies, is a concrete this, but it's a technical term so it doesn't have the same oomph as plain old 'thing'. Then again substance can also be used in other ways etc. of course, but this is the core meaning. I've never read Duns Scotus, only about him. I think he is correct that it is not possible for an Aristotelian to demonstrate the immortality of the soul, and imo Aristotle did not believe in personal immortality. Not just my opinion but many other Aristotelians would agree, again just not Thomists.

Does not Aquinas say active intellect is NOT the unmoved mover/god in the commentary on the de anima or am I retarded? Why does nominalist anon Lee equating this view with thomists?

>>24847925
*keep not Lee (autocorrect)

>>24847925
Exactly, that's Aquinas' position and I think it is incorrect. And so would Averroes, and Themistius, and Alexander of Aphrodisias, and ~90% of Aristotelians besides Thomists. You're just misunderstanding what I said.

>>24847882
>this 'ultimate' is immediate
Wait, so either the conclusion of a chain of reasons, or both ends of the chains of reasons (so final conclusion and the initial axiom)? I'm a bit confused as to what counts as "immediate".

For me, it seems like you are saying that something is mediate when it is *between* things, but something is immediate when it is the beginning or the end. But that's a weird use of the word "immediate" for me because 1) there is a connection in reasoning; and 2) before I had asked if it was a brute fact, and you had said no, but now it seems like they are brute facts after all.

Is there a Greek term for mediate and immediate that Aristotle uses? I was thinking about either going for another reread of Metaphysics or reading De Anima, but now it seems like Post An might be on the menu. Apostle is a good translation, right?

>To translate ousia as 'thing' means to recognize that for Aristotle the concrete this is what's really real, is what's most real. Thoughts, universals, are not somehow 'more real' than the actual thing.
That's fair. And honestly, I wonder if there's a sort of "game theory" to choosing which is most real, since: 1) Being refers to all of them, 2) an explanation needs to begin from somewhere, and 3) it is not immediately apparent which one should be the "bedrock" for the rest. I'm reminded of this excerpt comparing what substance is for Peirce in comparison with Aristotle (see pic rel). Obviously after Metaphysics, it seems apparent that substance should be it, but idk, maybe there could be a science of universals and how they interact with each other that isn't necessary Platonic. These studies are built on loftier and shakier ground than we give them credit for.

>>24847950
Sorry I see now, I think the structure of the green text above confused me, also I may have re-read your previous posts in other threads somehow. for that I sincerely apologize. I will go now and read the metaphysics 10 times before allowing myself to eat another meal.

bump

>>24844112
That passage from Timeaus (you know the one) demonstrates what's God's thinking is like. Of course, for strollers Timeaus is probably unacceptable.

>>24844376
Spirits can be individual too. Everything partakes of individuality in so far as it has any being. Why are strollers smart enough to regurgitate Aristotle but dumb enough not to understand basic metaphysics?

>>24844567
As far as I understood it, he's just describing how panentheism works with lots of verbiage. The icing on the sophistry cake is that the zenith of God's manifestation in time was supposed to be in his work. Don't get me wrong I thought the Phenomenology was interesting, the parts I understood, but it was certainly mostly wasted paper.

>>24844714
>"How could I think this was a cat... were it not for Catness Itself??"
You can call me legitimately retarded it's ok but what is the Aristotelian answer for this? That cats resemble each other? I would have thought, but then why can't we call the resemblance in more or less tortured language, "catness"?

>>24849429
You can call it whatever you want, and it is real, meaningful, and something shared between the cats, but it does not exist by itself as some separate thing. It doesn't exist in the mind, it doesn't exist in the Platonic realms, it doesn't exist in the mind of God, it doesn't exist in Erdos's "book", etc., at least not exist in the robust sense of being wholly independent, separate, and self-subsisting. Each cat exists by itself, but not catness.

>>24849438
Then how can causes even "come to be" nor "cease to be" without any UM-AI? Sounds like there's has to be at least one thing the UM-AI needs to generate what's passively receptive of act for it to be efficiently that thing, yet how exactly is it done without terminating into "name and form"? By necessity of which? Seems easier to admit to Necessity has to be stronger than Being to make arguments concerning Being being weaker than necessity, and that Necessity is in some ways, Absolute, beyond the weakness of Being that generates beings, which therefore makes Being not a pure Principality but a mixture of Principle and Attribute. There's also the issue of how Aristotle doesn't explicitly demand only there being one Being so there can be multiple UM-AIs. The Problem of infinite regress of Hard Pluralism all the way up is left unresolved.

>>24849438
Does any cat exist by itself either? A single cat implies the rest of the world because it is in a place in the world, birthed of another cat, made of organs and bones and eventually basic particles which obey the same physics as the other things in the world and which through causality gave rise to the state of the world.

And furthermore if it's real meaningful &c. then where Does it exist? It certainly doesn't exist in the cat because it doesn't have a physical location (at least not in the way a cat does) yet it's still the object of thought, of the mind's eye. Call it something other than the realm of forms if you prefer but if the objects of thought exist (and they do, as we agree) and it's clear there are relations between them then what's wrong with positing some sort of analogous space in which they exist? If you're familiar with the notion of a state space in physics that what I'm imagining.

Obviously under that last notion a "cat" does become one among many structures in the state space and it seems arbitrary which ones we pick out as named, or even which bits of the space we pick out as "structures" so it's not like a refutation of nominalism I just think it fits with the mathematical thrust of Plato. But it still exists, is the point.

>>24849466
An Immanent Abstraction Nominalism though has one problem: It cannot properly speak of a Transcendent Being qua being(s) that exists by necessity since it's not phenomenally referred to. Transcendent and Immanent Nominalism may not have that issue, while Atheists would just reject Transcendent Realities altogether. What a strange enterprise that would be.

>>24849456
>Then how can causes even "come to be" nor "cease to be" without any UM-AI
Which causes are you referring to? Or are you referring to causes in general? The answer is that causes in general were always there, and Aristotle believes that motion was always there too in an infinite chain in time.
>>24849466
>Does any cat exist by itself either?
Insofar as a cat can continue being a cat in perpetuity, provided that it doesn't die from natural causes, accidents, predation, etc., it absolutely exists by itself and actively maintains its own existence. The rest that you mentioned is an interesting philosophical implication, but it threatens to derail any coherent attempt at metaphysics and explanation, at least until you can grasp why Aristotle has chosen this bedrock of explanation.
>And furthermore if it's real meaningful &c. then where Does it exist?
In each cat. But it can't exist on its own and separate from the cats. What more do you need?

I don't know why you raise the other questions. It seems contrived if you need the "location" of a form (as if that is helpful for knowing what a form is and how to know it by), and you're unimpressed by pointing to any and all locations of cats, but yet are magically satisfied by the invention of a pseudo-space which isn't a space or location for it to exist. You can call it mere analogy, but analogy creates breathing room for sophistry to thrive.

>>24849493
What "caused" causes to "always there" if it's not caused by other causes for it to be either general or specific cause? Did Aristotle just assert this axiomatically without further introspection? How unreasonable, if that's what he's done.

One can refer to a species of animal that was wiped off of the realm of the living through referring to a timeline of a given space, but whose to say there will never be something biologically identical as a cat on earth as it is in some other phenomenal planet? You haven't checked all habitable planets in all of creation have you? Since dialectically cat existed in a space and time, a cat can exist in a completely different space and time so long as its evolutionary accidents produces cat in there. The Potential of cat exists any-where regardless of the actual cats' locations and positions because we can refer to actual cats, correct?

>>24849515
>What "caused" causes to "always there" if it's not caused by other causes for it to be either general or specific cause? Did Aristotle just assert this axiomatically without further introspection? How unreasonable, if that's what he's done.
I think you should read Metaphysics Lambda and then get back to me.

>>24849537
I think Aristotle doesn't explain it well in Lambda. His ambiguities is present even by commentarialists http://naturalisms.org/phil-editions/ancient/Aristotle/Aristotle%20Metaphysics%20Lambda%20-%20Oxford%20edn%202019.pdf

Aristotle and Aristotelians: Never A Straight Answer

>>24849766
Well the problem for me is that you seem to be unfamiliar with Aristotle's work with language like:
>Did Aristotle just assert this axiomatically without further introspection?
Because if you've read it, you would have answers as to what Aristotle believed and why you believed it. And desu I have my reservations as well but if you're not giving me anything to work with, I can't have a fruitful conversation.

>>24849481
But it isn’t “immanent abstraction nominalism”. Nominalists reject abstractionism as does Aristotle - see post an 2.19 as well as the discussion of potential universals and intellection in De Anima. There’s no entity to abstract, universals do not exist outside the mind as such. Why would the denial of subsistent universals = atheism? That doesn’t follow at all. I don’t understand the mentality of people here who want to argue but haven’t read the primary sources. Then they get annoyed when I won’t hold their hand and comment on the whole corpus line by line for them.

>>24849493
>but it threatens to derail any coherent attempt at metaphysics and explanation, at least until you can grasp why Aristotle has chosen this bedrock of explanation.
That's fair I'm only about halfway through the metaphysics myself

>You can call it mere analogy,
I mean the form doesn't exist literally in any cats either since I could x-ray and dissect as many cats as I want and I'll never find it, "in the cat" is being used analogically too. But fine you could replace "in" with "of" or something less locative if that were the real issue. What I was getting at with this state space location thing is that some forms are closer to other forms, some are deformed into other forms via certain transformations and so on, so a mathematical space seems like an appropriate way to, if not visualise then approach the situation.

>But it can't exist on its own and separate from the cats.
And neither can the cats exist on their own and separate from the world but like you said this is too much of a digression until I can phrase it compactly

>Aristotle is always already Heidegger
Discarded.

>>24850067
I will grant you this. I don't know how Aristotle would react to the theory of evolution.

>>24850064
Also, in De Anima Aristotle talks about the intellect “becoming” its object, “becoming” a form, eidos. And they think this means it becomes a divine Universal like in Augustine. So it’s just frustrating to talk about Aristotle here because you hardly ever meet anyone who has so much as mastered his technical vocabulary. The clearest account of intellection is post an, see for yourself there is no abstraction. For Aristotle “abstraction” (I forget the Greek desu) refers to the abstraction of quantity from substance in mathematics, it has nothing to do with “abstracting” a universal from a particular with your trusty rusty Agent Intellect. And how many times do I need to remind people that Aristotle denies that universals exist in Meta and all over the place? But people think he thought intellection depends on “abstracting” something from the thing, which he consistently maintains *does not exist* outside the mind, and is only immanently in the divine intellect?

>>24850082
He would have accepted it, it is not metaphysically problematic for him. He rejects Empedocles' theory of evolution on other grounds. There is even a line in History of Animals about how the boundaries between species are often fuzzy and unclear. Evolution is not a problem for an Aristotelian, a nominalist, someone who knows particulars ground universals rather than vice versa. But it's a fatal problem for Thomists - how do you handle these transitional individuals? "Hmm, its essence is still chimpanzee... and yet... it is sort of a Schopenhauer poster, somehow? Maybe because of the... uh... matter?" Evolution can't be reconciled with Thomistic ((essences)) and their crude, dare I say retarded, Fisher Price-inflected hylemorphism. Read their attempts and see for yourself, they're rubbish. That may be the easiest way to get red pilled about Thomism, read how they have attempted to make sense of evolution. Aristotle knew that individual animals have their own genetic material contributed by both of the parents, he talks about this at length in De Gen An. Inb4 some jackass who hasn't read DGA saying Aristotle thought the mother only contributed 'matter' (he's talking about the mechanics of reproduction there, not the 'genetics' of the individual produced).

>>24850096
>For Aristotle “abstraction” (I forget the Greek desu) refers to the abstraction of quantity from substance in mathematics, it has nothing to do with “abstracting” a universal from a particular with your trusty rusty Agent Intellect.
The term is aphairesis, and you're absolutely right about that. Even Sachs, who allows himself a little Platonism as a treat, highlights this aspect about "abstraction".
>Also, in De Anima Aristotle talks about the intellect “becoming” its object, “becoming” a form, eidos.
Doesn't he also talk about how, in Physics, Book VII, Chapter 3, last paragraph, knowledge is always known prior,. and that learning is more about stabilizing the restlessness of the mind than changing it?

>>24850129
>There is even a line in History of Animals about how the boundaries between species are often fuzzy and unclear.
You'd think that'd be a problem lol. Forms almost seem like noumena to Aristotle, then. I guess I was always looking for a "formal science" in Aristotle and never found one, outside bits and pieces from De Anima, syllogism, the works on Animals and Plants, etc.
>Evolution can't be reconciled with Thomistic ((essences)) and their crude, dare I say retarded, Fisher Price-inflected hylemorphism. Read their attempts and see for yourself, they're rubbish. That may be the easiest way to get red pilled about Thomism, read how they have attempted to make sense of evolution. Aristotle knew that individual animals have their own genetic material contributed by both of the parents, he talks about this at length in De Gen An.
I guess the main issue is to talk about where the form comes from when evolution occurs. But I suppose nominalism is in better shape here because they have less commitments to make and thus have more space for a robust explanation of changing species.

>>24850064
If your "God" and/or "Being" is purely Immanent, where is it? It doesn't exist in a purely Immanent Nominalist framework, it can be named in a Nominalist framework that isn't purely of Immanent reality. Immanent Nominalists can't refer to any Being that's Transcendent, yet they only concoct words that gestures to an Immanent Being that they can't actually discuss to be Immanent.

Although Aristotle may not himself believed in "Immanent Abstraction Nominalism", C S Peirce had. If you look at any video among Taxonomists, they certainly don't think Aristotle was right at all about a lot of things and do hold that there is an Immanent Abstraction within Living Beings that can be Named for the sake of classification and exists as a matter of fact independently from the mortal mind.

Regardless, neither Immanent Nominalism nor Immanent Abstraction Nominalism are complete per the first question of where is your "God" within phenomena.

>>24849942
Aristotle, unlike Plato, tried to bake a cake and eat it, in the UM-AI superimposition presumption. Again, why would a perfect Being make imperfect beings? If anything, however sort of perfection of Being has, Being-Itself is also engaged in an imperfect teleology. Throwing around Necessity and Eternity and such doesn't get rid of this initially Platonic problem that resurfaced in an Aristotelianized schema of the Platonic One and the Indefinite Dyad flattened in a superimposition as Unmoved Mover that's also Active Intellect. There's your Spinozian Natura Naturans and Natura Naturata, where One and Many is {One Many} prior to a oneness and a manyness

>>24850289
The UM-AI doesn't make anything. It isn't an efficient cause.

>>24850313
The Neoplatonist, for all their flaws, were right about the efficient cause leads to the final cause. An Aristotelian paradigm imbues meaninglessness in all life.

>>24850159
>Doesn't he also talk about how, in Physics, Book VII, Chapter 3, last paragraph, knowledge is always known prior,. and that learning is more about stabilizing the restlessness of the mind than changing it?
I always thought that was a very cool/weird chapter. But he isn't talking about anamnesis, he refutes (his interpretation of) Plato's theory of knowledge in Post An 1.1. A couple of things - is knowing a becoming? No, but not because it is not something that (broadly speaking) occurs or comes to be, but because it's a relation between the particular and the universal in the intellect. Whereas 'becoming' would be like a seed sprouting into a tree, a substance arising into existence. He says that knowing arises in the presence of 'something else' - is this something else an intellectual object existing outside the intellect, as in Platonisms? Na, it's the particular, and this is just what he says here, and also elsewhere. "it is when it meets with the particular object that it knows in a manner the particular through its knowledge of the universal." So if anything it's another passage in my favor, the relationship is immediate. As for the intellect 'coming to a state of rest' - someone might read this in a Platonist way as well. But you can see the contrast is again with becoming, and he's talking about the psychology of coming to know something, and how this isn't a becoming or an alteration. As a matter of plain language there wouldn't be anything wrong with describing it this way but not with the technical sense Aristotle gives these words. Learning isn't the coming to be of a substance, it isn't an alteration like a wall becoming white, it's a 'falling into place' and a coming to rest of the intellect in relation to something else, the particular which is potential in the universal.

>>24850381
But Aristotle does think efficient causes lead to final causes, this is why God is a final cause not an efficient cause. An efficient cause can't be first, its end is first, you see this in Physics 8 when he's explaining why he doesn't think you can stop with the heavenly bodies themselves. If you think this "imbues meaninglessness in all life" I don't know how to respond, I think you're confused. Aristotle metaphorically compares God to the general of an army in Meta 12. A final cause isn't less than an efficient cause, it's greater.

>>24844063 (OP)
Nigger.

>>24850433
(cont'd) also I should point out that this line of thought is itself deeply Platonist. Plato's God is the Good, right? In Timaeus you have God or at least the Demiurge as an efficient cause but this is mythological. Is there a sense in which the ultimate final cause is "Causing" things to be in some sort of efficient sense? Metaphorically, yes. And imo the most convincing answer Plotinus has to the 'why is the One become many?' question is teleological.

>>24850428
I was thinking about picking up Post An next, actually. Hippocrates Apostle or Barnes? Wish there was a Sachs version. =(
>Learning isn't the coming to be of a substance, it isn't an alteration like a wall becoming white, it's a 'falling into place' and a coming to rest of the intellect in relation to something else, the particular which is potential in the universal.
Well, it's just very confusing to see how the Platonic bent isn't in line with the anti-becoming aspect of Aristotle's "resting of the intellect" here, unless perhaps you are suggested that Aristotle is flanking Plato from Platonism (i.e. if Plato's anamnesis is like a potency of sorts from an earlier actuality, Aristotle's anamnesis never posits a forgetting and was always actual from the very beginning).

>>24850289
> Again, why would a perfect Being make imperfect beings?
Aristotle doesn't even try to answer this. Aristotle is 1.) very afraid of being too speculative, he was traumatized by all this schizo mumbo jumbo he experienced in the Academy; 2.) one of his main ideas is that some things are the way they are and we can't seek further explanations for them.
> If anything, however sort of perfection of Being has, Being-Itself is also engaged in an imperfect teleology. Throwing around Necessity and Eternity and such doesn't get rid of this initially Platonic problem that resurfaced in an Aristotelianized schema of the Platonic One and the Indefinite Dyad flattened in a superimposition as Unmoved Mover that's also Active Intellect. There's your Spinozian Natura Naturans and Natura Naturata, where One and Many is {One Many} prior to a oneness and a manyness
I agree, his theology is flawed and it does indeed lead to Spinozism. The idealists are the heroes in this story. I'm just trying to give him his due. I am not an astrotheologian and if you throw out the astro- part, none of it makes sense. This is another thing Thomists will never understand.

>>24850428
Were you the same guy that was arguing that Post An is about knowledge as opposed to merely pedagogical teaching?

>>24850458
Barnes is the only one I've read and it's perfectly fine, very literal. His commentary sucks though. I know how retarded that sounds, some random anon criticizing a great scholar, but he really did not understand, partly I think because he never read any of the Arabs. He thinks the syllogism is a deductive argument and this is fatal to understanding the Organon. The Greeks themselves did not understand the Analytics, it's an absolute cunt of a book, the sketchiest thing Aristotle wrote. I've heard good things about Apostle and he seems highly congenial to me, like I know he is critical of Barnes, but haven't read it. Aquinas' commentary is useful in the sense that he explains the structure of the work - there is a method to Aristotle's apparent madness. But on some of the details he is wrong, partly because his translation was bad, partly because he relies on a bad commentary (Philoponus). Still for a crutch to help you figure out wtf is going on in some of the trickier passages you could do worse than Aquinas.
>Well, it's just very confusing to see how the Platonic bent isn't in line with the anti-becoming aspect of Aristotle's "resting of the intellect" here, unless perhaps you are suggested that Aristotle is flanking Plato from Platonism (i.e. if Plato's anamnesis is like a potency of sorts from an earlier actuality, Aristotle's anamnesis never posits a forgetting and was always actual from the very beginning).
I might be misunderstanding you but the 'coming to rest' aspect doesn't have to do with our 'already knowing' whatever we come to know, it's just a psychological observation about how when we know something we 'rest' in our knowledge of it. When I know something my intellect as such is not in motion in any way; if it was moving, I wouldn't be knowing that thing.

>>24850486
Yes, and it is about knowledge, and he says this right at the start of the Analytics. There are passages certainly that do talk about pedagogy (thesis vs. hypothesis and so on) but the subject of the work is episteme. I don't care to argue about it if you think otherwise, you're wrong and should read it again, the evidence is absolutely overwhelming and literally every single Aristotelian that I have ever read, besides whatever modern jackass may have influenced you, agrees with me.

>>24850506
>I might be misunderstanding you but the 'coming to rest' aspect doesn't have to do with our 'already knowing' whatever we come to know, it's just a psychological observation about how when we know something we 'rest' in our knowledge of it. When I know something my intellect as such is not in motion in any way; if it was moving, I wouldn't be knowing that thing.
I'm just confused as to how can there be a rest without implying something was in motion (and now no longer is not), a "coming" to rest without a becoming of some kind. Unless all this motion is merely incidental to knowledge, which imparts its own change, then I don't see how it doesn't imply that the knowledge wasn't always there, merely obscured by disorder or something. It seems to me like Aristotle's trying to push some angle of Platonic anamnesis yet holds back in some way. Idk. I need a better explanation.

>>24850514
No I think you're right. Any teaching is ultimately about knowledge and its transfer so I don't even know why someone would be so fixated on something so obviously ancillary and minor.

>>24850506
>>24850514
>>24850546
Thank you anon, I've decided that I'm gonna read Posterior Analytics and learn more about this science. Originally, I was going to read De Anima, but it seems like my answer to how the mind understands forms and coming up with a "science of forms" will best be understood here more than anywhere else.

I have some old questions though, that I'd love if you could briefly answer each (I know it's a lot, just throwing it out there) before I start reading:

Does the presentation of the arguments in Posterior Analytics affect the necessity of the arguments therein? Why or why not?

What is the being of a syllogism?

What would we lose in Posterior Analytics and elsewhere in the Aristotelian corpus if its conclusions were not seen as necessary?

To what extent does an argument need to be isomorphic with its object?

What would you say is the scope of a syllogism, and do syllogisms need to be made explicit in order to be present?

How committed to Posterior Analytics is Aristotle?

What role do you see Post An playing within Aristotle's work?

>>24850514
>>24850506
>erratic schizo back-and-forth between helpful, overly familiar, and insanely angry
I guarantee you this guy is a drunk. Pretty sure he has alluded to heavy drinking in the past, too.

>>24850433
I completely disagree. Proclus finds a lot of holes that strict Aristotelians are too tunnel visioned to see, and how no one at all has properly systematized Aristotle in a consistent manner due to how there are innumerable many more ways in "misreading" him so often on almost everything and everything he has ever said, he has been a terrible teacher and great confounder.

Image from Proclus on Aristotle on Plato: A Case Study on Motion by Rareș Ilie Marinescu.

>>24850444
Not metaphorically.
Also, Aristotle's system is shifted one downwards from a Platonic perspective.

>>24850586
>Does the presentation of the arguments in Posterior Analytics affect the necessity of the arguments therein?

Yeah sure there’s a generally out-to-in movement in the text. He starts with apodeixis itself, the demonstrative syllogism, ie scientific explanations. Then in book 2 he discusses the principles of demonstration, middle terms/suppositions and definitions. And it peaks in 2.19, the very end, when he finally answers the big question - how do we acquire these principles of knowing? And each of these sections contains a similar inward movement within itself. It seems sketchy af at first but Aquinas does a good job at seeing the overall structure, he’s great at this in general. As usual in Aristotle the peak section is brief, ugly, obscure, and doesn’t draw attention to itself but it is essential to understanding him. I think reading Theaetetus alongside it is a good idea because it is closely related to that dialogue, almost a direct response to it.

> What is the being of a syllogism?

Strictly speaking it’s a state in your mind, just like anything involving universals. But it is grounded in real particulars. So imo the answer to this is the same thing I’ve been shilling for ages. Syllogisms are logical, it’s being in the intellect. And then recall what Aristotle says about the distinction between logic and metaphysics at the end of Meta 6.

> What would we lose in Posterior Analytics and elsewhere in the Aristotelian corpus if its conclusions were not seen as necessary?

It’d be fatal, the Analytics is his epistemology. He employs it constantly. Parts of Animals serves as an especially ‘clean’ illustration but it’s literally everywhere. Luckily it is quite sound, even modern scientists conform to these principles without knowing it. It’s not a guide to discovering scientific knowledge, it’s more an analysis of what it means to know something.

> To what extent does an argument need to be isomorphic with its object?

It depends on what you mean by isomorphic. A meteorologist knows how weather works but doesn’t know what the weather will be in 2 weeks. This is a big can of worms I dunno if I can do justice to it in a short post. I’ll just shill Meta 13.10 again and say that in Post An Aristotle shows how scientific knowledge is universal, not particular. In that sense it is not isomorphic, the relationship between our minds and reality is not symmetrical and particulars, the principles of knowing, are not knowable as such. This is why for example phronesis is a separate faculty from episteme.

>>24850898
(Cont’d)
> What would you say is the scope of a syllogism, and do syllogisms need to be made explicit in order to be present?

We syllogize constantly whenever we think, any explanation is syllogistic. The syllogistic form (“all a is b”) is totally unnecessary outside the science of Logic. You’ll see this yourself when for example Aristotle recognizes stuff like Bryson’s method of squaring the circle as syllogistic. Bryson didn’t write “in syllogisms” any more than did Aristotle but logically all explanations are syllogistic. Again, Aristotle says arithmetic is syllogistic. But it’s not written “in syllogisms”. In the Rhetoric he says people naturally syllogize well without any formal training. This isn’t a new “method” it’s an analysis of something we’re so familiar with that we take it for granted. As Hegel said what is most familiar is for that very reason not well known.

> How committed to Posterior Analytics is Aristotle?

Very, he alludes to it often, I think it’s the most frequently internally-quoted work. All that stuff in Metaphysics about the nature of first philosophy is deeply entwined with Post An, etc etc

> What role do you see Post A playing within Aristotle's work?

Simply put it is his theory of knowledge, his Wissenschaftslehre.

>>24850805
Aristotle says in Meta 12 that the unmoved movers are ends. And he says in more places than Physics 7 that an efficient cause must be in contact with what it moves and vice versa. And the “touching” of an unmoved mover is metaphorical, Aristotle makes a point of saying this too. (“I was touched by the music”). Finally, Aristotle’s God IS a one, there is no real distinction between subject and object in God, he says God is perfectly simple. Plotinus’ criticisms of Aristotle’s God as complex are retarded, Aristotle’s God is not thinking of Forms like the Neoplatonic nous, that’s Alexander of Aphrodisias, not Aristotle himself. Neoplatonists relied on Alexander too much. Also even Plotinus’ One is thinking itself (katanoesis), and yet it is not complex. Aristotle’s God is just like that. This is your brain on ((secondary sources)).

>>24851014
>Aristotle’s God is not thinking of Forms like the Neoplatonic nous, that’s Alexander of Aphrodisias, not Aristotle himself. Neoplatonists relied on Alexander too much. Also even Plotinus’ One is thinking itself (katanoesis), and yet it is not complex. Aristotle’s God is just like that. This is your brain on ((secondary sources)).
So what is it thinking of? Or I guess are you criticizing Alexander's attempt to understand the multiplicity of forms?

>>24844112
>>24847925
>>24847950
It's actually hilarious how hard catholic "philosophers" have worked at separating God from creation, in a way that completely cancels out any "proof" of God one might want to give, and makes their entire "system" a jumbled mess.

Take the whole common/universal being debacle. It's rather obvious that if "our" intellect stopped in any real sense at the bare category or common being (whatever the hell that is anyway), the proofs for God would not be able to conclude except for a purely gratuitous leap of unjustified faith.

That's also the reason why the more sophisticated late scholastics were devastated when they found at that any a posteriori proof of God rested on the apriori reflexive argument.

But I mean I get it. As was made evident in the modernist crisis and ensuing condemnations, they are obviously very aware that God being already fully possessed by everything that exists, as its horizon, renders null the purported need for revelation and the like. Same thing with the issue of acrasia, really: if we really do possess Good, and we really act for Good, then there is no such thing as chosing evil qua evil, and conversion is a metaphysical necessity, not one discrete thing we might chose to do or not. This scares them either for political or personal reasons.

>>24851056
It’s just thinking itself, though to put it in scholastic terms it is thinking everything virtually. You can’t think of it as some distant being it’s the principle of everything, as Aristotle says it is “life”. Alexander of Aphrodisias got filtered by the Metaphysics. Aquinas descends from him via Avicenna. Like Aquinas he veers toward semi-Platonism, with a non-universal, non-particular “essence” which is thought in the divine intellect. Then someone like Plotinus can say, “Aristotle’s got a souped-up intellect but that’s not perfect enough to be the One.” But that isn’t what Aristotle thought, God is not complex and only thinks himself, ie he is just like Plotinus’ One, as far are sheer theology goes. Aquinas otoh read Aristotle better here than Plotinus, he thinks Aristotle’s God is One.

>>24851082
Good post. Devilish, Hegelian. Hegel saw himself as perfecting Aristotle and he arrives at the same point of view.

>>24851084
>only thinks himself, ie he is just like Plotinus’ One
refreshing to see someone take V.4 and VI.8 seriously, lol

About the identity of the One and Aristotle's intellect, I've always felt it was really a matter of terminology, but I have no strong opinion on the matter.

If one takes certain key passages seriously, one understands that Plotinus' Intellect is the One's "looking" towards itself *as if from* the things it creates, that is, nothing more than the fact of procession and reversion that "flanks" the world on both sides, which means that Intellect is not literally a mediator but a mediation.

Now it is obvious why Plotinus thinks this cannot be first. It actually appears quite clearly that this is just the *fact* of emanation abstracted as a purely immanent category, which is unsatisfactory. It is one-many in the sense of "the unity of the many *insofar* as there are many".

And so he ends up with the One, which is a "pre-intellect" that thinks nothing (no-thing, i.e. itself), also a "pre-will" that desires itself, etc.

I take all of that as him trying to clearly point to an "intellect at rest", maybe inspired by Numenius.

But...

I'm not even sure it's a very important distinction. After all, God insofar as he is creating is God as he is in himself, he could not not create, etc. Plotinus himself is remembered as the guy who equated perfect immanence and perfect transcendence. It would certainly be as consistent with Plotinus' general tone to say that God is "the making" of all things, as to say that he is the "maker" of all things.

In a way, what's weird to me is that I've seen many Aristotelians accuse Plotinus of reducing the principle to activity or "exercise" (by which I guess they mean energeia, not kinesis), when in reality the only thing I would charge him with is that his distinction kind of suggests the opposite, if it is taken to be a sharp one.

>>24851014
>an efficient cause must be in contact with what it moves and vice versa. And the “touching” of an unmoved mover is metaphorical
But isn't the soul the efficient cause of our natural movement? And the soul also touches us in an "accidental"/metaphorical way.

I thought that the reason that the Prime Mover isn't an efficient cause is because the efficient cause is the "immediate agent that brings about a change or creates an effect", and there is no such thing for the celestial movement because this movement is eternal, i.e. there was never an immediate agent that causes this effect from not-happening to happening.

Similarly, Aristotle says that the efficient cause of the four elements' movements is the four elements' cause of generation, i.e. the sun and the moon; but the celestial bodies are eternal.

>>24850898
>>24850907
Good stuff, thank you. I ordered Apostle's book (come on, with a name like that, you know it's gotta be good), and I'll get started on it soon. Just one more book just one more book just one more book and I'll have it all figured out ;_;

>>24851082
>It's actually hilarious how hard catholic "philosophers" have worked at separating God from creation, in a way that completely cancels out any "proof" of God one might want to give, and makes their entire "system" a jumbled mess.
Honestly, that's a good point. I brought up the idea earlier that the unmoved mover being pure, perpetual energeia and lacking all dunamis seems to make it impossible to have any relation to anything else.

Aristotleanon, does the unmoved mover being a particular mean that it is impossible to truly know it? Furthermore, Metaphysics A lays out the premise that first philosophy is about studying the maximally universal causes. How can a particular be maximally universal?

>>24851084
It seems like a lot of thinkers got filtered on Aristotle's discussion about being, oneness, and numbers. It's hard to think of the unmoved mover as having anything less than complete unity if you've taken the whole treatise into account.

>>24851014
The Unmoved Mover is BOTH Efficient and Final Cause, for without it, there is no Final Efficient Cause too. That means though, it is not a Final Cause decoupled from Efficient Causation, so it lacks a simpler Aseity, and so, the Unmoved Mover is not The Unmoved, for it is a complex as the Active Intellect whereas it is Being and Intellect(Noeta of Being) in a perpetuated state of Power(Dunamis).

Plotinus's One is not that different from the Proclusian "One-Being", but his improvement over Proclus retroactively is simply the complete rejection of "Henology" between the Indeterminate One and Being. He also didn't divide the One into Ineffable One and Indeterminate One as the Athenian Neoplatonists does, since after all, Ineffability is said in relation to the perspective of an Intellect that tries to become a Purified Intellect, letting go of Being and Intellection by abiding within the pure Dynamis of the One that is only known by what it isn't apophatically speaking as it is self-extricated away from kataphatic realities as the Intellect transcends its Manifold Being in a Hypernoetic ascent that becomes the Good, which that Good is the sake of which there is any Necessity of Audacity(Tolma) that emanates from Good as its goodness that of which goodness is purely kataphatic in procession away from the Good so that Goodness from the Good can't be the Good, which is why Being isn't the Good for it is Goodness from the Good that is compounded by intellection and has power borrowed from the Good to know its Beinghood and so know of itself as One-Being, One-Power, One-Intellect, but not the One itself, and not in a succession one thing after another thing as it's still one thing but its attributes are many without being Many itself. Since that which rises beyond Being leaves behind its Beinghood, Being doesn't change at all. Therefore, it's not Being that seeks to ascend Being ultimately, but rather the disembodied Soul that ascends at the level of Being navigates past through Being to become the Absolute.

There's a lot more arguments in the book I've cited >>24850805 concerning the nature of motion that Aristotelians butcher the Platonic arguments, but Aristotelians only abide to their own orthodox beliefs and not beholden unto consistent reason and argue muh Alexander of Aphrodisiac and be done with it, ignoring how Platonists don't deny the unity of the intellect is in a way complete, but, it's in another way, not just itself but contingent upon many things.

>>24851400
Yeah I was wrong to suggest that all efficient causes are physical things in contact with other physical things, the soul being an obvious exception. The key passage for touching is De Gen et Corr 1.6. So the soul, like God, touches without being touched, but is an efficient cause not a final cause. I’ll try to resp to more later.

>>24852335
>The Unmoved Mover is BOTH Efficient and Final Cause, for without it, there is
no Final Efficient Cause too.
This makes absolutely no sense, sorry. You seem to be saying that, because the final cause causes efficient causality, it is efficient. But that’s absurd. If you go to the store to buy hot fries, are the hot fries moving you efficiently? Read Aristotle for yourself, you’re mixed up on basic physics. I can’t respond to the Proclus stuff, I’ve never read him.

>>24852361
Sounds like there's a "Cartesian dualism" in Aristotle, except instead of in substance (nevermind the fact that substance means something different to Descartes altogether) or even as matter and form, it's more like efficient and final causes.

>>24852335
Do neoplatonists really think Nous is “contingent on many things”? Plotinus definitely doesn’t. If you want my pseud hot take the real issue isn’t how “One” Aristotle’s God is or isn’t but that Aristotle assimilates theology to physics with his theory of heavenly spheres as intermediaries. At the same time look at how close these guys all still are. Plato: One -> Decad -> Mathematicals. Aristotle: UM -> other UMs -> spheres. Plotinus: One -> Nous-> Psyche. I’m not really an orthodox Aristotelian I recognize the naivety of Aristotle’s cosmology. But still, his God is One, not a One-Many.

>>24852406
Why, because he recognizes a logical distinction? Doesn't Proclus, too, differentiate between different kinds of causality? People just throw out these buzzwords - Cartesian, representationalist, nominalist. Like Schelling with 'muh reflection', 'muh understanding'. "The position, which maintains thinking to be merely subjective thinking, abstract universality as such, is bare uniformity, is undifferentiated, unmoved substantiality. And even if thought combines with itself the being of substance, and conceives immediacy or intuition (Anschauung) as thinking, it is still a question whether this intellectual intuition does not fall back into that inert, abstract simplicity, and exhibit and expound reality itself in an unreal manner."

>>24852179
>I brought up the idea earlier that the unmoved mover being pure, perpetual energeia and lacking all dunamis seems to make it impossible to have any relation to anything else.
It's related to everything else as an end; but then Aristotle does not try to explain how we go from this pure act to multiplicity, he just thinks he discovers that it is mediated by the heavenly spheres. It's not that it lacks dunamis as being 'unable to do anything', it does everything, but as itself unchanging and as an intellect. But yeah generally speaking thinking of God as a being, or being beyond being, 'at the circumference of the heavens' or in some other world, breaks down and leads to atheism. Occam is the one who says 'hey wait by Aristotle's own principles these proofs of God's existence don't work.'
>Aristotleanon, does the unmoved mover being a particular mean that it is impossible to truly know it? Furthermore, Metaphysics A lays out the premise that first philosophy is about studying the maximally universal causes. How can a particular be maximally universal?
Yes, it's impossible to grasp God as a concept for the same reason it's impossible to grasp an individual as a concept. Not because the individual is always changing per se but just because the individual is an individual, and when we think of things we mediate them with universals. Did Aristotle think you could have a direct, mystical 'intuition' of God? The jury's out but to me there are passages highly suggestive that he did think this, like in NE 10, or in Meta 12 when he talks about God enjoying a state 'that we ourselves enjoy from time to time' - but that passage could be alternately translated. Or simply the very intimate relationship between our passive intellects and God's active intellect in DA 3.5 but that passage too is obscure and controversial. Whenever Aristotle is getting to the 'good stuff' it's like he goes out of his way to be as sketchy as possible. God is maximally universal as the first cause of everything; the word universal (the phrase kat' holon) is homonymous just like all of the other technical words. But the gist in Metaphysics is - "I wanna know being itself, that's most universal; but substance is truly being, that narrows things down a bit; but form (actuality, essence) is most truly substance; but now I can bring in my arguments from Physics 8 to show that God is the principle of form, the principle of all actuality, so Metaphysics is really theology." And this answer opens up other questions but I'll leave it there.

>>24852634
huh?

>>24852658
Use your words.

>>24852630
I have no idea about Proclus. That's the other guy.

I'm just saying that while one might consider Aristotle's cosmology to have a singular first principle, the unmoved mover, it really seems to have two irreconcilable first principles, which is the unmoved mover and final cause on one hand and the infinite chain of motions and the efficient cause on the other hand. Both are eternal, but the unmoved mover "inspires" but doesn't otherwise do anything, and the other has a power that the unmoved mover doesn't have and then explains the rest of the material universe.

These aren't buzzwords. I think this is an apt and succinct description of the problem. It's a dualism when we might have preferred something more united. And I don't blame Aquinas for trying to tie the chain of motions back to the unmoved mover via the essence-existence distinction, despite his religious motivations, because at least it leads to a cleaner system.

What do you think?

>>24852634
>it does everything
It does everything but only in terms of being the final cause. It's one half of a pair of clapping hands and in a sense also does nothing (doing... is this efficient, final, both? Good question to ask.).

And in terms of relations, it's only in potency where we see reciprocal relations between things, as in one has the capacity of being one thing due to the other and vice versa. This unmoved mover's relations are completely one-sided. It receives the princess treatment and everybody else merely simps towards it.
>God is maximally universal as the first cause of everything; the word universal (the phrase kat' holon) is homonymous just like all of the other technical words.
Ugh, so it's another equivocation of sorts? More like, universal in scope as in it applies to everything, but not the technical term of being a universal? That makes sense. Also, I appreciate that you broke up katholon into kat-holon. Makes you appreciate that there is some kind of unity or perhaps holos to it, maybe? Lol.

>But the gist in Metaphysics is - "I wanna know being itself, that's most universal; but substance is truly being, that narrows things down a bit; but form (actuality, essence) is most truly substance; but now I can bring in my arguments from Physics 8 to show that God is the principle of form, the principle of all actuality, so Metaphysics is really theology."
This is actually a masterful elevator pitch. Kudos.

>>24852668
How's that working for you? Using your words? I'm shocked that someone who reads so poorly found their way to /lit/ then skimmed Aristotle and started babbling like an idiot. And yes, the bar is very low here.

>>24852707
>I'm just saying that while one might consider Aristotle's cosmology to have a singular first principle, the unmoved mover, it really seems to have two irreconcilable first principles, which is the unmoved mover and final cause on one hand and the infinite chain of motions and the efficient cause on the other hand. Both are eternal, but the unmoved mover "inspires" but doesn't otherwise do anything, and the other has a power that the unmoved mover doesn't have and then explains the rest of the material universe.
Yes in that sense it is dualist, it is not pantheism. God is not the same as the world. You could say the very same thing about the neoplatonists - the One is everywhere but the One is not the same as the material world. And it's more than dualism, Aristotle is an ontological pluralist, both in terms of the categories, but also more radically in the primacy of the particular. But there's no interaction problem here because Aristotle begins with the things here and reasons 'up' to the necessity of God. Then you could say 'fine, the sublunary world depends on God, but why does the sublunary world exist in the first place?' and that's a question Aristotle doesn't answer. Catholics too would say it's unanswerable, creation is a 'free' act of God. But Aristotle wouldn't even go that far, I don't think, he is happy enough to reason his way to God a posteriori and leave it there.

Beyond that imo you're mixed up about final causes as being somehow ineffectual or less than efficient causes, Physics 2 is where he talks about this most directly. In normal life we have desires, we can follow or ignore them. But think of the teleology of a living thing, it is the cause of causes, and God is roughly speaking an end like that. The soul of a plant actually transcends all the efficiently caused processes in the plant's life. In a way it isn't "doing" anything, the physical processes in the plant are "doing" everything, they are immediately existent and perceptible, but the soul is the unmoved mover, it's the teleological doing behind all the efficient doings. Essence/existence is a big can of worms I'll try to say something later about it.
>Also, I appreciate that you broke up katholon into kat-holon
No I just did it because I'm a retard and can't read Greek well. Enough to be able to profitably 'refer to the Greek' but I can't read it fluently, that's just a mistake.

>>24852748
Damn, you're smart! Thanks!

>>24852748
>Beyond that imo you're mixed up about final causes as being somehow ineffectual or less than efficient causes, Physics 2 is where he talks about this most directly. In normal life we have desires, we can follow or ignore them. But think of the teleology of a living thing, it is the cause of causes, and God is roughly speaking an end like that. The soul of a plant actually transcends all the efficiently caused processes in the plant's life. In a way it isn't "doing" anything, the physical processes in the plant are "doing" everything, they are immediately existent and perceptible, but the soul is the unmoved mover, it's the teleological doing behind all the efficient doings.
I'm not trying to say that final causes are "less than", anymore so that efficient causes are "less than". I was trying to point out that apparently we need two hands to clap, so we have two principles and not one.

Anyways, good points throughout. Looking forward to what you say about essence/existence later (that's been a pet topic for me over the last month, since apparently it branches off into many different philosophical topics as well).

>No I just did it because I'm a retard and can't read Greek well. Enough to be able to profitably 'refer to the Greek' but I can't read it fluently, that's just a mistake.
Even if it's a mistake, it's still a fortuitous one. I like to refer back to the etymology to help remember words and speculate about conceptual implications.

>>24852634
>But yeah generally speaking thinking of God as a being, or being beyond being, 'at the circumference of the heavens' or in some other world, breaks down and leads to atheism. Occam is the one who says 'hey wait by Aristotle's own principles these proofs of God's existence don't work.'
So you're mad that people import Plato into Aristotle but if you take all the Plato out of him his system collapses into fideism and atheism? K.

>>24852841
What does it even mean to take Plato out of Aristotle? We don't even know for certain what Plato's robust metaphysics looked like. For all we know they were more or less on the same page. And even if they weren't, Aristotle wrote decisively against boilerplate Platonism (i.e. the third man argument), so there is no "Platonism" to take out of him if that's what you mean.

>>24852772
>I'm not trying to say that final causes are "less than", anymore so that efficient causes are "less than". I was trying to point out that apparently we need two hands to clap, so we have two principles and not one.
Ah I see. Well yes there are multiple principles, matter is a principle, the five elements are principles relative to composites, and you could say the sublunary world is a principle. But some principles are more principal than others, these lesser principles don't rival God for primacy and they don't have an existence completely independent of his causality. Plato is the one who's more of a dualist - think about what he says in Laws X about the necessity of an evil god, or in Philebus the limited and the unlimited are just 'there' and not derived from anything higher, in Parmenides Being is just 'there' not derived from the One, or what Aristotle says about Plato's unwritten teachings on matter/form and good/evil in the last lectio of Physics 1.

I will never fathom /lit/'s obsession with irrelevant philosophers like Aristotle and Kant.

As far as essence/existence distinction – we’re talking about the intelligibility of a thing, and its existence as a composite of form and matter, and the relation between these two aspects. Alexander of Aphrodisias, some of the Neoplatonists (not Plotinus who is in some ways on the other side), Avicenna, Aquinas, all think of a thing’s intelligibility as its true being which is then limited by matter to form the individual composite substance. As Aquinas says I can think of a phoenix without there actually being a phoenix. So existence becomes an ‘act’ which is added to the essence when something comes to be.

On the other side (Averroes etc.) it’s the opposite, the real thing is first and the universal thought is secondary to it. You could call them existentialists. There is no doubt that the intelligibility of the thing is an aspect of its essence – it’s essential to the dog that a human who sees it would think of it as a dog. But is the dog just the dog that he is, or must he be conceived as a metaphysical dog-essence, which is neither universal nor particular (as prior to both), ‘limited’ by matter?

If you look at Aristotle himself the word essence is used in two senses, once as its intelligibility (so the dog’s essence really is dogness), again as the particular thing which has its own particular form, its own being. And I don’t have my books with me to do pick out important passages. But one crucial aspect here is the homonymousness of priority in Aristotle, which he explains in Categories and other places. The intelligible aspect of a thing is prior “by nature” but the form of the particular is prior “in being”. So they’re both first in different ways, really, but the way of the essentialists doesn’t make a lot of sense. You have this non-universal non-particular mysterious entity, which is also completely unnecessary. And how could matter, which is potential, act on form by limiting it, turning dogness into this dog? No, form and matter are a unity in composite beings, but essentialism makes them almost a mixture. Aristotelian essentialism is a classic case of hypostasizing concepts and logical distinctions.

Then you can also think about the problems of existence being an extraneous act, like what Kant says in the Dialectic, added to a concept. The existentialists made similar arguments even if I don’t know them first hand. Or what Aristotle says in Meta 7 about the unity of essence and existence – but that’s something I can’t get into without the books because I need to explain other passages (within pages of it) where he says exactly the opposite and show how they can be interpreted in the framework I already gave.

>>24853197
Well, true, compared to Plato, Aristotle is less of a dualist, but that is what makes Aristotle's inadvertent dualism all the more frustrating. The unmoved mover doesn't think matter. It has nothing to do with matter except to the extent that matter is informed as a substance and reaching out to the unmoved mover as end. At least form has some kind of archetype in the unmoved mover. But Aristotle's cosmology is like the demiurge in Plato's Timaeus but without any plot. It's kind of weird.

>>24853244
Well, first you have to be capable of fathoming in general.

>>24853309
I need to come back to this post with a fresh cup of coffee tomorrow morning. But I like where this is going, and I'm going to raise the stakes a bit. I don't think "existence is/is not a predicate" stuff is very enlightening.

>>24853845
> I don't think "existence is/is not a predicate" stuff is very enlightening.
Yeah I should have said more about this. But the point is existence isn’t some extra property like redness, basically. By synthesizing existence with a concept as if it’s just another property of the concept, the distinction between universal and particular is damaged, if that makes sense, and the relationship becomes abstract and unreal, as in Aristotelian essentialism. Cont’d

>>24853845
So as far as divine causality goes, like how does God ‘create’ matter and avoid dualism, which Aristotle definitely wants to avoid, I keep saying ‘Aristotle doesn’t say he was fraid of speculation’, but if you look at what’s there, it looks a lot like emanationism. Because you have a best, a second best, and so on all the way down, a teleological emanationism. People say Arabs mixed Neoplatonic emanationism with Aristotle but imo (as a pseud hobbyist) it goes the other way, emanationism came from studying both Plato and Aristotle and trying to make sense of these issues.

Re: emanationism - obviously I’m thinking of meta 12.6, but also consider De Caelo 2.12 when he tries to explain the vagaries of planetary motion.

>>24853309
So, I love the essence/existence distinction as a focal point of debate. It's what motivates Heidegger (ontotheology, in the sense that essence is ontology while existence is theology), and some of the deepest questions of first and second philosophy emerge from it. The other day, I listened to Tweetophon, who as an Eleatic rejects the distinction, debating a Thomist (a good listen desu), and the distinction turned into:
>truth and falsity
>ideal vs material
>modes of existence (possible vs. actual), >universals vs particulars (that was probably my favorite desu, as you can see how your interpretation of what essence is can then color your opinion on this topic)
>theories of time (presentist vs. eternalist, another good one because with an eternalist POV the distinction seems to wither away as well)
The following topic wasn't covered but I thought I would share it too:
>individuation (e.g. by matter or by haecceity)
Think about it. All these topics, in some way, have something to contribute to the question and can be seen as an answer to the essence/existence distinction in a certain light, although probably it's clearest with modes of existence.

>So existence becomes an ‘act’ which is added to the essence when something comes to be.
As if everything is an idea in God's mind that already "is" (but not really), that God then snaps into existence.

>If you look at Aristotle himself the word essence is used in two senses, once as its intelligibility (so the dog’s essence really is dogness), again as the particular thing which has its own particular form, its own being.
And ofc there's the sense that to be is to be intelligible, aka the philosopher's axiom I mentioned earlier, so perhaps they are not so homonymous after all. But then you have the problem of trying to know particulars, which Aristotle routinely rejects as a fundamentally incomplete task.

>And how could matter, which is potential, act on form by limiting it, turning dogness into this dog? No, form and matter are a unity in composite beings, but essentialism makes them almost a mixture. Aristotelian essentialism is a classic case of hypostasizing concepts and logical distinctions.
I like that you point that out. Form and matter have to be interwoven more closely than a mere mixture for this to make any sense. Anything less invokes the same problems that your average Christological heresy will in understanding the Church's view on Christ's being.

>Then you can also think about the problems of existence being an extraneous act, like what Kant says in the Dialectic, added to a concept.
Because Kant is accidentally making a Platonist move here, lol. Or at least a Meinongian one. It basically looks like the "God's mind" container but instead of prioritizing "is" in actual things, prioritizes "is" in potency or something like that. But I digress. It is a good point.

>>24853912
I don't really know much about Neoplatonism and emanationism. Could you briefly explain what you mean by that and best, second best, etc., and how this have to do with matter?

always wondered why self-predication wasn't a good solution to the third man problem. a form just is what it is. after all, it is what it is to be a thing. doesn't the third man problem only become a problem if you try to reify it in an extant way like substance?

>>24855403
Yeah but a crude theory of Forms is abstract in just that way. Certainty for Aristotle God is cause of intelligibility and reality, hence principle of form, forms are “in” God. But it’s not like God’s brain contains the thought of the animal-itself, or generates Numbers that exist outside him, God’s one.

>>24855403
Because self-predication makes it an instance of itself that requires an explanation if it's to be more than "because I said so." Self-predication is exactly what opens the way to Parmenides' two uses of the Third Man argument in the dialogue Parmenides.

>>24855429
>Because self-predication makes it an instance of itself that requires an explanation if it's to be more than "because I said so."
Why do these arguments terminate in "because I said so?" Why can't it be a logical recognition that there is no further decomposition, that one has reached an "elemental form" or something like that?

>>24855445
You would have a problem concluding that there's no further decomposition. If a Form is self-predicating, on what grounds does one distinguish it from instances, images, reproductions vs. the original? If there are Forms of things like men, then the Form of Man is a man? Where would he be, and how would he be? Does it breathe and eat and desire and will and grow and die, or not? But also, how would one know any of that? What makes it more than an arbitrary surmise to defend an explanation that seems to explain less?

Won't you have even more basic problems than that even, like the form of change is as a form supposed to be eternal, the form of anything material must be immaterial, and the form of any attribute of material objects can't really have that attribute if it's not material. Like even the form of largeness used in the Parmenides doesn't seem like it should be large because it's not supposed to take up physical space like that, because it's a form.

There’s multiple anons at work rn but here’s another passage where Aristotle directly backs me up re: essence/existence and btfo’s the tradcath zoomers.

“One must observe that some causes can be expressed in universal terms and some cannot. The primary principles of things are the actual primary ‘this’ (particular form) and another thing which exists potentially (matter). The universal causes then, of which we spoke, *do not exist*. For the *individual* is the source of the individuals. For while man is the cause of man universally, THERE IS NO UNIVERSAL MAN. But Peleus is the cause of Achilles, and your father of you, and this particular B of this particular BA, though B in general is the cause of BA without qualification.” Meta 12.5

>>24855455
These are good questions. I suppose individual men and forms would be different kinds of beings with different essences. Aristotle defines some beings as composite material and form, and other beings as only form. The copies will always be enmattered in some way, or perhaps be slightly different in form.

And then there's the whole problem of relating what it would mean for there to be an "original" vs. a "copy". Boilerplate Platonism seems to make it into another way of demonstrating the superiority of universals over particulars. With Aristotle, if there's any way to import it, it would be in understanding the original, primary particular that all other copies were derived from.

I suppose the form alone can count as a being in some specific circumstances (or at least can be treated hypothetically as one, even though it is not, like mathematics). And in terms of composition of ideas, perhaps there's something to it in the discussion of intelligible matter.

But that's the problem. I'm already working in an Aristotelian framework so even taking it to be feasible is problematic. And there is no "science of forms", where forms are identified, compared, and understood vis-a-vis each other, at least not anything explicitly mentioned.

>>24855468
Yes, that's absolutely right.

>>24855475
The immaterial substances are separated intelligences, not paradigms for composites. There are no such separable paradigms in Aristotle, for fuck’s sake. He says so right here >>24855473 and in 40 or 50 other places.

>>24855473
>>24855529
They don't exist, but they are. That's the problem and it links back to the essence-existence distinction, which is really a much deeper question about ontology. You can't say that it isn't, because it is. So what is it? And if it doesn't exist, it still has being that isn't tied to any particular being and can be distinguished from other beings.

>>24855468
These are probably much better critiques of why forms can't exist on the basis of self-predication. The only other one that is good imho is Aristotle's method in the beginning of Categories for sorting out what is the ultimate substrate. Everything else is question-begging or simply not creative enough to imagine an Aristotelian system where it somehow works.

>>24855565
I’ve been explaining this throughout the thread but check out Meta 13.10. No one is denying that intelligibility is “real” but investigating how it’s related to the composite. You’re just throwing up your hands desu. I’m not repeating the entire conversation for you but consider also De Anima 3.4:

“Thought is itself thinkable in exactly the same way its objects are. For in the case of objects which involve no matter, what thinks and what is thought are identical. In the case of those which contain matter each of the objects of thought is *only potentially present*” - ie the material thing is potentially thinkable, its thinkability is not constitutive of it itself - “It follows that while they will not have thought in them (for thought is a potentiality of them *only insofar as they are capable of being disengaged from matter*) thought may yet be thinkable.” Again, thought is not identical with the material substance because thinking is immaterial, it’s always mediated, universal. We can grasp the intelligibility of things which is their truth and in a way their being; but the concrete this just is what it is, not a composite of intelligible something and matter, but of form and matter, and, as he also says in meta 1 and post an 1, the individual is not knowable as such.

>>24855599
I never had any hands in the fight. I just wanted some better answers to what it means to predicate and why self-predicate is a bad answer lol. "It is what it is" tends to be an easy cop-out, so it's good to know how to refute it.

Anyway, my copy of PostAn comes in the mail soon. I was wondering if you have any thoughts on >>24854858 before I head out and start reading.

>>24855565
>>24855485
How obvious the failure of self-predication is always seemed to me to indicate it can't possibly have been what Plato was actually putting forward and I have assumed it's what characters in the dialogues occasionally say either because Plato knew it was some common naïve view of people who haven't really thought about forms or there was a contemporary school or group within the Academy who believed it.

>>24855653
Yeah sure, the problem is that what Plato really thought turns out to be daft. See DA 1.2 or all the material in Metaphysics on it.

>>24855653
I wish self-predication's failure was more obvious to me. It seemed like it was easy to see why other arguments failed but self-predication seemed like the magic bullet. Like, every particular self-predicates, no? Socrates is Socrates. The main issue is that names don't tell you anything you don't already know.

>>24855870
Sure Socrates is Socrates but is he Socrates-ness? assuming Socrates-ness were a valid idea

In English the big is the big it's only suggestive like that if you say big is big but that's equivocating really isn't it? Should be the big is big or bigness is big, and then it's more obvious it's not true. I know in the Greek it was more ambiguous but of course Plato spends a lot of time making it clear you shouldn't rely on linguistic constructions

>>24855904
Well, what does -ness mean? And why even employ it here? And what does Socrates have in relation to itself that any -ness word lacks in relation to itself?

>>24855468
This is probably where it boils down to though. Since -ness words are meant to describe things other than themselves. Otherwise, you run into these issues where materialness isn't material, largeness isn't large, etc. Although greenness being green seems plausible enough.

>>24855529
If forms don't exist but are real nonetheless, then you're arguing for forms being things but of a different ontological mode than the particulars which are said to exist full stop. And it's at this point where "is", being real, existing, etc., start to just sound like fluffy words about beingness.

>>24856123
No, Aristotle explains all of this and I’ve run through some of that in this thread. There’s no way to have a civilized convo here because you’re out of your element and haven’t read the texts, I’m not spoon feeding you the entirety of Aristotle. If you think “it is x” being true means there must be an entity, x-ness; or if you think this is all pointless and meaningless, I just don’t care. Read Aristotle if you want to learn about these things, otherwise frigg off. Philosophy isn’t about spitballing opinions you need to study.

>>24856170
Strictly speaking there is an entity of x-ness *as an affection of the soul*, as a thought. The point is it’s not an extramental middle. And again the intelligibility of reality is due to God, but a simple God, no Platonic Number-forms. Why does it “matter”, besides as autistic philosophizing? An essentialist reading of Aristotle makes every being into a sort of artificial toy, its intelligibility is what matters not what it is as a particular. So you can see these are different world views - are you Man, who due to matter limiting you are anon? Or are you simply anon? There that’s more than you heckin’ deserve now read Aristotle, all of Aristotle, several times in a row.

>>24856032
Do you think greeness is capable of reflecting light?

>Well, what does -ness mean?
I'm using _-ness to mean "the form of _" it's just a figure of speech; a particular self-predicates and so does a universal in the sense that they satisfy identity "X is X" but saying "justice is just" is not self-predication in the sense of identity, it is self-predication in the sense of "justice is justice-ness" i.e. justice/justice-ness can be predicated of the form of justice. Which is not the same the same thing as "justice is justice" or "the just is just" because it would be "the just is just" or "justice is just".

>>24856170
I'm the same guy who made the thread and just finished all of Metaphysics. And just a minute ago you were glazing me for not being a Thomist. Now I'm trying to have a more serious discussion about ideas whose ramifications I don't fully understand yet, and you're insulting me and saying all these baseless things instead of addressing the ideas.

This shit isn't that serious bro. Idk if you have an alcoholism problem or a mood disorder but none of this shit is becoming to actual discussion. I almost regret reading this shit because everybody who actually reads this stuff seems to have some abrasive and bizarre agenda.

>>24856216
>"justice is justice" or "the just is just"
bloody hell what a typo I mean to say here "the just is the just" in the second quote

>>24856170
>>24856206
>>24856216
You're not even addressing the problem that I'm pointing out. You're still fixating on whether forms are separable in the same way that particulars are separable even though that is well below the brunt of the line of ontological questioning that I'm pushing forward right now. Like get over yourself and read without some presumptions or this is going to go nowhere.

>>24856216
A figure of speech that means what? What function is it doing? And there's also Vlastos's idea of self-predication vs self-non-identity (or non-self-explanation), which are not the same thing whatsoever.

>>24856245
I just told you it's _-ness meaning the form of _. I'm using it because there's linguistic ambiguity about the differences between when particulars and universals can be said to self-predicate.

>>24856234
you're replying to two different guys I'm just trying to defend that one line from my is Socrates Socrates-ness post

>>24856258
Why should -ness be seen as equivalent to "form of ___"? What does that figure of speech do, generally-speaking?

>>24856267
Because if I had said
>Is Socrates the form of Socrates
that would not have made it as clear (or maybe it has had the opposite effect) that I mean it in distinction to saying
>The just is just
because just as an adjective is closer to _-ness than the construction "the form of _"

But if you're trying to say there's some agenda of separation (_-ness to form of _ implying substantial existence of the form and not of _-ness perhaps) I was not thinking about it that deeply.

>>24856234
I don’t think Aristotle addresses the deeper ontological issues very well, actually. But I’ve taken this as a discussion of what Aristotle thought and it is as I have said, it’s also correct within its limitations. If you’re still confused on that point after all this I can’t help you.

>>24856280
>Is Socrates the form of Socrates
>that would not have made it as clear
Actually that makes it really clear, ty.

But I was more about looking into the grammar of these things, e.g. Socrates is a noun, large is an adjective, -ness turns either one into an abstract noun that refers to the quality itself or the state of being said quality. And I was hoping there would be some insight from looking into that.

>>24856289
You keep trying to have a conversation that nobody asked for man. But at least you paid some lip service to what I had been talking about.

>>24856280
>>24856297
The strange thing is that it has both a linguistic and a logical descriptor, that is treated independently (though obviously not without some implied connection) of Platonism. In linguistics, it is nominalization. In logic, it is called hypostatic abstraction.

Sometimes I wonder if the project that Aristotle had, especially in Categories and to a lesser extent in Metaphysics, boiled down to "The world is both structured and inchoate, but the way we form sentences might be able to pin the world down closer to the side of structure and thus meaning and intelligibility." and "Nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc., are not so different and can transmute into each other, but there is only one form (within language) that can serve as the bedrock of anything, and that is the noun as subject."

Are causes also supposed to be things? Or are they in a category of "real but not necessarily existing unless the final cause happens to be a particular substance"?

>>24856297
> You keep trying to have a conversation that nobody asked for man. But at least you paid some lip service to what I had been talking about.
Dude, I’ve been explaining Aristotle’s position on the problem of universals in great detail this whole thread and why it is right, many many paragraphs of top shelf effort posting. After all that you still don’t understand, like the posts went in one ear and out the other, and we’re back at “but what *is* Socrates-ness?” There is no such thing except as a thought. Socrates is real, not Socratesness. You’re still reifying concepts and it’s annoying that I’ve wasted so much time and effort talking to people who can’t actually follow a philosophical argument. You won’t understand this one either and will think I’m pulling the wool over your eyes, so it turns out you’re fucking retarded, like most hobbyist philosophers.

Has anyone got links to archives of these older threads that are mentioned in the OP? or a search term I could use. I've really liked this thread but of course without context some of the points (e.g. Thomism) seem to come from nowhere.

>>24856228
we warned you about him

>>24857566 Are you done yet? Or would you like to continue arguing a position that I never defended? I feel like you have some sort of executive dysfunction that causes your amygdala to go into overdrive whenever I even mention the word universal, form, and a statement that describes the status of their being. It's genuinely concerning.

If it's a thought, what is a thought? It's not nothing. If it was nothing, then it wouldn't be a thought. it wouldn't even be. You accuse me of reifying concepts, but in a very bare and vague sense, there is nothing to reify because it already is. If it was not, then it would not even be a thought. I don't know what a good solution to this problem is, and you have yet to offer anything except to retreat to your little fort where you can pretend that the problem doesn't exist in lieu of more interesting conversations.

Like you need to get a grip, dude, or you're going to be stuck regurgitating boilerplate Aristotelianism forever, not advancing any further than that in your understanding, trapped in a prison of your own choosing. I'm not a Thomist, I'm not a Platonist, and I'm not advocating for the theory of forms for crying out loud. I just want to see what the next level of understanding is. And here you are, trying to drag me down to your level, when I don't enjoy being there because of its limitations.
>>24857568
A lot of it is his own headcanon from a culmination of experiences he's had across his life. Experiences which make sense but are grossly overstated in the /lit/ ecosystem and come off as the ramblings of an insecure and bitter man.

>>24857665
All the same I'd still like to read more. Also I'm pretty sure the first guy you're replying to isn't actually a dogmatic aristotelian I'm sure he's said he's rather a fan of the German idealists elsewhere in the thread

>>24857837
Yeah, he's probably the Fichte guy as well too. Lines up pretty well

>>24857936
I suppose that makes me a big fan this thread and one of the Fichte threads are the only lit threads I keep a bookmarked archive of

Unreifiable concepts are a different class of loose "anything goes" thoughts than reifiable concepts. Thoughts that provide definition don't pre-exists thoughts that lack definition. You can't have reifiable thoughts pre-exists in an unreifiable potential of thoughts because they don't actually definitively exists. Can't bake a cake and eat it as well. That which eats the cake (the reifiable concept) is not eating the potential of the cake-n't (unreifiable concept). The constitutents of the reifiable concept is ultimately positively definitive. Unreifiable constituents of the unreifiable concepts are un-referentiable and are not truly reifiable. A thought however is reifiable as something is thinking the thought of something, where that something and the thought of something are of the same thing of reference, but it doesn't exists independently from that something. Therefore, all formal causes of the intellect and the form thereof are also efficient causes in its self-moved nature. Therefore, efficient causes borrows formal causes to give rise to material causes, from Mind to Soul to Matter. Matter is Formed through Motion from the One's final cause, but ceases to be when Matter ceases to be in Motion, while there is no Matter without Motion whatsoever. It's a circle, a loop, where the Final to Efficient is through Formal, Formal to Material is through Efficient, Efficient to Final through Material (which is the material value that life has to the Soul as well as its lack of value in the ascent of the Soul to the Absolute), and Material to Formal through the Final.

>>24858067
I'm honestly a fan too. It's just I like to do more with a philosopher after I've gotten a decent understanding of them, and then he just doesn't want to be a part of that. And he has a bit of a paranoid personality. Which is a shame.