RE: Occams Hatchet and Is Materialism "Special"
October 1, 2016 at 6:56 pm
(This post was last modified: October 1, 2016 at 6:57 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
Please, Rhythm. (respectful tone) I don’t believe you are expressing yourself with sufficient nuance to convey what the term of art, materialism, means to you by saying things like the following:
The problem with the above is that even Thomas Aquinas would say a song is made out of sound, or rather vibrating molecules. He would call it the material cause. So when you say, “Materialism is a statement regarding the composition of the things we see,” you have haven’t actually defined materialism as a metaphysical theory; but rather, just noted the material cause of music.
I interpret from your explicit statements that, for you, materialism is a monist ontology that claims everything can be described in terms of matter and its modifications. At the same time you use words, like composition, which contain tacit assumptions with implications far beyond material interaction, as follows:
And:
You may not realize it but composition could be just another way of saying formal cause with respect to its essence and final cause with respect to its sense, what the song is about. To dispense with these non-material causes requires more work.
(October 1, 2016 at 3:05 pm)Rhythm Wrote: You asked what music was made out of, I told you it was made out of sound. Is that foolish? Is it untrue? Is it immaterial? So what, then, is the issue for materialism here supposed to be, exactly? Materialism is a statement regarding the composition of the things we see.
The problem with the above is that even Thomas Aquinas would say a song is made out of sound, or rather vibrating molecules. He would call it the material cause. So when you say, “Materialism is a statement regarding the composition of the things we see,” you have haven’t actually defined materialism as a metaphysical theory; but rather, just noted the material cause of music.
I interpret from your explicit statements that, for you, materialism is a monist ontology that claims everything can be described in terms of matter and its modifications. At the same time you use words, like composition, which contain tacit assumptions with implications far beyond material interaction, as follows:
(October 1, 2016 at 3:05 pm)Rhythm Wrote: In a legal sense, in the sense of it [a song] is composition, in the sense of any given performance as it relates to another specific performance or indeed..vis a vis any given performance of the same by any other?
And:
(October 1, 2016 at 3:05 pm)Rhythm Wrote: their composition, those questions would not have any relevance to the materialist position itself. The materialist position...is that music...is made of sound. Sound, to whit, being vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear.
You may not realize it but composition could be just another way of saying formal cause with respect to its essence and final cause with respect to its sense, what the song is about. To dispense with these non-material causes requires more work.
