[Serious] Book reports

[GrandizerII]

Maybe I missed it, but I didn't get the impression that there's anything spooky going on. Each object, due to its nature, has a set of potential things it can do or become. The rubber ball can become gooey, in the right conditions, but it can't become edible. Whether the various potentials get activated or not depends on various factors.

I agree, and the author doesn't clearly make any statement that comes off as spooky in this regard. I guess I'm just thinking ahead to what the author may eventually say in the later parts of the book, but honestly, so far things have generally made sense (when I don't read too much into what the author is saying). Actuality is prior to potentiality. I agree with this for sure.

Obviously quantum physics is out of my area, but some people are taking Aristotle-type potentialities seriously as a way to explain certain strange behaviors. 

https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context...-realities

This suggests that various potentialities do somehow exist concurrently before they become actualized.

Interesting interpretation, but still raises more questions for me than it answers. I mean, the interpretation involves a list of potentialities existing actually, yet only one of them is actualized? The researchers acknowledge this is really strange but that we should not dismiss it just because it is "unimaginable". Still, this doesn't sound right, and I feel there are better interpretations out there anyway (my favorite is the many-worlds interpretation).

So, anyway, just got done reading the bit on hylemorphism, for which Feser makes a good case. In the material world, you can't have matter without form and form without matter. But I think a case should be made here that materialists don't necessarily disagree with the conception of form as something that exists. A ball, to be a ball, obviously needs to be in the shape of a ball, and I doubt materialists would generally disagree with that. That said, not sure exactly what point Feser was trying to make against materialists in this section, but perhaps it'll be made more clear later in the book. The stuff about angels and other immaterial beings does make me eyeroll and, apparently, he does elaborate on this later on in the book. We'll see.