(October 23, 2019 at 11:58 am)Grandizer Wrote: 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.I think this is the interesting thing about the book -- or someone might say the sneaky thing, if they were so inclined. It starts off very matter-of-fact and self-evident, and then builds one baby step at a time to conclusions that are wildly beyond self-evident. I guess if we're going to knock it down, we'd have to point to exactly which baby step goes wrong. As long as he stays with natural, non-revealed theology, I haven't put my finger on a misstep, but that may be my own limitation.
Quote: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.
I've never understood why hylomorphism itself is controversial. To me it seems kind of like saying that everything has a left side and a right side, and that you can't have one without the other. Yet I've had people on this forum (or was it TTA?) flip out when I mention it.
On a recent thread about the soul I tried to explain how for Aristotelians, "soul" is just another name for a person's form. This is how lots of people have used the word. Though maybe people would like to avoid the word "soul" because of its implications, I thought it made sense. For example, it acknowledges that disembodied souls are impossible, because morphe always has hyle. And Thomas is clear that when Christians say one's morphe can be transferred at death to a different hyle, it is faith and not a proven argument.
There are ways hylomorphism gets applied that won't satisfy us moderns. For example, Aristotle explains knowledge by saying that your mind takes in a portion of a thing's form but not its matter. (So form can exist separate from matter, but only mentally, as idea.) This makes sense to me as metaphor, and possibly more than metaphor, though I'm not sure. It kind of seems right to say that when I know of Mt. Fuji, I call to mind a portion of its form -- I remember its shape, its appearance. But of course its matter is too big to fit into my little skull.
As for angels and that -- I don't recall that Feser ever tried to build a case for them that would satisfy people who don't already believe! I'm pretty sure that case is made by Neoplatonists like Pseudo-Dionysius who argue from a Great Chain of Being type argument -- from dead prime matter to humans there is a chain of lower-to-higher beings, and this means for them that there must also be a chain from people to God of different beings as well. With the hierarchy being one of more active mind. But that's another book.
