Do Chairs Exist?

[Neo-Scholastic]

The problem I see with this is that there doesn't appear to be a way to reliably pick out what composite objects resemble some pre-existing ideal and which ones don't. The video presented the example of a "trog" which is an object consisting of a tree and a dog whenever the two are in close proximity to one another. Trogs raise some of the same questions as chairs do...It would seem there are as many of these made up forms as there are combinations of objects and therefore the number of forms would seem to be infinite. But with forms, like the line from the incredible, "When everybody is super, then nobody is." This possibility would seem to make the idea that forms pick out things that are in some sense unique and special problematic.

Perhaps making reliable binary determinations using a single metric for existence (form) is not a good epistemic goal. Some things could exist by degrees according to multiple factors and not in a binary way? In the video, that would be Pegasus whose existence is caused formally, finally, and efficiently, but not materially. Why elevate material cause as a necessary condition (the only valid metric) for “real” existence?

Formal relationships between things are indeed infinite, but I see nothing wrong about ignoring relationships that are accidental and those that are essential based on intangible virtues like utility, value, or significance. Take for example, the Center of Gravity. The center of gravity is just one of innumerable points within an object and yet, we are able to tease out its approximate location and rely on it because of its value in various types of analysis, such as structural calculations. Is the center of gravity a “convenient fiction” or the identification of a real location, i.e. one that is the one best models significant physical relationships in calculations. In your words, finding the center of gravity would be “picking out things that are in some sense unique and special” Indeed! I don’t see that as irredeemably problematic…difficult and uncertain, yes, but not problematic.

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My question about trogs inspired a couple other questions.  Let's suppose that sometime in the future, our civilization makes a "Dyson Chair" -- being a chair that is basically the size of a planet, made out of interlinked modules, and kept in orbit around the sun by way of the momentum that its enormous mass possesses.  Is the Dyson Chair, which nobody could possibly sit on, a chair in the same sense as an ordinary piece of furniture.  

No. It fails to achieve the desired aim (final cause) essential to being a chair, of providing seating. The Dyson chair may still have formal, material, and efficient causes that allow us to consider it a chair...albeit a deficient one on account of it being unusable.