Soul

[Neo-Scholastic]

Quantity is only what humans have invented in order to easily organize and recognize patterns in a certain way. Quantity is just one of a million methods by which human brains perceive and process patterns in nature.

The ability to recognize a pattern presupposes a pattern to be recognized. How is it possible for us to rationally make distinctions from the seamless continuum of reality? For example, where does a corner end? The use of words and symbols to convey meaning requires more than the referent objects themselves. Foundational certainties must exist in order to identify referent objects.

Not if I assert a hylomorphic metaphysics, which basically is what I'm doing. All I need them to do is recognize that form even exists.

I don't know that term. You must educate me as we go along.

I don’t think ‘6’ is a good example. I’m just thinking out loud now because I do not have all my thoughts together on this one. Just as we recognize rough composite substances, like wood, and more pure ones, like water, they are still derived from more basic and more pure substance. Hence we have an atomic theory for substances. Science is still working on finding the Primal Matter out of which all substances are formed, i.e. “Formed”.

Yet, form, itself seems to be taken for granted, as if it were nothing at all, just a convenient fiction. That is a grand oversight. We do not yet have an ‘atomic’ theory for forms. It seems to me that 6 is a composite form, just like Euclidean triangles and perfect spheres. Whereas, “one” is much more pure, since it contains within itself the principle of unity required to unite six 1s as a single quantity.