Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Metaphysics

[genkaus]

Feser didn't agree with Plato's theory, but gave it so that we could understand where Aristotle was coming from. Feser believes Aristotle's "moderate realism". His views come from Aristotle, on which Aquinas also based his theology. In what ways would this philosophy be contradictory with the Christian faith?

In Feser's words:

"while it holds that universals considered in abstraction form other features exist only in the mind, it also holds that they exist in the extra-mental things themselves (albeit always tied to other features) and that the abstracted universals existing in the intellect derive from our sense experiences of these objectively existing things, rather than being the free creations of the mind."

Its not that difficult to figure out the contradictions of his philosophical ramblings.

Consider this statement - "while it holds that universals considered in abstraction form other features exist only in the mind, it also holds that they exist in the extra-mental things themselves" - in the same statement he is arguing that those universals exist only in the mind and that they don't.

According to Aristotle's view of the forms, the universals considered in abstraction that exist in mind are the perception of the essence that exists in the extra-mental thing. While arguable, he does admit that the essence cannot be independent of the substance - that the essence is the derivative and consequence of the object. And this is where it contradicts the Christian faith where essence is given primacy over the substance.

To use an example - consider a person "John Doe". Now, according to Platonic and Christian faith, there exists another plane where John Doe actually exists - that that 'form' of John Doe encapsulates all his John Doe'ness and the John Doe we see is the material reflection of it. However, by Aristotle's view, the substance and form of John Doe here is what dictates his essence - his John Doe'ness. That essence is not independent of his substance and form and it'll perish with it. Feser (and Aquinas) both ignore this logical implication of Aristotle's philosophy.

He also gives reasons why the "immaterial nature of these things entails that the intellect which grasps them must itself be immaterial as well" (I suppose he would mean a soul here, or that rationality depends on it, as he later states, and as I mentioned in an earlier post):

Consider first that when we grasp the nature, essence, for form of a thing, it is necessarily one and the same form, nature, or essence that exists both in the thing and in the intellect. The form of triangularity that exists in our minds when we think about triangles is the same form that exists in actual triangles themselves; the form of "dogness" that exists in our minds when we think about dogs is the same form that exists in actual dogs; and so forth. If this weren't the case, then we just wouldn't really be thinking about triangles, dogs, and the like, since to think about these things requires grasping what they are, and what they are is determined by their essence or form. But now suppose that the intellect is a material thing - some part of the brain, or whatever. Then for the form to exist in the intellect is for the form to exist in a certain material thing. But for a form to exist in a material thing is just for that material thing to be the kind of thing the form is a form of; for example, for the form of "dogness" to exist in a certain parcel of matter is just for that parcel of matter to be a dog. And in that case, if your intellect was just the same thing as some part of your brain, it follows that that part of your brain would become a dog whenever you thought about dogs. "But that's absurd!" you say. Of course it is'=; that's the point. Assuming that the intellect is material leads to such absurdity; hence the intellect is not material.

Another example of mixing up Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics. Thankfully, he made the error in the very first statement, which renders the rest of his mental convulsions pointless.

Assuming Platonic idealism, the form of an object has an independent existence - and is therefore reflected in the object and our intellect. In this case both forms can be considered one and the same.

In Aristotelian realism, the form of an object is the consequence of its substance and the form within our intellect is the reflection of that form. It is, therefore, not the same. The difference is the same as that between an object and its picture.

For example, the form of 'dogness' that exists in the dog could be very different from the form of 'dogness' that exists in our intellect - which is the result of observation of different dogs. Therefore, even if the 'dogness' of a dog is a material thing within a dog and the 'dogness' in our mind is a material thing within our mind, it still wouldn't turn that part of our mind into a dog because these are different entities to begin with.