(September 15, 2014 at 7:31 pm)Exian Wrote: I ask this genuinely and not at all Socratically- Wouldn't the same methods used to identify an entity as separate from its surroundings be the same to describe a hole?Thank you for the particularly thoughtful post. Clearly people know objects by the attributes they, the objects, manifest. Keep in mind that materiality is also a property that knowing subjects, eg. you and I, can attribute to real objects.
While reflecting of the various posts, I noticed that most respondents mistakenly (I believe) give matter a different ontological status than form, as if matter were somehow alienable from form. As for me, I do not claim, as some have charged, that forms, like holes, occur apart from matter but do maintain that form in-itself is immaterial. Likewise I would not claim that matter can occur independent from form, but I do say that matter in-itself is formless. I think reflecting on the apparent immaterial nature of things like holes highlights the fact that form has the same ontological status as matter. In effect, people can know about both by abstracting them from real objects.
