RE: Tentatively Christian; looking for a reasonable discussion
March 24, 2015 at 9:04 am
(This post was last modified: March 24, 2015 at 9:13 am by Neo-Scholastic.)
(March 24, 2015 at 1:19 am)Esquilax Wrote: Hey, if you want to posit things beyond the physical universe then please, go right ahead and justify that statement with some evidence.
Having already shown that the whole of reality, the All, does not change because it is in full actuality, we must account for why the sensible bodies within reality do. The physical universe, taken as a whole, is one such sensible body that changes. Everyone agrees that something that exists only in potential cannot affect change since only things that actually exist can do anything. Thus no sensible body can come into being on its own. Nor can anything move from potentially being to its actuality except by something that already exists. Therefore since the physical universe continually comes into being, i.e. goes from potential to actuality, it must be subject to something other than itself and which already exists in full actuality.
(March 24, 2015 at 8:38 am)Nestor Wrote: ...but don't numbers mean something in an 'alternate' reality of sorts that does not contain discrete objects? Otherwise, how else could we do pure mathematics?Thoughts about forms are not the forms themselves. Pure mathematics is possible (and effective with respect to sensible bodies) because what is conceived in the intellect partakes of the same form that is manifest in sensible bodies.
(March 24, 2015 at 8:48 am)robvalue Wrote: So I'd say no, 6 doesn't exist as anything other than an abstract notion.In order to abstract something that something must in some sense already, in some form (!), be present in the thing from which it is abstracted.