[Serious] Thomism: Then & Now

[vulcanlogician]

It goes deeper.

Sure, it could be that some intangibles are not real but that is different from extrapolating from examples about chairs and pots and concluding that no intangibles are real. Here's an intangible: a unit. Are there units? If not how can we do math without it. Or maybe go the other way: is there a totality? ...the All, as it were.

I was doing some sticking-up for the plausibility of mereological nihilism there. But I'm not a mereological nihilist, myself. I tend to think "allness" and "units" are real. I tend to think chairs are real. The form of the chair is intelligible, therefore the intelligible form of the chair is real. I think the same way about human rights, morality, and justice. All real.

It is obvious were I am going by mentioning units and allness. These are attributes of God: unity and perfection.

You're beginning to lose me here. An atheist could say allness and units are simply attributes of a godless reality. I'm not sure what makes God relevant to the claim that allness or units are real.

And we recognize those attributes in creatures to the degree they participate as some limited kind unity and completeness.  So I can see why an atheist would deny the validity of any intangibles even if it comes at the cost denying the validity of math and the utility of language.

This is a Platonic claim. And, I agree. It's compelling. I personally think Plato was on to something as far as numbers and math being real, permanent, immutable, and unchangeable. He also threw "eternal" in there. And I think that's what gets theists all excited about bringing their god into the equation. I agree with Plato. They are eternal... as in "forever and ever." The pythagorean theorem (or the immutable truth it claims about right triangles in Euclidean space) will survive the heat death of the universe. Therefore, "eternal."

NOT, therefore "God."

Plenty of atheists accept the metaphysical existence of ordinary objects. You may even convince some of them of hylomorphism. But hylomorphism when it comes to human souls and human identity is on slippery ground. In the most basic sense, we can say it's true of every object comprised of matter and form. Only mereological nihilists would object here, and most people aren't mereological nihilists.

The rest of us would admit, yes, there IS matter there. That matter IS arranged in an intelligible form. So what? That's materialism. If you start claiming a "substance" to that form, you are drifting into Cartesianism. If you say the form is wholly without substance, then you're a materialist who believes in shapes: that's what I am.