Attention: Starting December 14, 2019 Yahoo Groups will no longer host user created content on its sites. New content can no longer be uploaded after October 28, 2019. Sending/Receiving email functionality is not going away, you can continue to communicate via any email client with your group members. Learn More
- Feb 21, 2014John:Then, would you mind trying to resend that last attachment (by Schloss) to me at the following email address:jamesabarham@...Thank you!James
On Friday, February 21, 2014 2:09 PM, James Barham <jamesabarham1@...> wrote:
Hello Jim:Thank you for your welcome.Your question re: form goes to the heart of the matter, all right. I don't know the answer---I don't feel I understand Ross's position well enough yet.However, I believe I know what Oderberg would say. He is very clear that for an orthodox Aristotelian/Thomist like himself, "the laws of nature are the laws of natures." That is, formalisms describing the behavior of natural systems, like the Schrodinger equation, are mind-dependent abstractions which are ontologically dependent on the natures (essences) themselves. I find that view very attractive myself.On the other hand, Oderberg denies the possibility of strong (ontological) emergence. That means (I think) that he attributes radical novelty in nature to the direct intervention of God. That, I guess, is where Aquinas parts company with Aristotle. I confess that (assuming my interpretation is correct) I side with Aristotle on that point."Emergence" is really the heart of the matter, especially is we are to avoid a "scientistic" reduction of the human spirit (and even life itself, I would argue) to mechanical interactions, which would mean abolishing everything that makes both life and mind what they are. The trick, in my view, is how to save life and mind (or spirit) without recurring directly to divine intervention. Emergence seems to me the way to go, but unfortunately the concept is ambiguous. Scientists often use it in an epistemological sense only (e.g., Phillip W. Anderson in his classic article "More is Different"), while philosophers mostly believe it is hopelessly confused.I feel we must make sense of emergence if we are to have any hope of avoiding reductionism, on the one hand, and miracles, on the other. Of course, tastes will differ as to whether it is desirable to avoid these things.Anyway, to return to your original question, I side with you in wanting to interpret "form" in an emergentist way, not a Platonic way. However, there are certainly difficulties in understanding exactly what that ought to mean.JamesP.S. Question: Shouldn't we say that "substance" is what is emergent, with "form" linked more to the way the matter is structured---that is, more related to the explanation of the quality of the emergent substance, than to the fact of its emergence? I am still a little confused about exactly how to deploy these concepts.Another question: Oderberg seems to stick with the traditional Aristotelian view that form is the active or dynamic element in substances, with matter as the passive principle. But doesn't modern physics teach us that matter is itself dynamic? In short, on the modern view, don't matter and form completely interpenetrate each other? If that is right, then we need to re-think hylomorphism; however it seems to me that modern physics does support the basic hylomorphic insight, if not the details of Aristotle's doctrine.
On Thursday, February 20, 2014 9:06 PM, "jagiven1370@..." <jagiven1370@...> wrote:
James,
Welcome to the group I am also a senior (61 yr old) scientist, an amateur philosopher, and a Catholic.
I believe that Thomism as received is not capable of accounting for the freedom of the human will or the absolute novelty of nature. Thus I am deeply interested in Thomist-Scotist synthesis. Jim Ross (with Bates) wrote a very important book on Duns Scotus. He like me had major problems with the concept of Divine Ideas. I still have difficulties with Ross' book Hidden necessities on the topic of essences. Are essences mathematical like Schrodinger equation solutions, or more aptly thought of as emergent like ecological niches. I choose the latter, but how to make such a concept fill the demands we inherit from Plato and Aristotle?
Jim Given - << Previous post in topic Next post in topic >>