(urth) Severian I, Severian II, Severian III, Severian Ad Nauseum
Son of Witz
sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org
Wed Dec 3 23:16:14 PST 2008
thanks.
I'm more or less familiar with the concepts.
I just lose track of the jargon and attributions.
~witz
On Dec 3, 2008, at 8:37 PM, Lane Haygood wrote:
> OK, so matter, form and anima.
>
> Plato and many of the early philosophers wrestled with this idea of
> universality. For instance, if we go and look at a red thing (an
> apple), we know it's red. We see the color. But what about
> "redness?" What is the "thing-status" (being, reality) of redness?
>
> Plato answers that for every general category there is a perfect,
> unchanging, eternal Idea (eidolon) that is that category. So, in
> the Platonic Heaven of the Forms, there is the perfect Form of Red,
> and all particular red things "participate in" the form of red.
> That is, red things are imperfect instantiations of redness.
>
> But we never have direct contact with this world, Plato says, so we
> must know about it in another way. Hence, he theorizes that our
> souls know it, but forget it as we are born into the mortal world.
> When we see particular instantiations, it allows us to grasp the
> pure concept through a process called anamnesis, the remembrance of
> the Forms in our souls.
>
> Aristotle found this to be problematic, and so argued instead that
> universality was a feature of things themselves. The general idea
> of redness, he argues, inheres the being of red things. That is,
> there is no "redness" apart from red things. The same "ground for
> being" is in all particular predicates. When I say of an apple, "is
> red," I am really making the claim that the apple itself is a
> ground, a substance, for predication of a property, redness, but
> that said property has no independent ground for being apart from
> that substance.
>
> Matter is the stuff that persists through physical changes, or what
> we commonly think of as physical stuff. It's like dirt, or wind, or
> water. But it can be given form, and certain things arise only in
> concert between matter and form. A house, for instance, isn't the
> bricks and the framework and the plumbing, etc. It is the thing
> that is made up by their precise configuration. To put it more
> poetically, a cup isn't the clay shell, but the empty space inside
> of it that is useful. That's what gives a thing its telos, its
> purpose.
>
> So what is a substance, as opposed to just matter? A substance is
> something non-separable from the object. I can separate the color
> red from the apple. It is possible to think of a non-red apple.
> But I can't think of an apple that is non-spatial. Extension, mass,
> etc. are all properties of an apple that are substantial rather than
> predicable. In other words, substantial features cannot have
> separate existence. A substance must also be differentiable from
> other things. Individuality is a rough way of understanding it, but
> that implies too much uniqueness. We must be able to say that
> "this, and not that" is a thing. Matter is therefore not a
> substance, because matter cannot fulfill both these conditions at
> once.
>
> So the primary substance for Aristotle is <i>form</i> or essence
> (ousia) -- that special unique thing about a given individual that
> helps us to differentiate it, without which it would not be a thing
> at all. But nothing exists in this sort of "raw" state. Everything
> is matter + form, or essences and predicates, or grounds and
> properties. Apples have "applehood," but they also have mass,
> extension, a color, a taste, a smell, etc.
>
> Anima refers to the soul (Aristotle's "De Anima" is translated as
> "on the soul."). It literally means breath, but refers instead to
> the life-force or essential energy that animates (hey, hey, clue)
> the body. Living things are matter + form + anima. We might say
> that anima was a primitive attempt at understanding consciousness,
> though that'd be specious, because we're no closer to understanding
> what consciousness is 2,000 years later, and probably won't have any
> greater clue 2,000 years from today what it is.
>
> This has been your nightly PHIL 101 lesson.
>
> Lane
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