tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post3215871338266756283..comments2024-03-28T13:39:03.094-07:00Comments on Edward Feser: Around the webEdward Feserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-90058823733347923172019-10-28T19:15:37.124-07:002019-10-28T19:15:37.124-07:00(36:47) Cartwright: "If we didn't have th...(36:47) Cartwright: "If we didn't have the systematicity, we couldn't have science." <br /><br />Smith: "So I'm wondering where systematicity comes from...."<br /><br />Classical theist: "...............ahem...(excuse me)........"<br /><br />MattNelsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08798535744757220458noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-7654423559892459762019-10-21T20:53:41.519-07:002019-10-21T20:53:41.519-07:00But it seems like such beings *can* exist, and sur...But it seems like such beings *can* exist, and surely there is an epistemological gap between all these physical facts and the facts of consciousness. The same problem that haunts mechanistic views doesn't go away when we simply - by conceptual fiat, as it is - say that the power of consciousness is characteristic of a certain form (animal, sensitive forms) without ever accounting for the relationship between that power and the basic physical features, unlike how we can do with the wetness and liquidity of water, for example.<br /><br />Of course this is way more mysterious than why these laws are true or why there are no unicorns. We can make sense of laws and unicorns by examining material substances and basic physical effects. Consciousness, by contrast, is not like that; there is an epistemological gap (as in the Knowledge Argument and Zombie Argument), and no P supervenience between physical facts and consciousness; so no account of how conscious power could derive from a certain formal arrangement of matter. Seeger's point (and mine) remains unanswered. <br /><br />It seems consciousness is immaterial.<br /><br />(On a related note: consciousness being immaterial would also arguably make better sense of the relationship between consciousness and reason. We know reasoning is immaterial, but I also think there can be something it is like to reason (*can* be because there is also unconscious reasoning too), and so consciousness must be able to interact with concepts in a manner similar to that of the intellect. I might be wrong about there being qualia of reasoning, though. But I don't discard it so quickly, and if I'm right about that then there's another reason to take consciousness to be immaterial in a robust sense).Atnohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13138424784532839636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-29584946465480743982019-10-21T15:24:55.484-07:002019-10-21T15:24:55.484-07:00But isn't it the term arise that is the issue ...But isn't it the term arise that is the issue here. The Thomist doesn't believe that consciousness arises out of material things in the sense of being reducible to them. That's the materialist's position, and leads to the hard problem. In a sense, doesn't the Thomist think that consciousness simply can be an irreducible aspect of some material things. Is this any more mysterious than any other aspect of the world. We could as soon say why we do live in a world with these laws of nature or with bears and not unicorns. It isn't something we can answer.<br /><br />Surely Seager's point can be responded to by denying that such beings could exist.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-32432986634727440982019-10-21T10:20:28.218-07:002019-10-21T10:20:28.218-07:00Anonymous,
Reread my very first post here. It...Anonymous, <br /><br />Reread my very first post here. It's super cool that we can redefine the "material" in such a way as to include qualitative features in substances: the apple has a form of redness, the banana a form of yellow, and so on. But this does absolutely nothing to explain how and why a material substance would give rise to first person, subjective experiences of these qualitative features. <br /><br />Idealists and Cartesians take consciousness to be a fundamental property of the universe which doesn't arise naturally from extended, unconscious bodies. This is how they avoid the hard problem. An Aristotelian recognizing that consciousness can't be given a mechanistic explanation still has to account for how it would arise (in a non-mechanistic way) from properly formed material substances, unless he also recognizes consciousness is a fundamental, immaterial act, like reasoning is. So there is still a hard problem.<br /><br />And here hylemorphism does almost nothing to explain it. Why is it that this formal arrangement of molecules has the power of consciousness, while this other formal arrangement (of a plant, say) doesn't? Simply saying "it's the form! It's an animal form!" doesn't explain anything, it just names the phenomenon we want to explain as being one specific characteristic of that kind of form. Compare that to how we can actually explain why the substance of water is liquid, from the formal arrangement of its chemical composition. As I said in my example, we could think of zombie humans - substances that are very similar to us but nevertheless lack consciousness. The epistemological gap indicates the ontological difference.<br /><br />As William Seager says, in his review of Jaworski's hylemorphism book, "anyone who advances such a view would have to explain why there could not be another set of powers which share with the actual powers all the same basic physical features as outlined, say, in the standard model of physics and general relativity (a few basic kinds of matter, fields and the four forces of gavity, electromagnetism, plus the strong and weak forces) but which, when structured as a human being, fail to genrwte consciousness. In the absence of this explanation one is left with the suspicion that the problem of consciousness has only been 'solved' by conceptual fiat without giving us any understanding of the relation between the fundamental physical features of the world and consciousness. ..."Atnohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13138424784532839636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-4370792724458123102019-10-21T08:04:10.137-07:002019-10-21T08:04:10.137-07:00A final remark about Wittgenstein: I did not say h...A final remark about Wittgenstein: I did not say he found it easy to write about philosophical psychology. Part of his being a perfectionist was that he found every topic difficult. The point is that in this respect he found sensation and consciousness no different from the 'picture theory' of the proposition, logical constants, ostensive definition, or rule following. This is not my opinion. His life is very well documented. He and Russell frequently butted heads over Wittgenstein's perfectionism while they were working on logic.Gregnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-87418551332710466732019-10-21T04:37:31.465-07:002019-10-21T04:37:31.465-07:00Kaufman's article is interesting, and appropri...Kaufman's article is interesting, and appropriately acerbic. A political philosopher, whose name I forget unfortunately, commented at the end of the last century that the politically correct have twisted our natural affinity towards fair play and politeness into a method of censuring their opponents.<br /><br />They are also like missionaries, and I say this as a Christian who attends a pretty fundamentalist missional Protestant church (it's not a denominational thing, it's just an excellent local church). SJWs have gone out with the purpose of changing their society by colonising the committees and taking over the official roles of the institutions we built to promote critical thinking. There aren't many academics willing to fight them, because they hold institutional power. <br /><br />I honestly don't know what is to become of the university, particularly in Europe where they are usually publicly owned. The only organisations I see standing up to this are often Christian organisations, but the problem with them is that they are not the natural home of those atheists who would like to stand up to it as well.James Hamiltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14751687643490668756noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-25339507835259097622019-10-20T22:51:30.964-07:002019-10-20T22:51:30.964-07:00What do you mean by spatiotemporal facts? Isn'...What do you mean by spatiotemporal facts? Isn't it controversial whether these include or exclude qualia? <br /><br />Aren't you just observing that consciousness is different from non-consciousness? That isn't reducible to the non-consciousness. <br /><br />I think the failure of mechanism certainly suggests consciousness can't simply be reduced to non-conscious elements. Consciousness is distinct from non-consciousness. But whether consciousness can't be a material property would seem to depend on how we define the material.<br /><br />Isn't the hard problem of consciousness about explaining the production of consciousness and qualia from the non-conscious elements of the brain? But it assumes a reductionist framework. There's no hard problem of consciousness for the idealist or even the Cartesian, whatever other issues these positions may have. You're right that consciousness might still be a very interesting and rare property, but that isn't the same as the hard problem of consciousness.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-83237417924395520792019-10-20T22:09:30.959-07:002019-10-20T22:09:30.959-07:00Because nothing about spatiotemporal acts and rela...Because nothing about spatiotemporal acts and relations seems able to explain consciousness or necessitate its emergence; we can have all physical facts and still no knowledge whatsoever of qualia. As I said, we can even come across an alien substance (it goes for any substance, really) with organs very similar to ours, and still from observing such organs and their functions we would not *know* whether they are really conscious or not - we'll just assume they are based on induction, abduction, etc. But nothing about the physical facts necessitates consciousness. How do we get the power to subjectively experience qualitative features from a formal arrangement of matter? By virtue of what?<br /><br />I think mechanicism probably doesn't give us full explanations of non-living things either (we need notions such as final causality, forms, and so on), but it at least gives us some explanations. When it comes to analyzing consciousness, however, mechanicism seems utterly ineffectual, and this suggests a relevant ontological difference between first person properties, consciousness, and material substances.Atnohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13138424784532839636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-2998273477804576242019-10-20T20:04:44.551-07:002019-10-20T20:04:44.551-07:00Atno, aren't you just assuming a Cartesian/mec...Atno, aren't you just assuming a Cartesian/mechanistic framework? Why is conscious any more, or less, weird than anything else in nature?<br /><br />Also, is it really true that a mechanistic explanation is even a full one of non-living things, let alone living or conscious ones. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-86253120514553811622019-10-20T15:40:12.213-07:002019-10-20T15:40:12.213-07:00If you think it was only due to perfectionism, and...If you think it was only due to perfectionism, and it was really a breeze to just take our mindedness at face value, okay. I disagree, but that was just a small comment.<br /><br />The biggest issue is that consciousness remains an extremely weird addition to material substances, and I see no decent explanation for how it could emerge from any formal arrangement of matter. Atnohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13138424784532839636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-29702336875419383252019-10-20T15:37:39.465-07:002019-10-20T15:37:39.465-07:00I don't see an argument for how an organ could...I don't see an argument for how an organ could produce consciousness, and how we can understand "animal soul" as anything beyond a mere categorization that trivially tells us that this formal arrangement of matter somehow has the power of consciousness. My question is how we could know that from the form, and we can't. There is an epistemological gap, so it is something additional to the formal structure of matter; something that could also be missing, as seen in the possibility of zombies. <br /><br />Yes, in my view, we cannot *know* our fellow humans and other animals are conscious merely by learning about the formal arrangement of their body. We do, of course, know other people are conscious, but this knowledge doesn't come from analyzing the form like that, and so the epistemological gap remains. So consciousness is an immaterial power, even if extrinsically dependent on sense organs. God could have made zombie humans instead. <br /><br />I do take a position, I have presented it. I just used a more noncommittal language in an attempt to try to make you at least think that *maybe* consciousness could indeed be an immaterial power comparable to that of reason. I see a lot of thomists confidently asserting it isn't, but I see no adequate answer to the hard problem as I defended it. <br /><br />Further discussion of this topic would be good, since hylemorphism remains pretty much ignored in the literature (which is unfortunate). Atnohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13138424784532839636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-36075904084988248252019-10-20T12:58:51.968-07:002019-10-20T12:58:51.968-07:00Plants will not be immaterial in this case; they w...<i>Plants will not be immaterial in this case; they will have an immaterial aspect to them which is not reducible to their bodies, much like is the case with humans.</i><br /><br />Well, since a plant's being is its living, yes, its form will turn out to be through and through 'immaterial' on your view.<br /><br /><i>To put it differently, we still have an epistemological gap about mental facts when we know the physical facts about humans. Hylemorphism doesn't change this...</i><br /><br />I don't know why you think I have been arguing that it does. The question is why (non-)reduction to physical facts occupies such a privileged place in your model of philosophical understanding. On an Aristotelian understanding, non-reducibility to physics is not especially distinctive. And yes, there is such a thing as mechanistic explanation. It is not the only kind, and it is certainly not the gold standard. (I do not know what it means to say that failure of mechanistic explanation is a special indication of 'ontological difference'. I already knew, e.g., that slingshots and cactuses were ontologically different, as are camcorders and powers of sight.)<br /><br />You need not advert to the example of an alien hylomorphic substance to make your point. You can just point out that, on your conception, we do not know whether other animals or our fellow humans are conscious either.<br /><br /><i>And it could indeed be the case that there is no organ of consciousness, either. Conscious experience could be extrinsically dependent on sense organs and their activities, much like how reasoning appears to be with brain states, and still be immaterial in much the same robust way reasoning is. After all, what does an organ do in order to produce consciousness - or to intentionally grasp qualitative forms in a way that gives rise to a subjective experience of these forms?</i><br /><br />But again, the argument that there is no organ of thought does not proceed by simply marveling at the idea that any organ could produce the activity in question. That is never in the offing. The 'matter' which is correlate to 'form' is not itself described in terms intelligible apart from the hylomorphic unity. (The matter of a human being is its body, not the corpse that is left over when it dies. And not, I might add, the particles which compose it.) The idea is rather that if the intellect needs to receive all corporeal forms so as to know them (as an eye needs to receive all colors so as to see them), it could not have an organ with any one of those corporeal forms already (as, if the lens of your eye were red, everything would look red to you). There seems not to be anything parallel in the case of consciousness, though I suppose I cannot anticipate how you will attempt to shoehorn consciousness into one of the familiar argument forms.<br /><br />I note, in general, your noncommittal shotgun approach: "It <i>could</i> indeed be the case that there is no organ of consciousness... Conscious experience <i>could</i> be extrinsically dependent on sense organs and their activities ... <i>After all</i> what does an organ do in order to produce consciousness...?" Why not take a position? Why not ask why Aristotle and Aquinas think intellect is distinctive and work out in some precise way how consciousness is analogous? You seem just to be very impressed with the qualia literature and think that its implications for Thomism are obvious.<br /><br />Since your posts are long and scattershot and I am busy, I do not anticipate I'll be replying again if it is just more insisting that physical facts don't tell us everything about human minds.Gregnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-47682790452723441702019-10-20T12:02:25.169-07:002019-10-20T12:02:25.169-07:00Wittgenstein's difficulty in writing had nothi...Wittgenstein's difficulty in writing had nothing to do with consciousness per se. He had just as much difficulty in writing about logic (and, anyway, even his later work was mostly not about consciousness). The problem was just that he was a perfectionist and hated the idea of publishing anything half-thought out.Gregnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-22902612571008084332019-10-20T09:20:47.925-07:002019-10-20T09:20:47.925-07:00Wow thanks for the great information! I wasn't...Wow thanks for the great information! I wasn't intending to attack him, it just seems like Ockham and Scotus are commonly lumped together, usually under the pretext of here goes the inversion of intellect and will. Can you name any of those philosophers by any chance? I would love to read an essay on Scotus that explains some of his contributions to CatholicismAquinobrobinohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10575605295412908221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-36228799487477633562019-10-20T09:15:57.303-07:002019-10-20T09:15:57.303-07:00He was a pious Franciscan who also famously defend...He was a pious Franciscan who also famously defended the Immaculate Conception of Mary; his moral theory included a beautiful, passionate attack on slavery; his proof of the existence of God is extremely interesting and a pioneers certain notions of modal logic, arguing a First Cause from the mere possibility of effects; he also had logically cerives charity and love of neighbor from the love of God in a beautiful argument about how we must desire for others to enjoy public goods, and so on. And to this day there are good Catholic scotist philosophers. <br /><br />It is a little bizarre to me to suggest a man shouldn't be beatified just because his philosophy had some mistakes, even some egregious ones. Though even the charge of voluntarism is controversial; some scotists will tell you that it is not true. Atnohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13138424784532839636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-57952846773805820352019-10-20T06:30:17.489-07:002019-10-20T06:30:17.489-07:00From what I have read there was a cult surrounding...From what I have read there was a cult surrounding his holiness, but we know very little about his life. It is just interesting that we would beatify a man Who's thought lead to such a philosophical mess. I just read the Benedict XVI defends him as not a voluntarist. It just seems like a beatification is the Church encouraging research into a man's works, and it seems like that is not something that should be done now. <br /><br />But I would love to hear redemptive qualities of his ScholasticismAquinobrobinohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10575605295412908221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-9765621311201346622019-10-19T18:22:31.748-07:002019-10-19T18:22:31.748-07:00Because he was a holy religious man.Because he was a holy religious man.Atnohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13138424784532839636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-82868539095099559942019-10-19T17:09:38.399-07:002019-10-19T17:09:38.399-07:00Why was Duns Scouts beatified? I know he is signif...Why was Duns Scouts beatified? I know he is significant in formulating the immaculate conception, but according to the two readings linked on this post he was a dedicated voluntarist... Aquinobrobinohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10575605295412908221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-26384316065892931562019-10-19T15:10:57.901-07:002019-10-19T15:10:57.901-07:00To put it differently, we still have an epistemolo...To put it differently, we still have an epistemological gap about mental facts when we know the physical facts about humans. Hylemorphism doesn't change this; imagine we can find an alien substance in another planet; it is a hylemorphic substance like any other, it is prime matter informed by a certain essence. Still, we can know all the physical facts about that substance, and we still won't *know* whether it is conscious or not. It might even have what (appear to be) sense organs, complex structures which react to stimuli much like how our eyes do, and so on. And we still won't *know* whether this alien creature is conscious or not simply from observing its physical (informed) substance - we'll only know or assume it is conscious because of induction and our own experience with similar beings. <br /><br />For all we know from that informed substance, it could either have an animal soul (one which includes sense powers) or just a form which causes all its physical acts and reactions, but without sense powers. But then it is obvious that the sense power of animal souls is something additional, and which simply does not follow from the physical acts of the substance.Atnohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13138424784532839636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-32074368126049470682019-10-19T14:52:52.108-07:002019-10-19T14:52:52.108-07:00Seems to me that this attempt to take human minded...Seems to me that this attempt to take human mindedness at "face value", at least in the case of Wittgenstein and Ryle, end up as little more than an attempt at brushing wonder under the rug. There is something wondrous about consciousness, and especially about how "a certain form of explaining it is simply unavailable". Consciousness is in a weird place in our world; so weird that it took Wittgenstein a lot of effort to write his books.<br /><br />It is extremely weird how at one point we have plants and other material substances which function "in the dark", and then later on we have other material substances which still function in the same descriptions as those earlier substances, except with the addition that they have an "inner movie" accompanying all their functions. "Oh well, they have the power to intentionally grasp sensible forms" yes, and this power is very weird, we got ourselves a Cartesian theater.Atnohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13138424784532839636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-87773625246452416332019-10-19T14:46:16.386-07:002019-10-19T14:46:16.386-07:00Plants will not be immaterial in this case; they w...Plants will not be immaterial in this case; they will have an immaterial aspect to them which is not reducible to their bodies, much like is the case with humans. If life cannot be reduced to, or emergent from, the parts or the formal arrangement of parts that make up the body of a plant, then life is something additional to this structure, and will therefore be immaterial in a relevant sense. That is if life is like that. I am not arguing for it, though I am not particularly opposed to it either - as I said, I think it might make sense, after all.<br /><br />I do think this is the case with consciousness. And it could indeed be the case that there is no organ of consciousness, either. Conscious experience could be extrinsically dependent on sense organs and their activities, much like how reasoning appears to be with brain states, and still be immaterial in much the same robust way reasoning is. After all, what does an organ do in order to produce consciousness - or to intentionally grasp qualitative forms in a way that gives rise to a subjective experience of these forms? We can understand the emergence of solidity and liquidity out of chemical compositions, but consciousness - or the power to "intentionally have sensible forms" (notice the apparent irreducibility of such a description) - seems ontologically distinct. <br /><br />Mechanistic explanations are a real thing, and by recognizing this one does not reject have to reject the holistic tendencies of Aristotelian philosophy. The thing is that mechanistic explanations are real and can make a lot of sense (even if incompletely) of many phenomena in the world. But when they can't make *any* sense of a given thing, then that suggests this thing is ontologically different from the things which can be given mechanistic explanations and descriptions.<br /><br />Basically, how do substances develop the power to intentionally possess sensible forms? You might reply "by developing sense organs and a sense structure". But then by virtue of what does the bodily sense organ give rise to this new power? Its parts do not have this potency. Their formal arrangement must include something that is additional and categorically different from other formal arrangements of molecules. This "additional" element itself distinguishes the power of consciousness from the potencies that other material substances have. But then consciousness is something additional to formal arrangements of matter. You could rearrange molecules, unify them with different forms, and this still wouldn't be sufficient to give rise to consciousness. You could have zombies. <br /><br />The molecules do nothing to produce consciousness, and any formal rearrangements of these molecules into other hylemorphic substances will not give them this power; it is something they (and any body) simply cannot have, much like reasoning: no body can receive a universal form except by instantiation, so thinking is not something carried out by bodies. Likewise, no body can receive a qualitative, sensible form *as a first person, subjective experience*, only by instantiation (like when a blue wall is painted red). You can rearrange the body and its parts in every possible way, and it could still be a zombie; there is no logical supervenience between conscious experience/power of intentionally receiving sensible forms and the activities of bodies. Atnohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13138424784532839636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-4422010834124296162019-10-19T12:37:09.125-07:002019-10-19T12:37:09.125-07:00(This was supposed to be a follow up to my
Octobe...(This was supposed to be a follow up to my <br />October 19, 2019 at 12:34 PM reply to Atno.)Gregnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-59889011705313605652019-10-19T12:36:20.464-07:002019-10-19T12:36:20.464-07:00This is why I would say there is a deep affinity b...This is why I would say there is a deep affinity between the outlook of Aristotle and philosophers like Wittgenstein and Ryle. (The fact that all three philosophers are non-Cartesian, I consider to be a superficial affinity, and hardly distinctive, though that is what 'analytical Thomists' are most inclined to go on about.) Wittgenstein and Ryle attempt to legitimate simply taking our human mindedness at face value. We can go on to describe our powers and activities in a lot of detail. But a certain form of explaining them is simply unavailable.Gregnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-16999365017067290582019-10-19T12:34:30.080-07:002019-10-19T12:34:30.080-07:00It seems that lack of a mechanistic explanation do...<i>It seems that lack of a mechanistic explanation does, in fact, point towards immateriality.</i><br /><br />Yet in the same post you also suggest that life/self-motion may resist mechanistic explanation, as you also said earlier:<br /><br /><i>Where did this first form come from? Could consciousness come from non-consciousness? Even if it's a naturalizable power (unlike reason), it would seem irreducible to other natural powers and events. Like life. How do you get life from non-life? It seems even more problematic for consciousness...</i><br /><br />If your hunches here are all correct, then it follows that plants are immaterial in the sense in which reason and (you are suggesting) consciousness are.<br /><br />You're welcome to use the term 'immaterial' however you like, in particular wherever mechanistic explanation fails. There would be some sense in that. It would be the sense there is in saying that form is not matter. But that use is a stipulated one. It is not what Aristotle or Aquinas mean when they say that there is something immaterial about intellect as distinct from sensation and life generally. (I am not certain that they both do put the point that way, but suppose they did.) What they mean is that intellect lacks an organ (and Aquinas also thinks this implies it is subsistent). That's it. Whether everything immaterial-in-the-sense-mechanistically-inexplicable is also immaterial-in-the-sense-organless is a further question, and I don't think the answer is yes.<br /><br />You seem to me to regard the demands of naturalism as eminently reasonable, indeed as constitutive of true understanding. I do not really see any promise in grafting Thomistic theses onto such a philosophical outlook. The distinction between reason and other animate powers was never supposed to be that the latter are "naturalizable" while the former is not, and Feser has not attempted to "naturalize" qualia.<br /><br />Frankly, I think that without regarding a certain form of holism as a prephilosophical datum, hylomorphism is a hopeless doctrine. It is difficult to say in what sense this is true, but let me provide an analogy. One of the recurring objections to libertarian free will is that whatever is not physically determined must be random. If you try to zoom in on what is physically happening at the moment of choice, it looks like there will be no freedom to find there, unless one can find some way to be a compatibilist. And one still might feel this worry, even after appreciating that there is logical space for rejecting the dichotomy "determined or random". And I think one should feel the worry, as long as one thinks that understanding freedom should involve seeing how what goes on at the microphysical level amounts to freedom. But why should it? The account we give of our own actions is that we act for reasons, which we do not (generally) perceive as determining us (as evidenced by, e.g., our admission that sometimes we equally might have chosen something else, and by our practices of assigning praise and blame--so the libertarian might argue). A philosophical account of this need not be crypto-scientific speculation about what the molecules are doing when one acts. We will rather give an account of what practical reason and will are, what their objects are, what their activities are (choice, deliberation, etc.). But in giving such a description-explanation of a power, we are doing so in coordinate terms. We are never trying to reduce the human to something non-human.<br /><br />Likewise when we coordinate the power-activity-object tried sight-seeing-color. We may say, as Aquinas and Aristotle do, that, to receive a form such as color, it is necessary that the organ of sight be itself uncolored. But the question of reconstructing sight out of non-sight is never in the offing, and is not what is involved in giving the formal and material causes of sight in the first place.Gregnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-18224348585033873592019-10-19T10:45:37.444-07:002019-10-19T10:45:37.444-07:00But again, what is it about the formal structures ...But again, what is it about the formal structures of our organs that give rise to this power of intentionally receiving sensible forms? No other substances have that; only animals. There is nothing in the constitution of a rock that could give rise to an intentional power to receive sensible forms. But then why is it that when we rearrange atoms, particles, etc., into a different material form (such as a human body), that all of a sudden we have conscious experience? <br /><br />It seems that lack of a mechanistic explanation does, in fact, point towards immateriality. The reason mechanism was (and remains) popular is because it does capture an important ontological difference between physical entities and mental entities. We can describe physical facts in accordance with mechanism; we cannot do the same with mental facts. The Aristotelian is right to point out the limits of mechanism, but the ontological differences that even allowed for such a distinction in the first place would remain, and are still relevant.<br /><br />What about the basic physical facts of animals give rise to the power of "intentionally having sensible forms"? Is such a potency already present in inanimate entities? In virtue of what about the basic physical entities would there be such a potency? Couldn't there be zombie versions of these? <br /><br />Again it seems the power of "intentionally having sensible forms" is something additional to the physical facts; merely structuring particles into a human body would not suffice to bring about consciousness. It's a higher power that cannot emerge from just a different formal arrangement of the same entities shared by plants, minerals, etc. <br /><br />It might be that life is also like that. At the very least it seems life is also something that could not arise naturally, without divine intervention - it seems that the power of self-motion is categorically different and cannot originate from beings that lack it. <br />Atnohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13138424784532839636noreply@blogger.com