tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post6562845574025332924..comments2024-03-29T04:58:54.003-07:00Comments on Edward Feser: Transubstantiation and hylemorphismEdward Feserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comBlogger78125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-3875408166265930732023-07-18T06:32:34.904-07:002023-07-18T06:32:34.904-07:00Lol. Anonymous was on the correct tract, just need...Lol. Anonymous was on the correct tract, just needed the word for it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-89149561328247900422019-10-19T06:39:44.948-07:002019-10-19T06:39:44.948-07:00Tony asks of an ingested rabbit: "is it a wol...Tony asks of an ingested rabbit: "is it a wolf molecule when first entering the stomach, or entering the intestine, or entering the blood stream, or entering into a cell, or ...?" A chemist can only shake her head. There are no "wolf molecules" any more than there is "Marxist science." There is only science, and there are only molecules. You're mixing one language game--the phenomenological, common sense language game of hylemorphism--into a more precise language game (the one applied by chemists to the microscopic). Santihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18158850887371068289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-21003723670910351452019-10-19T06:23:20.475-07:002019-10-19T06:23:20.475-07:00Many good points, Lonely Professor. Well said. Many good points, Lonely Professor. Well said. Santihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18158850887371068289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-72282579067921204452019-10-18T10:01:26.968-07:002019-10-18T10:01:26.968-07:00Hey I'm sorry, looking back I may have worded ...Hey I'm sorry, looking back I may have worded this combatively which is not my intention. I'm just a novice trying to make sure I understand accurately what these ideas are about, I'm not trying to make some rhetorical point especially since I don't know enough about the subjectJimtaddeo1989https://www.blogger.com/profile/10081383025125429335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-7595937822161038742019-10-18T09:56:21.074-07:002019-10-18T09:56:21.074-07:00Hi, so I have question about something Professor F...Hi, so I have question about something Professor Feser addresses in the opening. He mentions the hylemorphic conception of nature versus the mechanistic view of nature. How the hylemorphic conception sees the tree and the stone and the dog as distinct substances but the atomist view sees them as aggregates of atoms or as part of one larger substance ala Spinoza. My question is does this entail then that hylomorphism rejects modern findings that suggest all matter is possibly all connected and just energy moving at different speeds? 'Cause it does seem that arguably matter is interrelated, or is this a misconception of the Aristotelian conception of what a substance? I'm sorry if this sounds sophomoric, I just want to make sure I'm not misunderstanding anythingJimtaddeo1989https://www.blogger.com/profile/10081383025125429335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-37019286930771473742019-10-18T05:51:39.673-07:002019-10-18T05:51:39.673-07:00The Aristotelian notion of substance as understood...The Aristotelian notion of substance as understood and explained by Aquinas remains a valid point of reference which ultimately came to us by the work of divine providence.Orestes J. Gonzálezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15867137812062130275noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-8091641192981768842019-10-17T18:16:43.781-07:002019-10-17T18:16:43.781-07:00Feser writes:
"Everything in the physical wo...Feser writes:<br /><br />"Everything in the physical world would be transubstantiated." Love it! Namaste!<br /><br />"Absolutely every physical thing would have to [be] treated with the same reverence that the Eucharist is, because every physical thing would be the Eucharist!" The horror! Green ecology! No more war!<br /><br />"[I]t is hard to know how to give a principled answer to the question what the boundaries are between those particles that make up the aggregate and those that are not part of it – and thus between those particles that are transubstantiated, and those that are not." All is one!<br /><br />Where do I sign up for this very trippy, Lotus-eater, George Harrison alternative to the narrow cranny, exclusion religion inhabited by Aristotelian hylemorphism?<br /><br />In other words, the problem with hylemorphism is that it tries to isolate a substance from the rest of the world around it--which is fine in terms of aspect seeing, and can be done nominally by definition--but in terms of providing the whole story, it's objectively wrong. It's incomplete. It's why scientists have so little pragmatic use for it. We can identify bread from wine via hylemorphic common sense--and we can call them separate "substances" with essences and accidents associated with them--but we also have to acknowledge that they are inseparable from the larger ecosystem and cosmic "blob" of matter and energy that is the universe. ("Blob" is Feser's word for characterizing Spinoza's substance-mode position--which is also Einstein's.) <br /><br />We also have to acknowledge the atomic theory--that the microscopic parts where boundaries lie are indeterminate.<br /><br />In other words, all three theses--hylemmorphism, the Spinoza blob, and atomism--are ways of aspect seeing the whole. They are hands on the elephant.<br /><br />But hylemorphic transubstantiation seeks to suppress attention to the other "hands" (the Spinoza blob and the atomist aspects of existence). In reality, hylemorphism is just one of three broad ways to talk about the world. It is a common sense, phenomenological, human, subjective point-of-view. <br /><br />But if you're looking closely, Christ turning into the substance of bread and wine is always already leaking out into the world blob of metasystems and microsystems, and the outgoing tide cannot be regulated, only ignored or downplayed. <br /><br />By contrast, science doesn't look away. It gazes heavy into those two big eyes of macro and micro existence that hylemorphism does not emphasize. <br /><br />Science goes macro (toward Spinoza's blob) and micro (toward atomism) because these have enormous explanatory value after we have established, phenomenologically, that we're looking at is the "substance" of dog, which includes a tongue, four legs, and a furry tail, etc. Once we say that, the relation of the dog to the macro and the micro then establishes its fuller, "cosmic address."<br /><br />So there's a trinity for you: hylemorphism, the blob, and the atomic. Perhaps think Blake on receiving the host? "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as is, Infinite."<br />Santihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18158850887371068289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-13638780478380044812019-10-16T06:01:43.227-07:002019-10-16T06:01:43.227-07:00@Khouri: There are blogs for that. This wouldn'...@Khouri: There are blogs for that. This wouldn't be one of them.thefederalisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17514099991587503764noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-11341045418900450742019-10-15T08:39:25.692-07:002019-10-15T08:39:25.692-07:00Catholicism is a syncretic religion. It mixes Chri...Catholicism is a syncretic religion. It mixes Christianity with paganism. Cardinal Newman said the same. What Catholics fail to realize is that when the Jews practiced syncretism they were judged, their temple was destroyed twice and their nation taken away by civilizations more wicked then themselves. A similar fate will await the syncretic Catholic on the day of judgment. Christ says he is returning for a church without spot or wrinkle. Catholics and employ cognitive dissonance with abandon and ignore the doctrinal, pedophile, homosexual, and other clerical scandals of the church. Yet, God is keeping score, and few Catholics will survive the refining fires. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-21167762495193794422019-10-15T08:34:10.362-07:002019-10-15T08:34:10.362-07:00Your just playing metaphysical word games. The re...Your just playing metaphysical word games. The reality is there is that the Real Presence is erroneous doctrine of the Catholic Church. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-1164659466595335882019-10-15T08:30:58.299-07:002019-10-15T08:30:58.299-07:00NO! World class thinking!NO! World class thinking!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-4774012398184190262019-10-15T07:57:58.655-07:002019-10-15T07:57:58.655-07:00FormFormBill Solomonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17463551320539811359noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-36209838753091767622019-10-15T07:51:45.925-07:002019-10-15T07:51:45.925-07:00I think clearly the strict Aristotelian still face...I think clearly the strict Aristotelian still faces the question as to how the accidents exist on their own without a subject to adhere in.Bill Solomonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17463551320539811359noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-16753859232254435952019-10-15T07:48:39.131-07:002019-10-15T07:48:39.131-07:00Surely Aristotelianism is about privileged ontolog...Surely Aristotelianism is about privileged ontologies and not a dichotomy between what exists and what does not. I find it incredibly easy to swallow that virtually means minutely less existent. As for your last comment I posted an interpretation of substance earlier in the thread that allows for the bread and the wine to be forms instead of accidents and therefore not necessarily adhering in the bread in the wine but accidentally, as it were, adhering in Jesus, without strictly and essentially being accidents of Jesus. Bill Solomonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17463551320539811359noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-83721302597988814642019-10-14T08:24:44.427-07:002019-10-14T08:24:44.427-07:00Just educated speculation, since "Beloved, no...Just educated speculation, since "Beloved, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known," : We will have bodies <i>capable</i> of sexual pleasure, just as we will have bodies capable of eating and drinking (because Christ after the Resurrection showed us he could eat and drink). But there will be no sexual intercourse, because Christ says "At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven." Likewise, Christ himself, and the Apostles and their successors the bishops, did not contract marriage and did not have sexual relations in this life, in part because their lives are meant to point us toward the life hereafter. <br /><br />C.S. Lewis speculated that our state in the Resurrection will hold for the consciousness some sort of heightened "pleasure" or satisfaction of the senses that both fulfills them and yet surpasses their ordinary fulfillment, in a manner we can't really grasp because we have no idea of, say, a pleasure or satisfaction regarding tastes that is so fulfilling it leaves nothing more to be desired as taste. (In our experience, one good taste is incompatible with certain other good tastes, so they can only be enjoyed serially, one after the other.) <br /><br />We also cannot imagine experience where on the one hand we are "caught up" in an eternal moment through the direct vision of God Himself, and yet we remain having bodies and having sensitive faculties that involve time as a necessary medium of action. Tonyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07159134209092031897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-29373050498829650432019-10-13T19:25:07.991-07:002019-10-13T19:25:07.991-07:00Classic 3am thinking. Classic 3am thinking. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-53513810393971368732019-10-13T14:01:35.678-07:002019-10-13T14:01:35.678-07:00Catholicism, ironically, is a type of paganism. Yo...Catholicism, ironically, is a type of paganism. You can call it sacramental, but the reality is they think they eat someone. A whole person with one gulp! I am not making fun of it, or saying it's unnatural. But it's not Jewish. It comes from Egypt. Catholic apologist say Jesus would not have let his followers be confused in John 6. But Jesus didn't explain HOW they would eat him, and Jesus could have explained the Eucharest then. John 6 is about how close God wants to be to us. So much so that it's like eating him and becoming one. There is no evidence for the Eucharest in the Bible. It's all Catholic interpretation. The ancient Egyptians had a sacrament where they ate their god through food. But Confession is basically Calvinistic, where God changes you without your will being perfectly pure.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-22661656949801556472019-10-13T13:43:33.323-07:002019-10-13T13:43:33.323-07:00I might consider being a pagan, but not a Christia...I might consider being a pagan, but not a Christian. The cousin sacrament of the Eucharest, Confession, is the height of evil, the evil of Christianity. To change evil to good purely from without is as evil as changing good to evil. Only a person can change his soul. Not a priest. A priest cannot make you a good personAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-70000138330662761252019-10-13T12:09:14.539-07:002019-10-13T12:09:14.539-07:00I think Thomists have a false idea of eternity. I&...I think Thomists have a false idea of eternity. I've been listening avidly to chants from different religions and becoming fascinated with God. I think three persons were in some indeterminate reality in-between necessity and contingency. They won an infinite test and become necessary, became the eternal Forms, and became God as Trinity. We can never see behind God, so Aquinas is right in what we see as the contingent world. The existence of God can't be proven, but if he is there I think its more like Greek mythology than Aristotle's idol of a God. Why must we be tested but not God? A/T see God as an object instead of with personality. That makes no sense. The hymn to Apollo of youtube is interesting. I want to know more about Aquinas's argument that there must be three persons only within GodAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-69752627804069013742019-10-13T11:42:26.475-07:002019-10-13T11:42:26.475-07:00@Paradoxo,
Your re-stating of my argument is clo...@Paradoxo,<br /><br /><br />Your re-stating of my argument is close enough.<br /><br />I would maybe reach for rejecting premise 1. Aquinas himself considers the question whether or not we are good by the Divine Goodness, and rejects the idea our goodness is just the Divine Goodness in us: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1006.htm#article4<br /><br /><br />The reason why I don't consider Chastek's response a good defeater is because his argument is essentially saying that creation is good without being what is good alone. And so the goodness of creation cannot be the goodness of God full stop. I grant that.<br /><br />But my argument isn't that "birthdays are God", rather that the goodness of birthdays is the Goodness of God in a finite mode. It's not the whole goodness of God, but like a cup of ocean water from the whole ocean, it is still the ocean, even if it isn't the whole ocean.<br /><br />And one of the absurd consequence of that is that, whenever we enjoy some created good, we are actually enjoying God - or rather a finite mode of God. Just as when we see the whiteness of snow we are seeing something that reflects all wavelengths of light.<br /><br />I would also therefore argue that premise 1 simply implies premise 2 - if God is that by which we exist, then our existence is God's existence in a finite mode. That is just what God's existence being our own existence <b>means</b> - We have no being outside the Divine Being. <br /><br />In other words, if we identify God with Existence, then it seems that a simple change of where we consider existence entails that our existence is God, and that when we say essences have existence we are saying essences have God.JoeDnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-90921767187949576592019-10-13T10:06:16.881-07:002019-10-13T10:06:16.881-07:00I just finished reading Chastek's posts on the...I just finished reading Chastek's posts on the subject. Maybe my reading on Thomistic thought is too far removed, or I'm just too frazzled, but the problem you have seems to be something like this:<br />1. If God's existence is necessary, per se, and ontologically first, then it is that by which we exist.<br />2. If God's existence is that by which we exist, then our existence cannot be numerically distinct from His.<br />3. So, if God's existence is necessary, per se, and ontologically first, then our existence cannot be numerically distinct from His.<br /><br />And if that's correct, then I just don't see anything that justifies premise (2), which is far from evident to me.<br />Maybe it's better to move on to a related question. Now, Chastek contends that we avoid pantheism because God's existence is transcendental rather than categorical. Since you're raising the question of pantheism, you must not consider that a good defeater. Perhaps explaining why not will help me with this.Parádoxohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05501803561895808925noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-3114165859794766572019-10-13T07:45:47.393-07:002019-10-13T07:45:47.393-07:00OK. Let me ask you for a clarification, then: Wh...OK. Let me ask you for a clarification, then: When the priest takes the host as Communion, the priest places the host in his mouth. It is by <i>moving</i> the host into a new place, and then by <i>changing</i> the host via chewing and swallowing: these are the meaning of "eating." And so before he consumes the host, Jesus is sacramentally present at the place of the paten on which the host rests, and then Jesus is sacramentally present in the place of the priest's mouth. Does Jesus's place change <i>without regard</i> to the change of place of the accidents, or (in some sense) <b>in virtue of</b> the change of place of the accidents? <br /><br />I have always been confused by the Church's teaching that Christ does not take on the accidents, and the coordinate teaching about the accident of quantity being as a kind of substrate to the other accidents of the bread: We say that Jesus "is in" a place, that is the very same place as the bread was when it was bread. If Jesus is "in" the place, but not "in" that place in any <b>relation to</b> to the accident of the bread (when it was bread), in what SENSE is He "in" the very same place? <br /><br />I had thought possibly that what the Church meant by Jesus not having the accidents of the bread is that Jesus doesn't have the OTHER accidents, but (obviously) the accidents of place (i.e. quantity, extension) apply because otherwise the priest could not MOVE His place by moving the host's extendedness. And we could not <i>consume</i> the Body of Christ by chewing and swallowing, without our motions of chewing and swallowing being actions that bear on the extended aspect of the host also bearing on the Body of Christ. <br /><br />I am not trying to suggest a position contrary to the Church's teaching, I am merely trying to understand it. Tonyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07159134209092031897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-23859639226905151302019-10-13T07:00:12.490-07:002019-10-13T07:00:12.490-07:00Tony, My comment was not meant to be uncharitable....Tony, My comment was not meant to be uncharitable. I greatly admire Feser's articles. I simply intended to make the point that the substance of Christ doesn't replace the substance of bread. It is true that the accidents remaining without inhering in a substance is a difficulty. However, the difficulty I raised in my comment was another one, to wit that after the change there is no relation between the Body of Christ and the remaining accidents of bread. The Body of Christ and these accidents are two separate and disconnected realities. <br /><br />I'm commenting as a philosopher, not as a theologian. Ronald Sevensterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18199474331928794071noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-71684460333122916532019-10-13T03:00:20.417-07:002019-10-13T03:00:20.417-07:00Goodness me, troll somewhere else.Goodness me, troll somewhere else.Randolph Cranehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16696593312319487318noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-74492546680461548672019-10-12T20:30:54.323-07:002019-10-12T20:30:54.323-07:00It belongs to the natural law of sacrifice for the...It belongs to the natural law of sacrifice for the priest to eat the portion allotted to him. Christ in this case is both the sacrifice and the priest. So he fulfilled both roles. <br /><br />I suspect that there is nothing untoward on account of him eating himself, because in the sacrament He is present <i>sacramentally</i>. This difference is what makes it so that we are not guilty of cannibalism: Christ appears under the species of a different thing - food. Tonyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07159134209092031897noreply@blogger.com