>>24844063
My only real goal, if I had any, in writing such rude and outrageous posts about Aristotle's nominalism, was the hope that some anon or other would get curious enough to study the thing for themselves and stop presuming on what they've heard about it. So glad to see some madman actually did it.

>essence is a form that is neither universal nor particular
That's a classic reading, one that I've argued against. You probably noticed that the word 'essence' (the formulae so translated) has multiple meanings, which are not disambiguated in Delta. On the one hand a thing really IS an "x", a cat, a table, and this is essence. And this is not the same as a universal, a concept in our own minds, which as you know Aristotle completely rejects as subsistent. On the other hand, the particular "x", this cat, this table, is also said to have its own essence. So the debate revolves around reconciling these two things. But if you've been following the catfight stuff you know what I think and the passages I can marshal in my support. As far as I'm concerned that passage in Meta 13 basically solves the whole issue. The relation between the particular and the universal is immediate. I don't even want to pretend that the other side (this cat is a cat because of its felinity) has a leg to stand on, it is just Platonism and it falls to all of Aristotle's arguments against Platonism. The only reason it has had such staying power is 1.) the obscurity of the Metaphysics; 2.) the influence of Platonist Church Fathers.

I'm not sure what it means for 'something like Platonism' to be salvaged, this could be true or false depending on what he means. Is Aristotle's God 'something like Platonism'? Yes, and also no lol. (cont'd)

>>24844063
>I also don't know how we can think of the active intellect aka the unmoved mover
>recognizing that the active intellect is God, not a 'faculty' of consciousness
Gooddddd, gooodddddd.... you are not a Thomist. I think you are absolutely correct but if any of the resident tradcath zoomers shows up they will start copy-pasting lines from the Summa against you. If they even know enough about their OWN adopted stance to recognize how opposed you are to them in saying this, which they likely won't.
> How can it be akin to wakefulness or meaningfully compared with anything we call thinking when our own wakefulness relies on a capacity or a power to be moved, something that the unmoved mover does not have? It seems like such an austere concept that we might as well treat it as the thinnest, brute fact aspect of being that we were looking for all along.
Yeah Aristotle is shy to talk about theology. But the 'thinking' of God isn't like our thinking, it's not discursive, in understanding one thing (himself) God understands everything. So it's not really meant to be austere, Aristotle's God is very much a God of life. But it is something about which Aristotle did not think much could be said.

>>24844063
>being-at-work for ἐνέργεια
Gay, sounds too continental, also implies a hard distinction between ἐνέργεια and ἐντελέχεια when they are nearly synonyms. You might as well say together-name for synonym and out-standingness for existence. Also last time I checked the word 'activity', the normal translation, already means being at work.

>>24844324
Yes some people like to fuss over the translation of philosophical terms but it's a mug's game because they're already technical jargon that are not being used as they would have been in the original language. As long as the translator is consistent it shouldn't matter whether you translate Hegel's Geist as spirit or mind (even if the former is obviously better), or Aristotle's ousia as Being or substance (here again the former is probably a bit better). Or to ti en einai as "what it was to be" or "essence", it just doesn't matter much at all. If the reader is attentive they will understand, if not then it won't matter how the word was translated.

>>24844350
>it shouldn't matter whether you translate Hegel's Geist as spirit or mind
The latter is completely retarded anon. The Geist of Athens was not a mind. He also says right in the preface that he takes Geist from modern religion; but in a religious context, Geist means something like spirit, not mind. If someone thinks it should be translated 'mind' you can practically discount anything else they have to say. Minds are individual, Geist is not an individual.

>>24844063
I like Aristotle a lot better than Plato. Plato sucks. But with these guys, I always have to remind myself that they felt slavery was justified and essentialist. What'd you think about those parts?

>>24844376
The problem with translating it spirit is that then you have retards thinking he's talking about some sort of Spiritual Being.

>>24844421
Didnt Hegel eat a lot of yummy food and write a bunch of fancy shmancy bullshit while most people worked really hard so he could keep doing that? I dont think it matters much what Geist is interpreted as. It might as well mean "poo poo"

>>24844421
Sorry but Hegel is talking about God. It might be a 'philosopher's God' but it's still God. If you don't understand this, you're basically just another Pure Insightfag.

>>24844095
>That's a classic reading, one that I've argued against. You probably noticed that the word 'essence' (the formulae so translated) has multiple meanings, which are not disambiguated in Delta.
Yes, and since I read Sachs's translation, he translates "ousia" as "thing" and "to ti en einai" as "thinghood" (as opposed to essence). And sometimes the thinghood is composite (as the thing or ousia is defined by form and matter), sometimes thinghood is meant to isolate *just* the form, and controversially sometimes the ousia/thing itself is immaterial so there is only ever form to worry about in the first place.

At least, if I understood that correctly, that's what seems to be the thing there.

>The relation between the particular and the universal is immediate.
The thing is, it is hard to understand what it means for a relationship to be immediate, unless we are talking about something that is brute fact without prior explanation (so like some indemonstrable axiom like the principle of non-contradiction) or if there is a kind of mechanical cause and effect or mathematical formulaic thing going on here. Most relationships are mediated through something in at least a loose sense.

>But if you've been following the catfight stuff you know what I think and the passages I can marshal in my support. As far as I'm concerned that passage in Meta 13 basically solves the whole issue.
Honestly if you took the time to recapitulate your points and refresh my memory, I'll look into the book today and see what the Sachs translation says. Bekker numbers would be much more helpful though lol, but I won't be picky and I'll do my own work.

>I'm not sure what it means for 'something like Platonism' to be salvaged, this could be true or false depending on what he means. Is Aristotle's God 'something like Platonism'? Yes, and also no lol. (cont'd)
If I understand Sachs correctly, it's that forms writ large exist from the unmoved mover but they themselves don't inhere in themselves nor exist independently for reasons that Aristotle shared. But honestly this was not a train of thought I pursued with enough rigor, despite my interest. It took me months to finish the book, 20 pages at a time, and I left with more questions than answers in my annotations. It deserves another rereading or 5.

>Gooddddd, gooodddddd.... you are not a Thomist
Kek I like what I've seen but obviously there are problems with Thomism. But Alexander's/Caston's argument to link the two together seems irreproachable.

>Aristotle's God is very much a God of life. But it is something about which Aristotle did not think much could be said.
Was that the hidden punchline you were hinting at? =p

>>24844324
Read Sachs's preface and dictionary. He chooses that translation as being-at-work precisely because energeia and entelecheia are closely related and thinks that it helps get to the shared root meaning better.

>>24844445
I mean this is bait but this is usually what you hear about Hegel. People could just be honest, "Hegel is very demanding but I'm interested in other shit, I have no idea what he's talking about, I don't want to spend 1-2 years reading nothing but Hegel I have other philosophical interests". But instead they have to pretend that he wasn't saying anything worth reading in the first place. This is exacerbated by Hegel's being the "yes AND no" guy. So his answer to many issues is 'you're both right and you're both wrong' and that doesn't give you much to grab onto, as an outsider, it seems like a cheap trick without knowing his logic. Then maybe they take a peak in the Phenomenology and come across some passage like:
>The living substance, further, is that being which is truly subject, or, what is the same thing, is truly realised and actual (wirklich) solely in the process of positing itself, or in mediating with its own self its transitions from one state or position to the opposite. As subject it is pure and simple negativity, and just on that account a process of splitting up what is simple and undifferentiated, a process of duplicating and setting factors in opposition, which [process] in turn is the negation of this indifferent diversity and of the opposition of factors it entails. True reality is merely this process of reinstating self-identity, of reflecting into its own self in and from its other, and is not an original and primal unity as such, not an immediate unity as such. It is the process of its own becoming, the circle which presupposes its end as its purpose, and has its end for its beginning; it becomes concrete and actual only by being carried out, and by the end it involves.
And their response again instead of "I'm not sure what he's saying, I'm simply not interested enough to find out," is, "it's heckin' gibberish!!! What midwit reads this shit???"

Heidegger himself described Hegel as the 'end' of the philosophical project that starts with Plato. He synthesizes German idealism and Aristotle/neoplatonism, he is incredibly based and interesting. But yes steep learning curve, he talks about how philosophy demands that ordinary consciousness stand on its head, and the fruity language accurately reflects this.

>>24844557
>ousia as thing
That's radical, I like it. As you know from Delta it has multiple meanings but concrete thinghood is the real base. This is something tradcath zoomers will never understand, because for them the concrete thing is not first but depends on a ((universal)) essence.

One issue I'm sure you noticed re: separated substances is that Aristotle wants them to be intellects. But the passages in De Anima that are relevant here are extremely brief and obscure - why would a form, on its own, if such a thing is even possible, be an intellect? That's one of the questions that moves later Aristotelianism as far as I can understand from my pseud vantagepoint. Aquinas' take here is neoplatonist and I think it's wrong. Or, at any rate, it's definitely not something Aristotle himself would have endorsed. There's this sort of fad right now of saying 'maybe Aristotle really was basically a Platonist after all!' and that is what I'm attacking. It's not even mainstream but in online communities it is overrepresented because of chud/cultural factors. Just as the neoplatonists tried to circle the wagons and say all of these philosophers were really saying the same thing, the same sort of pressure drives chud/traditionalist types to a similar syncretism.
>The thing is, it is hard to understand what it means for a relationship to be immediate, unless we are talking about something that is brute fact without prior explanation (so like some indemonstrable axiom like the principle of non-contradiction) or if there is a kind of mechanical cause and effect or mathematical formulaic thing going on here. Most relationships are mediated through something in at least a loose sense.
Immediate relationships are everywhere, like between a limit and what is limited by it.
>Honestly if you took the time to recapitulate your points and refresh my memory, I'll look into the book today and see what the Sachs translation says. Bekker numbers would be much more helpful though lol, but I won't be picky and I'll do my own work.
I'm thinking of Meta 13 toward the end, where he directly addresses the problem of universals. That'd be the keystone, but also what he says about primary/secondary substance in Categories, what he says about universals as affections of the soul in de int 1, what he says about reproduction in gen an 4, and actually all sorts of shit I feel there's an overwhelming amount of evidence for my position frankly. Like the entire section in Meta Z where he refutes the subsistence of universals. The tradcaths want to say "there's this universal essence that somehow does not fall under those criticisms" and it just doesn't make sense, this is why the medieval nominalists won and the realists only live on in Church-funded Dominican troll farms. (cont'd)

>>24844557
>If I understand Sachs correctly, it's that forms writ large exist from the unmoved mover but they themselves don't inhere in themselves nor exist independently for reasons that Aristotle shared. But honestly this was not a train of thought I pursued with enough rigor, despite my interest. It took me months to finish the book, 20 pages at a time, and I left with more questions than answers in my annotations. It deserves another rereading or 5.
Yeah this is Aquinas' take too and many others, I think it is correct. God is not an intellect thinking a bunch of discrete things, but whatever it is that he is thinking, i.e. himself, is somehow everything in one. This is also basically what Plotinus says in that one kataphatic treatise in 6, I can't remember the exact citation. So this means - yes, there are indeed Forms? No, it means the world is intelligible and it's intelligible because it's caused by an intellect, which isn't the same thing.

The problem with Aquinas is that he was artificially anointed as the True Philosopher of a major world religion in the mid-19th century, this inevitably creates distortions. That's why you have retards on /lit/ pretending that Occam was le evil bad and scaryman, it's straight propaganda and as you have maybe seen these kids haven't even read Aristotle and don't understand the problem of universals in Aristotelianism. For me Aquinas was just too much of a Platonist. There are no Occamists any more because literally everyone is an Occamist, except for the Thomists.

>>24844598
>But the passages in De Anima that are relevant here are extremely brief and obscure - why would a form, on its own, if such a thing is even possible, be an intellect? That's one of the questions that moves later Aristotelianism as far as I can understand from my pseud vantagepoint.
I think the main question is whether reality is intelligible or not. And if there is no stable basis for intelligibility, then 1) philosophy & the sciences are pointless to a great extent; and 2) it's a miracle that anything & anybody could be understood at all. So, maybe intelligibility is another axiom? Lol.

Anyway, I like the way Aristotle seems to bypass the mind-matter dualism of the early moderns by making ousia into the underlying neutral monism that unites the two. You do bring up a good point though. How is something that is purely form possible? And the conclusion I came to is that just like something being pure matter aka pure potency is problematic, something being pure act is also problematic because it seems like it cannot have any relation with anything else. It's closed off and isolated.

>'maybe Aristotle really was basically a Platonist after all!'
Meh, I am not even sure that Plato is even a "Platonist", at least not the boilerplate Platonism that is ascribed to him, since he is the originator of the most devastating critiques of such a system in the first place. That's why Plato is the GOAT, but I digress. I prefer Gerson's understanding of "ur-Platonism" as Platonism, because at least a more sophisticated Platonism, or even a reconciliation between Plato & Aristotle (where the latter is mostly dominant), can prevail without one-over-many problems.

>Immediate relationships are everywhere, like between a limit and what is limited by it.
Even that example is susceptible to a Zeno-style paradox. Though, I'd love to pick your brain about a few more examples of immediate relationships. I suppose even a limit and what is limited by it are united by the underlying whole though, right? So perhaps its not immediate (since there is something mediating it). But again, there are probably Aristotelian opinions on this from Physics which I have not read yet lol.

>So this means - yes, there are indeed Forms? No, it means the world is intelligible and it's intelligible because it's caused by an intellect, which isn't the same thing.
Honestly, I'm glad that you are giving Aquinas some credit. It shows that you're not partisan. But Aristotle is very much "ousia-first" because Being is too equivocal without some foundation from which to derive every possible aspect of reality that one can pinpoint. I always felt that it was better to think of forms as attributes that one can "peel away" from the UM-AI, which is the actual thing that subsists by itself, or something like that.

It is still very strange that there can be any kind of multiplicity in an otherwise simple & immaterial structure though. Again, there's no underlying potential so no parts.

>>24844598
>The tradcaths want to say "there's this universal essence that somehow does not fall under those criticisms" and it just doesn't make sense, this is why the medieval nominalists won and the realists only live on in Church-funded Dominican troll farms.
>There are no Occamists any more because literally everyone is an Occamist, except for the Thomists.
You hear the most deranged and schizo nonsense on this site.

>>24844625
The funny thing about the theological-political narrative about Ockham and nominalism ruining everything... is that it is entirely besides the point. You can be a tranny Platonist (for reasons that are quite obvious). You can be a based nominalist (aka de Maistre). You can make metaphysical arguments for virtually any political position, and we see political movements gravitate to either/or, sometimes at the same time, depending on what can advance their political agenda. So why fixate over it?

>>24844673
I was exaggerating for keks.
>>24844672
Yes you have noticed something important about Aristotle, he assumes intelligibility. This is a first principle for him. You probably remember from Meta 4 his arguments against the skepticism amount to "but then the world wouldn't make any sense, I couldn't distinguish one thing from another", etc. One big shift from Aristotle -> German idealism is that the idealists take the skeptics seriously where Aristotle more or less dismisses them.
>Anyway, I like the way Aristotle seems to bypass the mind-matter dualism of the early moderns by making ousia into the underlying neutral monism that unites the two.
Yeah and this comes back to life with Kant, as strange as that may sound, given how intensely dualistic/representationalist Kant's language is. I think of German idealism as picking up where the scholastics left off, I see a lot of continuity between the two traditions, as have others.
>How is something that is purely form possible? And the conclusion I came to is that just like something being pure matter aka pure potency is problematic, something being pure act is also problematic because it seems like it cannot have any relation with anything else. It's closed off and isolated.
Yeah and now you're bringing up a good point. As far as I can see, Aristotle's justification of there being separated substances is grounded in physics, there simply have to be such substances for the world to exist, as in physics 8, and he repeats the same arguments in meta 12. But he's heckin' shy about metaphysical speculation, he doesn't get into the weeds on this. But there is a bridge here that can help one understand a bit, which is our human intellect as passive intellect. The separated substances are a sort of inversion of our own intellects, where we passively 'take up' knowledge, they're actively 'creating' it in some way. This is how I (and others, but not Thomists) read De Anima 3.5.
>Meh, I am not even sure that Plato is even a "Platonist", at least not the boilerplate Platonism that is ascribed to him, since he is the originator of the most devastating critiques of such a system in the first place. That's why Plato is the GOAT, but I digress. I prefer Gerson's understanding of "ur-Platonism" as Platonism, because at least a more sophisticated Platonism, or even a reconciliation between Plato & Aristotle (where the latter is mostly dominant), can prevail without one-over-many problems.
Agreed, no one really knows what Plato thought. You can read the Parmenides as pointing toward something like Aristotelianism. The view the tradcaths want to give to Aristotle, though, is more like a crude Platonism, the one over many - "How could I think this was a cat... were it not for Catness Itself??" (cont'd)

>>24844694
The frustration for me is that these people all think Aristotelian nominalism is a sort of radical skepticism + egoism when it simply isn't. Nominalism is important because it helped direct our thoughts toward the here and now, the concrete 'this', away from completely empty metaphysical abstractions like 'equinity'. Nominalism gave us modern science and I know the chuds here think anything modern is le bad but I'm glad I can go see a doctor and I recognize that, philosophically, nominalism paved the way to this. And as you say I don't see how realism per se would prevent these various bad things, contraception and trannies and black people in the library and whatever else they're upset about. Nominalism and realism are not two realities they're two ways of thinking about the SAME reality, these are what Hegel calls 'after-thoughts', they don't have concrete bearing. A realist could absolutely justify 'bad things' just as much as a nominalist could.

>>24844672
>Even that example is susceptible to a Zeno-style paradox. Though, I'd love to pick your brain about a few more examples of immediate relationships. I suppose even a limit and what is limited by it are united by the underlying whole though, right? So perhaps its not immediate (since there is something mediating it). But again, there are probably Aristotelian opinions on this from Physics which I have not read yet lol.
Oh man I thought about going into this when writing the post and decided not to. But yes nothing is truly and absolutely immediate, everything is related to other things; that's almost trivially true though Aristotle doesn't say it as I recall. But take form and matter - is there a middle between your soul and your body? Of course not, they're a unity. But on the other hand the soul is 'mediated' insofar as it is part of the composite. But there's no middle between the form and the matter and in that sense the relationship is immediate. Another example would be subalterns, like the kinds of color. There's red, there's blue, but is there a middle between them, an explanation for their being? That's a bad example because you could get into the physics of it I guess. But you see at some point you reach an immediate, this is something he hammers home in Post An. Why is one and one two? It just is, it's immediate, it's simply the definition of two. Aristotelian realists think there needs to be a middle term between the universal and the particular and I'd say 'no', and I think Aristotle also says 'no' to this many times. What sort of thing could this be which is supposed to be neither particular nor universal? Entia non sunt multiplicanda.

>>24844672
>It is still very strange that there can be any kind of multiplicity in an otherwise simple & immaterial structure though. Again, there's no underlying potential so no parts.
There you go, that's another Big Issue in the development of Aristotelianism. You're hitting on all of them with the power of your own brain. Why does the UM-AI create, why does it need to be an end, why doesn't it just enjoy its own perfection? And you have many answers, from Plotinus - "Being is power, Being always overflows and expresses itself in something lesser", and so on - all the way down to Fichte, "This question is in principle unanswerable."

>>24844714
>But there is a bridge here that can help one understand a bit, which is our human intellect as passive intellect. The separated substances are a sort of inversion of our own intellects, where we passively 'take up' knowledge, they're actively 'creating' it in some way.
Wouldn't it make more sense to think of the knowledge as already created by the UM-AI? There would be no genesis of something eternal. It just is.
>Aristotelian realists think there needs to be a middle term between the universal and the particular and I'd say 'no', and I think Aristotle also says 'no' to this many times.
So, either we have a brute fact relation, or we have some kind of underlying and unifying thing, aka the substance itself. But that's where it gets weird, because the substance itself is what unifies and is also particular, but the form itself is a universal. I guess the form-at-work as essence (excuse my poor imitation of Sachs) is neither universal nor particular? Maybe that's the solution? I don't know how something can be neither universal nor particular though. It's like saying that something is neither true nor false.
>>24844768
Well, the fact that it is its own end seems credible enough. But why is there difference that emerges/unravels/overflows from the UM-AI, it beats me.

What the hell the acronym UM-AI stand for besides the meaning of it as Being qua being?

>>24844965
It's just my shorthand for unmoved mover-active intellect to indicate that we're treating it as the same thing.

>>24844914
Yeah I was using temporal language metaphorically there. But you see the mirror reflection Aristotle is going for. We understand the world and in understanding the world understand God. God is the active side of the equation, in de anima.

This isn’t a “brute fact” relation, like a bad smell we have to put up with. Post A shows why we must reach immediate relations and what sorts of relation are immediate. These immediates are better known than what they ground, not less.

Form is actuality. So it’s NOT universal. Don’t get confused, an Aristotelian form is not a Platonic idea.

Hegel would say the issue here is that God and the world aren’t two separate poles at all. Diversity of the world and oneness of God are interdependent. You can see this movement from the abstraction of Plato, to the astro-theology of Aristotle, to the humanistic pantheism of Hegel. Or the humanistic theism of Kant and Fichte.

I’m phone posting that’s all I got good luck bro <3

>>24845082
Which parts of Post An deal with immediate vs. mediate relations? I'll have to look into that.

Otherwise, I just feel kind of empty at this point. Tbh I miss the Thomist troll farm.

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bampin' (pic semi-unrelated, basic Neoplatonic schema on the Soul)

>>24844063
>Thoughts
metaphysics is a waste of time
>t. descartes

>>24845082
>>24845145
Also, since I'm here, why did you think that ousia translated as thing was so radical? And also, on the topic of religious interpreters, what do you think of Duns Scotus?

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>>24844768
I think Plotinus' Absolute is an Active Potential, that provides Actuality for Active Actuality, but that's neither here or there, especially in an Aristotelian thread, though it is a solution however illogical it may be, to the question of why Being is Power and why Being doesn't rest in its perfection.

>>24845145
It's one of the main themes of the book. So right at the start when he talks about how the 'chain' of reasons must stop somewhere, this 'ultimate' is immediate. And also at the end, the whole bit on noesis is about immediate propositions. He talks about it all over the place really. Or the famous proof around lectio ~17 of book 1 iirc, that demonstration must come to a stop, is all about this.
>>24846451
To translate ousia as 'thing' means to recognize that for Aristotle the concrete this is what's really real, is what's most real. Thoughts, universals, are not somehow 'more real' than the actual thing. God himself is a 'this' like this, not some sort of "unity in itself" or any abstraction. I'm sure you remember those discussions in Metaphysics though he talks about it in a few places. Substance is just as radical I suppose, a substance, what underlies, is a concrete this, but it's a technical term so it doesn't have the same oomph as plain old 'thing'. Then again substance can also be used in other ways etc. of course, but this is the core meaning. I've never read Duns Scotus, only about him. I think he is correct that it is not possible for an Aristotelian to demonstrate the immortality of the soul, and imo Aristotle did not believe in personal immortality. Not just my opinion but many other Aristotelians would agree, again just not Thomists.

Does not Aquinas say active intellect is NOT the unmoved mover/god in the commentary on the de anima or am I retarded? Why does nominalist anon Lee equating this view with thomists?

>>24847925
*keep not Lee (autocorrect)

>>24847925
Exactly, that's Aquinas' position and I think it is incorrect. And so would Averroes, and Themistius, and Alexander of Aphrodisias, and ~90% of Aristotelians besides Thomists. You're just misunderstanding what I said.

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>>24847882
>this 'ultimate' is immediate
Wait, so either the conclusion of a chain of reasons, or both ends of the chains of reasons (so final conclusion and the initial axiom)? I'm a bit confused as to what counts as "immediate".

For me, it seems like you are saying that something is mediate when it is *between* things, but something is immediate when it is the beginning or the end. But that's a weird use of the word "immediate" for me because 1) there is a connection in reasoning; and 2) before I had asked if it was a brute fact, and you had said no, but now it seems like they are brute facts after all.

Is there a Greek term for mediate and immediate that Aristotle uses? I was thinking about either going for another reread of Metaphysics or reading De Anima, but now it seems like Post An might be on the menu. Apostle is a good translation, right?

>To translate ousia as 'thing' means to recognize that for Aristotle the concrete this is what's really real, is what's most real. Thoughts, universals, are not somehow 'more real' than the actual thing.
That's fair. And honestly, I wonder if there's a sort of "game theory" to choosing which is most real, since: 1) Being refers to all of them, 2) an explanation needs to begin from somewhere, and 3) it is not immediately apparent which one should be the "bedrock" for the rest. I'm reminded of this excerpt comparing what substance is for Peirce in comparison with Aristotle (see pic rel). Obviously after Metaphysics, it seems apparent that substance should be it, but idk, maybe there could be a science of universals and how they interact with each other that isn't necessary Platonic. These studies are built on loftier and shakier ground than we give them credit for.

>>24847950
Sorry I see now, I think the structure of the green text above confused me, also I may have re-read your previous posts in other threads somehow. for that I sincerely apologize. I will go now and read the metaphysics 10 times before allowing myself to eat another meal.

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>>24844112
That passage from Timeaus (you know the one) demonstrates what's God's thinking is like. Of course, for strollers Timeaus is probably unacceptable.

>>24844376
Spirits can be individual too. Everything partakes of individuality in so far as it has any being. Why are strollers smart enough to regurgitate Aristotle but dumb enough not to understand basic metaphysics?

>>24844567
As far as I understood it, he's just describing how panentheism works with lots of verbiage. The icing on the sophistry cake is that the zenith of God's manifestation in time was supposed to be in his work. Don't get me wrong I thought the Phenomenology was interesting, the parts I understood, but it was certainly mostly wasted paper.

>>24844714
>"How could I think this was a cat... were it not for Catness Itself??"
You can call me legitimately retarded it's ok but what is the Aristotelian answer for this? That cats resemble each other? I would have thought, but then why can't we call the resemblance in more or less tortured language, "catness"?

>>24849429
You can call it whatever you want, and it is real, meaningful, and something shared between the cats, but it does not exist by itself as some separate thing. It doesn't exist in the mind, it doesn't exist in the Platonic realms, it doesn't exist in the mind of God, it doesn't exist in Erdos's "book", etc., at least not exist in the robust sense of being wholly independent, separate, and self-subsisting. Each cat exists by itself, but not catness.

>>24849438
Then how can causes even "come to be" nor "cease to be" without any UM-AI? Sounds like there's has to be at least one thing the UM-AI needs to generate what's passively receptive of act for it to be efficiently that thing, yet how exactly is it done without terminating into "name and form"? By necessity of which? Seems easier to admit to Necessity has to be stronger than Being to make arguments concerning Being being weaker than necessity, and that Necessity is in some ways, Absolute, beyond the weakness of Being that generates beings, which therefore makes Being not a pure Principality but a mixture of Principle and Attribute. There's also the issue of how Aristotle doesn't explicitly demand only there being one Being so there can be multiple UM-AIs. The Problem of infinite regress of Hard Pluralism all the way up is left unresolved.

>>24849438
Does any cat exist by itself either? A single cat implies the rest of the world because it is in a place in the world, birthed of another cat, made of organs and bones and eventually basic particles which obey the same physics as the other things in the world and which through causality gave rise to the state of the world.

And furthermore if it's real meaningful &c. then where Does it exist? It certainly doesn't exist in the cat because it doesn't have a physical location (at least not in the way a cat does) yet it's still the object of thought, of the mind's eye. Call it something other than the realm of forms if you prefer but if the objects of thought exist (and they do, as we agree) and it's clear there are relations between them then what's wrong with positing some sort of analogous space in which they exist? If you're familiar with the notion of a state space in physics that what I'm imagining.

Obviously under that last notion a "cat" does become one among many structures in the state space and it seems arbitrary which ones we pick out as named, or even which bits of the space we pick out as "structures" so it's not like a refutation of nominalism I just think it fits with the mathematical thrust of Plato. But it still exists, is the point.

>>24849466
An Immanent Abstraction Nominalism though has one problem: It cannot properly speak of a Transcendent Being qua being(s) that exists by necessity since it's not phenomenally referred to. Transcendent and Immanent Nominalism may not have that issue, while Atheists would just reject Transcendent Realities altogether. What a strange enterprise that would be.

>>24849456
>Then how can causes even "come to be" nor "cease to be" without any UM-AI
Which causes are you referring to? Or are you referring to causes in general? The answer is that causes in general were always there, and Aristotle believes that motion was always there too in an infinite chain in time.
>>24849466
>Does any cat exist by itself either?
Insofar as a cat can continue being a cat in perpetuity, provided that it doesn't die from natural causes, accidents, predation, etc., it absolutely exists by itself and actively maintains its own existence. The rest that you mentioned is an interesting philosophical implication, but it threatens to derail any coherent attempt at metaphysics and explanation, at least until you can grasp why Aristotle has chosen this bedrock of explanation.
>And furthermore if it's real meaningful &c. then where Does it exist?
In each cat. But it can't exist on its own and separate from the cats. What more do you need?

I don't know why you raise the other questions. It seems contrived if you need the "location" of a form (as if that is helpful for knowing what a form is and how to know it by), and you're unimpressed by pointing to any and all locations of cats, but yet are magically satisfied by the invention of a pseudo-space which isn't a space or location for it to exist. You can call it mere analogy, but analogy creates breathing room for sophistry to thrive.

>>24849493
What "caused" causes to "always there" if it's not caused by other causes for it to be either general or specific cause? Did Aristotle just assert this axiomatically without further introspection? How unreasonable, if that's what he's done.

One can refer to a species of animal that was wiped off of the realm of the living through referring to a timeline of a given space, but whose to say there will never be something biologically identical as a cat on earth as it is in some other phenomenal planet? You haven't checked all habitable planets in all of creation have you? Since dialectically cat existed in a space and time, a cat can exist in a completely different space and time so long as its evolutionary accidents produces cat in there. The Potential of cat exists any-where regardless of the actual cats' locations and positions because we can refer to actual cats, correct?

>>24849515
>What "caused" causes to "always there" if it's not caused by other causes for it to be either general or specific cause? Did Aristotle just assert this axiomatically without further introspection? How unreasonable, if that's what he's done.
I think you should read Metaphysics Lambda and then get back to me.

>>24849537
I think Aristotle doesn't explain it well in Lambda. His ambiguities is present even by commentarialists http://naturalisms.org/phil-editions/ancient/Aristotle/Aristotle%20Metaphysics%20Lambda%20-%20Oxford%20edn%202019.pdf

Aristotle and Aristotelians: Never A Straight Answer

>>24849766
Well the problem for me is that you seem to be unfamiliar with Aristotle's work with language like:
>Did Aristotle just assert this axiomatically without further introspection?
Because if you've read it, you would have answers as to what Aristotle believed and why you believed it. And desu I have my reservations as well but if you're not giving me anything to work with, I can't have a fruitful conversation.

>>24849481
But it isn’t “immanent abstraction nominalism”. Nominalists reject abstractionism as does Aristotle - see post an 2.19 as well as the discussion of potential universals and intellection in De Anima. There’s no entity to abstract, universals do not exist outside the mind as such. Why would the denial of subsistent universals = atheism? That doesn’t follow at all. I don’t understand the mentality of people here who want to argue but haven’t read the primary sources. Then they get annoyed when I won’t hold their hand and comment on the whole corpus line by line for them.

>>24849493
>but it threatens to derail any coherent attempt at metaphysics and explanation, at least until you can grasp why Aristotle has chosen this bedrock of explanation.
That's fair I'm only about halfway through the metaphysics myself

>You can call it mere analogy,
I mean the form doesn't exist literally in any cats either since I could x-ray and dissect as many cats as I want and I'll never find it, "in the cat" is being used analogically too. But fine you could replace "in" with "of" or something less locative if that were the real issue. What I was getting at with this state space location thing is that some forms are closer to other forms, some are deformed into other forms via certain transformations and so on, so a mathematical space seems like an appropriate way to, if not visualise then approach the situation.

>But it can't exist on its own and separate from the cats.
And neither can the cats exist on their own and separate from the world but like you said this is too much of a digression until I can phrase it compactly

>Aristotle is always already Heidegger
Discarded.

>>24850067
I will grant you this. I don't know how Aristotle would react to the theory of evolution.

>>24850064
Also, in De Anima Aristotle talks about the intellect “becoming” its object, “becoming” a form, eidos. And they think this means it becomes a divine Universal like in Augustine. So it’s just frustrating to talk about Aristotle here because you hardly ever meet anyone who has so much as mastered his technical vocabulary. The clearest account of intellection is post an, see for yourself there is no abstraction. For Aristotle “abstraction” (I forget the Greek desu) refers to the abstraction of quantity from substance in mathematics, it has nothing to do with “abstracting” a universal from a particular with your trusty rusty Agent Intellect. And how many times do I need to remind people that Aristotle denies that universals exist in Meta and all over the place? But people think he thought intellection depends on “abstracting” something from the thing, which he consistently maintains *does not exist* outside the mind, and is only immanently in the divine intellect?

>>24850082
He would have accepted it, it is not metaphysically problematic for him. He rejects Empedocles' theory of evolution on other grounds. There is even a line in History of Animals about how the boundaries between species are often fuzzy and unclear. Evolution is not a problem for an Aristotelian, a nominalist, someone who knows particulars ground universals rather than vice versa. But it's a fatal problem for Thomists - how do you handle these transitional individuals? "Hmm, its essence is still chimpanzee... and yet... it is sort of a Schopenhauer poster, somehow? Maybe because of the... uh... matter?" Evolution can't be reconciled with Thomistic ((essences)) and their crude, dare I say retarded, Fisher Price-inflected hylemorphism. Read their attempts and see for yourself, they're rubbish. That may be the easiest way to get red pilled about Thomism, read how they have attempted to make sense of evolution. Aristotle knew that individual animals have their own genetic material contributed by both of the parents, he talks about this at length in De Gen An. Inb4 some jackass who hasn't read DGA saying Aristotle thought the mother only contributed 'matter' (he's talking about the mechanics of reproduction there, not the 'genetics' of the individual produced).

>>24850096
>For Aristotle “abstraction” (I forget the Greek desu) refers to the abstraction of quantity from substance in mathematics, it has nothing to do with “abstracting” a universal from a particular with your trusty rusty Agent Intellect.
The term is aphairesis, and you're absolutely right about that. Even Sachs, who allows himself a little Platonism as a treat, highlights this aspect about "abstraction".
>Also, in De Anima Aristotle talks about the intellect “becoming” its object, “becoming” a form, eidos.
Doesn't he also talk about how, in Physics, Book VII, Chapter 3, last paragraph, knowledge is always known prior,. and that learning is more about stabilizing the restlessness of the mind than changing it?

>>24850129
>There is even a line in History of Animals about how the boundaries between species are often fuzzy and unclear.
You'd think that'd be a problem lol. Forms almost seem like noumena to Aristotle, then. I guess I was always looking for a "formal science" in Aristotle and never found one, outside bits and pieces from De Anima, syllogism, the works on Animals and Plants, etc.
>Evolution can't be reconciled with Thomistic ((essences)) and their crude, dare I say retarded, Fisher Price-inflected hylemorphism. Read their attempts and see for yourself, they're rubbish. That may be the easiest way to get red pilled about Thomism, read how they have attempted to make sense of evolution. Aristotle knew that individual animals have their own genetic material contributed by both of the parents, he talks about this at length in De Gen An.
I guess the main issue is to talk about where the form comes from when evolution occurs. But I suppose nominalism is in better shape here because they have less commitments to make and thus have more space for a robust explanation of changing species.

>>24850064
If your "God" and/or "Being" is purely Immanent, where is it? It doesn't exist in a purely Immanent Nominalist framework, it can be named in a Nominalist framework that isn't purely of Immanent reality. Immanent Nominalists can't refer to any Being that's Transcendent, yet they only concoct words that gestures to an Immanent Being that they can't actually discuss to be Immanent.

Although Aristotle may not himself believed in "Immanent Abstraction Nominalism", C S Peirce had. If you look at any video among Taxonomists, they certainly don't think Aristotle was right at all about a lot of things and do hold that there is an Immanent Abstraction within Living Beings that can be Named for the sake of classification and exists as a matter of fact independently from the mortal mind.

Regardless, neither Immanent Nominalism nor Immanent Abstraction Nominalism are complete per the first question of where is your "God" within phenomena.

>>24849942
Aristotle, unlike Plato, tried to bake a cake and eat it, in the UM-AI superimposition presumption. Again, why would a perfect Being make imperfect beings? If anything, however sort of perfection of Being has, Being-Itself is also engaged in an imperfect teleology. Throwing around Necessity and Eternity and such doesn't get rid of this initially Platonic problem that resurfaced in an Aristotelianized schema of the Platonic One and the Indefinite Dyad flattened in a superimposition as Unmoved Mover that's also Active Intellect. There's your Spinozian Natura Naturans and Natura Naturata, where One and Many is {One Many} prior to a oneness and a manyness

>>24850289
The UM-AI doesn't make anything. It isn't an efficient cause.

>>24850313
The Neoplatonist, for all their flaws, were right about the efficient cause leads to the final cause. An Aristotelian paradigm imbues meaninglessness in all life.

>>24850159
>Doesn't he also talk about how, in Physics, Book VII, Chapter 3, last paragraph, knowledge is always known prior,. and that learning is more about stabilizing the restlessness of the mind than changing it?
I always thought that was a very cool/weird chapter. But he isn't talking about anamnesis, he refutes (his interpretation of) Plato's theory of knowledge in Post An 1.1. A couple of things - is knowing a becoming? No, but not because it is not something that (broadly speaking) occurs or comes to be, but because it's a relation between the particular and the universal in the intellect. Whereas 'becoming' would be like a seed sprouting into a tree, a substance arising into existence. He says that knowing arises in the presence of 'something else' - is this something else an intellectual object existing outside the intellect, as in Platonisms? Na, it's the particular, and this is just what he says here, and also elsewhere. "it is when it meets with the particular object that it knows in a manner the particular through its knowledge of the universal." So if anything it's another passage in my favor, the relationship is immediate. As for the intellect 'coming to a state of rest' - someone might read this in a Platonist way as well. But you can see the contrast is again with becoming, and he's talking about the psychology of coming to know something, and how this isn't a becoming or an alteration. As a matter of plain language there wouldn't be anything wrong with describing it this way but not with the technical sense Aristotle gives these words. Learning isn't the coming to be of a substance, it isn't an alteration like a wall becoming white, it's a 'falling into place' and a coming to rest of the intellect in relation to something else, the particular which is potential in the universal.

>>24850381
But Aristotle does think efficient causes lead to final causes, this is why God is a final cause not an efficient cause. An efficient cause can't be first, its end is first, you see this in Physics 8 when he's explaining why he doesn't think you can stop with the heavenly bodies themselves. If you think this "imbues meaninglessness in all life" I don't know how to respond, I think you're confused. Aristotle metaphorically compares God to the general of an army in Meta 12. A final cause isn't less than an efficient cause, it's greater.

>>24844063
Nigger.

>>24850433
(cont'd) also I should point out that this line of thought is itself deeply Platonist. Plato's God is the Good, right? In Timaeus you have God or at least the Demiurge as an efficient cause but this is mythological. Is there a sense in which the ultimate final cause is "Causing" things to be in some sort of efficient sense? Metaphorically, yes. And imo the most convincing answer Plotinus has to the 'why is the One become many?' question is teleological.

>>24850428
I was thinking about picking up Post An next, actually. Hippocrates Apostle or Barnes? Wish there was a Sachs version. =(
>Learning isn't the coming to be of a substance, it isn't an alteration like a wall becoming white, it's a 'falling into place' and a coming to rest of the intellect in relation to something else, the particular which is potential in the universal.
Well, it's just very confusing to see how the Platonic bent isn't in line with the anti-becoming aspect of Aristotle's "resting of the intellect" here, unless perhaps you are suggested that Aristotle is flanking Plato from Platonism (i.e. if Plato's anamnesis is like a potency of sorts from an earlier actuality, Aristotle's anamnesis never posits a forgetting and was always actual from the very beginning).

>>24850289
> Again, why would a perfect Being make imperfect beings?
Aristotle doesn't even try to answer this. Aristotle is 1.) very afraid of being too speculative, he was traumatized by all this schizo mumbo jumbo he experienced in the Academy; 2.) one of his main ideas is that some things are the way they are and we can't seek further explanations for them.
> If anything, however sort of perfection of Being has, Being-Itself is also engaged in an imperfect teleology. Throwing around Necessity and Eternity and such doesn't get rid of this initially Platonic problem that resurfaced in an Aristotelianized schema of the Platonic One and the Indefinite Dyad flattened in a superimposition as Unmoved Mover that's also Active Intellect. There's your Spinozian Natura Naturans and Natura Naturata, where One and Many is {One Many} prior to a oneness and a manyness
I agree, his theology is flawed and it does indeed lead to Spinozism. The idealists are the heroes in this story. I'm just trying to give him his due. I am not an astrotheologian and if you throw out the astro- part, none of it makes sense. This is another thing Thomists will never understand.

>>24850428
Were you the same guy that was arguing that Post An is about knowledge as opposed to merely pedagogical teaching?

>>24850458
Barnes is the only one I've read and it's perfectly fine, very literal. His commentary sucks though. I know how retarded that sounds, some random anon criticizing a great scholar, but he really did not understand, partly I think because he never read any of the Arabs. He thinks the syllogism is a deductive argument and this is fatal to understanding the Organon. The Greeks themselves did not understand the Analytics, it's an absolute cunt of a book, the sketchiest thing Aristotle wrote. I've heard good things about Apostle and he seems highly congenial to me, like I know he is critical of Barnes, but haven't read it. Aquinas' commentary is useful in the sense that he explains the structure of the work - there is a method to Aristotle's apparent madness. But on some of the details he is wrong, partly because his translation was bad, partly because he relies on a bad commentary (Philoponus). Still for a crutch to help you figure out wtf is going on in some of the trickier passages you could do worse than Aquinas.
>Well, it's just very confusing to see how the Platonic bent isn't in line with the anti-becoming aspect of Aristotle's "resting of the intellect" here, unless perhaps you are suggested that Aristotle is flanking Plato from Platonism (i.e. if Plato's anamnesis is like a potency of sorts from an earlier actuality, Aristotle's anamnesis never posits a forgetting and was always actual from the very beginning).
I might be misunderstanding you but the 'coming to rest' aspect doesn't have to do with our 'already knowing' whatever we come to know, it's just a psychological observation about how when we know something we 'rest' in our knowledge of it. When I know something my intellect as such is not in motion in any way; if it was moving, I wouldn't be knowing that thing.

>>24850486
Yes, and it is about knowledge, and he says this right at the start of the Analytics. There are passages certainly that do talk about pedagogy (thesis vs. hypothesis and so on) but the subject of the work is episteme. I don't care to argue about it if you think otherwise, you're wrong and should read it again, the evidence is absolutely overwhelming and literally every single Aristotelian that I have ever read, besides whatever modern jackass may have influenced you, agrees with me.

>>24850506
>I might be misunderstanding you but the 'coming to rest' aspect doesn't have to do with our 'already knowing' whatever we come to know, it's just a psychological observation about how when we know something we 'rest' in our knowledge of it. When I know something my intellect as such is not in motion in any way; if it was moving, I wouldn't be knowing that thing.
I'm just confused as to how can there be a rest without implying something was in motion (and now no longer is not), a "coming" to rest without a becoming of some kind. Unless all this motion is merely incidental to knowledge, which imparts its own change, then I don't see how it doesn't imply that the knowledge wasn't always there, merely obscured by disorder or something. It seems to me like Aristotle's trying to push some angle of Platonic anamnesis yet holds back in some way. Idk. I need a better explanation.

>>24850514
No I think you're right. Any teaching is ultimately about knowledge and its transfer so I don't even know why someone would be so fixated on something so obviously ancillary and minor.

>>24850506
>>24850514
>>24850546
Thank you anon, I've decided that I'm gonna read Posterior Analytics and learn more about this science. Originally, I was going to read De Anima, but it seems like my answer to how the mind understands forms and coming up with a "science of forms" will best be understood here more than anywhere else.

I have some old questions though, that I'd love if you could briefly answer each (I know it's a lot, just throwing it out there) before I start reading:

Does the presentation of the arguments in Posterior Analytics affect the necessity of the arguments therein? Why or why not?

What is the being of a syllogism?

What would we lose in Posterior Analytics and elsewhere in the Aristotelian corpus if its conclusions were not seen as necessary?

To what extent does an argument need to be isomorphic with its object?

What would you say is the scope of a syllogism, and do syllogisms need to be made explicit in order to be present?

How committed to Posterior Analytics is Aristotle?

What role do you see Post An playing within Aristotle's work?

>>24850514
>>24850506
>erratic schizo back-and-forth between helpful, overly familiar, and insanely angry
I guarantee you this guy is a drunk. Pretty sure he has alluded to heavy drinking in the past, too.

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>>24850433
I completely disagree. Proclus finds a lot of holes that strict Aristotelians are too tunnel visioned to see, and how no one at all has properly systematized Aristotle in a consistent manner due to how there are innumerable many more ways in "misreading" him so often on almost everything and everything he has ever said, he has been a terrible teacher and great confounder.

Image from Proclus on Aristotle on Plato: A Case Study on Motion by Rareș Ilie Marinescu.

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>>24850444
Not metaphorically.
Also, Aristotle's system is shifted one downwards from a Platonic perspective.

>>24850586
>Does the presentation of the arguments in Posterior Analytics affect the necessity of the arguments therein?

Yeah sure there’s a generally out-to-in movement in the text. He starts with apodeixis itself, the demonstrative syllogism, ie scientific explanations. Then in book 2 he discusses the principles of demonstration, middle terms/suppositions and definitions. And it peaks in 2.19, the very end, when he finally answers the big question - how do we acquire these principles of knowing? And each of these sections contains a similar inward movement within itself. It seems sketchy af at first but Aquinas does a good job at seeing the overall structure, he’s great at this in general. As usual in Aristotle the peak section is brief, ugly, obscure, and doesn’t draw attention to itself but it is essential to understanding him. I think reading Theaetetus alongside it is a good idea because it is closely related to that dialogue, almost a direct response to it.

> What is the being of a syllogism?

Strictly speaking it’s a state in your mind, just like anything involving universals. But it is grounded in real particulars. So imo the answer to this is the same thing I’ve been shilling for ages. Syllogisms are logical, it’s being in the intellect. And then recall what Aristotle says about the distinction between logic and metaphysics at the end of Meta 6.

> What would we lose in Posterior Analytics and elsewhere in the Aristotelian corpus if its conclusions were not seen as necessary?

It’d be fatal, the Analytics is his epistemology. He employs it constantly. Parts of Animals serves as an especially ‘clean’ illustration but it’s literally everywhere. Luckily it is quite sound, even modern scientists conform to these principles without knowing it. It’s not a guide to discovering scientific knowledge, it’s more an analysis of what it means to know something.

> To what extent does an argument need to be isomorphic with its object?

It depends on what you mean by isomorphic. A meteorologist knows how weather works but doesn’t know what the weather will be in 2 weeks. This is a big can of worms I dunno if I can do justice to it in a short post. I’ll just shill Meta 13.10 again and say that in Post An Aristotle shows how scientific knowledge is universal, not particular. In that sense it is not isomorphic, the relationship between our minds and reality is not symmetrical and particulars, the principles of knowing, are not knowable as such. This is why for example phronesis is a separate faculty from episteme.

>>24850898
(Cont’d)
> What would you say is the scope of a syllogism, and do syllogisms need to be made explicit in order to be present?

We syllogize constantly whenever we think, any explanation is syllogistic. The syllogistic form (“all a is b”) is totally unnecessary outside the science of Logic. You’ll see this yourself when for example Aristotle recognizes stuff like Bryson’s method of squaring the circle as syllogistic. Bryson didn’t write “in syllogisms” any more than did Aristotle but logically all explanations are syllogistic. Again, Aristotle says arithmetic is syllogistic. But it’s not written “in syllogisms”. In the Rhetoric he says people naturally syllogize well without any formal training. This isn’t a new “method” it’s an analysis of something we’re so familiar with that we take it for granted. As Hegel said what is most familiar is for that very reason not well known.

> How committed to Posterior Analytics is Aristotle?

Very, he alludes to it often, I think it’s the most frequently internally-quoted work. All that stuff in Metaphysics about the nature of first philosophy is deeply entwined with Post An, etc etc

> What role do you see Post A playing within Aristotle's work?

Simply put it is his theory of knowledge, his Wissenschaftslehre.