Organisms are organs with orgasm.
Since there is no materialism, what are you talking about?
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 12 April 2015 23:41
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Materialists and Hyle-Morphists
In a message dated 4/11/2015 4:20:01 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"For example, iirc, not so long ago John suggested that "materialism" is true
(and I, predictably enough, suggested this does not fit well with any view
that gives autonomy to W2 and W3, and pointed out that even the law operates
with distinctions between physical/material and non-material entities"
So perhaps we should distinguish between a materialist (like Marx) and a
hyle-morphist, like Aristotle.
"; both inconclusive counter-arguments of course). We may not be able to get
anything like a conclusive answer to whether some form of "materialism"
is true but in the process we may advance our understanding of the 'problems
facing materialism', and also of what a tenable form of "materialism"
would look like (it might have to transcend the view that all is 'matter/atoms
and the void' and accept forces like gravity)."
Aristotle thought that he was a hyle-morphist, and he was right (he was one).
He possibly was the first hyle-morphist in the history of Western Philosophy
(at least Lord Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy does not quote any
earlier source)
McEvoy:
"We can advance in understanding how inconclusive the arguments are. And
advance in understanding the strangeness and wonder of the world when reflected
on philosophically. Still I am sympathetic to the view that wisdom can be
found outside philosophy, and perhaps more important wisdom than can be found
in it. I think there is wisdom of a profound sort in Beethoven's 'Holy Song of
Thanksgiving', though it is greater than any attempt to express it in words.
And I know a four year old who brings home the value and wonder and life more
than most philosophy ever does: how he teaches me this is hard to say, but I
feel he does. Btw, Stephen Hawking last made front page news here with his
claim that intelligent machines could bring about the destruction of the human
race. No report clarified whether Hawking was saying this destruction would
result from our use of these machines in war or whether he was suggesting the
machines might turn on us and wage war on us. If the latter, it is very
possible that it is an uncritical "materialism" that underpins his claim - for
if machines lack a W2 and access to a W3 how, outside of our programming of
them, could they ever turn on us?"
Well, I'm not sure Hawking studied hyle-morphism while at Gonville at Caius.
But he should.
The best essay on hylemorphism remains Anne Peterson's.
What, according to Aristotle, accounts for the fact that two co-specific
organisms, composed of matter and form, are distinct from each other?
Is their difference accounted for by the difference of their matter or of their
form, or in some other way?
Reading Anne Peterson clarifies important terminological and philosophical
ambiguities surrounding this question and contextualizes her exegesis of
Aristotle.
Peterson explores the two mainstream views on this question, both of which
claim that the diversity of co-specific organisms is derivative (either from
the diversity of their matter or from the diversity of their form), arguing
1) that both mainstream views are committed to what we might call a constituent
ontological vision of hylomorphism (according to which matter and form are
non-identical components of organisms) and
2) that there are considerable advantages to viewing Aristotle's hylomorphism
as a constituent ontology, perhaps most notably for defending the coherence of
generation and corruption.
Peterson, however, argues against each of the mainstream views, pointing out
conflicts with key points of Aristotle's metaphysics.
For that reason, Peterson introduces the thesis that diversity is underived
and defends it by appeal to Aristotle's metaontology and his nonreductivist
vision of organisms (in a way that, at the same time, cuts equally against both
mainstream views).
Peterson argues that we need not throw away constituent ontology along with
the mainstream views; rather, we can maintain both the thesis that diversity
for co-specific organisms is underived and a constituent ontological
understanding of hylomorphism.
Peterson outlines a constituent ontological interpretation of hylomorphism
which maintains that the diversity of organisms is underived.
A constituent ontological understanding of organisms does not, as some have
argued, in itself undermine the irreducible unity of organisms; rather, is only
when constituent ontology is coupled with one of the mainstream views on
diversification that unity is undermined.
Peterson goes on to argue that her version of hylomorphism is compatible with
both
1) the claim that an organism's body includes a plurality of distinct parcels
of matter within it, and
2) the claim that an organism's matter pre-exists and persists after the life
of that organism.
She explores key claims of Aristotle's about the nature of matter 's unity to
support these claims.
By advocating a constituent ontological hylomorphism that does not see the
diversity of the organism as derived from the diversity of one of its
constituents, we can maintain both these two advantages associated with the
traditional view on diversification and the irreducible unity of organisms.
Cheers,
Speranza
On Saturday, 11 April 2015, 8:34, John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
"Mike's complaint and yours seem to come from opposite ends; he is looking for
answers to deep existential questions such as why we are here, while you are
looking for solutions to practical problems."
No, I wouldn't say that. I remain interested in deep existential questions. I
no longer believe, as a younger and more naive me once did, that answers to
them can be found in philosophical debate. My pragmatism is colored by strains
of mysticism, Daoist and Zen, but also, I am sure, owes much to the pietism of
the Lutheran Church in which I was raised. That pietism primed me to be
receptive when, I must have been around twelve or thirteen, I was reading a
compendium of scriptures from the world's religions and stumbled across a
passage attributed to an apocryphal text called The Second Isaiah.
I remember the words as follows,
The Lord said to Cyrus the Persian, "Shall the clay say to the potter who
molds it, what makes thou? Let the potsherds of the earth speak to the
potsherds of the earth."
That said, I do not despise philosophy. I see philosophers as I see
mathematicians, smart individuals who try to work out rigorously the
implications of abstract assumptions. Whether the conclusions to which they
come bear usefully on any concrete problem we face depends on the problem in
question and the material conditions in which we address it. Their value
cannot be demonstrated by referring to the abstractions alone. To which I
would add that to me at least, chasing the same arguments round and round like
hamsters in a spinning bowl becomes tedious.
John
On Sat, Apr 11, 2015 at 3:52 PM, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I have found the discussions of Popper somewhat helpful as to the understanding
of science at least, others less so. On the other hand, I wonder if all
intellectual pursuits have to be conducted on the model of practical science. I
have read some of Stephen Hawking recently and I have been struck by how
philosophical it is, as the matter of fact. Mike's complaint and yours seem to
come from opposite ends; he is looking for answers to deep existential
questions such as why we are here, while you are looking for solutions to
practical problems. To put it somewhat simplistically, Mike expects philosophy
to replace God, while you seem to expect it to make vacuum cleaners. It may be
that the disappointment is the result of exaggerated and / or misplaced
expectations. On the other hand, I admit that I often find philosophy tedious,
but it may say more about me than about philosophy. (Although I believe that
philosophy took the wrong turn at some point in the 20th
century.)
O.K.
On Sat, Apr 11, 2015 at 3:52 AM, John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 9:46 AM, Mike Geary
<jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Philosophy has fascinated me since high school, through college and even
somewhat today. It has fascinated me because it seemed to feed into my
desire (need) to know if there is any reason or goal or purpose to our
existence or is it all just a phantasmagorical dance of electromagnetic
radiation?
I had hoped that buried in the arcane propositions of philosophy there
might me a rational response to my need to know.
Mike,
I was fascinated in the same way. What life has taught me, as I see it, is
that confining "rational response" to absolute certainty is fundamentally
irrational. We live in an uncertain but not entirely unpredictable world.
At the end of the day, the search for meaning is not that old adolescent
dream, a quest for the Holy Grail, but a matter of accumulating heuristics
that mostly work until they don't, then asking how they need to be changed to
fit new circumstances. In science, they call the heuristics theories and
try systematically to falsify and refine them. That is what science does and,
on available evidence, does pretty well.
Does going round and round in circles from Grice to Popper to Wittgenstein
improve our understanding. Not as far as I can see. After months and years
of the same debates, the same old chestnuts are hauled hot and roasted
again, time after time after time. Which to me spells waste of time. That is
why I now return here mainly for the poetry provided by Helm, Geary, and
Richie's chickens and the occasional word of wisdom from Robert Paul. For
thoughts, that is, that may be fleeting, but resonate in interesting ways.
Cheers,
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
