I see Thomists say that Thomism is superior to modern philosophy.

>>665920
most modern philosophy follows descartes presupposing a representationalist theory of perception.

Also, act and potency along with other metaphysics were rejected just because

Catholicism has a pleasing aesthetic. Ergo, Aquinas is right, as something that looks pretty is correct.

>>666027
>representationalist theory of perception
pls elaborate

There's literally no reasons in favor of it, they just come up with a million sophistries so they don't have to give up Catholicism and its neuroses

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>>666034
This nigga gets it.

>>665920
Abandoning Thomism is what led to postmodern sophistry and cultural relativism.

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>>666027

How would you contrast this with the Thomistic theory of perception?

Wouldn't Aristotle - and thus maybe Aquinas too - claim that the form of the perceived object makes an impression on our intellect (De Anima's seal impressing wax) and via this impression the intellect classifies the object according to abstracted concepts?

>>666086
Modernity is what rejected things like Thomimism

Post-modernitity is a rejection of modernity, but the time that era went around religion had already been side-lined. I can't think of a single post-modern philosopher that ever addressed Aquinas.

As for cultural relatvism you can food the roots of that in the discovery of the new world and increased trade allowing the West to become more familiar with Indian and Arabic culture. The idea that there were civilizations that existed with cultural ideas that had completly different perspectives on core issues (ie polygamy, religion, etc) came with obvious conclusions.

>>666076
here: http://www.catholicapologetics.info/catholicteaching/philosophy/askeptic.htm

it's a pretty superficial treatment of the question, but it's ok for a starting point. If you want a more indepth treatment of the issue you might want to see some of the Neo-Scholastic Manuals

>>666034
but Aquinas wasnt pretty, in fact he was the opposite of that

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>>666261

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>>666027

In describing the intellect's relation to an object independent of the intellect, Aquinas says that the intellect contains the "likeness" of the object, no? What do you think he means by "likeness"?

Sincerely,

>>666096

>>667154
"likeness" is the means by which we get knowledge of things i.e. the intelligible species

It doesnt differ much from Aristotle's account

>>665920
That it upholds Catholic doctrine. literally take a look at people who hold that view 9/10 of them will be Catholics and probably ones who have only read Edward Feser.

Scholasticism exists solely to confirm Catholic dogma which is rather ironic given that dogma has to be accepted irrespective as truth regardless. Accordingly it creates a play pen of thinking which ensures that even people with great minds like Aquinas *never* stray out of bounds.

Hence you get the fun effect where different religions all use Aristotle to prove their own specific religion perfectly.

>>666086
Shutting down the Platonic Academy and abandoning Plato is what led to that m8

>>667207
>Hence you get the fun effect where different religions all use Aristotle to prove their own specific religion perfectly.

Pretty much. Aquina's famous 5 proofs are just copy pasts of Avicenna's with one catch. Avicenna speficially wrote his proofs so they would exclude all Gods that were not 'one', this meant Christianity was disproven because it has a trinity.

Aquinas reworked Avicenna's stuff but made them 'new and improved' and supportive of a trinitarian God. He than went to work using Aristotle to prove a God that was only 'one' would not make sense.

And yeah, Aquinas is pretty shallow outside of Catholic circle jerk. The bulk of his work is just commentanting on biblical events and trying to figure what heaven is like, how to identify witches, and other bozo stuff. I can't imagine a use for his stuff outside Catholic theology and I've never seen anyone really use it for anything else.

Even when you look at other philosophers, the relationship with non-Catholics and Aquinas is almost non-existent.

>>667242
>Even when you look at other philosophers, the relationship with non-Catholics and Aquinas is almost non-existent.

Its an issue that plauges all religious philosophy though in that people who arent following that religion or have an inclanation to are not going to invest the substantial amount of time required to learn its reasoning and very specific terms - which are generally in rather dry texts. Its for the same reason that you wont see people like Feser or the Christfags here get into in depth discussions on Buddhist metaphysics and vice-versa.

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>>667194

Does this mean that my mind has immediate access to a likeness of X, and this mental likeness supposedly corresponds adequately to X as X is mind-independently?

>>667281
It's more like that their concepts are not usful for anything outside the religion.

Schopenhauer made use of Buddhism and Hinduism, with their ideas about the self and the nature of suffering. Spinoza used Avverros concept's of self and knowledge. There have been examples of religious philosophers being part of secular thinking but they have to be real philosophers and not con-men. Hermetism was one big pile of mystism but was a huge influence in Renaissance philosophy.

But what good does knowing what Aquinas think's about Adam's sperm going to do a philosopher of another religion. What good is his hundreds of pages argueing that rule by Catholicism is the only good form of government? Catholic 'philosophy' is just about shilling as hard as possible for the religion.

>>667207
>literally take a look at people who hold that view 9/10 of them will be Catholics
funny thing is most of Thomists became Catholics AFTER reading Aquinas (Maritain, Macintyre, even Feser, etc). And there are philosophers who have benefitted from Aquinas without being Catholic converts themselves, such as Philippa Foot
>Scholasticism exists solely to confirm Catholic dogma
I guess you havent heard about Reformed Scholasticism, or the Orthodox who tried to use Aquinas' teaching against Catholics (most ended up converting to Catholicism). The point is that Scholasticism was just a way to articulate dogma, and while it is a heritage of the Catholic Church, you dont have to accept the whole ecclesiology in order to learn Scholasticism

>>667242
>The bulk of his work is just commentanting on biblical events
anyone who has read the Summas apart from some cherrypicked quotes can see this is entirely false, since most of what Aquinas discusses in the Summa were matters of Natural Philosophy.
>I can't imagine a use for his stuff outside Catholic theology
Seeing how it was pretty useful for drafting systems of Law, Human Rights (Casas, Suarez, Vitoria), Psychology, etc, I know youre talking out of your ass.
>Its for the same reason that you wont see people like Feser or the Christfags here get into in depth discussions on Buddhist metaphysics
So are you going to make a generalization of philosophy of religion because of some Anons on 4chan, instead of actually reading the main representatives of a particular school of thought? Seriously? Is this your idea of philosophical education?

>>667290
Yeah, I'd say so. Here is what Aquinas says in regard to intelligible species
>Our intellect cannot know the singular in material things directly and primarily. The reason of this is that the principle of singularity in material things is individual matter, whereas our intellect, as we have said above (Q. 85, A. 1), understands by abstracting the intelligible species from such matter. Now what is abstracted from individual matter is the universal. Hence our intellect knows directly the universal only. But indirectly, and as it were by a kind of reflection, it can know the singular, because, as we have said above (Q. 85, A. 7), even after abstracting the intelligible species, the intellect, in order to understand, needs to turn to the phantasms in which it understands the species, as is said De Anima iii. 7. Therefore it understands the universal directly through the intelligible species, and indirectly the singular represented by the phantasm

>>667304
>But what good does knowing what Aquinas think's about Adam's sperm going to do a philosopher of another religion. What good is his hundreds of pages argueing that rule by Catholicism is the only good form of government?
I'm sorry but I'm going to need some actual citations, seeing how much youve read Aquinas (or rather, you've deliberatedly cherrypicked his commentary on Catholic theology in order to provide some sense of security while avoiding engagement with Aquinas' arguments directly, or something along those lines)

>>665920
It's not mainly Thomistic but rather appeals to elements of the Aristotelian framework. As Aquinas had a very comprehensive set of books on how to approach various questions people appeal to him significantly.

>>667320
>most ended up converting to Catholicism
citations etc

>>667320
>funny thing is most of Thomists became Catholics AFTER reading Aquinas (Maritain, Macintyre, even Feser, etc). And there are philosophers who have benefitted from Aquinas without being Catholic converts themselves, such as Philippa Foot

You miss the point, the issue is them gaining an emotional investment which locks them in play pen of scholasticism, which retards their ability to use their talent beyond those confines.

>I guess you havent heard about Reformed Scholasticism, or the Orthodox who tried to use Aquinas' teaching against Catholics (most ended up converting to Catholicism).

I have hence my allusion Averroes, the OP asked about scholasticism not a hyphenated scholasticism.

>The point is that Scholasticism was just a way to articulate dogma.

Which is entirely the problem and the great tragedy of it.

>you dont have to accept the whole ecclesiology in order to learn Scholasticism

I never said one has to, you don't have accept the communist party to study dialectical materialism either.

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>>667329

Right - so isn't this representationalism? Maybe it depends on how we define "representationalism," but from what I can tell, if the mind only has immediate access to some mental thing (the "likeness," as Aquinas' term seems to be) within itself, and the mind relies on this mentally internal thing for information about what is mentally external, then the mind refers to a mental representation of what is mind-independent. As quoted, the intellect knows

> indirectly the singular represented by the phantasm
>indirectly
>represented

So without immediate access to what is mind-independent, I don't see how the intellect can know for sure that it perceives things as they are in themselves, independently of its subjective intellectual apprehension of them; it rather seems that Aquinas was just begging the question, taking for granted that there's a physical world of things-in-themselves that our mind has adequate access to, providing us with knowledge of it. But I don't see much of an argument in defense of this, and this kind of issue was the very one that modern philosophers like Descartes and Kant were responding to.

In the context you quote from the Summa Theologica, the closest I can find (but I might be missing something) to a defending argument is an ad absurdum, in which Aquinas says that without such adequate knowledge of the spatiotemporal world-in-itself, we'd be reduced to crass relativism:

> "... a consequence would be the error of the ancient philosophers who said that all appearances are true, implying that contradictory opinions could at the same time be true. For if a faculty knows only what is experienced within it, that only is what it can discern. Now a thing 'appears' in accord with the way a cognitive faculty is affected. Therefore the discernment of a cognitive faculty will always judge a thing to be what it discerns, namely, what is experienced within it, and accordingly every judgment will be true.

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>>667329
>>667395

> For instance, if the sense of taste perceives only what is experienced within it, then when a man whose sense of taste is healthy discerns that honey is sweet, his judgment will be true. Similarly, if a sick man, whose sense of taste is affected, experiences honey as bitter, his judgment will be true. For each makes his judgment as his sense of taste is affected. It will thus follow that every opinion - and indeed every perception of any kind - has an equal claim to truth.

- S.T. Part 1, Question 85, Article 2.

But I don't think this argument takes into account how modern philosophical systems ground objectivity on intersubjectivity - how all humans can share a sufficiently objective perception of the world if their minds are all constituted sufficiently similarly, and how even such fundamentally subjective criteria of objectivity can still allow for differences of inner feelings and sensations among different people, without undermining the reliability of the external world, about which all their cognitions agree. Kant's first and third critiques are pretty much all about establishing such a philosophical system.

In fairness, of course, Aquinas and the ancients to which he refers might not have seen how such a representationalist epistemology could avoid the relativistic absurdities they criticized - but only because Aquinas and his predecessors lived too early to see the crafting of that kind of nuanced modern system.

How does Aquinas and Aristotle escape dualism ?

>>667404
Why would a philosophy that accepts the spiritual want to escape dualism?

>>667320
>Seeing how it was pretty useful for drafting systems of Law, Human Rights (Casas, Suarez, Vitoria), Psychology, etc,

Where is Aristotle and Aquinas being used in psychology?

You wouldn't be arguing that any group that appeals to something like nature or humanity is a product of Aristotilanism or Thomism would ?

>>667320
>So are you going to make a generalization of philosophy of religion because of some Anons on 4chan, instead of actually reading the main representatives of a particular school of thought? Seriously? Is this your idea of philosophical education?

Reread the quote, I dont only refer to anons.

>>667412
Not sure but its a claim people make about that group which seems rather unique

>>667412
It sure makes it hard to be taken seriously in today's scientific world.

If sensations, feelings, thoughts, memory, and awarness is the product of the physical than what the hell is the soul?

is there a good intro to Aquinas someone can recommend? i find him to be very difficult.

the same for Aristotle's metaphysics, De Anima, etc

>>667450
Aquinas by Feser is a solid intro.

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>>667453

>>667398
*tips fedora*

>I see Thomists say that Thomism is superior to modern philosophy.

And they're wrong

>>667483

*wonders how that meme is relevant here*

>>665920

Kh-khomeini?! Sean Connery?

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>>666261

In what way(s) do you find it superficial?

>>667395
It isnr representationalism because Aquinas doesnt hold that the "likenesses" are the object of our knowledge, but rather the means by which we get the knowledge.

The phantasm (a kind of likeness) is necessary for knowing because it is from what the intellect abstracts the intelligible species, it isnt the object of our knowledge, as representationalism holds.

I dont see how intersubjectivity can ground the objective when taking representationalism for granted. For we cant know whether we get an accurate perception of the world if we only know its "representations", we would only know our representations, which would give grounds for relativism

>>667419
>Where is Aristotle and Aquinas being used in psychology?
I didnt say used in psychology,only that it is pretty useful for drafting systems of psychology grounded on Aquinas'Anthropology (and no, it isnt an appeal to O. Sin)
>Reread the quote, I dont only refer to anons
While Feser hasnt written anything criticizing other religious metaphysics academically, he has discussed them in other less professional mediums (blogging, etc). Also, I dont see why Feser is the to-go when discussing Thomism, the works of the 19th Century Scholastics out do Feser by miles.

>>667391
>You miss the point,
I dont see what your point is though, you seem to think that they arent developing their "talent" because they consider Scholasticism is true and dont consider other things to be true, which is a pretty moot point.
Or you may say that because they study Scholasticism they cant engage other thinkers and adopt foreign elements into their ideas, which would be false, since there are a lot of Thomists who do these things (Geach working with Frege, Stein and Wojitla incorporating Husserl's thought, Pruss adopting Leibnizian insights, Feser adopting Popperian and Kripkean insights, etc)

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>>670346

>It isnr representationalism because Aquinas doesnt hold that the "likenesses" are the object of our knowledge, but rather the means by which we get the knowledge.

Okay - the "likeness" is supposedly a means, a mediator (yes?) between the intellect and the extra-mental object. The likeness is the intellect's formal activity, and this activity is supposedly of the same form as the concrete, extra-mental object's form, yes?

In this respect, Aquinas isn't yet advocating representationlism, as you've now shown me. But my point is that, from what I can tell, the knower can at most know that his/her intellect is activated in a certain formal way, but can't infer from this with absolute certainty that there is a corresponding material object isomorphic with that intellectual activity. A human knower can't start from the given state of his/her mind and infer with certain knowledge that some mind-independent object (existing in-itself in a state corresponding to the state of the human's mind) is ultimately responsible for putting his/her mind into that state; now, if such ultimate responsibility does lie with that kind of mind-independent object, then an omniscient third-person observer could know that, but this doesn't help us first-person human epistemologists escape our own minds. But Aquinas seems to overlook this, taking for granted that there must be mind-external objects-in-themselves that humans access directly in knowledge; but I think that he'd technically have to say "mine is a model that accounts for knowledge by assuming a direct access to mind-external objects via formal likeness, but there are other possible philosophies that model knowledge without the assumption of a mind-independent object."

So even if Aquinas would be correct to deny that he's so far offered a representationalist model of knowledge, I think he'd be wrong to say that we cannot conceive of "knowledge" to mean anything else.

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>>670346

> The phantasm (a kind of likeness) is necessary for knowing because it is from what the intellect abstracts the intelligible species, it isnt the object of our knowledge, as representationalism holds.

But it is the first thing that the active intellect has access to in its intellectual process of reaching for some mind-independent object, yes? This is the point of the representationalists: if the content of your knowledge is drawn from within your mind, you can't be sure that the same kind of content is also found in anything independent of your mind. So if the previous post didn't examine any claims that explicitly involved Aquinas in representationalism, I'm less confident that he escapes representationalism here.

And again I think we see Aquinas' assumption pop up - the assumption that there just is some mind-independent object that knowledge eventually accesses. In relation to the phantasm, Aquinas seems to (unintentionally, I'd bet) sneak in that assumption by claiming that the agent intellect simply *has* the ability to detect the form already inherent in the phantasm - that is, the form supposedly inherited from the mind-external object via sensation. But to say that the agent intellect can just do this, can just perform this act of "illumination" by its basic nature, is to assume that this intelligible form doesn't originate wholly within the mind itself.

Representationalists like Kant didn't take human intellectual ability of this kind for granted, but rather started from the assumption that the mind itself could contain all forms of knowledge, with these forms constituting the innate functions by which the mind operates on the raw sensations that arise within it.

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>>670346

> I dont see how intersubjectivity can ground the objective when taking representationalism for granted. For we cant know whether we get an accurate perception of the world if we only know its "representations", we would only know our representations, which would give grounds for relativism

The point of representationalism like Kant's is that the world *is* a representation. It's not just your memories and imaginings that are representations, but also what you perceive externally in space; for a physical, concrete object to exist in space is simply for it to be represented in outer sense. Your physical body and your spatial surroundings and everything you immediately perceive is real - equally real as your introspective train of thought - but to understand how, you need to largely reorient your view of what "real" means.

Just because a thing is outside of your skull doesn't mean that it is "outside" (more properly, "independent of") your mind - because on this representationalist model, your transcendental faculties of mind cooperate to produce the very appearance of your empirical body, eyes, nervous system, and every physical thing in causal interaction with them. So when you perceive a human body fundamentally like your own, behaving in fundamentally the same ways that you behave, and communicating to you language about the world that agrees fundamentally with your experience of the world, you are utterly justified in concluding that this is another mind experiencing existence in fundamentally the same way you do, though with their individual perspective - a mind appearing to you as an animal body, just as you appear externally to yourself as an animal body - a mind whose forms of knowledge are of the same nature as yours, and whose objective world will be the same as your objective world.

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>>670346
>>670864

It seems to me that Kant's system doesn't allow us to prove beyond every possible doubt that there really are other conscious minds associated with the other human bodies we experience - but I don't see how Aquinas could provide such a proof either. And though Kant's system requires that we embrace the inability to have knowledge of mind-independent things, things-in-themselves (and thus you can't even know what you are at the deepest level of being - you can only know how you appear to yourself, can only know yourself as a phenomenon of inner sense and of outer sense), it comes with its own advantages; a few examples are the advantage of an immediate knowledge of physical reality and its predictable natural laws, the advantage of protecting human free will from the determinism of those natural laws, and the advantage of saving human reason from paradoxes and contradictions about the world's beginning/end/infinity in space and time.

Kant's representationalism offers trade-offs, and I wonder if the best philosophies can ever offer anything more than that.

>>670832
>Okay - the "likeness" is supposedly a means, a mediator (yes?) between the intellect and the extra-mental object.
It depends on which kind of "likeness" you refer to.
In the case of the phantasms, it would be the one who "presents" (not represents) the particular object to the Active intellect.
> is supposedly of the same form as the concrete, extra-mental object's form
this would be the intelligible species i.e. that which is abstracted from the object as presented by the phantasm.
>A human knower can't start from the given state of his/her mind and infer with certain knowledge that some mind-independent object
I dont see why not. Maybe you would be justified in claiming that if representationalism actually holds, but there arent any grounds for making that assumption. Moreover, your line of thought has stuff backwards. We dont infer from our thoughts about things that there must be things in the external world, rather, it is because there are things in the external world that we have thoughts about things. And we know things outside the mind exist because we perceive them, as the very notion of perception implies there is a perceived object (perception doesnt just include vision, it include all of the senses)
>but there are other possible philosophies that model knowledge without the assumption of a mind-independent object."
I'd doubt so, since the very notion of knowledge means a "correspondence" between thought and the object of thought, a kind of intentional state.
>>670839
>This is the point of the representationalists: if the content of your knowledge is drawn from within your mind
the phantasm isnt drawn from the mind, it is drawn from sensation, and it is put together by perception. It still has material existence (hence it needs the immaterial, i.e. active intellect, in order to be "impressed" in the mind i.e. the passive intellect)
>is to assume that this intelligible form doesn't originate wholly within the mind itself.
Cont.

>>670839
>>671074
I think you are misunderstanding the nature of the phantasm, it doesnt exist within the mind, it exists in perception, which means it is still a material object (unlike the intellectual powers)

>The point of representationalism like Kant's is that the world *is* a representation.
And I dont see any reason to suppose it is. If the world is a representation how do we know that it accurately depicts the represented object, or that it is problable that it represents it accurately? I must confess im not familiar with Kant other than a few points here and there.
>>670868
> but I don't see how Aquinas could provide such a proof either.
While it isnt possible to prove beyond any "possible" doubt (since our imagination is pretty much limitless), i think one can be certain (that is, excluding any reasonable doubt) that any particular human body posseses an intellect if one has sufficient interaction with it and can "detect" certain characteristics exclusive to humans, like certain types of language that include concepts and exhibit rational thought. Of course, this isnt what Aquinas argues explicitly, but something along those lines would be correct (of course, I may be wrong)

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>>671074

> In the case of the phantasms, it would be the one who "presents" (not represents) the particular object to the Active intellect.

But the phantasm is supposedly a result of the mind-external object impressing on the knower's senses, right? The mind-external object affects the knower's retina, and skin, and ear drum, and this results in the knower having visual and tactile and auditory sensations within his/her body, and it is these sensations that are united in the common sense to yield the phantasm, yes?

But from what I can tell, this wouldn't mean that the mind-external concrete object is "presented" to the active intellect, which would seem to require that the material object fully enter the knower's body/soul to be *immediately* accessed by the active intellect, to be *immediately* present to the active intellect. Rather, it seems that the knower only has immediate access to his/her senses that affected and what occurs after such affectation - that is, the knower only has immediate access to the retina stimulation, fingertip stimulation, and ear drum stimulation, and the resulting phantasm, all of which occurs (as Schopenhauer would say) beneath the knower's skin, within the knower's body; so the phantasm, for Aquinas, seems to me to be an image of what is supposedly mind-external, and thus *represents* a supposedly mind-independent object. And that's certainly what I gathered from the translation of Aquinas I posted here: >>667395

So when you say

> the phantasm... doesnt exist within the mind, it exists in perception, which means it is still a material object (unlike the intellectual powers)

then okay, but it is not *the* material object that is supposedly external to the subject's mind/body. Even if the knower's sense faculty is not part of the knower's "mind," the active intellect still only accesses the perception, a sensory representation of the concrete object, an image produced by internal sense, wihtout accessing any object-in-itself.

>>673127

> only has immediate access to his/her senses that ARE affected

Fixed

>>666261
>Neo-Scholastic Manuals
>scholastic anything
Why should literally any of it be treated with anything but contempt?

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>>671074

>>A human knower can't start from the given state of his/her mind and infer with certain knowledge that some mind-independent object
> I dont see why not. Maybe you would be justified in claiming that if representationalism actually holds, but there arent any grounds for making that assumption.

The author of the article here >>666261 makes those same claims, of course, but doesn't show any extensive understanding of the representationalist tradition and their arguments; if this is what was meant by "superficial," then I agree. Is an apple red-colored apart from how it is seen? No - the redness we perceive is a result of how lights reflected off the apple affects our retinas. When you touch a piece of wood in your room and you touch a piece of metal in your room, is the metal colder than the wood apart from your feeling it? No - the wood and the metal are equally at room temperature, but the metal feels colder to you because its greater conductivity draws away your body heat faster than the wood does. There is a difference between what data our senses give us, and what things are like apart from our sensations - and even if Aquinas recognized this, I don't think he followed that insight to its rational conclusions; in fact, it took many thinkers and many generations to gradually show that not just our sensations of color and temperature, but even our perceptions of space and time, can plausibly be said to belong to the human mind's intrinsic constitution, rather than belonging to things-in-themselves independently of human minds. This representationalist tradition, from Locke and Leibniz to Berkeley to Kant, is what the author totally passes over, and shallowly dismisses, as if these thinkers didn't have rigorous arguments defending their views.

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>>671074
>>673406

Kant would also argue that we must consider space and time to be forms of how the human mind represents things, and thus deny that spatiotemporal attributes inhere in things-in-themselves, or else we get lost in contradictions: we couldn't know if space is infinite or bounded, or whether time has a first moment or an endless past, or whether there is a smallest object or infinite divisibility of matter, or whether humans have free will or are strictly determined to act by causal laws, or whether a necessary being is required to explain the world or if such a being is a mere fantasy and in fact impossible; both sides of each issue would have equally strong "proofs," and we'd be forever torn between the options, inless we dissolve the controversy by recognizing that space, time, and everything within them are only how things appear to human minds, not how things are in-themselves. (I alluded to this here: >>670868.)

Whether Kant's point actually holds up is another question - but he provides exceptionally deep and detailed arguments in defense of his system, so it's pretty comical to read that author say that representationalism is simply assumed without good reasons.

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>>671124
>>671074

The same shallowness characterizes this claim (which I blame him more for forwarding with such a tone of expertise, rather than blame you for repeating it based on his authority):

> Moreover, your line of thought has stuff backwards. We dont infer from our thoughts about things that there must be things in the external world, rather, it is because there are things in the external world that we have thoughts about things. And we know things outside the mind exist because we perceive them, as the very notion of perception implies there is a perceived object (perception doesnt just include vision, it include all of the senses)

Had the author done more of his homework, he'd understand that representationalists like Kant accomodate *all* of outer sense in thier idealism - not just vision, but touch and hearing and any perception of spatial objects. The fact that the author focuses so much on Descartes, when the modern idealistic tradition was still in such underdeveloped infinacy, serves well his underdeveloped grasp of representationalism and the problems associated with it; the fact that the author brings up non-visual perceptions, like feeling the ground beneath your feet and tasting with a tongue, as if such perceptions are a challenge to representationalism as a whole, really shows his inadequacy.

Related to this, that author doesn't seem to grasp that such representationalist models don't say that human minds only contain "thoughts" - rather, thoughts and judgments and perceptions and sensations are all "within" the mind. This is all part of what I meant when I said in >>670864:

> Just because a thing is outside of your skull doesn't mean that it is "outside" (more properly, "independent of") your mind

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>>671124

> I must confess im not familiar with Kant other than a few points here and there.

And this is admirable - nobody can be familiar with everything. But this philosophical topic was a central concern of Kant's philosophy, and his very revolutionary work on it is one reason he's such a tremendous figure. I'm not sure how much a person can really weigh in properly on this issue without being very familiar with Kant's arguments and the perspective he built upon those arguments - unfortunately, the author from catholicapologetics.info thinks this isn't true, or thinks it is true but doesn't have the familiarity with representationalism that he believes he has.

>>670366
>I didnt say used in psychology,only that it is pretty useful for drafting systems of psychology grounded on Aquinas'Anthropology (and no, it isnt an appeal to O. Sin)

That doesn't seem particularly useful, how are current documents using his work or how would they benefit from it?

>While Feser hasnt written anything criticizing other religious metaphysics academically, he has discussed them in other less professional mediums (blogging, etc).

Exactly my point, there is no serious attempt to understand other systems.

>Also, I dont see why Feser is the to-go when discussing Thomism, the works of the 19th Century Scholastics out do Feser by miles.

Because he is the most prominent of the contemporary scholastics. Contemporary scholastics have no excuse to justify thier parochial approach to philosophy.

>>670396
>I dont see what your point is though, you seem to think that they arent developing their "talent" because they consider Scholasticism is true and dont consider other things to be true, which is a pretty moot point.

Compare them to the Logical Positivists and those whose tied themselves up with their slavish attachment to empiricism. Although Scholasticsm has it harder as to reject it can often mean rejecting their Church.

Think for instance how many of these logicians would have made great scholastics but for that attachment to empiricism

>>673154
Because it is endorsed by the pope.

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>>673127

Bumping because I'm especially interested in a response to this.

>>668283

you're not a very good philosopher

>>674757

Any argument against a figure of Christianity amounts to

>tipping.gif

regardless of whether that argument is or isn't in defense of atheism, let alone amateurish scientistic atheism?

>>674671
I dont have time to respond, which means i wont be around, but your point in
>which would seem to require that the material object fully enter the knower's body/soul to be *immediately* accessed by the active intellect, to be *immediately* present to the active intellect.
exactly, the object IS present to the active intellect THROUGH the phantasm. There isnt any need for it to be "immediate" (it takes a slight amount of time for the light to reach our eyes), but it only needs to be presented.
> the knower only has immediate access to the retina stimulation, fingertip stimulation, and ear drum stimulation
that would be true if the sensation were the object of knowledge, but it isnt, it is merely the means by which we get knowledge. Of course you may dispute the fact that our senses actually give us data about reality (like you do here>>673406) but whether this fact can actually be established is something the scholastic affirms and can give arguments for it.

>>673550
>That doesn't seem particularly useful, how are current documents using his work or how would they benefit from it?
They could benefit by applying Scholastic principles to a variety of psychological disorders, such as addictions, identity disorders, etc.
>Exactly my point, there is no serious attempt to understand other systems.
Woah woah, where did i say there isnt any attempt to understand other systems? I was talking about religious metaphysics, not of metaphysics in general. In which case they do criticize other metaphysics (and the lack of any)
>Because he is the most prominent of the contemporary scholastics.
In America maybe, John Haldane is more prominent as well as David Oderberg
>>673561
>Think for instance how many of these logicians would have made great scholastics but for that attachment to empiricism
the Scholastics are empiricists (at least the most prominent are). And rejecting Scholasticism doesnt mean rejecting the Church, in fact the Church has a pretty negative view of Scholasticism today, and often hold it in contempt.

>>673562
>it is endorsed by a pedophile in a dress
That's not a reason for, that's a reason against.

>>675681
>implying pedophilia is wrong

it's in the bible dumb-ass

God's word AND God's chosen priests are above secular law.

>>675719
Epic bait

>>675719
>God's word AND God's chosen priests are above secular law.
Yeah, no. And they're below philosophy, too.

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>>674883

> the object IS present to the active intellect THROUGH the phantasm.

Aquinas just wants to have it both ways, I think. It seems obvious to me that if the extra-mental thing is accessed *through* the phantasm, then the extra-mental thing is not present to the intellect; the phantasm comes between the extra-mental thing-in-itself and the active intellect, and even if we assume that the qualities of the phantasmic image correspond exactly accurately to the mind-indpendent qualities of the thing-in-itself, the phantasmic image is still only a representation of that thing-in-itself - an image that represents its corresponding thing-in-itself with 100% accuracy.

Kant's point is that the only way for a thing-in-itself to be strictly "present" to an intellect would be for that intellect to create the thing-in-itself in the very act of knowing it; that is, for a thing-in-itself to be present to an intellect would be for it to be present *in* and intellect. But only God could have such an intellect (which Kant calls an "archetypal intellect"), because human intellects only know things once sense data arises and is taken up by the intellect, such sense data being only an appearance correlating with a mind-external thing-in-itself. This is Kant's way of Agreeing with Aquinas and Aristotle that the mind-external object doesn't enter the human knower, but only makes an impression; but where Kant is more consistent, I think, is that he recognizes this impression as a representation of the thing-in-itself that made the impression.

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>>674883
>>677543

> There isnt any need for it to be "immediate" (it takes a slight amount of time for the light to reach our eyes), but it only needs to be presented.

"Immediate" here doesn't mean "without passage of time," it means "without mediation." X accesses Y immediately if there isn't anything between them, if there isn't any other element that acts as a bridge by which X acts on Y (or vice verse) indirectly. Akin to your hand touching a rock directly, without a glove coming between your skin and the rock's surface.

>>677543

The missing piece for understanding "immediacy" here is essentialism: Aquinas is a realist about essence, that is, everything which exists has a principle that grounds its quiddity ("what it is") which can be extracted by the intellect and thereby unified with the intellect. When something shares in the essence of something else, one "participates" to some degree in the actual intrinsic principle of that which one understands. It is this that makes immediacy possible. What motivates this in turn is his understanding of what it is to know: to share in the being of that which is known. If no such sharing is possible, then it is difficult to see any sense in which one has access to the being of things (not even oneself, or one's mind).

The phantasm contains the quiddity of the thing perceived in a material form- phantasms are particularised, individual objects, present to the sense-faculty as individuals, hence in themselves ambiguous as to their referent. That is, the sense-faculties, being particular and therefore material, do not have the capacity to distinguish between the object of sense qua particular, and the universal quiddity which characterises the object, hence the sense-faculty's grasp of the object is vaguer and less complete.

The intellect, on the other hand, possesses the quiddity itself, through the grasp of its form. To grasp this quiddity just is to grasp the object as it inherently is, apart from the accidents of space and time which particularise it and introduce ambiguity. Thus whether one grasps the quiddity of a thing after the fact as a created intellect or before the fact as the Creator is irrelevant to the possibility of union with its being. As long as there are universal essences that the intellect can grasp (and here is the crucial thing which Kant denies), it is possible for there to be a real sharing in the being-itself of the thing understood.

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>>677788

> everything which exists has a principle that grounds its quiddity ("what it is") which can be extracted by the intellect and thereby unified with the intellect. When something shares in the essence of something else, one "participates" to some degree in the actual intrinsic principle of that which one understands.

And I'm pretty sure this is what I found problematic (>>670839, >>670832) taking "essence" as synonymous (effectively, at least) with "form." Especially:

>In relation to the phantasm, Aquinas seems to (unintentionally, I'd bet) sneak in that assumption by claiming that the agent intellect simply *has* the ability to detect the form already inherent in the phantasm - that is, the form supposedly inherited from the mind-external object via sensation. But to say that the agent intellect can just do this, can just perform this act of "illumination" by its basic nature, is to assume that this intelligible form doesn't originate wholly within the mind itself. Representationalists like Kant didn't take human intellectual ability of this kind for granted, but rather started from the assumption that the mind itself could contain all forms of knowledge, with these forms constituting the innate functions by which the mind operates on the raw sensations that arise within it.

and

> The likeness is the intellect's formal activity, and this activity is supposedly of the same form as the concrete, extra-mental object's form, yes? ...from what I can tell, the knower can at most know that his/her intellect is activated in a certain formal way, but can't infer from this with absolute certainty that there is a corresponding material object isomorphic with that intellectual activity. A human knower can't start from the given state of his/her mind and infer with certain knowledge that some mind-independent object (existing in-itself in a state corresponding to the state of the human's mind) is ultimately responsible for putting his/her mind into that state

>>677953

I don't think Aquinas "sneaks in" the assumption that the intellect has the ability to know. He takes it as self-evident that we know *something,* and from the metaphysical analysis of what it is to know anything at all, he can derive his account of knowledge. I'll flesh this out later if this thread is still up.

>>674918
> fact the Church has a pretty negative view of Scholasticism today, and often hold it in contempt.

Really? how is that happening and why?

>>679175
Vatican II and Nouvelle Theology

>>679187
How is that a negative view of it and how does that hold it in contempt?

Cool thread guys. Been making for interesting reading. Gonna pick up the Freser introductory book on Aquinas. Any opinions on his New Scholasticism? I hear he blows scientism thoroughly the fuck out

>>674918
>They could benefit by applying Scholastic principles to a variety of psychological disorders, such as addictions, identity disorders, etc.

How though and what results would that achieve and why would Scholasticism produce better results than other systems?

>>674918
>Woah woah, where did i say there isnt any attempt to understand other systems? I was talking about religious metaphysics, not of metaphysics in general. In which case they do criticize other metaphysics (and the lack of any)

When discussion regarding other systems outside such as those in the Buddhist context are limited to tiny and seriousness blog posts rather than a serious study.

>>679259
>such as those in the Buddhist context

>Buddhism
We're talking about Western Phil. here, you know, where materialism runs rampant

>>679279
But that conversation was literally about Scholastic not engaging with eastern thought.

>>679286
No, it was about not engaging with other systems as a whole.

>>679333
>nuh ah

Why dont Scholastics engage with Eastern Thought like that professed by Buddhists?

>>679358
Because Neo-Scholastics exist as a Western movement, and as such engage with Western developments. They still engage with Eastern ideas as filtered through Hume, etc. Besides, given that there is a huge Latin Corpus written in Jesuit Universities that hasnt been translated, there might as well exist such discussion of Buddhism

>>679374
>Because Neo-Scholastics exist as a Western movement, and as such engage with Western developments

Why should they limit themselves?

>Besides, given that there is a huge Latin Corpus written in Jesuit Universities that hasnt been translated, there might as well exist such discussion of Buddhism

Given that translations of texts like the Pali Cannon werent available until the late 19th and early 20th century that seems rather far fetched.

>>679399
>Why should they limit themselves?
It isnt limiting, it's focusing on a discussion of ideas rather than other ideas. Western Phil. is one of the biggest influences in the world, and as such it is a widely discussed subject.
>that seems rather far fetched.
Not really, when you take into account that the Jesuits were the ones to make contact with and bring Western Science to the East, and learned their languages as a result

>>679431
>It isnt limiting, it's focusing on a discussion of ideas rather than other ideas. Western Phil. is one of the biggest influences in the world, and as such it is a widely discussed subject.

Its kind limiting when you ignore the Second biggest influence on the world, especially when it has such different axioms and view points.

>Not really, when you take into account that the Jesuits were the ones to make contact with and bring Western Science to the East, and learned their languages as a result

Yeah really, as things like the Pali arent actually living languages even at that time. So whilst you might be able to make that case for Confucianism it does not seem to be the same with Buddhism. The relative control Europeans had over India created a far different environment that the tenuous situation in China.

>>679545
>Its kind limiting when you ignore the Second biggest influence on the world
it's a little bit unheard of, considering it's the "second best". Confucianism made a bigger influence in the World.
> So whilst you might be able to make that case for Confucianism it does not seem to be the same with Buddhism.
Of course it is, considering the Jesuits were the ones who kept the Buddhist texts at their Universities, and were available to scholars, including Hume.

>>666027
But there are pleanty of direct realists in phil. of perception at the moment. Try again.

>>666268

neither were Socrates or Schopenhauer

>>667207
That's because catholicism is true. Everyone who understands scholasticism, will eventually become catholic.

>>670832
>>670839
>>673127
>>673429
>>677543
>>677547
We see the thing-in-itself. The fucking object can't show itself from all its different perspectives to a particular sensibility, not because we are unable to see the "thing-in-itself", but because the "thing-in-itself" cannot show all its perspectives at the same time.

>>679659
>it's a little bit unheard of, considering it's the "second best". Confucianism made a bigger influence in the World.

Highly debatable, Buddhism has had an enormous impact on all East Asian culture and is making headway in the west in current times.

>Of course it is, considering the Jesuits were the ones who kept the Buddhist texts at their Universities, and were available to scholars, including Hume.

Can I see some sources on that, that seems interesting

>>680035
Just tracked down the article, that is a rather interesting story, I was wrong. I can only hope that modern philosophers will take inspiration from such stories to break thier disgustingly parochial habits

>>680035
>Buddhism has had an enormous impact on all East Asian culture
Along with Islam and Confucianism, and Christianity to some extent

And a quick Google search brought me this, but I'm sure there is some research by Hume scholars supporting it. http://www.alisongopnik.com/papers_alison/gopnik_humestudies_withtoc.pdf

>>680062
Ah I see, alright.
>will take inspiration from such stories to break thier disgustingly parochial habits
There is nothing wrong with following certain trends, often following those trends can make criticism develop at a much higher rate than not following any, and can encourage the introduction of new ideas. Of course there is always a balance between such approaches and one has to be careful inorder to reach that balance

>>680086
>There is nothing wrong with following certain trends, often following those trends can make criticism develop at a much higher rate than not following any, and can encourage the introduction of new ideas. Of course there is always a balance between such approaches and one has to be careful inorder to reach that balance

I see the risk and issue being that by not addressing some of the foundational issues (specific axioms and the like) which are found in foreign thought and focusing on the higher level arguments their efforts are in vain.

Kind of like the cartoon character who runs off a cliff yet keeps on going until he looks down.

The kind of scorn and conceit you see from people like Feser and the general scorn showed towards thought that came after their own does not fill me with hope for their school. Likewise the element of faith behind their ideas creates a special kind of bigotry.

>>680107
thats kind of jumbled but simply put until you hammer out your axioms and epistemology such higher arguments are wasteful.

>>665920
How do scholastics deal with the problem of induction?

How is it that their metaphysics does not have an immaterial component given the christian notion of heaven

>>680130
>How do scholastics deal with the problem of induction?
They ignore it. Scholasticism is completely and utterly worthless in every meaning of the word.

>>680107
>focusing on the higher level arguments their efforts are in vain.
How are they "in vain" when they actually focus on such arguments found in other systems? Of course i think your actual issue is them not engaging your "own" systems, in which case, it's not their fault for not engaging such systems, rather it is the fault of the others for failing to advance any arguments other than those from extinct languages.
>The kind of scorn and conceit you see from people like Feser and the general scorn showed towards thought
Youre overreacting, Feser and the Neo-Scholastics dont hold modern philosophy with "scorn" or anything else, they just see it as mistaken or misleading, and argue for a return to classical traditions. And there isnt any element of faith in their philosophical ideas. The Scholastics, contrary to popular opinion, actually separated between philosophy and revealed theology, and they still do.

>>680130
>How do scholastics deal with the problem of induction?
The problem presupposes nominalism, which is rejected by most scholastics and instead take on a moderate form of realism.
>How is it that their metaphysics does not have an immaterial component given the christian notion of heaven
It does, but they dont conceive immateriality in the modern sense of the word

>>680170
>The problem presupposes nominalism
Nope.

>>680183
Explain then

>>680191
Explain grandfathering nominalism into the problem of induction. Universals are irrelevant to it.

>>680196
>Universals are irrelevant to it.
Universals are what a lot of disagreements and problems ultimately boil down to.

Realism is tied with the notion of Essentialism, which holds there are universal, unchanging essences. It is by investigating particulars (induction) that we get a hold of these essences. Nominalism rejects all of this, which is what gives rise to the problem

>>680203
No, the problem persists in realism because you can never be sure that "investigating the particulars" is actually you getting hold of a universal essence. Nominalism is completely irrelevant to the problem.

>>680216
> because you can never be sure
try actually giving an argument as to why we cant get universals from particulars, instead of pulling the "u cant no nuffin" card.
>Nominalism is completely irrelevant to the problem.
No, it is pretty relevant to the problem, since it denies the universal needed to solve the problem of induction

>>680165
>How are they "in vain" when they actually focus on such arguments found in other systems? Of course i think your actual issue is them not engaging your "own" systems, in which case, it's not their fault for not engaging such systems, rather it is the fault of the others for failing to advance any arguments other than those from extinct languages.

It does not seem that way especially when the best work scholastics have on say a system like buddhism (with its very different axioms) is forgotten works that could potentially be found.

>Youre overreacting, Feser and the Neo-Scholastics dont hold modern philosophy with "scorn" or anything else, they just see it as mistaken or misleading, and argue for a return to classical traditions.

Summarily disregarding everything from hegel to heidegger strikes me as being quite scornful.

>And there isnt any element of faith in their philosophical ideas. The Scholastics, contrary to popular opinion, actually separated between philosophy and revealed theology, and they still do.

You literally stated that the purpose of it is to explain dogma, which itself is premised on faith.

>>680170
>The problem presupposes nominalism, which is rejected by most scholastics and instead take on a moderate form of realism.

Can you explain this a bit more?

>It does, but they dont conceive immateriality in the modern sense of the word

What do they conceive it in, and how does this escape the issues surrounding modern immateriality

>>680233
The argument is that until it tackles hard solipsism, it's still going to have to deal with the problem of induction. You don't make it go away by blatantly assuming infallibility.

>>680233
The problem of induction is an artifact of not having absolute knowledge. It's here to stay and no amount of unfounded assertions is going to get around it.

>>680235
>is forgotten works that could potentially be found.
and how is that compared to ancient works that exist in extinct languages?
>Summarily disregarding everything from hegel to heidegger
they dont disregard it, they argue for their position and point out problems in other traditions, while welcoming criticism of their own tradition.
>You literally stated that the purpose of it is to explain dogma
and they explain it (not proving, explaining) using the ideas from their schools of thought, they do not rely on dogma to establish their schools.

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>>679939

> The fucking object can't show itself from all its different perspectives to a particular sensibility

The point was never that a mind-independent thing-in-itself can't be immediately known in its myriad facets by an individual knower limited by his/her individual perspective; the point was rather that a mind-independent thing-in-itself can't be immediately known *at all.* Your mind is limited by its own nature, and this is admitted by Kant as much as it is admitted by Aquinas; but where Aquinas transgresses the mind's intrinsic limits is in his assumption that the mind's relation to non-mind (the extra-mental thing-in-itself) reveals more about the non-mind than it reveals about the mind.

Kant's point is that in consciousness, there is the thinker and the thought-of; the subject of consciousness and the object of consciousness, the knower and the known, respectively. At bottom, you are an "I," a subject of sensations, of perceptions, of objects; the fact that you have knowledge is given, is undeniable (and Aquinas would agree, as previous anons have said). In order for the subject "to know," there can't be any doubt about what is known; if your judgment about X includes the consciousness that you might be wrong about X, then you do not strictly "know" X, regardless of how improbable your error about X seems. But the only way for the knowing subject to have such assurance about the object of its knowledge is if that object must conform to the subject's intrinsic manner of knowing - in other words, the knowing subject must generate the very forms, the very laws, by which knowledge counts as "knowledge." Because otherwise, the knowing subject could never be 100% sure that the object of its knowledge agreed with its perception of it, since you, as a knowing subject, can never escape your subjectivity to compare the object-in-itself of your consciousness with your consciousness of it, and thus can't guarantee agreement from some third-person perspective.

>>680233
>try actually giving an argument as to why we cant get universals from particulars, instead of pulling the "u cant no nuffin" card.
>a """"realist"""" spends time walking around the middle east and holding a rock, then releasing it
>it drops to the ground every time
>because it drops down every time, the """"realist"""" decides that there's a universal "down" which all rocks are drawn towards

>>680239
it isnt an argument, anymore than claiming that you can never be sure homo sex will lead to pedo sex proves such thing.
>>680249
> It's here to stay and no amount of unfounded assertions
funny thing is that the problem is founded on Hume's unfounded assertions, yet you never question those.

>>680270
>and how is that compared to ancient works that exist in extinct languages?

So you are agreeing that the best work the scholastics have on Buddhism is something that might not even exist outside of your speculation?

>they dont disregard it, they argue for their position and point out problems in other traditions, while welcoming criticism of their own tradition.

Are these criticisms and arguements likewise locked away in books that may or may not exist?

>and they explain it (not proving, explaining) using the ideas from their schools of thought, they do not rely on dogma to establish their schools.

Which makes them to philosophy what ladyboys are to women.

>>680281
>decides that there's a universal "down" which all rocks are drawn towards
not exactly, instead it realizes that there's the essence of "rock" that falls to the Earth because of Earth's gravity.

>>680286
>it isnt an argument, anymore than claiming that you can never be sure homo sex will lead to pedo sex proves such thing.
Form a coherent sentence please.

>>680290
Well, let's turn your argument on it's head: What's the best Buddhist work on Scholasticism?

>>680297
Kek. First off, I'm referencing the middle east goatfucking religion that spawned scholasticism in the first place, so obviously before such time as Newton discovered gravity.

Second, put that rock far away from Earth and it's not going to fall towards it anyway. Under both cases the conclusion is false and """""realism""""" is a completely vapid and ironically named concept. It never points to a universal until we have universal knowledge.

>>680286
>funny thing is that the problem is founded on Hume's unfounded assertions, yet you never question those.
I've never questioned them because I don't spend my spare time in something as fruitless and irrelevant as philosophy.

>>680302
>Well, let's turn your argument on it's head

So in other word "gee I want to avoid a question that's embarrassing and change the topic"

Do you have an answer to this or are those books waiting to to actualize their potential arguments you best answer?

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>>680314
>middle east goatfucking religion

> I don't spend my spare time in something as fruitless and irrelevant as philosophy

>>680290
>So you are agreeing that the best work the scholastics have on Buddhism
What tradition of Buddhism are you referring to? Who are its main thinkers? What are they works? It is impossible to get such work when youre just namedropping an abstract "Buddhism"
>Are these criticisms and arguements likewise locked away in books that may or may not exist?
Not really, theyre pretty much available on the Internet Archive, go look
>Which makes them to philosophy what ladyboys are to women.
What? As I said, they dont rely on dogma in order to establish their schools, they rely on clear argumentation

>>680328
>tip tip!

>>680314
>Second, put that rock far away from Earth and it's not going to fall towards it anyway.
It will still be affected by the gravity of other objects, you can just replace Earth with anything you want, it doesnt matter

Anyways I already realized this is bait, thanks

>>680337
>oh no he pointed out my shitpost by posting a stereotypical picture of the kind of person that shitposts like me, better counter with the "tip tip" meme!

>>680319
I didnt write that, but his point is a valid one, where are the Buddhists promoting their metaphysics, getting their articles published, and giving critiques of other systems? Maybe that way someone will take notice and write a refutation in English

>>680342
>It will still be affected by the gravity of other objects, you can just replace Earth with anything you want, it doesnt matter
Yes, and that's something a middle eastern goatfucker will be in no position to discern. His idea of this "universal" will be "down". A point you seem intent on ignoring.

And then at some point the universal would get from "down" to Earth. And then from Earth to planets. And then from planets to any celestial objects.

And at all of these steps the universal will be demonstrably wrong.

>It will still be affected by the gravity of other objects
That's not the Earth pulling on it right now, is it?

>Anyways I already realized this is bait, thanks
What made you think this?

>>680350
Address the argument or fuck off, offended dumbass (;

>>680333
>What tradition of Buddhism are you referring to? Who are its main thinkers? What are they works? It is impossible to get such work when youre just namedropping an abstract "Buddhism"

Theravada or the Mahayana schools would be equally fine. As far as works go how about on the claims made in the Abhidhamma Pitaka which is the more philosophical section of the Pali Cannon.

>Not really, theyre pretty much available on the Internet Archive, go look

which archive is that?

>What? As I said, they dont rely on dogma in order to establish their schools, they rely on clear argumentation

Except when clear argumentation would not lead to an answer that would confirm dogma, then it just doesnt matter.

>>680355
>I didnt write that, but his point is a valid one

How on earth is that a valid point? All it does is deflect from one having to answer the question. Is this what counts for good and clear argumentation for a scholastic?

>>680368
>As far as works go how about on the claims made in the Abhidhamma Pitaka which is the more philosophical section of the Pali Cannon.
I was thinking more of an academic journal or some articles with clear argumentation, Got any of those?
>which archive is that?
The Internet Archive (archive.org)
>Except when clear argumentation would not lead to an answer that would confirm dogma
No one tried to reason "Revealed theology" from philosophical premises though

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>>680396

> No one tried to reason "Revealed theology" from philosophical premises though

What is "Cur Deus Homo" by Anselm of Canterbury, Alex?

>>680396
>I was thinking more of an academic journal or some articles with clear argumentation, Got any of those?

I do not, but I dont see how me not having academic journal articles would prevent you from sharing part of the wealth of materail the scholastics have which you refer to on the matter.

>The Internet Archive (archive.org)

I get you now.

>No one tried to reason "Revealed theology" from philosophical premises though

Yeah but they reason philosophy through revealed theology.

>>680342
The problem is that even if you assume gravity is some "universal", it isn't. There is no point at which you can decide you've come upon a universal, the example of ancient people thinking about "down" as a universal is just a particularly egregious (but completely apt) example of it.

>>680367
>that's something a middle eastern goatfucker will be in no position to discern.
Who is talking about a middle eastern guy?
>That's not the Earth pulling on it right now, is it?
Who said the Earth is the only one that affects the rock?
>What made you think this?
Well, thinking philosophy is shit while browsing a humanities board is a pointer

>>680414
>I do not, but I dont see how me not having academic journal articles would prevent you from sharing part of the wealth of materail the scholastics have which you refer to on the matter.
It would prevent me and a lot of people from engaging your views, which is what modern philosophical discourse is about.
>Yeah but they reason philosophy through revealed theology.
Where does Aquinas use Aristotle because it proves the Bible?

>>680420
Me. I'm telling you how your idea of universals is completely inapplicable to reality. Partially through the problem of induction, but mostly because we don't have complete knowledge.

>Who said the Earth is the only one that affects the rock?
That's what an ancient person would've said, and your kind of thinking would have immediately assumed there's some absolute truth to it.

>Well, thinking philosophy is shit while browsing a humanities board is a pointer
Philosophy by itself is completely and utterly pointless, baseless and little more than word games; only good for entertainment. Which is what I'm using it for.

>>680418
>The problem is that even if you assume gravity is some "universal", it isn't
I wasnt assuming gravity was a universal. What is more fitting is to hold the law of gravity to describe the essence of things, in this case material objects

>>680438
>>680420
And to be clear, they wouldn't even have said gravity, they would've either pointed at "down" as the direction rocks want to go in, or gone for a classical element approach in explaining it.

>>680435
>It would prevent me and a lot of people from engaging your views, which is what modern philosophical discourse is about.

Oh but Im not looking from your specific view point I just wanted you to show me some scholarly scholastics works (ie not blog posts) that deal with Buddhist metaphysics at all.

By giving such a broad critera that should make it very easy to find more info on it rather than if I was to point to a highly technical argument.

>Where does Aquinas use Aristotle because it proves the Bible?

The bible isnt the source of Catholic dogma.

>>680445
>I wasnt assuming gravity was a universal. What is more fitting is to hold the law of gravity to describe the essence of things, in this case material objects
Once again, this is you talking with your current knowledge. It's still lacking in a few places I can point out, but that's besides the point.

"Realism" necessarily leads to false conclusions without perfect knowledge, and the fact that you avoid the example of classical understanding of reality speaks volumes to your confidence in it. You cannot claim on the one hand that investigating the particulars leads to universals, when false conclusions can and have been lead to by said investigation. There's nothing you can say against the universal of "down" using the knowledge people had in the first century.

>>680438
>but mostly because we don't have complete knowledge.
What do you mean by complete knowledge? like being omniscient? That isnt what Realism entails.
>That's what an ancient person would've said
And? How is that relevant? Such person didnt have access to our devices or our methods that give us a greater amount of certainity.
>Philosophy by itself is completely and utterly pointless
And this is how I know youre just baiting, since somebody actually well read on philosophy wouldnt make such a moronic statement.

>>680396
>The Internet Archive (archive.org)

It doesn't seem to contain any works regarding scholastic tackling buddhist metaphysics.

Any terms you would suggest I use

>>680472
>What do you mean by complete knowledge? like being omniscient? That isnt what Realism entails.
It does for it to be of any value.

>And? How is that relevant? Such person didnt have access to our devices or our methods that give us a greater amount of certainity.
>>680470


>And this is how I know youre just baiting, since somebody actually well read on philosophy wouldnt make such a moronic statement.
Maybe I just like making you mad? It's not pertinent to the discussion so stop whining about it.

>>680457
>that deal with Buddhist metaphysics at all.
and such metaphysics would be dealt with if someone presented them in an academic work. Yes, even by modern scholastics.
>The bible isnt the source of Catholic dogma.
?

>>680470
>You cannot claim on the one hand that investigating the particulars leads to universals, when false conclusions can and have been lead to by said investigation.
I never said that investigation particulars were sufficient to get to universals, you need more than that.

>>680488
And what, pray tell, besides the investigation of particulars do we have?

>>680476
>It does for it to be of any value.
What kind of value are you talking about?

>>680490
>what is the scientific method

>>680491
Explanatory value, truth value, basically any sort of value other than rationalizing my feelies, i.e. religious beliefs.

>>680499
Dropping rocks on the ground in the first century is the scientific method. It's the building of models to describe and predict reality. Science doesn't claim to be infallible or to point to some universal truth. It's tentative.

>>680479
>and such metaphysics would be dealt with if someone presented them in an academic work. Yes, even by modern scholastics.

Can you just say that there aren't any works by scholastic on the matter to your knowledge then?

I searched your archive and its come up dry. There may well be solid Buddhist academic pieces but I dont know of them nor have I looked.

>?
Sacred tradition, scripture being the basis of dogma is a protestant concept thats rather modern.

>>680518
For it seems like you are talking as if there is a great deal of work that you are witholding until I meet certain requirements you set.

>>680488
Yes, that's right. You need to assume that universals that seem like they might be true, are true, and then continue your religious apologetics from there.

>>680278
>The point was never that a mind-independent thing-in-itself can't be immediately known in its myriad facets by an individual knower limited by his/her individual perspective;
I didn't say that, I said that the individual perspective is not actually a limitation in this sense. What limitates our knowledge is not our capacity of representation but our own judgements about these things.

>the point was rather that a mind-independent thing-in-itself can't be immediately known *at all.*
All things are mind independent.

Also, kantism is anti-philosophy. Call this whatever you want.

>>680631
>Also, kantism is anti-philosophy.

What do you mean by this?

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>>680170
>>680203
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>>680472
>>680488
>>680491
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>>680470

>realism leads to falsehood if we don't have complete knowledge

Seems you're saying that the realist has no theory capable of accounting for error. Firstly that's not true. What the realist emphasises is that knowledge exists through sharing in the actual being of the thing understood, as opposed to the complete separation from that being (and the accompanying impossibility of knowledge) entailed by nominalism. This is compatible with a very incomplete degree of unity with the being of the thing understood, with misnaming the things understood, and with a complete lack of unity where there is nothing to be understood.

Secondly, progress in knowledge is perfectly possible without denying realism. The awareness of gravity as a "downward force," for instance, may be refined, through isolating the phenomenon from the accidents of particular experiences (i.e., by repeated empirical exposure which makes the pattern clear) and by reflection on this process of isolating the thing itself. Our new knowledge may lead to the shedding of accidents (like "downwardness") from our understanding of the essence of gravity, and the illumination of its relation with mass.

The fact that we end up with a model of understanding which is new qua model, does not entail that the new knowledge is knowledge of a different being altogether. Through the refinement of our knowledge, we are able to see old knowledge as an incomplete version of the greater unity-with-being that new knowledge represents, which is not the same as not being knowledge at all.

Thirdly, there is nothing about realism per se which leads to any more falsehood than any of the alternatives. If you're mistaken about reality, you're just as mistaken on realism as nominalism. Realism explains how it is possible to come to knowledge of anything at all, where nominalism ultimately entails a self-defeating scepticism.

>>665920

>I see Thomists say that Thomism is superior to modern philosophy. What are some points for this?

there are none

>>680954
>Seems you're saying that the realist has no theory capable of accounting for error.
I'm not saying that at all. What I said was that for the idea to have any merit, error has no place in it. It might as well be true that every object has an essence to it, there is simply no way to get to it without perfect knowledge and thus any claims that come from appeals to universals or essences are inherently unsubstantiated.

>What the realist emphasises is that knowledge exists through sharing in the actual being of the thing understood, as opposed to the complete separation from that being (and the accompanying impossibility of knowledge) entailed by nominalism.
What are you calling knowledge in your post, before I get any further? "Sharing in the actual being of the thing understood" is not what has been happening, ever, when knowledge was shared. Disregarding, of course, "knowledge" of things we ourselves define.

>>681053

>What I said was that for the idea to have any merit, error has no place in it.

To understand the essence of a thing *in at least some degree* does not require perfect knowledge, as I indicated in my post. In the terms I indicated, it is sufficient for a realist account of knowledge that we are unified to *some degree* with the being of the other. Error has an obvious place on this account- when our faculty for grasping the essence of something else malfunctions or is misapplied or cannot be applied (because we have not developed the right kind of sensory access) or is only partially successful, we have error.

>What are you calling knowledge in your post, before I get any further?

The truest sense of knowledge is the unity in the intellect with the thing understood, as I said.

For dialectical purposes, I'm happy to adopt Justified True Belief (or your preferred variation thereof) to start with.

I think that the only way to achieve a true belief in an epistemically proper way, is for one's beliefs to come into union with the being of the thing understood. For if all there is to one's belief about a thing is the being of the belief itself, then there is no sense in which the belief specifies any object but itself. This in turn makes justified true belief about anything impossible.

>>681091
Again, I have no problem in principle with the idea that there are some truths to which our knowledge converges. What I said, for the third time, is that you can't get from the assumption that there is some truth, to that we KNOW it, which is where any and all religious apologetics based on realism fall apart.

I have some big issues with the idea of universals and essences, but that's a story for another time.

And actually, we've strayed way too far from the point of contention, which is that nominalism and realism are irrelevant to the problem of induction.

>>681116

Essentialism is what allows for convergence at all. Convergence presupposes increasing degrees of unity with that understood. The unity of diverse particulars to any degree, however, requires the universal.

>you can't get from the assumption that there is some truth, to that we KNOW it, which is where any and all religious apologetics based on realism fall apart.

Right. That we know some truth is self-evident, since it is self-contradictory to suppose the contrary. If the price of theism is the commitment to the idea that we can know things, that's absurdly cheap and it would be silly to be an atheist.

>nominalism and realism are irrelevant to the problem of induction.

Ah, sorry, I joined the conversation late.

I don't think they are irrelevant. If realism is true, then there is a reason for the future to follow the past: the patterns we observe in nature are not accidental unities, but multiple instantiations of a common essence, with essential properties which can be discovered when we control for accidents.

It would then be obvious why we should expect the future to follow the past. Both future and past versions of the same phenomenon must, in order to be the same, instantiate the same essence. Once we understand what the characteristic behaviours of an essence are, we have grounds for confidence that, under sufficiently similar conditions, similar results will follow for different instances of the same.

Now certainly our understanding of a thing's essence in this way could always be further developed- once we isolate a phenomenon sufficiently well to grasp its essence to some degree, we can get a clearer idea of that essence by examining it under different accidental conditions.

Nominalism, on the other hand, can afford to reify only bare particulars. Where the universals are mere mental impositions, one particular has nothing inherently to do with another. Under this sort of Humean condition, science is basically effective witchcraft.

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>>680631

> I didn't say that, I said that the individual perspective is not actually a limitation in this sense.

Uh okay, but I didn't find that at all clear in the language if your post >>679939

> What limitates our knowledge is not our capacity of representation

So are you agreeing with a representationalist model of knowledge, against the Thomist model described in this thread? I don't want to presume about you.

> but our own judgements about these things.

Kant's argument is that our knowledge is limited by both our faculties for representations of things, and limited by the judgements we make about those representations; without limitations, our capacity to know would have no structure, no order, no form, and any flurry of chaotic sensory input wouldn't yield a knowing consciousness, but would amount to "less than a dream."

Technically, for us to have representations of things in the empirical world requires our faculty of judgement in an automatic mode of its operation (subsuming intuitions of sensibility under the categories of the understanding, yielding objects of experience, without us having to ponder over this process or *try* to accomplish it). But our faculty of judgement also has an aspect over which we have more control, like when we're examining the natural world in order to classify its living species, or trying to figure out which particular laws of nature can be reduced to more basic laws of nature, or trying to figure out if we can trace causality back to a godly first cause, or whether there is a smallest particle of matter or if physical things are composed of an anctual infinity of sub-parts. Judgement in its second mode can help us recognize what errors we might be making within, or even at the basis of, such projects.

> All things are mind independent.

Arguments, please. And see >>673406

> Also, kantism is anti-philosophy. Call this whatever you want.

"A non-refutation" is what I call that.

>>681247
>Essentialism is what allows for convergence at all.
That's a wonderfully narrow definition of convergence, then. Or things just are, and our nominal approximations of things are approaching the actual things.

The distinction that the things do exist, but there is no extra layer of "being" ascribed to it that causes all sorts of problems, especially with the way you worded communication of knowledge.

But frankly, I'm tired of the subject and I'm done wasting time on it. Last post on nominalism/essentialism. Unless I'm REALLY bored at work tomorrow.

>I don't think they are irrelevant. If realism is true, then there is a reason for the future to follow the past: the patterns we observe in nature are not accidental unities, but multiple instantiations of a common essence, with essential properties which can be discovered when we control for accidents.

The problem of induction does not posit that the future "doesn't follow the past", it posits that from simple repetition you CANNOT induce the continuation of it. The sun rising in the east yesterday and for the last billion years does not mean it will rise in the east tomorrow. Believing in essences, particulars and universals is completely irrelevant. Or if it is, I've not seen even an approach.

Ascribing a spooky layer to everything isn't some sidestep around the problem.

>Now certainly our understanding of a thing's essence in this way could always be further developed...
Yes, yes, literally any guess is some approximation of an essential. There's no "wrong" answer, just an inaccurate approximation. As in saying there's a "down" force isn't wrong, it's just inaccurate. Mild sarcasm.

>>682140
Ok, i'm gonna be clear, your mind is a reality reader. Reading the reader is tautologic reasoning.
Your representation capacity was made to correspond real objects, without the real objects, this "a priori" intuitions don't mean anything.
There's no limitation, we perceive exactly what we are made to perceive, in a perfect correspondence which is true by itself.

I don't wanna enter inside your discourse because it will lock me inside your mental jail.

You are a pervert, by the way.

>>681247
>Nominalism, on the other hand,...
Nominalism does not need to reify anything. Things are real enough as is. You don't have a monopoly on the truth just because you have a definition of spooky abstract objects floating nowhere.

Nominalism can afford to observe patterns, draw distinctions and do everything else just fine. It just means we define the terms and draw the distinctions. These distinctions are completely arbitrary and only exist as defined by humans. We can use these patterns to predict things and to prove things to one another.

In biology, a cat is an arbitrarily defined four-legged furry little senseless killing machine with, which can actually take on many forms, including, under some more colloquial definitions, a lion or a tiger. There is no complete agreement on what a cat is scientifically or colloquially. Now under this proposed realism, there either actually is one essence of a cat and people are wrong when they define cats in some specific way, or there are as many essences of cats as there are cats.

Chemically, a cat is made of different quantities of different compounds and reacting with each other. Now under realism, what composition is the essence of a cat? Can you get to it?

Under classical particle physics, a cat is made of some different fundamental particles with their respective positions, velocities and spins. Same question here.

Under quantum field theory, everything is just a wave on a field, or several waves on several fields interacting. This is without even a theory of everything. And same question here.

See where I'm going with this?

You can see where I'm going with this. Realism in the discussion of objects decomposes into literally every single possible state of being. On every possible scale. It's based on infantile ideas of "objects" as elements. But that's enough of that, go back to the problem of induction.

>>682518
This character limit is really showing its ugly head.

As a conclusion, all we can logically have under your idea that there's essences and universals for everything, is functionally nominalism. We define what we define and we use our definitions how we use them. In this case only a subset of all essences are available at a time, and we approximate a different one at each moment in time. And depending on circumstances.

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>>682431

> your mind is a reality reader.

An interesting assertion, but one that's as yet undefended by you.

> Reading the reader is tautologic reasoning.

If you mean that the knower can't ultimately be known, then this is exactly what Kant would argue - pic related.

But if your mind-as-reality-reader account is instead correct, and the mind is part of reality (yes?) there should be no problem with the reader reading itself, and having absolutely flawless knowledge of its itself in all its depths. No?

> Your representation capacity was made to correspond real objects

Again, this assertion would be defended how?

> without the real objects, this "a priori" intuitions don't mean anything.

Kant would come close to agreeing, though some knowledge (like geometry and arithmetic) can be had even if the knower never happens to encounter any real, experienced objects onto which those geometric/arithmetic truths map.

> There's no limitation

Then picture in your imagination a square circle.

> we perceive exactly what we are made to perceive

"To be made" is "to be limited." Constraints are what provide structure; when you make a building, you take raw materials and impose some limitation, some form, onto them - otherwise you're left with an amorphous pile of rubble.

>in a perfect correspondence which is true by itself.

So apples would be red without any retinas looking at them?

> I don't wanna enter inside your discourse

You're been very "clear" about that.

> because it will lock me inside your mental jail.

Or free you from your own, but hey.

> You are a pervert, by the way.

Because of the pictures I posted? Nothing wrong with being fascinated by the human organism, anon - it's all part of astonishment with what we are.

>>682598
>An interesting assertion, but one that's as yet undefended by you.
If you deny that, you are simply saying "I'm an ignorant who doesn't believe in reality", so your opinions doen't even matter and you have no authority to deny or accept anything, not even your own thoughts. This is what I call anti-philosophy.

>If you mean that the knower can't ultimately be known, then this is exactly what Kant would argue
No. It's obvious that consciousness is the only thing you can't speak from outside as an object, but my point is that reasoning about reasoning will only give you virtual structures that doesn't have any value without the real world that gives it meaning. Pure reason doesn't exist, when you reason, you reason about something that exists in the real world, and virtual possibilities doesn't exist as a reality, but only as possibilities.

>and the mind is part of reality
Yes, but you can't treat it as an object in the same way the camera can't photograph itself.

>Then picture in your imagination a square circle
Not this kind of limitation. Being limited by reality is not a bad thing, it's being perfect.

>"To be made" is "to be limited." Constraints are what provide structure; when you make a building, you take raw materials and impose some limitation, some form, onto them - otherwise you're left with an amorphous pile of rubble.
Again, limitation is not a negative thing in the sense that it denies you the access to real knowledge. You can only perceive things as they are because you are a limited being. Order is limitation.

>So apples would be red without any retinas looking at them?
Red is the correspondence between two structure perfectly ordered to have access to this universal reality called red.
The structure of the apple impressed on your receptive structure creates what we call red. It's not in the objects, but in the relation subject-object which is how humans can perceive reality in the most perfect way.

>>682798
As you may have noticed, I'm not a very fluent english-speaker, so I hope you can forgive my simplicity using some terms.

>>682518

The problem is not the problem of induction is just the problem of why the future behaviour of an object should follow its past behaviour. The problem of induction is not a problem of making perfect predictions. It isn't about assuring ourselves that the sun definitely will rise in th east tomorrow (for all we know, aliens could blow it up), it's about what reason there could be for the fact that the sun's behaviour does seem uniform- it's about being able to say that the sun's rising in the east every morning is not a fortuitous accident, but something reasonably inferred.

Essentialism supplies this reason- there is some principle of unity among diverse particulars that transcends the temporal accidents, and combined with the assumption that external conditions won't radically change, allows us to make warranted predictions, which, if true, constitute knowledge.

> You don't have a monopoly on the truth just because you have a definition of spooky abstract objects floating nowhere.

Any reasonable worldview needs to be able to say that the diverse objects of experience exist. The nominalist simply cannot consistently affirm this, since every principle of diversity and unity the nominalist affirms is purely internal to the subjectivity of the observer. Reality outside the subject is pure undifferentiated being *at best,* and that makes the nominalist qua nominalist absolutely wrong about external reality if it is anything other than this undifferentiated being. Indeed, I suspect that even this is too generous, since the nominalist would have to affirm a commonality- existence- between himself and the world, which again requires principles of unity and diversity that amount to essence. The most consistent anti-essentialist must be a solipsist.

>>682518

Nominalism cannot afford to say that the patterns and distinctions really are in the world, hence cannot afford to "observe" real patterns in the world, because they affirm no such real patterns. The success of the nominalist's predictions if nominalism is true are purely fortuitous, and hence, if nominalism is true, tantamount to magic.

>Cat

It's not implausible that we do understand some essence when we use the word "cat," though as you say, our division among biological essences is frankly a bit of a mess at the moment. Some people may be more wrong than others, especially if they claim over-specific and exhaustive definitions. Still, at least some things about the essence we understand under the word "cat" can still be known with certainty- cats are essentially animals, for instance.

Cat, not being a chemical category, doesn't presuppose any particular chemical composition. As organisms are functional unities rather than chemical ones, it is perfectly consistent with the essence of a cat for its chemical composition to vary from moment to moment, which in fact it does. Now while the range of possible compositions for cats is not unlimited, the limiting principle is the biological nature of the cat- i.e., what allows it to carry out its characteristic biological functions, whatever they are. To discuss the cat at the chemical level doesn't destroy the essence or unity of the cat, but must make reference to that essence in order to be a discussion of the cat at all. If there is no such thing as "the cat," then there is nothing to discuss.

And so on for the more-fundamental levels of being.

As for your conclusion, I too agree that we define what we define and we use our definitions how we use them. That's just tautology. The difference is, I am able to affirm that the understandings we have share to some degree in the real being of things, through the essence that unifies diverse particulars, and so am able to affirm the world I understand.

Are these last big block posts Scholastic arguments against Kantian thought

>>683502
>The problem is not the problem of induction is just the problem of why the future behaviour of an object should follow its past behaviour.
No, the topic is the problem of induction. Don't change the subject.

> it's about what reason there could be for the fact that the sun's behaviour does seem uniform
No, it isn't. At all. The problem of induction is about induction being inherently less definitive than deduction. It is inherently probabilistic and cannot get you to absolute certainty.

When you're saying that the sun will "probably" rise in the east, that's true, and that's the essence of the problem of induction. You can never get to 100%. I'm almost tempted to take your evasion of this point as a concession.

>Nominalism cannot afford to say that the patterns and distinctions really are in the world, hence cannot afford to "observe" real patterns in the world, because they affirm no such real patterns. The success of the nominalist's predictions if nominalism is true are purely fortuitous, and hence, if nominalism is true, tantamount to magic.

I reject your interpretation of nominalism entirely. It's on the level of hacky religious arguments defining god as the truth and then claiming people don't believe truth exists. Things can exist without object-oriented programming style classes existing for literally everything in some spooky realm. There is absolutely no need to define structure this way, especially when, as you admit, it leads to the problem of where definitions that are arbitrarily come upon by humans are supposed to clash with some absolute essence.

I regard realism as an infantile (not being offensive here) classical view of the world that was born of thinking of objects as elements and before the concept of gradual change had any presence in human understanding, and which cannot deal with such change in any meaningful sense.

>>683332
> Reality outside the subject is pure undifferentiated being *at best,*
That's solipsism, not nominalism. Neither nominalism nor realism has anything to do with solipsism. Hard solipsism is in essence impossible to get around. Whatever essences you may think you see may in fact not be there in any meaningful sense.

>The difference is, I am able to affirm that the understandings we have share to some degree in the real being of things, through the essence that unifies diverse particulars, and so am able to affirm the world I understand.
It's no difference. Nominalists will also tell you they're able to affirm what they understand. They just won't claim that their understanding is approaching some absolute line of programming.

>>685113

>The problem of induction is about induction being inherently less definitive than deduction.

I think you've just mischaracterised the problem. Probabilistic reasoning being probabilistic is not problematic per se, not even for Hume. As Hume conceives it, The problem is not the probabilistic nature of the conclusion, but the possibility of justifying the probabilistic reasoning on anything other than a purely pragmatic level. Hume thinks that the conclusion that, "probably, the sun will rise tomorrow" is *not warranted* given uniform prior experience, since the establishment of any such conclusion depends upon some commitment to the uniformity of "nature," which itself cannot be proved deductively or inductively.

Essentialism helps by showing that uniformity of prior experience is possible only through universals and essences, and once essence is granted, there is excellent reason to suppose that the future will follow the past, unless conditions change. Rather than the uniformity of "nature," essentialism goes for the uniformity of "natures," and arguably succeeds.

>spooky realm.

No one's talking about spooky realms- essences, especially on the Aristotelian metaphysics the Scholastics like Aquinas favour, are components of the things they characterise.

But that's besides the point, dubious dialectical value of words like "spooky" aside. The problem is that without some principle functioning like essence to ground the distinctions between distinct things and the commonalities between common things, there is no such thing as really common and really distinct, which ends the possibility of real multiplicity in the world. The denial of essences thus entails the denial of multiplicity, which is absurd. The moment one does grant that the patterns we observe are really in the world, essentialism follows.

>gradual change

You'll have to make this argument clearer. Aristotle was all about gradations of change and being.

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>>685243
>You'll have to make this argument clearer. Aristotle was all about gradations of change and being.
I already outlined the problem. Ignoring action for a moment, it posits that every object is an instantiation of some universal. There's no objective classification where classification is a completely arbitrary and subjective product of humans outlining patterns and is thus not universal in any sense. That is to say that you don't get to conflate your idea of a cat with my idea of a cat.

I meant gradual change as a catch-all term for classification problems. Take a chair. Now gradually deform it in different ways. Bent the back forward a little bit, and it becomes a little bit uncomfortable. Shorten one leg a little bit, and it becomes shakier. There is no point at which it will suddenly stop being a chair, it will simply gradually become less and less comfortable and eventually we're just going to throw it into the trash.

Same goes for evolution. Two million years we have homo erectus running around, and 200,000 years ago we have homo sapiens. Every single generation between them is not exactly the same in any meaningful sense, instead being a link in a chain of change.

Now under this proposed realism, we have two possibilities. Either there is some essence of "chair" and "trash" with some breaking point between trash and chair, or there is an essence for every possible object on the scale of chair to trash.

The same problem exists for the definition of adjectives. "Blue", "hot", "fast", etc. If you posit some objective definition of concepts, you're in a position of explaining a framework to get to those concepts.

>>685243
>No one's talking about spooky realms- essences, especially on the Aristotelian metaphysics the Scholastics like Aquinas favour, are components of the things they characterise.
What component of a "chair" is "chairness"?

>The problem is that without some principle functioning like essence to ground the distinctions between distinct things and the commonalities between common things, there is no such thing as really common and really distinct, which ends the possibility of real multiplicity in the world.
For the sake of argument, I'll just go ahead and agree with this, and say that "really common" and "really distinct" are not things that you can ever get to, they are completely irrelevant to human life, and we do not make statements of distinction of commonality or distinctness under ANY other system than our own arbitrary definitions.

>The moment one does grant that the patterns we observe are really in the world, essentialism follows.
Or what we have is the emergent illusion of essences. The same way a "down" force is an illusion caused on a more basic level by gravity, which on a more basic level is caused by spacetime curvature. Cue the next explanation ad infinitum. The two are indistinguishable. I don't know if you knew this, but practically every concept we use in our daily lives makes no sense when you look at things closely enough.

>>685243
>I think you've just mischaracterised the problem.
No, I haven't. You keep trying to redefine it in terms of essentialism, but it is completely and utterly irrelevant.

The problem of induction does not exist merely in the ostensibly corporeal world we directly experience. It exists in things we axiomatically define (with greater precision than any essences you could even hope to define), like random processes in mathematics. You cannot get from seeing one hundred 1's in a row to claiming that the next number will be a one.

Or, hell, the problem exists for almost any proof in mathematics. You don't get to proof by saying "it's true for 1, it's true for 2, it's true for 3, so it's probably true for 4". Inductive reasoning is necessarily an uncertain affair whenever you're talking about instances of things and not the underlying concepts. And you CANNOT GET to underlying concepts via essentialism.

>>685380
>product of humans outlining patterns and is thus not universal
I'm sorry, have you ever talked with someone who wasn't a human?

>>685380
>product of humans outlining patterns and is thus not universal
I'm sorry, you've talked with someone who wasn't a human?

>>685447
Yes, I talk to my doggy all the time.

>>685380

Change in the first place presupposes essence, since it is necessary that there be a real distinction between that which is prior to change, and that which is posterior, and again the possibility of a real distinction between things is tenable only if each distinct thing has an inherently distinct character or characteristic, i.e., substantial or accidental essence, in some respect.

>sorites paradoxes

Just positing gradations of change doesn't entail that there are no such things as essences- essences as the Aristotelian conceives them tolerate deviation and eventually succumb to corruption and non-being when the thing that they characterise ceases to exist.

Fuzzy boundaries don't make the concept of "thing which has parts ordered toward sitting" any less perspicuous as a characterisation of "chair." There doesn't have to be a "point" at which chair suddenly becomes non-chair; all there has to be is clear examples of 'chair" and "not-chair" in order for chairs-as-such to be possible.

I, for example, am not a chair, since sitting does not teleologically explain the organisation of all my proper parts. The chair I am sitting on,however, is.

>what part of a chair is "chairness"?

That in the chair which unifies the parts as a whole of a certain kind, as opposed to every other kind. That it has such a part is obvious: if it didn't, "chairs" as such wouldn't exist. And so it goes for everything of which we have any idea whatever.

>Or what we have is the emergent illusion...

This is beginning to sound like a concession to my characterisation of your views as tending to a universal and self-defeating scepticism. It's literally self-defeating, of course, since you are yourself part of that very world which is impossible to understand. If such massive scepticism is the price of anti-essentialism, essentialism is a much cheaper rational option.

>>685494
>Change in the first place presupposes essence
It requires nothing, only an apparent change in a pattern.

>Just positing gradations of change doesn't entail that there are no such things as essences.
I didn't say there are no such things, I said that there is no method to get to them in any meaningful sense, and they are irrelevant.

>- essences as the Aristotelian conceives them tolerate deviation and eventually succumb to corruption and non-being when the thing that they characterise ceases to exist
Meaning there is a point where the essence is no longer there. Provide a framework for getting to that point.

>all there has to be is clear examples of 'chair" and "not-chair"
No, that's all that's possible, and only within the arbitrary definitions we ourselves provide.

>I, for example, am not a chair, since sitting does not teleologically explain the organisation of all my proper parts. The chair I am sitting on,however, is.
No, actually, you are. Your purpose is for me to sit on you.

Also your chair was made for art, not sitting. The function is incidental.

>This is beginning to sound like a concession to my characterisation of your views as tending to a universal and self-defeating scepticism.
Not at all. I'm dealing with reality on reality's terms, doing my thing, without ascribing some purpose beneath it all.

>>685494
>Change in the first place presupposes essence
By the way, even if I granted you this, you'd be no closer. The problem of induction is not contingent on change. Refer to >>685429

>>685511

>Not at all. I'm dealing with reality on reality's terms, doing my thing, without ascribing some purpose beneath it all.

It's hard to see how, on your view, you can rationally assert any sort of "reality" to anything at all. All these concepts, after all, dissolve into nonsense on scrutiny (on your view), and do not intrinsically characterise any real thing.

>I said that there is no method to get to them in any meaningful sense, and they are irrelevant.

And to back this up you provided sorites paradoxes which don't prove anything, whereas I showed that change, multiplicity and our ability to affirm the existence of external reality depend upon our being able to grasp essences.

>No, actually, you are. Your purpose is for me to sit on you. Also your chair was made for art, not sitting. The function is incidental.

The chair qua chair doesn't exist apart from the purpose of sitting, so the form of an art object may well coincide spatially with the chair, but it is incoherent to talk of a chair as not made for sitting in any sense. There is no basis for characterising me as a thing-for-sitting, since I am essentially a rational animal, and that entails a different teleology altogether.

>Meaning there is a point where the essence is no longer there. Provide a framework for getting to that point.

The identification of the "point" at which an essence ceases to be is irrelevant to identifying it. Though it is also manifestly obvious that things do come into being and cease to be. Essences are identified by central commonalities, from which the tolerances of the essence are then worked out, not by the exceptions or the very borders of possible corruption.

(I'll address mathematics in another post)

>>685578
>It's hard to see how, on your view, you can rationally assert any sort of "reality" to anything at all. All these concepts, after all, dissolve into nonsense on scrutiny (on your view), and do not intrinsically characterise any real thing.
Reality has to be agreed upon in some sense.

High-level concepts dissolve when we look at them on the small scales. That doesn't mean we must look at them on the smallest of scales.

>And to back this up you provided sorites paradoxes which don't prove anything, whereas I showed that change, multiplicity and our ability to affirm the existence of external reality depend upon our being able to grasp essences.
The sorites paradox isn't supposed to "prove" anything, it's simply pointing out a problem with this kind of thinking. If we hold that definitions are arbitrarily defined, as they are in actuality, there is no problem with it. We arbitrarily choose when an object fits our definition or doesn't. If you hold that there is an absolute definition of a chair, then there are problems with when an object fits that definition and doesn't that you can't ever get rid of.

You didn't show anything and are purposefully avoiding problems with your thinking.

>>685578
>The chair qua chair doesn't exist apart from the purpose of sitting, so the form of an art object may well coincide spatially with the chair, but it is incoherent to talk of a chair as not made for sitting in any sense. There is no basis for characterising me as a thing-for-sitting, since I am essentially a rational animal, and that entails a different teleology altogether.

The problem is that things do exist with purposes that are completely different from some function it may serve. To posit that teleology has anything to do with it is to posit that a "chair" made for the express purpose of art, never to be sat upon, gets you to say that that isn't a chair at all and I'd be wrong in categorizing it in that way.

So yes, while you think you're a rational animal that's on this planet to do as it pleases, you're actually there to run around until you're just right and then I will come and fulfill your purpose.

>The identification of the "point" at which an essence ceases to be is irrelevant to identifying it.

You have to be in principle able to identify it. There is no principle for you to do it.

>Though it is also manifestly obvious that things do come into being and cease to be.
Not at all. What you call "things" are vibrations, and they do not come into being and cease to be in any meaningful sense.

>Essences are identified by central commonalities, from which the tolerances of the essence are then worked out, not by the exceptions or the very borders of possible corruption.
You've yet to provide a ghost of a model for essences. If we can define anything as anything, then essentialism is a worthless proposition. Which, again, is my point in this. I don't care particularly whether ACTUAL universals exist or don't, I'm saying you can't get to them in any meaningful sense.

>ignoring the problem of induction
Third time's the final time, mate. >>685429

>>685578
By the way, teleology itself is a really problematic approach to this problem because you can't even hope to prove any intent besides our own.

I just want to know how god gave birth to himself, and through what passage

>>685578
>(I'll address mathematics in another post)
Didn't see that part, excuse the accusatory tone of the previous post

>>685515


>the problem of induction in mathematics

If the problem of induction just is the problem that induction doesn't give you deductive certainty, that's true but it's not a problem, because it's trivially true and doesn't mean that there is no rational justification for inductive/ probabilistic inferences, that successful inductive predictions don't count as knowledge, etc.

The statement of the 'problem' in terms of mathematics is similarly vacuous: yes, induction is not proof. Conjecture is conjecture. Doesn't mean that conjectures don't indicate or predict underlying unities (many proofs started as conjectures), nor that such predictions are necessarily irrational (if not conclusive). Now since the standard of knowledge in math is very high, it may not be very relevant to the aims of mathematics to settle for inductions, but that doesn't mean that the same applies to the empirical sciences.

In the empirical sciences, it's less important to have apodictic certainty, but none of that implies that inductively-acquired knowledge isn't knowledge. If one in fact grasps the essence underlying a set of phenomena, then one's inference based on that understanding will be rational. This doesn't exclude the possibility of error, but it does ground the possibility of rational success.

I'm not sure what the contention that one "cannot get underlying concepts via essentialism" means. If it means that subscribing to essentialism won't in itself let you solve a particular inductive or deductive problem, you'd be right, and I have not said anything to the contrary. If you mean that essentialism is not necessary for understanding the underlying concepts in abstraction or in nature, then it's difficult to see what sense can be made of this. Essentialism just is required for there to be underlying concepts for particulars in the first place, for that is what the essence is: the universal which gives rise to the particular.

>>685704
>If the problem of induction just is the problem that induction doesn't give you deductive certainty, that's true but it's not a problem
It is a problem, and it's the entirety of it. You don't get to "all x have y property" simply from "all x we OBSERVE have y property", and other similar variations. This goes for any and all theological arguments that try to use physics to prove metaphysics, for example. One cannot assign any meaningful probability outside the context within which it is made.

>yes, induction is not proof
I was being specific for a reason. Mere induction from the realizations of the underlying concepts is not enough (meaning using some limited set of numbers to prove something). Mathematical induction is in fact a proof, and is absolute. It just requires that we have the definitions - the equivalent of essences - on hand.

>Conjecture is conjecture. Doesn't mean that conjectures don't indicate or predict underlying unities (many proofs started as conjectures), nor that such predictions are necessarily irrational (if not conclusive). Now since the standard of knowledge in math is very high, it may not be very relevant to the aims of mathematics to settle for inductions, but that doesn't mean that the same applies to the empirical sciences.
I agree completely, the problem is even with the extreme rigor of mathematics you do not get around the problem of induction. And then, mere assertion of essentials that may or may not exist is not even remotely on the same level of having them on hand. Being less rigorous doesn't mean the problem evaporates.

>>685704
>This doesn't exclude the possibility of error, but it does ground the possibility of rational success.
Uniformity grounds the possibility of rational success, not abstract ideas given definitive form.

>I'm not sure what the contention that one "cannot get underlying concepts via essentialism" means.
Back to the argument about what is a chair. Either there's a functional infinity of underlying concepts that simply correspond to an "item", or there's one concept with no way for you to get to it.

> If it means that subscribing to essentialism won't in itself let you solve a particular inductive or deductive problem, you'd be right, and I have not said anything to the contrary.
It means you're introducing problems by positing universals that you can't ever hope to solve.

The closest I can get to essentialism is that everything works a certain way. That's the requirement for rational thought. But that's not dealing with universals or essences in any meaningful sense and isn't what we're talking about.

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>>685704
This is the closest thing you can get to a universal. It describes the way things work. The unfortunate part is that it doesn't contain any information on what you would call essences or universals, and it's not what nominalists are in fact denying.

Really done with the subject now, glad you conceded that the "trivial" problem of induction is indeed a problem, essentialism (even when I GIVE you the essentials) or not.

>>685770

The application of math to reality just is the abstraction of mathematical patterns from particulars. If they are true descriptions, then they will correspond to some universal present in that which they describe. Essentialism is thus unavoidable if one is to be a realist about such descriptions (as opposed to an anti-realist). It doesn't seem to me that the nominalist, if he is to avoid the universal, can afford not to be an anti-realist about even the very best mathematical models.

Even such mathematical universals can describe things in a physically "fuzzy" way, such as those which describe electron probability density. There's no reason, then, for there not to be "fuzzy" essences at "higher" and more obvious levels of reality.

Certainly, for those kinds of beings which cannot be reduced to such mathematical descriptions, different methodologies will apply to their study, but that doesn't mean their objective natures are undiscoverable, at least to some degree.

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>>682798

> If you deny that, you are simply saying "I'm an ignorant who doesn't believe in reality", so your opinions doen't even matter and you have no authority to deny or accept anything, not even your own thoughts. This is what I call anti-philosophy.

"Reality" doesn't have to mean "reality-in-itself." If you believe in a god, you probably don't believe that humans can know fully or at all what god is like, since god's nature is so beyond all of the finite things we experience in the natural world; you might be quite comfortable with this idea, yet it is very similar to Kant's claim that human knowledge is restricted to things-as-appearance (nature), and can't know things-in-themselves.

As I described earlier (>>670864, >>670868), Kant's system requires that we reorient our view of what "reality" means. Does this seem like an excessive, unjustifiable demand? I think you'll have to engage much more with Kant before you can fairly judge.

> my point is that reasoning about reasoning will only give you virtual structures that doesn't have any value without the real world that gives it meaning. Pure reason doesn't exist...

A basic premise of Kant's - which he defends rigorously, without merely asserting - is that the natural world derives its form from pure human reason ("the human mind" would be a more accurate term, despite the title of Kant's first critique). The human mental faculties of sensibility, understanding, reason, and judgement each generate their own innate structuring principles that impose order on the raw sensations originally received within sensibility; when these raw sensations are ordered by the mind's forms of knowledge, the empirical world of reality-as-appearance is the result. So Kant would agree that "pure reason" can't reveal the specific facts and qualities of the world (empirical experience must teach us those), but pure reason can reveal the general laws that those facts and qualities must conform to.

>>682798

Your other claims aren't wrong in Kantianism - but, as I said, the meanings of the terms would need to be understood in the reoriented perspective of Kant's Copernican shift.

>>682809

No worries! You've done far, far better in English than I could have done in your native language, I promise you.