Some contemporary Aristotelians suggest that Aristotle didn't think that artifacts had forms, because they think that an Aristotelian form has something to do with life. — Arcane Sandwich
We would not say that Truman himself is identical to his life, rather we would say that Truman is alive. He has the property of being alive. It's an open question what happens when Truman dies. Is he still Truman, but dead? If so, then his form wasn't his life, after all. Or, one would instead say that it was, and that when Truman dies, what remains is no longer Truman. Instead, what remains is merely Truman's body. For someone like me, who claims that every human is identical to a living brain in a body, this is problematic. — Arcane Sandwich
Or put differently, whether it is nonsensical to talk about Truman apart from his life. — Leontiskos
More about me. Cool.Note that Banno's whole logical horizon is bound up with the bare particulars of predicate logic, so I'm not sure it is possible to easily convey an alternative semantics to someone who who has never been exposed to an alternative paradigm. — Leontiskos
Why do people think a unique determination is a reasonable expectation? Quine talks about the consequences, not so much causes, of failure to perceive the indeterminacy. But it seems reasonable to blame this failure on the success of language in talking about real, physical relations. Its unreasonable effectiveness, if you will. — bongo fury
Cool. I take the pub Test to imply that you can't suggest anything that you can't explain in two sentences to a drunk. — Banno
I think qualia cause more problems than they solve.
It might be worth adding "... and get the same result". The same behaviours might be seen with very different interpretations - we get a rabbit stew even if "gavagai" means undetached rabbit leg. — Banno
For what could be more obvious then that we do refer to things with our words and mean things by them? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Not a topic to treat in a couple of words. — Banno
But I will not try explaining it to a drunk.Seems to me that there is nothing that talk of qualia is about. In so far as talk of qualia is usable and useful, it is no different to talk of colours or tastes or what have you. In so far as something is added to the conversation by the addition of qualia, seems to me that Dennett is correct in showing that there is nothing here to see. — Banno
Ummm, what? — Darkneos
I think that's a bit of a stretch in interpretative terms, but it's something to consider.
At the outset of Book II of the Physics, Aristotle identifies proper beings as those things that are the source of their own production.1 Beings make up a whole—a whole which is oriented towards some end. This definition would seem to exclude mere parts of an animal. For example, a red blood cell is not the source of its own production, nor is it a self-governing whole. Lymphocytes, for example, can be seen as being generated and destroyed in accordance with a higher-level aims-based "parallel-terraced scan," despite being in some sense relatively self-governing.
On this view, living things would most fully represent “beings.” By contrast, something like a rock is not a proper being. A rock is a mere bundle of external causes. Moreover, if one breaks a rock in half, one simply has two smaller rocks (an accidental change). Whereas if one breaks a tree in half, the tree—as a being—will lose its unity and cease to exist (i.e. death, a substantial change).
Aristotle’s mention of Empedocles' elements early in Book II might suggest that all “natural kinds” possess a nature (e.g. carbon atoms as much as men). Yet a lump of carbon or volume of hydrogen gas are both in many ways similar to a rock in that they are mere “bundles of external causes. ”Yet there is also a clear sense in which something like an water molecule is a more unified than a volume of water in a container, the latter of which is easily divided. Hence, we might suppose that unity exists in gradations.2 We can also think of the living organism as achieving a higher sort of unity, such that its diverse multitude of parts come to be truly unified into a whole through an aim.
Now, if we step back and try to consider our original question: if being is “many” or “one,” it seems to me that the most readily apparent example of the multiplicity of beings and of their unity is the human mind itself. We have our own thoughts, experiences, memories, and desires, not other people’s. The multiplicity of other things, particularly other people, and the unity of our own phenomenal awareness is something that is given.3
1 i.e. “possessing a nature.” Actually, at the very start of Book II, Aristotle gives us a brief list of things that might constitute proper beings possessing their own nature, namely animals and their parts, as well as simple elements (i.e., Empedocles’ five elements). However, Aristotle revises this estimation in the second paragraph.
2 Very large objects like stars, nebulae, planets, and galaxies are an excellent example here. These are so large that the relatively weak force of gravity allows them to possess a sort of unity. Even if a planet is hit by another planet (our best hypothesis for how our moon formed), it will reform due to the attractive power of gravity. Likewise, stars, galaxies, etc. have definable “life cycles,” and represent a sort of “self-organizing system,” even though they are far less self-organizing than organisms. By contrast, a rock has a sort of arbitrary unity (although it does not lack all unity! We can clearly distinguish discrete rocks in a non-arbitrary fashion).
3 Hume, Nietzche, and many Buddhist thinkers have challenged the notion of a unified self. I don’t think we have to entirely disagree with their intuitions here. Following Plato, we might acknowledge that a person can be more or less unified. Indeed, we can agree with Nietzsche’s description of himself—that in his soul he might indeed find a “congress of souls” each vying for power, trying to dominate the others. But on Plato’s view (and many others) this would simply be emblematic of a sort of spiritual sickness. This is precisely how the soul is when it is not flourishing, i.e. the “civil war within the soul” of Plato’s Republic, or being “dead in sin” (i.e. a death of autonomy and an ability to do what one truly thinks is best) as described in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Romans 7).
If Truman has an Aristotelian form, and if an Aristotelian form is essentially a life, then Truman's formal cause is his life. We would not say that Truman himself is identical to his life, rather we would say that Truman is alive. He has the property of being alive.
It's an open question what happens when Truman dies. Is he still Truman, but dead? If so, then his form wasn't his life, after all.
Or, one could instead say that it was, and that when Truman dies, what remains is no longer Truman. Instead, what remains is merely Truman's body. For someone like me, who claims that every human is identical to a living brain in a body, this is problematic.
"How we manage to refer is mysterious, but what is being referred to is not indeterminate."
Yes?
Or:
"How we manage to refer is inscrutable, but what is being referred to is not inscrutable." — Leontiskos
There is a lot of strong support for the view that organisms and the ordered cosmos as a whole are most properly beings. — Count Timothy von Icarus
A corpse is not a man. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Or, one could instead say that it was, and that when Truman dies, what remains is no longer Truman. Instead, what remains is merely Truman's body. For someone like me, who claims that every human is identical to a living brain in a body, this is problematic.
How so? A corpse doesn't consist of "a living brain in a body," so it need not be Truman, although surely it is Truman's body. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, but Aristotle's Prime Mover, which is pure form, is arguably not alive, at least not in the sense that trees, dogs, and people are.
Such, then, is the first principle upon which depend the sensible universe and the world of nature. And its life is like the best which we temporarily enjoy. It must be in that state always (which for us is impossible), since its actuality is also pleasure.54(And for this reason waking, sensation and thinking are most pleasant, and hopes and memories are pleasant because of them.) Now thinking in itself is concerned with that which is in itself best, and thinking in the highest sense with that which is in the highest sense best.55 [20] And thought thinks itself through participation in the object of thought; for it becomes an object of thought by the act of apprehension and thinking, so that thought and the object of thought are the same, because that which is receptive of the object of thought, i.e. essence, is thought. And it actually functions when it possesses this object.56 Hence it is actuality rather than potentiality that is held to be the divine possession of rational thought, and its active contemplation is that which is most pleasant and best. If, then, the happiness which God always enjoys is as great as that which we enjoy sometimes, it is marvellous; and if it is greater, this is still more marvellous. Nevertheless it is so. Moreover, life belongs to God. For the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and the essential actuality of God is life most good and eternal. We hold, then, that God is a living being, eternal, most good; and therefore life and a continuous eternal existence belong to God; for that is what God is.
Are you familiar with his distinction between "corpse concurrentism" and "corpse creationism"? He discusses this topic in his article The Person and The Corpse.
I want to be able to say, at the same time, that a person just is a living brain in a body, and at the same time I want to say that a recently deceased human being is still a human being, not merely a corpse. When a deceased person "rests" in a coffin, and the person's loved ones attend the corresponding funeral, it seems to me that the deceased person is still there, right where the corpse is.
What you identify is just one of the difficulties of identifying people and personal identity with bodies. — Count Timothy von Icarus
My take-away here is that since there's no fact of the matter that affixes reference, but we are able to refer, there must be something other than the facts which makes us able to refer. As is often the case in my thinking where this leads me to is the necessity of us sharing a language -- the things language does is present to more than my own cogito. So there's no theory I can hold to in evaluating whether you have referred separate from our collective interpretation of the language being spoken. It takes two to refer. — Moliere
it's inscrutable from the perspective of a person without knowledge of the language — Moliere
My take-away here is that since there's no fact of the matter that affixes reference, but we are able to refer, there must be something other than the facts which makes us able to refer. — Moliere
It takes two to refer. — Moliere
But that's a mundane claim, isn't it? Almost tautologous? The stronger and more interesting claim is that something is inscrutable in that it cannot be fixed. I hope Quine is doing more than uttering a tautology. — Leontiskos
From the early pages of this thread I have objected to this vague use of the word "fact." What is it supposed to mean? Does it mean anything to say there is no fact of the matter? If it did, then what would it look like if there were a fact of the matter? — Leontiskos
Will someone raised apart from language and people be able to identify food, such as berries? And will this be a cognitive identification, such that they might find they are hungry for berries and decide to go out looking for them? Because if so, then it looks like they can refer to berries without two — Leontiskos
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