tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post2543631408122183118..comments2024-03-28T21:41:32.110-04:00Comments on Grim's Hall: Plato's Parmenides III: Greater DifficultiesGrimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-30159648352233503252021-03-13T11:56:51.678-05:002021-03-13T11:56:51.678-05:00Yes, that's right; all of these thinkers have ...Yes, that's right; all of these thinkers have a lot to say about negative theology. You can approach God by eliminating things that God is not, even though there's a problem saying anything much about what God is.<br /><br />Even when you can say something positive -- "God is Good" -- there's a problem related to the problem of the Forms. What it means for God to be "good" is nothing like what it means for a material being like ourselves to be "good." The two words are (Aquinas' language) 'equivocal' rather than 'univocal.' <br /><br />So the negative is a viable road, but unfortunately, it's a road that embraces all the positive qualities as well. God is not 'good' in the way that any of us are; God is Good in the way of the Form of the Good. What does that mean? Well, it's intelligible -- knowing the Form as well as we do is how we recognize that other things are 'good' in one way or another. Yet at the same time, we can't fully grasp it because of our own limits.<br /><br />That's how the Medievals tell the story, anyway.<br /><br />I haven't read the book you mention. It sounds worthy!<br /><br />Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-34014574461940745242021-03-13T09:57:58.891-05:002021-03-13T09:57:58.891-05:00I am a mere amateur at Church history and theology...I am a mere amateur at Church history and theology, but I have the distinct impression that there was a surge in interest in apophatic theology in the century after the great Christological debates. Reading Aquinas always reminds me of that. But those references help, thanks.<br /><br />BTW, did you ever read "Place of the Lion" by Charles Williams?jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01792036361407527304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-391572723910423232021-03-12T21:05:37.029-05:002021-03-12T21:05:37.029-05:00The Form of Tables does not seem to have clear dif...<i>The Form of Tables does not seem to have clear differences from the Form of Stools--except in their respective purposes. </i><br /><br />Yes, function is a very important part of this from the ancient perspective. It's <i>telos</i>: the end for which the thing came to be, its reason for existence. Artifacts like tables and chairs aren't the interesting cases, they're just easy to explain because they have a clear <i>telos</i> that we (post?) Moderns can admit actually exists. We know why we built the stool, and why we built the table, and what they're each supposed to do (even if we sometimes use them for other things).<br /><br /><i>Would God would have "the best kind of knowledge" or _all_ kinds of knowledge (of what is and what could be)? Or more clearly, what does "best" mean?</i><br /><br />Parmenides means something different from the Medievals, although his problem gets wrapped up in their problem because Avicenna successfully melds Neoplatonic thought with Aristotelian thought. For Parmenides, knowledge of the Forms is better because it is the true knowledge: not just knowledge of <i>a</i> person, or a bunch of people, but a true understanding of what Men are and why they exist. Yet in grasping this exalted knowledge, you end up missing the individual men -- none of whom may fully achieve the purpose of Men, all of whom have potentials they don't realize, etc. Knowing the Form doesn't imply knowing any of the individuals who participate in the Form.<br /><br />The Medievals have an additional problem. Aristotle proves that the Unmoved Movers (which they take for God) is a pure activity. God lacks unrealized potential, being perfect; and, therefore, God's knowledge is unchanging (because things can only change if they have the potential to be something else). Now knowing the Forms is fine, because the Forms are pure activities too: form is what causes matter's potential to be realized in one particular way. But to know a material object means knowing not just its Form, but its matter -- and that is incompatible with the idea of God as pure activity.<br /><br />Maimonides (<i>The Guide for the Perplexed</i>, Part III, Chapter 20) explains his solution this way: God knows only Himself, but in knowing Himself God knows what He has willed, and all of the consequences of that. God's knowledge doesn't change because He knows the whole of time together, and without any potential because He can see how it all plays out. Thus, God <i>can</i> know particulars, in a way: God knows them as they will actualize. <br /><br />That still seems to remove something important, which is the struggles we all have with actualizing ourselves (e.g., sin is the potential to do something worse than we might have done). <br /><br />Aquinas treats this in ST I <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1014.htm" rel="nofollow">Q14</a> (especially article 5ff) and <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1015.htm" rel="nofollow">Q15</a> (on the Forms, which are called 'ideas' here).Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-26355900972575686572021-03-12T20:03:56.680-05:002021-03-12T20:03:56.680-05:00I'm not understanding something.
The Form of ...I'm not understanding something.<br /><br />The Form of Tables does not seem to have clear differences from the Form of Stools--except in their respective purposes. Those purposes vary with the circumstances of the instance: when I'm on the floor picking up the broken plate the stool serves as a table for me. So it would seem that knowledge of the Form would include knowledge of the circumstances of instances, real or possible. I suppose you can subdivide Tables into Tables with X and Tables with Y circumstances, but wouldn't that subdivision eventually converge to the real instance at hand?<br /><br />Would God would have "the best kind of knowledge" or _all_ kinds of knowledge (of what is and what could be)? Or more clearly, what does "best" mean? Is the best vector one that points a distance 1 along the x axis, or one that points a distance 1 along the y axis? Some things aren't ordered.jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01792036361407527304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-53844591034419982132021-03-12T19:44:55.354-05:002021-03-12T19:44:55.354-05:00A related mystery:
https://www.wired.com/story/ph...A related mystery:<br /><br />https://www.wired.com/story/physicists-chip-away-at-a-mystery-why-does-glass-exist/Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-53111571331338204682021-03-12T19:13:53.391-05:002021-03-12T19:13:53.391-05:00So, that's the 'psychological' rather ...So, that's the 'psychological' rather than 'metaphysical' idea of Forms; but it is, I think, inadequate. Form actually does something that is real, and it's not too hard to say some things about it.<br /><br />Consider the case we were discussing with James a while ago: water's wetness emerging from hydrogen and oxygen. If you've got three atoms, two H and one O, that are separate from each other, they're not wet. You can (James tells us) do some good math on their properties that will predict something about wetness if they were to get together; but they're not wet. <br /><br />Put them in the right organization, the right 'form' so to speak, and wetness emerges as a new property. That's not merely conceptual nor merely psychological; it's a physical fact. <br /><br />Now, all the same material was there before and after they joined. What's changed is the order, the organization, the shape of assembly -- the form, in a word. <br /><br />That's roughly Aristotle's idea of form, rather than Plato's. Consider a bed, except instead of being assembled it's all in a heap on the floor. All the same matter is there, but to be functional as a bed, you need to put it in the right form. What form? Well, the form of a bed! This form must be immaterial, since the material doesn't change; the same matter is there before and after assembly. Thus, when you put the matter in the right form, you get new functions that you didn't have before. <br /><br />Aristotle's got something very different going on, of course, and you may just like his approach a lot better. Many people find it more plausible. Yet even for Aristotle, form isn't just an idea; it's very often a real physical fact (but physical without being, interestingly, material). Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5173950.post-90256763067161854192021-03-12T14:16:58.305-05:002021-03-12T14:16:58.305-05:00This is interesting, but I tend to think the "...This is interesting, but I tend to think the "Forms" are linguistic and cognitive, so I don't have much to say about it at the moment.Tomnoreply@blogger.com