Talk:Substantial form

Errors

The ancients tried to use the substantial form of a thing to explain its actions - ie. 'Glass breaks because it has the form of brittle.' However, since we have no independent access to the form, we only know the substantial form of a thing by its actions. Thus this explanation is circular; as Moliere jokes: Explaining something by its substantial form is like explaining that opium puts you to sleep because of its dormative nature.

First of all Moliere wrote plays, he is not a philosopher. There is no reason to have him in this section. Furthermore broken glass has a destroyed form. Brittleness is an accidental property. Whoever wrote this article is in error.

Mixtions and Monsters

A mixtion is a special kind of mixture, a mixture of the strongest sort in which the result of the mixing is a completely new substance rather than some mere blend of the mixed ingredients. Such examples come up most frequently in chemical experiments whose results have radically different and new properties, properties that none of the ingredients previously exhibited.

Being abstract universals, substantial forms are immutable and incorruptible and ought always to operate in the same way, or at least within a narrow range of “normal". A monster is a creature that does not follow this rule.

Those new properties are accidental properties they don't effect the essence of the substance. Furthermore forms are not immutable, their state can be modified via a substantial change. For example a burning log's substantial forms eventually changes to the substantial form of ash. I am removing this until proper references can be made -- lets not make stuff up.

--70.68.147.204 (talk) 04:44, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Small edit

I changed “Scientific rejection” to “criticism”. Science has not rejected Substantial Forms; it is just that most of modern science is currently working under the philosophy of mechanism. --70.68.142.64 (talk) 07:32, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Aristotelian forms - Universal Forms vs. Particular Forms

24.107.148.93 “A central debate regarding Aristotle's metaphysics revolves around whether substantial forms are universals or particulars. Aristotle claimed that the things that have essence (form) are the the things whose account is a definition . As described above, he believed that the entelechy of the body is the soul, or form. So what makes Socrates this individual man is his particular form. However, Aristotle also says that only universals are definable even though he previously implied that forms are both definable and particulars. Since it is impossible for form to be simultaneously a universal and a particular, there is much debate over how to interpret Aristotle's discussion of this topic.”

As you say, there's much that's debatable... it would be good to cite secondary rather primary sources. Substance is individual/particular for Aristotle, it's not all that contentious...

He wants to be able talk about species of plants and animals (and about people) without speaking somehow indirectly. He resolves the problem by a substance layer, the soul, which supervenes on the body, (there's also the animal soul and the nutritive soul...)

Per hylomorphism, each is "form" relative to the next layer down as "mater". A copy of the father's soul is provided by the seed (sperma) and the mother supplies the mater. He didn't invent genetics, so every human soul is an identical copy of the same form.

Like (almost) all forms, they exist hylomorphically via mater in substance (individuals). Form is more important than mater however. Whereas prime matter cannot exist without form (the individual four elements are abstractions of hot/cold and moist/dry); prime mover(s) necessarily exist without matter because they're changeless and eternal.

The only purpose mater serves, is to support the change (motion) of form (properties) by providing a relative substratum. That substratum allows a substance to persist during accidental property changes. In essential property changes (the generation and corruption of substances) a layer beneath the passing substance provides the substratum. A change in the distinguishing property of a genus, the essence, by definition entails the passing away (or coming to be) of an individual (substance) formally defined by that property.

If an eternal substance had mater, it would be possible for it to change and it would change, given all eternity to do so (i.e. to actualize that potential). Thus, it's necessary for unchanging eternal substance to be immaterial; like a thought (without logical dependencies) a self-realization or a self-comprehension. Socrates was mortal...

In the infinitely long history of the cosmos with its unchanging pleroma of nature, like any genus (substance in the "secondary" sense) human ancestors have passed down the unaltered form of the human soul for dissemination in perpetuity. The definition of a genus must specifically nail the one unique property, particular to that natural kind (soul) and necessarily common to every specimen; essentially, what it is to be that kind. A definition that's only good for telling what's a Socrates (apart from the category error) would be scientifically useless. For Aristotle, science is what can generally be said "always or for most part".—Machine Elf ¹⁷³⁵ 09:40, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

References