Severian I, Severian II, Severian III, Severian Ad Nauseum

Lane Haygood · 04 Dec 2008, 04:37 · from 2008-December.txt.gz

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From: lhaygood at gmail.com (Lane Haygood)
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2008 22:37:18 -0600
Subject: (urth) Severian I, Severian II, Severian III,
	Severian Ad Nauseum
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OK, so matter, form and anima.

Plato and many of the early philosophers wrestled with this idea of  
universality.  For instance, if we go and look at a red thing (an  
apple), we know it's red.  We see the color.  But what about  
"redness?"  What is the "thing-status" (being, reality) of redness?

Plato answers that for every general category there is a perfect,  
unchanging, eternal Idea (eidolon) that is that category.  So, in the  
Platonic Heaven of the Forms, there is the perfect Form of Red, and  
all particular red things "participate in" the form of red.  That is,  
red things are imperfect instantiations of redness.

But we never have direct contact with this world, Plato says, so we  
must know about it in another way.  Hence, he theorizes that our souls  
know it, but forget it as we are born into the mortal world.  When we  
see particular instantiations, it allows us to grasp the pure concept  
through a process called anamnesis, the remembrance of the Forms in  
our souls.

Aristotle found this to be problematic, and so argued instead that  
universality was a feature of things themselves.  The general idea of  
redness, he argues, inheres the being of red things.  That is, there  
is no "redness" apart from red things.  The same "ground for being" is  
in all particular predicates.  When I say of an apple, "is red," I am  
really making the claim that the apple itself is a ground, a  
substance, for predication of a property, redness, but that said  
property has no independent ground for being apart from that substance.

Matter is the stuff that persists through physical changes, or what we  
commonly think of as physical stuff.  It's like dirt, or wind, or  
water.  But it can be given form, and certain things arise only in  
concert between matter and form.  A house, for instance, isn't the  
bricks and the framework and the plumbing, etc.  It is the thing that  
is made up by their precise configuration.  To put it more poetically,  
a cup isn't the clay shell, but the empty space inside of it that is  
useful.  That's what gives a thing its telos, its purpose.

So what is a substance, as opposed to just matter?  A substance is  
something non-separable from the object.  I can separate the color red  
from the apple.  It is possible to think of a non-red apple.  But I  
can't think of an apple that is non-spatial.  Extension, mass, etc.  
are all properties of an apple that are substantial rather than  
predicable.  In other words, substantial features cannot have separate  
existence.  A substance must also be differentiable from other things.  
Individuality is a rough way of understanding it, but that implies too  
much uniqueness.  We must be able to say that "this, and not that" is  
a thing.  Matter is therefore not a substance, because matter cannot  
fulfill both these conditions at once.

So the primary substance for Aristotle is <i>form</i> or essence  
(ousia) -- that special unique thing about a given individual that  
helps us to differentiate it, without which it would not be a thing at  
all.  But nothing exists in this sort of "raw" state.  Everything is  
matter + form, or essences and predicates, or grounds and properties.   
Apples have "applehood," but they also have mass, extension, a color,  
a taste, a smell, etc.

Anima refers to the soul (Aristotle's "De Anima" is translated as "on  
the soul."). It literally means breath, but refers instead to the life- 
force or essential energy that animates (hey, hey, clue) the body.   
Living things are matter + form + anima.  We might say that anima was  
a primitive attempt at understanding consciousness, though that'd be  
specious, because we're no closer to understanding what consciousness  
is 2,000 years later, and probably won't have any greater clue 2,000  
years from today what it is.

This has been your nightly PHIL 101 lesson.

Lane

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