On that page Feser says, "So, suppose this first actualizer had some potentiality that had to be actualized in order for it to exist." But this misses...
The following section of the proof (from Feser's book) is interesting: 19. In order for this purely actual actualizer to be capable of change, it woul...
No (at least, I haven't come across that view). I think you meant "transmit" not "split" above? After the world splits there is a photon on the transm...
Aristotelian potential is ontological on the Many-Worlds interpretation. For a concrete example, consider a photon about to enter a beam splitter. The...
I was referring to the first (primary) hylomorphic particular per the cosmological argument. It can cause subsequent particulars to exist but there ar...
No, I don't. Time is a universal. As such, it is immanent in particulars and not transcendent to them. So, on a hylomorphic version of the cosmologica...
You've just perfectly described 'ghost in the machine' dualism. I'm suggesting that it is only hylomorphic particulars that have identity. And so exis...
Note that the builder is a hylomorphic substance. It is the builder, not his mind, that is the causal actor. It is he that is constructing the buildin...
Agreed and good post. One consequence of continuing to investigate the world is that it ultimately reveals hidden assumptions that force us to look at...
No, Democritus' atoms and the void it is not. It's instead the recognition that causality applies to hylomorphic particulars, not to mysterious immate...
That's true as well. So we would seek to explain the causes for the chair's existence in terms of other particulars. For example, the person who made ...
I think a problem is the assumption that either matter or form must be the primary constituent. On Aristotle's hylomorphism, neither is. Instead the p...
That Bob is motivated to search for his (alleged) watch implies that he thinks there is a real watch. But that is not what it means for there to be a ...
For a physicalist, an idea is a pattern of physical matter. So stealing (i.e., the illegal copying of) an idea entails the occurence of the same patte...
Yes and that is a misleading idea that should be rejected. Taken literally, it suggests a homunculus (or a ghostly mind) that is looking through the w...
I think the issue is simply about how veridical and non-veridical experiences are categorized. When we are awake and in a normal state, we see trees. ...
Yes I think much of the history of philosophy can be seen as the playing out of Platonic and Aristotelian ideas in different contexts. Hylomorphism do...
Yes, we live in an intelligible universe where such laws and forms can be discovered by any rational being. Since the common thread for Aristotle is t...
The Platonic meaning of "idea" is that if you take away the material representations, the eternal idea remains. That is the ghostly existence that Ari...
A relation depends on particulars whatever names they may have. For Aristotle, the empirical (or phenomenal) world just is the intelligible world. So ...
Part of the "ghostly existence" problem is the issue of logical priority. I think Russell's example that Edinburgh is north of London shows that the p...
That's not really what Aristotle meant by potential. What the authors (and Heisenberg before them) are doing is replacing Descartes' res cogitans with...
Yes and purpose (a universal) is also immanent in the world, not transcendent to it. I hadn't - thanks for linking. As the author says: Back to your O...
Without universals we couldn't make statements about particulars (e.g., I have two hands). For Aristotle, there is only one world - the world of every...
Aristotle's view was that universals are immanent in concrete particulars not transcendent to them (per Plato). So, for example, there is no universal...
And that is the Platonic view that Aristotle disputed. Per Aristotle, the abstract principle depends on the concrete particulars. Yes they would, but ...
Yes. It is also an abstraction that depends on the existence of concrete particulars. Do you agree? Their difference actually has nothing specifically...
There's a presupposition in your question. Does an abstraction (such as information) depend on the existence of concrete particulars? Aristotle would ...
No, not as the quantity of asterixes which is the abstraction I was implying. So only the number six is immanent. To get to five, a transformation wou...
***** doesn't re-present the number five. The number five is present (immanent) in *****. It doesn't matter if you don't know that it is there or don'...
Yes, as Gerson says, an idea is not identical with particulars (such as synaptic states), it is instead a formal abstraction of particulars, just as t...
You're correct, they're symbols which represent numbers. But how about these asterixes (*****)? In this case, the number five is present (or immanent)...
Per Aristotelian realism, it's not either-or. Observation involves a physical process. Should be interesting. The relevant issue here is Aristotle's s...
By having a physical presence and not merely a physical representation. This is the difference between Aristotelian realism (where the abstract is pre...
Yes I think our theories should be deterministic. But, most importantly, our theories should be explanatory which is how I've used "causal" in this th...
The demonstration would require a quantum computer with about 300 qubits. Either that is an engineering problem that can one day be solved. Or there i...
It hasn't been done - it's only a theoretical possibility at present (and, no, classical computers couldn't do this). The practical goal right now is ...
Factoring large numbers requires physical resources (i.e., a computer). If a successful factorization required vastly more physical resources than wer...
Numbers aren't anywhere. Numbers are an abstraction over things (which is more-or-less the Aristotelian view). Possibilities are also abstractions. In...
That's fine. At any rate, the justification for the Born rule boils down to the following claims: 1. On the Everett interpretation, measurement leads ...
That raises the question of the status of the Born rule under such interpretations. It would seem that the Born rule could only be postulated, not exp...
That's a possible response. But if you make a distinction between the universe and reality, then it just pushes the issue back a level. That is, is re...
Yes. Before quantum mechanics came along, it was assumed that probability reflected a lack of knowledge about the world (i.e., it was an epistemic iss...
I agree that is true. There still remains the issue that the probabilities that the Copenhagen interpretation predicts are inexplicable since it rejec...
I agree with all you say above but would add that the probabilities themselves also have no causal explanation under the Copenhagen interpretation (i....
The Copenhagen interpretation makes the same prediction but it denies that there is a causal explanation for the probabilities. But, if causality is a...
We perceive things that emerge as the result of dynamic processes. So we may more-or-less agree here. Also, it seems to me that what you mean by non-d...
I'm not saying that at all. On the Everett interpretation, the quantum state contains the complete information about the system and that state evolves...
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