AJJ

Here’s mine again: “There can be a possible world where this planet doesn’t exist because the possibility doesn’t depend on the material world from wh...

You could, but that would be another assertion. I’m not asserting that you’re not providing a justification for the point under discussion - it seems ...

Here’s the definition you get when you Google justification: “the action of showing something to be right or reasonable.” You haven’t in my view shown...

Here’s the second definition when I Google explanation: “a reason or justification given for an action or belief.” So what your formulation amounts to...

What yours amounts to is: “There can be a possible world where this planet doesn’t exist because the possibility is a factor of the material world hav...

I disagree - it’s taking an example of a possible world where this planet doesn’t exist and saying such a possibility can only exist if you’re a reali...

It is a way of saying that, sure - but it also explains how there are possibilities: There can be a possible world where this planet doesn’t exist bec...

Just to make this clear: Saying the world isn’t “strongly/causally deterministic” is to my mind just another way of saying there are possibilities. Sa...

Can I take it that what you’re positing is that the existence of possible worlds is some kind of brute fact?

Those would be identical. But saying “there is an explanation” about something (which I see what you’re doing as) isn’t the same as explaining it. It’...

If I asked you for an explanation why it rains sometimes and you said “because there is a fact that enables there sometimes to be rain” then you’re no...

So you’ve explained that possibilities are possibilities (how things could have been), but you haven’t as far as I can tell explained how, on your ter...

It seems to me what you’ve said there is to the effect that “possibilities obtain because there are possibilities.” If for example there’s a possible ...

How on your terms do those possibilities obtain?

So on your terms (as I understand them) a possible world would be a concrete abstraction in your brain, and so only a possibility so long as it existe...

You can to an extent. But if you’re a nominalist about possible worlds then they must depend on the world around you and not be abstracted from it, wh...

It would amount to there being either a Platonic third realm where those objects exist, or a divine intellect where they do.

“existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence”

I’d say possible worlds are abstract according to the definition I quoted, and they’re discrete because they can be differentiated. Well I’d want to m...

I’d say the definition in my OP recognises that.

I don’t see how this applies to possible worlds, which I take to be discrete abstract objects. In that case concepts wouldn’t be abstract, rather they...

And I Googled abstract and this is the first definition given: “existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence”.

If you edit your posts after I’ve replied to them I might not see the edit. Can you tell me the difference between a nonmaterial particular and an abs...

If possible worlds have been rejected as existing in the abstract then possibility must be grounded in the material world. So for example the possibil...

Your objection was that the definitions say nominalists are necessarily materialists. Being nominalist about possible worlds doesn’t mean being a mate...

Where does it say that?

Sure, I did a moment ago: Like I said, I understand you can be nominalist about some things and realist about others. The definitions given in the OP ...

On Googling conceptualism you get this philosophical definition: “the theory that universals can be said to exist, but only as concepts in the mind.” ...

And I’d say something that isn’t a possible thing is no-thing: impossible thing = impossible to be a thing = no thing = nothing. But I think that may ...

I think the problem with that is logical impossibilities such as square circles or whatever aren’t things - rather they’re “no-thing”. So what you’re ...

It seems the most powerful descriptions of God are those made by the Aristotelian argument from motion or the Neo-Platonic argument from composition, ...

Interesting to consider how that might work. I like the Aristotelian emphasis on the material, as opposed to the Platonic notion of the world being so...

Yeah, I see what you’re saying now and agree. To conceive of prime matter is to conceive of non-existence existing, which of course you can’t.

I guess I just don’t see why conceiving of prime matter as pure potentiality is problematic. The concept seems fairly straightforward to me; I mean wh...

I assume that’s where the unmoved mover figures. Besides, whether formless matter ever was doesn’t change the fact that pure potentiality is the what ...

Sure :up:

I think that simply means you can’t say matter doesn’t have whatever properties for the same reason you can’t say it does: it’s pure potentiality - it...

Or I guess that it has no actuality is the better way to put it.

From the first paragraph you quoted earlier: ——— It has no being; it’s rather the potential to be.

In other words: pure potentiality.

Yeah, time is change and matter allows there to be change. I guess I don’t see why it does account for that; if matter is pure potentiality then it ca...

Sure, it’s what allows there to be material objects in the first place and also what allows them to change. I don’t understand the above though. Since...

But in the second paragraph you shared he explicitly says what he means by it; Augustine and Aquinas appear to have gotten it right.

I’ve been confusing terms - I thought the active intellect was another way of describing the unmoved mover. So it seems to me on Aristotle’s view that...

Thanks, that’s clarifying. Although it does still puzzle me why Aristotle would ground abstractions only in the world when the world is grounded in th...

The divine intellect is the ongoing source of everything I should say; that’s what the Aristotelian argument from motion establishes.

It’s both Aristotle’s and Plato’s idea. The divine intellect is the unmoved mover in Aristotle’s metaphysics, the beginning of everything. In Plato’s ...

If the divine intellect creates the world then all the forms things have must come from it.

“Prime matter” is to my understanding the term for matter apart from an instantiating form. That’s fine I’d say; it’s appropriate to refer to those in...

This is the distinction I was describing, where what other people say about Aristotle is interpretation in an attempt to gain the best insight. I didn...