display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
16767 | There is no centralised power, but we still need essence for a metaphysical understanding [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: One could empirically reject a centralised power within a substance - and still think a genuine substance requires a form of some more abstract kind, not for a physical explanation, but for a full metaphysical understanding of how things are. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 25.2) | |
A reaction: This divorce of the 'metaphysical' from the physical is a running theme in Pasnau, and he cites support from Leibniz. I'm not sure I understand 'metaphysical' understanding, if it is actually contrary to physics. I take it to be 'psychological'. |
16788 | Instead of adding Aristotelian forms to physical stuff, one could add dispositions [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Someone who wants to enrich a strict corpuscularian account with other metaphysical entities has alternatives other than Aristotelian hylomorphism. One can, for instance, introduce dispositions. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 28.2) | |
A reaction: This slightly throws me, because I have been flirting with a dispositional account of hylomorphism. The implication is that the form is abstract and structural, where the disposition is real and physical. But dispositions can do the job of forms. |
16738 | Scholastics reject dispositions, because they are not actual, as forms require [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Scholastics reject anything like bare dispositions, on Aristotelian principles. Powers are forms, and forms actualise their subject, and are causally efficacious. Therefore no powers can be bare dispositions. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 23.5) | |
A reaction: The point seems to be that a mere disposition is not actual, as a form is required to be. I would have thought that a power does not have to be operational to be actual. A live electric wire is a real phenomenon. It isn't waiting to be live. |