I want to see what anyone has to offer on Forms, essences, Being, etc. I'm not trying to focus on just one philosopher. I'm hoping to get whatever input you have on these and the relationship between them.

I see essences or concepts as Forms, but I'm not especially seeking debate but further insight into the matter. In what way do Forms exist? Do you think they exist in the first place? Is there a sort of logical/formal space prior to sensation? How does Kant fit into this?

I am especially looking for any personal insights you may have. References to especially good online material would also be appreciated.

There are many definitions of Form or Essences or Concepts (I will not even begin to discuss BEING), some of which are more strict than others. One should begin, perhaps, by understanding whether the three (or more) terms are interchangeable or able to be distinguished in some way or another.

Perhaps you should just focus on one of these. Have you ever been to the ProjectGutenberg page? Has a ton of goodies.

Reading Barthes again today and he's talking about forms.

"Semiology is a science of forms, since it studies significations apart from their content....Semiology, once its limits are settled, is not a metaphysical trap; it is a science among others, necessary but not sufficient."

Thanks! I agree as to the necessity of distinguishing them. I suppose the difficult part is that the same words are used in so many different ways. Currently I see essences and concepts meaning the same thing. Forms are more complicated. It does seem that beings, if not Being, are unified by/as concepts. If you have personal opinions on the matter, I would be glad to here them. Thanks.

This does not have anything to do with form et al., but it has to do with the potential pursuit of insight about them.

whether to split semantic hairs or lump the three together has less to do with actual differences between the words, and more to do with the envirnoment in which they are being discussed. I have ran accross this in several fields archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, semiotics, biology. Any field that required some sort of taxonomy. The actual taxonomic makeup is arbitrary, one can place the a demarcation almost anywhere dividing one thing from another. The actual structure of the taxonomy tends to hinge on either a person/school of thought's predisposition, values, and already adopted precepts and/or the goal of the study. It may serve your purposes reinforce things that you already think or want to be true to lump them together or to split them apart. So my advice would be to approach from several different vantages and taxonomies, with several different people, then make an informed decision. It can never eliminate a taxonomical bias, but it can reduce it some.

Sorry to disappoint, I have no passionate opinions on the matter, if fact I'm pretty sure I don't have a coherent opinion on the matter.

I suppose I was especially hoping for some passionate opinions on the matter. In my mind, this is perhaps the crucial issue in philosophy.

Hmm, and here I'm trying very hard to be dispassionate about everything.

The Pythagorean notions of Limit/Unlimited seem like a good place to start. "Being" as such would seem a likely candidate for unlimitedness, for example. "Limit" would then be whatever defines "this being" out of all potential beings, and so it would seem to have the character of defining an essence or imparting a form.

Plato, in his unwritten doctrine according to Aristotle, replaces the Limit/Unlimited pairing with the Indefinite Dyad, which, as I've written in some other thread here, seems to represent the "is" and the "what it is" of the things that come after the One. The "is" (i.e., Being) is a given for everything (we wouldn't be talking about a thing if it didn't have Being), so the "what it is" is really the only thing we can talk about.

I'm going to suggest that Essence is an aspect of Sameness and Form relates to Difference. In the first case, a being may be the same as another in some respects but not others, but every being is identical to itself. And this self-identity is the Essence of that being, the "internal" aspect of the "what it is."

Difference, of course, would be the "what it isn't," from one point of view: that which sets it apart from other beings despite any sameness it might share with them. So we could call it the non-identity of this particular being with all other beings, and thus the "external" aspect of the "what it is," the Form.

Just to round things out, Motion (or Change) and Rest refer to the activity or behavior of the being, and in these characteristics the being may be the same as some other beings and/or different from other beings. And by applying these binary judgments, we begin the process of sorting and relating things that is, in essence, Plato's dialectic (and also, incidentally, the original basis of all taxonomic systems).

So, one system of conceptualizing this subject. I hope it's useful in your thought-project.

Perhaps you will agree that there is a sort of dispassionate passion? Or shall we say a passion that does not seek to possess?

---------- Post added 06-04-2010 at 11:53 PM ----------


Indeed. My version of this is the discrete and the continuous, and in human terms concept (digital/discrete/limiting) and sensation-emotion (continuous.)
In fact I think Form is a better word than concept, because concept leans too much toward idealism. Form is prior to mind/matter distinctions, I would argue.


---------- Post added 06-04-2010 at 11:56 PM ----------


This too is something I relate to. Form just is. Existence is the fundamental property of Form/concept. Do you think? And yet because it's so fundamental, it transcends property. It's deeper than property. It exists, and its a unity. That's my take. The rest is synthesis/negation of sensation/emotion/other forms?

---------- Post added 06-05-2010 at 12:01 AM ----------



Difference seems to hinge on negation. Is negation something primal, foundation? I have speculated that essence is synthesized from the negation of accident. Usually, I am suspected of Metaphysics in the 1st degree when I say this sort of thing. You mention binary judgments. I think that the number 2, or duality in general, is central to human thought. Propositions are bits. The number line is bidirectional. Male and female. All the digital and continuous polar opposites/spectrums.

Do you think tings exist outside of essences, or outside of the human mind? I think we impose essences on sensation, and thereby experience things in a world that would otherwise be continuous sensation/emotion. THoughts?

Your post was quite helpful. Thanks.

I do want to say that I emphatically believe that things exist outside the human mind. In fact, in a certain sense the human mind exists outside the human mind; that is, the mind we experience as "my mind" is, so to speak, just the tip of the iceberg, or perhaps more accurately the little bit of light that shines through the pinhole.

The Platonist line on essences or forms, of course, is that they have an objective existence of their own and are just "reflected" in matter; we recognize them in material objects because that larger part of mind is where their objective existence is, and we're connected with it even when we aren't aware of it; so we re-cognize the form in the object.

And yes, I'm actually pretty passionate about this stuff, even though my mentors tend to urge apatheia.

Ultimately in constructing world view one must find a place for Truth, for Beauty, For Love, for Experience (all forms of Mind) as well for Reason and for Science in the modern world. Metaphysics is the search for unifying principle of reality and reality includes human experience (mind and reason), as well as sense perception and other "objects" (empiricism and independent reality).

If one thinks that "experience" and thus "mind" is confined to humans or a small number of higher life forms and organisms, then indeed, man (not just man but each individual) is indeed the "measure of all things". The world is ultimately without any particular aim or purpose and we each have to give whatever meaning or interpretation we can to our own individual lives and experience. There is no overarching unifying principle which would include anything like mind, reason, purpose, aims, values, aesthetics (these would all be purely human inventions and concepts with no independent existence apart from the individuals who hold them). I would say that is an a-theistic view of the world.

If one thinks the universe is constructed in such a way that it tends towards certain types of forms, values, or aesthetics then I would say that is a basically a theistic view of nature.
I personally see the universe tending towards order, towards complexity and self organization, tending under the right conditions towards life, mind, and experience.
For me these inherent tendencies follow the rules of reason and indicate intelligibility (comprehension by the application of reason and observation and expressible with the mode of logic represented by mathematics). I find it hard to comprehend this as the result of forces which themselves are fundamentally blind, purposeless, accidental, and themselves the result of chance (it just is, they just are; seems like the type of response that philosophy and particularly metaphysics should question).

The ultimate principle IMV is creative advance. The ultimate mechanism for this advance into novelty; is process which entails both material and experiential aspects or poles. The universe is engaged in a continuous process of creative advance of bringing that which is possible into actuality.

It is in the realm of "possibilities" that forms reside. The degree to which the forms have "essence", "being", "existence" depends on what one means by these terms. For Plato the "form of beauty" precedes and is necessary for any particular instance of beauty to be recognized by "mind". For Plato also learning and knowledge are remembrances (truth is remembered or discovered not created by man). This almost entails the notion of some form of preexisting mind, intellect, forms or ideals of which any particular object or any particular mind in the world is only a manifestation (or an emanation) of the underlying unifying form. There is an implied panpsychism or if you prefer psychialism or panexperientialsim in these views. I do not think one (in the modern world anyway) as a form for a horse, or a form for a cow, the forms are not particulars but unifying principle.

It is so much easier to be an a-theist. It really is. You do not have to explain anything. The world just is, its just that way, it just happens. Life is just complex arrangements of inert matter following laws of accident and chance, mind is just complex arrangements of insensate matter, experience is just physical chemical interactions in your brain. Aesthetics and values are just personal or group decisions or opinions . No god. No religion too. No ultimate purpose, no forms, no eternals. There is just something in me that rejects that materialistic, mechanical deterministic mindless, inert, insensate view of the world. It just does not seem to be the world I live, breathe and experience. I will be some sort of theist (mostly process theology and panenthism) till my dying day.

sorry for this too long post but the notion of forms is tied up with eternal values and truth and therefore with the source of eternals (god) and how eternals get represented in the (real or actual) world of sense perception and objects (divine action and persuasion). Of course for a materialist or an a-theist none of this requires any explanation.

I personally see the universe tending towards order, towards complexity and self organization, tending under the right conditions towards life, mind, and experience.

For me these inherent tendencies follow the rules of reason and indicate intelligibility (comprehension by the application of reason and observation and expressible with the mode of logic represented by mathematics). I find it hard to comprehend this as the result of forces which themselves are fundamentally blind, purposeless, accidental, and themselves the result of chance (it just is, they just are; seems like the type of response that philosophy and particularly metaphysics should question).

The ultimate principle IMV is creative advance. The ultimate mechanism for this advance into novelty; is process which entails both material and experiential aspects or poles. The universe is engaged in a continuous process of creative advance of bringing that which is possible into actuality.

A person who really feels that the world just is will probably feel this because they have recognized the limits of abstractions/forms. Although I don't use the word God much, because my version is so much different than most, I certain feel and experience a deep love and beauty that annihilates all hint of materialistic reduction. There may be an intelligence or force behind it all. But for me the most important thing is that it is and that we are and that it is beautiful and terrible.

I want to see what anyone has to offer on Forms, essences, Being, etc. I'm not trying to focus on just one philosopher. I'm hoping to get whatever input you have on these and the relationship between them.

I see essences or concepts as Forms, but I'm not especially seeking debate but further insight into the matter. In what way do Forms exist? Do you think they exist in the first place? Is there a sort of logical/formal space prior to sensation? How does Kant fit into this?

I am especially looking for any personal insights you may have. References to especially good online material would also be appreciated.

I think, for the sake of time, that I should deal with one of these, namely, form. But as I do not have a very clear understanding on even this subject, I am allowing myself to sail off into the ocean of metaphysical nonsense. Here it goes:

Form deals with the objects of things as they are mere representation, that is, as appearances they are chracterized by traits that are not in-themselves, but are in us. We can derive from objects three things: time, space, and casuality, to which objects, as mere appearance, come and go. In essence, we cannot think of objects without a space (although maybe in time), but we can think of a space without an object (which would simply be its form).

Ding_an_Sich;174766 wrote:

I think, for the sake of time, that I should deal with one of these, namely, form. But as I do not have a very clear understanding on even this subject, I am allowing myself to sail off into the ocean of metaphysical nonsense. Here it goes:

I enjoy your humor. I do feel that I should say that for me, forms are concepts. I'm glad you took the boat out.

---------- Post added 06-09-2010 at 07:45 PM ----------

Ding_an_Sich;174766 wrote:

Form deals with the objects of things as they are mere representation, that is, as appearances they are chracterized by traits that are not in-themselves, but are in us. We can derive from objects three things: time, space, and casuality, to which objects, as mere appearance, come and go. In essence, we cannot think of objects without a space (although maybe in time), but we can think of a space without an object (which would simply be its form).

For me, that entire quote is made of Forms/Concepts. Anything that bundles sensation, emotion, or other concepts is a concept or a form. I like your mention of spatial form. That's a tricky one. I personally think that spatial intuition is its own kind of Form. This is why math is so interesting to me. We see the collision of concept form (digital number) and spatial form (Euclid), and this collision can be awkward. Just look at pi.

Of course what I love in Hegel was his pointing out or agree that things-int-themselves are just a concept within our experience. Actually, as you probably know, Kant himself knew this. But he was practical enough not to stress the monistic implications. Personally I think that his "apperception of unity" is just one more concept. And so is the self. And so is all philosophy. This is a pretty radical way to think. A network of interdependent concepts, none of it are 100% justified logically but only practically. This is what I find in the TLP. Outside of contradiction and tautology, all of our concepts/knowledge is contingent, imperfect, dependent on sensation and emotion. Because propositions which are not tautological or contradictory must refer away from themselves for confirmation or rejection. And does not this depend on the senses? on the words of other humans? On feelings? I think he uses the word "senseless" in the sense of imperfectly precisely. We obviously get a sense of one another's meanings, but this meaning is blurry, vague, imperfect. One man's justice is another man's crime. What if the only permanent perfect essences/concepts are mathematical and logical? Basically just bits, completely abstract bits. All mathematics can be written in binary, it seems, while not forgetting the usefulness of symbols for pi and e, etc. But base-2 is enough for the usual numbers and symbolic logic (which I am brushing up on) is largely a matter of bits. Of course it's a broad field and all sorts of wickedness has been cooked up. In any case, pure precise abstraction might be the only perfect truth we have. And it's basically tautologous? So the world is opened up as something unexplained. Sensation and emotion are an ocean on which our fragile forms/essences/concepts make their way.