Scholastic Metaphysics
Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction provides an overview of Scholastic approaches to causation, substance, essence, modality, identity, persistence, teleology, and other issues in fundamental metaphysics. The book interacts heavily with the literature on these issues in contemporary analytic metaphysics, so as to facilitate the analytic reader's understanding of Scholastic ideas and the Scholastic reader's understanding of contemporary analytic philosophy. The Aristotelian theory of actuality and potentiality provides the organizing theme, and the crucial dependence of Scholastic metaphysics on this theory is demonstrated. The book is written from a Thomistic point of view, but Scotist and Suarezian positions are treated as well where they diverge from the Thomistic position.
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- Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction by Edward Fesser
I stumbled across this completely by accident while doing research for a history of science class I was designing years ago. It took... a while... to stop saying "but why does this matter!" every two seconds while reading it, but eventually I was able to open my mind to metaphysics as a discipline and get it into my head exactly what he was talking about, and why it was useful. After that, it was smooth sailing. I owe a lot to this book.
- This is a start, but I think it doesn’t do hylomorphism justice. Many of us (as I was, before I overcame the inculcated bias) suffer from a kind of unsophisticated atomism. This is what happens in the vacuum of intellectual discipline and formation characteristic of our education systems. It is important to distinguish between physical models and metaphysical theory. Now, metaphysics doesn’t ignore physical models, but it does view physical models through the lens of physical methodology so that they are interpreted in a sound and responsible way. A naive reading of physical theory can easily lead to a mechanistic metaphysics, because while the physical sciences are not inherently mechanistic, the tradition does insinuate mechanism. In a mechanistic metaphysics, the artifact becomes the paradigmatic object, and pretty soon, reality becomes nothing but a shifting aggregate of atoms. Gone is the world of human beings, trees, cats, and dogs. Gone is the very intelligibility of the world and the very powers of reason that sought to grasp it. To say that mechanism, and especially materialism, doesn’t even get off the ground is beating a dead horse at this point (the obstinate still hanging on have doubled down to the point of embracing the patent absurdity of eliminativism, for example).
The renewed interest in hylomorphism (or hylomorphic dualism) is it seems related to the perhaps relatively modest, but certainly discernible resurgence of interest in Aristotlean metaphysics in the last decade or two. Speaking from experience, it is not easy to break mechanistic habits of mind, but it is possible. One way out, I find, is to begin with the realization that even if we accept a naive atomism, the atom itself is a thing, and to be a thing is to be an instantiated form. For if you truly have many atoms, as an atomist believes, then you have a plurality of things that are of like kind (the “matter” in hylomorphism is, first and foremost, prime matter, not something determinate as a kind of stuff, which itself requires form to be a kind of stuff; form is what causes a thing to be what it is). And if you happen to fall into the reductive mechanistic trap, you should recall that the further you go down that road, the more you undermine the very capacity of reason to know reality, the less you can explain the very possibility of reason, and the less your position holds weight as a result. We do not begin with atoms, but the world we experience everyday, and it is within that world that we perform scientific investigations and reason philosophically. Get something wrong, draw the wrong conclusion, and you can face a retorsion argument, a paradox of the sort skepticism generally faces (“there is no truth!” type of stuff).
I recommend some of Edward Feser’s books on the subject. “The Last Superstition” is a light read in that respect, but “Scholastic Metaphysics” is more of a proper manual.
- Two points.
First, I might recommend the Metaphysics before the Physics. Second, I think reading the original Aristotle as a novice and alone is perhaps not the best move. I think it is best to start with a commentary or something more pedagogically suitable. Contemporary expositors like Edward Feser or David Oderberg write lucidly and approachably on the subject (see “Scholastic Metaphysics” and “Real Essentialism”).
That never said, it takes time to understand this stuff, especially when all sorts of bad intellectual habits must be broken.
- That's an excellent question. My road to philosophy was a long one. It took me a while to realize that the kinds of questions I was asking or preoccupied with—often having to do with basic presuppositions and what reality must be like for the facts as we know or accept them to obtain, questions of identity, etc—were ultimately philosophical in nature.
I would first distinguish between history of philosophy from philosophy itself. Sometimes these two things are confused, much like people will sometimes confuse being a philosophy professor with being a philosopher (these two can coincide, naturally, but the former does not necessarily entail the latter). Some history is edifying, of course, because philosophical arguments and discussion occur in time, and indeed, history will incidentally enter the picture on its own as a way of presenting the dialectical refinement of some position (for example, the typical way Aristotle's theory of act and potency is presented is by beginning with Parmenides, followed by a somewhat idealized version of Heraclitus and then by showing how Aristotle's theory resolves the resulting aporia).
In retrospect, I would recommend something in the Aristotelian vein. It not only serves as a strong and sound foundation, as well as a good base from which to examine other positions, but it will save you a lot of grief later (even here, it took me a long time to overcome ingrained biases and habits of mind that were insinuated by the modern education system). I would highly recommend some of Edward Feser's books. He's well known for writing in a lucid style that dispenses with some of the the needless jargon that some philosophers are known for. On the introductory side, "Aquinas" [0] is probably a good starting point. A follow up, or if you can handle something a bit more substantive to begin with, would be his "Scholastic Metaphysics" [1]. I emphasize metaphysics first because the most basic philosophical questions are metaphysical; everything else benefits greatly from a clear understanding of metaphysical issues. Avoid any philosophical approach that begins with methodological doubt. It will destroy your capacity to know or to reason and may actually succeed in driving you mad (no joke). Groarke [5] wonderfully argues how such doubt is ultimately unresolvable through reason because it isn't a rational doubt—something that arises when we are met with, say, conflicting evidence—but a _willed_ doubt.
I'll leave it at that, partly because I would have to take some time to think about what additional recommendations I should make so that they would be most helpful to you, and partly because I think the recommendations I've made above will occupy you for some time and lead you in a direction of inquiry all on their own.
(Some honorable mentions: David Oderberg's "Real Essentialism" is a nice complement to [1]. Etienne Gilson's "Being and Some philosophers" [2] is also a nice trek through metaphysics. His "Methodical Realism" [3] is also a nice quick read in which he argues against idealism, while "The Unity of Philosophical Experience" [4] is a historical tour of how various major philosophers in history have failed.)
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6963088-aquinas
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19160503-scholastic-meta...
[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2479290.Being_and_Some_P...
[3] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12409190-methodical-real...
[4] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/232542.The_Unity_of_Phil...
[5] https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/an-aristotelian-account-of-inductio...
- I'm not sure how you justify calling a "revival" of teleology doomed. It may have been discarded by the early moderns, but it was discarded without a genuine rebuttal ("new" metaphysical theories were simply proposed where teleology was dismissed). However, as Aristotelians and Thomists argue, efficient causality cannot be understood without final causality. Without final causality, it cannot be explained why certain causes produce certain effects and not others. Furthermore, biology is saturated with functional accounts of organisms. Dismissing these functional accounts as merely "useful fictions", as it is often done when the challenge is posed, undermines far more than the dismisser seems to realize, and raises more questions than it answers.
In the case of information as it is discussed in the paper, Feser first discusses the technical sense of "information" which is exactly the one Shannon is concerned with, i.e., the syntactic sense. The semantic content is provided by the observer which is to say it is not inherent in the physical states that are being used to represent bits (which itself is observer dependent). Following this line of thought, Searles argues that computational states are assigned to physical states and are thus as artifactual and conventional as chairs. The computationalist naturalists cannot rebut Searle's charge without invoking notions which are broadly Aristotelian in nature.
It's worth getting a hold of a copy of the paper if you can. In lieu of or in addition to the paper, some of his blog posts delve into related subjects that clarify these points. I also recommend Feser's books on related subjects which are known for their lucid prose and clear explanations. Good places to start are "Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide" and then "Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction". Aquinas was decidedly Aristotelian and the scholastic philosophers broadly speaking were heavily influenced by Aristotle.
