Why Aristotle and Aquinas are Right - Robert C. Koons

[@AlexADalton]

Koons old website with much of his initial work in Naturally Theology was instrumental in my conversion. I hope he will one day have a renewed web presence that is accessible to the lay person.

[@scottbuchanan9426]

Good news -- Dr Koons has re-established his old website. It's fantastic!

[@AlexADalton]

@@scottbuchanan9426 thank you!

[@computationaltheist7267]

@@scottbuchanan9426 Please post the link to the website here.

[@quad9363]

I think Koons reason for Aristotelian over others pretty good. Aristotle gives us framework that is nearly universally applicable, where other frameworks might specialize in certain areas but have problems when trying to contend with other areas of our experience.

[@TemprateThomist]

Thank you for this interview! A very good overview of Aristotelianism-shows the breadth of Aristotle’s mind, which was both impressive and more manageable in his time, but something we often lack today. I think many people do not see the unifying feature of these many different systems: Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Epistemology, Ethics, Ontology and Metaphysics. That unifying feature being logical argument. If they could see that the underlying justification of science and mathematics is drawn from the same well as the justification for the broad philosophical categories, I think Aristotelianism makes a lot more sense-which shouldn’t be too surprising as Aristotle may well be the founder of formal logic like that used in the basic axioms of number theory or probability. Of course, deductive logic isn’t the whole story, but there are deep ties between prudence/practical wisdom and inductive inference.

[@gregoryweber5667]

Oh wow, terrific interview, good questions by the interviewer and good responses by the interviewee. The interview format provides a sweet break from philosophical lectures on KZbin. So glad to have discovered this channel. I'll be coming back for more.

[@journeyfiveonesix]

Great video! It's great that you were able to get an interview with Dr. Koons.

[@daman7387]

do potentials hold some ontological status?

[@martyfromnebraska1045]

Yes, from what I understand.

[@matswessling6600]

no, they doesnt.

[@daman7387]

getting mixed messages here, haha

[@Ashriel_bruh]

​@@daman7387yes they do. If not, that'd defeat the whole purpose of introducing potential in the first place. While potentials may not exist in the same sense as actualities, they still do exist.

[@TheBrunarr]

I've been trying to reconcile idealism and thomism for a while. I think there are actually good similarities. It's too bad that Koons's explanation of idealism is Berkeleyan because there are many other types of idealism, like Objective idealism. Here's one similarity between thomism and idealism. Thomism affirms the reality of forms and places those forms as divine exemplars in the mind of God. The objection is that since God is simple, those forms would be identified with His essence, and since God has only one essence there is only really one form. Aquinas answered this objection by appealing to the notion of being multiplied by relation. But if there are multiple forms and they are all identified with God's essence and therefore God Himself, then it would seem to follow that instantiations of forms are instantiations of God, albeit imperfectly, and so properties/forms would be the diverse ways Aquinas talked about when he said that God can be imperfectly participated in by a finite creature through diverse ways. This is almost exactly proportional to Bernardo Kastrup's idealism, in that the universe is the extrinsic appearance of God's conscious inner life. Another similarity is that under Thomism God is Being, but God is also an Intellect or Mind, so Being is identical to Mind, but that's essentially what idealism says, that consciousness is the ground of all existence and there is nothing independent of consciousness since that would be akin to saying that there are things independent of being, which is contradictory. There's at least one more example I have but you get the picture.

[@journeyfiveonesix]

Well the being of God is identical to His intellect. Further, mind in Thomism is not consciousness. St. Thomas believed consciousness was a semi-material process; the elements of conscious experience only exist in matter (colour, sound, heat...) and thus we are conscious insofar as we are material. Mind for St. Thomas was purely information qua essences. This does not seem to be idealism at all.

[@MegaDocalex]

Thomism is not anti-idealist, it only depends on what do you mean by idealism, St Augustine says almost the same thing as Saint Thomas Aquinas on everything (except minor issues such as theory of knowledge and stuffs)

[@diggingshovelle9669]

Is the Trinity inconsistent?

[@MegaDocalex]

Just another proof that catholic philosophers > all

[@vaskaventi6840]

I don’t think Aristotle was a Catholic philosopher.. (unless you were just talking about Aquinas)

[@gabrielcoutinho599]

@@vaskaventi6840 lol what are you talking about? Aristotle is the fifth evangelist

[@MontyCantsin5]

No.

[@cosmicnomad8575]

@@MontyCantsin5Yes.

[@cosmicnomad8575]

@@MontyCantsin5Yes.

[@marc6003]

Excellent content, thanks!

[@Leocomander]

Suan is a gift to the Church!

[@Ali124hdkflc]

Great video.

[@MonisticIdealism]

50:30 Idealists believe the things we seem to see and interact with are really there, it's just that we identify those things as mental instead of physical. Since idealism is identifying reality using just one category (mental) then it is simpler than any alternative which would add an additional category (e.g. physical).

[@fr.hughmackenzie5900]

But our mind freely predicts and develops the physical, because the latter is not free. So you can't be monist. You must have mind and matter, and therefore God, the ultimate mind, is transcendent of his creation (i.e. Judeao-Christian theism).

[@fr.hughmackenzie5900]

So the effect of the Form of the individual member of the species grounds a "functional equivalence" across each. Certainly this is a useful concept in terms of modern science's insight into the key role in natural unities of environmental "function". But what grounds the functions specific to each sub-species or to each individual? Koons would seem to term them metaphysical "accidents". Yet is their intelligible character as physical functions any different from his "formal" functions?

[@matswessling6600]

this is world salad abd nothibg else

[@2046-b2o]

47:48 idealism

[@mnmmnm925]

2:22

[@michaelcollins9698]

Thanks Suan

[@jakelm4256]

1:26:00 nothing he says is contrary to libertarianism whatsoever

[@diggingshovelle9669]

If God is full actuality He has no nature because He has no potentiality?

[@Ashriel_bruh]

Actually, in the Aristotelian/thomistic view, form is to matter what actuality is to potentiality.

[@Jacob-hr2vf]

St Palamas was right.