If I do produce something new when I assemble the contents of the box, then the table is something more than just those contents. The table is not only its material parts, but also the formal organization of those parts.
And that is the fundamental claim of hylomorphism: that there is some kind of formal part, component, or aspect to any table, chair, rock, tree, rabbit, planet, or human being, something beyond its matter which accounts for its existence and nature."
Yes, and this is what Kant called 'the conditions of the possibility of knowledge', namely space and time in our reason. The form exists neither on the object nor in a Platonic heaven, but only in our minds because it is 'imposed' on the table by our reason and intellectual categories.
This is a useful connection, but I think “in our minds” is misleading. Like you say, the forms of particular things like tables are not the same forms that are the conditions of possibility of experience. The latter forms are more abstract and common to our experience of all things, like the forms of space and time and the structure of causality. That universality also shows why “in our minds” is misleading, because these forms are common to all minds and therefore cannot really be said to reside primarily in individual minds, even though they are of course employed somehow by individual minds in cognition.
> The form exists neither on the object nor in a Platonic heaven, but only in our minds because it is 'imposed' on the table by our reason and intellectual categories.
This. I was looking for this in the original article. Thanks for following up.
I really prefer learning these aspects of philosophy rather than more ethics oriented topics but it’s really such a rich subject.
If I do produce something new when I assemble the contents of the box, then the table is something more than just those contents. The table is not only its material parts, but also the formal organization of those parts.
And that is the fundamental claim of hylomorphism: that there is some kind of formal part, component, or aspect to any table, chair, rock, tree, rabbit, planet, or human being, something beyond its matter which accounts for its existence and nature."
Yes, and this is what Kant called 'the conditions of the possibility of knowledge', namely space and time in our reason. The form exists neither on the object nor in a Platonic heaven, but only in our minds because it is 'imposed' on the table by our reason and intellectual categories.