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Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 7, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Does anyone here actually "believe" Plato/Aristotle's theory of forms, material/formal/efficient/final causes, and hylemorphism? Or is at all basically nonsense, dreamed up for a want of robust physical science, with 'ball', 'sphere', 'man', 'dog' being just human oversimplifications for matter arrangements?

Overview of Platonistic metaphysics, see especially the section on mathematical objects and the associated bibliography because usually when people talk about Platonism in a contemporary context it's in relation to mathematics.

Here is an introduction to some problems in the metaphysics of physical objects.

I'm less familiar with contemporary hylomorphic approaches but searching philpapers.org for hylomorphism turns up some results like this that seem relevant.