When you say "in the same arrangement," then, assuming I am translating your terminology correctly, you are claiming that the dead petunia has the same "formal cause" as the live petunia, however some efficient cause has moved the petunia from the state of being alive to the state of being dead, much as an efficient cause might move the petunia from the state of being on the floor to the state of being on the tabletop?
Living organisms can suffer from the maladies I list. These often result from physiological insults; if the insult is minor, the organism recovers homeostasis. If the insult is not recoverable, then these "maladies" compound as organismal resources are exhausted in the course of compensating. An organism at equilibrium with its environment (really, truly, totally dead) will almost certainly lack ion gradients, its proteins will be denatured, the substrates for its reactions will be exhausted, and its lipid bilayers will be perforated.
Regarding DNA, it is certainly damaged all the time. It is also frequently repaired (either with high or low fidelity depending on the nature of the lesion; low fidelity repairs occur where bulky lesions preclude the more selective high fidelity polymerases--i.e., those with more tightly fitting active sites). If DNA is too extensively damaged, however, repairs will fail. This is how irradiated meat becomes sterile.
Only in part. The form of a living being is much more complex than that of an inanimate one, though it is clear the body possesses its powers from its form, and not from its matter. A living petunia has the so-called vegetative form and possesses the four powers of homeostasis, metabolism, growth/differentiation, and reproduction in addition to the inanimate powers of gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear, and weak.
Once an entity is dead, its vegetative powers cease. It no longer maintains homeostasis, no longer metabolizes, no longer grows or differentiates, no longer reproduces. This should be clear. From now on the petunia acts like an inanimate object: a bag of chemicals, as it were. Its proteins become denatured, and so on. Once this begins to happen the matter is transformed through decay and other processes.
However, the matter of the petunia is the same immediately after death as it was before death. It is all the same parts, as I have said, and still (at least for a time) in more or less the same arrangement. As you have pointed out, the arrangement is no longer dynamic, but this is exactly the point. The matter are still there: stem, pistil, petals, etc. Thus, matter as such cannot explain the difference. It must be matter "in action."
So in your model, the death of the petunia precedes the loss of these vegetative powers?
More precisely, the death of the petunia is the loss of these powers, which are proper to the form (or entelechia, iirc). The form is called in Latin "anima" (a quo "animate").
Not quite, because the petunia, dead or alive, is also a bag of chemicals, and the inanimate form possesses its own powers. The petunia's form is a unification of the inanimate and the vegetative. And we might also note that it is specifically a petunia and not a generic vegetative being, so the generic form is not all she wrote. Aside from those and similar considerations, the form is what gives a thing its powers.
Then, to translate from your Aristotelian model, what you call the "form" of the petunia is more specifically a particular spatial configuration (position and orientation, energy and bonds) of all of the ions, atoms, and molecules in the petunia. The continuous rearrangement of these particles as they react (or simply interact) with one another (and with the non-petunia world) comprises the "powers" (i.e., particular array of autocatalyses) of the petunia, derived from a combination of its current spatial configuration and the "inanimate" chemical properties of its constituents. When the petunia falls into a configuration that fails to support its vegetative powers/autocatalytic reactions, we call the petunia dead.
Not exactly. Matter must also be understood in context. But the point remains that what you call an interaction is not itself matter. Like gravity, it is something else than matter per se. Perhaps I should do a full post on this issue.
I used the word "interact" to differentiate between chemical reactions where traditional ionic, covalent, and hydrogen bonds are formed and those based on (for example) properties like hydrophobicity which organize the lipid bilayer of the cell membrane and anchor membrane proteins in a functional orientation.
Upthread somewhat you snark about materialists, claiming that they must "pretend" that immaterial processes must be material. I would first argue that material* entities are defined by having detectable properties** (this separates them from immaterial entities whose properties must be postulated***) and that processes**** (which you call immaterial, but which result in detectable rearrangements of material entities) follow from the properties of the participating entities. I would subsequently argue that because we can translate with some little effort between the terminology of the materialists and your Aristotelian terminology, much of your contempt for them may lie more in semantics than in actual referents. But that relies on a certain amount of charity in interpreting their arguments and actively engaging with their models.
*: in the sense that a materialist would use, not that of an Aristotelian. **: you might call these properties "form" ***: Encompassing such items as triangles or unicorns, either of which may not actually materially exist, but which certainly fall along a spectrum of concepts ranging from more to less useful. ****: Aristotle's "movement"
But such things are in fact immaterial. Something material is liklely to have mass or weight, location or place, dimension, and so on. Gravity, for example, is known through the behavior of matter, but gravity is not itself a material thing. Or take the arrangement of pool balls just before the break. The pool balls are material, but their triangular arrangement is not a material thing. Or to riff on Billy Ockham's famous example: a father exists and a son exists but the relationship "fatherhood" does not have material existence. Molecules are material, but the vibration of molecules is not itself a material thing. (Otherwise you run into the Vibration-Molecule interaction problem, a parallel to the Mind-Body interaction problem.)
If we define "material" entities in the sense that materialists do--as entities with detectable properties from which their interactions proceed--then gravity belongs to a material understanding of the universe. It is readily detectable. I'm detecting it right now. Your other examples are similarly detectable by various methods. In fact, one might go so far as to say that gravity is known not so much through the behavior of matter as that matter is known through the behavior of its properties and interactions (including gravitation).
If we then define "immaterial" entities as those without detectable properties, then geometry and unicorns are immaterial, being posited rather than detected (though, again, each has some degree of usefulness within a broader or narrower context). This is what materialists may mean when they make statements regarding matters material versus immaterial.
Expecting to successfully refute your materialists without either agreeing upon terminology (for the purpose of mutually useful discourse) or accurately and charitably translating from their system of understanding into your own strikes me as somewhat optimistic, veering dangerously close to sophistry.
Because I've defined "material objects" as being those having "detectable" properties--and, also, I believe this is how your materialists use the term. Defining "immaterial objects" as having "detectable" properties would not accurately reflect their arguments, and furthermore would not be a useful distinction.
I grant you that materialists can be sloppy and imprecise in their terms, but when I say something is material I mean it is made of matter. I can place this apple, that apple, and the other apple on the table. There will be three apples. The apples are material; the three is not. The will perforce be arranged as a triangle. The apples are material; the triangle is not. And yet, this immaterial triangularity has detectable results: we can measure the distance between the apples; we can count them.
IOW folks who think that all things are accounted for by material causes are usually smuggling formal causes in by the back door.
But I have decided to do a post on the topic in the next few days so maybe we can defer further questions.
Living organisms can suffer from the maladies I list. These often result from physiological insults; if the insult is minor, the organism recovers homeostasis. If the insult is not recoverable, then these "maladies" compound as organismal resources are exhausted in the course of compensating. An organism at equilibrium with its environment (really, truly, totally dead) will almost certainly lack ion gradients, its proteins will be denatured, the substrates for its reactions will be exhausted, and its lipid bilayers will be perforated.
Regarding DNA, it is certainly damaged all the time. It is also frequently repaired (either with high or low fidelity depending on the nature of the lesion; low fidelity repairs occur where bulky lesions preclude the more selective high fidelity polymerases--i.e., those with more tightly fitting active sites). If DNA is too extensively damaged, however, repairs will fail. This is how irradiated meat becomes sterile.
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Once an entity is dead, its vegetative powers cease. It no longer maintains homeostasis, no longer metabolizes, no longer grows or differentiates, no longer reproduces. This should be clear. From now on the petunia acts like an inanimate object: a bag of chemicals, as it were. Its proteins become denatured, and so on. Once this begins to happen the matter is transformed through decay and other processes.
However, the matter of the petunia is the same immediately after death as it was before death. It is all the same parts, as I have said, and still (at least for a time) in more or less the same arrangement. As you have pointed out, the arrangement is no longer dynamic, but this is exactly the point. The matter are still there: stem, pistil, petals, etc. Thus, matter as such cannot explain the difference. It must be matter "in action."
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More precisely, the death of the petunia is the loss of these powers, which are proper to the form (or entelechia, iirc). The form is called in Latin "anima" (a quo "animate").
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Upthread somewhat you snark about materialists, claiming that they must "pretend" that immaterial processes must be material. I would first argue that material* entities are defined by having detectable properties** (this separates them from immaterial entities whose properties must be postulated***) and that processes**** (which you call immaterial, but which result in detectable rearrangements of material entities) follow from the properties of the participating entities. I would subsequently argue that because we can translate with some little effort between the terminology of the materialists and your Aristotelian terminology, much of your contempt for them may lie more in semantics than in actual referents. But that relies on a certain amount of charity in interpreting their arguments and actively engaging with their models.
*: in the sense that a materialist would use, not that of an Aristotelian.
**: you might call these properties "form"
***: Encompassing such items as triangles or unicorns, either of which may not actually materially exist, but which certainly fall along a spectrum of concepts ranging from more to less useful.
****: Aristotle's "movement"
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If we then define "immaterial" entities as those without detectable properties, then geometry and unicorns are immaterial, being posited rather than detected (though, again, each has some degree of usefulness within a broader or narrower context). This is what materialists may mean when they make statements regarding matters material versus immaterial.
Expecting to successfully refute your materialists without either agreeing upon terminology (for the purpose of mutually useful discourse) or accurately and charitably translating from their system of understanding into your own strikes me as somewhat optimistic, veering dangerously close to sophistry.
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IOW folks who think that all things are accounted for by material causes are usually smuggling formal causes in by the back door.
But I have decided to do a post on the topic in the next few days so maybe we can defer further questions.
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