Matt J wrote:No, that is a logical error. The pot depends on the clay, but the clay does not depend on the pot. The clay would still exist whether or not anyone ever made a pot out of it. Also, the clay that forms the pot can be re-arranged to form a plate, a bowl, a little rabbit, or whatever.
That is true of the clay before the clay is made into a pot, and if the clay is made into something else that is true, but if we are considering a specific pot made out of clay, they both depend on one another at the particular time when the clay is made into a pot.
Consider this. Given such a clay pot, is the clay something that is different from the pot or is it the same as the pot? If it is different than the pot, then one should be able to give a definition to identify the clay of the pot in such a way that all of the clay is included in the definition, while at the same time excluding the pot itself. If the clay is the same as the pot, then that means that the pot and the clay are different ways of referencing the same thing, and so they both depend on one another because it is trivial that a thing depends on itself.