The phrase "a mere form of" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to indicate that something is only a superficial or insignificant version of something else.
Example: "The proposal was seen as a mere form of compliance rather than a genuine effort to address the issue."
Alternatives: "a simple version of" or "just a superficial representation of".
Some people have suggested the Occupy Wall Street protest is a mere form of street theater, that the protesters have a myriad of grievances with no particular agenda.
Online games go far beyond a mere form of passive entertainment.
Subsequently it has no more claim to reality than spatiality, for it too simply implicates a mere form of perception.
The two basic and mutually exclusive positions maintained, on the one hand, as Schlegel portrays them, that human language must have originated as a transcription, representation or imitation of external objects; and on the other, that in its origin language must have been purely sensual, i.e. a mere form of expression of emotions through sounds.
What is this thing called "love" -- It is a mere form of chemical madness, hormones running furiously amok; Is it inexorable bonds formed between like-minded, socio-economically compatible individuals; Or is it something more -- a cosmic, near-divine affection that nourishes two entwined souls?
In these cases, initial impressions of the mere "form" of a material object generate approbation (T, 364).
However, Kant also considers some other principles that may sound stable or law-like but go beyond the "mere form of law"—and thereby fail to be justifiable.
All that is left to determine my way of acting (my maxim, in Kant's terminology) is "the mere form of giving universal law" (5:27).
Kant's injunction to look to the mere form of law at first appears to provide no guidance at all, and has often been reproached on this basis.
In arguing that it is possible for the will to be determined by the mere form of the moral law, independently of any sensible inclination, Kant had identified the will with pure practical reason.
But since the only candidates for such "pure intuitions" are space and time ("the mere form of appearances"), it follows that only spatial and temporal magnitudes can be exhibited in pure intuition, i.e., constructed.
