The Evangelical Philosophical Society blog alerts its readers to the forthcoming Summer 2010 issue of the EPS journal Philosophia Christi. My paper “Teleology: A Shopper’s Guide” is among those which will appear in it. (Scroll through the last several posts at the EPS blog to see some of the rest of the contents.) Here is the abstract: Teleology features prominently in recent discussions in the philosophy of mind, action theory, philosophy of biology, and in the dispute between Intelligent Design theorists and Darwinian naturalists. Unfortunately, discussants often talk past each other and oversimplify the issues, failing to recognize the differences between the several theories of teleology philosophers have historically put forward, and the different natural phenomena that might be claimed to be teleological. This paper identifies five possible theories of teleology, and five distinct levels of nature at which teleology might be said to exist. Special attention is paid to the differences between Aristotelian-Thomistic and ID theoretic approaches to teleology.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Teleology in Philosophia Christi
The Evangelical Philosophical Society blog alerts its readers to the forthcoming Summer 2010 issue of the EPS journal Philosophia Christi. My paper “Teleology: A Shopper’s Guide” is among those which will appear in it. (Scroll through the last several posts at the EPS blog to see some of the rest of the contents.) Here is the abstract: Teleology features prominently in recent discussions in the philosophy of mind, action theory, philosophy of biology, and in the dispute between Intelligent Design theorists and Darwinian naturalists. Unfortunately, discussants often talk past each other and oversimplify the issues, failing to recognize the differences between the several theories of teleology philosophers have historically put forward, and the different natural phenomena that might be claimed to be teleological. This paper identifies five possible theories of teleology, and five distinct levels of nature at which teleology might be said to exist. Special attention is paid to the differences between Aristotelian-Thomistic and ID theoretic approaches to teleology.
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Speaking of teleology, I thought you may find this discussion between atheist-turned-Catholic writer John Wright and an atheist materialist, with the latter asserting that final causes do not exist:
ReplyDeleteRight here.
Not only do people fail to recognise different kinds of teleology, they often fail to recognise it at all. Despite the modern materialist disavowal of all causes final (as documented here many times), scientists do actual science in a thoroughly teleological way — they have to, that's how it works. Yet somehow they are all convinced that it isn't. The lack of understanding could be put down to scientists' not being philosophers; but I have to wonder at the resistance to the very concept. Is it that Aquinas's Fourth Way is too unvoidable a consequence, or what?
ReplyDeleteLike most other philosophical topics, teleology is just one more example of wishful thinking - spin, if you like.
ReplyDeleteSure, things are done with some purpos or other involved. But to say what ONE final purpose explains reality is hubris.
It's deja-vu all over again...The haughty non-sequiturs and argument-free dismissals of the topic at hand. "Just Thinking": are you another iteration of our old friend Perezoso/J? Come clean now!
ReplyDeleteNever heard of PJ. Instead of stating how I make a point, why not address what point I make.
ReplyDeleteIf teleo is so real, defend it in a clear manner. I am open to discussion, really.
Or, for instance, in Ed's Chomsky post I comment that the explanation for change in the A-T realm leads to circular statements.
ReplyDeleteIn both examples, I am stating in in common simple language why so much of Scholastic metaphysics has been put away by moderns.
In both examples, I am stating in in common simple language why so much of Scholastic metaphysics has been put away by moderns.
ReplyDeleteWell, now you're just making us think that you grasp the history as poorly as the philosophy involved. Your comments have not indicated that you understand what final causality is all about, so it's hardly surprising if nobody jumps in to debate you.
On the other hand, I guess that does explain the modernists... they don't understand the philosophy involved either.
How hard is final causality? For it to be meaningful in a discussion, you have to buy the rest of the A-T spin of how and why.
ReplyDeleteThis is why I choose not to argue, but discuss at a more general level. A-T demands its acceptance before any argumentation - then both parties get bogged down in causes, essences, forms, acts, and potencies. O.K. for monks after evening chants, but hardly where modern folk are in their understanding.
Just Thinking: O.K. for monks after evening chants, but hardly where modern folk are in their understanding.
ReplyDeleteUm....yeahhh. Final causality isn't hard, but "modern folk" don't understand lots of things. Even a lot of philosophers don't understand it, because they don't bother. I'm sure you don't believe in quantum mechanics, either. (Too much spin, don'tcha know.)
"Modern folk" aren't much of anywhere in their understanding, because understanding in the appropriate sense was largely abandoned in favor of utility. Problems do show up when people mistake this utility for understanding, etc.
ReplyDeleteBut some teleology seems downright undeniable. For instance, I want a drink. I think I'll go get one. (Useful thing, this teleology!)
Crude: the appropriate sense was largely abandoned in favor of utility.
ReplyDeleteYes; and yet, to refer to my post above, the bizarre thing is that abandoning finality wasn't actually useful at all! (Or if it was, only for a brief and tenuous time between Descartes and Newton.) That's the most peculiar thing about the whole business. Historically, there are all sorts of influences at work, but philosophically it's a dead-end, which is why all scientists now accept teleology in all but name! Modern physics is nothing but formal and final causes, so you'd think explaining the true Aristotelian sense of the terms would immediately be understood; but it seems that too many people suffer from a nigh-unsurmountable conceptual block.
David,
ReplyDeleteI'm tempted to agree with you. And of course, teleology in other ways (particularly biology) never really went away. Perhaps what I should have said was, there was a shift in emphasis and attention. Ignoring the elephant in the room and all that.
Again, somewhat pertinent to Ed's OP:
ReplyDeleteJerry Fodor in an exchange re: Darwinism.
I quote this part, with emphasis added, because it reminds me of a page in TLS. First quoted is the site owner. Second is Fodor's response to him:
Brig: It sounds like you're saying that evolution needs a mind to do what it has done. But that can't be right. ...My computer can do lots of interesting things, but it has no mind. What it has is _programming_. Life also has programming in its DNA. Can't this, if supplied, do the job? Other questions follow, but only if this line of thought interests you. Thanks for responding. ...Brig
PS -- has any reveiwer understood you fully? Who?
Fodor: NO; I'm saying that if Darwin were right about how evolution works, (namely, by selecting-for adaptive traits) it would have to have a mind. ...Your computer seems to have a mind because you actually do have one. Perhaps it would have a mind if it had the right sort of program (the kind you have). But it doesn't, so it doesn't.
Well, that's certainly a new spin to that particular argument.
“A-T demands its acceptance before any argumentation - then both parties get bogged down in causes, essences, forms, acts, and potencies.”
ReplyDeleteScience does not rely on such hubris. Science takes the nature and even the existence of such existents as its challenge to understand. Thus the ID venture (and thus its A-T opposition).
Science changes its mind based on evidence. It does not hold investigation hostage to 'the right teleology.' Traditionalist church people are constrained by out-moded conceptions they claim they mist hold to. Luckily, progressive theological endeavors are more amenable to an agnostic scientific spirit.
Poor philosophy, it must dogmatically state and defend its particular 'answer to it all'. In this, it is no different than traditionalists who cannot be open to novelty and the adventure of new discovery.
Just Thinking...
ReplyDeleteyou just quoted your own contortion of A-T and then agreed with it??
I'm very pleased that people like you (or people who defend their positions like you) are on 'the other side'.
Whew!!!
How did I agree?
ReplyDeleteJust Thinking should change his name to Just Emoting . . .
ReplyDeleteCrude quoting Fodor: I'm saying that if Darwin were right about how evolution works, (namely, by selecting-for adaptive traits) it would have to have a mind.
ReplyDeleteHm, I didn't quite follow all that, perhaps because I haven't read Fodor's book. I can see that saying Natural Selection "selects" anything implies that it's guided/has a mind/etc.; to which the reply is that that is just a way of talking. I think the point then is that either NS really does select (and if that implies a mind behind it, so be it), or else it doesn't really do anything at all (regardless of what we might "read into it").
In other words, if I look at some clouds the right way I might be able to make out some letters and symbols: that might be deliberate (sky-writing), in which case I can read the message and see what it says. Or else it's just an accidental arrangement of rain-clouds, and I'm merely imposing a "meaning" that isn't really there. But if it isn't really there, I can't conclude anything based on what the clouds "say". Similarly, a biologist can claim that the metaphor of selection and function is imposed by us thinking beings from the outside, but then he can't also claim that the effects of that purely imaginary function are real. Or something like that.
"Science changes its mind based on evidence."
ReplyDeleteScience has a mind to change??
Interesting.
So it has a mind that can apprehend ideas/concepts that are beyond (external to) this mind of science?
But no, "science" doesn't change its mind base off of evidence.
Science is entirely indifferent to the evidence that it might uncover.
It's individuals who interpret data points that science uncovers and then determines how those data points are related to a given theory.
The approach you're trying to put forth is entirely subjective. How do individual data points relate to a given theory? The interpretation of those data points is based off of criteria that is beyond the scope of science.
That the data should be interpreted one way as opposed to another (despite the possibility you would have agreement from each and every scientist wrt that interpretation method) is not a conclusion of the scientific method.
Beauty, simplicity, coherence.... are subjective values. And based off of your approach you have no ground whatsoever or means by which you determine a good interpretation contrasted to a bad interpretation.
Just thinking-
ReplyDelete"Or, for instance, in Ed's Chomsky post I comment that the explanation for change in the A-T realm leads to circular statements.
In both examples, I am stating in in common simple language why so much of Scholastic metaphysics has been put away by moderns."
As far as I can tell your three-line answer to 'newbie's' question represented either a straw-man or a misunderstanding. For scholastics change happens when a potency of a given object or substance is actualized by another object or substance. That's the minimally simple explanation and you'll have to explain your beef with it here; your last response was far from definitive. It looked a lot more like you dismissed it out of hand without grasping it, the same way that Hume, Kant et. al. did.
One other thing. You complained in your answer to 'newbie's' question that "change happens because that's just the way it is" represents lousy metaphysical reasoning. If you are a modern-type philosophical thinker then you should adopt a more humble attitude because that's exactly the answer your intellectual ancestors took to be accurate. The early moderns dropped Aristotelianism in favor of essentially the metaphysics of Democritus which had fallen out of favor for two thousand years. For Democritus, as you probably know, the entire world is made up of indivisible particles that are themselves self-existing and constantly arranging into new combinations (sound familiar?) Thus for Democritus motion (change in modern terms) is primary; that is, things really do change because "that's just the way it is," and it isn't as important to understand why change happens as it is to understand why rates of change vary (i.e. acceleration and decceleration etc.)
Thus if you really are a defender of the modern philosophical assumptions that dismissed AT as mere irrelevant hair-splitting, then you're logically bound to endorse exactly the metaphysic underlying the understanding of change that you previously labeled a "[bad] explanation." Not a very consistent position, to say the least.
Just Thinking: "How hard is final causality? For it to be meaningful in a discussion, you have to buy the rest of the A-T spin of how and why."
ReplyDeleteNot true. Read Gilson on finality in the history of biology for the persistent--and unavoidable--attempts by non-Aristotelians to employ finality or quasi-finality. Even Dennett wants to slip it back in, either by way of intentional constructivism or creeping panpsychism.
Just Thinking: "Science takes the nature and even the existence of such existents as its challenge to understand."
I leave it as an exercise to JT and any other reader to explicate how this one quotation, allegedly opposed to Aristhomism, is rife with profoundly Thomistotelian notions. (Yes, Aristhomism and Thomistotelian are my little terms of art.) My own leads are in bold.
Best,
Some good replies. As for emoting, I must admit to a heavy reliance on intuition in my beliefs. Logic is great, but words are generally too slippery for its beneficial application.
ReplyDelete“For scholastics change happens when a potency of a given object or substance is actualized by another object or substance. That's the minimally simple explanation and you'll have to explain your beef with it here”
AFAIU, A-T metaphysics sees a primary category, substance, as a 2 part epoxy of potential (prime matter – not even bosons, quarks, or atoms yet) and an ACTivator called substantial form. This substance is what undergoes changes, but the quote above is a not-so-modern gloss that covers all things fleshed out in physics, ceem, bio, and psych.
One detail discussed in the Chomsky post was how the 2 part epoxy explains motion, since physical units of distance and time are not apparent components of either reactant. I have read some Oderberg and others, but never found a satisfactorily strong explanantion of the science of hyleomorphism.
Starting with space-time as a receptacle (from Uncle Plato) for some stuff ala Democritus (or a monad or two from Liebnitz), the moderns have fashioned some neat theories of how 'things' go round and round.
How does hyleomorphism do it?
"One detail discussed in the Chomsky post was how the 2 part epoxy explains motion, since physical units of distance and time are not apparent components of either reactant. I have read some Oderberg and others, but never found a satisfactorily strong explanantion of the science of hyleomorphism.
ReplyDeleteHow does hyleomorphism do it?"
Fair enough; it seems to me that your asking about 'local' motion specifically over a distance in a certain amount of time(i.e. the motion of a car driving down the street). If that's the case this is related to the intertial objection to Aquinas's first way. If you haven't seen it, Ed posted a lengthy article by Oderberg responding to this objection and you might find it informative, here it is:
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/03/oderberg-on-first-way.html
For my own personal judgment (which Oderberg and Dr Feser would probably reject as selling out too much but let that pass) I would say that the local motion you ask about does not represent change in the relevant sense, since Aristotelian categories of the sort described are talking about changes of state rather than changes of position. Especially considering a modern, relativistic picture of the universe there is no kind of 'absolute position' that an asteroid or planet hurling through space can be said to be objectively changing place in relation to. Local motion is thus entirely a matter of 'change' based on one's own perspective, and I would say for an Aristotelian it could be reduced to changes of state which are metaphysically primary.
That's just a stab at it; but I do concede that your complaint about local motion on a hylomorphic conception is not wholly groundless.
JT: I posted {this reply} in the Chomsky thread, don't know if you saw it:
ReplyDelete{Presumably a quantum vacuum collapse that generates the whole cosmos randomly and without a cause is a better explanation for "change"? Change in hylomorphism is a function of the contingent finitude of essence as participated in by matter. A pencil is never a "quintessential" pencil (i.e., at the exclusion of other materially different pencils) because the finite essence of "what it is to be a pencil" is inadequate to informing matter perfectly. Matter is always catching up to form, so to speak, and this plenitude of variability is change. Temporality and extension are just functions of the global-cosmic variability in spacetime.}
As for the claim that "the moderns" invoked space-time as a (Platonic) receptacle, I think that is beside the point since Newtonian receptacle theories of spacetime have, ahem, rather gone by the wayside since Michelson-Morley, Einstein, Minkowski, de Sitter, at al. furnished a relativistic cosmology. So as far as current science goes, the modern theories of receptacle-based motion are profoundly off-base.
I would add that a Minkowskian interpretation of special and general relativity––an interpretation which Einstein grudgingly but then wholly accepted––creates just as many, if not more, problems for accounting for change. For in a Minkowskian "block-world," nothing changes, nothing happens, everything just IS. This is a function both of the fact that special relativity admits of objects only fully existent in their four dimensions (incl. time), and of the fact that a 'proper' analysis of any particle (I use proper in the technical sense of "proper time"), must include the totality of its whole career in spacetime. This is some of what bothered people for so long about Schwarzschild's (quasi-)singularity: it followed beautifully from SR and GR, but cut the same theoretical apparatus off from charting a particle's spatiotemporal career at the cuff of what has since become known as the event horizon. The point is that a particle––or any object––can't be what it is and alter in any of its 4-dimensionality; ergo, nothing that exists can change. It is no mere coincidence that Einstein was a Spinozan.
Best,
And here be a bunch of links:
ReplyDelete• http://books.google.com/books?id=umCe0vzm148C&dq=change+in+aristotle&printsec=frontcover&source=in&hl=en&ei=GU4cTJmfCpK9caLRxfMM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=12&ved=0CEkQ6AEwCw#v=onepage&q=change%20in%20aristotle&f=false
• http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/archange.htm
• http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/WeirdWildWeb/courses/wphil/lectures/wphil_theme03.htm >>> Scroll to section 3
• http://www.aquinasonline.com/Topics/change.html
• http://www.aquinasonline.com/Topics/chemical.html
I am truly puzzled by your complaint, as far as I grasp it, since, historically, one of Aristotle's great advances over (and explicitly against) Plato was a rigorous account of realist change. I don't see how/where you are finding a lacuna on change in Aristhomism. I also don't know what your "argument" against finality is vis-Ã -vis change. I have only seen some reiterated protests against the "hardness" of (getting? articulating? verifying?) finality.
If you want a scientifically literate and frank, broadly Aristotelian metaphysical discussion of change and knowledge, cf. James Ross's _Thought and World_. Form is just a classical term for what we might call "dynamic permanence": things are intellectually graspable; formal structure (information) goes all the way down; and "things" persist AS what they are on account of WHAT THEY ARE, not what they are made OF (meanwhile, of course, what they are made of keeps altering since the elements are not WHAT they belong to). Sorry if that's abstruse.
Best,
This comment was meant for here - I inadverdently put it in the Chomsky post a minute ago. Sorry
ReplyDeleteVery good posts, ff and codge. This is the stuff I grapple with in my metaphysically-bent mentality.
Trying to assimilate what you two said: change is the flux of some matter that is somehow lead in a particular situation to prop-up, or fill-in, a particular form. Such inFORMation goes all the way down (and up too, I guess), and information is only a value for intellect. (On this, one could support panpsychism.)
Three dimensions of extension and one for time are the result of material flux engaged in sustaining a stable pattern (dynamic permanence), and this form is not eternal/perfect like Plato’s, but a weaker knock-off.
I am intrigued by all this and will follow thru the links. I see the Ross link leads to Ed’s blog of last March where panpsychism was discussed a bit.
I am a little amused in considering I was not too far off the mark when saying that “hyleomorphism, change occurs in some thing because it is formed in such a way as to so change. In other words, change happens because 'that's just the way it is.”, since it is not too far from "things persist AS what they are on account of WHAT THEY ARE”!
Good stuff – I will read the Ross paper that is Chap 6 of his book.
"change is the flux of some matter that is somehow lead in a particular situation to prop-up, or fill-in, a particular form"
ReplyDeleteNope. I looked at your links (several I have seen before) and some Ari explanations of change agree that the matter changes, most say that matter is the constant, with form being the changed part of the epoxy. So, again, change is a function of time, but there is no time in a form.
And I was starting to get my hopes up. To empirically deal with change, and motion, in particular, we gotta be talking about something compatible with space-time. Activated potential (informed matter) seems deficient.
It seems that A-T offers an ingenious alternative description of processes in reality, but the alternative empirical tools of science are better for understanding what is really going on.
If A-T is right about substance being a two part epoxy-like thing, it at least should correct its glaring error that the matter is constant in change with the form bearing the burden of alteration.
ReplyDelete"{C}hange is the flux of some matter that is somehow lead in a particular situation to prop-up, or fill-in, a particular form" sounded right, but consider the simple fact that your body replaces its chemicals with every breath, digestion, and bath. Yet it is fundamental to A-T.
Hylomorphism is just not sufficient for science as far as I can see it being explained.
Clarified post...
ReplyDeleteIf A-T is right about substance being a two part epoxy-like thing, it at least should correct its glaring error that the matter is constant in change with the form bearing the burden of alteration.
"[C]hange is the flux of some matter that is somehow led in a particular situation to prop-up, or fill-in, a particular form" sounded right - consider the simple fact that your body replaces its chemicals with every breath, digestion, and bath.
Hylomorphism is just not sufficient for science as far as I can see it being explained. Yet it is fundamental to A-T.
What am I missing, here?
JT:
ReplyDeleteYou are quoting your own paraphrase of what ff and I said, just to accurate.
Does 'science' inquire into undifferentiated matter? Why do the entities discovered by science invariably have specific features? Your objection to the constancy of matter rests on a fallacy of equivocation, since "matter," properly speaking, isn't any-thing. What is constant, however, is the existence of forms in matter. WHAT those informed 'patches' of matter are, however is not based on their materiality, anymore than what a penguin is depends on how many feathers it has. In any case, who says hylomorphism is a "scientific" device? It doesn't work by hypothesizing "forms" (nifty idea, let's do a demo!) and seeing if we can dig deep enough into the world to hit "a form." Rather, hylomorphism is a metaphysical assessment of actual experience which invokes "form" and "matter" to make sense of intelligible endurance, specific difference, and contingent variability.
Best,
"Rather, hylomorphism is a metaphysical assessment of actual experience which invokes "form" and "matter" to make sense of intelligible endurance, specific difference, and contingent variability."
ReplyDeleteHow does space-time fit in (especially time)?
"WHAT those informed 'patches' of matter are, however is not based on their materiality, anymore than what a penguin is depends on how many feathers it has."
I am not sure it is that simple for hylo. The form of salt depends on its components of Na and Cl. Water has a different form because its made of different material components. You may refer to prime matter prior to the quarks, protons, electrons, atoms, etc. In this case, then what actually is meant by a specific substantial form (a dog) - what other forms does it require for explanation?
There are other meta-paradigms, of which science is also but one. How do we know which metaphysics most closely models the actual physics?
I know from responses to numerous commenters to Ed's blog that hylomorphism is regarded with dogmatic certitude and defended accordingly. Such commenters are ultimately ridiculed and laughed out of discussion. I am here thinking that an open skeptical mind is needed in assessing metaphysics.
I appreciate your willingness to discuss, Codge.
"How does space-time fit in (especially time)?"
ReplyDeleteDo you think time is a receptacle (absolute), 'in' which things happen? As far as we now know, it is (minimally) a dimension of matter. Material expansion is temporal duration, and vice versa. You can't so easily divorce formal actuality in matter from formal actuality in time. Maybe I'm just dense, but I just don't see where you're going with this time complaint, if you are basing it on a well informed grasp of what time is (gasp, that formal 'what' again!).
"The form of salt depends on its components of Na and Cl."
Does its form depend on WHICH particular Cl and/or Na atoms are involved? Certainly not. Ergo, etc.
I side with St. Thomas Aquinas that "Sapientis enim est non curare de nominibus" (Wisdom does not quibble over names). If you prefer not to call form "form" or matter "matter," that's fine. Yet, the dialogue keeps revolving to those same concepts.
Best,
E=mc^2, so in British units
ReplyDeleteft-lb = (lb-s^2)/ft * (ft/s)^2
What you sat about expanding mass and time must be explained in the mass units: 1 slug of mass = (lb-s^2)/ft
Assuming the same multiplier for expansion for the mass and the time duration (s), we can drop it and equate the two
(lb-s^2)/ft = s
We then see that lb = ft/s, which equates force of attraction (weight, lb) with velocity (ft/s), and that is a no-go.
My interest in time is its role in the dynamics of change, nothing more. I still see no way to account for dynamic change in hylomorphism.
He claims to be championing physics over A-T, then he does *this* and demonstrates that he doesn't even *understand* the physics.
DeleteHe starts out with the equation
E = m * c^2
...then goes on to dimensional analysis, which he appears to be completely incompetent at. For some reason, he insists on using ugly imperial units. Having no convenient abbreviation for mass in such terms, he instead divides weight by acceleration. This being more complicated than the simple label "kg," he introduces opportunities for error.
To see why this is a problem, let's try the same "derivation" (lol) in metric.
We start with units of
kg*m^2/s^2 = kg*m^2/s^2
...and, as you can see, any attempt to leave one side with units of seconds is going to leave the other side in units of seconds as well, which is perfectly acceptable.
In fact, if he had taken the trouble to simplify his *imperial* expression, he would have found the same thing!
See, his initial expression was
ft*lb = lb*s^2/ft * (ft/s)^2
Which becomes
ft*lb = lb*s^2/ft * ft^2/s^2
Quick rearrangement:
ft*lb = ft^2/ft * lb * s^2/s^2
Which obviously simplifies to
ft*lb = ft*lb
Which is, as before, completely unobjectionable. In fact, whenever you use dimensional analysis on an equation, you're going to get the same units on both sides. That's why it's called an equation. The things are equal.
I'm also not sure where JT got "mass = time." Certainly it wasn't from Cogitator's prior post.
Cogitator's point appears to have been that "space" and "time" can't be defined in modern physics apart from extended ("expanded," in Cog's somewhat imprecise terminology) material processes. And, if that was indeed his point, Cogitator was entirely correct.
To see why, let's take a quick look at the monstrosity known as the Einstein Field Equations - a set of coupled, nonlinear partial differential equations. That's math-speak for "equations that are ridiculously hard to work with."
Sets of equations can sometimes be condensed into a single expression by using matrices, which is what is usually done for Einstein's field equations, and what I will be doing as well. So, without further ado, Einstein's field equation is:
[Rμν] - 0.5 R•[gμν] + Λ•[gμν] = (4*pi*G/c^4)•[Tμν]
Where [Rμν] is the Ricci curvature tensor (a 4x4 matrix), R is the scalar curvature, [gμν] is the metric tensor (another 4x4 matrix), Λ is the cosmological constant, G is the gravitational constant, c is the speed of light, and [Tμν] is the stress-energy tensor (yet another 4x4 matrix).
Don't worry if you don't get it. It makes use of some advanced mathematical devices that you couldn't have learned about outside of high level college/university courses. To put it in layman's terms, the EFE defines the spacetime geometry of an infinitesimally small region in terms of the energy, momentum, pressure, and shear stress in said region. In other words, spacetime is inseparable from particular material objects and processes (where, for our purposes, even a region of vacuum with a well defined energy density can be regarded as an "object").
Interestingly, this fits in well with the Scholastic notion that space and time may be regarded as "entia rationum, fundamentum in res" - beings of reason with a foundation in real things. Space and time, qua space and time, are mental constructs. However, they have a real basis - space in the extension/shape of material objects, time in the succession of their forms.
This gives us the answer to JT's objection, by the way. JT wanted to know how time enters into the A-T account of change. The answer is that it doesn't. Rather, *change* enters into the A-T theorist's account of *time,* and the very findings of physics that JT extolled so constantly, but knew so poorly, confirm that this is the proper way of going about things.
Not to interrupt this exchange, but I'd add one thing.
ReplyDeleteSo far, I see a lot of claims about how A-T doesn't make its case definitively, and "science" is the better way to understand the world, etc. The problem is that the A-T proponents I've read have fired back that science, in practice, makes tremendous (if often unspoken) use of A-T concepts and even relevant teleology alike. And I have to admit, they seem to have a very strong case there. And I see it coming up in this discussion too.
Trying to replace a broad aristotileanism with "science" seems similar to trying to replace aristotileanism with Aquinas. Maybe the reply can be "well, it's a particular view of science, or science given a particular metaphysics", but then science isn't the issue but the view/metaphysics, so...
There are a good many Catholic theologians brought up on and embracing 'much' of Thomism, but they are looking for alternate metaphysical schemes to get around Ari's hylo stuff.
ReplyDeleteIt is a situation somewhat akin to myths thst express very profound truths in ways that basically uphold the truths, and yet the myth stories are presentable to a not-too-involved general audience.
Surely the findings of modern scientific inquiry has surpassed hylo in explaining nature's ways.
Surely the findings of modern scientific inquiry has surpassed hylo in explaining nature's ways.
ReplyDeleteBut, again.. One response I've seen in other places - and that I see here - is that 'hylo' hasn't been surpassed, because what it's being squared against is reliant on A-T concepts (forms, and teleology, etc) anyway, whether or not people consciously or actively intend as much. And if it's true that a broad aristotileanism is unavoidable, then there's been no surpassing. If anything, that aristotilean view has been updated and expanded on.
Wondering what Codge thinks?
ReplyDeleteJT: "Surely the findings of modern scientific inquiry has surpassed hylo in explaining nature's ways."
ReplyDeleteThis is a pretty strong bias to bring to the table.
As far as I can tell, you argument against hylomorphism is that, since forms can't change, therefore form can't play any role in temporal processes, which, in turn, means hylomorphism has nothing but error to say about scientific inquiries. Is this accurate? I'm having an unusually hard time "getting my mind around" your objection and have done my best to address what I think it is in my previous comments. Help me out?
I should add, however, as a mild argumentum ad auctoritatem, that no less a philosopher than Patrick Suppes defends hylomorphism as a sound framework for standard model physical theorizing.
Cf. also
http://www.springerlink.com/content/1426836w55xp8u5n/
These web pages also provides numerous links to further reading from competent scholars on precisely where and why Aristhomism is not down for the count in scientific reasoning.
http://www.morec.com/nature.htm
and
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~aversa/scholastic/
and esp.
http://www.morec.com/natural.htm
Best,
Jime has posted a relevant piece in the Hitchens combox.
ReplyDeleteI have no argument, but just do not see how a hylo substance of two very fixed parts changes in time, because I do not see where time is situated in this system. I am a lot more aware of how science (phys, chem, bio) describes changes in things.
Transcendent purpose
ReplyDeletehttp://fora.tv/2010/01/27/Daniel_Pink_The_Surprising_Truth_About_What_Motivates_Us