Readers in
England might be interested to know that on February 14 I will be speaking at Blackfriars, Oxford University, as part
of the Blackfriars Aquinas Seminar. The
title of the talk is “Aquinas and the Immaterial Aspects of Thought.” Information about the Seminar can be found here.
Very busy trying to meet a couple of
deadlines and attend to some other matters at the moment, so posting may
be light for a week or so.
And since the principle of causality is the essential component of all reasoning about God, then one has completely undermined any knowledge that one can have about God. You cannot infer that all perfections are virtually present in God, for example, because that position depends upon the principle of proportionate causality in which the cause must be similar to the effect in the sense of containing the effect in a more perfect and higher mode of being (i.e. virtual or formal). That is because the cause in which the effect is either virtually or formally contained must itself by actual in order to be able to “give” the effect at all, and if actuality is not the same as “actuality”, then the latter is adrift without a governing principle.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, you cannot even say that a “cause” is similar to a cause, because this itself presupposes the principle of causality. After all, what is similar between a “cause” and a cause? Their partial identity is that they both produce effects. But this is only possible if the effects are pre-existent within the “cause” or cause in a formal or virtual mode of being in order for the “cause” or cause to “give” its effect. That is how Aquinas talks about causality and participation. And this can only occur if the pre-existent effects exist within a being in act, as per the principle of causality. And as you have said, “act” is not act, and thus is outside the purview of the principle of causality, including its ability to produce effects.
However, to say that God is a cause absolutely is to presuppose knowledge of his act, which is his very essence; and so we can't call him a cause in the standard sense. Now, given that we know that we're effects, that means that we're inferior to something else. That's how the world of effects works. But the cause-like thing of which we are effects is not bound by the same rules. Hence, we are inferior to it but it is not superior to us.
You keep sidestepping the key issue, which is how it makes sense to say that X is inferior to Y with necessarily saying that X is inferior to Y because Y is superior to X, and vice versa. I’m sure that you will agree that our ordinary and everyday meaning of “superior” and “inferior” are identical to what I have been saying. Presumably your claim is that these definitions change into something else when discussing transcendent reality. So, why don’t we keep things clear:
(1) X is inferior1 to Y iff Y is superior1 to X iff X and Y exist in an ordered hierarchy
(2) X is inferior2 to Y AND Y is not superior2 to X AND X and Y do not exist in an ordered hierarchy
(3) Inferiority1 is similar to inferiority2
My position is (1), which represents everyday and ordinary language, and your position is (2), which represents language that describes transcendent reality, and thus operates according to different rules. My argument is that (2) is incoherent, because there is no sense to saying that X is inferior2 to Y, but Y is not superior2 to X. I mean, what does “inferior2” even mean? It must mean that X is somehow less than Y in some sense, but it cannot mean that, because that would presuppose that X and Y are in an ordered hierarchy, which would reduce inferior2 to inferior1, and negate your position entirely. So, now you have to explain what “less than” means without referencing any ordered hierarchy. I don’t think any of this makes sense.
Here’s the equivalent of what you are trying to endorse:
(4) X is a square1 iff X has four sides
(5) X is a square2 iff X does not have four sides
(6) Square1 is similar to square2
How on earth could a square2 be similar to a square1, except in the most trivial sense. In that sense, a triangle is a square2, as is a circle, because they are all shapes, and so square2 just reduces to any geometric shape. But then why even call it a “square” at all?
Similarly, calling inferiority2 similar to inferiority1 is ludicrous. The latter makes sense, because it is grounded in our everyday language and experience of ordered hierarchies, which is where the term gets its meaning and sense. To detach it from an ordered hierarchy is to rob it of any sense, and is illicit, because you are trying to use its implication of “less than” without the ordered hierarchy in which such comparisons can possibly make sense. It is like saying that 3 is less than 4, but 4 is not more than 3. Even saying that this makes sense in a transcendent realm does not negate the point that it makes no sense in the realm that we actually operate in. If this is the conclusion of an argument, then I say it should serve as a reductio of that argument.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, while I cite Heidegger, Hart, Aquinas and the Church Fathers to support my argument, you continue to base yours on personal incredulity.
I did cite Aquinas who identifies similarity as partial identity and partial difference. And why on earth is Heidegger and Hart authorities here? The Church Fathers, fine.
The sun is an equivocal cause to which men are related not as "one quantity to another"--which would be incoherent--, but simply in the sense that "every relation of one thing to another is called proportion". This is how men are related to God.
First, the rest of the quote says: “in this sense there can be a proportion of the creature to God, inasmuch as it is related to Him as the effect of its cause, and as potentiality to its act”. So, creation is related to God as “the effect of its cause” and as “potentiality to its act”. Notice how Aquinas connects an effect with “its cause”. I don’t think it makes sense to say that the creature is an effect of “its cause”, and then deny that God is its cause, because clearly the creature could not exist without God’s causal intervention.
Second, this does not address my point at all. If God virtually and pre-eminently contains the standard, then creation is simply the imperfect exemplification and actualization of that standard. Our similarity to God rests upon this scheme of causality and participation in which God causes creation to be bound to God by virtue of causal participation in his esse divinum by esse commune as it is compounded to the essences contained within his intellect as perfect standards for those created entia. That is why creation is limited, i.e. the essences act as potencies that esse as actuality is poured into and restricted. As I mentioned in another context, act is limited by potency, in all contexts. The “relation” that you are talking about is the isomorphism between our esse commune and God’s esse divinum, as our very act of being and source of our causal power, as well as our essences that contain the perfect standard of our kind of ens within the divine intellect. Because we share these in common with God, albeit in a different way, we participate in God and can be caused by God, and are similar to God.
I think it should be kind of obvious that the relation is from metaphysics to supra-metaphysics, but not vice versa.
But a similarity relation between supra-metaphysics and metaphysics must have partial identity and partial difference, and it is the partial identity that is the problem, because if there is partial identity, then there is only metaphysics and ontology, and nothing transcendent or beyond it. And yet, without partial identity, there can be no similarity relationship either.
I was referring specifically to your claim that there is some two-way relation between God and creation. That was the "partial identity/partial difference equation" with which you replaced your earlier partial identity/partial difference equation.
ReplyDeleteSo, do you accept my account of similarity as necessarily involving partial identity and partial difference, i.e. X and Y are similar iff X is partially identical to Y AND X is partially different from Y? And if you don’t, then could you please provide your definition of similarity, i.e. X and Y are similar iff … ?
In the wider context of the article, which I just looked up, Aquinas makes it clear that he is referring to the analogy between beings and beings. The "one same thing" to which all of these beings refer is esse.
That is not the point. The point is that his construal of similarity involved in analogy involves partial identity and partial difference. And since this same idea is also endorsed by leading Thomists, I think I can presume that it is somewhat defensible. Furthermore, since there are no other versions of similarity that do not presuppose partial identity and partial difference, I’d say it’s pretty well established.
Again, Aquinas is not talking about God here. He's dealing with the relation between beings and beings, which hinges on the different-yet-unified appearances of esse. God does not have esse, and so you can't use this when discussing him.
God has all kinds of things that are partially identical between himself and creation, such as the pre-existent and virtual forms that become the essence component of all composite entia, and his esse divinum being shared and participated in by esse commune, which is the other component of all composite entia.
Then you have accepted the idea that there cannot be logical beings like "esse commune" or "non-being", since the res involved could never be separated from the modes of being in which it inheres--meaning that no universal version could be created.
Of course there can be. The esse commune that exists in all composite entia would have a modus significandi by which it presents itself to the human mind in a particular way during its abstracting activity.
No word can jump to creation without relaying through the mind, and no idea can jump to God without relaying through creation. Even logical beings only gain their meaning by referencing some created thing.
But if ideas can only refer to creation, then how can ideas refer to God? They cannot, which is just my point. Unless there is some way for our ideas to bypass creation and directly refer to God, then our ideas will always be about different aspects of creation, but never about anything beyond it.
That is not at all what it means.
Of course it does. The name must first be associated with mental content before it can be associated with a res significata.
That's understandable, given that it's false. A modus significandi is just a signification of the mode in which a res was found.
You keep minimizing this key part, i.e. “A modus significandi is just a signification of the mode in which a res was found” by a knowing mind. The modus significandi is the mode by which a thing is signified to a mind, which depends upon the modus intelligendi, which is how the mind understands the thing. It does not exist without interacting with a mind trying to know it. If there were no minds trying to know things, then there would only be modus essendi, i.e. the real thing as it exists in the world.
The correct formulation is that the mind must know some res Y in real-world mode X before it can abstract Y from X. After that, Y can be considered in separation from X. If that wasn't the case, then esse commune could not exist.
ReplyDeleteFine, but all of this has to be done according to how Y presents itself to the human mind in a distinctive and particular signification. Once Y has presented itself to the human mind according to its modus significandi, then the human mind can begin to engage in abstraction, composition and division in its judgments about Y.
In the case of God, all of our names are based on created res, which comes bundled with created modus by necessity.
Sure, because they are created res.
But every res has an analogy of proportion with God, even though it is unlike him in kind. There is nothing self-refuting about denying that a res fully encompasses God (denying the mode of being of every res) and then still saying that the res is like God via the analogy of proportion.
First, I don’t know what you mean by “fully encompasses God”. To me, “encompasses” means “comprehensively encircle and contain”, which certainly could never be done to God. So, I don’t see how a res can “fully encompass” God. Or maybe you mean something else?
Second, by denying the mode of being of a res, what you are left with is either nothing, an abstracted esse commune, or the abstracted essence.
Third, it is self-refuting if you can’t even say or think anything about the shared proportion that grounds the likeness relationship between God and creation.
You are still confusing Thomism with Platonism.
????
However, there is an analogy between our res and God. This has nothing to do with God and creation possessing a res in different modes, though, which would reduce analogies with God to the level of analogies with beings.
So, it is false that the essence in a composite ens is the same essence in the divine intellect, albeit in an actual mode in conjunction with esse commune in the former, and in a virtual pre-existent mode in the latter. Are you really going to reject this key part of Thomism by denying that there is a necessary isomorphism between the forms/essences contained in the divine intellect, the human intellect, and the composite entia in creation?
Basically, the only coherent option is that God "causes" being/goodness (res) in created things (modus). We deny that the created mode of every res defines God, but we acknowledge that the res has an analogy with him. That's how Aquinas's system works. It isn't a matter of completely removing every modus (which is impossible, since every knowable res is created), but merely of denying that the modus encompasses God.
First, the question still remains what the basis of this analogy between God and every res is supposed to involve. There must be something in common that is shared between God and every res, even if this something in common is manifested in different ways in God and in every res. That would be the partial identity and partial difference. If you want to reject this way of construing analogy and similarity – i.e. as partial identity and difference – then you must come up with an analogy that does not presuppose the necessity of some commonality between God and every res, and yet is still a similarity. Like I’ve been saying for months now, I don’t think this is possible, because it ultimately comes down to three options: everything in common, something in common, or nothing in common. You’ll have to pick one, because they are mutually exclusive.
Second, I think that the only coherent option is to say that we are lost. If we have a system in which something can transcend transcendence; can only be described in ways that necessarily contradict what it is; can have things inferior to it, but not be superior to them; can be a non-cause cause; can have something in common, but cannot have anything in common; and so on, then we are in a mess. Rather than saying that all of this confusion and incoherence must mean something important that is beyond our grasp, and to focus your life upon this maybe something, why not just admit that we lack the cognitive resources to crack this puzzle at this time?
ReplyDeleteI mean, if you start with a definition of a square, and then through a series of arguments end up with a “square” that is still a square, but not four-sided, then you’d quickly see that you have gone wrong somewhere. I see this whole affair as identical, because you start with terms that are fairly clearly defined, and then end up with bizarre conclusions that contradict the prima facie meaning of the original terms, and rather than conclude that things have gone wrong, you see profundity and depth that transcends the limited truths of our mind.
Your case for there being a common relation between God and creation thus far comes down to multiple arguments from personal incredulity and a handful of out-of-context Aquinas quotes.
No, it actually comes down to the fact that your argument ends up contradicting the original terms of the argument in question, and thus ending in meaninglessness.
As Denys says, God is prior to every denial and assertion.
And yet this is unsayable. So how are you saying it in a meaningful way?
When I say that there are no absolute statements about God, I am saying that there are no statements about God that do not cash out as either A) analogous, B) metaphorical or C) completely false.
So, you have three options:
(A) “There are no absolute statements about God” is an analogy
(B) “There are no absolute statements about God” is a metaphor
(C) “There are no absolute statements about God” is false
If (A), then what is the analogy? If (B), then what is the metaphor? If (C), then why should I accept it?
The statement that there are no absolute statements about God is not self-refuting for two reasons. First, it is not actually about God: it is about statements about God.
It is a statement about God. It is a statement that means that God is beyond linguistic meaning. You are not just saying that one cannot construct sentences in a language that make absolute statements about God, but are saying that one cannot do so, because God is transcendent beyond language and its limitations. And the problem is that you have said that this cannot be said, and so there is absolutely no basis to your prohibition whatsoever, making it arbitrary. And if there is an explanation, then it must falsify your prohibition.
Second, the "God" named in this statement is an idol, since every discussion of God is based on analogies from his effects. Hence, on closer examination, the statement "there are no absolute statements about God" deconstructs itself into yet another analogy for God, which simultaneously reveals the impossibility of making an absolute statement about him.
ReplyDeleteAny analogy from his effects must be based upon some principles that justify the inference from effects to something. The only principles that you can use are the principle of causality and the principle of proportionate causality. But the problem is that these principles only work for composite causes and effects, which are what we encounter and interact with, and thus are the very basis for these principles at all. That is why God cannot be a cause, but rather must be a non-cause “cause”, i.e. because the only causes that count under those principles are composite causes. But, if God is a non-cause, then he is outside the purview of these principles, and thus they cannot guide one’s reasoning about God at all. And without these principles, then what are the “rules” that you are using here?
And this just repeats the very problems that I’ve raised about our thoughts’ ability to refer to God. If our thought content necessarily involves composition, and if composite thoughts can only refer to composite entities, then we have no way to refer to metaphysically simple entities, including via negation. You haven’t answered any of my arguments for this position (unless I’ve missed them). Again, negating the composite content of our thoughts can either result in simple content of our minds, another composite content of our thoughts, or an empty thought. A simple content in our thoughts is impossible, because it would follow that God himself was in our thoughts. Another composite content in our thoughts would not refer to God, because it would only refer to another composite res as an idol of thought, and not God at all. An empty thought would not refer to anything at all, because intentionality requires thought. So, there is no way for our language to ever reach God, and all we can talk about is creation. And even if creation pointed to God, there is no way to think or say this.
This is mostly true, but, as I just said to dguller, I would say that your statement was about effects rather than about God himself. A better way to phrase it, I think, would be "you will not be saved unless your soul is imparted with grace by God". Aquinas himself writes in the ST that "it is better to say that such things cannot be done, than that God cannot do them."
But the context of that quote is divine omnipotence and whether God can do what is logically impossible. The impossible is not an effect at all, because it is incoherent and not genuinely possible. That is why “it is better to say that such things cannot be done”. It is not a real limitation upon God’s power, because the logically impossible is a confusion of words that do not represent anything really possible or actual.
Exactly. It is “witnessed in the real world”, which means that the being must be presented to a witness’s mind in some way in order for the witness to be able to perceive and understand it at all. All your accounts keep making reference to the res being presented to a mind in some way.
ReplyDeleteThat's because it is. The res is contained within the modus. When you see one, you see the other. When you take one into your mind, you take the other. Once they're there, you can abstract the res from its initial modus. Otherwise, there couldn't even be such a thing as the res "health", because we could only know its singular appearances in "healthy cow" or "healthy human".
You still seem to be thinking about this in completely the wrong way--something like post-modern Platonism, maybe.
I never said it had to be a “property”, but there must be something in common between the two, or else you do not have similarity at all, but rather total difference.
An analogy of proportion is a kind of similarity. Anything that is said to be inferior may, by that same turn, be said to be similar to the thing to which it is inferior. I already hashed this out earlier.
Isn’t that what I’ve been saying? An “epistemological problem” is a problem, because if your own theory makes it impossible for one to know that theory at all, then it is impossible to meaningfully talk about that theory, which means that all your writings about it are meaningless, which completely undermines the theory itself. This is not some small problem that can be brushed aside, unlike the serious ontological issues.
The thing is that the epistemological problems don't undermine the system. You keep insisting that they do, but your arguments to this effect are still based on double-grounding or just plain misinterpretation (as with the res and modus) of what Aquinas said.
I don’t see why this would follow. Just because we cannot account for change does not make it impossible.
Logically, change would become impossible. The non-existence of the Unmoved Mover would show that act/potency were ungrounded, and thus were logically incoherent. As a result, we would have to jump onto the Parmenidean bandwagon and deny the existence of all change.
I’m going to assume that when you say “partial similarity”, you mean “partial identity”. I also assume that when you say that “inferiority” is identical in both God and creation, it is probably present in God in a virtual mode of being and in creation is either an actual or potential mode of being.
Not at all. If any X is inferior to some Y, then X must also be in some way similar to Y; otherwise, it could not be called inferior, but would rather be compared only by equivocation.
But if none of these fundamental principles can be applied to God, then God would be outside the principle of causality altogether, because the principle of causality necessarily covers orderly hierarchies involving act-potency, perfect-imperfect, cause-effect, and so on.
All the principle of causality dictates is that no effect can be self-grounding. A self-grounding effect would violate the law of non-contradiction, since every effect is built on potency or non-being, neither of which can cause anything.
In fact, as you have admitted, he could not count as an act at all, and thus could not be held to be a cause of anything, because all causes exist in actuality in order to change potency to act, as per the principle of causality, and since he is neither cause nor act, he cannot change potency to act.
ReplyDeleteYou've equivocated, here. For Thomism and Platonism, the less definite something is, the more universal and powerful it is. Thus, the least definite thing will be the least limited and the most powerful. Further, to the extent that all act imitates God by way of the analogy of proportion, we must say that act is like God and thus that causes are like God. I don't see why this prevents God from "causing" anything.
And if he cannot change potency to act, then he cannot be a cause of anything, again, which you have admitted.
I admitted that he cannot be the cause of anything in any univocal sense. I never said that nothing resulted from God, which would be an absurd position given the Five Ways.
I’m sure that you’d find arguments from authority and tradition just as convincing to support the validity of Hinduism, which has been around much longer than Christianity.
And I would take them seriously. It's pure arrogance to think that you've found some magical hole in positions thousands of years old, particularly when it seems like your finding is original. If I thought I found a contradiction in a Hindu doctrine, but someone told me that it had never been challenged along those lines for 1,000 years, I would seriously reconsider my position before pushing forward. To do otherwise is to suppose that one surpasses the collective genius of countless generations of brilliant theologians and philosophers.
And remember: arguments from authority are not technically fallacious; just weak.
I don’t think so. I’ve only accepted the proposition that we do not know why anything exists. After all, not knowing why X exists does not necessarily imply that X does not exist.
By denying the Third Way, you most definitely admit that nothing exists. If everything is contingent and mutable (prone to non-existence), then, given enough time, there will be a certain configuration in which nothing exists. But nothing cannot generate anything, and so if there were ever a time when nothing existed, then nothing would exist now. Since the definition of "time" in this argument is based merely on change, it applies even pre-Big Bang.
1. Everything is prone to non-existence.
2. Given enough changes, there will be a configuration in which nothing exists.
3. Therefore, nothing exists now.
This is a fairly obvious modus tollens.
But, since you have said that God transcends all orderly hierarchies, and is “above negation”, it must follow that any analysis involving act and potency cannot be applied to him, including the one involving pure actuality and impassibility, which means that you cannot even conclude that he is impassible.
You've equivocated again. Impassibility is not the logical opposite of passibility. Impassibility is what happens when someone is completely devoid of passibility. It is not a positive statement about some property possessed by an entity.
But it must produce effects by being actual.
ReplyDeleteNope. The principle of causality dictates that no potency can be self-grounding. Whether its cause is act or whether its "cause" is "act" (analogically) is irrelevant to the underlying metaphysics.
(1) X is a cause iff X is actual iff the principle of causality applies to X
(2) If X and Y are such that X is superior to Y and Y is inferior to X, then X and Y exist in an ordered hierarchy
(3) Act is superior to potency and potency is inferior to act
(4) Thus, actuality is part of an ordered hierarchy (by (2), (3))
(5) God is beyond all ordered hierarchies (= divine transcendence)
(6) Thus, God is beyond the ordered hierarchy between act and potency (by (4), (5))
(7) Thus, God cannot be called either act or potency
(8) Thus, God is not actual (by (7))
(9) Thus, God is not a cause (by (1), (8))
(10) Thus, the principle of causality cannot apply to God (by (1), (9))
(1) is false, and so your entire argument is invalid. Something is a cause or "cause" if it produces effects. That is the definition of the word cause, whether we apply it to God or creation. We call God a "cause" because there exist effects that cannot be produced by creation: they must be grounded beyond it. However, unlike a normal cause, we cannot say that God is actual except by analogy. That is, actual things are like God, but not vice versa.
(1) X is inferior1 to Y iff Y is superior1 to X iff X and Y exist in an ordered hierarchy
(2) X is inferior2 to Y AND Y is not superior2 to X AND X and Y do not exist in an ordered hierarchy
(3) Inferiority1 is similar to inferiority2
This is not what I'm saying. There is only one kind of inferiority and one kind of superiority. The difference is that double-groundings in creation are acceptable, while double-groundings between creation and God are not.
So, now you have to explain what “less than” means without referencing any ordered hierarchy.
Anything that is caused must be said to be less than its cause, because otherwise you have a logical contradiction. Now, we know that creation is an effect that nothing in creation can ground. Hence, we must say that creation was caused in some sense, since there cannot be a self-grounding effect on pains of contradiction. Whatever "caused" creation (cash this out as "whatever is not creation") cannot be inferior to creation, since creation, as an effect, must be inferior to it. Again, though, if something is inferior to something else, then there must be a kind of likeness. Otherwise, there is only equivocation and nothing is inferior at all. That also means that nothing can be said to be caused, because there cannot be a cause related only equivocally to its effect. (Aquinas refers to analogical causes as equivocal causes, but this does not mean the same thing.)
This is what it means for something to be inferior without a superior.
ReplyDeleteI did cite Aquinas who identifies similarity as partial identity and partial difference. And why on earth is Heidegger and Hart authorities here? The Church Fathers, fine.
Aquinas does not say that God is partially identical to creation. He denies this at every turn. Further, I cited Heidegger to support the conclusion that whatever grounds creation cannot be grounded by creation--and Hart for the various discussions of analogy.
First, the rest of the quote says: “in this sense there can be a proportion of the creature to God, inasmuch as it is related to Him as the effect of its cause, and as potentiality to its act”. So, creation is related to God as “the effect of its cause” and as “potentiality to its act”. Notice how Aquinas connects an effect with “its cause”. I don’t think it makes sense to say that the creature is an effect of “its cause”, and then deny that God is its cause, because clearly the creature could not exist without God’s causal intervention.
And yet, in DP 3:3, he openly denies that God causes anything in the univocal sense. The language of the ST is loaded with analogy--he takes it for granted that his readers will understand what he's saying. When he refers to God as a cause, what he means is that creation is an effect.
The “relation” that you are talking about is the isomorphism between our esse commune and God’s esse divinum, as our very act of being and source of our causal power, as well as our essences that contain the perfect standard of our kind of ens within the divine intellect. Because we share these in common with God, albeit in a different way, we participate in God and can be caused by God, and are similar to God.
God is neither essence nor existence, and so we could not possibly share that in common with him. Our relation to God is one-way. He is totally unlike us, even though we are like him. To say that God is the exemplar of goodness is to say that goodness is inferior to God, which means that it must in some way be similar to him. It is not to say that God is the perfect instantiation of goodness against which all others are judged, which proposes to comment on God's unknowable being.
But a similarity relation between supra-metaphysics and metaphysics must have partial identity and partial difference, and it is the partial identity that is the problem, because if there is partial identity, then there is only metaphysics and ontology,
First, your claims of partial identity and partial difference are based on comments Aquinas made in relation to creation. He wasn't talking about God. Second, we are similar to God in that we are inferior to him. Likewise, metaphysics are inferior to "supra-metaphysics". This means that metaphysics are in some sense like supra-metaphysics, just as it means we are in some sense like God.
So, do you accept my account of similarity as necessarily involving partial identity and partial difference, i.e. X and Y are similar iff X is partially identical to Y AND X is partially different from Y?
Aquinas used that definition while discussing creation. When he refers to God, he reverts to the language I've been using here: X is similar to Y if X is inferior to Y. In the case of analogies between creation and God, the "if" would be an "iff".
That is not the point. The point is that his construal of similarity involved in analogy involves partial identity and partial difference. And since this same idea is also endorsed by leading Thomists, I think I can presume that it is somewhat defensible. Furthermore, since there are no other versions of similarity that do not presuppose partial identity and partial difference, I’d say it’s pretty well established.
ReplyDeleteConsidering that Aquinas and all of the Church Fathers deny that God is similar to creation, I think you're on pretty shaky ground. Also, leading Thomists (like Maritain) used Cajetan as a main source until very recently, and the stink of his work is heavy even on the modern Thomist scholarship that rejects him. My account is the only one that reconciles Aquinas with himself and tradition and even basic logic. Yours ends in double-grounding, incoherence and contradiction.
God has all kinds of things that are partially identical between himself and creation, such as the pre-existent and virtual forms that become the essence component of all composite entia, and his esse divinum being shared and participated in by esse commune, which is the other component of all composite entia.
Nothing of esse divinum is shared with esse commune, except in the loosest terms. Further, the discussion of virtualities in God is just an analogy. God is not a cause in the univocal sense, and so he cannot have virtualities in the univocal sense. This does not mean that all good doesn't pre-exist in him; just that it doesn't pre-exist in him in the "partially identical" way you're imagining.
But if ideas can only refer to creation, then how can ideas refer to God? They cannot, which is just my point. Unless there is some way for our ideas to bypass creation and directly refer to God, then our ideas will always be about different aspects of creation, but never about anything beyond it.
They refer to aspects of creation that refer to God.
Of course it does. The name must first be associated with mental content before it can be associated with a res significata.
Every res is mental content no less than is every modus. Your confusion on this issue is starting to drive me insane.
You keep minimizing this key part, i.e. “A modus significandi is just a signification of the mode in which a res was found” by a knowing mind. The modus significandi is the mode by which a thing is signified to a mind, which depends upon the modus intelligendi, which is how the mind understands the thing.
A modus significandi is not the mode by which something is signified to a mind. That makes no sense. It is the mode of being that one signifies alongside a res.
Think of it like this. I see an instance of horse-health. Health is the res and its mode of existence as horse-health is the mode of being. When I hereafter refer to horse-health, health will be the res significata and its mode of being in the horse will be the modus significandi--the mode signified. That's all the res and modus system means.
However, when I witness horse-health, I am capable to abstracting the res "health" and considering it in itself. If I ever name it, though, it will take on a different modus based on the collection I have in my intellect. For example, it might take on the modus of a "subsisting thing", as we when refer to "healthiness". This is the res "health" in the modus "subsisting thing", which is a thing that exists of itself and not in the mode of a creature. Or I might refer to the health that is contained in medicine. Or whatever.
Fine, but all of this has to be done according to how Y presents itself to the human mind in a distinctive and particular signification. Once Y has presented itself to the human mind according to its modus significandi, then the human mind can begin to engage in abstraction, composition and division in its judgments about Y.
ReplyDeleteSure, but this is no different than the system in place for differentiating singular entities from universal essences.
First, I don’t know what you mean by “fully encompasses God”. To me, “encompasses” means “comprehensively encircle and contain”, which certainly could never be done to God. So, I don’t see how a res can “fully encompass” God. Or maybe you mean something else?
I mean that no res can refer to God absolutely rather than analogically.
Second, by denying the mode of being of a res, what you are left with is either nothing, an abstracted esse commune, or the abstracted essence.
None of the above. I am left with the res in itself. Just like esse commune, every res is just a logical being in the mind.
Third, it is self-refuting if you can’t even say or think anything about the shared proportion that grounds the likeness relationship between God and creation.
There is no shared proportion between God and creation. There is a one-way proportion.
So, it is false that the essence in a composite ens is the same essence in the divine intellect, albeit in an actual mode in conjunction with esse commune in the former, and in a virtual pre-existent mode in the latter. Are you really going to reject this key part of Thomism by denying that there is a necessary isomorphism between the forms/essences contained in the divine intellect, the human intellect, and the composite entia in creation?
I never rejected the actual Thomist belief--just a misinterpretation of it. The divine intellect is itself an analogy. To say that God contains all things in his intellect is to say that God is God: wholly complete, lacking nothing, the measure of all things. There is no such thing as the divine intellect in absolute terms, because this would invite composition. Hence Aquinas says that God's intellect is his own being which is his own action.
First, the question still remains what the basis of this analogy between God and every res is supposed to involve. There must be something in common that is shared between God and every res, even if this something in common is manifested in different ways in God and in every res.
There is nothing in common between them, except that every res is inferior to God. Nothing at all is shared between God and creation. Otherwise, for the millionth time, we would have a double-grounding.
Second, I think that the only coherent option is to say that we are lost. If we have a system in which something can transcend transcendence; can only be described in ways that necessarily contradict what it is; can have things inferior to it, but not be superior to them; can be a non-cause cause; can have something in common, but cannot have anything in common; and so on, then we are in a mess. Rather than saying that all of this confusion and incoherence must mean something important that is beyond our grasp, and to focus your life upon this maybe something, why not just admit that we lack the cognitive resources to crack this puzzle at this time?
There is no puzzle to crack. All of our metaphysics are grounded in something that is beyond them, and so it's a necessary consequence that our metaphysical terms will be scrambled when we try to apply them to that ground. Thomism, like all traditional Christian thought, is built on a foundation of mysticism. The attempt to totalize everything, including the ground of metaphysics, into one giant metaphysical picture is a decidedly modern, post-Scotist endeavor--one that leads to incoherence and onto-theology.
I mean, if you start with a definition of a square, and then through a series of arguments end up with a “square” that is still a square, but not four-sided, then you’d quickly see that you have gone wrong somewhere. I see this whole affair as identical, because you start with terms that are fairly clearly defined, and then end up with bizarre conclusions that contradict the prima facie meaning of the original terms, and rather than conclude that things have gone wrong, you see profundity and depth that transcends the limited truths of our mind.
ReplyDeleteYour example cannot be identical, because the idea of a four-sided square leading to a square that is not four-sided is comparing the ontic to the ontic. There are no examples equivalent to the case at hand, because even that four-sided square has to be grounded in God. Any example you come up with, in fact, will always already have to be grounded in God.
Any analogy from his effects must be based upon some principles that justify the inference from effects to something. The only principles that you can use are the principle of causality and the principle of proportionate causality. But the problem is that these principles only work for composite causes and effects, which are what we encounter and interact with, and thus are the very basis for these principles at all.
You seem to be thinking about the principle of causality as a kind of "useful fiction" that we invented to describe creation. (Even if you aren't, you've slipped into that language.) That isn't the case, though. We know that no effect can be self-grounding. Hence, any appeal to self-grounding effects is an appeal to contradiction. We reason to God, in a sense, through several modus tollens arguments.
And this just repeats the very problems that I’ve raised about our thoughts’ ability to refer to God. If our thought content necessarily involves composition, and if composite thoughts can only refer to composite entities, then we have no way to refer to metaphysically simple entities, including via negation.
As Aquinas says, we know simple entities by knowing forms. The problem is that forms are not subsisting or unlimited, despite their simplicity.
Again, negating the composite content of our thoughts can either result in simple content of our minds, another composite content of our thoughts, or an empty thought. A simple content in our thoughts is impossible, because it would follow that God himself was in our thoughts.
There is a difference between "simple" and "absolutely simple". We know all kinds of simple stuff--just nothing that is absolutely simple, which is to say wholly without any properties.
So, there is no way for our language to ever reach God, and all we can talk about is creation. And even if creation pointed to God, there is no way to think or say this.
We think and say it from the knowledge that every effect is inferior to and related to its cause or ground.
Rank:
ReplyDeleteThat's because it is. The res is contained within the modus. When you see one, you see the other. When you take one into your mind, you take the other. Once they're there, you can abstract the res from its initial modus. Otherwise, there couldn't even be such a thing as the res "health", because we could only know its singular appearances in "healthy cow" or "healthy human".
You have it wrong, and have confused different modi. As Rocca writes: “a physical noise (vox) becomes a word (dictio) and a part of speech (pars orationis) by possessing a determinate manner of signifying (modus significandi) within the language, but the manner of signifying is directly conditioned by the human manner of understanding (modus intelligendi), which is itself representative of the various categories and modes of real being (modus essendi)” (p. 338) and that “Aquinas certainly recognizes the triad of modus essendi, modus intelligendi, and modus significandi” (p. 339). The modus significandi is the semantic and linguistic sense of a term (dictio) within human language, which is itself rooted in how the res significata is presented to the human understanding in a particular modus intelligendi.
You still seem to be thinking about this in completely the wrong way--something like post-modern Platonism, maybe.
No, I’m thinking of it the way a medieval thinker would think about it, according to their contemporary theories of grammar and language.
An analogy of proportion is a kind of similarity. Anything that is said to be inferior may, by that same turn, be said to be similar to the thing to which it is inferior. I already hashed this out earlier.
The only way for one to say that X is inferior to Y is if X and Y exist in an ordered hierarchy according to some standard. Aquinas writes that “"more" and "less" are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum” (ST 1.2.3). There must be a standard (i.e. “the maximum”) according to which the ordered hierarchy is measured. Even if Y is the standard itself, then X would have to be an imperfect exemplification of Y. And in that case, what X and Y have in common is the degree to which they exemplify Y. X exemplifies Y imperfectly, and Y exemplifies Y perfectly, because Y is completely identical to Y. So, inferiority only makes sense according to an ordered hierarchy according to some standard, and whether the inferior X is relative to the standard itself (i.e. “the maximum”) or something else being compared to the standard, there must be a hierarchy involved.
The thing is that the epistemological problems don't undermine the system. You keep insisting that they do, but your arguments to this effect are still based on double-grounding or just plain misinterpretation (as with the res and modus) of what Aquinas said.
The epistemological problems do undermine the system. If you are talking about the system, then it must be possible to talk about the system. If it is impossible to talk about the system, then you cannot be talking about the system. And if you cannot talk about the system, then you cannot reason about it, describe it, analyze it, and so on. As I said, it would be like a scientific theory inferring that human beings could not possibly exist. That would falsify the theory immediately, because the fact that we exist falsifies it. Similarly, if your theory implies that you cannot talk about the theory, then the fact that you are talking about the theory falsifies the theory.
Logically, change would become impossible. The non-existence of the Unmoved Mover would show that act/potency were ungrounded, and thus were logically incoherent. As a result, we would have to jump onto the Parmenidean bandwagon and deny the existence of all change.
ReplyDeleteFirst, why would ignorance lead to ontological impossibility? If a contradiction is found in any theory that purports to explain reality, then reality does not implode into nothingness. The theory is treated as inadequate, and alternatives are examined, if any are available.
Second, the sticking point that unravels the Five Ways is divine transcendence. If God transcends all kinds of ordered hierarchies, then he must transcend the principle of causality, which is saturated by ordered hierarchies. And if he transcends the principle of causality, then we cannot use it to know anything about him. However, if it applies to him, then we can certainly reason about him. So, if the Unmoved Mover, or Pure Act, were a kind of actuality, and not “actuality”, then everything would be fine, because that Unmoved Mover sits firmly and appropriately within the principle of causality.
Not at all. If any X is inferior to some Y, then X must also be in some way similar to Y; otherwise, it could not be called inferior, but would rather be compared only by equivocation.
What is the difference between “partially similar” and “partially different”?
All the principle of causality dictates is that no effect can be self-grounding. A self-grounding effect would violate the law of non-contradiction, since every effect is built on potency or non-being, neither of which can cause anything.
First, Aquinas would say that nothing, i.e. neither causes nor effects, can be self-grounded.
Second, let’s unpack this a little. If the principle of causality states that no effect can be self-grounding, then that implies that all effects must be other-grounded. I presume that if X grounds Y, then X is a cause of Y, and if Y is grounded by X, then Y is an effect of X. And that means that for any effect, there must be a cause of that effect, and the cause is not identical to the effect. And since every effect is a transition from potency to act (or the “transition” from non-being to act), then every cause must be in act to cause the transition. And that would get us to Pure Act and an Unmoved Mover, for example.
The problem is when you insist that God must transcend all ordered hierarchies. That must mean that nothing associated with ordered hierarchies can be predicated of God, and that must include cause-effect, perfection-imperfection, act-potency, and so on. These all are examples of ordered hierarchies in which there is a higher and a lower ordering involved. If God transcends the act-potency distinction, then God cannot have act predicated of him, because he is beyond actuality. And if God cannot have act predicated of him, then he cannot ground anything, because only that which is in act can be a cause or ground.
You've equivocated, here. For Thomism and Platonism, the less definite something is, the more universal and powerful it is. Thus, the least definite thing will be the least limited and the most powerful.
But since God transcends all ordered hierarchies, it follows that we cannot say that he is “least definite”, “least limited” and “more powerful”. None of this has anything to do with God, and only with what exists as part of an ordered hierarchy.
Further, to the extent that all act imitates God by way of the analogy of proportion, we must say that act is like God and thus that causes are like God.
ReplyDeleteBut remember that likeness, imitation, and similarity derive their sense in Thomism from the metaphysics of participation and efficiency causality.
Say you have a cause C and an effect E. To say that C causes E means that something X is passed from C to E. X exists in a particular mode of being in C (i.e. X-in-C) and X exists in a particular mode of being in E (i.e. X-in-E). If X-in-C is identical to X-in-E, then C is a univocal cause. If X-in-C is similar to X-in-E, then C is an equivocal or analogical cause. Notice that in the similarity relation, there is partial identity (i.e. X) and partial difference (i.e. X-in-C versus X-in-E). Also notice that for causation to be possible at all, there must be a common X that is shared by both C and E. Participation is involved in this account, because E is said to participate in C by virtue of their mutual possession of X, but X exists primariy and more perfect mode of being as X-in-C, and X exists in a secondary and less perfect mode of being in X-in-E. As he writes: “To pre-exist virtually in the efficient cause is to pre-exist not in a more imperfect, but in a more perfect way” (ST 1.4.2). That is one of the reasons why an effect is inferior to a cause, i.e. the effect is a less perfect instantiation of X than the cause.
What this account implies is that the reason why we can make inferences from effects to causes is the similarity that must exist between effects and causes, and the similarity in question necessarily involves X-in-C and X-in-E. As he writes: "The perfection and form of an effect consist in a certain likeness to the agent, since every agent makes its like” (ST 1.6.1). In other words, because we know X-in-E, we can infer that the X-in-E must have come from C, which must have possessed X as X-in-C. Without this framework, it is impossible to make any inferences from effects to causes. And that is what Aquinas means when he writes that “whatever is said of God and creatures, is said according to the relation of a creature to God as its principle and cause, wherein all perfections of things pre-exist excellently” (ST 1.13.5). Because creation is the effect of God, and all effects are similar to their causes, because the causes contain the effects either formally or virtually, it follows that creation is similar to God. But this argument is only possible on the basis of the above framework. Without the metaphysics of participation, you cannot make any sense of saying that an effect is similar to a cause, and thus creation must be similar to God, and that underlying similarity is the root of all analogy of proportion between creation and God.
The problem is that this account opens the door to a univocal relationship between God and creation. After all, if God is C and creation is E, then God must virtually possess X, which he gives to creation, and thus the X is a commonality between God and creation. But given divine transcendence, it is impossible for God to have an X in common with creation, and yet without X in common, there is no account of the similarity between God and creation, which undermines the doctrine of analogy. So, to preserve transcendence, one destroys analogy and similarity. Furthermore, if you insist that God transcends all ordered hierarchies involving higher and lower, then God must transcend the above framework altogether. And if he transcends this framework, then it cannot be applicable to God at all. And if it cannot be applied to God, then we cannot say that creation as effect is similar to God as its cause, because that claim only makes sense within the above framework. And thus, you have eliminated any way to infer anything about God from his created effects.
I admitted that he cannot be the cause of anything in any univocal sense. I never said that nothing resulted from God, which would be an absurd position given the Five Ways.
ReplyDeleteBut to say that God is the cause of creation even in an analogical sense implies an underlying similarity, which implies that creation exists within God in a pre-existent and virtual fashion, which is the only way for God to cause creation, and thus ground the underlying similarity between them.
And I would take them seriously. It's pure arrogance to think that you've found some magical hole in positions thousands of years old, particularly when it seems like your finding is original. If I thought I found a contradiction in a Hindu doctrine, but someone told me that it had never been challenged along those lines for 1,000 years, I would seriously reconsider my position before pushing forward. To do otherwise is to suppose that one surpasses the collective genius of countless generations of brilliant theologians and philosophers.
As I told you in a previous exchange, Aquinas lived 1,500 years after Aristotle, and yet he never shied away from poking holes in his theory, and he also never shied away from criticizing his Christian forebears where he thought they were wrong. The fact that I never heard you say that Aquinas should not have offered criticisms of Aristotle, given the authority and duration of his positions means that this objection is not a good one at all. And the bottom line is that I have been seriously considering my position. I have read over a dozen books on this subject, and am still reading and debating it. Believe me, I’m happy to discard positions if they become untenable, but thus far, some of your responses have not been persuasive to me. Others were very persuasive.
By denying the Third Way, you most definitely admit that nothing exists. If everything is contingent and mutable (prone to non-existence), then, given enough time, there will be a certain configuration in which nothing exists. But nothing cannot generate anything, and so if there were ever a time when nothing existed, then nothing would exist now. Since the definition of "time" in this argument is based merely on change, it applies even pre-Big Bang.
A configuration of what?
You've equivocated again. Impassibility is not the logical opposite of passibility. Impassibility is what happens when someone is completely devoid of passibility. It is not a positive statement about some property possessed by an entity.
You completely missed the point, which was that if you want to say that God transcends the act-potency distinction, then it cannot apply to him, and thus all the divine properties that are inferred on the basis of that distinction also cannot apply to him. And even saying that actuality is like God implies the metaphysics of efficient causality and participation, which itself presupposes ordered hierarchies. And if God transcends all ordered hierarchies, then the metaphysics of efficient causality and participation cannot be applicable to him, and thus you cannot even say that creation is like God at all, because the underlying likeness is rooted in what is passed to the effect from the cause, which undermines the entire system.
Nope. The principle of causality dictates that no potency can be self-grounding. Whether its cause is act or whether its "cause" is "act" (analogically) is irrelevant to the underlying metaphysics.
ReplyDeleteAs I explained above, saying that “no potency can be self-grounding” is the logical equivalent of “every potency must be grounded by another". And furthermore, the “another” that grounds the potency must be in act. As Aquinas says, “potency does not raise itself to act; it must be raised to act by something that is in act” (SCG 1.16.3). And yes, I know that Aquinas says that being is “the actuality of all acts, and therefore the perfection of all perfections” (DP 7.2), but he bases this very conclusion upon the premise that “act is always more perfect than potentiality” (DP 7.2). (He also writes that “the first active principle must needs be most actual, and therefore most perfect; for a thing is perfect in proportion to its state of actuality, because we call that perfect which lacks nothing of the mode of its perfection” (ST 1.4.1), which means that the degree of X’s perfection is correlative to the degree of X’s actuality.) And since God is supposed to transcend all ordered hierarchies, and the act-potency dichotomy is an ordered hierarchy, it follows that God transcends act and potency, and thus God cannot be “the actuality of all acts” at all. He cannot be an “actuality” of anything at all! This would be yet another idol, according to you. Again, if God transcends the principle of causality, then it cannot be used to infer anything about him. And you should be satisfied by this conclusion, because the principle itself is nothing but a part of creation, and thus is necessarily infinitely removed from the transcendence of God.
Something is a cause or "cause" if it produces effects. That is the definition of the word cause, whether we apply it to God or creation.
And in order for a cause (or “cause”) to produce effects, those effects must pre-exist formally or virtually within the cause (or “cause”). Otherwise, it is impossible to account for causality at all. And if those effects pre-exist virtually within the cause (or “cause”), then they are more perfect and higher than the effects themselves. As he writes: “To pre-exist virtually in the efficient cause is to pre-exist not in a more imperfect, but in a more perfect way” (ST 1.4.2). But that would involve an ordered hierarchy, which is impossible to associate with God, and thus this entire account is excluded from applying to God at all. But without this account, there is no sense to saying that creation is an effect of God. You cannot even call it an effect at all, because to be an effect, it must be an effect of a cause, i.e. be grounded in something else in act, and to have a cause (or ground) is to be involved in an ordered hierarchy in which a cause is higher than an effect, act is higher than potency, perfection is higher than imperfection, and so on. Again, no hierarchy, no causality. And no causality, no effect.
We call God a "cause" because there exist effects that cannot be produced by creation: they must be grounded beyond it. However, unlike a normal cause, we cannot say that God is actual except by analogy. That is, actual things are like God, but not vice versa.
ReplyDeleteYou keep wanting to have it both ways. You want to say affirmative things about God, and then take them back, leaving nothing behind, but pretending that there is still something there. All that we can conclude is that “there exist effects that cannot be produced by creation”. According to you, it does not follow that we can infer anything about the cause of creation, because it literally makes no sense to say “the cause of creation”, because that would imply a relationship from the cause of creation to creation itself, which is impossible, because only creation can have a relation to its cause, and not vice versa. So, again, I’ll accept your conclusion, but if you want to be consistent, then you cannot say anything about the cause of creation. All you can do is point to the inadequacy of creation as an explanation of itself. You cannot point anywhere else, and so must stop there.
You cannot even say that the cause of creation must be unlimited, non-material, non-composite, non-potential, non-actual, non-cause, non-effect, non-imperfect, non-passible, and so on, because all of these negations must be predicated of something that grounds all that is limited, composite, potential, actual, imperfect, passible, and so on. Once you eliminate the underlying referent that these negations point to as the source of all effects of creation, then you just have creation and nothing else. In fact, you don’t even have effects at all, because part of the very meaning of “effect” is to be an effect of a cause. Saying that the cause of the effect is not a cause at all is as much of a contradiction as saying that a thing in potency causes itself to transition to actuality.
This is not what I'm saying. There is only one kind of inferiority and one kind of superiority. The difference is that double-groundings in creation are acceptable, while double-groundings between creation and God are not.
The problem is that inferiority only makes sense relative to superiority, i.e. within an ordered hierarchy according to some standard by which things in the ordered hierarchy are measured. You want to keep the sense of inferiority but dislodge it from an ordered hierarchy, which is like wanting to keep the definition of squareness but dislodge it from four-sidedness. You can pretend that you are making sense, but you are actually saying something meaningless and incoherent.
Honestly, explain to me how X can be less than Y, but Y not be more than X. Explain how “less than” can have sense without being part of an ordered hierarchy of higher and lower, superior and inferior, more than and less than, and so on. It is not a response to say that the Church Fathers thought it made sense for centuries, and so it must make sense. It is also not a response to say that key elements of theology would be falsified if it did not make sense, because that would be like arguing that you did not care if an argument led to a contradiction, because the premises are all essential to your system. That’s not how the game is played. It is also not helpful to try to ground it in a similarity relationship, because the similarity relation’s role in grounding the inferiority relation is rooted in the principle of proportionate causality, which would be inapplicable to that which is beyond all ordered hierarchies.
Anything that is caused must be said to be less than its cause, because otherwise you have a logical contradiction.
ReplyDeleteBut you have to first explain in what sense an effect is less than its cause that is non-circular. And we have to be clear that we are talking about efficient causes, because final causes are more perfect as effects than as causes, because they instantiate in act the final end of the being in question. Perhaps an effect is less than its cause, because an effect involves the transition from potency to act and act is superior to potency? Perhaps an effect is less than its cause, because the cause has more power than the effect (e.g. “the cause must always be more powerful than its effect” (ST 1-2.112.1))? But even these explanations necessarily involve an ordered hierarchy in which an effect is lower than a cause, which must imply that a cause is higher than an effect. Otherwise, “lower” is senseless. Again, you would have to explain how “lower” makes any sense completely independent of an ordered hierarchy involving a standard.
Now, we know that creation is an effect that nothing in creation can ground. Hence, we must say that creation was caused in some sense, since there cannot be a self-grounding effect on pains of contradiction. Whatever "caused" creation (cash this out as "whatever is not creation") cannot be inferior to creation, since creation, as an effect, must be inferior to it.
So, what “caused” creation must be governed by the principle of causality, because otherwise there is absolutely no reason to say that what “caused” creation cannot be inferior to creation. But this is impossible, because the principle of causality only applies to entities that can exist as part of an ordered hierarchy, i.e. act is superior to potency, cause is superior to effect, perfection is superior to imperfection. That which transcends all ordered hierarchies cannot be governed by principles of ordered hierarchies, after all. It would be beyond them altogether.
Again, though, if something is inferior to something else, then there must be a kind of likeness. Otherwise, there is only equivocation and nothing is inferior at all.
But the likeness precisely lies in the fact that the X in the cause (i.e. X-in-C) is passed to the effect (i.e. X-in-E). It is because X is passed from C to E that there is a likeness or similarity at all. Without this common X, there is no sense to saying that the cause and effect are similar. Upon what basis would they be similar?
That also means that nothing can be said to be caused, because there cannot be a cause related only equivocally to its effect. (Aquinas refers to analogical causes as equivocal causes, but this does not mean the same thing.)
I don’t know what this means. Now your interpretation means that you can have effects without causes? Well, if that is true, then there is no longer any basis to argue from the effects in creation to God at all. We can just rest comfortably with the effects themselves! The only problem is that they cannot be called “effects” at all, because to be an effect is to be an effect of a cause, which is the whole point of the principle of causality, i.e. an effect cannot be self-grounded, meaning that its grounding depends upon a cause in act.
This is what it means for something to be inferior without a superior.
ReplyDeleteThen it means nothing at all.
You start with our everyday meaning of “inferior”, which necessarily is correlated with that which is “superior”, all relative to a standard. I doubt that you will reject the truth that if John is inferior to Peter, then Peter is superior to John. That is what “superior” and “inferior” mean. (You do not have “inferior” in itself, but rather “inferior to” or “less than”. They are inherently relational, because they make reference to an opposite that is part of their very meaning.) Even Aquinas writes that “"more" and "less" are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum” (ST 1.2.3). There must be a standard (i.e. “the maximum”) according to which the ordered hierarchy is measured. You then move from this everyday sense and want to preserve one part of the superior-inferior dialectic (i.e. “inferior”) while eliminating the opposite part (i.e. “superior”) altogether, even though each provides the meaning and coherence to the other.
Again, it is like starting with a standard definition of “square” as a four-sided shape, and then inferring the existence of a “square” that is not four-sided. And instead of realizing that your reasoning has gone horribly wrong, feel an immense experience of awe in the face of this deep and profound mystery of the non-four-sided “square”.
And another problem is that this position leads to the situation in which effects have no causes, as you yourself admitted above. And if that is true, then all we have are effects, which means that we neither need nor can have anything to ground or cause or explain those effects, which completely undermines the Five Ways, as well as reason in general. And furthermore, once again, it also means that we cannot have effects, either, because to be an effect is to be an effect of a cause. No causes, no effects, and no effects, no causes. To be a cause is to cause an effect, and to be an effect is to be caused by a cause. The existence of each depends upon the other, once a causal relationship is established between cause and effect.
Aquinas does not say that God is partially identical to creation. He denies this at every turn. Further, I cited Heidegger to support the conclusion that whatever grounds creation cannot be grounded by creation--and Hart for the various discussions of analogy.
I know that he denies it, but it is a necessarily implication of his system. I found only one definition of “analogy” and “similarity” and it was partial identity and partial difference in his commentary on the Metaphysics. If this definition is not applicable with respect to how God and creation are similar, then there is no other definition that he provides that explains how similarity is distinct from total identity and total difference.
And yet, in DP 3:3, he openly denies that God causes anything in the univocal sense. The language of the ST is loaded with analogy--he takes it for granted that his readers will understand what he's saying. When he refers to God as a cause, what he means is that creation is an effect.
ReplyDeleteAquinas discusses whether God has a real relation to creation at DP 7.10. He argues against it, because although effects are dependent upon causes – “the effect is always perfected by its cause and dependent thereon” -- not all causes are dependent upon their effects. For example, an object is the cause of one’s knowledge of that object, and thus one’s knowledge is dependent upon the object as its cause, but the object itself is not dependent upon one’s knowledge of the object. As he writes: “knowledge has a relation to the thing known”, but “the thing itself that is outside the soul is not touched by that act [of knowledge]”. And with God, since he is pure actuality without any potency whatsoever, he is impassible and completely unaffected and unchanged by anything, which means that whether creation exists or not, he remains exactly the same. Given the fact that he remains unchanging, he cannot be said to be dependent upon creation, and thus cannot have a real relation to creation, even though creation has a real relation to God, because creation depends upon God as an effect depends upon its cause.
The problem with this analysis is it fails to make a distinction between a potential cause and an actual cause. A potential cause is an entity that has not caused anything yet, but could, and an actual cause is an entity that has caused an effect to occur. The former is not dependent upon any effect, because there is no effect, but once a potential cause has become an actual cause, then there is now an actual effect, and the actual cause is the cause of that effect. Its identity is changed by making the transition from potential cause to actual cause, and this transition depends upon the actual existence of an effect that was caused by the cause. So, looking at Aquinas’ example of knowledge, although it is true that an object is independent of one’s knowledge of that object, once that object is known, then its identity as a known object does depend upon its being known by a knower. If it was not known by a knower, then it would not be a known object at all, but only an object.
Now, with God things get more complicated, because he is impassible and thus unchanging due to his pure actuality. And I think this leads to a contradiction, because once creation has been created, he necessarily becomes a creator as the cause of the created effect. There is a difference between a God that has created and a God that has not created. After all, if God is identical to his intellect, then an intellect that knows an actual creation would have to be different from an intellect that knows a potential creation. Also, a God that has not created is not dependent for his identity upon a creation, because there is no creation to be dependent upon. But a God that has created is dependent for his identity upon a creation, because there is a creation that stands as an effect of his efficient causality.
And yes, this directly contradicts God’s impassibility, but the only way to preserve his impassibility is to endorse the contradictory notion that there can be effects without efficient causes, which violates a number of other Thomist principles, as well as endorsing other absurd conclusions, such as if X is inferior to Y, then Y is not superior to X, and if X is an effect of Y, then Y is not a cause of X, and so on. So, all options lead to absurdity, which is a pretty good sign that we are lost here, and not that we are touching upon something deep and profound. I mean, if you were writing a computer program and it kept crashing, then would you really think that you were on the verge of something amazing, or would you think that you didn’t know what you were doing?
God is neither essence nor existence, and so we could not possibly share that in common with him.
ReplyDeleteGod could not give us essence or existence unless he already possessed them. That is the whole underlying model of efficient causality that Aquinas uses. God possesses an essence E (i.e. E-in-God) within his intellect in a pre-existent and virtual mode of being, and he is his esse divinum. Once his esse divinum is received by E, it becomes limited by E into esse commune, and the conjunction of esse commune and essence E is a composite ens. At the very least, we must share E in common with God, because E-in-God is similar to E-in-ens, and E is present in both God and an ens.
I would also argue that they share esse in common, in an unlimited and unrestricted form in God and in a limited and restricted form in composite entia, but this is a complex subject in itself. Again, if God is the efficient cause of esse commune as a co-determining principle of all composite entia, then God must give something from himself to entia. The question is how to conceptualize this. If esse divinum has nothing in common with esse commune, then nothing has been given. If esse divinum has everything in common with esse commune, then they are identical, which is impossible, because esse divinum is unlimited and esse commune is limited by essence. If esse divinum has something in common with esse commune, then there must be an underlying commonality between them, even if it is present in a pre-eminent and perfection fashion in God.
Our relation to God is one-way. He is totally unlike us, even though we are like him.
And this is something that I just do not agree with. There is an argument in Scholastic thought that if a statue is made of a man, then the statue is like the man, but the man is not like the statue. Why would this be the case? Fine, the man is the standard and the statue is an imperfect instantiation of that standard, but does that necessarily imply that the man cannot be like the statue? Under the idea that similarity implies partial identity and partial difference, then it would follow that if a statue is like a man, then a man is like a statue. Their partial identity would be the physical appearance of the man, and their partial differences would be multiple, including the fact that the statue is non-living but the man is living, as well as many others. I don’t know any account of similarity that would justify the inference that if X is similar to Y, then Y is not similar to X.
To say that God is the exemplar of goodness is to say that goodness is inferior to God, which means that it must in some way be similar to him. It is not to say that God is the perfect instantiation of goodness against which all others are judged, which proposes to comment on God's unknowable being.
Aquinas says that goodness is “in Him in a most excellent way”, because “all desired perfections flow from Him as from the first cause” (ST 1.6.2). Again, this only makes sense in terms of his account of efficient causality as a metaphysics of participation, in which everything that has being and goodness only does so “inasmuch as it participates in [being and goodness itself] by way of a certain assimilation which is far removed and defective” (ST 1.6.4). And if that framework applies, then one can certainly say that God has perfect goodness, because he is goodness itself, and thus is the perfect actualization of goodness from which all other goodnesses “flow from him as from the first cause”.
First, your claims of partial identity and partial difference are based on comments Aquinas made in relation to creation. He wasn't talking about God.
ReplyDeleteI know. The problem is that he gives no other account of similarity, other than similarity between created beings. So, what account is he using then? You still haven’t provided one, but try to use other terms, such as imitation, likeness, and so on, which are all interrelated. What is the core idea that unites them and connects them? And if we start with an idea of similarity that involves partial identity and partial difference, because we start with creation for our knowledge, then what does it say about our understanding of similarity if it is applied to God and the key component of “partial identity” must be dropped? It becomes incoherent.
Drop the partial identity, and you are left with “partial difference”, but “partial difference” implies “partial identity”, because you either have total difference, partial difference or zero difference. Total difference means there is nothing in common, and zero difference means that there is everything in common. Partial difference means that there is something in common. Again, it is like starting with a definition of a square as a four-sided shape, and ending up with a conclusion involving a square that is not four-sided but is still a square. You’ve just eliminated a core component of what it means to be a square, and so what is left is not a square at all, but might be like a square in that it has lines and shape, but then why call it a “square” at all?
Second, we are similar to God in that we are inferior to him. Likewise, metaphysics are inferior to "supra-metaphysics". This means that metaphysics are in some sense like supra-metaphysics, just as it means we are in some sense like God.
I’ve already elaborated upon the framework that makes this make sense. And if God transcends that framework, then we cannot coherently or meaningfully talk about him at all.
Aquinas used that definition while discussing creation. When he refers to God, he reverts to the language I've been using here: X is similar to Y if X is inferior to Y. In the case of analogies between creation and God, the "if" would be an "iff".
Again, that definition uses terms that are originally derived from creation, i.e. “similar to” and “inferior to”, and in creation, they are necessarily related to an ordered hierarchy according to some maximal standard. Aquinas himself endorses this when he writes that “"more" and "less" are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum” (ST 1.2.3). When you reject their association with ordered hierarchies, then you have negated a core component of their very meaning, and are just pretending that they still have meaning, much like I can talk about three-sided squares, but not be saying anything at all. Their relational nature is part of your own definition, i.e. X is similar to Y iff X is inferior to Y. X’s similarity and inferiority depends upon X’s relationship to Y, and once X has a relationship to Y, then Y has a relationship to X, especially when the relationship is one of efficient causality. Again, you cannot say that X is shorter than Y without necessarily implying that Y is taller than X. Once they are in a relationship to one another, they necessarily have those opposing properties, even if they are Cambridge properties that are not inherent within X or Y.
My account is the only one that reconciles Aquinas with himself and tradition and even basic logic. Yours ends in double-grounding, incoherence and contradiction.
ReplyDeleteYou haven’t even explained what similarity means. X is similar to Y iff X is inferior to X? What does “inferior” and “similar” mean here? You keep using words that have everyday meaning that completely contradict what you are trying to say, and you refuse to provide your revised meanings at all. It seems like you are playing a shell game here.
Nothing of esse divinum is shared with esse commune, except in the loosest terms.
But even if something is shared “in the loosest terms”, it follows that something is shared. If nothing was shared, then there would be no terms, including “loosest terms”, that could be used.
Further, the discussion of virtualities in God is just an analogy. God is not a cause in the univocal sense, and so he cannot have virtualities in the univocal sense. This does not mean that all good doesn't pre-exist in him; just that it doesn't pre-exist in him in the "partially identical" way you're imagining.
But you can’t have it both ways. You claim that talk about “virtualities in God” is just an analogy that presumably is rooted in the way that pre-existent and virtual forms exist in a cause. So, which way does the analogy go? You earlier argued that God cannot be like creation, and only creation can be like God. Fine. So, the analogy must be that the way that pre-existent and virtual forms exist in created causes is like the way that pre-existent and virtual forms exist in God. You also say that the way that pre-existent and virtual forms exist in created causes does not have something in common with the way that pre-existent and virtual forms exist in God. Otherwise, there would be partial identity between them, which you adamantly reject. But logically that only leaves either the two analogates having everything in common or nothing in common. Since both of those possibilities are impossible in this context, you are left with nothing. The way that pre-existent and virtual forms exist in created causes can have neither everything in common nor something in common nor nothing in common with the way that pre-existent and virtual forms exist in God. What is left here to ground and justify the analogy? Since you have excluded every logical possibility, you are left with nothing.
They refer to aspects of creation that refer to God.
Yes, they refer to aspects of creation, period. Creation then refers to God. But our minds would have to be able to represent that further reference, which is precisely the problem. An unrepresentable reference is invisible to the mind, even if the reference itself objectively exists. The fact that you claim to be able to talk about this reference means that it must be representable to the mind. My question is how this is possible at all, given Thomist principles of epistemology and language.
Every res is mental content no less than is every modus. Your confusion on this issue is starting to drive me insane.
I have no idea what you are talking about. A dog that is not being thought of by any mind “is mental content”?
None of the above. I am left with the res in itself. Just like esse commune, every res is just a logical being in the mind.
ReplyDeleteWow. So, you would endorse that X exists as a res iff X exists as a logical being in the mind? And you accused me of Kantianism!
There is no puzzle to crack. All of our metaphysics are grounded in something that is beyond them, and so it's a necessary consequence that our metaphysical terms will be scrambled when we try to apply them to that ground. Thomism, like all traditional Christian thought, is built on a foundation of mysticism. The attempt to totalize everything, including the ground of metaphysics, into one giant metaphysical picture is a decidedly modern, post-Scotist endeavor--one that leads to incoherence and onto-theology.
First, are you saying that no-one prior to Duns Scotus ever tried to explain all of reality into a single system of thought? What about the pre-Socrates, such as Parmenides, Heraclitus, Democritus? Each tried to explain all of reality either as the One, a constantly changing flux, or compositions of atomic structures. And what about Aristotle? Did he say that there was anything outside of metaphysics that was beyond thought itself? Certainly, that was Plato’s position, but Aristotle rejected a number of Platonic dogmas. Also, the Stoics certainly believed that all of reality was intelligible by their logic. So, I’m not too sure about your history here.
Second, the presumption that metaphysics is grounded upon a relation of similarity is the unfounded part of this system. How does one know that metaphysics is similar to what transcends metaphysics? Well, one sees how efficient causality works within metaphysics, and it certainly involves similarities and likenesses between cause and effect. One then infers that this same system within metaphysics must also be operative in that which transcends metaphysics, and thus if metaphysics is conceived as an effect, then it must have a cause or ground in what transcends metaphysics, and since all cause-effect relationships involve similarity, a similarity relationship must also exist between metaphysics and that which transcends metaphysics.
But this presupposes that metaphysics is an effect of that which transcends metaphysics, and thus that the principle of causality applies. However, this is impossible, because the principle of causality only applies to beings capable of being part of an ordered hierarchy, and since there is no ordered hierarchy between metaphysics and that which transcends metaphysics, then the principle of causality cannot apply. After all, that which transcends metaphysics also transcends all ordered hierarchies, and thus transcends all principles rooted in ordered hierarchies. Thus, there can be no similarity between metaphysics and that which transcends metaphysics, and thus there can be no cause or ground of metaphysics, because all causation and grounding presupposes similarity. And yes, this leads to absurdity, but then again, so does rejecting it. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
You seem to be thinking about the principle of causality as a kind of "useful fiction" that we invented to describe creation. (Even if you aren't, you've slipped into that language.) That isn't the case, though. We know that no effect can be self-grounding. Hence, any appeal to self-grounding effects is an appeal to contradiction. We reason to God, in a sense, through several modus tollens arguments.
ReplyDeleteThe principle of causality is something that we inductively infer from our experience of how composite entia interact with one another in causal relationships. Based upon it, we can reason that “no effect can be self-grounding”, which ultimately reduces to “the transition from potency to act involved in every effect must have an efficient cause that is in act and possesses the effect in a formal or virtual mode of being”. I agree that one can infer from this principle that every effect must ultimately be traceable to a first efficient cause that is pure actuality (actus purus) without any potency whatsoever and that contains all perfections and is unlimited and simple, and so on. That’s all fine. Where I disagree is when you then say that this first cause is not a first cause at all, because it transcends anything that we can conceive, including first causes. It is a cognitive idol or mental construct that refers to that which is beyond anything we can conceive. Because then the conclusion of the First Way, for example, is not about God, but about a cognitive construct. It is a conclusion about how we think about reality and not about reality itself.
And this is all rooted in the claim that God must transcend all ordered hierarchies of any kind, which would have to include act-potency, perfect-imperfect, cause-effect, superior-inferior, higher-lower, and so on. But to transcend these ordered hierarchies is to transcend the principle of causality, which makes constant reference to ordered hierarchies as part of its internal machinery. This means that only what exists within an ordered hierarchy can be under the purview of the principle of causality, and thus that which exists outside of all ordered hierarchies is also outside the principle of causality, which would have to include God. It follows that one cannot use it to infer anything about what transcends it, including what grounds its existence and truth. Our minds literally shut down in darkness when even looking in that direction. Whether that is because there is really something there that is too bright or there is nothing there at all is impossible to say, because to say that there is something too bright presupposes the machinery of the principle of causality, and we cannot do that. So, we are lost and cannot know one way or another.
So, we are stuck with a contradiction. As you said, a series of logical arguments based upon the principle of causality leads to conclusions about what transcends metaphysics, and these arguments themselves are sound. Thus, the principle of causality can be used to provide knowledge about what transcends metaphysics. But it is not permissible to use the principle of causality to provide knowledge of that which transcends it, because the principle of causality only applies to that which exists in an ordered hierarchy, and since that which transcends metaphysics also transcends all ordered hierarchies, it follows that the principle of causality cannot provide knowledge about what transcends metaphysics. So, the principle of causality both can and cannot provide knowledge of that which transcends metaphysics. And that is quite an aporia.
As Aquinas says, we know simple entities by knowing forms. The problem is that forms are not subsisting or unlimited, despite their simplicity.
ReplyDeleteBut forms are not simple entities. Forms are composite entia involving essence and existence. After all, a simple entity must have its essence = its esse, and only God meets that criteria, which means that either forms are composite entia or each form is God. This would lead to a problem, because it is hard to conceive how a form can be a composite ens if that would imply that a form would have to have an essence-esse composition. But then a form would have to have an essence, which seems strange. However, if there can be an actuality of an act, a perfection of a perfection, then why can’t there be a form of form? I mean, if we can just make up the rules as we go along, depending upon their convenience, then we stops me from making this move? Sure, it makes little sense, but it’s necessary for my account, and so if it’s okay for X to be like Y, but X to have nothing in common with Y, and for X to be inferior to Y, but Y not be superior to X, then I think we’re on par for this discussion.
There is a difference between "simple" and "absolutely simple". We know all kinds of simple stuff--just nothing that is absolutely simple, which is to say wholly without any properties.
And yet absolute simplicity is precisely what we are trying to figure out how we to conceive.
We think and say it from the knowledge that every effect is inferior to and related to its cause or ground.
And that itself presupposes the principle of causality, which itself presupposes ordered hierarchies. No ordered hierarchies, no principle of causality, no cause, no effects … nothing at all.
I'm going to be away from my computer for several weeks, so don't expect to see me around for awhile. Plus, this debate is starting to wear me down: the combination of comment moderation and arguing in circles for weeks has burned me out. I'm pretty confident in my position at this point, though, even though I doubt you'll be convinced by the case I present below. Anyway, feel free to respond if you'd like, but I'm going to leave future counter-arguments to any interested parties who may be lurking.
ReplyDeleteYou have it wrong, and have confused different modi.
Not at all. Your Rocca quote meshes perfectly with everything I just wrote. The human mind witnesses some mode of being (modus essendi), internalizes it (modus intelligendi) and then signifies it in language (modus significandi). As Aquinas writes, although I can't recall in which work, we gather knowledge (modus intelligendi) of simple modes of being and subsisting modes of being (modus essendi), which we may then abstract from their initial appearance and apply to something else (modus significandi). For example, we might discuss "whiteness", which is a white (res) that subsists (modus significandi). There is no such thing as whiteness in the real world, since every appearance of white is one of accidental being: derivative of substantial being. However, it is still wholly possible to discuss the idea in abstract, since res and modus are not inseparable mentally and linguistically and since we do not have to see something exactly in order to talk about it.
So, inferiority only makes sense according to an ordered hierarchy according to some standard, and whether the inferior X is relative to the standard itself (i.e. “the maximum”) or something else being compared to the standard, there must be a hierarchy involved.
Aquinas uses the term "maximum" here not univocally, which would result in placing God as the "highest being", but rather analogously. He means exactly what I've been saying all along, which I will lay out again.
1. Every effect is inferior to that which is prior to it.
2. Effects cannot be self-grounding.
3. Creation is an effect.
4. Therefore, creation is inferior to something prior to itself.
1. Anything that is inferior to something else is said to be like that thing, insofar as it is "less than" it.
2. Creation is inferior to that which is prior to it.
3. Therefore, creation is said to be like that which is prior to it, insofar as it is "less than" it.
This is what it means to say that God is the "maximum". Creation is less than God, and so we must, by an analogy of proportion, apportion to God all of the highest names from creation in an attempt to reach him.
The epistemological problems do undermine the system. If you are talking about the system, then it must be possible to talk about the system. If it is impossible to talk about the system, then you cannot be talking about the system.
They make it impossible to talk about God univocally. The metaphysical scheme is wholly divorced from him, and so it stands or falls on its own terms.
First, why would ignorance lead to ontological impossibility?
Ignorance is an epistemological problem. The problem of having no Unmoved Mover is one of logic and ontology, and it leads to a direct contradiction. Act and potency would simply have to be scrapped.
What is the difference between “partially similar” and “partially different”?
ReplyDeleteSince God does not refer to creation and God as partially similar and partially different, this is irrelevant. Creation's similarity to God is its likeness to him that is always already present prior to any analysis--the facticity of existence. You cannot break it down into simpler components. It just is true.
Second, the sticking point that unravels the Five Ways is divine transcendence. If God transcends all kinds of ordered hierarchies, then he must transcend the principle of causality, which is saturated by ordered hierarchies. And if he transcends the principle of causality, then we cannot use it to know anything about him. However, if it applies to him, then we can certainly reason about him. So, if the Unmoved Mover, or Pure Act, were a kind of actuality, and not “actuality”, then everything would be fine, because that Unmoved Mover sits firmly and appropriately within the principle of causality.
This move seems tempting at first, but then you realize that it's prone to the onto-theological critique. If the Unmoved Mover is just a giant univocal engine within an ordered hierarchy of best and worst, then it follows that the Unmoved Mover is involved in a double-grounding and so must be grounded in some further thing from which it derives its power and being. This brings us right back to where we started: divine transcendence of dialectics.
First, Aquinas would say that nothing, i.e. neither causes nor effects, can be self-grounded.
This is only because every cause in the created sense is itself an effect. Admittedly, God is ungrounded rather than self-grounded, but the terms are basically interchangeable when referring to creation. To say that creation is ungrounded just is to say that it's self-grounded.
Second, let’s unpack this a little. If the principle of causality states that no effect can be self-grounding, then that implies that all effects must be other-grounded. I presume that if X grounds Y, then X is a cause of Y, and if Y is grounded by X, then Y is an effect of X. And that means that for any effect, there must be a cause of that effect, and the cause is not identical to the effect. And since every effect is a transition from potency to act (or the “transition” from non-being to act), then every cause must be in act to cause the transition. And that would get us to Pure Act and an Unmoved Mover, for example.
You run off the rails when you start talking about how every effect is a transition from potency to act. This is only the case with change, which is all the Unmoved Mover took care of. Aristotle did not believe in creation: the Unmoved Mover and prime matter were locked in an eternal, unbreakable struggle between pure order and pure chaos, from which only change could result. There was no creation, and the universe had always existed.
On the other hand, God for Aquinas (and Christian tradition) grounds both act and potency, being neither. Creation is not a change and it emerges from no dialectical ground (i.e. being combined with non-being), but rather from something that is totally self-sufficient. We call this self-sufficient thing "act" via analogy, since act is better than prime matter or potency or what have you.
But since God transcends all ordered hierarchies, it follows that we cannot say that he is “least definite”, “least limited” and “more powerful”. None of this has anything to do with God, and only with what exists as part of an ordered hierarchy.
ReplyDeleteAll of those affirmations may be applied via the analogy of proportion, since all things are inferior to him. If one thing is inferior to something else, then the other must be said to be "better" in some way. Now, in the case of God, no affirmation is capable of expressing him completely. Hence, we have to deny our affirmations with further affirmations.
Say you have a cause C and an effect E. To say that C causes E means that something X is passed from C to E. X exists in a particular mode of being in C (i.e. X-in-C) and X exists in a particular mode of being in E (i.e. X-in-E). If X-in-C is identical to X-in-E, then C is a univocal cause. If X-in-C is similar to X-in-E, then C is an equivocal or analogical cause. Notice that in the similarity relation, there is partial identity (i.e. X) and partial difference (i.e. X-in-C versus X-in-E).
This is a discussion of created and composite entities. There is no such thing as "X-in-C" when we're talking about God, because God does not contain any perfections in this accidental way. Also, his "perfections" are not virtual in the way that we say the divine ideas are virtual, since names like "good" signify the divine being itself rather than some divine idea. His perfections are only virtual in the sense that created res signifies the divine being in a variety of ways, since the divine being can be called by many names (truth, goodness, nobility, beauty, etc.) that are true but not absolutely true.
Participation is involved in this account, because E is said to participate in C by virtue of their mutual possession of X, but X exists primariy and more perfect mode of being as X-in-C, and X exists in a secondary and less perfect mode of being in X-in-E.
The language of participation is based on the idea of one thing sustaining another in a certain aspect. For example, the hand sustains the stick in motion. However, the hand itself has to be sustained by something that is not sustained--something that does not have any accidental features. And, in the case of this thing, it is impossible to talk about it possessing a certain trait that it shares with creation, because it has no traits. This does not mean that the hand does not participate in the traitless thing, which would be a non sequitur. Rather, the hand participates in God himself, rather than in one of God's traits (which do not exist). What this means is knowable only by analogy from composite, created res to that in which it participates.
That is one of the reasons why an effect is inferior to a cause, i.e. the effect is a less perfect instantiation of X than the cause.
This is not the reason that effects are inferior to causes, but is rather one of the side-effects of that reason. The reason that effects are inferior to causes is that every effect is in some way potential or prone to non-being--contingent. Effects rely on something else, since otherwise they cannot exist. It's a contradiction to say that something relying on something else is not inferior to that thing in some way. Now, since every aspect of creation relies on God, it must be the case that everything is inferior to God. Again, if something is inferior to something else, then there is a likeness and hence an analogy.
In other words, because we know X-in-E, we can infer that the X-in-E must have come from C, which must have possessed X as X-in-C. Without this framework, it is impossible to make any inferences from effects to causes. And that is what Aquinas means when he writes that “whatever is said of God and creatures, is said according to the relation of a creature to God as its principle and cause, wherein all perfections of things pre-exist excellently” (ST 1.13.5).
ReplyDeleteTo say that God is X-in-C is to speak of God in composite terms. It doesn't work. What Aquinas means there is that every created good is said to be like God, and from this he extrapolates, via analogy, that God is something like the principle of all things. But to call God the principle of all things is to use a divine name, which again is only to engage in analogy from effects. Aquinas has no intention of making an absolute statement about the divine nature.
Because creation is the effect of God, and all effects are similar to their causes, because the causes contain the effects either formally or virtually, it follows that creation is similar to God.
X is said to be similar to Y if X is inferior to Y. X is inferior to Y if X relies on Y. Your case about shared traits is a red herring.
But to say that God is the cause of creation even in an analogical sense implies an underlying similarity
Only from creation to God. Not the other way around.
The fact that I never heard you say that Aquinas should not have offered criticisms of Aristotle, given the authority and duration of his positions means that this objection is not a good one at all.
No offense, but you are not Aquinas. Few alive today could match his intellect. Further, Aquinas rarely formulated his own positions: he usually just argued for positions that others had advocated in the past in different words.
Also, the core issue here is that you seem to think there's an underlying problem in something being inferior without something else being superior. I've never seen this objection trotted out--ever. Neither have you, despite your large amount of reading on the subject. And what you don't seem to grasp is that your "solution" to this "problem" dissolves into Hegelianism and onto-theology, and so is not really a solution at all.
A configuration of what?
ReplyDeleteAct and potency and being and non-being. If everything with being tends toward non-being, then it is not only possible but necessary that there will be a configuration of being and non-being in which nothing exists. In this state not even prime matter or substantial forms could exist, because both are parasitic on the esse/essence composites that tend toward non-being.
You completely missed the point, which was that if you want to say that God transcends the act-potency distinction, then it cannot apply to him, and thus all the divine properties that are inferred on the basis of that distinction also cannot apply to him.
God doesn't transcend the act/potency distinction in the sense that applying the term "act" to him is equivocation. God is indeed "act" in the sense that act is a perfection applied via analogy to him. He is "pure act", in fact--the "highest act". But he is none of these things absolutely, since analogy by nature only hints at God.
And even saying that actuality is like God implies the metaphysics of efficient causality and participation, which itself presupposes ordered hierarchies. And if God transcends all ordered hierarchies, then the metaphysics of efficient causality and participation cannot be applicable to him, and thus you cannot even say that creation is like God at all, because the underlying likeness is rooted in what is passed to the effect from the cause, which undermines the entire system.
All false. Our arguments for God are based on the impossibility of creation being self-sufficient. If creation is not self-sufficient, then it must be grounded in something else. It is this fact that gives us the issue of inferiority, which in turn provides the analogy of proportion, which in turn allows one to give God names like "pure act", "being itself" and suchlike. There are no begged questions in this chain of reasoning.
As I explained above, saying that “no potency can be self-grounding” is the logical equivalent of “every potency must be grounded by another". And furthermore, the “another” that grounds the potency must be in act.
You have to realize that God is the ground of both act and potency (as both Aquinas and Hart assert), being himself neither in absolute terms. The only thing that God does not sustain is non-being, which is a logical construct that does not exist. To say that God is act is a distant analogy, derived from the fact that our act is similar to that which sustains it. We don't call God "potency" because potency is inferior to act, and so cannot be one of the highest names; but that doesn't mean that he isn't its source.
And since God is supposed to transcend all ordered hierarchies, and the act-potency dichotomy is an ordered hierarchy, it follows that God transcends act and potency, and thus God cannot be “the actuality of all acts” at all. He cannot be an “actuality” of anything at all!
He is our actuality in that he is called actual via analogy. But God transcends every metaphysical scheme, and so obviously cannot be actual in the absolute sense. This does not mean that he is not our ground, though.
Again, if God transcends the principle of causality, then it cannot be used to infer anything about him. And you should be satisfied by this conclusion, because the principle itself is nothing but a part of creation, and thus is necessarily infinitely removed from the transcendence of God.
ReplyDeleteThe principle of causality is based on the world of act and potency--this is true. But the principle of causality reveals its own insufficiency with its inability to explain creation without relying on onto-theology. This does not mean that it ceases to apply to us: merely that it does not apply to our ground in any absolute sense. And this is enough to say that we are inferior, since the principle of causality does indeed guarantee that we are effects (i.e. contingent, imperfect, etc.) even though it cannot, in strict metaphysical terms, explain why or how this result has come about. Not that it's necessary for it to do so, given that the apophatic ground from which we spring is already reachable via analogy thanks to our inferiority to it.
And in order for a cause (or “cause”) to produce effects, those effects must pre-exist formally or virtually within the cause (or “cause”). Otherwise, it is impossible to account for causality at all. And if those effects pre-exist virtually within the cause (or “cause”), then they are more perfect and higher than the effects themselves. As he writes: “To pre-exist virtually in the efficient cause is to pre-exist not in a more imperfect, but in a more perfect way” (ST 1.4.2).
This, again, is just Aquinas's way of saying that everything has to come from our ground. Bit by bit, he shows that nothing in creation is self-grounded (or ungrounded), which throws all of it into the apophatic void from which we emerge.
But without this account, there is no sense to saying that creation is an effect of God. You cannot even call it an effect at all, because to be an effect, it must be an effect of a cause, i.e. be grounded in something else in act, and to have a cause (or ground) is to be involved in an ordered hierarchy in which a cause is higher than an effect, act is higher than potency, perfection is higher than imperfection, and so on.
Nope. An effect is something contingent, in need of some kind of ground. It is not defined solely by its dialectical relation to a "cause". I know you're looking for a begged question in my account, but it just isn't going to work.
You keep wanting to have it both ways. You want to say affirmative things about God, and then take them back, leaving nothing behind, but pretending that there is still something there. All that we can conclude is that “there exist effects that cannot be produced by creation”. According to you, it does not follow that we can infer anything about the cause of creation, because it literally makes no sense to say “the cause of creation”, because that would imply a relationship from the cause of creation to creation itself, which is impossible, because only creation can have a relation to its cause, and not vice versa. So, again, I’ll accept your conclusion, but if you want to be consistent, then you cannot say anything about the cause of creation. All you can do is point to the inadequacy of creation as an explanation of itself. You cannot point anywhere else, and so must stop there.
To say that creation is not self-sufficient and end there is to state a contradiction. Not even a skeptic could accept this result. The thing is that once we admit that creation is not self-sufficient, we've reached the end of metaphysics. That is their limit--they cannot go beyond it. As soon as we begin talking about that which is not creation, we are talking about theology and mysticism rather than metaphysics. Everything that we say after this point is ultimately reducible to analogy.
But again, if we know that creation is not self-sufficient, then it follows that creation is inferior to *insert analogous name here*. Let me put it in the form of a syllogism.
ReplyDelete1. Everything that is not self-sufficient relies on something that is not itself (trivial truth).
2. If something relies on something that is not itself, then it is inferior to it.
3. If something is inferior to something that is not itself, then there is said to be a likeness of one to the other.
4. A likeness of the kind mentioned in premise (3) leads to an analogy of proportion.
5. Creation is not self-sufficient.
6. Therefore, creation relies on and is inferior to and is analogous to *insert analogous name here*.
Even if I had put "a ground" or "something else" in place of *insert analogous name here*, both terms are once again reducible to analogy. And this does not mean that the syllogism is a non sequitur or an equivocation, because all of the premises inexorably lead us to that same conclusion. The thing is that the conclusion is, again, the very end of metaphysics, after which point we have only analogy. But metaphysics does do us one last favor, in that it guarantees the possibility of analogy right before collapsing.
The problem is that inferiority only makes sense relative to superiority, i.e. within an ordered hierarchy according to some standard by which things in the ordered hierarchy are measured. You want to keep the sense of inferiority but dislodge it from an ordered hierarchy, which is like wanting to keep the definition of squareness but dislodge it from four-sidedness.
And yet I don't see any argument from you in support of this view: just assertions and begged questions.
Honestly, explain to me how X can be less than Y, but Y not be more than X. Explain how “less than” can have sense without being part of an ordered hierarchy of higher and lower, superior and inferior, more than and less than, and so on.
For something to be superior to something else, it has to fall under metaphysics. God doesn't. However, because we do fall under metaphysics, it is possible for us to be inferior. Hence, we are inferior but God is not superior. These types of dialectical terms do not have the Hegelian universal applicability that you seem to think they do: they are connected to distinctions like act/potency and the ten categories. Anything that falls under those distinctions will also fall under distinctions like higher/lower. Anything that does not fall under those distinctions will not fall under distinctions like higher/lower. Hence the strange and unintuitive break between our inferiority and God's lack of absolute superiority.
Something similar happened with created grace. The Eastern Orthodox were appalled that Aquinas would consider grace created rather than uncreated, when in fact he said nothing of the sort. The confusion arose because Aquinas referred to grace as created from the angle of creation--in that a person begins to be affected by it--, but uncreated from the perspective of God, since grace is God's own being. This is the gap between metaphysics and theology/mysticism to which Aquinas always paid careful attention, but which most of his followers ignored.
But you have to first explain in what sense an effect is less than its cause that is non-circular.
ReplyDeleteMy six-point syllogism should take care of that.
I doubt that you will reject the truth that if John is inferior to Peter, then Peter is superior to John. That is what “superior” and “inferior” mean. (You do not have “inferior” in itself, but rather “inferior to” or “less than”. They are inherently relational, because they make reference to an opposite that is part of their very meaning.)
Peter and John both exist in the metaphysical realm of the created. That's where terms like "better" and "worse" have meaning. This is also why Peter can be superior to John and John inferior to Peter without God being superior to both, even though both are inferior to God.
Now, with God things get more complicated, because he is impassible and thus unchanging due to his pure actuality. And I think this leads to a contradiction, because once creation has been created, he necessarily becomes a creator as the cause of the created effect. There is a difference between a God that has created and a God that has not created. After all, if God is identical to his intellect, then an intellect that knows an actual creation would have to be different from an intellect that knows a potential creation. Also, a God that has not created is not dependent for his identity upon a creation, because there is no creation to be dependent upon. But a God that has created is dependent for his identity upon a creation, because there is a creation that stands as an effect of his efficient causality.
Of course, I agree with your concern. This is the very definition of onto-theology: the creator comes to be defined by its creation, resulting in a double-grounding. The thing is that your argument is built on a fundamental misunderstanding of the split between metaphysics and mysticism.
Aquinas says that goodness is “in Him in a most excellent way”, because “all desired perfections flow from Him as from the first cause” (ST 1.6.2). Again, this only makes sense in terms of his account of efficient causality as a metaphysics of participation, in which everything that has being and goodness only does so “inasmuch as it participates in [being and goodness itself] by way of a certain assimilation which is far removed and defective” (ST 1.6.4). And if that framework applies, then one can certainly say that God has perfect goodness, because he is goodness itself, and thus is the perfect actualization of goodness from which all other goodnesses “flow from him as from the first cause”.
This means that, given the analogy of proportion between created goodness and God, it must be said that God is something like the standard of all goodness and hence the highest goodness.
I know. The problem is that he gives no other account of similarity, other than similarity between created beings. So, what account is he using then? You still haven’t provided one, but try to use other terms, such as imitation, likeness, and so on, which are all interrelated.
I provided it several weeks ago with my talk of the Trinitarian trace. Our likeness to God cannot be broken down or analyzed: it is factical, the condition of creation--something presupposed in every metaphysical endeavor. The likeness just is present. Like esse, it is a simple truth.
But even if something is shared “in the loosest terms”, it follows that something is shared. If nothing was shared, then there would be no terms, including “loosest terms”, that could be used.
I meant that one could say that esse divinum was shared with esse commune in that esse commune is similar to esse divinum. But this is only in informal usage--the "loosest terms".
Yes, they refer to aspects of creation, period. Creation then refers to God. But our minds would have to be able to represent that further reference, which is precisely the problem. An unrepresentable reference is invisible to the mind, even if the reference itself objectively exists. The fact that you claim to be able to talk about this reference means that it must be representable to the mind. My question is how this is possible at all, given Thomist principles of epistemology and language.
ReplyDeleteCreated res is the reference. We understand created res just as we understand created modes of being: by witnessing, internalizing and signifying.
I have no idea what you are talking about. A dog that is not being thought of by any mind “is mental content”?
The mode in which a dog essence exists in the world is modus essendi, and we can consider this mode via modus intelligendi. We can then signify this mode via modus significandi. Likewise with the res "dog". We witness the dog in the real world, then abstract its form, which we signify (res significata). A perfection like "goodness" works the same way. We witness it in the real world, then consider it as we do with modus intelligendi, and then signify it (res significata).
The word "dogness" signifies both a res and a mode of being. The res is "dog" (a form). The mode is subsistence. Obviously, there is no such thing as dogness in the real world, because no dog form subsists: a dog form must be attached to matter. Dogness is a fiction of language created out of a res and modus taken from other places.
Wow. So, you would endorse that X exists as a res iff X exists as a logical being in the mind? And you accused me of Kantianism!
A res in the mind is based on a res in the real world, just as esse commune is based on real esse.
First, are you saying that no-one prior to Duns Scotus ever tried to explain all of reality into a single system of thought? What about the pre-Socrates, such as Parmenides, Heraclitus, Democritus?
Notice that I was referring to Christian tradition in that line. I wrote:
"Thomism, like all traditional Christian thought, is built on a foundation of mysticism. The attempt to totalize everything, including the ground of metaphysics, into one giant metaphysical picture is a decidedly modern, post-Scotist endeavor--one that leads to incoherence and onto-theology."
Obviously there were ancient practitioners of totalistic, onto-theological metaphysics. Aristotle was one of them, as I have readily admitted for a long time. Plato was further away from it, in my opinion, but he still never escaped it. The Neo-Platonists came pretty close to getting out, but Hart argues convincingly that they never quite pulled it off.
Second, the presumption that metaphysics is grounded upon a relation of similarity is the unfounded part of this system. How does one know that metaphysics is similar to what transcends metaphysics? Well, one sees how efficient causality works within metaphysics, and it certainly involves similarities and likenesses between cause and effect. One then infers that this same system within metaphysics must also be operative in that which transcends metaphysics, and thus if metaphysics is conceived as an effect, then it must have a cause or ground in what transcends metaphysics, and since all cause-effect relationships involve similarity, a similarity relationship must also exist between metaphysics and that which transcends metaphysics.
ReplyDeleteThe issue of the likeness of creation to God is based the knowledge that anything grounded in another must be inferior to that other. See my syllogism for the detailed argument. See also my comments about the metaphysical/mystical divide, which is what allows something to be inferior without having an absolute superior.
But this presupposes that metaphysics is an effect of that which transcends metaphysics, and thus that the principle of causality applies.
It is not presupposed that metaphysics have a cause: it is just demonstrated that there is a giant hole in the center of any metaphysical system. What we must then decide is whether we're going to worship the hole (as Derrida did), accepting the irrationalism and skepticism that follow, or to acknowledge something similar to what Aquinas and the Church Fathers did. This second position is that the hole simply shows that metaphysics are not self-supporting--the hole is not the original stuff from which metaphysics were built--, which means that all things that we know are contingent. This in turn leads us to say that creation is an effect, even though it has no cause in the absolute, metaphysical sense.
Thus, there can be no similarity between metaphysics and that which transcends metaphysics, and thus there can be no cause or ground of metaphysics, because all causation and grounding presupposes similarity.
Every effect is inferior to something else, simply because it relies on it. This inferiority is the basis of the analogy of proportion.
The principle of causality is something that we inductively infer from our experience of how composite entia interact with one another in causal relationships.
That is absolutely false. The principle of causality is an ontological reality for every metaphysical entity. We merely discover it.
Based upon it, we can reason that “no effect can be self-grounding”, which ultimately reduces to “the transition from potency to act involved in every effect must have an efficient cause that is in act and possesses the effect in a formal or virtual mode of being”.
It does not ultimately reduce to that equation, not least because creation is from non-being and thus involves no potency.
Where I disagree is when you then say that this first cause is not a first cause at all, because it transcends anything that we can conceive, including first causes. It is a cognitive idol or mental construct that refers to that which is beyond anything we can conceive. Because then the conclusion of the First Way, for example, is not about God, but about a cognitive construct. It is a conclusion about how we think about reality and not about reality itself.
Not in the slightest. The First Way shows that no secondary change can exist unless it is grounded in something that is beyond secondary change. This is a logical and ontological fact. Whether or not we can actually comprehend the being to which this logic leads us is irrelevant to the logic itself.
This means that only what exists within an ordered hierarchy can be under the purview of the principle of causality, and thus that which exists outside of all ordered hierarchies is also outside the principle of causality, which would have to include God. It follows that one cannot use it to infer anything about what transcends it, including what grounds its existence and truth.
ReplyDeleteConsidering that all we use the principle of causality for is discussing creation and effects, I don't see how this is a problem. The principle of causality is how we find the holes in every totalistic metaphysical scheme, and it is how we then realize that these holes point to something that we can only understand through analogy.
But forms are not simple entities. Forms are composite entia involving essence and existence.
A form is simple. A substance is a composite of essence and existence; and a form exists inside this substance as one of its core parts. But the form itself is not composed of anything at all. Angels are pure and subsistent forms, it is true, but they are also substances--which is why they are existence-essence hybrids, and why they are capable of being forms at all.
After all, a simple entity must have its essence = its esse, and only God meets that criteria, which means that either forms are composite entia or each form is God.
Not true. Something is simple if it cannot be divided into further parts. Forms fit this description, as does esse. God, on the other hand, is absolutely simple. This means that he not only cannot be divided into further parts, but that he is completely unreliant on any other parts. Esse melds with essence; form requires esse and essence; matter requires form; the average substance requires it all. In this way everything is composite, even when it is simple when considered in itself. God is all that he is--and so he is absolutely simple.
And yet absolute simplicity is precisely what we are trying to figure out how we to conceive.
Absolute simplicity is a completely apophatic term that means essentially nothing. Aquinas erases each distinction in God until he hits essence-esse, which he removes as well. Once that's gone, there's nothing left at all. That is absolute simplicity--it cannot be conceptualized.
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ReplyDeleteYour Rocca quote meshes perfectly with everything I just wrote. The human mind witnesses some mode of being (modus essendi), internalizes it (modus intelligendi) and then signifies it in language (modus significandi).
Right. Modus significandi is the way the modus intelligendi, which is a cognitive and intellectual representation, is presented in a linguistic and semantic mode.
As Aquinas writes, although I can't recall in which work, we gather knowledge (modus intelligendi) of simple modes of being and subsisting modes of being (modus essendi), which we may then abstract from their initial appearance and apply to something else (modus significandi). For example, we might discuss "whiteness", which is a white (res) that subsists (modus significandi). There is no such thing as whiteness in the real world, since every appearance of white is one of accidental being: derivative of substantial being. However, it is still wholly possible to discuss the idea in abstract, since res and modus are not inseparable mentally and linguistically and since we do not have to see something exactly in order to talk about it.
I don’t know what quote you are talking about, and so I can’t evaluate the veracity of your claim, but it seems prima facie to contradict everything that I’ve ever read about the modus intelligendi and modus significandi, as medieval terms for grammar and language. Even Aquinas, when he uses the term “modus significandi”, is referring to the mode by which our names signify their referents, which must be according to our human understanding, and thus limits our ability to understand referents that exist beyond composition (see ST 1.13.3, 6). It also contradicts what Wippel and Rocca have written on the subject. And since you have not cited Aquinas, nor any other scholar, in support of your position, I feel comfortable ignoring it as just your individual understanding of these terms that carries no weight at all.
1. Every effect is inferior to that which is prior to it.
2. Effects cannot be self-grounding.
3. Creation is an effect.
4. Therefore, creation is inferior to something prior to itself.
Again, the tacit assumption in this argument is that creation and creator stand as effect to cause, and thus the principle of causality must be applicable to the causal relationship between creation and creator. However, if you also want to claim that God is beyond all ordered hierarchies due to his divine transcendence, then he must also be beyond the principle of causality, because the principle of causality only applies to what exists in an ordered hierarchy (e.g. act-potency, perfection-imperfection, cause-effect). It must follow that God cannot be the cause and creator of creation. And if God cannot be the cause or creator of creation, then creation has no cause, because only God could be the cause of creation. And if creation has no cause, then creation is not an effect at all, which violates (3) above.
1. Anything that is inferior to something else is said to be like that thing, insofar as it is "less than" it.
ReplyDelete2. Creation is inferior to that which is prior to it.
3. Therefore, creation is said to be like that which is prior to it, insofar as it is "less than" it.
But the only way for (1) to be justified is according to the metaphysics of participation and efficient causality in which the cause has X in a pre-existent and virtual mode (i.e. X-in-C), which it then gives or transfers to the effect to cause the transition from potential X-in-E to actual X-in-E. This justifies the underlying similarity and inferiority relationship between the cause and effect, because they are partially identical (i.e. they both have X) and they are partially different (i.e. X-in-C versus X-in-E). Without this framework, (1) cannot be justified, and thus should be rejected for anything that is beyond this framework. And the problem is that if you want to say that God transcends all ordered hierarchies, then he must also transcend this framework, which means that God cannot stand as cause of creation, and if God cannot be the cause of creation, then creation has no cause, and if creation has no cause, then it cannot be an effect. And if it is not an effect, then it is not inferior to anyting or similar to anything, and the whole thing unravels.
This is what it means to say that God is the "maximum". Creation is less than God, and so we must, by an analogy of proportion, apportion to God all of the highest names from creation in an attempt to reach him.
If God transcends all ordered hierarchies, then he transcends the only framework in which creation could be inferior to or similar to God. The analogy of proportion only makes sense within the metaphysics of participation and efficient causality that I’ve outlined.
They make it impossible to talk about God univocally. The metaphysical scheme is wholly divorced from him, and so it stands or falls on its own terms.
The metaphysical scheme is what justifies his existence, and so if you want to cut off the branch that you are sitting on, then don’t be surprised if you fall. Also, if the metaphysical scheme says that there is only one way to talk about anything, and God transcends this only form of meaningful reference, then the metaphysical scheme implies that we cannot talk about God at all in a meaningful fashion. So, you have two options. You either stop talking about God, but endorse the metaphysical scheme, or you keep talking about God, but falsify the metaphysical scheme. You cannot talk about God and endorse the metaphysical scheme.
Ignorance is an epistemological problem. The problem of having no Unmoved Mover is one of logic and ontology, and it leads to a direct contradiction. Act and potency would simply have to be scrapped.
Nope. Act and potency are facts. How they are possible is a separate issue. If Aristotle never came up with the act-potency distinction, and Parmenides held reign, the world would still go on as it does. If all our possible explanations lead to paradox, then we just don’t understand how reality works at a fundamental level. It does not obliterate reality itself. It just means that we need a better explanation, and if we don’t have any at this time, then we have to admit that we are lost at this time.
Since God does not refer to creation and God as partially similar and partially different, this is irrelevant. Creation's similarity to God is its likeness to him that is always already present prior to any analysis--the facticity of existence. You cannot break it down into simpler components. It just is true.
ReplyDeleteFirst, your claim presupposes the applicability of a framework that cannot possibly apply, which is a huge problem.
Second, you can break it down into simpler components. I’ve already done it. Even Aquinas uses my definition in the commentary on the Metaphysics, and so there is some support for it. The problem is how to use it between God and creation, and in that situation it is impossible, but since it isn’t replaced by anything else, it becomes utterly empty.
Third, how do you differentiate “X is similar to Y” from “X is identical to Y” and “X is different from Y”? Saying that X is similar to Y is neither X is identical to Y nor X is different from Y does not help, because then similarity would involve any relationship that is neither identical nor different. And that would mean that similarity would encompass a huge number of other relationships, and thus lose all specificity. After all “X is yellower than Y” is also neither “X is identical to Y” nor “X is different from Y”. So, “X is similar to Y” becomes too general to be meaningful.
Fourth, it must be meaningful before “it just is true”.
This move seems tempting at first, but then you realize that it's prone to the onto-theological critique. If the Unmoved Mover is just a giant univocal engine within an ordered hierarchy of best and worst, then it follows that the Unmoved Mover is involved in a double-grounding and so must be grounded in some further thing from which it derives its power and being. This brings us right back to where we started: divine transcendence of dialectics.
Why would this be the case? The problem of double-grounding is only for effects. Since the Unmoved Mover is not an effect, it is beyond the double-grounding problem altogether. Remember that an effect cannot ground itself. A cause that is not also an effect is beyond the applicability of this rule, and thus it is not a problem.
This is only because every cause in the created sense is itself an effect. Admittedly, God is ungrounded rather than self-grounded, but the terms are basically interchangeable when referring to creation. To say that creation is ungrounded just is to say that it's self-grounded.
They are not interchangeable. “Ungrounded” implies no ground and “self-grounded” implies a ground that grounds itself. The former implies the non-existence of a ground, and the latter implies the existence of a ground that grounds itself.
You run off the rails when you start talking about how every effect is a transition from potency to act. This is only the case with change, which is all the Unmoved Mover took care of. Aristotle did not believe in creation: the Unmoved Mover and prime matter were locked in an eternal, unbreakable struggle between pure order and pure chaos, from which only change could result. There was no creation, and the universe had always existed.
I know. That is why I wrote “transition” in scare quotes when discussing the “transition” from non-being to being. Of course, since God is eternal, and God has ideas about anything that could possibly exist, it follows that things always potentially exist, and thus when he creates them makes the transition from potentially existing by actually existing in the divine intellect to actually existing outside the divine intellect, and that is a transition from potency to act.
On the other hand, God for Aquinas (and Christian tradition) grounds both act and potency, being neither. Creation is not a change and it emerges from no dialectical ground (i.e. being combined with non-being), but rather from something that is totally self-sufficient. We call this self-sufficient thing "act" via analogy, since act is better than prime matter or potency or what have you.
ReplyDeleteFirst, you cannot call “this self-sufficient thing” an “act”, because it is “better”, because it must transcend all ordered hierarchies, including that of better and worse, and thus we cannot call it act at all. In fact, we cannot call it anything
Second, creation is a change, as I explained above. It is a change from potentially existing within the divine intellect to actually existing outside the divine intellect. It is a different kind of change than what occurs within creation, but it is still a change from potency to act.
All of those affirmations may be applied via the analogy of proportion, since all things are inferior to him. If one thing is inferior to something else, then the other must be said to be "better" in some way. Now, in the case of God, no affirmation is capable of expressing him completely. Hence, we have to deny our affirmations with further affirmations.
The problem is that they can’t. God cannot be better in any way, because he transcends all ordered hierarchies, which would have to include superior-inferior, better-worse, and so on, and thus if X cannot be better than Y, then Y cannot be inferior to X. Furthermore, if X is inferior to Y, then Y must be said to be better than X according to the same standard by which X is inferior to Y.
This is a discussion of created and composite entities.
I know, and that is the only aspect of reality in which this framework can possibly make sense, which means that it cannot apply to that which transcends composite entities at all. And that makes sense, because everything within this framework operates according to ordered hierarchies according to some standard, and if X transcends all ordered hierarchies, then X cannot operate according to the principles of ordered hierarchical entities at all. And that would have to include act-potency, perfection-imperfection, cause-effect, higher-lower, superior-inferior, and since these are dialectical relational concepts in which the former implies the latter, and vice versa, then if X cannot be a cause of Y, then Y cannot be an effect of X, for example.
There is no such thing as "X-in-C" when we're talking about God, because God does not contain any perfections in this accidental way. Also, his "perfections" are not virtual in the way that we say the divine ideas are virtual, since names like "good" signify the divine being itself rather than some divine idea. His perfections are only virtual in the sense that created res signifies the divine being in a variety of ways, since the divine being can be called by many names (truth, goodness, nobility, beauty, etc.) that are true but not absolutely true.
The created res does not just signify divine being, but rather manifests divine being in an imperfect and limited fashion, and that is how a created res can participate in divine being, and this participation is ultimately a matter of efficient causality in which the effect is like its cause by sharing something in common with it, but in a different mode. Again, if none of this is applicable to God, then God is beyond all causal analysis, and thus cannot be a cause of creation, which means that creation cannot be an effect of God at all.
The language of participation is based on the idea of one thing sustaining another in a certain aspect.
ReplyDeleteX participates in Y iff X takes part in Y. X could not be X without its participation in Y, and thus you are correct that Y sustains X “in a certain aspect”. For example, John participates in football iff John takes part in football, and John could not be a football player unless John participated in football. For Aquinas, participation is closely related to efficient causality, and the effect is said to participate in the cause, because the cause gives something to the effect that exists in a higher and more eminent fashion in the cause than in the effect, but exists in both the cause and the effect. That is the basis of the Thomist principle that causation is akin to a gift from cause to effect in which the cause cannot give what it does not have.
For example, the hand sustains the stick in motion. However, the hand itself has to be sustained by something that is not sustained--something that does not have any accidental features. And, in the case of this thing, it is impossible to talk about it possessing a certain trait that it shares with creation, because it has no traits. This does not mean that the hand does not participate in the traitless thing, which would be a non sequitur. Rather, the hand participates in God himself, rather than in one of God's traits (which do not exist). What this means is knowable only by analogy from composite, created res to that in which it participates.
But there is no analogy possible between a simple and a composite entity. Analogy presupposes similarity and likeness, and similarity and likeness presuppose a metaphysics of participation and efficient causality, which itself presupposes ordered hierarchies. If God cannot be part of an ordered hierarchy due to his divine transcendence, then God cannot be part of the metaphysics of participation and efficient causality, and thus God cannot be involved in any similarity or likeness relationship to composite entities, and thus there can be no analogy at all.
You still haven’t explained any coherent notion of analogy that does not presuppose some commonality between the analogates. Even if you want to say that it is not partial identity and partial difference, but rather sameness-in-difference, there is still the sameness in the difference that must be present. My contention is that you cannot possibly come up with any coherent account of analogy that does not presuppose some commonality between the analogates, and if this is true and it is impossible for there to be any commonality between God and creation, then there can be no analogy between them.
This is not the reason that effects are inferior to causes, but is rather one of the side-effects of that reason. The reason that effects are inferior to causes is that every effect is in some way potential or prone to non-being--contingent. Effects rely on something else, since otherwise they cannot exist. It's a contradiction to say that something relying on something else is not inferior to that thing in some way. Now, since every aspect of creation relies on God, it must be the case that everything is inferior to God. Again, if something is inferior to something else, then there is a likeness and hence an analogy.
First, inferiority is only measured according to the standard of independence. A child that depends upon their parents for support is not inferior to another child that is independent of their parents, according to the standard of the child adhering to people who benefit them. So, you have to justify the standard that you are using here.
Second, dependence itself does not explain similarity. Just because X depends upon Y does not mean that X has to be similar to Y. That further claim requires additional justification. Aquinas’ justification is his account of participation and efficient causality as a form of giving something from cause to effect. If God is beyond the reach of such an account, then there is no longer any justification of any similarity relationship between creation and God, even if there is a dependency relationship.
ReplyDeleteTo say that God is X-in-C is to speak of God in composite terms. It doesn't work. What Aquinas means there is that every created good is said to be like God, and from this he extrapolates, via analogy, that God is something like the principle of all things. But to call God the principle of all things is to use a divine name, which again is only to engage in analogy from effects. Aquinas has no intention of making an absolute statement about the divine nature.
But if God cannot be part of a metaphysics of participation in which C has X-in-C and gives X to E to cause the transition from potential X-in-E to actual X-in-E, then you cannot infer that E is like C at all. You have eliminated the sole basis for any similarity relationship between E and C. What else is the similarity relationship based upon? Nothing at all. I mean, the whole system collapses once it is applied to God, because it cannot be applied to God, and yet it must be applied to God, which results in a massive contradiction. It is like cutting off the very branch that you are sitting on, and expecting to float in the air. You will fall, and the system does fall. There is a specific account of how an effect is similar to a cause, and if that account cannot apply to a “cause”, then effects cannot be similar to that “cause” at all, because similarity is only for causes, and not “causes”.
X is said to be similar to Y if X is inferior to Y. X is inferior to Y if X relies on Y. Your case about shared traits is a red herring.
No, it is a key point that you are trying to gloss over. Why does dependence imply similarity, according to you? As I said above, Aquinas has an explanation based upon participation and efficient causality, but you claim that this explanation cannot apply to God, and thus the sole rationale for any similarity between creation and God has been tossed aside, and you are left using the word without any justification and without any coherent meaning, because it makes no sense to say that X is inferior to Y, but Y is not superior to X. The antecedent in the conditional already implies the negation of the consequent, and yet you are pretending to some new meaning that still preserves its sense, even though your new meaning flatly contradicts the core meaning of the original terms.
No offense, but you are not Aquinas. Few alive today could match his intellect. Further, Aquinas rarely formulated his own positions: he usually just argued for positions that others had advocated in the past in different words.
Great. So, he is smarter than anyone alive today, but never had original positions, and only acted as a sophisticated thesaurus for older thinkers. And other than resorting to an ad hominem against my intelligence, you didn’t answer the argument, except in the “weak” form of authority and condescension towards a critic.
Also, the core issue here is that you seem to think there's an underlying problem in something being inferior without something else being superior. I've never seen this objection trotted out--ever. Neither have you, despite your large amount of reading on the subject. And what you don't seem to grasp is that your "solution" to this "problem" dissolves into Hegelianism and onto-theology, and so is not really a solution at all.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I think it’s ridiculous that you are so dismissive of my objection, because you’ve never heard it before. Wow. I’m going to dismiss Plantinga’s EAAN, because it’s original. That’s so much easier than engaging in a detailed refutation. And I never knew that an argument derived its force from the number of its adherents. I thought it derived its force from whether it was sound or unsound, not whether it is popular or unpopular.
Second, you have admitted that “If one thing is inferior to something else, then the other must be said to be "better" in some way”. Inferiority is clearly the opposite of superiority, and thus the presence of one necessarily implies the opposite of the other. To deny that X is superior to Y necessarily means that Y is not inferior to X, and so to deny that God is superior to creation means that creation is not inferior to God. I’m sorry if this fact upsets your theology, but you haven’t justified your claim that inferiority is a relative state, and yet cannot be a relative state. To say that X is inferior to Y necessarily involves Y in a dialectical relationship to X by virtue of X’s inferiority to Y. You may as well say that a statue represents a person, but the person is not represented by the statue. It just doesn’t make sense, and your attempt to ground inferiority in dependency fails, because it presupposes an ordered hierarchy according to the standard of independence in which if X is more independent than Y, then X is superior to Y, and if X is less independent than Y, then X is inferior to Y.
Third, I do not have a solution to this problem. My position is that there is no solution. All logical possibilities lead to absurdities. We are lost in a middle of a necessary impossibility.
God doesn't transcend the act/potency distinction in the sense that applying the term "act" to him is equivocation. God is indeed "act" in the sense that act is a perfection applied via analogy to him. He is "pure act", in fact--the "highest act". But he is none of these things absolutely, since analogy by nature only hints at God.
But all of this makes him part of an ordered hierarchy, which is impossible.
All false. Our arguments for God are based on the impossibility of creation being self-sufficient. If creation is not self-sufficient, then it must be grounded in something else. It is this fact that gives us the issue of inferiority, which in turn provides the analogy of proportion, which in turn allows one to give God names like "pure act", "being itself" and suchlike. There are no begged questions in this chain of reasoning.
The begged question is that the entire line of reasoning is only possible for that which is part of an ordered hierarchy involving act > potency, perfection > imperfection, cause > effect, independence > dependence, ungrounded > grounded, and so on. Without this fundamental assumption, the entire chain of argumentation fails, and yet this very assumption makes the entire chain of argumentation unable to be about anything that transcends ordered hierarchies, which necessarily involves God. So, if God transcends all ordered hierarchies, then he cannot be part of any analogy, because all analogy presupposes ordered hierarchies involved in participation and efficient causality.
You have to realize that God is the ground of both act and potency (as both Aquinas and Hart assert), being himself neither in absolute terms.
ReplyDeleteGod is the actuality of all acts, which makes him a kind of act. And that is important, because the principle of causality says that if X is an efficient cause, then X must be in act.
To say that God is act is a distant analogy, derived from the fact that our act is similar to that which sustains it. We don't call God "potency" because potency is inferior to act, and so cannot be one of the highest names; but that doesn't mean that he isn't its source.
But this similarity presupposes ordered hierarchies to justify it, and thus cannot apply to that which transcends all ordered hierarchies, which completely undermines any possibly similarity between creation and God, and that completely undermines anything we can know or say about him.
He is our actuality in that he is called actual via analogy. But God transcends every metaphysical scheme, and so obviously cannot be actual in the absolute sense. This does not mean that he is not our ground, though.
If God “transcends every metaphysical scheme”, then that must include one that involves similarity, participation and efficient causality, which completely undermines your claims about the possibility of an analogy between creation and God. It’s like saying that X is only possible if Y, and then when it is shown that Y cannot occur, then you still carry on claiming X.
The principle of causality is based on the world of act and potency--this is true. But the principle of causality reveals its own insufficiency with its inability to explain creation without relying on onto-theology. This does not mean that it ceases to apply to us: merely that it does not apply to our ground in any absolute sense. And this is enough to say that we are inferior, since the principle of causality does indeed guarantee that we are effects (i.e. contingent, imperfect, etc.) even though it cannot, in strict metaphysical terms, explain why or how this result has come about. Not that it's necessary for it to do so, given that the apophatic ground from which we spring is already reachable via analogy thanks to our inferiority to it.
The principle of causality guarantees that we are effects of causes, and if the standard is independence, then effects are inferior to causes. But this is an ordered hierarchy relative to the standard of independence. If God transcends all ordered hierarchies, then he transcends this standard, and without this ordered hierarchy relative to this standard, the principle of causality no longer applies, and without this principle, there cannot be similarity and without similarity, there cannot be analogy, and so we are left in darkness.
Nope. An effect is something contingent, in need of some kind of ground. It is not defined solely by its dialectical relation to a "cause". I know you're looking for a begged question in my account, but it just isn't going to work.
You just defined it “by its dialectical relation”. You just changed the word “cause” to “ground”, as if that made any difference. I appreciate the appropriation of Heidegger, but why it changes anything is beyond me. So, an “effect” is “in need of some kind of ground”, which means that if X is an effect, then X must be sustained by a cause, which is exactly what I said. You cannot call X an effect without saying that it must be an effect of a cause. You can call this cause a “ground”, or a “moose”, or whatever, but the underlying point remains the same.
1. Everything that is not self-sufficient relies on something that is not itself (trivial truth).
ReplyDeleteTrue.
2. If something relies on something that is not itself, then it is inferior to it.
Only according to the standard of independence, which necessarily involves an ordered hierarchy relative to that standard.
3. If something is inferior to something that is not itself, then there is said to be a likeness of one to the other.
But why is there “said to be a likeness”? X is dependent upon Y iff X is like Y is certainly not a logical truth. It requires some justification. The only justification that I have come across is the metaphysics of participation and efficient causality. And thus anything that operates within that metaphysics can be said to be similar to its cause, but anything that operates outside of that metaphysics cannot have any justified similarity relationships rooted in dependency relationships.
4. A likeness of the kind mentioned in premise (3) leads to an analogy of proportion.
If X is part of the metaphysics of participation and efficient causality, then X can participate in an analogy of proportion to X’s causes and X’s effects. But if X is beyond that metaphysics, then X is beyond the only foundation that could justify an analogy of proportion between causes and effects.
5. Creation is not self-sufficient.
True.
6. Therefore, creation relies on and is inferior to and is analogous to *insert analogous name here*.
But if *insert analogous name here* is beyond the very conditions that ground all inferiority and analogous relationships, then it cannot be a cause or ground or act of creation, and since effects requires causes, then if there are no causes, then there are no effects, which contradicts (5).
Even if I had put "a ground" or "something else" in place of *insert analogous name here*, both terms are once again reducible to analogy. And this does not mean that the syllogism is a non sequitur or an equivocation, because all of the premises inexorably lead us to that same conclusion. The thing is that the conclusion is, again, the very end of metaphysics, after which point we have only analogy. But metaphysics does do us one last favor, in that it guarantees the possibility of analogy right before collapsing.
But the possibility of analogy depends upon the metaphysics, and so if the metaphysics collapses, then so does the very justification of the analogy itself! That’s the whole point.
And yet I don't see any argument from you in support of this view: just assertions and begged questions.
I could say the same thing about you. You agree that between composite entities X and Y, X is superior to Y relative to standard S iff Y is inferior to X relative to standard S. (I hope you’ll agree with this, because if you reject this basic claim, then I really don’t know what else to say.) Even Aquinas endorses this view.
Your claim is that because this position cannot possibly be true if God is as classical theism describes him due to divine impassibility and immutability, then this position must be false.
But the problem is that you have not given an account of how this position can be false, and yet the terms involved in the position retain their meaning. Inferiority is defined in opposition to superiority relative to a standard, and so denying the validity of superiority necessarily denies the validity of inferiority, because they define each other mutually, much like an effect can only be an effect of a cause, and thus the cause is part of the definition of the effect. That is the whole point of your double-grounding thingy.
So, to avoid one contradiction, i.e. between the above account and divine impassibility and immutability, you embrace another contradiction, i.e. inferiority independent of superiority. For whatever reason, you have less cognitive dissonance with the latter than the former, but I can assure you that they are both incoherent. You may as well embrace square circles for the sake of God. Heck, you could even repeat “square circle” often enough that you numb your mind and blur your intellectual vision to the contradiction at its heart, but that does not change the fact that it is contradictory to its core.
ReplyDeleteYour task is simple to refute me. Explain “inferiority” without any mention of an ordered hierarchy relative to a standard. So, go for it.
For something to be superior to something else, it has to fall under metaphysics.
Furthermore, under metaphysics, X is superior to Y relative to standard S iff Y is inferior to X relative to standard S. Superiority and inferiority are co-relational terms that make reference to S in an ordered hierarchy. That is what these terms mean, “under metaphysics”. I hope you’ll agree with this.
God doesn't.
Yes, God does not “fall under metaphysics”. He transcends metaphysics, as well as all ordered hierarchies, and thus transcends any metaphysics that is rooted in ordered hierarchies, which must include the Thomist metaphysics of act-potency, cause-effect, perfection-imperfection. None of this can be applicable to God at all.
However, because we do fall under metaphysics, it is possible for us to be inferior.
But inferiority does not exist in itself. It is inferior to something else, according to a standard by which superiority and inferiority are measured in an ordered hierarchy. To say that we are inferior necessarily implies that we are inferior to something else, and the meaning of inferiority is such that if X is inferior to Y, then Y is superior to X. If God transcends metaphysics, then God transcends all ordered hierarchies, and thus cannot be superior to anything, including us. And if God cannot be superior to us, then we cannot be inferior to God, because that is what “superior” and “inferior” mean. So, we cannot possibly be inferior to that which transcends metaphysics.
Hence, we are inferior but God is not superior.
Nope.
These types of dialectical terms do not have the Hegelian universal applicability that you seem to think they do: they are connected to distinctions like act/potency and the ten categories. Anything that falls under those distinctions will also fall under distinctions like higher/lower. Anything that does not fall under those distinctions will not fall under distinctions like higher/lower. Hence the strange and unintuitive break between our inferiority and God's lack of absolute superiority.
First, why do we always have to make higher affirmations after negations if “higher” has nothing to do with God? You want to say that he is higher, and yet claim that he cannot be higher. Even saying that he is higher than higher is still saying that he is higher.
Second, I’m not talking about Hegel. Or his bagels. (Simpsons reference.)
Third, if higher-lower only applies within metaphysics, then we can only be lower than something else within metaphysics. After all, being lower means being lower than something else, and if this “something else” transcends metaphysics, then it cannot be higher than us, because higher-lower only applies within metaphysics. And if it cannot be higher than us, then we cannot be lower than it.
Again, you start with the meaning of higher-lower within metaphysics as being in an ordered hierarchy relative to a standard in which each is defined in opposition to the other. And here we are, within metaphysics, and you claim that we are lower (or inferior). Well, within metaphysics, all instances of lower within metaphysics imply a higher also within metaphysics. And thus my inferiority within metaphysics is defined relative to a superiority also within metaphysics. My inferiority makes no reference to what is outside metaphysics. So, if my inferiority has nothing to do with what is outside metaphysics, then my inferiority cannot be used as a justification for the need for a ground outside metaphysics, because my inferiority can only refer to a superiority within metaphysics, and not to a superiority beyond metaphysics. And since the cause-effect relation is necessarily one of superiority-inferiority, then the ground of creation cannot be found outside of creation. A ground can only be within creation, because all grounds are superior to what they ground, and this relation is impossible beyond metaphysics.
ReplyDeleteSo, creation requires a ground outside of creation, because of the validity of the Five Ways, but there cannot be a ground outside of creation, because “ground” only makes sense as part of an ordered hierarchy, and ordered hierarchies only apply within creation.
I provided it several weeks ago with my talk of the Trinitarian trace. Our likeness to God cannot be broken down or analyzed: it is factical, the condition of creation--something presupposed in every metaphysical endeavor. The likeness just is present. Like esse, it is a simple truth.
It is justified on the basis of a metaphysical system that is fundamentally unstable. And our likeness to God can be analyzed, certainly with imperfect understanding, but it is not so fundamentally inexplicable that the words themselves are incoherent. Or is it?
Created res is the reference. We understand created res just as we understand created modes of being: by witnessing, internalizing and signifying.
But you missed the point.
words <--> thoughts <--> composite entia --> simple God.
Our words refer to reality by virtue of the mediation of our thoughts. It is only because reality can affect our minds that our minds can associate words with reality at all. So, there is no problem with the words <--> thoughts <--> composite entia part of the above schematic.
My question is how words --> simple God. In order for divine names to refer to God, they would have to be mediated by semantic and cognitive content within our minds, and yet this is impossible, because any semantic and cognitive content that could exist within our minds can only be about composite entia, as per your schema. If the simple God is hidden behind composite entia, fundamentally un-representable to our minds, then God is invisible to our minds, and thus to our language. Thus, we cannot talk about him at all, including to say that he exists within the above schema.
It is not presupposed that metaphysics have a cause: it is just demonstrated that there is a giant hole in the center of any metaphysical system. What we must then decide is whether we're going to worship the hole (as Derrida did), accepting the irrationalism and skepticism that follow, or to acknowledge something similar to what Aquinas and the Church Fathers did. This second position is that the hole simply shows that metaphysics are not self-supporting--the hole is not the original stuff from which metaphysics were built--, which means that all things that we know are contingent. This in turn leads us to say that creation is an effect, even though it has no cause in the absolute, metaphysical sense.
ReplyDeleteI accept that there is a giant hole in metaphysics, but since this hole is beyond metaphysics, and our thought is saturated by metaphysics, it means that we literally have no idea what is going on in that hole. And that leaves us in a fundamental state of undecidability. We do not know if the darkness in the hole is due to something in excess of being (i.e. God) that blinds us with too much light, or due to something less than being (i.e. differance) that has too little light to show anything at all. There is no resolution to this undecidability, because the only tools that we have available cannot apply to the dark hole at all. So, we are lost, adrift, unsure in our footing, and walking cautiously over an abyss.
Neither Derrida’s nor Aquinas’ solutions are adequate to the task. Both lead to irrationalism and inconsistencies that are irresoluble. And that is because both rely upon necessary impossibilities. That is why there are so many parallels between deconstruction and apophatic theology, and much literature has been written about their relationship.
The traditional Christian solution assumes what turns out to be impossible, and tries to make sense of things in a way that ends up being senseless. To say that creation is an effect carries with it a series of implications, all of which are completely falsified, which compromises the initial position in which creation is an effect at all. It makes no sense to think of creation as an effect without also thinking of creation as an effect of a cause. That is what the principle of causality is all about. However, causality is only applicable to a reality that is ordered hierarchically, because cause > effect, act > potency, perfection > imperfection, and so on, and so none of these concepts can be utilized to understand that which transcends all ordered hierarchies, and that must include God. You embrace this conclusion, as you should. So, God cannot be considered the cause of creation, and if God cannot cause creation, then nothing can, and if creation has no cause, then creation is not an effect. And if creation is not an effect, then there is no sense to asking what its cause could be, because only effects require causes, which completely undermines the Five Ways, and all natural theology, because all natural theology tries to reason from the composite entia of creation to its ground, which turns out to be impossible, under its own rules.
What the approaches of apophatic theology and deconstruction tell us in their different, but related, approaches to the necessary impossiblities of their systems is But they tell us more about ourselves than about reality. They tell us about our desire, the desire of language itself, the desire of reason itself, to transcend itself, even when it leaves all meaning and sense and logic behind it.
That is absolutely false. The principle of causality is an ontological reality for every metaphysical entity. We merely discover it.
That is absolutely false. It does not apply to God. If it did, then he would not be transcendent.
Not in the slightest. The First Way shows that no secondary change can exist unless it is grounded in something that is beyond secondary change. This is a logical and ontological fact. Whether or not we can actually comprehend the being to which this logic leads us is irrelevant to the logic itself.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet this “logical and ontological fact” turns out to be impossible, for the reasons that I’ve outlined above.
Considering that all we use the principle of causality for is discussing creation and effects, I don't see how this is a problem. The principle of causality is how we find the holes in every totalistic metaphysical scheme, and it is how we then realize that these holes point to something that we can only understand through analogy.
It is a problem, because even if you find holes in metaphysics using the principle of causality, you cannot use it to reach any conclusions about the holes themselves, because they are beyond the reach of the principle of causality. You cannot even make any analogies between the hole and creation, because analogy presupposes similarity, which presupposes the metaphysics of participation and efficient causality, which cannot be applied to the hole. So, you are lost.
And just to formalize my argument, here it is:
(1) X is higher than Y iff Y is lower than X iff X and Y are part of an ordered hierarchy relative to a particular standard
(2) X involves an ordered hierarchy iff X is within metaphysics
(3) The principle of causality involves ordered hierarchies (such as act > potency, perfection > imperfection, cause > effect)
(4) Thus, the principle of causality is within metaphysics (by (2), (3))
(5) X is beyond metaphysics iff X cannot be understand by that which is within metaphysics
(6) God is beyond metaphysics
(7) Thus, God cannot be understand by that which is within metaphysics (by (5), (6))
(8) Thus, God cannot be understood by the principle of causality (by (4), (7))
(9) The principle of causality necessarily presupposes the truth of the metaphysics of participation and efficient causality
(10) Thus, God cannot be understood by the metaphysics of participation and efficient causality (by (8), (9))
(11) X is similar to Y iff X is an effect of Y iff X is dependent upon Y iff X and Y can be understood according to the metaphysics of participation and efficient causality
(12) Let X = creation and Y = God in (11)
(13) Creation is similar to God iff creation and God can be understood according to the metaphysics of participation and efficient causality (by (11), (12))
(14) It is not the case that creation and God can be understood according to the metaphysics of participation and efficient causality (by (10))
(15) Thus, creation cannot be dependent upon God, creation cannot be an effect of God, and creation cannot be similar to God (by (11), (14))
The bottom line is that inferiority only makes sense relative to that which is superior. That is why we say that X is inferior to Y. It makes no sense to say that X is inferior, period, without any relative comparison to a superior Y. And that means that if you want to say that X is inferior, then it must point towards what is superior, and that must mean towards another composite ens within an ordered hierarchy within metaphysics. In other words, an inferior X within metaphysics cannot point to a superior Y beyond metaphysics, but can only point towards a superior Y within metaphysics. And thus, there is no way to reach God via the inferiority of creation, because God cannot be superior due to his existence beyond the metaphysical framework of ordered hierarchies, and thus nothing can be inferior to him, including creation. Again, this is a direct consequence of the demand for utter transcendence. It ends up undermining any analogy that can be made between creation and God, even on its own terms. And thus, we are left in the darkness of the hole, unable to know if we are blinded by too much light or no light at all.
ReplyDeleteOne last thing. I think that you are right that Aquinas’ thought is a development from earlier Christian thought and mysticism, and so I am reading several books on the subject to better familiarize myself with his background. I’m reading Robert Louis Wilken’s The Spirit of Early Christian Thought now, and will then read Andrew Louth’s The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition. I’ve also got Eric Perl’s Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite, William Riordan’s Divine Light: The Theology of Denys the Areopagite, and Andrew Louth’s Deny the Areopagite to better understand Pseudo-Denys’ thought, which as you mentioned was key for Aquinas’ thought. I’ve also ordered a book on Gregory of Nyssa, and a few books on Eckhart to better understand the mystical tradition to understand your position better, especially before I venture to read Hart. I have a few books on continental philosophy of religion to read first, as well, before Hart. After all, you seem to highly value his books, and so I want to have a good background in place before I tackle his thought.
That being said, I think that the argument that I have made above is compelling, and undermines all attempts to adhere to utter divine transcendence and any form of knowledge of the divine rooted in the similarity/dependence/contingency of creation. You cannot have both together, and one must give way.