Last week I
linked to my paper “The Medieval Principle of Motion and the Modern Principle
of Inertia,” which appears in Volume 10 of
the Proceedings of the Society for
Medieval Logic and Metaphysics. The
paper addresses the familiar claim that Newton’s law of inertia has undermined
the argument of Aquinas’s First Way, which rests on the principle that whatever
is in motion is moved by another -- or, to state it more precisely, the
principle that any actualized potency is actualized by something already actual. I argue that when Newton’s principle and
Aquinas’s are properly understood, it is clear that the objection has no force
and that those who raise it have not even managed to explain exactly what the
conflict between Newton and Aquinas is supposed to be.
The first
half of the paper is devoted to developing five reasons why the appearance of
conflict here is illusory. In summary
they are:
1. There would
be no formal contradiction between the principles even if we took them to be
using “motion” in the same sense.
2. In fact
they are not using “motion” in the same sense, so that the objection rests on
an equivocation.
3. That Newtonian
inertial motion is commonly said to be a “state” which can be altered only by
an external force in fact implicitly affirms,
rather than conflicts with, Aquinas’s principle rightly understood.
4. Contrary to
a common erroneous assumption, Aristotle and Aquinas do not hold that natural motions
require a conjoined mover, which puts them much closer to Newton than is
commonly realized.
5. Since
Newton’s principle is intended to address a question of physics while Aquinas’s
is intended to address a question of the philosophy of nature, the two
principles rightly understood are not even addressing the same issues in the
first place.
In the
second half of the paper I examine, without endorsing, several ways of
construing the relationship between the two principles, depending on whether:
1. We
construe inertial motion as involving a genuine actualization of potency,
2. We
construe inertial motion as stasis in the sense of not involving any genuine
actualization of potency, or
3. We
construe not only inertial motion, but physical events in general, as not
involving any genuine actualization of potency.
I note several
objections that might be raised against various alternative ways of construing
the relationship of Newton’s principle to Aquinas’s on each of these interpretations. The reason I do not argue for or even endorse
any particular interpretation is that it simply does not matter which one we
adopt for purposes of evaluating the First Way.
For none of the interpretations eliminate, or in principle could coherently
eliminate, the actualization of potency; at most they merely shift it around
like the pea in a shell game. And as
long as there is some actualization of
potency somewhere in reality, we have what is needed to get a First Way-style
argument off the ground.
Now, my
longtime readers might expect, as I certainly would have, that atheist physicist
Robert Oerter, a smart and usually serious guy with whom I have previously had
some very useful and friendly exchanges (here,
here,
and here),
would have something of interest to say in response to the paper if he bothered
to comment on it at all. If so, then
they would be as surprised and disappointed as I was when I read this
post which criticizes it. Prof.
Oerter completely ignores the first half of the paper -- that is to say, he
completely ignores the paper’s main arguments -- and he ignores almost all of
the second half too. Instead he sums up
the paper for his readers as follows:
Newton says that an object that is
completely isolated, so that it has no external influences on it, will continue
to move. Aquinas denies this.
So how does Feser resolve the
conflict? Easy! The object in uniform motion is moved along by....
(wait for it)
ANGELS!
Yes, angels are necessary to keep a
moving object moving. I'm not making this up, he really says it…
End
quote. Oerter then proceeds to ridicule
this thesis he’s attributed to me, saying, among other things:
And how many angels are needed for
this heavenly guidance? If an asteroid is being guided by an angel, and suffers
an impact that splits it in two, does the angel recruit another angel to guide
the second piece? Or can the first angel handle both pieces? What if the
asteroid gets shattered into smaller and smaller fragments? Maybe each
elementary particle has its own angel? How many angels are needed to guide a
fragment the size of a pin? (And do they dance?)
Once again we see the Sophisticated
Theologian in action. When the world doesn't work the way you want it to, just
invent some invisible, undetectable beings to fill the gap.
End
quote. Now those who read through my
paper very quickly or only read the first half of it might have no idea what
Oerter is talking about. They will no
doubt find themselves as shocked as I was to learn that the aim of my paper was
to argue that angels move asteroids around. But to afford Oerter the minimal fairness he
has not afforded me, it is true that he has not spun his attribution out of
whole cloth. For you will find, nine
pages into my paper, a single paragraph wherein I do discuss (though I do not endorse)
the idea that angelic substances are the cause of inertial motion. What Oerter has done is to rip this brief discussion out of context and
insinuate that I endorse the thesis in question, that I think the thesis is
needed in order to reconcile Aquinas and Newton, and that putting this thesis forward
was the main point of the paper.
In fact,
none of these things is true. In fact I
do not think that angels are the
cause of inertial motion, I do not
think that any appeal to angels is needed in order to reconcile Newton and
Aquinas (one reason being that there’s no conflict between them in the first
place), and the very idea of an angelic cause of inertial motion is discussed
only very briefly in passing. All I was
saying in that passage is that IF one regards inertial motion as genuinely
involving the actualization of potency and IF we reject the thesis that the
external physical initiator of motion is sufficient to account for inertial
motion and IF we also reject the impetus theory and IF we also reject the idea
that the Unmoved Mover directly causes inertial motion, THEN the notion of intelligent
or angelic substances might provide a model for a cause of inertial
motion. But I never endorsed every or
even any of the options in this decision tree.
On top of
that, Oerter offers no serious objection to the thesis in question, but merely
ridicules it as an arbitrary “angel of the gaps” pseudo-explanation. But it is not that at all. Though I do not myself accept the thesis, it
is not a silly one but makes perfect sense IF one moves down the decision tree in
the way described above and IF one also understands what an angel is in the
thought of an Aristotelian like Aquinas.
(Needless to say, the idea has nothing whatsoever to do with wings,
golden hair, white robes and the other stuff of children’s books. The relevant point is rather that an angel is
something which, since it is not a composite of matter and form, has no
inherent tendency toward corruption -- and is thus, unlike material substances,
which do have a tendency toward corruption, a candidate for a cause of indefinite motion. If you don’t like the word “angel,” call it
X.)
In fact all
Oerter is doing is tossing some red meat to the New Atheist mob, who are sure
to get some cheap giggles at the word "angel" without bothering to
understand exactly what a writer like Aquinas means by it, or to read an
article which Oerter has implied is nothing more than an absurd attempt to
apply Highway to Heaven
to serious questions in physics. No
doubt the meme “Feser claims that asteroids are moved around by angels!” will
soon be regularly thrown out in comboxes as something “everyone knows.” Hope you’re proud of yourself Prof. Oerter.
I think there is a contradiction here which I don't now have the opportunity to articulate.
ReplyDeleteBut roughly.
The APOM as a metaphysical principle is a product of realism.
Yair's objection to Inertia as a mere state & as an example of real change is based on using a scientific realism.
But Yair is a Parmenidian which is a philosophy that is not compatible with realism & denies change is real.
Yair objects to the APOM via Ockham's Razor(Will wasn't a Realist either BTW) but by doing so abandons scientific realism.
If we see Inertia as an example of real change and not as a state then if we use a Realistic Metaphysics with a Scientific Realism then we cannot but help but conclude there must be an external metaphysical mover to account for Inertia.
Thus I think there is an element of special pleading in Yair's objection via Ockham.
That is he wants to be a realist in regards to Inertia being metaphysically real change but drop realism when convinent.
The A-team can judge if I thought well.
@Glenn:
ReplyDelete"Quantum superposition is the term physicists use to describe the manner in which quantum particles appear to exist in all states simultaneously."
This sentence is highly misleading.
Notwithstanding a lack of familiarity with any of a number of relevant things, the term 'appear' alone should set off the warning bells in a reader's mind.
Also, I appreciate the succinctness of the ZFC para; thanks.
"Whatever is being changed (object's location) is being changed by something else (it's kinetic energy)."
ReplyDeleteI cant see a problem with your reasoning. It makes sense to me. The objects location(the changing element in this scenario) is being changed by its momentum. There really is no problem.
@Yair,
I think dialetheism is just an abuse of language. Sentences like "This sentence is false" dont actually mean anything. A sentence with no content is not the type of thing that can be true or false, anymore than a coffe cup can be true or false. Ask yourself, how is it false?
@Yair:
ReplyDeleteI think that our primary differences here are methodological.
So, I think the place to begin is with this idea of the philosophy of nature. The idea behind the philosophy of nature is vaguely similar to what you describe as Kantian "transcendental" philosophy, but with some very major points of difference that would make a comparison between the two misleading.
Unlike Kant, we are not trying to deduce the necessary conceptual preconditions for any possible experience, nor do we accept anything like a phenomena/noumena distinction. There are also other serious differences between our project and the Kantian besides.
Rather, we are trying to uncover the necessary conditions for our most basic a posteriori knowledge about the actual world.
We start with a posteriori premises that no non-insane non-philosopher could reject, and we try to rationally reconstruct the necessary conditions for those premises to be true. It is a kind of ontological reverse-engineering project that combines a posteriori empirical truths and a priori metaphysical truths.
The a posteriori data we are starting with are extremely basic claims like: "change occurs" and "some things persist through change" and "some changes are alterations while others are destructions" and so on and so on.
And then we try to winnow out what the actual world would have to be like for these truths to obtain; positing what is necessary to reconstruct the data of experience and rejecting a priori conceptual possibilities that contravene it.
So, we can admit that there is an at least logically "possible world" in which no change occurs or in which no change occurs; its just that these worlds contain none of the things that we know exist in our world.
So sure, there are, in our view, logically possible worlds in which the act/potency distinction doesn't apply- worlds of Heraclitean flux or Parmenidean stasis. But these worlds cannot possibly contain any minds, or any experiences, or any change etc.
And so we take ourselves to be justified in positing things like PSR (in at least one version) or the act/potency distinction. But not because these things exist in all conceivable worlds, and not because they are needed to make our scientific theories empirically adequate, and not because they are derived from pure logic or mathematics.
But they are nevertheless, in our view, necessary posits in order to make the a posteriori data of experience. And so appeals to Ockham's razor have no force; because a theory that doesn't posit these things isn't on an explanatory par with our theory in terms of making our experiences intelligible. And conceivability arguments don't cut any ice with us either. First, because we don't think logical possibility tracks metaphysical possibility, and second because we are talking about the necessary conditions for what we experience in the *actual* world, not any world we can conjure up in the space of logical or imaginative possibility.
So we have independent and principled grounds upon which to resist appeals to both conceivability arguments a la Hume as well as appeals to theoretical parsimony a la empirical theorizing.
@Kuartus:
ReplyDeleteThe original point behind dialethism, as I understand it, is to account for the conjunction of the following data points a), b) and c):
a)The putative truth of any proposition follows logically from a contradiction b)Some minds contain contradictory beliefs c)It is not nomologically (or, perhaps, metaphysically) possible for minds described by (b) to arrive at any belief whatsoever.
The reason Graham Priest invented dialethism was to try and show how contradictory beliefs could exist within a single mind and yet fail to imply every other proposition. This would resolve, at the psychological level, the data inscribed in a), b) and c) above.
The whole project assumes a ton of things about psychological encapsultion, the the extent that functionalism can be abstracted into an idealized deductive system and etc. that I can't see much real metaphysical use for it.
And I would say that the mere fact that there are possible interpretations of QM that do not violate LNC (e.g Bohm's, arguably DeBroglie's)is enough to establish that QM as such does not put LNC in any serious jeopardy.
@Untenured: " I can't see much real metaphysical use for [dialethism]"
ReplyDeleteWell, consider the question of whether God, seen as a Necessary Being, exists. To provide a fair answer to this question, we need to take seriously both possibilities - that it exists or that it doesn't - before settling the matter through argument (supposing it can be settled). But since we're dealing with a necessary truth or falsehood, we will need to seriously consider a contradiction (whether that be that God exist or that he doesn't). Which is to say, we should assign a positive probability that a falsehood is correct - which is an error in basic reasoning. Paraconsistent logic promises to solve this problem, by allowing us to consider false claims for necessary truths (whether in theism, maths, or so on), or even just false data in databases. So at least potentially, I think it can be useful both philosophically and practically.
I'm just not sure it's really in contradiction to the LNC. I think it's just a "metalanguage" that allows one to consider contradicting options.
"the mere fact that there are possible interpretations of QM that do not violate LNC ...is enough to establish that QM as such does not put LNC in any serious jeopardy."
Even one such interpretation will demonstrate that the NLC is not a metaphysical truth (in the analytic sense). That said, there aren't any (coherent) interpretations of QM that violate the NLC, so the point is moot.
Yair
@Untenured:
ReplyDeleteI now at least have better understand the nature of the "philosophy of nature" you advocate. Thank you. I feel I have a much firmer grasp on what is assumed what is being claimed. Which is great.
I am afraid I can't accept it as a valid methodology, for various reasons. I agree with your criteria (the theory should make sense of our everyday experiences, for example), and greatly approve of the project, but not with the way you pick the premises. If you wish I'd be happy to explore the issue further, but for now I suggest I'll simply accept the methodology for the sake of discussion so we could focus on the question at hand - is the principle of motion compatible with the principle of inertia?
So, given that assumption - how are the questions raised in the above thread resolved?
I concede that mere inconceivability doesn't undermine the "metaphysical" status of the principle of motion, where the quotation marks indicate the terms' use in the philosophy-of-nature sense of the term. (While noting that it does undermine it in the analytic sense of the word.) This is the secondary argument, however; I'm more interested in exploring the main argument I made, namely that the principle of motion implies ad hoc causes.
I concede that if you are absolutely certain in all your "metaphysical" deductions (again, the quotes denote the technical sense), then the existence of such ad hoc causes is simply implied and this is no problem. Surely, however, your position is not that dogmatic? Given any probability less than absolute certainty, the existence of such ad hoc reasons will lower the probability that the principle of motion is true and hence should be of concern to the Thomist.
So - what about the main body of the argument? How is the impetus theory or natural motion not in violation of the principle of motion? Are there independent grounds for assuming the necessary sustaining causes that presumably cause the change in location during local inertial motion?
I am sorry if I'm pressing for question you don't feel like answering. Feel free to ignore them, of course - but frankly, it is in hope of receiving good Thomistic answers to questions like these that I entered this thread, so I hope you'll oblige me.
Thanks,
Yair
Yair
ReplyDeleteI was talking about that, sorry the end of the phrase was so comfusing you probably thought i was replying that discussion.
Was meant to be a question on how to devise a method that gives certainty.... Had nothing to do with being dogmatic.
I tzhink it is best if I just watch hahahaha, i confuse you hahahhah you have way better opponents and i think we did reached a good point in our discussion
"[F]rankly, it is in hope of receiving good Thomistic answers to questions like these that I entered this thread . . . "
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, it's because I know that's your main interest that I haven't been replying (much) further myself. I think very highly of Aquinas and I regard myself as sympathetic to Aristotelianism, but I'm not any sort of expert and, in order to avoid sidetracking the thread, I'm leaving the detailed replies to those who are. I think my contribution here is best limited to helping to ensure that everybody who's replying knows what questions you're asking and what issues you're raising.
Just didn't want you to think I was rudely ignoring you. ;-)
"Paraconsistent logic promises to solve this problem, by allowing us to consider false claims for necessary truths (whether in theism, maths, or so on), or even just false data in databases. So at least potentially, I think it can be useful both philosophically and practically.
ReplyDeleteI'm just not sure it's really in contradiction to the LNC. I think it's just a 'metalanguage' that allows one to consider contradicting options."
That's a very interesting take on dialethism and one that I had never before considered. I have to say that it immediately makes me much more sympathetic to it -- not that I'm about to sign up as an acolyte of Graham Priest or anything.
@Yair
ReplyDelete" How is the impetus theory or natural motion not in violation of the principle of motion"
The principle of motion is just that whatever is changing is changed by another.
As was said before, whatever is being changed (the location of the object) is being changed by something else (the kinetic energy or momentum of the object.)
There really is no conflict with the APOM. In fact, it is an example of the APOM.
The whole notion that QM contradicts (irony) LNC is just nonsense. Just like the experiment in Santa Barbara, there have been others as well, one of which (if my memory serves me well) was in Portland, OR. These experiments do not show any violation of the principle and it's good to remember that it would be in principle impossible for an experiment to undermine the LNC.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is more on the side of amateur scientists (who like to make sensationalist proclamations) and atheists (trying to deny the inevitable rationality of Theism). So the appeal is one made to the superposition of states. But what people become forgetful of is that the superposition describes potentialities, not actualities. Once that is understood, the whole QM undermines the LNC is reduced to tosh.
Scott,
ReplyDeleteThat's a very interesting take on dialethism and one that I had never before considered. I have to say that it immediately makes me much more sympathetic to it
I'm not sure if I'd call it a metalanguage. Maybe paralanguage would be more appropriate? Somehow calling dialetheism a metalanguage seems to imply that it's a step removed and above commonsense language. I'm not an expert on the topic, but I have read some of Priest's work, so I'm not stating this with the utmost of certainty.
To me dialetheism seems like a different way of looking at things (one I'm not too fond of) but not a way of looking at the way we look at things (which is why I am skeptical of calling it a metalanguage if that makes sense).
Either way, I don't really think the LNC is compromised either way.
If you or anyone else is interested I have in my archive a dissertation/article that criticizes Priest and refutes his position. I found it last year when I had taken interest in the topic. If you want I can look for it and upload it somewhere to read it. It's pretty long if my memory serves me well.
Disclaimer: I'm not too familiar with this AT stuff, but I have done a bit of reading/research.
ReplyDeleteAn object moving in a straight line (inertial motion)is actually passing by point A and has the potential to be at point B. If, somehow, it could be shown that it is infact the "potential to be at point B" which is sustaining the inertial motion, then the APOM fails, because we have an example of a potential which is "self-actualizing." Which is akin to saying: the reason that the ice melted is because the resulting water caused itself to exist. That's how I see it anyway.
lol, I should have made a nickname.
ReplyDeleteJust to prevent any confusion, I'm the Discaimer Anon, different from the poster at 4:08 PM and 4:02 PM.
In AT metaphysics, would it make more sense to call God the "Unmovable Mover" rather than the "Unoved Mover?"
ReplyDeleteI would say that the potential to be at B is actualized by the objects kinetic energy.
ReplyDelete@kuartus:
ReplyDelete"I would say that the potential to be at B is actualized by the objects kinetic energy."
This does not quite work because kinetic energy is a property not a substance, and is ontologically dependent on the object, not the other way around which is what is needed to make the claim stick.
@grodrigue,
DeleteWould impetus be considered a property?
@Scott: "Incidentally, it's because I know that's your main interest that I haven't been replying (much) further myself."
ReplyDeleteThat's cool. I'm very grateful for your participation. :)
"That's a very interesting take on dialethism and one that I had never before considered."
Of course, I can't claim originality - I read this view, or something close to it, in an article attempting to argue that "negation" in paraconsistent logic is not "negation" in the logical sense. I can't remember the reference, but that's the origin of that thought. I'm not sure it's strong enough to apply to dialethism itself, but, well, I was just floating the idea :) As I said, I'm struggling with the LNC - I don't claim to have the answers...
@Disclaimer Anon: "lol, I should have made a nickname."
That's why I despise anonymous posts (no offence) - they make discussions so confusing. And it's not like one has to use one's real name; any nick will do.
I do agree with your point, and indeed think it's a big problem for AT in general - but I digress....
@kuartus: "I would say that the potential to be at B is actualized by the objects kinetic energy."
Feser gives two formulations of the principle of motion in his paper:
POM1: Whatever is in motion is moved by another
POM2: Any potency that is being actualized is being actualized by something else (…that is already actual)
My reading is that "another" or "something else" refers to another entity, or THING. This seems to me to be strongly implied by POM1, and consistent with POM2.
Your reading is apparently that "another" or "something else" refers (at least sometimes) to another PROPERTY, a property that is actual while the property that is changing is still potential. I have to say that in this case POM1 is EXTREMELY misleading in its phrasing, although this reading consistent (again) with POM2.
I also have to say that a reformulation that will clarify what are BOTH things being talked about (both the "whatever" and the "another") would be highly desirable!
I need to think about your option more. It is my understanding that the AT thesis is that the APOM allows to build a web of ENTITIES (which is its purpose in the First Way), which your interpretation denies, but perhaps I'm mistaken. I have a nagging feeling that I'm forgetting some basic principle of AT metaphysics that forbids your reading too - but I can't place my finger of it at the moment. I need to think about it. :) (Of course, I'd be glad if anyone can marshal arguments either way.)
An advantage of your interpretation in this specific case is that the kinetic energy is essentially the velocity, and it sort of makes sense for this property to be the cause of the object's movement - the change in location is indeed implied by the velocity.
I think, though Im not 100 percent positive, that Feser would agree with me. This comment of his implies that this is a route which can be taken in AT metaphysics:
Delete". When I say, for example, that the potential gooeyness of the ball cannot actualize itself, I don't mean that only heat external to the ball can actualize it, and in fact I'm not really saying anything about the ball itself in the first place. What I mean is that the ball's gooeyness cannot actualize itself, precisely because it is only potential. That remains true even if t is something internal to the ball that does the actualizing."
I think the point is that an external entity need not be involved. Well thats my take on it. Im not an expert so I could be wrong. Feser has also said that the argument of motion ultimately reduces to the causal principle, where God is the direct cause of the joining of an essence with an act of existence, so no chain on entities is necessary.
"If you or anyone else is interested I have in my archive a dissertation/article that criticizes Priest and refutes his position."
ReplyDeleteI'd certainly be interested in reading that. So far my own view has remained pretty close to Mark Sainsbury's, that Priest seems somehow to be wrongheaded but that there's not a knock-down argument showing that he's flat-out wrong.
"Of course, I can't claim originality - I read this view, or something close to it, in an article attempting to argue that 'negation' in paraconsistent logic is not 'negation' in the logical sense."
ReplyDeleteNo matter who thought of it first, that's a marvelously pregnant suggestion and I'm glad you passed it along.
A thought about the relativity of motion under the AT-formulation:
ReplyDeleteSince only relative velocity is meaningful in Newtonian physics, an object can only have a relative property of velocity - velocity (or kinetic energy) with respect to a reference frame. This relative velocity will correspond to the change in location in that reference frame. But as we change reference frames, different bodies will have different velocities - different properties! We'll have a different metaphysical explanation about what is going on depending on which reference frame we're adopting.
This is especially problematic if velocity/kinetic energy is seen as a cause. Is the ball nearing the wall because the ball is moving towards the wall, or because the wall is moving towards the ball? The causal structure seems to change based on the reference frame, which I find quite problematic.
These kind of considerations lead Feser to suggest seeing inertial motion as a "state". As I said, I find this unsatisfactory as it implies that the change in position in a particular reference frame is not a "real change" - the system is still in the same "metaphysical state" of inertial motion. Which I find just makes no sense - the (relative) location changes!
Cheers,
Yair
"That's cool. I'm very grateful for your participation. :)"
ReplyDeleteThank you -- and I for yours. As I've said in previous posts, you're engaging Feser's arguments and doing so in an intellectually responsible way, and it's a pleasure to discuss these questions with you and to follow your discussions with others. Glad you dropped by and I look forward to future discussions.
Yair
ReplyDeleteActually, you could interpret it with two additional ideas.
One, is that a body is really moving and it is not moving because of referential.
Two, reference in physcis are pragmatic in nature.
This way you solve the problem, keeps physics intact, and save A-T.
Actually, I think this way of thinking could even be part of the tradition, since they are holistic.
"Since only relative velocity is meaningful in Newtonian physics, an object can only have a relative property of velocity - velocity (or kinetic energy) with respect to a reference frame."
ReplyDeleteAnd here we come to the first leg of your argument; I take it from your further remarks that this is part of why you don't think it makes sense to regard uniform motion as a "state."
What I think I'm not grasping here is why, just because the balls' location relative to other objects changes, the state of the ball itself must be changing. On the face of it it seems the other way around to me: if we can regard the ball as "at rest" in some frame of reference, then being in relative motion isn't a different "state" from being at rest. Can you say more about why you don't regard uniform motion as a "state"?
@Kuartus:
ReplyDeleteI am not sure I understand your question.
If it helps, I simply pointed out that your solution does not quite work because kinetic energy is a property, not a substance, and is ontologically dependent on the object it inheres. If you want to say that kinetic energy actualizes a potency then you are committed, among other things, to attributing causal powers to properties. It seems to me that it also "inverts" the relation of ontological dependence, and for that reason it simply cannot be right.
Unless I am misreading you and you have a different conception of kinetic energy.
@Yair:
Motion, or change, is the reduction of potency to act. But what is in potency, insofar as it is only potencial, cannot actualize itself, for to actualize itself it would have to be already in act. Only what is already in act can reduce potency to act. The real, objective distinction, and also ontological asymmetry, between potency and act is absolutely central to understand AT metaphysics.
@Yair
ReplyDeleteI think you mean einsteinian physics. But anyway, it depends on your interpretation of the special theory of relativity. There is the
1. Einstein interpretation
2. Minkowski interpretation
3. Lorentz interpretation
Acconding to the first two, there is no absolute reference frame, but according to the third interpretation, there actually is an absolute reference frame. As interpretations, they share the same empirical support, and you cannot differentiate one from the other based on scientific evidence, although you could choose one to the exclusion of the others bases on metaphysical considerations. For example, the minkowski interpretation makes the world out to be an eternak block universe and the passage of time is an illusion.
"This is especially problematic if velocity/kinetic energy is seen as a cause."
ReplyDeleteOffhand it seems to me that velocity and kinetic energy would seem to be part of the object's "state" rather than a "cause."
@Scott: "if we can regard the ball as "at rest" in some frame of reference, then being in relative motion isn't a different "state" from being at rest."
ReplyDeleteIndeed, there is no "absolute" (in modern physics terms) meaning to between being in rest as opposed to being in inertial movement, and I find it quite plausible that in AT terms it would translate to saying that there is no "real" difference between the two. Which is why the "state" view does work for velocity.
My contention was, however, that this trick doesn't work for the change in location.
"What I think I'm not grasping here is why, just because the balls' location relative to other objects changes, the state of the ball itself must be changing."
I agree it doesn't follow. However, in both the AT metaphysics and (the standard interpretation of) Newtonian physics the objects are said to have the property of location.
Note that the distance between the two objects is changing. This is an absolute, real, change. So something is changing. In both AT and N standard view, this something is the state of the object; the (relative) location. Hence, the absolute, real, change in distance is attributed to a change in relative location, a property of the object under Aristotelianism.
The only other alternative I can see is the Machian idea that distance is a separate entity, that itself changes. I have previously acknowledged Another Anon for raising this option in this thread as a way to attack me on this very point - as an option for taking local motion as a state. I'm not entirely convinced this actually suffices for this purpose, however - I need to think more about it. It is my understanding, however, that this is in sharp violation of how location and local motion is seen in AT, so that such a solution may bring with it its own problems for the AT view.
@kuartus:
Thanks, that quote greatly supports your premise. I have to admit I understand very little of what follows, about the first way, but this doesn't seem germane to our discussion.
What do you think of my counter-argument from relativity? How can the kinetic energy be the cause of the inertial motion if it's a relative property?
Cheers,
Yair
Can you say more about why you don't regard uniform motion as a "state"?
Disregard the last line in my last post; editing error.
ReplyDelete@Scott: "Offhand it seems to me that velocity and kinetic energy would seem to be part of the object's "state" rather than a "cause.""
I'm referring to kuartus' suggestion to view the kinetic energy as the cause of the change in location.
@kuartus: I am referring to Newtonian, or more precisely Galilean, relativity. Let's leave the debate on the structure of reality in light of special relativity to another day (and the debate about it's structure in light of general relativity to a yet more distant day... ;-) ).
Cheers,
Yair
@יאיר רזק ,
ReplyDelete"The justification of the LNC is a topic I'm struggling with, and any way I try to think of it seems to presuppose it."
What would you do with a system of reason that could prove anything at all anyway. Run for public office?
@grodrigues,
"From an inconsistent theory by the principle of explosion *anything* expressable in the language of the theory is derivable; you could derive, say that 0 = 1."
You said it yourself : renormalize!
@grodrigues,
ReplyDeleteI was just wondering whether you think that impetus as explained in Feser's article can be a legitimate cause of inertial motion.
@Yair,
Well I think when looked at from an absolute frame of reference, you can say whether an object is really at reast or really in motion. If its really in motion through space, then it really is undergoing extrinsic change.
@kuartus:
ReplyDelete"Well I think when looked at from an absolute frame of reference, you can say whether an object is really at reast or really in motion. If its really in motion through space, then it really is undergoing extrinsic change."
Yes, absolute space (which was Newton's position, BTW) will solve that problem. It would commit you to the view that change in location is a real change, however. Which coheres less well with Newtonian physics - the coherence between "no real change" of AT and the "no absolute sense" is nice. It would also imply that we mortals have no way to establish what is the correct causal picture in the above case, since we have no way to determine which is the "correct", absolute frame. Which, while being "formally" (to use Feser's term) consistent with AT, goes against its pretensions to making the world comprehensible. Under that interpretation, we have no idea what the causal structure of even basic events like a ball hitting a wall are!
"My contention was, however, that this trick doesn't work for the change in location."
ReplyDeleteAccording to my understanding of Aristotle, he'd regard location, relation, and position as accidents. Would changes in those properties/relations count as changes of state?
"Note that the distance between the two objects is changing."
Yep, can't argue with that. But does that change represent a change in the state of the object?
@grodriques,
ReplyDelete"If it helps, I simply pointed out that your solution does not quite work because kinetic energy is a property, not a substance, and is ontologically dependent on the object it inheres."
Why can't energy be a substance?
It has mass and location and obeys a conservation law. What if quantum field theory is basically correct and what we call "matter" is ontologically dependent on the displacement of some underlying medium? Does that mean that matter would not be a substance either?
An object moving in a straight line (inertial motion)is actually passing by point A and has the potential to be at point B. If, somehow, it could be shown that it is infact the "potential to be at point B" which is sustaining the inertial motion, then the APOM fails, because we have an example of a potential which is "self-actualizing."
ReplyDeleteThat makes no sense.
@Yair,
ReplyDelete"Which coheres less well with Newtonian physics"
Im no physics expert, but wasnt newtonian physics superceded by einsteinian physics? I brought up lorentz interpretation of special relativity because I wanted to bring attention to the fact that one need not abandon an absolute reference frame because of relativity. If there is an absolute frame, then that would defeat your objection that properties are just relative.
So let me see, we have two objects that are separated and moved about unrelated to the other one's movement.
ReplyDeleteNow let's say that they hitted each other at a given moment, one of them was standing still and the other was moving with a velocity V.
Now if we think of movement as dependant on referentials we have that any body is either moving with or without acceleration or standing still at all times, if ALL referentials are true. If all these characteristics exist at the same time so we can conclude that an object can have any possible state based on movement or location(Because movement is related to location). This when we analyse in the light of APOM and NPOI can only be squared for APOM if we have that substances and referentials can both have the potencial to cause movement. For NPOI we have that a body will remain in inertia ONLY if the referential is itself inertial otherwise the principle is not valid, so remember NPOI has a particular ser of referentials that it works under, so for NPOI we can only expect substances to create movement since referential that are not inertial are not valid in NPOI.
Going back to APOM, noticed that a referential actualizing the movement of an object seems to require that referential be subjective in nature, because if you were to believe all possible states of movement are true, how could we square that we don't see ALL THESE states at the same time. The possible reason is that referentials are subjective in nature so what you see is dependant on your subjectivity and what actualizes this subjective experience is the referential!
There are more choices in the very beginning, since maybe not ALL the possible states of movement are actual, are true. Maybe states are independant of referential or referential's are not subjective. Noticed that here, a body in movement may not be in movement JUST for a certain referential, so what is actual is the an Objective MOVEMENT.
Hoooold on. Does the APOM deal with changes in "essential" properties, "accidental" properties, or both?
ReplyDeleteIf we were to choose that referentials are not subjective but movement depends on a referential, the question becomes just what is the objective referential. A referential that is never changing would be able to ground this non subjective movement. But noticed that true movement is movement in relation to this referential, so certain things are moving and certain things are standing still. In the light of APOM there seems to be no problem with this referential since it just eliminates the subjectivity of a movement. APOM may became incorrect because of some other phenomena though in this referential system. NPOI can square with this as long as this referential is inertial.
ReplyDeleteBLS
ReplyDeleteI think it deals with both, is just that ontologically they are different, I think their relations to a certain object must be different.
Now if you choose that movement are independent of a reference then something's movement must be something related to the object. See, the movement is no longer dependent on my position towards the object so we can no longer conclude that movement is just part of an reference either it be objective or subjective. Imagine an object being hit, when it is hit, it starts moving, the movement is real movement, even if you were to follow the body in a way that the body doesn't seem to change linear momentum the body IS moving. So movement if it is caused by something must be caused by something external to the body or internal or itself.
ReplyDeleteNow how this cause relates to movement comes into play. The cause must produce it's effect and keep it in effect until something happen (considering that movements have causes). The causes must be able to be shut down and turned on at any given time and to regulate it's input to the body.
Now if it something internal, we could think as part of the object itself, like one of it's characteristics... like it's essence...
This option is the hardest one to think about...
@kuartus:
ReplyDelete"I was just wondering whether you think that impetus as explained in Feser's article can be a legitimate cause of inertial motion."
Still have not had the chance to read Prof. Feser's paper. And if you retort "then what the hell are you wasting your time here!", I will say that I am in take a peek / shoot my mouth off / run away mode.
@reighley:
"Why can't energy be a substance? It has mass and location and obeys a conservation law. What if quantum field theory is basically correct and what we call "matter" is ontologically dependent on the displacement of some underlying medium? Does that mean that matter would not be a substance either?"
kuartus did not spoke of energy, but of kinetic energy. As the name says it is the energy related to movement, the energy *of* a mobile, so it has no independent existence.
As far your more general question goes, it depends on what you mean by energy, but my answer would still be the same. Energy, whatever its type (potencial, kinetic, etc.) is always the energy of something. For example in QM, the energy levels of a quantum *system* is the spectrum of the Hamiltonian operator. It is the system that has the energy property, not the other way around.
You are also incorrect; energy neither has mass, rather it is *related* to it (the equal sign in physics is a tricky bugger), neither it has location. Only the substances which have energy as a property (e.g. elementary particles) have a space-time location. As far as your second sentence, yes elementary particles are states of certain quantum fields via the procedure called second quantization; but what we observe *in nature* are the elementary particles. Whether the fields have a real extra-mental existence outside of the formalisms of QM must be argued for and not simply naively "read off" the theory. Otherwise, we will start saying that the spinor bundle on Minkowski space is also a substance because the state of an electron is in QM field theory an L_2-section of this bundle.
@Scott:
ReplyDelete"According to my understanding of Aristotle, he'd regard location, relation, and position as accidents. Would changes in those properties/relations count as changes of state?"
I think the stress here is not so much in that they are accidents, but in modern terminology that they are relations. Absolute space, emptied out of matter, is an abstraction of the spacial relations that objects bear with one another. Similarly, time is the metric of change, not some absolute entity with independent existence.
Inertial motion is not observable, not even in principle. But let us suppose you are an intelligent photon leaving in a space-time region with no curvature, that is, no mass is "bending" the space-time region you inhabit. How would you know that you are in motion? You have no external markers to tell you that you are moving. So it seems to me that motion is a relational property and that inertial motion, were it possible, is a state, that is, the only things that are changing are certain spatial relations with the totality of the other material objects in the universe, but nothing intrinsic to the object is changing.
note: this is just a preliminary impression, I still have not Prof. Feser's paper. Whatever little thinking (little, because it always seemed "obvious" to me that there is no incompatibility between the metaphysical principle of motion and the physical principle of inertial motion) I devoted to the matter was derived from here: The Law of Inertia and the Principle Quidquid Movetur ab Alio Movetur.
This is precisely why I like reading this blog. Because I almost always learn something new. A few days ago I learned about how to understand Derrida a little better, thanks to Rank, while to day I learned a little more about physics, thanks to grodrigues.
ReplyDelete@grodrigues,
ReplyDelete"Whether the fields have a real extra-mental existence outside of the formalisms of QM must be argued for and not simply naively "read off" the theory. Otherwise, we will start saying that the spinor bundle on Minkowski space is also a substance because the state of an electron is in QM field theory an L_2-section of this bundle."
I have come very close to actually taking the position that the material is equal to the formalism elsewhere in this very forum, but that is not the point I was trying to make on this occasion.
I am not asking you assent to the proposition that matter is in fact the state of some ugly nest of some underlying field which exists at all points in space, or that what we call "motion" is actually the transfer of energy by sympathetic vibration from one point in space to another.
I honestly don't believe that myself.
We should however accept that, apparently, it might be so. It would fit the facts rather well (not perfectly, Lord help us, but rather well). The logical possibility of it is the striking thing. We can compose a coherent description the world in which matter is a property and not a substance. The electron might not have the property of being at a point in space so much as the space has the property that it contains an electron.
Again, I am not saying that this is so. I am saying that we can legitimately read quantum field theory as a metaphysical argument that it might be so.
Since it might be so, it would seem that we cannot easily make the distinction between substance and property using logic and observation.
It is certainly true that when we use the word "energy" we are often referring to a number, which is referring to a measurement we take of some system.
It is only a small abuse of notation to offer up the theory that this number is counting some object, and to call that object "energy". Might it not be so? Might there not be a thing which matches our notion of "energy" in every respect except that it is the substance, and matter merely it's form?
You should take your own medicine and not read the metaphysics out of the physics. I warrant there is a cospace in which all the free parameters of our models become systems of equations and our systems of equations become free parameters. Then who would be substance and who property eh? Not going to attempt a formal proof of that, but it doesn't sound very far fetched this early in the morning.
@Scott: "According to my understanding of Aristotle, he'd regard location, relation, and position as accidents. Would changes in those properties/relations count as changes of state?"
ReplyDeleteAccording to my limited understanding - yes. Feser in the above paper specifically discusses and quotes people talking of local motion as changes in the property of location that hence needs to be caused, and expressly discusses changes of the "state" of inertial motion as caused.
"does [distance] change represent a change in the state of the object?"
Either it does or it doesn't. If it does, then we have "real change". If it doesn't, then the only option I can see at this point is the Machian view.
And I have to say the Machian view seems to me to be totally alien to the "Philosophy of Nature" as Untenured described it. Consider the option we're discussing here:
When we throw a ball at a wall, we apparently impart a particular "in inertial motion" state to the ball, but also to the wall (and everything else in the world) due to symmetry. The ball's and wall's "in inertial motion" states then act together to change the size of the "distance between the ball and the wall", which is an independent, real entity, separate from both.
This picture may "formally" (to use Feser's terminology) allow us to consider inertial motion as a state within the AT metaphysical framework, but it appears to me to be in dire conflict with the project of maintaining our common-sense physics that the Philosophy of Nature (as articulated by Untenured) is supposedly engaged in. When we throw the ball at the wall, we confer motion to the ball; when the ball moves, it's location changes - if these are not a commonsense a posteriori premise no sane non-philosopher will consent to, I don't know what is.
Indeed, I don't see how the whole idea of "inertial motion as a state" can fit the Philosophy of Nature project. Newtonian physics is too removed from our folk physics (although not nearly as much as more modern physics, of course).
That said, I'm not convinced Feser would agree to characterize Philosophy of Physics in the way Untenured did. The semi-empirical approach was not how he characterized it in his paper.
@kuartus:
"If there is an absolute frame, then that would defeat your objection that properties are just relative."
Yes. This is valid for Newtonian physics, too. My point was that this has some odd implications.
@grodrigues:
"Energy, whatever its type (potencial, kinetic, etc.) is always the energy of something"
Is it? Or is it that energy is always manifested as something? Your position is a metaphysical interpretation that cannot be simply naively read-off the theory too. :)
To be clear - I tend to agree with most of what you said. I just wanted to note that this view is just a view, too.
Cheers,
Yair
Yair
ReplyDeleteI think Feser is talking about Natural Philosphy, not philosophy of physics.
Feser said: "In particular,
ReplyDeletequestions about what the natural world must be like in order for any natural science at all to be
possible must be distinguished from questions about what, as a matter of contingent fact, are
the laws that govern that world. The latter questions are the proper study of physics,
chemistry, biology, and the like. The former are the proper study of that branch of
metaphysics known as the philosophy of nature."
Emphasis added. Whether or not "what the natural world must be like in order for any natural science at all" means something like "what must be true for common-sense a posteriori premises to hold" - I'm not entirely certain.
Yair
@Yair:
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reply, I would delve back in but I am in the middle of writing up a syallabus for my philosophy of mind class.
I will let others answer the technical points about the compatibility of Aquinas and Newton's respective principles of motion, because I just can't sink any more time into this thread right now even though I would like to.
The only thing I can leave with is that the theory of impetus, which is a medieval dynamical theory developed by Johann Philoponous, is a false dynamical theory that is, in my opinion, orthogonal to whether the principle that "whatever is moved is moved by another" is true.
In my opinion it would help, just at a communications level, if Thomists would quit formulating the principle that way and instead just get straight to its import: "No potencies are self-actualizing". That would convey the exact same concept but without all of the equivocal baggage that trips people up.
Sorry I can't go into more detail. But I do hope you stick around because, unlike most of the atheist/naturalists who show up here, you are definitely worth talking to.
Scott,
ReplyDeleteI'm looking though Springge's books and just got done reading your review on his book the God of Metaphysics, where he apparently takes a pantheistic approach
One thing that I am having trouble with this is Schoppenhauer's criticism that pantheism is superfluous since it essentially treats nature as God.
Do you have a route to get from Springge's arguments to your theistic position? A quick sketch would suffice.
Thanks again.
@Yair:
ReplyDeleteOkay, one more since you just posted.
The question of what needs to be the case "In order for there to be any natural science at all" is a continuous but distinct question from what we need to posit in order for our most basic a posteriori knowledge to come out true.
For the latter, we argue that you need things like the act/potency distinction, substance ontology, the accidental change/substantial change distinction etc.
But for the former, a different set of arguments come into play. We think that the fact we can conduct natural science presupposes the conceptual apparatus implied in Aristotle's doctrine of the four causes, and that if you drop any of the four causes then end up with all of the crazy problems of induction, all of discontinuities in nature implied by the failure of type-identity reductionism etc, and etc.
So they are both strands of phil-nature argument but they serve to shore up different aspects of the project.
Emphasis added. Whether or not "what the natural world must be like in order for any natural science at all" means something like "what must be true for common-sense a posteriori premises to hold" - I'm not entirely certain.
ReplyDelete-------------------------------------
I think you would have to accept Untenured's method, you know the one you rejected just a while ago XD!
Now I quite sincerely think that your questions need something way bigger than a combox. Yair, I think it would be better if you studied books about A-T or related subjects, because I feel like we will soon turn the combox into a treatise XD.
Now, not that you should stop posting, but consider that the depthness of this talk may be really big, one that it takes time and space which are found in books.
Well anyways, just a thought in case you feel like the combox replies are not meaty enough.
@Untenured: " I would delve back in but I am in the middle of writing up a syallabus for my philosophy of mind class."
ReplyDeleteNo worries, thanks for stopping by - it's greatly appreciated.
" the theory of impetus, which is ... orthogonal to whether the principle that "whatever is moved is moved by another" is true."
I suggest that if you could clarify why that is the case next time you visit, then it will both serve to advance the current discussion and, hopefully, will take up little of your time as you clearly have the argument in your head already.
"In my opinion it would help, just at a communications level, if Thomists would quit formulating the principle that way and instead just get straight to its import: "No potencies are self-actualizing". That would convey the exact same concept but without all of the equivocal baggage that trips people up."
Bolded for emphasis. I couldn't agree more that a reformulation is in order. The standard formulation is EXTREMELY misleading.
I'm not sure I fully understand the principle, though. Your preferred formulation (let's call it POM3) is markedly different from Feser's. He said
POM2: "Any potency that is being actualized is being actualized by something else (…that is already actual)"
which implies a temporal relation (in the "already" there) of cause always preceding effect, with perhaps allowance for atemporal causes as well.
Your formulation, however, will also allow "simultaneous causation" where both cause and effect are simultaneous, and "backwards causation" where the effect precedes the cause. Is this really your intention? Feser's formulation also emphasized that a potential can only be actualized by another actuality, not by another potential - I presume you intend this feature too, even if it does not follow from your wording?
I do find your phrasing the most elegant of the formulations, in that it commits only to the existence of of a cause to any change and can even be applied to eternal actualities that do not change. If you do intend to allow only actualities to actualize potentials, however, I suggest APOM3 is still insufficient and a still-clearer formulation is required.
"We think that the fact we can conduct natural science presupposes the conceptual apparatus implied in Aristotle's doctrine of the four causes"
I'm confused. Doesn't the fact that we can conduct natural science presuppose the existence of change? Isn't the act/potency distinction required (on the Thomist view) to make sense of change? It appears to me that element should be put on the list of the "former".
Regardless, I think we can note THREE levels of metaphysics here, which I shall dub:
General: What can be said about existence in any possible world (the science of "being qua being" in the truest sense).
Semi-Kantian: What has to be assumed in order for natural science to be possible. (This is really the Kantian project.)
Semi-Empirical: What has to be assumed in order to maintain our "most basic a posteriori knowledge".
These are three rather different projects (although, of course, related). The term "Philosophy of Nature", confusingly, seems to describe both of the latter.
Cheers,
Yair
January 10, 2013 9:00 AM
ReplyDeleteGlenn said...
" A bit late on this; but, oh well.
1. Crude: 'I have personally seen large groups of atheists explicitly question the LNC on quantum physics grounds.'
2. DNW: 'Yes, I've seen it too. Here. What's interesting is that when you do see it, it's usually with the reference you mention, but without substantive argument, as if it's self-evident as to why the laws of non-contradiction or excluded middle should be invalidated. Someone mentioned Copi's famous introductory logic text the other day. "Parameters"'
3. Crude: 'What I usually see is the claim (and this happens with the ex nihil discussion too) that 'science shows that...' Really, a lot of times it's ginned up to make it sound as if people observe LNC violations in the laboratory, or observe something coming from nothing without cause. But yeah, once you start questioning it a lot of them just buckle or rely on 'Well I heard scientists say..!' It's parroting.'
- - - - -
Copi mentions "parameters" in connection with translating the premises and conclusion of an argument into "standard-form categorical propositions".
Turning to Copi, and employing a combination of 'plagarism' and substitution ... Consider the following argument ... "
That's quite a riff. And yet one that hews to the underlying theme. Or catches the drift ...
Using my oldest printing as an example, you both link and then conceptually integrate passages from separate chapters, pages 218 and 285-6, while successfully bearing in mind that the subject matter and reference is to: 1, the construction of analyzable arguments as much as states of affairs (We could go back to Cohen and Nagel for that if need be) and 2. that while parameters are used in order to render propositions into a (less ambiguous) form suitable for categorical analysis, the subject of the rendering is in the first instance the proposition.
Also you went on to cite Copi's final excluded middle remark on the elmination of ambiguity ... which is what more or less underpins the reference in the first place.
It's always more interesting to read comments or critiques from someone who actually has the text, and can cite it with accuracy.
I'm sure Crude got a kick out of it too.
I suppose the ultimate question for skeptics is whether there is such a thing as a sufficiently stipulable state of affairs.
Certainly a great deal of ambiguity (conceptual or verbal) can be disposed of merely by posing a few simple hypotheticals. Say for example: Do two simultaneous observers - say two individuals attending to the same test apparatus at the same time - report discretely different outcomes?
I will let others answer the technical points about the compatibility of Aquinas and Newton's respective principles of motion…
ReplyDeleteUntenured,
I must request that you defend the term “principle” being used for Newton’s Law. Is it not the case that the term “principle” is being applied here equivocally? IMO, it surely is. For APOM is clearly intended to be, and clearly is, a true Principle of Demonstration, whereas the Newton’s Law is quite obviously no such thing, nor was it ever intended to be. Newton’s Law is not a principle at all, but rather an observation – nay rather a mere theory supported by observation. Neither does his theory even imply that no external force is the cause of inertia. That was just a gloss added to it after no one could figure out what was causing it. And it is this (wholly conjectural) gloss of a theoretical proposition that is what is actually in conflict with APOM.
It is clear from all this that, from an A-T point of view, if inertia is true motion, and I think it undeniably is, then the mobile object is necessarily moved by another, and there's no way around it. For observations of science must be interpreted in the light of the Principles of Demonstration determined by metaphysics and philosophy.
And what happens when they’re not? I present to you Exhibit A: the lunatic asylum known as the modern cosmological community.
What about inertia in relation to the final and formal causes of mass? You can't have inertia without mass.
ReplyDeleteAs long as the location of an object or the distance between two objects don't cause themselves to change during inertial motion, I don't see a conflict.
ReplyDelete"I'm looking though Springge's books and just got done reading your review on his book the God of Metaphysics, where he apparently takes a pantheistic approach
ReplyDeleteOne thing that I am having trouble with this is Schoppenhauer's criticism that pantheism is superfluous since it essentially treats nature as God."
That might be true of some versions of pantheism, but I don't think it applies to Sprigge's because he's a panpsychist. His ascription of a positive mental/experiential character to the nature of things keeps his pantheism from being redundant or superfluous; he's not just saying "nature is God."
"Do you have a route to get from Springge's arguments to your theistic position? A quick sketch would suffice."
Sprigge's own route is to argue that the little nuggets of experience that constitute the noumenal reality of the physical world must be unified into a certain type of whole, so that all of reality must consist of a single overarching eternal "experience."
That's not quite my own route, however. My preferred approach is to argue for theism on other grounds (e.g. Aquinas's five ways, Meynell's argument from intelligibility, Lewis's/Reppert's argument from reason) and then add that the relation between God and the universe is in some way analogous to the relation between a mind and the objects of its thought (in the manner of John Leslie, whose views are not far from Sprigge's).
Scott,
ReplyDeletethen add that the relation between God and the universe is in some way analogous to the relation between a mind and the objects of its thought (in the manner of John Leslie, whose views are not far from Sprigge's).
This is a type of idealism that I've been playing around with myself. One obstacle that I have is in making the distinction between the mental stuff of the world and the mental stuff of subjectivity. Obviously not all our thoughts are instantiated so it is the case that some mental stuff (internal) does not relate to the mental stuff of the world (external).
How would an idealist like Springge (or yourself perhaps) make the distinction between these two types of mental stuff? Or do you think this dichotomy is misplaced and I'm simply trying to force a dualism of some sort?
The reason I am stuck on this is because of a) human error which does not correspond to reality - thus thoughts about the world are inaccurate and b) I have a feeling that the mental stuff of the world is hierarchically superior to the mental stuff of the subjective mind.
I hope my question makes sense. If not, I'll try to clarify it better.
"One obstacle that I have is in making the distinction between the mental stuff of the world and the mental stuff of subjectivity. Obviously not all our thoughts are instantiated so it is the case that some mental stuff (internal) does not relate to the mental stuff of the world (external)."
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point, but then again even in the case of error the objects of our thought aren't entirely homeless in reality. Bradley and other idealists rejected the notion of "floating ideas" and held that pretty much everything in our thought was something that, if fully developed by reflection and so forth, would be something in the objective world; Royce and (the early) Blanshard held a similar view that an idea is itself in some way a potential version of its object, so that a fully developed idea would be that object.
I'm not sure whether that resolves the question fully, and it poses problems of its own (as the later Blanshard found in retreating from his earlier view). But I think it's at least a pregnant suggestion and may not be far from the truth.
It's not a long leap from Aristotle, either. As I understand things, he held that when we think of X, the form of X actually and literally enters into our thought, so that forms, at least, are the sorts of things that can be got within minds. And I think an argument can be made that if Aristotle is right about form and matter, then it's "form all the way down" in some sense: the "matter" at each stage itself consists of form plus some more basic matter, and either the process never actually bottoms out, or if it does, it bottoms out in Sprigge's little nuggets of experience. If that's right, then everything that exists is at least internally related to mind in the sense that it's "made of" the sort of "stuff" than can enter into thought.
And there you have it. The new thing I learned today. ;-)
ReplyDeleteThanks again Scott!
"Thanks again Scott!"
ReplyDeleteYou're very welcome. Thank you as well.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteDNW,
ReplyDeleteWe've different editions, I see. In the sixth edition, which is the edition I have, pp 247-8 covers parameters under Uniform Translation, while pp 319-21 covers the Three "Laws of Thought". There's a larger gap between the two topics in the sixth edition than in your edition; I've no idea if this is due to material added for the sixth edition, material removed for the edition you have, or some change in the order in which topics are covered. Whatever the edition, it's a valuable reference.
Glenn said...
ReplyDeleteDNW,
We've different editions, I see. In the sixth edition, which is the edition I have, pp 247-8 covers parameters under Uniform Translation, while pp 319-21 covers the Three "Laws of Thought". There's a larger gap between the two topics in the sixth edition than in your edition; I've no idea if this is due to material added for the sixth edition, material removed for the edition you have, or some change in the order in which topics are covered. Whatever the edition, it's a valuable reference.
January 12, 2013 10:28 PM "
I agree that having a copy of Copi on hand makes for a valuable reference.
I wish I had an "Intro" from the sixties. The one I used in my response to you was on my shelf in the office, and was an edition released in the early seventies.
The one I used during my second course of logic in school, had a green cover, and had only been out long enough probably for me to pick one up used (hardly) in the campus bookstore. For some reason I liked it especially well. I loaned it out, it never came back.
I've since picked up two newer ed.s in A.A. bookstores, as well as two rather different editions of his symbolic logic.
Frankly, having been exposed to Peano symbolism exclusively as an undergrad, I found the discussions of alternate systems, such as you sometimes see here, helpful.
Copi certainly doesn't need my praise but one of the things I like most about his work is that it treats informal fallacies in a systematic way rooted in long recognized fundamental distinctions. The current multiplication of informal fallacies seems to me to have elements of comedy built into the process.
Think of all those mishmash intro to logic or "critical thinking" texts one sees. It seems to me that they are as confused as the students they purport to help.
Every time I come across an accusation referring to the No True Scotsman fallacy I cringe.
Hi, Franz Wenger here,
ReplyDeleteNo, surely it is not necessary to imagine that things are moved by some physical appendage of god pushing it along, like a child's toy.
But if each thing and event rises from the eternal and untouched being of deity, and that is god, then certainly god can be said to power the events, including the hurtling of a comet across the cosmos.
For the reasonable understanding posits a power to do what the universe does, god or no god.
And, if one has had a deep experience of the eternal unchanging peace that is untouched by creation, then it is patent that that power creates event after event and thing.
Those Without such a deep and indubitable experience, cannot understand how such a thing could be. To those who have had the experience, to whom the whole setup of things is as patent as their hand, no argument is necessary.
Without tasting a peach, any argument for what its taste is like--however clever--is moot.
After a lengthy ecstasy toward the end of his life, in response to an urging that he continue his writing, Aquinas is purported to have said:
"I can do no more. Such secrets have been revealed to me that all I have written now appears to be of little value"
How could this be? The master of logic and theology denying the value of his great Summa---in the face of what?
I say he experienced directly the thing itself; he tasted the peach so to speak; he experienced the eternal within him (the kingdom of heaven is within)the eternal from which all arises.
And he felt that his beautifully constructed Summa was not the point, rather the experience he had had was the point.
And if his writing, as gloriously intellectual as it is and as grounded in religious intuition, could not enable this all important experience in others, then it was of 'little value".
Perhaps he had had the experience of being completely, as Eckhardt says, "raised entirely above creatures" including self, such that one does not know what one is,or where-- only isness is there ; the world drops away and what is left cannot be said to be and oneself cannot be said to be, and yet there is; this an account the intellect subsequent to the experience may produce.
Indeed, dialectic is far from such an experience exceeding and so paradoxical to the intellect.
We can only speculate, but it has plausibility; Aquinas by all accounts was a devoted contemplative all his life, in addition to a brilliant intellectual, and certainly valued revelation in the Summa.
It seems at the end of his life that direct experience proved to him that dialectic is at the periphery of the spiritual endeavour. The taste of the peach is the point and it births a true and indubitable understanding in the intellect that dialectic can only subsequently and inadequately reflect.
I think, with many others, including Aquinas apparently, that Philosophy and Theology is excellent stuff---but not the real thing.
Neither argument nor faith are necessary subsequent to indubitable experience of the eternal--which by its very nature
is impervious to doubt.
"According to my limited understanding - yes [Aristotle would have to regard local motion as a change of state]."
ReplyDeleteIf so, then I suggest one way of resolving the difficulty is simply to say that, according to the best physics we currently have, Aristotle was wrong about that: "local motion" simply doesn't have the absolute meaning that he (and Newton) thought it did, and uniform local motion doesn't require the actualization of any potencies (other than whatever impetus is required to put an object into that state of motion in the first place, of course).
It seems implausible to me to regard relative motion as a change in the state of an object. According to post-Einsteinian physics, all such motion is relative, and what's really changing is the relations between the objects in a system.
Yes, looking at things this way could involve taking the more or less Machian view that in local motion, distance itself is what's "changing" in a physical sense, but I don't see why that would further commit us to the view that such relational "change" also involves change in the Aristotelian sense (actualization of potency). The "change" would simply be an ongoing side effect of an actualization of potency that had already occurred.
In that case Aristotle's mistake (like Newton's, in fact) would be in his physics, not in the Principle of Motion. It wouldn't be the first time Aristotle's physics turned out to be incorrect or less than final.
Feser's concern about this case (case 2, "Inertia as stasis," pp. 12-13) seems to be that modern mechanistic worldviews try to reduce other kinds of change to local motion as well. But he offers the solution himself: as long as local motion involves (Aristotelian) change (really, actualization of potency) somehow, somewhere, sometimes, then the Unmoved Mover argument is untouched. And since neither I nor, I'm sure, Feser thinks that such a reductionistic program could succeed, I'm not seeing an issue here.
In short, I agree with you that treating uniform local motion as involving no actualization of potency does pose a problem for Aristotle, but it's a problem with his physics (and far from the first), not his metaphysics or philosophy of nature; in particular it leaves the POM untouched.
Sorry, in my penultimate paragraph I should have made the following point explicit: according to current physics, local motion does involve (or at least can be regarded as involving) Aristotelian change/motion (actualization of potency) when an object is accelerated, which seems to me to be sufficient.
ReplyDeleteAlso, having just now read the paper to which grodrigues earlier linked, I should add that I don't know whether it's necessary, according to the best current physics, to regard uniform motion as involving no actualization of potencies. If it isn't, then current physics itself would have to supply the answer to Feser's implied question about what the physical causes of inertial motion would be (and if they're something like "fields" or "the geometry of space," they wouldn't be internal to the object).
ReplyDeleteIn that case, the POM would again be untouched (though Aristotle's physics might require some correction) and Feser wouldn't have to fall back on metaphysical causes in case 1 (pp. 10-12).
. . . all of which I can now assemble into what I hope is a cogent reply (more precisely a summary of such a reply) to Yair's counterargument.
ReplyDeleteFeser, recall, has argued that the APOM and the Newtonian law of inertia are not in conflict for a number of reasons, and in considering how they're really related, considers three cases: (1) inertial motion involves a genuine actualization of potency, in which case (a) physical causes for such actualization appear unlikely, but (b) we can't rule out metaphysical causes; (2) inertial motion is, in an Aristotelian sense, static, in which case it agrees with the POM; (3) the whole universe is static.
Again, what Yair is arguing is that Feser's attempted reconciliation is unsatisfactory because (a) it's not plausible/feasible to regard inertial motion as stasis in the required sense, so (b) we have to fall back to case 1 (as far as I recall, Yair doesn't consider case 3) and, on Feser's own argument, we're thereby committed to metaphysical causes (which appear to be introduced ad hoc in order to rescue the POM since we have no independent evidence for them).
My reply to (a) comes down to: why not? I simply fail to see any reason why uniform motion must, according to current physics, be regarded as involving the actualization of any potency; all motions being relative, uniform motion seems to be an epiphenomenal/supervenient side effect of an actualization that has already occurred.
Supposing that's not true, though, my reply to (b) is that if current physics does require us to regard uniform motion as involving the actualization of a potency, then the reason must come from physics itself and Feser is not actually forced back to metaphysical causes.
In either case, the POM itself is untouched, even if some of Aristotle's physics (not metaphysics or philosophy of nature) requires modification.
The end. You may fire at will.
Careful now. We were talking about the Newtonian principle of inertia, not contemporary physics. Pushing the discussion there brings in lots of complications. That said, Einstein flirted with Mach but General Relativity isn't Machian. There is a distinction between changing coordinates – which occurs during inertial motion, i.e. geodesic motion – and changing the distance – the metric - which occurs during cosmic expansion.
ReplyDeleteI believe the Aristotelian does have to consider the change in the Machian distance as a “real-change”, a change in the length property of the distance between the objects. I see no other way to fit this change within the Aristotelian framework – the distance changes, hence by the APOM something must change it. I note, however, that this isn't such a big problem for him since he does have recourse to “satisfying” causes for this change – the states of inertial motion of the objects. The only problem I see here is that this position is extremely counter-inutitive, e.g. requiring us to grant the state of “inertial motion” to everything in the universe when we throw a ball. In addition to being highly problematic in of itself, I find that to be in opposition to the project of rescuing common-sense physical intuition which Untenured described as the point of the Aristotelian Philosophy of Nature.
I did not respond to Feser's arguments regarding the Eternalist/stasis view since I did not see the relevance. That said, if the world is pure actuality, without any change in the Aristotelian act/potency sense, then the APOM is simply irrelevant for inertial motion, or indeed any change at all. While Feser may consider this to mean the two are “compatible”, I think such a position empties the principle of virtually all meaning and makes it completely disharmonious with the NPOI. It reminds me of the logician's claim that “All A are B” is compatible with “No A are B” if A is an empty set; while technically true, this is a rather disappointing compatibility. And I don't care, for the purposes of this discussion, whether this position allows one to save the First Way – my only concern is the compatibility with the NPOI, which I maintain is empty and void in this case.
To be honest, I also adhere to the Eternalist view and thus utterly reject any actualization, anywhere, at any sense, even of the universe as a whole, so Feser's defense of the First Way here is also invalid in my opinion. There is only actuality. Talk of potentiality suffers from that malaise good old Parmenides warned us about:
Helplessness guides the wandering thought in their breasts; they are carried along deaf and blind alike, dazed, beasts without judgment, convinced that to be and not to be are the same and not the same, and that the road of all things is a backward-turning one.
But that's wholly besides the point.
So, the state of the argument as I see it right now:
1. Inertial motion cannot be seen as a state under the standard Aristotelian understanding of “location”.
2. It can be seen as a standard change under the Machian view, but this is highly counter-inutitive.
3. It can be seen as a real-change induced by velocity, a la impetus (Untenured claimed otherwise; I don't see it), but at the cost of presuming absolute space and denying us access to the metaphysical structure of reality (as we cannot determine which frame of reference corresponds to this absolute space).
4. It can be seen as real-change induced by “angels”, but at the cost of invoking them ad hoc.
5. It can be seen as real-change induced by God, but at the cost of providing a trivial answer (“god did it”; which is true for anything).
6. It can be seen as irrelevant to the APOM if nature is seen as purely actual, but at the cost of emptying the “compatibility” of any content.
This picture is more complex than the one I initially presented. I think adopting the Machian position while disavowing the project of maintaining common-sense is the Thomist's best move.
Cheers,
Yair
I'll have to reserve further comment until time permits a longer reply, but here are a couple of short responses:
ReplyDelete"We were talking about the Newtonian principle of inertia, not contemporary physics."
Fair enough. However, if Aristotle and Newton were both wrong in the same way according to contemporary physics, then I think that's pertinent to the point at hand, if only because it means Newton's principle of inertia doesn't successfully challenge the POM. I just don't see anything very interesting in the claim that Newton would have undermined Aristotle if he'd been right about something that, in fact, both of them got wrong.
Morerover, my main point is that the challenge (if any) to Aristotle in Newton's law of inertia is to Aristotle's physics, not to his metaphysics or his philosophy of nature. (You do address that point, but I must note that you do so in terms of contemporary physics.)
"[I]f the world is pure actuality, without any change in the Aristotelian act/potency sense, then the APOM is simply irrelevant for inertial motion, or indeed any change at all. While Feser may consider this to mean the two are 'compatible', I think such a position empties the principle of virtually all meaning and makes it completely disharmonious with the NPOI."
Well, I think he says a bit more than that: he also notes that on the universe-as-stasis view he's considering, the law of physics are themselves contingent, so there's still a role for the POM to play in accounting for their actualization. But it's not a key point—and at any rate I wasn't criticizing you for failing to consider case 3, merely noting that you hadn't done so.
"I think adopting the Machian position while disavowing the project of maintaining common-sense is the Thomist's best move."
I tend to agree on the whole, and I think that point is independent of contemporary physics.
@Yair:
ReplyDeleteI just have to ask: how on earth do you think you can escape from the fact that change occurs?
So when you type upon the keyboard to put in your comments at Feser's blog, no change occurs? There is no motor-neuronal firing and no striking-of-your-fingers upon the keyboard?
So when you first came to believe that "eternalism" was true, there was no transition that took place between your prior mental state of unbelief in eternalism and the subsequent mental state of belief in eternalism that you entered into afterwards?
And you really think that, before you even read this comment, it was already true that you responded to it with an appeal to either Parmenides's argument, one of David Lewis or Ted Sider's arguments for 4-D, or with some nebulous appeal to General Relativity?
Do reflect upon what is manifest to your sense and your intellect as you type up your response. Ask yourself whether it can be justly described as "change".
"I just don't see anything very interesting in the claim that Newton would have undermined Aristotle if he'd been right about something that, in fact, both of them got wrong."
ReplyDeleteI just don't want to open yet-another discussion. The discussion for Newtonian physics is complex enough.
For what it's worth, I think the situation under General Relativity is analogous to Newtonian physics. Free (geodesic) motion involves a change in coordinates, not a change in the metric. The situation in quantum field theories is more complicated, and cannot I think be resolved without stipulating an interpretation for quantum mechanics. On a many worlds interpretation, the Aristotelian metaphysics of change is inapplicable. On any single-world interpretation there is real change as flow of energy across grid points. If we are to extend the discussion further to future physics, then in a quantum gravity context it appears highly likely, on the other hand, that the Machian view is correct; yet this is extremely speculative. So what is one to make of this complicated picture? I don't know, but I think arguing even one of these options can take us forever. Let us stick to Newton, please. That's quite enough.
"I tend to agree on the whole, and I think that point is independent of contemporary physics."
Indeed.
" I must note that you [deal with implications to metaphysics or philosophy of nature] in terms of contemporary physics."
Non-Newtonian ones? How so?
"he also notes that on the universe-as-stasis view he's considering, the law of physics are themselves contingent, so there's still a role for the POM to play in accounting for their actualization."
Since the laws are the same as the specific form of this actuality, this amounts to saying the APOM applies to the existence of the entire actual world (as it is); which is another way of saying it doesn't apply to specific inertial motions at all, providing a wholly "empty set" sort of compatibility.
I must note also that on the view he's supposed to be considering it is meaningless to talk about the contingency of the laws of nature. Contingency, like time, is a relation within existence, not about it. It is only from an Aristotelian perspective that Feser can apply the APOM to the universe as stasis.
Yair
@Untenured: "I just have to ask: how on earth do you think you can escape from the fact that change occurs?"
ReplyDeleteIn the ancient Parmenidean way - namely not to deny that change appears to occur to us, but rather to maintain that it is an illusion, that reality is not as it intuitively appears to us.
Specifically, it isn't that events like my fingers striking the keyboard don't occur. It is, rather, that they occur in spacetime which exists as a whole, so that these events existed "before" I was aware of them happening "now" and exist still "after". A part of my worldline (well, worldtube) was always, eternally, atemporally, responding to your comment with an appeal to Parmenides' argument. From the perspective of a different part of my worldline, this part is in the future; from the position of the part of my worldline that's typing this, this part is in the present; and from the position of yet another part of my worldline, that part is in the past.
It is the passage of time, rather than the events themsleves, that is the illusory aspect of change.
I don't see why Thomists find it so difficult. It is simply adopting God's view as an atemporal being. The Eternalist is simply saying that this is the only perspective that makes sense; this is perhaps contentious, but that the position itself is coherent shouldn't be if God is to be atemporal!
Cheers,
Yair
I must note also that on the view he's supposed to be considering it is meaningless to talk about the contingency of the laws of nature. Contingency, like time, is a relation within existence, not about it. It is only from an Aristotelian perspective that Feser can apply the APOM to the universe as stasis.
ReplyDelete-------------------------------------
Yair
it seems to be related to a TYPE of existence is it not?
Eduardo: Contingency? Well, I don't think it's useful to think of contingency as referring to TYPES of possible worlds, but I concede that many do. My preference is to ask whether the actual-event is determined by actual-patterns, rather than invoke (non-existent) "possible worlds". Deterministic events are necessary; indeterministic ones are contingent. Similar criteria can apply to other domains (mathematical truths, etc).
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Yair
If the world was purely actual, then it would be absolutely immutable.
ReplyDeleteOne question about eternalism though. The eternalist argues that the future, present and past exist simultaneously, correct? And we are just experiencing a transition from "now" to "later," kind of like the actors within a DVD movie. My question is, why are the time frames "seamless?" How come between this "frame" and the next few "frames" I appear to age rather than vanishing entirely? Why do I exist at all in the future "frames?"
Does any and all sort of "causality" go out the window one the eternalist view?
@Anonnymous:"My question is, why are the time frames "seamless?" How come between this "frame" and the next few "frames" I appear to age rather than vanishing entirely? Why do I exist at all in the future "frames?"
ReplyDeleteDoes any and all sort of "causality" go out the window one the eternalist view?"
Causality, on the eternalist view, is a particular pattern that actually exists in the actual universe. Because this pattern actually exists, you actually persist to exist for some time and so on. Your continuous existence is not due to any abstract metaphysics; it is due to the simple fact that existence actually includes it.
I note that the eternalist is not committed metaphysically to the idea that existence as a whole abides by causality; he merely presumes a posteriori and transcendentally (i.e. so he could consider the issue at all) that it applies in a limited region of it. Which is perhaps fortunate, as it appears on multiple grounds (the many world interpretation of quantum mechanics and the cosmological scale; which if Sean Carroll is right might be one and the same) that reality as a whole indeed does not boast a causal structure.
This is my understanding of the Humean/Regulatory - Parmenidean/ Eternalist position, at least.
Cheers,
Yair
Oh and - how can the world not be immutable, if God is to be omniscient? A mutable world appears to me to be possible only under Open Theism.
ReplyDeleteYair
"Causality, on the eternalist view, is a particular pattern that actually exists in the actual universe. Because this pattern actually exists, you actually persist to exist for some time and so on. Your continuous existence is not due to any abstract metaphysics; it is due to the simple fact that existence actually includes it."
ReplyDeleteI was more so asking for an explanation as to why the patterns exist at all.
@Anonymous: "I was more so asking for an explanation as to why the patterns exist at all."
ReplyDeleteUnder the eternalism-regulatory view such an explanation is impossible. A Humean-regulatory position decries non-regulatory explanations as vacuous; saying an object has the "power" to cause A, for example, is akin to saying that a medicine heals because it has "healing powers". A Paermenedian argument then precludes any possible explanation: either it will be based on existing patterns, in which case it will not explain the fundamental patterns (if such exist; an infinite regress is allowed), or else it will be based on Nothing and thus capable of explaining nothing. A slightly different version: nothing exists outside reality which can explain it, and nothing that exists within reality can explain it.
I concede that the lack of ultimate explanations is the weakest part of this worldview. I think the best that can be said for it is that since I agree with the arguments above, I see no alternative.
The only attempt I run into to provide an explanation within this worldview is the position that since no pattern can be explained all patterns actually exists; there is surprisingly some theoretical-physics support for the latter contention. I find this argument extremely weak, however - all patterns existing is a pattern, which is not at all explained.
Yair
Eduardo: Contingency? Well, I don't think it's useful to think of contingency as referring to TYPES of possible worlds, but I concede that many do. My preference is to ask whether the actual-event is determined by actual-patterns, rather than invoke (non-existent) "possible worlds". Deterministic events are necessary; indeterministic ones are contingent. Similar criteria can apply to other domains (mathematical truths, etc).
ReplyDelete-----------------------------------
I thought necessary was the type of things that coudn't fail to exist and contingent are ones that could not exist.
I never heard of that distinction of those words as you have lay out.
Determinism I've heard as something different too, not as something that happens in every possible world but something that is throughly determined by previous states or the beginning of the system...
Then it seems to me that these patterns, on eternalism, are brute facts. I have another question then. Why do we experience this illusory change at all, rather than experiencing all the frames of our conscious existence at once (kind of like Dr. Manhattan?) Also, if time is illusory, then what about space?
ReplyDeletesaying an object has the "power" to cause A, for example, is akin to saying that a medicine heals because it has "healing powers"
ReplyDelete-------------------------------------
This really doesn't seem to be vacuous at all, it didn't have the power to cause a state which I associate with healed, then is not a medicine or cure for that particular problem.
This seems to pressupose that true explanations can not involve saying that something has the power to do something. But it must be something else,most likely it's parts that are the explanation and obviously they can not explain because they can but rather because ... well shit happens it is just the way it is by a freak accident
So in eternalism you can fall prey to correlation is not causation, you have no way to refute that so the only option is to ignore THAT and pretend that YOU DO KNOW causes... but of course you don't.
ReplyDelete@Eduardo: On contingency and determinism - I think I'm only confusing you. Your positions are closer to the standard accounts. I am representing here my own account, which is idiosyncratic in several respects. Perhaps it will be best to drop that topic, to avoid further confusion.
ReplyDelete"This really doesn't seem to be vacuous at all, it didn't have the power to cause a state which I associate with healed, then is not a medicine or cure for that particular problem."
Consider the explanation "The medicine healed because it killed the germ" with the explanation "The medicine healed because it exercised its healing powers". In the former, we understand why the medicine healed (once we understand the germ theory of disease and so on). In the latter, we're merely going around in circles, our explanation begging the conclusion instead of actually making it intelligible.
"well shit happens it is just the way it is by a freak accident"
On this I shall quote The Philosopher himself (Aristotle): "Some indeed demand that even this shall be demonstrated, but this they do through want of education, for not to know of what things one should demand demonstration, and of what one should not, argues want of education. For it is impossible that there should be demonstration of absolutely everything (there would be an infinite regress, so that there would still be no demonstration); but if there are things of which one should not demand demonstration, these persons could not say what principle they maintain to be more self-evident than the present one. "
He said this on the Law of Noncontradiction, but it applies here as well. Explanations should make things explicable in a non-begging-question way; or they're no explanations at all. But if you don't see it, then it cannot be explained to you - much like the LNC cannot be justified to you if you don't accept it.
@Anonymous: "if time is illusory, then what about space?"
It is the flow of time that is illusory; and there is no analog "flow" with space. However, the distinction between the two is itself illusory; as Minkowski famously said "Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality".
"Why do we experience this illusory change at all, rather than experiencing all the frames of our conscious existence at once (kind of like Dr. Manhattan?)"
I don't think a particular answer follows from the eternalist-regularity picture by itself. My own answer to this question is twofold.
First - I deny that we actually have the experience of time flow. Rather, I agree with many observers (from Buddha to Broad (IIRC)) that we experience a stream of experiences, which includes our memories, and knit from that an intuition of time "flowing".
Secondly, we experience distinct mental states because - under Panpsychism - every mental distinction is a physical distinction and vice versa. The mental is just the way the physical feels from the inside, so that the existence of distinct physical states implies the existence of distinct mental states. And distinct physical/mental states, answering to the Law of Noncontradiction, are required to even think coherently about reality at all, so their not-existence cannot be coherently considered; they are a metaphysical necessity.
This is my current understanding; but I don't claim certainty about it - nor should this (especially my position about consciousness and contingency) be considered the standard view on the naturalist or Eternalist camp.
Yair
"So in eternalism you can fall prey to correlation is not causation, you have no way to refute that so the only option is to ignore THAT and pretend that YOU DO KNOW causes... but of course you don't."
ReplyDeleteIndeed. The idea that we pretend to know causation, or in Hume's terms that our belief in causation is a habit, was a big part of Hume's point and is a cornerstone of the Humean-Regulatory view.
(Of course, there is a difference between mere correlation vs. causal patterns in the actual world, but we're discussing something slightly different here.)
Yair
Okay subject dropped.
ReplyDelete-----------------------------------
QUOTE = Consider the explanation "The medicine healed because it killed the germ" with the explanation "The medicine healed because it exercised its healing powers". In the former, we understand why the medicine healed (once we understand the germ theory of disease and so on). In the latter, we're merely going around in circles, our explanation begging the conclusion instead of actually making it intelligible. = QUOTE
-----------------------------------
ME = In the first one you have described part of it's healing power is all about, and in the second you are sort of supposing that what you have seen is healing and that is why it healed, but Power must belong to the substance, so in the end is just in the first one you are talking about the element and the other you are talking about the group in which the element was. Do you get where I am coming from = ME
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QUOTE = On this I shall quote The Philosopher himself (Aristotle): "Some indeed demand that even this shall be demonstrated, but this they do through want of education, for not to know of what things one should demand demonstration, and of what one should not, argues want of education. For it is impossible that there should be demonstration of absolutely everything (there would be an infinite regress, so that there would still be no demonstration); but if there are things of which one should not demand demonstration, these persons could not say what principle they maintain to be more self-evident than the present one. "
He said this on the Law of Noncontradiction, but it applies here as well. Explanations should make things explicable in a non-begging-question way; or they're no explanations at all. But if you don't see it, then it cannot be explained to you - much like the LNC cannot be justified to you if you don't accept it. = QUOTE
-----------------------------------
ME = You are not getting, you can not ground any of these things you call upon, all you have is the pragmatic necessity to belief that you do understand these. But that doesn't mean that you can't ground them but rather that your personal view has no way to ground it if we suppose it is meant to be at least coherent in the mind. I was going for that even since I asked the stupid question about coherence. You see the force of an argument that tries to establish something about reality is because it premises are grounded in reality. If we just do argument in pragmatic ways, well then... discussion loce their meaning entirely because I can always turn to you and say that your pragmatic desires are not mine and hence I won't accept your argument. THAT was my point from the very start.
Has nothing to do with infinite regress or my desire to demonstrate it all, but rather it is about this very choice I am talking about in the last paragraph, If Coherence is nothing more then just an idea I like and think I ought follow because brute fact, I could just not follow it because of brute fact.
P.S:
Perhaps next time I will be just blunt and say it out loud instead of TRYING to make the other side understand by doing questions and analysis ... is just that, I hate speaking as if I am RIGHT and that is it!!!
Unless you happen to be paps or a troll XD. = ME
Yair
ReplyDeleteAbout Hume.
Yeah I remember people talking that about Hume, but never got to read the guy .... too damn lazy, you might have already realized that I am a lazy bum too.
But the idea that we can never know what caused what seems to make the world utter unintilligle, and makes all our endeavor into reality just merely wishful thinking ... (Personal Opinion) guess if I accept this, I would see no reason to study physics XD beyond what physics could give me (Personal Opinion)
BTW, Sorry ffor all the typos, it is just the excitation!!!! ..... and because I am too lazy to revise it.
ReplyDeleteWell you could make an eternal regress of demonstration by using finite induction like in mathematics. Just wanted to say that because I remembered it XD!
ReplyDeleteThis is my current understanding; but I don't claim certainty about it - nor should this (especially my position about consciousness and contingency) be considered the standard view on the naturalist or Eternalist camp.
ReplyDeleteBy the more popular definitions of naturalism, you wouldn't even qualify as a naturalist. You'd be some kind of non-naturalist pantheist.
Which is perhaps fortunate, as it appears on multiple grounds (the many world interpretation of quantum mechanics and the cosmological scale; which if Sean Carroll is right might be one and the same) that reality as a whole indeed does not boast a causal structure.
That really isn't an "appearance". The MWI is just one interpretation among many, and talk of the cosmological scale is ridiculously speculative and theoretical.
The very idea of trying to look for an "appearance" that reality as a whole has a causal structure is either a very shady way of talking about metaphysical argument and commitments all over again, or a dramatic misunderstanding of what observations are capable of.
Well naturalism just means whatever wants it to mean... so by the real definition he is one.
ReplyDeleteI did not respond to Feser's arguments regarding the Eternalist/stasis view since I did not see the relevance. That said, if the world is pure actuality, without any change in the Aristotelian act/potency sense, then the APOM is simply irrelevant for inertial motion, or indeed any change at all.
ReplyDeleteBut Feser's argument in the paper is that the eternalist view still does involve "change in the Aristotilean act/potency sense".
It is only from an Aristotelian perspective that Feser can apply the APOM to the universe as stasis.
ReplyDeleteAnd this doesn't seem like very much of a criticism.
@Eduardo: "But the idea that we can never know what caused what seems to make the world utter unintilligle"
ReplyDeleteNot unintelligible - only uncertain. We can come to hold certain empirical beliefs rationally, but we can never be certain that these beliefs pan out. Which sounds quite right to me; certainty is to be avoided by all seekers of truth.
"Perhaps next time I will be just blunt and say it out loud instead of TRYING to make the other side understand by doing questions and analysis ... is just that, I hate speaking as if I am RIGHT and that is it!!!"
Don't think of it as speaking THE TRUTH from on-high. We're all just humans stating our opinions. Explicating them gives not only others, but also us the opportunity to re-examine them and their justification. I much prefer that to the Socratic method, which works well when you're leading a fictional character by the nose but less well in real life. I also think it's more respectful to your opponents in the discussion to state your views and justifications upright, instead of being circumspect about them.
However, I'm having a hard time understanding what your opinion on the above topics is.
"in the first one you are talking about the element and the other you are talking about the group in which the element was."
I think we may be miscommunicating. You seem to believe my attack was on the metaphysics of "powers". My attack was rather on the explanatory strength of appeal to abstract powers. The point was not that "The power to cause A" did not explain A because "power" is problematic, so much that "The power to cause A" did not explain A because such an "explanation" begs the question. It is only when you provide the "element" that makes us understand why the object's causal powers can cause A that we understand why A.
(I believe that this actually does imply that the entire structure of "causal powers" makes no sense; but that's a separate argument that I did not intend to make here. Perhaps having it in my mind seeped through to my phrasing, and confused my point.)
"If Coherence is nothing more then just an idea I like and think I ought follow because brute fact, I could just not follow it because of brute fact. "
There are two levels of description here.
You should rationally follow the idea of coherence because it's the rationally thing to do. Systems that think in this way are rational systems.
You will, or will not, think rationally because - ultimately - of brute facts about how your mind works.
That both the irrational and rational thinking is driven by brute facts that doesn't mean that irrational thinking is just-as-valid as rational thinking. It's not - it's irrational. The fact that they're both driven by psychological facts about how our brain works is irrelevant to the descriptive and normative level of description.
Yair
@Anonymous: "By the more popular definitions of naturalism, you wouldn't even qualify as a naturalist. You'd be some kind of non-naturalist pantheist."
ReplyDeleteNah, I'm a naturalist by the common definitions. I think they're wrong-headed, but I still fall under them. :)
In particular, I'm not a pantheist because I deny unity to the world as a whole, perceiving it instead as an aggregate (as many philosophical panpsychists do).
"The MWI is just one interpretation among many [and].... the very idea of trying to look for an "appearance" that reality as a whole has a causal structure is ...a dramatic misunderstanding of what observations are capable of."
Let's just say I disagree. :) Because arguing those points will be a REALLY long argument.
"But Feser's argument in the paper is that the eternalist view still does involve "change in the Aristotilean act/potency sense"."
I don't care about whether the eternalist view involves change in the act/potency sense. I don't care about the First Way. Not for the main argument of this thread/my piece. I only care about whether the APOM is compatible with the NPOI, and under the eternalist view it only vacuously is.
"And this doesn't seem like very much of a criticism."
Consider it my way of saying Feser is skirting very close to strawmanning his opposition, if he hasn't crossed the line already.
Yair
QUOTE = Not unintelligible - only uncertain. We can come to hold certain empirical beliefs rationally, but we can never be certain that these beliefs pan out. Which sounds quite right to me; certainty is to be avoided by all seekers of truth. = QUOTE
ReplyDelete-----------------------------------
ME = Yeah, you could be right that maybe the world doesn't become unintelligle, so yeah perhaps you are right.
That rule of your is self-refuting... come on obviously that can no rules especially made for truth seeking just correlations that seem to work for now... if you know what truth is. = ME
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About me speaking OF THE TRUTH!!!
ME = Sorry, is just that I don't like to state stuff bluntly because people MOST OF THE TIME, get things wrong, you know they get the wrong connotation.
Well I don't really have a build opinion, I just sort of learn from you guys, quite literally that is how it goes. You know just to see if I can get something XD. = ME
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QUOTE = I think we may be miscommunicating. You seem to believe my attack was on the metaphysics of "powers". My attack was rather on the explanatory strength of appeal to abstract powers. = QUOTE
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ME = Not really, the idea was more towards that you could interpret the phrase as a metaphysical position, but not really that you were doing a critique, about the explanatory power ... I will leave it alone, I am going to take you for another stupid ride with questions. SO yeah I better not do it. = ME
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QUOTE = The point was not that "The power to cause A" did not explain A because "power" is problematic, so much that "The power to cause A" did not explain A because such an "explanation" begs the question. It is only when you provide the "element" that makes us understand why the object's causal powers can cause A that we understand why A. = QUOTE
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ME = Well, yeah. Unless of course you show that the GROUP is part of the explanation so in the end, you are understanding how it is happening but just know exactly what is happening. = ME
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QUOTE = You should rationally follow the idea of coherence because it's the rationally thing to do. Systems that think in this way are rational systems.
You will, or will not, think rationally because - ultimately - of brute facts about how your mind works.
That both the irrational and rational thinking is driven by brute facts that doesn't mean that irrational thinking is just-as-valid as rational thinking. It's not - it's irrational. The fact that they're both driven by psychological facts about how our brain works is irrelevant to the descriptive and normative level of description. = QUOTE
ME = Of course it is as valid, how do you measure vaalidity... you don't, you having to ground theis measure but creating SOME RULE that "forces" you to follow what you believe is the rational option, but in the end is all smoke and mirrors, what is really going on is that you like to think this is the correct on, no reason to believe it is so. It is all pragmatic desire, it has no validity as an argument about reality until you ground it.
Let me put this way, you could say that believing that you will dies by jumping from a building and the rational thing to do is not do it. But it has nothing to do with a reason to choose that because you have no reason to follow reason unless you pressupose that you HAVE to follow reason, which is not a rational choice at all is just whatever you want... Just modelling whatever principle in order to get what YOU want, but there is nothing in there that forces you to choose those particular choices. = ME
Yair
ReplyDeleteSo you agree with the paper, just that it is not compatible the way you like.... even the paper was never about arguing for the position you like.
Yair, then the conversation what the paper is over, you agree to the paper's objective, you just don't agree to it based on additional ideas that were never of concern to the paper.
btw I really gotta revise these comments, not having the blogger account is starting to be a problem XD.
ReplyDeleteNah, I'm a naturalist by the common definitions.
ReplyDeleteAlright. Which one? I hope your reasoning is more than "Well, I'm an atheist.", because atheism isn't sufficient under any common definition I'm aware of.
I don't care about whether the eternalist view involves change in the act/potency sense. I don't care about the First Way. Not for the main argument of this thread/my piece. I only care about whether the APOM is compatible with the NPOI, and under the eternalist view it only vacuously is.
The vacuous charge simply isn't true for the reasons already stated. At the same time, I think it's disingenuous to say on the one hand that you don't care, but on the other hand to offer up the vacuous charge as part of your criticism, especially since the subject of the NPOI is central to the discussion mostly with regards to the First Way and act/potency considerations to begin with.
If eternalism still allows the first way to go through and still involves change in the act/potency sense, then claiming that the compatibility is vacuous doesn't make much sense at all.
Consider it my way of saying Feser is skirting very close to strawmanning his opposition, if he hasn't crossed the line already.
Why be cutesy about it? If you think he's strawmanning, say so. If you're not committed to say, then don't. But don't try to say it without "really" saying it.
Still, as I said, that isn't really much of a criticism. If all you mean by saying that is that you don't care, well, then say as much and we'll leave it at that. But at that point you're not making any criticism, you're just saying you're uninterested.
Yair
ReplyDeletethe last part was so plagued with typos I am sorry man, making suffer all this unecessary aggrevation XD.
But my point is that, you are just defining reason as whatever you like and saying: Oh this is the rational position.
It has nothing to do with a rule of some sort, or the main characteristic of being rational or some essence or something like that, but just with your desire that THIS is the rational position, but in the end is a choice that can be made in whatever way someone like since the word rational is just whatever you choose it to be. It is quite literally an empty word during an argument.
Let's just say I disagree. :) Because arguing those points will be a REALLY long argument.
ReplyDeleteWhy should it be, if it's an observation? Point at the data and you're done.
I'm not denying that you can mount an argument for such and such. I'm pointing out that interpretations of quantum mechanics are themselves speculative interpretations of formalisms that themselves are not part of, or at least not currently decidable by, current science.
Again, note that I'm not denying you can have such a metaphysical view, or even provide some arguments for it. But you've left science far, far behind when doing this, and are now in to philosophy or metaphysics. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
I have been following the discussion for a while and im not seeing how a change in location violates "whatever potency is actualized can only be actualized by something already actual." Perhaps someone can clarify?
ReplyDeleteEduardo,
ReplyDeleteBut it has nothing to do with a reason to choose that because you have no reason to follow reason unless you pressupose that you HAVE to follow reason, which is not a rational choice at all is just whatever you want.
I think one possible reply to you would be that a decision to do such and such is only rational relative to a goal, and goals themselves are not rational or irrational. They are just taken as brute.
One problem is if that reply is given, then no goal is any more rational than another ultimately. At the same time, we can't say that any given act happens to be irrational in and of itself. It can only be rational or irrational with respect to a goal, and no goal is objectively better or worse than any other in and of itself.
This would seem to extend to beliefs as well, including fideism.
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ReplyDeleteExactly Anon, and that kills the idea to reject any other idea based on ad hoc or any other rule as well!
To ground these things is to force them into the argument with their full force, but to do what, you gotta open doors that not everybody wants to open. But if you don't open them, you are stuck with a meaningless talk and wishful thinking, hardly what people desire when they are discussing something.
But I know Yair won't go there... He can't.
Actually you can quite literally go even further and start thinking that maybe Reason is non existent and therefore irrelevant to any discussion!
ReplyDeleteYeah, people done that before!!!
To be honest, I also adhere to the Eternalist view and thus utterly reject any actualization, anywhere, at any sense, even of the universe as a whole
ReplyDeleteIt seems like you assert things but never seem to prove them. This position right here, is unintelligible (physicists' infatuation with it not withstanding). Can you provide a proof that change is impossible?
5. It can be seen as real-change induced by God, but at the cost of providing a trivial answer (“god did it”; which is true for anything).M
ReplyDeleteThis is just ridiculous. Strawman fallacy and all.
Under the eternalism-regulatory view such an explanation is impossible. A Humean-regulatory position decries non-regulatory explanations as vacuous; saying an object has the "power" to cause A, for example, is akin to saying that a medicine heals because it has "healing powers".
ReplyDeleteYet, another terrible straw man. For a good discussion of this error that Hume and yourself are committing you should read Feser's book.
A Paermenedian argument then precludes any possible explanation: either it will be based on existing patterns, in which case it will not explain the fundamental patterns (if such exist; an infinite regress is allowed), or else it will be based on Nothing and thus capable of explaining nothing. A slightly different version: nothing exists outside reality which can explain it, and nothing that exists within reality can explain it.
So basically you admit that your worldview is based on the incoherent notion of brute factness. Well, I suppose if that's where you need to go to escape, so be it.
I agree with many observers (from Buddha to Broad (IIRC)) that we experience a stream of experiences, which includes our memories, and knit from that an intuition of time "flowing".
ReplyDeleteThat would be change.
Eduardo,
ReplyDeleteYair, then the conversation what the paper is over, you agree to the paper's objective, you just don't agree to it based on additional ideas that were never of concern to the paper.
That's why I asked for his to prove his worldview from the beginning. He brought in, unconsciously perhaps, his beliefs and assumptions when he started making his arguments, which I still don't see much merit to. That along with his methodological commitments (e.g. Ockham, analytic tradition etc) is what this who debacle was essentially based on.
Now, I'm not going to press for that proof (since I believe it's impossible to provide) but I will note that perhaps for most of this discussion people were talking past each other in regards to the conclusions that ought to be drawn from each sides arguments, due to the lack of common ground and the radically different assumptions they make (that does not entail that I am claiming that there was no communication of course).
"I have been following the discussion for a while and im not seeing how a change in location violates 'whatever potency is actualized can only be actualized by something already actual.' Perhaps someone can clarify?"
ReplyDeleteBasically, according to Yair, a change of location in Newtonian physics is supposed to count as a real change in Aristotelian terms: that is, the actualization of a potency. I believe that's supposed to be because, for Newton as surely as for Aristotle, there's such a thing as absolute space to serve as a "background" for that change of location.
In that case, Newton's first law would deny Aristotle's principle of motion by asserting that some potencies—specifically, those actualized in uniform motion—can be actualized without being actualized by something else already actual: once an object is in uniform motion, it keeps going without the application of any external force.
But both grodrigues and I have pointed out that even against a backdrop of absolute space, it's not obvious that a change in spatial relations involves the actualization of a potency in the moving object, as those changes of relation aren't intrinsic to the object (even in Newtonian physics, never mind contemporary physics).
I've further added that in that case, there might still be a problem for Aristotle if he thought (as he apparently did) that change of location did involve an actualization of a potency in the moving object—but if so, it's a problem for his physics, not for his principle of motion; he would simply have been mistaken (and not for the only time) about a matter of empirical physics.
Yair has replied (and I've agreed) that the best recourse for the Thomist is indeed to regard uniform motion as involving no change in the state of the moving object. Since he doesn't want to bring in post-Newtonian physics (which may or may not be relevant to any alleged conflict between Aristotle's POM and specifically Newton's LOI, and in any case would take us far afield), that seems to be the end of the matter for now: if the Thomist denies that uniform motion involves any real "change" in the Aristotelian sense (at least any change intrinsic to the moving object), then the LOI doesn't violate the POM (although Yair finds that move implausible on other grounds that I don't share).
Hope that helps.
Scott
ReplyDeleteYou can take the change in position to be real change and newtonian physics to be a pragmatic study that consider inertial movement as no change.
Scott,
ReplyDeleteI finally got a chance to go through my archive and as promised here is the article (it's a 300 page dissertation in fact) of the defense of Monoalatheism (against many of Priest's objections). I've only read parts of it myself due to its size.
http://www.2shared.com/document/1YAtQ-iQ/Argument_against_dialetheism_a.html
I addition, I've also found an article by Tuomas Tahko, who defends the LNC from an Aristotelian perspective as a metaphysical principle (not just a logical one). Again he attacks Priest's critique.
http://www.2shared.com/document/l_cbUyel/Defence_of_the_law_of_non-cont.html
Hope you find these articles helpful
(I'm splitting this one in two in order to fit within the character limit.)
ReplyDeleteFor the benefit of those asking about eternalism, it might be worth my bringing out clearly something that Yair has pointed out once or twice: what he's describing and discussing not just eternalism itself but what he himself regards as a consequence of it (a Humean/regulatory view of causation).
Arguing about whether eternalism really does commit us to Humeanism in that way would take us way off-topic, so let me simply say that as an eternalist myself, I disagree, and leave it at that (except for a brief parenthetical remark below).
As for eternalism and consciousness, I can't do better than to quote Sprigge (which I hope will be of interest to Yair as well since (a) Sprigge has come up in the thread before and (b) Sprigge, like Yair and me, is both an eternalist and a panpsychist):
[T]he universe as it really is consists of innumerable moments of experience, each of which is eternally just there and . . . cannot really cease to be. However, each of them—or at any rate the ones we know about—feels itself as something which is a transition point between two other experiences. It by no means follows that the feeling which each experience certainly has of emerging from and passing into other experiences is entirely an illusion. Personally I am convinced that there is a sense in which this feeling is quite correct. . . .
Still . . . there is an element of illusoriness in the feeling of transition, for it goes with a feeling that somehow past, present, and future are radically different sorts of reality, whereas the truth is that presentness is eternally the true character of every event, and that each is eternally there in precisely its own locus in the whole temporal series. (From "The Unreality of Time," reprinted in The Importance of Subjectivity, p. 132.)
That is, in calling time "unreal" Sprigge is not denying that there are temporal series with temporal relations between their elements; he's saying (as Yair is saying) that the apparent flow of time (in which an as-yet-nonexistent "future" winks into existence as the "present" and then fades back into another sort of nonexistence as the "past") is illusory and all the parts of the temporal series are in some metaphysical sense "all there at once." (to be continued)
(Part 2 of 2)
ReplyDeleteFor him, each of the temporal series that make up our world consists of what we might describe as a series of overlapping "beads" of momentary experience, each of which feels to itself as leading from the one before into the one after. That feeling is not illusory; we feel the "passage" of time because each of those beads really does stand in certain temporal relations to the others. The illusion consists of our taking that feeling to mean that the "future" and the "past" don't exist in the same way as the "present." They do, and the fact that there are relations between them that are in some sense irreducibly "temporal" doesn't imply otherwise.
The trick in understanding this view is to be careful not to imagine something like a filmstrip, each frame of which is eternally present and of which we "watch" each frame in turn. It's the latter step that poses the problem: on the eternalist view (and particularly on Sprigge's panpsychist version of it), it's not necessary (and not correct) to imagine anyone or anything stepping through the frames one at a time (thereby simply reintroducing the "passage" of time that we were trying to explain). Each frame itself simply is a moment of experience—watching itself, if you like. The "I" of each series is not an external watcher who steps through them in turn, but the entire series of experiences itself.
Moreover, just as this view doesn't make temporal relations unreal, it also doesn't make relations of difference unreal. In denying that real "change" occurs, Yair is not claiming that there is no difference between one moment and another—only denying that real "change" occurs between them in the sense of one thing actually passing into something else or one thing ceasing to be and being replaced by another. We could just as easily say that "change" (consisting of relations of difference) is real, but there's something illusory about what we usually take it to involve (things/stuff actually coming into and going out of existence).
(Here's that parenthetical remark: I think the foregoing analysis can also be applied to causation, and that's why I disagree that eternalism commits us to a Humean/regularity view of causal relations. Again, though, discussing that here would take us far off-topic.)
Anonymous, thank you very much for the links. I'll check them out ASAP.
ReplyDelete"You can take the change in position to be real change and newtonian physics to be a pragmatic study that consider inertial movement as no change."
ReplyDeleteThat's true although I'm not sure how relevant that would be to a discussion of Feser's own attempted reconcilation; if he suggested something along those lines, I didn't notice it.
However, I think it's even possible to argue that Newton himself took a somewhat equivalent view: I do recall that he said of gravitation that he didn't know or claim to know what "caused" it.
I'd have to dig through some stuff I haven't read in a while to find further support or disconfirmation, but offhand it does seem that this approach could fit within the "metaphysical causes" case of Feser's argument: to my (fallible) recollection, it seems that Newton himself allowed for the possibility that his physics dealt (in your sense, although he didn't use the term) "pragmatically" with mechanical systems without claiming to know that nothing about them was due to metaphysical causes (or for that matter to then-unknown physical causes).
If so, then it's possible that the claim that Newton's law of inertia violates Aristotle's POM might be wrong on Newton's own view, never mind ours.
Those are just my offhand thoughts, though, and I wouldn't claim any great weight for them.
"I much prefer that to the Socratic method, which works well when you're leading a fictional character by the nose but less well in real life."
ReplyDeleteHeh.
"X."
"You are right, Socrates."
"Y."
"So it must be, Socrates."
"Z."
"Only a fool would deny it, Socrates."
"Then you were wrong."
"You have forced me to acknowledge it, Socrates."
Thank you Scott. But as long as inertial motion doesnt involve that the potential, accidental property of "being at location B" is the explanation, reason or cause of inertial motion, I dont see why this is a problem. The First Way doesnt require that all change must have a sustaining cause, IIRC, isnt that why Aquinas differentiated between per se and per accidens? Also, cant we say that change in location depends on a material cause (which is one of the Aristotelian causes)? No matter/mass, no inertial motion. And I dont think that the causes must come from the "outside" in spatial terms. It only has to come from sources that are already actual.
ReplyDeleteAlso, dont unexplained/brute fact entities count against the simplicity of a theory? If that is true, then Scott's eternalist view is simpler than the humean one. And out of curiosity, what was Aristotle's opinion of time, if he had one?
ReplyDeleteScott,
ReplyDeleteThat is, in calling time "unreal" Sprigge is not denying that there are temporal series with temporal relations between their elements
Well, if time is unreal, then what does it mean for there to be a temporal series? And how is the temporal relation taking place?
What determines whether one slice of time is before or after another?
"Well, if time is unreal, then what does it mean for there to be a temporal series? And how is the temporal relation taking place?"
ReplyDeleteThe idea is that the temporal relations are in some way analogous to spatial relations (or, on a Minkowskian view of spacetime, bound up even more closely with them than that).
I doubt that such relations can be reduced to something else altogether, and it's so fine (as far as I'm concerned) to regard them as irreducibly temporal in some sense; the point is just to avoid is taking them to mean that anything is really passing into and out of existence.
The basic problem with doing so, in Sprigge's view (and I agree though with a slightly different emphasis that doesn't matter here), is that we seem to be able to speak truly about the past and the future. To make a long story short, when I say that at noon yesterday I ate a sandwich, I seem to be saying something that's true now—yet if there's no sense in which the past exists "now," what is there that could possibly make my statement true? What is it true of? (For that matter, if the past no longer exists in any sense, what would it even mean to say that an event of yesterday took place before the present? We'd have a two-term relation in which one term simply failed to exist.)
Getting into the details, cases, possibilities, and so forth would get messy, so please take the foregoing as a summary/explication rather than as a full-blown argument; you can find the latter in the Sprigge paper I've already cited. The point here is just that, if that argument is well-founded, we're forced to conclude that whatever time "really" is, we can't treat it as just things winking into and then out of existence; there must be some eternal sense in which the past is "just there" in order to be successfully referred to, thought about, and described truly.
In other (and fewer) words, what makes things be "before" and "after" one another may perfectly well be what we usually take it to be (unless that turns out to be wrong on other grounds). What we shouldn't do is draw wrong conclusions about the nature of time from the existence of relations like "before" and "after," which themselves seem in some sense to presuppose that the temporal series is just eternally "there."
Heh. By "it's so fine" I meant of course "so it's fine."
ReplyDeleteThe discussion is becoming unwieldy for me, so just some brief comments:
ReplyDelete@Zia: "dont unexplained/brute fact entities count against the simplicity of a theory? "
I wouldn't call it simplicity, but yes - if theory A doesn't explain fact P1 and theory B does, then theory B has an advantage. The Humean/Regulatory position, of course, is that no theory explains those things :)
@Scott: "But both grodrigues and I have pointed out that even against a backdrop of absolute space, it's not obvious that a change in spatial relations involves the actualization of a potency in the moving object,"
Why the insistence on the OBJECT's properties? The APOM speaks about "whatever moves"; if this change, during inertial motion, isn't of the object but of the Machian distance between objects - so be it. The NPOI speaks about uniform motion in a straight line; in Machian terms, this too will mean change of the distance, rather than a change of the object's properties.
Whether in absolute, relative or Machian space, I don't see how you can avoid the application of the act/potency nature of change to the change in distance during inertial motion, and thus the denial of "state" and the acceptance of "real change" and the applicability of the APOM. Well, except by taking the Eternalist route.
@Eduardo: "Yair, then the conversation what the paper is over, you agree to the paper's objective, you just don't agree to it based on additional ideas that were never of concern to the paper."
I'm not interested in the paper's context, or all its points. I wanted to settle the compatibility between APOM and NPOI, for my own curiosity, that is all.
Regardless - I think the discussion is over simply because it is over. We've clarified things and presented the options as well as we can, and even side-stepped into many sub-issues. Time to wrap it up.
Not to leave you all with a feeling I've avoided the issue, I'll state things very clearly:
Feser has succeeded to show that the NPOI does not necessarily contradict APOM and hence that the chaining rule of the First Way is not falsified by the NPOI. As this seems to have been the concern of the paper, it's a success. I'll even add that our discussion has shown that the Thomist has several options, some of which may not even considerably undermine the plausibility of APOM given NPOI (which is a stronger claim than Feser's).
I expect this to be my last post in this thread. Have fun ya'll, and may we approach the truth.
Cheers,
Yair
And of course the overarching point here is that we shouldn't misunderstand what Sprigge and others have meant in saying that time is unreal. As Sprigge himself is at pains to explain, he means that time as we ordinarily conceive it is unreal and to some extent illusory. He's not saying that there's nothing in the real world answering to the name of "time" at all—and in fact he expressly says that his own account could be just as easily taken as an alternative account of what "time" really is.
ReplyDeleteCheers, Yair. Thanks for your participation here; hope to see you again in other threads. But I agree that it's time to wrap this one up.
ReplyDeleteI also thank yair. As Feser mentioned, the exploration of how the two principles are related are a seperate, ongoing project.
ReplyDeleteYair
ReplyDeleteYou should have said so in the beginning xD, because then we were all wrong headed while talking you
Amem brother XD!
And yeah I agree with Scott it was really delightful to read you, seriously... you are one of those once in a life time apparitions XD.
Sorry if I was too hard on you in the beginning Yair.
ReplyDeleteYou have contributed a lot here.
Cheers man!
grodrigues:
ReplyDeleteI mean do people even *read* what they say? Formalize QM, say in some background theory like ZFC. If QM entailed some contradiction of LNC, it would entail a contradiction, that is, there would be a sentence P, such that from the formalized QM we could prove P and not-P.
The best part is that these people are saying that the Law Of Non-Contradiction is invalidated on the grounds that it contradicts the evidence. It's absolutely impossible to get any more comically inane than that.
This means that the formalized QM would be inconsistent. From an inconsistent theory by the principle of explosion *anything* expressable in the language of the theory is derivable; you could derive, say that 0 = 1. IOW, the predictive power of the theory is null and void.
Exactly. If a theory contradicts the evidence, or itself, that's how you can tell that the theory is mistaken. But to the promulgator of QM-based bullshit, in the case of (their stupid idea of) quantum physics it just means that contradiction itself is okay now! And it's almost always those GNU atheist "followers of reason" who take this tack in my experience. My guess is, they're trying to head off the Arguments From Reason by denying ahead of time that we have rational minds that can find objective truth via reason, an example of shooting oneself in one's foot if there ever was one.
Is it possible to provide a philosophical argument for the existence of angels apart from revelation? IDK, through notions of the hierarchy of being or the principle of continuity?
ReplyDeleteI have a question on how angels can move matter. St. Thomas says corporeal matter does not obey the mere will of an angel, and he says an angel can move bodies. By what power does an angel move corporeal matter if not by the will? It apparently cannot be through the intellect. I assume St. Thomas would agree that an angel's intellect is both speculative and practical like the human intellect is. However, the speculative intellect contemplates the truth; it does not, by itself, move anything external to the thinking person. The practical intellect applies the truth to specific actions. However, the practical intellect does this through the will. Because matter does not obey the angel's will, and because the practical intellect acts through the will, it seems an angel's practical intellect cannot move bodies. St. Thomas also says angels act by intellect and will. So, if corporeal matter does not obey an angel's mere will, and because an angel's intellect apparently cannot move corporeal matter, how does an angel move bodies?
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