My essay “Truth
as a Transcendental” appears in the Festschrift
Metaphysics
Through Semantics: The Philosophical Recovery of the Medieval Mind: Essays in
Honor of Gyula Klima, edited by Joshua P. Hochschild, Turner C. Nevitt,
Adam Wood, and Gábor Borbély. Gyula’s
work has contributed mightily to the revival of interest in medieval and Scholastic
philosophy, and this honor is most deserved and welcome! You can check out the table of contents
at Josh
Hochschild’s Twitter feed or
at the
publisher’s website.
Man alive, $150.00? I'll wait for the movie.
ReplyDeleteAfter looking at the table of contents, $150 seems to me a steal. Expensive when looked at under the rubric of "just a book"; cheap when looked at under the rubric of "a large number of substantial contributions on important topics from world class philosophers."
DeleteOr, one can listen to Feser on the topic HERE. The accompanying chart is helpful for beginners who are a picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words type. I occasionally include myself in that number.
DeleteBit disappointing Adam Wood is getting a podium these days. Of fame for thinking Aquinas arguments for the immortality of the soul don't work (spoiler his understanding of the arguments is atrocious).
ReplyDeleteAquinas' primary argument for the immortality of the soul is absolutely weak in itself in comparison to his other arguments such as the Five Ways, and Wood does a good job explaining why the argument needs, at the very least, substantial elaboration to be seriously entertainable. It's intellectually unfair to think he doesn't deserve a "podium" on the subject of Aquinas. If anything, we need more classical theists that are critically engaged with Aquinas.
DeleteMost modern classical theists don't have the proper grounding. The problem isn't in Aquinas it is in Wood. Michael Augros at least (gently) corrects one of Wood's many mistaken understandings in his review in Nova et Vetera but there is more than can be covered in a short review.
DeleteOne of Wood's other arguments is the supposed content fallacy argument. His examples (such as universals can be known by the intellect without universals being real, and God is immaterial and yet knows individual material things) move from the nature of knowledge to the nature of the thing known. They do not concern the ontological status of the knowing power that is a precondition for the act of knowing. It is common experience that an agent acts based upon what it is. No one is surprised that animals (and plants) are able to reproduce based upon what they are. It should also be no surprise that a knowing power knows based upon what it is. From the nature of the action (the mode of knowing), then, it makes perfect sense that we can determine at least something about the nature of the knowing power.
So yes we need people "critically engaged" with Aquinas but not people who have a sophomoric understanding. For a culture going down the drain who needs enemies when you have (supposedly Thomistic) friends like these?
@J.Storey
DeleteI still haven't found a good answer to the causal closure argument against the existence of the soul. It seems that the soul uses telekinetic powers to jiggle the neurons to move your body, but these telekinetic powers are space limited to the 3lbs of brain tissue inside your head and are unable to be used with greater generality (claims of Uri Geller nonwithstanding).
Infinite, it looks to me like you are assuming that the soul interacts with the body in the way an efficient cause moves another body. But (at least for Aquinas), this is not at all how the soul interacts with the body: it is the substantial form, making the matter to be the body of a human being, specifically. It isn't there to operate by the mode of efficient causality.
Delete(While our most fine-grained sensory powers (sight and hearing) are located in our head, and perhaps due to the overwhelmingly high band-width of information contained in seeing, it may generally seem that mind activity occurs mainly in the head. But there is no principled reason, from Aquinas or Aristotle, to say that the brain and only the brain rests as the bodily seat of the intellect's powers: First, the soul resides in the entirety of the body, and it does not have local parts properly speaking. Second, there is a growing body of evidence that other parts of the nervous system are important parts of the control apparatus, including the nerves of the stomach. Third, from yore there was a wide view that the heart was as important to the personality and apprehension as the head: "The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of." (Pascal) So, would it matter (to your concern) if we expanded the locus of bodily parts affected by the mind to the whole body? If not, then drop the "3lbs of brain tissue" and focus on the core problem, which is that of the soul moving the body at all.)
If not, then drop the "3lbs of brain tissue" and focus on the core problem, which is that of the soul moving the body at all.
DeleteOkay. How does the soul move the body at all? It still seems like the invisible substance has to "touch" the meat. Saying the soul is the formal cause of the body does successfully answer the question of why the soul seems spatially finite.
The question here isn't the *existence* of the soul but the *immortality* of the human soul. I contacted a top Thomist who himself has published books through CUA and he agreed Wood's stuff was flawed. If he had a proper examining committee his thesis would have been torn to shreds.
DeleteAquinas3000
Delete"One of Wood's other arguments is the supposed content fallacy argument. His examples (such as universals can be known by the intellect without universals being real, and God is immaterial and yet knows individual material things) move from the nature of knowledge to the nature of the thing known. They do not concern the ontological status of the knowing power that is a precondition for the act of knowing. It is common experience that an agent acts based upon what it is. No one is surprised that animals (and plants) are able to reproduce based upon what they are. It should also be no surprise that a knowing power knows based upon what it is. From the nature of the action (the mode of knowing), then, it makes perfect sense that we can determine at least something about the nature of the knowing power."
Can you elaborate on that? I think those who say Aquinas commits a content fallacy are pointing out that the action can be physical (and hence the power also physical) while it's just the *content* of the thought that might be non-physical. As in, just because the content of my thought is a red car (I think about red cars) that does not mean my thought is itself red; and likewise just because the content of my thought is an immaterial, universal concept that does not mean that my thought is itself immaterial.
So can you elaborate on the response you just mentioned?
I don't have access to Augros's full review. I wish I did.
@Infinite The soul doesn't move the body, just like the ball's roundness doesn't round the ball, nor does it "touch" it or "move" it in some way. The soul is not an efficient cause.
DeleteJust like there's no interaction between the sphere and the rubber in the case of a rubber ball, there aren't two different things to "interact" in the case of the soul and the body.
@Zeno
DeleteWhen Aristotle says "the formal cause of a coffee table standing upright and steady is its three leggedness" he is saying that that the logical property of having three points of contact makes it possible for the coffee table to be upright and steady. Had a different logical property (e.g. having four legs) been instantiated, the coffee table wouldn't have been upright and steady (two legs would have acted as a seesaw).
But the three-leggedness of a coffee table doesn't actually do things. The soul, on the other hand, does things like thinking and choosing. Because of this, calling the mind the formal cause of the body is the logical fallacy of special pleading, because it remains to be explained why this particular formal cause can do actions and is capable of changing while all the other formal causes are merely timeless properties.
Thanks for posting this. It got me to revisit your talk on YouTube at the Thomistic Institute.
ReplyDeleteJust as an aside, I've had the experience several times while grappling with your content as a non expert, of finding clarity on a thing in my intellect. A kind of moment where things I might have read but not entirely understood, suddenly clicks into place in my mind and moves from a sort of cloudy fuzziness into understanding. One of which is how to understand the reality of essences. Your talk of ontological truth versus logical truth, and how logical truth must be based on ontological truth, is one such concept. I understood that ontological truth is what our minds abstract away in terms of the intelligible forms of things. But I did not adequately grasp how real essentialism depends on the essence of things also existing in the mind of God as their ultimate origin. Thus when we discover the essence of triangularity from particular instances of triangularity, yes, that essence comes from those particular instances, but their ultimate grounding is in the mind of God. Thus, one cannot believe in real essentialism without believing in the existence of God. Essences preexist their instantiation in particular things as concepts in the divine mind. They are the archetypes by which God creates. This is what grounds ontological truth as a property of being which would exist even in the absence of human minds.
You reference the Augustinian proof from your Five Proofs for the Existence of God book as a basis for this.
But this is slightly frustrating, as the atheist will bar the move to ground essences as concepts in the mind of God. In fact, they will naturally want to downgrade the preexistence of essences in the mind of God, into the things which instantiate them, and then from the things which instantiate them to the minds of human beings. And then they will make the further move to try to deny that human beings truly have access to the essence of things at all in they are in themselves in external things. And so we are trapped in this Kantian subjectivity.
The atheist will be happy to reside in this mind trap, so long as they don't have to believe in God. Or at least, so long as they don't have to believe in the Judeo Christian God. An atheist would be happy to believe in some materialistic alien super mind, or even super AI, that can calculate or predict or even manipulate all of reality. But they would only relate to or even notice human beings as an elephant might notice a flee, or a human scientist, an individual amoeba under a microscope. But they certainly wouldn't ascribe the very invention and maintenance of the concepts that form the very laws of physics to such aliens. Or maybe they would, but it would be a very sinister thing. A terrible power that might crush human beings. Or sometimes a benevolent power associated to black holes or something like that.
Bracketing aside the second part of my previous post, I was thinking about how best to shore up a defense of essences. Localizing essences in the mind of God as archetypes seems to depend on first proving the existence of essences in things and in human minds. Once you've made that move, then you can go on to see how essences must depend on a single cause, at least analogically.
DeleteEd has a section in Scholastic Metaphysics that goes into a defense of essences. He poses the question, whether essences are products of the mind or whether they are real and mind independent.
The discussion is good, and goes into the fact that essences are a gathering together of common properties and causal powers. What essences explain is their unity. The unity of the essence of cat, for example, would be hard to explain if it were simply a product of the human mind and in no way reflected a reality that defines all cats.
The added point is that science appears to be in the business of discovering the essence of things. Ed quotes from Brian Ellis who maintains that essences are necessary to ground laws of nature. Ellis finds that elements in the periodic table are clearly definable essences that are real, and not accidental. Also with chemical compounds. He does not extend this to biological kinds, but he at least understands their evidence necessity at the level of the periodic table.
Then Ed moves on to describe the subject of essences as a subset of the subject of universals and moderate realism about universals. This goes over the same ground that Ed covers in his talk "Truth as a Transcendental".
I will have to reread the Augustinian proof in Ed's Five Proofs to figure out how to shore up the necessity of grounding universals and essences in the mind of God.
But I'm wondering if the fifth way can also be used to prove that essences must be grounded in the divine intellect? It depends on acknowledging that the created world is filled with objects that are ordered and can be described as having final causality. Things are intelligible, not because we ascribe it there with our minds. They are intelligible because their natures are intelligible. If the universe is only composed of things that are intelligible, then there must be some transcendent source of wisdom or intelligence that is the source for all this comprehensive intelligibility. An intelligence that explains the unity of the order of all creation.
Why would the inference for the necessity of the Divine Ideas to ground abstract objects be frustrating to you? You are right that atheists would "bar" the grounding of essences in the Divine Intellect but they have no other means of explaining abstract objects such as numbers (particularly the eternality of numbers and their causal efficacy in the natural world). They might also be nominalists who deny the existence of extramental universal forms in things. With either move, they have no way of explaining the fact that numbers are both eternal and have causal efficacy. The theist doe as numbers are eternal ideas that are dependent on the eternal Divine Intellect who orders the universe according to number.
DeleteThe pervasiveness of both atheism and skepticism within modernity is of course not accidental. Nominalism is the reason that modernity has been one endless and unsuccessful effort to answer basic epistemological questions. They can't successfully account for knowledge because of mistakes that were made in metaphysics. The most fundamental mistake that characterizes modernity is the denial of extra mental universal formal causes. The via moderna of Ockham denied the existence of such extramental universal forms and said that they were only names (nomina). Once you make this move, you have the possibility of demons skepticism which is not even possible within a realist framework such as that of Aquinas as Klima's work has shown in multiple articles.
Recognition of this should not disturb anyone, much less scholastic realists. It explains what has gone wrong in modernity. It also explains the necessity of theism in accounting for other things we know such as the existence of abstract objects. In other words, theism is demonstrative in light of what we already know and the work of natural theology shows this to be the case.
The above also explains what has gone wrong on some strands of Thomism which, wrongly following Suarez, interprets St. Thomas in a nominalist fashion. Benedict Ashley is an example of this (If you would like the quote, I will be happy to did it up). The work of Gyula Klima has made very clear the position of St. Thomas on formal causality and its implications for epistemology and that position is at odds with the position of Suarez. So, in sum, no need to be frustrated but much cause to celebrate the clarity of the recovery of authentic scholastic realism through figures like Edward Feser and Gyula Klima (It sounds like you have read alot of Feser's work, but I would highly recommend reading as much of Klima's work as you can get your hands on as well. Much of it is available online and the links under this post can direct you to them.)
The theist doe as numbers are eternal ideas that are dependent on the eternal Divine Intellect who orders the universe according to number.
DeleteI have always been puzzled about whether (in Thomist thought), numbers (and even more basic mathematical objects) are properly to be understood as contingent, created being, vs. necessary, created being, vs. necessary, uncreated being. The reason it puzzles me is that while we tend to say ONLY GOD is the sole necessary, uncreated being, it is very difficult to describe logic as something that God created, as if it wouldn't describe God absent God willing to create logic. Same (obviously) with number: would the Persons of the Trinity not be "three" if God had chosen not to create number? Does such a question even make sense? So, "necessary" seems right, even if we don't immediately answer whether logic and number are created or not-created.
I suspect that Thomas would propose some added distinction, of which I am not now aware, that explains how number and logic can be not "created" but still be "dependent" on God. But I confess that I am unhappy with the idea. I know that we insist that the Son derives from the Father in the sense of generation, and that the Holy Spirit derives from the Father and the Son in the sense of spiration, but I don't think that we would ascribe dependence to this distinction of relation. St. Thomas, at least, doesn't:
Hence this term "cause" seems to mean diversity of substance, and dependence of one from another; which is not implied in the word "principle." (Q 33, A1)
But if we limit ourselves to saying that God is the "principle" of logic and basic math realities, without their being "dependent" on him in the way of God causing them, then we are left with their inhabiting the same rarefied atmosphere as the Persons themselves. Which doesn't seem right.
Is there a way of describing them as eternal, not-created, and necessary, but of separate (lower) being than the Persons? Really?
Daniel,
Delete"If the universe is only composed of things that are intelligible, then there must be some transcendent source of wisdom or intelligence that is the source for all this comprehensive intelligibility."
Why?
Ok, just supposing you have a sound principle here, that anything that is ordered requires an intelligence to act as a source for that order.
If god is real then god must be highly ordered, or do you suppose that intelligence can be a feature of that which is entirely disordered?
Thus by your principle god needs a god, god's god. But then, god's god needs a god, god's god's god, ad infinitum.
God solves no logical problem.
God solves no ontological problem.
Speculating god only makes the problems worse by introducing an unknowable unknown which in turn calls for all the same questions.
Yes, material has essences or characteristics or properties at its most fundamental level, whatever that turns out to be, perhaps fields.
"on the Aristotelian view, what directly grounds the laws of nature are the essences of physical things,"
Dr. Feser acknowledges neutrality between atheism and theism concluding "the Aristotelian view of laws of nature is neutral between theism and atheism"
edwardfeser.com/unpublishedpapers/whatisalawofnature.html
"But I'm wondering if the fifth way can also be used to prove that essences must be grounded in the divine intellect?"
No, as Dr. Feser acknowledges.
The Fifth Way is an argument for necessity of the existence of god. One cannot coherently argue for necessity and simultaneously acknowledge neutrality toward atheism.
Michael Copas,
Delete"they (atheists) have no other means of explaining abstract objects such as numbers"
Abstractions are not independantly ontologically existent objects so there is no call to explain the existence of that which does not exist.
"(particularly the eternality of numbers and their causal efficacy in the natural world)."
Numbers do not have externality and do not have casusal efficacy in the natural world.
"The theist doe as numbers are eternal ideas that are dependent on the eternal Divine Intellect who orders the universe according to number."
Your so-called "explination" is just an idle speculation of an unknowable unknown which itself has no explination.
All you have done is blurt out "goddunnit".
"They can't successfully account for knowledge"
Whereas your "account" for knowlege is that there is an undetectable invisible ghost in your skull.
"realist framework such as that of Aquinas"
Actualization of a potential is an anti-realistic account for change. One way causation is anti-realistic. Motion as change is anti-realistic. Teleology is anti-realistic.
The arguments of Aquinas are riddled with false premises and logical fallacies. Aristotle got almost everything wrong about motion, change, and causation so it is no surprise that the arguments for the necessity of the existence of god made by Aquinas are worse than worthless, since they are deceptive obstacles to gaining realistic understandings.
@ All,
Deletesd says, "If god is real then god must be highly ordered"
The order that science discovers is a compression of data from experiments. That is the teleological goal of science. Further compression is achieved by representing the ideas of God as a random sequence, as I have repeatedly explained to sd. All ideas that sd can have, and more, are there. This world, and everything in the infinite, unbiased, random, binary sequence, is an idea of God's. So are other worlds that were never created. That sd cannot interpret an unbiased infinite random sequence is no skin off God's nose. sd is not the superior mind that he represents himself as being. sd's dictates are circular and ignorable.
sd spews false news about Christianity, such as that justice is not a concern of Christianity when justice is actually one of the four capital virtues. Christians are to try to be just here on Earth.
sd's false news about justice in Christianity is itself highly unjust. sd simply hates Christianity and despises Christians, whom, sd imagines, have minds inferior to his.
sd's response to challenges outside of his understanding is to ignore them.
Ha, ha, ha🤣!
How absurd that sd demonstrates his inability to understand in his question "why?" and following words and expects that this means he understands what he ignores🤣!
😏
Tom Cohoe
@ All,
Deletesd says, "Abstractions are not independantly ontologically existent objects so there is no call to explain the existence of that which does not exist"
Oh cool, a dictation from sd🤣!
Numbers exist as ideas in the unlimited infinite mind of God. God has a proper idea of himself, but sd cannot have a proper idea of God, nor can any other person except the Son and the Holy Spirit.
sd says, "Numbers do not have externality and do not have casusal efficacy in the natural world."
Actually, the word used was "eternality". God has causal efficacy and through numbers a limited understanding of the behaviour of created matter can be achieved, so numbers have causal efficacy as perceivable in human minds.
That sd cannot understand this does not somehow make him understand, even with the magic of his small "g" nothing god.
sd's inability to understand certainly does not give him the ability to understand. He cannot understand Aristotle, Aquinas, or sense, because he willfully chooses to not understand a large part of what the human mind _can_ understand. sd particularly wills to not understand that anything could be beyond human understanding in general and sd's understanding in particular.
It is funny that sd thinks that there cannot be a relation between God and creation that is not symmetrical, among other funny things that sd thinks🤣!
😏
Tom Cohoe
Can't any of you old timers on this blog intervene to make Tom Cohoe see what a fool he is making of himself? SD must be absolutely delighted at his behaviour.
Delete@Anonymous
DeleteTom Cohoe is a very creative writer. I enjoy reading his comments.
"Is there a way of describing them as eternal, not-created, and necessary, but of separate (lower) being than the Persons?"
DeleteI described numbers as both eternal and dependent on the Divine Intellect. Something can be eternal and also be eternally dependent on something else. As numbers are Ideas of the Divine Intellect, they are eternal. As they require the Divine intellect for their being, they are dependent.
Regarding necessity, their necessity is not absolute as their existence is dependent on the Divine Intellect. Yet, given the absolute necessity of the Divine Intellect to account for all causality, they are necessary. Part of the reason for the difficulty in all of this is that it requires distinctions at a deep level regarding what we mean with fundamental terms like "necessity". We have to distinguish between absolute necessity or necessity in light of what is absolutely necessary.
The same is true regarding what we mean when we use the term "created". If by created, we mean "began to exist in time", then numbers are *not* created. The reason for this has to do with the relationship between time and matter. If time and matter are interdependent (as both ancient figures like Philo and St. Augustine and modern physicists would say), then the existence of time requires the existence of matter. As numbers are immaterial and dependent on a eternal intellect, they have neither a beginning nor an end.
It is here, however, that crucial questions arise and further distinctions are required as the human soul is also immaterial and immortal and yet does have a beginning in time. What distinguishes the immaterial human soul from immaterial numbers in terms of their relation to time and having a beginning? The difference is that the soul is ordered toward material reality in a way that numbers are not. The soul is the form of a body and is ordered toward a body. So a human soul requires being ordered toward a body to be a human soul as the composite of body and soul is precisely what makes something human. The beings are not ordered toward matter in the same way.
What however of angels, are they created in the sense used above (having a beginning in time)? They are not ordered toward material reality as human souls are. In Catholic Tradition, the creation of angels was first before the creation of the world. In the sense of their having an origin outside of time, this would entail that they are not created in the sense of having a beginning in time. Yet they are dependent on God for their being and are created in that sense of the word.
This does not mean that they have no relation to material reality. It is just that their relation to that reality does not have the same sort of necessity of the human souls relation to reality. The human soul is ordered to material reality (a human body) by nature of what it is. The angelic form is not so ordered.
The same is true of number. Their is nothing about matter that requires it to be orderly, yet the cosmos is in fact ordered according to number. Physicists are profoundly aware of this and it is something that must be accounted for. Are we to think that the numbers have the power to order the material world? Such an answer is silly as numbers are causally inert. Instead, intellects order things according to number. It was not the numbers idea to order the universe precisely because numbers don't have ideas. Number ARE ideas in the Divine Intellect who orders the universe according to them.
Dusty Psyche,
Delete"Abstractions are not independantly ontologically existent objects so there is no call to explain the existence of that which does not exist."
Do you plan to provide any arguments for this assertion or do you really expect everyone here to put child like faith in your nominalism? That's a quaint little suggestion. You need to dust off that psyche and actually do the work of providing arguments rather than making question begging assertions.
"Numbers do not have externality and do not have casusal efficacy in the natural world."
So, question begging assertions are your MO. Got it. Regarding "casusal efficacy", I agree. There is no "casusal" efficacy in the natural world or anywhere else. There is however causal efficacy. Or perhaps you meant to say "casual efficacy". If so, I agree with this as well. The elegant ordering of the natural world according to number is anything but casual. If it were not ordered by the Divine Intellect, it would be consistently haphazard and accidental like your spelling and assertions. As it is ordered by the Divine Intellect, it is not.
"Your so-called "explination" is just an idle speculation of an unknowable unknown which itself has no explination."
"Explination?" Now I realize that I mis-spelled "does", so mea culpa on that front; however, spelling errors don't pervade my writing. Perhaps you might revisit "spelling 101" or "keyboarding 101" and then move into "logic 101" rather than confidently jumping into the wave pool of metaphysics without the requisite accoutrements to prevent drowning. After your spelling class and typing class, you will learn in the logic class that assertions are distinct from arguments. Your first two responses above are question begging assertions. In the logic class you will learn about fallacies and will be able to provide the class with a slew of examples from your own writing.
Your third response is to claim that I have made a question begging assertion. Well at least you recognize that question begging assertions are not arguments when it is convenient for you. The step to becoming principled and thoughful is to assess your own writing in the same way. Another sign of your progress would be to avoid making patently false assertions like claiming that I have made a question begging assertion when what I have provided is an argument.
I have argued that the Divine Intellect is necessary to account for both the eternality and causal efficacy of numbers in the natural world. You have no explanation for these things and so you just assume that if you can't explain them, then they have no explanation.
So your dusty intellect is the measure for all knowledge? That's very convenient. You affirm causes when its convenient and deny them when it is not. Why don't you try to be consistent? Such integrity might be invigorating.
So for example, the next time you are sick, instead of going to the doctor for a cause to your sickness, why don't you just assume there is no cause and stay home? Maybe the sciences as a whole should just abandon that whole idea of causation. No more experiments per the rules of one old dusty psyche. Oh, oh, that's right. The rule only applies when you don't like the conclusion to an argument. Once again, how quaint.
That's your approach in a nutshell. Your MO is to take all the phenomena that require the existence of God for their existence and to baldly assert that such things have no explanation, because your fundamental premise is "God doesn't exist." So you have no arguments against my arguments; all you have is question begging assertions.
Dusty psyche,
Delete"Whereas your "account" for knowlege is that there is an undetectable invisible ghost in your skull."
"knowlege"? Your spelling and philosophy are equally sloppy. The fallacy you have committed is a strawman. After spelling, you will learn about this in logic class.
"Actualization of a potential is an anti-realistic account for change. One way causation is anti-realistic. Motion as change is anti-realistic. Teleology is anti-realistic.
The arguments of Aquinas are riddled with false premises and logical fallacies. Aristotle got almost everything wrong about motion, change, and causation so it is no surprise that the arguments for the necessity of the existence of god made by Aquinas are worse than worthless, since they are deceptive obstacles to gaining realistic understandings."
Perhaps you imagine that by stacking question begging assertions, their proximity will make them magically morph into something else. By stacking them you put them in a cocoon and hope that a butterfly will appear. What will you teach us about next? Alchemy?
@Daniel
Delete"Localizing essences in the mind of God as archetypes seems to depend on first proving the existence of essences in things and in human minds. Once you've made that move, then you can go on to see how essences must depend on a single cause, at least analogically.
Ed has a section in Scholastic Metaphysics that goes into a defense of essences. He poses the question, whether essences are products of the mind or whether they are real and mind independent.
The discussion is good, and goes into the fact that essences are a gathering together of common properties and causal powers. What essences explain is their unity."
Along with Feser's arguments regarding the necessity of essences to account for the unity of things, essences are also necessary to account for the intelligibility/knowability of things. It is for this reason that modernity was one big, endless search to answer fundamental epistemological questions. Once you have denied the existence of extramental universal formal causes, you have no means of accounting for our knowledge of extramental reality. Such knowledge occurs via abstraction of forms that reside in things cojoined with matter and, after abstraction, reside in our intellects separated from matter. A summary of this scholastic synthesis that draws in the divine ideas as exemplar causes is that God's knowledge is the cause of the existence of things and things are the cause of our knowledge. Klima has discussed this in at least one article where he refers to the form ante rem (in the Divine Intellect), In re (in the thing), and post rem (in the human intellect as knowledge).
Thanks Michael, for this reply. I appreciate it. I like and agree with the idea that what we know when we discover anything about a thing, is its essence. And this is a great description from you of the process by which this happens in the human mind:
Delete"Such knowledge occurs via abstraction of forms that reside in things cojoined with matter and, after abstraction, reside in our intellects separated from matter. "
I also like this, because it helps me create a thread from things back to God:
"A summary of this scholastic synthesis that draws in the divine ideas as exemplar causes is that God's knowledge is the cause of the existence of things and things are the cause of our knowledge."
So in knowing things, we know something of the mind of God. This is a beautiful thought.
I'm going to go over Ed's Augustinian proof for the existence of God where he goes over seven key arguments for realism in opposition to nominalism and conceptualism in a new thread.
Michael,
Delete"I have argued that the Divine Intellect is necessary to account for both the eternality and causal efficacy of numbers in the natural world. You have no explanation for these things "
Oh, that's easy, the explanation is that such properties are all in your imagination, therefore no divine intellect is needed to explain them.
Numbers do not exist in the first place, much less are they eternal.
The number did not exist before you thought about it.
The number did not exist while you thought about it.
The number did not exist after you thought about it.
However, it is eternally true that once you thought about the number you did in fact, in the past, think about the number.
Once you think about the number then your having thought about the number becomes a historical fact. Historical facts are eternal in the sense that it will forever be true that the historical fact occurred in the past.
Hi Michael,
DeleteI wanted to circle back to this comment of yours from a while back:
"The above also explains what has gone wrong on some strands of Thomism which, wrongly following Suarez, interprets St. Thomas in a nominalist fashion. Benedict Ashley is an example of this (If you would like the quote, I will be happy to did it up). The work of Gyula Klima has made very clear the position of St. Thomas on formal causality and its implications for epistemology and that position is at odds with the position of Suarez. So, in sum, no need to be frustrated but much cause to celebrate the clarity of the recovery of authentic scholastic realism through figures like Edward Feser and Gyula Klima (It sounds like you have read alot of Feser's work, but I would highly recommend reading as much of Klima's work as you can get your hands on as well. Much of it is available online and the links under this post can direct you to them.)"
I have Benedict Ashley's "The way toward Wisdom", and I agree with you that he claims Aristotle and Aquinas were not realists, but he also says that they were not nominalists:
"Aristotle and Aquinas were neither realists or nominalists, but agreed with nominalism that only individuals exist, yet explained the possibility of scientific knowledge in an entirely different way than Plato."
He says that Plato's notion of real universals confuses mind dependent objects with reality. He claims that "Matascience enables us to keep the mental constructions of logic clearly distinct from the mind-independent world and at the same time see their value in the dynamic process by which the intelligence clarifies what it knows. Therefore, logic is in a sense metascientific since it is able to transcend all sciences and be of service to them all, yet, since it is not about the real but only the mind-dependent, it is not yet metascience."
So, he claims Aquinas and Aristotle would agree with the nominalists that the real is always the individual, but our knowledge of universals must be grounded in the actual sciences. Anyway, not sure if I follow all his arguments. There is a lot of nuance I'm missing as I am not an expert.
I would appreciate if you could point me to works by Ed or Klima that specifically addresses Ashley's mistaken ideas?
Thanks,
Daniel
This is Prof. Klima's homepage. His many papers, discussions and readings can be read online.
ReplyDeletehttps://faculty.fordham.edu/klima/
Klima is so easily taken in by bad arguments that he does not even realize that the ontological argument fails by the fallacy of reification, confusing an abstraction (of god) with an independent ontological realization (of god).
Delete"Secondly, I intend to show that with this understanding of Saint Anselm’s argument we can see that it is a valid proof of God’s existence."
faculty.fordham.edu/klima/anselm.htm
Klima writes great volumes of sophisticated sounding sophistry to support the rather childish notion that wishing makes it so.
@ All,
Deletesd says, "Klima writes great volumes of sophisticated sounding sophistry to support the rather childish notion that wishing makes it so"
Odd, this sounds like a good description of sd, the Church attacker.
🤣!
😏
Tom Cohoe
"Klima is so easily taken in by bad arguments that he does not even realize that the ontological argument fails by the fallacy of reification, confusing an abstraction (of god) with an independent ontological realization (of god).
Delete"Secondly, I intend to show that with this understanding of Saint Anselm’s argument we can see that it is a valid proof of God’s existence.""
For your response to amount to anything more than nay saying (yet more question begging assertions), you need to actually reproduce Klima's characterization of Anselm's argument. Straw men, question begging assertions, and atrocious spelling might give you some sort of weird buzz, but it is not going to impress anyone here.
Michael,
Delete"For your response to amount to anything more than nay saying (yet more question begging assertions), you need to actually reproduce Klima's characterization of Anselm's argument."
No, I do not have to reproduce it. Anselm and Klima are both easily referenced by anybody interested and able to use a search tool.
Further, the defect of reification in Anselm's argument is well known. Anybody familiar with the subject knows exactly what I am talking about. If you don't, well, you just are not very familiar with arguments for the existence of god.
Central to the ontological argument is the premise that god exists as a thought in the mind. That is a false premise, here is why:
"the ontological argument fails by the fallacy of reification, confusing an abstraction (of god) with an independent ontological realization (of god)."
Prof. Klima's CV is 29 pages long.
ReplyDeletehttps://faculty.fordham.edu/klima/cv.pdf
Well deserved indeed. I am so glad to see this work out and excited to read your contribution to it!
ReplyDeleteSome interesting links on the subject of the OP
ReplyDeleteedwardfeser.blogspot.com/2021/10/truth-as-transcendental.html
Edward Feser on Truth as Transcendental: Ontological Foundations
youtube.com/watch?v=78tvmP0l21Y
The distinction between ontological truth and logical truth is indeed a very important distinction to make.
The lecture is very lively and engaging, by virtue of the subject matter and Dr. Feser's exceptional oratory skills.
I think he got his points, concepts, and understandings mixed up by using triangles in a discussion of ontological truth. Triangles have no ontological truth, as they are pure abstractions.
Dr. Feser gets mixed up saying that forms are ontologically true and then using examples of idealized abstractions of forms as though they represent an ontological truth, which they do not, at least not precisely, only as an approximation abstraction.
I find it rather a pity that such a fine intellect has chosen to hobble itself with the ancient errors of Aristotle, Aquinas, and Christianity.
If only Dr. Feser could find his way back home, get back to his 90s roots, he could really be a first rate world class philosopher, lecturer, and author.
At 24:11 in the video Dr. Feser gives a fine explanation for the lack of circularity that is the case on materialism, although I doubt that was his intent.
Unfortunately, he then goes completely off the rails conflating various abstractions with ontological truth in a tortured attempt to lay the groundwork for an argument for god.
Of course, otherwise great minds are always dissembled in the attempt to argue for god, because religion corrodes the intellect by influencing otherwise rational thinkers to argue for the intrinsically irrational, and thus their prior rationality is decimated, as is the case at this point in this lecture, that is about 26 minutes in.
The realistic answers are so much simpler and entirely self consistent. Materials are the necessary beings. Ontological truths are indeed transcendental. Those truths are grounded in the necessary beings, materials. Intellect is a process of material.
There is no necessity for god as the source of essences of material in order to ground ontological truth. That is just a made up, ad hoc, pointless, useless, unevidenced, unnecessary, mentally crippling, idle speculation.
Materials are the necessary beings and their essences or properties or characteristics are necessary aspects of their being. Done.
“Materials are the necessary beings”
DeleteIf you’re going to use terms in nonstandard ways, you need to define them. I have no idea what you mean by “materials” here.
Is the wood of the chair that I’m sitting on a material in your ontology?
Ed helpfully points us to the Augustinian proof in his Five Proofs for the Existence of God in his talk for more information about the nature of abstractions and universals and the debates about them. There he builds up a case for the existence of God that first analyzes the following:
Delete""1.There are three possible accounts of abstract objects such as universals, propositions, numbers, and other mathematical objects, and possible worlds: realism, nominalism, and conceptualism.
2.There are decisive arguments in favor of realism.
3.There are insuperable objections against nominalism.
4.There are insuperable objections against conceptualism."
What I would say in your above post is that you have failed to understand or represent Ed's arguments for realism, and you have provided no defense of conceptualism or nominalism or the problems that defending them involves.
At best, the position you describe above would fall under some form of nominalism or conceptualism. Can you describe or defend them? Or are you limited to just assertions? I can detect no arguments in your above post.
If you have no rational basis for your assertions, I'm happy to present Ed's analysis of all three positions in detail. This provides me with an opportunity to shore up my understanding of Ed's arguments while sifting through your invective to see if there is some plausibility to anything you say.
What say you? What to be my sparring partner again?
Daniel,
Delete"There are three possible accounts of abstract objects such as universals, propositions, numbers, and other mathematical objects, and possible worlds: realism, nominalism, and conceptualism."
I do not subscribe to any particular school of philosophy. I have my own ideas and arguments, while I feel no need to defend the ideas of others that might be perceived as correlated to my own ideas and arguments.
"Can you describe or defend them? Or are you limited to just assertions? I can detect no arguments in your above post."
Fair enough, but presenting well structured arguments was not what I had in mind in that post. The very first comment in this thread mentioned $150, so I began by searching for "truth as a transcendental" and found links to prior posts, a diagram, and a video, which I then decided to share. So, I listened to the video and wrote notes in the process.
But yes, I can describe and defend my ideas and assertions.
First, if you are interesting in gaining realistic understanding of the cosmos it is necessary to throw away Aristotelian, Thomistic, Theistic notions, as they are a collection of ancient errors and misconceptions and faulty analytical paradigms that will only hobble your cognition.
Just pack up all that worse than useless junk, hual it out to the trash bin, put it in, and try to forget about it.
Once you have cleared your mind from all that old nonsense you can move forward in realistic analysis.
All change is mutual interaction. The idea that A actualizes P is nonsense. All change, all causation, is a continuous or continual multilateral mutual interactive process.
In all change, in all causation, there is no identifiable first, nor is there a preferred directionality. There is no such thing as a one way push or pull, rather, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction that occurs mutually.
The distinction between which is moving which, itself, the other, each other or any other notion of order is arbitrary and meaningless.
The evidence for this approach to change and causation are the primary sources for the formulations in every university physics textbook. All change and all causation is formulated as forces acting upon material. Change and causation is formulated as mutual interactions of material as a consequence of mutual forces.
Actualization of a potential is not taught in university physics because actualization of a potential is an ancient error that is worse than useless, it just does not work to solve realistic problems of change in modern physics.
Daniel,
DeleteReturning to the notion of truth as a transcendental, that is, truth as something that transcends our apprehension of it, yes, I agree very strongly with Dr. Feser at least on the basic point that there is a critical difference between an ontological truth as opposed to a logical truth.
Ontologically reality is the truth. There absolutely must be some true reality. This is as undeniable, even in coherent speculation, as the absolute truth that I exist in some form. We can imagine all the usual speculations, perhaps I am god dreaming, perhaps I am insane and in a coma, perhaps this is all a simulation on an extraterrestrial computer.
Irrespective of even the wildest speculation then it is still absolutely certain that some ontological truth must be the case, even if my perceptions are baseless hallucinations.
Logical truths are not transcendent. Dr. Feser says it would be true that the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees even if nobody is around to point that out. He is wrong. Without a mind to conceive of a triangle there are no triangles at all.
Triangles have no ontological truth. That is where Dr. Feser goes off the rails, about 24 minutes into the video I linked above. There is no such thing as a triangle as an ontologically existent object in the cosmos. Triangles are not beables, they do not have an independent existence in the cosmos.
If you disagree, then by all means, please do point to a triangle, even just one, please. How about a latitude and longitude where I can go and look at this triangle? Perhaps you have seen one floating around in space and you can give me instructions for aiming my telescope at it for observation? No, of course not, are are no such things. Triangles are just in your imagination, and mine. We think as a consequence of processes of material, the material of our brains.
"If you have no rational basis for your assertions, I'm happy to present Ed's analysis of all three positions in detail."
Does not follow. You only wish to present arguments to a blank mind?
"opportunity to shore up my understanding"
Ok
" your invective"
Well, I admit that from time to time I lapse from total civility while discussing reality with one who follows a geocentrist who thought the world was made of 4 elements and motion was a matter of going to a thing's natural place. I mean, Aristotle got almost everything wrong about motion, change, and the nature of the underlying reality. How does one achieve a modern education without realizing that?
But yes, by all means it would be interesting to hear a survey of common viewpoints on the account for abstract "objects" with respect to ontological versus logical truth.
No.
DeleteStardustyPsyche - Your first post was almost purely invective and a good portion of your second post. I am willing to interact with you, but only if you remain on topic and refrain from your constant invective.
DeleteThe topic will be this abstract objects and the three ways philosophy has of explaining them.
Should your next post be a wall of opinions, unsubstantiated claims, and baseless invective, I will take it that you cannot function in any other way.
"The distinction between ontological truth and logical truth is indeed a very important distinction to make."
DeleteDusty psyche likes this distinction because the nominalist turns it into the modern bifurcation in which "never the twain shall meet." A distinction is fine as long as we recognize that the form in the thing and the form in the intellect are the same (the form in the thing is cojoined to matter and the form in the intellect is not, but it is the same form). Klima has also written on this as well noting that scholastic realists (e.g. St. Albertus Magnus) referred to this as "formal identity".
Dusty psyche,
Delete"If only Dr. Feser could find his way back home, get back to his 90s roots, he could really be a first rate world class philosopher, lecturer, and author."
Perhaps he might even follow in your footsteps and devote his time to question begging assertions, strawmen, and gross incompetence with the English language. I suppose that is what you mean by "world class philosopher." I expect there are few who could mix together these things in quite the same way you do, dusty. You are in a class all of your own, so it is best not to give others false hope in reaching your level.
"Fair enough, but presenting well structured arguments was not what I had in mind in that post."
DeletePresenting well structured arguments seems from your engagement here to be something that you never have in mind. No room for arguments when the mind is filled with question begging assertions and strawmen. You can make room for the former by getting rid of the latter.
"Well, I admit that from time to time I lapse from total civility while discussing reality with one who follows a geocentrist who thought the world was made of 4 elements and motion was a matter of going to a thing's natural place. I mean, Aristotle got almost everything wrong about motion, change, and the nature of the underlying reality. How does one achieve a modern education without realizing that?"
DeleteDusty psyche,
This trope about Aristotle has been laid to rest for decades by AC Crombie and William Wallace. Both had advanced degrees in modern science (Crombie in zoology and Wallace in Physics) and both wrote extensive academic treatments on the ancient and medieval precursors to modern science. Crombie taught at Oxford and Wallace at CUA and they both recognized that modern science drew substantially from ancient and medieval precursors. Crombie gives extensive attention to the Greek recognition of the order of the universe as a fundamental stimulus to science and Wallace focuses particularly on the recovery of Aristotle among late medieval scholastics like Roger Bacon and Robert Grostesste and the role of that recovery in sparking work from scholastics that was drawn from by figures like Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler. Wallace was one of the foremost experts in the world on Galileo and Crombie wrote an entire monograph on Grosseteste and both recognize the contribution of Aristotle to the modern sciences. (Wallace in particular focused on the contribution of Aristotle's work to the development of modern science in his two volume work Causality and Scientific Explanation (University of Michigan Press).
So in sum, you haven't the slightest clue what you are talking about. This is thematic in your assertions which a riddled with logical and spelling errors. Now we can add substantive historical errors to your resume. Just under this post, you have added quite a bit to your CV as a "world class philosopher" as you would define it.
"Should your next post be a wall of opinions, unsubstantiated claims, and baseless invective, I will take it that you cannot function in any other way."
DeleteIf "cannot' be taken as "unwilling to", then this is about as solid a claim as one might find in all the philosophical literature.
@ All,
Deletesd says "First, if you are interesting in gaining realistic understanding of the cosmos it is necessary to throw away Aristotelian, Thomistic, Theistic notions, as they are a collection of ancient errors and misconceptions and faulty analytical paradigms that will only hobble your cognition.
Just pack up all that worse than useless junk, hual it out to the trash bin, put it in, and try to forget about it.
Once you have cleared your mind from all that old nonsense you can move forward in realistic analysis."
sd cannot, by his own choice, even face the idea of a random number. Why should anyone take seriously what is therefore nothing more than sd's ignorant and notably anti-Church bigotry?
sd says, "yes, I can describe and defend my ideas and assertion"
sd's descriptions are confused and his "defense" is nothing more than circular nonsense.
sd says, "All change is mutual interaction. The idea that A actualizes P is nonsense. All change, all causation, is a continuous or continual multilateral mutual interactive process."
Well, no. Science itself shows that change happens that cannot be explained by sd's faulty understandin of what science is and what it can do. Thus sd fails and his thinking is just self-promoting garbage. He does not understand even what is the proper subject field of science.
sd says "The distinction between which is moving which, itself, the other, each other or any other notion of order is arbitrary and meaningless."
sd is "teaching" here🤣, which means declaring whatever he does not authorize, in his incredibly arrogant way, to be arbitrary and meaningless.
It is here, bearing in mind his anti-Church bigotry, that we begin to see that we must
BEWARE
his desire to harm the Church, Christians, and freedom.
sd says, "The evidence for this approach to change and causation are the primary sources for the formulations in every university physics textbook."
Physics textbooks do not normally teach what is outside of their scope, but here is sd in a typical lapse of logic using his assumption about what physics textbooks teach to argue about stuff beyond their scope. Talk about kooky bootstrapping a a textbook limit into the delusion of all encompassing authority!
Ha, ha, ha🤣!
sd says, "Actualization of a potential is not taught in university physics because actualization of a potential is an ancient error that is worse than useless, it just does not work to solve realistic problems of change in modern physics."
Actualization of potential is not taught in physics because it is beyond the scope of physics, just as is right and wrong behaviour.
Realistic problems in modern physics do not include problems beyond the scope of modern physics, the existence of which modern physics has demonstrated, as has been explained to sd many times.
Here is sd's method:
"I, sd, have had it proven to me that Frank does not know a word or an inkling of the Italian language. This proves that I, sd, am an authority on geraniums, and that I, sd, am a genius without compare".
Whee, what fun🤣!
BEWARE false "teachers" like sd.
😏
Tom Cohoe
@ All,
Deletesd says, "Returning to the notion of truth as a transcendental, that is, truth as something that transcends our apprehension of it, yes, I agree very strongly with Dr. Feser at least on the basic point that there is a critical difference between an ontological truth as opposed to a logical truth.
[... deleting most of the five paragraphs as just a repetition of what is almost immediately above ...]
We think as a consequence of processes of material, the material of our brains."
This is just a bizarre circular assertion that thought is nothing but the movement of material. The superposition of brain states, as allowed for and required by quantum mechanics is beyond the reach of sd's mind, by his own free will choice (sd does not believe he _has_ a choice).
Isn't that funny🤣!
sd actually looks for ways to not understand what he does not want to understand.
🤣!
Imagine looking for ways to not understand an algebra textbook. Would it be any surprise that such an oddball method would lead to actually not understanding algebra?
So it is with sd. He works hard at not understanding Aristotle, Aquinas, Feser, teleology, the limits of science as demonstrated by science itself, and many, many other things.
Folks, this _is_ funny, but it is also very sad.
Let us pray to the Father, with the assisting intercessory prayer of Mary, never unanswered, that sd can hope to learn not to work at not understanding and begin to work instead at understanding at least a little of what is beyond the perfect comprehension of any human being - Amen
😏
Tom Cohoe
Michael,
Delete"both recognize the contribution of Aristotle to the modern sciences."
Aristotle contributed almost nothing directly to modern science.
Nothing rising above trivial generalities remains of Aristotle's "scientific" assertions.
Yes, Aristotle is one of the philosophers who attempted to systematically observe and analyze the natural world. He was by no means the first, and by no means have his assertions stood the test of time as well as others.
For example, the atomists who preceded Aristotle used far superior reasoning as to the nature of the underlying reality. Unfortunately, Aristotle failed to build on their prior work, instead regressing with his notions about the 4 elements and the impossibility of the void.
You cannot do real cosmology or even astronomy based on geocentrism (Aristotle).
You cannot do real chemistry based on the 4 elements (Aristotle).
You cannot do real physics based on sublunary motion or moving to natural place (Aristotle).
You cannot do real causation based on actualization of a potential (Aristotle).
Aristotle got almost everything wrong about the structure of the cosmos, the nature of the underlying reality, motion, change, and causation.
Nothing in modern science references Aristotelian cosmology, chemistry, fundamental structure, motion, change, or causation. Nothing in modern science reduces to any of those Aristotelian assertions as a limiting case or a valid approximation.
Dr. Feser teaches at a California community college. He is well aware that Aristotle was wrong about geocentrism, wrong about the 4 elements, wrong about sublunary motion, and wrong about "natural" motion.
I can only pray that he will come to realize that actualization of a potential is nonsense as well:-)
Michael,
Delete"Crombie gives extensive attention to the Greek recognition of the order of the universe as a fundamental stimulus to science"
Right, Greeks who recognized order in the universe stimulated others to discover what that order actually is and how that order actually works.
But so many folks here still take those ancient Greeks literally!
Muslims have the same problem. It is one thing to judge a man in the context of the day, in which case one can make excuses for things like genocidal conquest, slavery, and subjugation of women, which was all in some sense normal back then. But too many Muslims want to use the man who practiced such things as the perfect example of how to think and act today.
Aristotelians suffer the same sort of misapprehensions, albeit absent the barbaric violence. It is one thing to judge the ancient Greeks in the context of their day, and appreciate them for taking initial ancient steps toward analyzing the order of the universe.
That appreciation in context is not the problem. The problem is that the folks here still take him literally! I mean, it is as though 2300 years have not transpired. Somehow, modern science just is not a thing for the Aristotelian, apparently.
A few Aristotelian ideas, however, have stood the test of time. There is indeed a transcendental truth, which is the true nature of the underlying reality, which remains true irrespective of our ability to apprehend it.
Unfortunately, if you continue to take Aristotle literally in the twenty first century on the subjects of the cosmos, the nature of the underlying reality, motion, change, and causation you will never make personal progress in getting closer to that transcendent truth.
Dusty,
Delete"Aristotle contributed almost nothing directly to modern science."
His framework for causation was the entire backdrop for the development of the sciences in late medieval scholasticism so again you haven't a clue what you are talking about. It was the rediscovery of his corpus that ignited the scientific inquiries of figures like Albert the Great, Roger Bacon, and Robert Grosseteste and it was from figures such as these that early modern scientists like Kepler and Galileo drew. You are making baseless and uninformed claims and thinking that repeating them will magically make them true. For an education on this topic read the two volume work by Wallace where he systematically traces the development of the modern sciences in light of an Aristotelian account of causation. Or you could just stick with sad tropes and baseless assertions. Just because you know nothing about late medieval scholasticism doesn't mean that there is nothing to know.
Dusty Psyche,
Delete"the atomists who preceded Aristotle used far superior reasoning as to the nature of the underlying reality."
Superior reasoning? Wow prey tell. Reasoning superior to the figure who essentially founded the discipline of logic. I have got to hear more about this. What is this unique mode of reasoning and how do you know it is "superior"?
Noting that Aristotle got geocentrism wrong like almost every other ancient figure of course doesn't support such an assertion so you must have some other support for such an extravagant claim. On the edge of my seat waiting for it.
If you are not sure as to how you would supply such support, let me offer some guidance. First you would provide a reliable exposition of the ancient atomists. Then you would offer an equally reliable exposition of Aristotle's position vis-a-vis the atomists, accurately portraying his critique of the atomists. Then you would argue that the atomists had a unique mode of reasoning and that this is superior to that provided by the founder of the discipline of logic. So you have quite a bit of work on your hands dusty.
Of course, the alternative is just to keep the question begging assertions flying off the key board. I am sure that you will win some subtle minds with that approach.
@Copas,
DeleteAre Crombie and Wallace a good place to start learning about the history of medieval science?
I've read a number of articles on medieval science that have helped me with getting rid of some of the common caricatures about that period in history. The only book I've read on the history of science, so far, is "Setting Aside All Authority" by Christopher Graney. It's about the science that was around during Galileo's time.
I'm planning on reading some historians of science such as James Hannam, Ronald Numbers, David Hutchings, etc. in the near future. (Probably this summer).
Michael,
Delete"His framework for causation was the entire backdrop for the development of the sciences in late medieval scholasticism"
Yes, I am well aware his major influence, hardly "entire", and in many respects inhibiting and retarding. I do not consider that a direct contribution to modern science, rather, a distant precursor in a pre-scientific era.
Recall, Aristotle did not do experiments, and he did not use mathematical expressions. Those critical aspects of modern science were absent from his methods and are a big reason why he was wrong about the structure of the cosmos, the nature of the underlying reality, motion, change, and causation.
"What is this unique mode of reasoning (employed by atomists) and how do you know it is "superior"?"
Strawman, I did not say "unique". I know the reasoning of the atomists was superior because they thought more clearly about their observations of the real world all around them and drew conclusions about the nature of the underlying reality that have to a very substantial extent stood the test of time. I am sure you realize that there are such things as atoms and they do move through the functional equivalent (for motion) of the void, space.
"First you would provide a reliable exposition of the ancient atomists. Then you would offer an equally reliable exposition of Aristotle's position vis-a-vis the atomists,"
In short, the atomists concluded there are small indivisible entities, atoms, they combine by means of connecting to each other, and they move through the void. Aristotle considered the fundamental stuff to be Earth, Water, Air, and Fire (roughly solid, liquid, gas, and energy), and further considered the void to be impossible.
It is really a pity Aristotle regressed, rather than refined, from the much more realistic model of the underlying reality that the atomists had.
Aristotle was not wrong about everything, of course. An example is the subject of the OP, truth as a transcendental. That concept, that there is an underlying reality of the nature of the cosmos, and it is at least partially or approximately discoverable using our senses and our reasoning, was a very valuable contribution.
That notion that the cosmos is a transcendent truth is something that provides atheists and Thomists at least some common world view, some common conceptual basis, some common language for communication.
Some theist might say it is all just because of god and we know that because of scripture and he has faith in that scripture and that is all the reason he feels he needs. Well, ok, fine, have a nice day, but there is nothing much for us to talk about in that case, there is just no intersection to our Venn diagram in that case.
Michael,
DeleteSo now that we agree that the truth of the nature of the underlying reality transcends our ability to apprehend it, how then can we reasonably hope to get closer to that trancendent truth?
There is only 1 viable candidate for apprehending the transcendent truth of the cosmos, modern science. Modern science is not the only method avaible for obtaining every sort of knowledge, but modern science is the only viable candidate for apprehending the true nature of, or at least the closest humanly possible approximation of, the underlying reality of the cosmos.
You cannot, I cannot, Aristotle could not apprehend the true nature of the underlying reality simply by the unaided senses and careful reasoning. Without the benifit of a modern education we are all no more advanced in our world view than an indigonous hunter gatherer. The true nature of the underlying reality is invisible to the unaided eye, and utterly beyond the imagination and apprehension of a homo sapian absent modern science.
And that is why the Aristotelian fails in the attempt to apprehend the great trancendent truth of reality. Because the Aristotelian, to various personal degrees, is mired conceptually 2300 years prior, lacking in various personal degrees modern scientific reasoning, stuck in detrimental anti-realistic analytical paradigms, treating a whole suite of ancient errors almost reverentially.
I will give a few examples.
Motion is not in an impeding medium such that a moving object will slow and its motion will be lost, as Aristotle falsely asserted. Rather, all motion is in space, and for motion, space is a lossless medium. Interactions between material ojects are always net lossless because matter-energy is conserved. Once you understand that then the call for first mover is eliminated.
Change is not the actualization of a potential, requiring something already actual to change the potential to actual. Examples of self movers abound, such as a rocket, an insect, a star, and on and on. Real change is always a mutual interaction wherein the identification of first or second or moved or mover or self mover or mover of other is arbitrary and therefore meaningless. All change is motion, there are no sorts of change that are not motion (local motion in the A-T parlance). All change is a mutual multilateral process wherein every action has an equal and opposite and concurrant reaction, that is conceptually multidirectional and circular, not hirearchical, not linear, and not unidirecitonal.
When you understand these modern scientific facts of the transcendent truth, available to you in any modern university physics textbook, then you will understand that the A-T call for an infinite regress is moot and pointless because all real causal regress terminates finitely in mutual causation.
There is your truth as a transcendental.
Dusty psyche,
Delete"Yes, I am well aware his major influence, hardly "entire", and in many respects inhibiting and retarding. I do not consider that a direct contribution to modern science, rather, a distant precursor in a pre-scientific era."
Your comments belie you being aware of any of this. So, again, read Wallace's work rather than pretending like you have the slightest clue what you are talking about. It was not a "distant precursor"; that is the entire point. Just because your knowledge of late medieval scholasticism is analagous to a black hole doesn't mean that there is nothing there to know. The recovery of Aristotle's broader corpus and natural philosophy was the immediate stimulus and provided the framework for the inquiries of St. Albert, Roger Bacon, and Grosseteste who then influenced figures like Kepler, Copernicus, and Galileo. If by distant you mean "Well Aristotle lived a long time before that", then this is both true and completely beside the point that the recovery of his work immediately stimulated scientific inquiry in the late medieval period and provided the framework for that inquiry.
You should start titling your posts. This one should be titled "Adventures in missing the point". Other titles might included "Beginnings in begging the Question" and "Standing by my Strawman."
Dusty Psyche,
Delete"Recall, Aristotle did not do experiments, and he did not use mathematical expressions."
No one said that he did either of these things as he and everyone one else that preceded the development of modern science did neither of these things. Again, completely irrelevant to the question of whether he as a precursor to modern science contributed immediately and significantly to the development of modern science when his corpus was recovered.
The effort to mathematize everything has, by definition, been helpful for modern science to specifically quantify their work. This does not, however, justify any suggestion to the effect "Well numbers are the most important part of reality" Or "Numbers are the only thing we really know" Or "Numbers are the most important part of our knowledge". Such claims are entirely baseless and without any support via experimentation. They are vacuous philosophical claims without a shred of empirical support. Now for the philosophical unreflective, they would imbue such claims and then go on to drone about the superiority of modern science over all other forms of knowledge. They would not have the tools or wherewithal to justify their baseless premises but would carry them around like a rock in their shoe that they accidently picked up and forgot it was there.
So here is a reminder for you dusty psyche that you have that rock in your shoe and it is affecting your philosophical gate. Instead of pretending like everyone should stumble about with such a rock, you might actually pull the rock out of your shoes and ask yourself whether it belongs there. Perhaps you conclude that you were meant to go about life stumble about. If so, at least you will have looked at it and given it some consideration which is more than you have done in this thread.
Dusty Psyche,
Delete" I know the reasoning of the atomists was superior because they thought more clearly about their observations of the real world all around them..."
This one should be entitled "Round and Round we Go: Adventures in Circular Reasoning." So their reasoning is superior because they tought more clearly? Yet what is it to reason except to think clearly? In this you are saying, "Their reasoning is superior because their reasoning is superior." This leaves me with the following question: How do you type while dizzy from your constant roundabout?
Dusty Psyche,
Delete"...drew conclusions about the nature of the underlying reality that have to a very substantial extent stood the test of time."
Underlying reality? So whatever is the smallest particle of matter is most basic to all reality. Well that is just a fascinating claim. I wonder, would you mind pointing me to the experiment that proves *precisely that claim*? Oh, oh, it is just another question begging philosophical premise that we will have to take your word for. Another quaint little idea dusty psyche. I don't know how you move about with all these unacknowledged rocks in your shoes while spinning about in circles.
Dusty Psyche,
Delete"Aristotle was not wrong about everything, of course. An example is the subject of the OP, truth as a transcendental. That concept, that there is an underlying reality of the nature of the cosmos, and it is at least partially or approximately discoverable using our senses and our reasoning, was a very valuable contribution.
That notion that the cosmos is a transcendent truth is something that provides atheists and Thomists at least some common world view, some common conceptual basis, some common language for communication."
Well you start off better than I have seen up to this point, but you still run off the rails. No purported disciple of St. Thomas would rightly call the cosmos "transcendent truth." Here you are confusing categories and what transcends them. Being, Goodness, Unity, Beauty, and Truth pervade the Cosmos; but that is not the same things as saying they ***are the Cosmos***. Only a materialist would make the latter claim and you should be aware that Thomists are not materialists.
Dusty Psyche,
Delete"Some theist might say it is all just because of god and we know that because of scripture and he has faith in that scripture and that is all the reason he feels he needs."
Here, I would encourage you to try to be more aware of your surroundings. There are no fideists posting under Dr. Feser's name. Dr. Feser and every informed Catholic on this blog is not a fideist. Feser and myself and St. Thomas and St. Augustine and Pope St. John Paul II and William Wallace and St. Albert and Vatican I and St. Anselm all pursue the truth not simply by faith but also by what can be known via reason.
Your complaint is analagous to visiting an airport with your hot air balloon and complaining to the pilots that they are not interested in flying. I assure you, Dr. Feser and all the figures noted above cover far more ground than you do with all your hot air and complaining to them that they are not full of hot air doesn't reflect very well on your ability to discern your surroundings before making such complaints.
Dusty Psyche,
Delete"So now that we agree that the truth of the nature of the underlying reality transcends our ability to apprehend it, how then can we reasonably hope to get closer to that trancendent truth?"
This one should be entitled: "Equal rights for equivocation." Here you are equivocating on the word "transcendent(al)". Equivocation means that you are using the same word in a different sense and acting as though you are using it in the same sense in an argument. Transcendent does not mean that it transcends the human intellect. (How could it as truth is a transcendental that resides in the human intellect? It is reality as known by the intellect.) A transcendental means that is transcends the categories of being and yet pervades all being.
If you are going to use terms to claim that there is common ground between the nominalist, materialist, aetheist and the scholastic realist or Thomist, you need to understand how those terms are respectively used by each group and be sure that they are being used in the same way to avoid equivocation. Otherwise the purported overlap is a figment of your imagination. Perhaps you might work harder to actually understand scholastic realism before imagining that you are in a position to either critique it or to assert where it may or may not agree with whatever you already think.
Dusty Psyche,
DeleteI have had to almost exhaustively correct about every sentence you have written and I could proceed with the remainder of your response. At this point, however, I think it would be prudent for you to make effort to understand scholastic realism more deeply so that you can actually engage it. If your goal is to land a punch, you actually need to be facing your target rather than flailing your arms about wildly.
To help with this, I would recommend reading as many of Klima's articles as you can get your hands on and to slowly and thoughfully read whatever you have not yet read of Dr. Feser's work. Three other very expensive works that are extremely rewarding would be: Leen Spruit's Species Intelligibilis, Vivian Boland's Ideas in God According to St. Thomas Aquinas, and Jan Aertsen's Medieval Philosophy and the Trascendentals. These extensive studies are published by Brill. They are very thorough but very expensive. You might also purchase the older version of The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy edited by Kretzman. Sometimes you can find paperback versions at a reasonable price. You might also purchase Michael Augros' Aquinas on Theology and God's Existence. This too is regretfully expensive, but extremely valueable. John Wippel's The Metaphysical Thought of St. Thomas would be a great purchase this is not super expensive in paperback or you might also buy Gregory Doolan's Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes.
Happy reading.
@Michael
Delete"Are Crombie and Wallace a good place to start learning about the history of medieval science?"
If you can find a copy of AC Crombie's Augustine to Gallileo, that would be a great place to start. It was originally two volumes, but there is a single volume hard cover on Amazon. The problem is that the cheapest used is $70. I haven't looked up Wallace's two volume history on Amazon, but you might look that up as well. It is done by an academic publisher in the 70s so it may tricky to locate a reasonably priced used copy.
If found Crombie a much more enjoyable read, but both cover important ground and lay to rest silly tropes like those coming from the keyboard of Stardust.
If you can't get ahold of either of those works at a reasonable price, then I would recommend looking up Stanley Jaki. You should be able to locate his work The Savior of Science or some other work that focuses on the early history of the development of the modern sciences.
I hope that this helps and happy reading!
Dusty Pscyhe,
Delete"There is only 1 viable candidate for apprehending the transcendent truth of the cosmos, modern science. Modern science is not the only method avaible for obtaining every sort of knowledge, but modern science is the only viable candidate for apprehending the true nature of, or at least the closest humanly possible approximation of, the underlying reality of the cosmos.
You cannot, I cannot, Aristotle could not apprehend the true nature of the underlying reality simply by the unaided senses and careful reasoning. Without the benifit of a modern education we are all no more advanced in our world view than an indigonous hunter gatherer."
Even looking past the mispellings, I can only say that your writings suggest to this reader that you might just be incorrigible. Not unable to reform. Just unwilling. Perhaps in the sense of the verse "Can the leopard change his spots?"
I have shown how you understand neither scholastic realism in general nor transcendentals in particular and have provided a good reading list for you. So the loss of your purported "common ground in teh transcendentals" undermines everything that you wish to build on that ground. Yet I will continue if not for your education, then for others.
"the only method avaible for obtaining every sort of knowledge"
Would you telling me precisely which experiment shows this assertion to be true? Oh, oh, we all just have to have child like faith in that dusty old psyche who has contradicted his very own principles by saying that he knows something not proven by experimentation. It's cute--in a deranged sort of way--that you imagine that anyone should take such a claim seriously. If you wish to be taken seriously here, you need to stop acting in a manner that makes people want to pat you on the head and send you off for a nap with a bottle of warm milk. If you are going to make philosophical claims, it is time you learned how to argue for them rather than putting such child like faith in what you yourself admit that you have not grounds for believing.
"I will give a few examples.
DeleteMotion is not in an impeding medium such that a moving object will slow and its motion will be lost, as Aristotle falsely asserted."
Is your point that no one got motion precisely right before the modern sciences? Well that is true but doesn't specifically impugn Aristotle and is completely irrelevant to the question of which figures contributed to the original development of the modern sciences without themselves being modern scientists or discovering what was discovered by modern scientists. In light of this, you might entitle this: "Irreverent Irrelevance".
Dusty psyche,
Delete"When you understand these modern scientific facts of the transcendent truth"
Parading inept philosophical claims as science is not going to impress anyone here. Why don't you show what you have written to mommy and ask her for some warm milk.
Dusty Psyche,
Delete"Examples of self movers abound, such as a rocket, an insect, a star, and on and on. Real change is always a mutual interaction wherein the identification of first or second or moved or mover or self mover or mover of other is arbitrary and therefore meaningless."
Thank you for the examples (of which Aristotle was aware and accounted for) in which composite things are moved via one part actualizing another part. This can be added to your post entitled "Irreverent Irrelevance".
Regarding the philosophical claim of the second sentence ("Real change is always a mutual interaction wherein the identification of first or second or moved or mover or self mover or mover of other is arbitrary and therefore meaningless."), I must have missed the experiment that proved this. Would you mind telling us which experiment proved *precisely this claim*? Oh, oh, here again we just have to trust you on this unproven philosophical claim. Pat pat. Warm milk. Off to bed you go, dusty psyche.
Hey Michael Copas! Great reading list recommendation. I'll be sure to try to read up on some of these after I've absorbed as much of Ed's books as I can. Should only take me another five or ten years. :)
DeleteMichael,
Delete*"the only method available for obtaining every sort of knowledge"*
"Would you telling me precisely which experiment shows this assertion to be true?"
You left out the preceding negation, so, no need for me to cite the opposite of what I actually wrote.
"Is your point that no one got motion precisely right before the modern sciences? Well that is true but doesn't specifically impugn Aristotle"
Yes, nobody got motion correct before modern science, we agree on that, although the atomists allowed for motion through the void, which is closer to the truth than Aristotle got.
I have never impugned Aristotle relative to his day. I impugn the rationality of those today who cling to such ancient errors as Aristotle and many others expressed.
"Aristotle was aware and accounted for (self movers)"
Falsely. Nearly every account Aristotle made for motion, change, and causality was false, including his account for self movers.
"which composite things are moved via one part actualizing another part."
Which is false. The fact that you cling to such ancient misunderstanding indicates your lack of understanding of modern science.
"I must have missed the experiment that proved this."
That fact is quite apparent, I appreciate that you acknowledge that fact.
"Would you mind telling us which experiment proved *precisely this claim*?"
Have you ever studied physics at university? If not, fine, there are other sources for you to learn these subjects.
*("Real change is always a mutual interaction wherein the identification of first or second or moved or mover or self mover or mover of other is arbitrary and therefore meaningless.")*
One way for you to learn this is to study the basic formulas for gravitational and electrostatic forces, which are essentially the same form.
One of the first things you will learn is that such attractions (or in some cases repulsions) are always mutual, and there is no preferred designation of first, or second, or influence upon self, or influence upon other. There is only the mutual, equal, and opposite and concurrent action, typically multilateral and multidirectional, but simplified to two body problems for the student.
Michael,
DeleteIn modern science the philosophical debate centers around whether causation is even a valid notion at all, or how we might formulate the mutual processes of interaction inherent to all modern physics as causal processes.
Aristotelian notions of actualization of a potential are considered so preposterous as to not even merit a mention. For example, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on the subject:
plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-physics/
Featuring prominently is the article is "Bertrand Russell’s extremely influential article “On the Notion of Cause” (1912), denying the applicability or at least the usefulness of causal notions in physics."
www.hist-analytic.com/Russellcause.pdf
users.drew.edu/~jlenz/notion-of-cause/br-notion-of-cause.html
Reading Russell you can learn modern realistic understandings of causation, and the errors of the ancients. Russell famously argued that the notion of cause was so badly polluted with misunderstanding that it would be best to eliminate the notion of causation from general discourse altogether.
I don't take quite that position, rather, causation is a process that is always mutual, with equal and opposite actions concurrently, typically multilateral in the complexity of the real world.
Obviously, there is no preferred direction, or designation of first, or what is moving or changing what. The notion that it takes something actual to actualize a potential in something is is just so much ancient nonsense. Those are ancient notions now considered preposterous to seriously assert.
There is only the mutuality that is at the root of all causation.
Bonus fun fact. I can, in principle, put a shinny cube of metal on my kitchen table. The table, the air, and the cube are all at 25C. Then, without any external power source, this cube of virtually pure metal "actualizes" itself by getting hotter and hotter burning a hole in the table, all on its own.
When you finish reading your university physics textbook you can tell me how this self-mover changed itself.
Dusty psyche,
Delete""the only method available for obtaining every sort of knowledge"*
"Would you telling me precisely which experiment shows this assertion to be true?"
You left out the preceding negation, so, no need for me to cite the opposite of what I actually wrote."
I quoted this twice and the first time gave the full quote. However you are correct. What I should have quoted is the following:
"but modern science is the only viable candidate for apprehending the true nature of, or at least the closest humanly possible approximation of, the underlying reality of the cosmos."
That is a philosophical claim and you have merely asserted it without support. That is the problem that I was pointing to. You claim to know this, but haven't the slightest support for it. You are merely begging the question by presupposing that underlying reality is best accounted for via the modern scientific method. You expect everyone here to just trust that you know this without any support. Or should we put child like faith in your alchemy?
"Yes, nobody got motion correct before modern science, we agree on that, although the atomists allowed for motion through the void, which is closer to the truth than Aristotle got.
I have never impugned Aristotle relative to his day. I impugn the rationality of those today who cling to such ancient errors as Aristotle and many others expressed."
I said no one got motion *precisely* correct and was specifically referring to locomotion. So no we don't agree. In other words, Aristotle and others were unaware of how momentum, velocity, gravity, etc work because such discoveries would occur later through other figures who were further developing inquiries into the order and causality of the universe that was initiated by figures like Aristotle. To impugn Aristotle speicifically for not understanding these things is sheer nonsense for the very reason that NO ONE understood these things prior to the discoveries of these later figures and no they were not all idiots for not knowing what would be discovered later any more than Einstein or Newton are idiots for not knowing what will be discovered later.
Regarding your animosity toward contemporary disciples of Aristotle, you are acting as though such folks believe in geocentrism. This is something called a straw man. If you would let your question begging and circular efforts be disciplined by Aristotle you would avoid such fallacies. No modern disciple of Aristotle is a geocentrist so stop pretending. It is just making you look either dishonest or incompetent.
Regarding your claim that Aristotle got causation entirely wrong, well that is sheer non sense. The modern sciences focused on efficient causality almost entirely just as they focused almost exclusively on they quantification of reality. Such focus does not entail that either numbers or efficient causality are all that there is. If you had read Feser's work, you would be aware of this. Having the most powerful metal detector in the world does not prove that metal is the only thing that exists and final causality is presupposed by the modern sciences which vindicates his fuller orbed account of causality vis-a-vis a more emaciated account that only affirms efficient causality. So you can add to your reading list Aristotle's Revenge and Scholastic Metaphysics by Feser.
""Aristotle was aware and accounted for (self movers)"
DeleteFalsely. Nearly every account Aristotle made for motion, change, and causality was false, including his account for self movers."
Just to change things up, why don't you actually try to support your question begging assertions. Who knows, it might be fun for you. At least it would be a change of pace.
""which composite things are moved via one part actualizing another part."
Which is false. The fact that you cling to such ancient misunderstanding indicates your lack of understanding of modern science."
Oh great teacher of all, please enlighten us with your wisdom. Should we cover the difference between a sheer assertion and an argument again so that, through repetition, the distinction might make its way into that frontal cortex.
""I must have missed the experiment that proved this."
That fact is quite apparent, I appreciate that you acknowledge that fact."
You neither have an experiment nor an argument for your position. Thank you for acknowledging that. However, I am afraid you have thanked me prematurely for acknowledging something that I have clearly not acknowledged. Perhaps your goal here is to appear to all readers of this blog to be incorrigible. If so, you are on the right track to achieve that end. I will have more to say about this below.
""Would you mind telling us which experiment proved *precisely this claim*?"
Have you ever studied physics at university? If not, fine, there are other sources for you to learn these subjects."
Yes, I have. My undergraduate work was civil engineering. Instead of avoiding my questions why don't you try to answer them. Again, might be fun.
"("Real change is always a mutual interaction wherein the identification of first or second or moved or mover or self mover or mover of other is arbitrary and therefore meaningless.")*
One way for you to learn this is to study the basic formulas for gravitational and electrostatic forces, which are essentially the same form.
One of the first things you will learn is that such attractions (or in some cases repulsions) are always mutual, and there is no preferred designation of first, or second, or influence upon self, or influence upon other. There is only the mutual, equal, and opposite and concurrent action, typically multilateral and multidirectional, but simplified to two body problems for the student."
You are making claims about causality that extend beyond what is even possible to show via the modern scientific method. Specifically, you are stating that what is known via physics EXHAUSTS what we know about causality. That metaclaim extends beyond what is empirically demonstrable. It is a philosophical claim that you have no defense for. That is the first problem.
The second problem is that Newton's third law has precisely zero bearing on whether form actualizes matter (or whether change is the actualization of some potency). You merely assume that formal causes don't exist and that matter is all there is. You are a nominalist without the slightest support for your nominalism.
Dusty,
DeleteAll you see is particles bumping into each other because of your nominalism which entails materialism. But neither your nominalism nor your materialism are the results of experimentation. They are just you reading into the data your foregone metaphysical conclusions. One can be a realist and account for the laws of motion and physics. The problem is that most scientists have no understanding of philosophy and imbibe bad philosophy and then confuse it with science. In this they are not merely inept philosophers, they are parading that inept philosophy as pseudoscience. Dawkins has done this and has been taken to task for it by Feser (Read The Last Superstition).
Thankfully philosophical stupidity is not a prerequisite to being a scientist. Anthony Rizzi is a first rate physicist who solved an 80 year old problem in physics associated with Einstein and he has written numerous works on how physics is BEST accounted for via realism in general and the philosophy of Aristotle in particular. So now add to your reading list Physics for Realists and The Science Before Science. You have so much homework to do that it is unclear to me how you have time to write on this blog. Unless of course you are not keeping up on your homework.
Dusty Psyche,
Delete"In modern science the philosophical debate centers around whether causation is even a valid notion at all, or how we might formulate the mutual processes of interaction inherent to all modern physics as causal processes."
Oh Dusty. So your claim is that advanced degrees in modern science puts someone in a position to make philosophical, exhaustive claims about reality. In this your presuppose without either argumentation or experimentation that quantification and efficient causality are all that exist. "Look at my metal detector! Isn't it obvious that only metal exists!" You are just the cutest, Dusty. Why don't you have some warm milk.
"Aristotelian notions of actualization of a potential are considered so preposterous as to not even merit a mention. For example, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on the subject:
plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-physics/
Featuring prominently is the article is "Bertrand Russell’s extremely influential article “On the Notion of Cause” (1912), denying the applicability or at least the usefulness of causal notions in physics."
www.hist-analytic.com/Russellcause.pdf
users.drew.edu/~jlenz/notion-of-cause/br-notion-of-cause.html
Reading Russell you can learn modern realistic understandings of causation, and the errors of the ancients. Russell famously argued that the notion of cause was so badly polluted with misunderstanding that it would be best to eliminate the notion of causation from general discourse altogether.
I don't take quite that position, rather, causation is a process that is always mutual, with equal and opposite actions concurrently, typically multilateral in the complexity of the real world.
Obviously, there is no preferred direction, or designation of first, or what is moving or changing what. The notion that it takes something actual to actualize a potential in something is is just so much ancient nonsense. Those are ancient notions now considered preposterous to seriously assert."
To pretend like whatever Russell says is axiomatic in the sciences is preposterous. If Russell's account of causation were true, all sorts of things would occur at random as Feser has pointed out. Were his account of causation true, your typing on the keyboard might be just as likely to produce a pink elephant as an intelligible argument (I am beginning to wonder if the former is more likely that the latter). So no Russell is not a given in the sciences. Why don't your read the work of the host for this blog and make a sincere effort at interacting with the arguments contained therein? Again, just for a change of pace away from strawmen, question begging, adventures in missing the point, etc.
A final note for old Dusty:
DeleteDear Dusty,
Another commenter noted in the most recent post:
"SP is becoming a laughing stock through his increasingly desperate efforts to undermine AT."
I don't wish for you to become a laughing stock, but endless question begging, circularity, strawmen, and historical errors make you prone to the disdain of your fellow commentors. Why not make greater effort at avoiding constant fallacies so that you can be taken more seriously here?
If you do this there is good news and bad news. The good news is that you will be able to be more consistent, coherent, and integrous. This will make you happier and that is good news indeed. The bad news is that you are going to have to learn about logic which means that you are going to have to become a disciple of Aristotle. I know that this feels like bad news from where you are sitting, but to those who commit fallacies as easily as most folks breath, it is actually good news. It just require conversion.
Michael,
Delete"That (science is the only viable candidate...) is a philosophical claim and you have merely asserted it without support. "
I have supported it, but these threads get long, but I can re-summarize.
You cannot, I cannot, and nobody can determine the true nature of the underlying reality with the unaided senses and just thinking about it. Scientific instruments are needed to observe nature in detail, and mathematical models are needed to analyze physics, and scientific experiments are needed to test and falsify and confirm all this scientific activity.
There simply is no other process on Earth other than modern science that can provide those insights.
Mine is not a philosophical position, it is an observed fact of our lives that you depend on every day, like when you post here, for example.
"Regarding your animosity toward contemporary disciples of Aristotle, you are acting as though such folks believe in geocentrism. "
Such folks believe in the equally false notions of Aristotelian motion, change, and causation.
Discussing motion, change, and causation with a Thomist is indeed very much like discussing modern astronomy and cosmology with a geocentrist.
"The modern sciences focused on efficient causality almost entirely"
Physicists generally don't focus on causality at all.
The notion of actualization of a potential such that a thing that is actual is needed to actualize a potential in something else is nonsense in modern science. Physics is formulated as mutual interactions. This is the part where speaking with you about causation becomes very much like speaking to a geocentrist.
Michael,
Delete"Oh great teacher of all, please enlighten us with your wisdom (about self movers)."
Ok, for example, an animal. The limb moves when the muscle contracts. The contraction of the muscle occurs because of mutual attractions at the molecular level in muscle cells, primarily the electrostatic force. The electrostatic force is formulated much like the gravitational force.
There is no such thing as something in act that actualizes the potential of something else in a muscle. Molecules attract each other via the electrostatic force in what is described as a molecular walk or mutual sliding force. The designation of first or second or actual or potential is arbitrary and therefore meaningless.
An animal moves itself because at base molecules move each other mutually.
Another example, a rocket, say, a simple solid fuel rocket, moves itself. There is nothing outside the rocket actualizing the potential of the rocket to move itself.
Energy is released when bonds form. Bonds form between atoms when they attract each other mutually and move toward each other, primarily by mutual electrostatic attraction. There is no identifiable first or second, any such designation is arbitrary and therefore meaningless. The Carbon atom is not somehow already in act while the Sulphur atom has its potential actualized by the already actual Carbon atom, or any other such Aristotelian nonsense. If you describe a chemical reaction to a chemistry professor in those terms you will seem nuts.
Bonds form by mutual attractions and in turn molecules move each other such that the molecules of a hot gas move out the nozzle just as the rocket moves in the opposite direction, but equally and concurrently. There is no preferred mover or moved, rather, the rocket moves the gas just as much as the gas moves the rocket.
The analytical causal chain of a self mover always terminates finitely in mutual causation, such that there is no call for an infinite regress and there is no call for a first mover.
"Anthony Rizzi is a first rate physicist"
Who melts down to gibberish when discussing a circle of change. This is another example of an otherwise intelligent person who babbles at the level of a geocentrist attempting to defend the faith.
At least he adds the circular case, which Aquinas did not in the First Way. So, Rizzi shows that the First Way is logically invalid, suffering from a false dichotomy.
Then Rizzi goes on to use the Duns Scotus argument against circular causation, entirely forgetting his "first rate" physics by applying a unidirectional assertion of circularity.
A "first rate" physicist knows that the formulations of attraction and repulsion are not unidirectional, they are bi-directional in a two body problem, and multi directional in a multi body problem. There is no call for an outside cause to make the circle of causation to go around the circle unidirectionally because real causation is not unidirectional, as anybody who understood physics class understands. Rizzi obviously forgot.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZAaprCCq-g&list=PL6cPgDv4oMrvynip9BRRl_t4ZarmoL_8w&index=6
The Science Before Science by Anthony Rizzi: 6. God
8:29
Dusty Oh Dusty,
Delete"You cannot, I cannot, and nobody can determine the true nature of the underlying reality with the unaided senses and just thinking about it. Scientific instruments are needed to observe nature in detail, and mathematical models are needed to analyze physics, and scientific experiments are needed to test and falsify and confirm all this scientific activity.
There simply is no other process on Earth other than modern science that can provide those insights.
Mine is not a philosophical position, it is an observed fact of our lives that you depend on every day, like when you post here, for example."
For my sanity, would you mind making an effort to not be tediously obtuse, SD. You are reasserting your position. Not supporting it. You are assuming that what is most fundamental to reality is what is: 1. Visible (via scientific instruments) and 2. smallest. So you mean by fundamental: material and small. in this you are ASSUMING materialism. You are not making an argument for it. You are assuming it.
Dusty Psyche,
DeleteNearly everything I have examined that you have written contains basic fallacies. It is beginning to feel like walking around after a two year old who is compulsively littering all over the house. The difference is of course that I can make excuses for the two year old is just too young to model the virtue of cleanliness. I cannot make that excuse for you, so I will have to slow down my pace on cleaning up after you. Thankfully there are other folks here that are contributing to the effort. Watching a toddler is all consuming and tracking your fallacies is almost a full time job as well.
Micheal,
DeleteI think you are giving Stardusty too much credit.
His argument about Aristotle being wrong about motion is related to The First Way and the hand-stick-stone example of local motion. He is attacking the proposition that the hand is the cause of the stone moving from one place to another using the stick. Similar to how a locomotive pulls a train of cars.
He has 2 basic arguments:
1) "Motion" cannot be lost:
Motion is not in an impeding medium such that a moving object will slow and its motion will be lost, as Aristotle falsely asserted
2) All causes are "circular" or mutual so there cannot be any net "motion"
All change is a mutual multilateral process wherein every action has an equal and opposite and concurrant reaction, that is conceptually multidirectional and circular, not hirearchical, not linear, and not unidirecitonal.
Regarding 1:
He is apparently confusing "motion" with either conservation of momentum or conservation of energy (or both) with the fact that an object can move from one place to another (local motion). The First Way merely observes that a stone moves from position A to position B while leaving aside questions magnitudes of the forces or masses involved. If he were actually referring to "local motion" being lost, it would mean that the stone could never have moved from A to B and remained there. Likewise, don't take a train because you'd never go anywhere.
Regarding 2:
He apparently misunderstands Newton's 3rd Law in a way that many beginning students first misunderstand it (again along with the definition of "motion"). If the hand applies a force to the stick and the stick applies an equal reactive force to the hand then there should be no net "motion" right? No "one-way push". So the hand cannot really be causing the stick and stone to move and likewise a locomotive cannot cause a train to move. Another reason not to buy a train ticket. (for Stardusty see The Horse Cart Paradox)
But one can actually cause a stone to move from one location to another by pushing it and a train can take you from one city to another because the locomotive pulls it. Unless of course Stardusty's (mis)understanding of physics is correct.
So it's not just that Stardusty doesn't understand that Dr. Feser's arguments regard the underlying metaphysics rather than merely physics as modernly described, he doesn't understand classical physics either. Like I mentioned, I think people give him too much credit initially and need to keep digging into his verbose responses to see how really confused he is.
Anonymous May 13 7:46,
DeleteThank you for this helpful comment.
Anonymous May 13, 2023 at 7:46 AM,
Delete"He is apparently confusing "motion" with either conservation of momentum or conservation of energy (or both) with the fact that an object can move from one place to another (local motion)."
No confusion, "motion" as in the sense that Newton used the word in the Principia...as in the term "state of motion".
"If he were actually referring to "local motion" being lost, it would mean that the stone could never have moved from A to B and remained there."
This is where you and Aristotle and Aquinas and Dr. Feser and all A-T folks go wrong.
There is no such thing as "local motion" as a distinct species of motion.
The stone can move from A to B in that reference frame, but when it slows and stops its motion (as Newton described it) or what we would call its kinetic energy is never lost, only transferred or transformed. In the case of moving through air then air molecules gain the kinetic energy (motion) lost by the stone.
That is why there is no first mover called for. The movement of the stone from A to B is net lossless.
"If the hand applies a force to the stick and the stick applies an equal reactive force to the hand then there should be no net "motion" right?"
No, because motion depends on net forces applied. The stone moves in your local reference frame because there is a net directional force applied to it, as does your hand. Your feet stay still because there forces are in balance.
"(for Stardusty see The Horse Cart Paradox)"
There is no paradox (see above)
"But one can actually cause a stone to move from one location to another by pushing it"
That is the common sense view.
The common sense view is also that the Earth stands still and the sun goes around it, just look outside, it is obvious.
When you learn more then you realize that you, the stone, and the Earth are all in space. The only way anything moves is by a mutual causal process.
Objects such as a rocket, an animal, and an autonomous vehicle move themselves because at base molecules and subatomic particles move each other.
There is no net loss in all these motions, so there is no call for a first mover to account for continued observed motion.
"motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality."
False. This is based on the notion that sublunary motion is in a lossy medium, which is a false common sense Aristotelian view. Inertial motion is not a change in the state of motion. No momentum and no kinetic energy are lost in inertial motion.
"nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality"
False. All change is mutual. Causality is thus fundamentally circular, terminating finitely in mutual causation.
"It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e. that it should move itself."
False. Objects at the level of a hand, staff, fire, wood obviously do move themselves. The reason, for example, that an animal moves itself is that at base molecules move each other inside muscle cells, primarily by electrostatic attraction, which is always mutual, wherein the designation of first or second or mover or moved is arbitrary and therefore meaningless.
"But this cannot go on to infinity"
False dichotomy. Duns Scotus showed this logical error by attempting to address the third case, circular causation, as does Rizzi in modern times. Aquinas failed to address this case rendering the First Way logically invalid.
"staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand."
False. The staff also moves by inertial motion. The hand moves because molecules in the muscle move each other mutually.
Anon,
ReplyDelete"If you’re going to use terms in nonstandard ways, you need to define them."
Fair enough, I thought I was being clear, obviously that was not the case.
I was going to say "material is" (singular) but that would denote that there must be only one sort of material. So I chose to say "materials are", indicating that there can be more than one sort of material.
Material as in materialism. Stuff. Ontologically existent fundamental material(s). Beables.
Right now we have the Standard Model. One very common assertion is that each particle in the standard model is actually a manifestation of a field, one sort of field for each sort of particle, with all such fields existing in superposition throughout spacetime.
If that turns out to be true, then in that case those fields are the necessary beings and their properties are necessary aspects of them.
"Is the wood of the chair that I’m sitting on a material in your ontology?"
Wood is a particular sort of arrangement of fundamental materials, say, fields, if those turn out to actually be fundamental.
I am not terribly fond of this expression, but a common way of putting it would be that wood is a particular sort of arrangement of fundamental material(s) arranged woodwise.
“ If that turns out to be true, then in that case those fields are the necessary beings and their properties are necessary aspects of them.”
DeleteI don’t see why that follows. What about field theory being a more accurate model of reality than the standard model makes fields necessary beings?
Are you admitting a formal principle? Fascinating.
Deletesd says, "I thought I was being clear, obviously that was not the case"
DeleteNo surprise, since sd is very confused and clarity does not arise from confused pseudo-"teaching". Of course, sd, in his arrogant way, actually means that only others are confused, not sd.
sd says, "Material as in materialism. Stuff. Ontologically existent fundamental material(s). Beables."
Blah, blah, blah. The pretense at depth is staggering.
sd says, "Right now we have the Standard Model. One very common assertion is that each particle in the standard model is actually a manifestation of a field, one sort of field for each sort of particle, with all such fields existing in superposition throughout spacetime.
If that turns out to be true, then in that case those fields are the necessary beings and their properties are necessary aspects of them."
Here is his pretended understanding of physics without any concept of the meaning of wavelength or what superposition actually is. It his usual argument from his non authority of non comprehension masquerading as comprehension.
sd says, "I am not terribly fond of this expression, but a common way of putting it would be that wood is a particular sort of arrangement of fundamental material(s) arranged woodwise"
Of course he is not fond of it since he speaks of wood as a thing existing in its exemplars as uniquely wood, as any sensible person understands and likes as his personal knowledge of reality underived from sd's senseless (by his own free will choice to seek for ways to misunderstand) blatherings. But sd failed in his attempt to dodge the question while appearing as somone with incomparable understanding.
Pffft!
Tom Cohoe
AnonymousMay 8, 2023 at 3:27 AM
Delete*If that turns out to be true, then in that case those fields are the necessary beings and their properties are necessary aspects of them.*
"I don’t see why that follows. What about field theory being a more accurate model of reality than the standard model makes fields necessary beings?"
Right, merely being a more accurate model does not necessitate that they are necessary beings. I should have written more clearly. I was thinking of the link but did not put the connections in writing, so you are correct that what I wrote is a non-sequitur.
*Material as in materialism. Stuff. Ontologically existent fundamental material(s). Beables.*
I meant to link the most fundamental material(s) with one assertion of what they might be, fields that manifest as the particles in the Standard Model.
So, there is no need to make up some completely unobserved and in principle unobservable being as the necessary being. There is no logical or known ontological reason why observable beables cannot be the necessary being(s).
Professor Feser
DeleteYour combox is being ruined by a very persistant and bullying troll - Tom Cohoe. Could I request that you instruct him to cease his obsessive vendetta or to vacate the site. Obnoxious trolls really do bring the fluidity and tenor of the conservation down.
Tom, you don't have to keep responding when he responds. You could just let it drop.
DeleteEnough with the meta-commentary about tone, who is the real troll, etc.
DeletePeople, please keep it substantive. Resist the urge to include insults and other trash talk in your posts. And resist the urge to respond in kind, to post comments focusing on tone rather than the substance of the discussion, etc.
I'm not going to police every insult or stupid thing people say, but I also can't have each thread degenerate into this nonsense. So, again, kindly keep it substantive.
Did you get that Tom?
Delete@ All,
DeleteIt is interesting and funny that a person would think that defending the Church against a Church hater should be a reason to call me a "troll" and beg Dr. Feser, a Christian himself, to get rid of me so that poor sd can continue his "friendly" attack in peace.
🤣
No doubt Professor Feser can decide when to eliminate without anonymous "help".
sd does not respond to me. He does not lnow how to respond to straight out contradictions (how dare I) of his self proclaimed "authority", nor to ideas that he cannot consider, involving as they do that there actually is such a thing as a random number, which I defined, or that there is such a thing as free will, or that teleology gives ultimate meaning to everything we can consider, or that science itself sets its own limit by the most accurate of all proper scientific studies, quantum mechanics.
Since sd does not respond to me, by his own free will choice, it is hard to see how I am interfering with the poor Church haters very unfriendly attack on the Church and on Christians, so I am going to ignore anonymous complaints about my existence and about my actions.
sd says, "But so many folks here still take those ancient Greeks literally"
Most people take advances in proper science to be steps in the ongoing refinement of science, not as reasons to denounce earlier scientists as "failures". By sd's use of the idea of "failure", all scientists are failures, including Newton, but sd, from his own pretended authority gets to decide when "failure" is an appropriate description, and when it is not, a very silly manner of pseudo-thinking.
Worse is his use of the term "literally" indicating sd's belief that he knows the thoughts of those who do not respect sd's "absolute" authority, based on nothing more than the circular, "i, sd, am always right because i, sd, am always right."
🤣
If I, Tom Cohoe, were as bad a "thinker" as sd is, I would conclude here that sd is always wrong. He may well be always wrong but I am not drawing that conclusion, as drawing it would be a mistake.
sd says, "Muslims have the same problem [ ... ] want to use the man who practiced such things as the perfect example of how to think and act today"
This is irrelevant except as an illustration of sd's belief in the depth of his pseudo-thinking. Coupled with his hatred of the Church and his contempt for the minds of Christians (although some of the many minds of Christians are useful to him in his paranoia) we have a strong indicator that he is dangerous to the general peace - that we must
BEWARE
All of the world's worst tyrranies, in act, are led by an order in which free will, ultimate teleology, and true faith in Heaven play no part, just as is the case with sd.
sd says, 'if you [blah-blah-blah -it's always a form of "if you do not believe that sd is the way, the light, and the truth" you will never make personal progress in getting closer to that transcendent truth'
sd, of course, does not lead people to transcendant truth. Only God does that.
Sorry for being so "vicious" as to believe in God and to defend God's Church anonymous.
😏
Tom Cohoe
Tom, a great many of us have found that the perfect reaction to someone whose comments are not worthy of response is to NOT RESPOND to them. Eventually, they go away, and that is beneficial to all of us.
DeleteTom,
Delete"Most people take advances in proper science to be steps in the ongoing refinement of science, not as reasons to denounce earlier scientists as "failures". By sd's use of the idea of "failure", all scientists are failures, including Newton, but sd, from his own pretended authority gets to decide when "failure" is an appropriate description, and when it is not, a very silly manner of pseudo-thinking."
Well said. Thank you for addressing this.
@ All,
Deletesd, who thinks that science plus sd's inimitable power of pseudo-"knowing" means that determinist atheism is "necessarily" true.
He pretends that science demonstrates this and that he, sd, has merely concluded what science shows, but of course this is false. The supernatural, for example, is beyond the scope of the science of measurable things. No responsible scientist, qua scientist, can claim that eternal God is proper to science dependant in any way upon the measurement of material things. But sd, with sd's typical sleight of hand, makes up "definitions" which exclude, "by definition", all that lies beyond proper science.
IOW, he bans talk of the "Supernatural" because the Supernatural, "by definition" "does not exist"
Isn't this backward way of thinking hilarious🤣!
It is actually the other way around. sd begins with what he wants to believe and then makes the utterly ridiculous "claim" that what proceeds from a definition can prove anything other than what, in massive circularity, would follow from the definition🤣.
And he would make talk about God impossible by this silly, self willed trickery.
Shame on sd.
sd says "Recall, Aristotle did not do experiments, and he did not use mathematical expressions. Those critical aspects of modern science were absent from his methods and are a big reason why he was wrong about the structure of the cosmos, the nature of the underlying reality, motion, change, and causation."
Aristotle _did_ do experiments. He counted, added, subtracted, used numbers and made observations with such exquisite detail, such as in the formation of an embryo from an egg, that had some 18th century scientists promoting a theory that reproduction involved tiny perfect copies of the parent actually paid attention to Aristotle's description, they need not have bothered.
Like modern scientists Aristotle appreciated independent confirmation or disconfirmation (not circular nonsense like sd's of course).
sd gives an apparent incorrect observation about motion in the cosmos (and what Aristotle says in the original early Greek is hard to understand - I doubt sd reads it - and has not come to us directly, but through Muslim translations that Aquinas had access to, but which now may be lost due to Muslim reaction to Greek influence). From this eagerly used assumption about Aristotle's true expression, sd sweeps away as much as possible - "the structure of the cosmos, the nature of the underlying reality, motion, change, and causation".
sd's eagerness here fails to actually undermine Aristotle. In fact his eagerness undermines sd himself as no dispassionate seeker of truth would attack Aristotle the way poor sd does.
sd says, "Motion is not in an impeding medium such that a moving object will slow and its motion will be lost"
All motion is impeded by the medium, nowhere is space empty. sd is just preaching his circular belief here. Science does not even prove the conservation of energy or momentum here. Rather, it is assumed on the basis of a finite number of observations, which have nothing to say about the infinite limit inherent in the eternal Supernatural. So sd is misleading about what human reason can actually conclude, as per usual. Dismissal of what he wills to refuse to contemplate is just fake thought.
🤣.
BEWARE
Tom Cohoe
@ All,
Deletesd says, "there is just no intersection to our Venn diagram in that case"
Oh wow! Poetry🤣!
Since others are capable of contemplating what sd refuses to contemplate, sd's dictation of "truth" must "follow"!
Ha, ha, ha🤣!
sd says "Once you understand that then the call for first mover is eliminated"
Circular BS in which what is "called for" is what sd "calls" for. Just remember this - sd will contemplate nothing more than his own ideas.
sd says, "I am sure you realize that there are such things as atoms and they do move through the functional equivalent (for motion) of the void, space"
There are also such things as dogs and there is no such thing as a "void", as the science of measurable things allows us to infer.
sd says, "Real change is always a mutual interaction wherein the identification of first or second or moved or mover or self mover or mover of other is arbitrary and therefore meaningless"
It is neither arbitrary nor meaningless, because such dismissal of meaning does not follow from sd's personal declarations, bound as he is to conclusions implicit in his unwarranted assumptions.
sd says "When you understand these modern scientific facts of the transcendent truth, available to you in any modern university physics textbook"
Decent physics textbooks do not stray into circular reasoning or metaphysics. They do not make declarations of "transcendent truth".
sd says, "then you will understand that the A-T call for an infinite regress is moot and pointless"
There is no "A-T call for an infinite regress". Quite the opposite in fact.
🤣
BEWARE sd's trickery.
😏
Tom Cohoe
Michael,
Delete""Most people take advances in proper science to be steps in the ongoing refinement of science, not as reasons to denounce earlier scientists as "failures"."
Indeed, advances are just that. Regressions are another matter. Aristotle regressed from his atomist predecessors in some very important ways.
Aristotle did not do "proper science". He merely made some observations, thought about it, and wrote some (incorrect) opinions. He didn't quantify his assertions or check them against experiment, hardly "proper science", which is a big part of why he got nearly everything wrong about the cosmos, wrong about the nature of the underlying reality, wrong about motion, wrong about change, and wrong about causation.
Edward Feser on Truth as Transcendental: Ontological Foundations
www.youtube.com/watch?v=78tvmP0l21Y
"For Augustine and Aquinas it is ontological truth that is more fundamental.
Truth is one of the transcendental properties of all being.
What has being is what is real."
6:02
In his discussion of truth as a transcendental Dr. Feser makes the critical distinction between an ontological truth and a logical truth.
It is worth noting that an ontological truth must necessarily be also a logical truth. If an ontological truth violates a system of logic then that system of logic is necessarily defective.
However, the reverse is not necessary, that is, just because a proposition is logically true in no way necessitates that it be ontologically true.
We can make logically valid propositions that are ontologically untrue.
There cannot be an ontological truth that is logically untrue.
Thus, the ontological reality of the universe grounds both ontological truth and logical truth.
Aristotelian accounts for the structure of the cosmos, the nature of the underlying reality, motion, change, and causation are all ontologically false. Those falsehoods render all of the ways of Aquinas unsound due to ontologically false premises, and also logically invalid.
If one is willing to postulate by convention that which Aquinas stated as his basis (that which is manifest and evident to our senses) is a sound basis for proof of ontological truth, then the following statements are incontrovertible.
Modern science proves that Aristotelian motion is ontologically false.
Modern science proves that Aristotelian change is ontologically false.
Modern science proves that Aristotelian causation is ontologically false.
We have only 1 viable candidate method to get closer to the ontological truth of real motion, change and causality, which is modern science.
@ All,
Deletesd says "Indeed, advances are just that. Regressions are another matter. Aristotle regressed from his atomist predecessors in some very important ways"
This is just sd's definitional change of "refinement" into "regression".
sd then claims that Aristotle did not do "proper science" which is just sd's slanderous anti-Aristotelianism. Aristotle did do proper science, measuring, counting, quantifying, seeking confirmation, relying on previous findings by others, as basically defines experimental science. But sd, absurdly, says that this is not "experimental" (Aristotle did not "check [his results] against experiment", says sd).
sd then uses his twisted mis-account of Aristotle's experimental science into what is hard to see as anything but furious hatred, saying, "which is a big part of why he got nearly everything wrong about the cosmos, wrong about the nature of the underlying reality, wrong about motion, wrong about change, and wrong about causation"
One understands sd's fury as sd cannot get past Aristotle's superior thinking, and sd's project founders on the hard rock of obtuse self promotion through willful avoidance of understanding what is, in fact, understandable.
sd writes several paragraphs which, by using the word "ontological" repeatedly amount to nothing more than one of his circular proofs by definition, in which his self consciousness of the weakness of this type of argument is apparent through his founding of it on something Dr. Feser wrote and sd did not understand.
Sorry buddy, you cannot define your absurd deterministic atheism into scientific truth. Here is something simple about truth: "truth does not contradict truth".
sd says, "Modern science proves that Aristotelian motion is ontologically false.
Modern science proves that Aristotelian change is ontologically false.
Modern science proves that Aristotelian causation is ontologically false."
Modern science does none of these things. Modern science is not a foundation for sd's outrageous ego.
sd says "We have only 1 viable candidate method to get closer to the ontological truth of real motion, change and causality, which is modern science."
Well Aristotle did what is essentially modern science, qualified only in that it was done in not-modern times, but then sd seems to be aiming here at something less than asserting that there is nothing Supernatural and just writing a circular definition of the science of the material in a tricky dodge, as if to say "1 and 1 is 2, therefore the Supernatural, I insist, is nothing".
What a load of willful misleading falseness.
😏
Tom Cohoe
Tony at 7.59am
DeleteI completely agree with what you said there. If only Tom would be sensible and take heed of what you say.
@ All,
DeleteOh, I almost forgot, by ontology sd usually means that he knows that sd exists. But then he abandons ontology and "very carefully" assumes that there is something besides himself.
Maybe. Who knows what sd actually thinks about the existence of something besides himself.
🤣
But this is an abandonment of ontology anyway.
Except that the word has such broad possibility of meaning that he can claim he means something else so that with Dr. Feser as his loyal assistant, he can attack and destroy Aristotle, change, free will choice, Dr. Feser, and anything else that does not agree with sd's proclaimed knowledge from self.
Hey, we're back to knowing only self - a silly circle🤣!
BEWARE such kooky mis-leading by sd's freely chosen circularity!
😏
Tom Cohoe
For readers other than Dusty Psyche who has a long reading list of homework:
Delete"which is a big part of why he (Aristotle) got nearly everything wrong about the cosmos, wrong about the nature of the underlying reality, wrong about motion, wrong about change, and wrong about causation."
"underlying reality"- An assertion that SD has not and cannot support either with experimentation nor any argument. More question begging.
"wrong about motion"- Locomotion? Well yes just like everyone else who preceded modern science. Hardly a particular knock against Aristotle.
"wrong about change"- SD is here denying that change is the actualization of a potency. Another assertion that he has not and cannot support either with experimentation nor any argument. More question begging.
"wrong about causation"- Dusty also denies formal causality without any experimentation or argument to support his nominalism. If he is denying final causality, he needs to make sure to note that his reading homework includes: Aristotle's Revenge.
"We can make logically valid propositions that are ontologically untrue.
There cannot be an ontological truth that is logically untrue."
You are confused here. Propositions aren't valid or invalid. Arguments are valid or invalid. Propositions are either true or false. While you can have a valid argument whose conclusion is false, this does not make the argument "true" for the very reason that arguments are assessed by their validity. So just like on so many other things, your comments here stem from confusion.
"Edward Feser on Truth as Transcendental: Ontological Foundations
www.youtube.com/watch?v=78tvmP0l21Y
"For Augustine and Aquinas it is ontological truth that is more fundamental.
Truth is one of the transcendental properties of all being.
What has being is what is real.""
Feser is of course right about this, but as I note above you have managed to get confused over what is being said. Truth is what is. It is for this very reason that Truth and Being are convertible. Stated differently truth is reality in the intellect. To know something is to know it as it is. It is to see things as they are. Again this is why being and truth are convertible.
For the human intellect, our knowledge is rooted in extramental being and that extramental being precedes our knowledge of it. In this way, it is more fundamental as St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and Edward Feser recognize. As scholastic realism holds, the form in the thing precedes our knowledge of it via abstraction (the form post rem) and is more fundamental. In other words, Feser's account of truth as a transcendental is consistent with realism and doesn't work with the nominalist opinions that you have imbibed without so much as offering an argument or experiment in their support.
Michael,
Delete""underlying reality"- An assertion that SD has not and cannot support either with experimentation nor any argument."
You claim to have a background in civil engineering, yet you seem unaware of the myriad experiments in chemistry, atomic physics, subatomic physics, particle accelerators, charge measurement, cloud chambers, field measurements, and on and on.
Either you are being dishonest about your background or you are being dishonest about being unaware of the vast body of experiments that show Aristotle was wrong about the underlying reality, because he only went as far as an incorrect speculation of the 4 Greek elements.
""wrong about motion"- Locomotion? Well yes just like everyone else who preceded modern science. Hardly a particular knock against Aristotle."
Right, it is a knock against Thomists who continue to employ the mistaken notions of Aristotle.
""wrong about change"- SD is here denying that change is the actualization of a potency. Another assertion that he has not and cannot support either with experimentation nor any argument."
I have in fact cited the experiments and provided significant argumentation, so either you do no read before you write, or you are being dishonest.
You claim to have taken university physics. As I have told you in the past, simply refer back to your university physics textbook, its myriad citations of experiments and formulations, and you will see that modern physics is formulated as mutual causal processes wherein the designation of first or second or mover or moved is arbitrary and therefore meaningless.
"he needs to make sure to note that his reading homework includes: Aristotle's Revenge."
Your required reading assignment is your university physics textbook and On the Notion Of Cause by Bertrand Russell.
"For the human intellect, our knowledge is rooted in extramental being and that extramental being precedes our knowledge of it."
Ok, so you got that much correct, that is a start.
"opinions that you have imbibed without so much as offering an argument or experiment in their support."
Oh darn, you slipped back into dishonesty again, you had a start at some sound reasoning there for a moment. Care to get back on track?
Did you keep your university physics textbook? If not, all the information in it is freely available on line.
You could start with, as I have argued and cited repeatedly, the electrostatic force, and the myriad experiments involving charged particles. There is no such thing as actualization of a potential or purpose in the experiments and formulations I am citing here, just mutual attractions and repulsions.
That is the nature of the underlying reality as only modern science can show. Causation is a fundamentally mutual, circular, multidirectional, concurrent process with a causal regress that terminates finitely.
Self movers are accounted for at base with the mutual causation I have argued for and cited again and again.
Aristotle was a great man in the ancient era. Those who continue to take him literally with regard to the true nature of the underlying reality, motion, change, and causation are either uneducated, foolish, or dishonest.
Stardusty,
DeleteYou claim to have taken university physics. As I have told you in the past, simply refer back to your university physics textbook, its myriad citations of experiments and formulations, and you will see that modern physics is formulated as mutual causal processes wherein the designation of first or second or mover or moved is arbitrary and therefore meaningless.
So you're saying that that you can't cause a stone to move by pushing it?
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteAnonymous May 14, 2023 at 6:21 AM
Delete"So you're saying that that you can't cause a stone to move by pushing it?"
" If you press a stone with your finger, the finger is also pressed by the stone. If a horse draws a stone tied to a rope, the horse (if I may so say) will be equally drawn back towards the stone: for the distended rope, by the same endeavour to relax or unbend itself, will draw the horse as much towards the stone, as it does the stone towards the horse, and will obstruct the progress of the one as much as it advances that of the other."
The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1846)
by Isaac Newton
LAW III.
en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Mathematical_Principles_of_Natural_Philosophy_(1846)/Axioms,_or_Laws_of_Motion
In the case of your ability to move yourself, and to move other things, there is always an equal magnitude and opposite reaction to every action.
At base, you move yourself because molecules move each other.
Your hand moves as your muscle contracts.
Your muscle contracts because molecules in your muscle cells attract each other, primarily due to the electrostatic force.
The electrostatic force is described with both sample experiments and various formulas in every modern university physics book. Such attractions are mutual, that is, there is no first or second, no distinction between mover and moved, there is only mutual causation at base.
There is no call for an infinite regress to an unmoved mover because all causal regress terminates finitely at base with mutual causation.
In Newton's terms, the stone obstructs the progress of your hand as much as your hand advances the progress of the stone.
Stardusty,
DeleteI asked:
So you're saying that that you can't cause a stone to move by pushing it?
Was your answer a "yes" or a "no"? It seems to me that you are implying Newton was saying "no". Am I right?
Old Dusty,
Delete"You claim to have a background in civil engineering, yet you seem unaware of the myriad experiments in chemistry, atomic physics, subatomic physics, particle accelerators, charge measurement, cloud chambers, field measurements, and on and on."
Well you can now add hand waving to your resume of fallacies. You have not provided a single experiment from modern science that shows that change is not the actualization of a potency and you have provided no experiment that shows that formal or final causality don't exist. In fact, after loads of hot air, you have not even so much as named an experiment much less shown how that experiment was out to prove that Aristotle's natural philosophy or metaphysics or logic were worthless. So all of this great song and dance does precisely zero to show that what is used by modern Thomists from Aristotle has been disproved by any modern experimentation or anything from modern physics.
"Either you are being dishonest about your background or you are being dishonest about being unaware of the vast body of experiments that show Aristotle was wrong about the underlying reality, because he only went as far as an incorrect speculation of the 4 Greek elements."
What I said above applies to the nonsense here as well. Of course Aristotle did not know the periodic table. Nor did anyone else. The point under discussion is whether Aristotle contributed to the development of the modern science. The answer from those who are actually familiar with the recovery of Aristotle's corpus in late medieval scholasticism have shown exhaustively that he did. The fact that you think he did not even in light of the work of Crombie who holds advanced degrees in science, taught at Oxford, and was one of the most prolific historians of science of the 20th century shows that you are clueless. The fact that you keep repeating the point shows that you are incorrigible.
Old Dusty,
Delete"I have in fact cited the experiments and provided significant argumentation, so either you do no read before you write, or you are being dishonest.
You claim to have taken university physics. As I have told you in the past, simply refer back to your university physics textbook, its myriad citations of experiments and formulations, and you will see that modern physics is formulated as mutual causal processes wherein the designation of first or second or mover or moved is arbitrary and therefore meaningless."
I have not seen a single experiment from a scientific journal cited wherein the scientist provides both the data of the experiment and his interpretation. I have seen you drone on about your baseless interpretation of Newton's third law, but your interpretation is not the result of a scientific journal. It is just the non expert opinion of someone who has shown himself to be grossly incompetent in logic, philosophy, and history of science. Do you somehow imagine that this qualifies you to interpret Newton's laws? Are you fancying that posting fallacies here is analogous to peer reviewed academic research? That suggestion is amusing but very difficult to take seriously.
Regarding your quoting of an interpretation of Newton: he did not say what you said. He did not say that there is no sense in which you can refer to a principle of motion. The rock does not initiate the motion. It does not get up and start pulling against the horse.
Recognizing this simply makes someone sane and denying it does not make you scientific. It makes you a pop apologist for materialism who is incompetent not only at logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics, and history of science, but also incompetent at science itself.
As Anonymous (May 13 7:46) pointed out above, the one valid point that I thought you were making was not even valid. As that anonymous said I was giving you too much credit by even thinking that you had gotten one thing correct. I assumed that you were noting that Aristotle was not familiar with modern scientific knowledge about things like inertia (or the periodic table). If that were your point, that would be true but no knock against Aristotle in particular as such knowledge was lacking from every ancient and medieval figure.
Regarding your suggestion that you have any basis for chiding contemporary Thomists, I am going to need you to show some receipts. Why don't you provide a single example of a Thomist who has denied something that has been shown to be true from the modern science. I am not referring to the additional nonsense, metaphysical spin you give to modern science. That spin is the problem as you pretend like modern science has shown that formal causes or teleology don't exist. Such inferences are not demonstrable via experimentation. They are philosophical and require an argument and you have provided nothing in this regard. That is the point that is apparent to everyone else here and yet is not causing the movement of any grey matter upstairs for you. Perhaps the grey matter is pushing back in the opposite direction. There's a hypothesis for you.
Dusty,
DeleteI think I have figured out the problem in our miscommunication. In my case, I am communicating by typing on my keyboard. In your case, your keyboard is typing on you. In the former an intelligent agent is communicating through a human artifact. In your case, an inanimate object is acting upon an entirely passive nominalist who is unable to resist materialist metaphysical tropes. Since you and your keyboard are equally to blame for this tragedy, I think that you should both be tried and put into jail.
"Your required reading assignment is your university physics textbook and On the Notion Of Cause by Bertrand Russell."
DeleteI have read the former and saw no mention of Aristotle on formal causality or teleology or act and potency; the latter is going to need to return from the grave to respond to Feser's exhaustive refutation before his account of causation has even a semblance of credibility. Perhaps one of his modern days devotees might be willing to publish in his defense in response to Feser. If they have, I bet the sound of that bell would produce more saliva for you than pavlov's dogs. But if that had occurred you would point me in the direction of a defense by a contemporary devotee responding to Feser rather than pointing me back to the discredited dead. So sad you have to sit there dry mouthed while your key board keeps abusing you.
Anonymous May 14, 2023 at 7:07 PM
Delete"Stardusty,
I asked:
So you're saying that that you can't cause a stone to move by pushing it?
Was your answer a "yes" or a "no"?"
Neither, or perhaps both.
In either case a "yes" or a "no" would be at best a highly incomplete answer.
" It seems to me that you are implying Newton was saying "no". Am I right?"
Newton went at great length to describe whole systems of movement and causation. Perhaps he had in mind the person who wishes a simplistic answer to a contrived and inadequate question.
Michael,
Delete"Why don't you provide a single example of a Thomist who has denied something that has been shown to be true from the modern science."
The Five Ways of Aquinas, and every attempt to justify them, but no need to be so broad.
We could focus on the First Way.
But, let's not put this off on others, shall we?
By all means, do cite for me an experiment that does not terminate in mutual causation at base. Any scenario will do, hand-rock-stick or a locomotive and the train, or a book on a table or fire and wood or whatever your favorite demonstration of Aristotelian causality is.
Stardusty,
DeleteMe: " It seems to me that you are implying Newton was saying "no". Am I right?"
You:
Newton went at great length to describe whole systems of movement and causation. Perhaps he had in mind the person who wishes a simplistic answer to a contrived and inadequate question.
You were the one who brought up the quote from Newton presumably to answer my question. But now it appears that you don't know how it was relevant?
All humans, even children, have the answer to the question but it is too perplexing for you? Maybe you should dig back into that stack of physics books you claim to know so well and try again.
"But, let's not put this off on others, shall we?"
DeleteTranslation: I have no answer to this.
Now if you are not going to offer me the courtesy of answering my question, don't you think it a bit hypocritical that I should answer yours? Why don't you accommodate my request--exactly as I stated it--first. I am sure that it will not take you long and I don't see anyone here objecting to it. Or you might login under anonymous and offer an objection. Viable option for you.
"You were the one who brought up the quote from Newton presumably to answer my question. But now it appears that you don't know how it was relevant?
DeleteAll humans, even children, have the answer to the question but it is too perplexing for you? Maybe you should dig back into that stack of physics books you claim to know so well and try again."
Wow. This is called reducing one's opponent to silence. Thank you for holding SD's feet to the proverbial flame.
Ah, founds Ed's position in a 2009 post on Teleology.
Delete"Scholastic realism – the position of Augustine and Aquinas – takes what is in effect a middle ground position between Platonic and Aristotelian realism. Like the Aristotelian realist, the Scholastic realist affirms that universals can exist only in either their concrete instantiations or in an intellect. But like Plato, he also affirms that they nevertheless have a kind of existence beyond those instantiations and beyond finite, human intellects. For universals pre-exist both the material world and all finite intellects qua ideas in the infinite, divine intellect, as the patterns according to which God creates the world.
....
Scholastic realism, then, corresponds roughly to Scholastic teleologism: Universals are immanent to the natural world, and therefore the natures of things can, at least to some extent and in principle, be known and studied without reference to their creator; and this remains true even though any ultimate explanation of universals and the things that instantiate them must make reference to God. Similarly, the final causes of things are immanent to the natural world and can, at least to some extent and in principle, be known and studied without reference to God – despite the fact that their explanation too must ultimately be referred to God."
It would be interesting to understand what Ashley might disagree about in this.
Michael,
DeleteDon't worry. I expect he will be repeating the same things in the next tread.
I'm just sorry you got distracted by his muddled diatribes. Hope to see your thoughtful comments keep coming.
Anon,
Delete"But now it appears that you don't know how it was relevant?"
Yes, I realize that you do not know that I already explained the relevance to you.
Q. Does a bicycle have 1 wheel?
A. A bicycle has 2 wheels.
Q. You didn't answer my question, and by the way, it is obvious that a bicycle has 1 wheel, I am looking at a bicycle and I see a wheel. Everybody can see the wheel. A bicycle has 1 wheel.
A. There is no such thing as a 1 wheel bicycle.
Q. See, you are so dumb, I am looking at the wheel and a bicycle obviously has 1 wheel.
A. To understand how a bicycle works you need to understand how a 2 wheel vehicle works.
Q. You are so muddled, you can't even answer the obvious fact that a bicycle has has 1 wheel.
Well, Anon, when you learn about the mutual causation Newton described you can go on to the mutual causation that is described in the formulations of all the forces of nature.
Then, you can understand that at base all causation terminates finitely in mutual causation.
Aristotle, Aquinas, and all the A-T folks got just about everything wrong about motion, change, and causation. To find out why just review the experiments and equations described in your university physics book.
Stardusty,
DeleteSo you're saying that that you can't cause a stone to move by pushing it?...yes or no?You:
Neither, or perhaps both.
In either case a "yes" or a "no" would be at best a highly incomplete answer.
Are you saying Newton says no?
Aha! Bicycle wheels!
Makes as much sense as anything else you've said.
For my part, I can cause a stone to move by pushing it. I've children do the same. Maybe you need some time in the gym if you can't.
Anon,
Delete"Makes as much sense as anything else you've said."
Indeed, everything I have said makes sense.
When you only consider 1 wheel of a bicycle then your consideration is fatally incomplete.
When you only consider your apparent pushing of the stone your consideration is fatally incomplete.
Do you understand that much at least?
"For my part, I can cause a stone to move by pushing it. I've children do the same. Maybe you need some time in the gym if you can't."
That is the common sense view. Aristotle used common sense. That is why he made so many mistakes about motion, change, causation and the structure of the cosmos.
Common sense tells you that you move the stone and that the Earth does not move. Common sense is not enough if you want to gain a realistic understanding of the cosmos.
The stone changes you as much as you change the stone.
Did you know that? Yes, it is true that you change the stone. Did you know that the stone changes you by equal magnitude?
If you say something like "I moved the stone so something must have moved me, therefore I have proved a first mover" you are doing the equivalent of looking only at 1 wheel of the bicycle and drawing wrong conclusions by virtue of your incomplete common sense analysis.
In fact you are aware of the sensation that you moved the stone. You can measure the difference in location of the stone.
To understand more you need to go beyond common sense, beyond such simplistic notions.
When you feel yourself changing the stone in fact the stone is changing you. Whatever kinetic energy the stone gains you lose. The regress of movers goes back to your muscles.
In your muscles molecules move each other mutually. The regress terminates finitely in those mutual attractions, primarily due to the electrostatic force.
You feel like you move the rock because at base charged particles in your muscles move each other by mutual attraction. Here is the basic equation that describes that attraction.
F=k q1 q2 / r^2
Note that there is no distinction between mover and moved, no consideration of actualization of a potential in something else by that which is already actual. Those are ancient Aristotelian errors.
All causation is mutual at base. Designation of mover or moved or self moving or moving other is arbitrary and therefore meaningless.
Further, it seems that when you stop moving the rock it's motion stops, hence the false Aristotelian notion of an essentially ordered causal series. In truth the motion of the rock, its kinetic energy in modern terms, is not lost, only transferred or transformed to surrounding material, net losslessly.
When your hand pushes on a rock you think that you moved the rock and that is pretty much it. The truth is far more complicated and in all cases regresses to mutual causation, not a first mover.
Stardusty,
DeleteMe:
"For my part, I can cause a stone to move by pushing it. I've children do the same. Maybe you need some time in the gym if you can't."
You:
That is the common sense view.
Yes it is common sense and is also the view of Newton and all physicists following him. I can't help it that you don't understand either Aristotle's argument or classical physics. There are dozens of explanations of how force causes things to move on the internet so if you haven't absorbed that by now you never will.
The stone changes you as much as you change the stone.
Did you know that? Yes, it is true that you change the stone. Did you know that the stone changes you by equal magnitude?
No it doesn't. I can move a stone from a location 1 foot away from where it potentially could be to actually being at that location without changing my own location, not that changing my own location would matter for the hand-stone-stick example. Neither stick nor stone could have caused themselves to move, only the hand, making the hand the proximate first mover in this example.
Whether I move the stone 10 yards by pushing it and therefore change my location as well as the stone is irrelevant to the argument as is how much force I used, how much friction is present how fast I did it or how much the stone weighs. All that matters is that the stone can't move itself (see Newton's 1st law of motion) until I apply and adequate force to it (see Newton's 1st and 2nd laws of motion). If I "impress" (Newton's term) an adequate force to a stone it will move according to Aristotle, Newton and all modern physicists.
See the Horse Cart Paradox to see how classical physics shows how the force from a horse pulls a cart. The cart moves because the horse pulls it, in a similar manner to how the hand moves the stick moves the stone. The horse causes the cart to move by pulling it (with a force it supplies).
The kinetic energy of the system is irrelevant to the argument of The First Way. "Why does the stone move from one location to another?" is the question asked, and the answer is "because the hand caused it to move".
But let's look at the kinetic energy of the stone:
The kinetic energy of the stone starts a zero. The kinetic energy of the stone increases to an average of 1/2mv^2 while being moved by (the force impressed by) the hand and then ends at zero again when the hand stops pushing. The stone was at location A but potentially at location B unable to change that potentiality to actuality. It was moved by another, the hand. There was no "mutual causation" of change in location whether I moved the stone a foot without moving my feet or whether I pushed the stone 10 yards while moving myself in the same direction and change of location (aka local motion) is the topic. The stone had no part in changing it's location other than going along for the ride.
You've been simply trying to change the subject either intentionally (which I doubt) or unintentionally because you confound the concepts of classical physics and the terms of The First Way as well as reasoning poorly.
Anon,
DeleteSP-Did you know that the stone changes you by equal magnitude?
"No it doesn't."
"The kinetic energy of the stone increases to an average of 1/2mv^2"
Correct. And concurrently your energy decreases by the same amount.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. All causation is thus mutual. The stone changed you by decreasing your energy as much as you changed the stone by increasing its energy.
Causally, the distinction of first or second is arbitrary and therefore meaningless, there is only the mutual causation between you and the stone.
"There was no "mutual causation" of change in location"
What you perceive as change of location is not a change for the object that moved.
In the time it took you to write your post you changed location by thousands of kilometers and likely did not even think about it, much less detect any change in yourself.
"The kinetic energy of the system is irrelevant to the argument of The First Way. "Why does the stone move from one location to another?" is the question asked, and the answer is "because the hand caused it to move"."
To read the glaring defects of the First Way see
StardustyPsyche May 17, 2023 at 6:47 AM
Indeed, Aquinas stopped regressing nearly the same as you did, in his case he asserted the staff moves only because the hand moves it, whereas you say the rock moves only because the hand moves it, basically the same sort of scenario.
The hand moves as the muscle contracts.
Muscles contract because charged molecules move each other mutually.
Every causal regress terminates finitely in mutual causation.
The basic formula that describes the finite termination of the causal regress in the hand-stone example is this:
F=k q1 q2 / r^2
Note, designation of q1 and q2 is arbitrary. You can designate either charge as q1 and the other as q2, it doesn't matter. Calling one of the charges first and the other second, or suggesting one moves the other in some preferred manner, or any such designation is arbitrary and therefore meaningless.
There is only the mutual attraction, the mutual causation at base.
Stardusty,
DeleteMe:
"The kinetic energy of the stone increases to an average of 1/2mv^2"
You:
Correct. And concurrently your energy decreases by the same amount.
And maybe I was wearing blue pajamas. But I still caused the stone from potentially being in one place to actually being there.
Causally, the distinction of first or second is arbitrary and therefore meaningless, there is only the mutual causation between you and the stone.
Except that I caused the stone to move. The stone did move itself nor did it cause me to move it.
What you perceive as change of location is not a change for the object that moved.
Except that the object suffered a change in location. Those physics books you claim to have read should have a bunch of graphs showing how the velocity of an object changes as it moves from one location to another over time.
In the time it took you to write your post you changed location by thousands of kilometers and likely did not even think about it, much less detect any change in yourself.
I didn't think about it because I didn't move wrt my inertial reference frame. Keeping in mind that velocity is always in reference to something seems to confuse you.
To read the glaring defects of the First Way see...
You didn't get a single thing right.
Indeed, Aquinas stopped regressing nearly the same as you did, in his case he asserted the staff moves only because the hand moves it, whereas you say the rock moves only because the hand moves it, basically the same sort of scenario.
Yes, that was my point. The hand is the first proximate cause of the stick and stone moving as explained above by me, Dr. Feser, Aristotle, Aquinas, Newton and all physicists before and after Newton.
Every causal regress terminates finitely in mutual causation.
No it doesn't. The hand caused the stick and stone to move. The stick and stone were not involved in causing their movement. They were along for the ride. There is simply no "mutual causation" within this 3 element system. The hand is the mover and the other 2 are moved. Period.
The basic formula that describes the finite termination of the causal regress in the hand-stone example is this:
F=k q1 q2 / r^2
Your formula describes the force between 2 charges wrt the distance between them. So what.
The man was not moving the stone. Then the man decided to cause the stone to move and impressed a force on the stick and consequently the stone causing them both to move. If you want to argue that the man did this by increasing or decreasing the distance between charges in his body I'd complain that you are ignorant of biology but the stick and stone would still have been moved by the man "non-mutually".
There is only the mutual attraction, the mutual causation at base.
Wrong. The stick and stone were moved. They went along for a ride provided by the hand.
@Anonymous May 18th
DeleteThank you for your kind words and for all your efforts here!
Anon,
Delete"Those physics books you claim to have read should have a bunch of graphs showing how the velocity of an object changes as it moves from one location to another over time."
Yes, and as you changed the velocity of the stone then the stone changed you equally and mutually. As you increased the energy of the stone by accelerating it then the stone decreased your energy equally.
All causation is mutual at base.
SP-Every causal regress terminates finitely in mutual causation.
"No it doesn't."
There is your core error.
"At base" means at the bottom of a causal regress analysis. That is what the proofs of Thomism are based on, regress analysis.
At the base of every causal regress analysis is mutual causation, there are no exceptions.
"Your formula describes the force between 2 charges wrt the distance between them. So what."
That is what is at the base of the causal regress analysis of the hand-stone example, the mutual electrostatic attractions in your muscles. It is those mutual attractions that terminate the causal regress analysis in your example.
"If you want to argue that the man did this by increasing or decreasing the distance between charges in his body I'd complain that you are ignorant of biology"
That is how muscles work, by mutual electrostatic attraction described as a sliding action or a molecular walk.
Stardusty,
DeleteYes, and as you changed the velocity of the stone then the stone changed you equally and mutually. As you increased the energy of the stone by accelerating it then the stone decreased your energy equally.
The stone did not cause it's own movement nor did it cause the hand to move it. I pushed it and it was pushed just like the horse pulled the cart in the example I showed you. I have to assume at this point you can't understand it. That's OK, lots of people don't understand physics. That doesn't make you a bad person.
At the base of every causal regress analysis is mutual causation, there are no exceptions.
The hand applied force in one direction and the stick and stone moved accordingly. Just like the example of the horse pulling the cart in one direction. The stick and stone did not mutually cause themselves to move in the former and the cart did not mutually cause itself to move in the latter. Even if I and the horse were wearing blue pajamas, the cart, stick and stone were not mutually involved in causing themselves to be moved from location A to location B. They went along for the ride.
That is what is at the base of the causal regress analysis of the hand-stone example, the mutual electrostatic attractions in your muscles. It is those mutual attractions that terminate the causal regress analysis in your example.
Sticks and stones don't have muscles so they were not moved by "electrostatic attractions", they were moved by the force of the hand. So the proximate cause of the stone's movement was the stick and the proximate cause of the stick's movement was the hand. There is no "mutual electrostatic attractions" in this 3 element series and you have been demonstrated to be wrong that "every causal regress analysis is mutual causation". Period!
It is a fact of physics that the hand is the mover and the stick and stone are passive. That is why this is a stock example of an essentially ordered series. One mover causing things unable to move themselves to move.
OK. Now that we've established that fact, you want to ask "what makes the hand move?".
The short answer is "the man". The whole man. His flesh and blood, his capabilities and powers, his continued existence during the movement and the reason he decided to move the stone. Take away any of those and the hand won't move the stone. Yes there are electrical changes internal to his body when he exercises his power to move the stone, but it was he that caused those changes by his will. He caused his muscles to move just like the horse caused the cart to move and the hand caused the stick and stone to move as essentially ordered series. No mutual causation just a mover causing things unable to move themselves to move.
Anon,
Delete""what makes the hand move?""
That is a necessary question in any sound causal regress analysis.
"The whole man."
Which is a closed system, for example, when he holds his breath and still moves his hand.
"Yes there are electrical changes internal to his body "
All of which act via mutual causation.
"He caused his muscles"
Indeed, all of which terminates in mutual causation at base in a sound causal regress analysis.
Surely you realize that other animals have muscles and other animals move themselves. Do you suppose there is an ant "will" that is somehow not part of the ant that causes the ant muscles to contract and thus move the clump of dirt?
I presume you know that singled celled animals move themselves and other things. Do you suppose it is the bacterial "will" that causes the bacteria to move?
All self moving of all animals is at base caused by mutual causation. You cannot cite a real and factual counterexample.
Stardusty,
DeleteMe:
""what makes the hand move?""
You:
That is a necessary question in any sound causal regress analysis.
OK, but your argument to this point has been your "physics textbooks" have told you that carts cause horses to move them. Carts do not "mutually cause" horses to move them nor do sticks and stones "mutually cause" hands to move them. Look again at the diagram from that link. The horse provides the force causing the cart to move. The cart is along for the ride. Notice that the "resultant force" is the force from the horse that is left over after the vector addition of all the other forces and is what moves the cart in the direction of that resultant force. Notice that it goes in a single direction, not in opposing directions. Don't worry it doesn't matter if you understand it right now. Just trust that physicists have known this for centuries.
All of which act via mutual causation.
No they don't. The muscles move because the man causes them to move. The muscles do not cause the man to decide to move them anymore than the cart causes the horse in blue pajamas to move it. The muscles move because the man decides to move them. Please see a doctor if this is not the case with you.
Indeed, all of which terminates in mutual causation at base in a sound causal regress analysis.
No. Once again the man causes his muscles to move just like the horse causes the cart to move and the hand causes the stick and stone to move. The muscles do what the man wants them to do, unless he has some health issue.
You cannot cite a real and factual counterexample.
I just did. A healthy person's muscles move because the person wants them to move when that person wants to move a stick to push a stone. The person's muscles were not involved in that decision so there is NO "mutual causation". Period.
Just like there is no "mutual causation" of carts causing horses to move them.
bmiller,
Delete"A healthy person's muscles move because the person wants them to move"
Look up The Sliding Filament Theory of muscle contraction. Molecules bind due to mutual forces. Tissues slide past each other due to mutual forces.
The motive force for muscle contraction is due to mutual causation, primarily the electrostatic force at the molecular level in muscle tissue.
"the person" as a cause is hopelessly simplistic. "The person" is not one big blob.
Nerve action is also at base due to mutual causation.
You cannot soundly name any causal process that does not terminate finitely in mutual causation in a causal regress analysis.
If you think you have a counter example the simple fact is that you have stopped your regression analysis too soon.
Stardusty,
DeleteThe motive force for muscle contraction is due to mutual causation,
No it is not. A healthy person causes his muscles to move. Muscles do not cause themselves to move nor do they cause the person to decide to move them.
primarily the electrostatic force at the molecular level in muscle tissue.
Leaving aside your simplistic attempt to describe how muscles contract, the fact remains that muscles do not cause themselves to contract. They are caused to contract by the person.
The motive force for muscle contraction is due to mutual causation, primarily the electrostatic force at the molecular level in muscle tissue.
No it's not. The same molecules/electrons were present before the person decided to move his muscles as during his decision to contract his muscles. The only difference is he decided to cause his muscles to contract. Just like the cart being pulled by the horse.
"the person" as a cause is hopelessly simplistic. "The person" is not one big blob.
Right. The person is not "one big blob". The person is a certain type of thing with characteristics, limitations, powers and capabilities. One of the powers his powers is to be able to move his muscles at will. One of his limitations is that he can only exercise his powers to move his muscles while he is alive. He did not cause himself to be alive, nor does he cause himself to remain alive.
Nerve action is also at base due to mutual causation.
In the case of a person causing his hand to move a stick to move a stone the person causes the nervous system to stimulate the particular muscles required to do that particular movement. Nerves to not cause muscles to move sticks by themselves nor do nerves cause the person to decide to move sticks. Just like the cart does not cause the horse to move it.
You cannot soundly name any causal process that does not terminate finitely in mutual causation in a causal regress analysis.
If you think you have a counter example the simple fact is that you have stopped your regression analysis too soon.
I've just did it again. Neither muscles nor nerves "mutually cause" the person to decide to move his hand to move a stick to move a stone.
The stone is moved by the stick. No mutual cause
The stick is moved by the hand. No mutual cause
The hand is moved by the person. No mutual cause.
The muscles of the person involved are moved by the person. No mutual cause.
The components of the muscles, no matter how far you want to go, are moved by the person. No mutual cause.
The cause of the motion of the stone is ultimately the cause of the form of the person. Along with his material cause, efficient cause and final cause or purpose.
Bmiller,
DeleteSP-"The motive force for muscle contraction is due to mutual causation,"
"No it is not."
You clearly do not know what the term "motive force" means.
In a solid fuel rocket the motive force is due to the chemical reactions of the fuel, which in turn is due to the mutual forces between the molecules, atoms, electrons, and protons of the fuel, all reacting primarily as a consequence of the electrostatic force.
The motive force is the force of motion, not the ignition source.
The ignition source is a past temporal process, also a consequence of mutual causation, but past temporal and no longer a factor and in any case not the ongoing motive force of the rocket.
A rocket moves because at base submicroscopic beables move each other mutually.
A muscle moves in a more complicated way, but it is somewhat analogous to the rocket in that there is an "ignition source" sometimes called the action potential that is also a past temporal process of mutual causation at base.
The motive force of a muscle arises in a process called the sliding filaments, which is at base a process of mutual causation of electrostatic forces.
"the fact remains that muscles do not cause themselves to contract"
They can, so in general, you are wrong.
The heart will continue to beat even when removed from the body.
A muscle cramp is a contracted muscle that will not relax even though "the will" very much wishes it would.
There are nerve pathways that have nothing to do with "the will", such that certain stimuli will trigger the motive force of the muscle directly without any "will", such as the retraction of the arm when touching something painful.
"The same molecules/electrons were present before the person decided to move his muscles as during his decision to contract his muscles. ***The only difference is he decided to cause his muscles to contract***."
You really ought to study the chemistry of muscle contraction. You obviously have no idea what you are talking about.
Just enter "The Sliding Filament Theory of muscle contraction" into your search tool.
Stardusty,
DeleteA muscle moves in a more complicated way, but it is somewhat analogous to the rocket in that there is an "ignition source" sometimes called the action potential that is also a past temporal process of mutual causation at base.
They are hardly analogous. One expells gas in a single direction and the other contracts muscle tissue in a single direction. Regardless there is no "mutual causation" involved in either case. In the case of a man moving the muscles to move a stick to move a stone, the man causes his muscles to move and keep moving. In the case of a rocket (designed and built by the man for the purpose of transporting things) it is again the man that is the cause. The rocket would not exist and function the way it does except for the fact that the man designed and built it. And it does not cause the man to load it with fuel, press the ignition button and direct which direction it moves and how far. But of course the topic is the hand moving the stick moving the stone, so you're trying to change the subject.
They can, so in general, you are wrong.
I'm not wrong. You're just trying to change the subject again. The subject is the normal stock example of a hand moving a stick moving a stone. When a person decides to move a stick to move a stone he normally exercises his will. Muscle cramps do not normally cause this, nor does his beating heart (directly), nor does an involuntary reaction to pain (non of which are "mutually caused I might add). The fact you're trying to change the subject indicates that you realize you're wrong.
You really ought to study the chemistry of muscle contraction. You obviously have no idea what you are talking about.
Just enter "The Sliding Filament Theory of muscle contraction" into your search tool.
Yes it's easy to find. It's been years since I have been interested in it and I'm not too interested in it now either. I'm more interested in how you understand it even if your understanding is wrong. Here is what you said:
You:
Molecules attract each other via the electrostatic force in what is described as a molecular walk or mutual sliding force.
OK, that isn't exactly right because chemical reactions change molecular bindings and so forth and energy is released but it doesn't matter wrt what is causing these changes. The entire process of stone being moved by the stick by the hand never involves mutual causation.
The stick and stone do not mutually cause themselves to move nor do they cause the person to decide to decide to move them in any way. The person's muscles do not mutually cause the person to decide to move the stick and stone and keep moving them. Nor do the molecules, atoms, electrons, quarks or whatever that make up the material components of the muscles cause the person to decide to move them to move the stick and stone.
It is the person's will exercised through the person's form that causes the stick and stone to move. Whatever keeps the person alive is cause of the stone being moved.
There is ultimately no "mutual causation".
bmiller,
Delete"One expells gas in a single direction and the other contracts muscle tissue in a single direction. Regardless there is no "mutual causation" involved in either case."
Wrong on both counts.
Muscle filaments slide past each other mutually.
Rocket fuel molecules react with each other mutually.
"The rocket would not exist and function the way it does except for the fact that the man designed and built it."
That is a temporal argument irrelevant to the argument for a first mover.
But, consider a geyser, a sort of natural rocket, no man, no will.
"You're just trying to change the subject again. The subject is the normal stock example of a hand moving a stick moving a stone."
Same subject, but your analysis skills and scientific knowledge are so rudimentary that it seems hopeless you will be able to reasonably analyze anything so "architecturally" complex as a human being.
So, I am giving you some simpler examples to attempt, but, so far, you have shown no significant analytical capacity for even the simplest examples.
"The entire process of stone being moved by the stick by the hand never involves mutual causation."
Every acceleration is always due to mutual causation at base.
By "at base" what is meant is "at the terminus of a causal regress analysis".
The terminus of every comprehensive realistic causal regress analysis is always mutual causation because that is just how the cosmos works.
Consider this very simple case of 2 charges.
F=k*q1*q2/r^2
So, the force between 2 charges is proportional to the product of the charges divided by the distance squared.
That is how forces work, mutually. The designation of q1 and q2 is arbitrary and therefore meaningless. The force acts mutually between them and on both of them mutually concurrently. Force then results in acceleration, again, mutual.
That's how the cosmos works at base, via mutual interactions, mutual causation.
Every realistic and comprehensive causal regress analysis necessarily terminates with mutual causation because that is the only way causation works at base.
Stardusty,
Delete"The rocket would not exist and function the way it does except for the fact that the man designed and built it."
That is a temporal argument irrelevant to the argument for a first mover.
I agree that introducing how rockets work into a discussion of how a stone it moved by a stick is moved by a hand and is ultimately moved by the person is irrelevant. They are only similar in that both operate as they types of things they exist as with the capabilities and powers they have as that type of thing. However, the rocket is just a tool the man has made from existing stuff for the purpose of transporting things. Like the arrangement of the horse and cart. Or the stick used to move a stone.
Same subject,
Of course they are not the same subject. You need to keep changing the subject because you realize your position makes no sense. You've squirmed from declaring Newton thought carts caused horses to move them to muscles cause persons to move stones with sticks. There is no "mutual causation" in a single example you've given.
Consider this very simple case of 2 charges.
So what? Even if 2 free charges were involved in moving a person's muscles (they aren't) to grip and move a stick to move a stone they did not move themselves either individually or mutually. The person made the decision to move the stone and if that involved changing the position of free charges it was the person that caused the motion and not the free charges. The charges went along for the ride. Just like ever other part of the person's body that was moved by his will.
Every realistic and comprehensive causal regress analysis necessarily terminates with mutual causation because that is the only way causation works at base.
Except the for the person deciding to move his hand to move a stick to move a stone. The horse supplying the resultant force that moves the cart. And ever other case of movement of corporal things.
It seems to me that the language of mutual causation in physics can be further broken down into the Aristotelian point that whatever is moved, is moved by another. Mutual causation does not invalidate that. I've had this discussion with SD before, and I'm not convinced by his arguments against my position.
DeleteAdditionally, all cases of mutual causation prove that whatever is moved is moved by another. When two objects in a state of motion relative to one another, and they collide together, they are both moved by something else. Aquinas also thought that animals were not self movers either, because one part of the animal moves another part of the animal. Their motion is explainable purely in materialistic terms. There everything in an animal is moved by another.
Also, the idea that my will can be ultimately reduced to some ignition point in the brain assumes a reductive materialistic account of mind. This is not in the scope of what physics can describe. It has also not been proven at the level of neuroscience either. At best we are given a request for a blank check that materialism will eventually be able to explain everything.
There is also a reification of the mathematics that physics uses to exhaust what happens at the level of objects. q1 and q2 are irrelevant to physics, only because physics is not concerned with any other considerations. It has confined itself to only one layer of reality (that which is quantifiable) and made it absolute.
Daniel,
DeleteI suggest you rethink your argument. There simply are ultimately no cases of "mutual causation" period concerning motion at all as you correctly note. So talking about "all cases of mutual causation" is confusing to the reader.
For instance Columb's Law describes a force between point particles when neither particle is moving. There is no movement being caused in this case so there is no cause of movement. The only question regarding causation in this case is "what is causing these particles to exist in this way?" This involves The Second Way although The First Way naturally leads to The Second Way.
BTW, Stardusty hasn't denied he causes his own muscles to move things like sticks, stones and keys on a keyboard. That indicates he knows he's wrong at some level of consciousness.
Daniel,
Delete"It seems to me that the language of mutual causation in physics can be further broken down into the Aristotelian point that whatever is moved, is moved by another."
No, it can't. Causation is mutual and concurrent. In the example of q1 and q2 one could say q1 used q2 as a sort of anchor to move itself, like you can grab onto a handgrip and pull yourself toward it. In that view q1 moved itself. The same could be said of q2 moving itself. Or you could say that q1 moved q2 and that q2 moved q1.
All such designations are arbitrary, and therefore meaningless. There is only the mutual and concurrent equal and opposite force and therefore motion between them.
"I've had this discussion with SD before, and I'm not convinced by his arguments against my position."
Fair enough, but what Aristotle, Aquinas, Scotus, and Rizzi all have in mind is a one way causation. That is the basis for a one way causal regress. They did not have the concept of mutuality.
That is one of the reasons Newton's Principia was so revolutionary, because it overturned Aristotle.
This is further evidenced by the arguments against circular causation used by Scotus and Rizzi. Both attempt to disprove circular causation on the principle that if A is the cause of motion it cannot be both anterior and posterior to itself. They reasoned A moved B, B moved C, C moved A. Thus A, so to speak, pushed itself in the back, and of course you will not move off your spot by reaching around and pushing on your own back.
Such an analysis fails to account for the mutuality of action. When A pushed B then B also pushed A. B and C likewise. C and A likewise. A, B, and C all pushed each other and therefore they will all move away from each other with an expansion motion.
"There everything in an animal is moved by another."
Everything in an animal moves by mutual causation at base. That is why animals move themselves, because at base molecules in the animal move each other mutually.
"At best we are given a request for a blank check that materialism will eventually be able to explain everything."
It is the introduction of the will that is an attempt to get a blank check, since no such ethereal entity is in evidence.
Consider the same principles with other animals. Do you suppose that an ant has will? The basic principles of motion are the same. An ant moves itself because at base molecules in the ant move each other mutually.
Further, muscles do not, in general, require a signal from the brain. For example consider
reflex arc
spinal reflex
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwHdYk7NogU
There is no will, just electrochemical reactions along nerves and in muscles that result in motive force. At base all due to mutual causation.
"q1 and q2 are irrelevant to physics,"
The charge force equation is not a reification of math, it is a mathematical description of ontological reality. If you rub a balloon on your sweater it will really stick. The maths simply describe the forces of that reality.
Hey bmiller,
Delete“I suggest you rethink your argument. There simply are ultimately no cases of "mutual causation" period concerning motion at all as you correctly note. So talking about "all cases of mutual causation" is confusing to the reader.”
I will take your advice on this since I am out of my depth. I was granting his point for the sake of argument. It makes sense that when I push a rock, there is a certain amount of resistance that is pushing back on my hand. The resistance of the rock is just a fact of its nature though. It is not causing itself to resist the hand. And the hand, if it has sufficient strength, is causing the rock to move. But unlike the rock, the motion of the hand depends instrumentally on the human will. Also, even though the rock is exerting a force on the hand that is ultimately moving it, the hand is still being moved by another, just as the rock is still being moved by another. Its just that the rock is moving the hand only accidentally, while the hand is moving the rock essentially. Does that make sense?
“For instance Coulomb's Law describes a force between point particles when neither particle is moving. There is no movement being caused in this case so there is no cause of movement.”
If the charge between q1 and q2 is equal, then the force between the protons and the electrons are balanced out. They are neutral. If the force is positive or negative, then where are either more electrons or more protons in the object. If you increase the distance between q1 and q2, then there ought to be less force overall from what it was at the original distance. I agree that there is no movement. The law only speaks about repelling versus attracting, but that does not translate into motion between q1 and q2.
Are you saying that when SD applies this at the macro level, he is applying Coulomb's law in an invalid way?
“The only question regarding causation in this case is "what is causing these particles to exist in this way?"
Agreed.
“This involves The Second Way although The First Way naturally leads to The Second Way.”
If you don’t mind, and you have a moment, can you flesh this out a bit more? I’d be interested in how you go about doing that.
"No, it can't. Causation is mutual and concurrent. In the example of q1 and q2 one could say q1 used q2 as a sort of anchor to move itself, like you can grab onto a handgrip and pull yourself toward it. In that view q1 moved itself. The same could be said of q2 moving itself. Or you could say that q1 moved q2 and that q2 moved q1.
DeleteAll such designations are arbitrary, and therefore meaningless. There is only the mutual and concurrent equal and opposite force and therefore motion between them."
SD - Are you talking about Coulomb's Law? If yes, then I'm not sure where causation comes into play. Here is what I've learned so far from the internet:
An atom has a nucleus of protons and neutrons. Neutrons are neutral in charge.
Protons have a positive charge. Electrons, which orbit the nucleus have a negative charge.
A proton has a charge of 1.6X10 to the power of -19 Coulombs. Charge is said to be quantized. It exists in discrete amounts. It will always be a multiple of 1.6X10 to the power of -19 Coulombs.
An electron has a negative amount of the same value, so -1.6X10 to the power of -19 Coulombs.
So lets call the positive charge q1 and the negative charge q2. Opposite charges attract. Like charges repel. Q1 has a force that propels it to Q2. Likewise for q2 to q1. They each experience an equal force in magnitude, but opposite in direction. ---><---
So force is calculated as F = kq1q2 / r2. R is the distance to the center of these two charges between q1 and q2. These are known as point charges. K is the proportionality constant, which is 9 x 10 to the power of 9 Newtons / m2c2.
An object that is positively charged has more protons than electrons. An object that is negatively charged has more electrons than protons. When there are equal protons and electrons, the object has a neutral charge.
This equation F = kq1q2 / r2, describes the electric force, the magnitude of the charges and the distance between the two charges. If we were to increase the magnitude of one of the charges, say double the value you put in for q1, then the electric force will increase. Say from 100n to 200n. However, if you increase the distance of r between q1 and q2, then the force between them decreases as well. Say twice the distance would be 2 squared, which would be ¼ the Newtons.
Just trying to think about this in terms of causation then --- Seems like K is a constant, but q1 and q2 can change, as can r. How do they change? And what causes them to change? Do they change themselves? Or does it take an external object to change them?
We know that when the universe formed, there were only hydrogen and helium atoms. What caused them to change? They coalesced into stars that through the immense pressures of gravity caused them to form into the heavier elements through nuclear fusion. They did not cause themselves to change. I'm not sure how language of mutual causation fits in here. Because it seems to me that in fusion, extra protons and neutrons had to be fused together through pressures and heat, along with their required negative electrons. Where is the mutuality in this picture? Seems like they are not self moved, but moved by the immense pressures and heat surrounding them. Hydrogen and helium atoms had to be destroyed in order to get the raw materials to make the larger elements....These changes are dependent on external movers to make them happen... right?
Daniel,
DeleteI think there is some confusion here regarding movement and force. Just because a force is applied to an object does not mean the object is moving. If you push against a wall neither you nor the wall moves (ie changes location) although the wall experiences the force you apply and you experience the reaction of the wall resisting motion.
So for instance here:
Its just that the rock is moving the hand only accidentally, while the hand is moving the rock essentially.
The rock may be applying a reactive force to the hand pushing it, but that does not mean the rock is moving the hand. In the stock example of the hand-stick-stone the stick and stone are moved by the hand because the net force of the hand is greater than all resistive forces and therefore things start to move.
To see what's going on see the cart and horse example.
Are you saying that when SD applies this at the macro level, he is applying Coulomb's law in an invalid way?
My point is that, as you say, this is not an example of anything moving. So it is a distraction from any argument of motion. I don't know why Stardusty thinks this somehow relates to his "mutual causation" of motion since there is no motion involved. Just equal forces keeping things from moving.
If you don’t mind, and you have a moment, can you flesh this out a bit more? I’d be interested in how you go about doing that.
The First Way is an argument involving the observation that something is moving and since nothing can move itself and there can be no infinite regress of movers moving things there must be an Unmoved Mover. This is easy to see regarding inanimate objects because they obviously do not start or stop their own movement nor change their own direction once moving. But animate objects seem to do those things by moving parts of their whole. We can see by self examination that we do that by our will directing us toward what we think is good for us. How did we get to be this way? By the efficient or generating cause, which is the argument of The Second Way.
Daniel,
Delete"Just trying to think about this in terms of causation then"
Ok, just keep in mind, all causation is mutual at base. There is no such thing as a one way push, a one way pull, one way causation, or a one way causal regress.
" but q1 and q2 can change, as can r. How do they change? And what causes them to change? "
In one of the simplest examples the charges remain constant and r changes.
Change in r due to attraction or repulsion is the causation at the base of muscle filaments "sliding" past each other. Mutual causation is at the base of the causal regress that accounts for the motive force of muscles.
"We know that when the universe formed, there were only hydrogen and helium atoms. What caused them to change?"
Nobody knows the answer to that question and anybody who says they do is either kidding themselves or just being dishonest.
Why did the big bang go bang? Nobody knows.
But that question is irrelevant to the First Way, and the other four ways of Aquinas. Aquinas starts with the observation that things in the cosmos do in fact move, and that we do in fact observe change.
Irrespective of how it all got going in the first place, it is in point of observed fact, going right now, and Aquinas used that as his starting point.
Motion in the general sense of the word, including change in motion, and how we analyze the components of motion, is perpetual. The perpetual motion of our observed cosmos is due to the conservation of matter-energy and that fact that all motion is in space, and space is a lossless medium for motion.
The First Way is based on the false notion that sublunary motion is in a lossy medium such that absent a mover motion will slow and stop and be lost.
That is a key error of Aristotle and Aquinas, the notion of loss in a lossy medium. That idea is false. Motion is never lost, only transferred or transformed, perpetually.
Daniel,
Delete"They coalesced into stars that through the immense pressures of gravity caused them to form into the heavier elements through nuclear fusion. They did not cause themselves to change."
Actually, yes, they did cause themselves to change.
Star formation is a good example of mutual causation. Supposing there is a huge cloud of gas, mostly hydrogen, some helium, and as you say, that cloud of gas coalesced.
What does that mean, "coalesced"? It means that all the atoms and particles in the cloud all attracted each other gravitationally. They all changed each other mutually by attracting each other mutually. That caused them to change themselves mutually by the heat of compression until at the core of this hot compression they crushed each other so forcefully that they began to fuse, and that fusion released energy, what we see as a star shining, such as the sun.
"Because it seems to me that in fusion, extra protons and neutrons had to be fused together through pressures and heat, along with their required negative electrons. Where is the mutuality in this picture? Seems like they are not self moved, but moved by the immense pressures and heat surrounding them."
That is the mutual self moving. That is what the pressure at the core of a star is due to, all the bits of material of the star attracting all the other bits of the star mutually.
"Hydrogen and helium atoms had to be destroyed in order to get the raw materials to make the larger elements....These changes are dependent on external movers to make them happen... right?"
It's not so much that hydrogen and helium get destroyed as subatomic particles in smaller atoms rearrange and recombine into larger atoms.
Proton-proton electrostatic repulsion mutually pushes the hydrogen nuclei apart, but the mutual attraction of all the particles in the star combines to force the protons together against their mutual repulsion. With the help of some neutrons the strong nuclear force takes over to mutually attract the protons and neutrons more than the electrostatic force mutually pushes the protons apart and a heavier nucleus forms and stabilizes.
But that tension remains with the electrostatic force always pushing the protons apart mutually but the strong nuclear force always attracting the neutrons and protons mutually together with a greater force, thus keeping the heavier nucleus together in a sort of ongoing battle of opposing mutual forces.
Stardusty,
DeleteChange in r due to attraction or repulsion is the causation at the base of muscle filaments "sliding" past each other. Mutual causation is at the base of the causal regress that accounts for the motive force of muscles.
Why would "r" change just when you decided to move a stone with a stick? Why not before, after or not at all? Do you really think the electrical charges in your muscles suddenly decided to move a stick? Don't you think that sounds absurd?
Hi bmiller - Thanks for your response. It was very helpful.
DeleteHey StardustyPsyche - I appreciate the tone you've taken when discussing your ideas with me. I'm sure we will have a chance to exchange ideas again.
God bless,
Daniel
"Why would "r" change just when you decided to move a stone with a stick?"
DeleteThe motive force of a muscle is due to mutual electrostatic forces in the muscle cells. In a so-called essential causal series that is the terminus of the causal chain in the present moment, mutual forces between fundamental beables in the muscle cells. That is the sort of causal regress analysis relevant to the First Way.
If you want to engage in a temporal causal regress, so-called accidental accidental causation then there are a few options, although they are irrelevant to the First Way.
The hand can move in a reflex arc, say, if one is poked with a needle. Due to processes of mutual causation electrochemical signals move along nerves directly to the muscles to provide the action potential.
In other cases mutual causation in the brain causes electrochemical signals to move along the nerve to the muscle to provide the action potential.
In all cases of all sorts of comprehensive realistic causal regression analysis the terminus is mutual causation.
“ So, there is no need to make up some completely unobserved and in principle unobservable being as the necessary being. There is no logical or known ontological reason why observable beables cannot be the necessary being(s). ”
ReplyDeleteSD, you seem to have a peculiar set of intellectual commitments. If you see no problem with asserting that material, observable beings can be the necessary beings, why bother with the extra step at all of assigning that property to unobserved material beings we don’t even know exists yet? It seems like the simplest explanation would be to stop where we are right now, we don’t even need to posit anything theoretical like fields.
You clearly seem uncomfortable attaching the label of “necessary” to some kinds of existing material objects (or less charitably, are unwilling to admit it because you think *we* would be uncomfortable with that being the case), so there must be some principle for this distinction that you have yet articulated.
Anon,
Delete"It seems like the simplest explanation would be to stop where we are right now, we don’t even need to posit anything theoretical like fields."
Simpler is not necessarily the truth. The reason to bother with complexity is because the cosmos is factually complex.
Dr. Feser seems genuinely in pursuit of truth, so we have at least that basic sensibility in common.
Now I'm really confused.
DeleteYour original comment implies that the simplicity of your theory is theoretical virtue over Dr. Feser's account, and now you're saying that we actually ought to avoid a simpler explanation?
As I understood your objection, you originally argued that Dr. Feser's account is unnecessarily metaphysically complex and positing an immaterial being as the necessary being provides no explanatory value and solves no logical or ontological problem. Your own metaphysical account posits an unproven material being (or beings) as the metaphysics necessary ones.
I'm not trying to be pedantic here, but there seems to be a great deal at stake in figuring out this question. If it is the case that material beings can be necessary beings then it is possible that a lot of scientists are wasting time and resources on problems that do not actually have solutions. It seems to me like we need a good principle to determine where the buck stops when declaring that a material being could be a necessary being.
@ All,
Deletesd says "Simpler is not necessarily the truth. The reason to bother with complexity is because the cosmos is factually complex."
It is not progress in science to find a more complex model for the same finite data than already exists. The compression of data into a general rule is always the teleology of proper science, compression being a metaphysical measure of the progress.
sd here contradicts himself because the complexity of the possible future measurement he usually claims is nothing, "nothing changes", etc. "it is all a 'jiggling' of what i, sd, declare to be fundamental, there is no complexity, no causation, and Dr. Feser now agrees with me"
Some science! sd's "explanations" are always hilarious🤣!
sd's claim that Dr. Feser's genuine pursuit of truth is common with sd seems to be nothing more than an unacknowledged nod to Aquinas in his first 10 questions that we cannot prove anything to those with whom we have nothing in common so that sd can now "prove" his absurd ideas to Dr. Feser, but this does not qualify as that type of commonality, as _everyone_ claims to be seeking truth, so this commonality does not distinguish people to whom proofs are fruitful from those to whom proofs are unfruitful.
Belief in the Supernatural basis of the Church would be more like such a meaningful commonality. sd's out of hand rejection of this is a typical failure of commonality that makes sd's assertions nothing more than unwarranted personal opinion that people of common sense can see through, even though sd himself cannot.
Generally, sd ignores ideas about the compression of complexity, as he sees them as contradictions of his beliefs, and because, by his own free will choice, he wills to not understand them, as would be expected of those with whom we have nothing in common in what we believe.
😏
Tom Cohoe
Tom, do you really think that by now ANYONE will be reading your constant, voluminous and highly repetative output?
Delete@anonymous May 11, 12:30 AM
Delete"Now I'm really confused."
It is possible that the reason for your confusion is that you generously assume that SD is sincerely seeking the truth attempting to avoid incoherence. If you reexamine that assumption (which is right to initially give to anyone), the situation will likely become less confusing.
@Tom Cohoe. Thanks for your posts, Tom. They are valuable and enlightening!
DeleteTom,
DeleteThank you for your comments. I must admit that they are especially enjoyable when they provoke SD to comment under "anonymous" so that he can pretend like anyone other than himself is disturbed that he is repeatedly refuted by you.
I want to try to understand the seven key arguments for realism about essences from Ed's Five Proofs for the existence of God, in the Augustinian Proof.
ReplyDelete1. The “one over the many argument”: This is one that has grown on me over time. The idea that universals like triangularity, redness, and angularity, are not reducible to any particular material instance of triangularity, angularity, or redness. And so they are not reducible to any material thing. We abstract away all that is particular to them and focus on what is common to them. You cannot interact with them in any of the ways you can interact with a material object. And so they are immaterial abstract objects of thought. Although these things are objects of human thought, they would in fact be true and remain objects of thought, whether human beings existed or not. And so they are not mind dependent.
This makes me think of Ed’s May 8 post, Substance, teleology, and intentionality where he is comparing the Aristotelian ideas of substance and teleology with Searle’s ideas about the different kinds of intentionality. The aboutness of a thing or the directedness of a thing. He says this:
“An awareness of the parallel I’m calling attention to is at least implicit in some comments Daniel Dennett makes in his essay “Evolution, Error, and Intentionality” (from his collection The Intentional Stance). Following W. V. Quine and others, Dennett holds that the meaning or semantic content of thoughts and utterances is indeterminate from the physical facts about human beings and their larger environment. That is to say, if the physical facts are all the facts there are, then there simply is no objective fact of the matter about what any of our utterances mean or about the content of any of our thoughts. (Recall Quine’s famous “gavagai” example.) Since these thinkers hold that the physical facts are indeed all the facts there are, they conclude that there is indeed no fact of the matter about what we mean when we say or think something.”
This paragraph can describe those who accept conceptualism or nominalism. Because if there is in reality no fact of the matter about what we mean or say or think, then knowledge is an illusion. Ed goes on to say”
“Now, I have argued (in my American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly article “Kripke, Ross, and the Immaterial Aspects of Thought” and elsewhere) that while the premise about the semantic indeterminacy of the physical is true, the conclusion Quine, Dennett, and others draw from it is false, and indeed incoherent. The right conclusion to draw, I submit, is that thought is not physical. ”
And this seems to be the only viable alternative to materialistic thinking that wants to reduce abstract objects of thought to material things. This very act of reduction eliminates the very possibility and objectivity of knowledge. And not only that, but any appearance of knowability or intelligibility in natural objects is also an illusion for them. The human heart is not made for pumping blood. There is no teleology inherent in things. Ed points us to chapter 6 of Aristotle’s Revenge to go deeper into this topic. I am tempted to go there now, but I want to keep the focus on the seven arguments for the reality of essences in this thread.
For now, I think it is interesting that arguing against the reality of essences appears to entail arguing against any kind of objective thinking at all or the reality of the apparent coherence and knowability of the universe. So the cost of holding to conceptualism or nominalism seems too high a price.
Key argument 2: The argument from Geometry. Geometry deals with perfect lines, angles, and circles. We discover, rather than invent, objective and necessary truths about them.
DeleteThey are true whether there is a human mind to them them or not. Since these truths are objective and necessary, they cannot be inventions of the human mind, as conceptualism and nominalism assert. Even if the entire natural world were to go out of existence, they would remain true. Finally, no material thing have the perfection that geometrical objects have.
This is my summary of Ed's second key argument. Here are some of my own thoughts.
This is not the same argument as the one for universals, because this one deals with perfection, objectivity, and necessity. For some reason, our minds can conceive of perfect idealizations, from which necessary and objective truths can be derived, although they are never perfectly instantiated in the material world.
I'm wondering how this is so? How can the mind, abstracting from imperfect material things, create geometrical formula that surpass what is possible to exist in the material world? Does the fact that any material thing necessitate a mixture of matter and form necessitate some level of imperfection? And the fact that the human mind can abstract away form from matter mean we can now somehow deal with perfection?
Also, is this necessarily true though, about matter? For example, pi can be calculated down to almost infinite degrees, at least on paper. Is this not possible in real instances of circles?
Anyway, I like this one. It seems related to the argument from universals, but has a different focus. Not sure how far I'm convinced about it though, since in physics, at least, there appears to be a degree of precision in certain laws that appear to me (for whatever that is worth) as being close to perfect... although maybe not necessary and objective. I'm not sure. I'd like to read up more on this though.
The third key argument is from mathematics in general. This is an observation that mathematical truths appear to be necessary and unalterable, while the material world is contingent and changing. 2 +2 is necessarily 4. That formula is unalterably true. This truth can be known in minds, but does not appear to depend on minds. It would also be true whether the entire universe went out of existence. Therefore such objects of thought cannot be mere constructs of the human mind as conceptualism and nominalism would claim. Additionally, a series of numbers is infinite, but material things are finite and the human mind or collection of human minds can contain only a finite number of ideas. Hence the series of numbers cannot depend on the material world or human minds.
DeleteSo ends my summary of Ed’s argument for the reality of essences from mathematics in general. It covers familiar ground in common with the first two, such as being necessary and unalterable in character. I like the argument from the idea that a series is infinite, (I assume at least potentially). The material world, presumably, is finite, so the infinity of an infinite series cannot be reducible to the finite material world. Neither can the human mind contemplate an actual infinity, so it cannot be the source of an actual infinite series. And yet we can contemplate a series that goes on forever. At least potentially if not in actuality. Even Aquinas and Aristotle said that you could have an accidentally ordered series of causes that goes on to infinity.
Not sure … Seems like this argument from infinite series could use a bit more work. I have questions. :)
The fourth key argument is from the nature of propositions. This would include mathematical propositions, like 2+2=4, but would also expand to even contingent facts such that Caesar was killed on the ides of March. This proposition would remain true even if every human mind and the entire universe went out of existence tomorrow. And even contingent facts that are not based in reality would be true, if those contingent facts were realized. For example, if the entire material world and every human mind were to no longer exist, the proposition that there is neither a material world nor any human mind would have been true.
DeleteEnd of summary.
I took a walk with my son to talk about these. It is important to remind myself who these arguments are a problem for. For someone who has a naive dualism, this lends itself perfectly to an argument for some kind matter and mind independent object of thought. For a naive materialist, then of course this can be reduced to neurons firing in the brain.
This whole section seems to presuppose that our interlocutor has accepted that there are two options for essences to reside: matter and mind. But what if our interlocutor does not accept this dualism? Then you have only matter/brain. If any of these arguments are going to get off the ground, we need to start the argument by at least addressing neurobable, as Ed does in the last chapter of Aristotle's Revenge. For example, the assumption and presupposition of introspection in all neuroscience. Introspection is itself the guide to the reductionist endeavor. So all that can ever be established is correlation between first person introspection and third person neuronal processes. We might and typically do get a request for a blank check that all introspection will eventually be explainable in third person neuronal processes, but this has not yet occurred at the level of, say universals, geometry, mathematics. At best, we can establish correlations between sensory perceptions. For example, if I stimulate brain area A, I introspectively report that I smell bacon. I don't think it has ever occurred that if I stimulate brain area B, I can introspectively report that I have thought the proposition 2+2=4, or Caesar was killed during the ides of March. Perhaps I could damage the brain to such an extent that I could no longer understand the proposition that 2+2=4, but you can certainly not reduce this proposition of a specific neuronal structure. ...
... But you see the problem here. There are myriad ways for a materialist to object to these key arguments before the argument can launch... As Ed says in Philosophy of Mind on the materialism chapter, materialists parade around with the following attitudes: "Materialism is innocent until proven guilty... Materialism must get the benefit of the doubt... all remaining unsettled issues are just a mopping up operation..."
Ed answers these attitudes in various ways in the chapter, for example, firstly, by siting the problem of intentionality, qualia, and the like, as simply being swept under the rug by modern science. Secondly, by bringing up that those areas where science have been most successful have very little to do with the key metaphysical problems to be explained, which are the nature of mind and its relation to the body, the ontological and epistemological status of mathematical and other apparently abstract objects, and the question of the existence of God. But materialistic philosophy have not made substantial progress in any of these areas. In fact, the majority of materialistic philosophy has been defensive in character, trying to defend itself against explicit or implicit anti-materialist objections. The only thing that explains the current dominance of materialism in the field of philosophy of mind rests on the assumption that the success of science everywhere else means it must eventually be successful in the philosophy of mind as well.
Bill,
Delete"materialists parade around with the following attitudes: "Materialism is innocent until proven guilty"
Hmm...I was just going to say the same thing about proponents of some sort of ethereal mind or soul or whatever.
The assertion of mind doesn't solve anything, only makes the problem unsolvable even in principle. All the same questions are still called for. What is "mind" made of? What is its structure? How does it change over time? How are memories stored in mindstuff? How are thoughts thought in mindstuff? How can mindstuff be conscious?
At least with materialism we can study these questions and make progress. A very great deal of progress has been made using techniques of molecular biology, neuro science, neural networks, and artificial intelligence.
But proponents of mind seem to think all they have to do is speculate some ghost in the skull and all is solved, whereas such speculation actually solves nothing.
"the ontological and epistemological status of mathematical and other apparently abstract objects,"
Oh, that's easy, they don't exist in the sense of being ontologically real mind independent features of the cosmos. They are sorts of brain processes.
"the question of the existence of God."
Ok, another easy one. The speculation of god is just another idle speculation, like the teapot in orbit. One cannot strictly disprove such speculations but one can make them up in great numbers so there is just nothing much to bother about such nonsense.
"In fact, the majority of materialistic philosophy has been defensive in character, trying to defend itself against explicit or implicit anti-materialist objections."
Funny, that's what I was going to say about theistic apologists who are forced to navigate in the ever receding corner of unanswered scientific questions.
Aquinas tried and failed miserably to defend the speculation of god, and many other such arguments have been put into general circulation, all failing just as badly.
"The only thing that explains the current dominance of materialism in the field of philosophy of mind rests on the assumption that the success of science everywhere else means it must eventually be successful in the philosophy of mind as well."
Uhm, nope.
Evidence is what drives the dominance of materialism in the philosophy of mind. Scientific evidence strongly indicates that mind is brain function. Injury studies, drug actions, FMRI, neurosurgery, as well as the above mentioned biochemistry, neural networks, and artificial intelligence.
Negative evidence comes in as well, as there is no scientific evidence for the mind, when there should be a very great deal of such evidence. The mind would have to be scientifically detectable because it would interact so strongly with material, the brain.
It's a bit like how unseen material is detected, because of its interaction effects. If there is a ghost in your skull continually zapping your neurons by the billions to get them to do all the things they do then all those zaps would have to be detectable, but they are not detected.
The positive evidence for material brain processes and the negative evidence against an ethereal mind is why the soul is considered to be just so much ancient superstitious nonsense.
The fifth key argument is from science: Scientific laws and classifications, being general or universal in their application necessarily make reference to universals. Science is in the business of discovering objective mind-independent facts. To accept the results of science is to accept that there are universals that do not depend on their existence on the human mind. Science also makes use of mathematical formulations, and since mathematics concerns a realm of abstract objects, to accept the results of science thus commits one to accepting that there are such abstract thoughts.
DeleteEnd of summ... OK ... this is mostly a straight up copy and paste. LOL
I love this one! The first part is a meditation on the laws and classifications that seem to permeate the natural world. We can't even talk about them without making use of universals and essences. We can't even do science without them. For example, one cannot reasonably look at the periodic table and think this is merely nominalism or conceptualism.
This is a very compelling argument for myself and especially my scientifically minded son. Reading a science textbook is like reading the mind of God in some ways. Throw in mathematics, which my son, who is going into first year physics in September, and it is a wonderland of truth and a deepening understanding of the very fabric of time, space, and the structure of fundamental particles, the nature of the forces, and so on. In short, there is so much truth here that for those with a mathematical mind, it is simply beautiful. New discoveries, or even properly understanding old discoveries is accompanied by joy and exhilaration.
I do not have a mind for math, but I can share in his joy. It always amuses me when he tries to explain to me a particularly complex problem he solved in calculus. He tries so hard to explain it because he is so filled with joy and enthusiasm. :) Our minds are made for discovery - for truth. And all truth is a reflection of God - or what Bonaventure called, vestiges of God. Truth points to truth.
Daniel,
Delete"I do not have a mind for math"
Are you so very sure of that? Your writing is very clear and well organized. I would not infer any sort of math inhibiting mental defect in you just based on the structure of your posts.
Have you considered the philosophy of the infinitesimal? It has a fascinating history and your son might appreciate digging deeper into the ontological meaning behind the symbolic manipulations he employs, apparently to your mutual enjoyment.
How about Zeno's paradoxes, the philosophy of infinity, and the philosophy of an infinite series?
Are you familiar with the simple arithmetic proof that .999... is precisely equal to 1?
Newton used the term "fluxion". Integral calculus is sometimes taught with the now out of date notion of the infinitesimal. Later integral calculus was re-defined replacing the infinitesimal with a limit function, but that leads to the philosophical question as to the precision of a closed form definite integral solution.
Too many physicists relegate themselves to being little more than sophisticated engineers, satisfied to pragmatically push symbols around to get answers that agree with experiment to within the error bar of the apparatus.
Here are some names of some physicists who are or were not satisfied with models that match experiment closely enough to do practical work, rather, they want or wanted to learn the true ontological nature of the universe and are or were willing to employ philosophical questions and reasoning to consider the ontological significance of their mathematical expressions:
EPR
John Stewart Bell
Gerardus 't Hooft
Sabine Hossenfelder
Later integral calculus was re-defined replacing the infinitesimal with a limit function, but that leads to the philosophical question as to the precision of a closed form definite integral solution.
DeleteCan you show a paper on this, StardustyPsyche? I have never heard of this.
Daniel,
DeleteRe: Key Argument 2.
It appears to me that the abstraction is possible precisely because instantiations of such figures approximate the perfection of the figure itself. If they did not approximate such perfection, it would not be clear if what was being drawn or constructed was a circle, square, or triangle. However, because the perfection of a circle or square or triangle can be approximated, we are able to determine the perfection being approximated. I think you mention this solution under one of the other key arguments.
The fifth key argument is from the nature of possible worlds. Much of what is possible does not depend on the material world or the human mind. We can imagine a possible world where some of the cosmological constants are slightly different, making it impossible for human beings to exist. You can't reduce these ideas to the existing world or the human minds, because we do have laws of physics that allow for the existence of human beings. Before the actual material world or human minds came into existence, it was at least possible for them to exist. But this possibility can not be grounded in the actual material world or the actual existing human minds, because they did not exist at that point.
DeleteThere are also possible worlds in which no human minds nor any material things of any sort exist - a world in which there are only angelic intellects, say - and the possibility of such a world could not depend on the material world or any human mind.
End of summary.
I think Ed summarizes this better in Scholastic Metaphysics:
"Similarly, pure or logical possibilities, though (since they are not grounded in the actually existing things) they can exist only in a mind, cannot plausibly depend on finite minds (since they concern what might have been actual even if no finite mind had existed). Hence they too, Scholastics have argued, must depend on a necessary existing divine intellect."
So, if I understand this righly, possible worlds cannot depend on the existing world, because the possible world does not exist in the existing world. Possible worlds can only exist in a human mind. But even there, the possibly cannot be ultimately rooted in human minds, because the possibility would have existed even if no human mind existed.
Hard to wrap my head around this one. I think the force of this argument probably depends a great deal on the alternative explanations for possibilities from a nominalist or conceptualist framework. Ed goes into these as indirect evidence for real essentialism in the next series of key arguments.
SD
Delete“The assertion of mind doesn't solve anything, only makes the problem unsolvable even in principle. All the same questions are still called for. What is "mind" made of? What is its structure? How does it change over time? How are memories stored in mindstuff? How are thoughts thought in mindstuff? How can mindstuff be conscious?”
You should do some research on what Thomists claim about mind body dualism. Most of the stuff you bring up is reducible to material organs of the brain. It is very specific parts of the mind that can’t be reduced to the brain, such as those abstract objects I’ve been delving into in this thread.
“Oh, that's easy, they don't exist in the sense of being ontologically real mind independent features of the cosmos. They are sorts of brain processes.”
What brain processes are responsible for mathematics, and how do you know this to be the case? The only way you can claim this is by correlating brain activity, such as with an FMRI with introspective reports from the people being scanned. Or from brain injury. Correlation in no way proves causation and it certainly does not prove reducibility of mathematics to brain processes. I see from your following responses that you understand this, but are asking for a blank check in behalf of materialism.
“It's a bit like how unseen material is detected, because of its interaction effects. If there is a ghost in your skull continually zapping your neurons by the billions to get them to do all the things they do then all those zaps would have to be detectable, but they are not detected.”
This is a problem for Cartesian dualism and not for Thomistic dualism. The brain handles pretty much all sensory perceptions of particulars up until the part of the act of abstracting occurs. Once the mind goes from an individual image or sensation of a thing to an abstract concept, one has moved into the realm of the immaterial. This where the will and the intellect reside. But this is not to say that the brain has nothing to do with this world of abstract objects. It is rather to say that these abstract objects cannot be reducible to brain functions in principle.
Daniel,
Delete"The only way you can claim this is by correlating brain activity, such as with an FMRI with introspective reports from the people being scanned."
Then please show me the fMRI of the soul.
"Or from brain injury. Correlation in no way proves causation and it certainly does not prove reducibility of mathematics to brain processes."
You still have not told me anything about the way this mind works, how it stores abstractions, how it connects to the brain so the brain can act on those abstractions.
"up until the part of the act of abstracting occurs"
Which is where you have all the same problems of dualism. How does the brain connect up to the soul to feed those abstractions and how does the soul internally represent, store and manipulate those abstractions and how does the soul download all those signals to the brain for material actions?
Why isn't the upload and download visible, like oddly dancing strings manipulated by an invisible puppeteer?
Ever see an old movie with an invisible man? Doors seem to open by themselves, a glass of water is raise and drains into apparently nowhere, and many odd things are seen to happen due to the invisible man.
That is what we should see in the brain, the odd effects of the invisible soul, but we don't.
All you have given me is a lot of just so stories about some imagined thing you cannot even describe at all.
"It is rather to say that these abstract objects cannot be reducible to brain functions in principle."
So, you say numbers are abstract objects and that manipulating them, storing them, and performing functions with them cannot be reduced to brain functions.
So, that means number storage and manipulation cannot be reduced to material processes, except for one little problem, you post here, and every time you do then you prove that abstractions such as numbers can be stored and manipulated by material processes.
Lisramic,
DeleteLater integral calculus was re-defined replacing the infinitesimal with a limit function, but that leads to the philosophical question as to the precision of a closed form definite integral solution.
"Can you show a paper on this, StardustyPsyche? I have never heard of this."
Which, the history of the infinitesimal, its replacement by the limit in integral calculus, or the philosophical objections to the infinitesimal and the limit as exact functions or operators?
Wikipedia has some good introductions to the limit and the infinitesimal, including some history.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit_(mathematics)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitesimal
Sorry, I did not find anything about the philosophical objections, I don't think it is a topic of much present day interest.
But reading the language phrases like "tends to" and "arbitrarily close to" are used. Well, close to correct means wrong if one is satisfied only with an exact solution.
If the limit of h as h approaches zero was precisely equal to zero then we could find the limit by substitution, which is done in relatively trivial cases.
But if h is not precisely equal to zero then it must be some finite number, in which case a definite integral is really just an finite sum. But h is said to be arbitrarily close to zero such that for any particular finite value assigned to h we can always divide h again and again to an arbitrarily fine division.
It was arguments such as these used to describe fluxions and the infinitesimal that led philosophers to strongly object to Newton and Leibniz until finally calculus was re-defined with a limit in its fundamental theorem.
In my view the limit does not solve the problem of the infinitesimal by making the arbitrarily close actually exact, rather, it solves it by admitting that the solution to a definite integral is itself a limit. Limit in to limit out is philosophically coherent.
But, it has been some decades since I have been enrolled at university so if you have any further insights by all means do share them.
Oh, wait, I just remembered reading Bertrand Russell on this subject. Here is an analysis piece referencing Russell.
piratesandrevolutionaries.blogspot.com/2014/05/russell-ch39-of-principles-of.html
Here is a reference with a great deal on the subject
people.umass.edu/klement/pom/pom.html#sec315
Hey SD,
DeleteJust wanted to thank you for the tone you are taking in these last few posts. And you are raising some good questions and arguments to boot.
“Then please show me the fMRI of the soul.”
The brain can only store particular instances of things – not universals. Also, the soul is the form of the body in Aristotelian thinking, which includes the shape, but also the powers, functions, and properties of the human body. So this question imposes a Cartesian substance dualism that proposes the soul and the body are two separate things. This is not how Thomistic dualism works.
“You still have not told me anything about the way this mind works, how it stores abstractions, how it connects to the brain so the brain can act on those abstractions.”
If abstract objects cannot be reducible to brain processes, then there would be no way to know in a material scientific sense, how the mind works apart from the brain. You could deduce some of this stuff via philosophy though.
The interaction problem has a few propositions. One of these is occasionalism. I don’t like this one because it requires that God be the causal mechanism by which the mind interacts with the brain. And again, this is only required in the Cartesian sense of things.
The other is parallelism. The mind and the brain are not causally associated at all. But even so, events in one are always accompanied by events in the other. Mind and body are totally synchronized in terms of events, but not causally associated at all.
If one takes for granted the materialist world picture, it is easy to dismiss both of these. But if one believes that there is already independent evidence for the existence of God and for the distinction between mind and body, then these arguments are not so unreasonable after all. Worldview and background assumption tends to guide your reaction here.
Still, it is a bad idea to explain a controversial idea by appealing to another controversial idea. They both deny that there is any causal connection between mind and body.
Another more widely accepted theory is epiphenomenological. Here your introspective world is the epiphenomenon, but has no causal power to do anything. All our choices, and all our actions, are based on the material processes of the brain. This appeals to those who like to reduce mind to neurological processes. They feel there is no need to try to explain how mind impacts the body, because they don’t. But they are still dualists because they believe the mind is non physical. This is a compromise position that tends to satisfy no one, but is still touted to try to bridge the divide, so to speak.
Although parallelism and occasionalism are terrible explanations of how the body and the mind interact, at least they acknowledge the common sense idea that they actually interact. Epiphenomenalism makes it mysterious how we can even talk about the mind. The mind has no effects at all….
Still, at the end of the day, although we can acknowledge that there is an interaction problem, along the lines you describe, what solutions you think are plausible depends to a great deal on your world view, as I stated above. And to acknowledge that there is a problem does not mean you have to reject all talk about them until such time as a universally excepted explanation for both mind and body is found. For example, just because quantum mechanics and general relativity seem to be in conflict, does not mean you must reject both or only accept one theory until such time as the conflict is resolved.
So, what I am doing here is providing arguments in favor of the reality of essences and universals such that they don’t depend on the material world or even the mind. Just because the mind body interaction problem is not easily resolvable does not invalidate all the other arguments being made here.
So lets look at the indirect evidence for realism that depend on arguing against the conceptualist and nominalist alternatives.
DeleteNominalists deny that there are universals, numbers, propositions or possible worlds. For example, they think that universals are only general names. General words that apply to many things. And so, there is a general word for blue, but no such thing as blueness. But still, you have to ask why the term blue applies to so many things without appealing to their having blueness in common. But blueness is a universal, which nominalists reject. So instead they appeal to the idea that blue things resemble each other. But the realist can easily say well yeah, they resemble each other because they all share in blueness.
The other problem is that the concept of resemblance that nominalists appeal to is itself a universal. You can say that a blue hat and a blue jay, and blue pants all resemble one another in some way, but the key unifying term is resemblance. They have not done away with universals at all.
Additionally, the nominalist acts as though the term blue is not a universal, but it is a universal. I say blue, you say blue, Ed says blue. We are all saying blue. Our words and the proposition underlying the words are not just resembling one another. They are identical. Even if we were using different languages, we would still be referring to the same underlying proposition. For example blue in english and ao in japanese.
Daniel,
Delete"the nominalist acts as though the term blue is not a universal, but it is a universal. I say blue, you say blue, Ed says blue. We are all saying blue."
All?
Most humans have 3 sorts of color receptors, corresponding to red, blue, and green at their peak sensitivities.
But other humans are color blind in various ways. How can you say blue is universal to a person who does not experience blue as most of us do?
Surely other animals experience color. Did you know that various species have between 2 and 15 color receptors? Do you suppose they experience blue as we do?
We experience violet when mostly or only the blue receptor is stimulated at the high energy end of the spectrum.
Is violet also a universal? What of animals that experience colors in the ultraviolet outside our visual sensitivity? Is their experience of ultraviolet a universal even though we cannot see it at all?
And what of animals with only 2 sorts of color receptors? Surely their variety of color sensations is reduced relative to ours, and therefore not universal.
What you call universals are actually simply common shared experiences, which is what we would expect from a population of animals with nearly the same physiology.
If most cars are built with a steering wheel then steering wheels might seem universal, until we get to a car with a steering paddle, or tiller, or foot pedals.
We experience the world broadly similarly because the mechanisms of our sensory systems are constructed so similarly.
“Most humans have 3 sorts of color receptors, corresponding to red, blue, and green at their peak sensitivities.”
DeleteAgreed.
“But other humans are color blind in various ways. How can you say blue is universal to a person who does not experience blue as most of us do?”
Because the universal, blue, is not dependent on direct first person experience. You can understand that there is something called blue from say, understanding the color spectrum. Just like we can understand that the color spectrum we experience is only a subset of the full color spectrum. Our human anatomy cannot directly experience these aspects of reality, but we can use the tools of science to detect them and know they are there.
Also, the problem of qualia like color in mind body dualism discussions is more of a Cartesian problem. I think it would be OK for a Thomist to admit that qualia is likely a product of our sensory organs alone. But the universal that is abstracted away from the individual experience of colors is not.
“Surely other animals experience color. Did you know that various species have between 2 and 15 color receptors? Do you suppose they experience blue as we do?”
Agreed. They certainly live in a very different sensory world.
“We experience violet when mostly or only the blue receptor is stimulated at the high energy end of the spectrum.
DeleteIs violet also a universal? What of animals that experience colors in the ultraviolet outside our visual sensitivity? Is their experience of ultraviolet a universal even though we cannot see it at all?”
Good question. I used to be confused about this stuff as well. Let me try to explain what I think is going on here. What is a universal? It is a bundling of properties in such a way as the bundling abstracts away individualizing aspects and focuses on those properties that can group many things together.
This is a very general description of a universal. We have to introduce other terms to see how universals are used in practice. Here we introduce the concept of genus and species. Both should be considered abstractions. So lets apply this to your question above: “Is violet also a universal”. Violet is a species of the genus color. Color abstracts away all specifically identifiable colors and focuses on the idea of color in general. There are species of color that human beings are not equipped to see. We can also use the tools of science to further drill in on what truly constitutes a color. It may be that our naive senses do not tell the whole truth about the color spectrum. But certainly the color violet does sit on that spectrum somewhere.
Another thing to keep in mind is that a species may also be considered as a genus, and then further subdivided into further species of things. Ultimately we may come to a rock bottom definition of something that cannot be divided any further.
This is the language of thought. Some objects of thought are dependent on what we experience from the material world. Our thoughts map the reality of the physical world. Some objects of thought map our world of mental experience.
“And what of animals with only 2 sorts of color receptors? Surely their variety of color sensations is reduced relative to ours, and therefore not universal.”
No – they simply do not have the sensory receptors that detect the universals that are outside of the scope of their senses. Those universals exist even if they can’t directly sense them, in the same way as those colors that are outside of the scope of our senses exist even though we cannot directly sense them.
“What you call universals are actually simply common shared experiences, which is what we would expect from a population of animals with nearly the same physiology.”
Yes, they are common shared experiences at various levels of abstraction. But non sentient animals, as far as we know, do not abstract in this way. They deal only with particular sensations. Perhaps some animals do approach the level of human intellect, but only at a very rudimentary level, and certainly not in such a away as humans do with language.
“If most cars are built with a steering wheel then steering wheels might seem universal, until we get to a car with a steering paddle, or tiller, or foot pedals.”
Not all universals or abstractions deal with substances. A true substance has an irreducible essence. Many universals are merely accidental features of true substances.
A field of Thomistic philosophy that deals with some of these issues is called Semiotics.
"We experience the world broadly similarly because the mechanisms of our sensory systems are constructed so similarly."
Human beings go far beyond what our senses can detect when we do science. I would say most of the sciences would be impossible without our powers of abstracting, which is the hallmark of what it means to be a rational animal. The human mind and the shared world of experiences that make up what we call science is truly a remarkable thing. I honestly can't explain this by using only the five senses. They are so much more than these.
Daniel,
Delete"You can understand that there is something called blue from say, understanding the color spectrum."
No, because what you call the "color" spectrum is really the electromagnetic radiation spectrum in which there are no colors, just different frequencies of the same sort of thing.
"Because the universal, blue, is not dependent on direct first person experience."
The experience of a particular color is a first person experience that depends on the color perception system of the animal, and is thus not a universal.
"Violet is a species of the genus color."
Absent an animal or similar being with a color receptor system there is no genus of color.
Many animals have no color, only shades of gray, like an old black and white TV. No genus of color for them either.
"Those universals exist even if they can’t directly sense them,"
Exist where? How? Can I grab some color out of space?
You are imagining things, just making things up. You are projecting into the universe your personal experiences.
"A true substance has an irreducible essence."
All so-called substances are reducible to the particles and fields of the standard model.
"Human beings go far beyond what our senses can detect when we do science."
When we do science we rid ourselves of the ancient Aristotelian and mystical errors. The reality of the universe reduces to submicroscopic particles and fields that interact net losslessly via mutual causation.
Aristotle was wrong about almost everything. He was a great man for 2300 years ago. Anybody who follows his metaphysics today is simply clinging to ancient nonsense.
You say you do not have a mind for math. There are physics books that present the same concepts but do not include the mathematical proofs, just the resultant algebraic solutions. Such a physics book might be titled "Conceptual Physics".
If you are no willing to take the word of the authors for the solutions they present you might be willing to accept it when your son explains that he learned all the supporting math, so yes, the basic expression in your conceptual physics book is supported by a great deal of experimentation and sophisticated mathematical proofs.
There you will find how wrong Aristotle was about just about everything. Perhaps you could learn some things from your son on these subjects. I am sure you want him to be a better man than you, every good father does.
Delete“No, because what you call the "color" spectrum is really the electromagnetic radiation spectrum in which there are no colors, just different frequencies of the same sort of thing.”
This is reductionism. It is similar to those who claim there is no chair, because it is made of of particles and mostly empty space between them. It is the impulse to explain away our world of direct human experience with the one that science discovers using various tools. The ultimate level of reality for such as these is fundamental particles. Those at the macro level have less fundamental reality.
Fine, I don’t agree with your reductionism, but it is beside the point. The electromagnetic radiation spectrum is a universal that abstracts away from particular spectrum frequencies then. Each spectrum frequency is a species of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum. Our unaided senses cannot see the electromagnetic radiation spectrum directly. Nor can we directly detect the individual spectrum frequencies. But is the electromagnetic radiation spectrum real? Or is it mind dependent? Are spectrum frequencies real, or are they mind dependent?
I like science, so I say firmly, they are real. They don’t depend on the mind that thought them. They are a real aspect of reality and map reality.
“The experience of a particular color is a first person experience that depends on the color perception system of the animal, and is thus not a universal.”
Fine. I don’t agree, but surely you agree that the electromagnetic radiation spectrum that we detect without scientific instruments is real and universal, right? Surely you aren’t claiming that radiation spectrum frequencies stop existing because human being stop existing.
“Exist where? How? Can I grab some color out of space?”
Where is the genus of radiation spectrum, since you reject color? Where are instances of spectrum frequencies, since you reject the terms red, blue, green, and violet?
“You are imagining things, just making things up. You are projecting into the universe your personal experiences.”
Ah, you have taught me the error of my ways! Thank you. Then you agree that there is a universal called the radiation spectrum which is a general universal concept that can be subdivided in constituent species of radiation frequencies! Wonderful! You are living in a world of abstractions that map reality.
“All so-called substances are reducible to the particles and fields of the standard model.”
Right, so the macro world of objects is nothing! Excellent example of reductionistic thinking! Neil Degrasse Tyson would be proud! But, you have introduced new universals to the discussion! New abstractions for us to play with! A massive mathematical abstraction that strips away everything in reality except for extension! The standard model! It is universally applicable everywhere in the known universe! And it has as parts of its definition species of particles and fields, which are further instances of abstract universals! Wonderful!
“The reality of the universe reduces to submicroscopic particles and fields that interact net losslessly via mutual causation.”
And we can know that this is true because of the wonderful human power of abstraction.
“You say you do not have a mind for math. There are physics books that present the same concepts but do not include the mathematical proofs, just the resultant algebraic solutions. Such a physics book might be titled "Conceptual Physics".”
It is truly amazing that human beings can so transcend our senses so as to know these things.
“If you are no willing to take the word of the authors for the solutions they present you might be willing to accept it when your son explains that he learned all the supporting math, so yes, the basic expression in your conceptual physics book is supported by a great deal of experimentation and sophisticated mathematical proofs.”
When was I arguing with you about these topics? We were talking about the nature of abstract objects, a subset of which are those captured by physics.
So, to recap what I have been working through so far in my goal to understand the seven key arguments for realism about essences from Ed's Five Proofs for the existence of God, in the Augustinian Proof:
Delete1-The one over the many argument about universals. I can accept that universals are applicable to many individual things and exist individuated in those things and in human minds that discover them. I think most universals are reducible to the material world, except for a subset that are mind dependent. These are knowable only through introspection. They also do not appear to be reducible to individual instances when in its universal form in the intellect though.
2-3-Arguments from geometry and mathematics in general. Again these seem to be discovered in the material world although not reducible to it. The one from geometry seems to be about perfection that can never be found in the material world. And yet it is also true. I can’t imagine them suddenly not being true when human minds disappear or even if the entire material world were to disappear. This one seems to sneak in possible world arguments where the material world were simply to no longer exist and human minds as well and yet the rules of math still apply in such a case. And also, I imagine, such logical propositions such as the law of non contradiction, modus tolens, modus ponens, and the like.
4-Arguments from propositions: This seems to recap 2 and 3 under the umbrella of propositions. I’m sure it would also include logical truths as well.
5-Argument from science: Science just obviously doesn’t work if you don’t have universals or some form of abstraction. For us to say abstract thoughts don’t exist is just to deny science and truth. It is to deny that we have any kind of real contact with the external world. Something the Cartesian and Kantian philosophers are so ready to admit, but no one who believes in the reality of scientific findings should.
6-Argument from possible worlds: I’m not entirely sure I understand this one, but I do see in general how it is deployed in some of the others. Possible worlds, though, when talking about logical possibility, seems to prove that logical possibility must apply to any possible world. Therefor it can’t be dependent on any possible world, either in the matter that exists in those world or any finite intellects that exist in such worlds. This is compelling to me. We live in a rationally knowable world, afterall.
7-Then you have indirect evidence that depends on the incoherence of nominalist and conceptualist thinking. This is good, although I would include materialistic and physicalist accounts of mind that need to be dealt with as well, such as behaviorist, functionalist, and the like compared to dualist accounts of mind. I’ve been coupling this section with forays into the Intro into the Philosophy of Mind.
So now, I think I have the building blocks to consider the various kinds of realist theories, which Ed lists as platonic realism, aristotelian realism, and thomistic realism. Platonic realism posits forms in some third realm and there is no clear way to understand how they can have any causal interaction with the material world, so it isn’t really worth considering. Aristotelian realism I think focuses on just the forms being in individual things that instantiate them. They can also be abstracted into human minds. And I’m pretty sure he stops there. Thomistic realism seems to merge both platonic and Aristotelian realism. It rejects the third realm, but posits that the forms exists as archetypes in the mind of God.
Daniel,
Delete"This is reductionism. ... It is the impulse to explain away our world of direct human experience with the one that science discovers using various tools."
Your experience is absolutely your experience. It is an absolute certainty that you are experiencing the experiences you experience yourself experiencing.
Your experiences are your personal processes, not universals. You are projecting your personal processes into the rest of the cosmos as if they are somehow universal, but they are not.
"But is the electromagnetic radiation spectrum real? Or is it mind dependent? Are spectrum frequencies real, or are they mind dependent?"
Electromagnetic radiation is real material that really does progress through the cosmos and is realistically described by science.
Color is not an intrinsic property of electromagnetic radiation, rather, it is a qualia, a personal experience, that varies from being to being.
The same frequency of electromagnetic radiation is experienced differently by different beings.
"Surely you aren’t claiming that radiation spectrum frequencies stop existing because human being stop existing."
Right, material really does exist and really does progress in the cosmos whether a human is aware of it or not. Qualia are not like they, rather, they are mind dependent experiences, not mind independent ontologically existent universal entities.
"Where are instances of spectrum frequencies"
The manner of progression of material is intrinsic to the material. The time period unit of 1 second is arbitrary. The distance unit of 1 meter is arbitrary.
Dr. Feser and I agree on at least this much, that material has intrinsic properties.
"Right, so the macro world of objects is nothing!"
The biggest problem in eliminativism right now is language, precisely defining "exist", "something", "nothing", "real", "actual" etc.
I would begin the attempt to overcome the language barrier by stating that the macro world of objects are actual arrangements of simples.
"forms exists as archetypes in the mind of God."
Form is the actual spatial relationships of material.
Essences are the actual properties of material.
As for the speculation of god in all this, Je n'ai pas eu besoin de cette hypothèse.
Delete“Your experience is absolutely your experience. It is an absolute certainty that you are experiencing the experiences you experience yourself experiencing.
Your experiences are your personal processes, not universals. You are projecting your personal processes into the rest of the cosmos as if they are somehow universal, but they are not.”
OK. But you then say this:
“Electromagnetic radiation is real material that really does progress through the cosmos and is realistically described by science.”
So in other words, electromagnetic radiation is a universal, right? And the
“Color is not an intrinsic property of electromagnetic radiation, rather, it is a qualia, a personal experience, that varies from being to being.
The same frequency of electromagnetic radiation is experienced differently by different beings.”
Ed argues for a naive color realism, but I’m not sure why he thinks that is necessary. If color only exists in the human mind, it still exists in the human mind…. I need to research why he takes this position a bit more. But for the sake of argument, lets agree that color is not an intrinsic property of objects. At best color is similar to language as a token of a proposition that can be instantiated by many different words in different languages. All our words for colors express a different ranges in the electromagnetic spectrum.
“Right, material really does exist and really does progress in the cosmos whether a human is aware of it or not. Qualia are not like they, rather, they are mind dependent experiences, not mind independent ontologically existent universal entities.”
Again, I know Ed disagrees with this, but I’m not sure why it is important, so I’ll agree for now.
“The manner of progression of material is intrinsic to the material. The time period unit of 1 second is arbitrary. The distance unit of 1 meter is arbitrary.
Dr. Feser and I agree on at least this much, that material has intrinsic properties.”
When our minds apprehend real intrinsic properties of matter, we are tracking the reality of material processes. And we can group them into abstract categories, that are universally true for all such intrinsic properties of material things. We can subdivide them by greater and greater levels of specificity, or generalize and group them into greater and greater levels of generality. Some aspects of our thoughts are mind dependent and arbitrary artifacts of human logic, such as various unites of measurement. But to the extent that they are consistent, they can accurately capture the dimensions of real physical things, whether you are talking about imperial, metric, or Egyptian cubit. Again, the underlying proposition or property of a chunk matter is what is ultimately important.
“The biggest problem in eliminativism right now is language, precisely defining "exist", "something", "nothing", "real", "actual" etc.”
DeleteRight – for that you would need some sort of eliminativist metaphysics - which seems to be a contradiction in terms. LOL.
“I would begin the attempt to overcome the language barrier by stating that the macro world of objects are actual arrangements of simples.”
Right – this treats natural objects in the same way one would treat a machine. To know what a machine does, you break it down into its constituent parts and see how those parts work together to produce the functions of the macro object.
Functionalism can fit in this description of things, but also admits that the macro object can have a variety of different types of and arrangement of parts. For example, a knife can be made out of various hard metals or even some strong resins. What is important is that the knife can function as a knife. Here function seem to emerge from matter, but is not reducible to only matter. This way functionalism can be deployed in either an eliminativist framework or a dualistic framework. An eliminativist wants to do away with the language of function though, at least any sort of sense of intrinsic functions (including those you listed as intrinsic in your posts above). All functions are accidentally imposed on an object. A dualist wants to see some functions as intrinsic to the nature of a thing and others as accidental. That is the point of Ed’s most recent argument in Substance, teleology, and intentionality.
“there can be no objective fact of the matter about natural functions any more than there can be about the meaning or semantic content of thought. That is to say, the same considerations that entail the indeterminacy of semantic content also entail indeterminacy about the teleological properties of natural objects. Just as, for Quine, there is no objective fact of the matter about whether “gavagai” means “rabbit” or “undetached rabbit part,” so too there is no fact of the matter about whether the function of the heart is to pump blood.” This is where Dennett and Quine take things, at least.
But rather than eliminate function from the conversation, I’d like to zero back in on the simples. If simples do exist, they contain within themselves the potential to become fundamental particles we know: electrons, bosons, and fermions. Those contain within themselves the potential to be arranged as elements in the periodic table, say the most fundamental one, helium with protons, neutrons, and electrons. And those in turn have the potential to be converted into the larger elements, which in turn can mass together into stars, asteroids, and planets, which in turn can build themselves up into elentary forms of life, which themselves have the potential to become more complex forms of life, all the way up to human beings.
...wow… so much potential packed into one simple elementary particle. Almost pure potential if you ask me. Who would ever think that such an infinitely small particle could contain within itself the entire known universe in potential! I would even go so far as to call this matter, primary in character. Just look at all the forms it is able to instantiate (see the above paragraph)! Makes you think, right? Almost like this pure or primary matter can instantiate any form!
"...wow… so much potential packed into one simple elementary particle."
DeleteFallacy of composition.
Consider a single bit, that is in the computational sense, a 1 or 0, some object that can take on two distinct states. With enough such objects we can, and have, built the internet as well as all the computational machines connected to it and the computational machines not connected to the internet.
So, does a single memory cell have packed into it the potential for the whole global network? I don't think so.
There have been some 10^21 transistors manufactured, as well as vast numbers of other memory and logic devices. Vastly complex structures are realized in the aggregate of simple devices.
It is a logical error to consider that somehow the observed result of the aggregate is packed into the simple component.
That is one of the ways teleology goes wrong. It seems as though things are moving toward a purpose, or that perhaps this purpose is packed into the simple components of the cosmos. Neither is necessary.
All that is necessary is a few sorts of simple components that interact locally in a few simple ways. Perceived purpose is just the aggregate of a vast multitude of simple interactions.
"Makes you think, right?"
Indeed. Among other things it makes me think that Klima, Feser, Aquinas, and Aristotle got just about everything wrong about the structure of the cosmos, motion, change, and causality.
Klima, the subject of the OP, in my view is in no respect deserving of a Festschrift.
For example, here is Klima on Anselm.
faculty.fordham.edu/klima/anselm.htm
He uses a great many words with convoluted sentence structures and faux sophisticated terminology, all to make the assertion that wishing makes it so. Such a thinker and writer is in no way deserving of contemporaneous honor and accolade.
Anselm failed by the fallacy of reification. It doesn't matter if the thinker is an atheist or a convinced believer, wishing does not make it so, and no volume of verbal effluent can provide any man the capability to wish a thing into existence or to rationally claim that his thinking about a thing necessitates its extramental ontological realization.
As for Klima's defenses of Thomism more generally see
StardustyPsyche May 17, 2023 at 6:47 AM
for a summary of defects in the most manifest way.
Klima is not a great thinker, merely a verbose writer.
“Fallacy of composition.
DeleteConsider a single bit, that is in the computational sense, a 1 or 0, some object that can take on two distinct states. With enough such objects we can, and have, built the internet as well as all the computational machines connected to it and the computational machines not connected to the internet.
So, does a single memory cell have packed into it the potential for the whole global network? I don't think so.”
Agreed! The simples have a capacity to be part of a whole, but they do not determine the function of the whole. This is a form of reductionism that can’t make much sense of the macro level.
“There have been some 10^21 transistors manufactured, as well as vast numbers of other memory and logic devices. Vastly complex structures are realized in the aggregate of simple devices.”
Agreed again.
“It is a logical error to consider that somehow the observed result of the aggregate is packed into the simple component.”
Or at least we can say that the simple is not formally sufficient to explain the aggregate. For example, H2O can be explained at the level of atoms, neutrons, protons, and electrons, but their properties cannot all be assessed except at the macro level. For example, without the macro level, you could not know from the behavior of the H2O molecule, that H2O can be in a gaseous state, liquid state, or solid state. Granted, you can correlate macro behavior with micro behavior, but not without first knowing the macro behavior.
Another observation that aligns with your statement above is that the properties of hydrogen and the properties of oxygen disappear when they are bonded together as water. Only the properties of water now exist. Something about the aggregate is irreducible to the constituent parts.
“That is one of the ways teleology goes wrong. It seems as though things are moving toward a purpose, or that perhaps this purpose is packed into the simple components of the cosmos. Neither is necessary.”
If you don’t like the language of teleology, then do you accept the concept of regularities? That H2O regularly displays various properties and powers?
“All that is necessary is a few sorts of simple components that interact locally in a few simple ways. Perceived purpose is just the aggregate of a vast multitude of simple interactions.”
So you have rejected the notion that the “observed result of the aggregate is packed into the simple component.” But now you seem to be saying that the observed results of aggregates can be packed in a few simple components that interact locally in a few simple ways.” Seems to me that you are also making the error of composition here.
I will not comment on your critique of Klima since I haven’t read any of his stuff.
Anyway, this notion of irreducibility is important to the notion of substance. Water cannot be reduced further in its constituent parts without it no longer displaying the properties of water. Same thing for all the substances described in the periodic table. When the elements in the periodic table were discovered, science discovered their nature, or their essence. When a substance is either broken down into its constituent elements or becomes part of some larger element, it undergoes substantial change.
Daniel,
Delete"Something about the aggregate is irreducible to the constituent parts."
You just did not reduce far enough. Oxygen and Hydrogen may seem to have changed when joining as water, but the Oxygen and Hydrogen were not solid little balls with properties that somehow got changed or lost.
Oxygen, Hydrogen, and water are composed of electrons and quarks which continue to do what they do in water just as they do in Oxygen and Hydrogen.
It is the Thomistic tendency to reify perceived properties that leads to your incomplete reduction analysis and your false conclusion that reductionism does not work.
"But now you seem to be saying that the observed results of aggregates can be packed in a few simple components that interact locally in a few simple ways.” Seems to me that you are also making the error of composition here.
Being the result of an aggregate is the opposite of macro properties being packed into the simples.
What is sometimes called "emergent" properties are due to the arrangements and combinations of simples.
A lego block is just a lego block. It does not have the potential to be a house but it can be a part of all kinds of structures. The properties of the structure are due to the arrangement of the parts and the aggregate of the parts.
"Water cannot be reduced further in its constituent parts without it no longer displaying the properties of water."
That's not what reducing means. One does not expect to take apart a house and find little houses in every nail. The perceived properties of the whole are accounted for by the aggregate of the properties of the parts.
"What is sometimes called "emergent" properties are due to the arrangements and combinations of simples."
DeleteOne could almost say, instead of arrangement, is that it is its form that generates the properties. Your just using the same language any Aristotelian would use. And your point about lego blocks, I've already conceeded. Whatever potential is locked into the simple is due to its taking on various forms as aggregates.
But there is a point where one form of lost in favor of another form. For example, when water breaks down through electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen. It lost the form of water because it no longer displays the properties of water. Just because the hydrogen and oxygen atoms are still made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons does not change that fact.
Also, this appeal to emergentism is a fuzzy word that can be used by either a dualist of a reductionist. Whatever properties emerge from the formal arrangement of consituent simples still cannot be reduced to the individual simples. It can only be explained by their being part of some new form. And thus, we are right to call this a substance.
On the topic of reification, Ed says the following in his post, Contretizing the Abstract:
"Modern Scholastic writers often distinguish three “degrees” of abstraction. The first degree is the sort characteristic of the philosophy of nature, which considers what is common to material phenomena as such, abstracting from individual material things but retaining in its conception the sensible aspects of matter. The second degree is the sort characteristic of mathematics, which abstracts not only the individuality of material things but also their sensible nature, focusing on what is intelligible (as opposed to sensible) in matter under the category of quantity. The third degree is the sort characteristic of metaphysics, which abstracts from even the quantitative aspects of matter and considers notions like substance, existence, etc. entirely apart from matter.
Abstractions can be very useful, and are of themselves perfectly innocent when we keep in mind that we are abstracting. The trouble comes when we start to think of abstractions as if they were concrete realities themselves -- thereby “reifying” them -- and especially when we think of the abstractions as somehow more real than the concrete realities from which they have been abstracted. "
In the post, he goes on to propose that the modern mind body hard problem is a cause by this:
"I have suggested in a couple of recent posts (e.g. this one) that the “mind-body problem” is essentially a consequence of Descartes’ reification of two abstractions. He first abstracted from the notion of matter everything but its mathematical features, relocating all qualitative features to the mind; and he then treated this mathematical abstraction from actual concrete matter as if it captured everything that really is there in actual concrete matter. Matter generally came to be regarded ever afterward as inherently devoid of anything but the sort of thing expressible in the mathematical language of a physics textbook. And this included the matter that makes up plants, animals, and human bodies, all of which were -- necessarily, if lacking anything except what could be captured in mathematical language -- to be regarded as utterly devoid of consciousness, thought, meaning, teleology, or like."
I think this is a valid point to make.
Daniel,
Delete"For example, when water breaks down through electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen. It lost the form of water because it no longer displays the properties of water. Just because the hydrogen and oxygen atoms are still made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons does not change that fact."
The "form" of water is the consequence of its constituent parts in that arrangement.
When those constituent parts are re-arranged then those new arrangements result in new "forms".
Feser-"considers notions like substance, existence, etc. entirely apart from matter."
Incoherent. Substance and existence can only be of the material. Absent material there would be absolutely nothing at all, and nothing has no substance or existence.
"I think this is a valid point to make.( about Descartes)"
For modern materialists Descartes is a strawman. Feser can refute Descartes all he wishes, it is irrelevant to modern materialism.
"The "form" of water is the consequence of its constituent parts in that arrangement.
DeleteWhen those constituent parts are re-arranged then those new arrangements result in new "forms"."
Why should I grant that bottom up arguments from the micro to the macro level are all that there is to reality? This seems more like an assumption rather than a settled fact.
Why shouldn't I grant that top to bottom arguments from macro features down to micro features?
There are even materialistic forms of this with regard to functionalism. I know that physicalism rejects these, but physicallism is only one form of materialism, and a fairly extreme one at that which is not widely accepted.
"Incoherent. Substance and existence can only be of the material. Absent material there would be absolutely nothing at all, and nothing has no substance or existence."
Its an abstraction ... when he says it abstracts from matter, he means it abstracts from every individuating part of matter. Even quantity. Granted, he believes that human beings have an immaterial aspect, and admits that God is purely immaterial, as well as angels, but that does not prevent him from abstracting away from all material substances and focusing on the abstract category of substance over all. So this works even if you only admit that material things have existence or are substances.
"For modern materialists Descartes is a strawman. Feser can refute Descartes all he wishes, it is irrelevant to modern materialism."
When modern materialism has reified mathematical abstractions, then yes, this is a valid criticism.
Daniel,
Delete"Why should I grant that bottom up arguments from the micro to the macro level are all that there is to reality? This seems more like an assumption rather than a settled fact."
I am not advocating you take it on faith. The explanatory and technological success of reductionism is a scientific fact. Scientific facts are not absolute truths, but if you are convinced that your senses provide some fair indication of an external reality then a scientific fact can be very convincing, because science is based on the provisional postulate of the basic reliability of our senses.
Consider the close connection between particle physics and cosmology. Physicists use the results of particle accelerator estimates to figure out the structure of the entire observable universe. The very largest is explained as the aggregate of the very smallest.
"Why shouldn't I grant that top to bottom arguments from macro features down to micro features?"
Because they don't, in general, work.
Aristotle got almost everything wrong about the structure of the cosmos, the nature of the underlying reality, motion, change, and causation.
You can make some very general observations at the level of the unaided senses. To find out the real details of reality modern science is the only tool available to humanity.
"but that does not prevent him from abstracting away from all material substances and focusing on the abstract category of substance over all. "
Sure, one can form abstractions. Abstractions do not have ontologically real mind independent existence.
"When modern materialism has reified mathematical abstractions, then yes, this is a valid criticism."
Right, the reification of abstractions is a common error. That is what Aristotle did, reified his abstractions based on common sense, which was almost completely wrong.
Thomism is a further reification of abstractions, making the five Ways of Aquinas failures due to unsound premises and invalid logic.
Daniel,
ReplyDelete"Although these things are objects of human thought, they would in fact be true and remain objects of thought, whether human beings existed or not. And so they are not mind dependent."
The point of the proof is not that they are not mind dependent, but they ARE mind dependent but not on any human intellect. They must be dependent on an eternal intellect. That is precisely what makes this a proof. You are probably aware of this, but the way it is stated might mislead others who are not familiar with this argument in Feser's Five Proofs.
Agreed. I am only focusing on establishing real essentialism at this point.
DeleteDaniel,
ReplyDelete“Now, I have argued (in my American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly article “Kripke, Ross, and the Immaterial Aspects of Thought” and elsewhere) that while the premise about the semantic indeterminacy of the physical is true, the conclusion Quine, Dennett, and others draw from it is false, and indeed incoherent. The right conclusion to draw, I submit, is that thought is not physical. ” (Daniel quoting Feser)
Klima is immensely helpful here in the charts in his stanford encyclopedia article on the medieval problem of universals. He shows the different accounts of signification in the respective nominalist and realist frameworks. For the realist a term signifies a concept which is rooted in the thing. In other words, terms do not point to material things principally. The point to concepts that are abstracted forms coming from material beings. This explains both "the semantic indeterminacy of the physical" and the possibility of knowing reality. This also accounts for both the occasional need to disambiguate words and the possibility of communication and our ability to know the world as it is.
Interesting!
DeleteThanks for aĺl your posts SD, and for your tenacity. They are valuable and enlightening.
ReplyDeleteSaid the person who was so sure of his stance that he was willing to put a name to it.
DeleteThe Other Bob
DeleteMy name is Fred. Your point?
A screen name or Anonymous ain't that much different.
ReplyDeleteDear Mr. Feser,
ReplyDeleteI am Hungarian and no one in our country apparently has any idea that contemporary Hungarian Scholastic philosophers even exist. Where could I make an interview with Klima or Borbély?
WCB
ReplyDeleteMichael Copas -
"...it was from figures such as these that early modern scientists like Kepler and Galileo drew"
Galileo and others drew on John Philoponus. Philoponus critiqued Aristotle on his many errors and bad logic. As a result, Galileo, a physic professor pronounced the physics of his day inadequate, poorly grounded and tossed it all out. And started physics from scratch on a strictly experimental and observational basis. Empiricism became the basis of physics and science, and Galileo's students went on to spread the new empirical science methodology.
WCB
WCB,
DeleteI don't recall denying that they drew from John Philoponus and there is a very good reason I don't recall that. Regarding "bad logic", do tell. Tell me which principles of logic you deny and why you deny them. It will be fun for the world to watch you contradict the principle of non contradiction. Just about as amusing as watching you cut branches while sitting on them. Please do send us videos of the latter.
For anyone to reject Aristotle wholesale is for them to be a deranged idiot. The reception of Aristotle in late medieval scholasticism was of course varied but Aristotle's widespread influence on scholasticism is undeniable if you have the slightest clue what you are talking about. This includes the positive influence the recovery of his corpus had on the development of the modern sciences. Again read Wallace and Crombie and after your homework you will be better informed.
Regarding thoroughgoing empiricism, that is a philosophical position that cannot be grounded via an experiment. If you claim that it is, why don't you tell us which experiment proved the claim that all knowledge requires empirical verification. Be sure to tell us the answer before you go out in your yard to trim the trees because it will be difficult to type after that.
WCB,
DeleteBTW, William Wallace (whom you must read for your homework) published numerous academic monographs on Gaileo. He was, in fact, one of the foremost experts in the world on Galileo. As I mentioned above, he also wrote a two volume history of science that shows Aristotle's influence on the development of modern science. So his claims about Aristotle's influence are coupled with an intimate and thorough knowledge of Galileo (something that trolls whose knowledge consists of trivia from wikipedia lack).