tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post2162006066015204869..comments2024-03-28T03:20:15.940-07:00Comments on Edward Feser: Haldane on Nagel and the Fifth WayEdward Feserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comBlogger59125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-19541763837440125582014-08-07T08:11:02.262-07:002014-08-07T08:11:02.262-07:00@Joe K.:
"So I wonder if maybe you could app...@Joe K.:<br /><br />"So I wonder if maybe you could apply the concept to 'ecosystems.'"<br /><br />After a bit of reflection it seems to me that we could. We can surely speak, for example, of a healthy or flourishing human society; why not an ecosystem? As you say, though, an ecosystem contains life even if it's not living itself, and I'd be inclined to say that the concept of its "flourishing" is parasitic on the concept of its members' doing so; I don't think I'd want to talk (other than metaphorically) about the "flourishing" of (say) a planetary system completely devoid of any sort of life.Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-44693881837913018472014-08-07T07:32:28.670-07:002014-08-07T07:32:28.670-07:00@Joe K.:
Thanks for the excerpt from the Foot int...@Joe K.:<br /><br />Thanks for the excerpt from the Foot interview. It's not only on point, it's a very helpful summary and elaboration of the view I initially expressed in reply to James Barham.Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-31267709731486857142014-08-07T01:54:37.983-07:002014-08-07T01:54:37.983-07:00"I teach philosophy ... My primary academic r..."I teach philosophy ... My primary academic research interests are in ... and philosophy of religion"<br /><br />You are cordially invited to see it from an Islamic point of view.azluhttp://arabicwithlagouader.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-91182470449582317232014-08-06T19:58:32.441-07:002014-08-06T19:58:32.441-07:00Source on that interview: http://philosophynow.org...Source on that interview: http://philosophynow.org/issues/41/Philippa_Foot<br /><br />Also, to add to that a bit: A concept I thought that might be interesting, sort of hinted at in that interview, is seasons. A winter might be "too hot," but again, it would be difficult to say that it, as winter, is too anything. It being too anything seems to be related to us or other living things. At the same time, it does seem to be related to the "health" of the planet as a whole.<br /><br />So I wonder if maybe you could apply the concept to "ecosystems." It would make sense, I think, to say that an ecosystem is defective or unhealthy. But of course, ecosystems are about life. At the same time, there is a sense where an ecosystem is sort of an inanimate system of regularity separate from its individual living members, a sort of Thing. But then, I wonder if you can call an ecosystem or a season an "object" at all.Bhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10872384675415092134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-64776616816885958882014-08-06T19:54:56.666-07:002014-08-06T19:54:56.666-07:00Scott,
I thought this interview Philippa Foot had...Scott,<br /><br />I thought this interview Philippa Foot had a little while back with Rick Lewis seemed right on point.<br /><br />Foot: ...I mean, you can say all rivers have water in them, or some rivers go down to the sea. But there are also some peculiar propositions, propositions which only apply to living things, which are neither all nor some. And this kind of proposition really is about the standard; it’s about how it should be. It takes one towards what I have called ‘natural goodness’. For example, we say “humans have thirty two teeth.” Not all humans do, in fact, but we have defective teeth if we don’t have thirty two. Either we’ve never had the full complement or we’ve lost some. Elizabeth Anscombe put out a very important article about this kind of proposition, called ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ which was published in Mind I think in the 1950s. She didn’t make a great deal out of it but a lot of people refer to it now.<br /><br />The thought is, that first of all there is a difference in the way we talk about living things and non-living things. Just leave aside artifacts – they’re a bit like one and a bit like the other. I’ll put that aside.<br /><br />Rivers are interesting because they’re natural things and they have a pattern of development through the seasons as living things do, and yet you cannot talk about a river as being defective. Of course it can be defective from our point of view, from the point of view of irrigation or animals or something like that but not in its own right, not autonomously as I say.<br /><br />Lewis: Does that apply to non-living things like stars, as well? I’m thinking of an astronomer looking at a star and saying “this should have developed into a classic yellow class 2 star but it ran out of hydrogen and that prevented it from doing so.” So surely you can say ‘should’ in relation to them?<br /><br />Foot: In the everyday use of language we do say “it should” meaning “it was about to” or “they usually do” or something like that. But that’s not the same ‘should’; that pattern doesn’t give you the kind of natural defect. This is what I’m identifying here – the difference between the two. That’s why, as I said, I think moral evaluation belongs within a whole set of concepts which apply to living things only. You see, rivers don’t flourish. Of course we can say the river is flourishing, but then it is a sort of jokey use. It doesn’t literally flourish, it doesn’t literally die. You could say the star died but you obviously would mean something different because they’re not members of a species of living things. I’m not in the least fighting the everyday language, but a star being born is very, very different to any member of a species being born. They haven’t got this pattern of one and then another of the same kind coming from it. Rivers don’t spawn rivers. They can’t literally be born or die, and there is in their case no species in which a function could be identified. Of course anything we make can have a function, but the parts of animals and their movements can have function quite apart from anything that we do or want. A spider’s web has a function. What’s the function of it? Is it to keep predators at bay? No, it’s to catch food. That’s a very straightforward, ordinary thing to say. That’s the function of it. Then the function of whatever part of the spider secretes sticky stuff is for making webs; and webs are for getting food. And food is for sustenance, to keep the spider going, and other things it will need in order to reproduce.<br /><br />Lewis: Is it only in the case of entities who have interests that you can have the idea of function from the point of view of the entity itself?<br /><br />Foot: ‘Interests’ I think is excellent. Rivers particularly, look so much like living things; they have seasonal progressions and so on. But they don’t have interests, as artifacts do not. I like that thought of yours!Bhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10872384675415092134noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-60647377896348984092014-08-06T14:37:56.092-07:002014-08-06T14:37:56.092-07:00Regarding "bad gold", here is my underst...Regarding "bad gold", here is my understanding of the A-T position.<br /><br />Badness is absence of being. So, bad gold would be gold that isn't "all there" in some sense.<br /><br />In particular, and more precisely, a piece of gold is bad to the extent that it has unactualized potential — some way that it could be but isn't. If one piece of gold is actualizing its potential to a greater degree than another, then the first piece is better than the second.<br /><br />Of course, actualizing one potential sometimes means foregoing another. Such actualizations involve trade-offs. For example, gold can be hot, and gold can be cold, but it cannot be one without <i>not</i> being the other. Thus, on net, a hot piece of gold isn't any better than a cold piece of gold, all else being equal. Each piece of gold has just as much being as the other, though the two pieces attain this degree of being in different ways. (Or, at least, this is not obviously not the case.)<br /><br />Thus, to be certain that one piece of gold (call it <i>A</i>) is strictly better than another piece (call it <i>B</i>), we need to find an example where <i>A</i> actualizes all the potential that <i>B</i> actualizes and then some. That is, there needs to be some potential that <i>A</i> actualizes <i>on top</i> of all the potential that <i>B</i> actualizes.<br /><br />So, how about the conducting of electricity? Gold always has the potential to conduct electricity, but not all gold is doing this. Say that <i>A</i> is conducting electricity, while an otherwise similar piece <i>B</i> is just sitting there, not conducting electricity. As far as I know, <i>A</i>'s conducting of electricity doesn't entail the foregoing of any potential, at least not on net. (Yes, maybe conducting electricity causes <i>A</i> to lose coldness. But the gold is compensated for this loss by gaining hotness, so no potential is lost on net.)<br /><br />On the A-T view, as I understand it, to <i>not</i> conduct electricity is not a potential that <i>B</i> is actualizing. <i>B</i> is just sitting there, not conducting electricity because it hasn't been offered any electricity to conduct. It is not as though <i>B</i> is actively insulating. Thus, <i>B</i> is actualizing strictly less potential than <i>A</i> is.<br /><br />To be clear, in my example, the comparative perfection of <i>A</i> isn't because its conducting of electricity might be serving some intelligent end. The point is that <i>A</i> is <i>actually</i> conducting electricity, while <i>B</i> merely <i>potentially could</i> conduct electricity. The example should still work even if <i>A</i> is conducting electricity just because of some natural accident.<br /><br />In this case, would it not follow from the A-T view that there is more goodness in <i>A</i> than in <i>B</i>?<br /><br />(It looks like there is some dispute over whether lumps of gold are substances, or whether instead the individual gold atoms are substances while the lump is just an aggregate of distinct substances. However, if I'm not mistaken, even an individual gold atom could conduct electricity, so my example doesn't turn on the resolution of this dispute.)Tyrrell McAllisterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03742116091097551615noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-16855263912793156832014-08-06T08:43:44.354-07:002014-08-06T08:43:44.354-07:00@Mr. Green:
"[I]t's not natural in the s...@Mr. Green:<br /><br />"[I]t's not natural in the sense of being innate or intrinsic."<br /><br />Fair enough. I agree with that.Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-90113665785842864862014-08-06T08:10:23.147-07:002014-08-06T08:10:23.147-07:00Scott: The problem I have is that I think the dist...Scott: <i>The problem I have is that I think the distinction between natural and violent motion is a part of Aristotle's physics is one that hasn't worn well.</i><br /><br />That is what I have thought also: just as a body moves towards its natural place (the centre of gravity, not the centre of the universe — a mere refinement of Aristotle's view) by virtue of its natural gravitational teleology, so does a body move when you pick it up by virtue of its natural electromagnetic teleology. But I suddenly recognised that I've had it backwards the whole time. The <i>natural</i> state of a body is simply to move in a straight line (in whatever direction it was going, not towards the centre of the universe), because that's what it does of its own nature, without any outside force acting on it. (So much for inertia's being a problem for Aristotelianism!) It is both falling and pushing the object that are unnatural, because they rely on some other object acting on the body. Of course, it's only partly unnatural, because it still depends on the nature of the body being acted upon, but it's not natural in the sense of being innate or intrinsic.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-6183624886625467372014-08-05T18:47:07.232-07:002014-08-05T18:47:07.232-07:00Well, there's nothing like an extra verb or tw...Well, there's nothing like an extra verb or two to render a sentence more emphatic. ;-)<br /><br />Of course what I meant to write was <i>The problem I have is that I think the distinction between natural and violent motion is a part of Aristotle's physics that hasn't worn well.</i>Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-91843619506073389622014-08-05T17:05:18.345-07:002014-08-05T17:05:18.345-07:00@Brandon and George LeSauvage:
[George:] "&#...@Brandon and George LeSauvage:<br /><br />[George:] "'Bad' here means 'not acting according to its nature', doesn't it?"<br /><br />Well, at least it means "falling in some way short of fully manifesting or expressing its nature." At any rate I certainly see the analogy Brandon notes between violent motion and badness, and I agree with George's statements after his first paragraph.<br /><br />The problem I have is that I think the distinction between natural and violent motion is a part of Aristotle's physics is one that hasn't worn well. I don't see that modern physics bears out his view that merely tossing a stone in the air somehow causes it to act out of accordance with its nature, or even not to act <i>from</i> its nature.<br /><br />But such details aside, I'm satisfied if we're all in agreement with this statement of George's: "Since they [inanimate objects like rocks] are not alive, the notion of flourishing cannot apply." That's the heart of the point I originally wanted to make.Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-75026514454511397822014-08-05T15:53:12.894-07:002014-08-05T15:53:12.894-07:00James Barham wrote,
" The principle under...James Barham wrote,<br /><br /><i>" The principle underlying the stability of non-living systems (such as stars) is free energy minimization. The principle underlying the stability of living systems (such as cells) is clearly something entirely different---something we as yet know very little about, though some (e.g., Stuart Kauffman, F.E. Yates, Mae-Wan Ho, Alexei Kurakin)have begun to speculate about it in a productive way.<br /><br /> August 2, 2014 at 8:30 AM "</i><br /><br /><br />Huh, I was just thinking about what the "stability of living systems" notion might imply, the other day ... if not about it in any particularly systematic manner.<br /><br /><br />But this angle seems to me to lead to the crux of a critical sociopolitical issue; one directly and inextricably tied to a philosophical stance and outcome: the answer to which, renders social morality claims either intellectually coherent, or as records of mere acts of will, on the part of a ... well, something or other.<br /><br />Anyone who has had basic college level biology will have been familiarized with the principle of homeostasis. Of course you can simply toss it aside conceptually, but the notion of health as we understand, or have understood it, will necessarily be jettisoned as well.<br /><br />This is no doubt a prospect a goodly number of moral nihilists who wish to preserve (for whatever reason) some respect for their own social existences, are trying to deal with.<br /><br />Although I have not yet decided to register with the site Alan Fox has provided as his home base, it looks, superficially at least, as if this very question has, under another aspect, come up over there. To wit and in essence: the question, while assuming both the scientistic/moral nihilist stance and the proposition that there is a genetic determinant in the production of homosexuals - why once detectable, "homosexual" foeti should not habitually be eliminated, and/or any genetic tendencies toward the production of the same outcome, be preemptively corrected. Should the carriers of course, so desire.<br /><br />Or if the term "corrected" seems objectionable; why individuals should not be socially allowed to purge their own genome of any such potential, or abort at will any such product, simply on the grounds of personal autonomy or preference.<br /><br />Certainly not every genetic abnormality or variation could be claimed as conferring some reproductive or survival advantage. Modern evolutionary theory explicitly denies such.<br /><br />So for (for the sake of argument) cleft palates and borderline personality disorder, so too, perhaps, for homosexual dispositions or liabilities.<br /><br />It would be remarkable to witness an anti-teleological theorist's attempt to configure a taboo against such actions on principles consistent with his own interpretive assumptions.DNWnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-88914622264807320392014-08-05T14:46:13.033-07:002014-08-05T14:46:13.033-07:00@Scott:
I think Brandon pointed to the point I wa...@Scott:<br /><br />I think Brandon pointed to the point I was trying to make. "Bad" here means "not acting according to its nature", doesn't it?<br /><br />For humans, that is often something we call bad, morally. The rest of the time, it is, as with animals and plants, a case of it being defective. (I don't mean a "bad dog" as one who wets the carpet, but one who won't drink water, or who can't stand up - defects relative to the nature of a dog.)<br /><br />Since there is no internally generated natural motion with inanimate objects, the analogous "badness" is further removed from our ethical paradigm for "badness". But shouldn't we expect this? A rock which fails to act as it should would be a bad rock, etc. <br /><br />But of course, it is also true that inanimate substances are quite the same sort of things as animate. Many are just collective terms, like water; others, like rocks, don't have organic unity. We don't say a rock is damaged, qua rock, by being split in two. Since they are not alive, the notion of flourishing cannot apply.<br /><br />Of course, we don't normally believe this can happen. So we look for causes, as I said. The point is that inorganic substances are at a great remove from organic, and so any discussion of their failure to be or act as their nature ought, would also be at a great remove.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-55836252078671343182014-08-05T10:47:19.711-07:002014-08-05T10:47:19.711-07:00@ Anonymous,
That book was in fact referenced mul...@ Anonymous,<br /><br />That book was in fact referenced multiple times in Ed's recent debate with Keith Parsons over the grounding of morality in nature. Unfortunately due to the wordcount it never became a focus of attention. <br />Danielnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-46657455004211281922014-08-05T10:37:00.341-07:002014-08-05T10:37:00.341-07:00Hey Professor Feser have you ever read "Darwi...Hey Professor Feser have you ever read "Darwinian Natural Right" by Larry Arnhart?<br /><br />The book description says "This book shows how Darwinian biology supports an Aristotelian view of ethics as rooted in human nature."<br /><br />Thought that would get your mortar board spinning.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-2140268014127471412014-08-05T09:48:34.588-07:002014-08-05T09:48:34.588-07:00I think George LeSauvage's example of stones r...I think George LeSauvage's example of stones rolling uphill is an interesting example, though, since it is effectively appealing to the old distinction between natural motion and violent motion; and the analogy, at least, between what we usually call badness and violent motion does hold fairly well -- to be a bad human being, for instance, is to natural human activity as undergoing violent motion is to undergoing natural motion, allowing for the difference free choice makes.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-84887217941631699212014-08-05T09:31:41.116-07:002014-08-05T09:31:41.116-07:00Perhaps it is the misconstrual, or the act of misc...Perhaps it is the misconstrual, or the act of misconstruing, which is "bad" (since it is, in some sense, a privation of the good of seeing things correctly).Glennnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-80660845035664238032014-08-05T09:15:03.940-07:002014-08-05T09:15:03.940-07:00@George LeSauvage:
"Wouldn't examples be...@George LeSauvage:<br /><br />"Wouldn't examples be such as:<br /><br />-A stone which rolls uphill."<br /><br />In this and your other examples, if such a thing actually occurred, we'd take it to be either (a) the effect of external factors or (b) (much less likely) a consequence of something hitherto unknown in the nature of the relevant substance(s). In neither case would we conclude that (e.g.) the stone was a "bad stone." Either it's a "good stone" that isn't able to manifest certain of its properties because of external circumstances, or (again, much less likely) it's manifesting properties we didn't know it had.<br /><br />"Heavy water is an example.…[I]t doesn't act as regular water does."<br /><br />Neither does H₂SO₄. That doesn't make it "bad water"; it makes it "good sulfuric acid." Each compound is a different substance,and its goodness is to be evaluated with respect to its own substantial form, not that of something else.<br /><br />You say something similar in your own sapphire/ruby example, in which we regard a non-living substance as "bad" merely because we've misconstrued its nature in the first place.Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-56544279662292063382014-08-05T09:02:57.081-07:002014-08-05T09:02:57.081-07:00@Scott & Mr Green:
I don't see what is so...@Scott & Mr Green:<br /><br />I don't see what is so problematic about saying an inanimate substance is "bad" in the sense that it doesn't behave as it ought. Wouldn't examples be such as:<br /><br />-A stone which rolls uphill.<br />-A nugget of gold which dissolves in alcohol.<br />-Mercury which is solid at room temperature.<br />-A whirlpool which is exactly square.<br /><br />Of course, in every such case, our reaction is "What's going on here?" That will lead, if possible, to figuring out what caused it to act contrary to it's nature (as that nature is known to us.) And from there, normally, it will entail either drawing a distinction between two types of that substance (eg, heavy and ordinary water), or adjusting our understanding of how it behaves in certain cases.<br /><br />Heavy water is an example. IIRC you can drink as much as you want, and still die of dehydration. That means it doesn't act as regular water does.* The point is not its inutility to the drinker, but that it doesn't react in us as H2O does. <br /><br />Another would be the reclassification of ancient jewels, some of which were called one thing - from their colors - are know classed by chemical composition. (The bad sapphire is really a blue ruby.)<br /><br />*The best description I know of is from Pogo. Seminole Sam sells bottles of plain water packaged as "a lifegiving elixir. Freeze it, and it turns to beautiful crystal. Add soap and it's a fine cleanser. Put in carrots and a bone and it becomes soup. If you thirst, it quenches. Is your house on fire? The elixir puts it out. Only one dollar."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-44123150903053149222014-08-04T11:30:29.322-07:002014-08-04T11:30:29.322-07:00Since we are going over general points in A-T Meta...Since we are going over general points in A-T Metaphysics might I ask about an issue which has been bothering me? It pertains to the Argument from Eternal Truths and the Aristotelian take on modality as a whole.<br /><br />The Argument from Eternal Truths goes something like ‘Abstracta cannot exist apart from some mind, however there are necessary truths dependant on Abstracta that hold from Eternity, ergo there must necessarily be a mind which has existed from Eternity’. Now what kind of necessity are we talking about? Necessary in the sense God qua Unmoved Mover is necessary in that there is motion ergo there is an Unmoved Mover, or necessary in the sense that the non-existence of said being would imply a logical contradiction (apologies for not knowing the technical terms here)? That 3 is a prime number, that Yellow and Blue make Green and countless other truths are logically necessary, so one would be lead to assume that the mind which grounds them from Eternity must also be logically necessary*. But how is said Mind logically necessary? Might we say that the Argument from Eternal Truths establishes that there is a logically necessary being but not what it is about said being that entails its logical necessity, whilst the Ontological Argument tells us that by which said being is logically necessary if possible (which the AET has established) – this would be a clever Leibnizian move.<br /><br />This is largely preamble, what is worrying me is that someone might interpret the Eternal Mind as meaning that necessary truths are not so. Prescinding from issues of Divine Eternity and Immutabilty the Deity could not ‘change its mind’ and have those truths otherwise. Not even God could make 3 cease to be a prime number or alter other necessary truths of Essence. Aristotelian Actualism would not allow anyone to deny this, correct? <br /><br />*Oderberg once wrote that if all minds capable of comprehending the universal Green went out of existence then so would the universal Green. But the very notion of a universal qua necessary truth pertaining to an Essence (say that Green is Yellow and Blue) going out of existence seems logically absurd which suggests that the Eternal Mind must be logically necessary or that Aristotelianism must be abandoned for a soft Platonism a la Husserl on the question of universals. I’d hold that that the logical necessity of God can be established in other fashions anyway, so do not take that latter route.Danielnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-10992831562553504312014-08-04T08:16:30.196-07:002014-08-04T08:16:30.196-07:00@Daniel Thanks so much for the clarification :)@Daniel Thanks so much for the clarification :)James Taddeonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-23957703590977753132014-08-04T07:50:55.414-07:002014-08-04T07:50:55.414-07:00@Mr. Green:
"[Is it] logically incoherent fo...@Mr. Green:<br /><br />"[Is it] logically incoherent for CO to have been the same substance as CO₂, only defective? Or is it 'possible but silly'…?"<br /><br />Hmm, yes, I guess I'd have to agree it's the latter.<br /><br />"[I]s there a 'common sense' argument that we want to think of malleability as being a property of gold, rather than some electrochemical side-effect of a bunch of gold atoms?"<br /><br />I think there is, and it's powerful enough as far as it goes. But I don't think it shows that a lump of gold is a <i>substance</i> in its own right; I think it just shows that there are properties of gold that can be manifested only in aggregates. Isn't there also a "common sense" argument that merely splitting a lump of gold in two doesn't seem sufficient to turn it into two distinct substances?<br /><br />"Actually, here's a counter-argument: if a single atom doesn't have the essential properties of gold, then the atom isn't gold — but what else could it be?"<br /><br />I think I'd have to disagree with the first statement. Gold can still have the <i>essence</i> of gold even if it doesn't manifest the properties that <i>flow from</i> that essence (which is what I assume you mean by "essential properties"). So the single atom <i>is</i> gold; it just isn't manifesting all of its properties.Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-36106926482938254422014-08-04T07:38:27.371-07:002014-08-04T07:38:27.371-07:00@Daniel:
"I am still not convinced I’m afrai...@Daniel:<br /><br />"I am still not convinced I’m afraid."<br /><br />That's fine. Frankly, I expect there will always be (legitimate) disagreement about which non-living things count as substances and which don't, and offhand I don't see any burning issues the resolution of which depends on the answer.Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11979532520761760862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-42981887789424383552014-08-04T05:47:19.684-07:002014-08-04T05:47:19.684-07:00@ James Barham
Oderberg gave some lectures a whil...@ James Barham<br /><br />Oderberg gave some lectures a while ago in my area about the metaphysics of good and evil. He grounded morality in a wider notion of good and evil, connecting the terms to the theory of fulfillment and privation, and applying it to the non-living physical world. He has a book on the same topic in the works. I honestly can't wait.<br /><br />Aristotle gives us the epistemological key. Anything that happens always or for the most part is ordered to an end. This is how we discern final cause. So on this score, I guess we could say a <i>good planet</i> is one that coheres together and regularly orbits a star. I believe it's Oderberg (again) who gives the examples of cycles in nature as being examples of rather obvious teleology in non-living systems. <br /><br />Chastek has a nice dialogue that illustrates the same point. See if this helps<br /><br />http://thomism.wordpress.com/2013/07/20/being-and-goodness-in-modern-cosmology/Curionoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-2126676254010964752014-08-04T05:37:24.962-07:002014-08-04T05:37:24.962-07:00@Scott,
I am still not convinced I’m afraid. The ...@Scott,<br /><br />I am still not convinced I’m afraid. The examples used (conversation, sexual activity, etc.) are examples of two substances interacting with one another not two substances acting as one. In the case of collections like crowds I am uncertain as to whether they can even be taken as Aggregates save in a very loose analogous sense.<br /><br /><br />‘…that those atoms have the capacity/potency to manifest the relevant properties.’<br /><br />‘….Is there some principle of unity in the latter that I'm overlooking?’<br /><br />But this is exactly what concerns me to wit that those atoms only have the capacity/potency to manifest an impoverished amount of the relevant properties. If we go by the maxim ‘As a thing acts so it is: Action is the index of Essence’ then the lump seems an effective Index than the atom. The principle of unity in question is precisely to the Causal Nexus and bearer of the relevant powers. At the back of my mind there is a worry that the atoms should be taken in some way as ontologically derivative.<br /><br />‘The entire book is quite good.’<br /><br />Yes, it was one of the first books on philosophy that I read and I’m grateful that was the case, however Adler’s prose has an annoying tendency to be rather vague whist striving to be lucid in an everyday, kitchen-sink sort of way. I’m looking forward to trying his book on language though, as a lot of people have spoken highly of it.<br />Danielnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-37770065433274565142014-08-04T05:17:15.892-07:002014-08-04T05:17:15.892-07:00@James, with respect to Adams sic that has absolut...@James, with respect to Adams sic that has absolutely no bearing on the Fifth Way at least not on Feser’s account of which focuses on dispositional properties and what modern philosophers of Science have called ‘physical intentionality’. In fact Adams concedes the main point when he speaks of the relation between the ground determining the puddle. The argument most people of that ilk have in mind is the Design Argument (one I intensely dislike) and even in that case Adams remark is question begging since the proponent of said Argument is claiming that the probability of the ground alone determining the puddle is so miniscule as to be disregarded. The complexity in Adams case however does give one cause to wonder…<br /><br />For a look at Teleology in general this article might be of interest if you haven’t already seen it:<br /><br />http://www.epsociety.org/library/articles.asp?pid=81<br />Danielnoreply@blogger.com