Friday, March 3, 2023

Naturalism versus Katz’s Platonism

Naturalism holds that there is nothing more to reality than the world of concrete entities causally related to one another within space and time.  Since this is the realm studied by the natural sciences (such as physics, chemistry, and biology), naturalism can also be characterized as the view that the subject matter of natural science is all that there is.  Naturalism thus denies the existence of God, of angelic intellects, of immaterial souls (whether conceived of along the lines of Descartes’ res cogitans or in some other way), and of Platonic Forms and other abstract objects. 

When people think about philosophical criticisms of naturalism, it seems they usually call to mind arguments for God’s existence or for mind-body dualism.  But it is possible to reject naturalism for reasons independent of those particular issues.  That would be the approach of those who argue for the reality of abstract objects, whether they be universals, numbers, propositions, or what have you.  Call this sort of view Platonism.  (Here I am using the term “Platonism” more or less the way contemporary analytic philosophers tend to use it, viz. to refer to belief in the existence of such abstract entities as distinct from a commitment to either theism or soul-body dualism.  In the history of Platonism there was, of course, a closer connection between these three views than one might guess from the contemporary usage.)

Platonism in this sense has had a number of illustrious defenders in modern analytic philosophy from the very beginning of its history.  Frege’s classic essay “The Thought” is a famous defense of an essentially Platonist view of propositions.  Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy defends something like a Platonist view of universals.  Popper’s “World 3” notion is in some respects similar to Plato’s realm of Forms.  Gödel was famously committed to mathematical Platonism.  When I was in graduate school, it was arguments of this kind, and especially those concerning propositions, that gradually broke the hold over me of the naturalism to which I had long been committed – and softened me up, as it were, for a reconsideration of theism and of the immateriality of the mind.

It was during that time that I first came across Jerrold Katz’s book The Metaphysics of Meaning, a critique of naturalism very much along these broadly Platonist lines.  I’d later discover that this book was part of a larger project that included other works like Language and Other Abstract Objects.  Katz’s work is analytic philosophy at its best – the rigorous argumentation characteristic of that tradition, but in the service of defending old-fashioned metaphysical positions that the tradition is often (if wrongly) thought to have undermined. 

It is not just Katz’s Platonist approach to criticizing naturalism that makes his work stand out, but also his distinctive way of arguing for Platonism.  Katz was a linguist as well as a philosopher, and it is considerations about language and logic, specifically (as opposed, say, to mathematics or general metaphysics) that drive his arguments for Platonism.  But his focus is not (as it was for Frege) on the idea that we cannot make sense of language without positing propositions as abstract objects, lying beyond language, that we access by way of language.  Rather, for Katz, a language and the sentences that can be formulated within it must themselves be understood as abstract objects.  It is this realm of abstract objects that is the subject matter of linguistics – just as, for the mathematical Platonist, numbers constitute a realm of abstract objects that are the subject matter of mathematics, and for the Platonist metaphysician, the Forms are the primary subject matter of philosophy.

Platonic realism is traditionally contrasted with nominalism and conceptualism.  Each of these three positions has variations relating to the subject matter about which one may or may not be a realist (universals, numbers, propositions, or whatever).  For example, consider the problem of universals.  The Platonic realist takes them to be abstract objects (the Forms) in a “third realm” distinct from either the world of particular material things or the world of the mind.  The nominalist holds that only particular things are real and that universals are mere fictions, artifacts of language that correspond to nothing outside language.  The conceptualist takes the purportedly middle ground position that universals exist, but are the sheer creations of the mind rather than mind-independent realities waiting to be discovered by us.  I say “purportedly” because it is difficult to spell conceptualism out in a way that doesn’t collapse into either nominalism or realism of some sort.  (I put to one side for the moment the other variations on realism, viz. Aristotelian realism and Scholastic realism.)

Where language itself is the subject matter, Katz characterizes the nominalist rival to his own position as the view that the focus of linguistics ought to be on the study of token utterances and scribblings – this particular utterance or writing out on paper of the sentence “The cat is on the mat,” that particular utterance or typing out of the sentence “The dog is on the log,” and so on.  Katz endorses Chomsky’s critique of this conception of linguistics.  But Chomsky’s own approach is not realist either in the relevant sense.  Linguistics is, for him, fundamentally about discovering the rules of Universal Grammar that are innate to the human mind.  For Katz, this amounts to a riff on conceptualism or psychologism.  It cannot do justice to the objectivity of linguistic facts.

But it is Wittgenstein and Quine whom Katz takes to have developed the main twentieth-century defenses of naturalism of the kind he has in his sights.  Wittgenstein’s “therapeutic” approach to philosophy aimed to cure us of the temptation to suppose that language is anything more than one further part of the natural history of human beings, alongside seeing, hearing, eating, walking, and so on.  Quine’s scientism sought to fold the study of language into the more general study of human behavior, understood naturalistically.  Much of The Metaphysics of Meaning is devoted to showing that neither thinker successfully made the case. 

Katz’s positive arguments appeal to features of language and logic that the methods to which naturalists confine themselves cannot account for.  For example, there is the necessity possessed by logical truths and analytic statements.  A sound logic and linguistics cannot plausibly deny such necessity.  But the psychological properties posited by a conceptualist theory like Chomsky’s can only ever be contingent in nature.  Hence there is a deep ontological mismatch between the logical and linguistic facts on the one hand and the facts to which such a naturalistic theory can appeal on the other.

Or consider that a language’s grammatical rules allow for the construction of an infinite number of possible sentence types, and that the recursiveness of the logical connectives (and, or, if-then, etc.) allow for an infinite number of possible compound propositions.  By contrast, actual human linguistic and logical performance has yielded only a finite (albeit very large) number of concrete sentence tokens. 

Now, a naturalistic theory that identified linguistic and logical facts with psychological-cum-neurological facts would have to extrapolate, from actual performance, what our psychological-cum-neurological capacities are.  And while actual performance could justify attributing to us capacities for linguistic and logical performance well beyond what has been observed, it could not justify the attribution to us of an infinite capacity.  Again, there is a mismatch between what the logician and linguist know to be true of logic and language, and what is true of psychological capacities construed naturalistically. 

The basic problem, as Katz sums it up, is that “linguistics and logic… trade in the abstract while naturalism insists that everything be concrete” (p. 280).  And again:

Sciences like linguistics and logic are about structures which are maximally abstract… [T]he best scientific theories in these disciplines cannot be brought under constraints interpreting them as theories of concrete objects like minds/brains.  In requiring that a theory of English or a theory of implication be a theory of a concrete psychological reality, conceptualism presents us with theories that do not describe the structure of English sentences or implication relations themselves, but describe, as it were, the shadows they cast on the walls of our mental/neural cave. (p. 281)

Linguistics and logic are in this respect like mathematics.  As is well known, it is quite hopeless to try to interpret mathematical truths as nothing more than descriptions of finite, contingent, concrete entities (collections of physical objects, or of symbols, or whatever).  Katz’s point is that the truths of logic and linguistics are no less infinite, necessary, and abstract, so that it is no less hopeless to try to reduce them to descriptions of finite, contingent, and concrete phenomena of some kind (such as psychological phenomena).

Katz’s reference to “shadows they cast on the walls of our mental/neural cave” is most apt.  The modern naturalist labors under the delusion that he is more rational and scientifically informed than the traditional metaphysician, but the reverse is true.  His position is in fact radically out of harmony with the deliverances of sciences like logic and linguistics (not to mention mathematics), and it is only ideology that prevents him from seeing this.  He is like a denizen of Plato’s cave, albeit it is the brain rather than shadows that his attention is fixated on, leaving him unable to see the sunlight of the higher truths of logic, linguistics, mathematics and the like.

There is much else in Katz’s discussion that merits attention – his differences from Frege, his critique and reformulation of Moore’s notion of the “naturalistic fallacy,” and so on.  But the primary value of his work lies in the salutary reminder it affords us of a fundamental and historically enormously influential (but in recent times strangely neglected) style of challenge to naturalism.

It may seem odd for an Aristotelian like me to commend the work of a Platonist like Katz.  But I don’t see Platonism as a hostile rival to Aristotelianism, as naturalism is.  Rather, I see the dispute between Platonism and Aristotelianism as a family squabble, a disagreement over details between thinkers united on the key moves in the war against the naturalist menace.  (Aristotelianism is in this way best seen as a member of a broader “Ur-Platonist” alliance, to borrow Lloyd Gerson’s phrase.)

Moreover, though my own settled version of realism is Aristotelian (or, more precisely, Aristotelian-Thomist) rather than Platonist, I have long thought that the best route to seeing the truth of realism is through Platonism.  Given the way our minds work, I suspect, it is initially easier to see the falsity of naturalism by way of contrast with the exaggerated anti-naturalism of Platonism (and then to bring Plato down to earth with Aristotle and St. Thomas).  That was my own trajectory, in any case, since it was the Platonism of Frege and other contemporary analytic philosophers that first broke the hold over me of naturalism, and opened the way to reaching, eventually, the sober Aristotelian-Thomistic middle ground.

Related reading:

Join the Ur-Platonist alliance!

Frege on objectivity

Frege on what mathematics isn’t

The metaphysical presuppositions of formal logic

Rucker’s Mindscape

What is mathematics about?

The access problem for mathematical Platonism

David Foster Wallace on abstraction

Review of Craig’s God Over All: Divine Aseity and the Challenge of Platonism

Five Proofs of the Existence of God, Chapter 3

132 comments:

  1. Naturalism is a famously elastic category (yes, naturalists, I know that's not unique and you could say the same of theism).

    Here's two questions from the 2020 PhilPapers Survey:

    "Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?
    Accept or lean towards:
    naturalism
    50.16% (49.39%)
    Accept or lean towards:
    non-naturalism
    31.12% (30.34%)
    Other
    20.27% "

    "Accept or lean towards:
    Platonism
    38.38% (37.83%)
    Accept or lean towards:
    nominalism
    41.85% (41.37%)"

    I would like to know how many naturalists would also identify as platonists. For instance, I don't think that Oppy's tripartite categorization of naturalism precludes Platonism, but I can't recall his exact formula. Something like "All causation is natural," "mind is late and local," and "nothing is divine"? Regardless, the point is he doesn't ever add nominalism to that list.

    Note I don't endorse that schema either -- "mind is late and local" seems like an inessential accretion.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I would say that nominalism is implicit in those first two. "All causation is natural" is circular without further extrapolation of what "natural" means, but for the naturalist that typically means something to the effect that all causation is mindless and mechanistic, that there is nothing irreducibly mental or intellectual.

      "Mind is late and local" carries the same implication. There can't be anything irreducibly mental, even potentially or virtually (to use Thomistic terms), or else mind as a category is neither late nor local.

      This reductionist view of mental causation implies that our minds can't truly grasp or have thoughts "about" immaterial universals (and *especially* not in such a way that the grasping of immaterial universals could affect our behavior), which thus implies nominalism.

      I think naturalism is so elastic *precisely because* naturalists don't like these implications and want to avoid them via imprecision. It's the exact same reason "non-reductive materialist" philosophies of mind tend to be so vague, as Ed has discussed before. Naturalism/materialism entails eliminativism as regards the mind, which entails radical nominalism and ultimately the wholesale rejection of the very concepts of truth and reason. Purportedly naturalist/materialist accounts of mind, when spelled out clearly, either collapse into eliminativism (with all that entails) or turn out not to be materialist after all. Hence they attempt to avoid it by not spelling it out clearly.

      Delete
    2. If naturalism implies materialism then nominalism follows of course. But I don't think all naturalists would list materialism in their credos. Now, 99% of them (I suppose) would be self-identified "physicalists" but that can be a slightly broader term meaning that our universe is exhaustively accounted for by the language and ontology of contemporary physics. That could arguably include abstracta depending on your philosophy of mathematics and laws of nature.

      "All causation is natural," or "all causation mindless and mechanistic" (your gloss) -- a naturalist could believe in the real existence of abstracta but think they are causally inert. Or that their causal influence is found in the operation of laws of nature and thus any influence they have is to be considered quintessentially natural.

      "Mind is late and local" -- I don't see how this implies nominalism provided one doesn't think abstracta depend on mind for their existence.

      Again, I'm not actually advocating for such a stance here or arguing for its plausibility, my proposal is that naturalism is loose enough to include platonic realism if we don't enforce its commitment to strict materialism. I agree that nominalism is a more agreeable bedfellow with naturalism.

      Delete
    3. a naturalist could believe in the real existence of abstracta but think they are causally inert

      To be consistent with this, the naturalist would have to hold that human beings cannot grasp, know about, think about, talk about, or otherwise refer to abstracta in any way, certainly not in any way that would actually have a *causal influence* on our behavior. Hence, he would have to concede that when he says "Abstracta exist but have no causal influence," that he's not actually referring to anything but his own nominal projection.

      Now, perhaps the naturalist could concede that abstracta are real and transcend the material universe and time, but say that they count as "natural" for the purposes of naturalism, and that intellects that can grasp them also count as "natural," but at this point you're defining "naturalism" away, and you could just as well say that God is "natural" and that theism is therefore a type of "naturalism."

      I don't see how this implies nominalism provided one doesn't think abstracta depend on mind for their existence.

      It's not abstracta that depend on [human] minds for their existence. It's the grasping of abstracta BY minds with intellect that depends on minds for its existence.

      Now, given the premise "minds are late and local," there are a few ways the naturalist could try to construe this. The most, er, natural, would be to say that human minds are just aggregates of the blind, mechanistic matter that preceded them and comprise them, that human minds *don't* actually grasp or otherwise interact with abstract in any way, and hence that nothing irreducibly new came into existence with intellectual minds. This would be the eliminativist route, and of course entails radical nominalism (at best).

      The next option would be saying that ALL matter is not only conscious, but also intellectual and grasps abstracta. Under this schema, the naturalist would concede that human minds really do grasp abstracta that transcend the material universe, but would say that our minds are still just aggregates of the conscious, intellectual matter that preceded and comprise them, hence that nothing irreducibly new came into existence with intellectual minds. This would be a radically panpsychist route, and in addition to the problematic idea of all matter being intellectual, this is already stretching the definition of naturalism extremely thin.

      The final option would be to concede that human minds really do grasp abstracta, that the matter that preceded them does not, and hence that intellectual creatures are not mere aggregates of the matter comprising them and that something irreducibly new came into existence with the first creature with an intellectual mind. At this point, however, I would say that the definition of "naturalism" has been clearly stretched beyond any plausible breaking point. The naturalist has implicitly conceded that while individual minds may be "late and local," mind as a *category* is "early" and irreducible and hence what is referred to as a substantial form in Aristotelian terms. And furthermore, the naturalist has conceded that the physical universe was constructed in such a way that it contained the form of irreducible substances that would grasp eternal abstracta that transcend the universe itself, just "waiting" to be realized. Maybe the naturalist could try to attribute all this to "brute facts" in a last-ditch effort to preserve some semblance of something that could be called "naturalism," but the theistic implications here are pretty obvious.

      Delete
    4. Out of all of these, I think only the radical panpsychist route may be plausibly called "naturalistic," while allowing for the existence of abstracta and our ability to grasp them, thus avoiding nominalism.

      However, in addition to stretching the definition thin already, it completely subverts the usual justification for positing naturalism in the first place, which is that we shouldn't postulate the existence of things outside the realm of what science can observe, which very much does not include any supposed consciousness or ability to grasp abstracta in bare matter.

      So I maintain what I said before: "Naturalism" is so vaguely defined precisely because when you attempt to define it clearly, it either collapses into materialism and absurdities like nominalism, or ends up being trivial and meaningless, and naturalists wish to avoid committing themselves to those implications.

      Delete
  2. "Katz’s reference to “shadows they cast on the walls of our mental/neural cave” is most apt. The modern naturalist labors under the delusion that he is more rational and scientifically informed than the traditional metaphysician, but the reverse is true. His position is in fact radically out of harmony with the deliverances of sciences like logic and linguistics (not to mention mathematics), and it is only ideology that prevents him from seeing this. He is like a denizen of Plato’s cave, albeit it is the brain rather than shadows that his attention is fixated on, leaving him unable to see the sunlight of the higher truths of logic, linguistics, mathematics and the like".

    Bravo, Ed, Bravo! Very well stated!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ed
    If there were more philosophy professors who wrote as clearly as you do, there would be a lot more philosophy majors. But how employable they would be after graduation, is another matter entirely.

    ReplyDelete
  4. OP(Katz)
    "It cannot do justice to the objectivity of linguistic facts."
    There are no objective linguistic facts.

    Language is entirely a subjective process of material.

    Material processes of the brain lead to motor movements such that material is deposited on a surface that the writer subjectively associates with "The cat is on the mat". Once on the surface that material has no objective meaning and no association with any abstract objects or other unseen objects in the universe, rather, that material is merely a particular arrangement of material.

    Another human being comes along and through the material processes of light reflection, cellular stimulation by light, and the resulting physical processes recognizes, or does not recognize, the material on the surface the writer associated with "The cat is on the mat". Most attempted readers find the writing meaningless in content, since most attempted readers are illiterate in the language it was written in, or perhaps entirely illiterate.

    Even assuming the reader is stimulated to brain activity considering some sort of cat on some sort of mat it is unlikely that the brain processes of the reader match the brain processes of the writer, for example, what color cat? What sort of mat? What size, shape and on and on. All that is conveyed are brain process in the reader that arise as very rough corollaries to the brain processes in the writer.

    That physical description of the processes involved is sufficient to account for written language. No reference to abstract objects of language, immaterial mind with its associated incoherent notions, god, or any other mystical imaginary aspect are necessary.

    " In requiring that a theory of English or a theory of implication be a theory of a concrete psychological reality, conceptualism presents us with theories that do not describe the structure of English sentences or implication relations themselves, but describe, as it were, the shadows they cast on the walls of our mental/neural cave."
    Material processes are sufficient to account for linguistic structures as evidenced by the ability of AI to form natural sounding English sentences, AI being entirely a deterministic mechanistic material process.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @ StardustyPsyche,

      Science shows the world to be unpredictable. Therefore AI cannot model the world since an AI program is an algorithm which is a prediction rule. You cannot give a prediction rule for what is unpredictable.

      Minds, OTOH, can contemplate beyond a computable rule because neurons do not have computable outputs. Science has shown that they have built in random behaviour, which is the key to going beyond any computer routine. Minds have a supernatural (no this is not self contradictory) component, the scientific sign of which is the random part of neural behaviour.

      Just because your philosophy implies that you do not have a mind doesn't mean that you don't have one. You just refuse to contemplate it.

      Tom Cohoe

      Delete
    2. Stardust,
      Do you realize the implications of what your saying?
      A reality such as you describe is one in which you have no sentience. Your words and acts would be just deterministic byproducts of your brain chemistry: as meaningless as a dog barking.

      Delete
    3. What makes you think a dog's barking is meaningless?

      Delete
    4. Tim,
      "Do you realize the implications of what your saying?"
      Yes, in general, although I can't claim to be absolutely comprehensive and thorough in considering every possible implication.

      "Your words and acts would be just deterministic byproducts of your brain chemistry"
      Yes, clearly, that is the case.

      "as meaningless as a dog barking."
      A dog barking has meaning, to dogs, other animals, and human beings. I know many people who have effective interactive communication with dogs in which barking conveys meaning to the human being. A dog bark seems to mean things like "pay attention to me", "I want to go outside", "I'm hungry", or "I hear a noise outside". Relative to the English language barking is quite rudimentary, to be sure, but I would not say barking is devoid of meaning.

      Meaning is a relation. Meaning is relative in that one thing has meaning relative to something else. The entirety of existence has no ultimate meaning because there is nothing outside of all that exists for the entirety of existence to be relative to.

      Does that bother you, to merely exist? It does not bother me. I suppose that is a matter of personal sensibilities.

      A thousand years from now do you suppose the fact that either of us lived will have meaning to anybody or anything? I very much doubt it. Does that bother you?

      You can record words to express the things that have meaning to you, and then you could encode them on a CD, if you have a CD writer. In a thousand years chances are that will all seem like a million meaningless etch marks on plastic, because by then nobody is going to be using CDs to decode your symbols.

      The symbols you make have no objective meaning, convey no objective linguistic facts.

      Language is a subjective convention, not objective. Outside of those participating in the convention the utterances or symbols do not have meaning.

      Chomsky, and others, showed the poverty of stimulus, meaning, young children receive too little stimulation to account for the complexities of language they quickly adopt and use. It would be like you could do calculus with just a few scattered lessons in arithmetic and geometry. From that scientists have concluded that our capacity for language in general is partially hardwired into the structure of the brain.

      To that extent, the observation of the poverty of stimulus indicates that the whole of humanity has some foundational aspects of the conventions of language already embedded in the structural arrangements of the brain, driven by genetics as a product of biological evolution of our species.

      Delete
    5. @ StardustyPsyche,

      "Meaning is a relation. Meaning is relative in that one thing has meaning relative to something else. The entirety of existence has no ultimate meaning because there is nothing outside of all that exists for the entirety of existence to be relative to."

      The utterance, "all that exists", does not include God as God (a name) is not limited by the meanings of words.

      The symbols of language do not have intrinsic meaning, but they convey meaning which the supernatural part of the mind can understand. "Supernatural" here means "beyond scientific investigation". The existence of random sequences in nature (which is not "all that exists"), as shown by the formalism of quantum mechanics, shows us that supernatural things exist since something outside of the rules of science causes the random symbols to be selected.

      Your previously expressed scorn at the idea of "random" is just a form of ignoring what you refuse to contemplate and shows the hollowness of your assumption that you can "prove" atheism (with your "meaningless" symbols yet - funny thinking indeed).

      All you are doing is expressing the artificial limits of what you allow yourself to think. It is funny in a sad way, but it is not deep.

      Tom Cohoe

      Delete
    6. What's that?

      I thought I heard something talking.

      Doesn't matter. It already ceased to exist.

      Delete
    7. Tom,
      "Therefore AI cannot model the world"
      Neither can the human brain, precisely, I never made any such claim that AI could precisely model the world.

      AI can produce native speaker-like English text, proving that a deterministic mechanistic system with no soul, no mind, is sufficient to account for language production.

      " Minds have a supernatural (no this is not self contradictory) component"
      These terms are incoherent in reference to real existent entities:
      supernatural
      immaterial
      multiverse

      nature
      noun
      na·​ture ˈnā-chər
      Synonyms of nature
      1
      : the external world in its entirety

      Thus "supernatural" means "beyond all the world in its entirety".

      The term "supernatural" asserts an existence beyond all that exists, and is thus an incoherent term.

      Delete
    8. @ StardustyPsyche,

      "AI can produce native speaker-like English text, proving that a deterministic mechanistic system with no soul, no mind, is sufficient to account for language production."

      Sorry buddy, that you can be fooled proves nothing.

      "The term "supernatural" asserts an existence beyond all that exists, and is thus an incoherent term."

      You can't whip out a bunch of definitions and synonyms and prove anything here either.

      Sorry, my friend.

      😏

      Tom Cohoe

      Delete
    9. @Tim the White: I have read that cats make some 80 different communicative sounds and use them more with humans than with other cats. I have also read that human cat-owners are fairly accurate in interpreting the vocalization of their own cat but not particularly so in interpreting the vocalization of previously unknown cats. So I don't know that we can say cats have a proper "language" that they use with humans, but individual cats at the least are able to work out a system of vocalizations to communicate with "their" humans -- who are less able to read other forms of communication than other cats are.

      Delete
    10. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
  5. The problem with rejecting nominalism is... what's the alternative? If names are not human constructs then names are real. And if names are real then names have power. And if names have power then names can change objective reality. And if names can change objective reality, then sorcery is real and easily accessible to anybody.

    Do you really want to go down that train of thought?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Drugs are Bad!"-Mr. Mackey, SOUTH PARK.

      Delete
    2. Consider the name of the Archangel Raphael, which means God Heals. The name is like a verb. The name and the angel symbolize and personify God's healing will. That is why people invoke Saint Raphael.

      While not sorcery, some names are indeed miraculous, or at least prodigious.
      They carry great power, and effect change. Examples include.

      Jesus,
      Mohammad
      Caesar
      Einstein
      Elvis

      Delete
    3. @Tim the White

      A scary thought. Our Lady of Victory pray for us.

      Delete
    4. @empoweredbeing. It seems strange that you would consider us able to create new physical forms, but not words that are real? We know words are real, I call out my dogs name, and she comes running. The reason you won’t get why this is pertinent is that you only assume a horizontal reality, the vertical platonic aspect of reality is hidden in the modern scientistic perspective. This is one reason why free will is denied, as if accepting that the words of Shakespeare were effectively written at the point of the big bang is more rational than accepting something which is self evident. Top down causation is taken as primary in the study of, say, history classes, then denied in physics classes!

      In loosing the vertical 700 years ago, we have become better at understanding surface, and terrible at understanding even being itself.

      Delete
    5. And if names have power then names can change objective reality.

      Wait, what? How does it follow from words having an existence that transcends the material that this entails a power to directly change the things named by naming them?

      In fact, words DO have power, but not that particular power. The ability of human reason to grasp the forms of things, to name them and communicate their forms to other humans using those names, is in fact what has given us mastery over the world around us, the ability to collectively compile knowledge over time, and to advance our technology based on our understanding of that communicated knowledge. You are reading this on a computer in a comfortably heated house with indoor plumbing and electricity available in every wall precisely because words have power.

      Delete
    6. Names are human constructs in every philosophy ever, even in Plato. Saying that the essence of what it means to be a tree is not human construct does not entail that the word “tree” is also not a human construct. The essence or form exists objectively, but not the word used to signify it.

      Delete
    7. "If names are not human constructs then names are real. And if names are real then names have power."

      When the platonist says that "names are real" he means that human thought and language is connected, is about the realm of abstract objects, not that utterances are physical objects.

      Some real-life platonists, in the sense of pagans followers of Plato, did defend that sorcery is real, but their metaphysics is... quite diferent than what the average analytical platonist defends.

      Delete
    8. I think you're conflating some things here, at least if you want to keep "names" as an example. The reality of universals doesn't entail the reality of haeccities and even if they did, their power is to identify

      Delete
  6. I would like a version of Platonism to be true, but I find nominalism more persuasive. It seems to me that mathematics, for example, is about definitions, which are human creations. A Platonist would say that Pi, the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle, is independent of people, and will continue to hold of any circle even if/when there are no people. But the "universality" of Pi is consequence of how we define circumference and diameter.

    Consider a square, which is *defined* to have 4 sides of equal length. If the circumference of a square is defined as the sum of the lengths of the sides, and the diameter as the length of one side, then "PI" for a square (call it PI*, say) is a constant 4 for ANY square. Both Pi and Pi* are universal truths, but they are not independent of our definitions.

    When the Pioneer spacecraft was sent away to other parts of our galaxy, some mathematics was included in it because "math is universal". So says Nobel prize winning mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose, who believes that although intelligent life on other planets won't have the same languages we have, it will have the same math.

    Really? We don't need to go to other planets to find other forms of intelligent life. Take bees, for example. When a scout bee comes back to the hive, it tells the other bees the direction and distance to the flowers it
    found. To us, it looks like a dance, but there may be more to the com mmunication than we know. Somehow, bees communicate quantitative information, so that's bee math. We don't understand bee math, and bees don't understand our math. So why do you suppose life on another planet would have the same math as us?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Your problem is that you’re failing to distinguish between the word and the thing signified. The thing we call a circumference might be called a “bloop blap” by aliens, but it doesn’t change the math when you change the word used to describe it. The “circumference” of a square that you’re discussing is just the perimeter of the square. Do you see that you’re just using different words to describe something that already is understood and discussed under a different name? If you agree that the “circumference” of a square is understood by other people as being called the “perimeter” then you’ve effectively agreed that there’s one single concept that both terms are attempting to describe, and if you believe that, then you’ve refuted nominalism, which claims there are no such universals which can be shared between people beyond the mere words.

      Delete
    2. How we even build the rocket if our matematics do not point somewhat to the real organization of the universe?

      Delete
    3. @ Journey 516, ok, so maybe I mean conceptualism or formalism, not nominalism. I may not have the correct terminology but my point is that there are no universals or concepts "out there" waiting to be discovered. This isn't a settled question. It might be thought that the "unreasonable effectiveness" of math points to Platonism (or its variations), but an alternative perspective is to see that early on math was found to be a useful tool for analyzing the world, and so many concepts which were amenable to this analysis were quickly "discovered". But of course, that doesn't mean there are aren't other ways of analyzing the world. Even with math itself many alternative paradigms are possible. e.g. euclidean and non-euclidean geometry. You only have to look at the history of mathematics to see this.

      Delete
    4. Even with math itself many alternative paradigms are possible. e.g. euclidean and non-euclidean geometry. You only have to look at the history of mathematics to see this.

      To take your example: Euclidean and non-euclidean geometry are not opposing accounts of reality, which cannot both be valid. Euclidean geometry is valid, and non-euclidean geometry is also valid, it's just that they don't both obtain as the entirely 100% accurate account with respect to the very same space and moment in time.

      Similarly, there are different possible "arithmetics" out there with different operators than "plus" and "times", and which operate on different sets than counting numbers. They might be non-commutative operators, for example. That fact doesn't invalidate the basic arithmetic we use for ordinary stuff, though: the alternate arithmetic simply applies to some other situation.

      It is wrong to posit that mathematicians merely make up a set of formal rules as the rules they want to play with logically, and that's all there is to the math they do. Nearly all of math done before the 19th century was a process of discovery of relationships that actually hold in real things, and that's why such math "works" to both predict outcomes and to engineer real things. An astronomer who uses math and then predicts an eclipse, and then observes the eclipse (along with 100,000 other people) isn't causing the eclipse to happen, and the mathematical tools he uses aren't mere whims that he willed into existence to play with as a game. Yes, the math tools might have been expressed in different ways, but the underlying relationships they express are real.

      Delete
    5. Having read some of the posts Ed linked to, which in turn led me to the work of James Franklin, I have to admit that the Nominalist/Formalist view seems quite incoherent, and I'm now looking forward to reading Franklin's book.

      Delete
    6. I’m not always so sure about math, but do you really not look at two dogs and think “these are both dogs” in an objective sense? Or two trees and really believe that they don’t both exist as specimens of one and the same entity of tree? I don’t think conceptualism is very potent because it basically has the very silly idea that somehow two dogs don’t actually share the same “dogness” that we clearly recognize. If there was no objective dog essence then we’d be literally inventing an idea that isn’t there if we create a universal our minds. But, then, we couldn’t objectively state true and justified facts about any general thing like dogs or trees or helium particles in general. The result is that it would only be a complete coincidence that we can form useful concepts of universals AND they apply to the objective world EVERY time. To distill what I’m saying, the idea that we don’t really see shared essences between two members of the same species is out of touch with reality, and if that’s not already obvious, the fact that these universals so accurately apply to the objective world even when they have no reason they should under conceptualism, is a big red flag for the conceptualist.

      Delete
  7. Starting with the first two sentences of Professor Feser's article above (i.e. "Naturalism holds that there is nothing more to reality than the world of concrete entities causally related to one another within space and time...naturalism can also be characterized as the view that the subject matter of natural science is all that there is"), I would like to emphasize that this way of thinking is not "natural," but is, by definition, a social and cultural construct that is fundamentally distant from what reality actually is. To begin with, the concept of entities existing "within" space and time is simply an intellectual construct that does not accurately represent reality itself: space and time are not substances or boxes, but rather a mathematical representation of state spaces, an epiphenomenon at best. As Elie Cartan clarified in his "Leçon pour les invariants intégraux" (Hermann Paris 1958) in 1920, the description of a mechanical system should not be done in physical space or even configuration space, but in an abstract space called the "space of states."

    The second point is that the concept of "matter" used in this context is not the same as that used in A-T (Aristotelian-Thomistic) philosophy, which again underscores that we are dealing with a cultural construct rather than a possible description of reality.

    The meta-naturalist question, then, is whether there exist entities in reality that we can know for certain but that cannot be described through a projection in this configuration space. As someone who is decidedly and absolutely not a Platonist (as it is clear to me that there is no world of ideas independent of a mind that thinks them), I believe that ideas - all kinds of ideas - are not floating around waiting to be grasped by my mind, but rather are constructs and inventions following rules of the game (logic) that are simply enacted by being. Therefore, I need to find these realities that are not reducible to a space-time configuration within my experience. One example is oneself: while others may pretend to find a function for us in that space, this is a complicated and sophisticated statement with numerous postulates, such as the existence of others, their ability to describe us in such a configuration, the fact that my act of being is fully enacted, and the coherence of the language used between us to share information. Each of these arguments can be contested, while the fact that I conceive of my own "whatness", that my known potencies are not inscribed even in my current act, is certain. Even using the theory of relativity, it can be said that everyone is in my past and that my sensory perception, including the psychological, is in my past, i.e. nowhere in "space-time".
    In a few words, I do not see how naturalism could hold as such: it is only a discourse or an ideology, not the description of the Reality.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Gaëtan
      "it can be said that everyone is in my past and that my sensory perception, including the psychological, is in my past, i.e. nowhere in "space-time"."
      That denies the present. If all is in the past, then, in the past of what? Surely there must be a present for there to be a past of.

      But how long does the present last? Many philosophical objections were raised to Newton's fluxions, or the infinitesimal, as a basis for integral calculus. Calculus was later defined based upon the limit, so we can think of the present as a limit.

      But to us the present seems longer than that. This is due to perceptual persistence, a sort of first in first out buffer that maintains the recent past in our perceived present. A part of this process is done at the sensory cellular level, for example in retinal retention.

      "the description of a mechanical system should not be done in physical space"
      Right, the description is an abstraction, the physical space is the reality being described, on the postulates you mention elsewhere in your post.

      "this is a complicated and sophisticated statement with numerous postulates, ... Each of these arguments can be contested, while the fact that I conceive of my own "whatness", ...is certain."
      Which is why naturalism is fully coherent, that is to say, completely lacking in self contradiction.

      Cogito ergo sum. Indeed, the rest requires the provisional acceptance of postulates. One approach is to provisionally accept the postulate that the human senses are basically reliable. Not that the senses are fully accurate, but that the senses provide some degree of information about a true external reality, an external reality that is discoverable, and that can be known to increasing accuracy by technologically ascertaining and compensating for inaccuracies and limits of our sensory data.

      With this we naturalists can at least meet with Thomists on a common ground, a common basis from which we can test each other's views.
      "The first and more manifest way"
      Note the key word here, "manifest". Aquinas seeks to argue based upon that which is manifest, not scripture, not mythology, not story telling, not dreams.

      "It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion"
      Here Aquinas reiterates very strongly that the basis of his argument is to be that which is evident to our senses. It is certain that in the world some things are in motion because those things and the motion of those things are evident to our senses.

      Thus, Aquinas makes clear from the outset that he will argue naturalistically. He goes on to use examples of ordinary physical natural objects and processes such as fire, heat, wood, hand, and staff.

      With this Aquinas has established a common basis of argumentation with the naturalist, having met us on our own ground, as it were. Aquinas agrees to use only logic applied to what is manifest and evident to our senses, thus, to limit himself to naturalistic arguments to prove the necessity of the supernatural, which he later claims everyone understands to be god.

      He of course fails, because he employs the errors of Aristotle, and thus makes demonstrably false statements, and employs invalid logic because he uses a false dichotomy, as well as other defects in his argument.

      Even though Aquinas failed due to his use of false premises and invalid logic, still, credit where credit is due, he argued on naturalistic and logical grounds.

      Delete
    2. @ StardustyPsyche,

      What you call the errors of Aristotle are your own, but you cannot see them because you cling to the self contradictory premise that things are as you say they are when that is not the case. Thus you choose not to face the truth that there is more.

      Aquinas of course argued that we learn from our sensory input. It is a major theme with him. But what you cannot face is that what you can perceive with the senses shows that more exists than what can be perceived through the senses. But whenever this is pointed out to you, you declare through some imaginary authority that this is a contradiction and ignore it. You already tried it once today, but there is no contradiction.

      The words "false dichotomy" are just a magic incantation when they express nothing more than your uncontradictable authority.

      If a clock moves through space, it measures less time moving between two points in that space than observers at rest measure. The less time it takes to cross a given space, the faster the clock is going. The distance between the given points is foreshortened in the direction of the clocks motion. Thus it can be moving at faster than the speed of light by its time measure to cross the space.

      E.g., in the twin paradox of special relativity, the twin moving to Andromeda can age 1 second over a distance of light years and therefore return much younger than his Earthbound twin. It's called a paradox because it can be resolved to be non contradictory within special relativity.

      But you declare "Aristotle made a fatal mistake" because you do not wish to understand. You can't show anyone to be wrong about anything with that attitude, and you certainly can't declaim against Aquinas with that attitude.

      If there was a piece of paper stuck to your back and someone told you that a piece of paper was following you around, your declaration that that couldn't be because pieces of paper do not follow people around wouldn't prove anything true. Your definitions don't prove anything true. Your convictions are not a proof.

      Tom Cohoe

      Delete
    3. Hi @StardustyPsyche,

      I'll address your comments in order:

      (1) In my example, I assumed the validity of the theory of relativity, so the notion of "present" I used is the one defined by the restricted theory of relativity, including the notion of past.

      (2) Your comments show that we're not discussing the same thing. "Cogito ergo sum" has nothing to do with the concept of "whatness". The conception of my "whatness" and other "whatnesses" that are not my own precede the act of thinking. My Aristotelian discourse focuses on the "whatnesses" themselves, which interact with my own "whatness" with absolute certainty. In contrast, your naturalist discussion aims to construct a scheme, like space-time, to categorize objects while excluding those that cannot be placed in a "space-time" box. This naturalist discourse is already a discourse on a discourse and therefore ideological.

      This approach has several intellectual consequences: (a) you exclude "whatnesses" that cannot be categorized in a "space-time" box from your investigations. (b) You limit your logical tools to the limited Boolean logic while disregarding the richer possibilities of Aristotelian logic. Aristotelian logic allows for a deeper understanding of reality, taking into account the explicit need of existence of the mid-terms in syllogisms.

      (3) Consequently, I reject your assertion that Aristotelianism and naturalism share a common ground. Their objects of discourse are not the same, nor do they share a common logic. As one example among many, Aristotelianism is perfectly compatible with quantum mechanics from a logical and experiential point of view, while naturalism struggles to interpret it and resorts to complicated concepts, or myths, to cope with it.

      In short, Aristotelianism deals with reality itself, while naturalism deals with a mythology, even if, I concede it, it is a noble one."

      Delete
    4. Gaëtan,
      "I reject your assertion that Aristotelianism and naturalism share a common ground."
      Strawman, those are your words, not mine.

      I cited the clear words of Aquinas in the First Way to assert Aquinas argued, in that case, on naturalistic grounds.

      "The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion."
      iteadthomam.blogspot.com/2011/01/first-way-in-syllogistic-form.html

      "fire...wood...hot...cold...staff... hand."
      These are the natural, manifest, and evident to our senses objects and processes with which Aquinas argued.

      III. The Argument in Symbolic Format:
      P1-A: m
      P2-A: m ® a
      C-A: a

      [P1-B: a ® (i V f)]*
      P2-B: a
      C-B: i V f

      P1-C: i V f
      P4-C: ~ i
      C-C: \ f.

      Note that Carrasquillo finds in the argument of Aquinas, and therefore uses, the same sorts of logical constructs we naturalists employ.

      It is the fact that Aquinas argued on naturalistic grounds and employed the same sorts of logical constructs as naturalists typically employ that allows we naturalists to communicate with Thomists using a common language at the intersection and overlap of our observational and logical techniques.

      Delete
    5. @StardustPsyche,

      I want to address the following points:

      (1) Firstly, it appears that you totally forgot what you wrote earlier, on March the 4th at 1:12 PM: "With this we naturalists can at least meet with Thomists on a common ground, a common basis from which we can test each other's views." This shows that what I wrote was the precise opposite of a strawman argument: it was perfectly to the point and I appreciate that you cannot counter my position rationally.

      (2) Secondly, it seems like you may be confused. I have never discussed the 1st Way with you here or anywhere else, so I'm not sure how you are relating my previous comments to that topic. It seems like you are using a strawman argument.

      (3) Motion is certainly a part of the "whatness," my dear, but it is not limited to entities that can be intellectually projected onto a configuration's or a states' space. It is simply the ontological transition from potentiality to actuality of a specific "whatness".

      (4) I am not interested in discussing your "Argument" and its symbolic format as it is not relevant to our current topic of discussion. Furthermore, it seems evident that you lack even a basic understanding of philosophy (Aristoteles, ...), logic (K, KT, ....), and physics (of any kind...) , but I am not here to "teach" you. Additionally, I personally do not support intellectually the 5 ways, except, perhaps, the one related to the final causes. On that specific topic, instead, I am fully convinced by the Gödel-Scott-Bentzmüller approach.

      (5) I urge you to stop conflating Aristotle with your vague definition of naturalism, if only out of respect for yourself.

      Delete
    6. @ StardustyPsyche,

      There are three ways to investigate truth - the right way, the wrong way, and the StardustyPsyche way, which is the funny way 🤣.

      Stardusty, I don't wish to be mean to you, but when you have to ignore so much, such as that an electron bouncing off another electron does not exemplify a supposed "false dichotomy", you need some well wishing jolts to loosen you from clinging to false illusions.

      "Naturalist" is a broad term. I too am a naturalist insofar as I believe in the use of science to investigate what is open to our senses, but I do not insist that science cannot uncover its own limitations, which it has, in fact, done in the formalism of quantum mechanics.

      Furthermore, there are places for the use of symbolic logic, but the understanding of Aquinas' short and simple First Way isn"t one of them. All of symbolic logic is, ultimately, defined in English (or some other human language), so what is expressed in symbolic logic can be expressed in English (or some other human language). You cannot say anything new or "deeper" about, or more "powerfully analyse", the First Way by copying a dozen lines or so of symbolic logic from some paper and posting it. All you accomplish is to make what you are saying more obscure and obstruct debate. You do not make the twin paradox of special relativity "go away", for example.

      The English language is all that is needed to discuss a good translation of the First Way.

      😀

      Tom Cohoe

      Delete
    7. Guys...

      Verse 1:
      There's a troll on our Thomistic site
      His name is StardustyPsyche, oh what a plight
      He never listens, just repeats the same thing
      Trying to reason with him is like a bee without a sting

      Chorus:
      Don't waste your time on StardustyPsyche
      He's stuck in his ways and won't see the light
      Just let him be and move on with your day
      Don't let his negativity get in your way

      Verse 2:
      He thinks he knows it all, but really he's just blind
      Spouting off nonsense that's all in his mind
      Don't feed into his game, don't give him a chance
      For every word you say, he'll just do a dance

      Chorus:
      Don't waste your time on StardustyPsyche
      He's stuck in his ways and won't see the light
      Just let him be and move on with your day
      Don't let his negativity get in your way

      Verse 3:
      We're here to discuss and learn from each other
      But he's just a distraction, a bother
      Let's focus on the topics at hand
      And leave StardustyPsyche in the dust where he stands

      Chorus:
      Don't waste your time on StardustyPsyche
      He's stuck in his ways and won't see the light
      Just let him be and move on with your day
      Don't let his negativity get in your way

      Bridge:
      Life is too short for pointless debates
      Let's use our time wisely and communicate
      With those who are willing to listen and grow
      And leave StardustyPsyche with his one-man show

      Chorus:
      Don't waste your time on StardustyPsyche
      He's stuck in his ways and won't see the light
      Just let him be and move on with your day
      Don't let his negativity get in your way.

      Delete
    8. Gaëtan,
      " Firstly, it appears that you totally forgot what you wrote earlier, on March the 4th at 1:12 PM: "With this we naturalists can at least meet with Thomists on a common ground, a common basis from which we can test each other's views.""
      I recall very clearly that was what I said, hence the incontrovertible fact that you employed a strawman argument, which is clearly fallacious.

      You stated:
      ""I reject your assertion that Aristotelianism and naturalism share a common ground.""
      But I did not state that. You used Aristotle as a strawman for Aquinas. You do realize those are two different people, correct?

      "I have never discussed the 1st Way with you here or anywhere else, so I'm not sure how you are relating my previous comments to that topic."
      Since you are the unsure one it is evident that it is you who is confused.

      "Motion is certainly a part of the "whatness,""
      I have never encountered the term "whatness". You are free to make up words as you wish, but using them in conversation with strangers tends to make your opinions sound like gibberish.

      "I am not interested in discussing your "Argument" and its symbolic format as it is not relevant to our current topic of discussion."
      The First Way by Aquinas is not "my" argument, so you are making yet another false attribution toward me.

      The relevance of the symbolic format is that it clearly shows that in the First Way Aquinas used the same sort of logic as we naturalists typically use, which provides evidence for my original point, you quoted above with respect to Thomists. You do realize that a Thomist is one who broadly agrees with the arguments of Aquinas, correct?

      "I urge you to stop conflating Aristotle with your vague definition of naturalism"
      I urge you to cease employing your strawman of Aristotle when I clearly stated Aquinas, if only out of respect for not repeating your logically invalid arguments.

      Delete
    9. Tom,
      "Stardusty, I don't wish to be mean to you,"
      I believe you, after all, you were so very kind as to pray for me, and although it is obviously incoherent to suppose intercessory prayer could actually benifit me on the Thomistic formulation of god, I appreciate the human sentiment nevertheless.

      "All of symbolic logic is, ultimately, defined in English (or some other human language), so what is expressed in symbolic logic can be expressed in English (or some other human language)."
      Indeed, which is why I appreciate the work of Francisco J. Romero Carrasquillo, Ph.D. (aka, Don Paco) Founder and author of Ite ad Thomam.
      I. The Text (ST I.2.3c):
      II. The Argument in Syllogistic Format:
      III. The Argument in Symbolic Format:

      Careful study and analysis of all 3 parallel presentations provides insights into the locations of the false premises and invalid logic employed by Aquinas.

      Dr. Feser thinks well enough of Carrasquillo to include his work as a reference in the right column of this page.
      iteadthomam.blogspot.com/2011/01/first-way-in-syllogistic-form.html

      "You cannot say anything new or "deeper" about, or more "powerfully analyse", the First Way by copying a dozen lines or so of symbolic logic from some paper and posting it."
      Indeed. The context for me posting that Symbolic Format of the First Way was to show that Aquinas used the same sorts of logical constructs as we naturalists typically use, so to that extent we share a common language to be used in constructive exchanges.

      "All you accomplish is to make what you are saying more obscure and obstruct debate."
      No, not once one studiously analyzes the logical symbols employed and relates them to the English language translation of the original text.

      Careful examination of the logical symbols in conjunction with analysis of the text reveals the false premises and invalid logic Aquinas used, so that would be a very valuable lesson to be learned by all Thomists, that "The first and more manifest way" is in fact a failed argument.

      That is by far the most important thing to learn about the First Way, that it is a failed argument.

      You cannot accurately claim to understand the First Way until you learn specifically where and how it is in fact a failed argument.

      Delete
  8. EmpoweredBeing,

    I don't follow.

    Names are signifiers of real things but not the real thing itself. A "Falling Rocks" sign in German will have different markings but will send the same message so it is only in that respect that a name is a human construct. Removing or changing the sign will not cause rocks to stop falling.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Isn't what you're saying nominalism?

      Delete
    2. No.

      What do you think nominalism means?

      Delete
    3. The idea that names are just labels for objects and are made by and for human purposes and not something discovered in objective reality. When God had Adam name the animals, it seems that Moses was implying nominalism: it seems that he was communicating the message that names are a tool constructed by Adam for his own personal purposes, and as descendents of Adam we have the same right he had.

      "'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.''The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.''The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that’s all.'" ~ Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

      So to summarize, I think that nominalism is the belief that man is master over names and not the other way around.

      Delete
    4. @EmpoweredBeing: I don’t think that’s nominalism? Surely words are always a relationship between the user and an element of reality? What you call the “master” of the name is of course usually the creator or owner of the thing. So for example, I expect that Elon Musk chose the name Tesla for his cars. Of course most of what exists in the world was not created by us. This is what Genesis is referring to in my understanding, that God ‘devolves’ some of His creator rights to us….

      I don’t think that has anything at all to do with Nominalism, which is about whether there is anything real behind what we name, or if it’s just our arbitrary way of dividing up the meaningless patterns in the world.

      Delete
    5. EmpoweredBeing,

      Nominalism is the rejection of universals or abstract ideas.

      From Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:


      Nominalism comes in at least two varieties. In one of them it is the rejection of abstract objects; in the other it is the rejection of universals. Philosophers have often found it necessary to postulate either abstract objects or universals. And so Nominalism in one form or another has played a significant role in the metaphysical debate since at least the Middle Ages, when versions of the second variety of Nominalism were introduced. The two varieties of Nominalism are independent from each other and either can be consistently held without the other. However, both varieties share some common motivations and arguments. This entry surveys nominalistic theories of both varieties.


      I think you are talking about something different.

      Delete
    6. When God had Adam name the animals, it seems that Moses was implying nominalism: it seems that he was communicating the message that names are a tool constructed by Adam for his own personal purposes, and as descendents of Adam we have the same right he had.

      On the contrary, a different interpretation is reasonable or even to be preferred: That God, earlier, had given to Adam a language that Adam could use to talk to God; in that language there already existed words for certain abstract truths (i.e. universals, held via concepts), and that Adam was given the task of naming the animals once he had experienced them and apprehended their essences, and could thereby speak to the congruence of certain of those universals with the essences of those animals. That "speaking to" would be the animals' suitable names in that language Adam had been given.

      It's true that if he had been given some other language, their names would have been different. It does not follow that the act of naming is, therefore, at whim and without reason. We name things all the time, even now, with good reason for the names. The name of "quiver" as a receptacle for arrows derives from an earlier name for what happens when you shoot an arrow into a hard target, but our naming has a reason, it is not wholly done at whim by picking a random sound out of the air and applying it. Arguably, the language God gave Adam was even more filled with such reasons than ours is.

      The "lordship" over animals that Adam's naming implies is that Adam is above the animals by being able to apprehend their essences and natures, something animals cannot do, and it is in virtue of this superiority that Adam was then expressly given lordship by God: not (for example) solely to "own" them for his own private good alone, but also so that, by apprehending the natures of animals, he can re-order in concrete instances ways of behaving that will be to the animal's good even though "mother nature" is unable to achieve that in individual instances (because she works by general rules that provide for good for the most part but not in each case). Adam (and we) can save a baby animal whose mother is unable to nurse it, whereas "nature" would let it die. That relationship to animals (and plants) is part of our lordship along with our using them for our own good: they are not "mere" lifeless tools with no inherent natures to them.

      Delete
    7. @Tony What do you think of St. Hildegard of Bingen, fourth woman doctor of the church, who constructed her own language de novo?

      Delete
    8. I have no problem, in principle, with a language constructed de novo. It appears that ALL known and current languages are sufficiently imbued with "mere conventions" abounding that none of them has much of a claim to being anything like a close cognate to, say, a "natural" language, much less to any primordial "original" and divine-led language. Certainly there can be better or worse languages, especially when you say "better for X", such as better for philosophy, or better for music. And even if there were some existing language that is the "closest cognate" to Adam's language, that doesn't mean it would automatically be better for ALL purposes. So: go for it.

      However, without divine inspiration, it seems (to me) unlikely that any de novo language is likely to be much good, unless the creator is a philologist, a poet, a philosopher, a grammarian, and has mastery over several languages (esp. over 2 or more very different language types).

      Delete
  9. Well said, Dr Feser. I agree. Platonism with a capital P is never going to be the full story, but the denial of the essentially ‘platonic’ nature of reality is the most blinding error of all nominalist philosophies, including empiricism/naturalism/positivism. I would argue thar truth must be something more like christian neoplatonism (under which I too would include Aristotle/Thomism) than any of those, but of course we’re then moving into faith, a leap that arguably can’t be made by reason alone. But reality itself falls apart under any nominalist ontology, even if you invent all kinds of magical ‘emergence’ from particles - of consciousness, maths, symmetry etc. You may as well throw in pixie dust.

    On this point: “ For example, consider the problem of universals. The Platonic realist takes them to be abstract objects (the Forms) in a “third realm” distinct from either the world of particular material things or the world of the mind.”

    I do think this modern idea of platonic forms being a third world is one of the biggest errors that had lead to it being rejected. It’s like saying that in the cave analogy, the object and the shadow of the object are separate things. From the physics of black holes, there is a strong suggestion that in some unexplainable way, the physical contents of the universe are a projection from the boundary of the universe. If you take this in a more platonic sense, the more important aspect is that the information in any sphere of space is described by the surface area of the sphere - not by the volume. In this we can see that the physical world is like an unfolding, or a projection from something deeper. We also have good reason to believe that time and space are themselves emergent and not fundamental. So what would you call the entities that unfold, or represent, from this more fundamental substructure as objects in the world? Substantial forms maybe? This is of course hinted at by David Bohm’s quantum interpretation with it’s explicit and implicit orders.

    Even the more abstract platonic forms, by existing in the unfolded representation must have existence in this realm from which they emerge. So there is no need to see this ‘third realm’ as separate, no more than a thing and it’s shadow are separate things. It just appears so when all you are looking at is shadows. The body is the shadow of the soul, it’s temporary unfolding.

    ReplyDelete
  10. As I recall, Quine held that abstract objects exist but do not have spatio-temporal location or causal powers. Platonic forms, on the other hand, are causes. Would Quine more properly be classified as a conceptualist than as a naturalist?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Also, would his theory be a variant of Berkeley's?

      Delete
  11. OP
    "Naturalism thus denies the existence of God"
    No, rather, naturalism denies the supernatural because "supernatural" is an incoherent term, meaning "existing beyond all that exists".

    Certain formulations of god are logically possible, for example the speculation of a deistic god of limited powers that created the universe but is not omniscient, not omnipotent, and has no concern for our lives or activities.

    One cannot reasonably declare the impossibility of that which is logically possible, merely dismiss such speculations as unevidenced fantasies.

    The Christian god, however is different because so many mutually contradictory properties have been assigned to this particular speculation of god that it is demonstrably incoherent.

    Notably, and rather admirably, Aquinas argued naturalistically. Aquinas argued from what is manifest and evident to our senses. He then went on to use ordinary objects and processes in his arguments, such as fire, heat, wood, hand, and staff.

    Using naturalistic examples Aquinas argued for the necessity of a first mover, which he then linked to god.

    Naturalists do not claim the impossibility of a logically possible god, rather, we claim the impossibility of the Christian god because that complicated formulation of god is self contradictory.

    Further, naturalists deny the necessity of the Thomistic god, because Aquinas used false premises and invalid logic in his attempt to argue for the necessity of a first mover based on logic applied to naturalistic observations.

    "For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality."
    False. Inertial motion is no change in the state of motion for the object in motion. Change of motion calls for a changer. No change of motion does not call for a changer.

    "It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved"
    False. For example an electron is both mover and moved.

    "(impossible) that it should move itself"
    False. Examples of self movers abound such as you, worm, bacteria, rocket, star, and on and on.

    " If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again."
    Invalid logic, false dichotomy, neglects the third case of mutual motion which is how gravity, the electrostatic force, and physics generally is formulated.

    "But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover,"
    Invalid logic, begging the question, uses the premise that there must be a first mover in the body of the argument that concludes there must be a first mover. Also a false dichotomy, neglecting the case that the regress can terminate finitely with mutual motion, as a circle has no beginning or end around its circumference but is finite in overall size.

    "Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover"
    This is what the naturalist denies, not the logical possibility of logically possible gods, rather, we deny the necessity of a first mover based on these arguments because these arguments fail on multiple accounts.

    "this everyone understands to be God."
    Both a false premise and invalid logic in the context of this argument. I do not understand "this" to be god, and I am one of everyone, so the statement is false. Further, inclusion of this statement is invalid logic in that it is a non-sequitur having no logical connection to the rest of the argument.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @ StardustyPsyche,

      "because 'supernatural' is an incoherent term"

      Heh. Only if we use your definition, from which you can prove nothing but how you can repeat yourself over and over.

      "dismiss such speculations as unevidenced fantasies."

      As your illogical atheist fantasy without evidence can similarly be dismissed.

      "The Christian god, however is different because so many mutually contradictory properties have been assigned to this particular speculation of god that it is demonstrably incoherent."

      You have not demonstrated it except by beginning with error, which you wilfully cling to. It is easy to find "contradictions" when you begin with a contradiction.

      "Examples of self movers abound such as you, worm, bacteria, rocket, star, and on and on."

      I've answered this by explaining Aquinas' meaning but you just repeat yourself, losing credibility as a serious thinker.

      😏

      "Invalid logic, false dichotomy, [...] neglects, [...] how [...] physics generally is formulated"

      You do not seem to understand how physics is generally formulated as you ignore arguments from physics and just repeat and repeat and repeat.

      🤣

      "because these arguments fail on multiple accounts"

      Again, only with you as the supreme arbiter of truth, which is "true" only in your fantasy.

      Aquinas says in the first way, "this everyone understands to be God."

      Your answer. Stardusty, is as kooky as I have seen from you. Aquinas's words here are a summing up, or title, to his First Way. It does not have to be logically part of the First Way. That you do not understand "this" to be God is irrelevant. It is not a premise. You do not understand Aquinas because you choose not to understand him.

      😏

      Tom Cohoe

      Delete
    2. So, still obsessed with the aristotelian cosmological argument, hun?

      Delete
    3. Stardusty
      You just channel my inner David Bowie

      "There's a starman waiting in the sky
      He'd like to come and meet us
      But he thinks he'd blow our minds
      There's a starman waiting in the sky
      He's told us not to blow it
      'Cause he knows it's all worthwhile
      He told me
      Let the children lose it
      Let the children use it
      Let all the children boogie"

      Delete
    4. Tom,
      "I've answered this by explaining Aquinas' meaning"
      No, your only "answers" are scattered attributions of what you assert I want, strange discussions of traveling faster than light, your notion of god as a random number sequence, and other non-arguments that never actually form specific counter arguments.

      Talmid,
      "still obsessed with the Aristotelian cosmological argument"
      The First Way is a foundation of Thomism. It encapsulates the core errors of Aquinas in a manner that one can specifically argue either for or against on independent grounds.

      Most assertions made by Thomists to argue for their beliefs or against naturalistic views (OP) are presented in the First Way, and/or in the other of the Five Ways.

      Are you a Thomist? If so, can you show any specific errors in my analysis of the First Way, or the incoherence of the term "supernatural", or any of the specific points I have made?

      Anon,
      Well, quite heart warming to have a song written in my honor. But, I have noticed that not a single person on this thread has the demonstrated capability to engage rationally on the specific facts and logic of my arguments.

      Your artistic talents are made plain by your endearing lyrical creativity and your incisive expressiveness, care to apply your talents to specific logical arguments on the facts and the merits?

      Delete
    5. Ode To StardustyTroll
      by La Mitraine

      Verse 1:
      StardustyPsyche, with words so bold
      His ignorance, a sight to behold
      Trashing God and Thomistic thought
      But his understanding, it comes to naught

      Chorus:
      For he claims concepts don't exist
      Yet he speaks of them with his every twist
      Incoherence, his only friend
      His naturalism, a foolish trend

      Verse 2:
      He claims there's nothing but the physical
      Yet consciousness, to him, is mythical
      He speaks of logic and reason too
      But without a mind, how can they be true?

      Chorus:
      For he claims concepts don't exist
      Yet he speaks of them with his every twist
      Incoherence, his only friend
      His naturalism, a foolish trend

      Verse 3:
      He cannot grasp the metaphysical
      His arguments, they lack the critical
      Without the divine, he's lost his way
      For nature alone cannot make us stay

      Chorus:
      For he claims concepts don't exist
      Yet he speaks of them with his every twist
      Incoherence, his only friend
      His naturalism, a foolish trend

      Verse 4:
      StardustyPsyche, listen to reason
      For your arguments are out of season
      Open your mind to the world of the unseen
      And true knowledge, you shall glean

      Chorus:
      For he claims concepts don't exist
      Yet he speaks of them with his every twist
      Incoherence, his only friend
      His naturalism, a foolish trend.

      Delete
    6. And, as a reward, seeing the other Anon, let me reply to this bit of you...

      "Well, quite heart warming to have a song written in my honor. But, I have noticed that not a single person on this thread has the demonstrated capability to engage rationally on the specific facts and logic of my arguments.

      Your artistic talents are made plain by your endearing lyrical creativity and your incisive expressiveness, care to apply your talents to specific logical arguments on the facts and the merits?"

      1..2... 1,2... *clears throat* Music !

      Verse 1:
      StardustyPsyche, don't you see
      Your claim to reason, it's fallacy
      You argue with no logic or facts
      Your beliefs, they're but mere acts

      Chorus:
      For you claim to have reason and sense
      Yet you lack any true evidence
      Irony abounds in your plea
      For it's your arguments that can't be

      Verse 2:
      You ask for engagement, you ask for proof
      But your claims, they remain aloof
      Your words, they lack any coherence
      Your logic, it's but an interference

      Chorus:
      For you claim to have reason and sense
      Yet you lack any true evidence
      Irony abounds in your plea
      For it's your arguments that can't be

      Verse 3:
      You seek to undermine Thomistic thought
      Yet your own beliefs, they're all for naught
      Your naturalism, it's but a facade
      For without reason, it's just a charade

      Chorus:
      For you claim to have reason and sense
      Yet you lack any true evidence
      Irony abounds in your plea
      For it's your arguments that can't be

      Verse 4:
      So, StardustyPsyche, heed our call
      For true reason, you must install
      Engage with facts, engage with thought
      And your arguments, they'll be worth a lot

      Chorus:
      For you claim to have reason and sense
      Yet you lack any true evidence
      Irony abounds in your plea
      For it's your arguments that can't be.

      Delete
    7. And to reply to the beginning of your incoherence on "supernatural"...

      Verse 1:
      Supernatural, a term so grand
      It's meaning, hard to understand
      To claim it's incoherent, you say
      But Aquinas, he saw it another way

      Chorus:
      For he defined it, with clarity
      As beyond nature, in its rarity
      A realm of being, beyond our senses
      A divine reality, that dispenses

      Verse 2:
      Aquinas saw the world as a whole
      With natural and supernatural, its role
      The natural, it's all that we can see
      But the supernatural, it's what makes us free

      Chorus:
      For he defined it, with clarity
      As beyond nature, in its rarity
      A realm of being, beyond our senses
      A divine reality, that dispenses

      Verse 3:
      To say it's incoherent, it's wrong
      For Aquinas, it's where we belong
      It's where we find the ultimate good
      And where we're understood

      Chorus:
      For he defined it, with clarity
      As beyond nature, in its rarity
      A realm of being, beyond our senses
      A divine reality, that dispenses

      Verse 4:
      So let us not dismiss it so fast
      For the supernatural, it'll always last
      In the world of Aquinas, it's not vague
      But a reality, that we can engage

      Chorus:
      For he defined it, with clarity
      As beyond nature, in its rarity
      A realm of being, beyond our senses
      A divine reality, that dispenses.

      Delete
    8. StarDusty is a legend. Who else on this blog has had poems written to him?

      Delete
    9. because "supernatural" is an incoherent term, meaning "existing beyond all that exists".

      That is indeed an incoherent definition, however it is not a definition that anyone who believes in the supernatural would use. So its incoherence is rather irrelevant.

      It's a common mistake to define others' beliefs through the prism of one's own beliefs, but that will not result in any sort of understanding.

      Delete
    10. Anonymous: well, I have, for one. But that was back in the day when the comments were worth reading and every other post wasn't a reply to some troublemaker.

      Delete
    11. La Mitraine,
      It is indeed gratifying to have inspired such superlative artistic expressions, which will no doubt endure the test of time and be cherished by humanity for eons to come.

      Now, the words do not form rigorous arguments, but, I am open to grade on a curve as typically such an artistic person would not reasonably be expected to form assertions of rigid validity like an engineer, mathematician, or logician. Although I remain open to the possibility that you might be that rarest of the rare Renaissance Man who has exemplary talents in both the arts and the rational.

      I do see a few snippets of argumentation, however, so I will give it a go with the limited argumentation material presented to me.

      "Your words, they lack any coherence"
      The naturalistic position, or at least my naturalistic position, is entirely lacking in self contradiction. That is because cogito ergo sum and closely related conclusions based on self awareness are the only claimed absolute known truths. The rest are provisional postulates based on the provisional postulate of the basic reliability of the human senses and the provisional acceptance of logic and language as systems of sentences for apparent communication.

      That foundation eliminates any claim that naturalism is circular or logically self defeating. That foundation eliminates the assertion that a naturalist depends upon the very thing he denies.

      "Irony abounds in your plea
      For it's your arguments that can't be."
      Which ones, specifically, and why? What is it, specifically, about which arguments of mine that cannot be, and for what reasons?



      Kevin,
      "That is indeed an incoherent definition, however it is not a definition that anyone who believes in the supernatural would use"
      Others are free to make up their own definitions for words, but Dr. Feser began this OP with some words concerning naturalism.

      Nature is so generally understood to be the external world in its entirety that dictionaries define it as such. That is how self identifying naturalists understand nature, as the cosmos in its entirety, that is, all that exists.

      Thus, even if some speculation of a real existent god turns out to be the case, such a god would have to be natural, else that god would not exist.

      God, if it exists, has to be something, else god is nothing, and nothing cannot rationally be said to exist. Any existent god must be natural, in fact, god would be the most natural thing of all, on the assertion that god is the primordial necessary being.

      How would a real existent being somehow not be natural?

      Delete
    12. Verse 1:
      StardustyPsyche, a troll so sly,
      Shifting definitions with each reply,
      His foundation's illusory, it seems,
      Ignoring problems, living in dreams.

      Chorus:
      Oh, he thinks he knows it all,
      But his arguments just fall and fall,
      Hume would say he doesn't know,
      His self-awareness like a donkey's butt on show.

      Verse 2:
      He claims his position lacks contradiction,
      But his logic's flawed, it's no prediction,
      He denies what he depends upon,
      And calls his foundation ironclad strong.

      Chorus:
      Oh, he thinks he knows it all,
      But his arguments just fall and fall,
      Hume would say he doesn't know,
      His self-awareness like a donkey's butt on show.

      Verse 3:
      He mocks my words with snide remarks,
      But can't read a message without barks,
      A song is what he needs to hear,
      To understand my message clear.

      Chorus:
      Oh, he thinks he knows it all,
      But his arguments just fall and fall,
      Hume would say he doesn't know,
      His self-awareness like a donkey's butt on show.

      Final Note:
      "I will give it a go with the limited argumentation material presented to me."
      Is that so? With your shifting definitions and flawed logic, we'll see.

      Delete
    13. "God, if it exists, has to be something, else god is nothing, and nothing cannot rationally be said to exist. Any existent god must be natural, in fact, god would be the most natural thing of all, on the assertion that god is the primordial necessary being.

      How would a real existent being somehow not be natural? "

      Oh boy.

      Verse 1:
      There's a troll on our website,
      He's got a misguided plight,
      Misunderstanding Aquinas,
      He's in need of some insight.

      Chorus:
      Oh, troll, don't you know?
      God is not natural, that's just a show.
      As the primordial necessary being,
      God transcends all we are seeing.

      Verse 2:
      You say that God must be natural,
      The most natural of them all,
      But existence doesn't work that way,
      Your definition just won't sway.

      Chorus:
      Oh, troll, don't you know?
      God is not natural, that's just a show.
      As the primordial necessary being,
      God transcends all we are seeing.

      Verse 3:
      To exist is to be distinct,
      From all that in nature exists,
      So a real existent being,
      Is beyond what nature brings.

      Chorus:
      Oh, troll, don't you know?
      God is not natural, that's just a show.
      As the primordial necessary being,
      God transcends all we are seeing.

      Verse 4:
      Your definition of natural,
      Is self-refuting and fatal,
      For if God were just like us,
      He wouldn't be God, that's a plus.

      Chorus:
      Oh, troll, don't you know?
      God is not natural, that's just a show.
      As the primordial necessary being,
      God transcends all we are seeing.

      Verse 5:
      So let's leave behind this confusion,
      And embrace Aquinas' conclusion,
      That God is beyond our conception,
      Transcending all natural perception.

      Chorus:
      Oh, troll, don't you know?
      God is not natural, that's just a show.
      As the primordial necessary being,
      God transcends all we are seeing.

      Delete
    14. @ StardustyPsyche,

      This post of yours is very funny, since you use two different definitions of "natural" to sneak another "proof" against the supernatural. 🤣 The "naturalistic position" being about "the basic reliability of the human senses" (science) fits only in a funny way with the definition that "the natural" is "all that exists". Your argument therefore does not use "assertions of rigid validity", because it uses two definitions as if they were one. 😀

      😏

      Tom Cohoe

      Delete
  12. @Simon Adams, "So for example, I expect that Elon Musk chose the name Tesla for his cars."

    "Current CEO Elon Musk didn’t have a say in the name, as he joined the company after it had already been incorporated. Tesla’s name was actually thought up in Disneyland’s Blue Bayou restaurant, when Tesla cofounder Martin Eberhard pitched it to his then girlfriend, and now wife, Carolyn, according to Business Insider." [FoxBusiness]

    Legendary development in action...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Interesting thanks anonymous. Clearly not a great example I user there!

      Delete
  13. Star, this is a little embarrassing, you've got to relax.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. jem,
      Please accept my heartfelt apologies for any embarrassment my comments evoke in you, but such is the heavy burden of the pursuit of truth. Let us bravely soldier forth.

      "Naturalism thus denies the existence of God, of angelic intellects, of immaterial souls (whether conceived of along the lines of Descartes’ res cogitans or in some other way), and of Platonic Forms and other abstract objects."
      Dr. Feser makes a clear mistake here.

      His error is in implicitly assuming that his notion of god is exclusive or comprehensive. Please see March 5, 2023 at 8:34 AM above for details of this error made by Dr. Feser.

      Or maybe that is not what is embarrassing you?

      Is your source of embarrassment that the term "supernatural" is incoherent, and perhaps you now realize you have been using an incoherent term, possibly in a rather cavalier manner?

      nature
      noun
      na·​ture ˈnā-chər
      Synonyms of nature
      1: the external world in its entirety
      Source:merriam-webster

      Here "external" refers to of yourself, outside of your thoughts, outside of your imagination.

      "World" means "universe" or "cosmos" in this context.

      "Super" means beyond, or in addition to.

      So "supernatural" means "beyond the cosmos in its entirety" or "that which exists in addition to all that exists".

      Clearly, the term "supernatural" is incoherent.

      Naturalists do not affirmatively assert the impossibility of god in general (error of the OP), rather, we assert the clear fact that any assertion of a supernatural formulation of a speculative god is incoherent.

      Delete

    2. Appreciate your dictionary defiitions for the simpletons on this blog. You really outdid yourself this time.

      Delete
    3. @ StardustyPsyche,

      "your only 'answers' are scattered attributions of what you assert I want"

      My explanations, no matter what you call them, of Aquinas's meaning are nevertheless correct. E.g., an electron does not bounce off of itself so there is no "third choice" or "false dichotomy" (except, of course, in a comedy routine).

      Apparently you have never heard of the twin paradox of special relativity.

      Similarly calling an infinite binary sequence, the implications of which you willfully have not studied, a "non argument" does not answer them.

      The rest of what you have posted today to various people is just repetition. Proving the non-existence of God is impossible, especially through the use of definitions and your authority.

      😏

      Tom Cohoe

      Delete
    4. Tom,
      In the OP Feser claims that we naturalists deny god, which is a critically inaccurate statement. We affirmatively deny logically invalid formulations of god, and place logically possible formulations of god in a set along with a vast number of other unevidenced idle speculations.

      Such is the Thomistic formulation of god, a logically invalid formulation the naturalist can prove to be a false formulation by analyzing the arguments for the Thomistic god and pointing out the false premises and invalid logic employed to argue for such a god.

      Electrons move each other. That is the third choice. You persist in the false dichotomy even in your denials, so, apparently, your world view is so limited that you have an extremely difficult time breaking out of that false dichotomy conceptually, even for a moment. Care to give it a go, though? You don't need acid, THC, or a retreat to a remote cave, or even toad, just refer to ordinary classical physics in the formulation of gravitational or electrostatic forces.

      There you will find the third choice that shows how Aquinas argued invalidly.

      One good source for you to expand your mind is ON THE NOTION OF CAUSE, WITH APPLICATIONS TO THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM. There Russell explains mutuality, and how it eliminates the ordinary notions of linear hierarchical causation.

      At base, simples move each other. There is no choice limited between being moved by another in a linear regress, or moving themselves. That is a false dichotomy.

      The third choice is in fact available to you in any physics textbook and has been well known for centuries. Simples, such as the electron, are in fact both mover and moved.

      e1 moves e2 and in so doing also moves e1.
      e2 moves e1 and in so doing also moves e2.

      That is the third choice. That is the observed fact of the universe. That is how classical physics is formulated.

      We naturalists to not deny god in general, as Dr. Feser erroneously claimed in the OP, rather, we deny the logically invalid Thomistic formulation of god that relies on the above false dichotomy.

      Delete
    5. Stardusty,

      Show us your "physics textbook" reference of your example of electron 1 moving electron 2 moving electron 1 like a perpetual motion machine.

      Delete
    6. @ StardustyPsyche,

      The blizzard of words in which you try to escape your fundamental circularity is a great joke. 🤣 But you are saying nothing new.

      "e1 moves e2 and in so doing also moves e1.
      e2 moves e1 and in so doing also moves e2."

      E1 is moved by e2, not by e1. Go on insisting your private view, it does not make it true that e1 moves itself. If e2 was not there to move e2, e1 would not be moved. Calling them "simples" does not change this, except in jokes that keep presenting false "false dichotomies" as their punch line 🤣.

      "Russell"

      Since there are hundreds of millions of books, I have to select carefully what I read, so I don't much care about Russell's opinion here, no matter how humorously you insist that I need to have my mind expanded by him. 🤣 No doubt my mind is far from perfect, but it isn't going to be Russell that fixes it. 😏.
      The same goes for Carrasquillo. I guess that Ed cites him means that I am supposed to think that Carrasquillo is especially formidable against Ed, especially since _you_ say so, but I just can't take your jokes as anything but jokes 😀.

      Again, the symbolic logic you copied adds nothing to a plain English analysis of The First Way.

      It is fun talking to you 😀.

      Here is another prayer for you.

      Holy Mary, Mother of God, intercede with the Father that Stardusty receive a glimmer of enlightenment, that he may, with applied, patient free will, choose the supernatural truth.

      😏

      Tom Cohoe

      Delete
    7. bmiller, Tom,
      I hope you don't mind being addressed together, as you both raised similar points.

      In the OP Dr. Feser said "Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy defends something like a Platonist view of universals. " Not much like Plato's world of forms, rather, a recognition that real material objects are in actual relations to each other.

      Whereas Plato asserted a real existent world of forms as part of his view of the true nature of the underlying reality, Russell did not assert that relations were real existent things in and of themselves, rather that material objects are in actual relations to each other independent of whether such relations are observed by an intelligent being or not.

      Russell went on in other works to propose the elimination of the word "cause" from our discourse because it has acquired so much erroneous baggage. To illustrate that fact Russell went on at length using the example of gravitational attraction to show that physics is formulated as mutual interactions, not a linear regress of cause and effect.

      I have used the example of 2 electrons similarly. Both the electrostatic force and gravity are classically formulated as a relation proportional to the inverse square of the distance. Acceleration is a function of force and mass in both examples.

      As a thought experiment imagine a single electron alone in space, in an idealized case. Clearly it cannot move itself, so it would seem Aquinas might be correct in that case, if we shut off our thinking at that point.

      Now, consider two electrons, ideally, alone together in space, say a millimeter apart. Clearly they will move each other. Thus, Aquinas is shown to have used a false dichotomy, having neglected the case of mutual motion.

      But who moves who? Suppose you and a friend stand on super slippery ice, so slippery neither of you can move yourself off your spot. So you touch each other's palms and simultaneously push each other, thus you both go sliding across the ice. Who moved who?

      Well, you moved your friend, and your friend moved you, but also you contributed to your own motion as did your friend. Clearly each of you was both mover and moved. You moved each other and in so doing moved yourselves mutually.

      No abstract objects are needed, no world of forms required, no supernatural is necessary. Macro objects move themselves because at base simples move each other. OBTW, I did not invent that term, if you prefer to say fundamental particles, or fields, or whatever, that is fine.

      To see how these sorts of problems are formulated classically here is one of many online resources, just search for this on utube.
      Introduction to Coulomb's Law or the Electric Force

      And say there Tom, you might have noticed Dr. Feser speak admiringly of the rigor of Katz in his analytic philosophy. Carrasquillo is not against Ed, rather, he is a highly accomplished Thomistic scholar who attempts to rigorously analyze the Five Ways of Aquinas to demonstrate that they are sound, that is, that the premises
      are true and the logic is valid.

      The greatest value in such a formidable work is that one can then very precisely point to the location of the false premises and invalid logic employed by Aquinas, and thus gain the most vital knowledge of, for example, the First Way, the knowledge of precisely where that argument fails.

      Delete
    8. Stardusty,

      I see that you failed to produce something from a physics textbook as you've claimed to be able to do to support your example of electrons "moving themselves" in perpetual motion. There's a reason for that. Things don't behave the way you imagine.

      Now, consider two electrons, ideally, alone together in space, say a millimeter apart.

      2 electrons together in space will not come within a mm of each other unless someone or something moves one or the other together. Like the hand moving the stick moving the stone. And like the hand moving the stick moving the stone, the stone can never end up being the cause of the hand moving.

      Delete
    9. @ StardustyPsyche,

      Ha 😀! I know Coulomb's law. It doesn't change the fact that an electron does not move itself. I think Carrasquillo, with his symbolic logic, is getting himself papers, neither adding to or taking from what Aquinas says in human language. I don't really care about Russell's teaching. I just think it's super funny that you think you can prove anything with your conflicting definitions of "natural" 🤣.

      "Now, consider two electrons, ideally, alone together in space, say a millimeter apart. Clearly they will move each other. Thus, Aquinas is shown to have used a false dichotomy, having neglected the case of mutual motion."

      Interestingly, here you claim to have demonstrated the third way without reference to Carrasquillo, or Russell, showing us that you think plain English is good enough. But it is also clear that your third way fails here, because neither electron moves itself. So it is with your so-called third way. Nothing moves itself. Citing science does not refute Aquinas with this mysterious third way. I guess you have to have your particular "faith" to believe this Mystery, The Third Way, of yours 🤣.

      Your assignment is to study the twin paradox of special relativity and explain why neutrinos, originally thought to be massless (0 rest mass like photons), had to be assigned a rest mass when they were observed copiously changing their "flavours" when passing through an Earth's diameter of space, even though they had almost zero interaction with the Earth's matter. Here is a Wikipedia link that you should study carefully to understand the basic idea:

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino

      Because of the fore-shortening of space in the direction of travel, faster than light travel in a moving object's proper time clock relative to at rest observers is implied. You have to understand that _special_relativity_ is about more than one reference frame, not just about what the observers in a single reference frame observe.

      The twin paradox can be set up with a there and back trip that takes years to the stationary observers, yet the traveller ages only 1 second (or less) on his trip. This implies faster than light speed travel in the relative measurement, but not in the single reference frame that you favour as your idea of _relativity_. Get it? It's called _Relativity_! 😀

      Have fun!

      😏

      Tom Cohoe

      Delete
    10. bmiller,
      "I see that you failed to produce something from a physics textbook as you've claimed to be able to do to support your example of electrons "moving themselves" in perpetual motion."
      The perpetual motion of fundamental particles in the universe seems so obvious that it seemed like a very minor point to me, but ok, yes, physics in general is formulated as perpetual motion.

      This is shown in various ways, there are so many references on this subject it did not seem necessary to cite specific sources, but ok, you can look at:
      Conservation of matter/energy, E=mc^2.
      Conservation of momentum, m1v1 + m2v2 = m1v1′ + m2v2′.
      Equations describing motion, the key word here being "equal". Interactions are net lossless, and thus perpetual. The matter/energy on the LHS equals the matter/energy on the RHS, so, yes, that means motion at the atomic scale is perpetual.

      For example, a sealed jar of air in thermal equilibrium between the air inside and the material of the jar such that there is zero net transfer of energy between the air inside and the material of the jar.

      The air molecules are in perpetual motion. They do not slow or speed up on average. They move each other. Their causation of motion is fundamentally circular and perpetual and finite, yet without a beginning or end. Further, the nuclei do not contact each other directly, rather, these perpetual mutual causations of motion are ideally due to the electrons in their orbitals in some sense bouncing off each other. So there is your example of electrons in perpetual motion, not only as they move in their orbitals in each molecule, but also as they move about in the sealed jar of air.

      "2 electrons together in space will not come within a mm of each other unless someone or something moves one or the other together."
      That is a temporal argument and thus irrelevant to the First Way as Aquinas attempted to show the necessity for a first mover.

      At base simples move each other, which is a 3rd choice Aquinas neglected, and you neglect in your example of hand, stick, and stone.



      Tom,
      "P1-C: Either this goes on to infinity (i) or it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other (f)"
      iteadthomam.blogspot.com/2011/01/first-way-in-syllogistic-form.html

      Option 1:
      Either this goes on to infinity (i)

      Option 2:
      or it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other (f)

      Option 3:
      or this terminates finitely with mutual movers, movers that are both mover and moved, in a circular regress that like a planar circle has no beginning or end around its circumference, but is finite in overall size (m)


      "So it is with your so-called third way. Nothing moves itself."
      Alone in space, ideally, that is true.

      "Citing science does not refute Aquinas with this mysterious third way."
      Not so mysterious. Here are some classical formulations of Option 3:
      F = (G*m1*m2)/r^2
      F = (k*q1*q2)/r^2

      The notion of moving itself is irrelevant.
      m1 and m2 move each other.
      q1 and q2 move each other.

      m1, m2, q1, and q2 are all both mover and moved.

      Put it another way
      Option 1:
      Objects do not move.

      Option 2:
      Objects can only be moved without being a mover.

      Option 3:
      Objects can be both mover and moved.


      I greatly appreciate the references in the OP to definitions of naturalism, references to Platonism, Katz, Russell, and analytic philosophy at its best.

      That is a highly commendable aspect of Thomism, I think, that its namesake, Aquinas, used naturalistic deductive arguments that can be accurately represented in syllogistic form, thus permitting precise analysis on the rational merits.

      Clearly, Aquinas neglected Option 3, making his work fundamentally logically invalid, suffering from false dichotomy. His other defects include the false premise that an object cannot be both mover and moved, which is plainly contested in the classical formulations above, available in any physics textbook.

      Delete
    11. @ StardustyPsyche,

      For some odd reason, you seem to think that if two objects are pushing on each other at the same time, then each of them is pushing on itself. They are not! 😀 Each of them is moved by the other, not itself. Neither of them moves itself. (BTW, I've got lots of physics textbooks and know all the physics you have cited 😀. )

      Apparently you have not looked at the reference I linked to about the significance of the twin paradox but just want to go on repeating an argument that doesn't work. 🤣
      Nothing in your "third way" has anything to do with Aquinas argument from motion. Do you actually think that Aquinas did not know what has been known from antiquity, from long before it was formulated in equations, that things push each other around? This is exactly what his First Way is saying! There is no missing "third choice". When one electron is pushed by another, it is reduced by the other from the potential to be moving in a different direction to moving in a different direction in act. It did not change, or move, by itself, but by the act of another, which has to be there for the change, or motion, to occur!

      Can't you see this? 😏

      Nor does this have anything to do with his "this cannot go to infinity, because then there would be no first mover" because Aquinas admits elsewhere that it cannot be philosophically proven that the natural world has not always existed. He means, in today's expressions of physics, that there cannot be an infinite sequence of formulas explaining the next formula in terms of more fundamental formulas. In other words, he is saying, "why anything?" The sequence of causes has to end. There has to be a cause of causes. If there is no start - then nothing!

      "In the beginning God created [past tense] the heavens and the earth" is, by Aquinas' own insistence, a matter of faith, not philosophical proof. But Aquinas' First Way argument from infinity is "God creates [present tense] the heavens and the earth" and it is that the sequence of causes cannot go to infinity. Coulomb's law, which you mentioned, is a consequence of Faraday's laws, which are a consequence of Maxwell's laws, which are a consequence of special relativity, which is a consequence of general relativity, which is a consequence of … physicists are still arguing about it, but the compression cannot be an infinitely long sequence (I'm pretty sure I missed something in that sequence, but off the top of my head, I can't think of it). I have an argument from the unbiased binary sequence model that shows that the sequence of human investigation must end, but since you apparently hate it 😏 I will not mention it 😀.

      Nope, I'm afraid your arguments here really do not demonstrate anything about the First Way.

      😏

      Tom Cohoe

      Delete
    12. Stardusty,

      You keep changing your story each time someone points how your examples don't conform with reality or refuse to interact with criticisms.

      e1 moves e2 and in so doing also moves e1.

      Now becomes air molecules sealed in a jar in perpetual motion which is also physically impossible according to the laws of thermodynamics.

      That is a temporal argument and thus irrelevant to the First Way

      First, if you think discussing the cause of electron motion is irrelevant to TFW you shouldn't have used it as an example.

      Second, it is the electron's property of electrical charge that will naturally keep each of them away from each other unless some agent forced them close in the same way that a book will fall to the ground unless someone/something impedes that natural motion. They are moved by nature (electic charge or gravity) rather than themselves or else they would be able to start or stop their own motion as animals seem to be able to do.

      This seems obvious to most human beings including infants but seems to escape certain individuals that have fooled themselves. For goodness sakes Even dogs can tell the difference!

      Here is Aquinas explaining the different way things are described as being in motion and the proximate and ultimate causes:

      SCG 13.8

      [8] In the second way, Aristotle proves the proposition by induction [ Physics VIII, 4]. Whatever is moved by accident is not moved by itself, since it is moved upon the motion of another. So, too, as is evident, what is moved by violence is not moved by itself. Nor are those beings moved by themselves that are moved by their nature as being moved from within; such is the case with animals, which evidently are moved by the soul. Nor, again, is this true of those beings, such as heavy and light bodies, which are moved through nature. For such beings are moved by the generating cause and the cause removing impediments. Now, whatever is moved is moved through itself or by accident. If it is moved through itself, then it is moved either violently or by nature; if by nature, then either through itself, as the animal, or not through itself, as heavy and light bodies. Therefore, everything that is moved is moved by another.

      Delete
    13. Tom,
      "Nor does this have anything to do with his "this cannot go to infinity, because then there would be no first mover" because Aquinas admits elsewhere that it cannot be philosophically proven that the natural world has not always existed."
      That conflates a temporal regression with a hierarchical regression, what Thomists sometimes term an accidental regression as opposed to an essential regression, having to do with what they call an accidentally ordered causal series as opposed to an essentially ordered causal series.

      You have conflated the two. Aquinas was not arguing temporally, he was arguing hierarchically. Sorry, but it is pretty hard to take you seriously on this subject when you get something that basic mixed up.

      When Aquinas said "this cannot go to infinity" that statement has nothing to do with whether or not the natural world has always existed. Clearly, you do not understand that most basic fact of the argument, so it is going to be pretty much impossible to communicate effectively with you on this subject until you study the argument and gain some further understanding of it.

      Delete
    14. bmiller,
      OP
      "Katz’s work is analytic philosophy at its best – the rigorous argumentation characteristic of that tradition"
      Indeed, rigorous argumentation is analytic philosophy at its best, at least Dr. Feser and I share that personal sensibility.

      "Now becomes air molecules sealed in a jar in perpetual motion which is also physically impossible according to the laws of thermodynamics."
      Please site the "law" of thermodynamics to support this assertion.

      Do you suppose that the molecules of air in a sealed jar will slow, and stop, and all fall to the bottom? What "law" of thermodynamics dictates this?

      Recall, I stated that the material of the jar and the air inside the jar, in this example, are in thermal equilibrium, that is, no net energy flows across that boundary, no net energy is transferred between the air inside and the material of the jar.

      Under those circumstances why would you suppose that the air molecules would slow on average at all?

      Quite the contrary, each collision, or interaction, between the N2, O2, H2O and other molecules inside the sealed jar is net lossless, that is to say, zero energy is lost in total each time such objects move each other.

      If we add a trillion trillion trillion zeros what is the sum?

      All I can do is urge you to join Dr. Feser, Katz, and I and make your arguments rigorously. The average kinetic energy of the air molecules inside the sealed jar must stay perpetually constant, that is to say, the air molecules must continue to move perpetually, because the net loss of each collision is precisely zero, and the net energy transfer across the boundary between the air and the jar is by definition of the example precisely zero.

      But, you are the one who raised the issue of perpetual motion, which of course is the case at the molecular level, but I don't see the relevance to our broader discussion.

      Delete
    15. bmiller,
      "SP-That is a temporal argument and thus irrelevant to the First Way

      BM-First, if you think discussing the cause of electron motion is irrelevant to TFW you shouldn't have used it as an example."
      You are conflating past, which is irrelevant, to present, which is relevant. In the example I provided you objected as to how the example got set up, which is irrelevant because those are in the past, and thus a temporal argument, not a present moment argument, which is what Aquinas used, a present moment argument.

      In the present moment Aquinas neglected the 3rd option, that at base simples move each other and are in fact both mover and moved.

      "They are moved by nature (electic charge or gravity) rather than themselves or else they would be able to start or stop their own motion as animals seem to be able to do."
      They both move and are moved by, one might say, their natures, which in the grander sense are a part of nature as a whole, but not by nature as in the mistaken Aristotelian motion sense of moving toward their natural place. So, that is a lot of different senses of the word "nature", but Dr. Feser does a fairly good job of defining a naturalist, except we do not deny the logical possibility of a logically possible god.

      Animals are sentient, meaning they have senses and they react to sensory input as complex systems.

      Something as simple as an electron mutually interacts with other charged particles, and this is classically modeled using the notion of an electrostatic field.

      There is no requirement for intelligent or sentient decision making in the assignment or identification of mover and moved of simples, which do in point of observed natural fact move each other mutually and are as a matter of observed scientific fact both mover and moved.

      "SCG 13.8"
      This paragraph is so absurdly argued it is almost painful to read it, scarcely a phrase in it is true or reasonable or logical.

      Aristotle had mistaken notions such as violent versus accidental motion, that heavy or light bodies fall or rise by going to their natural place, plus he had the mistaken notion that motion in the heavens was fundamentally different than sublunary motion.

      It is true that Aquinas used these mistaken concepts in his arguments, so it is no surprise that the argument from motion fails, owing in no small part to the failures of Aristotelian motion.

      Just as an example:
      "Nor are those beings moved by themselves that are moved by their nature as being moved from within; such is the case with animals, which evidently are moved by the soul."
      Firstly, there is no scientific evidence for the soul. The soul is not in evidence, so that portion of the statement is flatly false.

      But just supposing human beings have a soul. Is there also a fish soul, a worm soul, a bacteria soul?

      How about a rocket soul, a battery car soul, a star soul, a supernova soul? By all means, bmiller, please do provide some links to the evidence for all these souls to account for their evident self moving.

      Delete
    16. Stardusty,

      Your jar is fictional and physically unrealizable. As moving molecules collide with the jar's wall, momentum is absorbed by the jar and transmitted to the outside environment as heat loss. No perfect thermos bottle for us. And because of this fact the universe is possibly heading toward the "Big Chill" according to some.

      They both move and are moved by, one might say, their natures, which in the grander sense are a part of nature as a whole, but not by nature as in the mistaken Aristotelian motion sense of moving toward their natural place.

      They don't move themselves period or they could start and/or stop their motion. They are moved by their nature being the kind of thing they are (in this case, having a negative charge). Glad to see that you understand and agree.

      Animals are sentient, meaning they have senses and they react to sensory input as complex systems.

      Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by forces impressed.

      Cats get up from a nap, go to a food bowl, eat some and meander off towards a window. They routinely violate Newton's First Law of Motion. How can they do that while the electrons in your example can't?

      Delete
    17. @ StardustyPsyche,

      "study the argument and gain some further understanding of it"

      It is hilarious that you "teach" me exactly what I said to you 🤣.

      "Aquinas was not arguing temporally, he was arguing hierarchically"

      It must be obvious to anyone following this that that is exactly what the hierarchy I posted was about. Did you not notice it? Coulomb through Einstein? 🤣

      I take your statement that you cannot communicate with me until I study what I said until I understand what I said, that _you_ are finally beginning to understand Aquinas' First Way as he meant it to be understood.

      😏

      I will let bmiller argue for himself because I have no idea what he means when he says that the molecules sealed in a jar in "perpetual motion" violates the laws of thermodynamics.

      Still, there is this:

      "This paragraph [SCG 13.8] is so absurdly argued it is almost painful to read it, scarcely a phrase in it is true or reasonable or logical"

      Heh 😀. According to your authority huh? I take it to mean that you are not willing to understand SCG 13.8 either, but you are so over the top in your spite for Aquinas that it is truly funny 🤣!

      😏

      Tom Cohoe

      Delete
    18. bmiller,
      "Your jar is fictional and physically unrealizable. As moving molecules collide with the jar's wall, momentum is absorbed by the jar and transmitted to the outside environment as heat loss."
      Just put the jar in a room at a particular temperature, say, 25C, and your statements are made false.

      The air in the room, the jar, and the air inside the jar will reach thermal equilibrium, as I posited at the outset.

      At thermal equilibrium there will be no net transfer of energy across the boundary between the jar and the air inside. The result will be perpetual motion of the air inside because each collision is net lossless for energy of motion.

      This is related to another error of Aristotle, that sublunary motion is in an impeding medium such that objects will slow and stop and their motion will be lost.

      That is not true. The energy of motion is never lost, that is, when an object appears to slow and stop due to what we call friction, that apparently lost motion is actually transferred to other objects, typically by heating them, heat being molecular kinetic energy, generally in our experience.

      Aquinas made this false statement:
      "Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another"
      Note the use of the present tense "is" twice. That means Aquinas was claiming "Whatever we presently observe to be in motion is presently being put in motion by another".

      The underlying world view that lead Aquinas to that false statement is the same error you are making with regard to perpetual motion at the molecular level, and it is the same mistake Aristotle made in considering all sublunary motion to be in an impeding medium such that absent an external mover an object will slow and stop and its motion will be lost.

      If Aristotle, Aquinas, and you were correct, that objects require a continuous application of force to continue moving, then the rest of the First Way would be sound.

      But because Aristotle, Aquinas, and you were and are mistaken in that regard, that is, in point of observed fact, motion is perpetual at the molecular level because of inertial motion and because collisions at the molecular level are always net lossless, therefore the rest of the First Way is in point of observational fact unsound.

      "(cats) routinely violate Newton's First Law of Motion. How can they do that while the electrons in your example can't?"
      Cats and rockets and stars move themselves because simples like electrons move each other in a causal regress that is mutual and therefore circular at base, finitely terminating the causal regress with no first unmoved mover necessary. At base every simple is the first mover of every other simple within range of its influenece.

      There is not a single first mover for the entire universe, rather, there is a universe of moved first movers for each other.

      Delete
    19. Stardusty,

      Your claim was that the air molecules in your jar keep themselves in perpetual motion via N1 moves N2 moves N3 moves Nx moves N1 (N because air is mostly N2).

      Just put the jar in a room at a particular temperature, say, 25C, and your statements are made false.

      My claim is true and your statement here proves it. A moment's thought shows that those air molecules in the jar are not relying on themselves for their own movement but require energy from the ambient environment for their movement. If that jar was located in interstellar space where the ambient is below the boiling point of liquid nitrogen there would be no more "air" molecules to bounce around. No, this is not an example of an isloated group of things moving themselves.

      Cats and rockets and stars move themselves because simples like electrons move each other

      That's obviously not an answer. Electrons and the other "simples" you have in mind all move according to Newton's First Law. You just agreed that they (simples) don't "move themselves" but are moved in accordance with their nature (and so according to the 4 physical forces). If you contend that a cat is merely the sum of individual simples then they would all follow the First Law and so the cat....but cats obviously can and do can violate it. Even their arch-enemies, dogs, can see it. You can do better.

      Delete
    20. bmiller,
      "A moment's thought shows that those air molecules in the jar are not relying on themselves for their own movement but require energy from the ambient environment for their movement."
      Indeed, if you only think for a moment you will remain confused.

      "If that jar was located in interstellar space where the ambient is below the boiling point of liquid nitrogen there would be no more "air" molecules to bounce around."
      If the jar was in space then energy would radiate away due to black body radiation and the molecules would slow as energy was lost to the outside space. At no time would the molecules disappear or, on average, stop, rather, they will slow until they reach thermal equilibrium with their environment, no less than 2.7 Kelvins, the temperature of the CMB, at which time molecular motion will continue perpetually at velocities in accordance with a temperature of 2.7 Kelvins.

      That is not thermal equilibrium at 25C, or other ordinary room temperature. Have you ever heard that term before? It seems not. It means that temperatures are equal. When temperatures are equal then there is no net transfer of energy between the objects in contact with each other at equal temperatures.

      In thermal equilibrium neither object depends on the other to maintain molecular motion.

      Molecular motion is perpetual because collisions at the molecular level are net lossless.

      The air inside the jar does not depend upon the outside for energy when the air inside, the jar, and the air outside are in thermal equilibrium because there is no net transfer of energy in that case.

      The rest of your post is so confused it is apparent that you never took high school physics, let alone university physics. That is ok, that does not make you stupid or bad, just uneducated in this particular subject.

      Maybe our friend Gaëtan would be willing to educate you on what thermal equilibrium means, if you remain unwilling to learn from me.

      Delete
    21. Stardusty,

      I remember what you write from day to day.

      You claimed 2 electrons moved each other e1 moving e2 moving e1 here:

      e1 moves e2 and in so doing also moves e1.

      When I asked you which physics textbook you used to get this idea of things moving each other circularly continuously you ignored me and presented your sealed jar with air molecules example:

      The air molecules are in perpetual motion. They do not slow or speed up on average. They move each other. Their causation of motion is fundamentally circular and perpetual and finite, yet without a beginning or end.

      But now also you just agreed that their motion is not because they move each other "fundamentally circular and perpetual and finite, yet without a beginning or end" but because their motion was due to something outside of the sealed jar:

      If the jar was in space then energy would radiate away due to black body radiation and the molecules would slow as energy was lost to the outside space.

      Yes and at that point there would be no "air molecules (are) in perpetual motion" since there would be no "air" (the invisible gaseous substance surrounding the earth). Only liquid nitrogen, oxygen etc. I can't make it any more clear than this regarding which assertion of your's I was addressing.

      This of course a sideshow wrt TFW that you've even acknowledged, but still you brought it up for some confused reason that you haven't explained.

      It seems you've had enough for now. So thanks for the discussion. I'm glad to see you make progress on understanding TFW. It seems you finally understand that there are different proximate causes of natural things in motion. This round it seems you've grasped and agree that these inanimate objects can be moved by violence (collisions not due to their natural motion) as well as being moved by their nature. Maybe next time you will be able to discuss the natural animate objects and why they can routinely violate Newton's First Law of Motion while inanimate objects can't. Till then.

      Delete
    22. bmiller,
      "This round it seems you've grasped and agree that these inanimate objects can be moved by violence (collisions not due to their natural motion) as well as being moved by their nature"
      No, that is just repeating some of the many errors of Aristotle.

      Objects do not go to their natural place because it is in their nature to go there.

      Material has properties, or what might be called natures. In classical physics a "collision" is the material progressing according to its properties.

      In the example of electrons they typically do not actually "collide" as we see, say, marbles colliding. Rather, they move each other in circular causation.

      The distinction between natural motion and violent motion is nonsense. Perhaps some day you will learn that.

      "natural animate objects and why they can routinely violate Newton's First Law of Motion"
      Here you display more confusion, thinking somehow living things do not follow the same laws of motion everything else does.

      Delete
    23. Stardusty,

      No,

      Seems I have a better memory than you.

      They both move and are moved by, one might say, their natures,
      electrons in their orbitals in some sense bouncing off each other.

      Are you OK?


      Here you display more confusion, thinking somehow living things do not follow the same laws of motion everything else does.

      You mean like Newton's First Law that cat's routinely violate? Fido has a superior philosophy than the one you're clinging to since it is certain, and evident to our senses that animate things move differently than inanimate things.

      Delete
    24. @ StardustyPsyche,

      "Objects do not go to their natural place because it is in their nature to go there."

      Light things like hot air rise. Heavy things like rocks fall. It is an early fact in the causal series I told you about, not a fatal error.

      "In the example of electrons they typically do not actually 'collide' as we see, say, marbles colliding. Rather, they move each other in circular causation."

      Marbles do not actually collide either. Also, your circular causation is not a third kind of motion whereby a thing causes itself to move except in jokes 🤣. An intermediating second thing is the cause of the first marble's or the first electron's change of motion. Remove the second marble or electron and the first does not move. Your linguistic trick doesn't fix this. Aquinas didn't miss anything no matter how often you say he did 🤣.

      "The distinction between natural motion and violent motion is nonsense"

      Only where your personal thesis, that there is no free will, is a premise, in which case your argument is a dud, a joke told too often 😀.

      I agree that there is no force when it comes to your argument. You cannot control good thinking in others, not even by loud hailing 🤣.

      Sheesh!

      😏

      Tom Cohoe

      Delete
  14. The materialist could reply that we have grounds to assume induction in regard to the infinite categories in logic, language, math, etc. because we see that it works on the smaller, finite scale. But wouldn't this merely pretend to be an answer as it doesn't really address why induction should work at all? The effort explain the induction would itself assume what it is intended to show.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Are StatDusty and Papalinton the same person?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They write and argue quite diferently.

      Delete
    2. Stardusty might learn something after we repeat it to him 10,000 times. Papalinton will never learn anything. Also this is how I visualize Stardusty.

      Delete
    3. For some reason StarDusty is not met with the same level of opprobium and abuse as Papalinton sometimes is. Son of Yakov seems to have a personal vendetta against both Paps and WBC, but never seens to interact with StarDusty.

      Personally,I think that all three of the fellows above show an exemplary level of politeness and self control in the face of sometimes vitriolic opposition on this blog. They are an inspiring example to follow, and make many points that their interlocutors consistantly fail to address properly.

      Delete
    4. Anon, you surely have to realise that such effusive praise of another coming from an anonymous account inevitably invites suspicion of being a sockpuppet, right? Even if that isn't so, it's an obvious possibility that suggests itself to anyone reading.

      Delete
    5. Agreed. Probably because Stardusty's comments are more intellectual in content, however much one may disagree with that content.

      Delete
    6. Hem hem... Let me clarify something.

      Verse 1:
      Papalinton and Stardusty, the trolls of the Thomistic site
      Their arguments are incoherent, they can't seem to get it right
      But fear not my Thomistic friends, for I have got a plan
      Let's troll them back with finesse, and show them we're a clan

      Chorus:
      So let's sing our song of wit and charm
      And show these trolls that we mean no harm
      We'll point out their mistakes and flaws
      And laugh as they stumble across

      Verse 2:
      They think they can outsmart us, with their silly little quips
      But we know better than to fall for their tricks
      With reason on our side, we'll take them down with ease
      And leave them scratching their heads, wondering how to appease

      Chorus:
      So let's sing our song of wit and charm
      And show these trolls that we mean no harm
      We'll point out their mistakes and flaws
      And laugh as they stumble across

      Verse 3:
      So join me, my Thomistic friends, in this trolling endeavor
      Let's show the world our cleverness, and make them all remember
      That even in the face of trolls, we won't be brought down
      For we stand strong and united, with truth as our crown

      Chorus:
      So let's sing our song of wit and charm
      And show these trolls that we mean no harm
      We'll point out their mistakes and flaws
      And laugh as they stumble across.

      Delete
  16. I like that image, Empowering. I think Stardusty will too.

    ReplyDelete
  17. "God" is just a word.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, and if you spell it backwards you get 'dog'. Has everyone noticed that?

      Delete
    2. Oh boy. Papalinton is still on the show. Still stuck in old-grampy-retirement home?

      Here goes... One, two.

      Verse 1:
      Papalinton, oh Papalinton,
      Your name's just a word, it doesn't mean a thing.
      You troll and you tease, but your insults won't sting,
      'Cause Papalinton, your words don't really mean a thing.

      Chorus:
      God is more than just a word, my friend,
      He's the beginning and the end.
      So don't be fooled by Papalinton's empty talk,
      God deserves our awe and our walk.

      Verse 2:
      Papa-lie-ton, oh Papa-lie-ton,
      Your nicknames are just words, they won't go on.
      You try to ruffle feathers, but you're just a con,
      'Cause Papa-lie-ton, your words will soon be gone.

      Chorus:
      God is more than just a word, my friend,
      He's the beginning and the end.
      So don't be fooled by Papalinton's empty talk,
      God deserves our awe and our walk.

      Verse 3:
      Papa-pretend, oh Papa-pretend,
      Your insults are just words, they won't contend.
      You think you're so witty, but your jokes won't ascend,
      'Cause Papa-pretend, your words will soon come to an end.

      Chorus:
      God is more than just a word, my friend,
      He's the beginning and the end.
      So don't be fooled by Papalinton's empty talk,
      God deserves our awe and our walk.

      Outro:
      So Papalinton, oh Papalinton,
      Your words may seem clever, but they won't win.
      'Cause God reigns supreme, He's the kingpin,
      And Papalinton, your words won't make Him spin.

      Delete
    3. I do not think that Papalinton and StarDusty are trolls as I would use the term, but if you think they are - as you clearly do - then why do you feed them like this?

      Delete
    4. "But the Reality is so much more. Do you see? DO YOU SEE!!!!"

      Yeh I saw that you did there Paps. I saw EVENT HORIZON. You substituted the word "God" for "Hell".

      The response line is valid in either case.;-)

      Cheers. Say hi to the Kangaroos 4 me.

      Delete
  18. "Katz’s positive arguments appeal to features of language and logic that the methods to which naturalists confine themselves cannot account for. For example, there is the necessity possessed by logical truths and analytic statements. A sound logic and linguistics cannot plausibly deny such necessity. "

    I think even better, the "symbols" that are supposed--according to materialists--to represent thought's connection to the exterior world are only self-referential; they have no essential connection to that which they symbolize making the content of thought indeterminate and implying I have no knowledge of the content of my own thought.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Not really off topic: NDPR just reviewed Gloria Frost's (St. Thomas Univ., Minnesota) recent book, Aquinas on Efficient Causation:

    https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/aquinas-on-efficient-causation-and-causal-powers/

    ReplyDelete
  20. I'm pretty ignorant of such things, but what is the clearest evidence that "ideas" have their own existence, as opposed to them being socially convenient ways for us to talk about physical objects that have some sort of conceptual relationship?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @poppies. I would answer a lesser version of CS Lewis’s

      “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

      So for example you could take the idea of numbers, and the idea of using symmetry to use numbers in formulas. From these ideas, you can establish new understanding of elements of the universe that are millions of miles away, and correctly predict future events. Mathematicians explore this world of numbers, and they can (sometimes independently) discover new elements in this idea landscape, which then can again be applied to the real world to reveal new truths about it. Imaginary numbers only exist as ideas, and yet they clearly are a real aspect of the universe.

      Of course the empiricist in you will probably assume that these are just concepts we have invented to describe patterns in nature, but to the mathematician who ‘creates’ them, it fairly reliably seems to them as a discovery of something that exists.

      The reason we have such difficulty seeing this goes back to nominalist assumptions ~700 years ago that are now embedded in our education. We can see that the ‘idea’ of Marxism has had a huge effect on the last century, but see this as categorically different from, say, general relativity. This is a double or triple effect from assumptions that have followed on from nominalism. Not only have we lost the vertical where ‘top-down’ causes are real, we have also split the quantitive abstraction from the abstractor (us). This cartesian divide means that causes which are not easily abstracted into quantity, and are not deterministically predictable, are seen as inherently unreal. However the very existence of anything, and it’s intelligibility, are ultimately unexplainable in this view.

      Delete
    2. @Simon Adams

      "God made the integers; all else is the work of man." - Leopold Kronecker

      Delete
    3. @empoweredbeing: I think in most of these cases, what God created is some kind of substrate beyond our comprehension. When we engage with this substrate, we create a relational image (which we then sometimes share in a culture to for an image that is relational in a broader sense). So an alien species may have a fairly different version of maths, perhaps even as far as slightly different axioms. However there would always be some element of overlap because the image is always a partial unfolding of the same essential reality, which itself is beyond our grasp.

      This can be applied far more widely, and many of the problems of philosophy go away when you do this. However because Ockham rejected the existence of this substrate because he had no evidence of it and could not establish anything about it with certainty, the new tower of babel has sent us all backwards speaking in multiple different philosophical languages that have over time hidden this entire realm from us…

      Delete
    4. @Simon Adams I wish I could hire you as a philosophy tutor!

      Delete
    5. I’m no philosopher, just an ex atheist still trying to work out so many years later why I was so confident that there was no God…

      Delete
    6. @Simon Adams the points you've made are extremely helpful, but just ever so slightly out of reach for me. I'd love to get contact info for you to discuss more specifically if you'd be willing.

      Delete
    7. @poppies Happy to help if I can, but I suspect it will mainly be to point to some real philosophers :). Maybe the easiest way to get in touch would be a direct message on Twitter to @si_ad

      Delete
  21. Let me hand my mike to DJ... er, Dr Feser.

    (Verse 1)
    Naturalism denies what we can't see,
    God, angels, and souls, it doesn't agree.
    It confines everything to the concrete,
    But Platonism's true - that's hard to beat.

    (Chorus)
    So hats off to Feser for his observation,
    Platonism's worth our consideration.
    With logic and language, we can see
    The falsity of naturalism's decree.

    (Verse 2)
    Katz's arguments show a mismatch,
    Between naturalism and logical truth's pitch.
    The theory of conceptualism falls short,
    Against universal truths, it can't cavort.

    (Chorus)
    So hats off to Feser for his observation,
    Platonism's worth our consideration.
    With logic and language, we can see
    The falsity of naturalism's decree.

    (Verse 3)
    Some may think Aristotelians and Platonists fight,
    But they stand united against naturalism's plight.
    Platonism's anti-naturalism helps us see,
    That there's more to reality than what we can be.

    (Chorus)
    So hats off to Feser for his observation,
    Platonism's worth our consideration.
    With logic and language, we can see
    The falsity of naturalism's decree.

    (Bridge)
    Thank you, Feser, for your insight,
    For helping us see through the naturalism blight.
    Your work on Thomism is truly great,
    And we appreciate all you create.

    (Chorus)
    So hats off to Feser for his observation,
    Platonism's worth our consideration.
    With logic and language, we can see
    The falsity of naturalism's decree.

    ReplyDelete
  22. OK, everyone, let's cut it out now with the question of who's a troll and who's not, poems about the subject. etc. Any further comments along such lines will be considered off-topic and not approved.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So why were the previous ones not considered off-topic and approved then Prof?

      Delete
    2. Because comment moderation is not an exact science, especially when the moderator is busy with 1,234 things. For one thing, sometimes the boundary between what’s on-topic and what’s off-topic starts out fuzzy, and only when a conversation thread starts to go in a particular direction over time does it become clearly off-topic. For another thing, I don’t like to moderate with a heavy hand and in general prefer discussion to be fairly freewheeling. Hence I afford a presumption of innocence, especially if someone has taken the time to write up a long comment. For yet another thing, I don’t spend lots of time reading through each comment and weighing carefully its post-worthiness. It’s a snap judgment made quickly so I can get on to other things. (You don’t see the stuff I don’t let through, which is typically very clearly off-topic or nothing but a drive-by insult or obscenity or the like.)
      Some readers massively over-interpret what they see or don’t see in the combox. “Why did you let that comment through and not mine! You’re playing favorites! You don’t like criticism! You let too many trolls in! Blah blah!” – as if I really give it that much thought.

      Delete
    3. Ed,
      You write so clearly and gracefully in your books, articles, blogs and even in your comments on the blogs. I think you could teach Advanced Expository Writing at your college as well as any English professor. And considering how prolific you are, writing seems to come easily to you.

      Delete
  23. Moreover, though my own settled version of realism is Aristotelian (or, more precisely, Aristotelian-Thomist) rather than Platonist, I have long thought that the best route to seeing the truth of realism is through Platonism.

    I agree. My first introduction to Platonism was through your book The Last Superstition. It was a tour de force. After reading that section, I was immediately convinced that it (or some variation on it) had to be true.

    ReplyDelete
  24. @ StardustyPsyche,

    Maybe just maybe you ask the definition of terms somone is using instead of presenting a strawman.

    na·ture
    /ˈnāCHər/
    noun
    1.
    the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.
    "the breathtaking beauty of nature"

    ar·ti·fact
    /ˈärdəˌfak(t)/
    noun
    plural noun: artifacts
    1.
    an object made by a human being, typically an item of cultural or historical interest.
    "gold and silver artifacts"

    During the advent of modern scientific method in the last several centuries, nature became the passive reality, organized and moved by divine laws.

    Below your strawmaning.

    "nature
    noun
    na·​ture ˈnā-chər
    Synonyms of nature
    1: the external world in its entirety
    Source:merriam-webster

    Here "external" refers to of yourself, outside of your thoughts, outside of your imagination.

    "World" means "universe" or "cosmos" in this context.

    "Super" means beyond, or in addition to.

    So "supernatural" means "beyond the cosmos in its entirety" or "that which exists in addition to all that exists".

    Clearly, the term "supernatural" is incoherent."

    Perhaps this is a key to why.

    " "Your words and acts would be just deterministic byproducts of your brain chemistry"
    Yes, clearly, that is the case."

    Arriving at truth for such a mind in the rest of the natural view you have would be improbable. Trusting such a mind to know truth would not be rational.

    ReplyDelete