tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post4336166254591964899..comments2024-03-29T04:46:24.966-07:00Comments on Edward Feser: ID theory, Aquinas, and the origin of life: A reply to TorleyEdward Feserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comBlogger59125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-30558170894003664352019-04-07T10:50:14.123-07:002019-04-07T10:50:14.123-07:00A couple of objections from an ambitious amateur:
...A couple of objections from an ambitious amateur:<br /><br />1. What of God's creation of Adam from the slime of the earth, and Eve ex Adamo, which Fr. Brian Harrison amply demonstrates pertains to the universal ordinary Magisterium (as Pope Leo XIII insisted)? Does A-T thinking on the nature of divine creation reduce these events to metaphors? Or can we not admit that God, in these instances at least, chose to act precisely as an artificer because it pleased Him to do so?<br /><br />2. That God creates (saving those two cases) by conjoining an act of existence to an essence, i.e., a compound of matter and form, is consistent with the Catholic dogma of creation ex nihilo, but is also quite inconsistent with the attempt by certain A-T theorists to shoehorn A-T metaphysics into some form of evolutionary paradigm according to which created substances give way to other substances without further divine acts conjoining acts of existence to essences, that is without further acts of special creation but rather by the unfolding of "natural" processes. This attempt has led to some bizarre postulates, such as the emergence of human bodies prior to the infusion of a soul, which Aquinas absolutely denies. Ferrarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15904697471256936203noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-57620775181025994172010-04-21T19:12:55.597-07:002010-04-21T19:12:55.597-07:00To Brandon,continued
I find your quotation from t...To Brandon,continued<br /><br />I find your quotation from the commentary on the Metaphysics confirms rather than refutes my reading. Aquinas is saying that a cause is dispositive if and only if it does NOT induce the final form but merely prepares the matter for that form. That is precisely what I am saying the semen does. He says that a dispositive cause, which is an efficient cause, is not said to be efficient cause of the final product, but only the efficient cause of what is potentially the final product. Again, this is precisely my reading of his account of human generation. You are misreading Aquinas' entire comment because you are misreading the last remark you quote, the sentence beginning "He is more properly an efficient cause..." Aquinas is here talking about differences within the genus of dispositive causes. Two things make this clear. First, Aquinas says, not that he (the man who hews the wood and cuts the stones) IS the efficient cause [scil. of the house], but that he is "MORE properly" an efficient cause--that is, he comes closer to being or having the nature of an efficient cause, but is not yet a full and proper efficient cause, pure and simple. Second, Aquinas does not say that this "he" is more properly an efficient cause by virtue of the fact that he induces the final form--which is your reading--but rather in virtue of the fact that he induces the final or ultimate DISPOSITION to that form. And this is precisely how I read Aquinas' account of human "generation." The semen generates the last living body which is corrupted when God's creative act introduces the rational soul into the same matter previously informed by a purely animal soul. Thus the semen is merely a dispositive cause of the human being that is the term of God's creative act.<br /><br />Your reading of the commentary text on the metaphysics is self-contradictory. You say that the ultimate disposition to the final form is the disposition that has the final form itself. But this contradicts the very meaning of the term disposition. A disposition that actually possesses the form to which it is disposed is no longer a disposition TO a form, but the subject OF that form.<br />To be disposed to a form means to not yet have that form; a disposition is a kind of potency, and nothing can be the potential possessor and actual possessor of the same form at the same time.Would-benoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-56199422240203629452010-04-21T19:12:10.063-07:002010-04-21T19:12:10.063-07:00Hi Brandon,
I don't think my reading of Aquin...Hi Brandon,<br /><br />I don't think my reading of Aquinas contradicts his views on the relation between generation and corruption. We have to remember WHY the incorruptible is always ingenerable, the generable always corruptible. Corruption is related to generation as decomposition to composition. What is simple by definition can cannot be decomposed, because decomposition presupposes composition. Likewise, what is simple cannot come to be by way of composition, because if it did, it would be a composite, not simple.<br />By the parallel argument, what is composite can only come to be by uniting its constituent parts, and likewise can only be made to cease to be by way of decomposition.<br />It follows that God, who is absolutely simple, can in no way cease to be. The angels or separate substances cannot be corrupted, since their essences are simple, nor, for the same reason, can they be generated. There is, however, a composition of essence and act of being in them, and so it is possible for them to cease to exist, should God cease his creative act. Material things, however, have a composition in their essence, so they can cease to be in two different ways: like the angels, they can cease to be because of God's withdrawing his creative act, and also, unlike the angels, they can cease to be by the decomposition of their essences, which occurs when one substantial form is replaced by another, in the same matter. This process is called corruption, when one is looking at the ceasing to be of the original substance. The same process is called generation, when one is looking at the coming to be of the new substance. Now Aquinas and Aristotle also believe that there are bodies whose matter is in potency to only one form. And because their matter is in potency to no other form, they can neither be generated nor corrupted.<br /> <br /> Accordingly, human beings or human bodies are corruptible precisely because, first, we are composed of matter and form, and second, because the matter that enters into our composition is in potency to other forms besides the soul. Consequently, my claim that a living rational animal cannot be generated by the power of the semen in no way necessitates or implies the incorruptibility of the human body or the human being. <br /><br />Far from my claim being incompatible with Aquinas' metaphysics, it is the only interpretation that is consistent with his claim that the soul of man is not generated, but created immediately by God. Don't forget that the qualification "immediately" is not idle here: it means without any instrumental or intermediate cause. If the semen had the power to generate a human body actually informed by a rational soul, then it would be the cause of this form, the rational soul, being in this body. But this is precisely the position Aquinas is arguing against.<br /><br />I don't understand the second paragraph of your post. You begin by saying that the semen only generates a potentially human body, i.e. one sufficiently disposed so as to be capable of receiving the rational soul without any further development. This sounds as though you are agreeing with my reading. But then you add, that it [i.e. the semen's generative act] terminates in an actual human body, which contradicts my reading. These are two different positions--which one are you asserting? Or have I misunderstood?<br /><br />You refer again to Aquinas' claim that the generative act has the same term, in part, as the act of creation. But I have already given you my reading of that claim. The generative act terminates in what is potentially a part of man. <br /><br />continuedwould-benoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-17748773263902812222010-04-21T06:41:45.526-07:002010-04-21T06:41:45.526-07:00Would-Be,
I see no reason to think that Aquinas i...Would-Be,<br /><br />I see no reason to think that Aquinas is using the term 'human body' loosely here; as Gyula Klima <a href="http://www.fordham.edu/gsas/phil/klima/BODYSOUL.HTM" rel="nofollow">has noted in other contexts</a> we have to be wary of applying matter/form analysis too simplistically to discussions of the body.<br /><br />Yes, the generative process only terminates in the potentially human body; Aquinas is quite clear that it terminates in the human body as materially disposed to the actual intellectual soul informing it. It must be the actual human body, because Aquinas makes clear that the generation is an instrumental part of the act of creation to which the human being's beginning to exist is inferred, and this is impossible if the act of generation does not actually have the same term as the act of creation (as Aquinas says it partly does). The generative processes clearly terminate in the human being; he says this more than once. (That there are other souls intermediate to it is nothing surprising: all generation is like this, because you can't partially have a substantial form.)<br /><br />Likewise, Aquinas's discussion here is consistent with what he claims elsewhere, e.g., in the commentary on the Metaphysics(5.2, section 767): "An efficient cause is said to be dispositive if it does not induce the final form that perfects a thing but only prepares the matter for that form, as one who hews timbers and stones is said to build a house. This cause is not properly said to be the efficient cause of a house, because what he produces is only potentially a house. But he will be more properly an efficient cause if he induces the ultimate disposition on which the form necessarily follows; for example, man generates man without causing his intellect, which comes from an extrinsic cause." The ultimate disposition on which the form necessarily follows is the disposition that actually has the form; every disposition prior to that is neither ultimate nor a disposition on which the form necessarily follows.<br /><br />Moreover, your interpretation would be incoherent on Aquinas's view of generation. Aquinas accepts Aristotle's arguments that anything that is generable is corruptible and anything that is ingenerable is incorruptible; it is, in fact, these arguments that lie behind the notions of necessity and possibility used in the Third Way. But then, if the human body is ingenerable it must be incorruptible. However, the human body is clearly corruptible, both on Aquinas's view and in fact. Therefore it clearly must be generable on Aquinas's account of generation. The line of thought you are suggesting is not just inconsistent with Thomas's embryology; it is inconsistent with his accounts of creation and generation, as well; it is not even a slightly modified Thomism, but a massively modified one. Which is fine in general, but as the point of this discussion is Thomism and ID, it's clear that no one who actually accepts the basic Thomistic accounts of creation and generation could accept the argument you suggested above as being at a possible juncture of Thomism and ID.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-57376458013070281432010-04-20T20:29:09.136-07:002010-04-20T20:29:09.136-07:00to Brandon, part 2
The reply to the seventh state...to Brandon, part 2<br /><br />The reply to the seventh states that "both the body and the soul are made by the power of God; although the formation of the body derives from Him by means of the natural power of the semen...". But I have argued that Aquinas himself has explained that the natural power of the semen extends only to the formation of a body that is potentially human, so the seventh objection doesn't affect my reading of Aquinas' position.<br /><br />Likewise, the tenth objection says that the primary and principal parts of the body are formed by the power of the soul of the begetter. But we have already seen that on Aquinas' account, the power of the soul of the begetter acts through the formative power of the semen. So the body in question must be only a potentially human body.<br /><br />As for the reply to the third objection, once again I say that the human body which Aquinas says is formed at the same time by the power of GOd, as principal and first agent, and by the power of the semen, as the secondary agent, is precisely a body that is only potentially human. If the semen could produce an actual human body, i.e. one animated by a rational soul, then the semen would have produced the whole man, body and soul, which Aquinas denies. Because the semen produces only a potentially human body, Aquinas says that it only "disposes" toward the production of the human soul [and by extension, toward the production of the body animated thereby]. And when Aquinas says in the same reply that a part of man is generated by the power of the semen, I take him to be referring to the embryonic body that has the potential to become a part of man. Once again, Aquinas is being elliptical. We see yet another instance of this in the same reply when, in one and the same sentence, he states without qualification that man is a generated subject, and then makes it plain that only a PART of man is generated; which means, strictly speaking, that man is not a generated subject at all, since man is neither body alone nor soul alone but the composite of the two.<br /><br />I realize that my reading must seem perverse to you, especially since it would be much easier for Aquinas to refute many of these objections simply by first saying that they presuppose that semen has the power to generate an actual human body, and then making the argument that in fact it doesn't.<br /><br />To such an objection to my reading, I can only reply what I said before, that I believe Aquinas' account of human generation to be inconsistent, and that he has been saddled with a false embryology that needlessly complicates the issue.Would-benoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-77656218064850926212010-04-20T20:28:29.051-07:002010-04-20T20:28:29.051-07:00In reply to Brandon:
part 1
Aquinas IS using some ...In reply to Brandon:<br />part 1<br />Aquinas IS using some terms loosely in this text, especially the term "human body." To see this, take a look at the one passage where he is being precise, namely, in his response to the sixth objection, where he says, "the human body, so far as it is in potentiality to the soul, as not yet having one, precedes the soul in time; it is then, not actually human, but only potentially human. However, when the body is actually human, as being perfected by the human soul, it neither precedes nor follows the soul, but is simultaneous with it". Accordingly, every time you see Aquinas using the term "human body" in this article, you have to ask, is he talking about a body that is actually human, namely, one animated by a human soul, or is he talking about a body that is NOT actually human, but only potentially so.<br /><br />All of his answers to the objections are founded on his earlier discussion: "With these considerations in mind, it easy to answer the objections" (par. 12 in the Notre Dame edition). And if we read "these considerations", we find Aquinas discussing the "formative power" of the semen, namely, the power "responsible for the formation of the body". This power "remains the same...from the beginning of the body's formation until the end," and acts "by virtue of the generative soul of the father." The question is, to what body is Aquinas referring? An actual human body? No. The "generative processes" discussed by Aquinas end with the formation of an animal body having only nutritive and sensitive powers; this animal passes away, body and soul, when "the rational soul is introduced from without". Aquinas makes it explicit that the formative or generative power of the semen extends only to the PRECEDING souls. Thus the "human body" formed by the semen--more precisely, the series of "human bodies" formed by the semen in a whole sequence of generations and corruptions--is never an actual human body, never a body animated by a rational soul. The last body formed by the semen ceases to exist when the rational soul is "introduced from without." The animal body living before the introduction of the rational soul is not the same as the animal body living after the introduction of the rational soul. Thus our actual human bodies, of which the rational soul is the form, are NOT generated by the formative power of the semen.<br /><br />As for Aquinas' replies to the third, seventh, and tenth objections, I could reply as follows.Would-benoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-21046780503790670522010-04-19T22:20:41.105-07:002010-04-19T22:20:41.105-07:00(cont'd)
Moreover, the claim that the rationa...(cont'd)<br /><br />Moreover, the claim that the rational soul is 'introduced from without' clearly means simply that the rational soul does not exist in virtue of the formative power of the semen. <br /><br />Thus Aquinas's actual, and very explicitly stated, view is that the divine creation of the human being includes, as an instrumental action terminating in only part of the term of the primary act, the natural generation of the human body. And this is not surprising; human beings are clearly generated in some sense -- that's what reproduction is -- and generation and creation are not contraries, and the former always presupposes the latter, anyway. The only quirk in the human case is that, whereas in non-rational animals the instrument of divine creation insofar as the animal comes to be, that is, the generative act, terminates in exactly the same term as the act of divine creation. But in the case of a rational animal Aquinas has arguments that the generative act, while still instrumental, only terminates in part of the term of the act of creation.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-90925903700756348632010-04-19T22:15:31.416-07:002010-04-19T22:15:31.416-07:00Thus even in this text, even accepting the false e...<i>Thus even in this text, even accepting the false embryology, Aquinas is NOT saying that my body, or your body, was generated. He is, on the contrary, saying that our bodies came into being solely through the introduction of a form--in his own words--"from without."</i><br /><br />This is not accurate, and to see why, it is helpful to look more closely at the third objection and Aquinas's response to it. The third objection is that the human soul must be generated by physical processes because the body is clearly generated due to the formative power in the semen. The soul is the form of the body, and therefore shares one being with the body; so, the objector argues, that being must be the one object of one agent because the actions of diverse agents do not terminate in one being. Therefore the soul is generated from the formative power of the semen.<br /><br />Aquinas replies to this that the actions of diverse agents do terminate in one being when one agent is ordered to the other. In such cases, one agent is the instrument of the other, and thus the action is primarily attributed to the primary agent. But in some of these cases the primary agent's action goes beyond the action of its instrument. But every natural agent is an instrument of divine power. Therefore, says Aquinas, nothing prevents the natural act of generation from terminating in part of the very same man that is produced as a whole by divine creation. Therefore one and the same human being is formed by natural generation (through the formative power of the semen) and by divine creation at the same time, with the generating cause acting as an instrument that partially produces a human being, but is incapable of producing a human being insofar as it has a rational soul. Rather, the formative power of the semen produces the human being insofar as that human being is materially disposed to having that soul. There is no problem with this because natural generating causes (like any other kind of cause) can be an instrument in divine creation.<br /><br />In every particular St. Thomas's response to the objection is contrary to what he should say on your interpretation. (1) St. Thomas very clearly does say that the human being is generated in part by the formative power of the semen. Nor can this be ascribed to loose language; he is making a very precise distinction in the causal actions producing a human being. (2) He very clearly says that the formative power of the semen is an instrument of divine productive power in the very act of creating a human being. An instrumental cause, as Aquinas uses the term, participates in the action of its primary agent; thus the divine creation of the human being includes, but is not exhausted by, the generation of the human body. (3) He very clearly says, when one considers the response in the context of the objection, that one and the same human being is the term of both the generative and the creative act; the generative act merely has part of that human being as its term, while the creative act has the whole human being.<br /><br />This is confirmed by some of St. Thomas's responses to other objections; for instance, his response to the seventh objection clearly states that "he formation of the body derives from Him by means of the natural power residing in the semen, whereas He produces the soul immediately". Likewise, in response to the tenth objection he says that the primary and principal parts of a person's body are formed not by the person's own soul but by the power of the begetter's soul. Moreover, several of the arguments given in Chapter 86 for why the soul cannot be transmitted through the semen explicitly treat the semen as generating cause of the human body. Moreover, prior to answering the objections Aquinas argues at the beginning of 89, at some length, that the formation of the human body must be due to some kind of formative power in the begetter.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-78124090796174262312010-04-19T16:29:26.620-07:002010-04-19T16:29:26.620-07:00"He is, on the contrary, saying that our bodi..."He is, on the contrary, saying that our bodies came into being solely through the introduction of a form--in his own words--"from without.""<br /><br />If I am not mistaken, isn't the case for Thomas that is just true of human bodies, not bodies per se. That is, it is only human souls that are directly created by God. <br /><br />I'm away from my Summa, so I'm not sure where Thomas says that.Francis Beckwithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03765632359220115150noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-57884104452141385662010-04-19T16:05:33.909-07:002010-04-19T16:05:33.909-07:00In reply to Brandon:
On SCG II.89 and the generat...In reply to Brandon:<br /><br />On SCG II.89 and the generation of the human body:<br />In this article, Aquinas' primary concern is to maintain that the human soul is not generated like thosee of other animals. He is not trying to formally determine whether or not the human body, as such--that is, as human--is generated, so he is not being particulary careful in his language as regards the human body. He is also saddled with an Aristotelian embryology that is in tension--I myself would say in contradiction--with his metaphysical views on the substantial unity of the human being. All that being said, however, even if we accept the false embryology as true, a strict reading of this text would have Aquinas saying that the human body is NOT generated. To see why, let's start with the embryology. Aquinas believes that the union of the semen with menstrual blood begins a whole series of generations and corruptions. The first substance generated is an embryo living the life of a plant, with only a vegetative soul. Then that embryo is corrupted by the generation of a new embryo having both vegetative and sensitive powers, and living the life of a [brute] animal. Finally, this last embryo is corrupted when the rational soul "is introduced from without" (SCG II 89.11), by God'a creative act. Only at this point does a human being begin to exist, and so only at this point does a human body, strictly speaking, begin to exist. Prior to the introduction of the rational soul, there were a whole series of bodies, NONE of which was the body of a human being. When Aquinas talks about the generation of the human body in this text, he is talking about the generation of these prior bodies. But notice that every one one of these "human" bodies has ceased to exist. The body of the human being, at the end of the process, is not the same as the body of any of these generated embryos. Thus even in this text, even accepting the false embryology, Aquinas is NOT saying that my body, or your body, was generated. He is, on the contrary, saying that our bodies came into being solely through the introduction of a form--in his own words--"from without."Would-benoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-27226230818768283142010-04-19T14:52:25.515-07:002010-04-19T14:52:25.515-07:00Thank you so much, Mr. Torley, for your respectabl...Thank you so much, Mr. Torley, for your respectable and respectful reply. It is a welcome and much needed bit of wisdom, maturity, and a breath of healthy air.<br /><br />As I first noted, the main crux of this foray at hand is largely (though not entirely) that "For most people today, essences and causalities are spoken of in the terms used in physics, chemistry, biology, anthropology, and psychology. Modern terminology."<br /><br />Be well.Just Thinkingnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-85527139088763380442010-04-19T14:04:39.440-07:002010-04-19T14:04:39.440-07:00Francis J. Beckwith: "Can Aristotle tell the ...<i>Francis J. Beckwith: "Can Aristotle tell the difference between a rock that looks kinda like a face and Mt. Rushmore?"<br />Not just by looking at them. But rather, by "seeing" what they really are. </i><br /><br />I don't know what you mean. Are you distinguishing physical sight from intellectual sight? <br /><br /><i>If yes, then ID is mechanistic. If not, then ID is superfluous</i><br /><br />Superfluous to what?Davidnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-91478598672359818312010-04-19T12:35:11.374-07:002010-04-19T12:35:11.374-07:00"Can Aristotle tell the difference between a ..."Can Aristotle tell the difference between a rock that looks kinda like a face and Mt. Rushmore?"<br /><br />Not just by looking at them. But rather, by "seeing" what they really are. <br /><br />Suppose, however, we discovered a natural means by which things may sport faces. Would that mean that such things are entirely products of "non-rational" mechanisms and laws? If yes, then ID is mechanistic. If not, then ID is superfluous and may have the unintended consequence of supporting the mechanistic narrative. <br /><br />And, by the way, we do know of a natural means by which things may sport faces. It's called sexual intercourse. Works like a charm.Francis Beckwithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03765632359220115150noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-21285360644155631722010-04-19T11:58:19.911-07:002010-04-19T11:58:19.911-07:00Would-Be had said,
The existence of the human so...Would-Be had said, <br /><br /><i>The existence of the human soul is entirely ungenerated by any natural process. Consequently, the human body, as such, is also entirely ungenerated, since the human body has its existence only through its substantial form, which is the soul. The human body is NOT generated by natural processes.</i><br /><br />I thought you might be heading in this direction. But at this point we're well beyond St. Thomas himself, who does insist that the human body is generated by natural processes -- in SCG II.89, for instance.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-36152312786233571892010-04-19T09:57:58.680-07:002010-04-19T09:57:58.680-07:00Does my 21st century rendition of hylemorphism sti...Does my 21st century rendition of hylemorphism still sound like a travesty of Thomism to you? I hope I have persuaded you to reconsider, Professor Feser.<br /><br />In closing, I'd like to say something briefly, on the subject of reductionism.<br /><br />In an earlier blog post ("Nothing but," April 8, 2010), you insisted that Aristotelian Thomism is "<i>holistic</i> rather than reductionist; a whole can be analyzed into its parts, but the parts in turn cannot properly be understood apart from the whole." Fair enough, but you then continue: <br /><br />"“H20” abbreviates a description of the chemical micro-structure of water, but for A-T essentialism, macro-level substances are not <i>reducible to</i> their micro-structure."<br /><br />As I read him, Professor Oderberg would disagree with you, at least as regards water. (I have to confess that I'm reading his book online - $123 is a little outside my budget - so there are many pages I can't access.) Although Professor Oderberg rejects (rightly, in my opinion) the proposition that water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen - a statement which I would replace with, "Water is composed of one-proton atoms and eight-proton atoms," - he nevertheless goes on to acknowledge:<br /><br />"As far as we know, having the properties of water is wholly explained by the molecular structure of water. By 'wholly explained' here, I mean that the entire collection of properties possessed by water is understood by science as caused by the constitution of water and realized (to echo John Searle's (1991) way of speaking). I would go further and venture that every specific property of water is realized only in water's specific constitution." (<i>Real Essentialism</i>, Routledge, 2007, p. 90.)<br /><br />So "the entire collection of properties possessed by water" is "wholly explained by the molecular structure of water"? Hmm. I'd call that a reductionism of sorts. I think most philosophers would.<br /><br />Finally, I would like to close with a general request. When interpreting the writings of those who might disagree with me, I generally assume they're trying to say something intelligent that makes sense, so I tend to construe their meaning as positively as possible. I would very much appreciate it if you did the same when engaging with ID philosophers. Thank you, Professor Feser.Vincent Torleynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-21431657653069448742010-04-19T09:55:16.266-07:002010-04-19T09:55:16.266-07:00Let's continue with your blog post, Professor....Let's continue with your blog post, Professor. You write:<br /><br />"Torley’s definition of substantial form is at least slightly less bad; he tells us that it is “the fundamental or defining attribute of a physical entity, which makes it the kind of entity it is.” No, it is not an “attribute” at all. It is substances that have attributes, and a substantial form is one of two components of a complete substance (the other being the otherwise formless prime matter a substantial form is united to). Since having attributes presupposes having a substantial form, a substantial form can hardly be itself a kind of attribute. It is rather the essence which grounds a substance’s proper attributes or properties, that from which these properties flow."<br /><br />Professor Feser, you seem to be interpreting my term "attribute" as if it meant "accident." It doesn't. "Realization" or "modification" would be a better way of putting it. Primary matter is always realized in some way: the substantial form of a substance is simply the way it is currently realized. Thus relative to primary matter, the substantial form of a substance is what I call an attribute. Secondary matter is also realized in a particular way. Relative to secondary matter (the individual substance), an accidental form is what I call an attribute. Thus having attributes does <i>not</i> presuppose having a substantial form. What it <i>does</i> presuppose is having primary or secondary matter.<br /><br />You define substantial form as "the essence which grounds a substance’s proper attributes or properties, that from which these properties flow." The reason why I don't like this textbook definition is that for at least some substances, there <i>do</i> seem to be certain properties which are not just proper accidents of a thing, but rather constitute the very essence of that thing. In other words, not all properties are accidents (whether essential or inessential).<br /><br />Consider the following example from Professor David Oderberg's book. The interpretation which follows is mine: <br /><br />“Whatever the empirical technicalities, then, for present purposes we can rest content with the following:<br /> <br />(G4) Gold is a metal with atomic number 79<br /><br />as giving the correct definition of gold. (More precisely, we should say that gold is a metal whose atomic constituents have an atomic number of 79; but the shorter version (G4) will suffice.) For as well as assuming that <i>metal</i> is the proximate genus, we can be fairly sure that <i>having atomic number 79</i> gives the specific difference, marking gold out from everything else in the universe, no matter how similar.” (<i>Real Essentialism</i>, Routledge, 2007, p. 91.)<br /><br />Now, I should be happy to describe properties such as the melting point and specific gravity of gold as proper accidents. They don't capture the essence, or "whatness," of of gold, but they flow from its essence. However, the property of being a metal with atomic number 79 really does seem to capture the essence of gold: it gives us the specific difference that marks gold out from everything else. Now, some Thomists might say that the real essence of gold is <i>not</i> this property, but something deeper, one metaphysical layer down, so to speak. I have to say that to my mind, this seems downright obscurantist. <b>I know what gold is. If I don't know that, I don't know anything. Gold is a metal with atomic number 79. That's the essential definition of gold.</b> Thus the property (or attribute) of being a metal with an atomic number of 79 is the defining attribute of gold. I'd call that the substantial form of gold. It is an attribute of primary matter (mass-energy). Any "piece" of mass-energy that is realized (or instantiated) as (a) a metal (proximate genus), with (b) an atomic number of 79 (specific difference), <i>is</i> a piece of gold.Vincent Torleynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-55538978583930854162010-04-19T09:49:21.969-07:002010-04-19T09:49:21.969-07:00Professor Feser:
Thank you for your post. I'd...Professor Feser:<br /><br />Thank you for your post. I'd like to focus on hylemorphism. You wrote:<br /><br />"It seems to me that many of those who object to what I have said about the incompatibility between A-T and ID fail to see this because they are simply unfamiliar with A-T metaphysics and do not understand what is meant by terms like “substantial form,” “prime matter,” etc. And this includes Torley himself."<br /><br />I'm now 49 years old. I've been studying and pondering St. Thomas' metaphysics for 33 years on and off, since the time when I bought a second-hand copy of "Philosophy for the Layman" by Fr. Aegidus Doolan (Dublin: Irish Rosary, 1944) at the age of 16, at a school library sale. At five cents, it was a bargain. I had a lot of free time during my twenties, while I was studying, and I've read scores of books on Thomistic philosophy. Whatever my faults (and I know I have many), accusing me of being unfamiliar with "unfamiliar with A-T metaphysics" is risibly absurd. But let's continue with the passage in your post:<br /><br />"He says, for example, that “in modern parlance, prime matter is roughly the same as the modern physicist’s concept of ‘mass-energy.’” No, that is not what prime matter is. Prime matter, as I said in a passage Torley himself quotes, is matter without any form at all; and to have the properties of “mass-energy” entails having a certain kind of form, in the Aristotelian sense of “form.”"<br /><br />No, it doesn't. "Mass-energy" is about as non-descript a term as you can get in physics. There are many different forms of mass-energy - light, heat, sound, mass, kinetic and potential energy, and so on - but "mass-energy" is simply what gets transformed. It is utterly devoid of any qualities whatsoever. I don't know how much more formless you can get than that.<br /><br />It is true that mass-energy is conserved over time (leaving aside momentary quantum fluctuations). But that does not entail that it has a form. It simply means that mass-energy is quantifiable, where the "quantity" of mass-energy is defined by how much work it can do. ("Work" is done whenever a body is accelerated over some distance.) I should add that there were some Scholastic philosophers (e.g. Suarez) who held that quantity <i>could</i> inhere in primary matter. <br /><br />I might also add that Professor David Oderberg, unlike Professor Feser, is quite open to the idea that prime matter is the same thing as mass-energy. He uses the term "energy" in the quote below; I prefer to use the more generic term "mass-energy," because "mass" is simply a form of energy.<br /><br />"Thirdly, might prime matter be energy? It is an intriguing question which I cannot pursue here. One problem is that the hylemorphist has a better grasp of what prime matter is than the physicist has of what energy is, and since metaphysics has to be informed by science there will be severe limits to what the former can say about the possible identification of prime matter with energy. If there are substantial energy transformations (e.g. heat to sound, chemical to light) by which a wholly new thing comes into existence, there will have to be prime matter distinct from energy as a support (as noted in Johansson 1989: 38-39). But if transformations are but phases of an underlying pure energy that has no determinate form in itself, then <i>perhaps</i> one might venture the thought that they are one and the same." (<i>Real Essentialism</i>, Routledge, 2007, p. 76.)<br /><br />The latter option considered by Professor Oderberg is precisely what I would maintain. I would also claim that even in those cases when a substantial change occurs (e.g. an electron and a positron "annihilate" each other and create a photon of energy), mass-energy is still conserved, as an underlying quantity. It is easy to describe this change in Aristotelian terms. <br /><br />Part 2 to follow.Vincent Torleynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-46989683417906454992010-04-19T08:24:04.932-07:002010-04-19T08:24:04.932-07:00In reply to Brandon, by way of clarification:
By &...In reply to Brandon, by way of clarification:<br />By "moment of creation" of the human soul, I mean the moment it begins to exist. This is of course the same moment that a human body begins to exist, of which the soul is the substantial form.<br />The existence of the human soul is entirely ungenerated by any natural process. Consequently, the human body, as such, is also entirely ungenerated, since the human body has its existence only through its substantial form, which is the soul. The human body is NOT generated by natural processes. Only the matter from which the human body is made is generated, but this matter does not become a human body until it is informed by the special act of creation by which a human soul informs and animates this matter. Thus the moment a human soul begins to exist, not by generation, but by a special act of creation, a human body begins to exist, not by generation, but by the creation of its soul. The moment a human soul begins to exist, it begins to inform and animate pre-existent matter produced by the father and the mother. Thus a human being begins to exist only through God's imposing, or joining, a subsistent form from without to pre-existent matter, by his creative act.<br />God's involvement as a creator in the coming to be of a new human being is entirely different from his involvement as a creator in the generation of any other living thing. Other animals are able to reproduce themselves without God's help. We are not. In fact, there is no such thing as human reproduction, if the term is used, as you use it, to mean the generation of a human being. <br />I hope this clarifies the nature of our disagreement.Would-benoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-27375596218350146842010-04-18T22:29:27.657-07:002010-04-18T22:29:27.657-07:00one can argue that some forms of life can only be ...<i>one can argue that some forms of life can only be accounted for by viewing them as the product of an intervention by an immaterial intelligence acting on pre-existent matter. THe human soul is created individually by God, not generated. At the moment of its creation, the human soul is joined to pre-existent matter taken from the father and the mother....At the moment of its creation, the human soul is joined to pre-existent matter taken from the father and the mother.</i><br /><br />I'm not sure I follow your argument. In a strict sense, there is no "at the moment of its creation" when it comes to the soul; every moment is in a sense the moment of its creation, because it's never not actually a creature. This is one of the things that makes creation different from generation. But since the rational soul is ingenerable and begins to exist, the beginning of existence is one of the things explained directly by creation. The beginning of human existence, however, is explicitly regarded by Thomas as a cooperative active issuing in one unified effect: God in creating causes the whole person to begin to exist, with partial instrumental use of generating causes for part of what is created. We <i>are</i> products of physical processes issuing from forms immanent to physical things; otherwise we would be wholly ingenerable, or purely identifiable with our intellect, which we are not. We are one existing thing that is simultaneously generable and ingenerable, in different respects. What <i>is</i> true to say on Thomas's view is that we are not wholly generated by such processes. God is <i>not</i> imposing a form from without, however; Thomas doesn't have the Platonic view that we have the matter and then God just adds the rational soul on top. Rather, the rational soul is the form of the very body which is to be explained by generation through physical processes. The creation, in other words, is not a conjoining of two things; it is a producing of two things as already integrally united from their first moment, one of which is generated directly by natural processes. God's 'intervention' here is just creation, which is already the act that <i>everything actual</i> presupposes, regardless of what it is, and therefore is not really 'intervention' at all. One can call it art or artifice, if one wishes; all one is saying is that creation is the act of an intelligent cause and, perhaps, that that act has an effect distinct from that cause. Aquinas himself will occasionally use this terminology. But this is obviously not the sense in which Ed is taking it, nor indeed the sense that is usually meant when one makes the distinction between artifact and natural object. In fact, I would say that the qualification you make, about substantial versus accidental form, is one of the chief points at issue here. <br /><br />It's also ambiguous to say that nature has no tendency to produce intellectual life. Nature cannot itself produce intellectual life on a Thomistic view, but it can and does tend toward that production as a subordinate and contributing cause; this is, in fact, what human reproduction is, the generation of a human being, which is an animal with intellect. And this <i>is</i> a purely natural tendency to intellectual life -- one that, however, cannot be wholly completed by the natural causes insofar as they are natural causes. It's analogous in this sense to the natural human tendency to beatitude.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-23859556442401886022010-04-18T20:19:29.406-07:002010-04-18T20:19:29.406-07:00Feser says,
"The dispute has to do instead ...Feser says, <br /> "The dispute has to do instead with whether living things are to be thought of as “natural” objects or as “artifacts,” in Aristotle’s senses of those terms."<br />For Feser, this is equivalent to saying that the dispute has to do with whether mechanistic theories can adequately explain the natural world, or whether we need immanent and final causes to do so.<br /> My argument was intended to show that even on Thomistic grounds--that is, even given that there are immanent and final causes in the natural world--one can argue that some forms of life can only be accounted for by viewing them as the product of an intervention by an immaterial intelligence acting on pre-existent matter. THe human soul is created individually by God, not generated. At the moment of its creation, the human soul is joined to pre-existent matter taken from the father and the mother. Yes, there is a difference from human artefacts, in that most human artefacts only impose an accidental, not a substantial form on the pre-existent matter, and even when scientists make new elements (and so produce new substantial forms), they do so by working with the potentialities in pre-existent substantial forms, not by creating new ones ex nihilo. Nonetheless, human beings are not "natural objects" in the Aristotelian sense--they are not the products of physical processes issuing from forms immanent to physical things (and I believe that this is a point on which Aquinas' philosophy differs from Aristotle's). Nor is "human nature" itself a "natural object." Human nature is the product of the joining of an immaterial substantial form to pre-existent matter. That union requires a divine artificer. And in this respect, I argued that human beings are artefacts of precisely the sort that Feser himself says the dispute concerns. In creating a human being, God is imposing a form on pre-existent matter from without, a form to which the pre-existent matter itself has no tendency, since according to Aquinas, nature has no tendency to produce intellectual life.Would-benoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-49977961408466594862010-04-18T19:06:18.330-07:002010-04-18T19:06:18.330-07:00Brandon: I've enjoyed your comments on this su...<i>Brandon: I've enjoyed your comments on this subject, even ones with which I've disagreed. </i><br /><br />Thanks. And I disagree with many of my own comments! Some are devil's advocacy, and some are just thinking aloud as I try to figure it all out for myself.Davidnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-62060497764408447072010-04-18T18:35:15.139-07:002010-04-18T18:35:15.139-07:00Some questions:
What's the difference between...Some questions:<br /><br />What's the difference between a message and a machine? They both encapsulate some "purpose" or "meaning" or "intentionality" into a physical object (a watch, or ink on a page). [A message needs to be decoded or interpreted back into an idea, but perhaps something like an onomatopoeia is simpler in that it is the thing it represents.] At any rate, I want to know whether a message is like a machine in terms of imposing an extrinsic form upon some matter, or is it a more "natural", intrinsic kind of thing?<br /><br />Can God make a watch? Certainly He can manipulate matter and have the necessary pieces come together, or create the whole thing <i>ex nihilo</i>, but is it a machine, or a "natural watch"? The sun and the moon are "natural" timekeepers in that they are natural objects that serve to tell time, but is their time-telling intrinsic or extrinsic? Can they be considered machines <i>insofar as we view them as timepieces?</i> <br /><br />Can the same thing be different objects at the same time, that is, part of more than one [natural] object? Or, how do we know whether something is a natural object, or one part of a bigger nature, or a collection of smaller natures? The earth is a natural object, but so is the solar system — it acts according to a nature given to it by God, or else isn't it a machine? Are the creatures on the earth separate natures, or are they all parts of a "biosphere" which is what really has the substantial form? There are natural, or rather useful and practical and intelligible ways in which we can identify things as separate entities, but how do we know God views them the same way? He does not share our limitations and can see the whole universe at once, functioning as a coherent whole.Davidnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-18850231322294051642010-04-18T17:13:32.342-07:002010-04-18T17:13:32.342-07:00TheOFloinn: If tomorrow scientists were to discove...<i>TheOFloinn: If tomorrow scientists were to discover a new, non-Darwinian process which accounts for the specified complexity, then IDers are left flabbergasted and speechless and perhaps shaken in their faith. Thomists would go, "Way kool!"</i><br /><br />Yes, physics is not metaphysics, but so what? IDers "shaken in their faith" sounds like a caricature. (I'm sure there are such people to be found, especially if your sample population is the Internet. You can find silly flabbergastable Thomists as well.) A more sober suggestion is that ID proponents would say, "Way cool! See, we told you life wasn't Darwinian!" (Huh—are ID guys better spellers than Thomists? Let the flamewars begin!)Davidnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-13454164081525453752010-04-18T17:12:30.941-07:002010-04-18T17:12:30.941-07:00(cont'd, in response to The (Would Be) Leonine...(cont'd, in response to The (Would Be) Leonine Thomist)<br /><br />I agree, though, with your point about spontaneous generation: it is relevant, albeit in a limited way, in that Thomistic philosophy of nature doesn't rule it out at all. Indeed, except for certain things dealing with ingenerables (intellects and the heavens), Aquinas tends to leave very open what nature can or can't do; this has to be discovered by study. And part of the reason is found in Aquinas's rejection of occasionalism: denying a priori that a natural object could have a certain power is denying that God could give it that power. But God can do anything except a contradiction, so the only way to rule something out as a potential natural power is to show it leads to contradiction: either absolutely (e.g., generating an ingenerable) or on supposition (e.g., given the nature God has in fact given it the natural object can't do what's claimed). The former can be handled with metaphysics alone, but they are very rare; the latter requires openminded investigation of what powers natures do, in fact, have. And no ID I've ever run across actually argues for a contradiction; they are, as Mike says, all probabilistic.<br /><br />David,<br /><br />I've enjoyed your comments on this subject, even ones with which I've disagreed. I wish I had more time to engage with them.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-40486710457358168722010-04-18T17:09:20.282-07:002010-04-18T17:09:20.282-07:00The (Would Be) Leonine Thomist said:
I still don&...The (Would Be) Leonine Thomist said:<br /><br /><i>I still don't see why ID arguments cannot be validly applied in the case of human beings. In an earlier post, I argued that since (by Thomas's metaphysics and by Catholic dogma) a special act of creation is needed to give life to a human being, a human being can truly be said to be an artefact of God, a product of divine workmanship that could never be produced by natural causes. Human beings are thus evidence of intelligent design of precisely the sort that the IDers seem to be arguing for, and I don't see how in this case their argument can be said to be invalid or unThomistic.</i><br /><br />I can see the appeal of such a view, but as David says above, part of the problem in this discussion is that people keep importing different meanings into the phrase 'intelligent design'. In order to be intelligent design of precisely the sort IDers argue for, it has to have the following features: it has to argue on the basis of the kind of complexity of the object under question, claim that this complexity exhibits a feature, e.g., a certain level or type of information, that evolutionary pathways cannot reach in the time they have had to reach it, and conclude that this feature must be originally generated by an intelligence rather than by the natural causes involved in those evolutionary pathways; once the system has the right information, however, it can generate that sort of object indefinitely. As Mike says, however, none of these features are found in Aquinas's discussion of the rational soul. The ground of the inference is not the complexity of the intellect and on Aquinas's view the intellect can never be generated by any intelligence, either -- the arguments are that the intellectual soul is ingenerable. No amount of information of any kind added to a system can on this view add up to an intellect. Thus insofar as we are embodied we are (like almost everything else) both created and generated, but insofar as we are capable of grasping universals as such we are only created. And this is something that is true in every single human case -- the precise point of the argument that human souls must be created is that it is the follow-up to the argument that having an intellectual soul can't be transmitted through generation. Thus the argument seems to be different in every single particular -- the only similarity is that in both cases God does something, if one interprets the intelligent designer in ID as being God.<br /><br />Creation is a very different kind of causation than generation is. By its very nature, ID about biological organisms is confined to talking about generation. To this extent it is entirely possible for someone Thomistically inclined to make an argument that no mechanistic explanations can account for human intellect, because explanations that do not include God, however accurate they may be, only account for the bodily disposition to intellect and not the intellect to which it is disposed. But the grounds would have to be either very non-ID grounds -- because what ID looks at are only what the Thomist can consider relevant to the bodily dispositions -- or very non-Thomistic grounds -- understanding human intellect in a mechanistic way as a particular kind of interaction of a material system.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.com