tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post8664515616851664681..comments2024-03-14T03:14:22.144-04:00Comments on The TOF Spot: First Way, Part III: The Big KahunaTheOFloinnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-21061939955876391122016-03-23T06:40:08.536-04:002016-03-23T06:40:08.536-04:00Time lag ... inertia is certainly non-accelerating...Time lag ... inertia is certainly non-accelerating.<br /><br />But one can legitimately wonder whether it is, as Newton thought, of itself non-decelerating as well, or whether it is decelerating with a time lag.<br /><br />The SECOND, along with a Geocentric universe, is very much into God is "playing the universe right now". Obviously, a universe rotating around Earth cannot be a perpetuum mobile, its parts changing direction, and therefore not remaining even in Newtonian type inertia. So, if universe continues to rotate, God is rotating it NOW.<br /><br />The FIRST, with a universe with everything determined by previous motions and potential energy (why not potential potency or energetic energy, while we are at it?) as a positive factor maintaining the exact quantity of kinetic energy flowing into it and coming out of it, is more like a recipe for proving Deism - or "the watchmaker God". You know, the kind of God, who, like a watchmaker, can die while clock continues ticking. The kind of God Voltaire affirmed was alive and aloof and Nietsche affirmed was dead.<br /><br />Again, we have here only dealt with EXISTENCE of God, not with His Unity. If you think it through, Seneca once doubted whether God turned the Universe around us, or only turned US around in the Universe. In the latter case, it could be a God of Earth only - with parallel Gods for other parts.<br /><br />Aristotle and St Thomas would have judged that doubt as being somwhat undue. If we believe all we see, we must believe Universe turns around us (as long as we have no proof positive of contrary). If we admit Universe turns around us, we must admit there is a God who is God of the whole universe. Which is kind of parallel to Psalms and Romans saying Day and Night indicate God's glory.<br /><br />Do you start sensing something fishy about the implications of Heliocentric doubt?<br /><br />Well, duh, St Robert caught a very smelly fish called Giordano.Hans Georg Lundahlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01055583255516264955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-65674737163399553052015-04-30T00:33:25.163-04:002015-04-30T00:33:25.163-04:00This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17540547105510081730noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-75451046482634320242015-02-23T07:11:12.467-05:002015-02-23T07:11:12.467-05:00I notice that the link you offer in the Indicium L...I notice that the link you offer in the Indicium Librorum to the Compendium theologiae takes one instead to Q. 2, article 3, of the Summa theologiae. I saw the same thing somewhere else in the series of posts.<br /><br />Btw, an excellent series of post, and challenging, one measure of which is the quality of the comments (this comment set aside) this post has brought forth .Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12547302679904413077noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-21489330390136145692014-10-12T20:08:42.929-04:002014-10-12T20:08:42.929-04:00That is not to say that contingent things necessar...That is not to say that contingent things necessarily "come to be" temporarily.<br />A potential can be actualised ab aeterno, never beginning in time.<br />Yet an existent thing that is composed of potency and act is still causally dependent on something actual. For mere potencies do not raise themselves to act.G. Mancz 滿償喬治https://www.blogger.com/profile/15753680642571164788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-44030501102279297982014-10-12T16:34:10.201-04:002014-10-12T16:34:10.201-04:00Sorry it took me so long, but I have to confess i...Sorry it took me so long, but I have to confess it wasn't easy to understand the proposal you're making in the last paragraph. <br />Particularly the bit about matter. And I'm not feeling altogether well.<br /><br />I can be flippant and assume you are using this word in the Aristotelian sense: that matter causes persistence (actualises) to the thing. But that's impossible, for matter is merely potential, and only actual things can actualise other things.<br />If you mean that which served as matter (!) for something (oxygen and hydrogen before becoming water, say) in cases of substantial change (like this one), that would make no sense - for you're ascribing causal status to something that no longer is.<br /><br />If you've meant "nature" in the Aristotelian sense: natures/essences of things of themselves have no causal efficacy (they are not things, and things efficiently cause things) and are either distinct from each other or not.<br />For a nature of a thing to cause "persistence of existence" would be for a nature to just cause existence. But essenses do not act as efficient causes. Things do. <br />If in a thing essence and existence are distinct, something else explains their unity and therefore the existence of a thing. And that would be an existent thing. <br />If they are not distinct in a thing and its essence just is its existence, this thing exists necessarily. <br />But a thing that came to be - a contingent thing, potential being - cannot be said to exist necessarily. <br /><br />There Is Being where essence and existence are the same, incidentally - the One that Mr. Flynn referred to as the Big Kahuna.<br /><br />Then again, I suppose, if you didn't by the use of these words indicate their proper (Aristotelian-Thomistic) meaning, by "locating persistence of existence in the nature of the matter" you could be just re-stating that things do persist. Or to put it in a more seemingly sophisticated (in reality sophistical) way: it a law of nature that things do persist.<br />But that's no explanation at all, just a reformulation of an observation.G. Mancz 滿償喬治https://www.blogger.com/profile/15753680642571164788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-7823878295109332592014-10-09T12:43:29.025-04:002014-10-09T12:43:29.025-04:00"And if that's true, it will not do to sa..."And if that's true, it will not do to say that your parents and forebears cause the actualisation of this potency of matter, for they are not causally present."<br /><br />Since I understand the difference between accidentally- and essentially-ordered causal series, this point doesn't really help me. It seems to beg the question, because the question at issue is why it is necessary to have a "causally present" actualizer to sustain a person's existence. I agree that a thing (or any potency) cannot actualize itself, but once actualized why can't the thing's existence be explained in terms of its own nature? That's what our senses tell us. The house remains a house (for a period of time) after the builders are done. The person remains a person (for a period of time) after he is conceived and born. In other words, existential inertia, to use the term Feser uses in the article that Michael cites above, seems to be a principle of being. (The article was helpful, by the way, but I'm still not seeing the necessity of his argument against existential inertia and for a divine conserving cause. But that's probably my fault, not his; I need to think harder.)<br /><br />I guess you are saying that the potency for existence, and/or the potency for (prime) matter to combine with form to create an individual human being, must be actualized at every instant, and while that may be true, that is the part of the argument that I don't understand. I don't understand the necessity of it, as opposed to, for example, some other principle that locates persistence of existence in the nature of the matter that makes up the thing in question.LSnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-60921685090478578782014-10-08T18:08:18.112-04:002014-10-08T18:08:18.112-04:00..and one can reply that given that you're a c.....and one can reply that given that you're a composite of form and matter, and you're actually human (rather than a corpse, say), you therefore are an actualisation of matter (you can outlive this, as a subsistent soul, though it's a remnant of a substance, incapable of naturally acting). In a composite thing act is underlied by a passive potency: a marble statue is; marble has a potency to be fashioned in such a way as to be a statue, whereas, say, gases do not have this potency.<br />And if that's true, it will not do to say that your parents and forebears cause the actualisation of this potency of matter, for they are not causally present. You can say neither "nothing" nor "myself" (from nothing nothing comes and a thing cannot actualise itself). And yet it's actualised.<br /><br />Adittionally, for a discussion of Newtonian inertia in this context you can see the discussion already referred to by Mr. Flynn:<br />http://faculty.fordham.edu/klima/SMLM/PSMLM10/PSMLM10.pdf<br /><br />I take it you are not arguing against the statement that there are indeed per se series in reality and these do necessitate the Actus Purus?..G. Mancz 滿償喬治https://www.blogger.com/profile/15753680642571164788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-35240766459395630662014-10-08T17:56:12.252-04:002014-10-08T17:56:12.252-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.G. Mancz 滿償喬治https://www.blogger.com/profile/15753680642571164788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-69042366037177854812014-10-06T14:29:19.712-04:002014-10-06T14:29:19.712-04:00Try this: http://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purch...Try this: http://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=acpq&id=acpq_2011_0085_0002_0237_0267TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-60821683421733819622014-10-06T10:21:41.402-04:002014-10-06T10:21:41.402-04:00So, if I understand the argument, you are saying t...So, if I understand the argument, you are saying that the continued existence (the existence at this moment) of any contingent being is itself a potency that must be actuallized, which means there must be an actualizer outside that being to do the actualization, and since this is an essentially ordered causal series, that actualizer must be, ultimately, a being of pure act, hence the unmoved mover. My continued existence, in other words, is like my potency to be 8 floors above the ground, which depends upon the existence of the apartment building. If you take away the apartment building, I can't be 8 floors up, and if you take away the unmoved mover, I can't exist.<br /><br />Is that right? If so, I guess my last question is why my continued existence is a potency rather than simply a property or characteristic of the fact that I came into existence through the accidently ordered causal series of my parents and forebears. In other words, why is existence like me being 8 floors up in the apartment building rather than like the baseball moving from point A to point B after the pitcher has thrown it?LSnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-3701213364455089072014-10-05T12:01:39.098-04:002014-10-05T12:01:39.098-04:00@LS
Oh, It's fine, really. I could've jus...@LS<br /><br />Oh, It's fine, really. I could've just had "George" there, but that would complicate things with Russians out there. :)<br /><br />Parents at conception would be what is called "per accidens" causes (sometimes in fieri, but I'll stick to the older version; not just the parents, obviously: for the rational and subsistent soul is created by God ex nihilo every time, the intellect being immaterial and all :) ), they cause the transition. <br /><br />I cause the transition of catfood from a package (with silly pictures of cats) to a bowl. But I do not cause it's continued existence or even it's presence in the bowl (in a way I could, were I to prevent my cat from eating, but that's a bit different).<br />But during this there were actions of the other type of causal chains (per se, instrumental etc.) - for example, when I was actualising the potential of the package to remain above the bowl in a specific fashion so that catfood would fall in the bowl. For that I needed to be in a specific pose, and for that I needed to be and so on (any moment would do, really).<br /><br />Again, what's relevant here is that things that are composites of act and potency (which is "revealed" by change/motion, where the argument starts) have to be actualised (not just once, now), for potencies of themselves do not have act. If the thing actualising the potential was removed, there just wouldn't be any actualisation of this potential.<br />What applies to the music applies to Mrs. Kam. :)<br /><br />To the "here and now business", I don't know if it's a good example, but the catfood thing is odd, so..<br />I have nothing in me as I am that makes me stay 8 floors above the ground, but I actually am.<br />My potential to stay there is actualised by the floor, the potential of which is actualised by the other, then the other and so on to the ground floor. Removing the floor would "deactualise" the first named potential. :)<br /><br />G. Mancz 滿償喬治https://www.blogger.com/profile/15753680642571164788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-22354090114371687782014-10-05T09:06:56.259-04:002014-10-05T09:06:56.259-04:00@Georgy
Sorry for using the wrong name. I glance...@Georgy<br /><br />Sorry for using the wrong name. I glanced too quickly and leaped to a wrong conclusion. I think there might be a lesson there . . . .<br /><br />Okay, I see now how the argument remains an argument from motion. Your clarification is helpful. One more question, however, which is a repeat of one of my original questions. Why can't Sharon's existence (i.e., the actualization of the potential of matter to combine with a rational soul to form a human being) be explained in terms of the conception and giving birth to that person by her parents (which is the end-point of an accidentally-ordered causal series)? Isn't that like momentum of an object, for example, a thrown baseball, whose movement from point A to point B is explained by the person who threw the baseball (i.e., the baseball moves because of the impetus imparted to it by the one who threw it)? I understand that one response is to say that the here and now existence of Sharon needs to be explained, but I don't understand that argument yet, and, in addition, that response doesn't sound like an argument from motion to me. The potency for existence has already been actualized and Sharon exists at this moment, so where is the change? LSnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-78435763660320665992014-10-04T14:21:37.970-04:002014-10-04T14:21:37.970-04:00@LS
Yes, sorry, I should have specified the my us...@LS<br /><br />Yes, sorry, I should have specified the my use of the word, but then again it is a cosmological argument, so.<br />What I should have said is that the potencies that clarinet playing requires have to be actualised, including actualising the potentials of matter making up Mrs. Kam's body to be Mrs. Sharon Kam. <br /><br />The argument starts from the fact that motion/change occurs. And potencies need to be actualised. That's why it's an argument from motion/change.<br />Obviously, any particular motion of a thing depends on what the thing is, and for it to occur the thing needs to be. <br /><br />P.S.<br />It really is "Georgy". Sorry for that.<br />I spare y'all the Cyrilics.) G. Mancz 滿償喬治https://www.blogger.com/profile/15753680642571164788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-51567009437849458882014-10-04T08:09:46.023-04:002014-10-04T08:09:46.023-04:00@Gregory
I don't understand the argument you ...@Gregory<br /><br />I don't understand the argument you propose. I'm not saying its wrong, just that I need more explanation. How exactly do you get from contingent being to unmoved mover?<br /><br />As for free will, I think I understand your point, but the argument in question is the argument from motion, not the argument from causation so I am not sure resort to formal causation answers the questions I proposed above. Of if it does, then why start the argument from motion? Why not start the argument from the fact that people exist, they have such and such form, the only way that form could exist is if a certain kind of being exists who is causing us to have the form we do. That might be a valid argument, but it doesn't sound like an argument from motionLSnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-55499042531419367812014-10-03T19:51:06.946-04:002014-10-03T19:51:06.946-04:00Mind v. soul....it's an interesting question f...Mind v. soul....it's an interesting question for the resurrection of the dead, because we've little info. on what that next body will be like. But since we've reason to think it won't be reproducing, for example, it doesn't seem all the vegetative powers would be needed after death. Maybe not all the animal ones, either? Sorry if I'm not putting this well. But to put it in hamburger terms, it seems like by the synole model, everything we have/are now is different and more complicated than we shall be when the soul and "spiritual" body are united at the resurrection, so logically, the things we won't need then ought to be jettisoned at death.....Xena Catolicanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-43944490068134588552014-10-03T16:29:03.222-04:002014-10-03T16:29:03.222-04:00@LS
Sorry if I'm about to say something banal...@LS<br /><br />Sorry if I'm about to say something banal, but causation doesn't entail determinism. <br />As you noted, Sharon Kam is obviously contingent, and moreover, in order to play the clarinet she obviosly need to be, and that depends on.. so you get to Actus Purus anyway.<br />Free will is a matter (obviously, it's not matter, but... See what I did there? Probably lame, but anyways) of formal causality: the Big Kahuna is causing us (to have the form we do), and that includes causing us to be able to make free choices.<br />So He can teach us to be kahunas.<br /><br />@Mr. Flynn<br /><br />Thank you! It's a great exposition of the argument and a very good read. <br />I've seen a lot of these, and I must say.. :)<br /><br />P.S. Sorry for the deleted comment, silly typos.G. Mancz 滿償喬治https://www.blogger.com/profile/15753680642571164788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-83651516791146862482014-10-03T16:21:56.421-04:002014-10-03T16:21:56.421-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.G. Mancz 滿償喬治https://www.blogger.com/profile/15753680642571164788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-20389571060803582152014-10-02T17:33:35.876-04:002014-10-02T17:33:35.876-04:00I'm not a philosopher, though I play one on th...I'm not a philosopher, though I play one on this blog. :-) <br />I would be inclined to say that Sharon Kam, while a primary mover for the acts indicated, is not <i>the</i> primary mover, since as you say you must press beyond that. Sharon Kam is a <i>synole</i> of body and soul, i.e., matter and form, and one must go on to ask what is it that moves her soul, which probably does get you to the Big Kahuna. <br /><br />Mind v. soul. IMHO, the first term focuses as Late Moderns are wont to do, upon the purely intellective acts of the human soul. Often, even the intellective appetite (will) is left out, or even denied. Soul, OTOH, is more broadly inclusive of everything that constitutes the life of the body, including all the vegetative and animal powers.TheOFloinnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14756711106266484327noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-447603865959500290.post-79099565101842417902014-10-02T15:00:30.665-04:002014-10-02T15:00:30.665-04:00I’ve been eagerly waiting for this part of the arg...I’ve been eagerly waiting for this part of the argument because this is where I have the most difficulty understanding it. First, let me say that I understand the difference between accidentally- and essentially-ordered causal series. That’s not where my lack of understanding lies. But I start getting confused when I start thinking of examples.<br /><br />So, in the essentially-ordered series of Sharon Kam blowing into a clarinet and fingering the stops to produce beautiful music, it is Sharon, not the clarinet, that is the mundane prime mover (for the use of “mundane” in this context, see David Oderberg’s article on the first part of the First Way, which I read because you mentioned it somewhere, either on William Brigg’s blog or Ed Feser’s). The clarinet is an instrument without any intrinsic motive power of its own. The music we are hearing at this moment is ontologically dependent upon Sharon.<br /><br />But it is not actually Sharon, conceived as a whole, that is making the music, but various parts of her: mouth, fingers, lungs, and below that muscles, neurons, etc. all the way down to the elementary particles that make up her material body at the moment she is playing. But those material elements have no motive power of their own to make music. Ontologically, they are in the same category as the clarinet. The thing that moves her material body to hold, finger and blow through the clarinet so as to make music is her mind or soul (I’m still not sure if mind and soul are the same thing in Thomism, but that is for another day and I don’t think it matters for this example). It is her knowledge of how to play and her intention to play at this moment that moves her material body to produce the music. So now we have reached the true mundane first mover of this series: the mind/soul of Sharon.<br /><br />But does not this example contradict both Corollaries 1.1 and 1.2? Sharon’s mind/soul is neither unmoveable nor pure act: the fact that she once did not exist and once did not know how to play the clarinet is proof of that. But the only thing we need to explain about the music we are hearing at the present moment is the fact that Sharon’s mind/soul formed the intention to make the music and then the mind/soul moved her body to realize that intention. If one asks, what moved Sharon’s mind/soul to form that intention, can’t one simply say that it is part of the mind/soul’s essence to form intentions and to move the body so as to realize those intentions? In other words, Free Will, and doesn’t that mean she is a true primary mover in this instance? Isn’t this the end of the causal series? Surely, one is not required to say that a being of pure act acted on Sharon’s soul so as to bring about the intention to play at this particular moment. Doesn’t that negate free will? And if it is her existence that needs explaining, can’t that be explained by the accidentally-ordered causal series of her parents and forebears going back, in principle, ad infinitum?<br /><br />Lots of questions, probably too many to be answered in a combox, but I would appreciate any assistance you could give. Thanks for hearing me out.<br />LSnoreply@blogger.com