Acceleration

Inertia is the tendency of a Thing to maintain its current state. As Buridan wrote in Quaestiones super caelo et mundo (14th cent.)

"When God created the celestial spheres, He gave them an impetus [i.e., momentum] and this impetus is not corrupted or diminished unless there is resistance."

Centuries later, Newton used this as one of his three axioms

In biology, inertia is called "the struggle for survival." The efforts of a living Thing to go on living is simply a more animated version of the "efforts' of a boulder to remain stubbornly in place.

However, a Thing subject only to its own Inertia would remain... well, inert. Nevertheless, we see around us that some things are changing. A green apple changes to red; an acorn grows into an oak. A kitten crosses the room. Uranium decays to lead; sodium and chlorine combine into salt. A boulder tumbles down a hillside. Inertia would prevent all this from happening.

The potential redness of apples

Therefore, anything that is changing is being changed by something else, or as Newton put it "by an outside force." A green apple is potentially red but is made actually red by sunlight in the 3,600 to 4,500 Å range (which causes the anthocyanin in the skin to absorb the near-ultraviolet, violet, blue and green regions of the spectrum, thus reflecting red). A boulder tumbles down the hillside because wind and rain have undermined its support. It didn't make a break for it on its own initiative. 

Actualizers must already be actual. Since something that is merely potential can't do diddly-squat, a Thing that is potentially X cannot be made actually X, except by something which is already actually X, either in itself or in a higher sense. Paint cannot make a wall red unless the paint is already red itself. But the light that makes an apple ripen to red contains red only in a higher sense. 

The boulder moves down the hillside because the ground supporting it has moved, and this happens because the wind that moved [eroded] the dirt was itself actually in motion. [The air in turn is moved by a difference in air pressure, which contains the motion in a higher sense.] In either case, nothing that is only potentially so can make something actually to happen.

An important distinction. Among actualizers of potentials, some are like toppling dominoes. The capacity of domino #2 to topple #3 does not depend on Domino #1 still existing. If an email sent by Adam to Betsy to Chuck, the power of Betsy to forward the email to Chuck does not depend on Adam hanging around. Such actualizers are "sequential."

Other actualizers must continue to act or the result ceases. For example, the sunlight must continue to act on the apple for it to redden. If the sunlight is blocked, the apple will cease to redden. A clarinet has the potential to make music but will only actually do  so if a clarinetist actually plays on it. If she stops playing, the music-making will cease.

Turtles all the way down. A golf club swings because the hand grips it and the arms swing. These in turn actually happen only insofar as the muscles contract. The muscles contract due to the nerve impulses. The nerves signal only because certain motor neurons are firing. And these in turn depend upon the intentions of the golfer. If any of these actualizers cease -- e.g., if the golfer changes his mind or relaxes his grip -- the golf swing does not take place.

A chain of continual actualizers, which drills down in the present moment, cannot proceed backward indefinitely. It must be finite. If the sequence does not begin, if there is no primary actualizer, then none of the instrumental actualizers depending on it will act. The clarinet, the golf club, et al. would remain inert. 

 

The primary actualizer must be entirely actual, since if it were not, it would be in potential for something and thus not the primary actualizer. It changes without being itself changed, an unchanged changer. But everything natural is subject to change; e.g., evolution of species, radioactive decay, orogeny in geology, stellar evolution, et al. So the primary actualizer cannot be natural. But that which is "above" nature is what "all people call God."

The Feast of St. Thomas

Today, 28 January, is the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, translated. Do something logical in his honor.

His feast had been set originally on 7 March, the day of his death, as is customary. But it fell within Lent too often and so was shifted in 1969 to 28 January, when his remains were removed from Naples, where he had lived, and reburied in the Church of the Jacobins, the mother church of the Dominican order. This process is known as "translation." During the Revolution, the church was vandalized by the Enlightened: the stained glass windows were smashed and the medieval murals painted over with whitewash. The building was converted into an army barracks. In the early 20th century, the building was restored bit by bit and functions now as a monument and museum. It was called the Church of the Jacobins not because the leftist armies had vandalized and occupied it, but because the Dominicans had once been headquartered in Paris on the Rue St.-Jacques.

To celebrate the day, TOF will try briefly to recap one of his famous metaphysical demonstrations in as modern a lingo as possible; to wit, the Argument from Motion.¹

First Way, Part I: A Moving Tale

OK, TOF has finished "In Panic Town, On the Backward Moon" and is ready to resume what he joshingly refers to as "real life."

Back to the Argument from Motion (See Preface)

Getting 'Motional

[T]he arguments require the appreciation of certain metaphysical principles that are unfamiliar or seem archaic to the contemporary philosophical mind...  In particular, the notion of causation employed by Aquinas in the arguments has a decidedly obscure ring to modern ears.
-Oderberg, ‘Whatever is Changing is Being Changed by Something Else’

Part of TOF's herculean effort here will be to translate, as much as he is able, those original items into more modern lingo. This is not always quite possible and not always well-advised, because words in different languages in different eras do not always divide thought into the same categories. But, Excelsior!¹

Clarifications
1. Excelsior. As all men know, this is a packing material used as dunnage.

First Way, Some Background

Sr. M. Amelia, IHM
explicator of logical thought,
or else.

Sr. Amelia: And so, class, as we see from Postulate 9 and Axioms 6 and 2, supplements of the same angle are equal. Yes, Billy?
Billy: But, Sister, I don't see how this proves that a point equidistant from the endpoints of a line segment lies on the perpendicular bisector of the line segment!
Sr. Amelia: It doesn't, Billy. That comes later. Now class, let us proceed to showing that the vertical angles of two intersecting lines are equal.
Billy: But, Sister! How will that show that a point equidistant from the endpoints of a line segment lies on the perpendicular bisector of the line segment!
Sr. Amelia: You must have patience, Billy. You can't prove everything all at once, so you must prove something first.

Over on Briggs' place a discussion of the so-called Argument from Motion is being served up piecemeal, literally a paragraph at a time. Thus, by the time the esteemed Statistician to the Stars completes his Herculean labors, the final proof will be obvious, inasmuch as the Second Coming (and/or Heat Death of the Universe) will have taken place and all will see clearly and not as through a glass, darkly.

The Passing of the Age of Reason

Da Man

Recently, on a forum called Quora, TOF was amused to see this topic:  What are the strongest arguments for atheism?

There are actually only two such arguments, both put forth by Thomas Aquinas some 743 years ago.  Each was stated in the form of an actual syllogism, and then answered.  They are:

Objection 1. It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word "God" means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist.

Videtur quod Deus non sit. Quia si unum contrariorum fuerit infinitum, totaliter destruetur aliud. Sed hoc intelligitur in hoc nomine Deus, scilicet quod sit quoddam bonum infinitum. Si ergo Deus esset, nullum malum inveniretur. Invenitur autem malum in mundo. Ergo Deus non est.

Objection 2. Further, it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. For all natural things can be reduced to one principle which is nature; and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle which is human reason, or will. Therefore there is no need to suppose God's existence.

Praeterea, quod potest compleri per pauciora principia, non fit per plura. Sed videtur quod omnia quae apparent in mundo, possunt compleri per alia principia, supposito quod Deus non sit, quia ea quae sunt naturalia, reducuntur in principium quod est natura; ea vero quae sunt a proposito, reducuntur in principium quod est ratio humana vel voluntas. Nulla igitur necessitas est ponere Deum esse.

These can be summarized as:

1. Life sucks.  Therefore, no God. 
   (Vita sugit. Igitur nullus Deus.)
2. Everything seems to work fine.  Therefore, no God. 
   (Omnia videtur ad bene operandum. Igitur nullus Deus.)

All other arguments are either padding or irrelevant.  So curiosity compelled a glance at this "Quora" site to see what the ingenuity of the Late Modern mind has come up with.  TOF was bemused. 

Commemoration of Thomas Aquinas

Yeah, I know.  A day late and a thaler short.  But to make up for it, we have this link.

Whether St. Thomas is boring.

The Late Modern Age, which has substituted the locution "I feel that..." for "I think that..." undoubtedly finds the Dumb Ox boring.  Logic has that effect on the video-game mentality. 

Previously on the TOF Spot...

Quote ot the Day

James Chastek at Just Thomism took note of an comment by Thomas Aquinas, aka Da Man, regarding when sex is sinful even in marriage.  He writes:

Brandon digs out a fantastic text from STA’s commentary on Corinthians:

…that the conjugal act is sometimes meritorious and without any mortal or venial sin, as when it is directed to the good of procreation and education of a child for the worship of God; for then it is an act of religion; or when it is performed for the sake of rendering the debt, it is an act of justice. But every virtuous act is meritorious, if it is performed with charity. But sometimes it is accompanied with venial sin, namely, when one is excited to the matrimonial act by concupiscence, which nevertheless stays within the limits of the marriage, namely, that he is content with his wife only. But sometimes it is performed with mortal sin, as when…

So guess: what is he going to say? Is sexual activity a mortal sin when “it is not open to procreation” (an answer that is at hand from what he says at the head of the quotation) or when “it is performed in an unnatural way”? Don’t we expect St. Thomas to mention some obvious perversion? Yet, in the casual way that he says all his revolutionary things, he says that sexual activity is a mortal sin when…

What is Consciousness?

At RENOvation, the World Science Fiction Convention held in Reno NV this past week, there was a panel with the title "What is Consciousness?"  The panel did yeoman's work without (as is customary at con panels) ever coming to a conclusion, let alone a consensus conclusion.  I was in the audience and did not participate, but a few points struck me afterwards. 

There were several initial attempts to define consciousness, though no one tried to define consciousness by negation in the obvious sense; viz., "whatever it is you have when you are not unconscious."  They seemed to get all mixed up with "sentience," "intelligence," "empathy," and so forth.  All these terms were used interchangeably by panelists. 

One of the participants proudly declared himself a materialist, but never specified of what material "consciousness" is made.  My theory is that it is made of the same 'material' as momentum, gravity, or reproductive fitness; viz., none.  Physics has been edging away from materialism for the past hundred years.  Quantum mechanics dealt it a deadly blow, leading Heisenberg to remark that "It has become clear that the desired objective reality of the elementary particle is too crude an oversimplification of what really happens."  IOW, materialism no longer accounts even for matter.  The preferred term is "physicalist." 

Attack of the Brain Atoms!

Once more a public thinker has set forth to prove in public that he has no mind.  The brain atoms inhabiting the vehicle called "Sam Harris" have moved Mr. Harris's fingers to type a blog post yclept: Free Will (And Why You Still Don't Have It) contending that he did not intend to type a blog post, but was caused to do so by a congeries of external and internal stimuli. 

The post is an excerpt and/or digest of a section of the book which the brain atoms, responding to information from the external world, internal states of the body, and the ennoiasphere, entitled The Moral Landscape.  Like Condorcet before him, Sam Harris expects that he can find morality inductively by means of physical science, as if by knowing the mass of an electron he would tell us whether we should off granny for the inheritance.  In the course of this, his brain output replicated the following external stimuli:

Maundering Becomes Elektra

"The physiologist Benjamin Libet famously demonstrated that activity in the brain's motor regions can be detected some 300 milliseconds before a person feels that he has decided to move.  Another lab recently used fMRI data to show that some "conscious" decisions can be predicted up to 10 seconds before they enter awareness (long before the preparatory motor activity detected by Libet). Clearly, findings of this kind are difficult to reconcile with the sense that one is the conscious source of one's actions." 

Actually, findings of this kind are difficult to reconcile with the idea that they are scientific experiments, since they invariably over-interpret the actual empirical observations.  Identifying the "response potential" with the "moment of decision" is to beg the question. 

Quote of the Day

Tardiloquum te esse iubeo et tarde ad locutorium accedentem
(I bid you be slow to speak and slow to approach the chat-room.)

-- Thomas Aquinas, Epistola de modo studendi (A Letter on the Method of Study)

Found at FideCogitActio

A word on "chat-room".  That is a more or less literal translation of "locutorium."  If an auditor-ium is for auditors (for those-who-listen), a locutor-ium is for locutors (those-who-talk).  It referred to a room in people's homes in Late Imperial times that was reserved for amiable gathering and chatting.  It is usually translated as "parlor" or "salon."  However, Tom tended toward the colloquial and concrete in his imagery, and the sense of the locutorium is actually well-captured by "chat-room."  

Well, except for being physically present and all. 

The Translation of Thomas Aquinas

Today is the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas.  Do something logical in his honor. 

Now properly speaking, it is the feast of his translation; that is, when his remains were moved (28 January, 1369) from the site of his death to the Dominican Church in Toulouse.  Just as the Marines do not leave a man behind, neither do the Dominicans. 

The feast was initially celebrated, as is traditional, on 7 March, the data of his death, and is so-listed in older missals.  However, this resulted in what is called a "clashing of feasts," since 7 March was also the date on which Perpetua and Felicity were martyred.  The Feast of St. Thomas demoted them to a Commemoration.  So in 1969, Tom was moved to his translation date and Perpetua and Felicity restored to a place of greater honor.  (They are, after all, among those mentioned in the roll call of the ancient Roman Canon used in the Mass.) 

Oddly enough, there were no festivities in the streets today.  But then this is no longer the age of reason that the middle ages were.  There is a humorous comment on that situation, here. 

+ + +

However, the Angelic Doctor keeps turning up in odd places, often accompanied by his old pal the Stagerite.  Today's unexpected appearance is here: Nonlinear Brain Dynamics and Intention According to Aquinas

Against Gravity

The question has been raised in the comm box regarding Aquinas' proof from motion as to how an immaterial First Mover can affect anything material.  This asks for a physical explanation of a metaphysical relation.  The difficulty arises from Cartesianism which, if we may be unfair to Descartes for a moment, holds that life (the "soul" or anima) is a substance in itself.  This led to all sorts of problems now known as the "traditional" problems of philosophy, but are actually the problems of getting Descartes before the horse. 

Recall that "motion" to a pre-Cartesian means any change of form, and not only the form of location, the existence of a First Mover follows for all essentially ordered chains of motion.  An essentially ordered chain is one in which the entities in the chain have no power whatever to move things unless something prior is moving them, right now.  (This is independent of such physical questions of "simultaneity" or of "beginning to be moved.")  For example, imagine a series of gears, with one gear moving the next gear.  Somewhere there must be a first gear moving the lot; otherwise, none of the gears would be moving at all.  Similarly, in a train of rail cars, each car is pulled along by the car in front; but there must be a first car - the locomotive - that imparts the motion to the others.  There cannot be an infinitely long train of cars, because none of the cars itself has an engine. 

Once the First Mover is established, we realize that it must itself be unmoved.  If it were moved by another, it would not be the first mover.  And this leads directly to its immateriality, since anything material is in motion [change], coming into being, growing, changing, passing out of being. 

IOW, the immateriality of the First Mover is a logical consequence if it being the First Mover.  As to how it imparts motion to the physical, who knows?  There are many things that are purely physical that we don't yet understand. 

Which brings us to a question of great gravity; viz., gravity.