1 of 1- Heyzeus7
- New member
Offline - Registered: 7/06/2015
- Posts: 6
Two challenges to Thomistic cosmological arguments
Hi folks,
I'm a big fan of Thomistic cosmological arguments as laid out by Feser and others, but recently two potential problems with these arguments have been percolating in my mind:
1) What are the 'things' in the arguments? Thomistic arguments begin with the observation that there are some 'things' which have a dependent existence. For example, Norman Kretzmann says that "=11ptWe regularly observe the more impermanent things around us being generated and being destroyed, and we have good reasons to think that all the less impermanent things we see, such as mountains and planets and stars, have been generated and will be destroyed…a contingent being's present existence is dependent in two respects: first, it has been generated, and so depends on something else for having come into existence; second, it depends on something else for existing, because it has =11ptno intrinsic tendency to continue to exist=11pt…" (The Metaphysics of Theism, pp. 97-98)
The problem I see here is that some of these things (mountains, planets, even perhaps those stars) are just 'piles' whose 'generation' involves nothing more than clumps of 'stuff' coming together and sticking together via physical interactions. True, they are ephemeral and have no 'intrinsic tendency to continue to exist', but it doesn't seem like their persistence requires any special explanation. More plausibly, the 'things' in these arguments should only be substances proper, about which we may reasonably wonder what brings them into existence and what maintains them in existence, but even there we have to wonder whether substances have only a superficial contingency as opposed to radical contingency, since someone might argue that the generation and corruption of substances involves substances emerging from, and dissolving into, the same fundamental stuff which is necessarily existent.
2) Are there hierarchical (essentially ordered) series of causes in nature? I totally get the distinction between accidentally and essentially ordered series of causes and am completely convinced that essentially ordered series must have a first member. The problem as I see it is that few proponents of Thomistic arguments seem to have put much thought to proving that such hierarchical series actually occur in nature. There are some stock examples, such as the hand pushing the stick pushing the stone, the chandelier hanging from a chain hanging from the ceiling, or the boxcar being pulled by another boxcar which is being pulled by a train, but as Feser often points out these are not actually intended as true examples of essentially ordered series, because they are quite artificial. I'm not sure I've come across a description of nature which makes it clear that it consists of hierarchically ordered series of causes, which perhaps converge to a single sustaining condition (Kretzmann suggests the continued obtaining of the laws of nature, MOT p. 104). And Mortimer Adler has put forward a very forceful challenge to this perspective:
"Since we are well acquainted with the phenomena of artistic production, and since we understand the causal relation of the action of the painter's mind to the motion of his hand and the causal relation of the motion of his hand to the motion of his brush, we have no difficulty in arranging these three causes in a hierarchical set, in which the painter's mind is the first or principal cause and the remaining causes are all instrumental-secondary and tertiary.
However, when we pass from artistic production to the phenomena of nature, we do not find anything comparable to a set of simultaneously cooperative causes which can be hierarchically arranged. All natural causes seem to be on the same level or of the same grade. Though it may frequently be the case that a natural effect is produced by the cooperation of a set of causes, none of these stands to the others as a principal cause stands to an instrumental cause."
(How to think about God, p. 42)
- John West
- Administrator
Offline
- Registered: 6/25/2015
- Posts: 1,254
Re: Two challenges to Thomistic cosmological arguments
Hi Heyzeus,
Your first challenge, to the Third Way, can be dissolved straightforwardly. As you write, even if mountains, trees, etc., aren't objects with substances, they reduce to particles with substances.
Supposing those particles are necessary beings in the sense relevant to the Third Way, their essence and existence are either identical or non-identical. If the particles' essence and existence are identical, then they are divinely simple and either breach the law of non-contradiction, or are one—that is to say, are God. If the particles' essence and existence aren't identical, Thomists can proceed as usual and argue for the real distinction between essence and existence[1].
[1]Since St. Thomas thought that celestial bodies are necessary beings, this probably wouldn't have bothered him too much.
- seigneur
- Member
Offline
- Registered: 6/26/2015
- Posts: 469
Re: Two challenges to Thomistic cosmological arguments
@John West
Maybe I am misreading his argument, but to me it seems that Heyzeus is saying that since "these things (mountains, planets, even perhaps those stars) are just 'piles' whose 'generation' involves nothing more than clumps of 'stuff' coming together and sticking together via physical interactions", then this simply doesn't occur to him as something that would require an explanation. The relative persistence of such things does not get him going to the first cause that sustains all contingent beings. The relative persistence of such things is irrelevant.
Instead, in Heyzeus's view it's more interesting to note persistence of the 'stuff' which underlies all those secondary things, being their material cause. In his view, the Thomistic argument would be more relevant if it started off to explain the persistence of the material cause of all things, instead of the contingent transitory things.
Heyzeus's second point presents also a conceivable objection, as far as I can see. Given the stock examples of the hierararchy of essentially ordered causes, such as a lamp hanging from the ceiling, ceiling supported by the walls, walls supported by the foundation of the house, foundation fixed in earth, etc. is it really hierarchical causality rather than fully contingent circumstances arranged around more circumstances, just like all circumstances are structurally arranged? Structurally, not hierarchically.
I'd go even further and ask if this "essentially ordered series" of causality is even causality in the relevant sense. Why not call it more appropriately something like context, correspondence, correlation? (I have strong Platonic leanings instead of Aristotelian, so I am not so eager to label everything "causality". I don't see Forms as causes, but rather as Idea(l)s. Objects of this world basically fall short of Idea(l)s of the other world - precisely as Plato put it. The objects of this world are more like reflections of the Idea(l)s of that world, i.e. things related to the Idea(l)s are like distorted and inherently empty shadows, not like effects related to causes.)
Last edited by seigneur (8/02/2015 3:35 am)
- iwpoe
- Member
Offline
- From: Knoxville, TN
- Registered: 6/26/2015
- Posts: 1,080
Re: Two challenges to Thomistic cosmological arguments
seigneur wrote:
=13px(I have strong Platonic leanings instead of Aristotelian, so I am not so eager to label everything "causality". I don't see Forms as causes, but rather as Idea(l)s. Objects of this world basically fall short of Idea(l)s of the other world - precisely as Plato put it. The objects of this world are more like reflections of the Idea(l)s of that world, i.e. things related to the Idea(l)s are like distorted and inherently empty shadows, not like effects related to causes.)
I know what you're doing, but the stronger move as a Platonist is simply to realize the Aristotle was himself a Platonist and then that the distinction between self-labeled Aristotelians and Platonism more robustly understood are either mistaken lines drawn over vocabulary/historical textual context or unacceptable concessions to nominalism that wouldn't wash for Aristotle any more than for Plato, Plotinus, Procolus or anyone else..
As for 'cause'. Recall that in latin 'causa' very broadly means '"that by, on account of, or through which any thing takes place or is done". Ironically, the English word 'reason' comes closer to translating causa than the word 'cause' does.
A form is very plausibly called a 'causa', and 'causa' was itself chosen to translate the Greek 'αἴτιον' which is an even stranger word, but it also helps to know that Platonism treated of this question about causation,and said that Forms are an additional sort of cause to the 4 cause scheme you're familiar with in Aristotle: a paradigmatic cause- they are that by which anything is the kind of thing it is, they constitute something as what it is and as "the same" as other such things.
There's an article covering the history of that here, in an entry on Proclus (I'm not sure their exact account of how Proclus is taking up Aristotle is quite correct, but that's immaterial):
A broader account of Neoplatonism actually permits you to give a fully essentially ordered series all the way back to the one, rather than just trailing off somewhere after "the Earth" and pointing out, correctly, that you must come to a terminus which can be called God.
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
- DanielCC
- Administrator
Offline
- Registered: 6/26/2015
- Posts: 765
Re: Two challenges to Thomistic cosmological arguments
I'd go even further and ask if this "essentially ordered series" of causality is even causality in the relevant sense. Why not call it more appropriately something like context, correspondence, correlation? (I have strong Platonic leanings instead of Aristotelian, so I am not so eager to label everything "causality". I don't see Forms as causes, but rather as Idea(l)s. Objects of this world basically fall short of Idea(l)s of the other world - precisely as Plato put it. The objects of this world are more like reflections of the Idea(l)s of that world, i.e. things related to the Idea(l)s are like distorted and inherently empty shadows, not like effects related to causes.)
I agree about expanding the notion of 'causality' rather than introducing further terms (a lot of spurious Naturalist arguments like those of Papineau revolve around taking 'causality' to mean a striped down and on its own incoherent variation on Efficient Causality). We should never forget that strictly speaking there is no pure instance of Efficient Causality since everything’s bound in with Exemplary Causality.
Incidentally it would take us too far from the topic at hand but I would be interested in your take on this topic,
- John West
- Administrator
Offline
- Registered: 6/25/2015
- Posts: 1,254
Re: Two challenges to Thomistic cosmological arguments
Hi seigneur,
Maybe I am misreading his argument, but to me it seems that Heyzeus is saying that since "these things (mountains, planets, even perhaps those stars) are just 'piles' whose 'generation' involves nothing more than clumps of 'stuff' coming together and sticking together via physical interactions", then this simply doesn't occur to him as something that would require an explanation. The relative persistence of such things does not get him going to the first cause that sustains all contingent beings. The relative persistence of such things is irrelevant.
I read Heyzeus7 as arguing from mereological nihilism, and saying that there are no contingent things. If there are some contingent things, then since the Third Way is about all contingent things (and mountains etc. simply wouldn't be things in the sense relevant to the Third Way, but particles arranged mountain-wise) there's no problem.
If there aren't contingent things (an indefensible claim I think, but never mind), then Thomists can simply start from the second part of the Third Way's strategy (see my previous post).
Last edited by John West (8/02/2015 11:46 am)
- TomC
- New member
Offline
- Registered: 6/28/2015
- Posts: 1
Re: Two challenges to Thomistic cosmological arguments
I’m with you on this, Heyzeus7. I too have a difficult time identifying a satisfactory instance of a per se (i.e., essentially ordered) casual series out there in the world. I get the lamp-hanging-from-a-chain illustration, but I have a hard time seeing how metaphysically useful conclusions follow.
However, here are a few things I’m finding helpful.
1. Aquinas’s argument in "De Ente et Essentia" involves (what seems to me as) a sound and relevant demonstration of a casual series per se, one that involves God (Being Itself) as the First Cause in a per se series that imparts existence to creatures. For a great exposition and defense, I highly recommend Gaven Kerr’s new "Aquinas’s Way to God: The Proof in De Ente et Essentia." You can get it on Kindle or hardback. (Perhaps I should be satisfied with this per se series and leave it at that, but do think the per se series must have instances elsewhere. Otherwise, why would St. Thomas have not simply stopped with the De Ente and skipped the First, Second and Third Ways altogether?)
2. Feser’s recent lecture “An Aristotleian Proof of the Existence of God” sheds a fair amount of light on the casual series per se, at least for me. He talks about how a casual series per se is (in a sense) more fundamental than a casual series per accidens, and how the per accidens series actually depends on the per se series. While this lecture does not completely lift the fog for me, it certainly goes a long way in that direction. You can find the lecture at on YouTube. Just search the title.
3. Finally (and here I really hope others in this Classical Theism group can help me out), it seems to me the key may lie elsewhere in Aristotle’s four causes. Specifically, I suspect a true casual series per se involves Formal, and perhaps Final, causality, and not (primarily) Efficient causality. (I’m just not sure about Material causality fits in with whole the per se series question — is this relevant or not?)
Last edited by TomC (8/04/2015 2:38 pm)
- Scott
- Moderator
Offline
- From: Ohio, USA
- Registered: 6/26/2015
- Posts: 357
Re: Two challenges to Thomistic cosmological arguments
Aquinas’s argument in "De Ente et Essentia" involves (what seems to me as) a sound and relevant demonstration of a casual series per se, one that involves God (Being Itself) as the First Cause in a per se series that imparts existence to creatures. For a great exposition and defense, I highly recommend Gaven Kerr’s new "Aquinas’s Way to God: The Proof in De Ente et Essentia."
Seconded. Excellent book.