ForumUser wrote:

ClassicalLiberal.Theist wrote:

ForumUser wrote:

I've been reading Ed Feser's Aquinas and after finishing with his discussion of Aquinas' First Way, and midway into the Second Way, it appears to me he neglected to answer the objection that a per se causal series can terminate with a natural thing. The rock's motion depends on the stick which depends on the hand, muscles, electrical stimuli, brain neurons, atoms, quarks. Is a quark made of anything? Perhaps not. Apparently not? Why doesn't the buck stop there, as far as this 'unmoved mover' argument is concerned? Why must you instead necessarily arrive at God, Creator of the Universe, for any per se causal event (or observation of some motion, i.e. potential becoming actualized)?
 

Per se causal series, can not even in principle, terminate in a natural thing. They must terminate in necessity and all natural things are contigent. Thus, they don't fit the bill. Attempting to end a per se causal series of contigent things, with a contigent thing (which would be all natural things, even if they're small), is incoherent. I could give you a more in-depth response, if you wish.

You'll definitely need to elaborate for me, because it is not self-evident that all matter and energy is contingent.

I also do not see how the fact that a collection of quarks was positioned at (x,y,z) instead of (x', y', z') prior to someone moving a stone with a stick implies God's existence. To phrase my problem another way, it is not clear to me why God's existence must be the brute fact rather than the universe's existence (i.e. the set of all matter and energy).

​What matter or energy would be a necessary being?

​It's possible that the A/T view has a different idea of what the basic metaphysical components of reality are.

​I understand a brute fact as something whose existence has no cause and no explanation. The Thomistic arguments for the existence of God don't obviously s

ForumUser wrote:

The only thing he says is that if it has potency, then that potency must be actualized and hence it isn't the terminus of a per se series. I do not see how that applies to quarks as the fundamental constituents of matter. It appears to me that their only potency is being in one place rather than another -- namely, their current location rather than a different one, and this potency has no bearing on the fact that they were triggered by present stimuli (according to naturalism) to collectively form a neuron firing to move a limb to move a stick to move a rock. So the idea that the terminus of a per se series must be 'pure actuality' and hence be God seems simply false.

​The first way is an argument from change, particularly change of location, so if quarks change location that is enough for the argument to start. If their behaviour changes in other ways it is also going to be relevant. It seems that any individual quark has a lot of potencies, to be at a range of different locations, and some of these potencies are actualised as it changes location. 

​The act/potency distinction and various principles of causality that arise from it are important for this argument (and the 2nd Way), I can't remember how much space Feser devotes to explaining it in Aquinas​. His book Scholastic Metaphysics​ does so at greater length. Then, he develops a similar argument but more systematically in Five proofs of the Existence of God.

​​I found a little book by Stephen Mumford called Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction (OUP 2012), particularly the first three chapters and chapter 4 'What is change?', gives a broad idea of where these kinds of arguments are coming from.