Jeremy Taylor wrote:

What is the purpose in taking these substances? If it recreational, I'm suspicious of any substance, or use of a substance (i.e., when, like alcohol, the substance doesn't have to be used in this way), where its use becomes the focus of the occasion, rather than simply a supporting element ( its the difference between a few drinks down the pub with friends versus going out with the express purpose of getting blind drunk, or between the former and going to a rave and getting out of your head on ecstasy). I'm not sure how to express this point in moral argument though, though I think it has to do with the artificiality and self-centredness of enjoying a substance for its own sake. 

​If the purpose is spiritual, then, in general, psychedelics are a lazy and poor substitute for genuine spiritual effort and experience. Perhaps they may help a few people in the beginning of their spiritual journey (perhaps in questioning materialism), but you can't just take pills or plant matter and progress very far spiritually. For many they will do more harm than good (even ignoring side effects and the like).

​I have heard that they, as well as substances like MDMA, can be good for certain psychological conditions. I know little of the details, but this may be an acceptable use, and presumably doesn't contravene natural law. 

His position on recreation wasn't entirely clear to me, though I share sentiments similar to yours. I think the general track he had in mind is that if use of psychedelics is in principle legitimate, then there are certain contexts, including spiritual and intellectual, where it would be both allowable as well as arguably beneficial (we mostly left out discussion of the medicinal usage of said drugs). I'm guessing that were he pressed on the recreation component, he would go along the lines of saying that since there is no inherent wrongness in the use of psychedelics, it should be fine for recreation in moderation and in con

Sorry for the post-and-run earlier. Hopefully we can dive back in. One caveat though: for some reason, I've been mulling over your response and am struggling to comprehend it, so this will for now be a request for some clarification, as I am having trouble stringing some of the ideas together. 

Greg wrote:

He makes a few related points. First, the calculator won't be adding, because the inputs-output pairs (given their "standard" interpretations--I'll return to this) given by this causal analysis are just not identical to addition input-output pairs. Calculators don't work for all input-output pairs, but addition is defined for all input-output pairs.

Heh, I think I'm getting in over my head here, so would it be possible to dumb this down a bit? What is it that makes the input-output pairs in this causal analysis and addition inputs and outputs different? Further, when you say calculators don't work for all input-output pairs, is this for all possible physical inputs-outputs or only those that would fall under the process that calculator set for addition? 
Sorry if these questions seem basic or confused, but I'm having trouble understanding what I am not understanding, if that makes sense. 

Greg wrote:

Second, he claims that the calculator is still really under-determined. For the causal/dispositional analysis is in terms of the causal inputs to the calculator that are physically possible, and even granting their "standard" interpretations, it is not possible to enter all of them; the life of the universe, for instance, imposes limits on what is physically possible so that the dispositions of the calculator cannot correspond to the form of addition.

Thus even its disposition leaves it indeterminate which function, if any, it performs. This is real and not merely epistemological indeterminacy.

Could one argue here that what is physically possible is already determined by the initial state of the universe such that the calculator runs all and onl

Hey Scott, blessings for your consecration. Definitely something worth doing, though it requires being deliberate everyday about it (something I haven't been to great with myself) post-consecration to reap all the graces. You are in my prayers.

Apologies in advance for the lack of aesthetic; still trying to figure out this formatting here.

"How could one of my acts of willing be identical to me? I am a human being and any one of my acts of willing is an accident in me."I suppose one could say that act's are individuated by their set of objects. Then nothing that does not include moving my hand up and down and poisoning the inhabitants (along with some other, possibly indefinite list of objects) could be the same act."

Sorry, I butchered the explanation here, let me give a less messy one: Say God decides to create world A. This act of will is identical to Him. Had he created world B, that act of willing would have been identical to Him. In that case, however, since the act is different, God Himself would be different and thus given that we have the God we do, he would have been necessitated to create the world He did since the will to create said world is identical to Him.

"[color=#000000]I suppose one could say that act's are individuated by their set of objects. Then nothing that does not include moving my hand up and down and poisoning the inhabitants (along with some other, possibly indefinite list of objects) could be the same act."

Given my understanding of the presentation, I think this is the route the presenters would go down.

"However, I imagine the interest in (3) is its application to modal contexts, since that seems to be what crops up in Position 3. The proposal, I suppose, would have to be that if an act in the actual world has such-and-such objects, then in any other possible world, an act is either the same act or has different objects."

Again, I would tentatively say that this is what the presenters would say when pressed. To further expound though, to make sure we are on the same page, they would say that an act with a set of objects identical to the actual world would simply be our world, and any different set would be a different world. And thus the question

So today I attended a lecture by Dr. W. Matthews Grant and Dr. Mark Spencer, who co-authored the paper [color=#000000]Activity, Identity, and God: A Tension in Aquinas and his Interpreters (in which they lay the following line of thought out at much greater length). 
In this presentation, they laid out three claims, which are as follows:
1. An agent's act of willing is intrinsic (internal) to the agent.
2. An agent's act of willing is identical to the agent, if the agent could not have willed otherwise.
3. Object Essentialism: Different objects signal different; it is not possible for one and the same act to have different objects.
They go on to argue that to reconcile divine simplicity and divine freedom, at least one of these must be denied, and has been denied in three of the most historically significant solution. They put forward three different positions on the matter.

Position 1 argues that God's will to act is internal to God and (via divine simplicity) is also identical to Him. On this position, God also has essential properties (like omnipotence, omniscience, and the major classical theist attributes), but He also has free perfections, which are acts that are internal and identical to Him but could have been otherwise. They proceed to argue that to hold to this view, one must deny claim 2, which seems pretty straightforward. Not exactly ideal.

Position 2 states that some of God's acts of willing are external to Him, and thus the identity relation doesn't pose a problem. However, it becomes apparent that one must deny claim 1 on the view, which is problematic in itself and is compounded by the notion that sans creation, there is nothing external to God at all. If it is dependent upon God, then He simply could have created this outside act of willing differently or not a