@ficino,

ficino wrote:

bmiller wrote:

 

OK, so you're saying you don't know of anyone who actually argues for EI.  I kind of thought that was the case.  

 

In my experience, remarks like the above, when accumulated, lead to the acrimony that so often develops in online threads. 

In the above-cited article, Feser gives a long list of people who maintain EI. I'd say it goes back at least to the ancient atomists.
 

I'm sorry that sounded harsh, but I'm interested in what you hold EI to be and the reasons that you support EI over DCC.  I may be a little impatient since you have been arguing either that A&A did not hold DCC or that they have no reason for holding that position but have not told us what the alternative should be and why.

I've provided my reasons for supporting DCC and quotes from Aquinas for reference, but unless you share the specifics of what you believe EI entails and why, neither of us can search A&A's works to see if your concerns are addressed.

Of course you are entitled to your opinions, but I assumed you posted them here to stake out a position in this discussion and defend them.

@ficino,

Happy New Year.

ficino wrote:

As to SCG I.13: since it’s part of an argument from for God’s existence, it would beg the question to introduce premises that presume the God of Thomism.  Thomas can’t legitimately beg the premise that “the generating cause [i]s the ultimate source of natural motion in the present,” because at this stage of the argument, nothing about an ultimate source of natural motion in the present has been established, and it has not been established that the generating cause is identical with the cause of the simple bodies’ motion in the present. 

This assumes he is arguing against your position of EI.  In fact, he is merely providing the reason that things cannot be said to ultimately be moving themselves.  If inanimate things moved themselves then they could stop and start.  They cannot, hence there must be another principle at work in natural motion.  This is an argument Aristotle uses in Physics I believe, but don't ask me where right now.

ficino wrote:

We can only say it gave them a form in the past. From “everything that is moved is moved by another” it does not follow that this “other” is identical with the generating cause. 

Both Aristotle and Aquinas conclude natural movement is due to the form of the object.  Simple bodies are drawn to the center, while animals move due to the soul as well as being drawn to the center.  If you want to argue that A&A thought things moved themselves after being generated then please provide some quotes.

ficino wrote:

Sophroniscus was the generating cause of Socrates, but Sophroniscus is not moving every motion undertaken by Socrates after birth. Thomas needs to demonstrate that the same cause that generated a group of simple bodies, or heavy or light things, is the cause that is moving them after they are generated. But we get no argument for the latter inference. 

But Sophroniscus was not the only "generating cause" of Socrates and certain

Hi ficino,

Happy New Year (almost).

ficino wrote:

Your intro can be reworded, "If it sustains them in their form/matter combo, it causes their motion [through n intermediaries]." But doesn’t this assume what needs to be proved, i.e. that there is a sustaining cause? Your antecedent seems to beg the interlocutor to deny Existential Inertia, a denial that I’ve been contesting.

I quoted Aquinas and his reason asserting that the generating cause as the ultimate source of natural motion in the present.  "everything that is moved is moved by another." is in reference to motion in the present sense, isn't it?  So it is apparent here that Aquinas considers the generating cause (the cause of the form of the thing) to be operating in the "now" and is the answer to the question of what is presently moving the thing.  This is simply the Thomist position.  It does not beg any question but offers an explanation of why things remain in existence at all for any length of time.  It is the middle position between Parmenides and Heraclitus.    Why should things just persist anyway?

ficino wrote:

...things are only in motion as long as the generating cause is active” seems pretty clearly an error on A-T principles. We can go into this point more if you’d like.

I don't think this is controversial.  After all you have argued that only existing things can be in motion, so if the generating cause ceases to keep a thing in existence, per Aquinas, it follows that it is not moving.  Of course for Aquinas, the generating cause is God.
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ficino wrote:

Here you are not directly discussing EI vs. DDC (Doctrine of Divine Conservation). May I ask, though, whether you identify generation and conservation in existence as the same operation?

When Aristotle discusses violent motion of an existing material object, he elaborates that the motion has a beginning, a middle and and end.  So an agent causes an object to move from a state of rest...propagating th

@Calhoun,

Strawdusty has never admitted to having taken even a high school physics class.  In fact, you can easily tell he hasn't.  So, he's merely trying to divert you by insults.

Keep going.  You've exposed that he still doesn't understand the Carroll post.

ficino wrote:

@bmiller,

Do you know where Lang wrote that Ari included gen/corr among motions when the topic called for it?  

No.  I don't have any quote related to that particular definition.
I meant that I agreed with Lang's method of reading each of Aristotle's writing as addressing a particular topic.  The definitions that he used in that particular topic were related to that topic only and it would be a mistake to try to force uniform definitions across all of his writings.  That is why we see generation and corruption listed sometimes as motion and sometimes not.

ficino wrote:

I never got deeply into the problem of Aristotelian chronology, but as far as I've seen, it is often thought that his logical works were on the early side. So when he includes gen/corr among motions in Categories and Topics, it seems reasonable to me to think those passages predate his considered argumentation about the species of kinesis. And as far as I can tell, Aquinas did not comment on the Topics, and it's known that he did not comment on the Categories. So we can't check his take on Ari in those works. Anyway, I'm not ready to reject all chronological hypotheses when trying to interpret Aristotle, but there's no way to get into this question in depth here.
 

I haven't thought much about the chronological order of his works either, but Lang seems to think that the entire corpus could have been revised over the course of Aristotle's life as he encountered objections and responded to them.  This seems very reasonable to me.  

Also, perhaps he was a bit more loose with his definitions that moderns would like him to be and possibly read back modern definitions into his works.  I often see this when modern scientists insist he was wrong when he used terms like force and power which have very strict definitions in physics today.  Not so much in his time.

ficino wrote:

But I also agree with Jeremy, that Aquinas considers all real change as change from poten

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