Jeremy Taylor wrote:

SP never properly addresses refutations of his points. We've had 17 pages of this thread to show that. He would be saying the same things til kingdom come, or until there's a bug in his spam bot programming.

Yep.  His only goal is to annoy.  Or perhaps to set a Guinness record for getting banned from the most blog sites in the shortest amount of time.  He seems to take pride in that.

@ficino,

Regarding #148

ficino wrote:

The commentator "Mr. Green" over in the comments on the Feser/Admed debate on F's blog supports the contention that A-T and modern science do not conflict. I think he holds that either they talk about different things or, when they talk about the same things, their terminological differences are only verbal. Mr. Green takes the same position that many other supporters of Feser take. I have no clue how to adjudicate. E.g. 

I think Mr Green's contention is that there is no conflict between AT *metaphyics* and modern science.  In fact, AT metaphysics provided the basic framework for Western science. 

The particular example he uses regarding potential/kinetic energy and elasticity was explained by Liebnitz consciously using the Aristotlean ideas of potency and act (although he used "vis mortua" and "vis viva").  This is a matter of history.

But I'm not sure why you posted.  Do you have a particular question?

@RomanJoe,

RomanJoe wrote:

She concluded that we should protect the rights of known humans persons instead of protecting the rights of possible human persons.

Well, I as an owner of a building have the right to burn it down.  I don't know if there are people in there or not.  So it's OK for me to burn it down since I don't know if there are people in there or not with rights, but I'm certain I have *rights*.  After all, someone told me there were no people in there.

When we want to avoid responsibility for our actions we make all sorts of rationalizations.

@ficino,

The bolded part sounds contradictory to me!

My goal was to point out that he uses various definitions of motion at various times across his works.  It seems that you are insisting on a universal and *true* definition that can only be found in his "mature" works. You haven't made a case for that.

But even if you did make that case, Aristotle's notions had been developed and refined by later philosophers in the 1500 or so years since Aristotle wrote to when Aquinas lived.  In fact Aquinas developed his ideas even further.  So I don't understand why you think it is an objection to the First Way for Aquinas to partially support his argument derived/developed from Aristotle's metaphysics. 


No, that is part of a discussion of metabole not of kinesis. The former includes genesis and corruption. In Aristotle's mature works, however, and in arguments from motion where Aquinas cites Aristotle's mature works, kinesis does not include genesis and corruption. Some passage may have eluded me, though.

Yes, this is a good example of I'm referring to.  

@ficino,

If Feser or others want to make the motion argument a step in a sustainer argument, I think they need to lay out all those steps.

You are right that a "sustainer" is not mentioned in the premises of the First Way.  But neither are a lot of other AT background concepts that are baked in since it is a short summary rather than a book.  In particular for the case of existing material things, the same agent causes the particular combination of form/matter to come into existence (cause in fieri) but also causes it to remain in existence (cause in esse).  I suspect that Dr Feser has given enough lectures to gauge the appropriate amount of detail to supply in a short popular talk to get the point across without losing (too much) of his audience.  After all, his book "Aquinas" was subtitled "A Beginner's Guide".

He has however gone into the details and arguments for the differences between cause in fieri and cause in esse at his blog site.


Hello FZM, participants in this thread so far seem to be agreed that in A-T accounts, change or "motion" comprises locomotion, alteration and growth/decay. I think all are agreed that generation and destruction are not "motions" in A-T, though as I said earlier, Ari includes those two in lists of motions in some earlier writings.

I don't think is worded quite right.  AT lists generation and destruction as real *change*. It's just that these cannot be predicated of existing material objects (since they do not exist).  So when the discussion is about the change of an existing material object, the term *motion* is used for changes to that thing that allow it to remain as the same entity.

FZM is correct though that "actualisation of potency" applies to both types of change.