1 - mashsha'i
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Criticism of SM, 1.2.1, 46-7
Feser, at SM 1.2.1, 46-7 gives two arguments for the existence of causal powers. The first goes as follows:
"[…] a cause is not always bringing about its characteristic effect. For instance, as the author of this book I am its efficient cause. But I’m not always actually writing it. I’m doing so at the moment I type this sentence, but I was not doing so three hours ago and I will not be doing so three hours from now. My power to write must therefore be distinguished from this or that actual, particular action of writing, as a standing precondition of the latter."
I've two criticisms to make of the above. First, the argument does not work for non-voluntary agents, e.g., fire, which always bring about their effects, unless impeded somehow. Second, the argument, though it holds good against the non-Occasionalist denier of causal powers, seems to beg the question against the Occasionalist; for the latter can consistently hold (1) that God is the only cause and (2) that, as the only cause, He is not always bringing about an effect. These two premises perfectly explain the phenomenon of not always acting (on which the argument is based), but without positing the existence of a power to act. If the argument establishes anything, it only establishes a distinction between a power and its exercise, not the actual existence of one of the two (i.e., for the non-divine agent).
The second argument is as follows:
"For if we were to hold instead that only actual, particular, instances of causation and actual, particular effects are real - that there’s no such things as powers and potentialities, active and passive potencies - then we would in effect be saying that act alone is real and potency unreal. But in that case change would be impossible."
Again though, the Occasionalist will simply grant this; change as the Aristotelians understand it, he’ll say, is impossible. So this argument, too, doesn’t definitively establish the existence of causal powers.
Thoughts?
Last edited by mashsha'i (8/22/2015 5:28 pm)
'What is, is as it ought to be; and what ought not to be, is not.' - Tusi (d. 1274)
- DanielCC
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Re: Criticism of SM, 1.2.1, 46-7
mashsha'i wrote:
The second argument is as follows:
"For if we were to hold instead that only actual, particular, instances of causation and actual, particular effects are real - that there’s no such things as powers and potentialities, active and passive potencies - then we would in effect be saying that act alone is real and potency unreal. But in that case change would be impossible."
Again though, the Occasionalist will simply grant this; change as the Aristotelians understand it, he’ll say, is impossible. So this argument, too, doesn’t definitively establish the existence of causal powers.
Thoughts?
I think one might respond to the Occasionalist in question that claiming Act alone is real will implicitly commit them to a stronger thesis than they would be willing to accept i.e. that all beings are necessary beings that term being taken in its modern modal sense. The Occasionalist of course might attempt to counter this by appealing to the Real Distinction.
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Re: Criticism of SM, 1.2.1, 46-7
Let us assume the truth of direct realism. With this in mind how are we to handle the manifest properties of a physical substance e.g. its colour and visual shape when un-perceived unless we admit that it has the power(s) to cause these perceptions on our part? The Occasionalist can answer that it's not the substance causing the perceptions but God - very well we answer but that is implicitly admit the substance does nothing, in which case why posit it in the first place? Why not just have God as the sole cause of our experience of the phenomenal world? We can easily apply Kim's argument against property-dualism to the entire of the material world.
(As can be seen with Hume and the aftermath of his philosophy to empty a substance of its casual powers is to deprive it of its very nature and being)
This is assuming the Occasionalist will still grant that we have causal power; if this is denied then things get even worse. To be the possessor of casual powers is the mark of a concrete being. Yet on the Occasionalist's account only one being has true casual powers and thus only one concrete being exists in toto i.e. God. Ergo we are stuck with pantheism and all the assorted problems such as modal collapse.
Last edited by DanielCC (8/23/2015 11:36 am)
- mashsha'i
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Re: Criticism of SM, 1.2.1, 46-7
[...] claiming Act alone is real will implicitly commit them to a stronger thesis than they would be willing to accept i.e. that all beings are necessary beings that term being taken in its modern modal sense. The Occasionalist of course might attempt to counter this by appealing to the Real Distinction.
The occasionalist doesn't even need to appeal to that, though. His view that God is a voluntary agent suffices to resolve the objection you raised.
Last edited by mashsha'i (8/24/2015 1:32 pm)
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Thread Starter- mashsha'i
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Re: Criticism of SM, 1.2.1, 46-7
Firstly, the admission that an agent can be impeded in bringing about its effects is surely a suggestion that there is a difference between the power and the action. For the causal-powers-denier, if the effect didn't happen, it just didn't happen, and it makes no more sense to say the effect was "impeded" than it would to say I am "impeded" from sprouting wings and flying to Jupiter. To claim otherwise would be to imply that there is a distinction between what a thing will naturally tend to do (i.e. potency) and what a thing actually does (i.e. act), which is precisely what the causal-powers-denier wants to avoid.
True. I suppose let, then, the non-occasionalist power denier claim that instead, i.e., the effect just didn't happen. Feser's argument wouldn't prove it's conclusion for non-voluntary agents, then, because the causal power denier can maintain that e.g., fire is not always acting because the relevant conditions aren't fulfilled for it to act. This view is compatible with him also holding, with the Megarians (cf., Metaphysics IX.3) that nothing has the power to act unless it is (actually) acting, i.e., there are no inactive potencies.
Another point to make (though I'm hesitant to make it after the kerfuffle on another thread over the relationship of science and philosophy) is that, if powers can be reduced to act, reality must be deterministic [...].
I'm not clear about this implication. Could you explain it a bit more? Thanks in advance.
'What is, is as it ought to be; and what ought not to be, is not.' - Tusi (d. 1274)
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Re: Criticism of SM, 1.2.1, 46-7
The Occasionalist can answer that it's not the substance causing the perceptions but God - very well we answer but that is implicitly admit the substance does nothing, in which case why posit it in the first place? Why not just have God as the sole cause of our experience of the phenomenal world? [...]. This is assuming the Occasionalist will still grant that we have causal power; if this is denied then things get even worse. To be the possessor of casual powers is the mark of a concrete being. Yet on the Occasionalist's account only one being has true casual powers and thus only one concrete being exists in toto i.e. God. Ergo we are stuck with pantheism and all the assorted problems such as modal collapse.
Ibn Rushd (i.e., Averroes) would have agreed with you. In his Long Commentary on Metaphysics IX.3, he writes (emphasis mine):
Contemporaries of ours [i.e., Ash'arite theologians] claim that all existents have one Agent [who acts] without mediation, namely God. For them no thing may have its own specific [causal] act which God impressed upon it. But if existents do not have acts that specify them, they will not have essences proper to themselves either, because acts differ only through diversity of essences. And if essences are eliminated, then names and definitions are likewise eliminated, and that which exists comes to be one thing."
Last edited by mashsha'i (8/24/2015 1:52 pm)
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Re: Criticism of SM, 1.2.1, 46-7
[...] claiming Act alone is real will implicitly commit them to a stronger thesis than they would be willing to accept i.e. that all beings are necessary beings that term being taken in its modern modal sense. The Occasionalist of course might attempt to counter this by appealing to the Real Distinction.
The occasionalist doesn't even need to appeal to that, though. His view that God is a voluntary agent suffices to resolve the objection you raised.
I don' think that's will help them. The best they can way if the deny all ‘real’ causal potency for change is that beings still have logical potency and thus can be created and annihilated. But this means that all change is actually replacement - Socrates does not change as his skin goes from pale to tanned but is replaced by a different being. Thus there is no identity over time.
- mashsha'i
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Re: Criticism of SM, 1.2.1, 46-7
I don' think that's will help them. The best they can way if the deny all ‘real’ causal potency for change is that beings still have logical potency and thus can be created and annihilated. But this means that all change is actually replacement - Socrates does not change as his skin goes from pale to tanned but is replaced by a different being. Thus there is no identity over time.
Right, but this 'logical potency', they'll say, doesn't belong to the created being (so they don't "have it" in the relevant sense); it resides in God alone. Either that, or it's just not power in the relevant sense, i.e., the sense which they deny. This would entail, I agree, the change-as-replacement view; but, as I noted in my response to the second argument of Feser, I think (at least some) occasionalists will embrace that conclusion.
'What is, is as it ought to be; and what ought not to be, is not.' - Tusi (d. 1274)
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Re: Criticism of SM, 1.2.1, 46-7
I don' think that's will help them. The best they can way if the deny all ‘real’ causal potency for change is that beings still have logical potency and thus can be created and annihilated. But this means that all change is actually replacement - Socrates does not change as his skin goes from pale to tanned but is replaced by a different being. Thus there is no identity over time.
Right, but this 'logical potency', they'll say, doesn't belong to the created being (so they don't "have it" in the relevant sense); it resides in God alone. Either that, or it's just not power in the relevant sense, i.e., the sense which they deny. This would entail, I agree, the change-as-replacement view; but, as I noted in my response to the second argument of Feser, I think (at least some) occasionalists will embrace that conclusion.
Logical Potency refers to what modern philosophers would call metaphysical or broadly logical possibility (basically just possibility). So yes the beings other than God would still be contingent of their essences and thus the Occasionalist escapes the modal collapse situation I threatened.
How many of these creation, annihilation, and replacement changes occur in a second? If the number is finite then we would appear commit to a 'temporal atom'. a smallest possible unit of time, if not then we face the paradoxes of the actual infinite.
One could also argue the replacement scenario constitutes a gratuitous evil and thus is incompatible with the Divine Goodness. It would mean that God annihilates the souls of a vast or infinite number of his creatures, even the righteous and the prophets, and would make any kind of judgement in the hereafter arbitrary (why should this temporal 'man', or series of temporal men, be rewarded or punished for the actions of another being?
In some ways I think the most coherent route for an Occasionalist would be to argue that the Occasional Cause is necessary along with the five others (formal, final material and exemplary); however I am at a loss to see how this would differ to any great extent from the Concurrentism Feser himself accepts in opposition to so called 'mere' Conservationism
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Re: Criticism of SM, 1.2.1, 46-7
Logical Potency refers to what modern philosophers would call metaphysical or broadly logical possibility (basically just possibility). So yes the beings other than God would still be contingent of their essences and thus the Occasionalist escapes the modal collapse situation I threatened.[...].
Right, but, the Occasionalist will ask, where is this possiblity grounded? It's not some free floating thing out there. Answer: it just refers to God's power to create or annihilate a thing. And this is what explians why something can exist or not, i.e., God's willing it or not. So, even if things don't have powers, it doesn't follow that they're necessary beings; for God can existentiate them or not. No need to appeal to some essence that a thing may have, from which its existence is really distinct. I agree with your other contentions, so I don't engage them.
'What is, is as it ought to be; and what ought not to be, is not.' - Tusi (d. 1274)
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