iwpoe wrote:

What is Tom Bombadil? If you can do that, & I think you can, then I think you have a good prima facie case that it has an essence.

People sometimes say Sherlock Holmes exists. Then, after one insists this is not the case and presses them for flesh and blood details, they confess it's the mental Holmes-idea that they mean. But the Holmes-idea is not what we mean when we say “Sherlock Holmes does not exist.” 

In On What There Is, Quine points out that this type of error becomes clearer when we ask people to think of entities like the Parthenon. No one “confuses the Parthenon and the Parthenon-idea. The Parthenon is physical; the Parthenon-idea is mental [...] The Parthenon is visible; the Parthenon-idea is invisible. We cannot easily imagine two things more unlike, and less liable to confusion, than the Parthenon and the Parthenon-idea.” Similarly, a mental entity is not what we mean when we say, “Tom Bombadil does not exist.” When we talk about fictional characters existing, we're talking about mental entities.

The case with dinosaurs is only slightly more complicated. Growing block theorists and B-theorists would say that dinosaurs do exist, because the past exists. As a presentist however, I might answer, “Dinosaurs are entities that used to exist.” and the truthmakers for this statement are found in the fossil record.

Last edited by John West (7/11/2015 11:15 am)

iwpoe wrote:

In the dinosaur case I'm concerned with the more complicated problem of an essence coming into and going out of being. I might be willing to concede the fictional case on deeper examination, but I'm much less willing to concede the dinosaur case without a deeper argument.

Well, the idea that we have of dinosaurs is essentially a fiction—better, an approximation constructed from various kinds of evidence, like the fossil record.

Of course, as a theist, I can also simply point to the Divine Intellect, though all such talk would be analogical and using completely logical distinctions to talk about an entity that is, ultimately, pure existence or Being Itself. Though, I don't think essences coming into and going out of existence is actually a problem, either.
 

Last edited by John West (7/05/2015 9:57 pm)

Thanks for the link to Lowe's and Valicella's essays DanielCC.

I'd like to return to potencies again. Feser mentions the distinction between logical or objective potencies, which are only possible as objects of thought, and real or subjective potencies, which are grounded in the natures of real things.

John West wrote:

Well, the purely possible (ie. the possibility of a unicorn) is grounded in God, and God is absolutely simple, pure act.

Are ‘grounded in,’ ‘ontologically dependent on,’ and ‘ontologically posterior to’ synonymous?

Scott wrote:

…[For] Aquinas in particular, "possibilities" can be grounded either in the mind/intellect of God (Who is Pure Act) or in the potencies of substances that actually exist (which are not only actual themselves but also dependent on Pure Act for their existence, including their potencies).

Could the possibility of the existence of a substance be grounded in the potencies of a subject that actually exists? E.g., could the possibility of the existence of a child a woman might give birth to be grounded in the woman’s potencies?

Last edited by truthseeker (7/06/2015 9:34 pm)

truthseeker wrote:

Could the possibility of the existence of a substance be grounded in the potencies of a subject that actually exists?

That would follow, in my opinion.

There can be no potentiality to an impossibility; therefore, if there exists a real potentiality to something, though as yet never realized, then necessarily that something cannot be impossible, as there would therefore be no potentiality toward it. And if it is not impossible then necessarily it must be possible that it exist.

Indeed, as others have noted, there is no appetite for something without a corresponding real and possible object to satisfy that appetite in nature, for example, which leads to the argument from man's desire for infinite and perfect happiness to the necessarry possibility of unification (or communion) with or knowledge of God or with what is divine.

Last edited by Timocrates (7/07/2015 11:48 am)

Now that we've discussed what potency is, let's discuss why one would adopt the notion. Feser writes that one needs to adopt potency to refute the following arguments:

(1) Change would require being to arise out of non-being or nothingness.
(2) From non-being or nothingness, nothing can arise.
(C) Therefore, change is impossible.

(1') A runner can get from point A to point B only if he first reaches the midpoint between A and B.
(2') He can reach that midpoint only if the first reaches the point midway between A and the midpoint, then the point midway between A and that midpoint, and so on ad infinitum.
(C') Therefore, he can never move beyond A.

Neither of these arguments seem to me to require that one postulate potency. The premises of the first argument are ambiguous, and none of the disambiguations that I can think of necessitate the postulation of potency. The second argument is just invalid. Could someone explain to me why each of these arguments necessitate the postulation of potency?

Last edited by truthseeker (7/09/2015 6:31 am)