@Stardusty Psyche:

"Yes, I am well aware of that article.  How do you suppose it demonstrates the truth of the First Way?  Do you suppose that will be the next Carroll post "I was wrong and Aquinas was right"?  How stupid."

Take a gander gents, at the lying piece of shit we have in front of us. Stardusty laughed at "Now our resident "mathematical physicist" has GR violating conservation." Being shown that he is completely wrong he not only changes the subject "How do you suppose it demonstrates the truth of the First Way?", but will have us believe that he was "aware of that article" -- you never were aware of the article, neither do you know anything about GR, or how it violates conservation of energy, you are lying with every teeth that you presently conserve in that foul mouth of yours.

"I said material is conserved, not that a photon cannot lose energy."

Oh now, you are not talking about conservation of mass/energy as physicists speak of, it is "conservation of material", a something nobody knows what it is, least of all you. Do you even finished high school? Probably bought the certificate online, hey? Stole the money from your parents wallet probably. What a pathetic excuse for a human being you turned out: not even the least shred of decency or intellectual honesty.

And here is another for the road: in relativistic quantum field theory, particle number is not only an observable that is *not* conserved, there are states which are *not* eigenstates of the particle number operator. Everyone that knows quantum mechanics knows the red flag that this is. And I am not even speaking about pair production and annihilation. Of course the delusional kook has no freakin clue of what I am talking about, but conservation of material? Ha ha ha ha.

"One idea, often stated, is at base everything is fields."

This is not "One idea, often stated"; the fundamental objects in quantum field theory *are* fields. Once again, simple textbook material.

And the clueless moron insists on pretending that he knows anything about physics.

@Timocrates

Moreover there are fundamental essentially ordered series in modern physics. A gravitational field being one:

No, gravity propagates, classically, no faster than c.

if the earth vanished from existence

It can't.  That is magical thinking, Thomistic thinking.  In real observations planets do not simply vanish from existence.

Feser talks about "blinking out of existence", but he is a con artist who has figured out how to separate you lot from your money by selling woo books and woo articles to you folks.

unless you imagine gravity is like smoke from a fire that lingers around.

In some sense, yes.  Gravitational waves propagate like other waves.  Gravitational wave astronomy is a new and very exciting branch of astronomy. 

remove the Sun and the production of light ceases immediately.

So what?  The light already produced continues to propagate, so that would be a typical example of an "accidental" causal series. 

Events that already happened are not undone when the associated object is dismantled.

Every real material causal series is "accidental", to use the crude vernacular.

StardustyPsyche wrote:

@RomanJo #335

I just don't really understand SP's objection to the existence of  essential causal series.

Fair enough.  I will do my best to find better words to explain my meaning.

IEven if the process is temporal, involving causal members that exert their causal efficacy over time, how does it follow that such a series is accidental rather than essential?

At an ordinary naked eye personal day to day perception of things what you are saying seems to fit with our perceptions.  But those perceptions break down on closer examination.

Things are often not as they seem.  For example, solid objects don't seem to have space in them, but upon closer examination we find a solid object is mostly space.

Instaneity is not necessary for a per se causal series. What is necessary is derivative causal power,

Once temporality is allowed for there is no identifiable first source for what you call causal power.  In the classic hand-stick-rock example the hand is said to be the first member, the original source of causal power.  On closer examination the hand derives from the tendons, which derive from the muscle, and back to the blood, heart, lung, oxygen inside the lung, oxygen further from the lung, and still further, and the plants that produced the oxygen, and the water, the dirt, and back and back and back in time and space.

With this we see that the hand-stick-rock are not some special sort of causal series, rather, they are merely the most recent members of a vast causal series that goes back all the way to the big bang and perhaps to a past eternal universe, which is clearly an "accidental" series.

The idea that the hand-stick-rock is somehow not a part of a vast "accidental" series is merely an artifact of limited and incomplete human perceptions.

a continual dependence of latter members on earlier members of the series.

Continual is a good word because it illustrates the fact that causation is composed of separate events.  Human beings tend to lump things together.  Closer analysis breaks these causal events apart.

People tend to assign the title of "cause" to one thing and "effect" to another, when in fact the objects assigned those titles are actually undergoing a vast number of minute causal processes.

A car motor seems to be an ongoing cause of motion of the car.  Stop the motor and the car stops.  Actually each individual molecule of oxygen and fuel react and each causes a tiny amount of energy to be transferred to the motion of the car.  Each one of those tiny causal processes is "accidental", since just like the grandfather in the classic example of an "accidental" causal series, an individual molecule of CO2 can exit the engine and it could disappear yet nothing can undo its causal influence. 

Since every real macro scale material causal process is composed of a multitude of minute "accidental" causal series, then every real macro scale material causal process is an "accidental" causal series.

 

This does not answer what we pointed out. Of course the hand is not the primary mover in that series, THAT IS THE POINT behind Aquinas's arguments, for fuck's sake. Temporality does not change the fact that if the hand were to stop moving the stick, the rock would eventually stop moving. Can you accept this much, SP? Or do you fail to see the difference between this series and the grandfather-grandson series? Do you realize that if all oxygen were to disappear form your room, you would not be able to survive there anymore, even if this doesn't happen instantaneously? If you admit this much, you accept that hierarchical series are real in a relevant sense, ergo, there exists such a thing as "dependence" even if you prefer to break it down into accidental series (actually, accidental series can only exist because of hierarchical ones, but nvm).

Your last sentence commits a composition fallacy, Even if you break down a macro causal process into a bunch of accidental series of cause and effect, it does not mean that the macro process is not an essentially ordered series. For it to be an essentially ordered series all that is necessary is for there to be dependence. If the car motor stops, the car WILL stop. If the grandfather dies, the grandson will not necessarily die. If you grant this much, the arguments already work, because a reduction to accidental series won't change the fact that the macro series is essentially ordered. The fact that you think you can explain the movement of a train by reference to accidental series does NOT eliminate the fact that if what we call the train engine were to stop, the whole train would have to stop eventually. I know it hurts you to think, SP, but make some effort.

Last edited by Miguel (12/22/2017 9:32 pm)