@grod
@Stardusty Psyche:
"Thank you for confirming that my arguments are sound with yet another argument free post from you."

How does an "argument free post" confirm that your "arguments are sound"?

Because absence of evidence is evidence of absence. 

If counter arguments against my arguments were available you probably would have posted them.
You did not post any such arguments.
Therefore you have provided evidence that no such counter arguments to my arguments exist.

Now, if this were an isolated case the evidentiary value of a single negative instance would be low.  But given that the great majority of your posts contain no arguments at all, and the remainder are little more than snippets of buzzwords that barely have the appearance of a faux argument, the combined evidentiary value of all these negative instances becomes very strong.

Do not bother to respond; you need prayers, not arguments. Go in peace and God bless you.

Have your prayers been effective in my case?
 

@Calhoun

#314 If I create a car I bring something new into existence, When I take it apart entirely it ceases to exist and indeed

Not any new material, no.  You did not create any new mass/energy.  When you take it apart the material persists, the mass/energy is conserved, no mass/energy blinked out of existence.

This is also called existential inertia.  You can call it conservation of mass/energy, persistence of material in existence, existential inertia, the amount of mass/energy does not change, or whatever you wish.  This is an observed, experimentally confirmed fact of science.

So if some human e.g I am merely an organization of my constituents and the "organization" do not really exist , then I do not exist, this would be entirely untenable because If I myself do not really exist I can hardy make up some fiction of abstraction of organizations. And on the other hand think of what allows you to say of some constituents that they are constituents "of" something particular like me or car? 
So "organization" as you name it and composite wholes must be real existing things,

You are treating a verb as a noun.

A noun is material.  A verb is an action of that material.

Verbs do not exist independent of nouns, they describe what nouns do or how nouns relate to other nouns.

The ball rolls.
The ball bounces.
The ball spins.
Ten balls are in a line.
Eight balls are in an octagon.

The ball is conserved (ideally) through all the rolling, bouncing, spinning, lining up, and forming up, the ball stays the ball.  The ball has existential inertia.  No ball was created or destroyed through these various motions.  The material ball does not change in its existential respect,  In the respect of the ball's motion the material ball does change, temporally, due to the temporal interactions with other objects resulting in various accelerations.

#401 the fact that cup and table is constituted by other elements hardly lead to the series being accidental.

Yes, the combined facts of being constituted by other elements, the motions of those elements, the propagation times of those elements means that the water-cup-table-Earth system is not a 4 body problem in a single "essential" series, rather they are composed of a vast number of temporal causal series, each one of which is "accidental"  with no identifiable first member, rather with causal predecessors going back at least as fair as the big bang, which is clearly an "accidental" series, of which the presently observed members are just a small part.

#401  there is no formal contradiction between those. "Motion" in the argument simply refers to actualization of any potentiality and this is what all those processes involve.

You can speculate that an invisible being is changing all the things in the universe in just the right way so that inertia of motion and existential inertia, which are aspects of existence that do not change, are provided to us as illusions of no change in those respects.

While that is a wildly fantastic speculation, there is no formal contradiction.  I can speculate that motion is maintained by a googleplex tiny winged invisible unicorns and there is no formal contradiction.

A lack of formal contradiction does not equal *necessity*.

Aquinas asserts *necessity* and there is a formal contradiction in the assertion of *necessity*.  Conservation of mass/energy formally contradicts the assertion of *necessity* for an hierarchical first mover acting in the present moment to account for observed motion and observed existential inertia which are manifest and evident to our senses.

 

@FSC
"I have proved ten pages ago that you're a definite moron."
Sorry, I didn't see any such post from you.  Can you provide the post number?

StardustyPsyche wrote:

Yes, thanks for taking the time to at least summarize my position in a reasonable way.

You know, we're all trying to do this. At this point, RomanJoe is not summarizing your position, he's pulling words out of your mouth.

But fine. My two cents.

StardustyPsyche wrote:

However, to say the table does not "really" exist would take some fine parsing.  If somebody drops the table on my head I would not appreciate their defense being that the table does not really exist.

Rather than denying the reality of the table altogether I would say our perception of the table is a valid model or a valid approximation because such models converge on reality.  Our perceived boundary for the table and its actual details of boundary are very close. 

There's an interesting sentence here : "models converge on reality". That also hints you do think that reality is knowledgeable, or, at least, modelizable. True? If so, how do you validate a model? When you say that "this theory is more correct than this one", or "this model is better than this one", what do you mean? Which qualities of the model are important?

Given this last sentence, you can get a very vague approximation of what an AT would consider essence to be.

StardustyPsyche wrote:

The color of the table is a valid approximation in some sense but actually quite distorted in other ways.  There is a mapping of electromagnetic radiation wavelengths to our perceptions of color, but we don't think of various radio wavelengths are so very different, rather, on a continuous scale, whereas visible electromagnetic radiation on the same sort of scale appears to us to be vividly different.  And our perceptions can be wrong because a combination of red and green wavelengths can appear the same as a spectrally pure yellow wavelength.

Such comments smell like Democritus. The criticisms against your position can be the same as the ones Aristotle gave to the old atomist. I would be bad at presenting them.

StardustyPsyche wrote:

Further, consider that the cup-table-Earth system is transitory, with its causal predecessors extending back in time at least as far as the big bang, clearly an "accidental" series of which the cup-table-Earth arrangement is just a small part.
But how does the cup-table-Earth system, even on the notion of an "essential" series, necessitate a first mover?  Why do we need to say "this cannot go on to infinity"?  What cannot go on to infinity?

Fine, suppose we have the cup-table-Earth.  Ok, done. They are just sitting there in a gravitationally bound system.  Forces are exerted but ideally there is no motion, so no energy exchange.  Pushing on something that does not move does no work.  So what is going on and on and on here?  Just supposing the cup, table, and Earth were static solids, fine, they are not changing, they are just exerting static forces on each other.  With nothing changing why is it thought that somehow a changer is called for?
 

This leads us to an interesting question. As, per your view, "everything is accidental", then, being "StardustyPsyche" is also accidental. When does a table stop being a table? When does "StardustyPsyche" stops being himself? In this position, it's impossible to be alive or to die : there's nothing telling us "X is made of ABCD, and X is alive".

Now, why stop here? Why consider particles and balls to be the stoppers? Why not go ad infinitum? Particles made of strings, strings made of fields, etc. If you don't stop, then you have ontological nihilism. If you see why, you'll start to see what "essential" is : you need to stop somewhere to call it real.

Once this is cleared, we can wonder where the impression of the table comes from. Because, sure, we can say it's an anthropomorphism. But since particles, as you mentionned, are just particles, and since we're just what our parts are together, where does the "this is a table" idea comes from? Would it be possible to be different? Tons of ideas come from this starting question.

I'm not arguing for God or for a way yet, because there is still no conflict here. You have a specific worldview requiring adaptations and insight. Motion in your view and in the AT are two different things.

Last edited by FrenchySkepticalCatholic (12/23/2017 7:22 pm)

@FSC

There's an interesting sentence here : "models converge on reality". That also hints you do think that reality is knowledgeable, or, at least, modelizable. True? If so, how do you validate a model? When you say that "this theory is more correct than this one", or "this model is better than this one", what do you mean? Which qualities of the model are important?

That's what science does.  It does seem to be somewhat a case of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, but it is not quite so hopelessly arbitrary as it might at first seem.
Models are accepted experimentally as valid when the model accurately predicts measurements over a wide range of circumstances.
Models are accepted on a theoretical basis when their maths are valid.  One danger is in thinking valid maths necessitates its realization, which it does not.  Experimental confirmation is generally considered to be required.

This leads us to an interesting question. As, per your view, "everything is accidental", then, being "StardustyPsyche" is also accidental.

Ok.  I am made of stardust, literally, we all are.  I will die, we all will.  That's just the way it is.

When does a table stop being a table? When does "StardustyPsyche" stops being himself? In this position, it's impossible to be alive or to die : there's nothing telling us "X is made of ABCD, and X is alive".

The definition of life is somewhat controversial.  In my own view my own life started when my brain began to function and will end when my brain ceases to function, but not all living things have brains.

Perhaps we can define life as being the product of a self replication.  But what then of viruses and potentially self replicating robots?

Perhaps we have some definitional problems around the edges but we can say that certain things are alive, like you and I, for example, unless you are an AI bot, or is an AI bot alive?

Now, why stop here? Why consider particles and balls to be the stoppers? Why not go ad infinitum? Particles made of strings, strings made of fields, etc. If you don't stop, then you have ontological nihilism. If you see why, you'll start to see what "essential" is : you need to stop somewhere to call it real.

We should never stop until we hit bottom.  We might never hit bottom due to our own limitations as limited beings or some fundamental constraint against objects our size detecting objects of bottom size.

But it does seem that ontologically there must be a bottom, even if we might be barred from definitively identifying it. So perhaps it is as simple as stopping at fields and fields are the bottom.

But this is not an "essential" causal series, rather, it is a progression of improved human abstractions.  It is not the case that in the present moment quarks "cause" neutrons and protons, that electrons protons and neutrons "cause" atoms, that atoms "cause" molecules, that molecules "cause" cells, that cells "cause" me.

Rather, I simply am composed of electrons and quarks at this moment.  There is no "essential" causal regress from me to electrons and quarks at this moment, rather, human beings have constructed a hierarchy of abstractions, of models of organization, in our quest to understand what we are composed of.  Indeed, we are a multitude, each of us, simply is a vast collection of constituents.

The bottom is not *necessarily* an invisible being.  Modern science has proved Aquinas wrong in his assertion of *necessity*  Here Feser argues fallaciously in a variety of respects, but his favorite fallacy, that of strawman, is on display as "no formal contradiction" between that inertia is the case and why inertia is the case.  Feser, I suggest intentionally, misses the point that the formal contradiction lies in the assertion of necessity by Aquinas and modern science.

In modern science god is not necessary. The ontological bottom can be fields.  The explanation for inertia of motion can be conservation of energy for an object in uniform linear motion.  The explanation for existential inertia can be conservation of mass/energy.  The explanation for acceleration can be objects interacting with each other in temporal mutual causation.  There is the formal contradiction, it is between modern science and the assertion of the necessity of god.
http://faculty.fordham.edu/klima/SMLM/PSMLM10/PSMLM10.pdf

But since particles, as you mentionned, are just particles, and since we're just what our parts are together, where does the "this is a table" idea comes from?

Brains make internal representations of the external world.  Even insects respond to visual cues.  Mammals are highly complex in their recognition of and interaction with the environment.  Self awareness is merely the development of an internal modeling path.

In other animals with brains the primary sensory pathway is largely unidirectional with some feedback with respect to motor control.  In other animals with brains sensory signals enter the brain, are processed, and motor actions are taken.  The animal has some feedback awareness of its own motions which is part of the motor control process, and is to that extent self aware.

Our self awareness feedback paths are simply more highly developed.  Besides the same sort of sensory signal processing and motor feedback pathways we also have processing feedback pathways.  Some parts of the brain monitor the activities of other parts of the brain, we we are self aware not just of our own movements as are other animals but also of our own thoughts.

Motion in your view and in the AT are two different things.

Yes, my view is the modern scientific view and the A-T view is the discounted ancient view.  These are formally in conflict because A-T asserts necessity and modern science provides an alternative wherein the first mover is not necessary.

A-T further makes this distinction

local motion,change with respect to place or location. When Aristotelians speak of “motion,” they mean change of any kind. This would include local motion, but also includes change with respect to quantity, change with respect to quality, and change from one substance to another

"Local motion" as distinct from change of quantity, quality, and substance are in formal contradiction with modern science because change of quantity, quality, and substance require motion.  This is glaringly obvious in the case of quantity, which requires the objects we count to cross a boundary we abstract.

 

Last edited by StardustyPsyche (12/23/2017 11:01 pm)