@ficino
"I see arguments in the comboxes there that pretty much replicate what is argued in comboxes over on Feser's blog, here, and other places"
--Indeed, the pattern is much the same.  I lay out a carefully reasoned and easy to follow set of arguments such as in #7 and #8 on this thread.  In response good Christians call me a troll and various other names, make a few vague allusions, and that's all.

No theist, certainly not Feser, has displayed any capacity to form a valid and otherwise sound argument to demonstrate, on the merits, using sound logical reasoning, where #7 and #8 fail.

Jeremy is correct, ficino, no need to worry about your level of physics.  Just apply basic modern physics and you can quickly locate the flaws in the First Way and the Second Way.

" I don't agree that the First Way addresses existential inertia"
--Right, that is attempted in the Second Way, which I show to be erroneous in #8 on this thread.

"Whoa, where's this 'existence must be actualized by something else at every moment' stuff coming from?"
--You are obviously a troll for even asking such a question :-)

"But refutation of existential inertia isn't a conclusion that follows from premises required for an A-T account of the motion."
--Right, that is covered in the Second Way.  I like this translation, if you have a better one please send me the link.
http://iteadthomam.blogspot.com/2011/03/second-way-in-syllogistic-format.html

I invite you to read the text found at that link, or any preferred translation, then read #8 on this thread.  If you can point out any errors or weaknesses in my argument you would be doing me a much appreciated favor.

FZM wrote:

This may happen because Feser reads motion as meaning change in a very general sense and understands change as being the actualisation of potency. Then 'motion' becomes something very wide ranging.
 

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.

So you are right that motion is broader then mere change of location. But there is no A-T warrant to expand "motion" so widely that it encompasses continuation in existence. Feser believes that abstract objects exist, for example, but they are not in motion. God's sustaining of something in being is not as such an instance of the thing's motion unless every actualisation of a potency is a motion. But that seems not to be the case. It would be an excluded middle fallacy to say that because motion and existence are actualizations of a potency, therefore motion is equivalent to existence.

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Adding: In his commentary on Aristotle's Physics, Aquinas distinguishes between Aristotle's discussions of motion in a strict sense in Book V and later, where Ari limits motion to locomotion, alteration and growth/decay, and Ari's use of a more common sense of "motion" in Book III, where Ari speaks of it as an alternative of "change/mutation," as though it can include generation and corruption (In Phys. III l. 2, C286). In other places in Aquinas' commentary, where Aristotle restricts motion to the three above species, Aquinas notes those three as motion in the strict sense. John Wippel, 
The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Cath U Press 2000), 445-6 wonders whether Aquinas uses the term "motion" in this broad sense in the First Way, so as to include generation and corruption. Wippel comes down to this: "I am inclined to limit motion as it appears as the starting point of the first way to some form of motion taken strictly, but to suggest that in the course of justifying the principle of motion -- whatever is moved is moved by something else -- Thomas uses motion broadly enough to apply to any reduction from potentiality to actuality." Wippel thinks Aquinas may have allowed a similar, broader understanding of motion in SCG I.13. Then Wippel concludes, "Nonetheless, the starting point for both of these arguments appears to be motion taken strictly and, to be specific, local motion. Perhaps it is because the first way in the Summa theologiae begins with readily observable phenomena--local motion and alteration--that Thomas describes it as the 'more manifest way'."

I believe Wippel's conclusion is correct. 1) In SCG I.13, Aquinas refers expressly and often in those arguments to Books VII and VIII of the Physics. By the time Aristotle wrote the second half of the Physics, he had excluded generation and corruption from motions. It's that second half of the Physics that Aquinas applies in his proofs from motion.
 2) The A-T presentation of motion gives it a telos, an end. If the substance passes out of existence, it is not in entelechy, fulfillment, which is supposed to be the state that a thing attains when it attains an end. 



 

Last edited by ficino (11/28/2017 2:55 pm)

@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.

Right now I'm reading Feser's 2013 paper, "Motion in Aristotle, Newton and Einstein." I'm not at all happy about how he suggests (p. 238) that generation and corruption count as kinesis in a broader sense in Aristotle, since Ari expressly denies that they are kineseis in his later writings, starting from Physics V.2, 225b10. But I reserve judgment until I've finished Feser's article. On the point, see what I quoted from Wippel.

 

Can you elaborate on that point more? thus far You have only said that its because the subject does not persist through generation/corruption. But its obviously false that something needs to always and necessarily persist for it to count as Change. Your Quote from Wippel hardly seems illuminating here , there so much back and forth about what he is inclined to think, what appears to him and what STA's overall metaphysic allows, There doesn't seem to be anything of importance we should be taking on board here. 

And can you specify which version of Feser's article you're reading because I've never seen the word kinesis used by him. So I don't really see your point. 

In what you bolded, I was referring to kinesis as "change or 'motion'." I agree that generation and destruction are changes - metabolai or mutationes.

The most important point in bmiller's post was that "actualisation of potency" applies to both types of change, whether you want to make distinctions between them isn't relevant. 

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

In generation and corruption there is still a substrate that persists through change.

I said that the substance does not persist through corruption, and no preceding substance persists through generation. Aristotle opens up Physics V.2 with a second reason why generation/corruption are not motions: "In respect of substance there is no motion, because substance has no contrary among things that are." What is the substrate you are talking about as persisting through gen/corr, and what is its relevance to the question, whether premises about motion are sufficient for refuting existential inertia?


 

Last edited by ficino (11/28/2017 9:24 pm)