@ficino, 

ficino wrote:

I wrote a pacific reply, and then I said to myself, this forum is a joke. I thought there were people here who were interested in discussing writings of classical theists. But no one or almost no one wants to do anything scholarly on here. This place is a claque-pit for Feser. I'm done. 
 

It seems to me that your focus is on the parsing the original language used by the authors rather than how their students and followers understood them and developed their ideas.  That is fine since it that is your field of interest.  However I assume that is not the main interest of those participating in a Classical Theism forum and that is why some find it out of place.

It seems that you are making an argument that Thomists misunderstood Aristotle, and so they have foundational problems. Maybe you aren't making that argument, but that is the way it appears.

But if you are making that argument, then it should be no surprise that Thomists or Neo-Platonists would have counter arguments.

I found a passage where Aquinas treats generation and corruption as “motions”. Here he does not get into the issues that led Aristotle, as Aquinas himself knows, to argue in Phys. V.2-3 and elsewhere that gen/corr are not motions. Aquinas writes: “ In regard to the way which involves movers that actively move, the end of their motion is to attain the divine likeness by being the causes of others. Now, they are the causes of others by the fact that they cause generation and corruption and other motions in these lower things. So, the motions of the celestial bodies, as actively moving, are ordered to the generation and corruption which take place in these lower bodies.—Nor is it unfitting that celestial bodies should move for the sake of the generation and corruption of these lower things, even though lower bodies are of less value than celestial bodies, while, of course, the end should be more important than what is for the sake of the end … Similarly, then, celestial bodies, although they are of greater value than lower bodies, tend toward the generation of these latter, and through their motions to the actual eduction of the forms of the products of generation, not as an ultimate end but as thereby intending the divine likeness as an ultimate end, inasmuch as they exist as the causes of other things.” SCG III.22.5
 
For the above words, “and other motions in these lower things,” Bourke translations “motions” as “changes.” I changed it above to “motions” because the Latin reads  motus. If Thomas had wanted only to say “changes,” he could have written transmutationes or the like.
 
I think this passage, unlike those I found earlier, provides a basis to think it likely that Aquinas may have meant “motion” in the First Way to include gen/corr. 

@bmiller,

bmiller wrote:

 I agree with Helen Lang that he included it when the topic called for it. 

Do you know where Lang wrote that Ari included gen/corr among motions when the topic called for it? I've gone through her The Order of Nature in Aristotle's Physics and don't find her discussing the problem, whether gen/corr are species of kinesis. Right now I only have the GoogleBooks access to her Aristotle’s Physics and its Medieval Varieties. Doing word searches doesn't bring up discussion of the problem in that book, either, as far as I can see. I'd like to read a discussion by Lang if she did get into this problem explicitly.

As to Lang on chronology, as I said earlier, she urges that developmental hypotheses not condition our readings of Aristotle's arguments. In the GC, as I noted, Ari's arguments seem to rule it out that he thinks gen/corr to be species of kinesis, though he includes them among kineseis toward the beginning of that work, as you quoted him earlier. I don't see him arguing that gen/corr are motions in GC. So I don't see how chronological considerations affect the way we should parse his arguments in 317bff. And Aquinas, as I quoted, sets out those arguments explicitly, with their conclusion that differs from what had been said about gen/corr earlier in GC Book I.

I never got deeply into the problem of Aristotelian chronology, but as far as I've seen, it is often thought that his logical works were on the early side. So when he includes gen/corr among motions in Categories and Topics, it seems reasonable to me to think those passages predate his considered argumentation about the species of kinesis. And as far as I can tell, Aquinas did not comment on the Topics, and it's known that he did not comment on the Categories. So we can't check his take on Ari in those works. Anyway, I'm not ready to reject all chronological hypotheses when trying to interpret Aristotle, but there's no way to get into this question in depth here.

In fact, Aquinas uses the generating cause as proof that everything that is moved is moved by another in the SCG while explaining the reasoning behind the First Way.

[SCG] Book 1 chapter 13

[8] In the second way, Aristotle proves the proposition by induction [Physics VIII, 4]. Whatever is moved by accident is not moved by itself, since it is moved upon the motion of another. So, too, as is evident, what is moved by violence is not moved by itself. Nor are those beings moved by themselves that are moved by their nature as being moved from within; such is the case with animals, which evidently are moved by the soul. Nor, again, is this true of those beings, such as heavy and light bodies, which are moved through nature. For such beings are moved by the generating cause and the cause removing impediments. Now, whatever is moved is moved through itself or by accident. If it is moved through itself, then it is moved either violently or by nature; if by nature, then either through itself, as the animal, or not through itself, as heavy and light bodies. Therefore, everything that is moved is moved by another.

Aquinas considers the generating cause the ultimate cause of a certain class of present motion and argues this point in his explanation of the First Way.  So things are only in motion as long as the generating cause is active.  So the generating cause must be acting in the present moment.  So divine conservation is considered part of the explanation of the First Way by Aquinas.

We discussed this passage before, but I shall give it more thought, thanks. 

  But I also agree with Jeremy, that Aquinas considers all real change as change from potency to act and that real change requires an unchanged changer.  Do you disagree?

No this is my understanding of Aquinas. And by "real change," you mean to exclude something like so-called Cambridge changes? Aristotle was already aware of that problem, of course.
 

ficino wrote:

@bmiller,

Do you know where Lang wrote that Ari included gen/corr among motions when the topic called for it?  

No.  I don't have any quote related to that particular definition.
I meant that I agreed with Lang's method of reading each of Aristotle's writing as addressing a particular topic.  The definitions that he used in that particular topic were related to that topic only and it would be a mistake to try to force uniform definitions across all of his writings.  That is why we see generation and corruption listed sometimes as motion and sometimes not.

ficino wrote:

I never got deeply into the problem of Aristotelian chronology, but as far as I've seen, it is often thought that his logical works were on the early side. So when he includes gen/corr among motions in Categories and Topics, it seems reasonable to me to think those passages predate his considered argumentation about the species of kinesis. And as far as I can tell, Aquinas did not comment on the Topics, and it's known that he did not comment on the Categories. So we can't check his take on Ari in those works. Anyway, I'm not ready to reject all chronological hypotheses when trying to interpret Aristotle, but there's no way to get into this question in depth here.
 

I haven't thought much about the chronological order of his works either, but Lang seems to think that the entire corpus could have been revised over the course of Aristotle's life as he encountered objections and responded to them.  This seems very reasonable to me.  

Also, perhaps he was a bit more loose with his definitions that moderns would like him to be and possibly read back modern definitions into his works.  I often see this when modern scientists insist he was wrong when he used terms like force and power which have very strict definitions in physics today.  Not so much in his time.

ficino wrote:

But I also agree with Jeremy, that Aquinas considers all real change as change from potency to act and that real change requires an unchanged changer.  Do you disagree?

No this is my understanding of Aquinas. And by "real change," you mean to exclude something like so-called Cambridge changes? Aristotle was already aware of that problem, of course.
 

Agreed.  He included relative change in Categories, but didn't consider it "real change".

ficino wrote:

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

You've been told repeatedly that Feser does not deny EI.

Utterly wrong. Feser explicitly argues that each of the Five Ways refutes Existential Inertia.  Feser in his own voice argues against Existential Inertia in interviews and in print. Yours above is the reason why I do not follow along without independent confirmation when I have "been told repeatedly" by one or more commentators on here that something is the case. The control is the text.

Feser goes to great length to argue AGAINST existential inertia in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 85.2 (2011) 237-267.
 

Sorry, you're right. Due to SP's crap I had the principle of inertia on my mind and for some reason thought you were suggesting Feser rejected that (if I recall correctly, you did earlier suggest he questioned it). Feser certainly does argue against EI, which is a philosophical issue, not a scientific one (and not one that has direct bearing on the Newton's principle.