Timocrates wrote:

Armando, I am trying to keep us from flying all over the place here. That is not the way to make philosophical progress. Further, what are we to understand by "varying attributes"? It just raises the question again: do we have a potentiality (or "an attribute") to be sleeping and to be awake at the same time? We want to say yes and no but we can't. How do we make these distinctions without recourse to concepts like act and potency?

I'm sorry.  I didn't realize that I was getting off topic. I'm just trying to pin down what question the concepts act and potency are answering. How you can be awake but later not be awake is a non-obvious question.  I guess too much of me wants to say, "You just are awake now and asleep later!"
Iwas asking whether the question "How can anything be itself while its attributes change?" was equivalent to the question that the concepts of act and potency are trying to answer.  Because that wording makes more sense to me than responding to Parmenides (Feser's intro to the subject of act and potency).  Parmenides doesn't make sense to me because his difficulties with the concept of change seem all to stem from his denial of multiplicity.
I do think I'm beginning to grasp the truth and importance of the concept of act and potency, though.  Your examples are helping
And I keep asking about motion because wouldn't a materialist say all change is just the motion of particles?  In that case would an Aristotelian say, "The motion of particles requires the concepts of act and potency"?

The following post does not fully take into account the exchange between ArmandoAlvarez and Timocrates that occurred since my last post. Important as the concepts in that exchange are, my concern right now is just with Parmenides' and Zeno's arguments and why they lead us to the act/potency distinction.

First of all, I'd like to retract one of my earlier statements. I have been understanding Being in this discussion as the sum of everything that is, at any time. I concede, Timocrates, that what I said earlier about the possibility of a scenario in which beings change but Being does not was illogical. For if beings change, Being is composed of a certain state of affairs at one time but not another, and thus Being has different features at different times, and therefore changes since the definition of 'change' is 'the having of different features at different times.'

I do not believe, however, there is any contradiction in Being changing in this manner. Furtheremore, it can be the case that Being changes and everything is changed by something else. For Being could be changed by the changing of one of its constitutents. You seem to concede as much in this exchange with ArmandoAlvarez:

ArmandoAlvarez wrote:

 Components of the animal cause changes to other components of the animal," why couldn't we also say that about "being"? (i.e. some entities that constitute part of "being" in general cause changes to other entities.)

Timocrates wrote:

Once we grant plurality to being... change then becomes logically possible.

The changing of one of Being's constitutents would be caused by the changing of another of Being's constituents. E.g., in the scenario of the man with the stick pushing the stone, when the stone changes its location from not being in front of the hole at one time to being in front of the hole at another time, the stone changes because the man pushes the stone with the stick during the interval between these times. I could further posit that the man is changed from not pushing to pushing by a draft of wind coming through the hole and making the man chilly, which draft comes about due to the rotation of the earth, which rotation comes about due to another event... and so on indefinitely.

But perhaps I am illicitly assuming that change can be fully explained by an entity having different features at different times. Scott says that in Aristotelian philosophy, time is a measure of change and change is the more fundamental notion. I ask: what are the criteria of a being being more fundamental than another being?  

Last edited by truthseeker (7/12/2015 6:46 pm)

ArmandoAlvarez wrote:

I think I get it!

I think you do too. Well put.

ArmandoAlvarez wrote:

For a thing that exists to be changed, it must exist and be capable of change. . . . For example, for X to change to Y, . . . [X] must be capable of becoming Y[.]

That's the key right there. A capacity to undergo change is, functionally, what's meant by "potency" even if we call it something else.

Last edited by Scott (7/12/2015 7:26 pm)

@truthseeker,

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

truthseeker wrote:

the definition of 'change' is 'the having of different features at different times.'

I think we can remove time altogether as time is a consequent of change requiring its own causes and therefore not necessary to the definition of change or, as it were, requiring the cause of time to be included (rather than the consequent fact).

Now once we remove the consequent of time from the definition of change, we have remaining:

 'the having of different features'

However, merely the existence of being(s) with different features is/are arguably also a consequent of the fact of change or accidental to it. I mean this: that there is an X with property Y and another X with property Z doesn't necessarily involve causal relationship between the two (though, arguably, the difference in each being does, but I think this is beside the point). The fact does not speak directly to change itself except, perhaps, as a an accident (of change).

Change involves causality. Mere difference is arguably but the consequence of change and not change itself; however, I do concede that if difference(s) were impossible then there could be no change. Difference is therefore most important in the idea of change and consequently it is thus natural to include the concept of difference when thinking about change.

Further, the definition of change you kindly provided us to work with also does not seem to unite change in a single subject as seems necessary. When we think of change, we are thinking of one thing in somewise becoming in some way another or other or different, to be sure. But there is unity in the subject; otherwise, we end up with an idea of change that includes unrelated causal relationships more like correlation in statistics, in the sense of being accidental or coincidental merely.

I'm hoping I'm making sense here

Last edited by Timocrates (7/13/2015 7:03 pm)

Timocrates wrote:

I'm hoping I'm making sense here 

You are making sense. I need some time to study what's been written here and in other threads.