Timocrates,

"Please remember the maxim - especially important for physics - that from nothing comes nothing."

I agree that nothing comes from nothing, but I'm not suggesting that the apple's greenness came from nowhere - I think that's metaphysically impossible. I'm suggesting that there's no need to speak of "coming from" at all. The apple was red at t1, and green at t2 (because of this or that cause), and that's all there is to it. It seems gratuitous to speak of a "coming-from" event here.

I agree that the apple had a capacity to be green, and that the apple was potentially green, but I don't see how this shows that we need to posit another mode of existence (potential existence). To say that X potentially exists isn't to commit oneself to a realm of potential existence - it's merely to say that X can exist, or it's possible for X to exist. (Possibility can be cashed out in different ways; my preferred account is Pruss's causal account - roughly, X is possible iff either X or something can cause X.)

Perhaps I'm confusing something here though 
 

Why is it shadowy and mysterious to say the block of clay is potentially a sphere? It seems to me far more mysterious to say that the block of clay is now a lump and now it's a sphere when there was nothing about the lump that might predispose it to become a sphere. You're not giving an account of change so much as just noting that change occurred. You've confused the explanandum  and the explanans, all due respect.

iwpoe,

"Why is it shadowy and mysterious to say the block of clay is potentially a sphere?"

I don't think it's shadowy and mysterious to say that. I find no difficulty in understanding "The block of clay is potentially a sphere." What I find mysterious is the claim that some things have this mode of existence that is non-actual. 
 

ML wrote:

iwpoe,

"Why is it shadowy and mysterious to say the block of clay is potentially a sphere?"

I don't think it's shadowy and mysterious to say that. I find no difficulty in understanding "The block of clay is potentially a sphere." What I find mysterious is the claim that some things have this mode of existence that is non-actual. 
 

Well, technically, no potentiality of X is entirely non actual, at least as Feser accounts for it in scholastic metaphysics- except prime matter and the merely logically possible.

Though I accept something like pure forms as not particularly "mysterious" either. The critique from strangeness usually comes merely from the privileging of a certain picture or aspect of the world- Actuality in your case. Anti-metaphysical arguments often amount to nothing but "this is an odd kind of inquiry if you only focus on the natural sciences".

I'll start by re-emphasizing iwpoe's point that you have confused the explanandum with the explanan.

ML wrote:

This is helpful, thanks. I'm still unsure though how the apple's having a disposition to turn green entails that greenness somehow exists in the apple, unless one is speaking figuratively. In other words, I understand what it means to say "The apple has a disposition to turn green" but I don't understand what it means to say "Before the apple turns green, greenness exists in the apple in a potential way." It seems positing dispositions says everything we want to say without having to commit ourselves to some shadowy, mysterious mode of existence.

It should be stated that potencies inhere in act. What this means is that their existence functions as a principle of their formal identity. Read in this way, the green-ness is an unactualized potential. What is meant by this? It means that the state of the apple being green, is a reality, which is either (a) suppressed by different causal factors and thus fails to obtain, but remains possible, or (b) never comes to fruition (such factors are never met to ignite this passion).


Thomas Hobbes was someone who studied Aristotle for ten years, he still couldn't understand what final causes were. His argument goes something like this, any analysis of causation that invokes final causes seems to put final causation before efficient causation. He thought this to be wrong, since it topples the order of causation, i.e. efficient causes come first. He then concludes that there is no difference between an efficient cause and a final cause, and thus, there are no final causes.


The problem with such an account is that it completely ignores the investigation into the formal identity of things. If we put a piece of paper and a batch of dough into the oven and turn on the heat, the dough will rise and the paper will burn. Why will the dough rise, and the paper burn? Because of the formal identity, because of what it means to be a batch of dough and a piece of paper, they receive the causal suitor and as a result of their reception (which is dependent upon their formal identity) produce different effects. This is what we call 'potency.' We cannot do away with the reality of potency just by invoking dispositions, because the tendency of things is exactly what we call dispositions. This tendency can only function or be real, if the potency exists (either suppressed by different causal factors or as an unrealized possible function of an identity which never comes to fruition). So the potency of the paper to becoming a cake does not exist. Is this another way of saying that we have made an error in deciphering what the potency of paper is? I would say no. We're not interested in the potency of paper as such, we're rather interested in what potency is, and how it exists. If the analysis is right, we've established that the existence of potencies, is as a function or principle of the formal identity of something which is actual.  Dr. Feser rightly emphasizes that efficient causation, without final causation would be unintelligible. On the same vein, the emphasis of the formal identity on which the potency depends, is equally invaluable. We must not forget that potencies have their being in actual being(s).

Let's come back to Thomas Hobbes. Consider you have a matchstick in a vacuum, and you've struck the matchstick endlessly, suddenly someone releases oxygen into the vacuum, and the matchstick ignites. Now, suppose you have a different matchstick and oxygen, but it was never struck, however, when struck, it ignites. There are many efficient causes in play here that work toward the ignition of the the matchstick (phosphorus). When neither of the matchsticks are lit, they still remain in potency to being up in flames. The failure of the phosphorus to always be in flames only implies that that reality has either been suppressed by different causal factors where the formal identity of the phosphorus enjoys a different faucet of its identity, as opposed to being up in flames. This, is metaphysical potency.

I am not familiar with Dr. Alexander Pruss's causal account of possibility, but if this ignores dispositions as such it wouldn't be a very rich account, we could arguably do better. The upshot of having potency would be that it is ontologically prior to any-all efficient causation, and Hobbes is wrong. They exist as a function of that which is already in act, if they did not exist, efficient causation would be unintelligible and that the potencies of an object is decided by their formal identity.

Perhaps you would benefit from this thread of mine as well. The Scholastics had many different things to say about Potency.

Scott, John, and Timocrates, I'll come back with my problems about reductionism and Act/Potency a bit later.

Last edited by Dennis (2/17/2016 9:18 am)