I'm very unsure with what happens with the metaphysics here. So, for Aquinas there needs be a concurrent cause in which God provides the matter for the efficient cause to be causally efficacious. What becomes of efficient causation if God doesn't provide the matter? It seems as though the whole notion of efficient causation is threatened or at least, totally reformed if we bring in the Concurrent cause. For if we do that, doesn't it follow that the whole notion of O's motion/rest being explained by Π & E to be incomplete?


When a substantial change occurs, it's not the form that suffers loss, it's the matter of the form that is under perdition. But here's what I'm very unclear of, what role does God's general concurrence play in say, the river flowing downhill?

Doesn't the notion of efficient causation include within it or is at least implicit of a concurrent cause which ends up supporting creation or providing prime matter? 

Last edited by Dennis (3/02/2016 10:07 am)

Hi Timocrates, thanks for the reply!

Let me see if I can be a bit more precise. I agree with iwpoe that the act of creation cannot properly called to be an efficient cause, unless we're going to talk about how the concurrent cause comes into play. Then I suppose iwpoe's analysis of what counts to be an efficient cause is incomplete. Here, some would say that I'm begging the question if I'm assuming that it isn't possible for an instance of 'efficient causation' which is absent of an O being affected by God (the Π). But I'm not doing that, God could definitely 'create' but it isn't an efficient cause.

I just agree with iwpoe that I don't see how efficient causation as derived off of Aristotelian Metaphysics without Concurrentism to be equated with God's act of Creation.

However, if we are going to say that creation is an efficient cause, this radically reforms what is generally understood to be an efficient cause from Aristotelian metaphysics. In short, Aristotelian Metaphysics is incomplete in its analysis. Is this right? On Joe Sachs's reading the term efficient cause is a later doctrine (thanks to iwpoe for the clarification), and this is true! The primary source of motion is the substance itself. 

I'm such a cause (efficient in this sense) when I model clay into a sculpture. The hammer used to craft a chair is not the efficient cause, but the agent which uses the hammer, is (credits to iwpoe again). Only 'organized wholes' can be such a cause. What does it mean here to be an organized whole?

Can we get an analytic formulation of what an efficient cause is, including the fact of deriving existence along with the other basic-understood things? I want that. As in, yes, you've said that things do not bequeath existence. Why then, do people re-state this principle as a matter of nothing but the change/rest concerning a substance without mentioning concurrence? I would say mentioning the concurrent cause is crucial to get a full understanding of what's happening. I've rarely, if ever, seen Thomists mention this (other than the ones in this forum). It's not that it's the only problem I have, I fail to see why there isn't an added emphasis to the effect that it shows that the notion of efficient causation under Aristotelian Metaphysics is incomplete. Why, "The Four causes," since it is misleading and not, "The Five Causes?" 

With that clear, even after reading stuff about concurrentism (mostly due to my own failure, I suppose), how does this differ from Mere-Conservationism? 

Alfred J. Fredosso wrote:

Mere Conservationism. According to mere conservationism, God contributes to the ordinary course of nature solely by creating and conserving natural substances along with their active and passive causal powers or capacities. For their own part, created substances are genuine agents that can and do causally contribute to natural effects by themselves, given only that God preserves them and their powers in existence. When such substances directly produce an effect via transeunt action (i.e., action that has an effect outside the agent itself), they alone are the immediate causes of that effect, whereas God is merely an indirect or remote cause of the effect by virtue of His conserving action. Consequently, the actions of created substances are their own actions /134/ and not God's actions, and their effects are their own immediate effects and not God's immediate effects.

Concurrentism. Concurrentism, which flourished among the late medieval Aristotelian scholastics and certain figures in the early modern period, occupies a middle ground between what its advocates perceive as the unseemly extremes of occasionalism and mere conservationism. According to concurrentism, a natural effect is produced immediately by both God and created substances, so that, contrary to occasionalism, secondary agents make a genuine causal contribution to the effect and in some sense determine its specific character by virtue of their own intrinsic properties, whereas, contrary to mere conservationism, they do so only if God cooperates with them contemporaneously as an immediate cause in a certain "general" way which goes beyond the conservation of the relevant agents, patients, and powers, and which renders the resulting effect the immediate effect of both God and the secondary causes. This cooperation with secondary causes is often called God's general concurrence or general concourse[1].

Let me see if I can put it this way. If O exists, this O is brimming with causal power. It has all the natural fecundity it needs to act. Does it need more 'act' in order to move? We can now appeal to its nature. And the cause for its immediate existence, i.e. God. Isn't this just mere-conservationism?

Onto-theologians that I've talked to have come with me saying that St. Thomas undermines what it means to be an efficient cause because of his concurrent cause. And the position above, about conserving and bringing it's being to the said substance as such, as mere conservationism, not concurrence. Thank you for reading my questions and confusions! I do need help to see the distinction between the two.


[1]http://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/pitfall.htm, I'm sure I've not understood this paper, and that's where I need help.

Last edited by Dennis (3/03/2016 4:00 am)

Dennis wrote:

Alright, so reading it again and again, I think I've missed something incredibly vital.

Mere-Conservationism states that when substances produce an effect via a transeunt action (i.e., action that has an effect outside the agent itself), contrary to Concurrentism which requires that there be new matter produced by God for the efficient cause to be causally efficacious. I suppose the two differ on how effects outside of themselves are produced and what is necessary to do that, rather than just being in existence. Both hold to the position that God needs to be conserving the being of the substance when, it is only when these substances are to be causally efficacious that talk about sufficient conditions would come into play.

If this is right, then I think Concurrentism is true, and Mere-conservationism is false. This would help us expand the notion of efficient causation to be a matter of passing down existence as well, since I do think that creation is implicit of concurrence. If all of this follows, I still have a complaint against Thomists and Scholastics who agree with this. It's naturally understandable that the four causes pertain to the philosophy of nature, but if we're talking about metaphysics per se, then there should be an added emphasis on the concurrent cause and how it adds to the whole picture.

Hello Dennis

The difficulty I see here with your presentation of Concurrentism is that it seems deeply counter-intuitive. Say I have a 2 by 4 and I craft it into a spear. While the effect is certainly outside of me I don't see why we would need to posit new material or new matter being created by God in the process of producing the spear from the 2 by 4 or at the moment of the spear's coming-to-be.

Last edited by Timocrates (3/07/2016 2:52 pm)