- John West
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Re: Aquinas First Way
ArmandoAlvarez wrote:
What I've had a hard time understanding as long as I've been looking into the first way is, why do we need a single first mover that is pure actuality rather than a universe full of stuff that is partly actual and partly potential all actualizing the potentialities in each other into the past?
This question can be summarized: “Why must the regress of dependence-on-for-change bottom out in a purely actual First Mover instead of act-potency composites?”
I can only see two ways for the regress to bottom out in act-potency composites. The first is for it to bottom out in an entity that's not-currently-changing-but-can-change (see previous post). The second is for it to bottom out in a situation where one entity in the regress (a) actualizes another entity in the regress (b) and b actualizes a, so that no further actualizers are needed.
- John West
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Re: Aquinas First Way
Here is a summary of what I think is left to do:
(1) Show that hylemorphism is the only way to account for change.
(2) Give arguments for the dispositionalism about causation presupposed in the argument. (It's important to the per accidens v. per se causal series distinction.)
(3) The issues mentioned in this post's last paragraph.
(4) Show that symmetrical actualization is impossible.
The rest of you gentlemen are going to have to pick it up from here for now, though.
- Greg
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Re: Aquinas First Way
Aquinas himself only has the less strict "in a relevant respect", so I don't know why the strict formulation was what we got. I don't know what exactly Aquinas was trying to head off with that qualification, but the strict reading leads to obvious absurdities. Something does not have to be actually purple to make something blue purple. Scotch doesn't have to be drunk to make you drunk. Water doesn't have to be polished to polish a rock. Etc.
Well, the goal is to keep the First Way consistent with the principle of proportionate causality, which is necessary for saying something about some of the divine attributes and for developing his metaphysics of creation. If that which is brought into actuality must be made actual by something already actual "in a relevant respect," then what is in the effect must "in some sense" pre-exist in the cause.
How to think about that principle is another question. In what sense does drunkenness pre-exist in scotch? Well, first, Thomas is going to broaden the principle. The "relevant respect" in which an actuality must pre-exist in the cause is that it exists "formally, eminently, or virtually." The worry here is that if one understands these modes of existence as covering things like the scotch's power of causing drunkenness in humans, then it might seem that what is required is a pretty thin sense of "pre-existence in the cause." If causation is a matter of activating powers, then yes, the possible objects of powers will be specifiable before the effect is brought about, and in that sense at least the effect can always be said to pre-exist in the cause.