@ficino,

It would be great if you could provide links or the like.

Feser discusses it here.  But it is a common enough concept in Thomism.  
You seem to have some background in Thomism, so I'm  surprised that this idea seems new to you.

It seems you want to pin Aristotle down to some particular definitions of modification, motion, alteration, change  across all his works, accepting some while dismissing others.  I think that is difficult to do outside of the context of a particular work as shown here:

On Generation and Corruption Book 1,Part 4
Now, if 'musicalness and unmusicalness' had not been a property essentially inhering in man, these changes would have been a coming-to-be of unmusicalness and a passing-away of musicalness: but in fact 'musicalness and unmusicalness' are a property of the persistent identity, viz. man. (Hence, as regards man, these changes are 'modifications'; though, as regards musical man and unmusical man, they are a passing-away and a coming-to-be.) Consequently such changes are 'alteration.' When the change from contrary to contrary is in quantity, it is 'growth and diminution'; when it is in place, it is 'motion'; when it is in property, i.e. in quality, it is 'alteration': but, when nothing persists, of which the resultant is a property (or an 'accident' in any sense of the term), it is 'coming-to-be', and the converse change is 'passing-away'. 

 

Calhoun wrote:

 
Can you elaborate on that point more? thus far You have only said that its because the subject does not persist through generation/corruption. But its obviously false that something needs to always and necessarily persist for it to count as Change. Your Quote from Wippel hardly seems illuminating here , there so much back and forth about what he is inclined to think, what appears to him and what STA's overall metaphysic allows, There doesn't seem to be anything of importance we should be taking on board here. 

And can you specify which version of Feser's article you're reading because I've never seen the word kinesis used by him. So I don't really see your point. 
 

@ Calhoun: I think everyone will agree that Thomas argues that God sustains all things in existence. Feser expounds Thomas’ arguments for Divine Conservation, and against existential inertia, in an article in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly (“Existential Inertia and the Five Ways” 2011). There Feser recasts the First Way as an argument about things’ continued existence, as that follows from the fact that their potency has been actualized. On p. 242 Feser acknowledges that he is not putting forward textual exegesis “but something more like ‘rational reconstruction’.” This amounts to what I said: that deriving DDC from premises about motion requires additional premises that are not supplied in the SCG or ST. Thomas argues directly for DDC when he discusses divine providence, not when he argues for God from motion. On p. 243 n. 16, Feser does add that an anonymous referee brought up just the issue I am voicing. Feser in reply gives citations of some works by modern Thomists who think the First Way does establish DDC and overturn EI, or at least, who think it "can be plausibly developed in that direction," e.g. Gilson, Kretzmann, McInerny and a few others. I have not gotten to those publications. 

My beef was with Feser’s recasting of Aquinas’ argument/s from motion as an argument for DDC and against existential inertia. Maybe Feser needed to be clearer in popular works that he was doing ‘rational reconstruction’ of Thomas and not exposition of the text. I think he makes this side of his project more obvious in Five Proofs. I may just have missed other places. Whether Feser is justified in this reconstruction is a question beyond this combox!

As to your last question, I read Feser's article where it originally appeared, in the collection of essays edited by himself, the citation of which I supplied earlier. The paper has been reprinted in Feser’s Neo-Scholastic Essays. The original book is about Aristotle. In this paper, Feser transliterates some Greek words (e.g. stasis), but he doesn't transliterate kinesis. Greek also uses metabole for what is translated as “change.” In his mature works, Aristotle insists that not all metabole is kinesis. Feser doesn’t go into this in that article (cf. below if you want!).

FWIW in a review of Neo-Scholastic Essays [RevMeta 69 (2016) 621-623], Jamie Spiering of Benedictine College says that this particular paper, there reprinted, is the weakest of the ones on natural theology in the collection: “in general, the piece offers a series of merely plausible responses to challenges that seem to have been exaggerated by Einstein and Newton’s interpreters.” Hmm…
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The following I add for those who may be interested in exegesis. I think it is mistaken of Feser in “Motion in Aristotle, Newton and Einstein” (his 2013 paper) to speak about a “broad” sense of motion in Aristotle that includes generation and corruption. Feser himself cites the Wippel discussion I quoted earlier. There is no such “broad sense” in Aristotle parallel to a “stricter sense.” What we have is Aristotle changing his exposition. From Physics V onward—i.e. in what is generally accepted as the later half of that work--Ari denies that generation and corruption are motions. Aquinas goes along with this. In his proofs from motion, Aquinas employs Aristotle's expositions from this latter part of the Physics, where Aristotle had limited motion to locomotion, alteration, and growth/decay. Check Aquinas' frequent references to the Physics in SCG I.13. There, in arguments from motion, Aquinas does not employ passages from earlier books of the Physics or from other early works of Aristotle in which generation and decay are listed among motions. In his arguments from motion, Aquinas cites from Aristotle's Physics only bks. VI-VIII, where motion (kinesis) is limited to locomotion, alteration, and growth/decay. I have yet to see Feser establish a case that Ari or Aq arrives denies existential inertia at the end of any argument for God from motion. But Gilson and others may be right that such a case can be established. As I said, it’s another question, whether Feser is right that such a thesis is latent in Thomas' arguments from motion and/or is a valid reconstruction from what Thomas argued. 

ficino #65
"I am sorry that I can't do justice right now to the efforts you've made in your #8. I've read it a couple of times, and so far it seems more directed against the Third Way or the argument in the DEE than against the Second Way. That's because the Second Way focuses on hierarchical series of causes, but as I understand your #8, you mainly look at the question, whether something that exists will pop out of existence w/o a divine sustainer"
--The Third Way references the Second Way in its assertion of the impossibility of an infinite regress:
*Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes*
http://iteadthomam.blogspot.com/2010/02/third-way-in-syllogistic-form.html

The First Way also hinges on the assertion of the impossibility of an infinite regress.

The erroneous worldview of Aquinas is what leads him to a hierarchical regress analysis in his first three ways.

If an object in uniform linear motion required "another" to act upon it to sustain its motion then a hierarchical regress would be called for.

If an object needed a cause to persist in existence then a hierarchical regress would be called for..  But as you pointed out "Whoa, where did that come from?"

An object in uniform linear motion persists in motion because there is no change in its kinetic energy to do so, and no change means no changer is necessary to account for observed uniform linear motion.

An existent object persists in existence because there is no change in its mass/energy to do so, and no change means no changer is necessary to account for observed existential inertia.

Thus, I have utterly destroyed the First Way.  I have utterly destroyed the Second Way.  As arguments for the necessity of a hierarchical first mover both fail under my clear and unrefuted arguments.

If you, or anybody else, can use rational argumentation, on the merits, to specifically describe any errors in my disproofs of the First Way and Second way the favor would be much appreciated.

StardustyPsyche wrote:

JT #69
"In generation and corruption there is still a substrate that persists through change."
--Interesting.  Can your reference any mathematical descriptions of this substrate?

​If render your request in perfect Sanskrit first. . 

JT #76
"The substrate is that which provides the matter for what is generated, or what takes its place during corruption. "
--The substrate is some arm waving, nebulous, inspecific product of the imagination, apparently, since you were unable to provide any description of it beyond that level.

"Motion here is just a reference to change as such, or the actualization of potency. It is irrelevant which exact word Aristotle uses for this kind of change."
--An object in uniform linear motion is already fully actualized in a particular kinetic energy and requires no further actualization.  The error of Aquinas is in thinking it is necessary for an object in uniform linear motion to be continuously acted upon by "another".

Feser argues against a strwaman, as he so often does, because he cannot refute my actual arguments.  He is only capable of scolding his followers for engaging on the merits, and deleting comments that demonstrate his pedestrian errors.
http://faculty.fordham.edu/klima/SMLM/PSMLM10/PSMLM10.pdf

Feser argues against the strawman that modern science rules out the premise of the First Way, that god continuously acts upon an object in uniform linear motion.  The First Way purports to show god is necessary for the observation of motion.  I have destroyed that argument on modern science and clearly demonstrated that Feser is only capable of arguing against a strawman on the relationship between inertia and the First Way.

One can speculate that trillions of invisible little unicorns nudge every particle along moment to moment to account for observed uniform linear motion.  The unicorn speculation is equally valid to the god speculation in this respect. 


​I"'m not sure existential inertia needs to be refuted."
--For the Second Way it does.  For Feser to make the repeated public pronouncements that material could simply "blink out" of existence were it not for the continuous action of god existential inertia needs to be refuted.

"It is a heuristic principle of Newtonian physics, required for the purposes of mathematical abstraction. It has little to say about things such as motion or rest, actualisation or potency, "
--Material is already fully actualized in its existential respect.  Therefore, no changer is necessary to account for the persistence of material because the persistence of material is no change in its existential respect.

​"Anyway, as what is important here is change as the actualisation of potency, existential inertia is doubly irrelevant. So far as existential inertia would describe what is actualising particular potencies, and in a particular way (i.e., in line with the principle of inertia), this is enough to show it doesn't undermine the first way."
--Right, existential inertia eliminates the Second Way as an argument for the necessity of a first mover to account for efficient cause.

"This all should be obvious, of course,"
--Indeed, it should be, but very apparently it is not to a great many people.

"because what does the objection really amount to but saying that some contingent things don't change, for a certain amount of time."
--Material never changes in its existential respect, only in its arrangements or structure over time.

"You don't need to invoke the principle of inertia to notice this, "
--Inertia destroys the First Way as an argument for the necessity of a hierarchical first mover acting in the present moment to account for uniform linear motion.  You can speculate the appearance of inertia is actually due to magic, invisible unicorns, or God with those 3 speculations being of equal explanatory value and equal rational necessity.