SP,

​I wasn't directly responding to you, because, having once tried to debate with you, I have no illusions about the futility of trying that. I did notice you didn't properly respond to any of my points. You continued to treat existential inertia as something other than a heuristic principle necessary for mathematical abstraction (also see grodrigues post earlier, which you didn't respond to). You also ignored the points that what matters for the first way (you seem confused about what the first and second way are - the argument from motion is the first way) is that actualisation of potency, not kinetic energy or local motion or any one species of actualisation of potency alone. You therefore didn't answer the point that the principle of inertia, accepting for a moment it is legitimate to appeal to it in this context, wouldn't remove the fact that objects would still be actualising potencies, including the potency to act according to the principle of inertia and not in some other way.

​You're a joke, SP. Now, I don't see any Devanagari, and I'm sure as heck no answering your silly requests before you answer mine. Nor will I respond further to you unless you properly respond to me.

JT #81
" I did notice you didn't properly respond to any of my points"
--I properly responded to many of your points.  You just don't recognize the propriety of those responses.

"You continued to treat existential inertia as something other than a heuristic principle necessary for mathematical abstraction"
--It is manifest and evident to the senses that material persists.  There are an unbounded number of specific formulations of speculations of invisible entities to account for material persisting by having material tend to cease to exist but for the actions of these invisible entities.  That is just convoluted speculation, your God, magic invisible unicorns, and on and on and on.

Why wouldn't material persist?  It already exists.  To continue to exist is no change in its existential respect.  No changer is necessary to account for no change.  Simple. Done.

" (also see grodrigues post earlier, which you didn't respond to)"
Acutally, I did, #29
http://classicaltheism.boardhost.com/viewtopic.php?pid=7998#p7998

"you seem confused about what the first and second way are - the argument from motion is the first way"
--Hilarious

"is that actualisation of potency, not kinetic energy or local motion or any one species of actualisation of potency alone"
--Garbled nonsense.  Changes in quantity, color, or any other material alteration all require locomotion, or local motion, or whatever made up A-T term you want to apply to material moving.

"You therefore didn't answer the point that the principle of inertia, accepting for a moment it is legitimate to appeal to it in this context, wouldn't remove the fact that objects would still be actualising potencies,"
--No, objects persist in motion because they are already fully actualized in that motion, or alternatively, fully actualized in their kinetic energy.

"including the potency to act according to the principle of inertia and not in some other way"
--No, that would require a changer to stay the same, an obvious absurdity, and certainly unnecessary.

"You're a joke, SP"
--Ha Ha Ha

"I'm sure as heck no answering your silly requests before you answer mine"
--I answered your points at length, as well as grod, but you both lack the insight to recognize it.  Feser attracts that type.


 

Strangely enough, SP #83 post reminds me of the style used in New Atheistic/Scientistrolls """reviews""" of philosophy books on Amazon. Especially this "Hilarious." single quote. A coincidence, I'm sure.....

@FrenchySkepticalCatholic
"Strangely enough, SP #83 post reminds me of the style used in New Atheistic/Scientis trolls"
--How about the argument on #7 and #8 of this thread, do they remind you of "trolls"?

 "Especially this "Hilarious." single quote."
--That JT would attempt to educate me that the First Way is the argument from motion is indeed hilarious.

But by all mean, since you are a skeptical Catholic, what are the reasons you think #7 and #8 are the work of a "troll"?


 

bmiller wrote:

@ficino,

The bolded part sounds contradictory to me!

My goal was to point out that he uses various definitions of motion at various times across his works.  It seems that you are insisting on a universal and *true* definition that can only be found in his "mature" works. You haven't made a case for that.

But even if you did make that case, Aristotle's notions had been developed and refined by later philosophers in the 1500 or so years since Aristotle wrote to when Aquinas lived.  In fact Aquinas developed his ideas even further.  So I don't understand why you think it is an objection to the First Way for Aquinas to partially support his argument derived/developed from Aristotle's metaphysics. 


No, that is part of a discussion of metabole not of kinesis. The former includes genesis and corruption. In Aristotle's mature works, however, and in arguments from motion where Aquinas cites Aristotle's mature works, kinesis does not include genesis and corruption. Some passage may have eluded me, though.

Yes, this is a good example of I'm referring to.  

I don't know whether this side-topic about the reference of "motion" in Aristotle really matters for Stardusty's thread. 

Anyway, I agree that Aquinas and other scholastics do not limit themselves to what they understand are Aristotle's doctrines, and I agree that they are not obligated to follow Aristotle on a point.

As I said a few days ago, having read Feser's article in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, I see that he holds it legitimate to connect conclusions about God's conservation of things' existence to premises set out in the First Way, as though Thomas' argument from motion brings in a rejection of existential inertia. I have not read the discussions that Feser cited in the relevant footnote. Since Feser reports that a referee challenged him on this very point in an earlier draft of the paper, I conclude so far that it is controversial and/or questionable to construe the First Way as an argument against existential inertia. 

There are two problems: 1) how to construe what Aquinas wrote in the Five Ways and elsewhere; 2) how the Five Ways should be understood within an entire Thomist system as articulated today. Based on what I know, I am so far not in agreement with Feser's construal if it's taken as an answer to 1). Feser however seems to really want to answer 2) (cf. e.g. p. 240: "Here I will ignore exegetical questions, borrowing freely from the
history of Thomistic interpretation of the proofs rather than sticking closely to
Aquinas’s texts." and so forth) I haven't read enough yet to reach a view on 2). 


As far as Aristotle's undestanding of kinesis, discussions of that run into the problem that such discussions usually face, sc. the patchy state of many of the writings that come down to us as single treatises, problems about whether Aristotle's views underwent development, even alternative versions in different manuscript families, etc. etc. Arguing over Aristotle is a whole industry.

Aquinas never takes a developmentalist approach to interpreting Aristotle, as far as I have seen. Aquinas' discussion of Physics V.2 in his commentary makes clear that he recognizes Aristotle as narrowing the range of kinesis from what Ari had allowed in Book III. Cf. lectiones 2-4 of his commentary on Book V. Aquinas goes into a lot of detail explaining how Aristotle restricts kinesis or motus to changes in location, quality or quantity and denies that changes in substance are species of kinesis. Aquinas explains that Aristotle in bk V makes motus a species of mutatio.

Vernon Bourke in the intro to the transl I'm looking at (I go to dhspriory for the Latin) on various criteria arrives at a date of around 1268-1269 for this commentary. I have read that Aquinas was working on the ST from 1265-1274. Supposing that pars prima was written first, one might think that Aquinas was nevertheless up on Aristotle's latter books of the Physics, since Aquinas had cited Physics VI-VIII often in SCG I.13. In those books of the Physics, kinesis refers only to locomotion, alteration and gen/corr. 

I agree with Wippel, as I said earlier, that the presumption should be that Aquinas understands motus in just the same way in the First Way. Can I prove that Aq is not taking motus to include substantial change as well? No. There are a lot of auxiliary assumptions that one can't definitively falsify about the background of an antique text. The evidence I've seen inclines against the assumption that motus in the First Way includes change of substance.  

Last edited by ficino (12/01/2017 9:36 am)