StardustyPsyche wrote:

@Miguel
"I find the act/potency and essence/existence distinctions more obviously true than pretty much anything discussed in advanced physics today."
--More's the pity.

 
Yes, because knowing things have a capacity to change is much more controversial than studying the deeper natural features involved in its changes, often with theorizing that has to go beyond direct observation.

Again, if you don't understand the act/potency distinction as something *obvious*, you don't really understand it at all. Same for essence/existence. If you think that roughly knowing what a thing is doesn't tell us whether or not it exists, you agree. If you think that things can change and therefore have capacities for different changes, you agree.

First way and second way then show how we need Pure Act and pure existence in order to account for mixtures of act/potency and essence/existence. Because obviously act is primitive with regards to potency, and if we don't just have independent existence by itself we cannot account for dependent existence. It's the instrumental character of the causes that is a problem in e-ordered series. If you only have moons reflecting light, even an infinity of moons, that whole reflection process would not have been possible if there were no sun, no real source of light (instead of a reflecting one) somewhere in the chain. And this is why you have not refuted the first and second ways, and this is why if you actually try to publish your "objections" you'll be scorned.

This is metaphysics, son. It goes beyond physics and is basic to it; before discussing how things work according to a mathematical structure, we need to understand *that* things are. And if you don't think potency/act and essence/existence distinctions are more evident than advanced physics, it tells me you don't understand neither metaphysics nor physics. As you don't understand the first and second ways, eiter.

Miguel wrote:

Wait, grod is Portuguese? Não sabia.

Correcto. Provavelmente a única coisa correcta que Stardusty escreveu.
 

@Miguel #141
"Yes, because knowing things have a capacity to change is much more controversial than studying the deeper natural features involved in its changes, often with theorizing that has to go beyond direct observation."
--Material changes arrangement over time but not in amount.

To account for real material change we thus employ a temporal regress analysis.  Members of a real material causal series propagate their causal influences over time, not hierarchically.

Real material change does not result in a change in the amount of material.  This is known variously as conservation of mass/energy, existential inertia, or the persistence of material.  Since no change in the amount of material occurs no changer is necessary to account for the persistent amount of material that is manifest and evident to our senses.

Thus, the Second Way fails as an argument for the necessity of a hierarchical first mover acting in the present moment to account for existential inertia that is manifest and evident to our senses.

"Again, if you don't understand the act/potency distinction as something *obvious*, you don't really understand it at all. "
--You don't understand that those are ancient and obsolete terms that have no analytical value in modern science, which is why modern scientists do not employ those terms.

"First way and second way then show how we need Pure Act"
--"Pure act" is an unintelligible nonsense term made up by people with a fundamentally flawed world view in an irrational attempt to solve the dead end reasoning problems their erroneous views inevitably lead to.

"Pure act" makes as much sense as "pure motion"

The First Way fails because Aquinas presupposed a worldview in which material objects require "another" to continuously act upon them in the present moment to sustain their motion.  Aquinas was wrong about that.

The Second Way fails because Aquinas presupposed a worldview in which material objects require a cause to continuously act upon them in the present moment to sustain their existence.  Aquinas was wrong about that.

All you need to know to falsify the necessity of the first and second ways are kinetic inertia and existential inertia, both of which are manifest and evident to our senses.

"pure existence"
--Another unintelligible term that makes as much sense as "pure motion".

" It's the instrumental character of the causes that is a problem in e-ordered series"
--Instrumentality is meaningless when one allows for propagation delay and that the member arbitrarily designated as "first" actually is not first.  If you want to call the stick an instrument then you must also call the hand, tendon, muscle, blood, heart, lung, air, plants, water cycle, soil and back and back and back each and all instruments in their temporal turn.

Thus the notion of designating the hand as a first causal member, the stick as an instrumental member, and the rock as the final member is hopelessly simplistic to the point of being child like.  Honestly, how can any rational adult even think in such stilted terms?

" this is why if you actually try to publish your "objections" you'll be scorned."
--I am scorned because nobody can point out the specific words in my arguments that are mistaken so they lower themselves to adolescent epithets.




 

@Calhoun #113
"its simply not true that "no scientific works employ act/potency in their causal analysis" . Neo-Aristotelian philosophy of science is in fact very popular, the work on Powers and Dispositions for example is pradigmatically based on act/potency.  So this assertion by itself wouldn't show anything. "
--You proved my point in your own words.  Neo-Aristotelian philosophy is not practiced by any recognized scientist.  No scientific textbooks employ Neo-Aristotelian philosophy of science to teach physics or anything else besides  ancient history.

The standard model, relativity, and quantum mechanics are all devoid of Neo-Aristotelian philosophy of science.

There is no place in the practice of modern science whatsoever for Neo-Aristotelian philosophy of science.

"if first member doesn't impart causal power to subsequent members they can't instrumentally cause anything. so we logically require First Cause on pain of incoherence."
--Temporally, not hierarchically.  To find the first cause of motion, or more generally change, we must consider the deep past, at least as far back as the big bang.

"But this is simply a restatement of your old claims that have been already criticized, offered counter-example etc"
--No counter examples have been offered to the fact that all observed real material alterations of observable properties occur absent motion. 

"But this is complete gibberish repeated yet again, what does it even mean to be "fully actualized in the respect of its motion, or alternatively in the respect of its particular kinetic energy"? or to be "fully actualized in the respect of is its existence"
--"For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e. that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another." -- Aquinas, First Way

Aquinas had the erroneous world view that an object in motion have some "another" acting upon it in that moment.  He was wrong.  An object in motion is actually in motion, it is fully actualized in its respect of motion, it is fully actualize in its respect of kinetic energy.

An object in motion is not potentially in motion, rather, it is actually in motion.  An object with a particular kinetic energy is not potentially at that particular kinetic energy, rather, it is actually at that kinetic energy.

Aquinas was wrong.  Aristotle was wrong.  Almost everybody at that time was wrong.
 

I don't care how you wanna talk about the change; as long as things change and you're in agreement that things have a capacity for change, instead of simply popping up ex nihilo all the time, you agree wih the act/potency distinction. As long as you accept that roughly knowing a thing's essence doesn't tell us whether or not it exists, you agree with the essence/existence distinction. Scientists use these concepts all the time because it's part of common human understanding, it makes sense of the world. For the third time: if you don't get that these are obvious concepts, you don't get them at all.

"If you want to call the stick an instrument then you must also call the hand, tendon, muscle, blood, heart, lung, air, plants, water cycle, soil and back and back and back each and all instruments in their temporal turn.

Thus the notion of designating the hand as a first causal member, the stick as an instrumental member, and the rock as the final member is hopelessly simplistic to the point of being child like."

That's exactly Aquinas's point. The hand is also not the first cause, it is also obviously an instrumental cause. The rock is also not the final member. So far you are in agreement with Aquinas and are setting the stage for the first two ways. Of course the hand is instrumental like the stick, of course just the hand doesn't fully explain the motion of the rock (and whatever is beyond the rock of constituting it), because the hand, just like the stick and the rock, is an instrumental cause, it doesn't have the principle of movement in itself. The movement of the hand must be explained by the arm and the man, that will have to be explained by the flexing of the muscles going all the way to the activity of neuron firings, etc etc, and the very subsistance of the man in act or existence is dependent upon the atmospheric conditions around him, and so on and on.

This is why, as I said (and you ignored, unfortunately), hierarchical series of causes need not be temporally simultaneous. Simultaneity is not the gist of it. You can have a "time bomb" analysis of a hierarchical series, inasmuch as if cause 1 ceases to exist, cause 2 will also eventually cease to exist, even if not immediately. How can you say such nonsense that hierarchical series do not exist? If you agree even in a limited sense that the hand is ultimately necessary for the movement of the rock (and ultimately that the movement of the hand depends on the activity of certain neurons, etc), then you already agree with that there are hierarchical series of causes. That they exist is a metaphysical fact that can easily be observed. A hierarchical series is one in which there is a strict dependence relation between its members, the last member can only exist or change as it's changing because there is a preceding one that is maintaining the conditions for the last member's continuous existence or change. If this preceding member disappears, the last member's existence and change will eventually come to an end.

Taken in this sense, it is obvious that hierarchical series of causes exist. As it is obvious that the essences of the things we know are different from their act of existence. You can roughly know and understand what a unicorn is wihout knowing it exists. As it is also obvious that if there is "real material change" as you put it, then the subjects of these changes have within them a capacity for real material change. If they had no capacity, no potentiality for that, they would not undergo such changes. If water can be boiled, it means water has a potency for being boiled, and the change will involve an actualization of a potency, however you wanna further explain it by SCIENCE!tm. It's true in a very obvious sense, and at first it might even seem trivial.

Now, until you get at least to this point, you won't be able to understand why your criticism of the first two ways does not work. Change and existence can be investigated in terms of hierarchical series of causes, as indeed is the case (your hand can only move the stick moving the rock because it is being moved by the muscles being moved by the neurons etc -- you can only exist because the operations of your body provide you a condition for life which is also only possible because the atmosphere around you conditions that you can keep existing there, etc), and the issue is that there can't be an infinite regress in hierarchical series of causes, because each of the causes so analyzed are dependent on other causes for their conditioning-capacity; act/potency cannot be explained if there is no unmoved mover that can condition even an infinite series of change; existence cannot be explained if there is no being whose existence is unconditioned and independent of any further conditions, and can therefore provide the conditions necessary for anything at all existing in this chain of causes, etc. As I said: an infinite series of traincarts is not sufficient for them to move, there has to be an engine; an infinite series of moons reflecting light does not account for the light that is being reflected, there has to be a real source of light.

But until you understand what hierarchical series really are, and how it's pretty obvious (almost trivial) that they exist, and that the same is true for act/potency etc, you will not understand the first and second ways. And your arguments won't convince anyone because you're not really engaging what they are talking about. Many people here were atheists at one point and knew even more about physics than you do. But it's not what the argument is about. You're not getting it.