Miguel wrote:

Anyone else thinks it's pretty hilarious that Stardusty has been saying the same stuff almost every day for months?

As a CS Ph. D., I'm starting to think that Stardusty is a random chatterbot which has been fed gnu ath as a training set.
 

Frenchy, since you are a -- well -- Frenchy, have you read Louis Lavelle or any of the French spiritualist philosophers like René Le Senne? They were quite an interesting lot. Lavelle's main ideas seem to be that Being is actually act in the sense of action, and in a sense we "create ourselves" inasmuch as we exist as ourselves only as we act, and we therefore participate in Being, God. But maybe I got it wrong. He can be hard to understand, as is any continental philosopher. Some of these ideas can be taken from La Présence Totale; La Conscience de Soi and others. He also had some interesting works on morals, like L'erreur de Narcisse. Some people misunderstood Lavelle and thought he was a pantheist, but he was actually a theist, and also a christian. Overall I think they have way too much Cartesian and Malebranche in their tea, but they're still fascinating philosophers who unfortunately have been somewhat forgotten even in France. Much better than positivists, materialists and nihilists. Michele Federico Sciacca (Italian) was especially interesting and wrote some nice books on God and the soul

StardustyPsyche wrote:

@grod #143
Miguel wrote:Wait, grod is Portuguese? Não sabia.
Correcto. Provavelmente a única coisa correcta que Stardusty escreveu.

--Ok, so when I wrote that you are a "mathematical physicist"  that was untrue.  I thought so.

Also, when I wrote that you are a "PhD" that was untrue.  I thought so.

 
Sou brasileiro, não esperava outro lusófono aqui. Bom saber. Mas o Stardusty é meio louco, mesmo.

Last edited by Miguel (12/06/2017 1:11 pm)

@ficino,

Regarding #148

ficino wrote:

The commentator "Mr. Green" over in the comments on the Feser/Admed debate on F's blog supports the contention that A-T and modern science do not conflict. I think he holds that either they talk about different things or, when they talk about the same things, their terminological differences are only verbal. Mr. Green takes the same position that many other supporters of Feser take. I have no clue how to adjudicate. E.g. 

I think Mr Green's contention is that there is no conflict between AT *metaphyics* and modern science.  In fact, AT metaphysics provided the basic framework for Western science. 

The particular example he uses regarding potential/kinetic energy and elasticity was explained by Liebnitz consciously using the Aristotlean ideas of potency and act (although he used "vis mortua" and "vis viva").  This is a matter of history.

But I'm not sure why you posted.  Do you have a particular question?

bmiller wrote:

I think Mr Green's contention is that there is no conflict between AT *metaphyics* and modern science.  In fact, AT metaphysics provided the basic framework for Western science. 



But I'm not sure why you posted.  Do you have a particular question?

Edward Feser does not only argue that there is no conflict between A-T metaphysics and modern science. He goes further to argue that various points of contradiction that have been seen between A-T physics and Newtonian physics are in fact not contradictions. He admits that some details of A-T physical analysis are obsolete, e.g. that the earth is the place toward which heavy bodies move naturally or that projectile motion differs from the former motion essentially. But when he elaborates, Feser often concludes that some aspect of contemporary theory in physics either requires A-T metaphysical theses or comes close to them or does not conflict with them. So I am trying to get straight how much of A-T physics Feser thinks also stands. 
 

@ficino #158
"Edward Feser does not only argue that there is no conflict between A-T metaphysics and modern science
--That's because Feser vacillates between arguing against strawmen and making incomplete arguments and making false arguments.

There is no conflict between asserting motion and persistent existence are accounted for by a googleplex invisible unicorns pushing things along and modern science.  Modern science cannot prove a googleplex invisible unicorns do not exist, just as modern science cannot prove god isn't nudging everything along moment by moment.

That is the strawman Feser knocks  down.

Modern science shows that neither god or invisible unicorns are *necessary*.

The First Way fails as an argument for the *necessity* of a hierarchical first mover acting in the present moment to account for motion that is manifest and evident to our senses.

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.

Feser is completely incapable of addressing my arguments summarized in #7 and #8.  His only capacity is to delete them, argue against strawmen, lay out sophomorically incomplete A-T examples, and trick the gullible into buying his books and articles behind paywalls.

Last edited by StardustyPsyche (12/07/2017 9:40 am)