@grod #159
"As far as I know Prof. Feser never made comment either way, maybe because the whole issue is irrelevant for his particular purposes"
--Nonsense.  The key notion of ancient physics that an object in motion will naturally come to rest unless acted upon by another object is critical to using the First Way as an argument for the *necessity* of a hierarchical first mover acting in the present moment to account of observed uniform linear motion.

**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. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other**

On the Aristotelian world view of motion that is indeed a very powerful argument for a hierarchical first mover acting in the present moment.

On modern science that primary argument of Aquinas utterly fails.

Motion of an object persists because it is no change in its kinetic energy, no change necessitates no changer.

The failure of the First Way is just that simple to see.  Feser has never addressed this simple disproof of A-T, he is only capable of calling names, having a public temper tantrum, scolding his followers, and deleting posts that prove him wrong.  Wake up folks, you are being scammed for book sales.
 

SP never properly addresses refutations of his points. We've had 17 pages of this thread to show that. He would be saying the same things til kingdom come, or until there's a bug in his spam bot programming.

Live long and prosper grod.🖖

ficino wrote:

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. 
 

As grod mentioned, physics as such is not a concern of Dr. Feser.  He is interested in metaphysics.

Physics and Metaphysics are different things.  Science and Philosophy of Science are different things.
For instance, "From nothing, nothing comes" is not a physics statement, but a metaphysical statement.    But contemporary theory in physics requires this, as did classical physics, as did Aristotelian physics. 

Are you unaware that there is a difference?

@bmiller
"His only goal is to annoy."
--How do you know my goals?  Are you god?

Last edited by StardustyPsyche (12/08/2017 12:11 am)