@Calhoun #257

Counter-examples to particular principles you try to employ,

No, none have been provided.  A few attempts were made, but those asserted counterexamples turn out to be false. 

Material remains constant in its existential respect, that is, mass/energy is conserved, the amount of material stuff does not change.  Temporal examples were attempted but I have never even heard of an argument from time, that the passage of time somehow would necessitate a god, so those examples were not valid.

No counterexample to the persistence of the amount of mass/energy has been provided.

Showing fallacies in your arguments which include irrelevancies, non-sequiturs, ad hominems  etc,

No, nobody has shown any fallacies in my arguments that would render them logically invalid.  The accusation of ad hominems?  Really?  Pot, meet kettle.

explaining ways to simply circumvent such issues for the argument,  and also revealing some simply nonsensicalities in your claims

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No, you are just making that up because that is how you imagine your words and other's words are.

All of this are abundantly provided above, you either don't respond at all or simply throw an off remark and walk away,

Give me a break.  I spend hours responding in very great detail to specific points made.  Calling me names just isn't worth much of my time.  All the name calling means nothing to me, except it tends to indicate the individual has no response of any merit, thus bolstering my arguments.

then come back and reassert your original claims once again , asserting ,you haven't been refuted

They haven't been, by you or anybody else.  I laid out some basic arguments in short form in #7 and #8 as a reference point.  Nobody has gone through them point by point and actually refuted the actual arguments I actually made.  If you disagree please cite the post number of such supposed refutation.
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@RomanJoe #258

Also what do you think a per se causal series is and why it differs from a per accidens causal series?

A per se causal series is an ancient misconception.  It treats whole collections as a single concept, a whole collection of causes as a single cause, a whole collection of effects as a single effect.  In modern scientific study of causation that ancient terminology is not employed because if is so fundamentally defective in its analytical concepts.

Many definitions and examples can be found.  The hand-rock-stick is often used as an example of a per se causal series, while the grandfather-father-son is often used as an example of a per accidens causal series.

Here is one somewhat more formal contrast between the two

I. Per se cause/per accidens cause "A per se cause is a cause on which the effect directly depends with respect to that proper esse that it has insofar as it is an effect, in the way in which (says Aristotle) a sculptor is a cause of a statue.""On the other hand, since a per accidens cause is not a true cause but is instead called a cause because of some relation or similarity to a cause or because it is conjoined with a cause, it cannot be appropriately defined by a single general description; rather, a cause is called per accidens in various senses. For a cause is called per accidens sometimes on the side of the cause and sometimes on the side of the effect.
https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/courses/527/create03.htm

SP explain in detail how modern science proves there are no per se causal series?

First, let me emphasize that a scientific proof is a provisional proof because science is provisional, and rests upon the postulates of logic, the postulate of the basic reliability of the human senses, and the postulate of the intelligibility of the universe.  If you choose to accept those postulates, at least provisionally, then a scientific proof can have explanatory value.  If not, then not.

Under Newtonian mechanics there was the model of instantaneous action at a distance.  That turns out not to be true.  Causal influences propagate no faster than c, classically, and typically much slower according to the mechanics of the system. Thus there can be no rigid multibody system. There can be no simultaneity of cause and effect among multiple members of a causal series.

Simultaneity of cause and effect does not extend beyond the limit as t goes to zero, inside which no series of time separated events can occur.  Simultaneity is real in the present moment.

Feser has tried some erroneous attempts to salvage the bankrupt notion of an "essential" causal series by allowing for propagation delay and allowing that the member designated as "first" is not really first.  He seems unaware,  once propagation delay and members prior to the "first" are allowed for there is no qualitative difference between any real material causal series and an "accidental" causal series.

Some attempt has been made to shift the focus to some notion of instrumentality, as though that made any sense or made any difference.  Every so called instrument is composed of a vast number of members through which causal influences propagate temporally.  Designation as a whole collection of events spread over time as a single "instrument" is crude, illusory, and pointless.

Also why do you think it's necessary that a per se causal series requires a first mover.

If an object in uniform linear motion required "another" to sustain its motion right now then that would indeed make the First Way a powerful argument for a hierarchical first mover acting in the present moment.

But modern science shows there is no "another" necessary, whereas Aquinas argues for necessity, therefore Aquinas fails on modern science.

 

@FSC
"Has he answered my points that still have no answers?"

I answered your points at length

All you did was copy and paste this repeatedly in #201
"You're not answering my message. Gratuitous assertions."

You just don't understand the answers I gave you.  I can write answers for you but I cannot understand them for you.  Either you skimmed them without thinking much about my answers or you just don't have the background needed to comprehend what I am saying, dunno, I can't tell from here but if you have some specific points to make, fine. 

Just pasting in the same response over and over is silly.

Hello, SP.
If you had a cup sitting on a coaster, sitting on a table, couldn't you consider the table to be the "cause" of the position of both the coaster and the cup, and wouldn't that be a per se causal series?

Last edited by ArmandoAlvarez (12/16/2017 5:50 pm)

@ArmandoAlvarez

Hello, SP.
If you had a cup sitting on a coaster, sitting on a table, couldn't you consider the table to be the "cause" of the position of both the coaster and the cup, and wouldn't that be a per se causal series?

That is a classic example, and from a naked eye perspective what you are saying seems to make sense, but the assertion of a per se causal series breaks down and is shown to be illusory on modern science.

To identify the table as a single cause is a sort of personification, or anthropomorphization of a vastly complex temporal system.  The table appears to the naked eye to be a single static object.  In truth the table, if you could see its constituents, is a mad beehive of activity, vibrating and moving chaotically.  Each molecule is in motion relative to the others, the subatomic particles are all moving a high speed within each atom, and the 4 forces of nature are all dynamically at work, even though the table appears to the naked eye to be a single static object.

But let's not stop with the table, there is the floor, and the foundation, and the dirt, and the rock, and the mantle and the core of the Earth.  These are all also composed of a vast number of subatomic particles all in continuous motion all together constituting a temporal system of vast complexity.

There simply is no call for a hierarchical first mover in all this.  Roughly speaking, everything just keeps bouncing off everything else.  Aquinas said this cannot go on to infinity.  Ok, simply calculate the total number of subatomic particles on Earth.  There are about 1.33*10^50 atoms on Earth so there are roughly 10^52 subatomic particles on Earth, not an infinity, so no god required.

So which is the cause and which is the effect?  They are all mutually causes and effects of each other.  Assignment of titles of "first" "instrument" and "last" are arbitrary.  We can make such assignments for our practical functioning.  We can't go around calculating the actions of 10^52 particles every time we want to take a sip from a cup and then put it back down on the saucer.  We limited human beings need to make simplified models of an extremely complicated world in order to function.

Aristotle was a brilliant man who lived long ago and had only his naked eye observations to reason from.  Most of his ideas about motion and causation have been replaced by modern science.

If we wish to reason our way to answer the great fundamental questions about origins we must reason very carefully with everything we have at our disposal.  In that light the notion of a per se causal series breaks down and is shown to be scientifically and logically false and illusory and in no way a basis for an argument for a hierarchical first mover acting in the present moment to sustain existence and motion.


 

Last edited by StardustyPsyche (12/16/2017 9:40 pm)