- Jeremy Taylor
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Re: Stardusty Psyche's thread
Ficino,
Okay, but even if we grant your supposition, and allow Thomas sees what you are calling motion only as one species of change, I don't see what it matters to the argument. The first way is about change as an actualisation of potency. It may start off as with what you are calling motion, but it uses this to get to a wider basis for understanding change.
SP is a troll, but he fancies himself a genius and theists and Thomists idiots. He refuses to do things like read their books. He therefore most probably gets his idea of the first way from Feser's blog postings and other online sources. I would be very surprised if SP had read Feser's essay on this subject - he certainly shows no signs of having done so. Anyway, Feser largely sticks to Aquinas' argument. He doesn't change it fundamentally. SP's objections are basic and have been dealt with many times.
I'm not a Thomist myself. I think there are interesting objections to Aristotelianism put forward by, for example, Plotinus (though he also draws a lot from Aristotle, including the notion of potency). But SP puts forward nothing interesting.
Last edited by Jeremy Taylor (12/17/2017 6:57 pm)
- ficino
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Re: Stardusty Psyche's thread
Jeremy Taylor wrote:
Ficino,
The first way is about change as an actualisation of potency. It may start off as with what you are calling motion, but it uses this to get to a wider basis for understanding change.
I think the above is precisely one of the points at issue. I said a long time ago that it may be best for the theist to focus on the argument from the DEE and drop the First Way and maybe some others among the Ways of the ST. In any case, since the first way is an argument from motus, it is vital to try to specify what the saint meant by motus. I am happy to allow that he meant ANY change if I see that such a conclusion follows from the corpus thomisticum. As I said earlier, it will be very interesting to try to figure out the work to which Aquinas puts the expression, "A is nothing other than B." There is considerable textual weight AGAINST the conclusion that generation and corruption are motions in A-T, as I've cited previously. E.g. Physics V and VIII and Aquinas' commentaries thereon. Aquinas knew how Aristotle defined motion when he wrote the ST, and he knew that the Stagyrite did not include generation and corruption.
Relevance? If I'm right (with Wippel and I don't know who else right now), let's not bring in instances of substantial change in arguing for the First Way. And if alteration and growth/decay presuppose that some constituent changes location, and local motion does not require a first mover at every stage, then the First Way is called into question.
SP is a troll
Well, as I've said before, my experience with trolls on the internet is not like that with SDP. He formulates arguments. He's not like people I know who are banned as trolls on other sites. And the arguments go back to very controversial positions. So I have not yet formed a considered judgment (not that my opinion matters, but there it is).
I'm not a Thomist myself. I think there are interesting objections to Aristotelianism put forward by, for example, Plotinus (though he also draws a lot from Aristotle, including the notion of potency). But SP puts forward nothing interesting.
A colleague is a convinced neo-Platonist pagan drawing on Proclus. I can't even begin to sift through those arguments at this stage! But fascinating stuff. I rather like the way Plato in the Timaeus allows that there is a causal role to be played by necessity - he doesn't seem to harmonize its efficacy completely with that of divine "nous," according to Taylor.
- Jeremy Taylor
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Re: Stardusty Psyche's thread
Ficino,
The first way is undoubtedly focused on the actualisation of potency. These are the concepts it uses to argue for the existence of God. It differs from the second way, as that focuses on the concepts of essence and existence. Despite what is sometimes claimed, the first way doesn't collapse into the second way because the first way remains concerned with act and potency, even if it is just a matter of the potency inherent in an entity whose essence is distinct from its existence.
Whether or not SP is sincere, he is still a troll. It doesn't look good you can't tell that. The degree to which he puts forward arguments is open to debate. He puts forward basic objections, sure, but he never properly engages anyone. He doesn't argue in that sense. This whole thread is an example of that.
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Thread Starter- Timocrates
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Re: Stardusty Psyche's thread
Ficino,
The first way is undoubtedly focused on the actualisation of potency. These are the concepts it uses to argue for the existence of God. It differs from the second way, as that focuses on the concepts of essence and existence. Despite what is sometimes claimed, the first way doesn't collapse into the second way because the first way remains concerned with act and potency, even if it is just a matter of the potency inherent in an entity whose essence is distinct from its existence.
Whether or not SP is sincere, he is still a troll. It doesn't look good you can't tell that. The degree to which he puts forward arguments is open to debate. He puts forward basic objections, sure, but he never properly engages anyone. He doesn't argue in that sense. This whole thread is an example of that.
Just an aside here, I am really increasingly drawn to considerations of the nature of existence, particularly as distinct from essence, in terms of a proof or at least reasonable ground to believe in God's existence. There really is nothing we can point to and say this thing just exists with anything like necessity: as our understanding of matter deepens and matter becomes increasingly "slippery" in terms of its being, how anything came to exist and has existence seems to stand out more and more clearly as a question requiring a very special cause or reason.
Last edited by Timocrates (12/17/2017 10:44 pm)
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- StardustyPsyche
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Re: Stardusty Psyche's thread
@JT 291
. I would be very surprised if SP had read Feser's essay on this subject
Feser has some essays available that are not behind paywalls that I have read. Their exceedingly low quality would never induce me to pay for more of the same.
SP's objections are basic
Indeed, A-T, and in particular Feser, are so grossly erroneous that only a basic understanding of physics and logic is required to debunk them.
and have been dealt with many times.
Not validly and otherwise soundly, no, never, not by Feser, you, or anybody else, not once, not ever.
Feser uses strawman arguments, such as citing no formal contradiction between A-T and his so called "principle of motion". That is irrelevant. Anybody can make up an unbounded number of unfalsifiable speculations that have no formal contradiction with our observed reality. So what?
Feser fails to deal with the fact that Aquinas argues for *necessity* and that conservation of mass/energy make the first mover *unnecessary* because conservation of mass/energy is not a change, and an observation of no change does not *necessitate* a changer.
Feser has never dealt with that very basic and very obvious and completely sound logical disproof of Aquinas, and neither have you.
- StardustyPsyche
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Re: Stardusty Psyche's thread
@grod #290
This does not even pass the laugh test. He passes from what happens in the natural order of material bodies to the Unmoved over who is above the natural order.
You are a delusional kook, an ignorant moron who could not win a contest of wits with a dead gerbil.
Do you ever present logical arguments?
- StardustyPsyche
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Re: Stardusty Psyche's thread
JT #288
For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality.
Aquinas was wrong about that.
To use the clumsy vernacular, an object in uniform linear motion is already fully actualized in its particular kinetic energy. The kinetic energy of an object in uniform linear motion does not change. Therefore, it is not *necessary* for there to be any changer at all, much less a hierarchical regress of changers terminating in an invisible being.
Basic indeed. Very simple to understand for nearly all educated people. The small sect of Thomists are the exceptions, a variety of the mentality that leads to YEC faith.
Feser is not concerned to reject the Newtonian Principle of Inertia. He has no need to do so for his argument to succeed.
Quite the contrary, he goes to great lengths regarding inertia, invents strawman arguments, and engages in a great deal of disjointed "argumentation" on the subject.
SP is a moron and troll. His objection is basic and has been easily dealt with.
Very well then, I lift my scale for you to thrust a dagger of logic into my heart.
I say uniform linear motion is no change in kinetic energy.
It is not *necessary* to assert a changer to account for no change.
Therefore the First Way fails as an argument for the *necessity* of a first changer to account for motion that is manifest and evident to our sense.
Deal with that.
- seigneur
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Re: Stardusty Psyche's thread
How does incompleteness of present physics theories demonstrate the *necessity* of god?
That's not what I was saying. I was saying that, given the incompleteness of physics, it (physics) does not demonstrate much, certainly not anything about metaphysics.
Aquinas said
Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another
Modern science says that mass/energy is conserved, thus their is no need for "another" to sustain motion because motion is not a change in the kinetic energy of the object in uniform linear motion.
So Aquinas' motion is kinetic energy, never anything else, and you never back down from this?
Since uniform linear motion is not a change...
I'ts not even a change in location?
Last edited by seigneur (12/18/2017 12:42 am)
- FrenchySkepticalCatholic
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Re: Stardusty Psyche's thread
How does incompleteness of present physics theories demonstrate the *necessity* of god?
That's not what I was saying. I was saying that, given the incompleteness of physics, it (physics) does not demonstrate much, certainly not anything about metaphysics.
Aquinas said
Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another
Modern science says that mass/energy is conserved, thus their is no need for "another" to sustain motion because motion is not a change in the kinetic energy of the object in uniform linear motion.
So Aquinas' motion is kinetic energy, never anything else, and you never back down from this?
Since uniform linear motion is not a change...
I'ts not even a change in location?
Good luck if you can make SP engage you, seigneur. I tried, and he basically will not answer but vagueness information. If I'm lucky, he'll probably engage my last post in ten pages or more.
He's a total tête-à-claques. Not even worthy to be a troll, he just makes the most impossible answers to simple questions...
God bless if you interact with him. :/
- grodrigues
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Re: Stardusty Psyche's thread
@Stardusty Psyche:
"Do you ever present logical arguments?"
Do you ever stop being anything more than a complete and utter moron? The first sentence you quoted *is* an argument; it demonstrates that the OP does not even have the least idea of what the logical structure of the First Way is, and consequently, that the understanding of the person that put it to the consideration of the audience is not much better.