@Stardusty Psyche:

"Well, at least you managed to take one baby step in the right direction."

And you are still a complete and utter moron incapable of the least decency or intellectual honesty.

"More likely you are a Brazilian kid who found that ID on line but is completely incapable of imitating the scientific capacities of a real mathematical physicist."

Your envy and resentment are just pathetic.

And this here is the biggest problems with your above claim

That which exists never changes in its existential respect.  Whatever material, whatever stuff, that is existent, irrespective of the name you give it, at base continues to exist in the same amount.

Here again the biggest problem is your claims here are total gibberish, because You've failed to make the notion of "material" as you use it here intelligible. Taking from your statement above the term "material" just becomes another name of "existents" but as soon as you say that This makes entirety of your view untenable, And hence your criticisms of first and second way through them false.

First consider your claims that "nothing new ever comes to exist" or "nothing cease to exist"  This turns out to be blatantly false, Because  we observe new states of affairs and things coming to exist and ceasing at all times, If I create a car I bring something new into existence, When I take it apart entirely it ceases to exist and indeed , The way You yourself speak in your own passage allows something ceasing to exist, and hence also something coming into existence. Consider following claim of yours.

Your car is an organization of its constituents.  Constituents have spacial relationships to each other and interact with each other as modeled with fields.

Here you yourself allow of something ceasing to exist of something when car is disassembled , namely that of this particular "organization" . Hence So much for that claim of yours.

Now you would probably think that "Organization" is not a "thing" that exists, as you assert that "The whole is the sum, as it were, of the parts, no more, no less." But it can be shown that such a view is incoherent, First consider that you are committed to the view that "car" or any whole "sum" does not really exist, Its just some fiction or abstraction in our minds. because logically if it "is" organization and organization does not exist then it does not exist. 

But the reason the above view is untenable is because the human which is supposed to "make up" this fiction of whole sum through its minds is itself a particular composite object. So if some human e.g I am merely an organization of my constituents and the "organization" do not really exist , then I do not exist, this would be entirely untenable because If I myself do not really exist I can hardy make up some fiction of abstraction of organizations. And on the other hand think of what allows you to say of some constituents that they are constituents "of" something particular like me or car? 
So "organization" as you name it and composite wholes must be real existing things, and hence material and therefor Material ceases to exist and comes to exist in an evident way, And this way of refuting Five ways Fail.

*To be continued*   

   
 

StardustyPsyche wrote:

@timocrates #307

Which particular kinetic energy

E=mvv/2

it had not actually but only potentially, this potentiality being reduced to actuality by something else acting upon it.

That is acceleration, which is necessarily a temporal process, not hierarchical.
a=F/m

Moreover, its motion can be altered or redirected

Only temporally, not hierarchically

or even ceased,

The kinetic energy of motion is never lost, only transferred temporally, not hierarchically.

proving that its motion is only the actualization of a potentiality.

Change in motion can be very crudely thought of as an actualization of a potential, although use of that language is pointless and thus obsolete since the advent of modern science, which has far superior terminology and mathematical models to describe motion.

Change in motion is, to use the crude vernacular, an actualization of a potentiality.  That's called acceleration, which is necessarily a temporal process, not hierarchical.

Uniform linear motion is not a change in motion and is not an actualization of a potentiality. 

Since uniform linear motion is not a change in motion there is no necessity for any changer at all to account for its persistence.
Since acceleration is a temporal change it is accounted for in a temporal regress analysis, not a hierarchical regress analysis.
Therefore I have proved that the First Way fails as an argument for the *necessity* of a hierarchical first changer acting in the present moment to account for motion that is manifest and evident to our senses.
 

You realize math only describes change and motion, SP, and does not and cannot define it? Moreover the acceleration formula isn't even true except as a generality and average. Acceleration takes time because it is itself a motion and process, from (speed) X to X+1 and divisible temporally. The fact it happens over time and in time is to our point, not yours, as it demonstrates that the object being accelerated only attains a certain speed by the actualization of a potentiality.

And of course there are still hierarchical elements to such changes: not just anything can cause just anything. You need a sufficient agent and efficient cause to effect certain movements: this is indicated and determined by the variables in the equation, stipulating requirements in active and passive potency to generate a certain motion/effect.

Moreover, kinetic energy is and can be lost. On your insane theory, kinetic energy could never be transferred or transformed, which it manifestly is. The earth's speed isn't being affected every time I drop something on the ground. If you believe this then you are frankly insane.

Finally, speaking of the actualization of a potentiality is not "crude" but necessary to track reality; the fact we use precise terms to describe distinct kinds of motions or changes doesn't mean a thing since there is necessarily a distinction between actualities and potentialities when these terms are cashed out. To deny potentiality is to make change unreal or impossible; of course, to deny actuality is to assert that there is nothing at all.

For example, an object having X mass is only potentially moved or drawn by gravity: there must be present a gravitational force on the body for such a movement to become actual. This is not "crudely putting it," this is the only sane way of thinking about it and, in fact, how everyone thinks about it including physicists. If this were not so, you'd have to deny that an object could even be drawn or moved by gravity at all.

Last edited by Timocrates (12/19/2017 1:11 pm)

@FSC

your objection amounts to "there is no change".

You obviously need to read more closely.

Some things change in certain ways and in certain respects.

Some things do not change in certain respects.

That is my obvious, and often stated position.  Yours is a mere strawman.  I thought you were going to steelman, at least that is what you suggested.

The respect in which things do not change disproves the *necessity* of a hierarchical first changer, or any changer.
The respect in which things do change they change temporally, which disproves the *necessity* of a hierarchical first changer.

What part of that is difficult for you to grasp?

StardustyPsyche wrote:

@Calhoun

Here you yourself allow of something ceasing to exist of something when car is disassembled , namely that of this particular "organization" . Hence So much for that claim of yours.

Organization is not an existent thing, it is an arrangement of existent things.  Don't you understand the difference?

If you have 100 bricks you can stack them up, or you can lay them in a line, or you can stack them to make a fire pit, or you can throw them in the trash bin and they will be dumped in a land fill site.  Whatever you do to re-arrange them the number of bricks stays the same.  The amount of bricks does not change.

So "organization" as you name it and composite wholes must be real existing things, and hence material

This is nothing more than crackpot science.  Find any physics book to support this bizarre "reasoning".  Cite it.  There is no such reference.

If "Organization is not an existent thing," then why did claim it was? Likewise a line, a stack, a firepit or dumped?

Calhoun anticipated your response and you simply misread or did not understand the 3 paragraphs he posted in rebuttal.  His conclusion was just a reductio ad absurdum​ of your position.