Classical Theism, Philosophy, and Religion Forum / Answer a Physicist's Questions and Objections to Ed Feser's /Aquinas/

**Posted by ficino** 11/19/2017 9:42 am

seigneur wrote:

And did you start another thread to carry on the discussion? Do you even want to? ForumUser does not seem to want to have anything further to do with this thread.

No, I said on Nov. 4 that I'd start a thread if anyone was interested, but no one seemed to be so until you just now. At this point, though, I think my zero competency in science and mere undergraduate-level competency in formal logic leave me able to make too few informed contributions to further discussion of Ladyman's lecture (which I linked) or of the book that he co-authored.

Here is another review of the Ladyman book. Cian Dorr confronts some of the problems you mentioned about arguments, i.e. premises that are adopted either with no explicit justification or with little. Dorr points out how easy it is to say "it is intuitive that P" as a way of getting out of arguing for P. ETA: Dorr thinks that the view of Ladyman et al. may in fact dovetail with views of Quine's, as you suspected.

http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/every-thing-must-go-metaphysics-naturalized/

Last edited by ficino (11/19/2017 10:29 am)

**Posted by Jeremy Taylor** 11/19/2017 3:45 pm

The conclusion we can't have metaphysical knowledge seems self-defeating, given Ladyman is actually laying out a metaphysic. That he ties that metaphysic rigidly to natural science doesn't make it any less of a metaphysic.

**Posted by ficino** 11/19/2017 8:53 pm

From what I've read, Ladyman claims to propose a metaphysics, though tied to science, as you say.

"They argue that the proper role of metaphysics is that of elucidating the connections between the various special sciences so that they form a unified picture of the nature of reality. This is a task that falls to no specific science and so can be called metaphysics (they cite as an example the claim that chemistry unified is physics and physics unified is metaphysics)."

http://philosophyofbrains.com/2010/07/06/natural-metaphysics-blowing-through-the-air.aspx

I can't speak for Ladyman.

There is this video of about an hour. I may watch it later on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_J8W7z2Hy4

**Posted by Timocrates** 12/05/2017 6:39 am

ForumUser,

Your act-potency issue is that you are confusing more specific designations of an actualization and potentiality as somehow canceling the basic, underlying concept necessary that is being defined and designated (reduced, let's say) to some specific kind of instance of an actuality or potentiality. Eg. an atom ceteris paribus may or may not have a certain bond or have had a certain bond broken. This assertion still requires the concepts of act and potency to be made sense of and confusing the two is obviously going to lead to problems, especially for science."Atomic bonds" is more general than some specific kind or particular one but that hardly means the notion of atomic bonds is somehow superfluous or irrelevant to practical chemistry or physics because in every case it will always be some particular instance of some kind of atomic bond; still the notion of "atomic bonds" contains them all.

A-T philosophy agrees with you that these concepts are elementary and therefore they don't exactly grant specific and practical knowledge through themselves, which requires experience, research and study. The only point is that these things are still real and necessary. Again some atomic bond may or may not be; and it borders on crazy to imagine that assertion (which designates a potentiality of a specific kind) is somehow vacuous or irrelevant. It will of course make all the difference whether or not the atomic bond is or is not actual or instantiated and what follows consequently; and the potential of atoms to form bonds is also of the greatest importance for their explanatory power.

Hylemorphism
You are making traditionally skeptic appeals to the limits of the senses; however, skepticism exaggerates the fallibility of the senses. You can read Aristotle's take down of sense skepticism in his Metaphysics.