Classical Theism, Philosophy, and Religion Forum / Seeking Clarification of Feser's Philosophy

**Posted by truthseeker** 7/01/2015 6:10 pm

Greetings. I have an interest in Feser's philosophical writings, but I don't understand his arguments well enough to evalutate them. I hope that I can get some clarification on these forums.

**Posted by iwpoe** 7/01/2015 6:21 pm

Moving to philosophy.

**Posted by iwpoe** 7/01/2015 6:22 pm

Where are you in reading him? Have you read any of the books?

Last edited by iwpoe (7/01/2015 6:23 pm)

**Posted by Scott** 7/01/2015 6:34 pm

truthseeker wrote:
Greetings. I have an interest in Feser's philosophical writings, but I don't understand his arguments well enough to evalutate them. I hope that I can get some clarification on these forums.

I think you've come to the right place. But as iwpoe says, it will be helpful to know what work(s) of Feser's you've already read or tried to read.

**Posted by John West** 7/01/2015 7:32 pm

truthseeker wrote:
Greetings. I have an interest in Feser's philosophical writings, but I don't understand his arguments well enough to evalutate them. I hope that I can get some clarification on these forums.

Sure.

**Posted by truthseeker** 7/01/2015 8:38 pm

Thanks for the responses. I posted my topic in 'Introductions' because I have multiple questions, and I was going to ask them in seperate topics with this topic as an introduction to them. I could keep my questions in this thread though.

I read parts of Last Superstition, Aquinas and Introduction to Scholastic Metaphysics over the last three years. I mainly focused on the argument for God's existence from act and potency, which I couldn't follow. So I'll ask my questions in the order that they arise in Feser's development of the argument.

**Posted by Scott** 7/01/2015 8:40 pm

truthseeker wrote:
I'll ask my questions in the order that they arise in Feser's development of the argument.

That sounds like a good plan. It should keep the questions more or less bite-sized and get them addressed in the most helpful order.

**Posted by truthseeker** 7/01/2015 9:13 pm

Let's start with act and potency. I understand these concepts as equivalent to actuality and possibility. So 'the ball is blue in actu' is equivalent to 'the ball is blue,' and 'the ball is blue in potentia' is equivalent to 'it is possibly the case that the ball is blue' (with 'possibly' being used in the metaphysical sense rather than, say, the epistemic sense). Furthermore, 'the man is in actu' is equivalent to 'the man exists,' and 'the man is in potentia' is equivalent to 'it is possibly the case that the man exists.' Am I making any error?

**Posted by Scott** 7/01/2015 9:55 pm

truthseeker wrote:
Am I making any error?

Maybe, depending how closely you're identifying "possible" with "potential." A potency isn't a bare possibility, even a metaphysical one; it's a power inherent in a substance.

The ball in your example has a potency to become blue (if someone paints it), but it has no potency to grow legs and become a chipmunk. But it could be argued that there's no actual contradiction in the ball's turning into a chipmunk, so in that sense it's (logically) possible that it might do so.

The key thing is that a potency is in some sense part of what a substance is and a bare "possibility" is not. A "possibility" is just something that could be the case (i.e. it's without contradiction), whereas a potency is a substance's own positive power to do something or have something done to it (with external help).

**Posted by iwpoe** 7/01/2015 11:18 pm

I actually myself have a hard time distinguishing between potency and possibility. It is possible that I might, with some wonderious level of technology, transmute a ball of lead into a ball of gold by way of knocking off a few atoms. Is that a potency of the ball or not?