Jeremy Taylor wrote:

This is a thread where anyone wanting to critique Stardusty Psyche's posts can do so, rather than clog up Dr. Feser's combox.

You mean his comments to Dr. Feser's blog? What you can do is to tell him "I replied to you over there" and give a link here. Eventually he might turn up here.

I don't think SP will come here since it looks like his main objective is to clog the combox and nothing else, the best is to ignore him completely.

Last edited by am93 (11/13/2017 6:25 pm)

JT"True. That seems confirmation, if more were needed, he is a troll."
--Is that some sort of theistic groupthink thing?  The leader lacks the personal fortitude to engage a rational challenger, so he shouts TROLL, and all the followers chant in agreement?

Just wondering, how did you predict I was going to be banned soon?  I honestly thought Feser had more character than that, particularly when he publicly acknowledged that my posts were not the nasty ones.  Instead he threw a public temper tantrum, scolded his followers, used cursing symbols, and deleted posts that were strong rational arguments.  Yet he left my direct reply in place.  How odd.  He seems genuinely conflicted.

Well, I'll post my disproofs of the First Way and Second Way here.  Who knows, maybe there are some theists someplace who are capable of rational argumentation with those who fundamentally disagree, I haven't found any yet, Feser certainly has no such capacity, but maybe somebody here does.

Stardusty PsycheNovember 23, 2017 at 4:57 PM Anonymous November 22, 2017 at 11:49 PM

SP A man of strong character welcomes strong rational argumentation.

"No, By your own lights he is under no such obligation because those are all relative."
--No objective obligation, rather, a broadly shared sensibility. Putting aside whatever other differences you and I might have, do you agree with the principle, for yourself?

Socrates famously said the unexamined life is not worth living. I have no means to objectively tell you what ought to give your life meaning to you because as you correctly recount, those are all relative. But our differences aside, would you agree with me further that the unchallenged argument is not worth ascribing to?

Can you find, for example, specific rational logical flaws in the below logical argument?

If the natural tendency of material were to transition from actually existent to potentially existent then the Second Way would make sense as an argument for the necessity of a hierarchical first mover in the present moment to account for observed existential inertia of material.

Existential inertia of material is manifest and evident to the senses. Modern science calls this the conservation of mass/energy, described with E=mcc. We never observe new mass/energy persistently coming into existence, nor do we ever observe mass/energy persistently ceasing to exist. The amount of mass/energy or material remains constant, thus, material does not change in its existential respect, only in its structure, or shape, or organization, or form.

Since the existential respect of material does not change no changer is necessary. One can speculate that an unseen changer is actually changing material in just the right way so that it appears to our senses that no change in the existential respect of material is occurring, but such a speculation is not necessary, and thus the Second Way fails as an argument for the necessity of a hierarchical first mover acting upon matter to sustain it in existence in the present moment.

Further, besides being unnecessary, the unseen changer speculation brings with it a variety of logical defects. Several formulations of this speculation have been suggested, one can find various formulations of occasionalism and references to creatio continua, so I will address three potential formulations of this speculation, a continual changer, a continuous changer, and preventive force changer.

All these formulations suffer a major defect in that they posit material changing itself at base in its existential respect. A-T typically argues with naked eye examples, such as a cup of hot water, which is observed to go from actually hot to potentially hot. This is a change. To transition from actual to potential in a particular respect is a change in that respect. In the case of the hot water that appears to change itself but in truth the cup of hot water is not a single material entity; rather it is composed of moving molecules. As those molecules collide with the molecules of the air kinetic energy is transferred in a vast number of mutually causal temporal interactions with no change in the existential respect of the material of the water-air system.

In the continual change speculation it may be asserted that material is being continually changed, that is, moved from potentially existent to actually existent. But non-existence has no potential to exist. Non-existence has no potentialities at all.

But, just supposing non-existence could have the potential to exist how would actually existent material be continually actualized to exist? Actually existent material is already actualized in its existential respect. A thing cannot be both potential and actual in the same respect at the same time. So material would need to change itself to not existing, so the unseen changer could change it back to existing, or alternatively simply bring new material into being . Thus, a new universe is continually being created, while the old universe is continually being destroyed. This leads to severe problems with the notion of temporal continuity of self, besides the rather fantastic notion that the universe really was created a moment ago with the appearance of age and all things in just the right state and just the right motion so as to have the appearance of temporal continuity.

In the continuous change model much the same problems apply, but now material is being actualized from only potentially existent to actually existent in the same moment as it is changing itself from being actually existent to potentially existent. Thus, this model has the whole universe both potentially existent and actually existent at the same moment, a clearly illogical assertion.

Alternatively, one could say the unseen changer is only bringing matter into being continually or continuously, not actualizing a potential, but that still leaves us with the problems of material changing itself to go from existence to non-existence, the problem of the continuity of the self on the continual version of creatio continua, and the problem of material both being and not being at the same time on the continuous version of creatio continua.

In the preventive force model, conservation, or sometimes creatio stans, (a sort of static creation) the problem of material tending to change itself from actual to potential is not solved, but now there is no actual changer, since the asserted changer is only said to be exerting some sort of counter acting force that conserves already existent material, holding it back, as it were, in resisting its asserted tendency to destroy itself. To exert a force with no movement is not a change. A book and a table lay in opposition to each other each with a force applied, but since there is no relative movement between the book and the table there is no change, and thus no changer is called for.

All these speculations are unnecessary. Material simply does not change in its existential respect and therefore it is not necessary to assert a changer at all, much less a hierarchical first changer in the present moment that is changing all material in the universe in just the right way to make existential inertia manifest and evident to the senses.

Thus, the Second Way, the argument from efficient cause, fails as an argument for the necessity of a hierarchical first changer in the present moment to account for the observation of existential inertia that is manifest and evident to our senses

Last edited by StardustyPsyche (11/25/2017 1:56 pm)

SP is wrong in assuming that the First Way is unsound if local motion can be shown to operate without a concurrent actualizing cause. There are other types of change, namely, substantial, qualitative, and quantitative which the First Way can pull from. However he does bring up a good point. When something is in uniform motion it moves from point A to B to C (theoretically ad infinitum). This could easily be rephrased as being potentially at point A, being potentially at point B, and being potentially at point C. We then have something actualizing a potentially infinite set of potentials without a concurrent actualizing agent.