25:10 To me, this discussion of eternalism is like looking at a column sideways to deny gravity. Yes, if you redefine "up" gravity no longer pushes "down". But how does not provide any defeater to the sideways force? Eternalism still has cause and effect in a different sense. "Unmoved mover" just becomes "bottom of the temporal stack".
Really nice that a nontheist who is able to follow an argument is engaging with Feser on RUclips. I've wanted do that myself if I ever actually get my channel started.
It’s very nice hearing someone with philosophy backgrounds respond to this argument. I’ve at times done my best to respond to it from my physics background but I always feel like the words and concepts just doesn’t match up with how physicists think of things. I usually get the feeling that I might be straw manning the argument.
Or the argument is strawmanning reality. It was created before we understood that motion needs no cause, only acceleration. Edit: inertia instead of acceleration.
@@goldenalt3166 I’m inclined to think so as well, but at least some times I’m trying my best not to be overconfident about it. Maybe there is something there and I just don’t get it. It might also be that the argument fails for nontrivial reasons and/or that my possibly naive response to it could be easily shot down. 💜
@@HyperFocusMarshmallow The Catholics have one advantage in my book. They seem to have a large population that agrees on principle. I'm not convinced that many understand these arguments and it doesn't seem like any significant number are convinced by them, but if there is some sort of non-science method to truth, they are the best candidate.
I don’t know if you addressed this in the video or comments and I missed it, but I think it’s unfair to treat the Five Ways from the Summa Theologiae (meant as a basic summary) as if they exist in isolation from more exhaustive formulations like in the Summa Contra Gentiles. Also, many of the non-sequesters are established by Aquinas after the Five Ways. Aquinas would be the first to say that the First Way only proves at least one Unmoved Mover exists. That’s why he goes on to demonstrate that there must be one such being in I.Q3,Q11. In fact, over the next several articles, Aquinas goes on to demonstrate many attributes of the First Mover (all-good, all-present, all-powerful, rational, etc), so he makes the case that this being can be called God. More importantly, I’m not sure if you address the fact that potency in a being itself requires an external actual for existence. So if the First Mover in a chain ordered per se can be caused by something else in another chain ordered per accidens, then you’re implying that the First Mover has some unactualized potential. This is exactly what cannot be. The First Mover must lack all potency or else that potency requires appeal to an external actual in a causal chain ordered per se. The First Mover therefore must be Pure Act. To even suggest that the First Mover could be caused “at some other time” implies potency in the Mover because passage through time is a type of change. Aquinas argues this in I.Q10.A2. Think of the act-potency relation between mover and moved as itself part of an essentially ordered (meta) chain. This means eventually you need a first member that is just Pure Act so the chain of appeals to external actuals can terminate. Finally, about Aristotelean goodness: while the general concept doesn’t resemble what we mean by morality, our recognizable concept of morality (which relates particularly to goodness in rational beings) fits into the larger concept of good. So if God is all-good in that general sense, it follows that he is all-good in the moral sense that we typically mean by good. A circle is not rational, so it falls outside the scope of goodness that relates to morality. Plus a perfect instantiation of a geometric circle is not devoid of all potency. The very definition of a circle tells of its limits (and therefore potencies). For example, the circle isn’t all-present on the Cartesian grid; there are points it intersects and points it does not, and it is limited to a single plane. Definitions imply potency. This is why the Thomistic “definition” of God isn’t strictly a definition. God is. Full stop. Using more words would just be a way of clarifying or demonstrating the sufficient and exhaustive “definition” God is.
Thanks for the comment--I have already addressed these points elsewhere in the comment section. I've also already addressed them in this paper, including the point about potency requiring a prior act, the point about a potency's requiring appeal to an external cause, etc. www.dropbox.com/s/yyseyl07vhukdk9/%28APQ%29%20Unactualized%20Potential.docx?dl=0
@@MajestyofReason I’m glad you are aware of the things I mentioned and address them somewhere. I’ll definitely check it out as you do seem to understand well everything you do touch on. My criticism was based on things I felt you weren’t aware of, so I’m eager to see how you address a richer expression of the argument!
@@MajestyofReason Hmm ... I’m skimming this document and seeing several problems, actually. For example, your first objection to “Path” (which is actually just part of Aquinas’ main argument), you use an example of an essentially ordered causal chain (EO CC) that terminates with fire, heat being the relevant causal power. You note that the first mover here (fire) is not necessarily unmovable even in the relevant sense (heat), but that is irrelevant to the argument! The point is, at that exact moment, fire’s ability to transmit heat is itself contingent on prior actuals, so we are logically forced to couch fire within a larger EO CC as we chase for an ultimate explanation for the heated noodles. Fire can generate heat because of chemical combustion, which can impart this power because of atomic properties, which can impart that power because of more fundamental quantum mechanical properties. Do you see how each chain is nested within a more meta chain as we chase that ultimate first cause? This is a monster EO CC that must terminate! And whatever it terminates with must by definition not fit into yet another causal chain of any sort. I strongly believe that much of your trouble with this argument is based on this critical missing of the point (for example, your other two objections to “Path” are also resolved by this more proper articulation), and I beg your pardon if I’m putting this rudely. It’s so frustrating because you are really intelligent and I want to hear you rebut what I understand to be the full, rich argument that Aquinas argued. I noticed other problems, but I want to keep this tight.
@@DefenseofSanity "you use an example of an essentially ordered causal chain (EO CC) that terminates with fire, heat being the relevant causal power. You note that the first mover here (fire) is not necessarily unmovable even in the relevant sense (heat), but that is irrelevant to the argument!" I think that more than a skim is required to fully and adequately understand my paper and, more importantly, the dialectical context of its various points. For I believe you have missed the relevant dialectical context in which my response to Path arises. In particular, in this portion of the paper, I am simply addressing a response to one claim I made elsewhere in the paper. That claim elsewhere was that merely from the fact that S is unmoved in respect R, it doesn't follow that S is unmovable in respect R. [This is also one of philosopher Scott MacDonald's criticisms.] The response tries to avoid this claim. Thus, it is perfectly relevant for me to point out that the first mover in the relevant case is not necessarily unmovable even in the relevant sense, since this directly addresses the challenge raised to my earlier claim. It seems to me, then, that to say this is irrelevant "to the argument" is to miss the dialectical context in which my rejoinder arises. You then say: "The point is, at that exact moment, fire’s ability to transmit heat is itself contingent on prior actuals, so we are logically forced to couch fire within a larger EO CC as we chase for an ultimate explanation for the heated noodles" The first thing to note is that, strictly speaking, this again misses the dialectical context. The context in which I'm operating is one in which I am addressing a *version* of the First Way argument proffered by the likes of McNabb, DeVito, Davies, and Oppy. And in their versions, nothing about 'being contingent on prior actualities' arises. They desire to reach the intended conclusion merely from (i) the existence of change, (ii) the denial of the infinitude of per se chains of change, and (iii) the causal principle that what is changed is caused to change by another. It would therefore constitute an admission that the *original* arguments Im addressing do not, of themselves, succeed if we have to add in a further claim about abilities being dependent on prior actuals. [For this is no longer using the causal principle but instead is invoking a separate principle.] To be sure, it's perfectly legitimate to raise the principle as a next-stage-move in the dialectic; but it's crucial to keep in mind that to make the argument dependent on this further move is to concede that my *original* targets--McNabb, DeVito, Davies, and Oppy--proffer arguments which, of themselves and without the addition of separate auxiliary theses, don't work. Note also that I do not claim that this move isn't part of the 'first way itself' or isn't part of Aquinas's own reasoning [indeed, Aquinas himself explicitly uses the principle that act is prior to potency in similar contexts]; instead, keep in mind that my original targets have been the *articulations/defenses/interpretations* of the first way proffered by McNabb etc. With that being said, I can now move on to assess this next-stage-move in the dialectic. The first thing to say in response is to point out that the relevant principle of A-T metaphysics, I take it, says that potencies are posterior to actualities and, hence, for any potency P, P is dependent upon some prior actuality A. Call this principle the Potency Dependence Thesis (PDT). But notice that in order to infer, on the basis of PDT, that the fire's ability to heat is dependent upon some prior actuality, we must show that the fire's ability is, indeed, a potency [or else in potency]. But why should we think that? After all, this is an *active potency* -- it's the fire's causal power, of itself, to heat. And active potencies are, strictly speaking, *actualities*. [God, for instance, has [better, *is*] active but not passive potency.] So the relevant inference seems blocked: the ability is not a potency, and hence we cannot infer, using PDT, that it is dependent on some prior actuality. [Moreover: its not as though the fire merely has this ability merely *potentially*; it *actually* has it.] The second thing to say in response is as follows. Suppose (contrary to what I've argued) that the fire's ability is, indeed, dependent on prior actualities. This dependence regress still won't get us, so I argue, any closer to a *purely actual* being. As I write in the paper: "One might respond that Aquinas himself anticipated the problems I leveled in Section 3 concerning the (purported) possibility of the unmoved mover’s having some potency. For Aquinas himself writes: [T]he first being must of necessity be in act, and in no way in potentiality. For although in any single thing that passes from potentiality to actuality, the potentiality is prior in time to the actuality; nevertheless, absolutely speaking, actuality is prior to potentiality; for whatever is in potentiality can be reduced into actuality only by some being in actuality. Now it has been already proved that God is the First Being. It is therefore impossible that in God there should be any potentiality. (Summa Theologiae I, q3, a1) The idea is as follows. Act is prior to potency; hence, anything which is absolutely first in the order of being (such that nothing is prior to it) could not have potency. For if it had potency, some distinct actuality would be prior to it-in which case, it wouldn’t be first in the order of being. Something would be prior to it. We can formalize this argument like so: 1. Potentials require some prior actuality. 2. If the first being has potential, and if potentials require some prior actuality, then something is prior to the first being. 3. Nothing is prior to the first being. 4. So, the first being has no potential. What to make of this argument? There are at least two serious problems with this rejoinder. First, the consequent of premise (2) simply doesn’t follow from the (conjunctive) antecedent. It doesn't follow that there would be an entire concrete object (i.e. a being) that is prior to the ‘first being’. Instead, the actuality (or actualities) of a single being B could be prior to the potency (or potencies) of B. Hence, act would be prior to potency, but there would be nothing prior to B. Hence, B can be a first being while nevertheless having potency. (Recall the points defended in Section 4.) Second, as we’ve seen, the First Way only gets us to the claim that there is at least one first member T of chain C that is actually unmoved at time t in respect of the causal power or property of C. It therefore does not establish the existence of a ‘first being’ that is the most fundamental being-more fundamental than all else and in every respect. Instead, it only shows (at most) that each chain has a first member T of that chain C which has nothing prior to it in respect of the causal power of C only during the time period at which T stands as first member of C. But this is perfectly compatible with T standing in potency in some other respect (e.g. some respect that has nothing to do with the causal power/property of the C for which it serves as terminus). Hence, it is perfectly compatible with there being something more fundamental than T in that particular respect but yet not with respect to the causal power/property of C."
@@DefenseofSanity You then write: "Fire can generate heat because of chemical combustion, which can impart this power because of atomic properties, which can impart that power because of more fundamental quantum mechanical properties. Do you see how each chain is nested within a more meta chain as we chase that ultimate first cause? This is a monster EO CC that must terminate! And whatever it terminates with must by definition not fit into yet another causal chain of any sort." First, my quote from above responds to this, since this gets us no closer to a *purely* actual being--whatever the foundational entity is in this given chain, it could (for all the argument shows) easily have potency; its just that the potency is (given PDT) dependent on the prior actualities *of that very foundational entity*. Second, I have already addressed this objection elsewhere. In particular, what I say in response to McNabb and Devito, quoted below, responds to your objection here, since you--like them and like Feser--have merely appealed to 'more fundamental *component parts* ' of the fire [it's chemical parts, it's atomic parts, its quantum properties and parts, etc.]. Here's how I respond to their point: "McNabb and DeVito write: [I]n order for the chair to remain red at t + ε, the chemical microstructure of the chair will have to continue being in a certain way. If the microchemical structure of the chair were different, the chair would no longer be red. So, it isn’t the case that the red chair can remain red at t + ε as long as nothing intervenes. Rather… in order to retain ‘the redness,’ something outside of ‘the redness’ needs to be in place. (2020, p. 7) But this response to Oppy is inadequate on multiple fronts. In order to simplify things, let’s simply focus on the existence of the chair. The first problem with the response is that the chemical microstructure of the chair is a material cause of the chair, not an efficient cause that brings the chair into and efficiently sustains it in being. The second problem with their response is that appealing to microstructure as a ‘cause’ upon which a chair depends simply undermines the Aristotelian proof’s inference to an unsustained sustainer of the existence of everything apart from itself. For the microstructure of the chair is a *component* of the chair, and only ‘actualizes’ the chair in the sense that something ‘depends’ (in some sense) on its components. But upon tracing *this* causal chain of ‘dependence’ down to a first member, all we’re entitled to infer about such a member is that it is an uncomposed component, not an unactualized actualizer of the very being or existence of the things in question. Feser, McNabb, and DeVito have not pointed to something outside the composite object as an actualizer of its very being; instead, they’ve merely sent us off on a regress of more fundamental component parts of something on which that thing ‘depends’ (in the sense of whole-to-part dependence). Their response, then, ends up doing more harm than good for the Aristotelian proof. The third problem with their response is that (i) the microstructural elements of the chair are parts of the chair, but (ii) the parts of something cannot efficiently cause (i.e. actualize the existence of) their whole. Here are, briefly, three reasons why this is so. First, if we allow that pats of something can efficiently causally sustain their whole, then (as we’ve seen in Chapter 3) Feser’s argument could only get us to an unsustained, uncomposed component that sustains wholes-not a radically transcendent God who is decidedly not a part of its creation. Second, parts of wholes seem in some sense less fundamental than the wholes of which they are parts; plausibly, they’re only intelligible with reference to the substances they compose. Their existence qua the things they are, then, presupposes the (ontologically) prior existence of the substance and hence cannot causally [or even, I would argue, non-causally] explain its existence. It seems that my arm cannot be the efficient cause of me, since its being my arm in the first place presupposes my existence as a substance. Third, it’s a core component of Aristotelianism that parts of substances exist merely virtually (and hence only in potency); but per the Aristotelian causal principle, only things existing in actuality can causally actualize the existence of something else."
Very interesting, thanks for sharing! Here's a constructive criticism: it would be good to underline the text which is on screen while developing your argument, just to remind the viewer what point in the text your current monologue reflection is referring to. Again, great vid!
Classical theist/Feser fan here. Just want to say, props for steelmanning Aquinas’ arguments. You gave me something to think about. I’d like to see you have a conversation with Mathoma or Classical Theist.
@@MajestyofReason No problem! Your channel is awesome and I look forward to seeing what else you have in store. Video suggestion: I’m not sure what your ethical system is, but you should do a video raising the philosophical issues with virtue ethics. That’d be interesting
At 29:59 when you say “for all we have shown thus far it may terminate in two beings” - wouldn’t a Thomist just use Occam’s razor to say that while we cant disprove there being two entities, postulating one is simpler so in the absence of evidence for two, we should go with one?
However, there are some reservations here about quantitative vs. qualitative simplicity (most philosophers value qualitative simplicity far more), and the Thomist *might* have an edge on quantitative simplicity, but certainly not on qualitative simplicity. And the latter is, plausibly, what matters. But that's a topic for another day lol
I may have just missed it because I'm dead tired but commenting will be easier anyway, can you or did you give an example of how a per se causal chain could be grounded by a per accidens one? I mean yeah the picture is great and all and you are in fact the best artist the world has known but I'll need an actual example.
About the eternalist objection, assuming eternalism, I could endorse an at-at account of change, at least for the purposes of defending the first way, with the followings argument: 1. Either talk of "real change" is gibberish or there exists a set of axioms implicitly defining what "real change" means. 2. If talk of "real change" is gibberish the argument goes through using at-at eternalist change. 3. If there is a set of axioms defining real change and this set of axioms is compatible with eternalism, the (feser-inspired) eternalist objection fails. 4. If the set of axioms is not compatible with eternalism, but one of the axioms is not self-evident, or false, the eternalist objection fails. 5. If there is a set of axioms incompatible with eternalism, all of which are self-evidently and irrefutably true, then eternalism is false. In which case the argument goes through via presentism. In either case either the argument goes through or the objection fails, but since if the argument goes through the objection also would have to fail, it follows at the very least that the objection fails. Now with respect to what appears to be a second eternalist objection, namely that given eternalism it would not be possible to conclude the existence of a purely actual being, I would have to say that the only thing that was needed to conclude this existence under eternalism is to admit: 1. The eternal "block" of temporal things is moving, insofar as there is an at at temporal difference between different temporal instants which contain different possible states of existence. 2. If the block is moving it is being moved by something external to the block, which is hence not temporal and does not have an intrinsic temporal succession of different states. Hence also unmoved and immutable. 3. The fact that one state of existence temporally succeeds another in the block is contingent, therefore the block could have turned out very differently from the way it is. 4. If the block could have turned out differently that entails the block is in potentiality to a multiplicity of other possible outcomes, or ways the instants in the block could succeed one another. 5. If the external mover is the cause of the motion in the block it is the cause of the particular way the temporal instants succeed one another, hence it is the cause of the actualization of the potential ways the block could have been (i.e. it is responsible for picking one structure of temporal succession between intants from the collection of all possible such structures) 6. But because the mover itself is not temporal, then (presumably) it does not have a multiplicity of possible states it could be in, or different internal temporal structures to choose from. 7. Hence the external mover is purely actual, since he is not in potentiality to a multiplicity of different ways he could have been. It seems to be even more convenient to argue the first way from an eternalist perspective.
Thanks for your comments. I'm making a document in response to them. I'll share the document (via a link) under this comment when I have finished with the document. It will be either tonight or tomorrow. :)
@@luizcarlosrviana3724 Alright! Here's my response to this comment. (I call it 'Luiz's First Comment'). Please see my FB direct message to you for requisite context!!!
A critique of this video I found: So I've just quickly watched the part on eternalism--and it is so absurdly false. First, he says that Aquinas says 'there is change over time' which is 'manifest' to our senses (not perfectly quoted, but along the lines of--at 15:50). But this is false: there is no 'change over time'. Rather, time is manifested when there is change. In other words, when we observe change we can calculate time--or if we can calculate time, then there has been change. Time results from change; change does not occur 'in time' (for this conveys the idea that change is something happening inside a qualitative time, similar to how modern philosophy thinks objects 'are in the world' when objects are the world (c.f. Guénon, Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times). It is clear he is saying what I have just argued because proposition 2 makes this clear when he writes '...then some times are merely potential.' But no student of Thomas will say that 'time' is something potential because time is not a qualitative feature of the world. Rather, time is something quantitative that exists when there is qualitative change. In short, this is a ridiculous video (insofar as this argument is concerned) because the author says Aquinas said something when he said anything but--which, in my opinion, when there is written proof of what Thomas argues, is the mistake of an amateur.
Thanks for this. Whoever made this comment needs to work on their listening comprehension--it's quite embarrassing, really. (1) The critique says: "he says that Aquinas says 'there is change over time'" False. Wrong. Nowhere did I say AQUINAS said this. I simply pointed out that there is change over time, which is obviously true: I go from being a toddler to being an adult. To deny this is to be insane. (2) "But this is false: there is no 'change over time'. Rather, time is manifested when there is change." This is a blatant and obvious misunderstanding of what I'm saying. NOWHERE did I say that time is *more fundamental* than change, or that time isn't the measure of change, or that time isn't manifested when there is change. My claim was not one about the order of explanation (time --> change vs. change --> time). My claim is PERFECTLY COMPATIBLE with time manifesting when there is change. My claim is ONLY that (i) there are changes that (ii) are not instantaneous. And this is so obviously true that to deny it is to evince insanity or confusion. (3) "It is clear he is saying what I have just argued because proposition 2 makes this clear when he writes '...then some times are merely potential.'" Actually, if we listen to what I actually said, I said some times OR CONTENTS OF TIMES. And a content of a time is what actually happens at a given time. And this is perfectly compatible with the direction of explanation being FROM what-actually-happens-at-a-time TO the-reality-of-that-time. (4) "Rather, time is something quantitative that exists when there is qualitative change." Nowhere did I say ANYTHING which denies this. All I said is that there's change over time, which leaves open whether change is more fundamental or time is more fundamental. All I mean is that there is change from A to B such that A and B are not simultaneous. Whoever made that 'critique' has the listening comprehension of a 4th grader [that's generous] and the temper of a toddler.
Yikes, what a ride... This really did hurt my tender classical theistic feelings ;-) While I am not married to any spefic branch of Classical Theism or proof of God´s existence I still think that if there is a God he has to be radically different from all created beings / reality. As I said elsewhere, I am far from an expert on these issues and I hope you will get the responses you hope for from the prominent defenders of these arguments and concept (I have my popcorn ready ;-) ). I only want to mention that maybe at least some of the problems you mentioned (e.g. with the divine attributes) could be avoided by referring to the concept of the transcendentals and of analogical prediction. Have you perhaps adressed these concepts elsewhere? Last but not least, regarding the motto of your channel, something to ponder about from one of my favourite non professional "philosophers", G.K. Chesterton: "The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason" ;-)
Joe, throughout your analyses, you grant the premise that per se chains cannot regress infinitely. But if it can be shown that this premise is false (or at least not necessarily true), then the entire First Way falls apart from the start. I recall that Paul Edwards (see his chapter in the book, Critiques of God, edited by Peter Angeles) and William Rowe (The Cosmological Argument) have questioned this premise in their earlier works on the Cosmological Argument. I'm not sure if these criticisms have been addressed by defenders of Aquinas, but thought you might want to check those out if you haven't already..
@Actus Purus Thanks for the comment. I don't quite follow you here. Indeed, if every cause in the beginningless causal series did not have the capacity to exert a causal influence on the next member of the series, then you would be correct: there would be no causality. However, each cause in the beginningless causal series *does* exert a causal influence on the next member of the series. It could not do this if the cause were 'causally inert'.
@Actus Purus Thanks for the clarification. I believe my original point still stands, however. I would agree that without a face, there would be no reflection of a face in the mirror(s)! However, more to the point, I think, is that each cause in the series does indeed have its own particular causal power: each mirror has the causal power to reflect light. If a given mirror were substituted with a non-reflective surface, it would not have this causal power. If we were to remove one of the 'intermediate' mirrors in the series of mirrors then the light would cease to be propagated further. Same for a linear series of billiard balls colliding, dominoes toppling, etc. Philosopher Paul Edwards articulates these points far better than me in his famous essay on the Cosmological Argument (included in the compilation by Peter Angeles I cited earlier). I would highly recommend having a look at that chapter. Many of the other chapters in the compilation are excellent too (e.g., H. J. McCloskey's essay on God and Evil is one of the best I've seen).
@Actus Purus Yes, 'per se' chains are often described as 'simultaneous' and categorically different from 'temporally ordered causal chains' (e.g, the first chapter of Feser's book, 5 Proofs). But if one takes a closer, scientifically informed, look at the details of so-called 'per se' or 'hierarchically ordered' causal chains, such as the famous 'hand/stick/stone' example, one would see that they actually do involve temporally ordered series of causes- which, at least according to Feser, are completely unproblematic if they extend backwards endlessly.
@Actus Purus Thanks for the reply! I would disagree that the requirement that there be an actual face in order for there to be a reflection of a face in the mirror(s) concedes the point. The face is not a ‘primary cause’ in the sense that a theist would like to call God an ‘unmoved mover’ or ‘primary cause’ or ‘unactualized actualizer’. The face does not exist necessarily or outside of a context of prior causes. The face comes from somewhere, namely a person! And where did that person come from? Development from a fertilized egg, evolutionary history, the first form of life on earth, the prior history of the universe, the big bang, whatever came before it (a prior or mega-universe?), and so on ad infinitum. The existence of the face thus in no way undermines the coherence of a beginningless causal series. One could do a similar ‘historical’ analysis for the hand/stick/stone example without any logical incoherence, as far as I can tell. As Paul Edwards notes in his essay on the cosmological argument which I cited earlier, the mistake that critics of the possibility of a beginningless series of causes seem to make is in confusing an infinite series with one which is long but finite. I believe that precisely this mistake is being made in saying that “if there were truly an ENDLESS series, X's motion could never be achieved.” For every event, there is a cause that came before it, and a cause that came before that, .... There is no contradiction in the idea that something or other has been going on, changing, moving, forever, with no beginning. As finite beings conditioned by our finite experiences, this idea of beginninglessness may be hard for us to wrap our heads around, but that’s our problem, not a problem with the idea itself! Thanks, I’m actually familiar with the paper you linked to! It’s a good paper and I would love to be convinced by it, but I believe that in many places it implicitly assumes what it is trying to prove (that there must be a first, ‘unmoved mover’), similarly to the ways that are described in Paul Edward’s essay (see also William Rowe’s book length treatment of the cosmological argument). If you have a chance to read those, I’d be interested in your critique!
1:04:00 I believe the standard thomistic argument for deriving axiological or normative properties from the more ontological consideration of Omnibenevolence would be: 1. God created man (he created everything). 2. The finality or telos of man is happiness. 3. If 1 and 2, God created man to be happy, and hence intends our happiness 4. Happiness consists in virtue. (according to Aristotle it is the activity in accordance with perfect virtue) 5. By all of the above, God intends us to be virtuous 6. Vice and sin (sin is the act of vice while "vice" in general refers to the habit of vice) is opposed to virtue. Therefore God intends us to be virtuous but does not intend us to be vicious. Furthemore: 7. It is impossible for someone to desire virtue if he is not, at least in some sense, virtuous. Therefore God is virtuous. Well there are perhaps other arguments that could be made, for instance refer to the beginning of the prima secunda of the Summa Theologica.
Is it correct that the per accidents vs per se distinction is about temporality vs simultaneity? I think Feser argues that what is important is the instrumentality of each member in the latter not the simultaneity and that you can have in non-simultaneous per se series. Sorry if you addressed this later on, only partway through the video (it's long). Also you might be interested Scott MacDonald and Ed Feser's back and forth on whether the first cause must be merely unmoved or unmovable. (Also, just became a patron. :)
@@MajestyofReason cool. Regarding your criticism of omni-benevolence btw, I think you might be importing certain meta ethical assumptions that a neo-aristotelian would reject. In particular the aristotleian believes that "goodness" is a core-dependent homonym. Similarly with respect to A-T Phil of mind wrt how the intellect relates to universals.
@@Punibaba1 I think it's important to remember the dialectical context, though -- the onus is on Feser and defenders of the first way to (e.g.) *positively demonstrate* the truth of the A-T account of the intellect -- something Feser doesn't do.
St. Thomas Aquinas never claimed the First Way ends in a singular being _in isolation._ This is why Summa Theologiae I, Question 11, Article 3 exists (and other similar texts elsewhere).
And I never claimed Aquinas claimed it did. :) But in evaluating the argument as it is *in itself*, it's imperative to see if the argument itself establishes something close to God.
@@MajestyofReason Yeah, but I think it’s a mistake to see St. Thomas’ First Way as committing the quantifier shift fallacy. When St. Thomas says, “and this everyone understands to be God,” he clearly did not necessarily mean by this a singular, omnibenevolent, omniscience, etc being. If that’s what he meant by God, then it would make no sense to later ask whether God is one, omnibenevolent, etc. It’s the same mistake Dawkins made in “The God Delusion.”
@@Tdisputations No, it's not, since -- unlike Dawkins -- I actually went on to evaluate stage two inferences to singularity (i.e. uniqueness), omnibenvolence, omniscience, etc. To say I've made the same mistake as Dawkins is (I had to delete numerous adjectives I was going to use here) incorrect. Moreover, the reason I didn't look specifically at Aquinas's going on to ask whether God is one, etc. is because in those passages in the Summa, Aquinas assumes that God is pure act -- something which wasn't even shown in the first way.
@@MajestyofReason The first way also doesn’t claim that God is purely actual. That’s also proved elsewhere. I’m not saying you don’t address it at all, but that it seems calling it a “patch,” or a “fallacy” misinterprets the intention of the First Way.
@@Tdisputations Yeah I don't see how 'Aquinas assume that God is pure act.' The first way is simply meant to demonstrate that the world requires a prime mover--that which is unmoved--'and this everyone understands to be God'. It is very easy to conflate the prime mover with that which is purely actual but Aquinas makes no such claim in the first way.
1:16:07 For the argument for free will, it seems a fundamental problem is that you are turing "the intentional exertion of causal power" from a verb into a noun, when to begin with we don't need to pressupose that between any and all statements of the sort "agent X does Y" there is some distinct entity in reality which serves as a ground or truthmaker for that proposition and which could be called "the doing of Y by X". But even granting that there is such an entity, it does not follow immediately that it is different from any of the putative entities that we should assume to exist to begin to talk about the action of your run-of-the-mill free agent in the first place, namely (1) the agent and (2) the effect of the free choice. Now it would be hard to ontologically reduce "the intentional exertion..." to the agent itself since this would seem to imply the mere existence of the agent implies this intentionality, which seems incompatible with libertarian free will. However nothing keeps us from saying "the intentional exertion..." = "the effect of the free choice". After all those things are already modally or existentially equivalent, the effect exists (at least qua effect of that particular free choice) precisely in the possible worlds in which the "intentional exertion..." exists. They might as well be equated. In this case it is not the "intentional exertion..." which is the cause of the effect, but the agent which is the cause both of the effect and of it's own "intentional exertion...", and this "being the cause of" does not in itself require another "intentional exertion..." to exist (and even if it does it could be equated with the previous one, and so on and so forth, so that the cicle is not vicious).
Joe, thank you for another great video. Please define the word "eternal" because I wonder what you mean by it when you talk about eternalism. St. Thomas agrees with Boetheiua when he, Boethius, defines "eternity." Though I forget the Boethian definition, it says that an eternal being has no beginning, no end, and no succession. An everlasting being lasts forever after it begins to exist.
I am not sure if this is the proper place to ask such questions because this is literally about Thomism and the thomistic model of God. I know that you are inclined towards the theistic personality view of God. But, what can you say about the Orthodox model of God where there is a distinction between God's essence and God's energies? Although I am aware of Orthodox theologians and philosophers who use first cause arguments (I've even seen a scholastic Orthodox before), there are others who don't utilize first cause arguments to believe in the orthodox view of God. Do you think that this orthodox model suffers from the same objections you laid out here? Btw, I am not an eastern Christian so I am not an expert on the Orthodox view of God as well, but I would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you.
Does theistic personalism deny that God is immutable, timeless and impassible? I am not really an expert on theistic personalism, but that will be surprising to me if that's the case.
Nice analysis and video just like the others I've seen(I'm watching this all out of order). To think you're only 4 or 5 years older than me. When did you say your paper co-authored with Graham Oppy which was supposed to address Feser's five proofs was supposed to come out again? I forgot which video you said that in my bad.
Great video! I wonder if the PPC also unintentionally commits Feser to the position that that God is not immutable (i.e., not purely actual)- because if the PPC is true, then change (an effect we see in the world), must also be in the cause of the change. Hence, God would be capable of changing, and thus not be immutable.
The response would likely be that "change" is not a being, but a process. It isn't strictly something that exists as a thing in its own right. It can only be analogically called "being" insofar as it refers to substance (change is always _of_ a substance) and being is primarily said of substance. One may object that passive potency may have to exist in God, but the PPC (at least as Thomists see it, I haven't read Feser in a while) states that every _perfection_ or _actuality_ in the effect must be found in the total effective cause. Given that passive potentiality is an imperfection and in itself devoid of any actuality, it is not (and need not be) found in the the First Cause. At least, that's probably how Feser would respond to that.
@@ob4161 Thanks for the reply. I don't recall the 'perfection' qualification mentioned in discussions of the PPC, but I will dig into the literature to learn more. On the face of it, it seems a bit contrived, but I'm not surprised that Thomists are able to come up with a ready answer to almost any objection ;)
If you are familiarized with the argument, you should be aware that there's a very old and important distriction between active and passive potential, and active potential is permissible by the argument, only passive potential strictly isn't.
1:17:40 "Even our intentional exertions of agent-causal power are caused or actualized by something else." Hold up. I thought the agent is the cause of the choice/act of will/intention. The agent(-causal power) brings about the choice. Regardless, W. Matthews Grant shows that Thomism is compatible with LFW in "Divine Universal Causality and Libertarian Freedom." Excerpt: "Some may worry that, if God causes my act, whether or not my act occurs will be ultimately up to God, and not me. This consequence might follow were it the case that both God’s causing my act is logically sufficient for my act’s occurring, and I have no say regarding whether or not God’s causing my act occurs. Yet, on EM, while God’s causing my act is certainly logically sufficient for my act, it is not the case that I have absolutely no say regarding the occurrence of God’s causing my act. On EM, God’s act of causing my act depends on my act as on an essential constituent. Without my concurrent cooperation in performing my act, God’s act of causing my act does not occur."
I briefly addressed these points already in the video. For we also have to take into account the *manner* of God's causality in relation to the first way, viz. a wholly derivative and instrumental one. And, secondly, the agent's causing the choice -- that exertion of agent causal power -- is itself something that reduces from potency to act, and hence -- per the first way's causal principle -- would require a further actualizer.
@@MajestyofReason Let A=cause of the agent's causing the choice; B=agent; C=choice; C*=counterfactual choice A-->B-->C Causes can be deterministic or indeterministic. A deterministically causes B. (We could say A is the state of affairs of being at the forking path.) A-->B doesn't necessitate that B-->C nor that B-->C* *because* B is an *indeterministic* cause of C. B could have caused C* in spite of A and A-->B, and so LFW is preserved. A forces an agent-causal event to happen, but not *which* event.
@@ObsidianTeen This document I made in response to another commenter is relevant here. :) docs.google.com/document/d/10XXJFyhzU11WjKi7b0tySK_O8bMP6R4tbaBNTJVgJj0/edit?usp=sharing
@@MajestyofReason After reading some Timothy O'Connor, I realize I was mistaken to suggest that the exertion has a cause. (Though Reid and other agent-causalists would disagree. To each his or her own.) "If there’s no distinctive action that the agent performs so as to bring about the particular effect, then the effect’s coming about in some worlds and not in others seems wholly outside the agent’s control." Let Ag=agent, a (or b)=choice This would be a problem (if it is a problem) for indeterministic causation in general. The action (i.e. exertion) is the complex event "Ag-->a." The effect (the event of the action-triggering intention a) is a component of the action; the action doesn't bring about the effect. (Otherwise, you'd have the absurd "(Ag-->a)-->a.") I'm not sure about what "control" means, but the agent-causal libertarian could say it means "to cause" or "power." If the agent causes the event, then it ipso facto has control. (Though the detractor of LFW could still say it's a matter of luck *how* the agent controls the decision, one reason being that "Ag-->a" has no cause.) "Without a distinctive exertion of agent-causal power to choose one of them, it seems baffling to me to say that agent has real control over which effect obtains." I interpret "exertion...choose one" to imply the exertion causes the effect, which I covered. Since the exertion "Ag-->(a or b)" contains the effect rather than bringing about the effect, then any difference in effect entails a difference in the exertion. One could even argue the difference in effect is prior to the difference in the exertion, since the relata (Ag & a) are prior to the causal relation (-->). The relation presupposes the cause and effect. "this is because libertarian free will is itself baffling and mysterious. Lol" Sure. If we rewound time 100 times (#vanInwagen), perhaps half of the sequences would have Lucifer remaining in grace rather than rebelling.
I'm going to provide a similar argument to thomas but get to the root of what he is saying. 1.a finite thing lacks things,and it in itself cannot bring this lack of power to be. 2. This lack of power can only come to be by something outside of it. 3. If a finite thing is contingent it lacks the power to exist by it's own grounds,and can only be change by virtue of its source of existence. 4. If a finite thing is nesscearry, it must be able to exist on its own grounds,and to bring quality into existence. 5.if a finite thing can exist on its own grounds then it also would mean it would have to able to give some quality to things by it's own merits. 6.but for a thing to give some kind of quality to existentent parts, it must have that part in itself. 7.but if a thing is nesscearry and finite,a nesscearry thing is its parts and is its properties.aka simple parts(by virtue of it having no smaller parts to keep into existence) 8.it cannot have two different states of being that are contradictory or that would mean something has contradictory parts in its being. 9. But if a thing is nesscarry and fundemental,it cannot have two quality states capable in it's being without itself in virtue being change. 10. But if a nesscarry finite thing requires a change in its qualities then it needs something more fundamental to change it by its lack of power (Not in all cases,but in cases of a positive change instead of a privation) 11.So thier must be something in which has the power to both be able to have the contrary,but also no need for a more fundamental member to cause the quality to be that way. 12. So this can only exist in a member that has the ability to actualize both while not being subject to one state in its being. 13. But everything finite is subject to its one state of qualities. 14. So this being must be infinite in nature. (Or not lacking any possibility or that would entail finintiude) 15. Thier can only be one thing that it is in a state of infinite because thier is no way to tell the infinite beings apart. 16. If consciousness is finite,then it needs some derived power for its existence. 17. If we accept the principle of proportionate causiality, then this infinite thing must have some kind of mind to produce a mind. I do realize this presupposes a theory,and that b theoriest would disagree with me. Also for premise 8 I would like to point out that you cannot have a finite thing that holds one state of energy in one way but also a other state of energy in a other way. Because either you will get to something it eventually lacks or doesn't lack anything and it will have to be infinite in nature by it have no lack. This is including material bodies because material bodies would be a lack of state,and then gaining something for a type of change. Now accidental can cause changes,but when causing the change they would be simultaneous in that moment,and in virtue coming essential. But what are your thoughts Joe?
@@MajestyofReason the lack may not exist,but what it is does exist. So that would mean based off what something in principle it cannot produce something that is outside the parts nature. Like a bowling ball cannot role itself unless something extrinsic interacts with it. (Also whenever you can I would be interested in your examples im curious to see what they are.) So lack would just be what it cannot do based off what it is.
I have a hard time understanding what potentiality is. If something exists then clearly it is actual, but potentiality seems to be something with semi existence.
Hi Joe, I love the show. I wonder if you have heard the implicit teleological argument put forward by richard taylor? I have put my rendition of it here. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on it. Imagine you wake up on a train. You have no idea how you got here or where you are going. You look out the window and see the green rolling hills. On one of these hills you observe a sign written in great big boulders. It reads ‘WELCOME TO WALES’. Now upon reading this sign you would instantly suppose that you were entering wales, that the sign was placed there by humans for the sole purpose of welcoming people to wales. It also seems it would be rational to suppose these things. Now of course you could hypothesise that this sign was not formed by humans but by asteroids that fell from the sky and just by random chance happened to form the sign that reads ‘welcome to wales’. It seems unlikely, but it is afterall a possible explanation. If, however, you were to believe that the sign was formed by asteroids falling from the sky, then it would be irrational of you to also suppose that you are entering wales. That is, if there is a natural explanation for this sign, then it is irrational to suppose it also tells you truth outside of itself. Similarly, imagine you are walking through the forest. You see a gravestone that reads ‘Here lies John Smith, died 1981’. Now you would immediately suppose that John Smith is buried here and that he died in 1981. You could however suppose that this gravestone has a natural explanation. Such as the rock was generated by some geological process that made it shaped as a gravestone and a bird came along and by chance happened to peck into it ‘Here lies John Smith, died 1981’. Again if you were to accept this natural geological explanation then it would be irrational to suppose that John Smith is buried there. That is, it would be irrational to suppose that this naturally generated stone tells you some truth. These two thought experiments give rise to the following premise. If some declarative phenomena has a natural explanation then it is irrational to suppose that this phenomena tells us truth outside of itself. Now according to a naturalistic and biological explanation of the origin of humanity, our sense organs also have a natural explanation. Under this thesis our eyes have a natural explanation. Furthermore, we assume our sense organs are declarative phenomena in so far as they tell us about the external world. This gives rise to the second premise: Our sense organs are declarative phenomena and have a natural explanation. If we combine these two premises together we get the following argument: P1: If some declarative phenomena has a natural explanation then it is irrational to suppose that this phenomena tells us truth outside of itself P2: Our sense organs are declarative phenomena and have a natural explanation C: Therefore it is irrational to suppose that our sense organs tell us truth outside of themselves.
Hello there! This isn’t majesty of reason, but this argument is very interesting. I’d like to reject premise 1 although my response might be very inadequate as I’ve just heard this argument now. This may sound dumb so apologies for that, but it would also help to if you could clarify what you mean by “declarative phenomena”. You say that our senses are declarative phenomena because it tells us things about the world. Btw I’m not a naturalist so I’m open-minded to immaterial explanations of the universe, I just like to make sure that we don’t take too big of leaps so that’s why I wanted to respond to this. Anyways, consider this. We have the formation of a canyon. This tells us in a certain sense that something has happened here. Something clearly formed the canyon. However, we need not look to the non natural or supernatural for this because the reason why the canyon formed is because of thousands if not millions of years of erosion due to a river or wind or whatever. Again, apologies because I’ve just been introduced to this argument and I’m not super educated in philosophy.
Hey CrabKing! Thanks for the reply. I would define a declarative phenomenon as some object, event or sensation that tells us something extrinsic to itself. It informs us about the world external to it. In the case of a sensation - the sense impression of a tree, be it through the eyes, touch or smell, is first the detection of the tree by the sense organs. This is followed by a neural event which provides us with the awareness of the presence of a tree. The sensation followed by the neural event declare to us that this tree exists in front of us, external to both the event and the sense organs. I don't think the canyon example is analogous because it does not tell us any truth external to itself. It is loosely declarative insofar as it tells us about its own formation, but that’s it. It tells us no truth external to itself. If it had ‘Peter was here 20/12/20’ scrawled on the wall, then it would be a declarative phenomena as it tells us about an occurrence extrinsic to its own formation. Appreciate any thoughts? 😊
I think we can still find declarative phenomena which have naturalistic explanations. I think we can find phenomena which show truths external to itself. One example could be a fossil. Fossils can tell us about the past environment, or at the very least, help us make useful predictions based on certain features it carries to see how it evolved to adapt to the said environment it lived in. I’m not much of a paleontologist though so maybe I’m mistaken. Here’s another analogy which may or may not work. Suppose you’re entering a place in the wilderness which has never been explored before by another human. You see an apple on the ground and it’s half eaten and it’s eaten in such a way where it’s kind of messy so no normal person would eat like that. I think this apple can tell you that there’s a certain type of non-human animal within this unexplored place. Technically this was formed by a being with some intelligence though so it doesn’t give a complete ground to reject the premise. One last example. One way an island forms is through volcanic activity. It would seem as though when you come across an island, it can tell you that a volcano is nearby. Apologies if I’m still misunderstanding the argument. I kind of forgot about this comment thread. That’s on me.
@@crabking6884 These are all very good points. I think you are right. I wonder if we can save the argument by making a distinction between a phenomena that is explicitly declarative and one that is implicitly declarative. It seems to me the examples you provided do imply a truth but they don't explicitly declare it in the sense that 'Welcome to Wales' declares you are entering Wales. So perhaps I could restate the argument with a the first premise clarified. P1: If some declarative phenomena has a natural explanation then it is irrational to suppose that this phenomena tells us explicit truth outside of itself P2: Our sense organs are declarative phenomena which tell us explicit truth and have a natural explanation C: Therefore it is irrational to suppose that our sense organs tell us explicit truth outside of themselves. It seems now the premise is clarified the argument has lost all its weight. What do you think?
That is a useful distinction, but I’m not really sure if our senses can be classified as explicit declarative phenomena like a sign that says ‘Welcome to Wales’. For instance, suppose a toddler enters a room and sees a chair. It’s not like they’re robots and they see the word ‘chair’ coming up in their object identification program. All they see is an object maybe with four legs and a flat part placed on top of those legs. They perceive the object itself, but they don’t know they’re perceiving a chair. Someone like their parents actually have to teach them and say that they’re seeing a chair. With your analogy regarding the ‘Welcome to Wales’ sign, there’s something that explicitly says that you are entering the city Wales. Suppose that sign wasn’t there, but there was some sort of man-made structure without words written on it. It’d still implicitly tell you about an external truth such as there being a settlement of humans, but it doesn’t explicitly say you are entering a city, more specifically, a city called Wales. This is like our senses. Our senses tell us external truths and they help us perceive objects and such, but that alone doesn’t seem to explicitly tell you that the object you’re perceiving right now is a chair or a table or a book or something like that. That requires humans like you or me to further learn and ask questions and study implicit declarative phenomena like the analogies I gave in my last comment. Although I could be wrong about my analysis of our senses so apologies if that is the case.
Sorry, I don't know about philosophy, but does it defeat the argument that the real world is not this Thomistic world? [edit] ah you got there in the Moorean section.
I think this is related to my section on 'Moorean defeaters'. In essence, I think there are independent arguments against Thomism and classical theism that -- to my mind (recall that justification is person- and sight-based) -- succeed. And thus the first way could be 'defeated' in the sense that such independent arguments already give us reason to think it couldn't be sound. Hopefully I've understood you correctly! :)
So it seems for any accidental change thier must be a essential ordered memeber by the fact the accidental is a result of essential changes. To plant a tree requires interaction for items to become that way. And so when a object is interacting it is essential. And so the table your describing would be all essential.
Regarding eternalism: if eternalism is true and change is therefore NOT the actualisation of potential, then what is the analysis of change? Does it follow that there is no change? And also if eternalism being true means that change isnt the actualisation of potential then already Premise 2 of Feser’s Aristotelian Proof is undermined, without even getting into the rest of the premises
Excellent questions. So, there are different accounts of change under eternalism. One account is sometimes called the "at-at theory", and it consists in something's having a property at one time and not having the property at another time. [Notice the two "at"s there] So, for instance, so long as the banana has the property of greeneness at time t1 (or, more accurately, a temporal part, existing at t1, of the four-dimensional banana-like object exemplifies greenness) but yellowness at time t2, then the banana changed from being yellow to being green. It's a little weird how this counts as change, but that's how many do it. [there are different accounts, though] I think I agree with you about Feser's Aristotelian proof relying on the falsity of eternalism. He tries to circumvent this in his chapter on the Aristotelian proof, but I don't think his strategy works. [ I believe, and you're probably well aware, that I touched on this in this video :) ]
Looking over the eternalist argument really quick, it seems 4 (the conclusion) is false, or at least in need of qualification. It seems to me 4 would have to be _temporal_ change is not the actualization of a potential, not change simpliciter.
You invite a good clarification. So, I think change is always temporal change, i.e. change over time. There is no such thing as instantaneous change. Most philosophers tend to agree: change requires going *from* A *to* ~A (or vice versa), and clearly nothing can be both A and ~A instantaneously (i.e. at one time). Thus, all change is temporal change. The clarification you've invited is that 'actualization of potential' is not numerically identical with change. This is because all change is temporal, but not all actualization of potential is temporal (i.e. extended through time). For instance, some actualization of potential is wholly instantaneous: form's actualizing matter (under Aristotelian hylomorphism, that is) is an instantaneous actualization relation.
@@MajestyofReason thanks. Well what I had specifically in mind is modal change. Because change across possible worlds doesn't logically entail change across times, no? Btw, do you have a preferred view on time?
@@TheBrunarr I see what you're saying. I think I would say it's 'variance' or 'difference' across worlds instead of 'change' across worlds, since change tends to be associated with some one thing going from being one way to not being that way. And this is simply inapplicable in the case of variance across worlds, since nothing 'leaps' across worlds to be one way in one world and another way in another world! As for my preferred view of time, I slightly lean towards presentism. But I'm best characterized as an 'agnostic-leaning-presentist' wrt temporal ontology.
@@MajestyofReason I suppose difference would be a better term, although I'm still on the fence about whether change can be simply described in terms of difference, although I'm leaning towards it. Interesting, any thoughts on the truthmaker objection? I haven't been impressed with responses from Craig and Feser for example.
@@TheBrunarr I can't get into it much here (as I'm smack dab in the middle of midterm season), but I am at least somewhat sympathetic to Feser's response. But I think the more fundamental point to make, on behalf of presentists, is that truhmaker theories are deeply controversial, especially truthmaker maximalism. We already have very strong reason to think that there are loads of truths without truthmakers (e.g. negative existentials and all the other examples in the literature), and so I think the presentist can simply extend this to truths about times. (Whether this is a theoretical cost is another matter -- perhaps it is. But I don't view the problem as devastating.) And, as always, I need to do more research to come to a more considered view. :)
Couldn't an argument be made against the existence of per se causal series? The first way doesn't just argue for a first mover who set it all into motion and just disappeared, it also says that the mover has to be there at the beginning right now, and if he were to disappear, we would disappear with him, immediately. However, if causality travels at a finite speed (say, the speed of light), him disappearing wouldn't actually have that effect, at least not immediately. All the examples of per se chains actually struck me as advancing a view of instantaneous causality while no such thing is happening in reality: if I were to stack 10k cups on a desk and then remove the desk, the cups wouldn't actually start falling immediately, the last cup would start falling at a later time than the first one. I'm rambling a bit but I'd like to hear your take on this.
Thanks for your comment! There's a vast literature on whether no causation is simultaneous, whether some causation is while other causation isn't, and whether all causation is simultaneous. I don't have a settled view on the question (though I lean towards the middle option), so I won't be of much help. But attacking the notion of per se chains is one way to go about objecting to the argument, yes.
Well psi, that would be the case if laws of nature are real things with a prescriptive power instead of mere descriptive abstractions of how natural things behave. In the latter view, which I subscribe to, the law would only be "turned off" as the things it describes disappear, which would only happen at later times, thus the problem remains
Thank you for your reply. I asked because I often see the first way attacked in various manners but very rarely do I see it attacked from that perspective which, if true, stops the argument in its tracks very"early" in its premises. Btw love your channel!
So, way back in the 2010 premier league and champions league season, I happened to see an Arsenal game on television. I was mesmerized by Fabregas. He has brilliant. I instantly fell in love with him as a player (making my favorite number 4 up till this day, though I also have a special connection to the number 9 due to high school soccer (but that's beside the point)). And -- as a result of this -- I became a gunner. (And I have loved many Arsenal players since then, as well as Arsenal's quality style of play (e.g. tiki taka passing) throughout the years)
Personally a real madrid fan but I've been watching the PL since 2009 too. Fabregas really was an incredible talent,bit unfortunate he never got to win the league with Arsenal though :( . Yall will probably make top 4 this year so that's good
Is Feser an A theorist? Also I don't understand why you say the argument relies on rejecting eternalism, since Pruss is a B theorist and still accepts the first way I believe...
(1) Feser is a presentist; (2) If you don't understand why the argument relies on the falsity of eternalism, listen to the video from 12:12 to 25:07; (3) I don't know whether Pruss accepts the first way; I don't believe he has published any articles on it (though, of course, I haven't read every single one of his dozens of articles); and, finally, even if he does accept both, that doesn't entail in the slightest that they're compatible
@@MajestyofReason Pruss has written a blog post regarding how act and potency are compatible under eternalism. In fact, Pruss goes as far as to say that the actualization of potentials would not work under presnetism: alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2019/06/is-eternalism-compatible-with.html In addition to this, Cundy and other Thomists who would accept the first way also accept eternalism. Personally, I am agnostic on presentism vs. eternalism.
@@WilliamCanterbury We were talking about whether Pruss has published on the first way; I am well aware that Pruss has written blog posts on the (real or purported) compatibility of act and potency with eternalism. Two things: (1) I never claimed that act and potency are incompatible with eternalism. Indeed, I was explicit in this video that I was *only* targeting an *act-potency analysis of change* as it pertains to eternalism; and (2) Feser has written extensively on his blog in response to Pruss. (And I have to say that I side with Feser's arguments). Finally, I don't deny that there are people like Cundy who wish to hold both eternalism and the first way. I think there's an interesting question, though, as to whether or not they *can*. I have given arguments in this video that, by my lights at least [ recall, of course, that argumentation is person- and sight-based :) ], they seem incompatible.
@@MajestyofReason Thank you for the reply. I still need to watch the video and I will definitely watch the part that you highlighted in your initial reply. I look forward to hearing what you think. I am not sure if Pruss has ever written anything on the first way. The closest thing I can think of is his argument for a first cause in his book Infinity, Causation, and Paradox.
Concerning your criticisms on inferring omnipotence from pure act, you raised two objections: The first was that you disagreed with the proof which demonstrates how there cannot be more than one pure act. However, you only mentioned Feser's argument for the unicity of pure act. But, you did not mention the many other arguments which attempt to show this from thinkers like Avicenna and Aquinas. Since this was a video on Aquinas, you should have at least mentioned the arguments that Aquinas gave in his Summa demonstrating the unicity of pure act. Your second objection was that pure act could directly cause one being, but then that being causes everything else. So pure act only has the single power to cause one being, and so is not omnipotent. I think the first point to mention here is that I do not think Thomists would accept such a case as being possible. For example, see what Aquinas says in De Potentia Dei Q.3, Article 4 on if creative power is communicable to a creature. But, I think a deeper problem with your analysis is that it confused the difference between per se ordered series and per accidens ordered series. In per se ordered series, the primary cause has the causality of the series of itself, and every subsequent member derives the causality from the primary cause. From my understanding, every subsequent member in a per ser ordered series *directly* depends on the primary cause, for without the primary cause, the causality of the series just wouldn't exist. So in the case of pure act then, even if pure act caused one being, and then through that being caused everything else, it does not follow that pure act does not directly cause everything else and the other being is the direct cause of everything else. Pure act does not depend on the being, while the being depends on pure act. All power would still be derived from pure act and pure act would would still be the direct cause of everything else, it is just that everything else would also rely on the other being.
"Since this was a video on Aquinas, you should have at least mentioned the arguments that Aquinas gave in his Summa demonstrating the unicity of pure act." The video was on a bajillion things, and countless things had to be cut out that I wanted to include. As I said to another commenter, a proper analysis of the third way would take numerous books. And since the video was not about Aquinas as such but rather the first way as manifested in Aquinas, McNabb and DeVito, Oderberg, Oppy, Feser, etc., I think it's just wrong to say that I should have mentioned the arguments Aquinas gives. I don't think Avicenna's argument for unicity succeeds; and if you're thinking about ST I q13a3 w.r.t. Aquinas's arguments for unicity, then Aquinas doesn't argue from 'purely actual/unchangeable' to unicity. Instead, Aquinas gives three arguments for unicity: from simplicity, from infinity of perfection, and from the unity of the world. None of these aim to derive unicity from 'purely actual/unchangeable'. I'll reply to your second paragraph next.
"Your second objection was that pure act could directly cause one being, but then that being causes everything else. So pure act only has the single power to cause one being, and so is not omnipotent. I think the first point to mention here is that I do not think Thomists would accept such a case as being possible. For example, see what Aquinas says in De Potentia Dei Q.3, Article 4 on if creative power is communicable to a creature." First, I made it clear that I was addressing *Feser's* stage two inference, and so -- while it is valuable to bring to bear considerations elsewhere in the Thomistic tradition -- it is not targeting my stated aims in the video w.r.t. stage two. Second, my proposed counter-example doesn't require creative power to be a communicable attribute; the other being could simply be (for all Feser has shown, that is) a necessary intermediary in all causal chains, without which the purely actual being could do nothing -- and that is a far cry from omnipotence. Or the being could be a non-creative cause of other things (e.g. just as parents are non-creative causes of their children together which food, temperature, oxygen, gravity, etc.). Or (and this is an important one) the first way and its manifestations -- assuming (as I don't think we should) it successfully shows that there is a purely actual source of all change -- only shows that all *change* derives from the purely actual entity. This leaves it open as to whether or not the *being* of everything else derives from such an entity. (And, as you're well aware, the conferral of being is emphatically not a change for those in the classical tradition.) So, my counter-example can suppose that there is some distinct, uncreated, necessary entity that is the per se source of the existence of everything else (except for (i) itself, and (ii) the purely actual entity). And then the purely actual being could be creatively impotent in this scenario but is nevertheless that from which all change/motion causally depends. (Even if the scenario is odd or strange, this is (as you know) no mark against proposed counter-examples to analyses of omnipotence. Consider, e.g., Plantinga's McEar example!) This bridges nicely into your second point, wherein you claim I confused the difference b/n per se and per accidens chains in my example. I don't think so. This is because there is one sense in which the per se cause of a chain *is* directly causing all members of the chain, but another sense in which it is *not* -- and my argument only needs that there is a sense in which it is not. Consider the mind-hand-stick-stone case. There is a sense in which the mind can directly cause the stone's motion insofar as the mind has the relevant causal power of the series non-derivatively; but there's another sense in which the mind can't cause the stone directly to move, since it *has* to use certain intermediaries (e.g. the bodily movement of the hand, which in turn uses the stick to push the stone). It's not as though the mind can just magically move the stone without any intermediary means. Nevertheless, this is still a per se series. So, a per se series is compatible with there being a sense in which the first member does *not* directly cause all other members of the series; and hence, your claims do not defeat my counter-example. [ By my lights, of course :) ]
"if you're thinking about ST I q13a3 w.r.t. Aquinas's arguments for unicity, then Aquinas doesn't argue from 'purely actual/unchangeable' to unicity. Instead, Aquinas gives three arguments for unicity: from simplicity, from infinity of perfection, and from the unity of the world. None of these aim to derive unicity from 'purely actual/unchangeable'." I don't think I mentioned that Aquinas derives unicity from pure act, just that Aquinas proves the unicity of pure act. In any case, Aquinas at least implicitly uses pure act to prove unicity. You mentioned that Aquinas argued that God must be one because He is simple, but if you refer to where Aquinas talks about God's simplicity, one of the main ways to prove God's simplicity is because God is pure act. "the first way and its manifestations -- assuming (as I don't think we should) it successfully shows that there is a purely actual source of all change -- only shows that all change derives from the purely actual entity. This leaves it open as to whether or not the being of everything else derives from such an entity." I thought that at this part of the video, you were granting that there is only one being which is pure act in all respects which derives all change and the being of everything else, but doubting the inference that such a being would have to be omnipotent. If you were not granting this, then you are taking issue with stage one of the argument (which existential Thomists would argue does prove pure act as the source of all actuality), or the stage two arguments which prove the unicity of pure act. But, you would not be taking issue with the inference from one pure act which derives the existence and change of everything to it being omnipotent. "Consider the mind-hand-stick-stone case. There is a sense in which the mind can directly cause the stone's motion insofar as the mind has the relevant causal power of the series non-derivatively; but there's another sense in which the mind can't cause the stone directly to move, since it has to use certain intermediaries" So you've granted that there is a sense in which pure act would still be the direct cause of everything else that exists (because the causal feature of the per se series would not exist without the primary member), but there is another sense which pure act would not be the direct cause according to your counter-example. Call the former sense the first sense, and the latter sense the second sense. I think pure act being the direct cause of everything according to the first sense is enough to establish pure act's omnipotence. Whether pure act must use an intermediary being does not diminish pure act's omnipotence or make the intermediary being more powerful. In the example you provide, the stick would be the direct cause of the stone's movement, according to the second sense. The mind, however, would be the direct cause according to the first sense. But, would you say that the stick is more powerful than the mind or hand in moving the stone? I don't think I would. Therefore, whether something is a direct cause in the second sense does not make it more powerful in the relevant causal property than any other member in the per se ordered series. Now, suppose pure act causes a being (so pure act is the direct cause in both senses of this being), and then that being causes everything else (the being would not be the direct cause in the first sense, but is the direct cause in the second sense, while pure act would be the direct cause in the first sense but not in the second sense). In your video, you stated that this intermediary being would be more powerful than pure act. But, just because a thing is the direct cause according to the second sense, does not mean it is more powerful. Again, would you say the stick is more powerful than the mind or hand in moving the stone? Rather, I would say the mind is more powerful than the stick in moving the stone, because the mind is the direct cause of the stone's movement according to the first sense. The mind causes the stick to have the causal power of being able to move the stone, while the stick does not cause the mind to have the causal power to move the stone. Even if the mind could not move the stone without the stick as the intermediary, that does not mean the stick is more powerful than the mind in moving the stone. So then, if pure act is the direct cause of everything (including the intermediary being) according to the first sense, then that is enough to say that it is omnipotent. This is because it derives all powers, including the powers of the intermediary being. Even if it is granted that pure act must cause everything through this intermediary being, that does not make the intermediary being more powerful, or pure act less powerful. This would only be the case if one defines omnipotence as being the direct cause according to both the first and second sense of everything. In other words, God would have to directly cause everything without any intermediaries. But, this sounds a lot like occasionalism to me, which suffers from many problems of its own.
Also, with respect to your objections to the validity of the first way and the objection by Rasmussen, they are OK. However it wouldn't be hard to amend the argument with some reasonable extra premisses so as to make it not only valid but immune to objections from accidentally ordered chains (though doing so in some way requires mixing the first and the second ways). Here is the argument: 1. Some things are potential to a multiplicity of different possible actualizations or non-actualizations (non-being, or inexistence). 2. Whatever actual thing is potential (to a multi...) has it's current actualization constantly actualized by something else. 3. No infinite regress of an essentially ordered series of causes/actualizations is possible (or perhaps an infinite chain is possible, but we can assume that any chain is upper bounded, hence Zorn's lemma would allow us to conclude the same thing essentially). From this we can already conclude (by Zorn's lemma) that there is at least one "unmoved mover"/unactualized actualizer and everything that is actualized is actualized by at least one unactualized actualizer. Now for the other premisses: 4. Whatever is contingent has a potential for being and for not-being (hence if it exists its potential for being is also actualized [from 2] by something else) From this we can conclude that no unactualize actualizer can be contingent, for otherwise it would have to he actualized by something else. Therefore any first actualizer is necessary. This already answers Rasmussen's objection since necessary beings have no cause, either essentially or accidentally ordered. Now for the final premisse: 5. There can be at most a single necessary substance. We can also defend 5 by a slightly stronger principle: 5": Any 2 things which exist in exactly the same possible worlds are cosubstantial. Because obviously 2 necessary beings exist in exactly the same worlds (all of them), and hence by this principle would exist in one and the same substance (Father and Son in Christianity are examples of cosubstantial necessary beings). Now, I cannot go much further here in the defense of either 5 or 5". If they are not obvious to you, you can consider their particular defense as part of the "Gap problem" that has to later be solved about what properties we can ascribe of God (which I do think can be solved), namely this has to do with the Divine uniqueness problem. However, suffices to say for 5" that I believe you would have some genuine trouble finding a counterexample for that claim. From this argument we are certainly able to conclude that there is a necessary being that is purely actual (is not potential to a multiplicity of different actualizations or non-actualizations) and which is the (remote) cause of all possible change. Et quod dicimus Deus (which is Q.E.D. for proofs of the existence of God).
Oh yes, this also deals with your reply to the "patch" you mentioned, because in a sense it avoids the problem of change altogether (at the cost of it being actually much harder to distinguish this argument I made from the second way rather than the first, though they are certainly correlated).
@@luizcarlosrviana3724 Here's my document in response to this comment. :) As you know, please see my FB direct message to you for how we can proceed to discuss these matters via personal communication.
Love your videos so much, Joe! They're such a blessing! ♡
Much love
25:10 To me, this discussion of eternalism is like looking at a column sideways to deny gravity. Yes, if you redefine "up" gravity no longer pushes "down". But how does not provide any defeater to the sideways force?
Eternalism still has cause and effect in a different sense. "Unmoved mover" just becomes "bottom of the temporal stack".
I still remember us chatting about that Mcnabb and Devito paper when it first came out, we were both like "yo this isn't valid either" lolol
You're literally doing everything in your power to piss off the feser bots at this point.
All in the service of truth :)
@Elephant Philosophy lolol
Really nice that a nontheist who is able to follow an argument is engaging with Feser on RUclips. I've wanted do that myself if I ever actually get my channel started.
Lmaoo
@@MajestyofReason maybe you should see if you could get feser to come on your channel 👀👀
It’s very nice hearing someone with philosophy backgrounds respond to this argument. I’ve at times done my best to respond to it from my physics background but I always feel like the words and concepts just doesn’t match up with how physicists think of things. I usually get the feeling that I might be straw manning the argument.
Or the argument is strawmanning reality. It was created before we understood that motion needs no cause, only acceleration.
Edit: inertia instead of acceleration.
@@goldenalt3166 I’m inclined to think so as well, but at least some times I’m trying my best not to be overconfident about it. Maybe there is something there and I just don’t get it. It might also be that the argument fails for nontrivial reasons and/or that my possibly naive response to it could be easily shot down. 💜
@@HyperFocusMarshmallow The Catholics have one advantage in my book. They seem to have a large population that agrees on principle. I'm not convinced that many understand these arguments and it doesn't seem like any significant number are convinced by them, but if there is some sort of non-science method to truth, they are the best candidate.
@@goldenalt3166 Isn't acceleration a cause?
@@ethanf.237 Difficult to say. Gravity seems you be a form of inertia. I think I meant to say inertia rather than acceleration in the original post.
I don’t know if you addressed this in the video or comments and I missed it, but I think it’s unfair to treat the Five Ways from the Summa Theologiae (meant as a basic summary) as if they exist in isolation from more exhaustive formulations like in the Summa Contra Gentiles. Also, many of the non-sequesters are established by Aquinas after the Five Ways. Aquinas would be the first to say that the First Way only proves at least one Unmoved Mover exists. That’s why he goes on to demonstrate that there must be one such being in I.Q3,Q11. In fact, over the next several articles, Aquinas goes on to demonstrate many attributes of the First Mover (all-good, all-present, all-powerful, rational, etc), so he makes the case that this being can be called God.
More importantly, I’m not sure if you address the fact that potency in a being itself requires an external actual for existence. So if the First Mover in a chain ordered per se can be caused by something else in another chain ordered per accidens, then you’re implying that the First Mover has some unactualized potential. This is exactly what cannot be. The First Mover must lack all potency or else that potency requires appeal to an external actual in a causal chain ordered per se. The First Mover therefore must be Pure Act. To even suggest that the First Mover could be caused “at some other time” implies potency in the Mover because passage through time is a type of change. Aquinas argues this in I.Q10.A2. Think of the act-potency relation between mover and moved as itself part of an essentially ordered (meta) chain. This means eventually you need a first member that is just Pure Act so the chain of appeals to external actuals can terminate.
Finally, about Aristotelean goodness: while the general concept doesn’t resemble what we mean by morality, our recognizable concept of morality (which relates particularly to goodness in rational beings) fits into the larger concept of good. So if God is all-good in that general sense, it follows that he is all-good in the moral sense that we typically mean by good. A circle is not rational, so it falls outside the scope of goodness that relates to morality. Plus a perfect instantiation of a geometric circle is not devoid of all potency. The very definition of a circle tells of its limits (and therefore potencies). For example, the circle isn’t all-present on the Cartesian grid; there are points it intersects and points it does not, and it is limited to a single plane. Definitions imply potency. This is why the Thomistic “definition” of God isn’t strictly a definition. God is. Full stop. Using more words would just be a way of clarifying or demonstrating the sufficient and exhaustive “definition” God is.
Thanks for the comment--I have already addressed these points elsewhere in the comment section. I've also already addressed them in this paper, including the point about potency requiring a prior act, the point about a potency's requiring appeal to an external cause, etc. www.dropbox.com/s/yyseyl07vhukdk9/%28APQ%29%20Unactualized%20Potential.docx?dl=0
@@MajestyofReason I’m glad you are aware of the things I mentioned and address them somewhere. I’ll definitely check it out as you do seem to understand well everything you do touch on. My criticism was based on things I felt you weren’t aware of, so I’m eager to see how you address a richer expression of the argument!
@@MajestyofReason Hmm ... I’m skimming this document and seeing several problems, actually. For example, your first objection to “Path” (which is actually just part of Aquinas’ main argument), you use an example of an essentially ordered causal chain (EO CC) that terminates with fire, heat being the relevant causal power. You note that the first mover here (fire) is not necessarily unmovable even in the relevant sense (heat), but that is irrelevant to the argument! The point is, at that exact moment, fire’s ability to transmit heat is itself contingent on prior actuals, so we are logically forced to couch fire within a larger EO CC as we chase for an ultimate explanation for the heated noodles. Fire can generate heat because of chemical combustion, which can impart this power because of atomic properties, which can impart that power because of more fundamental quantum mechanical properties. Do you see how each chain is nested within a more meta chain as we chase that ultimate first cause? This is a monster EO CC that must terminate! And whatever it terminates with must by definition not fit into yet another causal chain of any sort.
I strongly believe that much of your trouble with this argument is based on this critical missing of the point (for example, your other two objections to “Path” are also resolved by this more proper articulation), and I beg your pardon if I’m putting this rudely. It’s so frustrating because you are really intelligent and I want to hear you rebut what I understand to be the full, rich argument that Aquinas argued. I noticed other problems, but I want to keep this tight.
@@DefenseofSanity "you use an example of an essentially ordered causal chain (EO CC) that terminates with fire, heat being the relevant causal power. You note that the first mover here (fire) is not necessarily unmovable even in the relevant sense (heat), but that is irrelevant to the argument!"
I think that more than a skim is required to fully and adequately understand my paper and, more importantly, the dialectical context of its various points. For I believe you have missed the relevant dialectical context in which my response to Path arises. In particular, in this portion of the paper, I am simply addressing a response to one claim I made elsewhere in the paper. That claim elsewhere was that merely from the fact that S is unmoved in respect R, it doesn't follow that S is unmovable in respect R. [This is also one of philosopher Scott MacDonald's criticisms.] The response tries to avoid this claim. Thus, it is perfectly relevant for me to point out that the first mover in the relevant case is not necessarily unmovable even in the relevant sense, since this directly addresses the challenge raised to my earlier claim. It seems to me, then, that to say this is irrelevant "to the argument" is to miss the dialectical context in which my rejoinder arises.
You then say:
"The point is, at that exact moment, fire’s ability to transmit heat is itself contingent on prior actuals, so we are logically forced to couch fire within a larger EO CC as we chase for an ultimate explanation for the heated noodles"
The first thing to note is that, strictly speaking, this again misses the dialectical context. The context in which I'm operating is one in which I am addressing a *version* of the First Way argument proffered by the likes of McNabb, DeVito, Davies, and Oppy. And in their versions, nothing about 'being contingent on prior actualities' arises. They desire to reach the intended conclusion merely from (i) the existence of change, (ii) the denial of the infinitude of per se chains of change, and (iii) the causal principle that what is changed is caused to change by another. It would therefore constitute an admission that the *original* arguments Im addressing do not, of themselves, succeed if we have to add in a further claim about abilities being dependent on prior actuals. [For this is no longer using the causal principle but instead is invoking a separate principle.]
To be sure, it's perfectly legitimate to raise the principle as a next-stage-move in the dialectic; but it's crucial to keep in mind that to make the argument dependent on this further move is to concede that my *original* targets--McNabb, DeVito, Davies, and Oppy--proffer arguments which, of themselves and without the addition of separate auxiliary theses, don't work.
Note also that I do not claim that this move isn't part of the 'first way itself' or isn't part of Aquinas's own reasoning [indeed, Aquinas himself explicitly uses the principle that act is prior to potency in similar contexts]; instead, keep in mind that my original targets have been the *articulations/defenses/interpretations* of the first way proffered by McNabb etc.
With that being said, I can now move on to assess this next-stage-move in the dialectic. The first thing to say in response is to point out that the relevant principle of A-T metaphysics, I take it, says that potencies are posterior to actualities and, hence, for any potency P, P is dependent upon some prior actuality A. Call this principle the Potency Dependence Thesis (PDT).
But notice that in order to infer, on the basis of PDT, that the fire's ability to heat is dependent upon some prior actuality, we must show that the fire's ability is, indeed, a potency [or else in potency]. But why should we think that? After all, this is an *active potency* -- it's the fire's causal power, of itself, to heat. And active potencies are, strictly speaking, *actualities*. [God, for instance, has [better, *is*] active but not passive potency.] So the relevant inference seems blocked: the ability is not a potency, and hence we cannot infer, using PDT, that it is dependent on some prior actuality. [Moreover: its not as though the fire merely has this ability merely *potentially*; it *actually* has it.]
The second thing to say in response is as follows. Suppose (contrary to what I've argued) that the fire's ability is, indeed, dependent on prior actualities. This dependence regress still won't get us, so I argue, any closer to a *purely actual* being. As I write in the paper:
"One might respond that Aquinas himself anticipated the problems I leveled in Section 3 concerning the (purported) possibility of the unmoved mover’s having some potency. For Aquinas himself writes:
[T]he first being must of necessity be in act, and in no way in potentiality. For although in any single thing that passes from potentiality to actuality, the potentiality is prior in time to the actuality; nevertheless, absolutely speaking, actuality is prior to potentiality; for whatever is in potentiality can be reduced into actuality only by some being in actuality. Now it has been already proved that God is the First Being. It is therefore impossible that in God there should be any potentiality. (Summa Theologiae I, q3, a1)
The idea is as follows. Act is prior to potency; hence, anything which is absolutely first in the order of being (such that nothing is prior to it) could not have potency. For if it had potency, some distinct actuality would be prior to it-in which case, it wouldn’t be first in the order of being. Something would be prior to it. We can formalize this argument like so:
1. Potentials require some prior actuality.
2. If the first being has potential, and if potentials require some prior actuality, then something is prior to the first being.
3. Nothing is prior to the first being.
4. So, the first being has no potential.
What to make of this argument?
There are at least two serious problems with this rejoinder. First, the consequent of premise (2) simply doesn’t follow from the (conjunctive) antecedent. It doesn't follow that there would be an entire concrete object (i.e. a being) that is prior to the ‘first being’. Instead, the actuality (or actualities) of a single being B could be prior to the potency (or potencies) of B. Hence, act would be prior to potency, but there would be nothing prior to B. Hence, B can be a first being while nevertheless having potency. (Recall the points defended in Section 4.)
Second, as we’ve seen, the First Way only gets us to the claim that there is at least one first member T of chain C that is actually unmoved at time t in respect of the causal power or property of C. It therefore does not establish the existence of a ‘first being’ that is the most fundamental being-more fundamental than all else and in every respect. Instead, it only shows (at most) that each chain has a first member T of that chain C which has nothing prior to it in respect of the causal power of C only during the time period at which T stands as first member of C. But this is perfectly compatible with T standing in potency in some other respect (e.g. some respect that has nothing to do with the causal power/property of the C for which it serves as terminus). Hence, it is perfectly compatible with there being something more fundamental than T in that particular respect but yet not with respect to the causal power/property of C."
@@DefenseofSanity
You then write:
"Fire can generate heat because of chemical combustion, which can impart this power because of atomic properties, which can impart that power because of more fundamental quantum mechanical properties. Do you see how each chain is nested within a more meta chain as we chase that ultimate first cause? This is a monster EO CC that must terminate! And whatever it terminates with must by definition not fit into yet another causal chain of any sort."
First, my quote from above responds to this, since this gets us no closer to a *purely* actual being--whatever the foundational entity is in this given chain, it could (for all the argument shows) easily have potency; its just that the potency is (given PDT) dependent on the prior actualities *of that very foundational entity*. Second, I have already addressed this objection elsewhere. In particular, what I say in response to McNabb and Devito, quoted below, responds to your objection here, since you--like them and like Feser--have merely appealed to 'more fundamental *component parts* ' of the fire [it's chemical parts, it's atomic parts, its quantum properties and parts, etc.]. Here's how I respond to their point:
"McNabb and DeVito write:
[I]n order for the chair to remain red at t + ε, the chemical microstructure of the chair will have to continue being in a certain way. If the microchemical structure of the chair were different, the chair would no longer be red. So, it isn’t the case that the red chair can remain red at t + ε as long as nothing intervenes. Rather… in order to retain ‘the redness,’ something outside of ‘the redness’ needs to be in place. (2020, p. 7)
But this response to Oppy is inadequate on multiple fronts. In order to simplify things, let’s simply focus on the existence of the chair. The first problem with the response is that the chemical microstructure of the chair is a material cause of the chair, not an efficient cause that brings the chair into and efficiently sustains it in being.
The second problem with their response is that appealing to microstructure as a ‘cause’ upon which a chair depends simply undermines the Aristotelian proof’s inference to an unsustained sustainer of the existence of everything apart from itself. For the microstructure of the chair is a *component* of the chair, and only ‘actualizes’ the chair in the sense that something ‘depends’ (in some sense) on its components. But upon tracing *this* causal chain of ‘dependence’ down to a first member, all we’re entitled to infer about such a member is that it is an uncomposed component, not an unactualized actualizer of the very being or existence of the things in question. Feser, McNabb, and DeVito have not pointed to something outside the composite object as an actualizer of its very being; instead, they’ve merely sent us off on a regress of more fundamental component parts of something on which that thing ‘depends’ (in the sense of whole-to-part dependence). Their response, then, ends up doing more harm than good for the Aristotelian proof.
The third problem with their response is that (i) the microstructural elements of the chair are parts of the chair, but (ii) the parts of something cannot efficiently cause (i.e. actualize the existence of) their whole. Here are, briefly, three reasons why this is so. First, if we allow that pats of something can efficiently causally sustain their whole, then (as we’ve seen in Chapter 3) Feser’s argument could only get us to an unsustained, uncomposed component that sustains wholes-not a radically transcendent God who is decidedly not a part of its creation. Second, parts of wholes seem in some sense less fundamental than the wholes of which they are parts; plausibly, they’re only intelligible with reference to the substances they compose. Their existence qua the things they are, then, presupposes the (ontologically) prior existence of the substance and hence cannot causally [or even, I would argue, non-causally] explain its existence. It seems that my arm cannot be the efficient cause of me, since its being my arm in the first place presupposes my existence as a substance. Third, it’s a core component of Aristotelianism that parts of substances exist merely virtually (and hence only in potency); but per the Aristotelian causal principle, only things existing in actuality can causally actualize the existence of something else."
Very interesting, thanks for sharing! Here's a constructive criticism: it would be good to underline the text which is on screen while developing your argument, just to remind the viewer what point in the text your current monologue reflection is referring to. Again, great vid!
Much love
Classical theist/Feser fan here. Just want to say, props for steelmanning Aquinas’ arguments. You gave me something to think about. I’d like to see you have a conversation with Mathoma or Classical Theist.
THANK YOU!!!! Much love to you my dude. I'm so happy my video is able to serve you and help you reflect on the fundamental nature of reality!!!
@@MajestyofReason No problem! Your channel is awesome and I look forward to seeing what else you have in store.
Video suggestion: I’m not sure what your ethical system is, but you should do a video raising the philosophical issues with virtue ethics. That’d be interesting
@@glof2553 good suggestion
@@glof2553 You said you were now a "previous Feserite." What did you mean? Like you are no longer a fan?
At 29:59 when you say “for all we have shown thus far it may terminate in two beings” - wouldn’t a Thomist just use Occam’s razor to say that while we cant disprove there being two entities, postulating one is simpler so in the absence of evidence for two, we should go with one?
That's definitely one way to go here!
However, there are some reservations here about quantitative vs. qualitative simplicity (most philosophers value qualitative simplicity far more), and the Thomist *might* have an edge on quantitative simplicity, but certainly not on qualitative simplicity. And the latter is, plausibly, what matters. But that's a topic for another day lol
I may have just missed it because I'm dead tired but commenting will be easier anyway, can you or did you give an example of how a per se causal chain could be grounded by a per accidens one? I mean yeah the picture is great and all and you are in fact the best artist the world has known but I'll need an actual example.
you should try to get oppy with DBH, It would be interesting how DBH interacts with oppy
YESSSSSSS
About the eternalist objection, assuming eternalism, I could endorse an at-at account of change, at least for the purposes of defending the first way, with the followings argument:
1. Either talk of "real change" is gibberish or there exists a set of axioms implicitly defining what "real change" means.
2. If talk of "real change" is gibberish the argument goes through using at-at eternalist change.
3. If there is a set of axioms defining real change and this set of axioms is compatible with eternalism, the (feser-inspired) eternalist objection fails.
4. If the set of axioms is not compatible with eternalism, but one of the axioms is not self-evident, or false, the eternalist objection fails.
5. If there is a set of axioms incompatible with eternalism, all of which are self-evidently and irrefutably true, then eternalism is false. In which case the argument goes through via presentism.
In either case either the argument goes through or the objection fails, but since if the argument goes through the objection also would have to fail, it follows at the very least that the objection fails.
Now with respect to what appears to be a second eternalist objection, namely that given eternalism it would not be possible to conclude the existence of a purely actual being, I would have to say that the only thing that was needed to conclude this existence under eternalism is to admit:
1. The eternal "block" of temporal things is moving, insofar as there is an at at temporal difference between different temporal instants which contain different possible states of existence.
2. If the block is moving it is being moved by something external to the block, which is hence not temporal and does not have an intrinsic temporal succession of different states. Hence also unmoved and immutable.
3. The fact that one state of existence temporally succeeds another in the block is contingent, therefore the block could have turned out very differently from the way it is.
4. If the block could have turned out differently that entails the block is in potentiality to a multiplicity of other possible outcomes, or ways the instants in the block could succeed one another.
5. If the external mover is the cause of the motion in the block it is the cause of the particular way the temporal instants succeed one another, hence it is the cause of the actualization of the potential ways the block could have been (i.e. it is responsible for picking one structure of temporal succession between intants from the collection of all possible such structures)
6. But because the mover itself is not temporal, then (presumably) it does not have a multiplicity of possible states it could be in, or different internal temporal structures to choose from.
7. Hence the external mover is purely actual, since he is not in potentiality to a multiplicity of different ways he could have been.
It seems to be even more convenient to argue the first way from an eternalist perspective.
Thanks for your comments. I'm making a document in response to them. I'll share the document (via a link) under this comment when I have finished with the document. It will be either tonight or tomorrow. :)
@@MajestyofReason Ok, thanks!
@@luizcarlosrviana3724 Alright! Here's my response to this comment. (I call it 'Luiz's First Comment'). Please see my FB direct message to you for requisite context!!!
@@luizcarlosrviana3724 Link: docs.google.com/document/d/1xltqlVM9J3TEPHd1gTSDJIIydEEw_dD0EYM7H2VcK0Y/edit?usp=sharing
A critique of this video I found:
So I've just quickly watched the part on eternalism--and it is so absurdly false. First, he says that Aquinas says 'there is change over time' which is 'manifest' to our senses (not perfectly quoted, but along the lines of--at 15:50). But this is false: there is no 'change over time'. Rather, time is manifested when there is change. In other words, when we observe change we can calculate time--or if we can calculate time, then there has been change. Time results from change; change does not occur 'in time' (for this conveys the idea that change is something happening inside a qualitative time, similar to how modern philosophy thinks objects 'are in the world' when objects are the world (c.f. Guénon, Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times).
It is clear he is saying what I have just argued because proposition 2 makes this clear when he writes '...then some times are merely potential.' But no student of Thomas will say that 'time' is something potential because time is not a qualitative feature of the world. Rather, time is something quantitative that exists when there is qualitative change.
In short, this is a ridiculous video (insofar as this argument is concerned) because the author says Aquinas said something when he said anything but--which, in my opinion, when there is written proof of what Thomas argues, is the mistake of an amateur.
Thanks for this. Whoever made this comment needs to work on their listening comprehension--it's quite embarrassing, really.
(1) The critique says: "he says that Aquinas says 'there is change over time'"
False. Wrong. Nowhere did I say AQUINAS said this. I simply pointed out that there is change over time, which is obviously true: I go from being a toddler to being an adult. To deny this is to be insane.
(2) "But this is false: there is no 'change over time'. Rather, time is manifested when there is change."
This is a blatant and obvious misunderstanding of what I'm saying. NOWHERE did I say that time is *more fundamental* than change, or that time isn't the measure of change, or that time isn't manifested when there is change. My claim was not one about the order of explanation (time --> change vs. change --> time). My claim is PERFECTLY COMPATIBLE with time manifesting when there is change. My claim is ONLY that (i) there are changes that (ii) are not instantaneous. And this is so obviously true that to deny it is to evince insanity or confusion.
(3) "It is clear he is saying what I have just argued because proposition 2 makes this clear when he writes '...then some times are merely potential.'"
Actually, if we listen to what I actually said, I said some times OR CONTENTS OF TIMES. And a content of a time is what actually happens at a given time. And this is perfectly compatible with the direction of explanation being FROM what-actually-happens-at-a-time TO the-reality-of-that-time.
(4) "Rather, time is something quantitative that exists when there is qualitative change."
Nowhere did I say ANYTHING which denies this. All I said is that there's change over time, which leaves open whether change is more fundamental or time is more fundamental. All I mean is that there is change from A to B such that A and B are not simultaneous.
Whoever made that 'critique' has the listening comprehension of a 4th grader [that's generous] and the temper of a toddler.
@@MajestyofReason Hahaha, destroyed.
Yikes, what a ride... This really did hurt my tender classical theistic feelings ;-) While I am not married to any spefic branch of Classical Theism or proof of God´s existence I still think that if there is a God he has to be radically different from all created beings / reality. As I said elsewhere, I am far from an expert on these issues and I hope you will get the responses you hope for from the prominent defenders of these arguments and concept (I have my popcorn ready ;-) ). I only want to mention that maybe at least some of the problems you mentioned (e.g. with the divine attributes) could be avoided by referring to the concept of the transcendentals and of analogical prediction. Have you perhaps adressed these concepts elsewhere?
Last but not least, regarding the motto of your channel, something to ponder about from one of my favourite non professional "philosophers", G.K. Chesterton: "The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason" ;-)
Thanks!!! Your comment means a lot
Joe, throughout your analyses, you grant the premise that per se chains cannot regress infinitely. But if it can be shown that this premise is false (or at least not necessarily true), then the entire First Way falls apart from the start. I recall that Paul Edwards (see his chapter in the book, Critiques of God, edited by Peter Angeles) and William Rowe (The Cosmological Argument) have questioned this premise in their earlier works on the Cosmological Argument. I'm not sure if these criticisms have been addressed by defenders of Aquinas, but thought you might want to check those out if you haven't already..
It's hard to put that in doubt, what do you think would be a good objection to it?
@Actus Purus Thanks for the comment. I don't quite follow you here. Indeed, if every cause in the beginningless causal series did not have the capacity to exert a causal influence on the next member of the series, then you would be correct: there would be no causality. However, each cause in the beginningless causal series *does* exert a causal influence on the next member of the series. It could not do this if the cause were 'causally inert'.
@Actus Purus Thanks for the clarification. I believe my original point still stands, however. I would agree that without a face, there would be no reflection of a face in the mirror(s)! However, more to the point, I think, is that each cause in the series does indeed have its own particular causal power: each mirror has the causal power to reflect light. If a given mirror were substituted with a non-reflective surface, it would not have this causal power. If we were to remove one of the 'intermediate' mirrors in the series of mirrors then the light would cease to be propagated further. Same for a linear series of billiard balls colliding, dominoes toppling, etc. Philosopher Paul Edwards articulates these points far better than me in his famous essay on the Cosmological Argument (included in the compilation by Peter Angeles I cited earlier). I would highly recommend having a look at that chapter. Many of the other chapters in the compilation are excellent too (e.g., H. J. McCloskey's essay on God and Evil is one of the best I've seen).
@Actus Purus Yes, 'per se' chains are often described as 'simultaneous' and categorically different from 'temporally ordered causal chains' (e.g, the first chapter of Feser's book, 5 Proofs). But if one takes a closer, scientifically informed, look at the details of so-called 'per se' or 'hierarchically ordered' causal chains, such as the famous 'hand/stick/stone' example, one would see that they actually do involve temporally ordered series of causes- which, at least according to Feser, are completely unproblematic if they extend backwards endlessly.
@Actus Purus Thanks for the reply! I would disagree that the requirement that there be an actual face in order for there to be a reflection of a face in the mirror(s) concedes the point. The face is not a ‘primary cause’ in the sense that a theist would like to call God an ‘unmoved mover’ or ‘primary cause’ or ‘unactualized actualizer’. The face does not exist necessarily or outside of a context of prior causes. The face comes from somewhere, namely a person! And where did that person come from? Development from a fertilized egg, evolutionary history, the first form of life on earth, the prior history of the universe, the big bang, whatever came before it (a prior or mega-universe?), and so on ad infinitum. The existence of the face thus in no way undermines the coherence of a beginningless causal series.
One could do a similar ‘historical’ analysis for the hand/stick/stone example without any logical incoherence, as far as I can tell.
As Paul Edwards notes in his essay on the cosmological argument which I cited earlier, the mistake that critics of the possibility of a beginningless series of causes seem to make is in confusing an infinite series with one which is long but finite. I believe that precisely this mistake is being made in saying that “if there were truly an ENDLESS series, X's motion could never be achieved.” For every event, there is a cause that came before it, and a cause that came before that, .... There is no contradiction in the idea that something or other has been going on, changing, moving, forever, with no beginning. As finite beings conditioned by our finite experiences, this idea of beginninglessness may be hard for us to wrap our heads around, but that’s our problem, not a problem with the idea itself!
Thanks, I’m actually familiar with the paper you linked to! It’s a good paper and I would love to be convinced by it, but I believe that in many places it implicitly assumes what it is trying to prove (that there must be a first, ‘unmoved mover’), similarly to the ways that are described in Paul Edward’s essay (see also William Rowe’s book length treatment of the cosmological argument). If you have a chance to read those, I’d be interested in your critique!
1:04:00 I believe the standard thomistic argument for deriving axiological or normative properties from the more ontological consideration of Omnibenevolence would be:
1. God created man (he created everything).
2. The finality or telos of man is happiness.
3. If 1 and 2, God created man to be happy, and hence intends our happiness
4. Happiness consists in virtue. (according to Aristotle it is the activity in accordance with perfect virtue)
5. By all of the above, God intends us to be virtuous
6. Vice and sin (sin is the act of vice while "vice" in general refers to the habit of vice) is opposed to virtue.
Therefore God intends us to be virtuous but does not intend us to be vicious. Furthemore:
7. It is impossible for someone to desire virtue if he is not, at least in some sense, virtuous.
Therefore God is virtuous.
Well there are perhaps other arguments that could be made, for instance refer to the beginning of the prima secunda of the Summa Theologica.
Here's my response to your comment here :)
docs.google.com/document/d/11j0ju0lH3b4r8670AFtSQwe59TRsyex6_KlrPPYm0ic/edit?usp=sharing
I should add that I also responded to another one of your comments within this document.
Is it correct that the per accidents vs per se distinction is about temporality vs simultaneity? I think Feser argues that what is important is the instrumentality of each member in the latter not the simultaneity and that you can have in non-simultaneous per se series. Sorry if you addressed this later on, only partway through the video (it's long).
Also you might be interested Scott MacDonald and Ed Feser's back and forth on whether the first cause must be merely unmoved or unmovable. (Also, just became a patron. :)
THANK YOU!!! Much love
@@MajestyofReason cool. Regarding your criticism of omni-benevolence btw, I think you might be importing certain meta ethical assumptions that a neo-aristotelian would reject. In particular the aristotleian believes that "goodness" is a core-dependent homonym.
Similarly with respect to A-T Phil of mind wrt how the intellect relates to universals.
@@Punibaba1 I think it's important to remember the dialectical context, though -- the onus is on Feser and defenders of the first way to (e.g.) *positively demonstrate* the truth of the A-T account of the intellect -- something Feser doesn't do.
St. Thomas Aquinas never claimed the First Way ends in a singular being _in isolation._ This is why Summa Theologiae I, Question 11, Article 3 exists (and other similar texts elsewhere).
And I never claimed Aquinas claimed it did. :)
But in evaluating the argument as it is *in itself*, it's imperative to see if the argument itself establishes something close to God.
@@MajestyofReason Yeah, but I think it’s a mistake to see St. Thomas’ First Way as committing the quantifier shift fallacy. When St. Thomas says, “and this everyone understands to be God,” he clearly did not necessarily mean by this a singular, omnibenevolent, omniscience, etc being. If that’s what he meant by God, then it would make no sense to later ask whether God is one, omnibenevolent, etc.
It’s the same mistake Dawkins made in “The God Delusion.”
@@Tdisputations No, it's not, since -- unlike Dawkins -- I actually went on to evaluate stage two inferences to singularity (i.e. uniqueness), omnibenvolence, omniscience, etc. To say I've made the same mistake as Dawkins is (I had to delete numerous adjectives I was going to use here) incorrect.
Moreover, the reason I didn't look specifically at Aquinas's going on to ask whether God is one, etc. is because in those passages in the Summa, Aquinas assumes that God is pure act -- something which wasn't even shown in the first way.
@@MajestyofReason The first way also doesn’t claim that God is purely actual. That’s also proved elsewhere.
I’m not saying you don’t address it at all, but that it seems calling it a “patch,” or a “fallacy” misinterprets the intention of the First Way.
@@Tdisputations Yeah I don't see how 'Aquinas assume that God is pure act.' The first way is simply meant to demonstrate that the world requires a prime mover--that which is unmoved--'and this everyone understands to be God'. It is very easy to conflate the prime mover with that which is purely actual but Aquinas makes no such claim in the first way.
1:16:07 For the argument for free will, it seems a fundamental problem is that you are turing "the intentional exertion of causal power" from a verb into a noun, when to begin with we don't need to pressupose that between any and all statements of the sort "agent X does Y" there is some distinct entity in reality which serves as a ground or truthmaker for that proposition and which could be called "the doing of Y by X". But even granting that there is such an entity, it does not follow immediately that it is different from any of the putative entities that we should assume to exist to begin to talk about the action of your run-of-the-mill free agent in the first place, namely (1) the agent and (2) the effect of the free choice.
Now it would be hard to ontologically reduce "the intentional exertion..." to the agent itself since this would seem to imply the mere existence of the agent implies this intentionality, which seems incompatible with libertarian free will. However nothing keeps us from saying "the intentional exertion..." = "the effect of the free choice".
After all those things are already modally or existentially equivalent, the effect exists (at least qua effect of that particular free choice) precisely in the possible worlds in which the "intentional exertion..." exists. They might as well be equated. In this case it is not the "intentional exertion..." which is the cause of the effect, but the agent which is the cause both of the effect and of it's own "intentional exertion...", and this "being the cause of" does not in itself require another "intentional exertion..." to exist (and even if it does it could be equated with the previous one, and so on and so forth, so that the cicle is not vicious).
Furthermore, the reason as to why not any run of the mill agent cause is not an unmoved mover is because run of the mill causal agents are contingent.
Here is my document in response to your comment here. :)
docs.google.com/document/d/10XXJFyhzU11WjKi7b0tySK_O8bMP6R4tbaBNTJVgJj0/edit?usp=sharing
Joe, thank you for another great video. Please define the word "eternal" because I wonder what you mean by it when you talk about eternalism. St. Thomas agrees with Boetheiua when he, Boethius, defines "eternity." Though I forget the Boethian definition, it says that an eternal being has no beginning, no end, and no succession. An everlasting being lasts forever after it begins to exist.
Much love
I am not sure if this is the proper place to ask such questions because this is literally about Thomism and the thomistic model of God. I know that you are inclined towards the theistic personality view of God. But, what can you say about the Orthodox model of God where there is a distinction between God's essence and God's energies?
Although I am aware of Orthodox theologians and philosophers who use first cause arguments (I've even seen a scholastic Orthodox before), there are others who don't utilize first cause arguments to believe in the orthodox view of God. Do you think that this orthodox model suffers from the same objections you laid out here?
Btw, I am not an eastern Christian so I am not an expert on the Orthodox view of God as well, but I would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you.
Much love
Does theistic personalism deny that God is immutable, timeless and impassible?
I am not really an expert on theistic personalism, but that will be surprising to me if that's the case.
@@chrisoliverdelacruz5347 It does. I explain different models of God in my video "Why am I agnostic?" :)
Nice analysis and video just like the others I've seen(I'm watching this all out of order). To think you're only 4 or 5 years older than me. When did you say your paper co-authored with Graham Oppy which was supposed to address Feser's five proofs was supposed to come out again? I forgot which video you said that in my bad.
Much love
Great video! I wonder if the PPC also unintentionally commits Feser to the position that that God is not immutable (i.e., not purely actual)- because if the PPC is true, then change (an effect we see in the world), must also be in the cause of the change. Hence, God would be capable of changing, and thus not be immutable.
The response would likely be that "change" is not a being, but a process. It isn't strictly something that exists as a thing in its own right. It can only be analogically called "being" insofar as it refers to substance (change is always _of_ a substance) and being is primarily said of substance. One may object that passive potency may have to exist in God, but the PPC (at least as Thomists see it, I haven't read Feser in a while) states that every _perfection_ or _actuality_ in the effect must be found in the total effective cause. Given that passive potentiality is an imperfection and in itself devoid of any actuality, it is not (and need not be) found in the the First Cause. At least, that's probably how Feser would respond to that.
@@ob4161 Thanks for the reply. I don't recall the 'perfection' qualification mentioned in discussions of the PPC, but I will dig into the literature to learn more. On the face of it, it seems a bit contrived, but I'm not surprised that Thomists are able to come up with a ready answer to almost any objection ;)
If you are familiarized with the argument, you should be aware that there's a very old and important distriction between active and passive potential, and active potential is permissible by the argument, only passive potential strictly isn't.
1:17:40 "Even our intentional exertions of agent-causal power are caused or actualized by something else."
Hold up. I thought the agent is the cause of the choice/act of will/intention. The agent(-causal power) brings about the choice.
Regardless, W. Matthews Grant shows that Thomism is compatible with LFW in "Divine Universal Causality and Libertarian Freedom." Excerpt:
"Some may worry that, if God causes my act, whether or not my act occurs will be ultimately up to God, and not me. This consequence might follow were it the case that both God’s causing my act is logically sufficient for my act’s occurring, and I have no say regarding whether or not God’s causing my act occurs. Yet, on EM, while God’s causing my act is certainly logically sufficient for my act, it is not the case that I have absolutely no say regarding the occurrence of God’s causing my act. On EM, God’s act of causing my act depends on my act as on an essential constituent. Without my concurrent cooperation in performing my act, God’s act of causing my act does not occur."
I briefly addressed these points already in the video. For we also have to take into account the *manner* of God's causality in relation to the first way, viz. a wholly derivative and instrumental one. And, secondly, the agent's causing the choice -- that exertion of agent causal power -- is itself something that reduces from potency to act, and hence -- per the first way's causal principle -- would require a further actualizer.
@@MajestyofReason Let A=cause of the agent's causing the choice; B=agent; C=choice; C*=counterfactual choice
A-->B-->C
Causes can be deterministic or indeterministic. A deterministically causes B. (We could say A is the state of affairs of being at the forking path.) A-->B doesn't necessitate that B-->C nor that B-->C* *because* B is an *indeterministic* cause of C. B could have caused C* in spite of A and A-->B, and so LFW is preserved.
A forces an agent-causal event to happen, but not *which* event.
@@ObsidianTeen This document I made in response to another commenter is relevant here. :)
docs.google.com/document/d/10XXJFyhzU11WjKi7b0tySK_O8bMP6R4tbaBNTJVgJj0/edit?usp=sharing
@@MajestyofReason After reading some Timothy O'Connor, I realize I was mistaken to suggest that the exertion has a cause. (Though Reid and other agent-causalists would disagree. To each his or her own.)
"If there’s no distinctive action that the agent performs so as to bring about the particular effect, then the effect’s coming about in some worlds and not in others seems wholly outside the agent’s control."
Let Ag=agent, a (or b)=choice
This would be a problem (if it is a problem) for indeterministic causation in general. The action (i.e. exertion) is the complex event "Ag-->a." The effect (the event of the action-triggering intention a) is a component of the action; the action doesn't bring about the effect. (Otherwise, you'd have the absurd "(Ag-->a)-->a.")
I'm not sure about what "control" means, but the agent-causal libertarian could say it means "to cause" or "power." If the agent causes the event, then it ipso facto has control. (Though the detractor of LFW could still say it's a matter of luck *how* the agent controls the decision, one reason being that "Ag-->a" has no cause.)
"Without a distinctive exertion of agent-causal power to choose one of them, it seems baffling to me to say that agent has real control over which effect obtains."
I interpret "exertion...choose one" to imply the exertion causes the effect, which I covered. Since the exertion "Ag-->(a or b)" contains the effect rather than bringing about the effect, then any difference in effect entails a difference in the exertion. One could even argue the difference in effect is prior to the difference in the exertion, since the relata (Ag & a) are prior to the causal relation (-->). The relation presupposes the cause and effect.
"this is because libertarian free will is itself baffling and mysterious. Lol"
Sure. If we rewound time 100 times (#vanInwagen), perhaps half of the sequences would have Lucifer remaining in grace rather than rebelling.
Joe, you are ACTUALLY made entirely of philosophy.
lol
Only video I've seen that's helped me understand. Is it really that complex or are people unnecessarily verbose and vague
Any chances of getting the text or notes of this presentation?
So, I used some stuff in this video from a paper I have under review at a journal right now, so I can't make my notes public yet. Apologies! :)
@@MajestyofReason ok, no problem, thanks!
In the future if capital "T" terminator is referenced in videos please include brief screenshots of either the original 1984 or sequel 1991 films
lolol
I'm going to provide a similar argument to thomas but get to the root of what he is saying.
1.a finite thing lacks things,and it in itself cannot bring this lack of power to be.
2. This lack of power can only come to be by something outside of it.
3. If a finite thing is contingent it lacks the power to exist by it's own grounds,and can only be change by virtue of its source of existence.
4. If a finite thing is nesscearry, it must be able to exist on its own grounds,and to bring quality into existence.
5.if a finite thing can exist on its own grounds then it also would mean it would have to able to give some quality to things by it's own merits.
6.but for a thing to give some kind of quality to existentent parts, it must have that part in itself.
7.but if a thing is nesscearry and finite,a nesscearry thing is its parts and is its properties.aka simple parts(by virtue of it having no smaller parts to keep into existence)
8.it cannot have two different states of being that are contradictory or that would mean something has contradictory parts in its being.
9. But if a thing is nesscarry and fundemental,it cannot have two quality states capable in it's being without itself in virtue being change.
10. But if a nesscarry finite thing requires a change in its qualities then it needs something more fundamental to change it by its lack of power (Not in all cases,but in cases of a positive change instead of a privation)
11.So thier must be something in which has the power to both be able to have the contrary,but also no need for a more fundamental member to cause the quality to be that way.
12. So this can only exist in a member that has the ability to actualize both while not being subject to one state in its being.
13. But everything finite is subject to its one state of qualities.
14. So this being must be infinite in nature. (Or not lacking any possibility or that would entail finintiude)
15. Thier can only be one thing that it is in a state of infinite because thier is no way to tell the infinite beings apart.
16. If consciousness is finite,then it needs some derived power for its existence.
17. If we accept the principle of proportionate causiality, then this infinite thing must have some kind of mind to produce a mind.
I do realize this presupposes a theory,and that b theoriest would disagree with me.
Also for premise 8 I would like to point out that you cannot have a finite thing that holds one state of energy in one way but also a other state of energy in a other way. Because either you will get to something it eventually lacks or doesn't lack anything and it will have to be infinite in nature by it have no lack. This is including material bodies because material bodies would be a lack of state,and then gaining something for a type of change. Now accidental can cause changes,but when causing the change they would be simultaneous in that moment,and in virtue coming essential.
But what are your thoughts Joe?
Thank you for your comment my dude. Your input is valued!
@@MajestyofReason the lack may not exist,but what it is does exist. So that would mean based off what something in principle it cannot produce something that is outside the parts nature. Like a bowling ball cannot role itself unless something extrinsic interacts with it. (Also whenever you can I would be interested in your examples im curious to see what they are.)
So lack would just be what it cannot do based off what it is.
I have a hard time understanding what potentiality is. If something exists then clearly it is actual, but potentiality seems to be something with semi existence.
I also have a hard time understanding it. This underscores the need for intellectual empathy and investigating what proponents say on its behalf :)
Great video
Hi Joe, I love the show. I wonder if you have heard the implicit teleological argument put forward by richard taylor? I have put my rendition of it here. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on it.
Imagine you wake up on a train. You have no idea how you got here or where you are going. You look out the window and see the green rolling hills. On one of these hills you observe a sign written in great big boulders. It reads ‘WELCOME TO WALES’. Now upon reading this sign you would instantly suppose that you were entering wales, that the sign was placed there by humans for the sole purpose of welcoming people to wales. It also seems it would be rational to suppose these things. Now of course you could hypothesise that this sign was not formed by humans but by asteroids that fell from the sky and just by random chance happened to form the sign that reads ‘welcome to wales’. It seems unlikely, but it is afterall a possible explanation. If, however, you were to believe that the sign was formed by asteroids falling from the sky, then it would be irrational of you to also suppose that you are entering wales. That is, if there is a natural explanation for this sign, then it is irrational to suppose it also tells you truth outside of itself.
Similarly, imagine you are walking through the forest. You see a gravestone that reads ‘Here lies John Smith, died 1981’. Now you would immediately suppose that John Smith is buried here and that he died in 1981. You could however suppose that this gravestone has a natural explanation. Such as the rock was generated by some geological process that made it shaped as a gravestone and a bird came along and by chance happened to peck into it ‘Here lies John Smith, died 1981’. Again if you were to accept this natural geological explanation then it would be irrational to suppose that John Smith is buried there. That is, it would be irrational to suppose that this naturally generated stone tells you some truth.
These two thought experiments give rise to the following premise. If some declarative phenomena has a natural explanation then it is irrational to suppose that this phenomena tells us truth outside of itself.
Now according to a naturalistic and biological explanation of the origin of humanity, our sense organs also have a natural explanation. Under this thesis our eyes have a natural explanation. Furthermore, we assume our sense organs are declarative phenomena in so far as they tell us about the external world. This gives rise to the second premise: Our sense organs are declarative phenomena and have a natural explanation.
If we combine these two premises together we get the following argument:
P1: If some declarative phenomena has a natural explanation then it is irrational to suppose that this phenomena tells us truth outside of itself
P2: Our sense organs are declarative phenomena and have a natural explanation
C: Therefore it is irrational to suppose that our sense organs tell us truth outside of themselves.
Hello there! This isn’t majesty of reason, but this argument is very interesting. I’d like to reject premise 1 although my response might be very inadequate as I’ve just heard this argument now. This may sound dumb so apologies for that, but it would also help to if you could clarify what you mean by “declarative phenomena”. You say that our senses are declarative phenomena because it tells us things about the world. Btw I’m not a naturalist so I’m open-minded to immaterial explanations of the universe, I just like to make sure that we don’t take too big of leaps so that’s why I wanted to respond to this.
Anyways, consider this. We have the formation of a canyon. This tells us in a certain sense that something has happened here. Something clearly formed the canyon. However, we need not look to the non natural or supernatural for this because the reason why the canyon formed is because of thousands if not millions of years of erosion due to a river or wind or whatever.
Again, apologies because I’ve just been introduced to this argument and I’m not super educated in philosophy.
Hey CrabKing! Thanks for the reply. I would define a declarative phenomenon as some object, event or sensation that tells us something extrinsic to itself. It informs us about the world external to it. In the case of a sensation - the sense impression of a tree, be it through the eyes, touch or smell, is first the detection of the tree by the sense organs. This is followed by a neural event which provides us with the awareness of the presence of a tree. The sensation followed by the neural event declare to us that this tree exists in front of us, external to both the event and the sense organs.
I don't think the canyon example is analogous because it does not tell us any truth external to itself. It is loosely declarative insofar as it tells us about its own formation, but that’s it. It tells us no truth external to itself. If it had ‘Peter was here 20/12/20’ scrawled on the wall, then it would be a declarative phenomena as it tells us about an occurrence extrinsic to its own formation.
Appreciate any thoughts? 😊
I think we can still find declarative phenomena which have naturalistic explanations. I think we can find phenomena which show truths external to itself. One example could be a fossil. Fossils can tell us about the past environment, or at the very least, help us make useful predictions based on certain features it carries to see how it evolved to adapt to the said environment it lived in. I’m not much of a paleontologist though so maybe I’m mistaken. Here’s another analogy which may or may not work. Suppose you’re entering a place in the wilderness which has never been explored before by another human. You see an apple on the ground and it’s half eaten and it’s eaten in such a way where it’s kind of messy so no normal person would eat like that. I think this apple can tell you that there’s a certain type of non-human animal within this unexplored place. Technically this was formed by a being with some intelligence though so it doesn’t give a complete ground to reject the premise. One last example. One way an island forms is through volcanic activity. It would seem as though when you come across an island, it can tell you that a volcano is nearby. Apologies if I’m still misunderstanding the argument. I kind of forgot about this comment thread. That’s on me.
@@crabking6884 These are all very good points. I think you are right. I wonder if we can save the argument by making a distinction between a phenomena that is explicitly declarative and one that is implicitly declarative. It seems to me the examples you provided do imply a truth but they don't explicitly declare it in the sense that 'Welcome to Wales' declares you are entering Wales. So perhaps I could restate the argument with a the first premise clarified.
P1: If some declarative phenomena has a natural explanation then it is irrational to suppose that this phenomena tells us explicit truth outside of itself
P2: Our sense organs are declarative phenomena which tell us explicit truth and have a natural explanation
C: Therefore it is irrational to suppose that our sense organs tell us explicit truth outside of themselves.
It seems now the premise is clarified the argument has lost all its weight. What do you think?
That is a useful distinction, but I’m not really sure if our senses can be classified as explicit declarative phenomena like a sign that says ‘Welcome to Wales’. For instance, suppose a toddler enters a room and sees a chair. It’s not like they’re robots and they see the word ‘chair’ coming up in their object identification program. All they see is an object maybe with four legs and a flat part placed on top of those legs. They perceive the object itself, but they don’t know they’re perceiving a chair. Someone like their parents actually have to teach them and say that they’re seeing a chair. With your analogy regarding the ‘Welcome to Wales’ sign, there’s something that explicitly says that you are entering the city Wales. Suppose that sign wasn’t there, but there was some sort of man-made structure without words written on it. It’d still implicitly tell you about an external truth such as there being a settlement of humans, but it doesn’t explicitly say you are entering a city, more specifically, a city called Wales. This is like our senses. Our senses tell us external truths and they help us perceive objects and such, but that alone doesn’t seem to explicitly tell you that the object you’re perceiving right now is a chair or a table or a book or something like that. That requires humans like you or me to further learn and ask questions and study implicit declarative phenomena like the analogies I gave in my last comment. Although I could be wrong about my analysis of our senses so apologies if that is the case.
Sorry, I don't know about philosophy, but does it defeat the argument that the real world is not this Thomistic world?
[edit] ah you got there in the Moorean section.
I think this is related to my section on 'Moorean defeaters'. In essence, I think there are independent arguments against Thomism and classical theism that -- to my mind (recall that justification is person- and sight-based) -- succeed. And thus the first way could be 'defeated' in the sense that such independent arguments already give us reason to think it couldn't be sound. Hopefully I've understood you correctly! :)
So it seems for any accidental change thier must be a essential ordered memeber by the fact the accidental is a result of essential changes. To plant a tree requires interaction for items to become that way. And so when a object is interacting it is essential. And so the table your describing would be all essential.
this is awesome thanks Joe.
Regarding eternalism: if eternalism is true and change is therefore NOT the actualisation of potential, then what is the analysis of change? Does it follow that there is no change? And also if eternalism being true means that change isnt the actualisation of potential then already Premise 2 of Feser’s Aristotelian Proof is undermined, without even getting into the rest of the premises
Excellent questions. So, there are different accounts of change under eternalism. One account is sometimes called the "at-at theory", and it consists in something's having a property at one time and not having the property at another time. [Notice the two "at"s there] So, for instance, so long as the banana has the property of greeneness at time t1 (or, more accurately, a temporal part, existing at t1, of the four-dimensional banana-like object exemplifies greenness) but yellowness at time t2, then the banana changed from being yellow to being green. It's a little weird how this counts as change, but that's how many do it. [there are different accounts, though]
I think I agree with you about Feser's Aristotelian proof relying on the falsity of eternalism. He tries to circumvent this in his chapter on the Aristotelian proof, but I don't think his strategy works. [ I believe, and you're probably well aware, that I touched on this in this video :) ]
@@MajestyofReason thank you for the detailed answer, really appreciate it!
Looking over the eternalist argument really quick, it seems 4 (the conclusion) is false, or at least in need of qualification. It seems to me 4 would have to be _temporal_ change is not the actualization of a potential, not change simpliciter.
You invite a good clarification. So, I think change is always temporal change, i.e. change over time. There is no such thing as instantaneous change. Most philosophers tend to agree: change requires going *from* A *to* ~A (or vice versa), and clearly nothing can be both A and ~A instantaneously (i.e. at one time). Thus, all change is temporal change.
The clarification you've invited is that 'actualization of potential' is not numerically identical with change. This is because all change is temporal, but not all actualization of potential is temporal (i.e. extended through time). For instance, some actualization of potential is wholly instantaneous: form's actualizing matter (under Aristotelian hylomorphism, that is) is an instantaneous actualization relation.
@@MajestyofReason thanks. Well what I had specifically in mind is modal change. Because change across possible worlds doesn't logically entail change across times, no? Btw, do you have a preferred view on time?
@@TheBrunarr I see what you're saying. I think I would say it's 'variance' or 'difference' across worlds instead of 'change' across worlds, since change tends to be associated with some one thing going from being one way to not being that way. And this is simply inapplicable in the case of variance across worlds, since nothing 'leaps' across worlds to be one way in one world and another way in another world!
As for my preferred view of time, I slightly lean towards presentism. But I'm best characterized as an 'agnostic-leaning-presentist' wrt temporal ontology.
@@MajestyofReason I suppose difference would be a better term, although I'm still on the fence about whether change can be simply described in terms of difference, although I'm leaning towards it.
Interesting, any thoughts on the truthmaker objection? I haven't been impressed with responses from Craig and Feser for example.
@@TheBrunarr I can't get into it much here (as I'm smack dab in the middle of midterm season), but I am at least somewhat sympathetic to Feser's response. But I think the more fundamental point to make, on behalf of presentists, is that truhmaker theories are deeply controversial, especially truthmaker maximalism. We already have very strong reason to think that there are loads of truths without truthmakers (e.g. negative existentials and all the other examples in the literature), and so I think the presentist can simply extend this to truths about times. (Whether this is a theoretical cost is another matter -- perhaps it is. But I don't view the problem as devastating.)
And, as always, I need to do more research to come to a more considered view. :)
Couldn't an argument be made against the existence of per se causal series? The first way doesn't just argue for a first mover who set it all into motion and just disappeared, it also says that the mover has to be there at the beginning right now, and if he were to disappear, we would disappear with him, immediately. However, if causality travels at a finite speed (say, the speed of light), him disappearing wouldn't actually have that effect, at least not immediately. All the examples of per se chains actually struck me as advancing a view of instantaneous causality while no such thing is happening in reality: if I were to stack 10k cups on a desk and then remove the desk, the cups wouldn't actually start falling immediately, the last cup would start falling at a later time than the first one.
I'm rambling a bit but I'd like to hear your take on this.
Thanks for your comment! There's a vast literature on whether no causation is simultaneous, whether some causation is while other causation isn't, and whether all causation is simultaneous. I don't have a settled view on the question (though I lean towards the middle option), so I won't be of much help. But attacking the notion of per se chains is one way to go about objecting to the argument, yes.
Well psi, that would be the case if laws of nature are real things with a prescriptive power instead of mere descriptive abstractions of how natural things behave. In the latter view, which I subscribe to, the law would only be "turned off" as the things it describes disappear, which would only happen at later times, thus the problem remains
Thank you for your reply. I asked because I often see the first way attacked in various manners but very rarely do I see it attacked from that perspective which, if true, stops the argument in its tracks very"early" in its premises. Btw love your channel!
@@l.q.cincinnatus2524
That Trump impression is top notch. The best!
I love just saying something is manifest to our senses as if thats correct. Eastern non dualists would deny all that seem manifest to our senses
This is gonna be epic
YEAAAA BOIIII
1:09:00
Just saving my place
I don't think eternalism can be true. Rather than a stream of consciousness, I'd have a lake.
Unrelated but how'd you end up an arsenal fan?
Literally my favorite comment on this video
So, way back in the 2010 premier league and champions league season, I happened to see an Arsenal game on television. I was mesmerized by Fabregas. He has brilliant. I instantly fell in love with him as a player (making my favorite number 4 up till this day, though I also have a special connection to the number 9 due to high school soccer (but that's beside the point)). And -- as a result of this -- I became a gunner. (And I have loved many Arsenal players since then, as well as Arsenal's quality style of play (e.g. tiki taka passing) throughout the years)
Personally a real madrid fan but I've been watching the PL since 2009 too. Fabregas really was an incredible talent,bit unfortunate he never got to win the league with Arsenal though :( . Yall will probably make top 4 this year so that's good
Is Feser an A theorist?
Also I don't understand why you say the argument relies on rejecting eternalism, since Pruss is a B theorist and still accepts the first way I believe...
(1) Feser is a presentist; (2) If you don't understand why the argument relies on the falsity of eternalism, listen to the video from 12:12 to 25:07; (3) I don't know whether Pruss accepts the first way; I don't believe he has published any articles on it (though, of course, I haven't read every single one of his dozens of articles); and, finally, even if he does accept both, that doesn't entail in the slightest that they're compatible
@@MajestyofReason Pruss has written a blog post regarding how act and potency are compatible under eternalism. In fact, Pruss goes as far as to say that the actualization of potentials would not work under presnetism: alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2019/06/is-eternalism-compatible-with.html
In addition to this, Cundy and other Thomists who would accept the first way also accept eternalism. Personally, I am agnostic on presentism vs. eternalism.
@@WilliamCanterbury We were talking about whether Pruss has published on the first way; I am well aware that Pruss has written blog posts on the (real or purported) compatibility of act and potency with eternalism. Two things: (1) I never claimed that act and potency are incompatible with eternalism. Indeed, I was explicit in this video that I was *only* targeting an *act-potency analysis of change* as it pertains to eternalism; and (2) Feser has written extensively on his blog in response to Pruss. (And I have to say that I side with Feser's arguments). Finally, I don't deny that there are people like Cundy who wish to hold both eternalism and the first way. I think there's an interesting question, though, as to whether or not they *can*. I have given arguments in this video that, by my lights at least [ recall, of course, that argumentation is person- and sight-based :) ], they seem incompatible.
@@MajestyofReason Thank you for the reply. I still need to watch the video and I will definitely watch the part that you highlighted in your initial reply. I look forward to hearing what you think. I am not sure if Pruss has ever written anything on the first way. The closest thing I can think of is his argument for a first cause in his book Infinity, Causation, and Paradox.
@@WilliamCanterbury Pruss is nevertheless a legend, of course. :)
Concerning your criticisms on inferring omnipotence from pure act, you raised two objections:
The first was that you disagreed with the proof which demonstrates how there cannot be more than one pure act. However, you only mentioned Feser's argument for the unicity of pure act. But, you did not mention the many other arguments which attempt to show this from thinkers like Avicenna and Aquinas. Since this was a video on Aquinas, you should have at least mentioned the arguments that Aquinas gave in his Summa demonstrating the unicity of pure act.
Your second objection was that pure act could directly cause one being, but then that being causes everything else. So pure act only has the single power to cause one being, and so is not omnipotent. I think the first point to mention here is that I do not think Thomists would accept such a case as being possible. For example, see what Aquinas says in De Potentia Dei Q.3, Article 4 on if creative power is communicable to a creature. But, I think a deeper problem with your analysis is that it confused the difference between per se ordered series and per accidens ordered series. In per se ordered series, the primary cause has the causality of the series of itself, and every subsequent member derives the causality from the primary cause. From my understanding, every subsequent member in a per ser ordered series *directly* depends on the primary cause, for without the primary cause, the causality of the series just wouldn't exist. So in the case of pure act then, even if pure act caused one being, and then through that being caused everything else, it does not follow that pure act does not directly cause everything else and the other being is the direct cause of everything else. Pure act does not depend on the being, while the being depends on pure act. All power would still be derived from pure act and pure act would would still be the direct cause of everything else, it is just that everything else would also rely on the other being.
"Since this was a video on Aquinas, you should have at least mentioned the arguments that Aquinas gave in his Summa demonstrating the unicity of pure act."
The video was on a bajillion things, and countless things had to be cut out that I wanted to include. As I said to another commenter, a proper analysis of the third way would take numerous books. And since the video was not about Aquinas as such but rather the first way as manifested in Aquinas, McNabb and DeVito, Oderberg, Oppy, Feser, etc., I think it's just wrong to say that I should have mentioned the arguments Aquinas gives.
I don't think Avicenna's argument for unicity succeeds; and if you're thinking about ST I q13a3 w.r.t. Aquinas's arguments for unicity, then Aquinas doesn't argue from 'purely actual/unchangeable' to unicity. Instead, Aquinas gives three arguments for unicity: from simplicity, from infinity of perfection, and from the unity of the world. None of these aim to derive unicity from 'purely actual/unchangeable'.
I'll reply to your second paragraph next.
"Your second objection was that pure act could directly cause one being, but then that being causes everything else. So pure act only has the single power to cause one being, and so is not omnipotent. I think the first point to mention here is that I do not think Thomists would accept such a case as being possible. For example, see what Aquinas says in De Potentia Dei Q.3, Article 4 on if creative power is communicable to a creature."
First, I made it clear that I was addressing *Feser's* stage two inference, and so -- while it is valuable to bring to bear considerations elsewhere in the Thomistic tradition -- it is not targeting my stated aims in the video w.r.t. stage two.
Second, my proposed counter-example doesn't require creative power to be a communicable attribute; the other being could simply be (for all Feser has shown, that is) a necessary intermediary in all causal chains, without which the purely actual being could do nothing -- and that is a far cry from omnipotence. Or the being could be a non-creative cause of other things (e.g. just as parents are non-creative causes of their children together which food, temperature, oxygen, gravity, etc.). Or (and this is an important one) the first way and its manifestations -- assuming (as I don't think we should) it successfully shows that there is a purely actual source of all change -- only shows that all *change* derives from the purely actual entity. This leaves it open as to whether or not the *being* of everything else derives from such an entity. (And, as you're well aware, the conferral of being is emphatically not a change for those in the classical tradition.) So, my counter-example can suppose that there is some distinct, uncreated, necessary entity that is the per se source of the existence of everything else (except for (i) itself, and (ii) the purely actual entity). And then the purely actual being could be creatively impotent in this scenario but is nevertheless that from which all change/motion causally depends. (Even if the scenario is odd or strange, this is (as you know) no mark against proposed counter-examples to analyses of omnipotence. Consider, e.g., Plantinga's McEar example!)
This bridges nicely into your second point, wherein you claim I confused the difference b/n per se and per accidens chains in my example. I don't think so. This is because there is one sense in which the per se cause of a chain *is* directly causing all members of the chain, but another sense in which it is *not* -- and my argument only needs that there is a sense in which it is not. Consider the mind-hand-stick-stone case. There is a sense in which the mind can directly cause the stone's motion insofar as the mind has the relevant causal power of the series non-derivatively; but there's another sense in which the mind can't cause the stone directly to move, since it *has* to use certain intermediaries (e.g. the bodily movement of the hand, which in turn uses the stick to push the stone). It's not as though the mind can just magically move the stone without any intermediary means. Nevertheless, this is still a per se series. So, a per se series is compatible with there being a sense in which the first member does *not* directly cause all other members of the series; and hence, your claims do not defeat my counter-example. [ By my lights, of course :) ]
"if you're thinking about ST I q13a3 w.r.t. Aquinas's arguments for unicity, then Aquinas doesn't argue from 'purely actual/unchangeable' to unicity. Instead, Aquinas gives three arguments for unicity: from simplicity, from infinity of perfection, and from the unity of the world. None of these aim to derive unicity from 'purely actual/unchangeable'."
I don't think I mentioned that Aquinas derives unicity from pure act, just that Aquinas proves the unicity of pure act. In any case, Aquinas at least implicitly uses pure act to prove unicity. You mentioned that Aquinas argued that God must be one because He is simple, but if you refer to where Aquinas talks about God's simplicity, one of the main ways to prove God's simplicity is because God is pure act.
"the first way and its manifestations -- assuming (as I don't think we should) it successfully shows that there is a purely actual source of all change -- only shows that all change derives from the purely actual entity. This leaves it open as to whether or not the being of everything else derives from such an entity."
I thought that at this part of the video, you were granting that there is only one being which is pure act in all respects which derives all change and the being of everything else, but doubting the inference that such a being would have to be omnipotent. If you were not granting this, then you are taking issue with stage one of the argument (which existential Thomists would argue does prove pure act as the source of all actuality), or the stage two arguments which prove the unicity of pure act. But, you would not be taking issue with the inference from one pure act which derives the existence and change of everything to it being omnipotent.
"Consider the mind-hand-stick-stone case. There is a sense in which the mind can directly cause the stone's motion insofar as the mind has the relevant causal power of the series non-derivatively; but there's another sense in which the mind can't cause the stone directly to move, since it has to use certain intermediaries"
So you've granted that there is a sense in which pure act would still be the direct cause of everything else that exists (because the causal feature of the per se series would not exist without the primary member), but there is another sense which pure act would not be the direct cause according to your counter-example. Call the former sense the first sense, and the latter sense the second sense. I think pure act being the direct cause of everything according to the first sense is enough to establish pure act's omnipotence. Whether pure act must use an intermediary being does not diminish pure act's omnipotence or make the intermediary being more powerful.
In the example you provide, the stick would be the direct cause of the stone's movement, according to the second sense. The mind, however, would be the direct cause according to the first sense. But, would you say that the stick is more powerful than the mind or hand in moving the stone? I don't think I would. Therefore, whether something is a direct cause in the second sense does not make it more powerful in the relevant causal property than any other member in the per se ordered series. Now, suppose pure act causes a being (so pure act is the direct cause in both senses of this being), and then that being causes everything else (the being would not be the direct cause in the first sense, but is the direct cause in the second sense, while pure act would be the direct cause in the first sense but not in the second sense). In your video, you stated that this intermediary being would be more powerful than pure act. But, just because a thing is the direct cause according to the second sense, does not mean it is more powerful. Again, would you say the stick is more powerful than the mind or hand in moving the stone? Rather, I would say the mind is more powerful than the stick in moving the stone, because the mind is the direct cause of the stone's movement according to the first sense. The mind causes the stick to have the causal power of being able to move the stone, while the stick does not cause the mind to have the causal power to move the stone. Even if the mind could not move the stone without the stick as the intermediary, that does not mean the stick is more powerful than the mind in moving the stone.
So then, if pure act is the direct cause of everything (including the intermediary being) according to the first sense, then that is enough to say that it is omnipotent. This is because it derives all powers, including the powers of the intermediary being. Even if it is granted that pure act must cause everything through this intermediary being, that does not make the intermediary being more powerful, or pure act less powerful. This would only be the case if one defines omnipotence as being the direct cause according to both the first and second sense of everything. In other words, God would have to directly cause everything without any intermediaries. But, this sounds a lot like occasionalism to me, which suffers from many problems of its own.
@@zanehaider7949 Thanks for your comment my dude
@@zanehaider7949 Here's my document in response to your comment.
Also, with respect to your objections to the validity of the first way and the objection by Rasmussen, they are OK. However it wouldn't be hard to amend the argument with some reasonable extra premisses so as to make it not only valid but immune to objections from accidentally ordered chains (though doing so in some way requires mixing the first and the second ways). Here is the argument:
1. Some things are potential to a multiplicity of different possible actualizations or non-actualizations (non-being, or inexistence).
2. Whatever actual thing is potential (to a multi...) has it's current actualization constantly actualized by something else.
3. No infinite regress of an essentially ordered series of causes/actualizations is possible (or perhaps an infinite chain is possible, but we can assume that any chain is upper bounded, hence Zorn's lemma would allow us to conclude the same thing essentially).
From this we can already conclude (by Zorn's lemma) that there is at least one "unmoved mover"/unactualized actualizer and everything that is actualized is actualized by at least one unactualized actualizer. Now for the other premisses:
4. Whatever is contingent has a potential for being and for not-being (hence if it exists its potential for being is also actualized [from 2] by something else)
From this we can conclude that no unactualize actualizer can be contingent, for otherwise it would have to he actualized by something else. Therefore any first actualizer is necessary. This already answers Rasmussen's objection since necessary beings have no cause, either essentially or accidentally ordered.
Now for the final premisse:
5. There can be at most a single necessary substance.
We can also defend 5 by a slightly stronger principle:
5": Any 2 things which exist in exactly the same possible worlds are cosubstantial.
Because obviously 2 necessary beings exist in exactly the same worlds (all of them), and hence by this principle would exist in one and the same substance (Father and Son in Christianity are examples of cosubstantial necessary beings).
Now, I cannot go much further here in the defense of either 5 or 5". If they are not obvious to you, you can consider their particular defense as part of the "Gap problem" that has to later be solved about what properties we can ascribe of God (which I do think can be solved), namely this has to do with the Divine uniqueness problem. However, suffices to say for 5" that I believe you would have some genuine trouble finding a counterexample for that claim.
From this argument we are certainly able to conclude that there is a necessary being that is purely actual (is not potential to a multiplicity of different actualizations or non-actualizations) and which is the (remote) cause of all possible change. Et quod dicimus Deus (which is Q.E.D. for proofs of the existence of God).
Oh yes, this also deals with your reply to the "patch" you mentioned, because in a sense it avoids the problem of change altogether (at the cost of it being actually much harder to distinguish this argument I made from the second way rather than the first, though they are certainly correlated).
@@luizcarlosrviana3724 Here's my document in response to this comment. :) As you know, please see my FB direct message to you for how we can proceed to discuss these matters via personal communication.
Tut tut, someone clearly hasn't understood Aquinas properly!
Butt