/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6639071]

Is this argument irrefutable

[Anonymous No.6639108]

>>6639071

You have never read Aristotle, have you?

[Anonymous No.6639116]

[Anonymous No.6639117]

>>6639071
>>6639108

>causation

I'm not sure what it is about it that I hate, but I sure do hate it.

[Anonymous No.6639121]

>>6639116

whoever made this meme never read Aquinas.

[Anonymous No.6639122]

Hi

[Anonymous No.6639132]

>>6639116
Sick dude, you just BTFO one of the greatest thinkers of all time. Oh wait, no you didn't.

Universe in the sense Aquinas used it meant: everything that exists. If there is something outside of the universe that caused the universe that's fine, but what caused that thing? Replace the word universe with everything that exists and you'll understand how is argument is not beaten.

And

>Causality could circular

in a universe yes, if you have something outside that is a cause. But it can't be circular in a closed system, in other words, everything that exists.

[Anonymous No.6639135]

>>6639122
has this faggot read Aristotle?

[Anonymous No.6639142]

>>6639108
I've only read physics, not metaphysics but it seemed like Aristotle agreed with this from my reading.

And it's certainly common knowledge that Aristotle believed in a creator.

[Anonymous No.6639143]

>>6639122

You can not be serious with this fucker?

>Universe from nothing
>Particles, gravity, dark matter
>Things

He doesn't even understand how fucking linguistics work. He's beyond meme-tier.

[Anonymous No.6639168]

>>6639143
>nothing
>real

[Anonymous No.6639177]

>>6639132
>But it can't be circular in a closed system
*within a thermodynamic system

the thing that caused our universe may not exist in a thermodynamic system

[Anonymous No.6639210]

>>6639122
>look him up
>ASU
>into the trash

[Anonymous No.6639289]

>>6639071
Where did god come from though?

[Anonymous No.6639303]

>>6639289
He was always there

[Anonymous No.6639306]

>>6639289
God is non-physical and eternal so how can god come from anywhere.

[Anonymous No.6639311]

>>6639071
b-but actual cold air is potential warm air

[Anonymous No.6639317]

>>6639071
There is still nothing to suggest he would be sentient
As such, he could very well just be a force. God is Physics

[Anonymous No.6639320]

>>6639311
>inb4 you don't understand heat transfer

okay warmer, fuck off

[Anonymous No.6639323]

>>6639317
>God is Physics

Physics works within observable parameters and laws. Where did these come from?

[Anonymous No.6639324]

>>6639122
Does anyone think /lit/ has gotten worse lately?

[Anonymous No.6639325]

>>6639108
You clearly haven't. If you knew anything about philosophy you would know that Aquinas is one of the greatest readers of Aristotle. He's basically using Metaphysics book 7 (the different types of generation) with the idea of efficient cause. Also, if you read the Posterior Analytics you'll know that Aristotle defended uncaused causes, also known as first principles.


OP, Kant refuted this. He'll say that the first principle is a logical necessity, but not an ontological one.

[Anonymous No.6639340]

>>6639323
There is still nothing to suggest that this force that started the universe is a conscious being. It could just be the divine spark that lit the powder keg.

[Anonymous No.6639362]

>>6639317
>>6639340
God must be sentient, if God wasn't sentient then God would have unrealized potential

[Anonymous No.6639419]

Depends on which physics language-game you're playing.
In an Aristotelian-Christian one, no.
In a quantum one, yes.
In a relativistic one, yes.
In a Hegelian one, yes.
In a strictly Aristotelian one, probably.
In a strictly Christian one, probably.
And that's not even mentioning how many people have explicitly criticized the physics involved; all these are just language-games that are more broadly accepted and more intuitive in the 21st century. Thomism might be big on /lit/ and at Catholic universities, but that doesn't make its fundamental presuppositions about the world uncontestable.
Considering that Aquinas is often seen as an outstanding genius of the Middle-Ages, I don't think >>6639116 does a very good job or gives the argument enough credit. However, the truth-value of its conclusion depends almost entirely on whether the person determining it believes in God or doesn't believe in God. Personally, I see it as valid and sound within its own context, but modern interpreters like William Lane Craig don't seem to do it much justice, which is why it comes off looking goofy and not as a profound piece of philosophy that transcends anything since Hegel, excepting maybe Wittgenstein.

[Anonymous No.6639432]

Why can't something be simultaneously actual and potential? For example, potential ice is actual water.

[Anonymous No.6639438]

>>6639432
Potential ice isn't actual water. Potential ice and actual water are both substantially H2O, which has the potential to actually be ice and to actually be water. The equivalence you're thinking of is on a substantial and not potential/actual level.

[Anonymous No.6639442]

>>6639071

Can you imagine that you amongst the millions of other people who were far more intelligent and did far more research than you were all completely wrong and you, living your worthless little life, trying to reassure yourself away from the soul crushing realization that your entire existence will be utterly meaningless just one day happened to understand everything better than anyone ever could before because you read something on the internet which might have been true about some guy you'd only heard of in passing?

Sit the fuck down Lucy

[Anonymous No.6639446]

"something that is itself actual has to actualize a potential" doesn't logically follow from "potentials cannot make themselves actual." "a -> ~b" doesn't imply "~a -> b." the exclusion of an infinite chain in panel 9 is unsupported. slide 11's claim that the head member must be purely actual is unwarranted. the thing about "perfection" in slide 12 is also unproven, if "perfection" is understood in a moral sense.

but more to the point, proving the existence of a divine creator is the least of the problems with this "christianity" business. even a valid argument that proved that would fail to meet the real difficulty.

[Anonymous No.6639452]

>>6639362
Isn't something that is sentient potentially not sentient? Isn't a living person just a potentially dead one?

[Anonymous No.6639456]

>>6639324
no, people say that about everything

[Anonymous No.6639462]

>>6639438
A potential can be an actual. As in actual water is potential ice.

But a pure actual can not be a potential

[Anonymous No.6639479]

It's been disproved for years. All five of them have.

http://www.vorpal.us/2007/10/the-five-ways-of-st-thomas-aquinas-are-all-dead-ends/

[Anonymous No.6639495]

>>6639340
he is sentient, because of the principle of proportionate causality

[Anonymous No.6639497]

>muh teleology
>muh top down organization
>what is self-organization
>what is trial and error

Also, none of these claims are testable, making it astrology tier

[Anonymous No.6639512]

>>6639479

To spare anyone the trouble of clicking through the link

>thinks the First Way is about local motion, thinks it's about accidentally-ordered causal series.

>objection to the Second Way is that nothing is caused to exist, because nothing ever comes into being

>Misconstrues the Third Way as a Leibnizian contingency argument, and screws up the rebuttal even to that. Invokes the demiurge to refute the necessary being, thinks it's arguing to a first cause in the past rather than a sustaining cause.

>Bizarre counter to the Fourth Way, from the ephemerality of pure uranium and its uselessness for artificial purposes.

>Bizarre counter to the Fifth Way: human minds develop within society, therefore God's mind cannot underpin unintelligent final causality.

I thought that The Amazing Atheist's take was bad, but this is next-level stuff.

[Anonymous No.6639515]

>>6639071
Physics suggests that the mechanism of action of the universe is beyond comprehension at this time, but the suggestion of Tommy here discounts that the universe could be non-linear or even non-causal. It's a much harder question, if you know physics even popphysics. This argument isn't refutable because based on the presuppositions that this theory holds, which are false, the theory looks true. It is intuitively interesting, but that's not exactly how science works :(

[Anonymous No.6639525]

>>6639479
>read first "rebuttal"
>thinks motion mean movement

[Anonymous No.6639526]

>>6639512

>Aquinasfag sees his idol get BTFO
>continues with more irrelevant points and even more semantics

I never would have guessed

[Anonymous No.6639528]

>>6639071
It's interesting that Aquinas qualifies the five arguments as carefully as he does. None of them prove specifically the Christian deity; it could still be precisely the same as Aristotle's prime mover, which is only called divine because it's eternal and unchanging, but which doesn't resemble a "god" as anyone who's not a philosopher would take it.

BECAUSE HE'S A SECRET AVERROIST

[Anonymous No.6639535]

>>6639497
>what is self-organization

Actualisation of potentials in the self-organising components to form a composite. So a kind of motion, for the purposes of the First Way.

>what is trial and error

An artificial process which has nothing to do with the First Way.

>Also, none of these claims are testable, making it astrology tier

It's more metaphysical-preconditions-of-testable-nature tier, which makes it more certain than a mere empirical result.

[Anonymous No.6639540]

>this chain can't be infinity long

how does he know?

He seems to be going on a lot of his own assumptions and human made words which we set our own definitions to.

[Anonymous No.6639541]

>>6639324
yes. it started out shit and got shitter when all the high school philosophers turned up

>muh special insights
>i've read some pop thinking and i think i've come to some interesting conclusions
>wait guys i've had some really deep thoughts

[Anonymous No.6639546]

>>6639528
Aquinas derives all the traditional divine attributes many times in his works- not just in the Summa Theologiae, but in the Summa Contra Gentiles as well.

[Anonymous No.6639548]

>>6639535

What the fuck are even talking about? Literally every single point you tried to make is incoherent gibberish without any meaning.

That's the big problem with aquinasfags, they're not even wrong, they're bullshit merchants of meaningless linguistic hot air with precisely zero substance. Reading your babble made me realize exactly why Christianity died out in the modern world

[Anonymous No.6639549]

>>6639324
I think it started when I read Hegel last summer and got in a few arguments about him.

[Anonymous No.6639554]

>>6639540
>how does he know?

Because then nothing would exist. You would only have an infinitely long chain of potentiality rather than actuality. Think of a chain of dominoes, each domino has the potential to make each subsequent domino fall, but if there is no outside agent to push the first domino, nothing happens. Actuality doesn't occur, only infinite potentiality.

>He seems to be going on a lot of his own assumptions and human made words which we set our own definitions to.

If you would take the time to actually read what he wrote on the matter rather than shitposting you wouldn't have to flood this thread with stupid questions which based Aquinas already provides answers for.

[Phil Gabriel !jcOURqNIBM No.6639555]

Easily: God doesn't exist.
QED

[Anonymous No.6639556]

>>6639548
>Reading your babble made me realize exactly why Christianity died out in the modern world

But it didn't and hasn't.....do you actually believe this meme?

[Anonymous No.6639560]

>>6639540
Words are the handles by which one grasps reality. Nothing wrong with using words in arguments.

>this chain can't be infinitely long
>how does he know?

Logic. A chain of essentially-ordered movers is such that each member is only moved insofar as another member is in motion. Hence, in themselves, no member of the chain has motion. An infinitely long chain of such movers would be composed of nothing but movers-which-move-only-insofar-as-they-are-moved. But such a chain would not have motion, hence could not be a chain of movers. So it turns out that an infinitely long chain of essentially-ordered movers is impossible.

[Anonymous No.6639566]

>>6639548

Nah, we know what we're talking about. Your helpless flailing gives me confidence that one day, when the barbarians have died out, we shall inherit the earth once again.

[Anonymous No.6639593]

>>6639117
You probably hate that it makes an ontological claim, and the standard modern intellectual disease is that external reality is inaccessible.

[Anonymous No.6639621]

>>6639446
>"a -> ~b" doesn't imply "~a -> b."
Actually, it does. Please read on logical equivalences. This one is transposition.

[Anonymous No.6639626]

>>6639566
That doesn't seem v Christian

[Anonymous No.6639627]

>>6639071
No, and no one really gives a fuck about what Medieval Christians said.

[Anonymous No.6639628]

>>6639446

"something that is itself actual has to actualize a potential" Is meant as in " in order to actualize a potential you need something actual" not that "something actual must necessarily actualize a potential". The inference holds there.

An infinite chain of derived beings is impossible due to the transitivity of the relationship between the members. Remember these are essentially ordered causes where if A actualizes B and B actualizes C then B requires the continued support of A to actualize C, you can keep adding more derived members, say we add D, if D is still derived and all we know is D through A, then none of the members have their actuality accounted for yet,if we go back a step further to E and E is still only derived then A-E do not have their actuality accounted for yet, until you reach a member who has actuality on their own actuality none of the members have their actuality supported. So in principle either the need for a first cause that is fully actual is correct, because it is the only way that the series can be intelligibly accounted for, or the world has features that are unintelligible, and hence we should not be engaged in rational theology or science on anything but probabilistic grounds.

Slide 11 is warranted, because if a being is not fully actual then it needed something prior to it so to actualize it's potential and make it actual, because potentialities need actualities to actualize them. So if it is a first cause it must be fully actual.

Slide 12 is proven, Medieval perfections are not like what we understand perfections as. For example, a crow who can fly and has all of it's parts functioning as they should would be a "perfect crow", perfections are just qualities of a being, imperfections are a lack of qualities that should/could be there, but are not. An imperfection would simply be an unactualized potential quality of some sort. So it is warranted,

>>6639515
To be fair, we have Relativistic and Quantum physics now which both have lots of evidence in their favor and yet are incommensurable. The thing with physics is that it is just system building based on mathematical abstractions and predictive power, there is no reason to think that these systems totally conform with reality or are anything but nice models that can be used for pragmatic scientific ends, our prima facie experience of the world and logic is a much more reliable at this point, the scientistic ideology has little to hold itself up on right now.

>>6639497
> he thinks teology was mentioned

Maybe implicitly in the part about perfections, but the main argument works without any teleology.

>>6639512
I'm sure there are some good academic critiques. You can't expect much from the blog generation. Kant was mentioned, though I have a hard time taking him seriously personally. Maybe someone can explain Kant's critique in here.

I can't wait until the day when /lit/ is willing to discuss a different one of Aquinas' arguments.

[Anonymous No.6639635]

>>6639560
>Nothing wrong with using words in arguments.

It's wrong however to assume that every word we use must stand for something that exists. Which is the main flaw of Aquinas' arguments: yes, you have a coherent linguistic framework that describes the whole universe as a chain of causality, but that doesn't tell the terms in this framework are real things or substances. They could just as well be useful theoretical entities, like the epicycles used in Antiquity.

What Aquinas (or rather anon in his summing up of Aquinas) is doing here is akin to claiming that if you have a mathematical theory that's consistent and who's not contradicting basic observations then this theory must be a description of reality and (on top of that) every entity in that theory must describe a thing that's acting in or on the physical world.

Basically this >>6639325 and Kant. First cause is a useful (in a sense, necessary) idea for the subjective organizing of experience through Reason, but it's not an object or a substance.

[Anonymous No.6639638]

>>6639627

Except contemporary academia where Thomas is huge and Medieval Philosophy in general is ascendant to a degree never seen before.

[Anonymous No.6639672]

>>6639635

The argument rests on there being causation in the world, and that the act/potency distinction is the best way to explain what is going on in our experience of causation. If you buy those two points then everything else follows as a logical necessity. I don't see any good reason not to accept those points though.

Maybe you can tease out Kant's critique a bit for us to understand.

[Anonymous No.6639692]

>>6639515
A non-causal universe (in Aquinas's sense of cause) is literally impossible.

No change occurs without the actualisation of potential. That change requires a cause is not because of "intuition," but is susceptible of demonstration. Potency cannot, in the respect in which it is potential, actualise itself, since in that respect it has no actuality. Hence, since potency and actuality exhaustively divide what exists, whatever it is that actualises a potential has to be an actual thing, hence not identical to the potential- a cause.

Even if one denies the usual obvious examples of change, one would be hard-pressed to deny composition. But composition is itself the actualisation of potentials in the components, to form the composite- which makes it a "change" in Aquinas's sense.

But then if one denies that there are composite things at all, it's hard to see in what sense there is a "universe," since a universe just is composed of disparate elements.

[Anonymous No.6639710]

>>6639635

>What Aquinas (or rather anon in his summing up of Aquinas) is doing here is akin to claiming that if you have a mathematical theory that's consistent and who's not contradicting basic observations then this theory must be a description of reality and (on top of that) every entity in that theory must describe a thing that's acting in or on the physical world.

What Aquinas is claiming is a bit stronger. He thinks there is no coherent way the universe could otherwise be.

>First cause is a useful (in a sense, necessary) idea for the subjective organizing of experience through Reason, but it's not an object or a substance.

This presumes a lot about the metaphysics of reason which Kant doesn't analyse very well, and which Aquinas can have no reason to accept. In the very act of putting the epistemological cart before the metaphysical horse, he begs the question against the Scholastics.

[Anonymous No.6639748]

Come on, this argument is debunked in every introductory philosophy class, so to answer your question, no.

[Anonymous No.6639765]

>>6639748
The argument debunked in these classes is invariably an embarrassing straw man.

[Anonymous No.6639783]

>>6639748

They never get the argument right in the first place though, this is a pretty well known fact by anyone who has studied the original literature, and it is one of the first points that will be made whenever you do a class on Aquinas or Medieval Philosophy in general.

[Anonymous No.6639792]

>>6639748
>>6639765
>>6639783
why does democratic education hate religion so much?

[Anonymous No.6639958]

>>6639324
>lately

[Anonymous No.6639960]

>>6639765
>>6639783
Except that one of the biggest counter-arguments against it were by a philosopher himself, one who knew the source text, Kant's argument in The Critique of Pure Reason

[Anonymous No.6639975]

>>6639792
Holds us all back.

[Anonymous No.6640014]

>>6639071
I remember answering one of those shitty online tests that matches you to a philosopher based on ethics. I answered every question with 'it doesn't matter' and I was assigned Aquinas.

Why?

[Anonymous No.6640032]

>>6639289
We're like God's side-bitch, the 'reality' is our relationship.

[Anonymous No.6640114]

This is some elementary school level philosophy idea i have, but what about the idea that because something can be destroyed and fucked up into irreparable chaos, it can come from that as well?

[Anonymous No.6640122]

>>6639960

Are you saying that the source text for Aquinas' argument, is Kant?

[Anonymous No.6640136]

>>6639442
This is the principle of innovation, to mock it it is a cardinal sin. This is why mental illness has played such a factor in advancement, delusion is a requirement.

[Anonymous No.6640141]

>>6640122
nvm, screwed up reading comprehension there.

[Anonymous No.6640153]

>>6639960
Kant wasn't really a good enough Aristotelian to get Thomas. He was mostly responding to guys like Hume and Leibniz.

[Anonymous No.6640165]

>>6640153
But by doing so he discredited Aquinas's argument.

[Anonymous No.6640175]

OP's pic related is bizarre to the extent that it looks like jumbled nonsense.

[Anonymous No.6640178]

>>6640165

Discredited (in a purely sociological sense), sure, but not successfully refuted. The argument in the Critique doesn't actually address any of Aquinas's argument, but merely tars it with a broad brush by confusing it for other arguments (which are not successfully refuted either).

[Anonymous No.6640201]

>>6639960

Kant made a good argument that is included in classes on the ontological argument. I never ran into Kant's critique of Aquinas' cosmological argument in any class though, especially since I was never introduced to Aquinas' cosmological argument until I took a Medieval Philosophy class.

>>6640165
Well he might have brought it some discredit publicly if people assumed that his argument against Leibniz's argument also carried on to Aquinas'. Can someone give us a run down of what Kant's critique of the argument actually ammounts to?

[Anonymous No.6640204]

>>6640175
Seems pretty straightforward to me

Unmoved mover

Dominos

[Anonymous No.6640222]

>>6639628
>Slide 11 is warranted, because if a being is not fully actual then it needed something prior to it so to actualize it's potential and make it actual, because potentialities need actualities to actualize them. So if it is a first cause it must be fully actual.
no. potentialities need actualities _to be actualized_, but they don't logically entail appropriate and engaged actualities. there s no logical necessity of potentialities' being actualized. this applies just as much to a first cause.

>
Slide 12 is proven, Medieval perfections are not like what we understand perfections as. For example, a crow who can fly and has all of it's parts functioning as they should would be a "perfect crow", perfections are just qualities of a being, imperfections are a lack of qualities that should/could be there, but are not. An imperfection would simply be an unactualized potential quality of some sort. So it is warranted,
interesting word history there, but nothing implies that a first cause be "perfect" in this sense, either, as discussed above. aquinas is simply dressing up an aesthetic preference as logical necessity.

[Anonymous No.6640252]

>>6640222

>there s no logical necessity of potentialities' being actualized. this applies just as much to a first cause.

That's Aquinas's empirical premise: that things change, i.e., that some potentials are in fact actualised.

>interesting word history there, but nothing implies that a first cause be "perfect" in this sense, either, as discussed above. aquinas is simply dressing up an aesthetic preference as logical necessity

Being purely actual entails the First Cause is perfect in this sense, since a purely actual being has no potencies in virtue of which it could lack some perfection. Aesthetic preferences don't come into it.

[Anonymous No.6640319]

>>6640222

Ok but just read the argument itself, all he is saying is that IF potentialities are being actualized then something actual has to be actualizing them, and from there we can move to a first mover by logic (and it works).He is not saying that actualized potentialities absolutely have to exist in the first place as a rule of logic, their existence is something we pick up empirically from experiencing causation and change.

The first cause does have to be perfect as mentioned in the image, because an imperfection is a lack, and all lacks are unactualized potentiality, but God is pure actuality, and therefore cannot have any unactualized potentiality in him and hence can have no imperfections, making God perfect. This is actually what is said on slide 12.

[Muck J.J. Bulligan !!9BQS7bEaaLE No.6640331]

>>6639071
>"Motion" means "change"
no it doesn't

refuted

[Anonymous No.6640341]

1/2
>>6639672
> our experience of causation

Kant would say that causation isn't a thing we experience, but a way of linking phenomena together so that an experience is at all possible. Random unrelated stimuli is not experience, merely sensorial input. To form an experience (something that can be the basis of knowledge) you need to order them. Causation is one of the ways we build that order, in that sense there is no causation "in the world", and causation is a requirement for "the world" (of experience) to exist.

But it's not where Kant's rebuttal of Aquinas comes in. Empiric causation is legit as far as Kant is concerned (though it perhaps doesn't mean exactly the same thing as what Aquinas means). The problems begins when you take the whole chains of causation and treat it as an object (in particular something that must have or not have an end). Shortly put, the totality of experiences (regarding chains of causation) isn't itself an experience, but Aquinas claims that there must be a prime mover rests precisely on handling the forme like it does the latter. And that's why Kant considers the "Prime Mover-causal regression ending stance" exactly as mislead as the "unending causal regression", because both are handling total series like single objects. Being able to add 1 to any natural number n, no matter how big, doesn't mean there must exist such a thing as infinite quantities, simply that infinity as a concept is useful for handling naturel numbers as a whole.

>the act/potency distinction is the best way to explain what is going on

There would probably be some argument to be made here, however I'm not sure this is the argument Kant focuses on (not that I remember). That distinction seems a bit dubious to me, it sounds like a nice terminology but it covers up more than it explains.

I guess my last sentence is still somewhat in line with Kant's criticism. Aquinas uses words that make things clearer, but that doesn't prove any existence whatsoever. A way to put it is that Aquinas reasoning has proper form but no ontological content because it produces object that can't be thought in relation to a possible experience. A mathematical concept still has its ground on intuitions of quantity, shapes, relationship, it can be produced within the intuition that forms a basis for experience even if it's not an experience itself (Kant here uses classical mathematics, modern mathematics are a bit different, though intution still plays a central role).

The first term of causation chains however is purely formal, you can conceive its existence but have no intuition of it. So yes, the Prime Mover follows logically from an "actual/potency" reading of causation, but a logical consequences isn't the same thing as an object of intuition. What Aquinas proves is only the necessity of a concept for ordering (or rather, that a concept is given as formal consequence of a structure of ordering) not that there exist something that is that concept in action.

[Anonymous No.6640349]

>>6639071
>change means the conversion from potential to actual
Seriously? Who thinks like this? Change is the conversion between different actuals. You don't look at a puddle and think that's "potentially ice," it's fucking water.

[Anonymous No.6640380]

>>6640349
You're either bait or stupid

Make your choice

[Anonymous No.6640387]

2/2

I haven't a good grasp of this (I've been planning to reread Critique of Pure Reason but no time for that now), hence the long, repetitive, possibly confused post. Kant's reasoning isn't as difficult as often made out to be, but it's still not that simple. Nonetheless, I hope that was enough to convince you to read Kant. Understanding why he thought Aquinas was wrong here (wether you agree with him or not) is imo very important for making sense of our perspective change over the past 300 years or so.

I'm not entirely convinced by Kant either (his appeal to mathematics, while legitimate, can be particularly confusing when you look at contemporary maths). But he is central enough that I need to make distinctions between classical science and modern science to account for his arguments.

>>6639710
>This presumes a lot about the metaphysics of reason

Not really, Kant uses reason to denote our ability to unite concepts under ideas.He's not talking about any higher form of reason. The only reason we can talk about, regarding accounts of experience, is the experience-ordering reason. Anything beyond that is moving away from wanting to account for experience, which in Kant's view prevents you from having knowledge. You could argue that Aquinas is less interested in accounting for experience than in demonstrating that there must be a Prime Mover, but in this case he shouldn't ground his argument on a discussion of physical causes. Another way to look at it would be to say that for Kant, Aquinas has no knowledge about a Prime Mover, somply an idea of it.

>In the very act of putting the epistemological cart before the metaphysical horse

Indeed that's where the fundamental reversal is, but why assume that the horse must be metaphysics and the cart epistemology ? It would also make sense to say we shouldn't make claims about how to derive the existence of something non-physical from the observation of physical things without knowing how those derivations are grounded and produced.

What you choose as the horse and as the cart is what determines what you'll be doing. It's pretty much the axiomatic starting point.

>he begs the question against the Scholastics

Rather, he says the Scholastics were actually begging the question. There's a choice to make here, to ground you inquiry on epistemology or metaphysics ? You could reframe this as: classical science or rational theology (not that you can't have science and theology, but we're talking foundations here) ? According to Kant, to have rational, systematic knowledge you need the former, and that choice entails that faith becomes entirely personal and out of the realm of reason. Which means that faith-deniers have no rational ground to stand on either (Kant himself said he want to open up a space for faith). Looking at the problem this way, Kant doesn't seem that much at odds with, say, Aquinas, given that the latter recognized you need revelation to know God as Christ (and not merely prime mover).

[Anonymous No.6640389]

>>6640380
>no rebuttal

[Anonymous No.6640408]

>>6640389
I can't make a rebuttal because potential doesn't exist, therefore your statement has no potential rebuttal.

[Anonymous No.6640422]

>>6640408
And in the end, no actual rebuttal presented itself.

[Anonymous No.6640445]

>>6640422
That's because it's potential and therefore unrealized without an actualizer.

[Anonymous No.6640460]

>>6640445
Potentialities are nothing but mental predictions of future realities

[Anonymous No.6640466]

>>6640460
*future actualities

[Anonymous No.6640467]

>>6640201
The SEP has a good page on it, but the meat of it is that existence is not a preidcate, having something exist because if it is perfect it mist exist is not logically sound.

[Anonymous No.6640477]

>>6640460
So you're saying that potentialities are future possibilities? Amazing.

Tell me more

[Anonymous No.6640491]

>>6640387
3/3
So I guess in the end Kant's argument is more about the interest (or lack thereof) of Aquinas's reasoning for obtaining knowledge than about the importance of God. But in the process he also argues for a kind of rational method that dispense with faith in the traditional sense.

The essence of that method is putting stricter, more intuition-and-experience oriented requisit on what knowledge proper is. A consequence of that is that a Prime Mover can only be out of the realm of knowledge proper.

Note that I've been using "Aquinas" quite sloppily here, I've mostly been trying to rephrase Kant's refutation of the cosmological argument in a way that addresses OP's pic.

I'm a bit ashamed of my posts, and I should have gone to sleep long ago, but at least this thread compelled me to do some writing efforts on a book I read, so thanks guys for that.

Wil be reading the answer for perhaps 10 min, then I should really hit the sack.

[Anonymous No.6640495]

>>6640477
So actualities are never contingent on potentialities.

[Anonymous No.6640560]

>>6639628
>An infinite chain of derived beings is impossible due to the transitivity of the relationship between the members.
there is no maximum distance on transitivity that would make an infinite chain impossible. that's the whole idea of transitivity.

>>6640252
>That's Aquinas's empirical premise: that things change, i.e., that some potentials are in fact actualised
right, _some_ potentials are actualized. not all--which is what would be required to logically entail that the first cause have no latent potentialities.

>Being purely actual entails the First Cause is perfect in this sense, since a purely actual being has no potencies in virtue of which it could lack some perfection. Aesthetic preferences don't come into it.
as discussed above, there's nothing that necessitates that the first cause not have latent potentialities. but even if it were proven that it could not, there is a vast difference between such a lack and "perfection" in the sense you give--that of conformity or platonic ideality.

>>6640319
>Ok but just read the argument itself, all he is saying is that IF potentialities are being actualized then something actual has to be actualizing them, and from there we can move to a first mover by logic (and it works).
no, the inference of a first cause is flawed. he denies the possibility of an infinite chain of causation seemingly just because he doesn't like it. there's no real argument, as discussed above.

>He is not saying that actualized potentialities absolutely have to exist in the first place as a rule of logic, their existence is something we pick up empirically from experiencing causation and change.
this is neither here nor there--totally irrelevant to aquinas' argument and to the critiques.

>The first cause does have to be perfect as mentioned in the image, because an imperfection is a lack, and all lacks are unactualized potentiality, but God is pure actuality, and therefore cannot have any unactualized potentiality in him and hence can have no imperfections, making God perfect. This is actually what is said on slide 12.
this is some kind of attempt at circular logic--aquinas is trying to confirm the validity of his reasoning about the first cause by checking that its conclusions are compatible with traditional christian teaching about god.

[Anonymous No.6640569]

>>6640341
The first argument about causation is erroneous, it assumes that because we require causation in order to have experience, that causation has to therefore be something that ONLY comes from us rather than the world. But there is nothing inconceivable about us being a part of a world with causation present in it, and that causation in the world is our reason for being able to experience the world itself. Kant gets so hung up on epistemology and the subject that he makes bad jumps in his metaphysics.

>The problems begins when you take the whole chains of causation and treat it as an object (in particular something that must have or not have an end). Shortly put, the totality of experiences (regarding chains of causation) isn't itself an experience, but Aquinas claims that there must be a prime mover rests precisely on handling the forme like it does the latter.

This is slightly obscure. The chains of causation are not chains of experiences throughout time, we just notice that the world works on causation and go from there. I mean I suppose a general critique of induction works here, but then all scientific knowledge, including this argument, is just a matter of probability rather than absolute truth, which is fine.

I also don't see how Aquinas treats the chain of causes as an object at all, the need for a first cause comes from what we logically derive from the act/potency schema, not treating the chain as if it was a concrete object itself or applying logic to a series that should only be applied to one thing. It is true that the possibility of a potential infinite has nothing to do with something actually being a potential infinite, but this is not a matter of mere possibility, but what logically necessary given the world we live in.

>A way to put it is that Aquinas reasoning has proper form but no ontological content because it produces object that can't be thought in relation to a possible experience.

This whole argument is based on logical intuitions, which are just as valid as mathematical intuitions, if it is a matter of it being able to be a possible experience then Aquinas' metaphysics is on no shakier grounds then basic mathematics is, we get our supporting intuitions from logical structures really experienced in the world the same way quantity and shaped based structures are picked out from the real world to form mathematical intuitions.

>>6640387

Well I'm definitely willing to look into it since the critique is so principled. I always end up bashing heads with Kant no matter what I do in Philosophy so it was bound to happen, and he is already on my list for my honours thesis since it is on Medieval Causation, and part of that is dealing with critiques from moderns.

>>6640467
That's for Anselm's Ontological argument though, I know that critique.

[Anonymous No.6640601]

>>6640387
>but no time for that now
If you haven't read about it don't talk about it.

[Anonymous No.6640626]

>hurr durr if i cant tell the difference between the two, there must be only one
>hurr durr copies in different locations are the same thing
>hurr durr theyre all connected and centralized
>mfw "energy cannot be it" on page 10
>hurr durr thats why you shouldnt masturbate

[Anonymous No.6640652]

>>6640560
>there is no maximum distance on transitivity that would make an infinite chain impossible. that's the whole idea of transitivity.

I'm talking about logical transitivity of the kinds of causes involved. If A->B and B-> C then A-> C, given this rule of logic the inference I made earlier holds.

>right, _some_ potentials are actualized. not all--which is what would be required to logically entail that the first cause have no latent potentialities.

This doesn't logically follow at all. His reason for why the first being must be pure actuality is that if it's actuality was caused by something else it could not be the first cause as something else would be prior to it. If a things actualities are actualized by something else, they are potentialities in the first instant of nature before they are actualities, thus something must actualize them and that thing cannot said to be first in the series.

> there is a vast difference between such a lack and "perfection" in the sense you give--that of conformity or platonic ideality.

What is meant be perfection is explained here
>>6639628
>Slide 12 is proven, Medieval perfections are not like what we understand perfections as. For example, a crow who can fly and has all of it's parts functioning as they should would be a "perfect crow", perfections are just qualities of a being, imperfections are a lack of qualities that should/could be there, but are not. An imperfection would simply be an unactualized potential quality of some sort. So it is warranted,

The explanation of why an infinite chain is impossible in this sense is explained here.
>>6639628
>An infinite chain of derived beings is impossible due to the transitivity of the relationship between the members. Remember these are essentially ordered causes where if A actualizes B and B actualizes C then B requires the continued support of A to actualize C, you can keep adding more derived members, say we add D, if D is still derived and all we know is D through A, then none of the members have their actuality accounted for yet,if we go back a step further to E and E is still only derived then A-E do not have their actuality accounted for yet, until you reach a member who has actuality on their own actuality none of the members have their actuality supported. So in principle either the need for a first cause that is fully actual is correct, because it is the only way that the series can be intelligibly accounted for, or the world has features that are unintelligible, and hence we should not be engaged in rational theology or science on anything but probabilistic grounds.

Finally

>this is some kind of attempt at circular logic--aquinas is trying to confirm the validity of his reasoning about the first cause by checking that its conclusions are compatible with traditional christian teaching about god.

This is just conjecture, don't include it if you don't have an argument for it. How is it circular ?

[Anonymous No.6640659]

>>6639071
So, why is this an argument?

[Anonymous No.6640758]

>>6640560
The impossibility of an infinite hierarchy of movers and moved is a consequence of the nature of its members that is, potentials with no movement in themselves, rather than infinite quantity per se.

Such a hierarchy of movers and moved, where each member, considered in itself lacks movement, would have no movement at all, hence would not be a hierarchy of dependent movers and moved. But a hierarchy of movers and moved, which is not a hierarchy of movers and moved, is a contradiction. Hence, asserting an infinitely high/deep hierarchy of movers and moved entails a contradiction.

>right, _some_ potentials are actualized. not all--which is what would be required to logically entail that the first cause have no latent potentialities.

All Aquinas needs is one thing that is moved, to make his argument from motion. He explicitly says that "some" things are moved, as the premise of his argument. His argument proceeds to an actuality that is not itself actualised- pure actuality. Nothing about this argument requires that all potentialities in other things be actualised.

What necessitates that the first cause not have latent potentialities, is that the first cause not be itself something which is moved. Insofar as it possesses latent potentialities, it would itself be a composite of potency and act, but anything composite is the actualisation of a potency in its components, to compose it. So the unmoved mover just cannot have potency within it.

>there is a vast difference between such a lack and "perfection" in the sense you give--that of conformity or platonic ideality.

Well, pure actuality is pure being. Particular, qualified perfections are qualified by the kinds of being they perfect. Unqualified perfection, then, i.e., perfection itself, must be being itself. So the Pure Act has unqualified perfection.

[Anonymous No.6640804]

>>6640569
But it applies to all ontological arguments

[Anonymous No.6640814]

>His reason for why the first being must be pure actuality is that if it's actuality was caused by something else it could not be the first cause as something else would be prior to it.
Aquinas (if he's in fact saying anything like what you say) is confusing two issues here: whether the first cause can have realized potentialities, and whether it can have unrealized potentialities.

>This is just conjecture, don't include it if you don't have an argument for it. How is it circular?
He's trying to prove it logically necessary that the Christian God exist. He constructs a (quite poor) argument for the necessity of a "first cause"--then ascribes to it the qualities of the Christian God, with inadequate basis. He implicitly takes the fact that this chain of errors has reached the desired conclusion as proof of its validity. We can go on debating the niceties of this and what particular fallacy to score it as, but you must see that there's a lack in integrity in this approach.

>>6640652
Re infinite causation, I don't know how much more clearly I can state this. The nature of transitivity is exactly such that there is no finitude limitation on its operation. Transitivity means precisely that causality does not break down because

I'm done with this for the evening. I may post again if the thread is still going in the morning.

[Anonymous No.6640831]

>>6640349
Part of what it is to be water is to be potentially ice. If one doesn't understand this, one doesn't understand water very well.

But to address the broader point that

>Change is the conversion between different actuals

Conversion between different actualities requires one to go out of existence, and another to come into existence. But if one thing comes into existence purely in virtue of another's cessation of existence, one is in fact saying that something can come from nothing. But nothing comes from nothing, so this is absurd.

Aristotle realised this, and therefore understood that there must be a medium-term: a directedness-toward being, rooted in current actuality but ordered toward new being. This is potentiality, and must be a feature of any change whatever.

[Anonymous No.6640887]

>>6640814

I don't think it makes sense to talk about an unactualizeable potency like you are suggesting the first could still have, if it can't be brought into being then there is no reason for us to ascribe any sort of being to it.

>He constructs a (quite poor) argument for the necessity of a "first cause"--then ascribes to it the qualities of the Christian God, with inadequate basis.

Look at slide 12, that is an adequate basis, he shows how what the argument leads to logically also leads to the necessity of this first being having all the qualities of the traditional theistic God. You have yet to show any errors in the argument what so ever, so your criticism here is'nt even remotely cogent. The fact that it holds logically and we accept the initial empirical premises it is based on is why the argument is successful, not because of the conclusion itself. If that were the case he would be for Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God, and yet he rejects that argument.

>>6640804
Aquinas' argument is a cosmological argument, where you start from empirical/contingent premises. The ontological argument starts from logically necessary or analytically true premises and does'nt bring in anything empirical or contingent.

[Anonymous No.6640895]

>take any member out of the chain right now and the water wont freeze

Water freezes naturally all the time, without the help of power plants or refrigerators. Ice can occur naturally, without divine intervention.

Check mate.

[Anonymous No.6640911]

>>6640895
All of those natural things you mentioned are themselves causes

Each cause is associated with a causality chain. All of these chains lead up to the first cause.

What you just mentioned does not affect Aquinas' argument at all, since causality itself is not refuted.

[Anonymous No.6640917]

>>6640911
That is ontologically incorrect!
Also, strawman!
Also, shitpost b0$$! Ayyyy!

[Anonymous No.6640929]

>>6639071
>It would not have knowledge but rather be knowledge itself
pure pantheism

[Anonymous No.6640941]

>>6640911
Doesn't change the fact I disproved the given example. Maybe it should be rewritten so I can't blow it the fuck out with such ease.

Doesn't change the fact that saying "god did it" is a shitty explanation for any natural phenomenon.

Check mate.

[Anonymous No.6640949]

>>6640895
It still will be caused by something else in nature, in it's own causal series, the example talks about the water in the fridge in particular, so no, you have nothing.

>>6640929
Except that God is a necessary condition for any instance of natural causation, as this argument showed. Though not mentioning intermediary causes is certainly less satisfying, this doesn't change the fact that you have yet to make an argument that does any damage to the argument.

[Anonymous No.6640966]

>>6640949
No, assigning the form "knowledge" to the first cause and using this to give it omniscience is more in line with pantheism than a personable god. It's literally saying "God is knowledge" rather than "God knows all." In the same vein, a lizard "is" knowledge of itself whereas a biologist only "has" knowledge of that lizard. If the first cause "is" the knowledge of the universe, then the first cause "is" the universe. Pantheism.

[Anonymous No.6641010]

>>6640949
>"take something out of the equation and the water won't freeze"
>remove something from the equation
>the water freezes

You're missing the fucking point, dumpkoff. I disproved the example. You can stomp your feet and pout all you want, it's been beat.

All you can do is say "Nuh uh! But God!" God can't help you now, though. That example is fucking dead. I proved water can freeze without power plants. Don't like it? Pray for divine inspiration to come up with a better example.

[Anonymous No.6641041]

>>6639122
>Americans

[Anonymous No.6641072]

>>6641010

Not even that anon but you've got no idea what you're talking about. Obviously the initial statement was relative to the particular case, not a statement about why water freezes in general. Honestly, one of the best arguments against the existence of God is that he creates people too dumb to follow simple, massively spiritually beneficial arguments.

[Anonymous No.6641074]

>>6640966

You do realize that the God of Traditional theism is not a personal God but a being of pure actuality right? It's not pantheistic because it includes things that go beyond the physical universe and is not identical with it, but beyond it. Knowledge is not identical with the object of it's knowledge, that is were your error is. A lizard is not equivalent to knowledge of a lizard, one is immaterial information and the other is a concrete substance.

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2010/09/classical-theism.html

>>6641010
The water in the freezer as it is in the freezer is all the example itself was talking about though, you are talking about a different case then the one that was being used as an example. You don't have a coherent argument here.

[Anonymous No.6641088]

I'm an atheist, and I don't pretend at all that I know if the big bang was caused by something else or if it was actually spontaneous, I haven't studied anything related to it so I will not pretend I have enough information to have a good opinion.

What drives me fucking insane is when a religious group acts like proving that the Big Bang was caused or even didn't happen will prove that THEIR religion is right. As if your opponent's argument being wrong proves yours right in a situation where there are an infinite amount of theoretical causes and explanations you could come up with.

Atheists are not exempt, when an atheist acts like proving the big bang right will confirm there is no god it fucking bugs me too, even though I share that belief.

[Anonymous No.6641102]

>>6641010
That's not very charitable anon.

[Anonymous No.6641105]

>>6639071
the chain CAN be infinitely long, given the case of a loop. thus, if the universe is a self-contained system, then there is no need for an "end" to the chain. if energy is not created or destroyed, it can be in a never-ending flux.

[Anonymous No.6641106]

>>6641088
Isn't that agnosticism?

[Anonymous No.6641121]

>>6641106
I'm an atheist, no part of me believes that there is a God or any higher power, but I also like to think I'm smart enough to know I could be proven wrong even on the things I'm most certain about.

[Anonymous No.6641157]

>>6641072
the only thing retarded about this argument are the people who don't see the examples themselves are loaded.

>how does water freeze?
>well SOMEONE needs to do the freezeing!

>how do roses grow?
>well SOMEONE needs to do the planting and watering!

What a crock of shit. Of course you would pick examples that expressly involve human intervention, because the analogies fall flat on their fucking face when you use an example free of human intervention.

>how do waves form in the ocean?
>well SOMEONE has to blow really hard at the ground!

>where does sunlight come from?
>well SOMEONE has to turn on the galactic light switch!

It's really no different from Kirk Cameron trying to prove creationism with a banana that's been selectively bred by humans.

[Anonymous No.6641231]

>>6641157
oh summer...
i cant believe this place is full of kids already

[Anonymous No.6641254]

>>6641157

> He thinks the God of traditional theism is a personal God who we can describe as a "someone".

Ouch.
Read this.

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2010/09/classical-theism.html

[Anonymous No.6641284]

>I have faith that I'm correct.

[Anonymous No.6641324]

>>6639071
>Something that is purely actual, with no unrealized potentials, must be OMNIPOTENT. To not be able to do something is to have an unrealized potential.
Water has the potentiality to be ice. It also has the potentiality to be steam. But it does not have the direct potentiality to be anything. This is why the chain structure is necessary, because things cannot cause X, so instead they must cause something that can in turn cause X. Aquinas in this paragraph assumes two states: actuality and unrealized potentiality. There is also a third: non-potentiality. Therefore something that has no unrealized potentiality is not necessarily pure actuality and thus omnipotent. It can have gaps in potentiality, non-potentiality, that it simply cannot be.

[Anonymous No.6641415]

>>6639132
The unmoved mover isnt Aquinas's theory. Its just a plagiarised version of the argument made by Averroes with some stuff about the trinity and natural justice mixed in