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Linusthe2nd
Guest
As usual Bahman is wrong on all accounts. Follow at your own risk.
Linus2nd
Linus2nd
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JuanFlorencio
Guest
Dear Blue Horizon:
I don’t think nor Aristotle nor St. Thomas ever tried to derive all types of change from the consideration of change of place. It simply happened that they used the same concepts of potency and act to deal with all types of change.
Well, it doesn’t say that. It is not the same to say “a hot thing can heat a cold thing” and to say “only a hot thing can heat a cold thing”.
Nowadays we understand any type of change as a result of local motion. Chemical reactions, which are behind a great number of qualitative changes, are the result of the relative movements of atoms, in such a way that the configuration among them changes. Atoms of oxygen and atoms of hydrogen become together and form groups (H2O) that exhibit quite new modes of interaction. In the Aristotelian conception, something that is eternally moving (from potency to act), eternally requires a prime cause (which should be pure act, for if it too passes from potency to act, it would require another cause)
You can look for the Aristotelian texts in the Internet. The one you need in this occasion is Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 6. You will be surprised that for his demonstration of the first mover Aristotle departs from the eternity of movement. Look also for Physics, Book VIII, Chapters 1-3.
Best regards
JuanFlorencio
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Blue_Horizon
Guest
My small point is that the First Way allegedly prove’s god’s existence from local motion.
Yet to travel that path wider potency/act principles are invoked that cannot be tightly proven by inducting principles from change in place.
Therefore the 1st Way cannot stand robustly on observing local motion alone.
What does it actually mean for an efficient cause to be in a state of actuality if that actuality doesn’t resemble the actuality it allegedly elicts from the object in potency?
How would we know it was the efficient cause?
No probs with that.
Lets just stick to the eternal moving of the celestial spheres, that is what Aristotle meant - though I like the modern insight you have above. However, see above re pot/act being seeming unjustifiably bigger in applicability than can be proven from observation of change in place. It is even seemingly wider in scale than even sensible change in general - for all sensible change requires an underlying “existant” medium (prime matter) while the more esoteric examples of pot/act do not.
You must be smart enough to know I can do that for myself. I am interested in your depth of understandi ng of the issue which I can judge by your own accepted english formulation of this principle…have another go, walk on the wild side
.Best regards
JuanFlorencio
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Bahman
Guest
You are the expert in Aristotle. So tell us openly what is potential and where does it resides?
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Linusthe2nd
Guest
Sorry to disappoint you, I would not call myself an expert. I might agree that I am a student.
It is a complicated subject. However, for material substances, potency is a principle residing in matter which allows matter to change so that a completely new substance appears or the substance undergoes an accidental change. An example of the first would be when water is able to be changed into the gases H2 and O. And example of the latter would be the change in the color of your hair as you age, changing from black or brown or red to grey or white.
So potency is the capability or power of matter to change, either in structure or appearance.
I have expressed this in layman’s terms avoiding the technical terms used in Aristotelian philosophy.
Linus2nd
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JuanFlorencio
Guest
Dear Blue Horizon:My small point is that the First Way allegedly prove’s god’s existence from local motion.
Yet to travel that path wider potency/act principles are invoked that cannot be tightly proven by inducting principles from change in place.
Therefore the 1st Way cannot stand robustly on observing local motion alone.
What does it actually mean for an efficient cause to be in a state of actuality if that actuality doesn’t resemble the actuality it allegedly elicts from the object in potency?
How would we know it was the efficient cause?
No probs with that.
Lets just stick to the eternal moving of the celestial spheres, that is what Aristotle meant - though I like the modern insight you have above. However, see above re pot/act being seeming unjustifiably bigger in applicability than can be proven from observation of change in place. It is even seemingly wider in scale than even sensible change in general - for all sensible change requires an underlying “existant” medium (prime matter) while the more esoteric examples of pot/act do not.
You must be smart enough to know I can do that for myself. I am interested in your depth of understandi ng of the issue which I can judge by your own accepted english formulation of this principle…have another go, walk on the wild side
Best regards
JuanFlorencio
English is not my mother tongue. I don’t even know if you mean to be rude (but I have the feeling that you do). I do not know what is the best English version of the Aristotelian principle. I am sorry.
I have explained to you before that the first way is not based on local movement alone, but on movent in general (change). If you don’t tell me where do you see the fault, I cannot gess. Responding “I am not convinced” or “it doesn’t prove”, doesn’t help me to understand you. You need to tell me why.
Thinking that “only a big house can build a big house” is an illustration of the principle “only the being that is in act can actualize what is in potency” is wrong. The word “act” means to have certain perfection that makes you able to actualize other beings. Using Aristotelian references: it is not the big house which can build a house, but the architect. Does the “act” of the achitect resemble the “act” of the house that he built. No; but it does not have to.
To learn what is justifiable or not justifiable about the use of the Aristotelian terms “act” and “potency”, you need to go to the source. Go to Aristotle’s texts, and find out. Then, if you still need it, subject me to a test. I don’t see the relevance of it, but if you need it, I offer you my assistance.
But the question “how do we know which is the efficient cause?” Is a good one. Let me come back to it later. I need to go to work now.
Best regards
JuanFlorencio
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Blue_Horizon
Guest
Never mind JF the comms misunderstandings are getting too tortured.
No rudeness intended, just some good natured cheekiness to quickly get you to understand what I really wanted of you.
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ChainBreaker
Guest
Potency is awareness? Never seen that said by Aristotle.
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Blue_Horizon
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CB lets take Aquinas’s dictum to heart in our discussions here that in the interests of brotherly love and a true desire to learn … that we always take the best and most reasonable interpretation of our “opponent” 's less than clear statements. (Which is always the case when Vulcan mind meld’s aren’t possible and we must communicate in frail words) Anything else is really churlish isn’t it?
So what I understand from “potency is awareness” is that “potency” cannot be found in sensible reality with a microscope - but rather by intellectual inference (awareness if you will) from observation of sensible change over time.
If we know water can be turned into steam by experience…then when I see a jug of cold water on the kitchen bench I know it has the potential to become steam. But at the moment that is not an actuality, only a potentiality.
Hence the principles of potency/act that can be “seen” by the mind as a principle of change in material things. I am aware of this principle with my mind.
Maybe I misunderstand Bahman on this point and he is actually saying something else as you suggest. But that is what I understood by that first phrase.
As for the rest of what Bahman said…I cannot see Aristotle in it. In fact I cannot make any sense out of it at all. No doubt its a coherent personal philosophy but if we don’t know how Bahman defines his terms then its all its all goggledy-goop.
If that is the case then Bahman needs to ask himself why any reader here should go to the huge effort of learning his unusual personal philosophic system…just so we can discuss his personal view on life. Most would define this as solipsism.
Far better to start with a tradition of philosophic thinking that many people know and are generally agreed upon such as that of Aristotle, Aquinas or the Catholic Magisterium.
That’s much more enlightening and fun.
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thinkandmull
Guest
I don’t know why Linus gets away with insulting people all the time
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thinkandmull
Guest
Can anyone here make a distincion between the First and Second Way?
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Blue_Horizon
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Linus I’d like to use your expose above to explore a few off-topic points with you…
(a) Is any given identification of a sensible “substance” actually absolute?
The dividing line between substance/accident in actual practice seems to me to be arbitrary. And if is the case then this identification is simply a mental construct that we apply to reality so we can “manage” or classify it. That is all. Would you agree.
Take your example above of alleged substantial change of water…
Sure, at a common sense observable level it seems that we are dealing with completely different things after water is electrolysised.
But with the eyes of the mind (which are not fooled by the senses) and modern scientific enquiry it would also be true that this is merely an accidental change in the local/spatial arrangement of the underlying atomic constituents which have only changed relative position (and sharing of electrons). The same number and mass of constituent atoms remains after as before.
Sure, Aristotle took account of this unbroken, underlying continuum of “existing” potentiality that existed both before and after his alleged “substantial” changes … he called it prime matter.
However the insights of Physics suggest his analysis of everyday “substantial changes” was limited. The underlying “prime matter” in such cases is not “prime matter” at all.
It is simpler than this - the underling principle is actually other more simple substances (atoms in this case) of “finer grain” whose characteristics are very different from the grosser composites that can emerge when these atoms undergo accidental change.
So one’s man’s “accidental change of atoms” is another man’s “substantial change of compounds.”
We can wax eloquent about “substantial change” and “accidental change” on a blackboard … but in the tangible world…there appears to be no absolute dividing line in any example we might suggest.
(PS I am not saying Prime Matter (as a co principle of sensible things) is a mistaken concept. But given that simple substances are not in fact infinitely divisible… then it seems to demonstrate that traditional examples of Aristotelian substantial/accidental change judgements are actually more layered more complex and more subjective than Aristotle perhaps realised).
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Blue_Horizon
Guest
Its not really an insult.
Lunus believes his views are mistaken - he is not saying he’s stupid, uneducated or without virtue.
If disagreeing with someone is an insult then we’re all in trouble
.
D
Dr.Bonnette
Guest
Hi Thinkandmull,
You ask the distinction between the prima via and the secunda via. Essentially, as I point out in my Aquinas’ Proofs for God’s Existence (Martinus-Nijhoff: The Hague, 1972), the prima via concerns itself with causes of coming-to-be, either final or efficient, whereas the secunda via concerns itself with efficient causes of being (esse). “As Mascall notes, ‘…the basis of this second way is wider than that of the first, which deals only with causes secundum fieri, while the second deals also with causes secundum esse.’”
Speaking of existence, you might also be interested in a new video I just put up dealing, in part, with the questionable existence of biologist Richard Dawkins: youtube.com/watch?v=rVCnzq2yTCg
Because of his metaphysical materialism, Dawkins takes no consideration of the kind of arguments we consider in any of the Five Ways of St. Thomas. I show the weaknesses of Dawkins’ general stance.
You ask the distinction between the prima via and the secunda via. Essentially, as I point out in my Aquinas’ Proofs for God’s Existence (Martinus-Nijhoff: The Hague, 1972), the prima via concerns itself with causes of coming-to-be, either final or efficient, whereas the secunda via concerns itself with efficient causes of being (esse). “As Mascall notes, ‘…the basis of this second way is wider than that of the first, which deals only with causes secundum fieri, while the second deals also with causes secundum esse.’”
Speaking of existence, you might also be interested in a new video I just put up dealing, in part, with the questionable existence of biologist Richard Dawkins: youtube.com/watch?v=rVCnzq2yTCg
Because of his metaphysical materialism, Dawkins takes no consideration of the kind of arguments we consider in any of the Five Ways of St. Thomas. I show the weaknesses of Dawkins’ general stance.
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Bahman
Guest
So what it is?
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Bahman
Guest
No. Potency cannot resides in matter since we don’t call two separate elements of H2 and O which are hold far apart water. One you breath and other one you use to burn things. From scientific point of view potency is held in something called force field generate by particles so they can experience each other and move.
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thinkandmull
Guest
I’m glad you’re here Dr. Bonnette. I’ve got lots of questions. First, are the motions of the world efficient causes? If so, why a difference between the First and Second Way? You said the first way deals with the “efficient coming to be”. I tend to think that the Second Way is arguing only for spiritual efficient causes. So he has the First Way, trying to establish that there is a spiritual efficient cause. Then the Second Way argues that there can’t be an infinity of spiritual causes based on each other. The problem with me is that the First Way seems to be based on the Third Way. And whether this is an intelligent being seems to be based on the 5th way. But someone can counter “where does God get his intelligence” just as much as a theist can argue “where did the universe get its deterministic order?”
I really don’t believe Aquinas when he says the world could be eternal. It would refute his whole position anyway. If motions could have gone through infinite time and causes till now, with none of them really being distinguishable as **either **a material cause or effect in the whole series, why can’t there be an infinite number of efficient causes going through non-time, ending in a First Move, just as the infinite series of the past movements end in the present movements?
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thinkandmull
Guest
A couple of other things dawned on me a couple minutes ago. I was considering how motions lose their force through resistances, so I thought “well maybe there had to be a First Mover to keep these energies going”. However, if we say there is infinite time and motions, maybe this world comes from the Infinite Energy, going down through history till now, losing more and more energy as time goes on. Or maybe energy activates other energy, and that cycle goes one. Aquinas’s First Way says something can’t move itself, but he must have been aware that Aristotle spoke of the theory that motions move like an animal, moving itself. Aristotle didn’t offer a refutation as I remember.
I don’t see how you can prove their is a God with Aquinas’s principles (leaving out the kalam argument). If Aquinas doesn’t believe in innate ideas, where is the fourth way? How did the idea of an infinite good come from the senses alone? And how do we know the goods we experience aren’t infinitely good?
The Third Way begins “We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be.” This doesn’t apply to the elements
I don’t see how you can prove their is a God with Aquinas’s principles (leaving out the kalam argument). If Aquinas doesn’t believe in innate ideas, where is the fourth way? How did the idea of an infinite good come from the senses alone? And how do we know the goods we experience aren’t infinitely good?
The Third Way begins “We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be.” This doesn’t apply to the elements
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Bahman
Guest
Let consider the example of your water. Water is made of O and H2 the former we breath and the later is flammable yet once together they can turn into water through a chemical reaction. Hence it is a property of distance which allows the mixed stuff to turn into water otherwise O and H2 stay as separate things forever. Do you call O and H2 in separate container as water? No.
But where potentiality/awareness really resides? From scientific point of view it resides in space between elements as a force field. Lets say, one particle generate the field and another particle experience the existence of field only and then it acts into the field. This is what I call it awareness in very simple physical world. In simple word one particle does not act accordingly if it does not experience the force field.
The same principle applies to us but in a very richer sense as our physical bodies are made of same stuff.
The key question is however whether what we call matter is conscious or not. There are three scenarios available here:
- Each single irreducible particle has a self (Huh, to be hones I don’t know anybody who would like to defend this, so I defend it myself)
- The whole have a single self (Descartes demon)
- There is no self in physical world (Solipsism)
We need an eliminative method based on reason to proceed further. Now balls are in your field.
How Aristotle explain the potentiality?
Well, I think my position is clear by now. Hope to have a fruitful discussion.
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Linusthe2nd
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