Avoiding Monism and Polytheism

[Formosus]

Ok, finally here is the problem in your line of reasoning.

"Change is what occurs when a potential becomes actual. If there is no potential in God (who is entirely actual), and no potential in nothing (which does not exist), it seems to me then that the universe cannot be made to go from potentially existing to actually existing, but must ‘already’ actually be existing. "

We have already defined “time” as a measure of change. This is the definition that Aquinas and Aristotle (to my knowledge) uses. So when one says the “Universe is created timelessly” then one is saying that the “act of creation” occurred without change in the One willing the act, or in the act itself. Since God has no potential, God’s Acts are complete and have no change. The Act of creation is a creation “ex nihilo.” Nothingness is not a thing, but a lack of a thing. So if something is lacking, then it has to have the potential to be filled with something. If the nothing has potential as I described, then God’s unchanging act can create the universe that is changeable.

 

[Birdmanman]

Ok, finally here is the problem in your line of reasoning.

"Change is what occurs when a potential becomes actual. If there is no potential in God (who is entirely actual), and no potential in nothing (which does not exist), it seems to me then that the universe cannot be made to go from potentially existing to actually existing, but must ‘already’ actually be existing. "

We have already defined “time” as a measure of change. This is the definition that Aquinas and Aristotle (to my knowledge) uses. So when one says the “Universe is created timelessly” then one is saying that the “act of creation” occurred without change in the One willing the act, or in the act itself. Since God has no potential, God’s Acts are complete and have no change. The Act of creation is a creation “ex nihilo.” Nothingness is not a thing, but a lack of a thing. So if something is lacking, then it has to have the potential to be filled with something. If the nothing has potential as I described, then God’s unchanging act can create the universe that is changeable.

Thanks for sticking with this issue! I hope we have found the heart of my problem.
But if the act of creation occured without change, neither in the act, nor in the One causing the act (since He and the Act are really one and simple), then the act was ‘already’ done, without change, since there was never a switch from 'the act not being done" to “the act being done”. When (or if) the act is done (or being done), the universe is existing as a result of the act’s completion; therefore no change needed to occur to cause the universe to exist. If no change at all needed to occur to cause the universe to exist, then the universe did not begin [as you and I know, of course, this is false], since a beginning only happens when something goes from not existing to existing.

Also, I assume “ex nihilo” means “out of no material cause”; God is the efficient cause of the creation of the universe and is it is really made “by God” but “out of nothing”; even though the result is something. But there is not potential in nothing, since nothing is the lack of any something, and potential is a something.

1. Nothing does not exist (this is self-evidently true, as it is really a double negative that means “something exists”). Nothing is a lacking of all something.
2. Potential either exists or does not exist; it’s existence is an ontologically positive thing; meaning potential, when it exists, is something.
3. When potential does not exist, it is said that “there is no potential”; typically meaning “there is no potential for this or that to be done”.
4. Because, if potential exists, it is a something, and nothing cannot contain or have somethings, since nothing lacks all somethings, then nothing cannot have potential, or any real potential. (It (nothing) can “have” a non-existent potential, which is the same thing as saying it can have no potential, because wherever potential of a certain kind does not exist, there is said to be ‘no potential’ of that kind there.)

So, unfortunately, I still am having trouble seeing how it is false that:

"Change is what occurs when a potential becomes actual. If there is no potential in God (who is entirely actual), and no potential in nothing (which does not exist), it seems to me then that the universe cannot be made to go from potentially existing to actually existing, but must ‘already’ actually be existing. "

Thanks again for your help

(Disclaimer: Let nothing I have written here be thought of as an attempt to teach anything contrary to Church teaching; I am asking a question and supporting it with arguments out of my flawed knowledge. Anywhere I say something that is contrary to Church teaching, let it be know there that I am wrong and She is right).

 

[Julia_Mae]

Of course, perhaps there is potential “for” God, or God’s actuality can contain or have potential without being potential, but I don’t see how a Being who is purely actual can logically be said to ‘have’ or ‘be’ potential, or have potential ‘for’ Him.

Oh dear. You seem like a lovely person, but someday you really have to get a handle on how arrogant all you say is. Don’t you rememeber that everything Aquinas write was as straw? Do you think God is a “being” as if you can possible grasp that? You need to stop reading philosophy and start reading mystics.

Essentially: I am confused on this topic, and would like to be able to say and reasonably back up at least the mere possibility that God is fully and purely actual, that the universe is not fully and purely actual, that the universe (creation) exists changingly, that God is unchanging and timeless, and the the universe (creation) is not timeless.

Go ahead and say it. Say anything you want, all you are really saying in any case is how you perceive, because you are so limited. (As all are.) You’ll have to define Universe and I’m pretty sure when you think about it, you’ll see if you define Universe as all there is, then you have to include all states of being in that which includes Heaven, Hell Purgatory and probably a bunch of realms we haven’t imagined.

But if you are talking about all that is not-God it has the same “timeline” as God: no beginning or end. “Reality” has emergence, it’s a in a constant state of emergence. It neither started not r can stop. But that’s about it.

But in fact you can’t say much of anything about God, certainly not that He is “purely actual.” It’s like saying a caterpillar is purely B flat.

I’ll leave you alone. But I’ll tell you what God is before I go: beyond.

And He isn’t “something.”

 

[Birdmanman]

Oh dear. You seem like a lovely person, but someday you really have to get a handle on how arrogant all you say is. Don’t you rememeber that everything Aquinas write was as straw? Do you think God is a “being” as if you can possible grasp that? You need to stop reading philosophy and start reading mystics.

I don’t mean to be arrogant, I am trying to learn; but at the same time, I do think our God-given reason is capable of grasping some things about His creation, and some things about Him. The Catholic Faith is not contradictory to human reason, although some things it reveals are not able to be discovered purely by human reason, but must be taught to us by God. Right now, I am trying to use human reason to show, as has been shown many times before with other topics, how Faith is not contradictory to reason. I also think St. Gemma Galgani is awesome.

Go ahead and say it. Say anything you want, all you are really saying in any case is how you perceive, because you are so limited.

The meaning of that statement you just made, is the truth of that statement too only just how you perceive it, or is it a real truth existing whether or not you perceive it? If the former, and I do not perceive it, then it is false ‘for me’ and so false for you (at least when you consider whether or not it is false or true ‘for me’); if the latter, then the statement has refuted itself (if it was meant to be applied universally and not just to me or what I am saying in particular) and so is also false.

While I appreciate your reminding me to consider the mystics, I think I may cause you much frustration, as I tend to focus on the reasoning and thinking aspects of my religion, and not so much (and probably too little) on the heart-issues. Of course, by reason and acceptance of Church teaching, I am led to the theological necessity of working on the heart-issues, or else I will become like the pharisees, or fail to make my religion “less of a theory and more of a love affair” as Chesterton would put it.

 

[Birdmanman]

1. Nothing does not exist (this is self-evidently true, as it is really a double negative that means “something exists”). Nothing is a lacking of all something.
2. Potential either exists or does not exist; it’s existence is an ontologically positive thing; meaning potential, when it exists, is something.
3. When potential does not exist, it is said that “there is no potential”; typically meaning “there is no potential for this or that to be done”.
4. Because, if potential exists, it is a something, and nothing cannot contain or have somethings, since nothing lacks all somethings, then nothing cannot have potential, or any real potential. (It (nothing) can “have” a non-existent potential, which is the same thing as saying it can have no potential, because wherever potential of a certain kind does not exist, there is said to be ‘no potential’ of that kind there.)

There is a problem with what I said above, because…
I. All somethings (existent things) either exist as pure actuality, or as a composite of actuality and potentiality, or as potentiality. [Premise 1]
II. Potentialities exist, they are ontologically positive, they are somethings and not nothing. [Premise 2]
III. There is no such thing as a potentiality which is impossible to be realized or made into an actuality (in such a situation, it is said there is ‘no potential’; if it is somehow entirely impossible for my cup of coffee to become as hot as the sun, then there is really no potential for my cup of coffee to become as hot as the sun). [Premise 3]
IV. All somethings (including potentialities) either (A.) have a beginning or (B.) do not have a beginning. [Logically necessary assumption]
V. If something does not have a beginning, it either has an infinite regress of temporal duration, or is timeless/changeless. [Logically necessary assumption]
VI. A potentiality with infinite regress of temporal duration is an impossibility (after an unending amount of temporal duration, it will never become an actuality, meaning it is impossible for it to become an actuality, which, from III. means it is really just no potential). [This also excludes a circularly infinite chain of potentials and actualities, since it would take take an infinite (unending) amount of events in the chain for any 1 event to actually occur, which is to say that any 1 event in that chain can never occur]
VII. A timeless/changeless potentiality is also an impossibility, as a potentiality without the ‘possibility’ of changing and becoming an actuality, or changing and becoming nothing (no longer being a potentiality because it has become an actuality), is really just no potentiality (from III.)
VIII. Thus, (from the refutation of B. using V., VI., and VII.) all potentials have a beginning.
IX. If all potentials have a beginning, then the first potential (or the multitudes of first potentials) had a beginning.
X. The first potential (or the multitudes of first potentials) had no potential to have a beginning, meaning it was impossible (not potentially possible) for potentials (or, the first potential) to begin.
[CONTRADICTION] XI. But all potentials began.

Limited amount of resolutions of the contradiction:
Resolution A. Either Premise 1 is false and all somethings or existent things are not actualities, mixtures of actuality and potentiality, or potentials.
or
Resolution B. Premise 2 is false and potentialities do not exist, they are not ontologically positive, they are mere descriptions…but saying this would mean we cannot say “the potential exists for this to do this”.
or
Resolution C. Premise 3 is false and potentials can be real or existent even if they will really never be fulfilled or are impossible to be fulfilled. (Maybe, when the statement is absolutely true that “this will never happen”, this statement is not the same thing as the true statement that “this is impossible”…although to my thinking these statements are equivalent).
or
Resolution D. My “Logically necessary assumptions” are not actually logically necessary assumptions.
or
Resolution E. My argument is not logically valid.​

If Resolutions A or B are the proper resolutions to this contradiction, meaning Premise 1 or 2 is false; then parts 2 or 3 of the argument I made in another poster (quoted above) are false or not necessarily true, and so the conclusion of the quoted argument above (part 4) is false or not necessarily true.

This is confusing.
If you finish reading this, and understand it, I congratulate you as I probably made this an incredibly convoluted or hard-to-follow argument, if so then mea culpa.

 

[Formosus]

I disagree with your premise that a “potential” is an existing thing. A potential is a lack of actuality, just as nothing is a lack of being. So a lack of being also lacks potential since there can be no actuality in “nothing.”

So going from your first argument before you corrected it, since the correction has no affect on my objection.

1. Nothing is a lack of something, and not an existing thing.
2. Potential is a lack of actuality.
3. A “non-existing potential” is total actuality or pure act. In God, no potential exists because He is pure being and pure Act.
4. So if nothing and potential are both a lack of being and actuality. Then it holds that God’s unchanging Act can indeed impart actuality since “nothing” has potential to be something. Since adding being to a state of “non-being” is a change, it is also a beginning and not timeless.

"Resolution B. Premise 2 is false and potentialities do not exist, they are not ontologically positive, they are mere descriptions…but saying this would mean we cannot say “the potential exists for this to do this”. "

When one says “the potential exists for this to do this” we are saying that there is a lack of act in the thing, so there is the ability to fill the gap of potential with an act. It is akin to saying that “I am doing nothing.”

 

[Formosus]

While I appreciate your reminding me to consider the mystics, I think I may cause you much frustration, as I tend to focus on the reasoning and thinking aspects of my religion, and not so much (and probably too little) on the heart-issues. Of course, by reason and acceptance of Church teaching, I am led to the theological necessity of working on the heart-issues, or else I will become like the pharisees, or fail to make my religion “less of a theory and more of a love affair” as Chesterton would put it.

This is not anything to do with your argument, but your perspective on mysticism is not true. It is not about feeling good, it is about an ineffable experience of the Divine. Even a rational theologian like Aquinas had such experiences (the straw comment mentioned above). Reason grasps many things, and there is no contradiction between faith and reason, but mankind’s understanding of reason is not perfect and especially when it comes to matters concerning God.

 

[Birdmanman]

I disagree with your premise that a “potential” is an existing thing. A potential is a lack of actuality, just as nothing is a lack of being. So a lack of being also lacks potential since there can be no actuality in “nothing.”

So going from your first argument before you corrected it, since the correction has no affect on my objection.

1. Nothing is a lack of something, and not an existing thing.
2. Potential is a lack of actuality.
3. A “non-existing potential” is total actuality or pure act. In God, no potential exists because He is pure being and pure Act.
4. So if nothing and potential are both a lack of being and actuality. Then it holds that God’s unchanging Act can indeed impart actuality since “nothing” has potential to be something. Since adding being to a state of “non-being” is a change, it is also a beginning and not timeless.

"Resolution B. Premise 2 is false and potentialities do not exist, they are not ontologically positive, they are mere descriptions…but saying this would mean we cannot say “the potential exists for this to do this”. "

When one says “the potential exists for this to do this” we are saying that there is a lack of act in the thing, so there is the ability to fill the gap of potential with an act. It is akin to saying that “I am doing nothing.”

This is great! Thanks very much Formosus. I think you have answered my question with the solution that potential is really ontologically negative; so in a circumstance such that creation does not exist, there is God who is pure actuality, and there is nothing, which can also be called pure potentiality. There are some conclusions of this, however, that are awesome:

1. If nothing “has potential”, since potential is really just another way of saying lacking-actuality, and there is no division or ‘discrimination’ between logical and nonlogical potentials within nothing (because nothing is unable to discriminate), and pure nothing has within it all potential, then it takes an actual ontologically positive “logical law” or “discriminator of potentials” to make sure none of the illogical potentials become actualized (since, these illogical potentials are just as ‘non-existent’ as the logical potentials, they are just as much nothing as any other nothing). So, a square-circle does not exist, and cannot exist without violating a law of logic, but the potential for the square circle to exist is just as non-existent as the potential for a trans-national clown boat-race to occur (which, although ridiculous, does not violate a law of logic if it exists).
2. If, in any circumstance, such a law of logic was not ontologically positive and actual, then something ‘might’ be made actual which violates a law of logic, which we would probably notice (especially if its a something that violates the principle of non-contradiction, like a hippopotamus that appears everywhere that it isn’t *).
3. So, there must be an either infinite or timeless ontologically positive and actual thing to ‘enforce’ the laws of logic (or act as a law of logic) on the actualizations of potentials, or to logically select the actualization of one potential over another, much like an intelligence.

Those last 3 points were just extra, in terms of this discussion, but are thrilling if my other dilemma in this thread (the lengthy one that you didn’t need to respond to) turns out to be a true dilemma that can only be resolved by saying for certain that potentials are ontologically negative and non-existent.

Also, I’m sorry if I implied that mysticism was something only emotional, or something inferior to reason, or anything else bad towards true mysticism; true Catholic mysticism is the stuff of great saints, and is very desirable and valuable. (When I referred to it as a ‘heart-issue’ I didn’t mean to sound condescending).*