How Aquinas confuses the First and Second way

[utunumsint]

I find binary alternatives a little unimaginative - don’t you?
Why can’t moderns have a better understanding of efficient causality than the ancients (who stand in need of some correction re alleged aposteriori arguments from local motion) and the ancients a better appreciation of the other three causes operating in the world that moderns tend to underestimate/ignore.

Of course. Perhaps I should have said "modern notions of causality are incomplete) The moderns, starting with Galilleo and Descartes, made the decision to define matter solely by extension and by those features of reality susceptible to mathematization. This approach obviously has its strengths. Feser makes the point, though, that so often, especially from the new athiest types like Dawkins, Dennet, et al, often read in modern presuppositions, and so misunderstand/mischaracterize the arguments. His book, The Last Superstition, was highly polemical in this regard, and was certainly not designed to convince Athiests, but those already sympathetic to Thomistism. His books Aquinas and *Scholastic Metaphisics *strike a much better tone. Scholastic Metaphysics is doing a great job at relating Thomistic foundational ideas to contemporary Analytic Philosophy. He does not get into the five ways specifically, but defends the ideas behind a proper understanding of those ideas against current arguments from Analytic Philosophers and modern science.

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

For later Aristotelian the great puzzle was how to explain projectile motion. A ball obviously has no natural tendency to fly through the air, yet when struck with a bat moves until stopped. Aristotle himself tried to reconcile this obvious fact with the principle that “nothing moves itself” by supposing that when the ball is struck some force is communicates through the medium through which it moves, which then keeps it moving after it has left the bat that put it in motion. **This seems to us absurd, be we should recall that today science still relies on the notion of “field”, that is, a medium, to explain the motion of bodies through that field. **

Here is where I think the idea that Newton’s motion of changing place without a cause can be seen to be false (or at least the idea that God directly enables this movement - a form of occasionalism). If the efficient causality makes the initial change in acceleration, that change has to be enabled by the causal powers (efficient causality) of the fields surrounding the object that is now in motion. So then the principle that everything that is moved, is moved by another, still holds true. It is just that the other in question must be coupled with the other of the fields that enable the object to behave in the way it does.

The Aristotelian commentators, beginning with John Philoponus (fl. sixth century CE), preferred, (rightly, in my opinion) to say that an impetus or force was imparted to the ball by the stroke of the bat. While they considered gravity to be a fundamental, natural force, a property of certain bodies, the impetus was a secondary type of force or active quality, accidental (preternatural) to the body that received it.

This sort of makes sense. Gravity does seem to be an intrinsic quality in any material substance. Motion seems to be a derivative property enabled (causally empowered) by the fields that surround the object in motion.

In this way, Newton’s later law of motion could be accounted for, since the impetus would keep the mall moving until stopped by another force. Moreover, since it was not strictly natural but secondary, it need not be predetermined to some specific result (final causality, teleonomy).

So what he is saying here is that motion does not have final causality in objects in motion. Although I wonder if he would say that motion is the final cause of the fields that efficiently enable the motion?

To this explanation we can add that such an impetus is, as it were, “second nature” to the moving ball. Hence the impetus is not an efficient cause but a quasi-property, which can be eliminated from the body in a way that its true properties cannot. A heavy body remains heavy, even when another body stops its motion; but a ball will not start moving through the air without being again struck.

Again - all of the is enabled by the efficient/final causality of the fields enabling material objects to move this way.

Thus, as long as any force, whether strictly natural or imposed, can be traced back to fundamental physical, material forces (active qualities) that are natural, the argument for an immaterial Prime Mover still follows. As previously noted Newton realized this problem when he concluded that the gravitational force on which his whole system was built required that God as Prime Mover will its action.

Right - so the efficient/final causality is preserved in the mover that initially causes an object to accelerate or decelerate, or stop.

Does this make sense?

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

I guess what is often missing in descriptions of causal per se causal series, are enabling causes. Feser, in his book Aquinas, references the 4 forces (gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear—each understood as the dynamics of a field) in his hand, stick, rock description enabling all the possible conditions for neurotransmitters to send motor signals to hands, that then moved the stick, that then moves the rock. Newton, as far as I understand it, had no knowledge of these forces.

God bless,
Ut

 

[Richca]

So we have no sensible reason to believe that any local motion in our world could ever be simultaneous. How then can we easily induct and accept that there is a principle of simultaneous causality based on observing movement (let alone other types of sensible change) - which is apparently the starting raw data of the First Way?

It is quite plain to observation that the motion of a stick in the hand is due to the motion of the hand and that the motion of the stick is simultaneous with the motion of the hand. The stick does not move itself but it is put in motion by the hand and it moves only because the hand moves. This one common sensible observation alone is sufficient to refute what you allege above.

 

[utunumsint]

LOL - Here is a paper claiming to explain classical physics and Newton’s laws by quantum mechanics. eftaylor.com/pub/QMtoNewtonsLaws.pdf#page=1&zoom=auto,0,848

Classical and quantum?
Let’s get away from the algebra and try to describe how it all works at the fundamental level. Newton’s law fixes the path so that changes in phase from changes in kinetic energy exactly match those from changes in potential energy. This is the modern quantum field theory view of forces: that forces change phases of quantum
amplitudes. We see it here in elemental form. What Newtonian physics treats as cause and effect (force producing acceleration) the quantum ‘many paths’ view treats as a balance of changes in phase produced by changes in kinetic and potential energy. So finally we have come all the way from the deepest principle of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics—Explore all paths!—to the deepest principle of classical mechanics in a conservative potential—Follow the path of least action! And from there to the classical mechanics taught in every high school. The old truths of the classical world come straight out of the new truths of the quantum world. Better still, we can now estimate the limits of accuracy of the old classical truths.

I wish I understood what he said.

God bless,
Ut

 

[balto]

It looks like we cannot take this any further if you do not accept that Aristotle and Aquinas consider change of place a perfectly valid form of motion/change that necessitates an efficient cause. That’s just a fact as far as I can see and the First Way as an aposteriori proof based on all types of motion stands or falls on the total applicability of that principle. That is what a principle is - a universal truth that must hold in all cases. Only one counter example is required to disprove its validity - and Newton found one…uniform motion in a straight line.

Well I am a little confused because elsewhere you have argued that Aquinas and Aristotle should be interpreted in light of new scientific knowledge, so I provided an explanation of constant velocity as not an example of authentic change, and now you are saying that’s invalid because it’s not what Aquinas and Aristotle taught . Are you arguing that change is uncaused? I don’t think that Newton discovered that change is uncaused because if he did he would have effectively undermined all scientific inquiry. And no, one counterexample would not suffice to invalidate the metaphysical principle that what is moved is moved by another. It only suffices to show that constant velocity is not an instance of real change, regardless of what Aquinas or Aristotle thought about constant velocities.

You may have missed something…the **chain **of causality is not simultaneous.
The wood at the hand end of the stick moves before the wood at the bottom of the stick.
The stick can be considered a large number of small bits of wood “glued” to the next forming a long chain all the way to the bottom. Movement ripples down to the bottom over a short but definite duration of time as the hand accelerates. That is why the foot of a golf club always lags the handle and the club in fact bows backwards.

Oh no, you had it in focus in the last post and lost sight of it again . We’ll use Aquinas’ example because you keep bringing it up. Imagine that the hand is moving the stick and the stick is moving the rock and imagine that all 3 are experiencing rectilinear movement. Now freeze time. The rock is undergoing change because it is experiencing a force. Why is it experiencing a force? Because the stick is imparting that force to it. Why is the stick experiencing a force? Because the hand is imparting a force to it. Why is the hand imparting a force to it? Because the muscles in the arm are contracting. Why are the muscles in the arm contracting? Because the action potentials in the neurons are firing. Etc. In an earlier post utunumsint talked about how we should be using the term “instrumental causes.” It is a bunch of “because” causes; each member is the instrument of the next member’s change. That’s what is meant by simultaneous causation, essentially ordered series, series order per se. That series ends with Pure Act. What is controversial about that?

 

[Blue_Horizon]

It is quite plain to observation that … the motion of the hand and that the motion of the stick is simultaneous with the motion of the hand.

OK. Can you refute my detailed physics with corresponding aposteriori reasoning rather than bald assertions of what is supposedly obvious to the senses?
There would seem to be a delay at the start, the top of the stick begins moving before the bottom of the stick. Therefore the chain of motion causality down to the bottom is time sequential - just like a shunter hitting a chain of parked carriages.

As observed before, “plain observations” are not by that fact alone accurate.
Concrete walls are not in fact solid.
Horses have more teeth than Aristotle stated.
We have tools today that extend our senses and observations not available to the ancients.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Well I am a little confused because elsewhere you have argued that Aquinas and Aristotle should be interpreted in light of new scientific knowledge, so I provided an explanation of constant velocity as not an example of authentic change, and now you are saying that’s invalid because it’s not what Aquinas and Aristotle taught . Are you arguing that change is uncaused?

I am arguing that some examples of what Aristotle certainly called change (ie uniform motion in a straight line) is uncaused. This is of prime importance in the First Way, which is the topic of this thread .

So only one contradictory example is needed to show Aristotle’s system/principles are in some way inconsistent … which Newton has ably shown wrt understanding uniform rectilinear motion.

Take your pick where Aristotle seems to have gone slightly wrong:
(a) constant motion is an accidental change;
(b) whatever is moving is being moved by another.

He cannot be right in both these statements according to Newton and I tend to agree.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Oh no, you had it in focus in the last post and lost sight of it again . We’ll use Aquinas’ example because you keep bringing it up. Imagine that the hand is moving the stick and the stick is moving the rock and imagine that all 3 are experiencing rectilinear movement. Now freeze time. The rock is undergoing change because it is experiencing a force. Why is it experiencing a force? Because the stick is imparting that force to it. Why is the stick experiencing a force?

If we accept that the top of the stick accelerates into motion milliseconds before the bottom of the stick launches into motion (due to inertia)… then it follows that, at any frozen moment in time as you put it, the motion at the end of the stick is not actually the effect of the current motion at the top of the stick is it!
Rather, the effect currently at the bottom was caused by a force applied at the top of the stick in a preceeding moment.

That is why the bottom of the stick continues to move briefly even when the top of the stick by the hand comes to rest.

The stick can be seen as a chain of connected bits of wood “glued” together much like a carriage train.

That is what I mean when I say material/temporal cause/effect chains are always time sequential.

If you cannot accept this then you may have a different understanding/definition of cause/effect and “the principle of causality”?

Which is exactly what Gilson said re Aquinas and the First Way (ie its not about causality as we understand causality today) .

 

[utunumsint]

There is no such thing as uncaused motion. This is simply false. Not even Newton believed that uniform motion does not have a cause. I’m not sure why you are ignoring this fact.

God bless,
Ut

 

[thinkandmull]

I do not see where what you assert Aquinas says that light which is a quality, an accidental form, is the substantial form of heat? Both light and heat are qualities of a substance. Whether an accident can be the subject of another accident or accidents, Aquinas says yes. For example, in his treatise on the Eucharist in the Summa Theologica, he says that the dimensive quantity of the bread and wine which remains after the consecration of these substances at Mass, though itself it remains without a subject, i.e., matter by divine power, is the subject of all the other remaining accidents of the bread and wine.

“light produces natural effects, for by the **rays **of the sun bodies are warmed… it is **impossible **that what is the substantial form of one thing should be the accidental form of another”. As I said, how can light be an accidental form of the sun and yet a cause of warming, being thus a container for the heat. Aquinas’s position is very Kantian: “substantial forms are not of themselves objects of the senses; for the object of the intellect is what a thing is”. So the colors on the matter are accidents, AND the matter is accident, yet what is the color an accident of except the matter? “What is the substntian form of one thing can’t be the accidental form of another” he says

 

[thinkandmull]

We believe what by faith? That the universe is past-finite. Yes, we do believe that by faith. If God is construed as a being that is simply the first causal player in a temporal series, then yes that God is deistic. Fortunately that’s not the kind of God the Catholic faith defends.

Well okay, to each his own I guess. Maybe if he was around today and had to deal with contemporary secularists he might have come to a different conclusion.

Matter is by definition contingent. If matter is necessary, then it would be pure act, but matter is the potentiality for act. Matter also changes; no one denies this fact. If it changes then you’re going to be susceptible to the arguments in the First Way. No, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity is not contingent and I don’t think I have said anything that would lead someone to believe otherwise. I don’t know where you are going with that question.

All of the Five Ways are attempts to prove that God exists so they are necessarily going to converge at some point. The First Way is interested in starting with the reality of change and arguing for a First Mover. The Second Way is interested in arguing from the reality of efficient causes and whether an essentially ordered series of causes can extend to infinity without a first cause. Yes, it is true that an efficient cause just is something that actualizes a potential, which is why he says that the First Way is the most obvious proof for God’s existence. But suppose someone doesn’t accept or understand the act/potency distinction. They can understand the notion of an efficient cause and understand that an essentially ordered causal series cannot extend backwards to infinity.

I don’t see why you don’t see the contradiction:
“what is moved by violence is not moved by itself… If it is moved through itself, then it is moved either violently or by nature.”

An essentially ordered casual series is exactly the same as an “accidental” essential series except one has God as a sustainer, and the other doesn’t. Whether it goes back inifinitely is beside the point. I don’t even think you have a clear idea of the distinction here, because that clear idea doesn’t exist. Also, matter could be JUST THERE for all eternity, therefore necessary in its own right, assuming the eternity of time. It would have pure act in its nature of existence, but subject to accidental change. As for the processions, Jesus comes from the Father from all eternity, but is not contingent you say. Than why does the world have to be contingent if it comes from God for all eternity?

 

[thinkandmull]

Does an infinite past explain anything? For example, by analogy, suppose the world is supported (sits on) an elephant and that elephant on an elephant…ad infinitum. Why are they elephants and not for example rocks?

Why is the sun yellow instead of purple. That’s just the way it is?

 

[thinkandmull]

It means any change whatsoever, as I understand Feser.

Does he really say that, or simply describe this mathematically?

If what Newton described was simply a mathematization of what actually happens, then this does not answer why this occurs.

I think this helps illustrate what he says later on in Scholastic Metaphysics.

He also states in other parts of the book that the decoupling of cause and effect by Hume and those that came after him, are really at the root of what the issue is here. If efficient cause A is not intelligible apart from being the final cause of B, then A and B are not really separable in time, but constitute one event, not two events, even though there may be a gap in time between the cause and that being caused.

Its a good book. I’m having a good time reading through it. Although it is very technical.

God bless,
Ut

You believe efficient cause A is not intelligible apart from the final cause B, because they are both God. Hume really has nothing to do with this matter. It makes no difference it is say the swinging of the bat caused the ball to fly or merely preceded it. The question is the eternity of motions and time

 

[thinkandmull]

First from Feser’s account of how causation can be simultaneous:

So A and B in this instance is one and the same event. Now in a per se series, you have multiple events strung in a sequence where:

1. 
   *]B depends on A in A’s intrinsic act of causation. A son depends on a father for existence, but not in exercising his own causal powers. A. The hand is the principle cause of the stone moved by a stick, moved by a hand all derive their causality on the hand’s causal power motion of the stick and the stone. The stick is the instrumental cause. Note that in locomotion, the cause of any change in velocity has to be explained in a similar way. And the continued motion of an object after a causal change has occured also needs a causal explanation. You may say not, but I say yes. It is a property or power inherent in nature that allows this to happen. That power is causal and can be explained by further laws of physics. These laws explain the regularities observable in nature, and those regularities are enshrined as “laws of nature”. But then what is a law of nature? Simply a observed regularity? If this is so, then the term law of nature has no real meaning, since a regularity being a law of nature and a law of nature being an observed regularity is a circular argument. The Aristotelian appeals to causal powers inherent in the essences of things instead.
   *]The primal cause of the power has a higher or more perfect nature than the instrumental causes. The person who causes their hand to move has a higher nature than the stick or stone. A father begetting a son is not a causal series in this sense, because the father’s inherent power to beget a son is not the primal cause of the power of the son to beget his own son. That would just be weird.
   *]The cause and effect are simultaneous, but are not or need not be in an accidentally ordered series. The hand pushes the stick that pushes the stone. Of course these events happen through time as a process, and in other examples, that process make take an extended time. But the power that strings together all the instrumental causes has to continue to exist.
   
   God bless,
   Ut

1. 
   To have an infinite number of tasks to do is NOT the same as an infinite series of causes extending backwards. That is why Aquinas rejects the Kalam Cosmological argument. The “stone moved by a stick, moved by a hand” has nothing to do with this discussion and Aquinas should have known better

 

[thinkandmull]

It has been quoted:
“As James Weisheipl (1985) has shown, the idea that Aristotle and Aquinas held that no object can continue its local motion unless some mover is continuously conjoined to it is something of an urban legend.”

So then what is all this talk of simultaneous motion. There are moments of time, and objects moving, that all we are considering. The force traveling thru those objects: can it or can it not go back infinitely into the past?

I ask balto, can God override with His almighty power the impossibility of doing an infinite number of tasks in a finite time?

Aquinas says

If among movers and things moved we proceed to infinity, all these infinite beings must be bodies. For whatever is moved is divisible and a body, as is proved in the Physics [VI, 4]. But every body that moves some thing moved is itself moved while moving it. Therefore, all these infinites are moved together while one of them is moved. But one of them, being finite, is moved in a finite time. Therefore, all those infinites are moved in a finite time. This, however, is impossible. It is, therefore, impossible that among movers and things moved one can proceed to infinity.

First, God is not a body, so where is the first way after this paragraph? Second, the urban myth turns out to be true: all motion is instantaneous: “every body that moves some thing moved is itself moved while moving it”. And yet there are finite moments in the instantaneous motion “But one of them, being finite, is moved in a finite time.” “Therefore, all those infinites are moved in a finite time.” WRONG. A number times infinity is infinity. Finally, his conclusion in that paragraph contradicts his conclusion in the Summa that the world could be eternal.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

There is no such thing as uncaused motion.

This is not the problem UUS.
Of course all presently observed motion had to have an efficient cause to kick it off (ie an acceleration).

The more subtle difficulty is whether or not the constant motion we now observe (after the object has been launched) requires a concurrent sustaining cause. Newton said it doesn’t, Aristotle said it did, even in space.

Do you still disagree?
If so provide an example and analyse it in detail according to Newton/Aristotle’s principles so we can discuss.
Ut

 

[balto]

If we accept that the top of the stick accelerates into motion milliseconds before the bottom of the stick launches into motion (due to inertia)… then it follows that, at any frozen moment in time as you put it, the motion at the end of the stick is not actually the effect of the current motion at the top of the stick is it!
Rather, the effect currently at the bottom was caused by a force applied at the top of the stick in a preceeding moment.

That is why the bottom of the stick continues to move briefly even when the top of the stick by the hand comes to rest.

The stick can be seen as a chain of connected bits of wood “glued” together much like a carriage train.

That is what I mean when I say material/temporal cause/effect chains are always time sequential.

If you cannot accept this then you may have a different understanding/definition of cause/effect and “the principle of causality”?

Which is exactly what Gilson said re Aquinas and the First Way (ie its not about causality as we understand causality today) .

Well I am not familiar with Gilson’s thoughts on the matter. I would like to read his work at some point, but I cannot comment on that at this point.

Your objection to the stick example is not addressing the point I am making. The atom at the bottom of the stick is moving because the atom next to it is pushing/pulling on it through van der Waals interactions that impart a force to it. That neighboring atom is also experiencing the same forces. All the way up to the hand. Multiplying the constituents of the stick out is not going to get around simultaneous causality. When the atom is exerting a force on its neighbor, is it’s neighbor not simultaneously experiencing said force? If the answer is yes, then you really do believe in simultaneous causation after all . If the answer is no, well then I cannot help you there because that seems to defy all of our understanding of the world.

And another dilemma that you would have to address is how you know that the rock moving is being caused by the hand moving the stick at an earlier time. Why suppose it is the hand that caused the rock to move? Why not the traveler’s decision to go for a walk in the woods that morning? Why not the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil 20 years ago? How do you know where to objectively draw that line? The only objective place to draw that line is in the simultaneous moment.

 

[balto]

I don’t see why you don’t see the contradiction:
“what is moved by violence is not moved by itself… If it is moved through itself, then it is moved either violently or by nature.”

I answered this in post 21:
"balto:

He’s trying to show that if something is seemingly self-moved, as in the case of the animal, it is not the case that it is moving itself through its nature: the soul is moving it. By soul he’s referring to the form of the body, and in the case of the animal the soul is sensitive. The soul is in turn moved by sensible species. For instance, the animal perceives something and then directs its appetible will towards it, causing the motion in the animal body. For humans with rational souls, we may also be moved by an intelligible species in other objects, i.e. the forms that are abstracted from particulars that we perceive through sensation.

So when he concludes that everything that is moved is moved by another, he is not contradicting himself. He could have been a little bit clearer here though, I will grant you that.

An essentially ordered casual series is exactly the same as an “accidental” essential series except one has God as a sustainer, and the other doesn’t. Whether it goes back inifinitely is beside the point. I don’t even think you have a clear idea of the distinction here, because that clear idea doesn’t exist.

I’ve explained the distinction numerous times already. You have to do more than simply assert that I don’t know what I am talking about. I’m glad you know my thoughts better than I do.

Also, matter could be JUST THERE for all eternity, therefore necessary in its own right, assuming the eternity of time. It would have pure act in its nature of existence, but subject to accidental change.

If it were subject to change, then it would not really be “pure act” now would it? It obviously has a potential for change which is exactly what pure act cannot have. If you then say “well then it doesn’t change” then you are just getting into a quibble over semantics. It doesn’t make a difference if we use the English word “matter” or “God” to refer to pure act.

As for the processions, Jesus comes from the Father from all eternity, but is not contingent you say. Than why does the world have to be contingent if it comes from God for all eternity?

Because the universe does not exist by nature. For one thing, it changes. For a second thing, it could have been otherwise. God could not have been otherwise. If God, i.e. Being Itself, were otherwise, He would not exist, in which case He would not really be God. So you would have a contradiction on your hands. The universe could certainly have been otherwise. Maybe if God felt like it, He could have created Middle Earth and I would be a hobbit campaigning around Mordor with a bunch of elves and dwarves instead of a measly graduate student.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

The atom at the bottom of the stick is moving because the atom next to it is pushing/pulling on it through van der Waals interactions that impart a force to it. That neighboring atom is also experiencing the same forces. All the way up to the hand.

If you do not accept that the heel of the golfer’s club begins to accelerate at the exact same microsecond as he accelerates the handle then there is nothing more to be said here.

I believe anyone who passed their final year of Physcis at secondary school will accept Aquinas’s stick example as demonstrating “simultaneous causality.”

If you accept both the above then I suggest you have an understanding of “simultaneous”
that escapes me.

…how you know that the rock moving is being caused by the hand moving the stick at an earlier time. Why suppose it is the hand that caused the rock to move?

I have no problem with the hand being the efficient cause of the rock moving.
The simple and observable point I make is that the chain of causality that links the two is not obviously simultaneous at all.

You were on the right track in your analysis based on “frozen” moments in time.
When you freeze the causal chain it becomes clear that at that instant in time the current moving effect has not been caused by the current moving cause … but by the moving cause of a preceeding instant.