Well, breaking down the First Way, it makes the following assumptions/arguments:
- Things exist
- Things are in motion (i.e., things change from potentiality to actuality)
- Things move (i.e., actualize some property they did not previously actualize) because something that already actualizes the relevant property transmits that property to them.
- An infinite chain of such actual beings cannot exist at the same time (the process described in point 3 is instantaneous, so we are not talking about one thing changing, then later changing another, and so on. The question is: the fire makes me hot, so what is making the fire hot right now, and what is making that thing hot, etc.)
Here’s an article you might be interested to read by Wes Morriston, from the Philosophy Dept. at the University Colorado:
stripe.colorado.edu/~morristo/infpast.html
Morriston (a theist, by the way), does a decent job of dismantling the “obvious” premise advanced by WL Craig in his Kalam argument – the same concept, namely that an actually infinite chain cannot exist. In the First Way this causal chain is posited for motion, and it is claimed that such a chain cannot be an infinite chain.
This section, in particular (and forward from that for a few paragraphs) locates the problem with 4 and the a priori rejection of actual infinite chains:
This is, of course, a fairly standard objection to the argument Craig is defending, and he is well aware of it. But he insists that the “impossibility of traversing the infinite” has “nothing to do with the amount of time available.” On the contrar y, he says, “it belongs to the nature of infinity that it cannot be so formed.” [EGBU]
It is not at all clear that any such thing “belongs to the nature of infinity.” Two ways in which a series of distinct, non-overlapping events might have been “formed by successive addition” have been distinguished: (i) “having started with one of the members and then having added in the rest;” and (ii) “always having been adding them in.” (i) is incompatible with “the nature of infinity.” (ii), on the other hand, is not–or at least we do not yet have an argument for thinking that it is.
Now the first of these is falsifiable, but if it were false there would be no one to notice. Anyway, it clearly isn’t false. . . . .
Agreed, although that’s the reason I am at pains to qualify the requirements more broadly … “in principle”. That certainly is a practical limitation, though.
For us, existence is ‘transcendentally true’.
The second is also falsifiable, though if it were false we certainly couldn’t be having this conversation–we and all other existing things would be eternally and unchangeably what they are and would have no possibility to learn or question or change in anyway.
This is not ‘transcendentally true’. We have the sense of motion, but the sense is not necessarily the thing. I think the sense does correspond to the thing, but that’s an inference we make with models, not something necessarily(transcendentally true).
The third is where things get tricky. I think that quantum physics is probably the best bet for falsifying this one. Unfortunately, quantum physics is darn hard to understand. But yes, I think this is in principle falsifiable. (If quantum physics falsified this one, and maybe no. 2 as well, we would still be left with the others. 5 is not, it seems to me, falsified by quantum physics even on the most indeterminist reading of quantum physics, because you could still say that the behavior of subatomic particles was directed toward a purposive end, and that is why the randomness remains solely at the subatomic level and gives rise to order at the atomic level and above.)
That’s a great answer, thank you. I happen to think so as well. If Aquinas’ First Way
is liable to falsification, it only becomes so in submitting to the credentials of modern physics, which paint a much different picture of causality and temporality than what Aquinas had available to him back in 13C. But, I bet you are aware that this is just as easily rejected as inert; science just doesn’t understand reality, the dynamics our intuition demand, which are that things necessarily move for a discrete reason. Science, on this view, is utter powerless against Aquinas, as is all and any evidence.
The infinite chain argument appeals to logic, and philosophers seem divided on whether it works. I’m not sure how you could falsify it, but perhaps there is a way to prove logically that an infinite chain exists. I certainly haven’t heard such an argument, but I’m not much of a philosopher!
That’s the rub, really. There isn’t a means to establish that, so far as anyone is aware, even in principle. That places the premise “out of scope” for true/false based on the principle of falsifiability. If it
is false, we have no way to discern that or to show its falsehood.
As a (the) crucial link in the syllogism, Aquinas has ventured nothing, put nothing at risk, is liable to no correction from the real world whatsoever. Darwin and “rabbits in the Pre-cambrian” is ever at risk of being discredited, and indeed, despite his stellar success on the main points of evolutionary theory, many of the arguments he ventured
were falsified and thoroughly discredited. He has put his ideas forth in a way that has them at risk, subjecting them to the ‘verdict of the real world’, where they may be vindicated or utterly discredited.
Aquinas doesn’t even got on the playing field. His arguments like this one, ensure that his arguments aren’t accountable or liable to any such risk. If Darwin is wrong, we have a way to discover it, to our epistemic advantage. Darwin can be “even wrong”. Aquinas can’t even be wrong, as if he is/was, we have no possible way to know it.
-TS
