On refutation of the Unmoved Mover

[joche]

I’m a young, foreign apologist, and I’ve become intrigued with A-T metaphysics after reading Feser’s “The Last Superstition”.

Sorry if this a simple question, but I’m a newbie at Thomism and it’s one I’ve been confronted with as a “refutation” of Aristotelian metaphysics and Aquinas’ first mover:

For example, particles wouldn’t gain mass without the Higgs boson. The consequence is that all particles is moving at the speed of light. Movement seem to be the fundamental condition.

But the most important argument is supposedly this: Human logic is provedly subjective, non-intutive and highly fallible. You can rarely conlude on reality, based on philosophy alone. You can be easily mistanken om premises.

Nothing in logical and physical state aren’t neccesarily alike. Standstill isn’t neccesarily a fundamental condition.

Time is likey to be an emergent property, which makes all arguments on events that led to the origin of the universe based on understanding something that’s presently outside all human cognitive faculty to understand.

 

[capablanca911]

“…logic is provedly subjective, non-intutive and highly fallible…”

Er, no disrespect but there’s your problem right there…

 

[ProdglArchitect]

“…logic is provedly subjective, non-intutive and highly fallible…”

Er, no disrespect but there’s your problem right there…

Seconded.

Interpretations of logic vary from person to person, but a logical statement will always be logical, and an illogical statement will always be illogical. The trouble is in a person’s unwillingness to acknowledge a statement for its inherent logical or illogical nature.

What you’ve quoted is a relativistic stance which wrongfully denies the existence of absolute Truth; people who believe as such deny that anything is true, and since they cannot recognize any truths, they have no base point from which to determine if something is logical or not; therefore they (again, wrongfully) assume that logic is inconsistent from person to person. They are wrong of course, but frequently are unwilling to acknowledge the existence of absolute truths because it would force them to rethink their entire world view.

 

[empther]

If you acquired this confusion from Feser’s “The Last Superstition”, I suggest you burn the book.

Now,
if you’ve gotten over this idea that human logic is no good and are ready to contemplate something, try this:

The universe could not have existed through an infinite past because every event happened a finite time ago.
Therefore, the universe began.
But the universe could not begin itself.
Therefore, there had to be a God to start it.

This is all you need to know to realize God exists.

 

[rossum]

Interpretations of logic vary from person to person, but a logical statement will always be logical, and an illogical statement will always be illogical.

But a logical statement may not be true. It depends on the truth of its premises, and that cannot be established within the logic itself.

What you’ve quoted is a relativistic stance which wrongfully denies the existence of absolute Truth

Absolute Truth may, or may not exist. I suspect that it does not, but even if it does you have no absolute way of expressing any proposed Absolute Truth. All language is relative and relies on assumptions. Whatever is expressed in a language is automatically relative and hence cannot carry the burden of Absolute Truth.

Relative truth exists, but Absolute Truth (capitalised) cannot be established because there is no absolute basis on which to build it. If you start with a premise that X is Absolute Truth, then you need, separately, an Absolute Proof of the Absolute Truth of your premise, and an infinite regress results.

The truths we deal with here and now are all relative. Is 1 + 1 = 2 true? Relatively, yes because we are making some standard assumptions. Is 1 + 1= 2 Absolutely True? No it is not, because it is not true in base 2. In base 2, 1 + 1 = 10 is true and 1 + 1 = 2 is meaningless because the symbol “2” has no meaning in base 2. It is like saying 5 + 5 = A in base 10, which is meaningless, but is true in hexadecimal, base 16.

people who believe as such deny that anything is true

You are incorrect. We deny that anything is Absolutely True, but we have no problem with accepting things as relatively true. The problem is not in the “truth” part, but in the reification of relative “truth” to “Absolute Truth”. The capitalisation of the words is a dead giveaway that there is reification happening.

rossum

 

[joche]

Well, it’s not my refutation, but one I received after pointing out that Aqunias Unmoved Mover wasn’t touched by Dawkins.

I merely wondered on how to best respond. What about Higgs? Aristotle doesn’t say anything about standstill condition as fundamental? He merely talks about motion and actualizing potentialities, don’t he? Criticizes both Heraklites and Parmenides?

 

[bzkoss236]

But a logical statement may not be true. It depends on the truth of its premises, and that cannot be established within the logic itself.

Absolute Truth may, or may not exist. I suspect that it does not, but even if it does you have no absolute way of expressing any proposed Absolute Truth. All language is relative and relies on assumptions. Whatever is expressed in a language is automatically relative and hence cannot carry the burden of Absolute Truth.

Relative truth exists, but Absolute Truth (capitalised) cannot be established because there is no absolute basis on which to build it. If you start with a premise that X is Absolute Truth, then you need, separately, an Absolute Proof of the Absolute Truth of your premise, and an infinite regress results.

The truths we deal with here and now are all relative. Is 1 + 1 = 2 true? Relatively, yes because we are making some standard assumptions. Is 1 + 1= 2 Absolutely True? No it is not, because it is not true in base 2. In base 2, 1 + 1 = 10 is true and 1 + 1 = 2 is meaningless because the symbol “2” has no meaning in base 2. It is like saying 5 + 5 = A in base 10, which is meaningless, but is true in hexadecimal, base 16.

You are incorrect. We deny that anything is Absolutely True, but we have no problem with accepting things as relatively true. The problem is not in the “truth” part, but in the reification of relative “truth” to “Absolute Truth”. The capitalisation of the words is a dead giveaway that there is reification happening.

rossum

If you claim that absolute truth does not exist, would that not itself be a statement on something absolute?

 

[rossum]

If you claim that absolute truth does not exist, would that not itself be a statement on something absolute?

Of course not. My statement was written in a relative language, not an absolute language, so it cannot have been an absolute statement. It was a relative statement.

If you want to make a statement of an Absolute Truth, then you need to use an Absolute Language to make that statement.

rossum

 

[JerryZ]

But a logical statement may not be true. It depends on the truth of its premises, and that cannot be established within the logic itself.

Absolute Truth may, or may not exist. I suspect that it does not, but even if it does you have no absolute way of expressing any proposed Absolute Truth. All language is relative and relies on assumptions. Whatever is expressed in a language is automatically relative and hence cannot carry the burden of Absolute Truth.

Relative truth exists, but Absolute Truth (capitalised) cannot be established because there is no absolute basis on which to build it. If you start with a premise that X is Absolute Truth, then you need, separately, an Absolute Proof of the Absolute Truth of your premise, and an infinite regress results.

The truths we deal with here and now are all relative. Is 1 + 1 = 2 true? Relatively, yes because we are making some standard assumptions. Is 1 + 1= 2 Absolutely True? No it is not, because it is not true in base 2. In base 2, 1 + 1 = 10 is true and 1 + 1 = 2 is meaningless because the symbol “2” has no meaning in base 2. It is like saying 5 + 5 = A in base 10, which is meaningless, but is true in hexadecimal, base 16.

You are incorrect. We deny that anything is Absolutely True, but we have no problem with accepting things as relatively true. The problem is not in the “truth” part, but in the reification of relative “truth” to “Absolute Truth”. The capitalisation of the words is a dead giveaway that there is reification happening.

rossum

:Uhmm: Nice try but it won’t work.

Is the construct in base 10 mathematics 1 + 1 = 2 true or not? Not relative to other contructs but to itself.
It IS either True or is False.
Your switching to other base numbering is a straw man of switch and bait.

Peace

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I’m a young, foreign apologist, and I’ve become intrigued with A-T metaphysics after reading Feser’s “The Last Superstition”.

You are still using training wheels. Try " Aquinas " by the same author, then start reading the Summa Theologica, its on line. By the way check out the Edward Feser blog, it has lots of information and good archives, etc.

Sorry if this a simple question, but I’m a newbie at Thomism and it’s one I’ve been confronted with as a “refutation” of Aristotelian metaphysics and Aquinas’ first mover:

For example, particles wouldn’t gain mass without the Higgs boson. The consequence is that all particles is moving at the speed of light. Movement seem to be the fundamental condition.

First of all, no one knows exactly what the Higgs Boson is, Does it have an independent existence? How fleeting is its existence? Can it be said to really exist? Don’t you think some people are jumping to unwarranted conclusions? What are your sources for all your information on this? Seems to me it is all rather uncertain. Certainly it is too uncertain to be drawing conclusions.

But the most important argument is supposedly this: Human logic is provedly subjective, non-intutive and highly fallible. You can rarely conlude on reality, based on philosophy alone. You can be easily mistanken om premises.

No, not subjective. We can make correct inferences on the ultimate structure of the reality outside our minds because God gave us an intellect capable of abstracting the natures of this external reality and using those abstracted concepts to form accurate conclusions. If this were not so human life would be absolutely impossible. The human race would not have gotten out of diapers. It would have ended on day one or two, certainly by the end of the first week

What idiot modern philosophers have you been reading. Since the " Age of Enlightenment, " madness has griped the mind of many schools of philosophy, generally these have been of the Idealistic bent, some species of Platonians - though most would deny it.

Nothing in logical and physical state aren’t neccesarily alike. Standstill isn’t neccesarily a fundamental condition.

Everything that exists in the universe has a " nature " which is the underlying " what " of a substance or being. The underlying nature remains the same while the substance or being engages in its own activity. However natures can change when the substance is undergoing a substantial change. In the process of electrolysis the nature of water is changed into the natures of Hydrogen and Oxygen. We could cite millions of examples.

Time is likey to be an emergent property, which makes all arguments on events that led to the origin of the universe based on understanding something that’s presently outside all human cognitive faculty to understand.

Time is the measure of change. I don’t see how time offers any difficulties.

Linus2nd

 

[Linusthe2nd]

But a logical statement may not be true. It depends on the truth of its premises, and that cannot be established within the logic itself.

Absolute Truth may, or may not exist. I suspect that it does not, but even if it does you have no absolute way of expressing any proposed Absolute Truth. All language is relative and relies on assumptions. Whatever is expressed in a language is automatically relative and hence cannot carry the burden of Absolute Truth.

Relative truth exists, but Absolute Truth (capitalised) cannot be established because there is no absolute basis on which to build it. If you start with a premise that X is Absolute Truth, then you need, separately, an Absolute Proof of the Absolute Truth of your premise, and an infinite regress results.

The truths we deal with here and now are all relative. Is 1 + 1 = 2 true? Relatively, yes because we are making some standard assumptions. Is 1 + 1= 2 Absolutely True? No it is not, because it is not true in base 2. In base 2, 1 + 1 = 10 is true and 1 + 1 = 2 is meaningless because the symbol “2” has no meaning in base 2. It is like saying 5 + 5 = A in base 10, which is meaningless, but is true in hexadecimal, base 16.

You are incorrect. We deny that anything is Absolutely True, but we have no problem with accepting things as relatively true. The problem is not in the “truth” part, but in the reification of relative “truth” to “Absolute Truth”. The capitalisation of the words is a dead giveaway that there is reification happening.

rossum

Your problem is that you do not trust your own mind to reveal the world outside your mind as it actually exists. This means that whatever human psychology you have studied is wrong. Or perhaps you have been indoctrinated into some epistomological system ( and there are many ) which is basically skeptical.

We all share the same human nature ( whatever its source ). If we cannot know the world as it exists, life would be impossible. It would not have survived the first week. Human life is absolutely dependent on the ability of the mind to know the reality outside the mind as it actually is. This a self-evident given, it cannot be proven. It is the starting point of any sane human psychology.

Linus2nd

 

[polytropos]

For example, particles wouldn’t gain mass without the Higgs boson. The consequence is that all particles is moving at the speed of light. Movement seem to be the fundamental condition.

My first thought is that this doesn’t really show much, at least without much more background on the Higgs boson. As you know from reading The Last Superstition, “motion” in A-T philosophy does not mean displacement over time; it refers to change in general.

So let’s concede what the objector is saying for a second, even though he is overstepping the conclusions of physics. Even if all particles were moving at the speed of light, it doesn’t follow that they are not interacting and that changes (reductions from potency to act) are not occurring. Again, “motion” in this case is neither strictly Newtonian nor Einsteinian.

Furthermore, whatever the Higgs boson is doing to cause particles to have mass (which then causes the particles to do other things like, for example, exert a force due to gravity and feel other particles gravitational forces) is an instance of causality, so even if the objector is right and the Higgs boson does bear the consequence that all particles are moving at the speed of light in the same reference frame, he’d be in trouble. (Not to mention, given relativity, I believe that there would have to be some “change” even if all of the particles were moving at the same speed.)

But the most important argument is supposedly this: Human logic is provedly subjective, non-intutive and highly fallible. You can rarely conlude on reality, based on philosophy alone. You can be easily mistanken om premises.

Nothing in logical and physical state aren’t neccesarily alike. Standstill isn’t neccesarily a fundamental condition.

Human logic is “provedly subjective”? I think you would have to demand the “proof” for that claim. If it relies on human logic… then it is self-refuting. If it does not rely on human logic, then I can’t see why you would believe it.

The other problem is that the claim is simply not true, and even if it were, it would not absolve anyone of showing where the logic of Aquinas’s Five Ways goes wrong. Maybe you could say that human logic is often flawed, which would justify suspicion towards Aquinas’s arguments, but it does not in itself justify rejecting them. If the premises are mistaken, then the objector must demonstrate how so.

Time is likey to be an emergent property, which makes all arguments on events that led to the origin of the universe based on understanding something that’s presently outside all human cognitive faculty to understand.

I think Feser should have made it clear that the notions of causality which Aristotle and Thomas’s proofs rely on are not time-dependent, ie. causes are instantaneous. If you throw a brick at a window (to borrow Feser’s example), the cause of the window’s breaking is not the event of your throwing the brick; it is the instantaneous event of the brick hitting the glass.

Furthermore, Feser makes it pretty clear that reason does not tell us that God created the universe at some point in the past but rather sustains it right now.

 

[joche]

You are still using training wheels.

You’re right!

I’ll finish TLS, before I throw myself into Aquinas, Oderberg on essentialism and Rizzi on science.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

You’re right!

I’ll finish TLS, before I throw myself into Aquinas, Oderberg on essentialism and Rizzi on science.

No, no, no. Stay away from Oderberg. Read " Aquinas " by Feser. Read what I said about modern philosophy. Are you going to read the Catechism? Start there, leave philosophy alone for awhile if you must, but stay away from Essentialism or any form of Idealism. Why get into something that will lead you astray?

Linus2nd

 

[Linusthe2nd]

You’re right!

I’ll finish TLS, before I throw myself into Aquinas, Oderberg on essentialism and Rizzi on science.

If you mean Dr. David S. Oderberg and Dr. Anthony Rizzi, they are fine. But you should also be reading " Aquinas " by Feser. He gives the fundamentals of Thomistic Philosophy.

Linus2nd

 

[polytropos]

I have not read Oderberg, although I would second Linus’s suggestion of Aquinas by Feser before Rizzi. Feser is very acquainted with how modern readers interpret Aquinas and so is very well suited to a beginner. Even though Rizzi is a physicist, I feel as though Feser has a better feel for how Thomism meshes with modern science.

 

[joche]

Of course starting off with Aquinas by Feser, and ending with his Philosophy of Mind. Aristotle on metaphysics seems interesting too, if I’m still motivated.

Thank you for some very substantive replies. Nice addition to my understanding, after several attempts of refutations that Dawkins actually kills off Aquinas First Mover and treats design like Paley’s biological complexity.

How would you suggest to answer this objector?

 

[polytropos]

Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics is far more technical and advanced than Feser’s other books. I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve flipped through it and it seems that some background in formal logic would be useful. It’s a collection of scholarly essays on a variety of topics (some of which, I believe, can actually be found online; I think that the essay on the Higgs boson and Aristotelianism is online, as is Feser’s rebuttal of the claim that Newtonian physics contradict the First Way). There are probably a number of more general introductions to A-T philosophy you’d want to read first. (It’s also fairly expensive, since it’s basically a textbook.)

I’m not sure what you’re asking about Dawkins’ objections. Could you restate? Dawkins treats Aquinas’s Fifth Way like Paley’s design argument, I believe, since the Fifth Way deals with final causality and God as Supreme Intellect. His objection faces a number of problems. He claims that Aquinas is “postulating” God as an “explanation” for complexity (ie. he characterizes it like Paley’s design argument), which is just a misunderstanding of the Fifth Way. The Fifth Way is a demonstration of the Supreme Intellect’s metaphysical necessity (not an empirical postulate based on a misunderstanding of evolution, which actually affirms teleology in the natural order and is fully compatible with Aristotelian metaphysics). Aquinas also has no particular interest in the complexity of things, but rather their directedness or final causality, which is found even in simpler things, not just biological organisms. So Dawkins’ objections just miss the point.

 

[joche]

Sorry about getting the two of them confused. I’ve been defending mainstream apologetics (on youth level of course) earlier on, and got pretty much introduced to examining the logic behind Aquinas’ argument by Dawkins and his disciples.

Now, that left aside, the objection I refer to is the one stated in the opening post.

 

[polytropos]

Sorry about getting the two of them confused. I’ve been defending mainstream apologetics (on youth level of course) earlier on, and got pretty much introduced to examining the logic behind Aquinas’ argument by Dawkins and his disciples.

Ah, I see.

Now, that left aside, the objection I refer to is the one stated in the opening post.

I responded to the objections in the OP in post #12. Specifically, with regard to the Higgs boson I think the objector is overstating his case and misinterpreting physics; I don’t think the objector can hold what he is claiming about human logic without contradicting himself; and I don’t think claims about time really impact the argument since causality, as understood in A-T philosophy, is instantaneous.