On refutation of the Unmoved Mover

[Portofino]

Of course, it will all be certain at the Second Coming of Christ, “the firing of the gun itself.” I take the argument as an attempt to show that right now there is an unfired gun, and it would be best to get out of the line of fire.

Ha There are a few pointed guns I’m aware of at the moment, despite the usual worldly ones – one is being pointed by Islam (theologically, that is); one by Catholicism, presumably; a few different ones by the different Protestant sects (SDA’s having to do with whether you dare modify the 10 commandments by worshipping on Sunday; one by Jehovah’s Witnesses; one by “Fundamentalist Protestants”).

One of these guns could be the actual one to fire – or none of them. Or maybe it’s not a gun at all, and a lot of us will be disappointed that the creator of the universe was pointing a gun at no one.

 

[Portofino]

If they are ontological, then the Unmoved Mover would have to be either all-good or all-evil, since any other position on the continuum would consist of a lack and so would be ruled out with respect to a being which is Pure Act.

Again, this assumes binary opposites (good and evil), each sitting at opposite poles. What about the model of two separated lines moving “upwards,” as it were, and ultimately converging into one?

Physics, of course, has nothing to say about the ontological existence of “good” versus “evil”; we are not talking electrons, when we talk about good and evil; nor motion; nor causality. Instead, we are talking human values, whose emotional neutrality is questionable. “Good” and “evil” are human value judgments.

 

[polytropos]

Perhaps it’s the duality between good and evil that is itself a man-made convention (the poet Blake wrote, “the roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man”). Thus, if one accepts that the Unmoved Mover is pure actuality, it is not that it must be either all good or all evil; rather, it is simply All.

…

I think a case could also be made for the Unmoved Mover existing beyond good and evil, as something that just is. Perhaps we conceive of it in terms of dualities – “all good, not at all evil” – because we are the imperfect beings, that cannot help but think – with our limited minds – of the universe as a duality, not a unity. When we walk the streets of a city, we see only separation and difference. When we become airborne, looking at from above, we see the larger pattern of interconnectedness and unity.

On quite a different level, a faith level, Jesus being “fully God and fully man” (100% of both?) has never posed any conceptual problems, so I don’t see why “fully good, fully evil” or “neither good, neither evil; it is the All, the totality of everything” should pose a problem. Catholics are the great champions of “Both/And”, as opposed to “Either/Or”, so this more Eastern conception would simply be adding yet another “Both/And” to the equation.

The disjunction I provided was certainly based on the continuum inocente provided. He seemed to be suggesting that each of the numerous possible Unmoved Movers would be some composite of good and evil. Perhaps this would entail that you could have an Unmoved Mover 75% good and 25% evil, or perhaps 65% good and 35% evil. That, I think, is incompatible with the demonstration of the Unmoved Mover as Pure Act.

I can see how you might revise my “pre-Thomistic disjunction” to include the possibility of “something that just is,” “beyond good and evil,” although I think the idea faces some issues. I would still hold that, if “it’s the duality between good and evil that is itself a man-made convention,” then one would have to determine what the duality is a (purportedly illusory) convention for. In other words, if we were to grant that good and evil are both conventional, what keeps us from the “neutral” option? Supposing our imperfect intellects lead us to falsely regard good and evil, why should we suppose that our intellect would be capable of determining that good and evil are really two different aspects of some “All”? What you seem to be suggesting is that good and evil, alternatively, form a unity; but what is the unity?

This may not be what you have in mind, but I do not think “of the universe as a duality, not a unity,” since I do not think of evil, strictly speaking, as being on metaphysical par with good, which I hold to be convertible with being. When what is good is determined by the fulfillment of final causes and the proper instantiations of forms, it is hard to imagine what evil would ontologically be - the lack of fulfillment of final causes and the improper instantiations of forms? There is, then, duality in a sense, but it is far from a symmetry or equality, and that which is Pure Act could only (it seems to me) be good. So, as I said, I would say that one could drift in that direction on the pre-Thomistic analysis, but I do not see it as a viable option for Catholics. It seems to me that one would have to establish evil as another aspect of being, which, I think, would be difficult to justify. For the reasons established above, I think the view would be hard pressed to go beyond simple agnosticism about the Unmoved Mover’s goodness.

 

[polytropos]

Matter can be neither created, nor destroyed; it only changes form. The destruction of a plant, of an animal, of a building, of a consciousness would be simply a change of form. It would seem that the existence of matter (animate or inanimate) would thus be identified with the good, not the continued existence of “you” or “I”, or “he” or “she” in particular. “You” or “I”, “he” or “she” are but ephemeral, whereas the basic building blocks – the basic material – of time, space, matter and energy will perdure. Whether that matter-energy is conscious or unconsciousness would seem to be a matter of indifference; a conscious, living body becomes a non-conscious, non-living body, and yet existence perdures.

I’m not exactly sure what you’re getting at here. I think that, if it were established that the Unmoved Mover is intelligent and that man is similarly (or, we might say, analogically) intelligent, it would be something remarkable.

Am I right in assuming that you are commenting in the bolded portion on the purported convertibility of the transcendentals (being and goodness)? The doctrine does not mean that subsistent matter, as being, is good. Aquinas briefly defines what he means by good where I quoted him above, “For something is good in so far as it is desirable. But everything desires its perfection, and an effects perfection and form consists in resembling its efficient cause (since every efficient cause produces an effect like itself).” “The good,” then, is that which is desired, which sounds tautological at first. It is, perhaps, clarified by the rest of what he says regarding efficient causes, perfections, and forms. The good is not just being but (as I’ve said elsewhere) the aspect of perfection in a thing’s instantiation of its form. Inasmuch as something instantiates its form, as is natural for things to do, it is good.

Subsistent matter would have no form would be pure potentiality (lacking any actuality or being, since it has no form, nothing to instantiate, and no “capability” to be perfect in any way). But there is no subsistent matter.

Likewise, it is not simply good that some things exist rather than others. Things are good inasmuch as they more perfectly instantiate their forms. But it is not really a question of whether it’s good for there to be one thing rather than another. One would not say, for instance, that a conscious, intellectual life is no better than any other existing matter, so human beings can be killed, since the killing of human beings would prevent those human beings from reaching their natural ends, and would therefore not be good.

Physics, of course, has nothing to say about the ontological existence of “good” versus “evil”; we are not talking electrons, when we talk about good and evil; nor motion; nor causality. Instead, we are talking human values, whose emotional neutrality is questionable. “Good” and “evil” are human value judgments.

This is one position to take, the more empiricist one, which I think would collapse good and evil into a “conventional” category. As I’ve mentioned, though, it might just lead us to be agnostic about the goodness of the Unmoved Mover (I would say, though, that we need not be lead to agnosticism, for reasons I’ve given previously). It would not necessarily, however, prevent us from identifying the Unmoved Mover with the God of revelation either.

A few nitpicky things: While modern physics may have little to say about the ontological existence of good and evil*, metaphysics might indeed. I would also say that, on the Aristotelian-Thomistic view, causality very much plays a role in the ontological existence of good versus evil.

*As I mentioned in the “problem of evil” topic, there is a sense in which modern physics might contribute to our understanding of good and evil. The new essentialist school of thought in philosophy of science abandons the view that the essences of things are fundamentally unknowable, and thereby might be thought to contribute to a reinvigorated understanding of form, final causality, act, and potency.

 

[Portofino]

The disjunction I provided was certainly based on the continuum inocente provided. He seemed to be suggesting that each of the numerous possible Unmoved Movers would be some composite of good and evil. Perhaps this would entail that you could have an Unmoved Mover 75% good and 25% evil, or perhaps 65% good and 35% evil. That, I think, is incompatible with the demonstration of the Unmoved Mover as Pure Act.

I suppose I’m questioning whether evil exists, not in a traditional sense of “evil as privation” but whether all is not good, including that which we call evil. This is similar to Alexander Pope’s statement (cited to a different purpose) that “whatever is, is right.”

Life is good – death is good. Pleasure is good – suffering is good, insofar as all were willed to exist. As a human being, I’m of course not capable of seeing it that way (emotionally)–I prefer certain things to others --but nature itself seems more “spacious” about things, than my limited human understanding. Nietzsche explored this idea when he talked about affirming all of life, saying “yes” to all of life. He wrote at one point, “if you don’t have any pleasure left to give me, Life… Well then! You still have suffering.” A life of suffering is still a life; if it is better to exist than not to exist (existence contains actualized possibilities) then a suffering life is still preferable to non-existence, and gives a quality of experience that pleasure lacks. Beautiful and ugly; pleasurable and painful – all are affirmed, all encompass this “Yes” spoken to all of existence. What ugliness gives, beauty cannot. What pain gives, pleasure cannot. What the experience of dying gives, the experience of living cannot.

The book of Ecclesiastes at least tinkers with these ideas, the contemplation of which is both comforting and disturbing, even somewhat painful: “to everything there is a season… A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up… A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to get, and a time to lose… [a time to come together (attraction) and a time to move away from each other (repulsion)] A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.” Of course, he grants that there is a right time and a wrong time for such things, as in the rhythms of nature – death in old age, for example, would be a “right” time, whereas death in youth would be a “wrong” time. Yet both occur – young life and elderly life, young death and elderly death – as if all possibilities are exhausted, as if all possibilities wanted to be exhausted (Marcus Aurelius wrote somewhere, “It loved to happen.”).

To look at it this way is to consider that the unmoved mover, or the first cause, prefers all of this to be the case, essentially saying, “this is my will – thus I want it, I want everything and its opposite, I want totality, I want *all *possibilities, I want everything to be explored and experienced” – indeed, all possibilities actualized.

I don’t have answers – I’m just exploring a different way of interpreting “that which is” – but this seems to me a compelling possibility, possibility more “Hindu” in character (Shiva, the creator and destroyer, I believe, just as “positive” and “negative” fulfill a role in physics and in nature; dead leaves fertilize what is reborn from their remains).

A poet like Walt Whitman pretty much expresses this “affirmative” spirit, saying yes to everything (the fragrant blossom and the sharp nettles), in a way that intuitively is more compelling than my more left-brain accounting of it:

"The little one sleeps in its cradle,
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies
with my hand.

The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill,
I peeringly view them from the top.

The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom,
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol
has fallen.

The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of the
promenaders,
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the
clank of the shod horses on the granite floor,
The snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow-balls,
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous’d mobs,
The flap of the curtain’d litter, a sick man inside borne to the
hospital,
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,
The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working
his passage to the centre of the crowd,
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,
What groans of over-fed or half-starv’d who fall sunstruck or in
fits,
What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and
give birth to babes,
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what howls
restrain’d by decorum,
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances,
rejections with convex lips,
I mind them or the show or resonance of them—I come and I
depart."

And, “Urge and urge and urge, Always the procreant urge of the world. Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex, Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.”

These are different perspectives; according to one, the human “elevates” itself above nature, via society, and this comes closest to God. According to the other, nature itself is an unencumbered glimpse into that much greater spaciousness of God’s existence, encompassing a much greater range of possibilities (again quoting Blake, “The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man.”).

 

[inocente]

I see No, I can’t imagine the existence of an unmoved mover would be testable in that sense. One could posit, “if the unmoved mover didn’t exist, then the universe as we know it could not exist, period,” but there obviously would be no way to “pull the plug” on the unmoved mover for even a moment, to show what would happen in its absence (one can only hypothesize what would happen in its absence, at least by the standards of scientific method; correct me if you disagree).

Therefore the argument is unscientific, which isn’t meant to deride it, just a statement.

*That doesn’t in itself mean that the unmoved mover “hypothesis” (again, which is how a scientist might describe it) is untrue, merely that the squabbling over definitions involved in the unmoved mover argument will probably continue indefinitely (the proof stands or falls with the definition one ascribes to words, and whether one can demonstrate that these definitions “hook up” with the things themselves, with not even a hairline of disparity). Hard to demonstrate this. Bacon, whom I’ve been reading lately, made the obsservation that nature, no matter how subtle the reasonings of the human mind, was more subtle still in its operations (Zeno’s paradox? ). Thus, we needed to yoke ourselves to the “things themselves” as much as possible, and not so easily trust our conceptual definitions of them (e.g., substance, causality,). *

Yes. I’ve not read Bacon, but that’s key to the success of the scientific method as a way of reasoning - the principle that we don’t need to explain everything in one go to make progress. Thus Newton could propose his law of gravity without saying why it exists (“I do not frame hypotheses” as he put it).

If Jesus comes back, no amount of reasoning will permit one not to “admit defeat,” if one was a naysayer. William James once wrote that, “reality is that which pushes back,” and thus denying the divinity of Jesus (like denying the efficacy of gravity) would indeed “push back,” in a most definitive way

Oh, I think He’d get peoples’ attention.

p.s. Zeno’s paradox, insofar as I understand it, makes a prediction – movement from point A to point B should be impossible. Yet, insofar as we empirically know that it is possible to get from point A to point B, we also know that Zeno’s reasoning (no matter how subtle and ingenious, and indeed incontrovertible on paper) must be wrong. skeptoid.com/episodes/4267

One key to unmasking Zeno’s paradox is that distance and time are continuums, so when we divide them up then of course we’ll get infinite series.

The paradox also tricks us most cunningly. Suppose Achilles (A) is one meter behind the tortoise (T), running at ten times the speed. The paradox invites us to consider the infinite series of shorter and shorter intervals up to the point where A and T are neck and neck. Well of course A never overtakes T if we’re only looking at the series before A overtakes!

 

[inocente]

As I’ve said, the Five Ways in the Summa Theologica are summaries of proofs that Aquinas gives in more detail elsewhere (for example, in Summa contra Gentiles). Nevertheless, the point stands from what is written here. Look at the last few sentences of the First Way:

It should be clear from the example that Aquinas is using, “as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand.” This is an example of simultaneous and derived causality (a per se causal series, as opposed to a per accidens causal series in which each element has in a sense its own causal power). That would imply that there would have to be an Unmoved Mover at the moment of any given change. Since change is always occurring (I assume most would concede that much), the Unmoved Mover is always here.

I don’t see how this follows in the argument. If the unmoved mover throws a ball toward a greenhouse and leaves while it is in the air, the ball won’t just stop. If the unmoved mover detonates ten kilo of plastic explosive and leaves 5 milliseconds later, the explosion won’t just stop.

Besides that, one might note that the Unmoved Mover, as Pure Act, cannot change, and so he couldn’t decide to “leave” (whatever that would mean in this context).

I can see nothing in the argument itself which says the unmoved mover is everywhere. Anyway space is expanding, if the unmoved mover can’t move, how can it be in places which didn’t exist before?

*I don’t think it can be “necessarily” demonstrated through philosophical argument that the Unmoved Mover created the universe. It is, as I’ve said before, an article of faith.

(I would agree that the Unmoved Mover would have to have created the universe in order for it to be the Creator God of Genesis. What I am not claiming is that we can know through philosophical argument that the Unmoved Mover did such a thing. But it wouldn’t follow then that the Unmoved Mover did not create the universe.)*

But that’s enough for my purpose, which is that it’s only an assumption that the unmoved mover is God. If the argument doesn’t prove that unmoved mover is the creator, perhaps the most important thing people believe about God, then it has little or no explanatory power.

The bolded portion is a massive non-sequitur: math can represent some aspects of matter and energy; therefore matter and energy are math. (I think few, even among those beholden to scientism, would claim that math can represent all aspects of matter and energy.) It would also remain to be defined just what it would mean for everything to be made of math, which as I’ve said is generally taken to be an abstraction. If everything is abstracted, then from whence and by whom was it abstracted?

I noted that Feser throws in a scientism every so often as if it’s a logical argument , but nope, all laws of nature are mathematical, there are no aspects of matter or energy which cannot be represented mathematically, none at all.

But we are not done yet. Have you heard of the Holographic principle?
*
“the theory suggests that the entire universe can be seen as a two-dimensional information structure “painted” on the cosmological horizon, such that the three dimensions we observe are only an effective description at macroscopic scales and at low energies.” - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle*

I am not sure what the relevance of this is. No one is denying that energy, mass, and space-time are related.

If everything is everything then the universe could just be.

Except I have provided justification as to why the principles I’m using (the act/potency distinction, the principle of causality) apply just as much to the molecular level as to any other level. What you are providing is a lot of scientific language and handwaving, without actually showing how “the attempt to divide the world into things with various states of motion (change) is an artifact of how we see the world at our scale.” Whether everything is composed of particles or waves does not really bear on the principle of causality or act/potency distinction - unless you show how it does.

I used the words particle and wave, that’s hardly “a lot of scientific language”. Anyway I’m making a philosophical point. We know that all things are made of particles, we know that for sure. We also know that all particles exhibit wavelike behavior (turns out that Aristotle was the first to suggest this).

So if act and potency were truly fundamental concepts they should apply to waves, since all things are fundamentally made of waves. But waves (think of waves on the beach) cannot be still and cannot move each other, rather they influence by interference (think of the wake of a motor boat in a swell). Hence act and potency are artifacts of a naive view of the world, and cannot represent reality.

 

[inocente]

As the article mentioned, the Unmoved Mover is intelligent (“Finally, as the source of all change, this prime mover would be the ultimate cause of things coming to have the qualities and attributes that they do – eminently, if not formally. Inasmuch as that would include all powers, we would conclude that this being is all powerful and all knowledgeable.”). Scholastics like Aquinas took humans to be “rational animals,” so we are created in the Unmoved Mover’s image insofar that we are rational and intellectual (that is what, in the classical theistic understanding, it means for us to be created in God’s image).

Then as predicted the argument doesn’t attempt to prove we are in the unmoved mover’s image, it’s another assumption, based on interpreting what Aquinas believed.

I imagine that this is a conclusion you would disagree with. It is based on other disciplines like philosophy of mind. A defense of this position would be another topic entirely (whether or not rationality and intellect are “real,” whether or not they succumb to a materialistic explanation, etc.). The current point is that the assumption that Aquinas (or any other classical theistic thinker) did not address all of these issues is simply prejudicial and false.

But if we’re discussing the argument itself, this is a distraction.

I’m not sure what you think Aquinas wrote in his several thousand pages of philosophy. From the things you would say, it would seem as though you think he wrote the Five Ways and left the rest of the pages blank. I don’t know why you smugly act like it’s obvious that defenders of his arguments simply haven’t thought of things like this.

Now even you’re getting defensive and making personal remarks . Remember when we started I said that even after it’s pointed out that the first-way isn’t part of any creed and no one will get killed if we toss it around, past experience is that supporters get furious when it’s criticized?

Was I right or was I right?

*I don’t think that, upon brief reflection, there are nearly as many options as you propose. Good and evil either are ontological or merely conventional realities. If they are ontological, then the Unmoved Mover would have to be either all-good or all-evil, since any other position on the continuum would consist of a lack and so would be ruled out with respect to a being which is Pure Act. If good and evil are merely conventional, then they obviously cannot be attributed in any absolute sense to the Unmoved Mover. So there are really only three possibilities, even on a pre-Thomistic analysis:
1). God is all-good.
2). God is all-evil.
3). God is neutral.

As Aquinas says (Summa Theologiae* Ia6.1):

If I have time, I will try to write up a more comprehensive defense of the Unmoved Mover’s goodness in the next few days. For now, hopefully this short bit will suffice. I’ll add that desirability here does not refer to conscious desirability, as it might with respect to human desires, so Aquinas is not arguing that the largely unconscious world “desires” anything consciously. He is largely referring to directedness and final causality inherent in things’ forms, and that things are objectively good insofar that they instantiate their forms (ie. a triangle drawn with straight lines is better than a triangle drawn with slightly curved lines, a dog with four legs is better than a dog with three legs, etc.).

There’s a bijou problemette though. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. We believe God is good, but from the argument alone there’s nothing which says the unmoved mover cares about us or even knows we’re here, and so could have nothing to do with good and evil. So again the assumption that the unmoved mover is God doesn’t pan out.

This conclusion, also, I suppose you would reject. But it is pretty clear that those defending arguments like these do not leave the Unmoved Mover’s qualities unanswered.

Indeed. :curtsey:

The last point I would make is that, even if one is a committed nominalist, for instance, and denies that there is goodness inherent in the instantiation of things’ forms (or that we could come to know that goodness), and therefore that the Unmoved Mover is Goodness Itself (or that we could come to know that the Unmoved Mover is Goodness Itself), it would not bear on the existence of the Unmoved Mover or any of its other qualities per se. As such, one might still know that we are made in the Unmoved Mover’s image as intellectual (and likely uniquely so) and that we are sustained in being by the Unmoved Mover at every instant. Given that the disjunction between all-goodness, all-evilness, and neutrality that I previously mentioned, I’d argue that there is still a strong case for associating the Unmoved Mover with goodness - at least enough that one might be able to consider the Unmoved Mover in light of the major monotheistic religions, which, as I have consistently maintained, is a move of faith.

Agreed on faith, though otherwise I think none of that follows from the argument itself.

 

[inocente]

I think you’ve mischaracterized what Feser argues. He is not questioning whether or not it is mathematically precise to characterize Newtonian motion as a state. He certainly is not denying what the principle of inertia claims (that an object in motion will remain in uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force). But like Kepler’s laws do not explain why the planets behave as they do (they just describe how they behave), Newton’s principle of inertia does not explain why objects in uniform motion behave as they do. And just like Kepler’s laws do not warrant the conclusion that the planets just behave as they do with “no more need” of an explanation, Newton’s principle of inertia does not eliminate the need of an explanation for uniform motion. What you have done here is restate the principle of inertia, but that is simply missing the point of what Feser has argued.

Nope, Feser gets it hopelessly wrong. Just look:

“Newton’s law tells us that a body will in fact continue its uniform rectilinear motion if it is moving at all, as long as external forces do not prevent this. It does not tell us why it will do so. In particular, it does not tell us one way or the other whether there is a “mover” of some sort which ensures that an object obeys the First Law, and which is in that sense responsible for its motion.” - faculty.fordham.edu/klima/SMLM/PSMLM10/PSMLM10.pdf (pdf)

But uniform motion is the same as no movement at all, no difference whatsoever. So substituting for this in Feser’s prose:

“Newton’s law tells us that a body will in fact stay still if it is still, as long as external forces do not prevent this. It does not tell us why it will do so. In particular, it does not tell us one way or the other whether there is a “stationer” of some sort which ensures that an object obeys the First Law, and which is in that sense responsible for it not moving.”

So what he said shows a fundamental lack of comprehension of Newtonian relativity.

Furthermore, you claim he’s made a “basic mistake” by failing to understand that states of motion and of rest are the same when considered in different inertial reference frames, but Feser specifically addresses the issue of different reference frames throughout the paper; it’s not like it ignores what the principle of inertia has to say about them, as someone might suppose by only reading your thoughts. So again, having read Feser’s paper, you have just reasserted that the principle of inertia shows that uniform motion and rest are “exactly the same” and need no explanation, when that is precisely what is at issue.

Nope, Feser is hopelessly at sea when it comes to reference frames. Just look:

“inertial motion (including that of celestial bodies, but that of all other objects as well) is unending. Hence the only possible cause of inertial motion—again, at least if it is considered to involve real change—would seem to be a necessarily existing intelligent substance or substances”

But from another frame inertial motion is exactly the same as staying still, no difference at all. So there is no change, hence no need for an agency of change.

I was stunned that he made such elementary mistakes, especially as the paper was peer reviewed (or at least it’s followed by comments).

The point of the whole paper is whether considering Newtonian motion either as real change or as a state has any bearing on the principle of causality. [snip] You have in no way addressed that point in your response, even though it was perhaps the central point of the paper.

You must be reading a different paper. The one I read is titled “The medieval principle of motion and the modern principle of inertia”. The sections are titled “The purported contradiction [between the principles]”, “Why the conflict [between the principles] is illusory”, “How the principles are in fact related” and “The mythology of inertia”.

(That last section is an embarrassing strawman, the word inertia has nothing to do with his polemic, it’s defined simply as “the property of matter which causes it to resist any change to its motion” which even a child can see is uncontroversial).

A, B, and C are spatial locations, not objects; it does not make sense for them to have potency. Certainly, we may think of another inertial reference frame in which A, B, and C move past a stationary body, but that does not undermine the act/potency distinction in the way you imply it does. The body is stationary, but it is still actually at A and has the potential to be at B and C. It goes on to B, and is then actually at A and has the potential to be at C. Thinking of the body as stationary does not change its actualities and potencies; they are not relative to the observer.

Call the moving body X, and make A, B and C stationary bodies rather than locations. Body X has potency to move past body A but A has no potency to move past X.

Now make X stationary and make A, B and C move relative to X while remaining stationary relative to each other. Body A now has potency to move past body X while X has no potency to move past A.

Yet the two situations are exactly the same. One observer says body A has potency, another observer says not. Thus potency is a false concept - which is the reason why it doesn’t figure in science.

What is at issue (and what you have not addressed) is whether there is no cause for those changes in location.

Let’s stick with Feser’s paper a while and take one issue at a time.

I start classes next week. I probably will only be able to fit in 1 or 2 more rounds of posts, but then I will need to spend a little less time on CA.

Fair enough, I’ve been finding it hard to fit in all these posts so a more relaxed pace would suit me as well.

 

[1AugustSon7]

But uniform motion is the same as no movement at all

And the revelations keep coming. Next we are to learn that uniform colour is the same as no colour at all; and that really there is no such thing as change either. Between change and no change there is, as the sage inocente would put it, “no difference whatsoever”. Fascinating!

Contradiction is the only proper form of diction for inocente

 

[1AugustSon7]

Call the moving body X, and make A, B and C stationary bodies rather than locations. Body X has potency to move past body A but A has no potency to move past X.

Now make X stationary and make A, B and C move relative to X while remaining stationary relative to each other. Body A now has potency to move past body X while X has no potency to move past A.

Yet the two situations are exactly the same.

Wow.

 

[inocente]

And the revelations keep coming. Next we are to learn that uniform colour is the same as no colour at all; and that really there is no such thing as change either. Between change and no change there is, as the sage inocente would put it, “no difference whatsoever”. Fascinating!

Contradiction is the only proper form of diction for inocente

Send your complaints to God.

I thought everyone learned this stuff at school.

1. There is no special place anywhere in the universe which is its center or origin point, therefore there can be no absolute positions. The position of something can only be described relative to something else.
2. Therefore there can be no absolute velocities, the motion of a body can only be measured relative to the motion of another.
3. Therefore you measure the speed and course of a body relative to you. If you are moving on a different heading or speed, you will see it moving relative to you. If instead you match its heading and speed, you will see it is stationary relative to you. But the body’s motion didn’t change at all, only your relative motion.

Kind of basic to navigating an aircraft, your airspeed and ground speed differ according to wind speed and direction.

Another example: depending on its latitude, your house is moving at up to 1700 km per hour due to the Earth’s spin (that’s how come geostationary satellites don’t drop out of the sky, they are stationary relative to your house but orbiting at the same speed as the Earth). In addition, the Earth is moving at around 100,000 km/h around the Sun. In addition, the Sun is orbiting around the center of the Milky Way. In addition, the Milky Way is moving relative to other galaxies.

So your house is stationary while at the same time moving at lots of different velocities.

Here endeth the lesson.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Wow.

You might be left with the impression that you are hearing an absolutely true proposition, but rest assured that it is only “true” relative to the unhinged position of the observer proposing it.

The proposition that “the motion of a body can only be measured relative to the motion of another” is only true if an absolute reference point determined by the Unmoved Mover is discounted in the process. Once an absolute position determined by the Unmoved Mover is admitted then an absolute reference point enters into the equation and the motion of any body is, in principle, at least, absolutely determinable. The key word, here is “Unmoved” which is an absolutely fixed reference, since, as the word implies, it is not susceptible to motion and hence is the absolute fixture or “hinge” by which motion can be measured absolutely.

Of course, the above is all pure semantics given that motion, for Aristotle and Aquinas does not mean movement, but rather something more like “change,” in general.

 

[davidv]

A knowledgeable scientist would say that a “God hypothesis” is not a hypothesis at all precisely because its untestable.

Demonstrating that the scientific method is not suited to the exploration and explanation of the nonmaterial.

 

[Portofino]

We believe God is good, but from the argument alone there’s nothing which says the unmoved mover cares about us or even knows we’re here, and so could have nothing to do with good and evil. So again the assumption that the unmoved mover is God doesn’t pan out…

I tend to agree. Divine intervention, via miracles, is one thing. If you’ve experienced them, then you know differently. The incarnation is another – Jesus saying, “somebody up there loves you”

But just looking at nature itself, there’s a sense of non-malevolent neutrality, at best. When bad things happen, it’s not because there’s anyone out there in the universe that doesn’t like you (Paul McCartney sings, “no one’s out to break your heart, it only seems that way”).

So the animal who bit you didn’t harbor a grudge against you; it was just hungry, or scared. The sun that gave you sun cancer also warmed your face; the sun isn’t against you, it just is. The water that drowned someone didn’t harbor any malice towards the swimmer; the water was just itself. It was innocent, just being what is is. It did not know that the body swimming in its waters was young and incapable of making informed judgments.

All that is good in our lives, vis-a-vis nature (the water that helps the crops grow) is no more evidently a signal of benevolent concern than the bad things (frost or a tornado ruined the harvest) is a signal of malevolence or ill-will. Nature doesn’t speak, it’s inanimate, so it’s unclear one should ascribe conscious intentionality towards it (but people have certainly done so, assuming that the bounty of nature meant that the gods were happy and that the apparent wrath of nature was a sign that the gods were displeased; sacrifices were an attempt to appease the gods).

As I understand it, the further arguments are that: the Unmoved Mover must be intelligent, therefore conscious and with intentionality (therefore, it is aware of our existence); the Unmoved Mover must be perfect in all respects, therefore good (this definition of “good” loses me, and the equation of Goodness with Being). It seems these arguments you guys have been having are very science-dense, physics-dense, replete with mathematics and logic. A word like “goodness”, though, is a value proposition. All that “pure logic or mathematics or science” can speak of is perfection as quantity, not as quality, or so it seems to me. Just so, there is an amoral definition of perfection, having to do with mere quantity. One can be the “perfect soccer player”; the “perfect businessman”; but also the “perfect criminal who has just pulled off the perfect crime.” This is arete, excellence (a neutral matter of quantity) as opposed to moral goodness (love, benevolent concern; the quality of loving and valuing).

 

[Portofino]

p.s. I also don’t understand this notion of evil as privation, as the absence of something. A human being has an instinct for aggression, for conquest, for appropriation – it harms, it injures its rival for their disadvantage and its own advantage. It has aggrandized itself, built itself up – big fish swallows little fish. The reward – big fish gets to continue to exist, continues to be (being is good). Kill or be killed. If such behavior is evil, equating being with goodness and evil with the absence of something doesn’t square up. If anything, it is the victim who, through the absence of strength, would be “evil”, and would also lose their being in the process. And the perpetrator – the predator – would have the presence of strength and aggression, and would be “good” insofar as he is the last man standing (he gets to keep his being, outlive his rival).

Not advocating this, just following (or trying to follow) the logic of evil as the “absence of goodness” and of being as not only perfection, but goodness.

 

[polytropos]

I don’t see how this follows in the argument. If the unmoved mover throws a ball toward a greenhouse and leaves while it is in the air, the ball won’t just stop. If the unmoved mover detonates ten kilo of plastic explosive and leaves 5 milliseconds later, the explosion won’t just stop.

The argument is saying that any change requires the Unmoved Mover as the first mover because any change (at least in the simultaneous sense) implies a per se causal series. As long as the change is continuing, it would require the Unmoved Mover, because there would still be a per se causal series.

It would be a contradiction for the Unmoved Mover to “leave” or stop sustaining the change in the world (since it is Pure Act), so the examples given here don’t make sense. However, since change cannot occur except with a purely actual Unmoved Mover, if the Unmoved Mover (somehow) stopped acting, then yes, the change would stop. (This is, as I mentioned, impossible, so it is not surprising that the result is counterintuitive)

I can see nothing in the argument itself which says the unmoved mover is everywhere. Anyway space is expanding, if the unmoved mover can’t move, how can it be in places which didn’t exist before?

The Unmoved Mover is immaterial (as I’ve mentioned and justified previously). It is not in one place or another. It would not need to “move” (in either the Aristotelian or Newtonian sense) in order to have causal efficacy in a given location.

But that’s enough for my purpose, which is that it’s only an assumption that the unmoved mover is God. If the argument doesn’t prove that unmoved mover is the creator, perhaps the most important thing people believe about God, then it has little or no explanatory power.

I think you’re wrong to say that the Unmoved Mover has “little or no explanatory power.” I think we can prove enough about the Unmoved Mover to be reasonable in believing that the Unmoved Mover is the same as the revealed God. I have never held that one could demonstrate necessarily that the Unmoved Mover is the revealed God, just that it has most of the qualities usually associated with God.

I noted that Feser throws in a scientism every so often as if it’s a logical argument , but nope, all laws of nature are mathematical, there are no aspects of matter or energy which cannot be represented mathematically, none at all.

I noted that you throw in an unsubstantiated assertion every so often as if it’s a logical argument . Care to provide a proof of the bolded statement? It is in principle impossible to prove that all aspects of matter and energy can be represented mathematically (even if it were true, you would not be able to know that it is true in order to make such an assertion, since you could not know whether there was another aspect of matter you had not represented).

But we are not done yet. Have you heard of the Holographic principle?
*
“the theory suggests that the entire universe can be seen as a two-dimensional information structure “painted” on the cosmological horizon, such that the three dimensions we observe are only an effective description at macroscopic scales and at low energies.” - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle*

Neat. But for the topic at hand, a red herring (unless you were to use it to support your argument in some clear way). The phrase “can be seen” seems to sell the game, however; it is a representation, not necessarily reality.

If everything is everything then the universe could just be.

Interesting thought. But not really relevant to the First Way. “Everything is everything” also seems more like a tautology than a proposition that follows from any relationships between matter, energy, and space-time.

I used the words particle and wave, that’s hardly “a lot of scientific language”. Anyway I’m making a philosophical point. We know that all things are made of particles, we know that for sure. We also know that all particles exhibit wavelike behavior (turns out that Aristotle was the first to suggest this).

So if act and potency were truly fundamental concepts they should apply to waves, since all things are fundamentally made of waves. But waves (think of waves on the beach) cannot be still and cannot move each other, rather they influence by interference (think of the wake of a motor boat in a swell). Hence act and potency are artifacts of a naive view of the world, and cannot represent reality.

Yes, particles exhibit wavelike behavior, which does not mean that all particles are nothing but waves (and even if they were, it would not follow that all particles behave just like waves at the beach, that particles do not act on each other, that all reductions of potency to act are illusory, or anything of the sort). It certainly would not undermine the principle of causality. One would have to explain why purported changes (say, the bonding of two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule or the lifting of a book) are actually not changes but just “interference.” And I think what you are here espousing is far from doing that.

 

[polytropos]

Then as predicted the argument doesn’t attempt to prove we are in the unmoved mover’s image, it’s another assumption, based on interpreting what Aquinas believed.

How does this follow from what I’ve said? It is not an “assumption, based on interpreting what Aquinas believed.” It is part of the argument; if I were to write a book on the First Way, I would defend all of the claims necessary to demonstrate that we are created in the Unmoved Mover’s image (kind of like what Aquinas does for each of God’s qualities after proving that there is a purely actual Unmoved Mover). Here I am telling you how theists have gone about showing that man is made in the Unmoved Mover’s image. It might be more accurate to say, “Then as predicted, because you have committed yourself to maintaining that the argument is silly and outmoded, you have once again claimed that the argument does attempt to prove something which it does in fact claim to prove.” Analytically showing that the Unmoved Mover exists and has the qualities of the Christian God does take up a lot of space, so the text of the First Way does not cover it all, but the issues are still covered elsewhere in any serious philosopher’s writings (like those of St. Thomas).

Now even you’re getting defensive and making personal remarks . Remember when we started I said that even after it’s pointed out that the first-way isn’t part of any creed and no one will get killed if we toss it around, past experience is that supporters get furious when it’s criticized?

Criticism is fine. Great, in fact, especially if/when it’s novel. I take issue when someone demonstrably unfamiliar with the argument trots out condescending statements like this: “Then similarly, our relationship, for example does the argument say we are in the unmoved mover’s image? I think I can guess the answer to that.” If this conversation has shown anything, it is that almost all (if not all) of your claims that the argument fails to show that the Unmoved Mover has [quality of God] have been based on an unsubstantiated and false presumption. The article I provided earlier even mentions specific qualities that the argument can be used to demonstrate; you did not question the reasoning provided for those justifications but just insisted that such justifications are never made. So even if you disagree with the reasoning for making those conclusions, there is no justification for calling them “assumptions” and implying that theists have somehow neglected to consider them.

I am defensive because remarks like the one I quoted above are essentially insulting to the intelligence of theists. You have consistently shown that you think that theists have not considered the most obvious objections to the Unmoved Mover argument. I think, to begin with, such a position is implausible, given how much has been written on the subject, but perhaps excusable to someone who is new to the topic. Raising objections and making criticisms is not at all what I take offense to; the fact that you do so condescendingly even though you have repeatedly demonstrated a lack of familiarity with the writings of the argument’s best defenders is what I am defensive about. A reasonable thing to say might be “I am not familiar with everything that Thomas argued because I’ve only read the first few pages of his works, and have not read his best commentators. It does not seem obvious to me how he would show that we are created in the Unmoved Mover’s image. How would the argument show that?” But I don’t think you gain anything by tacking on statements like, “I think I can guess the answer to that,” when your guess is, in fact, wrong.

Now, you might say that all of the qualities of God are not proven in the text of just the First Way. But that is hardly a worthwhile point to make; it would be a bit like implying that the first chapter of a physics textbook is flawed because it does not contain justification for all of the claims made in the remainder of the book. The fact that the qualities follow from the conclusion of the First Way (and happen to be included in the same works, Summa Theologiae and Summa contra Gentiles) is sufficient to show what I am claiming.

You might also say that you prefer to read “agnostic” writers on sensitive topics like these. Fine. Read what you please. But if you do not read the best defenders of an argument, please don’t comment on what the argument says or what its implications are.

There’s a bijou problemette though. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. We believe God is good, but from the argument alone there’s nothing which says the unmoved mover cares about us or even knows we’re here, and so could have nothing to do with good and evil. So again the assumption that the unmoved mover is God doesn’t pan out.

The claims here are implausible, based on the qualities of the Unmoved Mover we’ve already discussed: the Unmoved Mover sustains us in being, created us in His image (as intellectual), and is intelligent Himself. So the proposition “there’s nothing which says the unmoved mover cares about us or even knows we’re here” seems false even in light of our discussion up to here. And that much is known without considering the convertibility of transcendentals or the privation view of evil (which I intend to write about in a bit, if I have the time). So again, par for the course: claim the argument doesn’t and can’t show something which it does claim to show, and top it off by labeling it an “assumption.”

 

[polytropos]

Nope, Feser gets it hopelessly wrong. Just look:

“Newton’s law tells us that a body will in fact continue its uniform rectilinear motion if it is moving at all, as long as external forces do not prevent this. It does not tell us why it will do so. In particular, it does not tell us one way or the other whether there is a “mover” of some sort which ensures that an object obeys the First Law, and which is in that sense responsible for its motion.” - faculty.fordham.edu/klima/SMLM/PSMLM10/PSMLM10.pdf (pdf)

But uniform motion is the same as no movement at all, no difference whatsoever.

But you are not even responding to the point he is making. He is not saying that we cannot mathematically represent Newtonian motion as a state of rest in some other reference frame. He never denies that because it is (he would agree) absolutely true. What he is saying is that it does not follow from the mathematical equivalence of two reference frames that “uniform motion is the same as no movement at all, no difference whatesoever.” That is simply a claim that the Newtonian principle of inertia is not making.

So substituting for this in Feser’s prose:

“Newton’s law tells us that a body will in fact stay still if it is still, as long as external forces do not prevent this. It does not tell us why it will do so. In particular, it does not tell us one way or the other whether there is a “stationer” of some sort which ensures that an object obeys the First Law, and which is in that sense responsible for it not moving.”

So what he said shows a fundamental lack of comprehension of Newtonian relativity.

Again, you do not address what he is arguing. Whether the “stationer” is a “stationer” or a “mover” in two different inertia reference frames is not what he is talking about. In one reference frame, the object in question is stationary. In another reference frame, the object is moving (in the Newtonian sense). In both cases, the object is moving at constant velocity (whether that velocity is, say, v or 0). And Feser’s point is that that is all the principle of inertia tells us. It doesn’t tell us why there is a principle of inertia and why objects tend to move at constant velocity (in any inertial reference frame) unless acted upon by an external force.

What your points seem to rely on is that, for any given object moving at constant velocity, there is some reference frame in which that object appears stationary. You note that there is no absolute inertial reference frame. But that is just not what Feser is even debating. There is likewise no intertial reference frame in which nothing moves, so it is not a consequence of the principle of inertia that there is not actually motion or that Newtonian motion is not actually a change. The only consequence is that we can represent motion as rest in another reference frame, not that all motion is the same as rest.

Call the moving body X, and make A, B and C stationary bodies rather than locations. Body X has potency to move past body A but A has no potency to move past X.

This is a misrepresentation of what Feser (or any Aristotelian) is commmitted to. The bolded statement is simply false (and, indeed, contradictory) in any inertial reference frame. X’s moving past A would actualize A’s potency to move past X, as much as A’s moving past X would actualize X’s potency to move past A.

(I’d also note that defining A, B, and C as bodies rather than locations does not really change anything, for reasons that will be clear from what I say below.)

Now make X stationary and make A, B and C move relative to X while remaining stationary relative to each other. Body A now has potency to move past body X while X has no potency to move past A.

For the reason I noted above, this is based on a flawed interpretation of the situation. If A, B, and C actualize their potencies to move past X, then X is likewise actualizing its potencies to move past A, B, and C. You are trying to find a way to make the principle of causality contradictory, but you seem to be showing that you could only do so by misinterpreting it.

(What you seem to be assuming is that X’s potency to move past A can only be actualized if X is moving in the Newtonian sense in every reference frame, which would obviously be false since X is of course not moving in every inertial reference frame, since there is one in which it is stationary. But no one is committed to thinking that way, that it is the only way for X’s potency to move past A to be actualized; if, in one reference frame, X is stationary and A moves past it, the potency is still actualized. The fact that X is stationary in one reference frame does not undermine the principle. What you’d have to show is that there is a reference frame in which A never passes X, but since A passing X is dependent on the distance between A and X rather than either of their respective velocities in any inertial reference frame, that would never be true.)

Yet the two situations are exactly the same. One observer says body A has potency, another observer says not. Thus potency is a false concept - which is the reason why it doesn’t figure in science.

You are right that the two situations are exactly the same. What you fail to note is that they are the same not only with respect to Newtonian motion but to Aristotelian motion. The bodies all have the potency to move past each other in any reference frame.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

To demand that the arguments of philosophy meet the scientific standard of " falsifiableness " makes one wonder how to justify truths based on Faith. It seems to me this standard leaves the value of Faith seriously compromized

Linus2nd