Questions I need answered to help defend the faith:

[James_S_Saint]

When I was younger, I heard a story;

A wolf whispered over the fence to the sheep, “Hey, you guys should come over here. Your Shepherd is just fleecing you.” One of the sheep answered back, “I have faith. Our Shepherd wouldn’t do that.”

Sometimes the issue is not the truth that is being brought to focus, but the alternative not being discussed.

 

[NowAgnostic]

Sorry to burst your buble, mechanism wrought its own ruin when it tried to explain all of objective reality. Sure it is great in the natural sciences, but it is wrong to think that everything can be understood in terms of intrinsic forces and particles.

No, it isn’t, basically, although we have to add waves, fields, etc., to the list of what things can be understood in terms of.

For example, if a particle can move from A to B, then it can move from B to A. Therefore you should see in some rare circumstances change running backwards. Have you ever seen a pile of ash turn back into a burning log? Or broken sheets of glass turn back into a complete sheet of glass? With the substantial form this does not occur because it is immutable.

We don’t need the idea of a substantial form to explain this. Physics tells us such a thing happening is incredibly, astronomically unlikely. But not absolutely impossible; it would happen under the right initial conditions, which argues against the idea of a substantial form.

Also what about the idea of particles, is this made out of particles? If the idea of particles is made out of particles, we would not be able to know particles because it would be made out of what we are trying to know. (Like seeing seeing, or smelling smelling)

I don’t follow the logic. Why is it impossible to know something made out of what we are trying to know? If what we are using to know it is made out of what we are trying to know, how is that relevant? We use the brain to learn about the brain, don’t we?

Now matter itself has to be either indeterminate or determinate. If it is determinate we must be able to identify it. (This does not mean we have to be able to locate it.) If we can identify it, it must be some kind of subatomic particle.

OK.

(In our modern scientific terms), but since it is the primary instance of matter, it would imply it was indestructible and unchangeable – which no particle is that we know of.

Why must the primary instance of matter be indestructible and unchangeable? And why assume it’s the subatomic particle?

So how are we to explain the destruction of a quark? Obviously materially the mater is converted into energy, as stated by the physical laws. Yet this change needs to be explained. We cannot explain this by particles moving by intrinsic forces – we ran out of particles.

??? We explain it by interaction with the quantum field. Maybe you want the quantum field to be your “primary instance of matter” - that is indestructible and unchangeable. BTW matter-energy equivalence doesn’t mean there is either matter or energy, it means the two are equivalent (cf. E = mc2).

The answer is the immaterial form is destroyed, and thus since prime matter is fundamentally indeterminate (pure potency) the substance (quark) ceases to exist.

Mechanism is an amazing methodology, but it cannot explain everything.

Interaction with the quantum field, resulting in the quark being destroyed and a photon of the right energy in its place, “explains” this just as well as positing that the immaterial form is destroyed. Meanwhile there is also a new immaterial form of the photon being created.

 

[Matthias123]

You are well out of date in your history of philosophy. Mechanism fell in the 20th century for trying to do just that. This does not mean we are going to go back to substantial forms, it just means that mechanism is methodological. It is a grievous to hold the notion that one school of philosophy can describe all of objective reality. This is what Pope John Paul II in Fides et Ratio called “philosophical pride”. Don’t get me wrong, mechanism is great, it can describe properties of matter much deeper then the substantial form can. It defeats the “the poppy makes one sleep because of the sleep inducing property” problem. Also since it is a bottom up explanatory method, it is well suited for the natural sciences. It cannot explain all of objective reality however.

Take for example Sea Urchin embryos, that have developed far enough along that we can determine the normal grown of each part, and when we divide them into two or three segments produce as many animals as there were artificial segments. Does this not point to the existence, in each embryo a simple principle, which is one in the whole organism and is entire with each part? Isn’t this contrary to the claim that Mechanism claims to reduce everything to the movements of the parts?

Physics tells us such a thing happening is incredibly, astronomically unlikely. But not absolutely impossible; it would happen under the right initial conditions, which argues against the idea of a substantial form.

Show me an instance of cosmic events being able to be reversed. There can be space-time loops. Yet between two linear points in space time, cosmic events are not going to reverse. I believe you are following into the errors of metaphysical reductionism (as opposed to methodological reductionism.) Or perhaps that itself is a conclusion that has been given with physics operating under metaphysical mechanism, in which case, I would reject this as absurd. This is an extraordinary claim that is going to require extraordinary evidence. If you want to convince someone that their dead grandfather could potentially crawl out of his grave, without some sort of miracle, then you are going to have to have a large amount of evidence indeed.

I don’t follow the logic. Why is it impossible to know something made out of what we are trying to know? If what we are using to know it is made out of what we are trying to know, how is that relevant? We use the brain to learn about the brain, don’t we?

Because we need to know the idea of what we are trying to know before we can actually know it. When I first know say a goldfish, my mind needs to know the idea of a gold fish – the idea precedes a posterior knowledge. So before we know matter we must first know the idea of matter. However if this idea is made out of matter, the idea would be made out of what we are trying to know, and we would never be able to know it.
The brain is still made out of matter, is it not? So what happens if I try to understand a brain that is slightly biologically more complex them my own? Or try to understand something that is more complex then my brain. Will I be able to understand this?

Why must the primary instance of matter be indestructible and unchangeable? And why assume it’s the subatomic particle?

Matter needs to be either determinate or indeterminate. (This does NOT mean being able to determine its location, but being able to determine “what it is”) If it is determinate, we need to be theoretically able to determine it. This is why the atomists and mechanists always held the notion that the particle was indestructible. Now since touchstone wants to talk about String theory, I will refer to a string. If this is not indestructible you need to be able to explain its structure. Usually, like good reductionists, we would reduce it to its parts – unfortunately you have run out of parts. Therefore if there is nothing smaller, it must be indeterminate. Yet if it was indeterminate ie, pure potency, or purely potential, it wouldn’t actually exist – thus we would be having imaginary strings vibrate in our precious 11th dimension – which is no good for anyone. Therefore we need a primus actus – first actuality – to explain why the string itself actually exists, and not just potentially existing.

Remember, physicists don’t care about this. If the string exists, that is all that matters – the exact ontological nature of the string is left to the metaphysician.

As to your last question, we don’t care if it is particle or a pink flying elephant.

??? We explain it by interaction with the quantum field. Maybe you want the quantum field to be your “primary instance of matter” - that is indestructible and unchangeable. BTW matter-energy equivalence doesn’t mean there is either matter or energy, it means the two are equivalent (cf. E = mc2).

Interaction with the quantum field, resulting in the quark being destroyed and a photon of the right energy in its place, “explains” this just as well as positing that the immaterial form is destroyed. Meanwhile there is also a new immaterial form of the photon being created.

Energy is a scalar physical property. Metaphysically it is something to be explained, not explain matter. It is always attached to something, whether it be matter or the fabric of space time. You don’t get energy existing when it is not a property of something. Thus energy is not an ontological entity; it is a property of an ontological entity. When the particle transforms into energy, this entity “particle” ceases to exist, and thus it results in a quantified property in another entity equal to the mass of the original entity (particle). I am not a fan of that “living energy thing”, that seems rather New Age to me.

 

[Matthias123]

Food for thought, one of the famous particle physics (I forget his name, he worked on the Manhattan project) wrote a book called “What ever happened to the substantial form?” . Also I know some Catholic physicists proposed adopting Thomistic ontology a while back.

 

[NowAgnostic]

You are well out of date in your history of philosophy. Mechanism fell in the 20th century for trying to do just that. This does not mean we are going to go back to substantial forms, it just means that mechanism is methodological… It cannot explain all of objective reality however.

Well yes it can. Physics → chemistry → biology → neuroscience → psychology → sociology. Meaning that biology is reducible to chemistry, which is reducible to physics. If I may say so, you are a little out of date in your knowledge of science.

Take for example Sea Urchin embryos, that have developed far enough along that we can determine the normal grown of each part, and when we divide them into two or three segments produce as many animals as there were artificial segments. Does this not point to the existence, in each embryo a simple principle, which is one in the whole organism and is entire with each part? Isn’t this contrary to the claim that Mechanism claims to reduce everything to the movements of the parts?

No. There is a perfectly acceptable biological, which ultimately reduces to chemical, and physical, explanation. The “simple principle” is simply the specific arrangement of the molecules.

Show me an instance of cosmic events being able to be reversed. There can be space-time loops. Yet between two linear points in space time, cosmic events are not going to reverse. I believe you are following into the errors of metaphysical reductionism (as opposed to methodological reductionism.) Or perhaps that itself is a conclusion that has been given with physics operating under metaphysical mechanism, in which case, I would reject this as absurd.

Well, just because you would reject this as absurd doesn’t mean it’s absurd, and physics refutes you. It can be proven that in a chamber full of gas, the gas will align itself to one half of the container, with the other half being a vacuum, under the right initial conditions (position and velocity of the molecules). It’s just that those initial conditions are so astronomically improbable. The nuclear reactions in the sun would reverse with the right combination of quantum events, it’s just that there is such a astronomically low probability. But it is not an absolute impossibility.

This is an extraordinary claim that is going to require extraordinary evidence.

The extraordinary evidence has been provided.

If you want to convince someone that their dead grandfather could potentially crawl out of his grave, without some sort of miracle, then you are going to have to have a large amount of evidence indeed.

We don’t fully understand the biological and neurobiological processes underlying life yet, if we ever will. But yes, at the quantum level, a series of the right events would result in your dead grandfather walking out of his grave.

Let’s take turning water into wine. Are there a series of highly unlikely events which would result in such a thing happening? Yes.

Because we need to know the idea of what we are trying to know before we can actually know it. When I first know say a goldfish, my mind needs to know the idea of a gold fish – the idea precedes a posterior knowledge.

And how do you learn ideas?. You don’t know it’s a goldfish until someone tells you it’s a goldfish. But even so, I don’t see the logic.

So before we know matter we must first know the idea of matter. However if this idea is made out of matter, the idea would be made out of what we are trying to know, and we would never be able to know it.

Still doesn’t follow. We can know a whole (an idea made of matter) before knowing its parts (the matter making it up).

The brain is still made out of matter, is it not? So what happens if I try to understand a brain that is slightly biologically more complex them my own? Or try to understand something that is more complex then my brain. Will I be able to understand this?

Not entirely, but who ever said the brain was capable of understanding everything?

Matter needs to be either determinate or indeterminate. (This does NOT mean being able to determine its location, but being able to determine “what it is”) If it is determinate, we need to be theoretically able to determine it. This is why the atomists and mechanists always held the notion that the particle was indestructible.

You didn’t really answer my question. You can say matter is particles and yet not hold that each of them is indestructible.

Now since touchstone wants to talk about String theory, I will refer to a string. If this is not indestructible you need to be able to explain its structure.

Why? And what if it is indestructible?

Usually, like good reductionists, we would reduce it to its parts – unfortunately you have run out of parts. Therefore if there is nothing smaller, it must be indeterminate.

Why?

Energy is a scalar physical property. Metaphysically it is something to be explained, not explain matter. It is always attached to something, whether it be matter or the fabric of space time. You don’t get energy existing when it is not a property of something. Thus energy is not an ontological entity; it is a property of an ontological entity. When the particle transforms into energy, this entity “particle” ceases to exist, and thus it results in a quantified property in another entity equal to the mass of the original entity (particle). I am not a fan of that “living energy thing”, that seems rather New Age to me.

Yes, this still doesn’t answer my argument, the energy is now the property of the photon, if you want to put it that way. There is still a perfectly good physical explanation which does not need the idea of substantial forms.

 

[NowAgnostic]

Food for thought, one of the famous particle physics (I forget his name, he worked on the Manhattan project) wrote a book called “What ever happened to the substantial form?” . Also I know some Catholic physicists proposed adopting Thomistic ontology a while back.

Good luck making it fit with quantum mechanics, and so on. Thomistic ontology is more or less “common sense” notions, but nature need not correspond with our common sense notions, and often it doesn’t. Of course some will try and retrofit modern findings onto what amounts to a Procrustean bed. It can only be done with difficulty, but it can be done. I highly doubt whether it will help the progress of science very much, though.

 

[reggieM]

I agree. Infinite punishment for finite crimes or sins is disproportionate and therefore unjust.

At the risk of running afoul of Godwin’s Law, take Hitler: more than 6,000,000 people were murdered at his command; how much punishment does that warrant? A thousand years of suffering for each of his victims? That would still mean that after 6,000,000,000 years, you’d say “okay - he’s had enough.” But this is still only an infinitesimal portion of an eternity. After a few tens of billions of years of torturing even Hitler, it would cross the line from “just punishment” to “unwarranted cruelty”.

This has been answered already but I’ll just expand on it.
The crimes you’re talking about are not finite – since they’re directed against an infinite being. So, with a crime against God, without the help of God to absolve the sin, the punishment can never be “enough”. The damage is at the infinite level.

For example, you explain that 6 million people were killed. However, you value the reparation due for each one as a thousand years. How do you know that God valued a person at only worth a thousand years punishment?

The killing of those persons was an offense against God because he created them for a purpose. So, sin is against God – it actually can never be repaired by a human alone. How would the human know how much punishment would be enough to repair the damage? Could Hitler create 6 million more people to repopulate the earth? He could not even give one person their life back.

Aside from this, there is the ripple effect. Those 6 millon had families who all suffered. The whole world suffered from the genocide in some way or another. The fact that we’re still talking about that evil means that the suffering persists. Hitler gave a bad example to the neo-Nazis of today … so the crime continues generation after generation. Why should Hitler be absolved from the full effects of his sin and only held accountable for killing the people alone?

It’s like stealing money from someone. It’s not enough to simply give the money back after some time. What if the person went bankrupt, lost their job, lost their family, became ill – all due to the theft that you did? Does returning the money pay for all of that?

This is the problem with sin and with justice.

God is perfectly just so He sees the impact of sin – and He knows that a human being who does not want to repent cannot have their guilt taken away.

That’s the pain of hell – a refusal to repent of sin and the impossibility of ever making the choice to repent later in the future.

 

[gearhead]

For example, if a particle can move from A to B, then it can move from B to A. Therefore you should see in some rare circumstances change running backwards. Have you ever seen a pile of ash turn back into a burning log?

Yes, I have.

After a forest fire, the new trees will take up the nutrients (i.e. the constituent parts) of the ash, and with the help of energy from the sun, convert them into new wood. Later, you or I come along and chop some trees down for firewood.

Anyone who’s familiar with the concept of compost knows that you can take rotten or broken-down plant matter and turn it into the stuff of new, living plants.

Or broken sheets of glass turn back into a complete sheet of glass?

Yes. Every glassworks uses recycled material. Along with post-consumer glass, they’ll also take the cuttings and the sheets that don’t pass quality control and feed them back into the process as a raw material.

In both cases, and in fact in virtually all cases, it’s quite easy to get order from disorder; all you need is the (name removed by moderator)ut of energy.

With the substantial form this does not occur because it is immutable.

Does the fact that form is quite mutable when supplied with energy imply that your concept of “substantial form” is incorrect?

 

[Touchstone]

How would you know if you have explained everything? When would you stop?

Like I said, it’s a point on the horizon that can’t be reached. For any given set of explanations, we can find something more fundamental than the other parts, and ask “Why is this fundamental the way it is? What gives this fundamental the properties and dynamics it has?”

You’re a software guy, right? Think of this a cousin of the Halting Problem.

Touchstone, this is not a word salad situation. Use a dictionary if you don’t know what the word means.

merriam-webster.com/dictionary/potency

Argh. I’m asking for fundamentals, not tautologies! A link to a dictionary entry is as word-salad as it gets, here. I’m not asking what ‘potency’ means in terms of definitions. I’m asking what potency is, fundamentally. What gives ‘potency’ it’s potency?

I always thought it was self-evident, but apparently it is not. What is higher then being? It is the top of the explanatory model.

What do you mean by “higher” here? In science, a ‘high level of description’ is established by the degrees of freedom in description. If have two levels of description, A and B, B is “higher”, if we can change the semantics and particulars of B without changing the implicaitons for A, necessarily. That is, B is “based on” A, and A is more fundamental. For example, biological descriptions can and do change without affecting the underlying physics. We cannot change the underlying physics without necessarily affecting the biological descriptions, which is the reason we say that biological descriptions are “higher” than physical descriptions.

But in your view of ontology, which you refer to as highest (but, because of language peculiarities I understand to be “lowest”, or most fundamental), I fail to understand any such relationship. If we change the physics, the “substantial form” seems unchange, and unchangeable. Change our ontology – drop ‘substantial form’ for some alternative concept, say – and physics chaanges? Don’t think so.

That suggests to me that Aristotelian ontology is a concept that’s not in the ontic chain for nature as we observe it. It’s not depedant, nor is it depended on. It’s like ‘color commentary’ coming from the side.

I don’t think you understand what I am talking about. Science operated on the substantial form until it was abandoned, and later due to mechanism committing suicide people are talking about them more now. After all, there was no reason for us to stop talking about them, its just mechanism was superior, and still is superior in explaining what the Aristotelians would call “accidental properties”.

Mechanism committing suicide? Whatever could that mean? Do you suppose mechanistic metaphysics are being abandoned? You must be reading very different journals than I read!

I have no idea what you are talking about. Metaphysical cosmology is about putting the universe in your hand and viewing it as a whole.

OK, well, we are at parity, then. I have no idea what that means as a metaphor.

I am not talking about physics, I am talking about metaphysics. Hence the term meta, “beyond” physics.

I understand the term. But that doesn’t ground it anything real, or descriptive of reality. I agree that such notions can be ‘ways of thinking about the nature of things’, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t fanciful, arbitrary, and simply intuitional over against operative knowledge.

No, Aristotle is running ahead of physics trying to define reality. Hence the term meta.

Yes, that’s a very apt description of the collossal error at work in Aristotle and Aquinas – trying to define reality. Facts and reality are stubborn things. We can try and describe them, with some level of performance, but we cannot define reality. We are part of reality, describing what is around us as best we can, not outside it, defining it.

I am conviced that you have read very little metaphysics as this is a very simple question. Can you explain to me the difference in change between mechanistic metaphysics and Aristotelian metaphysics? If not, read up on it – it is important.

You keep asking questions that demand book size answers to treat fairly, open ended, “busy work” questions. Please don’t do that. If you have something specific enough to take on here, fine. Mechanistic metaphysics posits a closed system – natural mechanics. That’s not a metaphysical claim of completeness, but the establishment of a perimeter in order to provide a coherent, uniform epistemology. Aristotelian metpahysics are “open”, unbounded, and have no such perimeter, and disastrously, no demonstrable epistemic foundation beyond bare intuition.

*Now *you sound like Hume. Yet you have not answered my question, how do you explain the destruction of a quark? I can.

OK, so here’s the crucial question: let’s see what your explanation provides by way of falsifiability. If your explanation were incorrect or nonsense, how would you know? If you have no means to do that, you have no actual explanation, but a word salad.

How would your explanation be falsified if it were, indeed, a false one?

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Matthias123:

So in otherwords, you don’t know, so I must not be able to know.

No, it’s not got anything to do with me. It has to do with how you qualify it as knowledge on your your own view. If you can’t distinguish it for me from naked assertion or appeal to intuition, there’s no point in calling it ‘knowledge’.

And, are they indestructible? If not, you better be ready to explain how indeterminate matter is structured to make these one-dimensional 11th dimensionally vibrating entities.

We don’t know. It’s an unknown. This is how knowledge works in the real world. We can imagine tests that in principle we move things forward on this, but it requires high energy technology for experiments that we don’t have, and don’t expect to have for a long time.

uh huh…like I said, if you can’t explain it because of your positivism, then nobody can. I think not. What happend to think horn of progress that you atheists are always sounding? Did you misplace it?

Well, I’m not a positivist - my primary test for qualifying knowledge is liability to falsification, not simply building a positive case for a hypothesis. But in any case, these tools are just tools, not gods or oracles. Building knowedge is hard work, and sometimes progresses very slowly for long periods of time. Some areas of knowledge are or may be intractable, indefinitely. When you have a means of qualifying knowledge, you have a way to know what is unkown, and where progress is slowed or halted.

Did I ever say I was talking about physics? You know there is this great thing called metaphysics that you should check out.

It’s not the checking out that’s the problem. It’s the “now what?” That’s the problem. Ok, so you understand ‘substantial forms’. Now what? What does that do for you, and how do you know it does whatever you claim?

Strings for example, invert the Aristotelian notion of form being an expression of matter. Instead, matter is an expression of form, so far as we can tell.

I’m saying something more general: ‘substantial form’ is no help one way or another, and doesn’t contribute to anything in terms of our knowledge on that. If anything, ‘substantial form’ leads us away from a clear view of the model for strings.

Like I said said above. I don’t think you understand Aristotle.

Yeah, that’s it. No application is forthcoming as to how Aristotle applies or qualifies, which is the sum of my objection, but the problem must be that I don’t understand him. This should be easy to show, if so – just start applying and qualifying!

-TS

 

[Matthias123]

Well yes it can. Physics → chemistry → biology → neuroscience → psychology → sociology. Meaning that biology is reducible to chemistry, which is reducible to physics. If I may say so, you are a little out of date in your knowledge of science.

Arghhh! Matthias smash! We are not talking about the natural sciences, we are talking about how the natural sciences relate to reality! I already said this like five times. Mechanism does not mean physics. Mechanism is a metaphysical theory, in the realm of ontology – we are talking about being.

No. There is a perfectly acceptable biological, which ultimately reduces to chemical, and physical, explanation. The “simple principle” is simply the specific arrangement of the molecules.

So, tell me, at this particular instant, how do you distinguish between the different the different embryonic life forms that are found within the embryo? As mechanistically it should be one life form (If you even hold mechanism can describe life), yet there are 3 living things.

Well, just because you would reject this as absurd doesn’t mean it’s absurd, and physics refutes you.

Not so. Once again, it is obvious that it is logically possible – it just isn’t metaphysically possible.

It can be proven that in a chamber full of gas, the gas will align itself to one half of the container, with the other half being a vacuum, under the right initial conditions (position and velocity of the molecules).

When did I ever say that this could not happen?

It’s just that those initial conditions are so astronomically improbable. The nuclear reactions in the sun would reverse with the right combination of quantum events, it’s just that there is such a astronomically low probability. But it is not an absolute impossibility.

If I all the people in North America decided to move over to Asia, do you think this would change “humanity” at all? I think not, we would just have more humans living in Asia. Now what if I told you that by moving all the people in North America in Asia would cause “humanity” to change back into “Neanderthals”? This is the kind of reversal I am talking about – a metaphysical reversal of cosmic events – a metaphysical impossibility. Once again, you are still not talking about what I am talking about – the movement of particles are not going to change the essence of anything.

The extraordinary evidence has been provided.

We don’t fully understand the biological and neurobiological processes underlying life yet, if we ever will. But yes, at the quantum level, a series of the right events would result in your dead grandfather walking out of his grave.

I would have to disagree. My dead grandfather might become biologically the same way he was, but he will still be a very dead grandmpa.

Let’s take turning water into wine. Are there a series of highly unlikely events which would result in such a thing happening? Yes.

Nice try. I enjoy the rhetoric, but I did not accept it from Decartes and I am not going to accept it from you.

And how do you learn ideas?. You don’t know it’s a goldfish until someone tells you it’s a goldfish. But even so, I don’t see the logic.

The idea is immaterial; it is not subject to this difficulty. Not so, you wouldn’t know the name of the species until someone told you it. You would still know the species by abstraction.

Still doesn’t follow. We can know a whole (an idea made of matter) before knowing its parts (the matter making it up).

Yes, and the whole is subject to the same problem, as I stated before.

Not entirely, but who ever said the brain was capable of understanding everything?

Aquanis did. He seems to be correct, as I would say the nuclear fusion going on at the center of a star is far more complex then our brain is. Unless our brain is the most complex thing that exists, we are going to run into problems. In addition it seems that we c**can ** understand everything.

You didn’t really answer my question. You can say matter is particles and yet not hold that each of them is indestructible.

You bet you can, and then you need to explain how they have structure.

Why? And what if it is indestructible?

Because if it is not indestructible you need to explain how it has structure. If it is not theoretically determinate it is indeterminate and thus pure potency. If it was indestructible we would need to as it would explain its own structure. Then we are in a happy reductionist dream world because everything will be made out of determinate matter.

 

[Matthias123]

Why?

Yes, this still doesn’t answer my argument, the energy is now the property of the photon, if you want to put it that way. There is still a perfectly good physical explanation which does not need the idea of substantial forms.

You are explaining what happens when a quark is destroyed. You are not explaining the instance of the destruction. Obviously the energy is transferred to the proton – there is not debating this, yet you are still not able to explain the destruction per se. As you cannot explain how it is even structured in the first place. If you cannot even explain how the particle has being (remember we are talking about ontology now, not physics) then you cannot explain its destruction, as explaining its destruction is just explaining the removing of its structure.

Good luck making it fit with quantum mechanics, and so on. Thomistic ontology is more or less “common sense” notions, but nature need not correspond with our common sense notions, and often it doesn’t. Of course some will try and retrofit modern findings onto what amounts to a Procrustean bed. It can only be done with difficulty, but it can be done. I highly doubt whether it will help the progress of science very much, though

I am sorry, but I cannot help but see this as an ad hominem against Saint Thomas. As it seems you are on the Touchstone bandwagon as you are calling all ontology common sense notions. So perhaps in your view we should not talk about ontology all together? Your attack on being is rather unwarranted, and I would even dare to say suspect. As you two seem to hold a radical empiricism that is absolutely unnecessary and, as it appears to me, quite hindering.

 

[Matthias123]

Like I said, it’s a point on the horizon that can’t be reached. For any given set of explanations, we can find something more fundamental than the other parts, and ask “Why is this fundamental the way it is? What gives this fundamental the properties and dynamics it has?”

Argh. I’m asking for fundamentals, not tautologies! A link to a dictionary entry is as word-salad as it gets, here. I’m not asking what ‘potency’ means in terms of definitions. I’m asking what potency is, fundamentally. What gives ‘potency’ it’s potency?

No, I am calling you on intellectual dishonesty. As you claim to have read Aristotle and Aquinas to the extent that you view them as absurd, and then you come and ask me a simple terminology question? Sorry, I am not going to explain Thomistic philosophy to you at this time– it would be a good idea to actually read it, and understand it.

What do you mean by “higher” here? In science, a ‘high level of description’ is established by the degrees of freedom in description. If have two levels of description, A and B, B is “higher”, if we can change the semantics and particulars of B without changing the implicaitons for A, necessarily. That is, B is “based on” A, and A is more fundamental. For example, biological descriptions can and do change without affecting the underlying physics. We cannot change the underlying physics without necessarily affecting the biological descriptions, which is the reason we say that biological descriptions are “higher” than physical descriptions.

Why must I keep reminding people that I am not talking about science? I am talking about metaphysics. Being is the first notion conceived by the intellect – the very top of the explanatory model. If you want further explanations read Aristotle, or Aquinas (De ente et essientia)

But in your view of ontology, which you refer to as highest (but, because of language peculiarities I understand to be “lowest”, or most fundamental), I fail to understand any such relationship. If we change the physics, the “substantial form” seems unchange, and unchangeable. Change our ontology – drop ‘substantial form’ for some alternative concept, say – and physics chaanges? Don’t think so.

Physics has nothing to do with anything. That is not the reason why we postulate ontology; the reason is we can explain more with it. There are a vast number of people in this world who cannot honestly accept materialism. I happen to be one of them – it is such a narrow and incomplete view of reality.

Mechanism committing suicide? Whatever could that mean? Do you suppose mechanistic metaphysics are being abandoned? You must be reading very different journals than I read!

I never said that. I am a fan of mechanism! I like mechanism! As a method for science, yes! As a method to explain properties, yes! As a complete metaphysic that can explain all of objective reality? No way.

OK, well, we are at parity, then. I have no idea what that means as a metaphor.

I understand the term. But that doesn’t ground it anything real, or descriptive of reality. I agree that such notions can be ‘ways of thinking about the nature of things’, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t fanciful, arbitrary, and simply intuitional over against operative knowledge.

Yes, that’s a very apt description of the collossal error at work in Aristotle and Aquinas – trying to define reality. Facts and reality are stubborn things. We can try and describe them, with some level of performance, but we cannot define reality. We are part of reality, describing what is around us as best we can, not outside it, defining it.

Like I said to NowAgonostic, you seem to adhere to a radical blend of empiricism, that I find offensive to human intellectual thought. You have too little trust in reason, and too much trust in the senses. Next of all, I do not believe you have studied Aquinas. I believe you skimmed it over, and then rejected it outright.

You keep asking questions that demand book size answers to treat fairly, open ended, “busy work” questions. Please don’t do that. If you have something specific enough to take on here, fine. Mechanistic metaphysics posits a closed system – natural mechanics. That’s not a metaphysical claim of completeness, but the establishment of a perimeter in order to provide a coherent, uniform epistemology. Aristotelian metpahysics are “open”, unbounded, and have no such perimeter, and disastrously, no demonstrable epistemic foundation beyond bare intuition.

The reason I am giving open ended busy work questions is because I don’t honestly think you know Aristotle or Aquinas. Sure you know of them, and you know many of the things that they taught, but I do not believe you really understand them. I am trying to urge you into reading into them more, to perhaps cure you of this radical empiricism you have. This does not mean rejecting mechanism! This does not mean rejecting anything science has to say! This means changing your epistemology to accept that reason, apart from experience can acquire useful, meaningful knowledge. I am an empiricist myself; I do believe that the knowledge gained from experience is more valuable. Yet to dismiss the other species of knowledge is an error.

OK, so here’s the crucial question: let’s see what your explanation provides by way of falsifiability. If your explanation were incorrect or nonsense, how would you know? If you have no means to do that, you have no actual explanation, but a word salad.

Falsifiability is not understood in the same way – it would be deemed incorrect if it was illogical and incoherent.

 

[Matthias123]

I don’t have time to answer you other post, look to my response to NowAgnostic.

 

[Matthias123]

After a forest fire, the new trees will take up the nutrients (i.e. the constituent parts) of the ash, and with the help of energy from the sun, convert them into new wood. Later, you or I come along and chop some trees down for firewood.

Anyone who’s familiar with the concept of compost knows that you can take rotten or broken-down plant matter and turn it into the stuff of new, living plants.

Yes. Every glassworks uses recycled material. Along with post-consumer glass, they’ll also take the cuttings and the sheets that don’t pass quality control and feed them back into the process as a raw material.

In both cases, and in fact in virtually all cases, it’s quite easy to get order from disorder; all you need is the (name removed by moderator)ut of energy.

All these are examples of something being reformed. Notice something is always doing the ordering. What I am talking about is a cosmic reversal, without a space-time loop, and without being reformed. In other words, magic.

Does the fact that form is quite mutable when supplied with energy imply that your concept of “substantial form” is incorrect?

It is not material, energy has nothing to do with it.

 

[Touchstone]

I am sorry, but I cannot help but see this as an ad hominem against Saint Thomas. As it seems you are on the Touchstone bandwagon as you are calling all ontology common sense notions. So perhaps in your view we should not talk about ontology all together? Your attack on being is rather unwarranted, and I would even dare to say suspect. As you two seem to hold a radical empiricism that is absolutely unnecessary and, as it appears to me, quite hindering.

This I find fascinating. What would you point at as the kind of knowledge “substantial forms” is producing, or should be producing over natural explanations?

It’s not really an attack I have in mind on Aristotelian ontology, it’s just the shrug of apathy. It adds nothing to the knowledge base that isn’t already there, so far as I can see, and what effect it does have is negative – confusion, the overloading of terms that are subtle and tricky as it is.

“To be is to be the value of a variable.” -Quine

That’s pretty deep as ontology goes, it turns out.

-TS

 

[Matthias123]

This I find fascinating. What would you point at as the kind of knowledge “substantial forms” is producing, or should be producing over natural explanations?

I already explained several situations where this ontology would be beneficial.

“To be is to be the value of a variable.” -Quine

I find it fascinating that you seem to drop your radical empiricism as soon as you start talking about mathematics. You do know that Cantor’s set theory came about by rationalism, not empiricism? In all honesty you do not seem consistent with your epistemology.

 

[Touchstone]

I already explained several situations where this ontology would be beneficial.

Hmmm. OK, will go read back. What’s the application that springs to mind when I say “Aristotelian ontology”?

I find it fascinating that you seem to drop your radical empiricism as soon as you start talking about mathematics. You do know that Cantor’s set theory came about by rationalism, not empiricism? In all honesty you do not seem consistent with your epistemology.

Math is not the real world. It’s an awesome tool to model parts of the real world with, but it’s a map, not the territory itself. Here’s a good article I’ve referred people to on this previously, as somehow people get the idea that thninkers are either “rationalists” in some way that annihilates empiricism, or vice versa. If you took to people that work in science or knowledge building, you’ll find most are a a mix, employing both in different areas – different tools for different tasks:

Rationalism vs. Empiricism

A relevant quote or two:

I have stated the basic claims of rationalism and empiricism so that each is relative to a particular subject area. Rationalism and empiricism, so relativized, need not conflict. We can be rationalists in mathematics or a particular area of mathematics and empiricists in all or some of the physical sciences. Rationalism and empiricism only conflict when formulated to cover the same subject. Then the debate, Rationalism vs. Empiricism, is joined. The fact that philosophers can be both rationalists and empiricists has implications for the classification schemes often employed in the history of philosophy, especially the one traditionally used to describe the Early Modern Period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries leading up to Kant.

and:

The rationalist/empiricist classification also encourages us to expect the philosophers on each side of the divide to have common research programs in areas beyond epistemology. Thus, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz are mistakenly seen as applying a reason-centered epistemology to a common metaphysical agenda, with each trying to improve on the efforts of the one before, while Locke, Berkeley and Hume are mistakenly seen as gradually rejecting those metaphysical claims, with each consciously trying to improve on the efforts of his predecessors. In short, the labels ‘rationalist’ and ‘empiricist,’ as well as the slogan that is the title of this essay, ‘Rationalism vs. Empiricism,’ used carelessly can retard rather than advance our understanding.

Note that I took pains on Cantor references to make clear that his work is NOT a demonstration of actual infinities in the real world. I’m not pushing Cantor or a rationalist concept into empirical territory by saying that such an infinity does or must exist, over and agains any (lacking) empirical data. It’s just plenty enough to collapse Craig’s premise, and put paid to his hand waving about how infinities produce absurdities when we apply cardinal operations to them (which they do, so what?!?). If one can grasp Cantor, and Craig is plenty bright enough, Craig’s objection is a ridiculous one.

Craig’s mathematical stance on Kalam and infinity is bogus, and math – not empirical evidence, which is just a bit difficult on this issue of ultimate origins (we wouldn’t be having the debate if we had this empirical evidence!) – is all that’s needed to show this.

Use the right tools for the job!

-TS

 

[NowAgnostic]

Arghhh! Matthias smash! We are not talking about the natural sciences, we are talking about how the natural sciences relate to reality! I already said this like five times. Mechanism does not mean physics. Mechanism is a metaphysical theory, in the realm of ontology – we are talking about being.

Let’s go to good old Wikipedia:

In philosophy, mechanism is the theory that all natural phenomena can be explained by laws of nature.

This is what you mean, isn’t it? So mechanism does mean physics (laws of nature). Your claim was there were things mechanism couldn’t explain, you gave examples, and I showed how mechanism could explain then.

So, tell me, at this particular instant, how do you distinguish between the different the different embryonic life forms that are found within the embryo? As mechanistically it should be one life form (If you even hold mechanism can describe life), yet there are 3 living things.

No there aren’t, there’s only one living thing before the split. There are three after it. It’s your metaphysics which has to worry about where these extra forms came from - physically (chemically, biologically), there’s a perfectly good description and explanation.

Not so. Once again, it is obvious that it is logically possible – it just isn’t metaphysically possible.

You can refuse to accept the conclusions of physics which simply puts you in denial. We are not going to bow to the supposed “authority” of metaphysicians - the metaphysicians who say such a thing is impossible are simply wrong. You wonder why “classical” metaphysics has taken such a beating. It’s not because Aristotle and Aquinas are misunderstood. It’s because modern science has simply refuted it.

When did I ever say that this could not happen?

So you get an apparent violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, yes? This is the only reason (physically speaking) why macroscopic processes don’t run backwards. Once you admit such a thing can happen the whole rest of your argument disappears.

If I all the people in North America decided to move over to Asia, do you think this would change “humanity” at all? I think not, we would just have more humans living in Asia. Now what if I told you that by moving all the people in North America in Asia would cause “humanity” to change back into “Neanderthals”?

That’s ridiculous, and you can do better than putting up silly straw men.

This is the kind of reversal I am talking about – a metaphysical reversal of cosmic events – a metaphysical impossibility.

You maintain it is impossible for humans to devolve into Neanderthals. Whereas, you well know the right combination of genetic mutations would cause that to happen.

Once again, you are still not talking about what I am talking about – the movement of particles are not going to change the essence of anything.

Yes they are going to change the essence of things. Chemical reactions change the essence of things. Genetic mutations change the essence of things. Quantum events (e.g. radioactive decay) change the essence of things.

To something I already agreed to and thought of as ordinary.

Once you agree there can be apparent local violations of the 2LoT, the game is over for you. That is the only reason there is irreversibility in events. It doesn’t matter how much you claim things are “metaphysically impossible”, you are just wrong.

I would have to disagree. My dead grandfather might become biologically the same way he was, but he will still be a very dead grandmpa.

Well if he had a beating heart, working lungs, a working brain, and was talking coherently I’d say he wasn’t a very dead grandpa.

Nice try. I enjoy the rhetoric, but I did not accept it from Decartes and I am not going to accept it from you.

It doesn’t matter. A series of highly unlikely chemical reactions (with the presence of a little carbon) would turn water into wine.

The idea is immaterial; it is not subject to this difficulty. Not so, you wouldn’t know the name of the species until someone told you it. You would still know the species by abstraction.

An unsupported assertion.

Yes, and the whole is subject to the same problem, as I stated before.

No, it isn’t. We can know water before knowing hydrogen and oxygen, wouldn’t you agree?

Aquanis did. He seems to be correct, as I would say the nuclear fusion going on at the center of a star is far more complex then our brain is.

No, nuclear fusion is much, much simpler than our brain.

Unless our brain is the most complex thing that exists, we are going to run into problems.

And it is the most complex thing that exists. The average adult brain has about 100 billion neurons.

You bet you can, and then you need to explain how they have structure.

Why?

Because if it is not indestructible you need to explain how it has structure.

Again, why? It isn’t destroyed by being broken down into parts.

If it is not theoretically determinate it is indeterminate and thus pure potency. If it was indestructible we would need to as it would explain its own structure. Then we are in a happy reductionist dream world because everything will be made out of determinate matter.

Particles are “indestructible” in the sense that when they are “destroyed”, they are actually just changed into other particles. I still don’t see where you’re going with this.

 

[NowAgnostic]

Because then its structure will have no explanation as it is not composed of anything. It is like a house not being composed of building materials. It is a whole without being composed of any parts – ie the whole cannot be explained – that is the whole concept of reductionism, explain the whole by reducing it to the movements of its parts.

Well at some point you have to get to the “fundamental” unit - something which is the part that has no component parts, obviously, in a reductionist framework. Your argument seems to be that this part cannot be destroyed - destruction in your view meaning breaking down of something into component parts. And yet we see quarks and leptons being “destroyed” - actually, they’re changed into other particles.

You are explaining what happens when a quark is destroyed. You are not explaining the instance of the destruction. Obviously the energy is transferred to the proton – there is not debating this, yet you are still not able to explain the destruction per se. As you cannot explain how it is even structured in the first place.
If you cannot even explain how the particle has being (remember we are talking about ontology now, not physics) then you cannot explain its destruction, as explaining its destruction is just explaining the removing of its structure.

OK, yes, this is your argument then. Sorry if I was dense for not understanding at first where you were going with this. So your explanation is that a quark has a substantial, immaterial form which is destroyed and then another substantial, immaterial form is created for whatever the quark decayed into? It might be a good argument. More tomorrow. I’d like to ask you what experiment are you referring to when you refer to the destruction of a quark?

But physics can certainly not explain how a particle “has being”. Because, before measurement, what you have is a wave-function. The complete description of reality is the wave-function of the entire universe. A “particle” is a part of that wave function which more or less factorizes, but not completely. This is, in reality, quite arbitrary. There is no specific reason why we should separate the wave function in that way or single anything out. And yet, the wave function provides a “mechanistic” description of physical reality (at least what is observed).

I am sorry, but I cannot help but see this as an ad hominem against Saint Thomas. As it seems you are on the Touchstone bandwagon as you are calling all ontology common sense notions. So perhaps in your view we should not talk about ontology all together? Your attack on being is rather unwarranted, and I would even dare to say suspect. As you two seem to hold a radical empiricism that is absolutely unnecessary and, as it appears to me, quite hindering.

I’m willing to accept necessary truths in ontology (e.g. law of identity, etc.) But some of ontology I find suspect. Where’s the logical proof?