St. Thomas Aquinas...Help me understand the 5 proofs

[Linusthe2nd]

Here’s an article I wrote for my school newspaper, hope it helps.

Repeat using copy and paste.

Linus2nd

 

[Peter_Plato]

All it means is that the cause and effect occur over the same period of time, as opposed to in a single instant (ie. as opposed to being perfectly inelastic). I don’t care what Oxford dictionary says, as dictionaries do not capture the philosophical usage of terms. But I don’t see what is opaque about simultaneous as opposed to instantaneous. Both occur “at the same time,” but the latter requires that cause and effect exist in a single instant, which is an implausible claim. The former simply requires that they occur over the same period of time.

Too much of a focus on simultaneity may not quite resolve the issue. Feser actually denies that simultaneity is the crucial feature, opting instead for the idea of instrumentality. My understanding is that a per se ordered series is in all respects identical to an ‘essentially’ ordered series.

In the “Beguiled by Scientism” blogpost, Feser addresses this point.

“The series is ‘essentially ordered’ because the later members of the series, having no independent power of motion on their own, derive the fact of their motion and their ability to move other things from the first member, in this case the hand.” (TLS, p. 93)

In other words, when defining what makes something an essentially ordered series, I explicitly appealed to instrumentality, not simultaneity. Yes, the example involves simultaneity, but that’s not the salient characteristic. (Note also that I refer here to the hand as “the first member” even though later on I say that it is not strictly speaking the first member – the point of the example was to introduce the concepts, which it does adequately even if it is stated loosely.)

Blogger Mike Flynn in a comment on that Feser post clarified the question with an example…

What little I know about essential ordering is that a causal chain A->B->C is essentially ordered if the ability of B to cause C depends upon the present action of A. It is not that “first A happens, then B happens, then…” because no cause or effect happens instantaneously. Essentially-ordered series are causally simultaneous even if there is a trivial temporal lag in the “beginning to be” aspect of the change due to material causation. That is, causation is not the same thing as “beginning to change.” It’s an open set, not a closed one. It’s really more topology than physics. The apple ripens because of the sunshine and will not ripen in the absence of sunshine; and this is true even if first the sunshine “begins to” bathe the apple and then the apple “begins to” ripen.

If I recall, a classic example of this idea is a train engine pulling a number of cars ending in a caboose. Although the car immediately in front of the caboose is doing the “actual” pulling of the caboose, of itself that car is only instrumental to the engine which does the actual work. The time “lag” between the engine starting and the caboose beginning to be pulled is not relevant because it is the pull of the engine that essentially pulls the caboose. All of the other cars are “essentially” being pulled by the engine because they have no causal power of their own. The series between the engine and the caboose is ordered per se to the causal power of the engine by the fact that the engine is the cause of the movement of every car between the engine and caboose. Without it there would be no causal chain of motion, even if the motion between the engine and caboose had a short temporal “lag” or even a longer “infinite” lag if the train had an infinite number of cars.

My suspicion is that such examples are only illustrative rather than logically crucial. It is more the dependency of effect on the cause, rather than time, that is the crucial feature.

Transpose this idea from motion to causation, generally; whether that entails the coming into existence of something or actualizing some potentiality. Tracing the essential causal “train” for any effect would seem more a matter, perhaps, of necessity and sufficiency - identifying the causal elements in a series without which the effect could not have occurred. That contingent series would take us back to a necessary or first cause, which would have to be an uncaused one in order to logically end the sequence AND sufficiently explain the sequence itself.

If effect, the reason I think Aquinas distinguishes between per se and per accidens series is to keep the explanatory pursuit from going off on tangents that do not focus on the necessary causal conditions.

 

[Peter_Plato]

From the same blogpost, Feser makes this point…

…the idea of a per se or essentially ordered causal series has … to do with the instrumental character of (all but one of) such a series’ causes, their having (apart from the first member) no independent causal power. (Examples of simultaneous causes and effects are useful for illustrating the idea, and such a series is bound to trace eventually to a first cause operating here and now; but simultaneity per se is not what is doing the philosophical work.)

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Fr. John A. Weisheipl in Motion and Motin in the Middle Ages points out that the phrase “… Omne autem quod movetur ab alio movetur…” has been historically misunderstood or mistranslated. What it means is that " …whatever is moved is moved by another…" It does not mean that "… everything moving is being moved here and now by something else…( or some similar phrase ). Thomas points out in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics that " Nature is the cause of motion and rest in those things to which it belongs per se… "

This means that a moving object in space ( assuming a perfect void ) will continue moving forever ( unless obstructed by some opposing force ) by nature or naturally. This is because God, in creating the object, created along with it a nature such that it would continue moving once it receives an impetus from some source. In other words God is the effecient cause of the motion ( having created the object with such a nature ), but there is no " immediate " or " simultaneous " cause for the motion other than its own nature, it is not being moved by another - unless you want to consider God as that " other."

It will be observed that God is not a presently acting effecient cause, he is not now moving the object, the object is moving naturally by its natural power. That is how a bird flys, naturally. So it is not necessary for an effecient cause to be " touching " the effect here and now or simultaneously. This " immediate " envolvement of the effecient cause is another error that has existed in philosophy texts for nearly 800 years - it comes from not reading all of Thomas’ works, especially his commentaries on the Physics and Metaphysics, it comes from one textbook copying another ad infinitum.

An " immediate, " " touching " effecient cause is necessary only when a moving object is moving or changing in a way contrary to nature.
.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I think the Church knows what it is doing. " Conversion " and " change " mean the same thing…
I read your " sources " and disagree with their interpretation as I do with yours. But let’s get off this particular side bar, since it really has no bearing on the topic and can lead to confusion in the minds of the public - Catholic and non-Catholic.
Linus2nd

L2 we have shown your original dogmatic position (based on a “fundamentalist” approach to the English version of the CCC comparable to that of a Protestant worshipping the King James Bible (as opposed to the Vulgate or the Septuagint or the five main Codices)) is naiive from a scholarly point of view. We provided a range of very credible and solid evidence to support that view.

Not the least of which is the original Latin of Trent which the CCC is quoting.
All scholarly translations of Trent use the word Convert and not Change for a very good philosophic (and accurate Latin translation) reason due to past debates which you appear unaware of.

You persist in your solitary point of view expecting readers to accept your assumption that the English CCC is more scholarly than pastoral in intent and target audience - which most of us know is humbug. We also know that the official CCC was released in Latin and you are holding as “sacred” a typo done by someone who was not quite up to the job on this point or exhausted and thinking of dinner. It is clearly a poor translation.

You remind me of the story of the great Tai Chi Master who decided at the end of his life to reveal his full training form to his closest chosen disciples. They all followed his moves with great exactitude and even when he quietly sneezed they imitated that shudder too and each passed this form on to their own disciples unto many generations as the height of Tai Chi skill. Don’t make that mistake .

So if you want to keep your intellectual credibility maybe you need to actually source some form of authority that clearly agrees with you or, methinks better, hold your peace .

 

[Blue_Horizon]

All it means is that the cause and effect occur over the same period of time, as opposed to in a single instant (ie. as opposed to being perfectly inelastic).

Well if its means only this then the proposition is so banal and so self-evidentially tautological as to be of no relevance to conversation philosophic or otherwise. Who ever heard of cause and effect not being in the “same period of time”. That, by definition, is what cause/effect obviously already means which not even Quasimodo would deny .

If this is all we are quibbling about then do you now agree with my original assertion below?:
"…it seems time is intrinsic to the definition of sensible change and therefore of efficient causality… All worldly change, by definition, requires some duration of … time to be associated with the [chain of] instrumental causes. "

I’m not denying that changes occur over periods of time. That is indeed what is meant by “simultaneous” as opposed to “instantaneous” (occuring in a single instant).
I don’t care what Oxford dictionary says, as dictionaries do not capture the philosophical usage of terms.

What an extraordinary approach to philosophy . You seem to believe in the divine right of the high priesthood of philosophers to tell the rabble what their own words mean?
I put it to you that this imposition of elitist jargon into philosophic discussion is the death of philosophy and is the solipsistic intellectual equivalent of trying to procreate alone.
This is a deep modern day problem (since C16) with the Church’s valuable philosophic heritage and this approach (if not hyperbole for the sake of rhetoric effect) will continue to condemn that heritage to the dustbins of history and irrelevance. If philosophy cannot communicate itself sensibly in the language of the people it is dead or effete.

As I opined below:
"On cultural definitions depends whether or not the words/principles are used analogically or univocally. Who decides what is a correct definition. And would this have some bearing on the validity of the logic used? "
If you want to influence me, an educated Englishman of my times, use our language and definitions not your arcane ones of the past that had no science worthy of the name.

All that is absolutely necessary to the significations of “cause” and “effect” is that there is a priority to cause and some sense of dependence of the effect on the cause. There does not seem to be a prima facie case against excluding logical priority.

Nobody here denies the imputation of logical priority as essential to the definition of change and cause/effect. What is under discussion is the co-necessity of temporal priority/duration between cause/effect as well.

If you come up with a definition of cause/effect that does not include temporal priority/duration between the two then you no longer speak of “cause/effect” or “change” as used in the sensible world from which those common definitions derive.
By all means use these words in metaphysical discussion but lets not pretend the meanings are univocal - they are but a distant analogical usage until proven otherwise.

Hence I maintain that the logic of Aquinas’s “proof” based on instrumental causality (ie from cause/effect as seen operating in the sensible world) has significant speed-wobbles that need to be solved before that metaphysical conclusion can well fly.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Feser actually denies that simultaneity is the crucial feature, opting instead for the idea of instrumentality. … In the “Beguiled by Scientism” blogpost, Feser addresses this point.

I agree it is not the core argument but the definitions used in the core argument must rationally account for duration to be valid.

For example if we accept that Aquinas’s definition of “simultaneity” is the same as that of common modern English (involving the passage of at least some time between cause and effect in a finite chain of instrumental causality) then can the possible Eternity of the World be held as Aquinas agrees with Aristotle? That is, if each “instrument cause” has completed its effect so that the next cause may operate and “reach out to us over time today” AND each instrument cause must have taken a finite amount of time to produce its effect AND the chain of instruments is finite… then it seems unavoidable to conclude that the world is not Eternal.

The only way, it seems to me, that this line of argument can fall over is if Aquinas actually means something other than “simultaneous” by that word OR there is an aspect of efficient/instrumental causality that needs to be differentiated out. It looks like there may be different modes of instrumental causality that are being confused which conflates logical/temporal priority in some way:shrug:.

 

[polytropos]

Well if its means only this then the proposition is so banal and so self-evidentially tautological as to be of no relevance to conversation philosophic or otherwise. Who ever heard of cause and effect not being in the “same period of time”. That, by definition, is what cause/effect obviously already means which not even Quasimodo would deny .

It is not an entirely obvious point. As this thread demonstrates, people tend to gape at the suggestion that a cause need not precede an effect temporally. But what has to be disambiguated is an account of ontological, simultaneous, and instrumental causality from its analogue (ie. the father producing the son).

If this is all we are quibbling about then do you now agree with my original assertion below?:
"…it seems time is intrinsic to the definition of sensible change and therefore of efficient causality… All worldly change, by definition, requires some duration of … time to be associated with the [chain of] instrumental causes. "

Well, As Peter Plato has pointed out, it is the instrumentality which is truly fundamental. But I think in the case of sensible case, time figures inevitably (though not exhaustively).

What an extraordinary approach to philosophy . You seem to believe in the divine right of the high priesthood of philosophers to tell the rabble what their own words mean?
I put it to you that this imposition of elitist jargon into philosophic discussion is the death of philosophy and is the solipsistic intellectual equivalent of trying to procreate alone.
This is a deep modern day problem (since C16) with the Church’s valuable philosophic heritage and this approach (if not hyperbole for the sake of rhetoric effect) will continue to condemn that heritage to the dustbins of history and irrelevance. If philosophy cannot communicate itself sensibly in the language of the people it is dead or effete.

Oh please. Philosophy is a science and has its own terms. There is no specialized field of knowledge which defines its terms by cracking open a dictionary.

More to the point, the dictionary is going to give a definition of simultaneous, but what we are interested in is a definition of simultaneous as opposed to instantaneous. The words can be used interchangeably in general, non-philosophical contexts, but if one is interested in the distinction that they can be used to denote, then the dictionary won’t help us there.

Nobody here denies the imputation of logical priority as essential to the definition of change and cause/effect. What is under discussion is the co-necessity of temporal priority/duration between cause/effect as well.

If you come up with a definition of cause/effect that does not include temporal priority/duration between the two then you no longer speak of “cause/effect” or “change” as used in the sensible world from which those common definitions derive.
By all means use these words in metaphysical discussion but lets not pretend the meanings are univocal - they are but a distant analogical usage until proven otherwise.

Why say “temporal priority/duration”? Temporal priority and temporal duration are not the same thing. Simultaneous/instrumental instances of causality in the sensible world occur over some duration of time. But the cause qua instrumental is simultaneous with the change it imparts.

I haven’t claimed that the meanings of “cause” and “effect” are univocal. One can analogically call a father the cause of his son. The sense of “cause” there is related to, though different from, the sense of calling hands the cause of the shaping of a pot at the moment they are shaping it. The usages are clearly not equivocal, and neither usage is divorced from common language or sensible experience. But it is only the latter case that to which we refer in Aquinas’s arguments.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

L2 we have shown your original dogmatic position (based on a “fundamentalist” approach to the English version of the CCC comparable to that of a Protestant worshipping the King James Bible (as opposed to the Vulgate or the Septuagint or the five main Codices)) is naiive from a scholarly point of view. We provided a range of very credible and solid evidence to support that view.

Not the least of which is the original Latin of Trent which the CCC is quoting.
All scholarly translations of Trent use the word Convert and not Change for a very good philosophic (and accurate Latin translation) reason due to past debates which you appear unaware of.

You persist in your solitary point of view expecting readers to accept your assumption that the English CCC is more scholarly than pastoral in intent and target audience - which most of us know is humbug. We also know that the official CCC was released in Latin and you are holding as “sacred” a typo done by someone who was not quite up to the job on this point or exhausted and thinking of dinner. It is clearly a poor translation.

You remind me of the story of the great Tai Chi Master who decided at the end of his life to reveal his full training form to his closest chosen disciples. They all followed his moves with great exactitude and even when he quietly sneezed they imitated that shudder too and each passed this form on to their own disciples unto many generations as the height of Tai Chi skill. Don’t make that mistake .

So if you want to keep your intellectual credibility maybe you need to actually source some form of authority that clearly agrees with you or, methinks better, hold your peace .

You can make whatever false accusations you please, my explanation is perfectly orthodox and it is what the Church teaches, it is what T.A. teaches. There are no better explanations, none more thrue. Your problem is that you refuse to listen and then make one excuse after another.

Linus2nd

 

[Peter_Plato]

I agree it is not the core argument but the definitions used in the core argument must rationally account for duration to be valid.

For example if we accept that Aquinas’s definition of “simultaneity” is the same as that of common modern English (involving the passage of at least some time between cause and effect in a finite chain of instrumental causality) then can the possible Eternity of the World be held as Aquinas agrees with Aristotle? That is, if each “instrument cause” has completed its effect so that the next cause may operate and “reach out to us over time today” AND each instrument cause must have taken a finite amount of time to produce its effect AND the chain of instruments is finite… then it seems unavoidable to conclude that the world is not Eternal.

No. There is no unavoidable conclusion about the cause from the effect(s) because the nature of the cause could be far more extensive - in every way possible - from the effect.

If the Uncaused Cause is omnipotent and omniscient it need not entail the effect will be. In fact, if the Uncaused Cause is eternal the effect could be either of infinite or limited temporally.

A musician playing a song could make the song 5 minutes long or two hours long. The audible music is caused per se and instrumentally, both in a literal and a metaphysical sense by the musician. The length of the song need not imply anything about the nature of the musician because the musician has the capacity to autonomously determine the duration of the music.

If creation of the universe by God is analogically like music being played by a musician, God could, like the musician, make a “decision” regarding the duration of the universe, it could last an infinitely long time or a very short time. The length would be determined by God, not by the nature of creation as the effect.

You might also be confusing “eternal” which means “not temporal” or “without reference to time” with infinite which means, regarding duration, “without either a distinct beginning or end or with neither.”

The universe could have infinite or finite duration and neither of these possibilities have anything to do with God as Uncaused Cause since he exists eternally, that is unconstrained by time. Things that change require time as an aspect of that change. God is unchanging and is not restricted to time. That is an aspect of “Uncaused” in Uncaused Cause.

Caused causes do have limitations by the fact that they depend upon their cause as a limiting factor. The Uncaused Cause, not being caused or dependent upon some other has, in principle, no limitations.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

You can make whatever false accusations you please, my explanation is perfectly orthodox and it is what the Church teaches, it is what T.A. teaches. There are no better explanations, none more thrue. Your problem is that you refuse to listen and then make one excuse after another.

Linus2nd

And still you are unable to provide countering authoritative sources to support your, as yet, merely personal and totally unsupported view re “what the Church teaches” .

 

[Blue_Horizon]

All [simultaneous] means is that the cause and effect occur over the same period of time …It is not an entirely obvious point.

Seems pretty obvious to me that sensible cause/effect occur over the same time period :confused. If they weren’t why would we call something an “effect”?

As this thread demonstrates, people tend to gape at the suggestion that a cause need not precede an effect temporally.

No, people only gape when we say that sensible causes do not precede sensible effects or when we say a sensible effect is simultaneous (arises at the same instant) with its sensible cause. So if sensible reality (from where we learn the meaning of “cause” and “effect”) always involves a time gap (“duration”) how is it that you suddenly start defining “cause” differently? IE “a cause need not preceed an effect”.

So your metaphysical “cause” here is not readily seen to be exactly the same as the “cause” we see in sensible change. Hence the metaphysical usage must be regarded as analogical until proven otherwise.

Well, As Peter Plato has pointed out, it is the instrumentality which is truly fundamental. But I think in the case of sensible case, time figures inevitably (though not exhaustively).

Not quite sure what you mean by “not exhaustively”? Can you advise a case where the sensible instrumental cause does not precede its temporal effect?

Oh please. Philosophy is a science and has its own terms. There is no specialized field of knowledge which defines its terms by cracking open a dictionary.

Its not an all or nothing case. If every word philosopher’s used was “its own term” it would be a completely new language which nobody would understand. The point I make is that if even the basic words of a philosophic system inevitably contradict that meaning derived from sensible signification then that system has little new to say.
This happens all the time with Scholasticism when transliterated into english. For example:
(1) Jesus’s “body” is fully present in the Eucharist - hmmmn.
(2) Disembodied souls retain use of the faculty of “memory” yet that doesn’t include sensible or historical particulars - hmmmn.

You say philosophy is a “science” yet I am sure if I asked you to tease that out we would also discover that it isn’t “science” as most englishmen define that word for much of it is considered “non falsifiable” is it not? And if philosophy is not well considered a science by those who are not scholastic philosphers then it seems solipsistic for some scholastics to keep pushing this line.

Why say “temporal priority/duration”? Temporal priority and temporal duration are not the same thing.

Correct, that is exactly why I distinguish them here.
And having distinguished them I believe that in sensible change cause always precedes effect (if a perfectly inelastic world was possible) and aslo on a “timeline” there will be a certin duration of time between the two.

Simultaneous/instrumental instances of causality in the sensible world occur over some duration of time. But the cause qua instrumental is simultaneous with the change it imparts.

You have redefined the word “cause” to exclude a property (ie temporaL duration) that is always present in the world of change from which we derived the word “cause” in the first place. So that prima facie means “cause” is now being used in two different but related ways (ie analogical use). What is your justification for saying that the words can be used univocally (and hence sensible change need not involve time duration between cause and effect)? I know of no example of sensible change that doesn’t involve a finite duration of time?

If you still think that the potter’s hands and the clay are such an example I (and many scientists to boot) would have serious concerns about your appreciation of modern Physics.

I haven’t claimed that the meanings of “cause” and “effect” are univocal.

Yes I agree there are senses where this is true. But not in the present context.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

And still you are unable to provide countering authoritative sources to support your, as yet, merely personal and totally unsupported view re “what the Church teaches” .

Your obstancy in this matter and in others elswhere is mystifying. The English and American bishops use a translation of the CCC which has been approved by Rome. That authority is as solid as you can get. And the Latin of T.A. agrees with this translation. You are attempting to set yourself up as the authority. That just doesn’t wash.

Linus2nd

 

[Peter_Plato]

No, people only gape when we say that sensible causes do not precede sensible effects or when we say a sensible effect is simultaneous (arises at the same instant) with its sensible cause. So if sensible reality (from where we learn the meaning of “cause” and “effect”) always involves a time gap (“duration”) how is it that you suddenly start defining “cause” differently? IE “a cause need not preceed an effect”.

So your metaphysical “cause” here is not readily seen to be exactly the same as the “cause” we see in sensible change. Hence the metaphysical usage must be regarded as analogical until proven otherwise.

Not quite sure what you mean by “not exhaustively”? Can you advise a case where the sensible instrumental cause does not precede its temporal effect?

A lectern stands at the front of a stage. I walk up to the lectern and place a book on it. What is the cause of the book being suspended above the floor of the stage? Obviously, the lectern is “holding” the book, i.e., causing the book to be held in its current location. When did the lectern start holding the book up? At the same instant as the book was placed on the lectern, perhaps? The lectern could not hold up the book before the book was placed on it, so the lectern’s holding up the book (cause) is simultaneous with the book being held up (effect.)

 

[polytropos]

Seems pretty obvious to me that sensible cause/effect occur over the same time period :confused. If they weren’t why would we call something an “effect”?

Sometimes I cannot tell whether or not we disagree. If sensible cause/effect occur over the same time period, then the point that I am making–that causes and effects can be simultaneous–is true.

No, people only gape when we say that sensible causes do not precede sensible effects or when we say a sensible effect is simultaneous (arises at the same instant) with its sensible cause. So if sensible reality (from where we learn the meaning of “cause” and “effect”) always involves a time gap (“duration”) how is it that you suddenly start defining “cause” differently? IE “a cause need not preceed an effect”.

But you’ve said that “sensible cause/effect occur over the same time period.” So imagine you walk into a room and see a person who has already been spinning a pot on a pottery wheel. The causation that you see is simultaneous, and the change in the pot is instrumentally dependent on the action of the potter. Where is the “time gap”? The causing is a continual process, and at each moment the cause and the effect both exist. So clearly “a cause need not precede an effect” (temporally).

If your beef is with the initiation of the causation, then that does not defeat the relevant point, since what Aquinas’s arguments need to start are some instances of simultaneous, instrumental causality, not that all things which we call “cause” are paradigm cases of such.

Not quite sure what you mean by “not exhaustively”? Can you advise a case where the sensible instrumental cause does not precede its temporal effect?

Well, Feser’s example, where Peter linked to him, is of someone pushing a stick through a wormhole. The end of the stick comes out of another wormhole at some time in the past and pushes something. Its pushing is an instance of instrumental causality, but the cause occurs after the effect.

Whether that is possible is debatable. (I don’t think it is.) But I think it gets across what instrumental causality consists in, and why we can essentially regard “instrumental” and “simultaneous” to mean the same thing.

Its not an all or nothing case. If every word philosopher’s used was “its own term” it would be a completely new language which nobody would understand. The point I make is that if even the basic words of a philosophic system inevitably contradict that meaning derived from sensible signification then that system has little new to say.

Well, fortunately for us, the usage of “simultaneous” as “occurring at the same time” does not “contradict that meaning derived from sensible signification.”

You say philosophy is a “science” yet I am sure if I asked you to tease that out we would also discover that it isn’t “science” as most englishmen define that word for much of it is considered “non falsifiable” is it not? And if philosophy is not well considered a science by those who are not scholastic philosphers then it seems solipsistic for some scholastics to keep pushing this line.

In the sentence after I called philosophy a “science,” I implied that it was a “specialized field of knowledge.” And that much is indisputable. I mean “science” in the traditional sense of scientia. Please try to read my remarks in context.

And having distinguished them I believe that in sensible change cause always precedes effect (if a perfectly inelastic world was possible)

But haven’t you opined that the world is not perfectly inelastic? (And surely it is not.) So to say that “[if a perfectly inelastic world were possible, then] in sensible change cause always precedes effect” is irrelevant, since the antecedent is false.

and aslo on a “timeline” there will be a certin duration of time between the two.

You have redefined the word “cause” to exclude a property (ie temporaL duration) that is always present in the world of change from which we derived the word “cause” in the first place.

I am not 100% clear on your usage of duration. You seem to be saying that in the sensible world, there is a duration between cause and effect. Perhaps by that (correct me if I am wrong) you mean that a cause occurs and then stops occurring, a period of time passes, and then the effect occurs.

If so, then the pottery wheel is a clear counterexample, since the pot is shaped as I work it with my fingers. The cause (my action) and the effect (the shaping of the pot) both occur simultaneously, over a duration of time, but the cause is still present while the effect occurs.

I know of no example of sensible change that doesn’t involve a finite duration of time?

Nor do I, but it seems to me like you are possibly equivocating on what it means to “involve a finite duration of time.” I believe that sensible change occurs over periods of time, and there is no change that occurs in a single instant. But there is not a duration of time between cause and effect (unless we are using cause and effect analogically to the relevant sense, ie. when we say a father is the cause of his son).

If you still think that the potter’s hands and the clay are such an example I (and many scientists to boot) would have serious concerns about your appreciation of modern Physics.

Like what? You’ve said that you think the example requires that cause and effect are perfectly inelastic. But that seems to me to be rooted in a misunderstanding of what sort of causality we are talking about, since it seems patently obvious that simultaneous, instrumental causality is not perfectly inelastic.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Your obstancy in this matter and in others elswhere is mystifying. The English and American bishops use a translation of the CCC which has been approved by Rome. That authority is as solid as you can get. And the Latin of T.A. agrees with this translation. You are attempting to set yourself up as the authority. That just doesn’t wash.

Linus2nd

For the love of god L2 all you ever do is argue from your own favourite “authorities” but you never source and you never use reason. I call that solipsistic intellectualism.
I and others have provided you sources and a well reasoned argument.

And still you supply no sources for your mere personal opinions which are:
(a) “The English and American bishops use a translation of the CCC which has been approved by Rome. That authority is as solid as you can get”. This assertion and the logic implied is risable.
(b) “And the Latin of T.A. agrees with this translation.” What does this actually mean? Aquinas never refers to the “change” involved in Transubstantiation (or creation ex nihilo as far as I know) with the word “mutatio” which is acceptable for the more normal change of hylomorphism. And the reason is clear. The “changes” are of completely different orders and the usage is therefore not univocal. Which was my original point wrt this discussion. Nor does Trent - which was poorly translated in the English CCC. I don’t care if it was “approved by Rome” (which means very little if you tease that out). Any theologian worth his salt will tell you that “conversio” in this context is best translated “converted” not “changed.” Change is an acceptable enough pastoral/colloquial expression but strictly speaking is misleading. I thought you were into not misleading the “simple faithful.”

As Aquinas himself said, “arguments based on authority are the weakest.”

 

[CarmelJerome]

5 proofs make sense to me, but I lack an understanding of these 5 ways so I can defend the reason I believe in the existence of God.

Can anyone help me explain the 5 ways better and would greatly appreciate the counter arguments to the common objections/misunderstandings?

Thank you brothers & sisters in Christ!

The main point of the proofs is that there must be a first cause that has no cause; and that the initial cause must not be like anything within the universe; that this First Cause must BE, without any lack in its own Being, without any unrealized potential capacity, without any subjection to any of the powers or forces that follow. Almost every objection I’ve ever heard to the proofs indicates a lack of understanding regarding the term “Pure Act” means – because it’s only the Being that possesses Himself, who is all Act, all Being, and no potentiality, can be that First Cause.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

For the love of god L2 all you ever do is argue from your own favourite “authorities” but you never source and you never use reason. I call that solipsistic intellectualism.
I and others have provided you sources and a well reasoned argument.

And still you supply no sources for your mere personal opinions which are:
(a) “The English and American bishops use a translation of the CCC which has been approved by Rome. That authority is as solid as you can get”. This assertion and the logic implied is risable.
(b) “And the Latin of T.A. agrees with this translation.” What does this actually mean? Aquinas never refers to the “change” involved in Transubstantiation (or creation ex nihilo as far as I know) with the word “mutatio” which is acceptable for the more normal change of hylomorphism. And the reason is clear. The “changes” are of completely different orders and the usage is therefore not univocal. Which was my original point wrt this discussion. Nor does Trent - which was poorly translated in the English CCC. I don’t care if it was “approved by Rome” (which means very little if you tease that out). Any theologian worth his salt will tell you that “conversio” in this context is best translated “converted” not “changed.” Change is an acceptable enough pastoral/colloquial expression but strictly speaking is misleading. I thought you were into not misleading the “simple faithful.”

As Aquinas himself said, “arguments based on authority are the weakest.”

I see your attitude hasn’t improved. But for what its worth I have no objection to the use of the word " converted, " since it means the same as " changed " to my thinking.

Linus2nd

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Sometimes I cannot tell whether or not we disagree. If sensible cause/effect occur over the same time period, then the point that I am making–that causes and effects can be simultaneous–is true.

I’ll have to give up here PT its just too painful sorry. While I may be only an intermediate level Catholic philosopher I think I am pretty capable wrt the English language. I agree with the Oxford dictionary that “simultaneous” means “occurs at the same time”. You seem to go with a far broader definition where “occurs over the same time period” can harmonise with the tighter Oxford definition. This is where we differ sorry. Cause/effect must occur over the same time period but they are not “simultaneous” as the Oxford defines it.

So imagine you walk into a room and see a person who has already been spinning a pot on a pottery wheel. The causation that you see is simultaneous, and the change in the pot is instrumentally dependent on the action of the potter. Where is the “time gap”? The causing is a continual process, and at each moment the cause and the effect both exist. So clearly “a cause need not precede an effect” (temporally).

I know of no Physics teacher who would agree with you. This is not how post-enlightenment Man defines cause/effect. Your view of the potter at work seems more an intuitive, macro impressionistic “reality” of what is really at work there. If you take a scientific approach to what is really going on such impressions collapse and cannot be substantiated at an empirical level.

Let us define the effect - a perceived change in the diameter of the lump of clay (lets say the potter is making a narrow vase).
Let us define the efficient cause - the first perceived inward movement of the potters hands.

It takes a transfer of energy to deform the clay as it resists inward movement (due to the spinning and due to the internal plasticity resistance of the clay itself and also due to the inertia that all mass possesses). The potter at some instant in time will force the clay inward by compressing it with his cupped hands.

The instant the potter wishes to “pinch” the clay inwards he starts to feel a force in his fingers. Initially there will be no effect on the clay whatsoever because all matter resists instantaneous change in speed. But the moment the clay is known to have moved inwards - then the effect appears and is completed. And there is logically necessitated a very short duration between the cause (the movement of the hands) and this effect.

When you speak of cause/effect you seem to be talking about something else, I am not sure what. It seems to be a continuous stream of repeated cause/effect relations between potter and clay. If so I am not sure what relevance that has to the present topic?

Is it meant to be an example of a chain of instrumental causes?
If so it prob isn’t what Aquinas is referring to as he implies different cause/effect entities not the same one’s repeating their cause/effect relationship.

CONT BELOW

 

[Blue_Horizon]

CONT FROM ABOVE…

If your beef is with the initiation of the causation…

This seems to be where we differ but I am not sure what you mean here or why you would not think this is what people generally understand by cause/effect.

In the sentence after I called philosophy a “science,” I implied that it was a “specialized field of knowledge.” And that much is indisputable. I mean “science” in the traditional sense of scientia. Please try to read my remarks in context.

PT this is exactly the point I am raising and you still seem to be trivialising it.
What is the point of using “traditional words” if that isn’t what they mean to people anymore? Definitions change. Sometimes “high priests” impose a meaning on words that the words in their everyday “sensible significance” are not actually given. In other words philosophic conclusions based on words whose meaning varies between the premises used to make that conclusion are not robust in their logic.

This discussion proves that. You yourself just used the word “science” and made conclusions that few scientists today would agree with. You justified your statement by saying you meant “traditional sense” (what you really mean is Latin “scientia”) . In other words you just proved my point. You used the word ‘science’ in a “high priest jargon” way which is actually incompatible with that English word. Therefore your conclusion was not tenable in English. You imposed ancient thought/systemic ideas onto a language that no longer well holds that weight - if it ever did.

If we cannot first let our most basic colloquial words signify simple, sensible reality (as opposed to them smuggling in philosophic concepts of the past that few users of those words know of or could agree with when applied to those particular words) then philosophic discussion cannot proceed easily.

It seems clear to me this is why we seem to disagree philosophically when perhaps we really do not.

Methinks the solution is not to:
(a) pretend words are being used univocally here. There is much analogical if not even equivocal usage. Some “traditional” usages are simply not compatible with modern English.
(b) assert that words ought to mean this or that. Surely they mean what common usage and dictionaries dictate (right or wrong whatever that might mean) and good philosophy must adapt to that “language.”

It seems pretty obvious to me that this discussion is dealing with incompatible meanings wrt a number of words such as “simultaneous”, “duration” and even the very meaning of cause/effect and “instrumental causality.”

You seem to be saying that in the sensible world, there is a duration between cause and effect. Perhaps by that (correct me if I am wrong) you mean that a cause occurs and then stops occurring, a period of time passes, and then the effect occurs.

Yes this seems worthy of further discussion. I think there are a number of ways that post enlightenment thought intuitively understands cause/effect and this must be one of the predominant ones. Obviously if an 'effect" is recognised then by definition the “instrumental cause” has essentially completed its work.

Peter Plato’s example of the flautist and his song brings out the distinction you seem to be making. I disagree with Peter’s example because inherently it seems incapable of being part of a chain of instrumental causality. See below.

If so, then the pottery wheel is a clear counterexample, since the pot is shaped as I work it with my fingers. The cause (my action) and the effect (the shaping of the pot) both occur simultaneously, over a duration of time, but the cause is still present while the effect occurs.

No. If the effect has arisen then the cause has essentially completed. An incomplete effect is not an effect because it is not yet fully in act. This I believe is a major point of difference between pre and post enlightenment thought on the matter. So the flautist is the cause of the song. But there is no completed effect until the song is completed. How can such an understanding of instrumental causality ever be in a chain of instrumental causes? The next segment of the chain cannot begin until the preceeding effect is fully in act. only then can it be a cause of something else. If the preceding effect can be incomplete and still act as a cause for something further then, for all intents and purposes, it is complete. In that case we do not have a song but an instant of sound. And that always involves a finite duration in chains of sensible instrumental causality.