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

[Blue_Horizon]

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.)

This is interesting.
But can you define exactly what the sensible change is that requires an efficient cause?
And what exactly would we say the sensible effect is?

A book on a lectern (a balance of forces as opposed to a transfer of energy) does not really seem to be an example of sensible change/motion?

Perhaps its more about material causality then instrumental?

 

[polytropos]

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.

Still can’t understand your hang up here. The Oxford definition–“occurs at the same time”–is vague and indeterminate between what I have defined as simultaneous and instantaneous. Furthermore, we both agree that instantaneous/inelastic causality does not literally occur. So that leaves my reading of simultaneous.

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.

You’ve changed the description of the scenario. My point is not about the initiation of the change, “the first inward movement of the potter’s hands.” It is about the continued application of force.

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.

I have not denied any of this.

Initially there will be no effect on the clay whatsoever because all matter resists instantaneous change in speed.

Whether there is an immediate effect is not at issue.

But the moment the clay is known to have moved inwards - then the effect appears and is completed.

This strikes me as an odd phrasing–“the moment the clay is know to have moved inwards.” You’ve described the situation epistemically, and have conceded that the effect 'appears and is completed" after it “has moved” (past tense). Which is to say that the change in the clay (the effect) occurred over a period of time, ie. the period of time during which it was moving.

That said, the situation as I put it was that the potter does not cease compressing the clay after an instant. He continues to apply force and shape the pot. You seem to have described a different situation in which the potter touches the pot, which changes slightly, and then immediately ceases to apply force. It seems to me like that situation makes what is going on much less clear.

And there is logically necessitated a very short duration between the cause (the movement of the hands) and this effect.

But the effect is not instantaneously completed.

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.

It is a single, continued cause/effect relationship.

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.

Hm? We’re talking about single instances of causality, not chains of causality in Aquinas’s argument. Nothing I’ve said precludes that the cause is the effect of something else. (Then there is also the fact that nothing I’ve said is about a single cause/effect pair in “repeating” cause/effect relationships.)

 

[polytropos]

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.

I used a term in a way that would be familiar to anyone who is familiar with Aristotle or Aquinas’s thought.

I also used it in a way that should be unobjectionable to anyone who has heard of the modern field of “political science” or has heard economics pejoratively referred to as “the dismal science.”

Regarding the bolded sentence: The point I was making (my “philosophic conclusion”) did not at all turn on my usage of the word “science”, which was entirely substitutable with the phrase “specialized field of knowledge”.

I don’t know why conversations with you have to turn into semantic games about phrases that few people on the street would find objectionable. My usage of the terms “simultaneous” and “science,” for instance, are both subsets of contemporary usage. To refer to a specialized field of knowledge other than a natural science as “a science” is rather distant from “high priest jargon,” which I suspect you are trying to read into my words.

(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.”

I am doing neither of these things. I have said explicitly that the usages are analogical to some English usages. I have also defined simultaneous in some way in order to contrast it with instantaneous. No where did I say my usage is the only legitimate usage or that the man on the street should forego his own usage for mine. Though I believe my usage is a subset of common usage, and marks a legitimate distinction between simultaneous and instantaneous, as I have defined them. (While most people I have talked to about the distinction tend to begin by thinking of cause/effect in strict terms of temporal priority, generally they acknowledge that there are instances of cause/effect which occur in the real world that are marked by simultaneity, as I defined that term, which they find unobjectionable.

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.

“Post enlightenment thought” is a pretty vague category. It also includes the mechanistic view of causation as reducible to inelastic atomistic collisions, which is false.

Obviously if an 'effect" is recognised then by definition the “instrumental cause” has essentially completed its work.

I am talking about when the effect occurs, not when it is recognized. The latter point is an epistemological question.

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.

Hmm, it’s good that we’re finally seeing where our assumptions differ, but this strikes me as a very odd position. I would regard the effect as simply being the change in the patient caused by the agent, whether the agent has stopped or not. That would seem to be the common man’s way of seeing things. If someone is drilling a hole in a piece of wood, but hasn’t yet made it through the other side, we would be inclined to say that there has been an effect on the piece of wood, in that it changed, and that the incompleteness of the effect does not alienate it from the fact that it is an effect.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

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!

Re: How to transit from the concept of God to the existence of God.

---

Quote:
Originally Posted by CandideWest
You misunderstand, it isn’t about the word being abhorrent to me, it’s about it being misleading. Because it conflates the “Unmoved mover” with “some self aware agent”.

Not " conflate, " Thomas makes it clear that the " Unmoved Mover, the First Efficient Cause, the One Necessary Being, the Most Perfect Being, the Final End of all things, must be a being with Self Knowledge ( S.T., Part 1, Ques 14, arts, 1,2,3 ) or Self Aware. Thus He cannot be identified with anything He has caused to exist, whose end he directs, both through the Natures He has given them and by His direct action in some instances, and by sustaining their existence and the existence of the things which they move and change themselves. Such ability demands knowledge of what is being done and the will and the power to do it. He must be self aware.

To put it on a practical level or to make an analogy, I am self aware because I can reflect on the self. Can I prove that to you? No. By the same reasoning, you cannot prove to me that you are self aware just by saying it. However I can see that you do things which require power, knowledge and will. So, from that, I say you are self aware. Society supports this in many ways, our entire legal system assumes this, science supports it.
By analogy, God must be self aware.

I see God’s works and make the same judgment. Is that absolute proof? It is if you see how unreasonable it is to assume that non-intelligent matter caused itsef to exist, caused everything else to exist, and has caused, without mind, a universal, coordinated order and purpose throughout the universe. The latter seems most unreasonable.

And I think most people would agree. It is proof enough that an All Powerful Being Exists, which we can call God. All people should at least be Deist on that basis. And if one follows Thomas’ arguments, or those of St. Augustine ( whom I think you would like a lot ), then one might well conclude the the God of St. Thomas is the God of Christianity. He certainly had no doubts and he was no fool, neither was St. Augustine.

You asked Poly if there could not be another purely existent being. You also asked whether we could not consider that the Being concluded to in each of the Five Ways was not a different Being. And you have asked, if perhaps there were not other universes which might not have their own Unmoved Mover.

Thomas has established that the Unmoved Mover is Pure Act, without any potency to be more or less. That is a condition of absolute limitlessness, not just in existence, but in everything that implies existence ( i.e. intelligence, will, goodness, love, etc. ). The First Efficient Cause is absolutely First, it is limitless in the power of causality. Therefore He is identified with the Unmoved Mover.

In the same manner, the One Necessary Being of the third way is One. There can only be One Being which is the cause from which everything else in the universe derives it limited ( caused ) necessity. And such a Being, which is the cause of its own Necessity, is limitless in power, existence and every other perfection, is identifiable with the Unmoved Mover.

And we have already estsablished that there can only be on Being that is absolutely perfect and limitless in anyway. In the same way, there can only be one being which possesses any other perfection ( Goodness, Intelligence, Beauty, existence, power, will, etc. the Being of the Fourth Way) in a limitless way. Being limitless, this Being is identifiable with the Unmoved Mover.

Likewise the Fifth Way which concludes to a Being which is the End for which everything else in existence acts and directs its activity. There can only be One Such Being, the Unmoved Mover of the First Way, the One and only Limitless, Pure Act of Being.

Thus the End of each of the Five Ways is the same Limitless Being, the Unmoved Mover.

Thomas begins article 3 of Part 1 of S.T. by identifying this Being with the Being which is the conclusion of each of the Five Ways. So each Being of the Five Ways is the same Being, the Unmoved Mover.

Based on this argument, there could only exist One such Being. There may well be other universes of which we know nothing, but the same Being would be their Cause as well.

The remainder of your objections should be considered as answered by this presentation. It is certainly a more reasonable explanation than any alternative.

Pax
Linus2nd

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I am talking about when the effect occurs, not when it is recognized. The latter point is an epistemological question.

I’ve been away…

Yes this epistemological issue (how well differing subjective definitions match agreed objective observations) is at the heart of the new Physics as opposed to the old Physics.
I accept that those of the old Physics don’t accept this insight as relevant to solving the sort of intractable philosophic discussions this thread displays.

That is, at heart, why philosophic agreement is largely impossible. Not because there is no logical philosophy on both sides.
Its because the translation between “observation of objects” to “concepts of objects”
as represented by “words” differs between the two philosophic groups. Words are consistently used differently by these two differing outlooks.

I would regard the effect as simply being the change in the patient caused by the agent, whether the agent has stopped or not. That would seem to be the common man’s way of seeing things. If someone is drilling a hole** in **a piece of wood, but hasn’t yet made it through the other side, we would be inclined to say that there has been an effect on the piece of wood, in that it changed, and that the incompleteness of the effect does not alienate it from the fact that it is an effect.

Well that’s simply because your above example effectively describes the effect differently in different sentences - and therefore the logic falls over by same sort of subtle equivocation I have identified previously in this thread.

Namely, if the effect under discussion is “drilling a hole through a piece of wood” then obviously there is no effect until you’ve come out the other side.

Your example equivocates between an effect of “drilling in” and “drilling through” .
Its really like one of those optical illusions where our mind is tricked to believe water flows forever downward in a square aqueduct.

If we are talking about a chain of instrumental causality the incompleteness of the preceeding effect seems to become starkly definable.

 

[polytropos]

I’ve been away…

Welcome back. I’ll respond to these couple of points, but I don’t know if I want to get into this debate again. However, as I recall suggesting a while ago, when we were stilling having this discussion but before it was published–you should take a look at Ed Feser’s new-ish book Scholastic Metaphysics. He addresses a bunch of the issues of causality, simultaneity, etc.

Yes this epistemological issue (how well differing subjective definitions match agreed objective observations) is at the heart of the new Physics as opposed to the old Physics.
I accept that those of the old Physics don’t accept this insight as relevant to solving the sort of intractable philosophic discussions this thread displays.

I don’t consider myself “of the old physics.” And you suggest that this is an “insight” while admitting that the epistemological issue is not decided by the new physics itself. I have no problem admitting that there are epistemological issues in quantum mechanics that are perhaps reflected in ontology, or that its formalism can get by without positing any other hidden variables. I don’t believe that causal interactions are reducible to quantum mechanics anyway; I don’t think the atomism of the old physics eliminated higher-level descriptions. Nor do I think that quantum phenomena do.

Well that’s simply because your above example effectively describes the effect differently in different sentences - and therefore the logic falls over by same sort of subtle equivocation I have identified previously in this thread.

Namely, if the effect under discussion is “drilling a hole through a piece of wood” then obviously there is no effect until you’ve come out the other side.

Your example equivocates between an effect of “drilling in” and “drilling through” .
Its really like one of those optical illusions where our mind is tricked to believe water flows forever downward in a square aqueduct.

If we are talking about a chain of instrumental causality the incompleteness of the preceeding effect seems to become starkly definable.

I’m sorry, but this simply isn’t an equivocation on my part.

Let’s take the claim that “if the effect under discussion is ‘drilling a hole through a piece of wood’ then obviously there is no effect until you’ve come out the other side” and see if it is even remotely consistent with the way that human beings talk. You are saying that if we are talking about ‘drilling a hole through wood,’ then prior to the drill bit coming out the opposite side, the effect ‘drilling a hole through wood’ has not occurred?

So let’s say you ran into someone who was drilling a piece of wood, but his drill bit wasn’t yet through the other side. You ask him, “What are you doing?” He responds, “I’m drilling through this piece of wood.” What do you respond? “False, you’re equivocating. You are merely drilling in the piece of wood.” And I am the one equivocating and captured by an optical illusion?

Maybe I can sympathize with the idea that the same state of affairs could be described as drilling in and drilling through. But clearly we have abandoned the English language if we adopt the above analysis. The faulty principle here seems to be this: “An incomplete effect is not an effect because it is not yet fully in act.” Since the final drilling through could at any number of points have been described as a “drilling in,” it seems that we have partially completed the act of “drilling through” by doing our “drilling in.” Whether we say “in” or “through” is perhaps somewhat aspectual. No matter.

For the purposes of Aquinas’s arguments, the description of the change is not actually relevant. Call it “drilling in” if you want to define a new language game that way. There has nevertheless been a change in the wood.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Let’s take the claim that “if the effect under discussion is ‘drilling a hole through a piece of wood’ then obviously there is no effect until you’ve come out the other side” and see if it is even remotely consistent with the way that human beings talk. You are saying that if we are talking about ‘drilling a hole through wood,’ then prior to the drill bit coming out the opposite side, the effect ‘drilling a hole through wood’ has not occurred?

So let’s say you ran into someone who was drilling a piece of wood, but his drill bit wasn’t yet through the other side. You ask him, “What are you doing?” He responds, “I’m drilling through this piece of wood.” What do you respond? “False, you’re equivocating. You are merely drilling in the piece of wood.” And I am the one equivocating and captured by an optical illusion?

Maybe I can sympathize with the idea that the same state of affairs could be described as drilling in and drilling through. But clearly we have abandoned the English language if we adopt the above analysis. The faulty principle here seems to be this: “An incomplete effect is not an effect because it is not yet fully in act.” Since the final drilling through could at any number of points have been described as a “drilling in,” it seems that we have partially completed the act of “drilling through” by doing our “drilling in.” Whether we say “in” or “through” is perhaps somewhat aspectual. No matter.

For the purposes of Aquinas’s arguments, the description of the change is not actually relevant. Call it “drilling in” if you want to define a new language game that way. There has nevertheless been a change in the wood.

So let’s say you ran into someone who was drilling a piece of wood, but his drill bit wasn’t yet through the other side. You ask him, “What are you doing?” He responds, “I’m drilling through this piece of wood.” What do you respond? “False, you’re equivocating. You are merely drilling in the piece of wood.” And I am the one equivocating and captured by an optical illusion?

Yes, this paragraph looks to be at the heart of both the epistemological issue mentioned above and also the failure to recognise equivocation of effect.

Here you have defined the allegedly objective observable effect with a heavy dose of non-observable final causality (which is an unobservable intention of the human agent): “He responds I am drilling through the wood.”

That’s fine. But final causality is not efficient causality.
Final causality is first in order of (subjective hidden) intention but last in execution (objective fact). But the final cause does not complete a material effect - only an efficient cause does that.

So this intended effect (the final intention to drill through the wood) is not yet visible to an observer. So an observer does not know when he will stop drilling.
So all that can be said is that your man “is drilling into the wood” and this effect is indeed complete from the moment he started.

The agent’s final cause has not yet played out (drilling through the wood) … therefore the effect he intends is not complete until he does so.

But the real issue with your example is that it prescinds from what we are discussing - namely a chain of instrumental causality. We do not need to discuss agent intentions to well identify cause/effects in such a chain.

If the first effect does not itself become the second cause of a consequent second effect then it seems the first effect has not yet completed or has been wrongly described or identified.

Extend your example to a chippie who drills right through a wall noggin and into a mains wire on the other side of that noggin. His drill is an old fashioned metal one and he gets electrocuted and dies of cardiac arrest.

We know the 1st effect in question has to be “drilling right through the wood” (and into the conduit) otherwise there is no chain of instrumental causality. Merely drilling into the wood is not sufficient to launch the causal chain.

So when you say:
“If someone is drilling a hole in a piece of wood, but hasn’t yet made it through the other side, we would be inclined to say that there has been an effect on the piece of wood, in that it changed, and that the incompleteness of the effect does not alienate it from the fact that it is an effect.”

…then you are indeed focussing on a wrongly identified effect.
Sure, we can find change/effect in any blinkered aspect of material change we want to focus on. But if we are speaking of a chain of instrumental causality then its very easy to identify the exact effect that links from one causal object to the next.

In this way invalid equivocation between different effects in the same generic process of change can be identified.

So, getting back to our flautist, that is why I said
“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. So the flautist is the cause of the song. But there is no completed effect until the song is completed.”

The problem with the flautist example is that it is not an example of a chain of instrumental causality.

You are talking formal causality (what makes a song), but here we are discussing linkages. What 2nd effect is the completed song meant to cause? A bird mimicking?
If that is case the “song effect” was completed the moment the bird started chirping…even if the flautist hadn’t formally finished his song.

I think your observed examples are equivocating efficient causality (the main concern of modern Physics) with final causality and formal causality (which are fairly remote subjective inferences not attained by material observation alone and a main concern of traditional Physics).