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JDaniel
Guest
Yes; at least we can say, “by some (kind of) energy transferred to it.”
God bless,
jd
- Status
God bless,
jd
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Touchstone
Guest
Having gone round and round on this over many years now, and with many different people, my experience is that using kinetic motion as the example of Aquinas’ usage of ‘motion’ leads to all sorts of problems and confusion. Aquinas choice of on water being heated as an extended example I think may have been informed by the same experience; until one understands Thomist “motion” to be the union of actuality and potentiality with respect to the same aspect, that a pot of water that has been heated from 40 deg to 60 deg is moved and moving so long as the heat is being applied (motion with respect to heat).
With billiard balls, it’s way easy to start talking motion-as-physics rather than motion-as-metaphysics.
???
Now this is really a strong example of what I was cautioning about, above! For Aquinas (refining and clarifying (somewhat, anyway) Aristotle’s confusing and ostensibly self-contradictory definition of ‘motu’), motion is the conversion of potentiality to actuality, in this case, from "potentially moving (physical meaning of ‘moving’) " to "actually moving (physical meaning of ‘moving’). And even as the hit ball begins moving from the transfer of energy from cue ball, it stell has “potentiality” that is not actualized – if another ball where to hit it a moment later, it may gain even more momentum, for example.
But this is to equivocate on “potential” in “potential energy”. Potential energy is NOT transferred from one ball to the other; that is kinetic energy, actual energy. Potential energy obtains with position of an object within a field. The balls on the table surface have more potential energy with respect to the floor than balls in the pockets, and that has nothing to do with their lateral impact, but the balls’ position in the earth’s gravity field.
Nevertheless, in Thomistic terms, we would say that the struck ball is “moving” simply because it had the potential to move and now is doing so; motion for Aquinas takes the form “has the potential for X and now is actual with respect to X (to some degree, it’s not necessarily all or nothing)”. Using kinetic motion here makes this really confusing, pedagogically.
It does, but only in a tautological way, so far as I can see. It’s a “separate beginning” only because we/you/I/Aquinas says it is. These discrete events are analytic only, not synthetic, to invoke Kantian terms, here, as shorthand. The reason that’s important is that it detaches Aquinas, and us, from the putative reliance on the senses, on observation. Aquinas consults his experience, say, to watch objects move each other around when they collide, but that’s all left behind when each change is discrete event.
Anyway, here’s my question/illustration that has me writing this post:
Isotope decay events. In terms of statistics, decay events are marvelously pedictable over large ensembles. Per Aquinas, we would say that Thorium-232 “moves” to alpha particles and Radium-228. 232Th has “potentiality” for decay which becomes “actuality” (motion!) with each decay event. But while can look at neutron/proton ratios as unstable in 232Th, we might understand the ‘background potential’ for any subsequent decay. But the decay events themselves, so far as we can tell, at length, are uncaused, and probabilistic as to their timing of occurrence.
I’m not looking for a dispute on the “uncausedness” per se of the decay event, just here, but rather want to use that as a test. If we stipulate, for the sake of argument, that such decay events are just as uncaused as they appear to be, Aquinas would still impute “potentiality”, causation, as his metaphysics run right over any observation or physics. If such events were fundamentally uncaused, he’d have no way to tell, because he imputes cause in backward fashion, as a matter of definition.
All of which to say, if one defines (not observes, but defines) “change” as “result of cause” or “potentiality in superposition with actuality”, one is trafficking in definitions, and does not need, and does not use, any (name removed by moderator)ut, validation or testing from the real world.
If that’s the case, if Aquinas’ metaphysic was mistaken, how could he or we tell? I don’t see how saying its “true” or “sound” remains meaningful if so.
-TS
(Maybe this post should have just been “how is a ‘false metaphysic’ identified as such?”)
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The_Exodus
Guest
If Aquinas’s metaphysics are false, one could never know it to be so, since his principles of act and potency are a posteriori and observed.
In the same sense, you could ask an infinite amount of such questions:
- if we are all in the matrix, how could we ever know?
- if our memories are false, how could we ever know?
- if a supernatural demon is constantly deceiving us, how could we ever know?
- if the concept “I” is merely a subjective phenomena, how could I ever know?
- if we are really dreaming, how could we ever know?
Fortunately, since Aquinas’ metaphysics are demonstrable, the only alternative to it are such objections as these which are, by nature, impossible to be answered, since they assume a starting point to be valid, while at the same time demanding proof of that starting point, i.e. assuming also that the starting point is invalid.
Fortunately, also, such skepticism is self-refuting, at least if the skeptic ever makes a claim. If he never makes a claim, he cannot be refuted of course. But then again, why should one argue with one who makes no claims at all?
Aristotle answered this quite humorously when he said, if someone denies first principles, he really has no reason to say that he is not a vegetable; i.e. he cannot really distinguish himself, as a rational being, from anything. Who, then, would dispute with a vegetable?
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The_Exodus
Guest
If you want a free and somewhat thorough treatment of Thomas’s metaphysics, see here: thesumma.info/one/one25.php
Garrigou-Lagrange deals with more of the epistemological objections to Thomism. If you want a further treatment (which is quite thorough), see this work by the same author: amazon.com/God-Existence-Nature-Vol-Softcover/dp/B002AD7XGE/ref=sr_1_10?s=gateway&ie=UTF8&qid=1285131663&sr=8-10
For the briefest overview see here: thesumma.info/reality/index.php
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Touchstone
Guest
Well, it leads to pretty short haircut for metaphysics, I’ll grant. But that’s hardly universal skepticism, or solipsism. It’s just recognition of the severe limitations of metaphysics.
Note, though, that all of the above are “shrugs” in practical terms. A “matrix” that is perfectly convincing is just as “real” as a “non-matrix” reality. These are not practical questions. But “there must be a unmoved Mover” is not like the others, especially as a predicate for a belief in God. There, the negation has far reaching and profound practical impacts.
One doesn’t live any different in an undetectably deceptive “matrix”. It’s synonymous with reality as real. One can, and does live differently in the absence of an unmoved Mover (where the capitalization there indicates a proper noun, if not a person).
To show that not all metaphysical propositions are purely self-fulfilling/analytic, the gamble that reality is real in such a way as to be intelligible through the scientific method is an idea that is subject to failure. It might not have been so, and it might have worked out that we have nothing to show for our progress toward intelligibility of nature. That is metaphysics, but metaphysics at least nominally at risk to our experience, unlike Thomistic potentiality and actuality. Even if our senses at everyday level showed much more “random” or “seemingly uncaused” actions, it wouldn’t slow Aquinas or anyone down even a little bit, for those events are “motion” in the potentiality-superposed-with-actuality sense just as much as any “obviously caused” event; they are caused by definition, even if we don’t know the reasons yet.
This begs for an explanation of what you mean by “demonstrable”. I understand that “cause” is imputed from “effect”, by definition, but I don’t see where that would be demonstration rather than simple tautology: it’s a phenomenon, and therefore an effect, and therefore, by definition, something which has a cause. Which is not to say we do not and cannot identify causes, a posteriori, but it’s a synthetic a posteriori, and in many cases, we just do not know the cause, and indeed, have good indications that “cause” is a problematic term in the first place (particularly in QM contexts).
I think that’s where those pesky scientists pwn the philosophers. The philosopher, thinking himself clever, says: what justifies this idea that reality is real, and intelligible? Whence the justification for this metaphysical claim? The scientist just gives him a quizzical look, and says, “here’s your justification, try this thing called a ‘cell phone’!” Something like Samuel Johnson’s refutation of Berkeley: “I refute it thus”, with a kick of a nearby stone, the scientist doesn’t even recognize the conditions for such justification, but instead stands on the utility and performance of what is produced under the aegis of the naked premise: reality is real and intelligible to some degree.
You’re right, though, that there’s no argument to be had in such metaphysical claims. One either values the results of science, or one does not. Metaphysical argument is a waste of bandwidth. But it’s a pathetic refutation when you have practitioners go on to do what they do; Einstein predicts with spectacular novelty and accuracy the perihelion of Mercury. This is the point where he finally rejoices, knowing his hypothesis has become a successful theory. And the philosopher in the corner (you, here?) is waiting to refute his claims with… what? Maybe reality isn’t real? Maybe not, but that is to utter miss the point and the impact of what just happened.
When the “vegetable” makes the life-saving medicine the philosopher can’t being to understand, and his life rests on the epistemology of the ‘vegetable’, the folly of such a pose is clear.Aristotle answered this quite humorously when he said, if someone denies first principles, he really has no reason to say that he is not a vegetable; i.e. he cannot really distinguish himself, as a rational being, from anything. Who, then, would dispute with a vegetable?
It’s a very quaint kind of clever.
-TS
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Touchstone
Guest
Thank you, I’ve been to the summa.info many times (I think I just quoted from there on another thread here this week), but was not aware of the Garrigou-Lagrange book. I’ll have a look!
-TS
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The_Exodus
Guest
Since metaphysics are concerned with the principles of being or what is, then, if they are subjected to skepticism, so likewise is being. Then it follows that nothing can be known at all, since a thing is known only insofar as it is.
Assuming the unmoved mover has become man, or calls some men to eternal beatitude, yes. But that is a matter of faith, whereas reason demonstrates a being possessing no potentiality. Hence the parallel does not hold.
It is known a posteriori by sense perception, since knowledge comes from sense. A blind man does not know color, because he lacks that sense. In the same way, an irrational creature does not know becoming, in the liquid sense of motion or things moving from potency to act. Thus it is demonstrable, because it is perceived immediately, since the rational intellect seizes on being before all else. It is, as it were, the first principle of the intellect. We further distinguish what being is by reflection, abstraction, etc. Per St. Thomas: “that which the intellect first conceives as, in a way, the most evident, and to which it reduces all its concepts, is being”
Hence the force of sense perception, which, in its way, silences all arguments…and, therefore, hence the force of Aquinas’s arguments, since they rely on sense perception.
Of course I value the results of science, and, since I understand its epistemic starting point, I can see that it is the same thing as Metaphysics proper: i.e. understanding reality - that is, being or what is - using reason and sense perception. This dichotomy you are trying to draw, pitting Metaphysics against Science, does not hold at all.
The medievals knew that science was merely “knowledge which proceeds from certain first principles”. Again, per Aquinas, “The principles of any science are either in themselves self-evident, or reducible to the conclusions of a higher science…” And further down “As other sciences do not argue in proof of their principles, but argue from their principles to demonstrate other truths in these sciences… it is to be borne in mind, in regard to the philosophical sciences, that the inferior sciences neither prove their principles nor dispute with those who deny them, but leave this to a higher science; whereas the highest of them, viz. metaphysics, can dispute with one who denies its principles, if only the opponent will make some concession; but if he concede nothing, it can have no dispute with him, though it can answer his objections conclusions of a higher science.”
Your effort to somehow defend the glory of discovery and the spirit of science is entirely unfounded. Indeed, science is only capable of the splendor of certitude and the gift of knowledge when it is founded on a metaphysic which recognizes reality as intelligible.
What??
You are the one claiming this when you don’t accept that Aquinas’s proofs are demonstrative, since by your admission, perhaps being is unintelligble to us and our senses - i.e. that things can move from potency to act without a cause. If this is true, if this is the heart of reality, that things just happen for no cause at all, then existence is absurd. This is the only card one can play against Critical Realists, and it’s the Kantian card, “absurd to us, but perhaps not in reality.” I.e. then to us, it would follow, that reality really *isn’t *real. This is the logical consequence of Kantianism. “Being” or “reality” is just an a priori concept imposed onto the “phenomenal” world, which is unknowable, since there is an impassible chasm between us and it. We are, on such a view, trapped in our own being. This is what’s led to the modern schools of the absurd (i.e. existentialism).
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Touchstone
Guest
That the self exists is transcendentally affirmed. It cannot be denied, as the act of deny perfectly affirms what it seeks to deny. So “being” itself is a given, unavoidable, axiomatic. Propositions beyond that, the ones that contingent on the world around us and not transcendentally necessary, that’s a different matter. And despite the general futility of metaphysics, we can say that some of its ventures have paid off very well – science being an enterprise bootstrapped on “unjustified metaphysical gambles”, for example.
But, being is in no way endangered by even the most intense skepticism. Skepticism itself proves being.
I don’t think so. Even the notion of a fuzzy kind of deism, one that resists any of the particulars you mention, has a profound impact on practical living. For example, it can anchor the values chain for natural law – see the appeal of Enlightenment deists to the endowment of moral bearings and obligations by the “Creator”. Even in a pantheistic or Spinoza-like understanding, the moral calculus is profoundly different than reasoning from desires and values for humans in a godless, creator-less world.
This is also why indulgent speculation in metaphysics is dangerous in its own right. Before you know it, fluffy notions lead to god-became-man, which may not be so problematic, but then that gets hijacked by a guy named Saul/Paul, and before you know it, a cult is formed that has amongst many other practical cultural impacts things like the millenia long demonization of homosexuals. Because “God said so”, all tracing back to the fluff of these intuitions.
Agreed in the “front loaded” sense. I don’t dispute Aquinas’ (or Aristotle’s) reliance on sense experience for the hypothesis, for the conjecture. That’s how good reasoning and science begin. But the perception of motion is not the conclusion that, per JDaniel above, for example, every “mm” (not sure why that was the units, but doesn’t matter) was a new and complete act.
That is analytic, not synthetic. The percepts are sense-driven (obviously), but the concept of motion, of potentiality coexisting in a object with actuality with respect to the same feature, that is completely conceptual, analytic, non-empirical.
If you apply the “empirical test” to Aquinas, he detaches from reliance on sense-experience very early on. It’s grist for his conjectures, and it doesn’t go farther than that.
But it’s manifestly not a sense, even for Aquinas, but a tautology offered as a narrative. If it could be sensed, it wouldn’t be controversial at all as knowledge, it would be demonstrable. A blind man lacks the (name removed by moderator)ut/integration abilities of most other humans as a particular impairment, something we establish by our senses. This is not shown for the “sense of potentiality”. I’m tempted to say it’s “non-sense” as a play on words, but will just say it is not our senses that establish that belief or support it.
Here’s an example of me creating similar faux-knowledge claims, just on the fly.
- Our senses tell us that gravity is a ubiquitous force on earth, pulling things down.
- Every force has an “essence” that causes the force to behave as it does in nature.
- Ergo, gravity has an has an essence that actualizes it as a force, and this we call “gravitessence”.
It’s a short leap from there to understanding by faith that gravitessence is really sustained by gravitars, spiritual beings that sustain and uphold the laws of nature.
Etc. Do you suppose my syllogism there is “knowledge from sense”? It did indeed begin with the sense of gravity’s pull…
Potentiality is not a percept, per Aquinas. Agree?
See my proof of “gravitessence” above. It relies similarly on sense perception. What do you make of that as an argument?
Science rests on metaphysical propositions, undeniably. But it is a research program, a “what if”, a proposition that might fail. And that is its strength. It’s liability to failure is what separates it from all the other unaccountable metaphysical propositions out there.
-TS
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Touchstone
Guest
The Exodus:
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The_Exodus
Guest
I don’t think the detection of being begins with self. This would lead to a Kantian epistemology, and separate the I from reality with an impassible chasm. So, yes, if you start with the notion of being from “I exist” then you do end up unable to justify propositions beyond “I exist.”
Yet if you take the realist view, the existence of self or the soul is not known in its essence, but through its act, which renders intelligble sensed phenomena. The traditional Thomist view is that the soul does not know its own essence (in this life), indeed, it is immaterial, and our intellect knows material things; yet it does know itself by its essence, by its act (which is immaterial), by immaterially abstracting the essence of material things.
The concept itself is known from reality, as motion/becoming are objective qualities of reality itself.
Most scholars of Aquinas would here —>
Aquinas thinks the only knowledge we can have period (at least in this life) is through sense. “Nothing is in the intellect which was not first in the sense.” Hence he answers in the negative with respect to many epistemological questions: Can we know we have grace? Can we know we have charity? Can we speak univocally about God? etc…
It is demonstrable. You are merely assuming it is brought to the table a priori. On the contrary, we do not know anything about being or becoming until we sense reality, which has this element of existence as its fabric, so to speak.
Assertion.
I don’t see the parallel you’re trying to draw here.
The similarity I was trying to make between gravity and God is simply the way in which we know each to exist: i.e. by moving from effects to causes. You cannot sense gravity except by sensing its effects. The same goes for God, according to Aquinas. We don’t sense God’s or gravity’s “essence.” In fact, as I’ve repeatedly stated, the only essences we sense are material essences: things composed of matter and form. “Essence” per se has no place in the argument of God’s existence. It is more focused on the transfer or flow of being, which we find in reality, of things moving from one state of being to another. We sense that, as an objective fact about reality proper, material things move from potency to act by certain agents. All things which are moved are moved by another…etc.
What do you mean by “precept”?
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The_Exodus
Guest
Potentiality is a first principle insofar as it is the first thing the intellect senses about reality, even if it is not aware of the term. It knows it by instinct, as it were, upon first rationally sensing the world.
Nothing can validate this “gamble” since knowledge presupposes the gamble’s validity. Hence, nothing can pass any judgment on it in the first place, since judgment uses it as a principle. This is as circular as saying that “the Bible is true because it says its true” i.e. “science is true because it says its true.” Ah but look at the facts! you say. Fact are predicated on metaphysics, or what is, being qua being, etc.
You blur over the distinction between a thing being absurd in itself, and absurd to us. Absurd to us, but not in itself, is, I think, what you’re driving at. If this is what you claim, by all means, I’ll let you take the floor. For my part I think it utterly useless to talk about a thing absurd to us, no matter how intelligible it is in itself.
I actually agree with most of what you are saying here. I just don’t say that reality is absurd in itself, since, if I did, it would be futile to discuss it. I do however think a vast part of- probably the majority - reality is unintelligible to us.
This, I think, is where we differ.
You think that I’m bringing a sort of a priori notion of act/potency/being to the table, which allows me to subjectively and arbitrarily assign causes to things, and thus they are causes only because I’ve chosen to call them so. But my case is just the opposite. Act/potency/being is something which we all get from reality. We do not put it there with our minds. Hence the tree grows really because water gives it nourishment. The word “cause” is just a word, but it describes an actual, real element of reality, of the universe. Language does not invent concepts, on my view. It presupposes them.
This is why, when I say that an uncaused cause is absurd, I think it really impossible about reality, not simply about my imagining it about reality. Since it is true, that “that which is in reality” is sustained and caused by other things, it is impossible that “that which is in reality” could be something that is not sustained, or not caused. This is because the very fabric of reality, what it is, is a movement from potency to act, a sort of liquid motion of becoming.
Now, you could always say that perhaps we are deceived by our senses, etc. There is no answer to this. But it is not a claim, and can never be a claim, because it does away with the only way we have of knowing to begin with.
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Touchstone
Guest
This is the value of empirical validation. One can bypass the quandary of “philosophical justification” which is an intractable criterion (or maybe better to say, just a subjective one) with the adoption of a research program that succeeds not on that problematic idea, but on model performance established empirically. With subjective philosophy, you are right, you can’t get very far on strict terms, and through rigorous skepticism. But objective propositions and feedback loops obviate the problem. Who cares for the caprice of “justification” when one has natural models that perform?
I think that single paragraph would be good material for deconstructing as ungrounded, ill-formed terms (and this is Aquinas’ problem more than yours), but here, I understand existence to be understood by the self-evidence of one’s consciousness (and here is a case where ‘self-evident’ actual is used correctly on this forum!). “Soul”, “essence”, even distinctions between “material” and “immaterial” are all far down the tracks, off in the distance from the primary knowledge of one’s existence based on simple awareness, of consciousness. Just from that, one necessarily affirms one’s existence, and something other (one can’t be “aware” if there is nothing to be aware of).
But this is casual language. I don’t dispute that Aquinas, like Aristotle, looked around and used that (name removed by moderator)ut as the catalyst for very musings – they are “sense-driven” at that level. But while physical motion is a discrete stimulus (you can locate neurological machinery that tracks and fires off on detection of motion in the visual (name removed by moderator)ut stream, for example), “potentiality” is imputed, a derivation from thinking about what one sees. But that’s not “sense-driven”, it’s “thought-driven”. It may be a correct idea and an objective truth, but we can say that whatever the case there, it is not something we perceive as sense-data.
Again, the standards and concepts of empirical observation and perception were decidedly primitive in Aquinas’ day, and more so for Aristotle (although, not very much!). If we were to ask Aquinas to show us the empirical perception of “potentiality”, he’d be at a loss, and only show us “motion” – in the physical, mechanical sense of the term. “Actuality simultaneously obtaining with potentiality with respect to the same aspect of the same object” would be a rather convoluted product of noodling about things he’d seen for a substantial amount of time.Most scholars of Aquinas would here —>
That’s the key, here, and the key weakness, the connection to the corrective loop that Aquinas did not have (or at least did not acknowledge). “First in the sense” is the problem. Natural knowledge is also affirmed in the sense, validated empirically. Sense as confirmation, not just inspiration. I don’t deny the “inspiration” part of Aquinas’ heuristic – that’s perfectly sensory-driven, I’m willing to stipulate. But that doesn’t get one to knowledge, and doesn’t put knowledge to the crucial test against empirical data. “Poentitality” is a truism, a tautology, something that can be mapped onto any phenomena, and is empty because of it. This is not the case with “a body in motion tends to stay in motion…”, for example.
I understand this to be statements about his certainty, his faith in his reasoning. But its his certainty that is the fail, here. I’ll give him credit for acknowledging doubt and ignorance on these issues, but if he draws on that as a basis for being confident in the propositions he intuitively does have faith in, even that is a problem.
-TS
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Touchstone
Guest
Even after the fact, we cannot put meaning into those terms beyond their model descriptions (“a body in motion tends to stay in motion…”, for example). To say that lukewarm water has “potentiality” for hotness is just applying mechanical models backwards, retrofitting what we do say as physical change. Potentiality and actuality don’t tell us anything beyond what they derive directly from the mechanical model – the ‘potentiality’ of water to motion-as-becoming-hotter is simply retrodiction: we observe that water becomes hotter when heated, therefore it must have some “potentiality” to become hot! By definition!
I’m saying one can make up metaphysical truths, at will, on the fly, as easy as making up a new word, if one is not liable to grounding the proposition empirically. Its just analytic language, not tied to any statement about the real world. Of course gravitessence must exist conceptually, because we have constructed a definition of ‘gravitessence’ that makes it ‘true’ just as a definition. Gravitessence is that which makes gravity… gravity! It must be real in some metaphysical sense, else there’d be no gravity!
The point here is that this is thinkers getting completely wrapped around the axle of the language, and the ideas becoming completely detached from the real world. I can conceive and implement tests for the idea that “a body in motion tends to stay in motion…”, but I’m utterly stumped as to how to test “potentiality” as having any truth value beyond the trivial truth of the tautology – potentiality, of course being the predicate for that which may be actual (by definition!). This is analytic tautology being mistaken for synthetic a posterioris.
But the “sameness” there couldn’t be more different. Gravity we can measure, we can test, objectively, we can model, with precision, with fantastic accuracy. All obtained through sense-data, and sense data we can share, compare and test/validate objectively. God is the antithesis of the gravity phenomenon.
It works just as forcefully in a negative sense. If we suppose that we are simply imagining gravity, and remove the hypothesis, and try a “gravity free” physical model, it fails spectacularly, any way you slice it without gravity. But provisionally suppose that God is just a figment of the imagination, and the models don’t break. The math holds. The senses are not defeated. Gravity, and our knowledge of it are a very good example of what the knowledge of God is NOT.
I think we are talking past each other in the use of the term “sense”. Forgive my scientific inclinations, but “sense” denotes “sense-data” or sensory (name removed by moderator)ut form our perceptual faculties. I understand another sense [sic] of “sense” which means something like “intuit”, or “come to believe through informal reasoning”. Here’s Webster:
You must be using definition 2 above. And that’s fine so long as it’s clear, but it’s not clear at all, and I think this is equivocation with definition 1 (which has been my understanding) when applied to Aquinas, or anybody with respect to empirical u(name removed by moderator)ut – that’s definition 1. We don’t “sense[1]” that all things are moved by another. That is an inductive leap (which may be a valid one, but it’s still an inductive leap) that sits on top of sense[1], and would be [sense2], if it is “sensing” at all, coming to a grasp of a concept as the result of formulating an inductive conjecture from our sense[1] data.
Not “precept” – that’s a different word. “Percept”.
-TS
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The_Exodus
Guest
Your previous post has no new material, at least so far as I could tell, so I won’t respond to it and let it speak for itself.
Potentiality and actuality tells us everything we know about reality:i.e. that it is becoming. The fact that water can become hot is precisely the point. It can become. What in the world does that word mean - become? To be able to possess being in different modes. To gain something in being, which was not had previously, and to lose something in being, which was previously had. Being is constantly slipping away from us, as it were.
You are just confounding the whole point of the proof, since you continually misrepresent/caricature it by some sort of a priori conceptualism that is brought to the table.
touchstone:
I can see why you keep harking back to this point, since you are trapped in a Kantian epistemology (though you can’t see it.) Perhaps you will have a gestalt shift and see this for yourself.
touchstone:
touchstone:
"Truth is both in intellect and in sense, but not in the same way. It is in intellect as a consequence of the act of the intellect and as known by the intellect. Truth follows the operation of the intellect inasmuch as it belongs to the intellect to judge about a thing as it is. And truth is known by the intellect in view of the fact that the intellect reflects upon its own act—not merely as knowing its own act, but as knowing the proportion of its act to the thing. Now, this proportion cannot be known without knowing the nature of the act; and the nature of the act cannot be known without knowing the nature of the active principle, that is, the intellect itself, to whose nature it belongs to be conformed to things. Consequently, it is because the intellect reflects upon itself that it knows truth.
Truth is in sense also as a consequence of its act, for sense judges of things as they are. Truth is not in sense, however, as something known by sense; for, although sense judges truly about things, it does not know the truth by which it truly judges. Although sense knows that it senses, it does not know its own nature; consequently, it knows neither the nature of its act nor the proportion of this act to things. As a result, it does not know its truth."
But this, really, is casual language!
Do I hold that Aquinas takes potency/act as something we determine, by willing to “see it” in a certain way in reality? No. Even though all these things are required for us to sense potency - i.e. our will, minds, senses, etc - the view is that potency/act would be the same, as elements of reality itself, regardless of what our perception was. Yet don’t we come to knowledge of reality through perception? Well, yes, but that only follows on the fact of our sensing reality. Again, the intellect grasps concepts, language discovers them. They are not imposed or self-created.
But the definition is gained by experience. It is not presupposed. It is discovered.
Potentiality and actuality tells us everything we know about reality:i.e. that it is becoming. The fact that water can become hot is precisely the point. It can become. What in the world does that word mean - become? To be able to possess being in different modes. To gain something in being, which was not had previously, and to lose something in being, which was previously had. Being is constantly slipping away from us, as it were.
You are just confounding the whole point of the proof, since you continually misrepresent/caricature it by some sort of a priori conceptualism that is brought to the table.
None of this holds, since language does not presuppose concepts. It grasps them. (At least on the Realist view.)
I can see why you keep harking back to this point, since you are trapped in a Kantian epistemology (though you can’t see it.) Perhaps you will have a gestalt shift and see this for yourself.
My point still holds, which you don’t refute here. We know gravity by moving from effect to cause. But this is secondary anyway. I don’t think I’ll ever get around to expressing the force of that parallel, considering our current tangle of confusion.
I am using both definitions, since they follow upon one another, though you seem to fail to realize this. How could you know you were sensing a thing, unless you grasped what your senses perceived? Intellect abstracts immaterially from the senses. Hence, the senses themselves do not “know” anything. Rather, they “sense.” I know you are against such language, but I’ll let Aquinas speak on this distinction:
"Truth is both in intellect and in sense, but not in the same way. It is in intellect as a consequence of the act of the intellect and as known by the intellect. Truth follows the operation of the intellect inasmuch as it belongs to the intellect to judge about a thing as it is. And truth is known by the intellect in view of the fact that the intellect reflects upon its own act—not merely as knowing its own act, but as knowing the proportion of its act to the thing. Now, this proportion cannot be known without knowing the nature of the act; and the nature of the act cannot be known without knowing the nature of the active principle, that is, the intellect itself, to whose nature it belongs to be conformed to things. Consequently, it is because the intellect reflects upon itself that it knows truth.
Truth is in sense also as a consequence of its act, for sense judges of things as they are. Truth is not in sense, however, as something known by sense; for, although sense judges truly about things, it does not know the truth by which it truly judges. Although sense knows that it senses, it does not know its own nature; consequently, it knows neither the nature of its act nor the proportion of this act to things. As a result, it does not know its truth."
Ah, “percept” as in “perception.” I misread.
But this, really, is casual language!
Do I hold that Aquinas takes potency/act as something we determine, by willing to “see it” in a certain way in reality? No. Even though all these things are required for us to sense potency - i.e. our will, minds, senses, etc - the view is that potency/act would be the same, as elements of reality itself, regardless of what our perception was. Yet don’t we come to knowledge of reality through perception? Well, yes, but that only follows on the fact of our sensing reality. Again, the intellect grasps concepts, language discovers them. They are not imposed or self-created.
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Touchstone
Guest
OK, a lot of confusion I think has been cleared up above, with the identification of the overloading of “sense” here. The intellect can ‘sense[2]’ as in grasp or come to a conceptual comprehension, but the intellect does not ‘sense[1]’. The intellect works after the fact of sense[1] and any integration and modelling the lower-level functions of the brain perform. Think about listening to the spoken word. It’s sound waves in the ear, raw stimuli, that get processed by pattern-recognizers and tokenizers that bind those (name removed by moderator)uts (hopefully) to concepts which then become functional resources for the intellect. But as you talk about it, you appear to be equivocating on “sense”, because you are using it in contexts that fit sense[1] – “perceive”, in the pre-intellectual definition.
Humans are wired to build models on patterned stimuli (e.g. the visual integration of a child sight faculties in the first few months after birth). And we do have instinctual responses and cognitive patterns that appear to be fixed, hardwired into our “platform”. But these are developmental as well; a baby does not (demonstrably) understand “coming to be” in the sense we do, nor the “persistence of objects”; she is not surprised to see a ball that was put under a bowl “disappear” when the bowl is taken away, for she hasn’t developed the empirical models that signal that as “wrong” or “confusing” yet.
It doesn’t. The world might be such that we can know, necessarily, that we exist, because we are conscious and able to consider such a question. We are aware of our surroundings. We unavoidable know that, we have that knowledge transcendentally. So there is some knowledge right there, and that does NOT presuppose the validity of scientific metaphysics. Those metaphysical conjectures might be utterly mistaken, and yet knowledge remains. It’s just not extensive in the areas that we identify as scientific knowledge.
No, see above. Even on solipsism, we have knowledge of our existence.
Science doesn’t even bother with that sense of ‘true’. It’s performative on its own terms, and builds models that have utility, synchronization between sense experience on the front end, conceptual models, and sense experience on the back end that match the model. That is as ‘true’ as science gets, which is to say it doesn’t acknowledge, or even have anything to say about ‘metaphysical truth’. That judgment only obtains if someone subjectively commits to the idea that such performance does reify those propositions as “metaphysically true”.
If that’s not clear, imagine the skeptic who doubts that performative, practically useful models developed by science support the idea that reality is real and that the world is intelligible to some degree. What can one say to such a critic? Nothing. One either accepts that as evidence of ‘real’, or one does not. But for science’s part, it just says, “this stuff works and performs in this way and that”, and that is all. And that is plenty for its purposes.
‘Absurd in itself’ is a meaningless term, so far as I can see. A category error. “Absurd” only has meaning in the context of “to us”, or “to me”. There’s no “self” for the impersonal extra-mental world to “be absurd to”. If a proposition is absurd, it can only be absurd to us, to our minds.
Well, I think we do very much agree then, because it is futile to discuss the world as “absurd in itself” apart from our minds and contemplation of the world. That concept is incoherent.
-TS
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Touchstone
Guest
The Exodus:
A useful example an old prof I had used was the question: does walking exist? We can say “walking” is perfectly real, in the sense that it is a description of some pattern of movements of a body. But walking itself, proper, is not a real, discrete entity apart from our concepts. It’s a linguistic, conceptual construct, and abstraction that matches against an ensemble of movements and other phemonena.
-TS
I like this formulation: potency is in the eye of the beholder.
Yes, but it’s just a trivial restatement to reverse that and say: *therefore it must have “growth potentiality”. *Of course, by definition! It’s implied in the observation that trees grows. It’s vacuous to say that trees grow, and therefore have the ‘potentiality to grow’. It’s implied in grow, and in ‘heat’, and in any other verb you want to suggest that connotes state change. It simply “shadows” positive knowledge, positive observations. “The ball fell, therefore it must have “falling-ness” in some metaphysical sense”. Yes, but it’s just trivial, and tells me nothing beyond “the ball fell”.
I think that’s the key problem. “Cause” is a word, a concept, a mental concept for a class of phenomena. But when you say it’s “real”, it not a “real” element like a water molecule is real, having extension in space, energy and matter content. Even the concept of “cause” is real in the physical sense, a brain-state reified as electrons and chemical reactions over synapses. But the referent of that concept is perfectly abstract, a semantic placeholder for a category.
A useful example an old prof I had used was the question: does walking exist? We can say “walking” is perfectly real, in the sense that it is a description of some pattern of movements of a body. But walking itself, proper, is not a real, discrete entity apart from our concepts. It’s a linguistic, conceptual construct, and abstraction that matches against an ensemble of movements and other phemonena.
It must presuppose the concept of a concept as the mind goes about developing concepts through language.
I believe that is your conviction, but agnosticism on the matter is the only warranted position I can identify. You might be right – that’s my intuition, as well. But I have no way at all to establish its impossibility. Nature isn’t beholden to me, and my intuitions do not confer reality on nature. Since that’s the case, uncaused phenomena may obtain, at some level.
Here it gets outrageous. What do you mean by “fabric of reality”??? “What it is”??? This is an empty concept, isn’t it? What it is? It is what it is, but that only serves to separate it from dependency on our subjective will. It tells us nothing about what “is” is [insert obligatory Clinton joke here].
No, not deceived. We are just limited in our senses, and intellect. Formiddable and marvelous as both may be, they have practical constraints, and thus we not only allow, but expect that some parts of reality are impenetrable to both.
Agreed, but limited perceptual capabilities and limited intellect do not make for deception. It’s just a limitation, nothing deceptive about it. That being the case, we can know, and can discover and can test and can distinguish, and can comprehend. Just not infinitely, completely, whatever that would mean.
-TS
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The_Exodus
Guest
See my previous post which states more or less that yes, abstraction must take place in order for the intellect to “know” the senses, for there is no intellect in sense, and hence, though the senses truly sense, they do not sense truly or truth.
touchstone said:
I.e. then you assume a priori an ontology that whatever cannot be in the mind cannot exist in reality. You are just flip flopping back and forth here when it suits your fancy, with regards to “caused things” being uncaused (which is absolutely impossible); i.e. becoming or being coming from non-being.
But on your view it could nevertheless be *true * about reality; i.e. what “comes to be from another” can “come to be from nothing”. A flat contradiction in the mind. No person could possibly conceive of reality, which as we experience it comes to be from previously existing being, coming to be from nothing at all, since “coming to be” is known, through experience, to entail “coming to be from something.”
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The_Exodus
Guest
To make sure my post #54 doesn’t get lost
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The_Exodus
Guest
Yes, but it’s just a trivial restatement to reverse that and say: therefore it must have “growth potentiality”… Yes, but it’s just trivial, and tells me nothing beyond “the ball fell”.
That “the ball fell” at root expresses the mystery of being: change, potency, act, becoming, acquiring, losing… Possessing a state of existence, while almost simultaneously losing it. The inbetween of “was” and “will be,” like an instant which has both past and future as one momentary now.
touchstone:
If one concept is not real, no concepts are real, since all concepts are gained (on my view) the same way (the intellect abstracting from sense). It is merely arbitrary for you to say that the concept “water molecule” is real since it is “extended in space, etc.”
You wrangle me with being unclear about what “being” is; well tell me, what in the world is “space” or “extension”? Plumb the depths of those concepts for me. Concepts are on the same plane, because they underlie all language. Do you think because “water molecule” or “physical science” has been shouted from the rooftops of philosophy for the past 100 years that this changes how we fundamentally perceive reality? What is “physical”? What is “sense”? What can you tell me, without using a concept? What concept cannot be subject to such intense scrutiny that it becomes obvious that we cannot exhaust its meaning?
But that does not mean that we invent these concepts!
Take your point of view far enough, and you will see what Nietzsche meant when he said, “I am afraid we are not yet rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.”
touchstone:
I hold it as axiomatic that concepts are discovered, and not brought to the table.
touchstone:
But this is impossible, because it would appeal to infinity. What about “the concept of a concept of a concept?”
No, it only need be the case that, we come to reality without any concepts, and our intellect, abstracting from the senses, and reflecting on various phantasms/memories (which were gained by sense–>abstraction) acquires them. It, likewise, acquires the concept of concept by reflecting on its act of apprehension.
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Betterave
Guest
Touchstone;7090120I think you could easily find FIFTY posts of mine on this forum that make that very point said:
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