The First Way of St. Thomas: objections

[awatkins69]

I have been thinking of the First Way of Saint Thomas. I think it can be stated clearly like this:

(1) Everything that is changing is being changed by something else.
(2) But the series of changers and things changing cannot be infinitely
long.
(3) There must be a first cause of all change.

I have three main objections, mainly directed against the first premise:

1. It seems that what moves the will is the essence of happiness, which is certainly not changing, and which (prima facie) we do not identify with God. Of course, we can turn to the Fourth Way, but that means the First Way does not stand alone. Given a view of the will such as that of Bl. Duns Scotus, this clearly contradicts the first premise, it seems to me.
2. In the same line of thinking of my first objection, it seems that appetible objects are unmoved movers. The pizza is the final cause of my action of going to the pizza shop.
3. It also seems that natures are unmoved movers. For instance, the nature of atoms cause them to behave in certain ways, the nature of animals cause them to behave certain ways, etc. However, we usually do not call natures God, even though they are unmoved movers. In this situation we could turn to the Fifth Way, but again the First Way seems to fail alone.
4. Newtonian physics seems to contradict the first premise. I know this is the most common objection, but I still do not quite understand how one could answer it. Change of location seems to me to be change in the strict sense as well. An object is potentially at point A, and then is actually at point A, even though it was not put there directly by something else (I think). This is a change from potentiality to actuality. A genuine change, it seems to me.

Now, we could say that it’s fine to turn to the other ways for support, but if that is the case the First Way simply does not work. It either works or it doesn’t. So far I haven’t heard any satisfying replies. In my opinion, these are strong objections, though I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

 

[Katholish]

First thing to understand is that Thomas is talking about efficient causality, not final causality. Both final cause and efficient cause are present in change, and Thomas is looking specifically at efficient causality. That doesn’t mean the argument cannot apply to final causality in some way, but I don’t think that is the way it was primarily intended.

 

[JohnDamian]

The first premise is evidently false.

Immutability is not a necessary predicate of all positable necessary beings; ie-ergo; change is clearly a potential in hypothetical agents.

The Third proof is the only really valuable proof Aquinas offers.

 

[JDaniel]

The first premise is evidently false.

Immutability is not a necessary predicate of all positable necessary beings; ie-ergo; change is clearly a potential in hypothetical agents.

The Third proof is the only really valuable proof Aquinas offers.

John:

His first premise is slightly straw-manned, but, not altogether false. AW has effectively straw-manned all the arguments. All five of St. Thomas’ arguments are solid. If you want to go through each, one by one, I’ll be happy to do it with you. But, please, let’s do it one by one.

For AW, I’d have to untangle all of his straw men first, then re-state and re-describe each proof, in order to explicate each one properly.

Let me know if you want to start. I know Touchstone does.

God bless,
jd

 

[Marc_Anthony]

John:

His first premise is slightly straw-manned, but, not altogether false. AW has effectively straw-manned all the arguments. All five of St. Thomas’ arguments are solid. If you want to go through each, one by one, I’ll be happy to do it with you. But, please, let’s do it one by one.

For AW, I’d have to untangle all of his straw men first, then re-state and re-describe each proof, in order to explicate each one properly.

Let me know if you want to start. I know Touchstone does.

God bless,
jd

Please do. I’m interested in this.

 

[The_Exodus]

The first premise is evidently false.

Immutability is not a necessary predicate of all positable necessary beings; ie-ergo; change is clearly a potential in hypothetical agents.

The Third proof is the only really valuable proof Aquinas offers.

Hm… I find this objection interesting John.

It seems to me however that the first premise, at least set forth by the OP, that “everything that is changing is changed by another” is evidently true. That is, we observe the truth of the premise all the time, indeed, thousands of times a day our experience reaffirms it.

Now, the question you raise is whether the first cause must necessarily be immutable, unless I am mistaken. But the proof of motion is what this precisely proves. Unless you wish to maintain that God is “mutably immutable” or that he somehow always undergoes eternal change in such a way which is still compatible with changelessness. Such concepts, however, although they are interesting when discussing the Trinity and the infinite relations between Father, Son, and Spirit, really do no more than muddy the waters. If God is “mutable” in the sense of eternally in exchange with himself in the Trinity, this is essentially nothing more than saying he is immutable in himself, insofar as his nature, whatever its act may be, is not changing in act, even if that act is, itself, a sort of processive act. (He is act afterall, he must be acting in some way.) It would still follow that, the Trinity taken as Deity itself, is necessarily unchanged by any other agent. This is what the first proof shows, that all things we perceive which change are changed by other agents; i.e. agents outside themselves.

I believe the rigor of the proof is strong enough to accomodate for the faults you see. Perhaps, however, I am caricaturing your views. Perhaps you could expand your thought?

 

[The_Exodus]

I have been thinking of the First Way of Saint Thomas. I think it can be stated clearly like this:

(1) Everything that is changing is being changed by something else.
(2) But the series of changers and things changing cannot be infinitely
long.
(3) There must be a first cause of all change.

I would like to merely clarify premise 2, which is often misunderstood. The series of changers and changed things can be infinitely long in respect of a given species of causality. Hence, it can be temporally speaking, infinitely long. Yet with respect to efficient causality, it must terminate in an uncaused cause.
awatkins:

1. It seems that what moves the will is the essence of happiness, which is certainly not changing, and which (prima facie) we do not identify with God.

“All things, by desiring their own perfection, desire God Himself, inasmuch as the perfections of all things are so many similitudes of the divine being” ST I I q. 6 a. 1.

The essence of happiness is indeed God. He is the eternal good which all things desire of necessity. Hence he also desires himself. Thus it follows that all things which are in change are changed by something else, and that the will is changed by its notion of happiness, presented to it under various aspects by the intellect.
awatkins:

1. In the same line of thinking of my first objection, it seems that appetible objects are unmoved movers. The pizza is the final cause of my action of going to the pizza shop.

Pizza is merely a form of happiness conceived by the intellect. Yet all forms of happiness are related to God insofar as what the will really desires is not pizza itself, but happiness or fulfillment itself. In this life, however, we are deprived of the vision of the essence of God, and thus we turn, by degrees as it were, to various changeable goods, in order to merit eternal beatitude.

Hence St.Thomas says somewhere in the Summa that the life of man resembles the instant of choice of the angels. What the angels merited in terms of happiness or deserved in terms of justice in that one act - since angels are not measured in time, but in the number of their acts - man has spaced out over his entire life.
awatkins:

1. It also seems that natures are unmoved movers. For instance, the nature of atoms cause them to behave in certain ways, the nature of animals cause them to behave certain ways, etc. However, we usually do not call natures God, even though they are unmoved movers.

This is an interesting objection, but I think there is some conflation here. If we assume natures are whatever is in a thing - say, the nature of a bear is to catch fish - although we are stating, definitionally, the nature of the bear, we have not yet stated what gives motion or existence to that nature. Hence, we may say that, “it is in the nature of a bear to catch fish”, but we cannot mean that it is in the nature of the bear itself, since this at least depends on fish to exist, but rather, that if there is a bear here, it will move to catch fish. This really then becomes a matter of substituting the words “every nature” for “everything that changes” in the first premise.

In other words, if by “natures” you simply assume that these are things which move of themselves, then you must posit that they move by necessity, and hence they are, of themselves, first movers or uncaused causes. But concerning the nature of a bear, this would be false, since it is proven by the senses that bears only move by other natures; i.e. a bear only moves to catch a fish when it is placed in a river. Thus the bear is not unmoved by nature, but moved by nature, on the supposition of catching fish.
awatkins:

An object is potentially at point A, and then is actually at point A, even though it was not put there directly by something else (I think). This is a change from potentiality to actuality. A genuine change, it seems to me.

If the agent was not put there by something else, what was it put there by? Itself? But this is impossible, since the agent would have to of necessity act upon itself to move itself. In which case, if this agent did necessarily act upon itself to move itself - which must be the case if it was not moved by another - then the agent would necessarily already be where it was moving to, which is impossible.

This is the same idea behind the claim that something can come into being “of itself.” This is impossible because, such a being would have to be in act before it was existing. It would have to be prior to itself, to bring itself into being.

 

[awatkins69]

Thanks for the replies. I’ll try to get back to them later. Let me note that I did not intend to present the argument incorrectly. I figured I would just present the argument more clearly, since Saint Thomas uses many terms which are used differently today. I don’t disagree with premise 2, or the conclusions we will draw if the argument works. Thanks again.

 

[awatkins69]

John:

His first premise is slightly straw-manned, but, not altogether false. AW has effectively straw-manned all the arguments. All five of St. Thomas’ arguments are solid. If you want to go through each, one by one, I’ll be happy to do it with you. But, please, let’s do it one by one.

For AW, I’d have to untangle all of his straw men first, then re-state and re-describe each proof, in order to explicate each one properly.

Let me know if you want to start. I know Touchstone does.

God bless,
jd

We don’t need to go through each proof. I’m only really interested in the First Way for our purposes, specifically, premise one of that argument. I’d very much like to know how I misread Saint Thomas, and what specifically is wrong with my presentation of that argument. Which words, terminology, or form, specifically, are wrong in my presentation? Thanks.

 

[awatkins69]

Thanks for the comprehensive reply Exodus!

I would like to merely clarify premise 2, which is often misunderstood. The series of changers and changed things can be infinitely long in respect of a given species of causality. Hence, it can be temporally speaking, infinitely long. Yet with respect to efficient causality, it must terminate in an uncaused cause.

I understand and agree with premise 2 no problem.

“All things, by desiring their own perfection, desire God Himself, inasmuch as the perfections of all things are so many similitudes of the divine being” ST I I q. 6 a. 1.

The essence of happiness is indeed God. He is the eternal good which all things desire of necessity. Hence he also desires himself. Thus it follows that all things which are in change are changed by something else, and that the will is changed by its notion of happiness, presented to it under various aspects by the intellect.

Pizza is merely a form of happiness conceived by the intellect. Yet all forms of happiness are related to God insofar as what the will really desires is not pizza itself, but happiness or fulfillment itself. In this life, however, we are deprived of the vision of the essence of God, and thus we turn, by degrees as it were, to various changeable goods, in order to merit eternal beatitude.

Hence St.Thomas says somewhere in the Summa that the life of man resembles the instant of choice of the angels. What the angels merited in terms of happiness or deserved in terms of justice in that one act - since angels are not measured in time, but in the number of their acts - man has spaced out over his entire life.

I’d agree with this too. However, then we’re turning to the Fourth Way, as I said earlier. Thus, even if we don’t want to admit that the First Way fails, we’d have to admit that it is “parasitic”. And the Fourth Way is going to be much more contested than the First Way, I think.

This is an interesting objection, but I think there is some conflation here. If we assume natures are whatever is in a thing - say, the nature of a bear is to catch fish - although we are stating, definitionally, the nature of the bear, we have not yet stated what gives motion or existence to that nature. Hence, we may say that, “it is in the nature of a bear to catch fish”, but we cannot mean that it is in the nature of the bear itself, since this at least depends on fish to exist, but rather, that if there is a bear here, it will move to catch fish. This really then becomes a matter of substituting the words “every nature” for “everything that changes” in the first premise.

In other words, if by “natures” you simply assume that these are things which move of themselves, then you must posit that they move by necessity, and hence they are, of themselves, first movers or uncaused causes. But concerning the nature of a bear, this would be false, since it is proven by the senses that bears only move by other natures; i.e. a bear only moves to catch a fish when it is placed in a river. Thus the bear is not unmoved by nature, but moved by nature, on the supposition of catching fish.

I think you make a good point about the animals. However, I wonder if this works for all things? The other example I gave was the atom. By sole virtue of its nature, it decays into other elements. Objects with mass, by sole virtue of their nature, cause other things to be attracted to it (gravity), and are attracted to other objects with mass. Etc, etc.

If the agent was not put there by something else, what was it put there by? Itself? But this is impossible, since the agent would have to of necessity act upon itself to move itself. In which case, if this agent did necessarily act upon itself to move itself - which must be the case if it was not moved by another - then the agent would necessarily already be where it was moving to, which is impossible.

This is the same idea behind the claim that something can come into being “of itself.” This is impossible because, such a being would have to be in act before it was existing. It would have to be prior to itself, to bring itself into being.

I raised this objection in JD’s other thread, so I’m just going to re-paste it here for convenience: Newton’s second law of motion states that “Every body remains in a state of rest or uniform motion (constant velocity) unless it is acted upon by an external unbalanced force.” Let me note that this applies only in a vacuum. If there is air obviously the air will cause friction, or if there is gravity then obviously it will pull on the object.

Again, I’m not sure why local motion is not “motion” in the true sense as iterated by Saint Thomas. A body is potentially at point A and then actually at point A. Yet the body remains in motion without being directly moved by something else.

Saint Thomas believed in Aristotle’s physics which, however advanced they were for their time, ultimately proved incorrect. Aristotle believed there was no such thing as a vacuum, and that the air around an object made it move.

As a side point, it seems that physical laws are unmoved movers, in a sense.

All the best.

 

[The_Exodus]

I’d agree with this too. However, then we’re turning to the Fourth Way, as I said earlier. Thus, even if we don’t want to admit that the First Way fails, we’d have to admit that it is “parasitic”. And the Fourth Way is going to be much more contested than the First Way, I think.

How are we appealing to the fourth way, exactly?
awatkins:

I think you make a good point about the animals. However, I wonder if this works for all things? The other example I gave was the atom. By sole virtue of its nature, it decays into other elements. Objects with mass, by sole virtue of their nature, cause other things to be attracted to it (gravity), and are attracted to other objects with mass. Etc, etc.

You are simply assuming a priori these things have “changability” as part of their nature. Yet experience shows us that things change when acted on.

“Every body remains in a state of rest or uniform motion (constant velocity) unless it is acted upon by an external unbalanced force.” Let me note that this applies only in a vacuum. If there is air obviously the air will cause friction, or if there is gravity then obviously it will pull on the object.

Again, I’m not sure why local motion is not “motion” in the true sense as iterated by Saint Thomas. A body is potentially at point A and then actually at point A. Yet the body remains in motion without being directly moved by something else.

I will repeat what I think is the answer: a potential agent cannot be rendered actual, except by some agent which is previously (causally speaking) actual. This is because a potential agent would have to be actual prior to its being actual, which is impossible. Otherwise, the said agent would never be potential in that respect.
awatkins:

As a side point, it seems that physical laws are unmoved movers, in a sense.

Physical laws, which exist timelessly, spacelessly, immaterially…? Granted. Hence his proof stands, things are moved by a timeless, spaceless, immaterial cause.

 

[awatkins69]

1. How are we appealing to the fourth way, exactly?
2. You are simply assuming a priori these things have “changability” as part of their nature. Yet experience shows us that things change when acted on.
3. I will repeat what I think is the answer: a potential agent cannot be rendered actual, except by some agent which is previously (causally speaking) actual. This is because a potential agent would have to be actual prior to its being actual, which is impossible. Otherwise, the said agent would never be potential in that respect.
4. Physical laws, which exist timelessly, spacelessly, immaterially…? Granted. Hence his proof stands, things are moved by a timeless, spaceless, immaterial cause.

1. Well, if I remember the numbering right, the fourth way is the argument from degrees. To say it very very roughly, there are degrees of good, so there must be some being which is the highest good. And the good is what moves the will, according to Saint Thomas. This is what I mean.
2. It’s true. However, experience also shows us what appear to be some counterexamples, namely, those that I’ve presented. If they are not counterexamples, I’m curious to understand how we would apply Saint Thomas’ principle to this.
3. Do you think Newton’s laws are wrong??
4. Fair enough, but physical laws not “all people call God”. I’m also not sure that they’re timeless.

All the best.

 

[The_Exodus]

1. Well, if I remember the numbering right, the fourth way is the argument from degrees. To say it very very roughly, there are degrees of good, so there must be some being which is the highest good. And the good is what moves the will, according to Saint Thomas. This is what I mean.

I’m still unsure exactly how St. Thomas is appealing to the fourth proof. I apologize, but I am failing to find the connection.

2) It’s true. However, experience also shows us what appear to be some counterexamples, namely, those that I’ve presented. If they are not counterexamples, I’m curious to understand how we would apply Saint Thomas’ principle to this.

I’ve tried to answer as best I can. If “natures” are “unmoved movers” in and of themselves, then this contradicts our experience of these natures which shows us that they only move when moved by other natures.

3) Do you think Newton’s laws are wrong??

If they violate the law of contradiction, yes. If they don’t, then I’m unsure.

4) Fair enough, but physical laws not “all people call God”. I’m also not sure that they’re timeless.

Most people wouldn’t call them God, sure, but what we’ve done is here defined a concept which is the same as that proven in St. Thomas’s first way. What I mean by timeless is that the laws themselves do not change through time. It matters little what label you put on such a principle: it can be “God” or “nature” or “physical law” but the meaning conveyed is an unmoved mover which moves all things while itself not being moved by another. (I would also like to note that it is Catholic Dogma afterall that God is “in all things” i.e. omnipresent…“in him we live and move and have our being.”)

 

[Betterave]

Some tentative suggestions:

I have been thinking of the First Way of Saint Thomas. I think it can be stated clearly like this:

(1) Everything that is changing is being changed by something else.
(2) But the series of changers and things changing cannot be infinitely
long.
(3) There must be a first cause of all change.

I have three main objections, mainly directed against the first premise:

1. It seems that what moves the will is the essence of happiness, which is certainly not changing, and which (prima facie) we do not identify with God. Of course, we can turn to the Fourth Way, but that means the First Way does not stand alone. Given a view of the will such as that of Bl. Duns Scotus, this clearly contradicts the first premise, it seems to me.

But “what moves the will” as such is certainly not “the essence of happiness” as such. Right?

1. In the same line of thinking of my first objection, it seems that appetible objects are unmoved movers. The pizza is the final cause of my action of going to the pizza shop.

Surely it is my desire for pizza (not the pizza!) that (efficiently) motivates my going to the pizza shop. But in any case, I don’t see your point.

1. It also seems that natures are unmoved movers. For instance, the nature of atoms cause them to behave in certain ways, the nature of animals cause them to behave certain ways, etc. However, we usually do not call natures God, even though they are unmoved movers. In this situation we could turn to the Fifth Way, but again the First Way seems to fail alone.

Here I think you mean to say that natures are actual movers - why would you want to say they are unmoved movers?

1. Newtonian physics seems to contradict the first premise. I know this is the most common objection, but I still do not quite understand how one could answer it. Change of location seems to me to be change in the strict sense as well. An object is potentially at point A, and then is actually at point A, even though it was not put there directly by something else (I think). This is a change from potentiality to actuality. A genuine change, it seems to me.

I suspect the problem here is that relations (and relational changes) are simply not real in a relevant sense, but rather are entia rationis - their reality essentially depends on a mind grasping them as such.