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Blue_Horizon
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I am not sure if we are on the same wavelength.
“Natural motion” of course.
The earth and water elements fall rectilinearly, fire and air rise rectilinearly, aether moves in perfect circles.
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“Natural motion” of course.
The earth and water elements fall rectilinearly, fire and air rise rectilinearly, aether moves in perfect circles.
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thinkandmull
Guest
Does aether exist? Anyway, by mineral soul do you mean vegetable soul?
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Peter_Plato
Guest
Simultaneous motions are happening all around us. There is a distinction to be made between “horizontal” motion where one event temporally precedes another and “vertical” motion where the cause is simultaneous with the effect.
The stick moves the puck in such a way that the movement of the puck happens with the motion of the stick. This kind of “vertical” stacking could be infinite (possibly) because the effects are simultaneous with the causes.
I am not alone in reading both Aristotle and Aquinas as claiming this kind of vertical causation does happen in this way. Many Thomists do, though most – if not all – would claim that the verticality could not god on infinitely.
Listen to Michael Augros explain precisely this point on Catholic answers from this past Wednesday’s show.
catholic.com/radio/shows/who-designed-the-designer-31049
Listen from about 5:07 to about 9:20.
Now Michael Augros does not agree that simultaneous causes could be “stacked” to infinity. That is a different point, however, than arguing that causes CANNOT be “stacked” in this way – which you claim is not possible. He is arguing that the stacking is precisely the kind of causes (per se) which lead to the conclusion that a First Cause is necessary.
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balto
Guest
Well the word “soul” has a technical definition in Aristotelian parlance as I am sure you are well aware. A thing whose matter is informed by a soul is a living thing. Living things are typically held to be substances whose actions are explicitly undertaken for their own self-perfection, so-called “immanent” causation vs. mere transient causation. If you wanted to show that minerals have souls as well you’d have to demonstrate that mineral activities are specifically undertaken with the end of perfecting the mineral itself as an objective telos. Perhaps you have mineral growth in mind (I don’t know, I am only guessing)? I would argue that such a feature is only accidental since it does not tend to allow the mineral to function as a mineral any better regardless of its size.
If by “having a soul” you simply mean that it has some kind of natural activity, that is already covered by the fact that it is informed by some natural form or other. The form is the principle of actuality in any given substance and would cover activities that the substance does through its own nature. Do you have an inert substance in mind?
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Blue_Horizon
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Hmmmn.
If only people could agree what this actually means.
(a) What does simultaneous mean exactly? If we are speaking about movement then most people would prob regard that as meaning the chain of instrumental agents pass on that movement one to another instantaneously without delay from top to bottom.
Your distinction between horizontal/vertical simultaneity is interesting and I have not seen it before.
As far as I can tell, due to laws of inertia and compression, no real world example of vertical simultaneity in non-rectilinear motion actually exist… and even rectilinear would have to be at uniform speed.
(b) What exactly is meant by motion?
If local movement is a valid example, does the principle hold for all forms of such movement? ie accelerated movement along the chain of instrumental agents, or is it for constant rectilinear movement only?
Using this terminology it would seem local movement, if non-rectilinear or if accelerating, must be of the horizontal type (ie in temporal succession).
My understanding is that both A and T would agree that such horizontal chains of non rectilinear motion could be eternal - just as the world may be temporally eternal.
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Blue_Horizon
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The trouble with Aristotle is that depending what part of his corpus one reads…he has varying definitions for his core concepts which sometimes contradict on the edges as it were. I wouldn’t be suprised if soul is one of them but lets see where this goes…
This sounds back to front as if “soul” is something agreed by all well before we agree on what “living” means. Its the other way around isn’t it. We deduce/infer the soul from observing “living things”? So maybe its better to say “living things have their matter informed by a soul.” But, yes, I would agree this is basically ow most would understand Aristotle’s soul.
THe problem of course is how we then decide what constitutes “living” as life has many degrees.
Well I don’t know what Aristotle has to say on this matter but it sounds like this could be one of his understandings of “living”. Do you have a ref?
Haven’t come across transient versus immanent before nor know what the distinction is?
I don’t think that is a problem. Aquinas is always going on about the elements (esp aether, ie celestial bodies) in their natural motion being most perfect and are moved by the prime mover as by their final cause (or having an inner “appetite” that seeks this telos).
No, minerals don’t grow. Vegetation grows. But minerals (ie the elements) do not grow as their “soul” would possess a much more basic and more primitive source of generic motion/act. Such an elemental soul has a power - that of local motion - they do move if left to themselves and are not restrained.
I am not sure what you are saying here.
If the elements are seen to exhibit local motion if unrestrained…then they exhibit an appetite, a telos, a perfecting act…just like plants, animals and humans.
Therefore an unrestrained element is in a more perfect state or moving towards a more perfect place than if restrained. Air trapped/restrained under water is less perfect than air that has already sought and found the sky. Dust (ie the earth element) in the sky is less perfect than that same dust that has had time to settle back to earth where it should be.
I am not sure about the bearing of “soul” and form in this context - did Aristotle ever say his soul is the form of the body?
My simple observation is that a thing that moves must be (efficiently) moved by something else that is either part of the substance or external to that substance.
As Aristotle does not seem to clearly state that natural motion of the four elements is caused by an outside other substance … I am suggesting the only other solution is to posit some “part” of an inanimate substance is efficient cause of the local motion Aristotle calls “natural”.
In any other self-moving substance in his system that is called a “soul”.
Why not extend that principle to allegedly “inanimate” elemental/mineral matter to explain its self-driven natural motions too?
Well, if this also holds for plant//animal soul then I suppose it fits … though I am not quite sure what you are really getting at here to be honest.
Does “form” alone allow a thing to locally move itself without contradicting the principle that whatever is moved is moved by another (or a part of self)?
Can a faculty/power of a form be such that it can locally move (as an efficient cause) the matter/form composite and be considered a different “part” from the composite to allow the above principle to hold?
While modern physics would rubbish this explanation of “natural motion” I believe Aristotle’s own system forces him (and us) to be saying that really, in this abstract sense, all forms are also souls giving “life” (ie including local motion) and not just coherent existence/nature.
Not sure what you mean.
Just “unrestrain” a rock off the tower of Pisa.
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Peter_Plato
Guest
Motion for Aristotle, as well as Aquinas, was any kind of change from potentiality to actuality. This point has been made over and over again in a great number of the writings about A/T metaphysics.
That would mean motion in this sense would include, say, becoming more knowledgeable on a subject, becoming a person, development of a faculty or even making use of a faculty such as seeing or hearing.
Time would seem inherent in the process of a great deal of change, but is time fundamental to reality? Even positing present time as opposed to past, future or duration assumes time. The question, though, is whether eternity has any time constraints, whatsoever.
Those constraints exist for us as beings within time, but if God is eternal then the constraints of time do not exist for him and, then, eternality would be a more fundamental reality. If time is perspectival then it could be a constraint on us in the same sense that the two-dimensionality of figures in drawings or paintings is a constraint on the way those are seen. Eternality may, in fact, be the proper perspective from which to see motion/change.
I think CS Lewis made this point in Mere Christianity (not sure where, but I can look it up.) His point, was that perhaps time imposes upon us a constrained view of reality much like viewing a drawing or painting imposes 2D constraints on what is more fundamentally a 3D reality. Instead of time being linear/sequential as we see it, perhaps it has “height” as well as forward pointing “length.” This, I think, begins to capture the idea of the vertical and horizontal vis a vis motion/change.
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Blue_Horizon
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I don’t think I theoretically disagree with any of this but it’s all very a priori. These principles make us end up questioning what we observe… rather than the other way around. I see no observed issues that require me to be critical of my understanding of chains of local motion, which is surely a valid enough example of motion/change to engage the principles of alleged “simultaneity” in horizontal chains of efficient causality?
I do not believe examples of instantaneous chains of local motion and the efficient causality involved exist in the world.
If they do then we are using the words motion and simultaneous in an unusual sense.
The other issue may be that the change we call local motion is of a different kind from non temporal changes that both A and T throw into the single catchall grabbag of “motion.” The error of univocation when there is actually only equivocation.
Can you provide an example after defining these terms more clearly.
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Richca
Guest
The soul is the principle of life and animation in living things. If you extend this principle to inanimate things, then the element is both animate and inanimate at the same time which is a contradiction. It is also self evident that elements are not living things. There is a distinction between living and non-living things which appears to be self-evident to our experience of reality. Living things have a principle of life within them which Aristotle called the soul, not that he invented the term, and non-living things do not a principle of life or soul. Non-living things do not exhibit those things we associate with living things such as growth, reproduction, senses, consciousness, reason as in man, death, etc.
Nor would I say that non-living things such as rocks or the elements move themselves about. These things do not move unless they are moved by some external force or agent. Nor would I say that single elemental atoms move themselves unless moved by some external force or agent. For example, suppose I place a brick of gold in front of me. This brick of gold is not going to move unless I move it. Now, suppose I chip off one atom at a time until I get to the last atom of gold. Barring all external forces such as air currents, temperature, gravity, and whatever, the atom doesn’t move. If the brick of gold containing millions of gold atoms doesn’t move, I see no reason why any single individual atom should barring all external factors. My conclusion is that individual atoms of the elements, as a unit, do not move unless they are moved.
There appears to be movement inside the atom according to quantum physics such as the orbiting of the electrons around the nucleus. This is due to the electrical, electromagnetic, gravitational, and strong and weak forces in the atom. In Aristotle’s terminology, these motions in the atom could be called natural motions caused by formal principles or accidental forms of the atom such as the forces. I wouldn’t say that elemental atoms have a soul in the least because the elements are not living things.
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balto
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No I think the trouble is interpreting him correctly. It seems that you say this a lot, but I don’t remember any specific examples given.
To say that X has a soul and to say that X is a living thing are both equivalent statements. I don’t think we have too much of a difficulty understanding living vs. non-living things. The only point of contention is borderline cases, eg. viruses, but that’s not because we don’t have a good understanding of life but because we can’t figure out whether viruses exemplify it or not. It’s tangential to the issue at hand however.
The distinction I gave you was the relevant one. Here’s a good article on the matter for a more detailed explanation: Stop It, You’re Killing Me.
Everything has a telos though. If it exists, it has something it tends towards. Non-living things have teloses as much as living things do. That’s not the relevant distinction between life and non-life.
I think you know what I meant about mineral growth. Yes, they move because they have a certain substantial form. Electrons are always repelling each other and attracting protons. Do they have souls too, since they have natural powers and motion?
The spatio-temporal location of a quantity of air is an accidental quality and would not contribute to its perfection. I suppose you could say that one of the teloses of air is to rise, since by its nature it is adapted to doing so.
Yes I believe so. It is most likely in De Anima.
This is the modern view, which seems to only end in absurdities. Aristotle is saying that the elements have certain actions that flow from their nature. We know some things exhibit electrical properties, so we propose the electron as a unit of charge. It would be silly to ask what causes electrons to have charge. An electron just is a particle that is charged by nature. You’re forgetting about the formal causes here.
Because soul does not denote something that has natural actions, but rather something that is self-perfective. You may say that an ensouled substance has itself as one of its teloses. Natural motion =/= self perfection.
Yes it does. How do you understand the term “form?” I think it is a good thing that you are understanding soul the way you are, because it’s getting you closer to the A-T viewpoint on these issues, but what you are referring to is really the form and not specifically a soul.
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balto
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This could only essentially be the case in living things. The form is not a part of something or even a thing in its own right (that’s the big beef Aristotle has with Plato, who thought they are things in their own right). The form is the principle of actuality of the substance. So yes, the form can impart actualities to the substance that allow it to undertake self perfective actions. The form does not act on itself nor is it acted upon. It is not itself a substance.
What does physics have to do with this? It might be trouble for the philosophical reductionist. Forms give actuality. Souls are forms that give life actuality.
I mean is there any substance that does not do anything at all. I was thinking you’d probably give something like a rock as an example. But a rock is not inert. It exerts gravity on other objects. I don’t think there is such a thing that does not do anything at all since such a “thing” would have no actualities at all and hence be prime matter.
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Peter_Plato
Guest
I think it is possible to misread Aristotle on this. He does not mean that whatever motion is present in a thing, THAT motion must be on account of something else.
Take magnetism, for example. Magnetic objects exert a force on other magnetic objects. I don’t think Aristotle is held to imply that the magnetic force is itself caused by something else. I think what he means is ultimately, when the force is accounted for by a sufficient accounting of the force, the cause of the cause of the cause, etc., will not be in the object but will ULTlMATELY be shown to come from another.
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Peter_Plato
Guest
I think this idea of simultaneity is captured very well in Fr. Barron’s depiction of God in this talk.
wordonfire.org/resources/blog/watch-free-lesson-from-bishop-elect-barrons-the-mystery-of-god-study-program/4843/?utm_source=Mystery+of+God±+Sample+Video+%2B+PDF&utm_campaign=MoG+Pre-sales&utm_medium=email
Think about it. The God of the burning bush and of the Incarnation simultaneously creates and becomes what he creates without being a “cause” in the sense of preceding or coming before either.
In this same sense, God “creates” the universe without preceding it because God is not constrained by time nor is he in time. Time is an aspect of or internal to the creation, but not an aspect of nor internal to God.
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thinkandmull
Guest
This post is way unclear. The basic point is that even in the Thomistic model of an eternal universe, each cause would physically be dependent of the previous movement, and that to infinity past. So there is really no need for a God except in the sense of the last 3 ways, but then what happens to the first two?
Also, can you name Thomists who believe the Second Way does NOT say that infinite efficient causes are impossible?
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thinkandmull
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Could you explain how the “laws of inertia and compression” enter in here?
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Peter_Plato
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You seem to confuse eternal with “infinite past” as if time were a necessary aspect of all reality.
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thinkandmull
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No that not what I said. An infinite past in the Thomistic model would still have each cause physically dependent on the previous movement, and that to infinity past. So there is really no need for a God except in the sense of the last 3 Ways. Aquinas phrased the fist two Ways for average people to understand as if there could not be an infinite past, and then speculated about an infinite past later in the Summa. It actually totally undercut the First Two ways, and not just the interpretation most average people gave them
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Richca
Guest
The eternity or non-eternity of the world is irrelevant to the second way. The argument is concerned about the here and now. As Aquinas says in the second proof, in an ordered series of efficient causes per se, it is impossible to regress to infinity. The series he has in mind here is where the existence and causal activity of each member of the series is dependent on the existence and causal activity of the prior member of the series and all the members of the series must exist in the here and now or simultaneously. In such an ordered series of efficient causes there must be a first cause, we cannot regress to infinity in which there would be no first cause nor any intermediate or ultimate effects, at least if we want to make sense out of anything or account for the effects we observe right before our very ideas.
I think St Thomas gives us a clue to understanding why we cannot regress to infinity in an order of efficient causes per se in ST, part I, q.7, art. 4 where he writes about an infinite multitude:
"A multitude is said to be infinite absolutely, when an infinite multitude is necessary that something may exist. Now this is impossible; because it would entail something dependent on an infinity for its existence; and hence its generation could never come to be, because it is impossible to pass through an infinite medium…
This can be shown, for example, in the work of a carpenter requiring a certain absolute multitude; namely, art in the soul, the movement of the hand, and a hammer; and supposing that such things were infinitely multiplied, the carpentering work would never be finished, forasmuch as it would depend on an infinite number of causes."
St Thomas could have probably not only have said here that the carpentering work would never be finished, but it would never begin.
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thinkandmull
Guest
The problem with that is that there is no need to get vertical if it is explained by an infinite past of horzontal
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thinkandmull
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All Aquinas is saying is that you cannot do an infinite number of tasks. Actually you can though. Cross a segment and you pass over infinite points. However, the time is infinitely divided as well. The question is how one could have an infinite dominoes series from the past. That’s the LARGER infinity, and yet Aquinas is ok with that?
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