This post arises out of an exchange between me and one Matt Sheean at Ed Feser’s blog. I got involved there because there have been some exchanges, at times quite amusing and colourful, between Feser (assisted by some of his regular commenters) and Vincent Torley, well known to UD readers as perhaps the less unacceptable face of ID, in that he comes across as a nice guy on a personal level. Both Feser and Torley are both staunch Catholics, a religion that I find pretty objectionable (above all for it’s interference in private life and thought, the readiness of its leaders to tell others how to behave, oppression of women and minorities.. but I digress). In an earlier post at Uncommon Descent, Vincent Torley kindly transcribed some of Feser’s presentation (admittedly to a young, lay audience) of his version of Aquinus’ “First Way”. I was asked to summarise my impression of the video and agreed. Hence this post.

Below is Aquinus’ “first and more manifest” proof of the existence of (his) God reproduced in translation from the original Latin by Fathers of the English Dominican Province,1920. This translation is now in the public domain.

The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality. Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it. Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e. that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.

I managed to listen to Feser’s argument by transferring the audio to a CD with the track split into manageable chunks so I could listen while driving. But then I found I didn’t need to. Vincent had already transcribed the salient sections in this blog post.

Step 1. Change occurs – e.g. qualitative change, change in location, quantitative change and substantial change. This cannot be coherently denied.

Step 2. Change can only occur in things which have potentials that can be actualized.(Parmenides’ philosophical argument against the possibility of change mistakenly assumes it involves something coming from nothing. However, it makes much more sense to view change as involving coming from a potential, and a potential is not nothing.)

Step 3. Change requires a changer, because it is the actualization of a potential. The actualization of a potential can only be explained by something actual.

Step 4. When a potential in a thing is being actualized, sometimes the actualizer is undergoing change itself. That is, it is being actualized – in which case, the change occurring in the actualizer itself requires a changer, in order to account for it.

Step 5. We often explain changes in terms of prior changes: the room gets cold because you switched on the air conditioner earlier, which happened because you felt hot, which was caused by heat reaching you from the sun, and so on. This is a linear series (a.k.a. an accidentally ordered series). A linear series of changes extending back in time might have no first member, as the past might be infinite in duration. (Note: Feser’s argument, like that of Aquinas, does not assume that the universe had a beginning.)

Essentially ordered hierarchical series (which need not go back in time, although sometimes they may) are fundamentally different from linear series, in that the later members of the chain have no power to act, except insofar as they derive that power from prior members.

Example 1: Suppose there’s a coffee cup on your desk. The coffee cup on your desk is being held up by the desk, which is supported by the floor, which is supported by the foundation of your house, which is supported by the Earth. This series need not go back in time: the coffee cup is sitting on your desk at that moment only because it is being held up at that moment by the desk, floor, foundation and ultimately by the Earth. The desk has no power of its own to hold up your coffee cup; its power to do so depends on the floor, foundation and Earth beneath it.

Example 2: Or consider a lamp above your head, which is held up by a chain, which is held up by the fixtures in the ceiling, which in turn is held up by the walls, which are held up by the foundation, which is once again held up by the Earth. The chain, fixture, ceiling, walls and foundation have no power of their own to hold anything up; their power is derived from that of the Earth. They are in that sense instruments, just as it’s not a brush that paints a picture, but rather the painter who uses the brush that paints the picture. Likewise with the coffee cup resting on the desk, the desk, floor, and foundations are instruments of the Earth. Thus in a hierarchical series, each member is thus being actualized by prior members, and is only capable of acting insofar as it is being actualized by those members.

In other words, every member of a hierarchical series, apart from the first, has its power only in a derivative way. Thus in a hierarchical series of causes, the later members of the series are instruments. In a linear series, on the other hand, the members of the series have their own causal power, and can continue acting, even if prior members cease to exist and/or operate.

Step 6. A hierarchical series of causes has to have a first member, while a linear series of causes does not. Here, “first” does not mean “temporally first,” but rather, something whose power to act does not derive from anything else: something which is not the instrument of anything else, which has its causal power in a primary or built-in way, and which can impart causal power without anything being imparted to it.

For example, a paintbrush does not have the power to move itself: even if its handle were infinitely long, it would still be an instrument. A desk, floor and foundation have no power of their own to hold up a coffee cup, except insofar as they derive it from the earth. Even an infinite series of desks would not be able to support the cup. We would ordinarily think of the sequence cup-desk-floor-foundation-earth as simultaneous, but we do still have a series of actualizations in the hierarchical series. The potential of the cup to be three feet off the ground is actualized by the desk it rests on; the desk’s potential to hold up the cup is actualized by the floor; and so on.

Step 7. Hierarchical series are more fundamental to reality than linear series, because a linear series of causes presuppose the existence of an underlying hierarchical series. Things can undergo change only because they exist. But for any material thing, we can legitimately ask:what makes it continue to exist? Appeals to past causes in a linear series fail to explain anything, because although they explain why the thing came to exist, they don’t explain why it continues to exist. To say that the things exists by default, because nothing has come along to break up or destroy that thing yet, still doesn’t explain what keeps it in existence at any moment. After all, it has the potential to either exist or not exist. Appeals to the structural arrangement of the internal components don’t work either, as they fail to explain why those components are not arranged differently. Hence the chain of explanation for things’ existence must be a hierarchical chain.

Step 8. Because the chain is hierarchical, the First Cause of things’ existence must be one which can actualize the potential for things to exist, without having to have its own existence actualized by anything. This Cause doesn’t have any potential for existence that needs to be actualized in the first place: it is always actual. You might say that it doesn’t have actuality, but that it is Pure Actuality. Such a First Cause could not have had a cause of its own. Being devoid of potentiality, there is nothing in it that could have needed actualizing. Such a cause is an Unmoved Mover, Uncaused Cause or Unactualized Actualizer: a purely actual Actualizer of the existence of things.

Step 9. The First Cause is the Ultimate Cause of the existence of things: it keeps them in existence at any moment at which they exist at all.

Step 10. Since the Cause of the existence of things is Pure Actuality, it is immutable and therefore eternal (outside time).

Step 11. Since material things are essentially inside time, the First Cause must be immaterial and incorporeal.

Step 12. A defect in a thing is a privation: a failure to realize a potential that is built into the nature of that thing. Hence the First Cause, being purely actual, cannot be defective. Something is perfect to the extent that its potentials are actualized. Hence a purely actual Cause must possess maximal perfection.

Step 13. Such a Being must also be unique. For there to be two such beings, there would have to be something that one has and the other lacks. There can be no such differentiating feature with something purely actual. For if there were two such beings, one would have to possess a perfection that the other lacks. But as we have seen, any first cause is completely devoid of privation and purely actual. Hence there can only be one First Cause.

Step 14. The first cause possesses the attribute of unity: there cannot in principle be more than one purely actual Cause.

Step 15. Is the First Cause all-powerful? Since the cause of the existence of things is Pure Actuality itself, rather than being just one actuality among others, That which is the Source of the power everything else has, has all possible power. It is, in short, omnipotent.

Step 16. The First Cause must also be perfectly good, as it realizes its potentials to the fullest possible extent. A purely actual Cause of the world cannot be said to be bad in any way, as it lacks nothing and is perfect.

Step 17. Is the first cause intelligent? Intelligence in Scholastic philosophy involves three basic capacities:

(i) the capacity to grasp universal abstract concepts (e.g. “man”);
(ii) the capacity to combine these capacities into abstract thoughts (e.g. the thought that all men are mortal);
(iii) the capacity to infer one thought from others, as when you reason from “All men are mortal” and “Socrates is a man” to “Socrates is mortal.”

The first capacity is the most fundamental. It involves having a form or pattern in the mindthat is the same as the form or pattern that the concept is about. Intellectual activity can be defined as the capacity to have the abstract form or pattern of a thing, without being that kind of thing.

Step 18. Causation is essentially a matter of giving or transferring something. But a cause cannot give what it does not have to give. The Principle of Proportionate Causality says that whatever is in the effect must be in the cause in some way – either formally, virtually oreminently.

A cause can have what is in the effect either formally (as when the cause actually instantiates the form or pattern generated in the effect), virtually (as when the cause has the power to generate the form produced in the effect by acquiring that form from elsewhere), or eminently (as when a cause has the power to independently generate the form produced in the effect). To cause a thing to exist is to cause something having a certain form or pattern. But the purely actual Uncaused Cause is the cause of every possible thing that might exist, and hence the cause of every possible form – every possible cat, every possible tree, every possible stone. It is for that reason the cause of every possible form that a thing might have. But as we’ve seen, what is in the effect must also be in the cause – either formally, virtually or eminently. Hence the forms of patterns of things in the purely actual Cause of things must exist in a completely universal or abstract way, because this Cause is the cause of every possible thing having that form or pattern.

But to have forms or patterns in that abstract way is simply to have that capacity which is fundamental to intelligence: having a form or pattern within you, without being that kind of thing. Moreover, the purely actual Cause of things is not only a cause of their existence, but of theirrelationships to other things: it’s not only the cause of man but of all men being mortal; and it’s not only the cause of this cat, but of this cat’s being on this mat. Hence there must be some sense in which these effects exist in their purely actual First Cause, and it must be in a way that has to do with the combination of the forms or things that exist in that cause.

That is to say, these effects (states of affairs) must exist in the purely actual First Cause insomething like the way in which thoughts exist in us. We not only have concepts, but we also have complete thoughts. In the same way, the purely actual Cause of things is not only the cause of all entities but of their relations to one another. So there must be something corresponding to those facts or states of affairs in the Cause of the world – which means that there must besomething analogous to a complete thought in us. So what exists in the things that the purely actual Cause is the cause of, pre-exists in that cause, in something like the way that the things that we make pre-exist as ideas or plans pre-exist in our minds when we make them. These things thereby exist in that cause eminently and virtually, even if not formally.

Thus the Cause of things is not itself a cat or a tree, but it can cause a cat or a tree, or anything else that might exist.

Step 19. There is nothing that exists or could exist that is not in the range of this cause’s thoughts. In that sense, this cause is all-knowing or omniscient.

Step 20. Hence the First Cause must have the key divine attributes: eternity, incorporeality, maximal perfection, unity, perfect goodness, omnipotence and omniscience.

I struggle to take any of the foregoing seriously but I find I question, disagree with, doubt any meaning in so many statements seemingly thrown out as if factual, that I shall just comment on the most glaring as they crop up in Vincent’s transcription, which seems pretty faithful to Feser’s audio.

First I note Feser says “change” rather than “motion” (the original Latin is quae sumitur ex parte motus. The etymology is from moveo (“I move” {transitive} as the passive past participle “an object that has been moved” so the idea that someone/something moved it is demanded by the linguistics). The verb given as Latin for “to change” is muto, mutare, mutavi, mutatum which has more of the idea of altering or transforming, for example it was used when referring to an animal changing its coat (moulting) between winter and summer.

So is Feser right or wrong to say change occurs?  To be completely general, if one accepts the ideas currently presented by cosmology and relativity, everything in the known universe is moving through space-time but, on the other hand, fundamental particles that are stable may not change for the lifetime of this universe. Indeed, there is no way to identify individual particles or is there any way to tell how long they have existed.

Second I am unclear what “potence” or “potential” refers to. The original potentia can be translated as power, force, ability or indeed potential but I suspect theologian Feser is using it in some other meaning that is not obvious to sceptics like me; so the talk of potential being actualised sounds a bit “Deepak Chopra”. The gist seems to be any change can only occur if brought about by something else. This seems to imply a sequence of causal events but, when I look at the world, I see interactions; where a collision is an interaction between ,say, two particles, both needed for the interaction and both being changed as a result.

Rather than continue, as I am boring myself with this, I’ll just add a couple of impressions on Feser’s grasp of science. He  talks of “potential coldness” relating to a cup of hot coffee that cools to room temperature over time, seemingly having no idea of thermal equilibrium and entropy.

He also talks of a coffee cup being “held up” by a desk seemingly having no idea of current theories on how matter that has mass has a curving effect on space-time, explaining why the “force” of gravity is always attractive and proportional to the mass of objects.

This post has been too long already.

 

ETA strike one too many “boths”. Hat-tip to mung.