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.
I think Step 2 is funny. Translation: “It makes much more sense” to beg the question than to end up not being able to prove what you’d like to prove.
Great stuff.
By “potency,” (dunamis) Aristotle meant something fairly innocuous — that we perceive and conceptualize objects as being able to undergo changes. In contemporary lingo, that our empirical generalizations are counterfactuals (“this coffee is hot” means “if I were to touch it, I would feel a sensation of heat”) and so forth.
More precisely, the point of the act/potency distinction (energeia and dunamis, respectively) is to characterize how the world must be in order for there to be modally robust empirical generalizations.
As a piece of metaphysics — indeed, a fundamental position in what might be called “transcendental realism” — it strikes as perfectly right that we should ask “how must the world be in order for science to be possible?” as well as the Kantian question, “how must the mind be in order for science to be possible?” And in answering the former question, it seems perfectly right to say that the world must have modal structure, otherwise there is nothing to make our counterfactuals correct or incorrect. (This is different from the epistemological question of how to explain our conceptual grasp of modality.)
Where I’m less enthusiastic about the Aristotelian story is whether the act/potency distinction is the right way to characterize that modal structure. I do think that the act/potency distinction captures our “folk physics” cognitive grasp of objects. But that seems to take for granted that our folk physics is the ontological bedrock on which scientific physics is built, and that seems surely mistaken.
It is one thing to say, with the realist and against the skeptic, that our cognitive abilities are reliably tracking what is really there anyway. It is quite another to say that what is really there anyway is correctly characterized by our pre-scientific, phenomenologically described cognitive abilities. (This is what I was trying to get at in my comments on Feser’s blog about the extent to which the ‘explanatory gaps’ between matter, life, and mind rely on our conceptual frameworks for conceiving of matter, life, and mind.) I do not think Aristotle has the resources for making this distinction; put otherwise, Aristotle’s physics-cum-metaphysics rests on a version of the Myth of the Given.
(By the way, Alan, I’m pretty sure that the “Anonymous” at Feser’s blog who was giving me a hard time about having posted a few times at AfBC is none other than Barry Arrington himself. No hard evidence — just a conjecture based on my sense of the writing style, vocabulary, and of course the prosecutorial intent. Apparently I’m now going to be held accountable for failing to chastise you over all the mean things you’re going to say about Feser at AfBC. As the kids say, “whatevs”.)
It is one thing to say, with the realist and against the skeptic, that our cognitive abilities are reliably tracking what is really there anyway. It is quite another to say that what is really there anyway is correctly characterized by our pre-scientific, phenomenologically described cognitive abilities. (This is what I was trying to get at in my comments on Feser’s blog about the extent to which the ‘explanatory gaps’ between matter, life, and mind rely on our conceptual frameworks for conceiving of matter, life, and mind.)
Follow-up: as I see it, the only way to assume that our pre-scientific, phenomenologically described cognitive capacities are correctly characterizing what is really there anyway (and not just reliably tracking it) is to pretend that the past three hundred years of physics, biology, and epistemology simply did not happen.
Interesting hypothesis! How can we test it though?
Wow!
To me, this reads like philosophy’s version of “Adam and Eve.” That is to say, it comes across to me as the origins myth that is the founding belief of philosophy seen as religion.
I prefer the alternative: it is obvious that science is possible, so let’s investigate how does it actually work. Let’s not start with a dubious a priori assumption, that it works by generalization (induction).
(I realize this is wildly off-topic).
This seems to presuppose that there is some metaphysical notion of “correctness” which we are able to access and to which we can appeal. But surely, our notion of correctness is itself a human construct.
Were you intending this remark as part of what the Aristotelian is committed to, or a remark on my view?
Kantian Naturalist,
That was a response to your comment.
That properly-functioning cognitive capacities reliably track motivationally-salient real patterns or processes is a general claim of cognitive science — though only us discursive creatures can adopt this third-person stance on our own cognitive activities. (Just as only discursive creatures can adopt the first-person stance.)
Our characterizations of what we are tracking will be correct to the extent that those characterizations are informed by the relevant sciences — physics, chemistry, and neuroscience.
So no “metaphysics,” in the View From Nowhere sense, is required — just the ability to incorporate into our conceptual frameworks a scientific (third-personal or impersonal) explanation of what we are doing when we perceive and conceive.
Neil Rickert,
I don’t see those as alternatives from which we must chose.
I see the transcendental project — “what must the world be like such that science is possible?” and the empirical project — “what do scientists do, and how do scientific practices work?” as complementary, not as competing.
By the way, I only claimed that science involves empirical generalizations that are modally robust.
For example, “copper melts at 1,984 degrees F” is empirical (it is about the world as we experience it), it is a generalization (it holds for all pieces of copper), and it supports counterfactuals (“if this piece of copper were melted to 1,984 degrees F, it would melt”).
I wasn’t committing myself to any specific picture of how empirical generalizations are formed, e.g. by induction. I accept that there are pretty good reasons for thinking that Mill’s methods don’t capture everything about how scientists actually reason.
This type of discussion of philosophy and science reminds me of the quote attributed to Feynmann: “Philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.”
A superficial reading is that this was an insult to philosophy, but I read it to say that in the same way ornithology is a separate study of no interest to the lives of individual birds, philosophy is not of direct application to the daily work of a scientist.
But that does not mean ornithology/philosophy is not a useful and interesting field of study.
Further, one could say that ornithology helps birds as a species, eg by working to discover endangered species and the means to protect them.
Similarly, one could argue that choices on how much science to fund and the process for deciding which science work to fund are social/political decisions which are informed by some aspects of philosophy of science.
As always, many thanks for taking the time to post these mini-tutorials.
[This is quoting a comment by “grodruiges”, a commenter at Ed Feser’s blog. There are no permalinks to individual comments but here’s the link to the thread.]
By the way, your [the OP of this thread] post about the First Way is a real treat. I will make a not-so tiny comment about the following passage:
First, whether mass has a “curving effect on space-time” or not is completely irrelevant to the unobjectionable, perfectly correct point that the cup is “held up” by the desk; a fact that is readily empirically verifiable by removing the desk and watching the cup fall down to the ground. How from stating this seemingly mundane fact you go to saying that Prof. Feser has “no idea of current theories on how matter”, as if what he said contradicted it or something (how exactly does it contradict? Mysteries, mysteries), is a deep mystery.
Second, the force is definitely not “proportional to the mass of objects”. The equations of GR are (in geometric units)
where G is the Ricci-Einstein tensor and T the tensor describing the distribution of mass-energy. It is an overdetermined *non linear* system of partial differential equations, so no, the force is not proportional, not in any reasonable sense. Non-linear entails non-proportional. If it were proportional, there would be no black holes, or gravitational waves, or singularity theorems or other fascinating phenomena typical of GR.
It is not even true in Newtonian mechanics (which is probably what you had in mind): maybe you missed it when thumbing the old books and drooling over them, but there is a term
in there somewhere.
Here is a suggestion: if you cannot even get a few elementary, pedestrian, basic facts about physics right, how about not posturing and pretend that you are qualified to teach anyone about anything on the subject? Just a suggestion.
BruceS,
On the usefulness of philosophy of science to scientists, here’s a passage from Ladyman and Ross that I found insightful:
“There has been a tendency for philosophers of science to regard Popper as something of an embarrassment. However, naturalistic philosophers should take it as an interesting fact about science that Popper has long been the favorite philosopher of science among scientists; and it would be condescending to attribute this entirely to the fact that Popper’s philosophy is relatively non-complex, self-contained, and flattering to scientists. A necessary condition for Popper’s appreciation by scientists is that he emphasizes themes that they agree to be central: the provisional and dynamic nature of their knowledge, recognition of the creativity and indeed artistry involved in hypothesis formation, and acknowledgment that commitment to the institutional norms of scientific practice is an ethical stance with sweeping social and political implications. None of these themes are unique to Popper; but in his work they are fused into a philosophy that may not provide scientists with what philosophers wish scientists would want from them, namely metaphysical truth, but instead providing scientists with something else they value: affirming inspiration.”
This remark (by another participant on Feser’s blog) brings out my main objection to hylomorphic metaphysics: it seems to be nothing more than an explication of our ordinary ‘folk physical’ concept of an object. Taken in those terms, it is almost unobjectionable — but it also removes the metaphysical bite from it, unless one were to claim that our pre-scientific, phenomenologically describable cognitive capacities correctly characterized the fundamental structure of reality.
That claim is not only utterly incredible on its face, but could be maintained (I suppose) only on the further assumption that our cognitive capacities are divinely created.
Alan, I can’t tell who is talking (or who “you” is) in your post.
Kantian Naturalist,
As you know, I am wedded to the manifest image and believe that the scientific image must be (at least generally) made consistent with it. The curvature of space cannot explain the desk apparently holding up the cup unless it is in at least some sense consistent with the desk holding up the cup. It’s not that folk science “characterizes the fundamental structure of reality”–it’s that real science can’t simply dismiss it. The world of desks and cups is the world we actually live in–fundamental or not.
The “you” in the post refers to Alan; the comment was written by someone at Feser’s blog-community in response to Alan.
I agree entirely — in fact, I’m much less enthused than I used to be about Sellars’s dictum that the scientific image trumps the manifest image.
One of the key problems with Sellars’s view, as I realized as I was finishing the book, is that his conception of how the scientific image trumps the manifest image leads him to say that we do not directly perceive physical objects. Instead, we take ourselves (in the manifest image) to be directly perceiving physical objects, whereas in actuality (in rerum natura) we directly perceive sense-impressions that are causally grounded in non-perceived physical objects (microphysical processes).
Needless to say, I find that deeply implausible. The right way to think about the relation between the two images is that we can use the vocabulary of physics and neuroscience to explain how we directly perceive physical objects — not that we don’t! (A friend suggested that this brings me closer to Dewey than to Sellars, and I suspect that that’s right. I don’t mind — heck, I’m one of those who thinks that Dewey was the most important philosopher of the 20th century!)
On the other hand, my criticism of Aristotelian metaphysics is that it does take folk physics to be a correct characterization of the fundamental structure of reality, rather than using our currently best characterization of the structure of realty to explain how we experience the world as describable in ‘folk’ terms.
A point about philosophical method: I’ve (finally) started reading Chalmer’s The Conscious Mind, and at one point he makes the nice point that “epistemology recapitulates ontology backwards”. Ontologically, we move from the cosmos to the life-world; epistemologically, we move from the life-world to the cosmos.
Thanks. With the help of Alan F’s pointer, I have skimmed the first few chapters of that book. I got hooked by the “catty philosopher” tone in the first section and have found the first three chapters fairly accessible, at least to understand the conclusions if not the detailed justification for them.
L&R also talk about the importance of the “modal structure of reality” as you posted about and your mini-tutorial helped me understand that better.
That point also comes up in the discussions of the results of experiments related to Bell’s inequality. These seem indicate that reality must be non-local or non-real (or both) but one counter-argument, as I understand it, is to deny the modal structure of reality. That is, to argue that the experimenters at both ends of the entangled system had no choice about what measurements they would take. If so, that breaks the usual analysis of the results.
I had not fully appreciated that argument, but your points about modal structure help.
If anyone is interested in that sort of discussion, there is a bit more at a popular level here at Scientia Salon on a related topic, see especially the comments exchange involving Dominik Miketa on the first comments page.
Apologies to other commenters with my strange comment above (now edited). I started a comment, then real life intervened, and I put it in moderation for later editing. Before I got round to sorting it, Another admin kindly re-approved it!
I want to respond to this comment but did not want to be accused of taking Feser’s thread further off-topic so that’s why I reproduced it above.
grodruiges (at Ed Feser’s blog) writes;
The current most widely-accepted theory of gravitation is irrelevant to why masses such as cups, desks and earths accrete together? It also bears on causal issues. In cup, desk, earth scenario, the actions are reciprocal.
I did not say directly proportional. I meant that adding mass to a massive body increases local space-time curvature and increases gravity, while less mass means less gravity. The situation from minimal mass to super-massive black hole is a continuous change proportional to the mass (and only the mass) present.
So the above is moot.
Feser’s the one teaching outdated ideas about objects falling down to Earth.
Indeed! I think Aristotle did remarkably well in coming up with ideas about the World in the third century BC. but empirical knowledge has ballooned since then..
Well, aren’t they?
[/Feser
Time constraints meant I omitted a point that I intended to make in the OP. Feser mentions things popping in and out of existence, beginning to exist and ceasing to exist. If all the matter and energy present at the start of this universe is a constant then nothing begins or ceases to exist. Different arrangements and configurations of matter and energy happen and transform over time but there is no creation or destruction; the total of matter and energy remains the same.
BTW I found this PDF of four lectures given by Albert Einstein in 1921 quite enjoyable, though the maths are beyond me. KN should not look at the second paragraph of page 2.
ETA I like his diagram on page 40!
Of course I agree with Einstein about that! Did you really believe I wouldn’t? Come on — what kind of pragmatist would I be then?
Well, yeah — obviously!
😉
I really need to get a new pseudonym.
A candidate for patron saint of The Skeptical Zone?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ma%CA%BFarri
From that article:
I wonder if they also behead paintings and photographs.
petrushka,
Fascinating! I’d never heard of Al Ma’arri, but I know nothing of Arab philosophy except for the figures who influenced Aquinas. Another good patron saint for TSZ would be Hume, of course. Or maybe the original skeptic Sextus Empiricus?
BruceS,
I’ve been posting a bit at Scientia Salon myself — under my real name, though, since I log in through Facebook. It’s very interesting. Their lead article right now is about what evolutionary biologists can learn from creationists. I haven’t commented on it yet but plan to.
I like the approach Massimo is taking to this forum as explained in the course correction which is the penultimate post as of today.
I posted to his old blog but have not yet done so at the new forum.
I did read your comment on the latest post and enjoyed it. When it comes to exceptionalism, I suppose one needs to define with respect to what (eg life on earth or all possible life anywhere).
Nice shades, by the way.
This is a bit awkward. I’m trying to continue a conversation with Alan Fox, a conversation that began on another blog. There are two points. The latter will probably take more time.
1.) Alan mentioned his belief that nothing can come from nothing. I recommended Lawrence Krauss’s *A Universe from Nothing* to him, pointing out that Professor Krauss does claim, if with a bit of a wink to the wise, to have shown how something can indeed come from nothing.
2.) Alan also mentioned his belief that our concepts must always be born of sense experience. I asked him to explain how, if this is the case, one can recognize a repetition. (Hume, for example, acknowledged that repetition is not given in sense experience. Nevertheless he made “repetition” the cornerstone of his account of concept formation. I consider this a serious lacuna in his account.)
Anyway, I have a blog here on WordPress too. Just look up my name. That should forestall a misunderstanding or two.
Paul Amrhein,
Hi Paul and welcome to TSZ.
First comments need approving so that is why it did not appear straight away (I’m assuming you duplicated your comment so have just released one of them but it is recoverable if necessary). Any other comment you decide to make will appear immediately.
Indeed. I was also referred to an article by Sean Carroll on the same lines, though Carroll suggests it is not the physics that has changed, rather the interpretation.
Ah, yes! the peripatetic axiom.
Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses.
I’m happy to agree, apparently with Aristotle, and with Thomas Aquinus on this. Hume’s point about repetition seems to me to describe the process of learning; a deeply biological process in humans. It’s what our brains are for!
The reason I agree with Paul on this specific point is not because I think concepts are innate — I don’t, or at any rate I have no reason to believe there are any innate concepts — but rather because of a distinction between the process of acquiring concepts and what concepts allow us to do once we’ve acquired them. One of the many things that we can do with concepts is recognize repeated determinate particulars of experience as repeated (and as repeatable).
Exactly! Repeatability is the pragmatic buttress against solipsism.
I do appreciate your contributions and your patience with me, KN. Remember I was completely ignorant (and sceptical) of philosophy prior to exchanges at UD and my remark “philosophy is bunk”. I hope I have learned a little since then. As Dawkins says, ignorance is curable!
I don’t understand. What part of Paul’s post on repetition and how we cannot come to recognize it via sense experience are you agreeing with?
walto,
Well, since I don’t fully comprehend the point that Paul was trying to make, I’ll stop speaking for him and speak in my voice.
I think that, just as one needs to already have the relevant concept C in order to be able to classify o as exemplifying C, p as exemplifying C, etc., so too one needs to possess C in order to classify o at t1 as exemplifying C, o at t2 as exemplifying C, and so on. In other words, recognizing different sense-particulars as exemplifying the same concept requires already having that concept. We don’t first recognize the C-ness in first this particular, and then in that one, and then grasp the concept of C through induction.
Alan Fox seems to think that rejecting innatism requires embracing “concept empiricism”. But I think that both innatism and concept empiricism are both mistaken.
Got it. Thanks.
I do?
I find innate behaviour and how innate behaviours could be coded for in the zygote (as they must be to be heritable) fascinating – the spider’s web being an iconic example. That human infants display innate behaviour is undeniable. Language ability, the combination of the development of large dedicated areas of the brain, the necessary adaptations to voice production and control is again fascinating. As another commenter, Reciprocating Bill, has mentioned elsewhere, the ratcheting effect between biological adaptation and cultural development must have been crucial in human development from Homo erectus.
What I reject is the suggestion that the human mind is capable of any useful reasoning about the external world without learning, at least but not necessarily limited to, a language. That does not happen without sensory input. The innate ability and physical attributes are present in the human developing infant to learn language (even to become bilingual or multilingual if the learning opportunity presents) but if that learning process doesn’t happen, cognition and social development will be affected.
I’m not sure that I’m embracing “concept empiricism” in suggesting that without first acquiring language (let’s stick with that as I think it is key to abstract thought and reasoning that makes us human) we are unable to reason effectively or articulate our thoughts.
Alan Fox,
Everything you’ve said there seems utterly unobjectionable to me. I think we got off on the wrong foot here because you were using “a priori knowledge” quite differently from how I was.
A relevant passage (I believe) from W. Sellars:
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But though in this sense our knowledge that all As are B is independent of experience, there is another sense in which it most certainly does depend on experience. After all, the learning of a conceptual frame, the learning to use symbols in accordance with certain logical and extra-logical rules is a psychological process essential elements of which are sensory stimuli, together with the rewards and punishments of the environment (including the social environment) brings to our motivations. The conceptual frame we have developed is only one of a vast number of alternative frames any one of which we might have been brought to adopt by a more or less radical shift in the course of our environment. The claim that our conceptual frame is only one among many possible conceptual frames, and that our adoption of it is to be explained in terms of learning theory rather than of insight into abstract entities, is what led our true blue proponent of the synthetic a priori to say that our synthetic a priori is a peculiar kind of synthetic a posteriori.
(“Is There a Synthetic ‘A Priori‘?” in Science, Perception and Reality, p. 318.)
KN,
Nice summary.
Alan,
I don’t find that objectionable either.
In the famous example of Socrates and the slave boy, a triggering process it least is needed for the boy to “recall” the geometry of the situation. Plato meant to support the notion of innate ideas by this example. I’m up in the air on innate ideas. Here’a little blurb from my blog;
Is “face” an innate idea? Each cell in the body knows how to construct a face. Is it too far fetched to suppose that our brains may have access to a model of the human face?
This sounds right and consistent with Terry Deacon’s conjecture that our human language and brain co-evolved. As the “symbolic” species, we are radically social animals, which don’t merely describe (ask what is that?), evaluate (ask what’s that to me?) and norm (ask what’s the best way to acquire/avoid that?) reality in an epistemic vacuum. We also interpret reality with a hermeneutic frame gifted us by a community.
If we are lucky in life, we won’t just describe, evaluate, norm and interpret reality, but will transcend reality, in the sense that we’ll extricate ourselves from this or that frame to try on some other lenses, see what values might have been cashed out of other concepts, which might not only represent different ways of thinking about reality and processing it, but, also, different ways of seeing and perceiving it.
For example, many westerners facilely engage the great traditions of the East, imposing western metaphysical conceptions on translated writings. But many of the teachings of the East are trying to lead one into novel phenomenal experiences, e.g. nondual realizations, and not, necessarily, competing ontological conclusions.
Before language rubrics affect our explicit cognitive map-making exercises, they even shape the contours of our participatory imaginations, our tacit knowledge, our implicit hermeneutical frames, iow, not just what or how we THINK but what or how we will even SEE. This is why we don’t merely concede epistemic parity to competing tautologies, as if all hermeneutic frames share the same degree of epistemic risk. Some are more (or less) hypothetically consonant, abductively facile, speculatively fecund, interdisciplinarily consilient, externally congruent, internally coherent, ontologically parsimonious, and so on, even if not otherwise robustly probabilistic (enjoying empirical measurability and falsifiability), even if merely plausibilistic, so involve more vs less existential risk.
Johnboy,
I’m glad to see someone else here shares my admiration for Deacon’s work!
Two questions that might be posed, with regard to this
Is this a matter of
(1) using a different conceptual framework than those to which we have become accustomed?
(2) suspending all conceptual frameworks in order to have “pure experience”?
(3) transcending all conceptual frameworks and embodied, sensorimotor skills in order to see reality itself as it really is?
I’m skeptical of (3) but there’s much to be said for both (1) and (2).