A Defense of Classical Theology (Part 1): The New Atheism and the Cosmological Arguments
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ส.ค. 2024
- In part 1, I will go over the major misconceptions of the cosmological arguments promulgated by the likes of popular atheists such as Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins. We’ll conclude that their objections, which are also the most common ones in popular discourse, have little relevance to natural theology and we’ll have to search elsewhere for serious atheist critiques. We'll also briefly take a look at Aquinas' first way or argument from change/motion (argumentum ex motu), and how it not only argues for the existence of a First/Prime Mover, to which all change can ultimately be traced back, but implies that such a Prime Mover is an unactualized actualizer (or Pure Act/ actus purus, as the Scholastics said). Several of the divine attributes of Pure Act will be apparent, such as immutability, eternal, unity, immateriality, and incorporeality.
In this video series, I will make the case for classical theism and for the classical theological tradition more generally. This will, in part, involve a critique of atheism, modern metaphysics, including naturalism, an examination of what a profound atheism would look like, a defense of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, and the positive case for classical theism.
Please leave comments and continue the discussion.
Erratum:
At 15:20: proven to be impossible in the sense of not being able to regress infinitely. Of course, both sorts of series are possible because there are actual examples of both, but Ockham believes only essentially ordered causal series, not accidently ordered, can be proven “against the philosophers” to not regress infinitely.
Twitter: @Math_oma
Email: mathoma1517@gmail.com
Blog: mathomablog.wordpress.com
References / Additional reading:
Summa Theologiae by St. Thomas Aquinas (Part 1/ Prima Pars in particular): www.newadvent.o...
Aquinas (A Beginner’s Guide) by Edward Feser: www.amazon.com...
The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism by Edward Feser: www.amazon.com...
Five Proofs of the Existence of God by Edward Feser: www.amazon.com...
“So you think you understand the cosmological argument?” edwardfeser.blo...
“There Must Be A First: Why Thomas Aquinas Rejects Infinite, Essentially Ordered, Causal Series” philpapers.org...
"Causality and Radioactive Decay," by Edward Feser: edwardfeser.blo...
"Natural Theology, Natural Science and the Philosophy of Nature," by Edward Feser: edwardfeser.blo...
The Theological Origins of Modernity by Michael Allen Gillespie: www.amazon.com...
The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss by David Bentley Hart: www.amazon.com...
![ง้อ (ALRIGHT) - FOURTH [ TEASER ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ya6MBfo-Wvg/mqdefault.jpg)
*2004-2012 A Cultural Phenomenon*
0:26 The New Atheism Movement
1:21 Same talking points
1:51 Verificationist Principle
3:43 What can be more evident than “some things are changing.”
4:26 Reasoning
4:40 God of The Gaps. “God did it.”
5:20 Atheist Reflex.
*The Pseudo Cosmological Argument*
5:40
6:25 “Everything has a cause.”
*Atheists: “Who made God?”*
7:38 Daniel Dennett
10:38 Sam Harris
11:50 “Who caused God?” Is a silly question.
13:03 “How does God exist?” is a better question.
13:29 Christopher Hitchens
14:46 Infinite Regress
17:06 Richard Dawkins
*The Five Proofs of Thomas Aquinas*
18:50 The Unmoved Mover
22:47 Aristotle’s Act-Potency Distinction. 🔴🔵
• Actualized Potential , caused by something else
25:29 Unmoved Mover
25:43 Causal Series
• Flame 🔥
• Pot 🍲
• Water 💧
• Spaghetti 🍝
Chain of actualization.
27:29 Moving a Stone
• the 1st mover drives the movement
29:25 ❤️
29:54 Deeper Deeper Levels
30:24 Deriving from more fundamental movement
32:40
• Pure Act
• Immutable, Unchangeable
• Eternal
• Immaterial and Incorporeal
• One not many
34:38 The Ultimate Source
36:10 Richard Dawkins vs 2. The Uncaused Cause
37:27 3. The Argument from Contingency
*Ending on a Positive Note* 🙂 📝
39:15
39:32 1. Direct Experience of what is Intrinsically Beautiful 😄
40:23 2. Mysticism, Reflection on Experience. 🔁
42:28 Thanks for watching. Part 2 is next
This video series was recommended to me 2 years ago while I was going through an irreligious period in my life. I am now Catholic. Thank you
So glad I stopped being stubbornly and ignorantly opposed to religion. My life has gotten so much better since practicing as a Catholic.
Mind if I ask you a question regarding your conversion?
@@insertreference4207 Sure
@@dakota9862 Is there somewhere I could DM you about it?
@@insertreference4207 I'd rather not give that out over youtube. This is fine though. Ask anything you like
As as matter of interest, why didn't you choose to become a Southern Baptist? Or a Muslim or a Hindu or a Jew or a Mormon or a Sikh or a Jain or follow one of the thousands of other religions?
New atheist logic:
P1) God = Magic Man in the Sky.
P2) Magic Man in the Sky = Fairy tale.
C) Down vote video.
vergil arma That is consistent with how God has been defined since the time of Aristotle.
vergil arma Have you watched the video? The first way directly depends on the observation of motion.
no, neither Aristotle, nor anyone else ever defined God as "whatever I want him to be".
"that makes no difference. argument from tradition."
you don't know how definitions work do you?
Christians aren't supposed to tell lies. Improve yourself.
How many people who disliked the video actually watched to the end?
0
Now, come on mate. Let's not resort to petty insults when we have a logical destruction of them right in front of us.
@@lamestudiosinc418 🤪
@@lamestudiosinc418 I’m afraid there is nothing logical to this.
For example, it is claimed that things which are “in motion” need a mover.
This is not proved in any way shape or form, and there is no logic sustaining it. Maybe there are logical arguments for it, but they are not supplied in this video.
It might be of interest to note that experimental evidence points to otherwise. Things that are in motion need a mover to be stopped, otherwise they stay in motion. At the time these arguments were formulated, before newton, people might have thought otherwise, but now it doesn’t seem to be the case. We have ample experimental evidence of things that change their state spontaneously.
The study of spontaneous change is approached in thermodynamics, for example.
Imagine gas inside a box, occupying only a fraction of the volume. Our current understanding of reality, and experimental evidence - you can do this yourself by creating vacuum than opening a small chamber with gas inside the vacuum chamber. In theory, you could remove the barrier while it is not interacting with any gas particle, so the act of opening the small gas chamber does not need to in any way interact with the gas - is that the gas will spontaneously move to fill the entire box.
There is nothing “moving” the gas. The gas simply is in motion, and stays in motion due to conservation of linear momentum.
The example with the stone and the stick is simply wrong. The stone will continue moving left. Unless something makes it stop.
Aquinus did not have the insight we have, so it is understandable he thought things in motion need to be moved, but we stand over the work of enough giants to have the insight to know it isn’t correct.
And if you define “motion” as not the spacial velocity of the stone, but as some “change”, then understand that the stone maintaining its spacial velocity is exactly the absence of change.
In this example, it is the stick that allows the stone to stay unchanged or “unmoved”, because the floor is trying to change it in an opposite way.
Either way, the stick would “change” the stone even if it had nothing touching it. Just let the stick collide with the stone without touching it yourself. Or the ground for example, is changing the stone’s velocity, without being “moved/changed” by anything else.
There is no experimental or logical indication of a need for a prime mover in this video.
Fancy seeing you here
43 minutes of natural theology? Popcorn time!
I am an atheist looking to possibly convert to Catholicism and this video has been amazing.
+Zachary Batten
Great, let me know if you have any questions!
@@Math_oma I actually do have a question, I believe it was either in part 2 or 3 where you state God is not a person. I have yet to finish part 4, so I am unaware if you answer this question in that part. But how does the belief that God is three distinct persons not contradict this? Also how the Bible says God fashioned us in His image?
@@zacharybatten Every power that 'personality' entails is already included in God's omnipotence and omniscience, whatever those might be; God has the power to communicate those powers to us, so He must have them (in a super-eminent way, of course, beyond what we have), since whatever is in the effect is in some way in the cause. Whatever people have in mind by God being 'personal' is included here.
However, 'person' is a technical term, especially when applied to the Trinity. Certainly no Catholics should be comfortable saying God is "a person" in the singular given the Trinity, which says that the Divine Nature subsists in three distinct Persons, which is why I won't say that here. We must distinguish 'person' from 'being personal' here; those aren't asking the same sort of question.
I would be so excited to know if you'll actually become a Catholic. That just sounds amazing! You will certainly come to see how welcoming we Catholics are, and how happy we are for a new soul willing to be saved. I whole-heartedly wish you the best for your journey towards the Faith. And if you need a little bit of encouragement, don't be afraid to start praying. Ask Our Lady (Mary, the Mother of God) for intercession, and ask Our Lord Jesus Christ do grant you the grace of the true Faith. He will grant it to anyone who sincerely asks. Please, please, please do not be afraid to pray, even if you might feel inadequate. We all do, it's part of the experience =)
How goes your journey my friend? I will soon be received into the church, so I am extremely curious.
Dick Dawkins never made any serious attempt to understand the philosophy of Aquinas. He is similar to many other atheists in this regard.
Dick Dawkins never made any serious attempt to understand philosophy, period. It'd be embarrassing were it not for the fact that he's managed to be so successful in spite of that fact, or perhaps because of it. I have to imagine so casually dismissing "non-scientific" arguments as worthless categorically plays quite well to his fanbase.
Thanks I love it.
We need more classical theists on the media.
As a lapsed Catholic (though I’ve never really felt comfortable calling myself an atheist) who has spent the past 4 or so years every form of religion or philosophy I could find, I’m very excited to watch this series and revisit the tradition I was brought up in in a more rigorous and well argued manner. As someone who has always had nothing but contempt for the New Atheist movement though, this initial video was incredibly satisfying
Hello Mathoma,
I started studying mathematics and physics about 5 years ago and when I started, your videos were some of the first i watched to help me understand those subjects. Also, when i started i was an atheist. Recently i have found my way back to catholic christianity after abandoning it as a teen. The richness and beauty of this tradition is filling me with so much joy, but it's also staggering me. So i come on youtube again, to see if i can find some material on classical theology to help me gain a footing in this great tradition, and again, here you are.
Thank you for sharing your insights and greetings from Munich, Germany.
I know I'm late to the party. Keith Woods brought to a video on Neoplatonism, that brought me here. I'm loving this series so far. Just wish u had a louder mic
Its simply unfathomable that people like Richard Dawkins are absolutely passionate about a subject and wrote entire books about something they know next to nothing about, but they did.
Who in the world is so passionate about a subject and its clear they don't remotely understand the reasons why people believe it? This would be like me having some huge opinion about why the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is wrong, but when i explain the arguments for it, im not even close to getting it right.
Strange world.
Richard Dawkins is based
@@AliZalghout-ys3xkbased on what?
I never would've thought that a serious TH-cam discussion on the this particular subject would induce the usage of the term "salty". :)
Extremely well made. I can tell you did your research for this Mathoma, and I cant wait for the next parts!
Did you really read all of the Four Hourseman's works?
+Heavybakerguy
I've read the entirety of their books mentioned here (in the past, but I had to review them for this video) except Dennett's, in which I only read the parts where he addresses classical theology. Dennett writes very long and very boring books so you'll have to forgive me for that one. The rest of the book seemed to be about the evolution of religion. However, I'm looking forward to reading his new book on the philosophy of mind because one of my guilty pleasures is reading about that preposterous position known as eliminative materialism. I haven't read Harris's more recent books (on free will and meditation), but I have read _The Moral Landscape_
@@Math_oma Do you think _The Moral Landscape_ is just a defense of classic utilitarianism?
Good stuff, though I think cooking is in general a bad example of an accidentally ordered series. A better example might be why a gun shoots a bullet at a particular spot.
+Brainwright
Fair enough - as long as the underlying idea is clear, one can substitute in an example of his choosing.
Mathoma Your total explanation brought the point across, certainly.
Intro peice? it's comfy af.
+Angus Rhodes
Liszt's _Dante Symphony_ - the section is from the beginning of _Purgatorio_ .
Daniel Dennett may be a philosopher, but he always says he prefers sciences to philosophy. This is why he is happy to engage in blatant scientism.
Keep up the good work sir. Persevere.
What is the intro/outro music?
I think the "prime mover" arguments made by the new atheists are more about asking theologians to consider how they could possibly know that their subjective prime mover is the objective prime mover. It's a perfectly fine question, to ask why theologians stop looking for prior causes when they reach god. Therefore I don't think it is a misunderstanding of the new atheists, but perhaps your own misunderstanding of their argument.
+anon anon
If the cosmological arguments succeed in showing the existence of an uncaused cause, then it makes no sense to continue asking what caused that which is uncaused. Similarly, if these arguments work in demonstrating the existence of a Pure Act, it makes no sense to ask what actualizes the potentials in that which has no potentials to be actualized. It's the way this Pure Act is that makes theologians stop asking when they reach this point.
anon anon the cosmological arguments establish a necessary first cause that makes all of the contingent relationships in the universe possible. This cause in principle couldn't have its own cause because this first cause has to be purely actual or causal with, no potential.
Wait, i followed this channel because it explained quaternions to me ._. wat is this??
Some scholastic philosophy.
RodriTheMighty Its a video that help proves that mathematical equations aren't just human-made things, but laws of the universe.
Excellent video. I look forward to the next part. My only quibble is your voice is a little quiet in the mix.
could you make a video about Logical Positivism and Quine?
@Mathoma Thank you for this content and keep it up. I just wanted this clarification. How can't a being necessarily exist and still have potentialities to actualise? Can't quite grasp that. Thanks again and God bless 😇
This would be covered in the arguments later on in this series but there are many ways to look at it. To be necessary is to be simple, with no parts of any sort, since things with parts depend on their parts to exist, i.e. they're contingent. But something being to some degree in potentiality would entail its having a potential part and an actual part. So, necessary being cannot have any potentialities.
@@Math_oma So this would exclude something like having a one-part material body and having potentiality of movement? This idea is stuck with me and I can't conprehend why it is wrong. Thank you again and sorry if I am asking stupid questions hahahaha. My background in philosophy is not that great.
@@Math_oma Just to ask, would having potentiality imply that it has been set by someone else?
@@ivanprskalo9415 All of those have potentiality and they would all therefore be excluded, since what is necessary can have no potentiality, as I gave an argument for above.
@@Math_oma I am starting to grasp it now. Thank you for your replies. Good luck with your work and God bless :D
The leap from "that which terminates these causal series is not-X" to "that which terminates these causal series also possess divine attributes, e.g. unity, immutability, immateriality, eternal, omnipotence, etc., and is therefore what we understand to be God." is completely unconvincing except for those already trying to make the argument for god. I have never seen a proper development (yes, I'm including Aquinas's here!) of this transition and a defense of each such attributes that wasn't intellectually dishonest or loaded with anthropocentric and theocentric views. (e.g., classical notions of time, space, and causality; human morality being somehow a fundamental aspect of reality; consciousness/will being a non-physical thing; confusing the existence of a concept to the existence of a thing, etc.)
Secondly, I don't think it's fair to dismiss scientific knowledge so quickly in this discussions, as everyone does (even these "New Atheists" as you call). You can certainly discuss old philosophical thinking in its own context, but bringing it to modern day without a proper re-contextualization in terms of known physics is bound to be fundamentally incorrect. We are discussing fundamental aspects of reality, and as such our best knowledge of it HAS to play a central role. NOT our abstract and anthropocentric bias of it.
Relativity, quantum mechanics, deep fundamental results like experimental tests of Bell's inequality and the existence of zero-point energy fluctuations DO seem to suggest that, fundamentally, many events in the universe may be a-causal. Reality may not be fundamentally deterministic, for once. There is also some interesting research right now on developing space, time and as such causal orders, merely from quantum mechanical correlations (entanglement and so on). All of this seems to suggest that claiming causal orders (including per se) as a fundamental aspect of physics or metaphysics may be an incredibly naive "classical, macroscopic world perspective" of reality. In fact, space and time itself may not be fundamental. Perhaps the only fundamental things in physical reality are quantum entanglement, superposition and fluctuations, with some extra spices. How can any of these points align with such a possibility? They cannot.
The reality of these results were utterly and completely unreachable and unthinkable to these classical thinkers when they proposed such arguments. None of this is even remotely addressed or compatible with the typical discussions on the subject, modern or old, usually because the people who engage in such philosophical discussions are not knowledgeable of physics and the proper mathematical formalisms necessary to describe it.
So the core of this argument seems completely misguided in light of current physical thought, and are grasping at classical anthropocentric thinking about the nature of reality. Since we ARE talking cosmology and metaphysics, they should be based on a profound criticism of anthropocentrism, and our knowledge of physics SHOULD be at the core of the discussion, the starting point, and not classical philosophy with its classical way of thinking about space, time and causality, because we KNOW for a fact (as long as you subscribe to basic notions of empiricism and realism - otherwise why even discuss this?) that such notions are fundamentally incorrect and incompatible with reality.
You are free to discuss "what caused reality to exist, or what set the physical laws of the universe as they are", since at that point none of these points matter that much. But at that level, human existence and the human perspective is completely irrelevant. Personally, I find that discussion completely barren and prone to immense levels of anthropocentric bias, which is very discouraging.
+1ucasvb
I'm not surprised you find that step unconvincing on the ground of the assumptions you're making about the nature of morality and metaphysics. But you should ask yourself whether you can justify any of your metaphysical positions instead of saying you find the Aristotelian picture I'm presenting unconvincing.
The issues under discussion have nothing to do with the particulars of current physical theories, as interesting as they may be. The issue stands or falls on metaphysical demonstration and what's really doing the work behind all your statements are certain metaphysical presuppositions, not any of the physics itself. This might sound rude, but physicists are, for the most part, glibly unaware of the presuppositions they bring to the table and believe that their interpretations of their theories are free of metaphysical commitment, which is patent nonsense. Like I said in the video, what physicists often do is read a term used in metaphysics into physics (causality is a big one), and pretend they're referring to the same thing. When it comes to certain interpretations of quantum mechanics, assumptions of idealism are already built in, and I won't just accept these without argument. There's nothing wrong with metaphysical assumptions, but we must be aware of what they are, not pretend as though physicists aren't bringing any baggage on board.
There are a couple blog posts I'd recommend on this topic (besides the references), and I'd recommend you'd look more into this philosopher in particular:
edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2014/12/causality-and-radioactive-decay.html
edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/05/natural-theology-natural-science-and.html
>But you should ask yourself whether you can justify any of your metaphysical positions instead of saying you find the Aristotelian picture I'm presenting unconvincing
I'm merely saying all of these positions are fundamentally anthropocentric and rely on our evolved classical macroscopic worldview of reality, and as such we cannot use them as a fundamental basis to look at metaphysics. Or at the very least, we should be very aware of it at every step. I don't see such a care being taken, and of course, the classical thinkers had absolutely no idea of their biases in this regard.
>Like I said in the video, what physicists often do is read a term used in metaphysics into physics (causality is a big one), and pretend they're referring to the same thing
No, that's not at all what I'm saying. I'm not conflating the usage of the terms. On the contrary, I'm saying the very abstract notion of "causality", "change", "order", "action", "eternal", "power", is anthropocentric human construct, an abstraction our classical minds developed to deal with the macroscopic classical world around us. They are probably not at all fundamental aspects of reality. So any human making use of any such notion is forcing a fundamentally human-centric perspective into reality and beyond. THAT, to me, is what's a folly. It's very presumptuous.
> This might sound rude, but physicists are, for the most part, glibly unaware of the presuppositions they bring to the table and believe that their interpretations of their theories are free of metaphysical commitment, which is patent nonsense.
I'm well aware of this. We make many metaphysical assumptions in our field and for the most part, people simply refuse to discuss it explicitly. However, at the very least, we should be realists if we wish to discuss anything at all.
> When it comes to certain interpretations of quantum mechanics, assumptions of idealism are already built in, and I won't just accept these without argument
Everything I discussed in my comment is not bound to change with whatever interpretation of quantum mechanics you choose. All of them must necessarily imply on the aspects of physical reality I talked about if they are to be compatible with observation.
> There's nothing wrong with metaphysical assumptions, but we must be aware of what they are, not pretend as though physicists aren't bringing any baggage on board.
I completely agree, and this is a point I often clash with my colleagues. But to say that our current physical (and even biological) knowledge of reality is irrelevant in metaphysical discussion seems naive, to say the least, because this metaphysics has to necessarily be compatible with physics. I mean, what good is your metaphysics if known physics isn't a subset of it?
Note that the fact that physics concerns itself with the very fundamental rules of reality is what makes it particularly unique and relevant in this discussion. If at any moment in your metaphysical discussion you invoke abstract notions of time and space, by invoking notions of beginning, end, cause, change, action, (i)materiality, no matter how informal or "out of a physical context" your intent meaning is, you are necessarily stepping into physics's realm, because those very notions arose in our human perception of reality because of some underlying physics.
I'll check the references later on. Cheers!
+1ucasvb
Fair enough. However, I don't see much by way of refutation of any of the actual metaphysical principles such as those in this video or more broadly in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. You merely assert it's anthropocentric, or it's presumptuous, it's biased, or probably doesn't exist, but you don't seem to provide a refutation or any argument to this effect. And much of the antirealism you're espousing is extremely contentious, especially if you're denying that change is a real feature of the world (a la Parmenides). I understand a TH-cam comment section isn't the place to do such a refutation but this is the sort of thing that would have to be done to really blow Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics out of the water.
I won't pretend that I am capable of offering such a refutation, as I don't feel I am knowledgeable enough or hold any authority on the matters at hand.
However, I do think I know enough to criticize the shaky foundations of some arguments. There is absolutely no requirement for me to offer something better in return to make my criticisms valid, as I'm sure you are well aware, so that's why I prefer to not make a serious attempt at it.
But really, this is the gist of my criticism: physical laws gave rise to the world in which we exist, and in which our brains evolved to perceive emergent properties of that physical reality. The very notion of time, space, cause and effect and so on may very well be emergent properties of more fundamental aspects of reality we don't yet know.
I do not think you can really use our perception of that emergent physical reality (like our notions of cause and effect, time and space) so carelessly as a fundamental basis to discuss something beyond that physical reality, because your metaphysics has to, necessarily, explain the physical reality in the fundamental level. In a sense, you can't go from metaphysics > emergent properties familiar to our human brains, you have to go from metaphysics > fundamental physics > emergent properties.
That's what bothers me in these discussions. That jump over the fundamental aspects of physical reality needs to be addressed. I'm not asking for Aquinas or Aristoteles to somehow produce the postulates of quantum mechanics, but at the very least, they should not take for granted something that is an emergent property of underlying physical laws (what time, space and causality may very well be), because that seems like cheating. This is precisely what I'm calling anthropocentrism. We're all too comfortable with making that leap!
> And much of the antirealism you're espousing is extremely contentious, especially if you're denying that change is a real feature of the world (a la Parmenides)
There's nothing antirealist about my argument. On the contrary, I'm simply trying to highlight how some concepts in this discussion (which we take for granted as humans because our brains evolved to take these concepts for granted) may not be fundamental, but emergent properties of something else. If you refuse to address the nature of this emergent property, to me the argument is unsatisfactory and not "close enough to the fundamentals of reality to be a valid starting point to discuss metaphysics". Does that make sense? I'm not the best with words...
And I'm absolutely not denying change as a real feature of the world!
(Also, please note that I'm not really attempting to refute any of these arguments. I'm merely pointing out that their conceptual framework is most likely ill-posed, insufficiently fundamental and a bit naive to the task at hand.)
What a cool channel. I’m just now realizing a bit more what he’s aiming to offer, and I like it!
What I don’t get about these arguments is how do you choose which principles observed in nature can be extrapolated to be fundamental, by my lights “everything that moves is move by another” is at best as defensible as “anything that moves another does it by moving”.
Do you like Rene Guenon or the Traditionalist school at all?
I disagree with the idea of Traditionalism/Perennialism, but from the little bit I've read I really enjoyed their astute criticisms of the New Age and its influences on society.
I can accept, from the cosmological arguments, that there is something without a cause. If you want to call that God, that's fine with me. It could be that the universe itself, or the fundamental rules of it, it could be something on a whole level above.
But in no sense will I accept any religion trying to describe said God, assign attributes to it, infer what it might mean for our purpose, etc. All of that is a complete shot in the dark, when it comes to the God, as described in the theological arguments.
Some qualities that are commonly ascribed to it by religions are omnipotence, omniscience, immutability. with the cosmological argument, we cannot conclude such traits. We can only conclude that there is something without a cause.
On a similar note, the assumption in many religions that there's an afterlife, that the concept of objective morality is valid and not just an assumption, that life has a purpose, that worship is sensible, pushes me far away from them. Oh, another one, that humans are fundamentally different from other animals. The idea of having a soul. Spiritual beings. Supernatural beings. Stuff like that.
Most aspects of religion, simply put, do not follow.
Call me a deist, if you want to, since I can accept some immaterial entity without a cause, that is timeless, but I feel like calling it "God" is a collusion of other qualities, given how that term is used. After all, we have 0 idea what it might actually be.
+mrBorkD
I did give an argument for immutability in the video though along with a few other divine attributes. What are your objections to that segment? Regarding omnipotence, if you accept the Prime Mover is pure act and one, not many, then it follows that it is the ultimate source of all motion and the source from which anything else derives its motive power. That is to say, it has all possible powers or omnipotent. This is all jumping ahead, but the divine attributes can be proven by ordinary reason, without appeals to any specific religion. Omniscience requires talk of intellect and I'll talk about that later. We can conclude such things and give reasons for all of them. The suggestion that the Prime Mover is the universe itself is a little bizarre if you think it's also immaterial. I would be a bit skeptical of the claim that we cannot say much about what comes out of the cosmological arguments. Feser's book _Five Proofs of the Existence of God_ is a great systematic treatment of all of this.
Remember that this Prime Mover is the source of motive power in the here and now, not just in the distant past. This isn't deism, where God had something to do with an event in the past and disappeared, rather classical theism where God sustains the power that anything has in the here and now to actualize potentials.
I would encourage you to check out the references and see what a soul even is on the Aristotelian account. Much can be said about all your questions from the perspective of natural theology / philosophy of nature alone.
Right, the argument presented in the video for immutability is that it wouldn't be the first mover if it wasn't immovable. However, just because it *wasn't* initially moved, does that mean it necessarily *cannot* be moved at all? Why can't it be put in a different state later in the sequence? After all, causal chains can feed back into themselves (simple examples being negative feedback loops in biology)
It's also not clear to me why there necessarily has to be an essential, rather than accidental series of movers.
Also, just because something has caused *everything*, does not mean it has the potential to do *anything* (which, I understand, is what omnipotence is)
"Anything" should include things that are not in fact part of the past, present or future state of the world.
I do think it'd be good to read more into the topic since you've caught my interest with these videos (particularly, I'm looking for a defense of each divine attribute)
At the very least, I'll continue watching the series as you upload more.
+mrBorkD
Like I said, Feser's book is a great systematic defense. You'll find I'm basically regurgitating what he says in most cases. He has better examples of essentially ordered series, which are often based on the sheer existence of things at any moment, rather than the example I gave involving motion.
The reason the Prime Mover is immutable (not only wasn't but cannot in principle be moved) is that because it is purely actual, devoid of potential, and there's nothing for it to become even in principle. Remember, change is the actualization of a potential. The pure act cannot go from potential to actual in any respect because it has no potentials that could be actualized. To say that something with no potentials could in some way go from potential to actual would be contradictory.
Why does the Prime Mover necessarily have to be devoid of potential? is that not just an assumption? You're just begging the question.
+mrBorkD
The chain of reasoning in this video starts from the argument from motion itself, which establishes the Prime Mover: that most fundamental member of the series of movers. Because it is most fundamental, and act is logically prior to potency (potency only reduces to act insofar as it is actualized) and the prime mover is the most fundamental actualizer/mover, it must also be Pure Act (devoid of potentiality) - there cannot be any unactualized potentials within this most fundamental mover. Because it is devoid of potential, it cannot in principle be moved because for it to be moved is the actualization of some potential within it - but there are none. I quickly went through the arguments in this video but I don't see any question begging here.
Hey mathoma you probably don't reply to comments here anymore but what are your thoughts on existential intertia? On the one hand it seems like it just asserts a brute fact to avoid the purely actual actualizer conclusion. On the other, it seems like premise 7 of feser's argument is possibly question begging or at least not substantiated. Thoughts?
Excellent summary of the argument from motion!
Question: In the SCG 1.13, Aquinas summarizes Aristotle’s argument to the effect that an infinite _per se_ causal series would entail infinite motion in a finite time, which is impossible. I never understood this argument, even after going back to they Physics VI where Aristotle makes it. It sounds a lot like Leibniz’s argument against the existence of infinite wholes, but I understood this argument to have been refuted.
Granted, Aristotle is not Leibniz, but it’s difficult to grasp what _else_ Aristotle is talking about in the Physics. Can you recommend a resource that develops this argument?
These videos are incredibly insightful!
Can you please do a video on hylemorphism?
+Joseph Feely
Yes.
Mathoma
Thank you. I've been having difficulty hylemorphism and competing brands of nominalism and reductionism.
Hey Mathoma, I have a question. So do you believe that the universe began? I heard you mention it in the video but said it was irrelevant when it came to quantum physics. What are your views on that?
I believe it began to exist, yes, but it's irrelevant for the purposes of this series, which is natural theology. Whether the universe began to exist or not has no bearing on whether God exists, and the main arguments in demonstration of that do not depend on the universe beginning to exist (except for the Kalam). You'll notice in this series the arguments don't require that it began to exist. What specifically you're referring to in 'quantum physics' I'm not sure.
From the deduction that, in causal chains per se, the First Mover is at the "base" (the most fundamental), does this mean that God gives rise to every effect in the here and now? Just as the stone's motion can be reduced to the forearm moving, which can be reduced to the bicep moving, which can be reduced to the neuron, and eventually to God, does this mean that God caused the stone to move? In other words, does the proposition explained in the video necessarily lead to occasionalism?
Occasionalism would say that God is the only cause to speak of. However, this is not true, since _you_ are still responsible for throwing the ball too, despite your requiring actualization in order to do so. This brings up two orders of causation: the primary cause and secondary causes, which would be _concurrentism_ .
It only shows that the athiest is simply showing prejudice without a desire to understand the arguments. Face palm.
But can't that be shown in all cultures, including Christianity and all of it's denominations?
@@shiverarts8284 We're discussing what is, not what can be, friend.
Your time and efforts are much appreciated. I learned something today!
Is it possible to claim that there are no "Essentially ordered" causal series; that all motion is an actually "accidental series"? If we take human actions to be deterministic (like the heating of a pot), than can we not argue that the moving of the stone is also an accidental series? The accidental nature can be seen if you look at a really small chunk of time.
+saltcheese
It's possible to say there's no reality to any of these essentially ordered causal series that I'm talking about. What the objector might have in mind is a _time lag_ between the action of members within the series, so this would make such a series (ostensibly) accidental not essential. For example, there might be a slight time lag between the force of the hand on the stick and another on the force of the stick upon the stone, so the objector would say this is just an accidentally ordered series having the illusion of what I'm saying is essentially ordered.
I think there is a reality to these sorts of series for a few different reasons. The important feature of these essentially ordered series is the essential dependence of each member on the other - the action of distal members in the series essentially depends on the action of more basal/fundamental members, in that distal members only act insofar as basal members are themselves active in the course of the event in question (e.g. a stone's being moved). The issue of whether events just so happened to be spread out over time is, I think, an accidental feature; it's that dependency that's at issue, or deriving power from previous members; for the negation of this idea, there being derived causal powers but nothing from which such powers are ultimately derived seems to me to be nonsensical. So long as there are causal series which operate in this way, as opposed to series which do not need concurrent actualization, like the pot's ability to heat water when the flame is suppressed, then I think it makes sense to make this distinction between accidentally and essentially ordered series.
Another reason is that any accidental series seems to presuppose an essentially ordered series because those things which act within the accidentally ordered series need to exist at any moment at which they act. The need for this concurrent actualization is even more apparent when we consider that there must also be something which actualizes the very existence of the things which act within such a the series. On further analysis, this actualization of a substance's existence will turn out to be another one of these essentially ordered causal series, in that something only exists at a moment insofar as some more fundamental thing is actualized, which itself only exists insofar as some more fundamental member is actualized. Ed Feser's "Aristotelian proof" from this book _Five Proofs of the Existence of God_ makes an argument like this.
This seems to me to be an even stronger argument than Aquinas' argument from motion even though both Feser and Aquinas start with a (hopefully noncontroversial) premise that change is a real feature of the world, in the sense of things going from potency to act. Aquinas seems to be considering certain relations in which actualization of the potencies of things has this "received causal power" feature in the here and now and says there must be something from which this causal power is received whereas Feser is saying the sheer existence of things at any moment is another one of those things that must be "in place" right now for anything to act at all (since it has to exist to be able to act). Aquinas' second way (from the ordering of efficient causes) might also be interpreted in this way, as Feser points out in his book _Aquinas_ , that not only must there be an unmoved mover for there to be potencies being actualized at all, there must be an uncaused (efficient) cause for there to exist anything at all, so that it may do other stuff (in the here and now). These ideas about conserving the existence of things was quite common in medieval thought and it's something we forget about in modern philosophy, but it makes good sense. We moderns tend to think the existence of things and of certain 'physical laws' are just 'given' and the only causal series we need to worry about are those which extend into the distant past, whereas I think Scholastic thought, particularly Aquinas, suggests it's the essentially ordered ones that we need to think carefully about. And thinking about this sort of causal series makes it clear that the existence of God has nothing to do with whether the universe had a beginning (Aquinas didn't think you could prove this by these sorts of arguments) or what happened in the primordial events of the universe, something which is totally obfuscated by theists and atheists alike today.
Simultaneity doesn't require instantaneity. A causal series ordered per se requires the former, not the latter. All simultaneity requires is that the receiver of actualization and the actualizer interact in the process of actualization in a single unit of time, however long that single unit may last.
I'm afraid I am a little confused with how the essentially ordered causal series works. I understand how the chain works, where each aspect of the arm essentially drives the next part all the way to the stick, and to the stone. But at the point where you explain the firing of the motor neurons, this is where it confuses me. In order for those neurons to be fired, there needs to be the firing of ion channels... but doesn't there need to be an assortment of molecules that are actual in order for the potentiality of the ion channels to be actualized? If those were there, wouldn't they also have to be actualized by a previous set of actual molecules? Couldn't this chain lead to my upbringing, then my birth -- which could then lead to the beginning of the universe.
I do think that I missed something very fundamental and my argument may be flawed. My question is, how does essentially ordered causal series not eventually not turn into accidently ordered causal series? How can they remain independent of each other? It just appears to me that we can indeed go further and further down into states of reality, but at some point, we also have to go back, rather than to stay in the here and now.
I know how to reply, but I simply don't know what an ion channel is lol, if I did I can surely guide you from there.
It's the same mistake I found myself making as well, but at some point you have stopped analyzing the series essentially and started analyzing it accidentally. Many things in our experience can be analyzed in both ways. "Why is that candle lit?" Accidentally I could say, "Because I lit it, and because I was born, and because my parents were born, etc." but I can ESSENTIALLY say "The candle is lit because oxygen is fueling the flame, which is actually oxygen because of its atomic arrangement, which is made actual by the laws of electromagnetism etc."
Just remember it's easy to sneakily switch the series and keep the focus essential. Do reply if you have further questions please or need clarification.
I think you're thinking about this in the sense of time rather than in the here and now. Time is not a factor here just what acts upon another which acts upon another which acts upon another and so on. Exempli Gratia a leaf's potential to move is actuated by a rock whose potential to move the leaf is actuated by a stick whos potential to move the rock is actuated by my forearm whos potential to move the stick is actuated by neurons... and so on going smaller and smaller until you arrived at the first cause which would be God. A hierarchical series ordered essentially such as this cannot extend to infinity due to this having nothing to do with TIME just that which acts upon another which acts upon another which acts upon another. The series operates independently of object A existing which would later bring about object B since object B exists here and now and is in use here and now. I hope this answers your 2 year old question
Hello! Is it possible to download your videos into mp3 for me to listen to them through mp3 music player?
keep it up, educate the heathens
It doesn't really help people be in the best state of mind to listen to your arguments if you're just calling them names.
@Ariiel11RP That's just conceit. You could easily say the opposite to justify name-calling the theists instead.
@@ppaaccoojrf I think you are correct. There seems to be some unwillingness to "be moved" on both sides.
Incredible wonderful series! Many thanks!
Bro, can you teach me briefly what does Anselm was trying to say when he said that God is "grater" than any other being? What does it mean to be "greater"?
What if the stick is a light year long? Wouldn’t hand moving the stick not be essential? You know because of general relativity and stuff.
This is great
Wait, this does not look like math. This does not look like math at all.
I think it's a giant load of gobbledygook. Tons of baseless assertions. For example: You cannot just dismiss the workings of reality if you are talking about reality. (referring to the Thomas Aquinas bit)
how is he dismissing the workings of reality?
He explicitly states that his argument is independent of actual physics... and therefore concerned with more universal principles I assume? But I question whether these universal principles can simply be asserted.
from what I understand they are independant of physics in the same way math is.
Exactly. But that is flawed, as math is not concerned with physical reality, but the infinite regress of actuations and potentials IS.
I’m having a debate with my friend and I’m not extremely articulate with Aquinas’s arguments, can you give some reasons why various the deep Quantum physics theories don’t discount Aquinas and Aristotle’s arguments? By the way your videos are awesome!
+Matt Mayuiers
The analysis of change as the actualization of potency comes before this-or-that claim of particular changes, otherwise the change being described could not be intelligibly described and the act-potency distinction and the principle that "whatever is reduced from potency to act is done so by another (whatever moves is moved by another)" are on solid ground. I would say that the actualization of a potency and something else actualizing this potency, an actualizer, cannot be metaphysically separated, much like a stone breaking a window cannot be separated from the window's being broken by the stone, and is really the same event just from two different points of view, namely active and passive (breaking and being broken). You might be able to verbally separate the two aspects but they cannot be uncoupled in reality. The coffee's being made cool (actualization of a potency) by the ambient air is coupled to the ambient air (the actualizer) making the coffee cool, and is absolutely unintelligible without an actualizer; it makes as much sense to talk about actualization of a potency without an actualizer, I would say, as speaking of an effect without a cause since, much like the effect is just what the cause does, the actualization can be thought of as what the actualizer is doing; that something be actualized without an actualizer is an absurdity and if anyone is proposing that such happens, they are talking nonsense and aren't even at the level of proposing something intelligible. They're talking as much sense as someone saying "I received a gift but no one gave it to me" in that the detractor is saying that something gains this specific actuality neither from itself, being still in potency, nor from another. So why in the world does it gain this actuality?
Those trying to object to this argument by vaguely waving their hand in the direction of quantum mechanics can hardly ever state what exactly the objection is supposed to be precisely and demonstrate that this actually contradicts a premise of the arguments other than 'quantum mechanics is difficult to understand.' This is no better and no more useful than your typical quantum woo from, say, Deepak Chopra. And if a physicist talks nonsense, the right thing to say is that he speaks nonsense, not that we have to start thinking that nonsense might actually be sense. And it's extremely controversial about what quantum mechanics has to do with reality beyond the mathematical formalisms, so I have no problem saying this.
Mathoma Thank you so much! Really appreciate it, can’t express how much I value your insight.
+Matt Mayuiers
No problem. Feel free to email me anytime.
Could you explain more about why the physics of the hand-moves-the-stick-moves-the-stone example doesn't matter? Is it the presence of friction that makes that example essentially ordered rather than accidentally ordered?
I think most atheists who do use the "Who Created God" argument, assume God is temporal. I don't think that is a bad assumption, it is the only way to make sense of anything. However, more people should focus on that core problem with God, then work up to the question who created God, as the implication. Without it, it becomes a silly question with no support.
Anyway you earned a sub, keep it up.
I don’t really understand why you spend so much time on the worst arguments of solely the new atheist movement, and pit them against the best arguments of the classic theology
It's because of their massive popularity.
He literally addressed that in the first three minutes
Max Scribner the cosmological and ontological arguments are not the strongest theological arguments. I find them interesting but not full proof in themselves.
There is a deep and frustrating irony with you complaining that new atheism doesn't address serious theism while continuing to focus on it rather than addressing intellectual atheism like Graham Oppy etc.
Regarding the argument from motion, does this hold up at a quantum level? It seems that there is no red ball. There are quantum particles which are all wave functions which are constantly changing. If we start with the premise that everything constantly changes, does this undermine the entire classical theist endeavor?
I can't do everything in one video, although I have read Oppy, Sobel, and Mackie.
The argument from motion only requires the actualization of a potential. It doesn't matter if the potential is in macroscopic sensible things or in quantum objects. For instance, when an electron is bound in the ground state, that is the actualization of a potential state, whereas other potential states are the 'free state' or other excited states, which are actualized by, eg light. Without the actualization of the ground state, the electron is in some other state, in which case there is an actualizer of this state to account for why it's in this state as opposed to another. That's the point.
I don't agree that quantum mechanics undermines macroscopic sensibles, and I hold such a position to be incoherent. You cannot establish quantum mechanics or have any evidence for it without macroscopic sensibles. For instance, if the computer screen in front of me is not real, or the oscilloscope screen isn't real, then you really look at the readout of some experiment. In that case, you know nothing about the system you're trying to investigate if the oscilloscope doesn't exist; all your inferences about the quantum are made by way of macroscopic things.
@@Math_oma Thanks. I appreciate your videos. Looking forward to the rest of the series.
(Also, re your point about how absurd it would be for a theist to say evolution is false because a monkey wouldn't give birth to a human, this is exactly the kind of argument Ken Hamm makes on a regular basis. So "popular atheists" are often responding to "popular theists." Not many on either side of the issue are thinking as deeply as you, Aquinas, or Oppy. And I think that's OK. But I'm glad the deeper stuff is also here for me to consume!)
Why would he start with people like Oppy, when 99% of atheists have no idea who he is, but think that "science" 🔭 has shown them it isn't rational to believe in God, because the people indicated in this video argue such, seemingly not even understanding what "rational" even means (as opposed to "empirical").
It's necessary to address such persons because their arguments are so simpleton, despite being utterly fallacious, but millions have been influenced by them.
That's my 2 cents.
@@godfreydebouillon8807 That is pretty much the same reason online atheists go after unserious theists (Frank Turek, Ken Hamm). The unserious folks have outsized influence.
@@kensey007 Yeah I guess it's complicated. I would say that within atheism, like 99% of atheists are convinced by the whack jobs. In Christianity, I guess it's hard to say. I'm not sure that Ken Ham is a really big name in Catholicism or Orthodoxy, but some of the loosely strung together protestant groups that think just reading the Bible makes someone qualified to be a leader.
Anyhow, I'm just trying to say that in atheist circles, this isn't like "a large group of them" sort of problem, it's almost all of them, which is why it needs to be addressed.
I get your point though, and really agree with the sentiment
Please, can someone give me the reference for the left pic at 40:40 ? Thank you.
@Mathoma God bless you for your vids
(sorry for my bad English I'm French).
good shit my dude when is part 2?
+professor farnsworth
Hopefully in another week.
hell yea.
This is what a 12th century mind sounds like.
+Luckystrike
I presume you didn't intend this to be a complement, but it was received as one.
To quote Chesterton: “My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday.”
The only thing primitive here is your logic
Did Parmenides really (35:08) "deny that things are in motion"? To the extent that there are things, I think he would agree that they are (vacuously) in motion; he would just deny that there are things (which is simply the gnostic (not Catholic) way of looking at classical theism, isn't it?).
He would certainly deny the proposition 'there are many things and they are changeable'. That change is impossible is proposed by Eleatics, along with numerous arguments against the possibility of change despite the appearances, and Aristotle comments on these proposals, along with the proposal there is only one substance.
Mathoma, i appreciate these video's a lot, now a question to you. What do you think about Deleuze and his ontology of difference? That is difference as being privileged over sameness? I would be interested in seeing what a Scholastic think's about this. Again good video.
8:14 "Saying that the cosmological argument is one argument is strike one. It's a class of argument, not one argument."
The argument may take more than one form, but at 3:08 it was made pretty clear that all these forms of the cosmological argument amount to the same argument. "Some things in our experience are X," and substitute various values for X. All these arguments take the same form and therefore they are bound to share the same flaws. Let's exercise the principle of charity and not become flustered by minor grammatical issues.
9:21 "Dennett says he's giving us the simplified version of the argument, as though he could give us the more complex one if he had the time."
Couldn't he? It seems highly unlikely that Dennett would have never encountered any version of the cosmological argument. It seems that virtually anyone who uses the internet must have seen one version of the argument or another at some point. It may be frustrating to see the argument so brutally simplified, but the end result really does seem to capture the fundamental elements of the arguments and their objections.
"The Cosmological Argument, which in its simplest form states that since everything must have a cause the universe must have a cause--namely, God--doesn't stay simple for long."
This seems like a fair simplification of "Some things in our experience are X. That which is X requires a cause." It's true that he's improperly conflating things which are X with "everything", but in practice X usually seems to amount to pretty much everything. Whether X is "in motion" or "contingent" or "composite" we're still talking about practically everything in the universe. Dennett is hardly missing the proper argument by much.
"Some deny the premise, since quantum physics teaches us that not everything that happens needs to have a cause."
Dennett's point here is the obvious objection that we can't be sure that everything which is X requires a cause. Especially looking at quantum physics tends to give people reason to doubt, since quantum physics seems to be home to uncaused stuff in plenty. Clearly Dennett isn't spelling this out in rigorous detail, but it is a quick simplified summary of the concept.
"Others prefer to accept the premise and then ask: What caused God?"
In more rigorous discussion this one would be phrased as why isn't God X? Why is God exempt from needing a cause when everything else in our experience seems to be X and thus in need of a cause?
"The reply that God is self-caused then raises the rebuttal: If something can be self-caused, why can't the universe as a whole be the thing that is self-caused?"
In other words, if God gets to avoid needing a cause due to not being X, then how can we be sure that the universe can't have the same exemption? What if the universe is not-X? Or perhaps the underlying substrate of the universe might be not-X. Or any other non-divine thing might be not-X.
10:00 "Suppose I tried to make the case against evolution by saying that it can't be right because if it were that means that in its simplest form, a chimpanzee gave birth to a modern human about six million years ago."
That wouldn't seem to capture any of the interesting features of the case for evolution, or the objections raised against evolution. It's not nearly as useful as even Dennett's oversimplified cosmological argument. No one would foam at the mouth with outrage over that. They'd more likely take it as an opportunity give an elementary overview of how evolution works.
12:25 "If the atheist is truly understanding what the theist is talking about when he says that God is first cause or unmoved mover, he would not even bother asking such questions as what caused God?"
Obviously the question is phrased poorly, but it still seems to be getting at an interesting question. What it's really asking is how can God be uncaused? How can there be a first cause when things don't exist without being caused to exist? Why would God exist rather than not exist if there can be nothing to cause God's existence?
14:44 "Hitchens is also a bit confused here because he then raises the issue of infinite regress, but if he thinks that such infinite regresses are possible in whatever cosmological argument he has in mind, why bother talking about a real first cause? He should have said there is no first cause."
Hitchens didn't claim that there is no first cause because he wasn't interested in making a case for that. Hitchens didn't know and probably didn't care whether there was an infinite regress. He was only interested in showing how the idea of an uncaused cause is bizarre and mysterious. He was saying that the only way we can claim to know anything about the underlying causation of the universe is by faith, so obviously he wasn't interested in making his own faith-based claim about an infinite regress.
28:51 "To say that such a series regresses infinitely is to say that the stick ultimately doesn't derive its motive power from anything. If the stick doesn't derive its motive power from anything, there's no way it could do things like move stones."
All we see is the start of the regress and not the source. We see the stone and the stick and so on, and the regress disappears from view to go to some unknown place from which the motive power flows, but how can we be in any position to make claims about the parts of the regress we cannot see. It's difficult to believe that motive power could flow from an endless regress, but it's also difficult to believe that motive power could flow from an end point where motive power just appears out of nothing. How could any of these options have support in evidence? Wouldn't it be better to admit our ignorance and just suppose that the motive power comes from some unknown place by unknown means?
33:42 "Because the prime mover is the most fundamental, it cannot have any unactualized potentials."
But the prime mover is just the end of the chain, the source from which the rock ultimately gets its motive power. If we're not assuming in advance that the prime mover must be God, then for all we know the prime mover is just some thing, perhaps in some incomprehensible realm of existence, and there'd be no reason to suppose that it has no unactualized potentials.
Imagine a magic spring where water appears from nothing and feeds a river. The spring is the fundamental source of all water in the river, but that doesn't mean that the spring cannot be acted upon. We could find the spring and put a cork in it to stop the river. In the same way, if we knew where to look for the prime mover, we might find all sorts of interesting ways we could act upon it.
33:59 "Because the pure act is in no way potential, it immutable or unchangeable, and because those things which exist within time or are made of matter are subject to change, at least in possibility, the pure act is additional eternal and incorporeal."
Why should a thing be incorporeal just because it cannot change? Imagine a lump of immutable stone, a rock of infinite physical strength and resistant to all attempts to move it or change any of its properties. Just because we cannot affect it doesn't give us any reason to think we could not touch it.
34:13 "There can only be one pure act, because for there to be multiple pure acts would imply that there is some material or temporal feature that one has but the others do not."
Why limit it to only those features? It's true that we've ruled out any sort of temporal, material, and potency features, but how have we determined that this is an exhaustive list of all possible features? Maybe the multiple pure acts differ in some way we have not imagined. For example, what if each pure act had a domain of responsibility, so one pure act supplies motive power for one kind of motion, while another one supplies motive power for a different kind of motion? If there are four fundamental forces, then maybe there could be four pure acts, one for each of the forces.
You then flat-out contradict yourself by asserting that the cosmological arguments is not a singular argument per se, but more of a class of arguments. After that, you slam Harris for "misrepresenting the argument." I'm sorry, but you cannot have it both ways. If it is a class of arguments, then there are necessarily variations of the argument that don't work well and should be rejected. If it is a singular argument, then you cannot complain when people fail to acknowledge the many variations of it.
He clearly was addressing the argument from motion. So he didnt contradict himself.
I am clearly misunderstanding something here and would like to understand. In the example of a stone being moved, why are the neurons in the motor cortex not the source. Why must the chain extend beyond that to a prime mover? I’ve been thinking about this topic for hours at this point and every time I think I finally understand I remember this point and get confused as to why the prime mover is necessary
@Josb 983 does something not cause the neurons to fire?
I would recommend learning what is required in terms of actualization within a neuron just for a neuron to 'fire', such as confomation changes in ion channels, voltage differences, ionic translocation. All this is going to be built on the most fundamental actuality, which is the very actual existence of such things, as I explain in part 6. By no means is a neuron an ultimate source or first actualizer.
Mathoma ok, I actually thought of this after posting my comment but didn’t know enough about neurons to understand beyond that. Thank you, I will look into this
What about richard carrier, he's a new atheist who wrote a book claiming Jesus never existed and i am kind of worrying because he makes a solid case and i haven't seen any in depth Christian response to it, i know that's not what this is about but if you have any resources i'd appreciate it, i dont want to doubt my faith
Maybe you should. If somebody brings up reasons to doubt a belief you hold, doubt it. If you are biased in favor of maintaining that belief, you are unlikely to reach the truth
Given the nature of history one could reasonably doubt the existence of virtually any historical person. We don't believe in Christ because we found him under a microscope, we believe in Christ because the people that he ordained to teach us continue to do so to this very day, while the rest of the world has been in constant flux around it.
@@David-lb3tp That's silly. How do you know that the people Christ supposedly ordained were, you know, actually ordained by Christ? This is akin to believing in Socrates because Plato wrote down his teachings. Plato's writings are evidence, but not enough on their own to prove Socrates ever existed.
@@piecrumbs9951 Look up apostolic succession.
@@David-lb3tp
There is no apostolic succession. It’s an invention of the church. It’s claimed that people like Ignatius, Polcarp, and Papias were students of the apostle John. But none of them ever mention John in their writings.
Rather, decades after these men had died, certain legends arose about these figures having known the apostles (and eventually, that they were _instructed_ by the apostles) in order to give credibility to the teachings of the orthodox church and combat “heresies”. It’s thus no accident that Irenaeus is the first to declare some of them.
I mean it just sounds like your equivocating on God LOL. Cool video man.
43 minutes of pure sophistry. imagine getting btfo'd in 3 pages of dawkins, and needing this level of mental gymnastics to try and wiggle out of it. the sad part is that none of this is actually what has convinced you is it ? this is just filibustering on a cosmic scale because you have absolutely zero evidence for any of the ideas you espouse.
Both causal chains - essential and accidental - are impossible within an infinite chain, so you always need a base case. Can we ALL (theists, atheists) agree? Where we differ seems to be to describe the base case further. Yes, you can derive some properties of this base case, but in no way you can derive a personal god as a propery of this base case and that's where theists fail.
+ostihpem
You've just conceded the major part of the argument right there, so you can no longer be an atheist. I'll get to proving that that which is purely actual has intellect (i.e. contains forms without being them) and will (operation following intellect) and knows everything in their natures is therefore quite personal.
Dear Sir I appreciate your hard work however I must ask is therefore an agreement that is inspired my Romans chapters 1 to 8 with the focus on people running away from accountability?
You then blatantly misrepresent the atheist position of "who created God?" This is after citing a paragraph by Dennett himself that explains the argument in the form of a dichotomy. If everything that begins to exist needs a cause, then what created God? If God is a thing that is "self-creating" (or whatever) then you admit that there are things in this world that do not require causes to exist, which makes the presumption of God a classic instance of special pleading.
Seriously dude, if you're going to prop yourself up as some sort of serious academic philosopher, then it would really help if you didn't misrepresent so many basic ideas, especially after literally reading them out loud to us 5 minutes prior.
If you watched the series you would know why it is a goofy objection. First off, the fact that we must arrive at the first cause (in order to make sense of essentially ordered causal series) is already proof that it must not need a cause, for if it did, it wouldn't be the first, making it eternal. This also addresses the "self creating" comment, because something eternal is, well, eternal and was not created. It is not the classical theist who misunderstands the objection, it is you who does not understand the arguments. Watch the series.
@@account2871 *First off, the fact that we must arrive at the first cause*
That is absolutely not a fact. The very idea of a "first cause" is utterly meaningless. You're assuming a concept of time that is demonstrably false. Please go study general relativity and don't come back until you know what a "spacetime" is.
Also, I like how you respond to my argument without ever bothering to address it. You just sort of barfed up a bunch of red herrings about first causes and self-creating eternities. So let's repeat the argument, shall we?
(a) If everything that begins to exist needs a cause, then what created God?
(b) If God is a thing that is "self-creating" (or whatever) then you admit that there are things in this world that do not require causes to exist. If "God" is the only entity within this set, then that makes "God" a classic instance of special pleading.
Please try addressing the argument instead of blindly repeating a bunch of stuff that was already debunked.
@@AntiCitizenX These questions are dealt with in the very series you are commenting on.
Answer to (a): God requires not a creator, because if he did, he would not be eternal, something concluded in the series you refuse to understand.
Answer to (b): God is not a thing that is self-creating. This is not even a point in the series you refuse to understand.
It's turtles all the way down... I tried very hard to allow your reasoning to unfold; but you, yourself fell into multiple fallacies that you accused your opponents of... Just smelled like hypocrisy. Godel has shown that there are questions that can't be answered. I think Godel's assertion in and of itself points to the unknowable... which may or may not be something called "Creator" but is most certainly a great "Mystery". But if you want your argument to hold water you must stop the "Argument from authority" where you take the Atheist side of the argument building them up as an authority and then applying the "Ipse dixit" to deny the logic of their argument... very sneaky... but a fallacy none the less. I really digg your math videos!
+ntesla66
Thanks, but I'm just wondering what Godel has to do with any of this. And what authority am I appealing to here?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems. And the authorities (Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett) are the ones I'm referring to.
+ntesla66
Yes, I'm aware of the incompleteness theorems but what relevance do they have to the video or to the topic?
Really??? Okay, never mind ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski%27s_undefinability_theorem. Good luck with your proving God exists, I'm out.
When were tarski and godel the same person?
Motion = change. Is this difficult to comprehend....any good philosophers out there? We all have faith , hope and charity.
Is it fine to download these videos of yours into mp3 so that I can listen to it through mp3 music player?
Yes, but you don't need my permission to do that anyway.
@@Math_oma thank you!
I started to watch part one……I won’t bother with part two.
I'm curious as to why that is the case
The kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God [no mater how you manipulate the wording of said argument] has been refuted over and over again Ad nauseam.
You can ether Google ‘The kalam cosmological argument refuted’ and learn why it’s a bad argument for God, or you can go on believing that the kalam cosmological argument does make sense as it does seem to help people to hang onto their God belief providing they does go too deeply into it.
Belief in God is faith based, not evidence based.
but he is not making the kalam argument he is using aquinas.
www.scandalon.co.uk/philosophy/cosmological_aquinas.htm
Same old argument.
not really
Your opening discussion immediately shows how completely out of touch you are with modern philosophical thought. Positivism did NOT receive a “curb stomping” as you put it. If anything, the tenets of logical positivism are some of the most widely accepted ideas in philosophy itself. If you had half the education in philosophy that you pretend to have, you would know this. Why do you pretend to lecture atheists on their lack of “intellectualism” when you are inexcusably ignorant of such basic philosophical facts?
Welcome to this trash-fire circlejerk of a channel, I couldn't stomach it.
Love your stuff btw
@• You may want to look up "confirmation bias" it will help you.
Also check out "argument from authority" Wikipedia is not an authority, you can't just ignore someone's argument and slap a Wikipedia link.
@• I see no reason to believe you have any significant understanding of the topic.
I have already done research, re-read the original statement maybe you missed what was actually said.
@• Maybe you should check out his channel, your strawman of what he is saying is not what he is saying.
You know, do some research? Or is telling people to do some research just your way of avoiding actually giving an argument to support your assertions?
@• Why on earth should I have to explain someone who is pretending to be a philosopher how the statement "If anything, the tenets of logical positivism are some of the most widely accepted ideas in philosophy itself." is different to " logical positivism has received very harsh criticism from many philosophers." you aren't even talking about the same thing.
-
"Maybe you should, you know, do some research?"
O shut up you imbicile.
"According to logical positivism, there are only two sources of knowledge: logical reasoning and empirical experience. The former is analytic a priori, while the latter is synthetic a posteriori; hence synthetic a priori does not exist.
The fundamental thesis of modern empiricism [i.e. logical positivism] consists in denying the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge.
(H. Hahn, O. Neurath, R. Carnap, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis, 1929)."
Critique that and piss off.
The illustration at the beginning must be a picture of Dover beach.
You make a reasonable case, but I think I'm missing part of the train of thought here. I appreciate that asking "Who moved the unmoved mover?" is about as unwarranted as asking "Who broke the fixed glass?" in that it prescribes an aspect to something that is by definition not there, but the problem I'm facing is that I don't think this line of reasoning actually necessitates an unmoved mover because not all chains of cause are as linear as they are here portrayed.
I'll use the chain shown at 27:44 as an example. The stone is moved by the stick is moved by the hand is moved by the forearm is moved by the etc. I'm not convinced that this system necessarily needs an external starting point. Namely, the whole thing is actualized because the owner of the hand decided to hit that stone, right? But I would note that had they not seen the stone they would not have been caused to make that decision, therefor we do not need anything outside the system as a starting point.
That's not a great example, because it leads to the obvious "what caused the stone?" fiasco which we've already established is outside the discussion. A better one for what I'm trying to demonstrate would be something like the rain cycle. Water is moved to precipitate because it was condensed into clouds because it evaporated because it was collected somewhere because it was moved to precipitate. It makes sense to say A because B because C ... therefore Z, but only if we're observing a system that isn't on some level self sustaining. I could be missing something in all this, if anything you've effectively demonstrated people saying things that sound reasonable but perhaps aren't, but it still stands as a reason I don't find this point compelling.
+Casual Graphman
This is just an example, but let's focus on what the argument is saying: how does any actualization of a potential occur _at all_ in those series in which motive power is _derived_ in this way if there does not exist an unactualized actualizer?
I think I'm having trouble with the specifics of these words. It seems that actualization of a potential is derived from an actualizer whose potential has already been actualized. Thus it is that each member of the series requires an actualizer individually, but the series itself only needs an unactualized actualizer if it has ends that aren't closed in some way. Is there some reason that closed series are impossible or what?
+Casual Graphman
I'm not sure what you mean by _closed_ . The reason there must be something which is already actual, i.e. doesn't require some potential actualized (unactualized actualizer) is because each member in an essentailly ordered series is only able to actualize a potential _due to_ to a previous actualizer - that's what I mean when I say derived power. If something has derived power in this way, it must derive it _from something_ - and that from which it's derived must contain it already, not by way of another. The alternative, that things derive motive power but don't derive it from anything, is just nonsensical. That's why we must conclude there is an unactualized actualizer.
I mean "closed" like a graph theorist means "cycle". I agree that, in these terms, it would be nonsensical to say that a single thing could derive motive power from nothing, but I think that what you've presented sounds like a false binary since that motive power can pass from one thing to another in a cycle. Since, as you've presented it, when a thing is actualized it's moving from an actual state to another actual state that was once a potential state, I don't see why it is that a cycle can't form.
+Casual Graphman
Okay, but this series of movers terminating cuts off any possibility of there being a cycle. Besides that, if there were such a cycle, you would have movers at the same instant deriving and donating motive power - you cannot give something you don't have. Another reason is that if there were such cycles, then something is ultimately self-moved which is impossible because something cannot be both potential and actual in the same respect: that's just contradictory.
Nice.
Something brings the will from potentiality to actuality, at it does not actualize itself. It is actualized ultimately by God, thus the will is not free. I have come across this objection to free will, and I am unable to answer it.
That's a non sequitur. God actualizes the will in such a way as to preserve the self-determination of the agent and maintain his powers, and concurrent to the agent. We're not mechanists. Freedom of the will does not require that God have no role in actualizing you and your powers, which is the suppressed premise of the argument. Freedom of the will is not an escape from the God's causation. Also recall there are two orders of causation, primary and secondary.
@@Math_oma Thank you.
In the essentially caused series, how does God actualize the motor neuron? I understand the accidental series but I'm having a hard time understanding the essential series.
+Sweden XII
You have to read something like Feser's "Five Proofs of the Existence of God" particularly the chapter on "The Nature of God and of His Relationship to the World" to get a sense of the sort of causality we're talking about here. More specifically, you have to go through 'primary' and 'secondary causes'.
There are two things to keep in mind in how the world is related to God relevant here. First, God is the universal cause of being ( _esse_ ), which is at once the simplest, most universal, but also the most powerful cause in that it makes something be. This is the 'primary cause'. For a motor neuron to do anything, it must first _be_ . In an electric power grid, the power generator is the unifying and simple cause of there being any power throughout the grid, though what comes out on the other end is a diversity of effects as this power is used to do many different things. Furthermore, so far as anything cannot operate on its own, and must receive power from another, it cannot do anything without the unactualized actualizer; this is shown in the argument from change. A motor neuron is powerless all by itself and at all times requires a divine concurrence to grant it power, or to 'concur' with it (this position is called 'concurrentism') to be what's called a 'secondary cause'. These powers that things other than God have is derived power from God who just is unparticipated power. Note that if there is no primary cause there's no secondary cause to speak of.
Another thing you have to stop doing is thinking you're going to understand causation by 'playing movies in your head' and using your imagination. You have to use your _intellect_ and get away from these internal movies otherwise you won't understand anything at the level of intellect. Many people fall into this trap of imagining causation to be something like one billiard ball hitting another, which then hits another, etc. one after the other. You have to use your intellect to understand causation, not imagination. Many people say they cannot 'understand' something but this is only because they're trying to figure out how to watch a mental movie of it (which is impossible), discover they cannot, and then say they don't get it. This subject, along with all other serious thought, is not amenable to such mental movies, the imagination, and one must reason through arguments to understand at the intellectual level. These topics are much closer to mathematics, which isn't about 'visualization', in which we must rely upon intellect.
Mathoma
thank you very very much! Your explanation was very helpful.
Yes indeed I tend to think in movies, I do that with everything. The reason is most likely because I’m bad at math. I realise I tried to think in steps to find out “the magic organ” in our bodies that receive actualisation from God. I now understand that is not the right way.
I will read Feser’s book and try to think more like math instead.
God bless you Mathoma.
Hello Mathoma, I discovered your channel thanks to Archidiacre's french translation, you're doing very good work so thank you.
Nevertheless, I have an objection to the proof by movement : I agree on the fact that an essentially ordered causal series cannot regress ad infinitum, but do we actually have the proof this kind of series exist in reality ? Even in the example you give there is a temporal delay between the motor neuron "lighting up", the muscle contracting and the stick being moved ; also, if this example was a real essentially ordered causal series we would expect to be able to regress until the unmoved mover (i.e. God), but actually I don't get where God is supposed to actualise anything in the process of moving a stone. Maybe the motor neuron is actualized by spirit/consciousnesse which is itself acutalized by God ? But doesn't that contradict free will ?
Thanks for you answer.
The fact that there's a temporal delay isn't relevant at all. What is relevant is that the members of this series have a derived power, and do not have power intrinsically. That the effect comes to be over a time period doesn't really affect anything.
Not sure what you mean by 'where'. God isn't confined to a location. You'd also have to spell out what you take the issue with free will to be. You are actualized in such a way as to yourself have a power to actualize yourself (one part moving another) in a free manner (at least those powers under voluntary control).
@@Math_oma If I got it well, the fact is that each essentially ordered causal series is necessarily terminated by God, right ? From that perspective, if the example of the arm moving the stick is indeed an essentially ordered causal series, it should also be terminated by God, right ? The problem to me is that I don't figure at which point of the series God is supposed to intervene in order to terminate the causal series. Thank you for your answer.
@@paulmaigne I mean it's like saying you recognize that the power grid doesn't function without electric power, but you don't understand at which point the power generator 'intervenes'.
@@Math_oma Ok I think I get what you mean, thanks a lot.
@@paulmaigne No problem.
The argument to a prior mover at about 24:20 is better put in these terms: what is changed has only in potency the quality it acquires through the change while what makes it change has it in act, for it has to transfer the quality and nothing can transfer what it does not have in act. Now, of course, you must be referring to changes in which a quality is transferred (otherwise counterexamples are easy: you need not be glad in order to turn somebody glad, etc) and the question is whether any such chain exists that leads outside the temporal universe.
+Laureano Luna
It is a perfection or actuality we are concerned with in this analysis, not a 'quality'. And the Aristotelian-Thomistic analysis always understands the responsibility for the actualization in a actuality present _in some way_ in the cause, either formally, virtually, or eminently, called the _principle of proportionate causality_ . This is already built into the analysis and therefore objections such as yours about gladness, the stock one being 'you don't need to have a black eye to give that to another', are things we already agree with, namely, the perfection need not be present _formally_ in the cause.
@@Math_oma Thanks. What I am suggesting is that dropping the speech about perfections (which I have always found slippery) and sticking to changes in which some quality or property is transmitted could be a more economic way of arguing.
@@LaureanoLuna I just say 'actuality' although I have no problem with 'perfection' - both 'quality' and 'property' are confusing terms, since the analysis of becoming is not restricted to either. Using the word 'property' haphazardly, and almost as a filler word, leads to confusion and conflates proper accident (property) with accident. It is not _proper_ to coffee to be hot or cold, rather an accident. The vast majority of things called 'properties' are not proper to the things in which they inhere. The word 'actuality' and 'perfection', in the sense of the Latin _per_ (through)+ _facio_ (do) has the breadth to convey what's being talked about in this subject.
@@Math_oma I can only quote you: "It is a perfection or actuality we are concerned with..." and myself: "What I am suggesting is that dropping the speech about perfections (...) and sticking to changes in which some quality or property is transmitted could be a more economic way of arguing". It is not well-defined what a perfection is; however, it is indeed well-defined what passing from posessing a property potentially to possessing it actually means. The argument could perhaps benefit from leaving aside part of the Aristotelian-Thomistic ontology. It is but a suggestion.
what's the name of the song that plays in the intro?
Did you ever find out? I've been trying to find it as well. Shazam doesn't help.
edit: Found it. It's Liszt's Dante Symphony - Purgatorio .
@@Daniel-cl6hj Oh thanks man! I forgot I even asked about it. I guess I should have been more perceptive of the image he used
Great video, but one question still persists: why does God have to be purely actual, why can't he be a mixture of potency and act?
Let's suppose you have the following essentially ordered causal series:
An apple held up by a table, table held up the floor, and floor held up by the Earth. Let's assume that in this hierarchical series, the unmoved mover is the Earth. The Earth has the power to hold up other things, without being held up itself. In principle, it has no potential to be held up. Therefore, the Earth is purely actual in this sense.
However, the Earth could also have the potential to be spinning clockwise, although this potential has no bearing on the ultimate effect - the apple being held up. So here, we have a prime mover who is purely actual in one sense, but still has potency in other sense.
So why should the prime mover be pure actuality, why couldn't it have some dormant potentials which are not relevant to the actualization of reality?
There are many reasons this couldn't be the case.
First, if you have something whose existence is unactualized, yet was in potentiality in some other way, that would imply that it is a composite, since it has a potential part and an actual part. However, all composites require actualizers, since there must be something which causes the here and now composition. But then that would mean we have not reached the unactualized actualizer, but instead there's something else actualizing it, and the regress hasn't terminated. Therefore, it cannot be in potentiality in some other way.
Secondly, if something is in potentiality toward X, that means that it is actually not-X. But if it's actually not-X, that entails it is being actualized, for we're going to want to know why that potential for not-X is now being actualized, and not the potential for X. This just restarts the analysis by which we trace what is non-instrumentally responsible for this actualization. So that means something that's not actualized could not be in potential toward something.
@@Math_oma Ty, for the response. So, in essence: any being with any form of potentiality is necessarily contingent on an external set of affairs. Like you said, if a being is potentially X, where X is some attribute, then that means its potential to be not-X is being actualized here and now. Hence, it cannot be the unmoved mover.
Is that basically correct? I know Aquinas used a more metaphysical-heavy approach to resolve this issue, using esse and essence, but I couldn't really understand it.
@@Math_oma "All composites require actualizers, since there must be something which causes the here and now composition."
Why must all composites require actualizers? Why must there be something which causes the here and now composition? Aren't we talking about the uncaused, the end of the regress, where things cease to require causes? Aren't the normal rules of cause and effect suspended for that which is uncaused?
"If it's actually not-X, that entails it is being actualized, for we're going to want to know why that potential for not-X is now being actualized, and not the potential for X."
Wouldn't it be misguided to ask questions about _why_ the unactualized actualizer is actual? It's not actual for any reason. It's not actualized. It just is. So even if it's actually not-X, that does not entail that it is being actualized. For other things perhaps being actually not-X might require an actualizer, but we're talking about the end of the regress where things are no longer actualized but are simply actual, and no matter how much we may want to know why the potential for not-X is being actualized, we will have to deal with the disappointment of never finding an answer.
@@Ansatz66 No, we're not talking about the uncaused. We're talking about the composite things. Hence why I'm talking about composite things not a non-composite thing. Something which doesn't require a cause on account of its being simple is not a suspension of anything, it's simply a non-instance of a rule. If someone doesn't have a debt he's not a suspension of the rule "if you have a debt, it must be paid by the end of the month" it simply doesn't apply to him. Likewise "all composites require actualizers" isn't applicable to something non-composite.
You're misunderstanding. The other guy asked about whether the unactualized actualizer could be in potentiality in some way. I'm going with that assumption to show that it cannot be the case.
@@Math_oma "If someone doesn't have a debt he's not a suspension of the rule 'if you have a debt, it must be paid by the end of the month' it simply doesn't apply to him."
It seem that similar reasoning would apply to the unactualized actualizer. While most composite things may require a cause to actualize their composite nature, the unactualized actualizer would just exist without being actualized by anything. Just as a debt doesn't need to be paid if there is no debt, a composite does not need an actualizer if it is not actualized. If it so happens that the unactualized actualizer is composite, then the rule about "all composites require actualizers" must be false, just as it would be false to say that all people must pay their debt. It may be true of some composites, but not an unactualized composite.
Is there some way to prove that all composites require actualizers?
"The other guy asked about whether the unactualized actualizer could be in potentiality in some way. I'm going with that assumption to show that it cannot be the case."
Is this saying that we're assuming that the unactualized actualizer is in potentiality in some way? That seems like a fair setup for a _reductio ad absurdum_ argument, but what conclusions can we draw from the unactualized actualizer being in potentiality? How do we draw this argument toward a contradiction that would establish that our assumption is false?
Are all causal series order per accidens part of a larger causal series ordered per se?
+Kingbubs
_Per accidens_ series of movers presuppose a _per se_ series involving the sheer existence of those movers at each moment at which they may be acting. So yes, I think it would be correct to say that these accidentally ordered series are 'part of', in some sense, a more fundamental / hierarchical _per se_ series which is presupposed by this accidentally ordered series, since nothing which doesn't exist cannot be actualizing anything at all. Such is discussed by Ed Feser in _Five Proofs of the Existence of God_ in the "Aristotelian proof" in the chapter of the same name. This more fundamental series is primarily what St. Thomas is concerned with in his arguments for the existence of God.
imo a non-standard, probabilistic, Idealistic VR model such as Tom Campbell's MBT et al. where Consciousness itself is the/a something rather than nothing which exists as just a "natural" digital information system/thingy is a good starting point. Its the computer & programmer of the "physical" universe. Actually it wasn't programmed but rather it was evolved from initial conditions(hence anthropic). Now, this "thingy" of which we are pieces/nodes/copies/partitions/instantiations etc. of does have many of the attributes of a "G-word" but it is finite(regardless of how unfathomably large it may appear) because we must assume its "real" & imperfect because its evolving. It evolves by creating more & more useful information specifically by lowering the Entropy of its bits at hand. We & VR's are one of its primary strategies for its survival/evolving. Now it may or may not be "all there is" but its boundary does seem to be able to expand and/or its bulk divide at infinitum. We just can't ever get outside of it to view its cause(if there even was one) objectively. the subset can't describe the superset. Similar to how If a gut bacteria had a perfect 200 IQ, what can it ever know about the diesel engines & refrigerators that deliver its food ? Nothing ! But at least we aren't stuck in an infinite regression of causality. We must exist graciously with uncertainty however large. There is way too much to adequately summarize here but such models can/do logically derive even "purpose" & imho they already unite physics/meta-physics/philosophy/super-natural/PSI/para-normal/theology etc under a single sensible paradigm. They connect way more dots than I ever thought possible from ANY (mostly scientific)theory ! One issue is that science really doesn't have an epistemology for Idealism but even if it could or partially did many aspects will remain un-falsifiable. Which doesn't invalidate these things it only means that science alone isn't as applicable as we once thought.
+realcygnus
These are all interesting ideas but isn't all this _way_ more speculative than anything I present in the video?
Such Ideas have grown(& are still growing) on me .....so I'd say only slightly speculative as where you'd say highly(as most would) if not even absurd.......almost everything has an intrinsic uncertainty, except what we call objective where the probability is 1.... Anyway the real "value" in such models is how they can appeal to practically anyone(atheist to theologian) & in how they can/do connect apparent polar opposites across multi-disciplines. I didn't comment to refute your vid in any way.......but rather just to perhaps append an addendum.
+realcygnus
Oh sure, I wasn't intending to be belligerent in my tone above. I'd be satisfied if people thought more about first principles and metaphysics from this video series because there is just tons of apathy about this among intelligent people nowadays.
yup, I didn't take it as such(was just say'n). I know exactly what you mean. In fact such Ideas can be a particularly practical "on ramp" for overly "left-brained"(metaphor) people. I was one of them. cool channel btw.
Hay, Ive been trying to get into these arguments and honestly find where i stand on the issue. Honestly its all just confusing but you seem to do a good job at explaining everything. I would like to ask two questions though(nothing to big but just small things nagging at my mind).
the first being of Radioactive decay and Virtual particals, how would they factor into potentiality and actuality?
(I guess the Tl;DR version of this question is "does Quantum Mechanics go against potentiality and actuality, if not then why?")
the second more or less has nothing to do with this video but im looking into free will and while soft determinism seems the most logical to me. Im wondering a good place to look at arguments for or against it, know any good books/videos/sources I should look at?
Ive honestly been getting a headache from the research ive done on free will....
also on a side note, I very much respect the fact that even videos as old as this one your still coming back and looking at new comments to clarify your position. Even if one agrees with your opinion or not thats very commendable.
I think I touched on some of these issues later on in my series, in which I talk about the argument from change in more detail and defend the act-potency distinction. You should also check out the description box of my videos for readings, since the application to quantum mechanics and radioactive decay are common questions. For example:
edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2014/12/causality-and-radioactive-decay.html
I do not believe these phenomena, assuming we could ever understand them well enough at the level of _just the physics_ do not undermine the act-potency distinction, they would only adjust how it is applied.
Also, the account of free will is bound up in an account of 'will' which is in turn bound up with an account of the human psyche (what is classically called 'soul') which is the domain of philosophical psychology. A book which may help you put all this together is Feser's "The Last Superstition" since he goes through there what I present in this series and contrasts how a scholastic would approach these problems, and how they contrast with the approach of modern philosophy.
@@Math_oma Thanks that helped alot! just ordered a Last Superstition and am excited to see what it has to say. Ive also been checking out the series and am understanding the arguments alot better. I still have a question if you can get the time to answer it, The way you describe Essentially ordered causes (that being the hand that moved the stick example) wouldn't that be a temporal phenomenon, so it would stretch back to the big bang(or however long)? Sense time does pass between potentiality or actuality? Thanks again.
@@slumbertrap6506 With the hierarchical series, the relevant feature is simply the dependence on each actualizer on another in order for it to have the power to actualize. It may be that the effect is produced over a duration, but that's not the relevant feature here, rather the _per se_ dependence of one actualizer on another. In the linear series, there is no such dependence. It is in virtue of this _per se_ dependence that the conclusion that it cannot regress indefinitely is drawn, not from whether the effect is produced over a duration or not.
@@Math_oma correct me if Im wrong. A hierarchical series focuses on the potentiality and actuality (like the potential to move a stick then actually moving the stick) while an accidental series( one that goes back to the big bang/or eternally) focuses on the physical(the actual time(in seconds or so not in potential and actual) of the stick being moved by the hand)?
Perhaps im just having trouble with distinguishing the two, if so my apologize for not simply saying that. Cause if they both are effected by potentiality and actuality how are they different?
@@slumbertrap6506 Both concern actuality and potentiality, it's that in the hierarchical series, each actualizer itself requires actualization in order to actualize, whereas in the linear series, it does not. Compare the example I give of the power strips plugged into one another, how each power strip depends one on the other, ultimately on a power generator, compared to a grandfather begetting a son begetting another son. Remove any power strip or part of the circuit and the whole series has no power. The sons don't require their parent's continued actualization in order to exist. The former is a hierarchical series, the latter, a linear.
Hey, can someone help me, im kind of a brainlet - i have a question about the Aquinas first way: Lets take a painting, which i hang on the brackets, that are being held by a wall, which is being ''held'' by the foundations of the house, which is being held by the earth, which is being ''held'' together by electron repulsion etc. Why cant the last part in the chain be a law of nature?
Well at that point you've conceded there is an unactualized actualizer, because some won't concede that, and instead say there is none. But then, once you go into the second stage of the argument proving the attributes of the unactualized actualizer, e.g. immateriality, immutability, simplicity, etc. it's not going to be a 'law of nature'. In fact, the unactualized actualizer isn't a 'kind' of thing at all, because kinds of things are actualized. See part 7 of this series and the readings in the description boxes.
I want to see more videos like this one.
1. Should you believe things that are not supported by evidence?
1YES: What epistemology are you using?
1NO (2): Is there evidence that any particular deity exists?
2YES: What is it?
2NO: You shouldn't believe in any particular deity. (Modus ponens)
This is the paired down flowchart of theistic belief, which is a subchart of the flowchart of belief.
+1337w0n
Do you have any objections or questions about what I presented in the video? I addressed the "where's your evidence?" point in the video and sketched an argument.
Mathoma My apologies, but I got a fair bit through without anything particularly compelling being said, and you can only hear the same thing so many times before getting tired of it. If you are talking about your defense of the cosmological argument, that doesn't really work. You don't establish the existence of god, since you haven't justified the premises. Saying "God is necessary for existance therefore God" only has weight if you can say why he is necessary. And even then, the Existence of any god in particular is not established.
+1337w0n
If you didn't watch it, how would you know? If you don't want to watch, that's fine, but please don't make the claim I haven't justified the premises unless you've watched it. The 'gods' vs. God point was addressed in part 0 and "God is necessary for existance therefore God" is totally garbled - I don't know where you got that reasoning from.
Mathoma
Like I said, I stopped watching because there was no new information. Do you present any unique information later in the video or not? If so, where is it? If it's compelling, it may just change my position.
+1337w0n
I didn't write the video so that it could be fragmented into soundbites. This topic already suffers from a lack of systematicity, causing much confusion, and I'm not going to engage in that sort of thing. If you don't want to watch it, it's fine. But the video isn't going anywhere and you don't have to grind through it in one sitting. If you have questions on the content, I'd be happy to answer but I'd at least request you do me the courtesy of listening to what I said before saying whether it works or not.
Hi Mathoma, fantastic video series. I'm studying medieval philosophy in university currently, and the professor does not have a firm grasp on Aquinas, which can make the lectures frustrating because I see a lot of misrepresentations you've spelled out here. He even quoted Dawkins on his objections slide!
I have some questions regarding the first way. Regarding essentially ordered chains: is it possible for an accidental cause to provide the "motive power" to an essentially ordered chain? I think of a perpetual ball pendulum in this case, where all motive power (kinetic energy) remains inside the system, and was given accidentally by the hand that lifted the ball (as this hand is no longer "present" and no longer gives motive power to that system). This leads me to think the entirety of the system, ie the universe, contains within in it a sum total motive power and "redistributes" this motive energy (think ball pendulum), which seems directly in line with modern thermodynamics and entropy. I know the ball pendulum concept relies on gravity, but it isn't difficult to conjure up a contained system perpetually in motion from its own system's motive power.
By this understanding, the necessity of a first mover would then rely on the inability of an infinite regress in accidentally ordered chains, as accidental chains could, in effect, provide initial motive power to essentially ordered chains. Let me know if I'm failing to grasp any necessary concepts. Thanks
"is it possible for an accidental cause to provide the "motive power" to an essentially ordered chain?"
No. The essentially ordered series just means that potential doesn't actualize itself no matter how many potential causes you stack up: a string of rail cars will never move themselves no matter how many you hook together. This is not because we need yet more rail cars, but because we need something different than a rail car to get the thing moving. In order for potential to be actualized, the series must terminate in pure actuality.
@@neptasur Thanks for the reply T N.
"The essentially ordered series just means that potential doesn't actualize itself no matter how many potential causes you stack up."
I would disagree with this definition inasmuch as it does not differentiate between essentially ordered series and accidentally ordered series. Potentials can never actualize themselves because potentials do not exist in an actual sense, but only in a potential sense; potentials must become actual before they have any actualizing power. So stating potentials can actualize themselves is non-sensical as it assumes the potentials have already been actualized. I say this to demonstrate the need for something else to actualize a potential in all cases. Even accidentally ordered series cannot move themselves as that assumes they've already been actualized, which would be begging the question.
What then is an essentially ordered series? From what I was taught, an essentially ordered series exists when every moving element in the chain is essentially dependent on the prior element for its movement, meaning that if one element were to be removed from the chain, all subsequent motion would cease. This differentiates from an accidentally ordered series insofar that an element can be removed from such a series, yet all (or some) subsequent motion can still continue. Thus in an accidentally ordered series, actual motive power can be found to not be essentially dependent on a prior.
As a stated earlier, we know in no case that a potential can actualize itself, as that would assume the potential is already actual. In the case of an accidentally ordered series, how is it that elements hierarchically lower in a causal chain can still possess motive power even after their prior mover has been removed? It cannot be that one element is actualizing itself, as that has been shown to be impossible. If it is not actualizing itself and if nothing is actualizing it, it is not moving, as movement is potential to actual. Thus, in an accidentally ordered series, there exists an intermediate element that is actualizing but is not essentially dependent on a prior.
This, then, is to an essentially ordered series the "unmoving mover" as it is not being changed from potential to actual, yet it is actualizing subsequent potentials. I see no reason why this cannot extend from accidentally ordered series into essentially ordered series. If my argument is sound, the concession of accidentally ordered series removes the necessity of a single "prime mover" for individual essentially ordered series, since the first mover in an essentially ordered series can come from an accidentally ordered series as demonstrated above.
In regards to the train example: Imagine a perfectly hot object fell inside the train, which heats water to produce steam, which drives the train forward. The perfectly hot object is a result of some accidental series (perhaps a meteorite falling from the sky) is now serving as the actualizing power in a new essentially ordered series (the cars being pulled by the train due to the hot object).
Edit: I wanted to just say that I am in all likelihood holding a misconception of some element of Aquinas' argument, which I believe is a consequence of language and the nature of the argument. I believe the argument Mathoma provides in the next video (regarding essence/existence) is much more compelling and much more "fundamental" as it makes no strange a posteriori distinctions such as the distinction between essentially ordered and accidentally ordered series.
@@grantb.6449 You indiscriminately interchange elements of essentially ordered series and accidentally ordered series. At some points it seems like you can distinguish between the two and at other times it seem like you can't. In any case, I am of the impression that you think philosophy is just playing word games. Most of your post is word salad. Have a nice day.
@@neptasur Perhaps you could point out where I fail and I could try to justify myself rather than uncharitably attacking my credibility. Philosophy is sometimes hard to read, and I apologize if I sacrificed ease-of-reading for thoroughness (which will inevitably result in using terms repetitively). To my knowledge, my definitions of essentially ordered and accidentally ordered series are perfectly in line with Thomist understanding.
@@grantb.6449 "Perhaps you could point out where I fail ".
Sure, see above and quit trying to sound fancy.
I'm sure you must get asked this question a lot, so I am sorry for this, but how do you get from the unmoved mover to the God of Christianity?
+woljang
After establishing that God exists, which is done in this series and in the works cited through philosophy, especially Feser's, we are at the position of philosophical theism. The more accurate question is how do you move from philosophical theism to Christianity? That is, how does one argue that God has revealed Himself as we Christians claim?
There are many ways to do this, from the historical reality of the Resurrection, the suitability of the Incarnation, which is the assumption of human nature by the Logos, and the suitability of divine help for Man to reach the highest fulfillment of his natural faculties, the intellect being to know truth and the will to desire/love this truth. The highest truth is God Himself and so the knowledge and desire/love of God are the natural aims of Man, and the 'divine help' is most suitably, perfectly, and beautifully accomplished by the condescension of the transcendent God to Man in the Incarnation of Christ.
You might also like this video:
th-cam.com/video/Zp7gAm6TxFw/w-d-xo.html
woljang-One does not get to the god of Christianity, only one presupposing that due to their upbringing comes to that conclusion. No one has established that any God exists, not in this series nor anywhere else in history. There is no evidence for that nor any of the other man-made cults throughout history. Everyone is only trying to pass off their opinions as facts, but none have every presented any facts.
@@degaussingatmosphericcharg575 does the philosophical argument provided in this video not prove at least some sort of "creator"?
do you not buy the argument? if so, for what reason?
@@woljangN You mustn't forget that there is a real difference between philosophy and theology. Philosophia ancilla theologiae. Philosophy delivers the base for theology, but philosophy has its limits. To arrive at the Christian God, we need to emply theology, after having proved that God does exist via philosophical arguments. The Truth of the Catholic religion can be proved with philosophy, history, general rationality, but there is no necessary connex between both topics in philosophical terms. To believe that Jesus Christ is really the Son of God, and uncreated God before all time, is not a consequence of any classical philosophical argument, but a truth we can only accept in Faith. That is why Faith is a divine virtue, and why there are two orders: Natural theology (proving that God exists qua employment of natural reason), and Revelation/Supernatural theology (which is a Grace granted by God that a person may accept holy Faith). The Catholic Faith, apart from the Theist question, can be defended in philosophical terms (which has been a standard even in the early Church - St. Anselmus speaks of fides quaerens intellectum and credo ut intellegam, and St. Augustinus speaks of credimus ut cognoscamus). Both questions are of course related (they form the traditional cursus of apologetics (Why God does exist - why Christianity is the true religion - why the Roman Church is the only true Church)), but not in the manner of one contingent philosophical argument.
Excellent video, although I'm curious: are you a Christian?
+Societisms
Yes, I'm Catholic.
Do you plan on making a video on why specifically Catholicism as opposed to other denominations and or religions?
+Societisms
All that together is too much for one video, since each one of those is a major defense in itself. I do think one may give intellectual assent to Christianity on historical grounds and the prior rationality of God as understood by classical theism would be incarnated can be established on philosophical grounds by reflecting on God's goodness and the relative inadequacy of our intellect in directing us toward our final ends in God, which I also believe can be established by philosophical means, without such an event. From these, I think one can reasonably move from classical theism to Christianity. I do not claim to be able to give a deductive proof but at the same time, I think it's reasonable to give intellectual assent to Christianity on those grounds. That would be my major interest, and I believe it's also Classical Theist's, who can make this case much better than I can. This is also a major area lacking in philosophical defenses of Christianity, and something 'new' (even though the Saints have argued this already) we can contribute to this discussion.
As for why Catholicism specifically, I do not think any denomination other than the Catholics or Orthodox can claim to be the Church established by Christ and carrying the Deposit of Faith and certainly I do not think any denomination other than those two can be backed up by Tradition. This rules out any Protestantism. A case made for the papacy would decide between those two (o)rthodox branches and I believe such cases can be successfully made based on Tradition and Scripture. On this front, I don't believe I have anything to contribute, and others can make this case better than I can, so I likely won't make videos on this. I do think an examination of the history of Christianity will show Protestantism to be manmade and erroneous, which will focus the discussion on the orthodox branches.
I dont know if you're still responding to comments on this series, but what are your thoughts on Kant's "existence is not a predicate"? I read an earlier comment thread here, regarding "existence is not a predicate", but it was somewhat hard to follow.
It's not relevant. It doesn't touch the premises of the arguments at all, and I don't know why people think it does.
@@Math_oma Ok, that's what I assumed, but I wasn't sure for myself. Thanks for replying and God bless.
I don't think you can dissociate potential actualization from time, because no change occurs without time passing, and change is what you mean by moving. Right?
You can, it's called a hirachical series.
Imagine you use a stick to push a stone that pushes another stone. the last stone being pushed is being actualized by the stone next to it, and it being pushed by the stick that is being pushed by you. The "pushing ability" is only on the first element. No element in this kind of series has the ability to "store" the causing ability. The series will collapse simultaneously if the first element will stop pushing.
The one helped me see it is Dr Edward Feser. look him up.
Could you please explain to me why exactly an esssentially ordered series (in the here and now) cannot regress infinitely. I guess it has some connection with the restriction of "here and now". But I am unfortunately too stupid to grasp the reasons.
+Pius Hälg
It has to do with the instrumental nature of the things within the series in that each is being used as an instrument of the previous. Instruments on their own cannot do anything unless they're being used as instruments of something which isn't itself being used as an instrument. If you had an infinite series of instruments, as you would in an infinitely long essentially ordered series, then considered as a whole, they ultimately aren't being used as instruments of anything, and so should not be able to be doing anything. The problem is, we do clearly perceive change in the world, which tells us that such a series could not be infinite. Again, if it were infinite, there should be no change whatsoever.
An analogy: if you had some books sitting on a shelf, the books unsupported by the shelf would fall to the ground, so the shelf supports the books. The same goes for that shelf: if that were not supported by another, perhaps another shelf, that too would collapse. Same goes for that shelf and on and on, each one depends at all times for the other shelves for support of the books. The books insofar as they are held up also depend on those 'more distant' shelves in the series. An infinite number of shelves could not hold up a book - there's just no support, and the book would fall to the ground. The fact you see that books are _in fact_ being held up tells you that such a series insofar as it is a causal series could not actually be infinite; there must be something which provides support that does not itself require more support. Furthermore, it must have a nature such that it does not require support. In Aquinas' argument from change/motion, the only possible thing for the job 'holding up' change is Pure Actuality / Prime Mover. That's why I say that Pure Act 'grounds' change, in that no change whatsoever could happen at all if it were not for Pure Act.
Although I don't discuss it in this series, you could think of Aquinas' second way, the argument from efficient causation, as doing something similar for holding up the very existence of things, in that the things of our daily experience cannot make themselves exist or persist in their existence. Thinking through that, one must conclude there is something that makes everything else exist at any moment at which it may exist but does not have to be caused to exist (and must have a nature, namely Necessary Being, congruous to what it's doing): a First Cause (first in the sense of most fundamental, not first as in the first in a temporal sequence extending back into the past).
Your exemple with the books and the sheves has helped me a lot. Thanks!
Quick question can God create a universe that's infinite in size?
So Having no end in both direction. You say he has infnite power so doesn't a finite universe point to a finite God or computer simulation.
As a simulation wouldn't be able to handle a universes infinite in size
Uh, maybe.
The terminus of the finite hierarchical causal regression is mutual causation, thus the dichotomy of the first way is made false, the argument invalid, and with it the foundation of A-T.
For example, 1 electron by itself cannot move itself. 2 electrons nearby at the present moment can and will move themselves. What moved x? y. What moved y? x. Any further regression analysis is temporal, not hierarchical.
Recall, the first way presupposes all the particles in the universe are in their present positions and already in their present motions. There is no call for a hierarchical first mover because at base everything is already moving each other.
If X is here and now actualized by Y but Y is then itself instrumentally actualized by X, then really what you're proposing is that X uses Y as an instrument to actualize itself. But this is impossible and this is especially seen in the actualization of something's existence. If X requires actualization, it only exists in potency without Y. But since it is in potency, it cannot use Y as an instrument to cause itself, since potency doesn't do anything, and thus X can never exist, in which case existence can never be actualized. But this is contrary to experience. Self-causation of this sort makes absolutely no sense.
First, the terms potency, act, and instrumental are obsolete, and use of them in a causal analysis only leads to confusion, as your argument clearly shows.
X and Y simply move each other mutually. The time period of that net mutual causation is contiguous.
Recall that in the first and second ways no attempt is made to answer the riddle of how all entities came to exist in the distant past or how they all started moving in the distant past. Rather, the universe is presupposed to exist right now with all entities already in their present locations and present motions.
That being the case there simply is no call for a first mover at the molecular level and below because all the molecules and atoms and particles are already moving each other.
Material progresses in a perpetual motion system because there are no net losses, just material interacting with other material in a vastly complex mutual causation process with no call for a first mover at all.
X and Y move each right now, as they did a moment ago, and a moment before that extending back in time for all the moments for at least billions of years.
The dichotomy of Aquinas is false because there is a 3rd alternative, mutual causation at the molecular level and below.
"Self-causation of this sort makes absolutely no sense."
Right, because mutual causation is not self causation of the sort you describe.
A key handicap of yours is that you use the clunky, obsolete, and inhibiting language of A-T. This leads you to a stepwise analysis that seems to be locked out against itself.
Mutual causation doesn't work that way. Mutual causation progresses over time as an interactive function, exemplified in any 2 body problem formulation.
X and Y cause the effects in each other as a cumulative functional causal process over time.
anyone still remembers TJ's etherial blueberry muffin?
Sadly yes lol
+skeptic pork
Yes, it's probably one of the worst objections I've seen to St. Thomas' arguments, right up there alongside "who moved the unmoved mover?"
Amazing atheist had the worst response to the arguments i’ve ever seen. And the worst part was that he was condescending. He was so sure that he knew better that he made a complete fool of himself.
This was a really helpful explanation of the causality argument. But doesn't your example for essential causality disprove the argument too? You ended with motor neurons, not God. You do mention that there are also things that make the motor neurons' state actual, but where does it end? The closer we look at particles the more complexity we see. We used to think that atoms were the smallest component, hence the name. But now we know atoms are made of protons and electrons, then we found out those are made of other particles. I still don't see any reason why we can know it must end eventually, other than assuming from the outset that God exists (i.e. revelation). Thoughts?
+junusavior65
Sure, the hierarchical series does not end at motor neurons, even those receive motive power derivatively, it's just an illustration of the derived causal power I'm talking about to get a sense of what's going on. The series can go on as long as it wishes but we know _that_ it terminates at something which already has causal power and need not derive it from another, since the contrary position, that there's an infinite series of derived causal power implies that things like motor neurons never actually derive it from anything, remembering how each mover is used instrumentally, and thus cannot do anything, contradicting our experience in which they do indeed do things. The rest is details and the theist is under no obligation to know all these details to draw the conclusion. _That_ the series terminates in an unactualized actualizer / Prime Mover is the thrust of the argument and is a correct inference under this view of causal powers. So I disagree that we need to suppose that God exists to get to the conclusion; if we had to do that, this would be a failed argument at natural theology, which is its intention.
Mathoma thanks for the cordial reply. I'm always a bit hesitant commenting on a TH-cam video so I tried to be as civil as possible. I'm still not quite convinced of the essential causality argument. But I understand your frustration at its misrepresentation though, this is a much more compelling argument than what we usually see. So you have given me some things to chew on. Thanks!
Sorry, but I don't like videos that basically repeat the same thing over and over for the first twelve+ minutes. It's not necessary.
What are your arguments against nominalism?
The stone-stick-hand example (28:00) is not really an 'essentially ordered' series however. Once the hand sets the stick in motion, the stick collides with the stone to set it in motion (accelerates it from rest), and once the stone is in motion, it stays in motion, unless acted upon by a force to retard or change its motion (e.g., friction). It's really no different than consecutive series of billiard balls colliding with each other to cause successive movement. Even if the causes and effects are simultaneous (which does not seem to be the case, as it takes some finite time to apply a force to an object to cause it to accelerate), this doesn't make their ordering 'essential' or 'ontologically dependent', and there does not appear to be any logical problem with an infinite regress of causes in this case.
Incidentally, the proposed immutable, timeless 'prime mover' without unactualized potentials cannot do anything- he is completely inert and impotent. He has no potential to create a universe, intervene in the world, answer prayers, judge the wicked and condemn them to hell., etc. Certainly not much of a God to waste your time worshiping!
This commentary on the stick and stone misses the point. The point is not that there is a simultaneous action in the scenario, but rather that the scenario is such that the stone does not continue in its velocity unless the stick continues to exert a force on it, i.e. the relevant things in the scenario make this to be the case. This is true in real life, and you've confused an idealized situation in high school physics problems in which the surface has no friction, which never obtains in reality, with what actually happens in reality, where you do require a continuing force from the stick on the stone to keep it in a constant velocity (if the surface has friction) otherwise the thing decelerates to rest, in conformity with the Newtonian laws of motion. Yes, of course it continues at constant velocity unless there is another force, but in the example I'm talking about there is another force (friction)! This is all true even if we drew out the free=body diagram and wrote out the equations of motion, which I could do if you like. *If* we had a scenario where the stone moves against a frictionless surface, sure, no additional force is required to keep it at a constant velocity. But that's not the actual case - surely you know this, so I don't know why you analyze an alternative scenario contrary to the real one.
But even if the example were not an example of an essentially ordered series, for the sake of argument, then that doesn't entail that an essentially ordered series can proceed indefinitely. That is obviously a non sequitur. It would just mean a faulty example was chosen to illustrate the notion of an essentially ordered series.
The comment about inactivity was addressed already elsewhere.
@@Math_oma Thanks for clarifying. I understand that the stick-stone example was intended to illustrate a 'simultaneous' dependency such that the continued movement of the stone depends upon the continued movement of the bicep. If the movement in the bicep stops, the stone eventually stops moving due to friction. It appears that you agree that this dependency is context dependent: in outer space, in the absence of friction, the stick-stone example would not demonstrate a 'simultaneous' dependency. But even if we overlook this point, it seems to me that the earlier example of the flame-pot-water-spaghetti, which was intended to illustrate an 'accidentally ordered' series, is not substantively different from the stick-stone example intended to show, by contrast, an 'essentially ordered' series. In the spaghetti example, if the flame is turned off, the pot cools down to the temperature of the surrounding air, which cools down the water, which in turn cools down the spaghetti. Simply replace the flame with the motor neuron, the pot with the bicep, the water with the stick, and the spaghetti with the stone and the two examples illustrate basically the same type of 'accidental' causal series. At least I don't see the fundamental difference between them.
@@doctorstrangiato3218 Yeah sure, in outer space, it would be a different scenario. But that's not the one I'm speaking of. In this context, yes, in fact you do need a continual force applied by the stick to keep the stone moving at constant velocity.
What you should be noticing is the dependency relations such that if one actualizer ceases its activity, the series is such that the entire series is powerless. That is, each actualizer depends on several other concurrent actualizers to be what it is, in a hierarchical fashion. Another case is that water is hierarchically dependent on the actual being of atoms, protons, quarks, and other fundamental physical things. I think this is an extremely reasonable idea because water really is like this, in that to be what it is, it depends on the concurrent being of a number of fundamental physical realities conjointly. Water really does have this dependency relation upon atoms, electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, etc. and the study of the sciences is in part about knowing such relations. Those relations are what you're supposed to be grasping.
@@Math_oma So, the flame-spaghetti example is not fundamentally different from the bicep-stone example in that they both illustrate the same kind of causal dependency. Hence, they don't really distinguish between 'accidentally' and 'essentially' ordered causal series. Would you agree? Now, just because the rest of the series would be 'powerless' if a prior actualizer (like the flame or bicep) ceases its activity, this does not imply that the series cannot regress infinitely- at least I don't see why such a regress is logically problematic.
Now, let's consider the hierarchical dependencies you described: the human body is made up of cells, cells are made of molecules, molecules (such as water) are made of atoms, atoms are made of subatomic particles, and so on, until physicists discover some fundamental 'theory of everything' that everything else is 'made of'.
First, I don't see why we should call these 'dependencies'. Rather, they are descriptions of the composition of things- what their 'building blocks' are. Would you agree?
Second, suppose that physicists do eventually discover a 'theory of everything' (assuming it's not 'turtles all the way down'). Why can't we just stop there? Why go further to posit a God with all of these unusual attributes to account for reality? And in what sense does such a God offer a good (if not 'the best') explanation for the existence and nature of the world we observe?
@@doctorstrangiato3218 No, the causal series in the motion of the stone has the sort of dependency that the heating of a pot does not for reasons explained above.
Also your 'alternative' of 'description' is not an alternative to what I'm saying, for composition is an _example_ of the sort of dependency I'm talking about, since composites depend on their parts to exist. There is no water to speak of without protons, neutrons, and electrons. That's dependence (X is dependent on Y just when removal of Y removes X), even if you don't want to use the word. Water depends on all of its parts actually existing in order to exist. That's the point I'm getting at and I go through that in part 7. If they are true descriptions, which they are, then water really is composed as such, in which case we have an example of the series I'm talking about which can only be terminated in something which has no such dependency on parts, and isn't hierarchically actualized by parts, i.e. an unactualized actualizer. There is no such theory of everything that leaves this out, except a theory of 'everything' 'so far as it goes' provisionally in physics and not attempting to explain the ultimate causes of physical things, but then that's just changing the subject.
Does the idea of cause and effect contradict the idea of potential to actuality?Because cause and effect seem sufficient enough to describe what your talking about.
No, it doesn't contradict anything, rather elaborates and makes clear what exactly the cause is making-be-actual. And you cannot ditch the act-potency distinction without absurdity, as I argue for in part 6, since it is required to explain the origin of the actuality seen in the manifestation of the effect, which is required to understand change, which is in turn requires for knowledge of the physical world. But such can only be done by understanding potency.
@@Math_oma okay, that makes sense.Also to understand this more what books would you recommend to start with.
@@studioofgreatness9598 Feser's 'Aristotle's Revenge' and 'Scholastic Metaphysics' and perhaps 'Five Proofs of the Existence of God' to see its relevance to philosophical theology.
Do you mean that there is an incorporeal first mover that actualises the most fundamental level of physics? Because yeah that actually makes sense.