/lit/ - Literature

>>11113938
>>11113891

You each seem to be talking past each other in crucial ways. Except in a very long and painstaking thread, written by anons deeply versed in each system, I’ve come to think this is bound to happen.

As this anon said: >>11109217

>>10918070

In the first way, Aquinas argues that any change in nature must be explained by some cause that already has actualization, otherwise the change could never be actuated. This cause does not have to precede the effect in time; if we imagine taking a given moment, a time-slice of the universe, that time-slice must have some basis that explains the entire structure of causal dependence that holds in that moment. For example, in a single moment: human posture is causally allowed by the resistance of the earth's surface, the rigidity of the earth's surface is caused by the compaction of the subterranean layers, the compaction of these layers is caused by the force of gravity, and this compaction is not overpowered by the gravity of any close, massive object; thus, causally contributing to the earth is the distance of the moon and sun, and the position of the moon and sun is allowed by the positions of the further bodies of the solar system and Milky Way - outwards and outwards in a causal chain that currently exists at any given moment. If there is change occurring right now, then there must be some cause that is actuating that change right now - or else that change has no explanation, which is absurd.

Kant would dispute that the chain of physical causes can ever reach an originating active power, even in a given moment; we can travel through space without ever ending, and we will never reach an edge beyond which there is a god imbuing the universe with active power. (Kant’s view would challenge Aristotle’s, and it was Aristotelian thinking that influenced Aquinas on this point.) Rather, the universe is the infinite spatiotemporal appearance of some non-spatial, non-temporal domain of being; this domain of being cannot be experienced by humans, but it provides a merely logical explanation for why there is a spatiotemporal universe at all. This domain of things-in-themselves might include a god, but we cannot prove or disprove this; in any case, the domain of things-in-itself does include us - that is, it includes whatever mysterious things human souls are apart from spatiotemporal bodies and their associated nature-restricted minds. So while Kant in a limited sense agrees with Aquinas' first way - namely, that every present moment of physical existence requires some non-physical basis that directly explains it - Kant would not agree that we can prove the necessity of this being by physical laws, nor that the universe is at all finite, nor that this being is likely what is traditionally called "God." For Kant, the more immediate basis of a person's physical existence is their own non-physical self - their transcendental unity of apperception, the core of all their orderly mental functions - and if a god exists, then its existence can only be suggested (not proven) after further rational arguments are made on the basis of this non-physical self.