/lit/ - Literature

>>6423936

>this implies it contains all ontological attributes and their perfections

That's logically impossible.

>What am I not getting?
The fact that you're engaging in fruitless sophistry.

>>6424033
>faith
>logical

>>6424084
>this
>faith

You don't, because it's an incoherent language game

Although I can get behind Aquinas' reasoning for the existence of a God, I don't understand how 'evil' can exist under the God he's talking about it. It seems to me that everything that happens is a result of that God, good or bad, and because this God is perfection, nothing that he has caused is bad. Christianity seems to definitely mark certain things down as bad/evil- the betrayal of Jesus and certain sins, for example. Is the reason these things were created by God because they serve a greater purpose in the universe? Can we say that Judas wasn't right but Judas' betrayal was still important and somehow 'good'?

>>6425595
What's incoherent about it? Seems like a legible paradox to me.

>>6425595
>language games
>incoherent
Read Wittgenstein nerd

>>6425602

It's riddled with contradictions, vague terms and conclusions that are justified with little more than 'just because'.

Also, the part where God is defined at the end of every argument instead of the beginning should raise anyone's suspicion

>>6425618
Please leave. These are simple issues that make you seem like you just struggle to understand it.

>>6425618
>vague terms

>>6425649

Defining your definitions at the end of an argument is a 'simple issue'? That's funny, last time I checked that was a major logical fuckup that allows for massive goalpost shifting

>>6425661

Then please explain what a potentiality is and how someone quantifies it

>>6423936
>How am I to make since of this? What am I not getting?
God exists because god.

>>6425600
>Is the reason these things were created by God because they serve a greater purpose in the universe?
Yes, as that's the general point you get from Job and the main answer to the problem of evil. Several popes have used this argument too.

>Can we say that Judas wasn't right but Judas' betrayal was still important and somehow 'good'?
We can, but we can also say the lessons learned and the shock from it were also good. The issue with the "all things happen for a reason" argument people use is they think they are ruining it by stopping it from happening when the resulting effects of the perceived bad thing and what it brings can be part of the reason why the perceived bad event occurs.

>>6425675
>define potentiality
Something's capacity for potential and change, generally.

>quantify it
lol

>>6425689
So sin is wrong, but also necessary? I just have such a hard time wrapping my head around how God created us all and even created the sinner who sort of by his own choice sinned but also sort of because of all of the causes leading up to him sinned. It seems like Christianity is deterministic, but also believes in free will. And I'm having a really hard time understanding how we can punish the sinner even if his sin necessarily happened.

>>6425709

So it has a capacity, but you can't quantify it?

Do you now see why we don't use Aristotelian physics anymore?

>>6425600
I think that from all this would follow that we live in the best possible world, something I imagine Aquinas would argue for. Evil would, quite literally, be a neccessary evil.

It is possible that God could create a world in which evil would not exist (I think C.S. Lewis describes it as a world where every knife would bend if used to inflict harm, or every treebranch would move aside), but this world without evil would also mean a world in which humans are not free to do good. They are simply compelled to do good, which makes it questionable how good that good is.

tl;dr: Aquinas would probably assume that the freedom to do good is worth the potential to do evil that accompanies it.

>>6425740

>They are simply compelled to do good, which makes it questionable how good that good is.

That wouldn't be questionable at all

>>6425748
How not? Can you really call someone's actions good if he couldn't do anything but good? If it was literally impossible for him to act in any other way?

I'm aware that this isn't an entirely one-on-one comparison, but it's roughly on the same level as the liberty vs security discussion.

>>6425765
>Can you really call someone's actions good if he couldn't do anything but good?

Yes, because it's the antonym of evil. If that doesn't exist, and in this scenario, evil is absolutely eradicated, by definition, everything done would by default be good

>>6425728
>So it has a capacity, but you can't quantify it?
It has a capacity and we can, but it's an exceedingly difficult fool's errand.
>something has a form, so obviously it has a shape
>it does not have to remain in that shape and can be made into other shapes
>it did not have to be made in that shape and could have been made into other shapes
>quantifying it would be basically listing all that it could become, which is both rife with issues of the person's ability to grasp all the shapes something could be in and exceedingly useless

>Do you now see why we don't use Aristotelian physics anymore?

If this is your reasoning it's purely because you want to be able to quantify everything, not because it's true or untrue.

>>6425781
>It has a capacity and we can, but it's an exceedingly difficult fool's errand.

So you can, but you won't? Why do you expect people to take your argument seriously than? You basically admit that it's needlessly vague

>If this is your reasoning it's purely because you want to be able to quantify everything, not because it's true or untrue.

It's my experience that being able to quantify something generally increases the ability to distinguish between true and false, so the chance of this argument being true is incredibly low

>>6425676
אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה

>>6425721
>So sin is wrong, but also necessary? I just have such a hard time wrapping my head around how God created us all and even created the sinner who sort of by his own choice sinned but also sort of because of all of the causes leading up to him sinned. It seems like Christianity is deterministic, but also believes in free will. And I'm having a really hard time understanding how we can punish the sinner even if his sin necessarily happened.

From a theological perspective, there is a concept of 'permissive will' and "ordained will". Ordained will is something that will happen no matter what, permissive will should be self-explanatory. Permissive will is what is usually called upon when people make accusations of determinism in a problem of free will.

Christianity, in Catholicism and Orthodoxy, focuses on free will strongly. We were created to love. You cannot have free will without the potential to go against our reason for creation. On the flip side, you cannot truly love without freely choosing to do it. This puts the opus on us to choose love.

Sin is said to have a nature that proliferates itself. This is how sin taints all things.

>>6425773
You define evil as the antonym of good, but you call everything good by default if that of which it's the antonym does not exist. Wouldn't it be logical to say that that which does not exist also has no antonyms?

>>6425849
*you define good as the antonym of evil

>>6425796
>So you can, but you won't?
No, you idiot, read my post.

>Why do you expect people to take your argument seriously than?
Because it remains logically sound.

>You basically admit that it's needlessly vague
How

>It's my experience that being able to quantify something generally increases the ability to distinguish between true and false, so the chance of this argument being true is incredibly low
My issue with quantifying it I just mentioned is that it has too much for one person to fully quantify freely and it serves no purpose. You don't judge something's potentiality by it's amount of forms but by its capacity generally. The degree of potentiality it has, which you're wanting, is entirely separate from what I've been talking about.

I will fucking destroy you

>>6425955
Cool.

>>6423936
>he creates things with potentiality, ignoring that he has no potentiality and yet all attributes pre-exist in him, which would include potentiality

You're misunderstanding the distinction between act/potential.
" all attributes pre-exist in him, which would include potentiality"
potential attributes don't exist, they potentially exist.
potentiality isn't something actual, or positive, it's like the shadow that receives the light of actuality.

>>6425864
>My issue with quantifying it I just mentioned is that it has too much for one person to fully quantify freely and it serves no purpose.

Right, but it does serve a purpose. Thinking and making arguments is done by the brain, which has a track record of not knowing everything and occasionally getting thinks completely wrong. Rigorously defining the terms you use and making your ideas measurable and testable generally helps to reduce this. If you use terms that are general and vague, it's almost guaranteed you get things completely wrong, especially when you're trying to explain something as bafflingly complex as the origin of everything.

Aquinas' five ways are almost certainly wrong, based solely on how vague there terms are he uses

>>6425600
> I don't understand how 'evil' can exist under the God he's talking about it.

It doesn't. He follows St. Augustine in saying that evil has no positive existence.

>Can we say that Judas wasn't right but Judas' betrayal was still important and somehow 'good'?

This is a good example to demonstrate this point of St. Thomas / St. Augustine.
Judas' betrayal in a relative sense is an abhorrent evil, because it's an act of ultimate betrayal. Considered in itself, it's evil. However, considered in the wider picture, it's good, in that it lead indirectly to the glorification of Christ, which is a good. It's just as Christ says about Lazarus' death, that He's glad that it happened so that people could witness the resurrection of Lazarus and thereby glorify Christ. The death of Lazarus in itself is an evil, but in the wider scheme is a good.
In the wider scheme there is no such thing as evil. Evil is something that only exists in particular intelligences like our own who cannot see the wider picture.
A moral evil is when an intelligence such as our own acts against the good. However, even when we do evil, God resolves it into good. This renders evil powerless, ultimately. Nothing is ontologically evil. St. Thomas says this, "everything that is, is good". That means, even though an act of murder is evil as it exists in the disordered will of the murderer, the fact of the murderer existing and the victim existing are good in themselves.
You might say to this, "well, if God resolves everything evil I do into good, then why should I worry about doing evil?" While it's true that God will turn every evil thing you do into good, it still exist for you as an evil. Thus, anyone who does evil ultimately only manages to harm himself.

>>6425982
>Right, but it does serve a purpose.
Sure.

>Thinking and making arguments is done by the brain, which has a track record of not knowing everything and occasionally getting thinks completely wrong.
Okay.

>Rigorously defining the terms you use and making your ideas measurable and testable generally helps to reduce this.
Potentiality is testable. Crush a can. Could you crush it? The fact that it could it crushed is if it had the potential to.

The only way to can truly measure potentiality is if you go into the degree of potentiality, which is irrelevant to this and difficult to fully quantify.

>If you use terms that are general and vague, it's almost guaranteed you get things completely wrong, especially when you're trying to explain something as bafflingly complex as the origin of everything.
Where are the concepts wrong though? They all have definitions. You saying that things having potential to be other things doesn't exist does not change the fact that things do have potentiality nor the argument they present.

>>6423936
lol its fucken christianity you expect it to make sense? its all logically inconsistent bullshit to escape the absurdist paradox of consciousness and reason

>>6426034
>Potentiality is testable. Crush a can. Could you crush it? The fact that it could it crushed is if it had the potential to.

If this is how you use the term 'potentiality', then it's a term that is mundane beyond any use, especially when it comes to explaining what has got to be the single most complex event ever. This is the equivalent of trying to explain equations of nuclear physics using only Dr. Seuss quotes. It could never realistically be done.

If you seriously believe that this type of argument can even rival, much less surpass the most advanced research in physics, then I seriously advice you to not bother

>>6426030
>It doesn't. He follows St. Augustine in saying that evil has no positive existence.

And if evil did have a positive existence it would ultimately lead to Zoroastrianism / Dualism where the universe is seen as a balance between the force of Good and Evil, the Good God vs. the Evil God. This isn't the Christian view at all. In the Christian view the Good God is everything and the Evil God is more like a nightmare or spook that exists only in disordered souls who refuse the Good God.
Evil occurs when the various powers of a soul are in conflict. It has no positive existence, it's just that this power of the soul overstepping that power of the soul leaves a shadow of disorder which we call evil.
God, however, manages to fill all of these shadows with light. So, wherever evil is, there is always a light to fill it. For example, though the murderousness of the Pharisees is an evil, the light of St. Stephen's martyrdom fills that shadow of their evil. This extends to everything in the Universe, such that wherever there is a shadow of evil there is a light to cover it, such that if you could see the whole thing you would see only light.

>>6426080
Well no shit it's mundane. It's MEANT to be mundane. Potentiality and actuality aren't special or mystical, they describe what CAN happen and what DOES happen. That's why they're part of some of the earliest philosophy.

Far from weakening them, however, I think their mundanity and their ubiquitousness give them their strength. All action is the transformation of potentiality into actuality. This allows us to make claims about the very nature of what it means to 'act.'

>>6426080
>If this is how you use the term 'potentiality'...
Are you just now beginning to understand this term? After all the talk we've had?
Well fuck, I don't intend on giving you a class. Read a book.

>>6426097
>Well no shit it's mundane. It's MEANT to be mundane.

Okay then, then Aquinas' five ways are MEANT to be taken with a planet size grain of salt

>Far from weakening them, however, I think their mundanity and their ubiquitousness give them their strength.

Not really, since, like I said before we're talking about what is arguably the single most complex event ever. This is an event that is so complex, most researchers can't even find proper names for them. If you think using mundane terms to explain them is a strength, then I'm afraid you're dreadfully wrong, as it makes the potential to make fatal thinking errors almost a certainty

>>6426101

I don't even need to read a book on this, that term is so general it's complete useless in the subject we're discussing

>>6424034
/thread

>>6426110
>you need complex things to explain complex things but their nature
But seriously, researchers are going into quite a bit more detail that Aquinas is. To compare the two is grasping for straws.

>triggering the christfags

>>6426121

Not really, that much is sure from the amount of accurate predictions modern researchers can make compared to Aquinas. This isn't such a surprise, since, like I said before, his argument is the equivalent of trying to explain the structure of galaxies by solely using the terms 'moving' and 'thingies'. It's utterly moronic

>>6426135
You really don't have to use VERY complex language to describe things like Being and Act. Sometimes the meaning of those terms gets complex, but the terms themselves aren't long, complicated words.

The trouble is that Aquinas is on grounds where physicists rarely tread. Aquinas isn't even talking about things inside our universe.

>>6423936

Potentiality and actuality are two different modes that the same attribute can have. Actuality is more perfect than potentiality ( there is more to it), and all potentialities require something actual so to actualize them. God has all attributes in their actuality, not in their potentiality, but he still has all the attributes.

>>6425600
Evil is only a lack of Good. It is something not fulfilling the teleological end that God set out for it. The only thing that allows this to happen is free will, but the act of giving free will is good thus God does it, the act of abusing free will is evil, but only we do that.

>>6425675
In order to speak I need to be the type of thing that can speak and thus have the potentiality to speak, a bowl does not have the potentiality to speak. We can't just boil this down to " you speak, but the bowl does not" because even when I and the bowl are both not speaking there is a difference between us because I could be speaking where the bowl could not. Hence I have the potentiality to speak where the bowl does not.

>>6425667

If part of the argument is explaining what God is that is fine. You can start with an incomplete definition, reason based off of it, and then finish your definition at the end give what logically follows your first definition.

>>6425796
>It's my experience that being able to quantify something generally increases the ability to distinguish between true and false, so the chance of this argument being true is incredibly low

Please quantify this sentence, or else I don't think we can take it seriously.

>>6425982

Again, quantify your presuppositions here.

>>6426110
The point of these arguments is to get the basic skeleton, you need to get the fundamentals of what is logically possible and necessary in general and THEN you can go and fill it up with more intricate complexities. The two do not contradict each other at all.

>>6426113
you should read a book on it since you obviously don't understand what it is. by the way, you can't try to understand potentiality without understanding actuality, form, matter, etc.

also folks in this thread aren't getting the notion that these are metaphysical arguments, so they have no use in talking about specific outcomes. that's not their purpose. they are the basic understandings of existence without which a coherent idea of change, causality, existence, etc would even be possible. it's not like anyone in their right mind is saying "wood has the potential to burn and that's the end of it". the scientific method and aristotelico-thomistic metaphysical doctrines complement each other.

also, don't confuse theological doctrine with metaphysics. beginner's mistake.

>>6423936
There's nothing to get. Aquinas and Aristotle turned the mental masturbation dial up to 11 and never rigorously examined the natural world or even their own mental models of it.

For example, there's no such thing as an essentially ordered causal series, but Aquinas thought there was because he didn't discover Newtonian physics. He didn't know that the stick CAN move the stone on its own because it receives kinetic energy/momentum from the hand. All physical causal series are temporally, accidentally ordered.

And Aquinas thought that the potter's hand actualizes the clay because he didn't know that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The clay shapes the potter's hand just as much, and there is no sense in which specifically the hand or the clay is actualizing the other. The system as a whole *actualizes itself* because of its own potential energy fields.

And then Aquinas uses a hierarchy of conceptual groupings to basically argue that every "thing" is a member of the group "existence" and therefore "existence itself" is the ground of all things and exists separately from them. If he actually examined his own thoughts he would have realized that his idea of God is only a mental concept, like a mathematical set.

Don't waste your time on the scholastics. They have been rightly discarded to the trash bin of history.

>>6426251
>the stick CAN move the stone on its own because it receives kinetic energy/momentum from the hand
What horror. That's not what "on its own" means.

Every other claim of yours is no better than Aquinas': you haven't given any arguments for any of your claims. You just claim things to be a certain such-and-such way. My favorite is "mathematical set is a mental concept" --- a thought that is shared and common among nearly all people whose mathematical and philosophical education does not exceed high-school.

If Aquinas belongs to the trash bin of history, your post goes along with him.

>>6426251

>He didn't know that the stick CAN move the stone on its own because it receives kinetic energy/momentum from the hand

That still means that the stick requires the hand for it to move, it just does it by imparting kinetic energy to the stick. You are confusing a more detailed description with a different explanation. Also, you need to be able to explain why the kinetic energy does what it does at each moment it is doing it, every moment of existence requires an essentially ordered causal series to explain why at every moment it exists it is doing what it does rather than not, and why it exists at that moment rather than just popping out of existence. So essentially ordered series are absolutely necessary.

>And Aquinas thought that the potter's hand actualizes the clay because he didn't know that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The clay shapes the potter's hand just as much, and there is no sense in which specifically the hand or the clay is actualizing the other.

And yet nothing in the form of my hand changes from the clay, but the form of the clay does change into a pot. Sure there is a slightly affection on the matter of my hand, but it doesn't change what my hand is in any meaningful sense of the word.

>And then Aquinas uses a hierarchy of conceptual groupings to basically argue that every "thing" is a member of the group "existence" and therefore "existence itself" is the ground of all things and exists separately from them. If he actually examined his own thoughts he would have realized that his idea of God is only a mental concept, like a mathematical set.

You seem to be arguing against the realism about universals here, and supporting nominalism ( this is also what the scholastics Abelard and Ockham held btw). Anyways, if there is no objective standard that defines things like "existence" or any quality "redness" "courage" or w/e then you can't explain attribute agreement, either there are objective standards by which we can demarcate the difference between different attributes and qualities and thus this standard is something outside of instantiations, since the instantiations are defined by the standard, or there actually is no real difference between qualities and attributes because what makes something x or not x ( essentially, not definitionally) is actually dependent on what we label it to be, hence there should be no order in the world things should be continually shifting to the point of inscrutability.

>>6426251
>He didn't know that the stick CAN move the stone on its own because it receives kinetic energy/momentum from the hand.
Aside from the contradictory use of "on its own", you can establish this without making the use of Newtonian physics. Substitute "receives kinetic energy/momentum from ____" for "is moved by ____". The same result ensues: the stone gets moved. It absolutely does not hinge on the "discovery" of Newtonian physics.

And of course it does not prove the obscure claim that "physical causal series are temporally, accidentally ordered". "Accidental" assumes there is no God; but of course, you have no argument for that, either.

>>6426335
>That still means that the stick requires the hand for it to move, it just does it by imparting kinetic energy to the stick.

Just like a son requires the father in order to beget a grandson. It's an accidentally ordered series which is my whole point.

>And yet nothing in the form of my hand changes from the clay, but the form of the clay does change into a pot.

Why can’t the hand and clay be considered to be a form called “handclay” which then changes into “handclaypot” all on its own? I fail to see how the form of handclay is less legitimate than your two separate forms. This is a problem with the whole idea of forms being things other than mental models. You can define any form you want, and the appropriately defined forms don’t need outside agents to actualize their own potentialities. For example, if the entire universe consisted of a positron and electron (one form), they would attract each other and convert into a photon (another form) all on their own. When you get down to it, *this is what our universe already is* just with more particles.

>You seem to be arguing against the realism about universals here, and supporting nominalism

Let me ask you a question first. Do you think that “redness” exists in and of itself apart from minds or material entities called photons? Because that’s what I understand to be equivalent to “existence itself” existing independent of the mind and material entities.

>>6426560
>Do you think that “redness” exists in and of itself apart from minds or material entities called photons?

He may not, but Aquinas does.

You are a nominalist. Aquinas is a realist, or at least a moderate realist. Aquinas believes in the reality of universals as things which inform particulars. You and he are looking at the world in two different ways.

>>6426576
I haven't spent much time learning about these distinctions, but I think I'm a conceptualist rather than nominalist. I believe that redness in and of itself is a mental state.

>>6426560

>>6426560

>Just like a son requires the father in order to beget a grandson. It's an accidentally ordered series which is my whole point.

As I mentioned earlier.

>Also, you need to be able to explain why the kinetic energy does what it does at each moment it is doing it, every moment of existence requires an essentially ordered causal series to explain why at every moment it exists it is doing what it does rather than not, and why it exists at that moment rather than just popping out of existence. So essentially ordered series are absolutely necessary.

It's a different case, because if there is moment between the cause and it's effect when it is not causing then you must account for what changed so that effect could happen, and hence the thing you were calling a cause is not the cause of the effect we are talking about.

People get confused about this mainly because of Newton's inertial laws. Inertial laws only tell us that bodies seem to move until they meet resistance, but it does not explain to us why it is that they do this. Newton himself held that God was continually causing everything in an essentially ordered series and never claimed that he had the “why” questions answered with his physics, they are descriptive only.

If the hand first imparts kinetic energy to the stick, but the stick does not move at first,and then later it does move and moves the stone, then it isn't the hand that caused the stick to move the stone, but something else from the time when the stone was moved. So while the example becomes misleading if we buy into the theory of kinetic energy, the metaphysics behind it are correct. Often when considering Aristotelean Metaphysics people throwout the metaphysical baby with the physical bathwater unfortunately.

>Why can’t the hand and clay be considered to be a form called “handclay” which then changes into “handclaypot” all on its own?

Something cannot both be actual and potential at the same time, that would be a contradiction since the two concepts are mutually exclusive, if something actualizes the potential of something else then the two must be different things. Otherwise you would have to able to explain why something actualized it's potential at the time that it did rather than at another time, which would require another cause, and hence it would be that cause which actualize the potential through the thing you were calling the cause before.

>>6426736

Part II

> For example, if the entire universe consisted of a positron and electron (one form), they would attract each other and convert into a photon (another form) all on their own.

The same problem I just mentioned holds with this.

>Let me ask you a question first. Do you think that “redness” exists in and of itself apart from minds or material entities called photons?

Yes because photons require a certain structure so to result in "redness"- one structure of photons and another structure of photons cannot be reduced down solely to their parts and need a differentiating factor, this is were the form comes in. If the structural difference is not mind external then there is no substantive difference between red and blue, and we actually can't define anything, not even “photon” because without an objective form of some sort the difference between photon and non-photon becomes arbitrary. The colour is also not reducible to the photons themselves, I could not know red if I was colour blind and knew the photons- thus there is a redness itself. Though mind you we should differentiate between pure Platonic Realism and Thomistic Realism. Platonic realism claims that things partake in objective forms through a kind of resemblance, Thomas believes that the forms are actually metaphysical properties that gets “embedded” in matter itself to make the objects what they are, and that these forms originate in God before they are instantiated into matter.

>>6426740
>Also, you need to be able to explain why the kinetic energy does what it does at each moment it is doing it, every moment of existence requires an essentially ordered causal series to explain why at every moment it exists it is doing what it does rather than not, and why it exists at that moment rather than just popping out of existence.

I need to explain why kinetic energy acts like kinetic energy? It’s tautological.

But okay, at a deeper level it’s because of time and spatial symmetry in the physical behavior of matter (Noether’s theorem). I suppose you’ll then ask me why time and spatial symmetry is what it is, in which case my response is as above.

>If the hand first imparts kinetic energy to the stick, but the stick does not move at first,and then later it does move and moves the stone, then it isn't the hand that caused the stick to move the stone, but something else from the time when the stone was moved. So while the example becomes misleading if we buy into the theory of kinetic energy, the metaphysics behind it are correct.

Frankly I’m not sure what you’re getting at, other than requiring me to explain why the universe has the physical behavior it has and not something else (in which case I may as well ask you why God made the universe the way he did and not something else…). And I don’t see how any of this conflicts with my point that physical causation is necessarily temporal and accidentally ordered. There is a finite speed to any transfer of information: the speed of light. If you’re arguing that conceptual levels are essentially ordered e.g. a baseball hit is caused by atoms which are caused by electric fields etc. then I get how you would consider those essentially ordered.

>Something cannot both be actual and potential at the same time, that would be a contradiction since the two concepts are mutually exclusive, if something actualizes the potential of something else then the two must be different things. Otherwise you would have to able to explain why something actualized it's potential at the time that it did rather than at another time, which would require another cause, and hence it would be that cause which actualize the potential through the thing you were calling the cause before.

I don’t think this addresses the substance of what I was saying. You’re saying that the photon was actualized by something else: the positron and electron. You’re looking at it from the future backwards. What I’m saying is that the positron and electron (Form A) has the potential to be a photon (Form B). Form A actualizes its potential to be Form B all by itself, because of its opposite charges. It happens at the time it does BECAUSE of its form: the distances between the two particles, their masses, and their charges. In other words, it happens at the time it does because that’s just what Form A does. Period.

>>6426933
(continued)

>If the structural difference is not mind external then there is no substantive difference between red and blue…The colour is also not reducible to the photons themselves, I could not know red if I was colour blind and knew the photons- thus there is a redness itself.

I’m not sure how we disagree then. I do think that there is an objective difference in color between two photons, and that is because of the structure of those photons themselves and how they interact with my nervous system and become conceptualized by my mind. But still, no where in that process is redness existing independently of the photons or my mind. The same goes for existence itself. Existence itself never exists independent of a material object (in a material object it’s not ‘by itself’) or my mind. I think Aquinas’ God exists, but not apart from my mind.

Medieval philosophy is boring shit. It's basically circlejerkers jerking the fuck out of their subjects.

>>6426933
>>6426938

>I need to explain why kinetic energy acts like kinetic energy? It’s tautological.

>But okay, at a deeper level it’s because of time and spatial symmetry in the physical behavior of matter (Noether’s theorem). I suppose you’ll then ask me why time and spatial symmetry is what it is, in which case my response is as above.

Again you are thinking definitionally here, not causally. You are giving descriptions but I am asking for where the causal power is coming from so that it maintains the behavior you are describing. We have to consider “why not otherwise?” for each instant. So if a bowling ball is indenting my cushion that I have rested it on, and I wait five minutes, at the moment it is not my putting the ball there that is at the moment causing the indent, but things like the cushion being there, the floor existing under the cushion so the chair and the ball don’t fall into the lower floor, that something is maintaining the unity of the composition of the ball, etc.

>Frankly I’m not sure what you’re getting at, other than requiring me to explain why the universe has the physical behavior it has and not something else (in which case I may as well ask you why God made the universe the way he did and not something else…). And I don’t see how any of this conflicts with my point that physical causation is necessarily temporal and accidentally ordered. There is a finite speed to any transfer of information: the speed of light. If you’re arguing that conceptual levels are essentially ordered e.g. a baseball hit is caused by atoms which are caused by electric fields etc. then I get how you would consider those essentially ordered.

The way you are using “Conceptual levels” assumes reductionism between supervenience levels, I don’t that that my biological level is reducible to my chemical level entirely, certain things emerge on “higher” levels that you can’t just reduce down to its mereological parts on the lower level, what you have rather is causal determinacy coming from lower levels instantaneously to the ones that supervene on them. Such that just as my qualitative mental phenomena cannot be reduced to my quantitative biological brain phenomena, still the brain activity cause’s things in my mental phenomena, and does so simultaneously, it’s the same for the microphysical to physical, chemical to biological, ect. If you can’t explain the phenomena fully without some reference to the level it takes place on then it is irreducible.
Now consider the prima facie image of the hand pushing the pen pushing the stone, if there is no bottom level that initiates the instantaneous causation across levels, then none of the causal activity will happen, just as the pen could not be pushing the stone unless my hand was pushing the pen. So each thing has a fundamental instantaneous bottom level of causation through an essentially ordered series.

>>6427238

part 2

Next consider causes in time, causes and effects have to be contiguous, because as I mentioned, if A imparts causal power to B,and then time passes and B imparts causal power to C, then A is not the case of B imparting causal power to C, this is because something other than A had to happen in order for C to happen, or else it would have happened right when A imparted causal power to B. The actual causation is coming from the instantaneous things that happen with the effect through the exact part of the causal event which is simultaneous with the effect. If you don’t have simultaneity then you can’t have continuity, then there will be a gap between the cause and the effect and it will be something else that does the actual causation based on what was formerly caused by that which is not contiguous with the effect.
Finally, each instantaneous part of the “horizontal” accidently ordered cause has a fundamental “vertical “essentially bottom level cause that causes it to be what it is. So accidental causation always requires essential causation and all the real causal power is coming through the essentially ordered series, accidentally ordered causal series are only idealizations, useful but not true by any means.

>I don’t think this addresses the substance of what I was saying. You’re saying that the photon was actualized by something else: the positron and electron. You’re looking at it from the future backwards. What I’m saying is that the positron and electron (Form A) has the potential to be a photon (Form B). Form A actualizes its potential to be Form B all by itself, because of its opposite charges. It happens at the time it does BECAUSE of its form: the distances between the two particles, their masses, and their charges. In other words, it happens at the time it does because that’s just what Form A does. Period.
The Photon was produced by the positron and the electron actualizing certain potentialities in each other and creating a new substance by it ( substance= forms plus matter in a unity). The positron and the electron were already defined as two separate things thus they can’t be a single substance until they are unified and you need to account for the difference between them being unified and not being unified. What you are getting at is that the two substances + certain conditions = the potentialities in them getting actualized, but it doesn’t just happen inevitably and necessarily without those supporting conditions unifying them.

>>6427243

part 3

>I’m not sure how we disagree then. I do think that there is an objective difference in color between two photons, and that is because of the structure of those photons themselves and how they interact with my nervous system and become conceptualized by my mind. But still, no where in that process is redness existing independently of the photons or my mind. The same goes for existence itself. Existence itself never exists independent of a material object (in a material object it’s not ‘by itself’) or my mind. I think Aquinas’ God exists, but not apart from my mind.
You are claiming the Aristotelean position on universals then: that there are real differences in the form but that it only exists insofar as it is instantiated, still it is not simply the matter itself( except materially of course)- the form itself is still an objective thing of some sort .Russell described universals as “subsisting” rather than “existing”, but consider this case ( again from Russell) Consider the relationship between Paris and London spatially- there is a certain directional relationship involved (south/north) but this relationship involves neither one rather than the other, but it certainly it subsists regardless of what any of us think of it, this relationship matches up with all other instances of the north/south relationship as well. Now again, if all the instants all match up then there is a certain exemplar that they all match up to so to keep their definition, it need not be sitting in some other universe like Plato claimed, but it does need to have some sort of being.
Also it is worth checking up on mathematical Platonism, many mathematicians believe numbers to be real things regardless of their instantiations, they simply are real themselves, even if no world existed.

>>6427067
What do you mean by this ?

>>6423936
4chan are literally idiots who obviously can't put two and two together.

>>6424033
Why?

>>6427244

Also for this anon who I am debating. Since you never know when someone is going to have to go do something else and drop the conversation, thank you for seriously responding with good points, exchanges like these are one of the reasons I haven't stopped coming to 4chan.

>>6427243
Well I still don't think I agree with you but I'll think about what you're saying and leave the conversation at that.

>>6423936
There are things that are, things that were, things that weren't, things that could be, and things that will be. All of these are based in a pure active Being, and Aquinas concludes this is God. Aquinas is basically correct but, as he himself concedes, there's no conclusive way of identifying this Being with the Christian God via scripture.

>>6427262
In case you're still here, would you mind explaining to me how this quote from Feser's book is anything but a word salad?:

>…But in God [attributes] exist as one: God’s power is his intellect, which is his goodness, and so forth; they are but different ways of referring to what is in itself the same thing, Being Itself.

I'm sorry but this sounds like Deepak Chopra talking.

>>6427344
This. Aquinas admits that his Five Proofs only prove that there is likely some sort of Supreme Being. To say that this is the Christian God requires a belief in Scripture, in Revelation, in Tradition.

And at the end of the day Aquinas does believe, does have faith. He is himself a Christian, after all.

>>6427379
not him, but from my understanding, if God is entirely simple, then we can only refer to it by analogy, to say that God has an intelect is to say that he isn't simple

What are some of the innovations Aquinas has made on the Aristotle's thought?

>>6427316

Alright then, cheers!

>>6427344

Yeah that is where Aquinas and Scotus differ. Scotus thinks that because our knowledge must start with creatures and then from them we get our metaphysical knowledge, that if we can't use the same terms for creatures as we can for God then we can't know God at all, Hence he did allot of work on reconciling this problem.

>>6427379
>>6427438

How to reconcile divine simplicity with the operation of God's different aspects is something I haven't studied yet unfortunately. I know for Scotus he derived divine simplicity from divine infinity, but I'm not sure how Aquinas reconciled this. There is allot of work on language and different kinds of distinctions so I imagine the general method would be to show how the difference between the attributes are some sort of second order reality that is more of a linguistic construct, where there is a first order metaphysical unity that is God. I would be really surprised if Feser didn't explain it though. Medieval Philosophy is all about extremely subtle distinctions that are often tricky, Feser usually does a good job to make them accessible, so keep reading imo.

>>6427456

His theory of universals go beyond Aristotle, as does his view on time.

Aristotle believed that universals can only be instantiated in matter and have no existence otherwise, but Aquinas thought that universals ( the forms) begin as ideas in God's mind which he imparts into matter, but unlike Plato these thing's don't "participate" in their forms but rather have the forms actually inside of them. So he fused the two approaches and reconciled them both with Christianity.

He also rejected Aristotle's proof that the world had to have infinite time and showed how it could logically be that time had a beginning.

I would like to say that his account of souls innovate on Aristotle's, but De Anima is kind of a mess, so you just really have tons of different interpretations, his was radically different from Averroes' interpretation at least.

He also developed Christian natural law theory based on Aristotle's ethics.

I actually think that as far as innovation goes there are much brighter lights than Aquinas, Scotus and Abelard especially. Still Aquinas generally does a really great job at what he does and is respected like he is in secular and religious academic circles alike for it. Interest in him is only increasing these days.