/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6759938]

Is the Unmoved Mover theoretically falsifiable?

[Anonymous No.6759978]

Dump till bump

[Anonymous No.6759986]

[Anonymous No.6759989]

[Anonymous No.6759992]

[Anonymous No.6759996]

>>6759938
Dunno, but how does perpetual motion fit into this chain thing?

In outer space it doesn't matter what the thing that pushed another thing is doing, the first will keep moving until it meets an opposing force.

[Anonymous No.6760000]

[Anonymous No.6760004]

>>6759996
Hold that isn't right.

The one that pushes doesn't have to keep pushing, the one that is pushed will keep moving regardless until a force opposes it's movement.

[Anonymous No.6760005]

>>6759996
But the motion still has a cause.

[Anonymous No.6760009]

>>6759996
are you retarded?
it has to have been moved by something in order to be moving

[Anonymous No.6760014]

>>6760005
>>6760005
Yes, it has a cause, but the cause doesn't act in the present like the pic tells.

[Anonymous No.6760021]

>>6760014
The law of inertia is acting in the present, though.

[Anonymous No.6760024]

I'm not asking for it to be falsified, but whether it is theoretically falsifiable.

[Anonymous No.6760032]

>>6760021
Physical laws are independent from physical processes. The reverse isn't true.

The laws don't have a place in the chain of cause-effect. They just dictate how the links will interact.

[Anonymous No.6760039]

>>6760032
Kinetic energy is acting in the present.

[Anonymous No.6760048]

>>6760039

Kinetic energy is motion. The change relates to space. It is independent from the source after breaking contact.

[Anonymous No.6760054]

>>6760024

Read the image and think hard on it. It doesn't read much to me like something you'd call "theoretically falsifiable". That's empirical talk and this is an excerpt from a religious opinion piece, basically (albeit a super interesting one)

[Anonymous No.6760055]

Well, one response is that, in fact, everything can be considered "purely actual," as the very idea of potentiality is in truth just an aberrance of the human mind. Water is not primarily "potential ice." It is only by a hypothetical leap that it can be thought of as such. Since the concept of "potentiality" is purely a theoretical aberrance, there needn't be any metaphysical, objective being there to get the train rolling, to use the metaphor in that image.

[Anonymous No.6760056]

>>6760024
I'm sure it has, or else everyone would be convinced God exists. Which we know isn't true

[Anonymous No.6760063]

nobody in this thread has any idea what they are talking about and they should abandon the thread. Bystander trying to help. saging.

[Anonymous No.6760081]

>>6760054
Opie here. This guy gets it, I'm leaving.

[Anonymous No.6760101]

We do take for granted our understanding of cause and effect. What if it isn't a chain system of pasts within the present? Instead our existence as a universe is not cohesive at all, rather it merely appears to be as each point in time manifests independently out of an ocean in flux. Maybe it's energy or mathematical chaos, who knows what composes it, but the point is there could have been an eternity since the appearance of the previous point in "time". Thanks to the adaption of our brains for the purpose of making sense of things, we might just be none the wiser and solely exist because we think we know who or what we are.

[Thomas No.6760117]

>>6760101
This isn't about causation though (hence why it isn't an argument for God being a creator, but sustainer). It's about dependence, sort of like if you are fishing then your bait's position depends upon the line. You could have an eternalist view of time, and it would still apply.

[Anonymous No.6760124]

>>6760081
>>6760054
samefag. saging.

[Anonymous No.6760228]

>>6760117
Time could be different from how we think it to be though. Causation may very well be an illusion of how consciousness functions in our brains. They are adapted to make sense of an environment and time on a microscopic scale as opposed to macroscopic time. Our concepts of time and reality might have nothing to do with time or reality themselves.

[Anonymous No.6760306]

>>6760056
That's assuming people are perfectly rational. Augustine argued that God only gives perfect rationality to Angels.

[Anonymous No.6760454]

>>6760124

[Anonymous No.6760602]

>>6759938
Why does Aquinas believe that God is sentient? In proposing that to lack some knowledge is to lack some potential, he says that to have some potential is to have some knowledge. While this might apply to humans, it doesn't apply to, say, the collective matter of planet earth, which has immense potential but no knowledge whatsoever. If Aquinas is saying God is the Truth then that's reasonable but knowledge not Truth but a recognition of the Truth, which requires sentience.

[Anonymous No.6760823]

>>6760602
because we are sentient

[Anonymous No.6760830]

>>6760823
elaborate. also is this your idea or his?

[Anonymous No.6760925]

>>6760054
>this is an excerpt from a religious opinion piece,

Ehh...not really. Just because Aquinas was Catholic doesn't make his argument any less valid. Aquinas was arguably the most rigorous, disciplined, and honest philosopher in history. The cosmological argument isn't a religious opinion piece any more than evolution is new atheist propaganda. Both are highly valid and serious explanations of reality. Aquinas goes to great lengths to point out that the God as detailed in the Cosmological argument doesn't necessarily equate to the Catholic God. To get to this understanding of God, Aquinas concedes that faith must be in order. It's why he quantified faith as one of the primary virtues.

[Anonymous No.6760943]

>>6760925
>Aquinas was arguably the most rigorous, disciplined, and honest philosopher in history.
>Both are highly valid and serious explanations of reality.

[Thomas No.6761065]

>>6760228
Yes, my point is that it isn't about causation, so that's irrelevant. You could be an eternalist, that is someone who thinks every moment is happening simultaneously it's just we process it in an order, and it would still hold true. It's about something being predicated upon something else, like building something from the ground up is not about the bottom bricks "causing" the middle bricks.

[Anonymous No.6761069]

>>6760830
it is based on the principle of proportionate causality.
Of course, the 1st way doesnt directly establish that God has an intellect. The 5th way is the one that establishes that

[Anonymous No.6761091]

>>6760943

Your ironic meme did nothing to validate or strengthen your position.

You'd be hard pressed to find a philosopher more disciplined and honest than Aquinas.

[Anonymous No.6761096]

I don't think I get this argument.
Why do the changes of the present must originate in somthing "actual".
I mean, things use energy to move. There is matter in the universe, and it uses energy to "actualize it's potentials".
It uses previous energy to actualize it's potential to use new energy. There has always been energy so it makes sense.
Why is somthing actual required to make everything in the present work? I'm missing somthing.

[Anonymous No.6761098]

>>6761091

That's like coming first in the Special Olympics

[Anonymous No.6761102]

>>6761098

Nice comeback, STEMfag. Back to r/atheism.

[Anonymous No.6761107]

>>6761096
youre not going to get it from a picture, try reading The Last Superstition or Aquinas by Feser to get a more profound understanding of the argument

[Anonymous No.6761133]

Because it is internally falsified? The rules of the game are that everything must have a cause. Yet his answer to how the game began is that something existed outside the rules. Instead of arguing for a creator or Unmoved Mover, why can't it be argued that the stated rules are false? That is a simpler solution.

[Anonymous No.6761156]

>>6761096
Something that is actual, something that is "in act", is something that exists. Something that is potential is something that does not exist except "in potency", "potentially". In order to bring something that potentially exists into existence, in order to actualize something, there must already be something in act (in existence) to cause it, because "from nothing comes nothing". Therefore, there must be a substance that is self-subsisting, that is "pure act" or "pure being", in which all other substances subsist. This can't be "energy" because energy is not pure act; we know this because that which is pure act does not have any potential (because it is already fully actualized), and energy has potential (for example, the potential to be in one place rather than another, to be transferred/moved).

[Anonymous No.6761161]

>>6761107
Okay, can you just explain why is this all relevant to the present and not past? He says that there must be an unmoved mover at any given time?

[Anonymous No.6761167]

>>6761133
Go home Russell

[Anonymous No.6761168]

>>6761069
At a brief glance, the teleological argument supposes that because there are laws to the universe (the teleological argument doesn't really apply to the ordering of matter as it can be explained through natural causes) then they must have been established by God. It seems strange that a First Mover can be conceived as a logical necessity and logically UNcreated, yet the laws of logic themselves must have been established by God, despite the fact that God is subject to them. Point being if these laws do not have their origin in God then God does not have to be intelligent.

As for the principle of proportionate causality I couldn't find a definition so I would ask you to elaborate.

>>6761133
It's a logical necessity and the stated ruled haven't been proven false.

[Anonymous No.6761176]

>>6761168
The rule is that everything must have a cause, the conclusion is there is one cause for everything that doesn't itself have a cause.

You see the contradiction?

[Anonymous No.6761177]

>>6761133
That doesn't satisfy my power fantasy at all though!
Aren't I a copy of god, who is perfect?
Aren't I perfect?
Aren't I?

[Anonymous No.6761178]

Yes. There is no such thing as an "End" or a "Beginning". There is only rearrangement.

[Anonymous No.6761205]

>>6760004

That's a contingent fact about what happens, it doesn't explain why it happens though. Newton admitted that he couldn't answer that question when he made his physics, and said that we might as well just forget about it because it was too hard and we could do fun science experiments without it.

The idea of Aquinas' argument is that at each moment there are a chain of causes acting simultaneously on one another. Each movement from the one point to the next needs a new explanation of why it keeps moving rather than not moving. The idea is that you have a first cause at each moment exerting the causal power to keep everything running as it does, sustaining creation.

>>6761161
Aristotle believed that the world was infinite in past time and motion. Aquinas was working the argument within the Aristotelean framework. You can have infinite causes going backwards in time. They are accidental causes because it is the simultaneous cause acting on things as they happen which does the work, the past accidental causes in time just help create the conditions needed for the first cause to bring things forth at the moment it does.

[Anonymous No.6761206]

>>6761168
Your understanding of the teleological argument is false. You are thinking of the modern version of Paley, not the classical version of Aristotle and Aquinas.

[Anonymous No.6761225]

>>6761168
I dont think that what the 5th way says at all

The principle states that whatever is in an effect must be in some way in its cause

[Anonymous No.6761233]

Although I don't accept that energy can't be the end of the chain, this logic doesn't prove any God in a traditional sense. It does not imply intelligence or divine will in anything or really any teachings that are found in the big religions, it just states that there is something that we may not understand which is the basis for all things.
Not falsifiable but it does not prove God, in a normal sense, like it implies

[Anonymous No.6761241]

For those who are interested
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAIHs5TJRqQ

[Anonymous No.6761264]

>>6761205
>>6761205
Okay, you explain it well. I get why Aquinas's argument is about each given moment and not an "unmoved mover" which existed in the past.

still, I wonder, doesn't this theory ignore the fact things exist before any given moment, as well? I mean, I can make my finger "actualize her potential to move" by commanding it with my brain, which uses energy he got by using energy he had in the past. (In a sense, all of our basic existence is about using energy to get more energy.)
Why does it require an "unmoved mover" if it actually IS able to move itself, using energy?

[Anonymous No.6761285]

>>6760925
>Aquinas was arguably the most rigorous, disciplined, and honest philosopher in history.

lol. Don't choke on his dick

[Anonymous No.6761315]

>>6761285

Prove me wrong then, faggot.

[Anonymous No.6761343]

>>6761315
Can't really prove you wrong coz it is hard to measure those qualities objectively. Just reminding you that you are sucking his dick with that over the top statement.

[Anonymous No.6761481]

>>6761176
In that case you would have to accept that God is a product on his own creation, because the First Mover is a product the Laws of the Universe (in this case logical ones). If we hold that God created everything then that means God created the Laws, which God is dependent on. The only conclusion is that the Laws are themselves a part of God, which means that they aren't something God created but eternal, meaning that omniscience was not exercised in the ordering of the universe. I recognize that my position has somewhat altered but I hope that it is at least closer to the truth.

>>6761206
elaborate, I am an amateur

>>6761225
True, but what I am proposing is that intelligence in the universe, i.e. it's laws, cannot be an effect of God because it is a part of God. If Aquinas has an answer to this please explain though, again I'm an amateur here.

[Anonymous No.6761912]

>>6761264

Well remember, Aristotle and Aquinas do not disagree with you entirely here. The world HAS to be infinite in past time, because for something to be actualized something first has to exist potentially. God creates infinite time and the world, but there is no time beforehand in which God does this, his creation is a matter of ontological priority in sustaining and creating the universe, which are the same thing here.

The thing is, there is no reason to think that something can move by itself unless it is the unmoved mover( or is is acting concomitantly with the unmoved mover, more on this later). It is not necessary that anything we see in the world does in fact move, we know this because things all go from rest to motion. If something was necessarily in motion then it would always be in motion, and never in rest. If something can go from rest to motion then something has to account for that change. When we go to account for that change we find that the thing that moved it would have to be something that is itself moving, how could something at rest cause motion in another ? Either this new thing is necessarily in motion or it is contingently in motion, if it is contingently in motion then we have to account for why it is in motion rather than not, and this goes on until we get to something that is necessarily in motion. This has to be the case, because if everything had only derived contingent motion, then there could be nothing for them to derive their motion from. Therefore for any motion to take place you need an unmoved mover.

Now of course then how do humans do anything? That is what one should be asking here, as it would seem that all of my choices depend on God's causality. This is true, but not unqualifiedidly so, it is only that God upholding with his causal power my ability to will, actualizing that capacity so that it can act, and me steering my will towards a certain object WITH God's power. God actualizes the potentiality for me to have choice and is constantly upholding it, but this does not mean that God chooses for me. So we are acting concomitantly together with every act I do.

>>6761133
Aquinas does not uphold the principle of sufficient reason (" that everything needs a cause") though. Nowhere is that stated at all in the argument.

>>6761481
I think using "laws" is leading this argument astray. " Laws" come from the distinction between potentia ordinata and potentia absoluta. The former are those natural contingencies that God happens to use on creation, and can be translated into the "laws of nature" of later natural philosophy, while the latter is his absolute power. When you talk about logic, it is not like God set out these laws and selects them as opposed to other possibilities. When you say something that does not correspond to logic you are actually just engaging in language that contradicts itself. That A is both B and -B, is not some possibility that gets excluded by God. It is a terminological error.

[Anonymous No.6761975]

>>6761912
Laws was probably not the right word, again I am not versed in philosophy, but I am still not convinced mostly through my own confusion. Let us then take a specific example, Causality. Causality is the principle on which the idea of First Mover rests, so I ask you how Causality came into being and, if from God, how to justify it.
Also to comment what little I can on your comment, I am not saying that God is selective about "the laws of nature," what I am saying is that his existence depends on them, so I reason that somehow they must be a part of him, eternal and uncreated, therefore God did not exercise sentience in creating them. I don't know if I am clarifying something you didn't understand or am just repeating myself but at this point i'm just along for the ride.

[Anonymous No.6762000]

>>6759938
An absolute law or principle or force independent of all precedence, sovereign in it primacy as the source of all cause. The first and only real cause and the seed of everything. This is the philosophers god. This is the philosophers pillar, his compass, his anchor. With it, paradoxes are reconciled, opposites become one, puzzles in logic are solved, intuition is fulfilled by reason and vice versa.

[Anonymous No.6762314]

>>6761975
Causality isn't what generates God though- since he is ungenerated. Nor is it is a being that is created. God's act of creatio ex nihilo is causality in the first instance, part of his potentia absoluta. For causality to "come into being" there would have to some form of causality to bring it into being, thus we cannot think of causality itself as something that comes to be. Causality is just something that is, an aspect of God's omnipotence, which is inseperable from him. From the power of God's potentia absoluta the natural laws of the universe come to be created, this is where we get natural causation from. Natural causation has certain contingent bounds( from nothing nothing arises) that are determined from God's potentia absoluta, but do not determine it. These are the principles of natural philosophy and God's potentia ordinatia. From the principles of the potentia ordinatia come natural laws, contingent matters of fact like " When interacting with X, Y will cause Z"- in the sense of natural causation. These in no way determine God, they are only determined by him.

Think of it this way, natural causality exists, for natural causality to exist God would have to exist, therefore God exists. That is the argument as I explained it here >>6761912.

In this case you seem to be confusing metaphysical and epistemic priority. Metaphysically speaking God is that which gives rise to natural causation from his own initial causal power ( an aspect of his omnipotence, which is not created by him, but integrally "part" of him). Epistemically speaking though, the existence of natural causation shows us that God must exist to account for natural causation existing at all. This is only because we happen to know the effects more readily than causes in this case, it is not that these causes depend on their effects metaphysically. In a matter of being God has priority, in terms of our prima facie knowledge as we know it natural causation has priority. But this does not mean that the natural causality determines God in any way, it only means that OUR knowledge of natural causality determines OUR knowledge of God.

A good critique of this argument comes from Duns Scotus. This argument begins from a contingent premise: the existence of natural causality. But as the premise is contingent, there is a possible world were there is no natural causality, in this world we would not have grounds to say that God exists through the argument, meaning that the conclusion is contingent as well. Therefore this argument only derives the existence of God as a contingently existing being( him not existing is not excluded in all possible situations). But, part of God's existence is that he is a necessarily existing being ( it must not be the case that he could not exist), therefore this argument fails to demonstrate the existence of God.

[Anonymous No.6762391]

>>6762314
>Causality is just something that is, an aspect of God's omnipotence, which is inseperable from him.
That was the conclusion that I came to in >>6761481
>The only conclusion is that the Laws are themselves a part of God, which means that they aren't something God created but eternal, meaning that omniscience was not exercised in the ordering of the universe.
Here's the question then, my original question, how do we know that God is a sentient being? Are the Potentia Ordinatia created through intelligence or simply necessity?

[Anonymous No.6762395]

>>6759938
No. Neither is "infinite causal chain" or "causality somehow loops around", or any other explanation for how the hell you can draw cause and effect back from now to any kind of origin.

[Anonymous No.6762572]

>>6762391

The Potentia Ordinatia is contingent, there are plenty of ways the universe could have been that are not the way ours is. I don't know how something other than an intellect could determine one of many different contingent sets of properties and laws. If it is not bound by necessity to make a certain set then we could not get to any set without an intellect and will choosing which set to actualize.

Another way to ground intellect is that God lacking intellect would mean that he had some unactualized potencys, but part of God's definition( in the argument given in the slide of what kind of being we need to make sense of the world) is that God has no unactualized potencys.

[Anonymous No.6762635]

>>6762572
Don't the Potentia Ordinata limit the actualization of God? If God is omnipotent that means that he can create whatever he wants as long as it isn't contradictory, so why would he leave the actualization up to natural laws? Take for example evolution. God could have very easily taken matter and created life, but he chose to do so in time, meaning that the actualization of, say, a fight between a man and a dinosaur, or a man and a dragon, is unactualized (yes I understand that those factors exist because of the laws of nature, but that doesn't mean that the laws must be fixed) The only conclusion would be that there are no Potentia Ordinata, as the limitations imposed by the laws of nature could not be God's choice. Either that or the multiverse.

[Anonymous No.6762650]

>>6762635
I think I just theologically justified the multiverse. Maybe. Probably not.

[Anonymous No.6762681]

>>6759986
fuck that looks cozy.

[Anonymous No.6762684]

>>6759938
nah

[Anonymous No.6762738]

>>6762635

You have roughly taken up Al-Ghazali's position. Welcome to Occasionalism and 14th Century England ( I don't mean this at all in a bad way since I have a hard on for post 1277 Medieval Philosophy and Occasionalism in general).

But we should be careful to distinguish between actualities in God vs things actualized by God. The world is not in God, so the world lacking something is not the same as God lacking something. Likewise Omnipotence only means the power to do everything, not actually doing everything.

God has the essence of each possibility in his intellect though, and can always do other than what he sets out in his Potentia Ordinatia and what he actualized in matter. The Potentia Ordinatia is just what he happens to do consistently enough that we can generally count on it, miracles can still always happen and have happened in you believe the Bible.

God does lack the material instantiations of the essences within him, God is not material and neither are any of his actualities. This is acceptable because being materialized results in mutability, and all material things start off in material potentiality, and are potencies for other material things, it would cheapen the essences in his intellect and his own being to be material. It would also stop him from being able to be pure actuality, since matter always implies potency. Materialization takes an essence( what we find in God) and places it into a corruptible state, so material things don't count as a part of his omnipotence or his pure actuality, as materialization is a negative process that diminishes rather than increases a things being. So this lack in God, is only a lack of a lack, and this makes it a positive thing and not a lack at all.

One might wonder " but why make the Potentia Ordinatia this way when it almost seems like it makes him lack something? Why not make material things the sort of thing that are not a negative". It is a bit against the point though because all that is demanded is that God's power is not limited and that he is pure actuality. God could have made matter and material things in a different way, but it is no affront to his power, and the fact that he could have done otherwise, that he did not.

[Anonymous No.6762750]

>>6762650

If you went for an Emanationist view of God, like Plotinus and Augustine did, you could. On that view God has to be absolutely omnipotent, infinite, and everything has to emanate from him necessarily, he has no choice in the matter, nothing is apart from God, everything is an extension of him. You could probably swing it that God has to actualize all possibilities through emanation and ground the necessity for modal realism, where every possible world is a real one. Which justifies a multiverse theory.

[Anonymous No.6762791]

>>6759938
At a quantum level, it probably isn't correct, but, ignoring this, it is not a valid argument for the existence of the Catholic God. Instead, it, at most, points out the need of an ever-active, sentient deity of sorts, and, at least, an ever-active force similar to Newton's Absolute Space.

[Anonymous No.6764340]

>>6759938
But surely all this argument is asking is why the laws of the universe are as they are. Plus the distinction between 'actual' and 'potential' seems rather artificial

[Anonymous No.6764479]

>>6759938
It's been empirically falsified by quantum theory.

[Anonymous No.6764883]

>>6762738
Makes sense. Now I know that Aquinas argues for God's benevolence, but I am curious as to how he goes about it. I understand that he argues that the good is what men desire, and all men desire perfection. Since God is perfect then all men strive for God, therefore he is perfect. What I object to is the notion that a benevolent God would allow men to subsist in this incomplete state and permit the suffering that arises from this incomplete state and Man's misguided attempts at finding completion. If the good is not found in the world, as Thérèse of Lisieux and Lacan both will attest, then why create the world? Many say that suffering is for the greater good, but is this not irrelevant if God is the greatest good?
Also as a side note may I ask how you know so much about this subject? Are you an autodidact or formally educated, and is your knowledge a part of your line of work?

>>6762750
Neat. I do plan to read Augustine so I'm not going to pester you for an explanation, although it is cool to see science lining up with philosophy.

>>6764479
elaborate

[Anonymous No.6765667]

>>6764883

Just working off some Avicenna I recently read I would say that: When ever someone does something there is some kind of change of status in them. Even becoming more just from a just action is something that will cause me to gain a perfection to some degree or another. In God's case, he is immutable and has all the perfections as they are, meaning that when God acts, he gains nothing from it. Charitableness is part of the definition of benevolence, and God of course does all he does for us without benefiting from any of it. This is enough to characterize him as benevolent.

I think the rest that you are touching on is more or less the problem of evil. Why do we have a world where the evil of man being in incomplete and suffering state is permitted ?

I would answer this with Peter Geach's response to the Problem of Evil. Take any world and God could add one more good person, one more good act, ect and the world would be a bit better. The thing is that this process could go on potentially infinitely ( as in it could always increase a bit more, while staying finite). Because of this, no matter how good God makes the world it can always be infinitely better. So the expectation that God ought to create a perfect, or sufficiently better world is misguided. Any attempt to say that a certain non infinite amount of goodness is the sufficient ammount rather than a step lower or higher would be arbitrary as well.

Thanks for the compliments. I am an undergrad in Philosophy, currently writing my honors thesis on Medieval Causation and Duns Scotus. My adviser is a scholar of Thomas Aquinas, so I have learnt allot from him. Beyond that Philosophy of Religion, History of Philosophy. and Metaphysics have been an interest of mine since I started University. It's just been for the last year that I have been really studying Scholasticism intensively. I traveled through allot of Philosophical positions to get to thinking that Scholastic Catholicism has it right.

[Anonymous No.6766314]

>>6765667
Ah but then we run into the question of why create the world as it is? Aquinas defines evil as a privation of the good (although I would also consider it a dysfunction of it. Case and point, pain is good because it helps us survive, torture isn't just a lack of that good). If God is the ultimate perfection then he is the ultimate good. We derive pleasure from striving towards this perfection and yet we are ultimately unable to achieve it, as Aquinas agrees. Catholics defend this suffering, which is the greatest evil, by saying it is the fault of an imaginary perfect ancestor, that is both us and not, choosing evil, the ramifications of which we, who are not responsible, have to deal with. But that is the case then it demonstrates we and are imperfectly equipped to handle it free will, and the necessary evil for free will is unnecessarily compounded as a result of our ignorance and vice. And of course Catholics tie natural evil into the fall in Genesis as well because that was the only way to justify it, and God's trials in Job which in an ideal world would be unnecessary.

Now you say that all that is required of God is to do something without benefiting himself and that justifies him as benevolent, but let me remind you that benevolence is not just something not done for the self but done for the other, and if God is not doing good for the other to the best of his abilities then he is not omnipotent. Unless you can prove that God is exercising his benevolence perfectly then you show that God's actions are meaningless or nonexistent, i.e. if he isn't acting perfectly for himself or for one who can gain (Man) then he is not acting. Now evil can be necessary, as Aquinas agrees, but find one shred of evil that it unjustified and God as a sentient being is falsified, and I posit that Man's innate inability to handle his free will, his fallen nature, is unjustified.

[Anonymous No.6766321]

>>6765667
As for Geach's argument, with it I come to a much greater realization. The argument would imply that that if God allowed, say, a dimension of eternal suffering from which there is no escape, then that would be justified because it could be infinitely hotter than it already is. The argument put's God's power at the mercy of infinity, so that not only can nothing God create be perfect, but that this impossible perfect is the only moral reference point. Therefore, the only conclusion is that God does not act according to morality, because to act for morality is to act for good/perfection which is an impossibility. We, as finite beings, are able to judge morality because there is a high an low cap to how perfect the world can be for us, the ideal, the perfect, but if there can be no best thing, which is the case because if there can be Adam in his Eden there can be a better Adam for a better Eden, then the entire universe, in that respect, is rendered a lost cause. God is infinite and perfect, but he is uncreated and necessary so it is justified. Once something is created, something that is not divinely simple, it is immediately imperfect because it does not have the divine qualities. So then, either we have to abandon the idea that the highest good for man is attaining perfection, which most contemporary philosophy has already done, or we abandon God's morality and therefore his sentience. I am not qualified to speculate on the true nature of what is good but I can conclude that whatever it is it is not being realized perfecly.

[Anonymous No.6768181]

>>6759938
Ive yet to see them provide a decent rebuttle to the position advocated by parmenidies

[Anonymous No.6768529]

>>6760602
There's lots of ways you can go about demonstrating this for Aquinas. There's his Fifth Way, of course, which straightforwardly demonstrates via final causality (which is necessary for any causality) that God has will insofar as he directs everything toward its end.

Aquinas can also demonstrate this via God's immateriality- the characteristic operation of the intellect is to grasp essence apart from matter. God is immaterial, because, being the ultimate cause, he is simple. If he had matter at all, he'd be pure matter- but pure matter is pure potentiality with no actuality, which would not exist. So God would have to be immaterial. Since God is simple, moreover, there can be no distinction in him between essence and existence. Since God is nothing but his own essence, God must be pure intellect.

Being entirely his own essence, God knows himself perfectly, hence knows creation insofar as they come from himself, so he doesn't exactly "recognise" the world. While we derive faint abstractions of what-is by separating out a part of the world after the fact, "re-cognising" it, God's is the Original Cognition that imparts that intelligible being in the first place.

[Anonymous No.6769341]

>>6759986
WOW that is an ugly room. The cat only tops it off.

[Anonymous No.6769518]

If Aquinas reasoned within an Aristotleian framework, have there been any attempts to reason the unmoved mover within a modern framework?

[Anonymous No.6769547]

>>6764479
How?

[Anonymous No.6770737]

>>6768529
>God has will insofar as he directs everything toward its end
Ah but as I explained in >>6766321
whatever end God works towards in the world is impossible to achieve.

>Since God is nothing but his own essence, God must be pure intellect.
No that means he us pure Truth, not pure ability to grasp the Truth.

>God's is the Original Cognition that imparts that intelligible being in the first place.
How does intelligibility arrive from God being intelligent? I'll fully admit I don't comprehend the logic here.

[Anonymous No.6771892]

>>6769518

Alexander Pruss has a few articles where he makes a modern version of the argument. I'm not sure where in his works it is, but Leibniz had a version as well.

[Anonymous No.6771920]

>>6766314

I don't see where you get the idea that God is not doing all he does for the sake of others, by definition he can't do it for himself, and acts of will are directed towards ends inherently.
> and if God is not doing good for the other to the best of his abilities then he is not omnipotent.
This is a false inference; God does not need to do everything he can do at once in order to be able to do it. Omnipotence is a capacity, not an act. In fact, such a demand treads into logical impossibility, because God would have to instantiate contradictory opposites, like me being both a man and a woman at the same time. God doing all he can do at the same time falls into the realm of logical impossibility and therefore is just language without meaning.
How is being "unable to handle free will" unjustified? Especially since some humans can handle their free will and do good by it. The granting of the freedom is the good, and through our freedom all humans are able to turn towards God and not abuse their free will, some simply chose evil. Any evil involved is from specific human choices, not the capacity for choice itself. The granting of the freedom to choose good or evil is a good itself. If man was made in a way that he could not chose to sin then he could not be praise worthy for not sinning, since he would have no choice in the matter. The capacity to sin is definitely justified.

[Anonymous No.6771926]

>>6759938
It's an assertion about that which cannot be known or detected. What do you think, chief?

[Anonymous No.6771928]

>>6766321
>The argument put's God's power at the mercy of infinity, so that not only can nothing God create be perfect, but that this impossible perfect is the only moral reference point.
No, because you are not differentiating between potential and actual infinities. The potentially infinite- that which can always increase while staying as a finite number, is what we can judge God's creation by, it has no set limit, but is always finite. But God himself is an actual infinite, unbounded goodness with no measure; nothing can be added to him. The creation is incommensurable with the creator in that sense, and creation can never fully communicate the goodness of the creator. It is God's goodness (which is identical with him) that is the ultimate moral standard, and no creature can fully meet it, so we are merely expected to do the best we can with our limitations on earth. With reaching God himself being the ultimate good we have to keep in mind.
>only conclusion is that God does not act according to morality, because to act for morality is to act for good/perfection which is an impossibility.
God acts according to his essence which is ubounded goodness, and can act as a standard of infinite goodness. There is no reason why the source of the act and the result of the act have to be identical.
> So then, either we have to abandon the idea that the highest good for man is attaining perfection, which most contemporary philosophy has already done, or we abandon God's morality and therefore his sentience.

This isn't deductively valid. You are making too many jumps. Sentience is not derived from morality in any sort of necessary way. Perfection need not be what God requires of man. God has no reason to expect his creatures to reach his level entirely. Finite beings cannot be expected to reach infinite goodness, again, it is a logical contradiction, and it has no meaning. To claim that God expects as much would be to say that God expects squareness in circles.

[no caps guy !!6P/WhzicJTl No.6772123]

unmoveing mover > unmoved mover

[Anonymous No.6772782]

>>6772123
Reminds me of one of those memes.

[Anonymous No.6772806]

>causality
>exists outside human mind
pls

[Anonymous No.6773944]

>>6772806

Go to bed Kant.

[Thomas No.6773958]

>>6773944
That's Hume he's referencing. Kant said causality must exist because to presume otherwise would be "absurd".

[Anonymous No.6774277]

>>6773958

“rescues the a priori origin of the pure concepts of the understanding and the validity of the general laws of nature as laws of the understanding, in such a way that their use is limited only to experience, because their possibility has its ground merely in the relation of the understanding to experience, however, not in such a way that they are derived from experience, but that experience is derived from them, a completely reversed kind of connection which never occurred to Hume”

For Kant causation doesn't come from experience that gives us knowledge of the world, rather experience is created by things like causation that come from our minds. Kant claimed that the world apart from our subjective construction of it is unknowable, so causation cannot exist outside of the human mind for Kant, or at least we can have no knowledge of it.

Hume's claim was less radical, to him we just mislabel our empirical experience of constant conjunction as causation, it is just a mental habit.

[Anonymous No.6774282]

>>6774277

Oh right, source of quote.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-hume-causality/#KanAnsHum

[Anonymous No.6775318]

>>6771920
>This is a false inference; God does not need to do everything he can do at once in order to be able to do it.
If I am a millionaire and I win the lottery, the benevolent thing to do would be to give it away. If I don't then I'm obviously doing denying the pleasure of others for my own. Now imagine that scenario if I had infinite money. The point is that if God has the drive toward the good (perfection) of the other, i.e. love, then he would do so, because to not do so would be unbenevolent. And if you don't have a drive toward any good then you don't act.

>God doing all he can do at the same time falls into the realm of logical impossibility and therefore is just language without meaning.
So God using everything in his power would cause him to do things not in his power? Doesn't that right there disprove absolute omnipotence?

>How is being "unable to handle free will" unjustified? Especially since some humans can handle their free will and do good by it..
Would you honestly say that humanity as a whole is able to handle it? Is the thug born to a crackwhore in the Chicago slums who to turns to a life of crime able to handle it? Is he really given a fair shot? Is it a coincidence that the most venerated mystic of the 20th century, Therese of Lisieux, was born into a upper class Catholic household with parents who tried to enter the convent themselves? Even the Bible recognizes that we are born into dysfunction. Freedom is obviously a good thing but what is in question is the ability to handle it, which is removed through the ignorance and vice are all born into. There's a difference between the capacity to sin and an environment that encourages sin.

>Any evil involved is from specific human choices, not the capacity for choice itself.
If I choose to, say, burn down the family business, then I am choosing to do evil to myself, but I am also bringing suffering upon my family, against their choosing. So yes, you are right. All evil derives from human choices, except of course the building could be destroyed by an earthquake as well.

>The capacity to sin is definitely justified.
And the suffering of those at the hands of the wicked and the world is to?

[Anonymous No.6775322]

>>6771928
No, because you are not differentiating between potential and actual infinities. The potentially infinite- that which can always increase while staying as a finite number, is what we can judge God's creation by, it has no set limit, but is always finite.
Fair enough, I'll concede on the reference point point, but if the the good is perfection, not more or less flawed but perfection, then the rest still stands.

>With reaching God himself being the ultimate good we have to keep in mind.
This presumes an afterlife, which would make life itself superfluous. If God could will us into the beatific vision, the ultimate good, then why would he not do so? And don't bring up the concept of "choosing heaven or hell" because I already covered the dysfunction problem.

>There is no reason why the source of the act and the result of the act have to be identical.
If it is possible then for a benevolent, omnipotent being then yes it is. If it is impossible then the best possible state should be arranged, which it isn't because it can't be.

>Sentience is not derived from morality in any sort of necessary way.
Forgive me, I've jumbled up my meanings again. What I really thinking of is agency. If one acts then one acts for a good, and the good that God would act to is not achieved, so God must not act.

>Perfection need not be what God requires of man. God has no reason to expect his creatures to reach his level entirely. Finite beings cannot be expected to reach infinite goodness, again, it is a logical contradiction, and it has no meaning. To claim that God expects as much would be to say that God expects squareness in circles.
So then God made us desire something that cannot be achieved?

[Anonymous No.6775331]

>>6775318
>So then God made us desire something that cannot be achieved?
only through Christ, my friend

[Anonymous No.6775333]

If you have a space with two particles, the particles will move towards each other via gravity. There's no first mover there so the idea is incorrect.

[Anonymous No.6775344]

>>6775331
Too little too late, my friend.

[Anonymous No.6775361]

>>6775344
it is never too late

seriously though, we cannot attain divine perfection, we can only attain human perfection, and that can only be attained with the grace of God

[Anonymous No.6775378]

>>6775361
It's too late for those born into the worst of the dysfunction, particularly those who never understood the Gospel.
More to the point why do you accept Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior?

[Anonymous No.6775384]

>>6775361
>>6775378
all this circlejerking is making my eyes sticky

[Anonymous No.6775698]

Any idea on pic relateds thoughts/ how his philosophical views would apply to the reasoning of aquinas? Most of the stuff I see discussed about him seems to be tied closer to Augustine.

Would the OP be a good example of philosophy just being a byproduct of misunderstanding language

[Anonymous No.6775726]

>>6775698
During his picture theory phase, he'd likely discount it and say that since it can't be verified objectively -- since the "mover" is outside of our detection/universe -- that it's nonsensical to make a remark that it does/doesn't exist, and to state what attribute it does/doesn't have is nonsensical, as well.

So, it MIGHT exist, but that's the most that could be said on the matter.

[Anonymous No.6775798]

>>6775726
Was picture theory phase during his early/tractus period?

[Anonymous No.6776185]

>>6775318
For the first comment: Again, God's will and goodness is an actual infinity, not a potential infinity. The expression of the infinite goodness in the world can only be in the mode of the potentially infinite because it is external to God. God only needs perfect goodness on his own side, the side of the actual infinite from where the act is derived from. The effects of his act on the world can only ever be in the potentially infinite mode, meaning they have to be finite and can always be infinitely better than they are. God himself has the perfect goodness and is acting by it, the effect does not have to be equivalent to it, nor can it be logically. God is benevolent because he gives all humans a path by which they can reach the absolute good, union with him. So given that any world can be infinitely better in its goodness, any world is equally acceptable to God’s benevolence so as long as it has a path to the actual infinite goodness for humans, which is the true good.
>So God using everything in his power would cause him to do things not in his power? Doesn't that right there disprove absolute omnipotence?
Only as much as me saying ' God cannot garbble gahcckik ehhh naejjae' does. Logically contradictory statements have no reference to anything, and have no meaning. It's just a linguistic error, not anything to do with real capacities, any sort of being, ect.
>Would you honestly say that humanity as a whole is able to handle it?
Libertarian free will is true, you always have a choice in everything you do unless someone has literally taken you over in some way. All humans have the choice; evil people can come from perfectly good situations and vice versa and often do. I am willing to concede that one who has never heard the gospel cannot make the choice for God, so God sending them to hell would be unjust. I don’t think God does that, and I’m not sure what the official teaching of the church on this matter is. I’m willing to be heterodox on any case that doesn’t conform to reason though personally.
>All evil derives from human choices, except of course the building could be destroyed by an earthquake as well.
There is no reason to call that evil. Evil =/= suffering, evil is defying the law set out by God's will that is informed by his goodness.
>And the suffering of those at the hands of the wicked and the world is to?
God only gives the capacity for freedom to do evil, he does not force anyone to do it. If he took free will from people then he would be doing an evil to them, as they could not freely reach the actual infinity of his goodness. All that matters is that there is a choice that can lead to God, how the world is beyond that in terms of how God sets things out is necessarily arbitrary.

[Anonymous No.6776192]

>>6775322

>This presumes an afterlife, which would make life itself superfluous. If God could will us into the beatific vision, the ultimate good, then why would he not do so? And don't bring up the concept of "choosing heaven or hell" because I already covered the dysfunction problem.
No, choosing between heaven and hell is valid. It makes things more just, as those who get to the ultimate good deserve it more than those who don't. It isn't superflous as long as it leads to the ultimate good in some sense, which it does.
> If it is impossible then the best possible state should be arranged, which it isn't because it can't be.
But that is exactly the point, "the best possible state of the world" is equivalent to "gheehhe lalal", it doesn't match up with anything because it is logically impossible.
>If one acts then one acts for a good, and the good that God would act to is not achieved, so God must not act.
Again, there is no reason why God has to try to instantiate himself in an act or a creature.
God does not make us desire the best possible world, we desire him, not the world or any possible world, as our teleological end.

>>6775333

God is the first cause that sustains the existence of gravity and causes those particles to move through gravity. The example does not work as a counterexample since both can be true without any contradiction.

[Anonymous No.6776213]

This argument falls prey to the same ideas that every argument about a God being falls prey to.
> A. Making assumptions about the godhead then reasoning from them
> B. Interpreting the godhead in a logical framework
By definition, the godhead cannot be defined. To see how logic fails Aquinas, see: A Critique of Pure Reason. Or Wittgenstein.

[Anonymous No.6776262]

>>6776213
>Or Wittgenstein.

Any particular essay or work?

[Anonymous No.6776274]

>>6760009
literally what >>6760005 said faggot