30
Oct
2014
Potpourri
==> Richard Tol on the “97% consensus” climate change survey.
==> Tom Woods has a great great podcast on Aquinas’ argument for God. Note: Neither Aquinas, nor any serious theologian, argued that, “Everything has a cause, therefore God.” That sounds boring? OK fine, Tom also specifically addresses the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
==> Richard Ebeling has a nice post on Israel Kirzner, who is shown teaching with Audio/Visual aids.
==> Joe Salerno discusses the NJ politicians arguing about the gold standard (!).
==> When he’s not in “office,” Alan Greenspan goes back to being a good economist.
==> My colleagues at IER put out this informative post on oil prices and production.
Wow. This (for probably good reason) is the most disliked YouTube video of Tom Woods I’ve ever seen. 84 YT dislikes v. 145 likes.
Strangely, as somebody who’s not religious at all–but who’s also read Aquinas and many other theologians, as well as the original texts–I find it to be quite stimulating in terms of the Thomistic Five Ways.
Most atheists entirely butcher “the Five Ways” without actually understanding Aquinas’ arguments.
It is clear that Tom understands the position. I can be honest in saying that they’re quite robust, but that I am still not convinced. However, I still won’t call him a bunch of names, because I still cannot refute them (as properly understood). But then, that is my nature: I do not take a position until I fully understand it. While I have a sense that they’re wrong, I can still not disprove them ultimately, thus I don’t go spouting off at the mouth as if I can.
Instead, I allow my apathetic and realistic nature dictate my future course in this regard.
What is the “good reason”?
Let me preface this by saying that I’m a devout Hindu, so I’m not questioning the existence of god(s). But Aquinas’ argument, at least as Tom Woods presents it, seems unpersuasive to me at first glance, for a bunch of reasons:
1. What reason do we have to believe the premise that a motion (in Aquinas’ sense) of an object must be caused by something other than an object itself? Why can’t an object cause its own potentiality to be actualized?
2. Why must the first mover in an essentially ordered causal series have no unactualized potentiality? Why can’t it be that in the present moment, this first mover is not undergoing change, but it might undergo change in future?
3. Why must any difference in attributes be associated with an unactualized potentiality? What if A has property P and B does not have property P, but A has no potential to lose property P and B has no potential to gain it?
4. If the immediate efficient cause of a motion must be simultaneous with that motion, then wouldn’t God have to exist simultaneously with any object which he causes to moves, and thus wouldn’t he be within time?
5. Why can’t something exist In a particular location in space without having a potential to be at some other point in space?
5. What makes good a positive attribute and evil a privation? Is any potential moral norm a positive attribute, and is the deviation from the norm always a privation? If someone defined “shmood” as going around killing people, and defined “shmad” as the absence of killing, then would would God have perfection with respect to shmood?
The last one should say 6.
Concerning my point 1, I found Aquinas’ defense of the premise:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinque_viae#The_Argument_of_the_Unmoved_Mover
“Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e. that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another.”
So basically the argument is that, e.g. something cannot become hot unless it is heated, and it cannot be heated by itself since it’s not hot to begin with (otherwise there’d be no need to be heated).
Fundamentally, this argument rests on the assumption stated earlier in the passage, that “nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality”. So what is the argument for that assumption?
It turns out this assumption has a name: the Principle of Causal Adequacy, also known as the Principle of Proportionate Causality. I’m still not sure what the argument is for it though.
One: Something cannot be in potency and act at the same time and same respect without a logical contradiction. Something cannot be red-all-over and not-red-all-over. An animal that moves from place A to place B still has internal distinctions or “parts” between what is changing what, all the way down to deeper layers of reality (e.g., nerves, cells, atoms with the weak force and strong nuclear force, etc., etc.)
Two: The first mover is necessarily out of time. It is not in the present moment, like you or I. What we call the “future” is already grasped in eternity by the first mover. Since the conclusion of the argument gets to a being of pure act, it cannot change and would have potency if it changed in the future.
Three: The answer to this, I think, has to do with the nature of arriving at pure act. The differences between “purely actual beings” has to be in reference to differences in actualities, but then the only way differences could happen is in terms of potencies.
Four: Everything changing, and even existing if it is not of its own necessity to exist, would require, according to the argument, a being of pure act whose essence is existence to continually impart the possibility of change and existence to everything but it. Everything would depend on God, but it doesn’t follow that He would be part of time, since he is an unchanging being. As an eternal being, the time-line would exist, so to speak, in one moment in reference to Him.
Five: One answer to this, it seems, deals with how the matter is potentially taking on the form it is currently taking on. For the sake of argument, if it has no real potency to be in a different location, it still has potency in the sense of its current atomic configuration at that place in space.
Six: The first part is hard for me to answer, the second part doesn’t follow. Metaphysically, we could say truth is what is in conformity to the reality of beings as they are. This helps make truth and being very much related concepts, called transcendentals. Goodness is also a transcendental. A “good” cat is one that corresponds to the nature of what it is to be a cat. When it lacks features of that nature, it is to that extent “bad.” Killing people deals with human actions that, if it is to engage in murder, goes against natural law principles. It is not up to us to define what is good and bad, and according to natural law philosophy, we cannot do so.
Principle of Proportionate Causality: If you’re really interested in this subject, my suggestion is to buy both _Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction_ and _Aquinas_ by Edward Feser. The former will give you the details, arguments, counterarguments, etc. In brief, just as something cannot come from absolute nothingness, something cannot give what it is unable to give.
Let me respond to your points in order:
1. “Something cannot be in potency and act at the same time and same respect without a logical contradiction. Something cannot be red-all-over and not-red-all-over.” Yes, I agree that something cannot be both red-all-over and not-red-all-over. But how in the world does that imply that an object cannot cause itself to go from being not-red-all-over to being red-all-over?
2. “The first mover is necessarily out of time.” OK, but that’s something that’s established later on, after we’ve established that the first mover has no unactualized potentiality. My point 2 was about how we establish that the first moved has no unactualized potentiality. I can understand the argument for why the first mover is unmoved, but I don’t see what the argument is for why the first mover must be unmovable.
3. “The answer to this, I think, has to do with the nature of arriving at pure act. The differences between “purely actual beings” has to be in reference to differences in actualities, but then the only way differences could happen is in terms of potencies.” Why must difference be in terms of potentialities? If A has property P and B does not have property P, why does that imply any potentialities?
4. “Everything would depend on God, but it doesn’t follow that He would be part of time, since he is an unchanging being. ” Wait a minute, Tom Woods explicitly makes the assumption that “the immediate efficient cause of a thing is simultaneous with it.” So doesn’t that imply that God is simultaneous with, i.e. existing at the same time as, any change he is the immediate efficient cause of?
5. “For the sake of argument, if it has no real potency to be in a different location, it still has potency in the sense of its current atomic configuration at that place in space.” OK, but that’s irrelevant. I’m asking about why it’s impossible for an object located at one point in space to have no potential to be located at another point in space. The reason I’m asking this is Tom Woods argues that God can’t be at any point in space, because if he was then he would have a potential to be at some other point. But why can’t God just be fixed at one point in space with no potential to be at some other point?
6. “Metaphysically, we could say truth is what is in conformity to the reality of beings as they are. This helps make truth and being very much related concepts, called transcendentals. Goodness is also a transcendental. ” Why is it that only properties that deal with conformity to reality are positive attributes? Why can’t deviation from reality be a positive attribute? Why can’t conformity to things other than reality be positive attributes?
“In brief, just as something cannot come from absolute nothingness, something cannot give what it is unable to give.” I certainly accept that something cannot give what it is unable to give; that’s trivial. (Cannot and unable are synonyms.) But how in the world does that imply that a cold object cannot make another cold object hot, or that cold object cannot make itself hot?
You ask a lot of good questions, in an open and non-hostile way to your credit. But I’m not sure if this is the appropriate forum to hash out the details. What needs to be consulted and read are the experts. Time is limited and I’m not expert. (Imagine solving some of the biggest philosophical questions in a blog comment section!)
Sill, remember, that a potency is of itself not actual and therefore needs to be actualized. What you suggest, from what I can gather, is that actualization can occur from a substance all by itself. Indeed, change can take place within a substance. An animal causes itself to move. And Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy surely admits of this: it’s called “immanent” (as opposed to “transeunt”) causation. (See, things get technical fast.) But the substance itself has internal parts. So your arm, for example, only moves insofar as other internal parts of the body move it. You admit at least this. However, for something as a part of the substance to go from potency to act by itself would have the act be caused by a potency which of itself lacks anything actual to cause any reduction to act. Now if it’s admitted that something in act without potency is required, this rules out any of these objects, or their internal parts, as candidates of being pure act.
The “Second Way”, furthermore, makes the argument that nothing can cause itself because that would require it to have proceeded itself. It would mean that “it would be prior to itself, which is impossible,” wrote Aquinas. So it’s not as if your questions haven’t been written about.
Scot MacDonald, funny enough, gives an objection you give: why should the first mover be unmovable? It’s a good question. That’s exactly why you need to consult an expert like Dr. Feser. He spends time answering this exact question. What I can say, though, is that a purely actual being is NOT strictly “stationary” or “static,” it is _active_. It is active in everything, but it is still unmovable. On this related point, you also raise the claim by Dr. Woods that cause and effect are simultaneous (which is not the same as instantaneous, by the way). This is compatible with God being eternal, since He transcends time. He exists, in a loose way, above every point on the time-line at once. So there really is no obvious contradiction here.
In regards to other questions, you have to understand (for instance) that space-time is understood not as an absolute framework. They are dependent on changing objects. And something in space is generally understood as necessarily material. Something totally immaterial is not in space, and cannot be so.
Anyways, I think anyone who wants to study this topic needs to do it systematically. Back-and-forth debate is good, but it needs to be combined with that systematic study. Those two books by Dr. Feser I highly recommend. An older book I like, also, would be _Principles of Natural Theory_ by George H. Joyce.
“You ask a lot of good questions, in an open and non-hostile way to your credit. ” Thanks George. That’s because you’re talking to a devout Hindu here. So I’m not trying to disprove the existence of God here, I’m just questioning the validity of Aquinas’ argument here.
“However, for something as a part of the substance to go from potency to act by itself would have the act be caused by a potency which of itself lacks anything actual to cause any reduction to act.” I don’t understand this. Why does the fact that something is going from potentiality to actuality by itself imply that the actuality is being caused by a potentiality?
“The “Second Way”, furthermore, makes the argument that nothing can cause itself because that would require it to have proceeded itself. ” OK, but that’s a completely separate argument. From what I can gather, that’s an argument about the causes of an object’s existence. What I’m talking about is the cause of an object’s motion.
“Scot MacDonald, funny enough, gives an objection you give: why should the first mover be unmovable?” Are you sure he addressed the “unmovable” issue, and not merely the “unmoved” issue? In any case, what work of Scot MacDonald are you referring to?
“Something totally immaterial is not in space, and cannot be so.” OK, but that’s not the argument Tom Woods made. He said that the unmoved mover cannot be at a spatial location because then it would have a potential to be at some other location. What is the argument for this?
By the way, you didn’t address my question about differences: “Why must difference be in terms of potentialities? If A has property P and B does not have property P, why does that imply any potentialities?”
I think it’s from Aristotle’s definitions of potentiality and actuality.
A thing or an aspect of a thing that is potential doesn’t exist. If it doesn’t exist, it can’t “do” anything.
Well, how do those definitions imply that, say, a cold object cannot spontaneously heat itself, or that an object in location A cannot move to location B of its own accord?
Certainly an object could actualize its potential in some way. I myself can walk from location A to location B, thus actualizing my potential to be at B.
I think the point is that it is not my potential to be at B that actually moved me to B. It had to be something actual that moved me to B.
Likewise, it is possible for a cold object to heat itself. But it is not the object’s potential to be hot that does the heating.
“Certainly an object could actualize its potential in some way. ” Matt G, Aquinas specifically says that this is impossible: he says “whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another.” See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinque_viae#The_Argument_of_the_Unmoved_Mover
And that proposition is crucial to his argument. The central piece of reasoning in the argument is that if X is in motion with respect to some attribute, then that motion must be caused by the some other object Y, and if Y is in motion with respect to some attribute, that motion must be caused by some other object Z, etc. And since we can’t have an infinite regress, it follows that this sequence must end with some object which has no motion with respect to any attributes. And that’s the object we call God.
So in order to get to the infinite regress part of the argument, we need the motion of one object to be caused by to some other object. Otherwise, you could just say “An asteroid is hurtling through space due to its own attribute called inertia, and other than its location it has no other unactualized potential.” That wouldn’t get you to any infinite regress, and thus wouldn’t allow you to prove the existence of a being with no unactualized potentials.
It depends on what we mean by “object”.
I think that according to Aquinas and Aristotle, an object could have many actual attributes and many potential attributes. One of the object’s actual attributes could cause the actualization of one of the object’s potential attributes.
What is impossible, say, is for the heat of an object to make that object hot. It sounds like nonsense because it is. Either the object is actually hot or potentially hot. If it’s actually hot, something must have made it that way, either external or internal to however we define the object.
Perhaps you’re asking: “why can’t the object just be hot, without having something made it hot?” This is challenging a different premise. We were talking about the reduction of potentiality to actuality, also known as “motion”. If the object simply is hot, was never not hot, and was never potentially hot, then the object has never moved with respect to the property of heat.
If all objects are like this with respect to all their properties, then nothing ever moves. Which is what Parmenides and others believed.
“One of the object’s actual attributes could cause the actualization of one of the object’s potential attributes.” Matt G, if that is possible, then how can Aquinas’ argument be valid?
Again, consider the example I gave in my previous comment: suppose there is an asteroid that is moving through space. So its potentiality to be at a given point in space is being actualized. But suppose that actualization is caused by another actual attribute of the asteroid. And suppose that except for potentialities relating to locations in space, the asteroid has no other unactualized potentials. Now from this state of affairs, how can we possibly infer the existence of an unmoved mover, i.e. an object with no unactualized potentials?
Matt G, this is fundmanetally of what I’m asking: I want you to rewrite Aquinas’ infinite regress argument for the case of an object all of whose actualizations of potentials are caused by other actual attributes of that object. I don’t think it’s possible to carry out the infinite regress argument in this case.
Keshav wrote:
Matt G, this is fundmanetally of what I’m asking: I want you to rewrite Aquinas’ infinite regress argument for the case of an object all of whose actualizations of potentials are caused by other actual attributes of that object.
This reminds me of the scene in Superman III when the villain says to Richard Pryor’s character, “I ask you to kill Superman, and you can’t do for me, that one simple thing.”
“suppose there is an asteroid that is moving through space. So its potentiality to be at a given point in space is being actualized. But suppose that actualization is caused by another actual attribute of the asteroid. And suppose that except for potentialities relating to locations in space, the asteroid has no other unactualized potentials. Now from this state of affairs, how can we possibly infer the existence of an unmoved mover, i.e. an object with no unactualized potentials?”
The asteroid’s movement through space is caused by an actual attribute of the astroid. How did that causing attribute come to be? Either it is and always has been, or at some point it was not. If the attribute at some point it was not, then at that point it had the potential to be, and something must have actualized it and we get the regress. Alternatively, if the attribute is and always has been, then then the object never moves with respect to that attribute.
I don’t think the particular distinction we might draw between object and attribute is important to the argument.
I don’t see how this argues specifically for one god or many gods. But it does argue for more than zero gods.
Matt G, you’re talking about an accidentally ordered causal series, i.e. a series of causes that occur at different times. But as Tom Woods says, accidentally ordered causal series are allowed to go infinitely far back. Only essentially ordered causal series, i.e. a series of causes in the present moment, are not allowed to have an infinite regress. For instance if a broom is pushing some dust, and your hand is pushing the broom, and your arm is pushing your hand, etc., then that chain of causes in the present moment isn’t allowed to go on forever.
Here is how Aquinas argument works: we start with an object that’s moving right now. This motion has to be caused by something else. If that something else is moving right now, its motion must be caused by something else. Etc. And that sequence of causes in the present moment can’t go on forever, so eventually we have to reach something which is not moving right now. It’s not about finding about tracing a sequence of causes in the past.
So if you’re right that the argument is just about attributes, then the conclusion of the argument would just be that there is some attribute which is not in motion right now. But of course, that’s an absolutely trivial conclusion, not something you need to prove you would need to prove using such a complicated arguments.
I think it’s pretty clear that the argument is not just about a particular attribute, because Tom Woods also presents an argument for why the unmoved mover must be unique: if there were two different beings with no unactualized potentials, then those two beings must differ with respect to some attribute. For instance A could have property P and B could lack it. But then A would have the potential to lose property P and B would have the potential to gain it. But that contradicts the assumption that these beings have no unactualized potentials. Therefore, there can only be one being with no unactualized potential. So we arrive at monotheism.
I think it’s pretty clear that this argument couldn’t possibly go through if we were just talking about an attribute.
Also, how do those definitions imply that a cold object cannot make another cold object hot?
Here is a good summary of Aquinas’ argument for those who don’t want to listen to Tom’s podcast: http://faculty.cua.edu/hoffmann/courses/317_1058/317%20Arguments%20for%20God.pdf
Also, are we really sure the 1970s productivity slowdown was due to the end of the Gold Standard? I don’t think this idea is quite right.
lol…. You gotta love that “typical atheist youtube rage” against Tom.
I find it interesting, and Tom talking about it makes it more so.
I am also in the “God because why not?” camp, though. It seems the vast universe could always have been. But that seems just as unlikely, if not more so, than the existence of a Creator.
I, meanwhile, have always found God way too big to believe in.
I wish Tom had spent the 20 seconds he says is all that is required to refute the spaghetti monster by putting it in writing. If 20 seconds was all that is needed he could have refuted it instead of saying how easy it is. If only because the FSM is not a serious argument, but an illustration. I have seen efforts to explain that because the FSM is not unitary or simple it could not be the First Cause. I think this is missing the point. The existence or otherwise of something that got the ball rolling has nothing to do with the nature of what is worshipped as god. The prime cause could simply have created the FSM . The Spaghetti Monster seems to be a good illustration of why all these arguments about prime causes etc are pretty much irrelevant to religious belief, pretty much the same as the Thor argument. My sound is currently not working so I cannot hear the podcast. -perhaps someone could spend 20 seconds to refute it in writing?
Regarding Tol, whether the 97% is actually 93% or whatever, does anyone seriously claim that a vast majority of peer reviewed papers acknowledge that human activities contribute to global warming?
The argument of Aquinas that Tom Woods presents goes roughly as follows: any change an object undergoes must be caused by something other than the object itself. And the immediate cause of any change must be simultaneous with the object being changed. Therefore, if an object X is undergoing some change, that change is due to some object Y. And that object Y is either not changing, or it is changing and this change is due to some other object Z, and Z must either not be changing or it must be changing due to some object W, etc. And the argument is that we can’t have an infinite regress, so at some point in the sequence we’ll reach an object which is not changing. That is the object that we define as God.
Tom Woods argues that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not God, because God is in unchanging and the Flying Spaghetti Monster is flying, so it’s moving from one place to another and is thus changing some attribute of itself, namely it’s position. Also, God is unchanging and the material universe is the world of things that undergo change, so God is immaterial and thus not made of spaghetti.
Let me be clear that I’m just presenting Aquinas’ argument, not endorsing it. As I said in my comments above, the main problem I see in the argument is that I don’t see what reason we have to believe that any change in an object must be due to something than the object itself.
I agree that refuting the spaghetti monster as the prime cause may be simple if we follow Aquinas’ argument, but that is that the point of the spaghetti monster? If we accept Aquinas’ argument, it doesn’t get us close to any god that anyone believes in.
Well, Tom Woods presents arguments for why the God that the argument deals with must be unique, omnipotent, conscious, all-good, immaterial, and outside of time and space – all of which are said to be attributes of the Christian God. (Whether these arguments are convincing is another matter; I’ve raised objections to them above.)
The argument for uniqueness is as follows. If there were two different unchangeable objects, then the fact they are different implies that they must differ with respect to some property P. But if object A has property P and object B does not, then object A has the ability to lose property P, and object B has the ability to gain it. (Note: I’m not sure why this has to be true.) So that means that if A and B differed with respect to property P, then neither one would be unchangeable. Thus there can only be one unchangeable object.
The argument for omnipotence is as follows: if God is responsible for all change in the universe, then he must be capable of causing any possible change. (Since if he were incapable of causing it, then it wouldn’t be possible.) Thus God can do anything possible.
The argument for consciousness is that since God is responsible for all change in the universe, he must be the one responsible for giving an object any attribute it has. So he must be responsible for giving humans consciousness. But an object cannot give what it does not have, either formally or eminently. (I’m not clear on what the “eminently” part means.) Therefore, God must be conscious.
The argument for goodness is that since humans are good, God must also have the property of goodness, since that’s the only way that humans could get it. And God couldn’t be partially good, because then it would be possible for his goodness to increase. But God is unchangeable, so it’s not possible for his goodness to increase. Thus God must be all-good.
The argument for being immaterial is that matter is changeable and God is not, so God is immaterial. The argument for being outside of time is that if God were within time, then he would change from existing at 12PM to existing at 3PM, for instance, but God is unchangeable, so he must be outside of time. And finally the argument for being outside of space is that if God were located at a particular point in space, then he would be able to change his location. But God is unchangeable, so he must be outside of space.
Yeah, it sort of goes off the tracks pretty quickly. If we are talking about things we can have no conception of – being outside time and space, it is pretty hard to come up with necessary qualitites like “goodness” in a convincing way by reference to our experience of living bound by time and space. I am sure others must have asked this one, but humans are bad, so must God must be all bad?
Harold, Tom Woods has an answer to that: good is a positive attribute, no evil is a privation, i.e. an absence of an attribute. So God only needs to possess the attributes, not the privations. Thus God has to be all-good, but he doesn’t need to be all good.
(I should add that I’m skeptical of this argument, because I don’t see how you determine what’s a positive attribute and what’s a privation. If A is the absence of B, then isn’t B the absence of the Absence of B?)
Thanks for the answer, I also find it unconvincing.
Has Tom read Hume and Kant’s response to Aquinas’ cosmological proofs? If so, what does he think of those arguments?
I trust he hasn’t done what he sees as a problem in the vulgar uninformed responses to Aquinas, which is not read important and serious critiques of one’s own worldview. I am not trying to be a smart Alec. I think Woods is awesome, brilliant and an incredible speaker of whom I learn much. I just haven’t found any if his writings that deal with Hume or Kant’s critiques in detail. I myself have some problems with their critiques, but at the very least they cast strong doubt’s on Aquinas’ proofs, and I don’t think anyone can solely rely on Aquinas to justify their faith in a rational, thought out sense (as opposed to blind faith and status quo adoption).
Also, in my own view, I don’t think Woods can be so confident that it is impossible Aquinas was really talking about his own ego, and not a God.
By golly! Woods is right. “Everything must have a cause” really has never been advanced by any serious theist as an argument.
From what I’m hearing, Woods’s “unmoved mover” argument sounds a lot like sun worship, as without the sun, plants would be unable to make sugars, fats, and proteins, and without plants, animals couldn’t eat anything. It also appears that Woods’s “god” is the “big bang” of the physicists. I understand Woods’s contention that saying that there are multiple unmoved movers is meaningless, as they cannot be distinguished.
But Woods’s god has no relation to the god of the Bible. There is no question that the god of the Bible exists in time and acts in it. He sees that light is good; he separates it from the darkness. He sees the wickedness of man; he is sorry for making him. He sees the affliction of the Kingdom of Israel by the Kingdom of Damascus; he saves Israel by the hand of Jeroboam II. He sees that the King of Assyria responds to Jonah’s message, he repents from carrying out what he said he’d do to the city. He is stimulated; he responds. This is not an unmoved mover. It’s a mover who interacts with his creation and by no means fully understands it.
Also, I think Woods is denying emergent properties.
“It also appears that Woods’s “god” is the “big bang” of the physicists.” How would you respond to Woods’ arguments that the God being discussed must be conscious, omnipotent, all-good, etc. I’ve outlined some objections to these arguments:
http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2014/10/potpourri-240.html?replytocom=1185241#respond
97%.. that’s how many votes the Communist party of Czechoslovakia used to get in the elections pre 1989. That number alone screams fishy.
It is also the number of doctors who believe AIDS is caused by HIV. Very suspicious.
Actually I couldn’t find the exact figure, but it illustrates that a large majority of experts believing something may not be fishy, but may be a reflection of the strength of the evidence.
The ego positing itself is the unmoved mover.
The ego positing itself is also the ego positing the non-ego.
Positing I am I is an unmoving actualization that is the center of all creation. Through and out of it movement becomes known.
The infinite regress is thought because of a misplacing of the ego: in the non-ego. There I will look high and low, at the back of things, searching for the unmoved mover, but everywhere I look, I cannot shake the thought of a mover of what moved. If I looked elsewhere for the unmoved mover, an infinite regress will be the only outcome. Infinities are impossible, so there must be a first unmoved mover, who Aquinas called God. I just call it Aquinas’ own ego.
Major_Freedom, motion in the context of Aquinas’ argument refers to any sort of change, i.e. any shift from potentiality to actuality. So are you saying that your ego is unchanging? Are you saying that it’s the cause of all change in the universe? Also, Tom Woods gives an argument that there can only be one unmoved mover in the universe, so are you saying that your ego is the only ego in the universe?
My ego is unique. So is yours.
That which is unique cannot be understood as changing or not changing, since this requires comparison to other things.
Your ego is the ground for how you know any change at all.
Tom Woods is talking about his own unique ego as the only unmoved mover in the universe.
“That which is unique cannot be understood as changing or not changing, since this requires comparison to other things.”
Wouldn’t it only require comparison to its state at an earlier time?
Rundle took what Aquinas called God, to be “Matter/Energy”.
The matter/energy of the universe is not contingent, it is necessary, as matter/energy in the universe persists. It undergoes change, but it persists. Matter/Energy is indestructible. It is always conserved. It is eternal.
But Tom Woods presents arguments that the God in Aquinas’ argument must be omnipotent, all-good, conscious, and outside of time and space. Does matter/energy have these properties?
Neither omnipotence, nor all-good, nor consciousness are attributes in Aquinas’s God via his 5 proofs.
I just thought of a seventh objection to Aquinas argument. (The tirst six are in my comment near the beginning of the thread.) The argument uses the premise that an essentially ordered causal series cannot have an infinite regress. But why is the sequence of movers an essentially ordered causal series? If the motion of object A is caused by object B, and the motion of object B is caused by object C, then if C stops moving B, why would that neccessarily make B stop moving A. What if the motion of A was caused by an attribute of B that was not itself in motion? Then how would the cessation of B’s motion affect its ability to move A?