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#Post#: 246--------------------------------------------------
Dealing with an Objection to the Aristotelian Argument
By: ClassicalLiberal.Theist Date: October 30, 2020, 5:55 am
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The objection: it is in principle possible that physical things
or at least things other than something pure act can lack
potentiality. Therefore, you cannot deduce God's existence from
the existence of motion.
To illustrate what this means, take any physical object
whatsoever. You can imagine a possible world in which a physical
object lacks the potentiality for things like local motion or
change. This would exhuast the possibility of it having
potentiality, all the while not qualifying it as something which
is pure act: it may still be susceptible to time, it is
composite, it isn't all powerful, etc. Therefore, the argument
from change is false (well, at least it isn't deductive).
I would like at the outset, to make some clarifying statements
about why the argument from motion proceeds as it does. In many,
if not all variations of the argument from motion, it starts
with the premise "change occurs", or something synonymous. The
reason for this move is soley to establish the reality of the
metaphysical categories act and potency. It is not, and I
repeat, it is not the premise by which the existence of God is
directly derived. To put it in a crude syllogistic form:
P1 Change occurs
P2 So, actuality and potentiality exist
P3 If actuality and potentiality exist, then God exists
C Therefore, God exists.
After the establishment of change, we get act and potency. From
this, the argument (I have Edward Feser's argument in mind) then
applies and seeks to understand the conclusion when these
metaphysical categories are applied to actualization which is of
a vertical sort, rather than a horizontal one. Meaning, it is
concerned with the continued actualization of a potential,
rather then the actualization of a potential throughout points
in time. The argument deduces God's existence from the fact that
there are objects that exist which are being continually
actualizaed, not the actualization of potentialities happens in
a temporal manner.
To make even more preliminary statements, however, I would like
to make a distinction between the ways in which a thing can lack
potentiality. These two I have labeled underivative existence
and derivative existence. The first we would call God, and the
second would be some sort of being which lacks the capacity to
change. Understanding now what the argument's objective is, take
any physical object. By virtue of being a physical object,
regardless of whether or not "it lacks the capacity for change",
it is always physically composite. Cups, spoons, houses, and
boeing 747s are the way they are because of the various
arrangement of atoms involved. Atoms can be broken down into
protons, neutrons, and electrons, and further those things can
be logically divided by space (if it is .0000000000000000001cm
long, then we can say it is composed of two parts which are
.0000000000000000001/2cm in length). Strictly speaking, anything
in space is divisible (composite), and everything physical is in
space. Knowing this, we can then say that call physical things
are dependent on their subsidiary parts for their existence.
Meaning, the arrangement of parts actualize the potentiality for
there to be a whole. Therefore, in order to appease the causal
principle, we must then posit some being which is causally prior
to this. You can run this game ad infinitum, but ultimately to
satisfy the chain of causality, you must at some point come to
the existnece of an "unmoved mover" or "pure actuality".
Physical things may very well lack the capacity to change, but
it is in the very nature of the things which deems it something
of derivative existence. You must therefore appeal to that which
is of underived existence.
#Post#: 247--------------------------------------------------
Re: Dealing with an Objection to the Aristotelian Argument
By: RomanJoe Date: November 16, 2020, 4:41 pm
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It doesn't matter if you posit some substance and just say that
for purposes of illustration it has no potential to move, heat
up, become cold, x, y, z, etc. You're still dealing with a
partitioned piece of reality. It's still composite even if it is
"unmovable"--it still exists in this locale rather than another,
with this color rather than another, with this atomic structure
rather than another. Why? There must be a reason for its
existence being composed in such a way rather than another. What
makes it so that it is actually here rather than there, or with
this atomic structure rather than that atomic structure?
Appeal to the substance itself? How? X actualizes the potentials
of X to exist in the manner it does. That's impossible. So we
must appeal to something outside of the substance. The causal
chain then continues on.
You see, potentiality isn't just an existential principle that
determines how an already existing being can exercise itself.
Rather it's a principle that carves up being. It explains why
some beings extend only so far or look a particular way. This is
the reason why the AT theist claims God can't be material, can't
be spatially limited. Any limitation is due to potentiality.
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