2 posts were split to a new topic: Aristotelian Thomistic Philosophy and Scientific Evidence
Hi @dga471,
You’re a Ph.D. student in physics. I’d just like to ask you this: what facts about the world do you think Aristotelian Thomism successfully explains, that rival metaphysical theories (including rival Scholastic theories of nature) fail to explain? It really seems to me that you’re going to quite extraordinary lengths to defend a centuries-old metaphysical account which is almost certainly wrong. I have to ask you: what’s the attraction of A-T? The reason why I’m asking is that I studied it myself for several years as a young man, before concluding that it really didn’t gel with science or common sense. What’s worse, the attempts of its leading exponents to explain away difficulties with their theory struck me as lame and evasive. So I’m mystified as to why you find it appealing.
This is assuming that H and O are present “as parts”. Are they? I’m not sure all Thomists would agree. They might think of H and O as present only “in power” in H2O. And there seems to be no contradiction between something being simple and having a lot of powers: to take an extreme example, God is simple yet omnipotent.
If Thomists can’t agree about a simple case like water, then what can they agree about? In any case, the claim that H and O as present only “in power” in H2O makes no sense. The power of a thing cannot be present where the thing itself is not, because the power of a thing is inseparable from the thing itself. Hence to assert that the powers of hydrogen and oxygen remain in water even though hydrogen and oxygen themselves do not, is metaphysically impossible.
…[P]rime matter always exists in the real world as limited by its form, and hence having limited potency instead of infinite potency (as is the case with prime matter). Thus, when you die, you undergo substantial change, but there is a limited amount of things that you can transform into, because the matter of your body doesn’t have infinite potency. Thus, your corpse retains some similar properties to the current you but different in other properties. In A-T philosophy, form, not prime matter, “controls” above anything else about what changes can or cannot happen.
The fact that there’s only a limited amount of things that I can transform into does not in any way imply that any properties will persist or carry over, if one substantial form is replaced by another. All it tells us is that certain bizarre properties will not be exhibited under the new form.
And again, Thomism offers no explanation as to why certain properties of my body carry over into my corpse (e.g. mass, size, shape), while others (e.g. color, hardness, smell) are radically different.
Robert Koons seems to think (at least tentatively) that they [photons] are only accidents of whatever body emitted them, but this is by no means representative of the “orthodox” Thomist view. There is no orthodox view in Thomism regarding what photons are, because Aristotle’s science is now agreed to be outdated and not talking about photons as we conceive them today.
This is precisely the kind of woolly thinking that makes me want to scream. Photons are an important part of the world around us. We couldn’t see without them. If Thomists can’t even decide whether they’re substances or accidents, then I have to say that their metaphysical theory is impossibly vague: you can’t pin it down on anything.
Still, is there anything fundamentally objectionable with the idea that there is constant substantial change going on around us in the case of small objects like raindrops and puddles?
Nothing at all, except Occam’s razor. Why would you want to posit a substantial change to explain the separation of an aggregate (such as a body of water) into two smaller parts? You might just as well say that when two children playing with a pile of sand in the park agree to divide it in two, a substantial change has taken place. Pile of sand, pile of water: what’s the difference?
Most atoms (for example the ones that make up the table your computer is on) only exist within a larger body which has its own structure and rules.
But on your proposed account, since a table and a chair are two different kinds of macro-level objects, each with their own structure and rules, then we have no a priori reason to expect the atoms of carbon in a table to have the same mass and other physical properties as the atoms in a chair. And yet they do.
The conclusion I draw is that Aristotelian Thomism is an inadequate account of change, as it stands. Certainly it beats Heracliteanism and Parmenidean philosophy, but those are absurd extremes, and there are many other rival accounts of nature which successfully avoid both extremes. Cheers.
At the risk of introducing a tangent here: the mainstream interpretations of QM don’t do any better in this regard.
(Which is exactly why I think Copenhagen/Everett are inferior to pilot wave theory, or any interpretation in the “primitive ontology” approach - clear ontology is necessary before one can make sense of what the theory is saying.)
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I’ve somewhat answered this here:
To add on to what I said: to me, the great attraction of A-T philosophy is that it’s a comprehensive, holistic philosophy that purports to explain multiple spheres of reality. I think it explains some areas well while it is awkward (though in my opinion not insuperably so) in others, but this is unsurprising, given its ambitious scope in the first place. Contemporary analytic philosophy, while technically impressive, is often disjoint and fragmented, with decreasing relevance to everyday life since almost all major positions have several serious arguments against them. (Just look at the literature on the Gettier problem, for example.) I’ve been dabbling in philosophy and theology since I was a teenager and I’m tired of reading Christian philosophers and theologians defending a growing list of arguments which might not even be consistent with each other.
I think one difference between us is that you are from a Catholic background, so perhaps a lot of this stuff (A-T philosophy and theology) is very familiar, perhaps even stale. For me, coming from a relatively “low church” evangelical background, it’s quite refreshing to find out that using only philosophy, one can rigorously argue that God is one, immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, omnipotent, and fully good, and that this is the traditional view of God throughout the history of Christian theology! (To quote Feser’s Five Arguments for the Existence of God.)
In some Protestant evangelical circles, while there is a lot of appropriate respect for Scripture, I feel there is not enough philosophical reflection on how the Christian worldview fits with all other aspects of reality, which leads to unsatisfactory answers to questions and various problems. For example (as I alluded to above in my reply to Josh), I have a suspicion that the false dilemma we’re often given as Christian scientists to choose between a deistic God or a creationist one (who constantly intervenes miraculously) is a result of unconsciously and uncritically adopting modern metaphysical categories and trying to haplessly fit God into this picture. In contrast, I notice that many Catholics seem to be more secure about evolution, because they already have the philosophical concepts to understand primary and secondary causation and how God can use both means, for example.
Finally, it’s also important to understand that I’m still thinking about and working through a lot of this stuff. I’ve only started reading A-T philosophy on and off for about 1.5 years, and who knows what my views will be in the next few years. (After all, not being a Catholic, I’m freer to pick and choose which parts of A-T philosophy and theology make sense for me.) My bringing up these issues to these forums where there are critical readers like you is part of the process of figuring out whether A-T philosophy is worth it or not.
I think that’s an unfair standard to hold Thomists to. Thomists are already incredibly united on many philosophical issues. Is there any other contemporary school of metaphysics or any philosophical camp whatsoever that has better agreement than Thomism? Most analytic philosophers today have their own collection of eclectic views.
You’ll have to be more specific with that paper from Koons. I am 99% sure that Koons thinks substances do have parts, he just doesn’t think that they have substances as parts. What he’s denying in that paper is that a substance is not a plurality of separate things. What’s simple according to him is the “metaphysical cause of the character of the substance, a formal cause that grounds that very substance’s complex structure. Both the structure and the materials so structured are unified by their having a common, simple formal cause.” It sure sounds to me like a substantial form has parts. There must be parts in order for the form to unify something. But they don’t exist in the same manner as before they were unified.
Prime matter is an abstraction. It doesn’t really exist or have existence in itself. While prime matter is the subject of substantial change, proximate matter is the formed matter from which the new substance comes from. Aquinas believes that some properties of the proximate matter can carried over to the new substantial form even though the prime matter is the subject of substantial change. That’s why some properties of atoms remain in the molecule. It’s a mistake to speak of annihilation in regards to the atoms previous substantial form, because what’s happening is that these atoms have gone from having their own independent existence to being ontologically dependent on the molecule. That’s why Thomists understand these as virtual parts. Just as they have ceased to have independent existences as substances, their properties have ceased to reside in the atoms and now reside in the molecule as whole. But they haven’t ceased to exist entirely, which is why they are still virtually in the molecule.
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You might like to read my reviews of Feser’s book:
18 really dumb (and not-so-dumb) objections to arguments for the existence of God (Generally complimentary towards Feser)
Feser’s predestinationism and his bizarre claim that God’s knowledge is non-propositional (Brief but important reading)
Has Feser proved that God is almighty, all-knowing, good, capable of free choice and loving?
Flawed logic and bad mereology: why Feser’s first two proofs fail
Feser’s fourth proof and the mystery of existence
Some of Feser’s remaining proofs (which I haven’t reviewed yet) have real merit, but to say that Feser mounts a rigorous case would be an exaggeration, in my view. To be fair, he’s probably tried harder than any other living Thomistic philosopher. He’s certainly the best contemporary popular exponent of Thomism, although Eleonore Stump is pretty good, too.
I find A-T philosophy helpful to explain a few things. Some examples:…
There are many schools of Scholastic philosophy, as I’m sure you’re aware. During the Middle Ages there were furious debates between these schools. What makes Thomism superior to the other schools? As far as I can tell, nothing, except that it has a larger loudhailer.
Re the philosophy of mind, Thomism fails to address the interaction problem, as I’ve argued here, here and here.
Re * Philosophy of biology (understanding the unity of organisms): Thomism does a good job of explaining the difference between organisms and machines. Where it falls down is in failing to put forward a set of reliable criteria for ascertaining whether something is alive or not - e.g. how would a Thomist identify extraterrestrial life?
Re the laws of nature: yes, some of them can be understood in terms of objects’ powers, but the most general ones appear to be features of the cosmos as a whole (think of Noether’s First Theorem) or of closed systems rather than substances (think of the laws of thermodynamics). At best, Thomism offers a partial explanation of laws.
Re quantum mechanics, please have a look at this chart. How would Thomists tick the boxes?
Is there any other contemporary school of metaphysics or any philosophical camp whatsoever that has better agreement than Thomism?
I have no idea. Thomists are agreed on certain important metaphysical issues, but hopelessly disunited on others. You mentioned evolution: some Thomists like to pretend that Aquinas would have been cool with it (he wouldn’t, as I showed here several years ago which I wrote while I was still heavily into Intelligent Design), while others insist that Aquinas would have staunchly opposed it. But if I had to say what I dislike most about Thomism, it would be (i) its narrow-mindedness on metaphysical issues which we know little about and (ii) its belief in predestination and physical premotion, which (in my view) destroys human freedom, as our choices are said to be determined by circumstances beyond our control - like the choices of the characters in a story (to use one of Thomists’ favorite analogies).
I didn’t realize that you’re a non-Catholic, Daniel. I guess you’ll sort all this out, somehow. I just wanted to warn you of the pitfalls, that’s all. Enjoy your reading! Cheers.
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Thanks for linking to these reviews of Feser’s work, @vjtorley, and thank you for the effort you put into them! It seems that you and I are in agreement about the modal collapse problem being the most important and devastating flaw in the Thomistic system (as you put it - the A-T conception of God as pure actuality negates both human and divine freedom). I definitely think some of your suggestions for how to resolve it are worth exploring.
I think what @dga471 and myself are interested in is not so much in figuring out how to make A-T metaphysics as a whole system work with modern science, but in trying to figure out how some of the concepts of Aristotelian and Scholastic thought (e.g. essences, casual powers, final and formal causality) might be brought to bear in a well-rounded philosophy and worldview that includes modern science - particularly in comparison to more modern philosophy, which seems to be a bit anemic on metaphysics.
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