Saturday, January 21, 2017

David Haines' Defense of Aquinas' First Way

Here. 

3,162 comments:

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StardustyPsyche said...

SteveK...

Here is one 20th century analysis of Aristotle:
CHAPTER XXIII Aristotle's Physics
IN this chapter I propose to consider two of Aristotle's books, the one called Physics and the one called On the Heavens…The historian of philosophy, accordingly, must study them, in spite of the fact that hardly a sentence in either can be accepted in the light of modern science.
http://s-f-walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/pdfs/History_of_Western_Philosophy_Bertrand_Russell.pdf

A-T is just unnecessary on modern science. A-T claims to be necessary. Feser says these are proofs, not mere speculations. He is wrong, the science that is manifest and evident to our senses renders A-T a convoluted irrelevancy.

SteveK said...

That you think A-T is shown to be unnecessary because science has shown this to be true, again, explains why people at Feser's blog ignore you. When will you learn this? I have some hope that you one day will, but not much hope.

StardustyPsyche said...

SteveK said...

" That you think A-T is shown to be unnecessary because science has shown this to be true"
--Indeed, and Aquinas laid a very good foundation for just that approach.

Aquinas said this first of all in the First Way:
"The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion."

Aquinas did the best he could with what was evident to the senses at that time, but lacking more detailed observations he was led astray by Aristotle.

Galileo provided new observations hundreds of years later. Newton built upon Galileo and formulated these principles in his great work known as the Principia:

Rule 1 We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.
Rule 2 Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.
Rule 3 The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intensification nor remission of
degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our
experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.
Rule 4 In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, not withstanding
any contrary hypothesis that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena
occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.


When we adhere to the admonition of Aquinas to use what is manifest and evident to our senses, and we admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances, then the whole of A-T becomes unnecessary.

A-T claims to be necessary as a modern argument for a first mover, and ultimately god. In truth, based on what is manifest and evident to our senses A-T is both unnecessary and irrational.


bmiller said...
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bmiller said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

In the structural respect the material of those particles are temporally changing.

Yes, physically existing objects are unable to change themselves and thus ultimately require an Unchanged Changer.

Matter never changes existentially. That is what is manifest and evident to the senses. The material never changes in the existential respect. This is called conservation of mass/energy and it is always observed to be true and never observed to be false.

I disagree that it is evident to the senses that *matter* never changes. What we can sense and what is intelligible to us is the form of a thing. Matter without form would not be something we could sense and would therefore unintelligible and undetectable to us.

Everything we can physically sense is a combination of form and matter. What we witness are physical things passing from existence and new physical things coming into existence. We can use the fact of these physical things' movement in time during their existence to abstract concepts like mass (m=F/a) or energy (E=mc²) but these things are merely properties we associate with existing physical things and have no existence of their own. If there were no thing existing as a combination of form and matter there would be nothing for us to sense and so no mass or energy to measure.

But since energy is defined in terms of motion and we now know that the universe is expanding, general relativity is the modern accepted theory. The energy of photons decrease while traveling through expanding space as explained here: Energy is not Conserved.

Come into the *new* world of modern physics.

Sorry about the deletions, had to fix typos.

bmiller said...

And then I still ended up with typos. Oh well.

SteveK said...

>> “The material never changes in the existential respect. This is called conservation of mass/energy and it is always observed to be true and never observed to be false.”

Unchanging matter can never cause other unchanging matter to become changing matter. Your argument is not based on observation or the senses - unchanging matter has not been observed - and it has galaxy-sized holes in it that A-T attempts to fill by way of philosophical argument. Try filling those existential holes yourself using only the methods of science and travel the existential road to nowhere.

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

Newton built upon Galileo and formulated these principles in his great work known as the Principia:

Yes, both Galileo and Newton knew the limits of physics but both, like Aquinas held the monotheist metaphysical view that God created the universe and the laws governing it.

They were not confused that the study of natural philosophy was not the study of God per se, but that the study of natural philosophy would not be possible without presupposing God.

When we adhere to the admonition of Aquinas to use what is manifest and evident to our senses, and we admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances, then the whole of A-T becomes unnecessary.

Well, the First Way is not an admonishment but just a good starting point according to Aquinas since he listed 4 other arguments...as you know. Nor is Newton's first rule a denial that the universe was designed and governed by God as shown in the General Scholium of the Principia.

This looks pretty desperate if you feel you have to take theist quotes out of context, intentionally imply they mean something different than the author intended and munge them together to reach a non-sequitur conclusion. Desperate, but not unexpected.

But it is gratifying to see so many geniuses agreed on God's existence and dominion. But don't worry Strawdusty, you don't have to be a genius to believe in God. :-)

bmiller said...

@SteveK,

travel the existential road to nowhere.

Hey! I like that. It's poetic. I may have to steal it :-)

bmiller said...

I have a complaint.

Strawdusty cheated. He purposely posted a series of short comments in order to roll the comment-odometer past the 3000 mark. :-)

StardustyPsyche said...

bmiller said.. November 05, 2017 3:21 PM.

". The energy of photons decrease while traveling through expanding space as explained here: Energy is not Conserved."
--OK, so we don't need god to account for more new stuff, it just expands into being all on its own!

But seriously folks, the truth is nobody knows what dark energy is, what dark matter is, or what properties they have.

Carroll is way out on the edge on this one. If photons are losing energy and space is gaining energy how does he know that is not the process of conservation?

The truth is nobody knows and what is actually driving all this talk is a number of supernova detection that seem to tell us the rate of expansion of the universe is increasing, against the idea that gravity would be slowing it down.

This is all wonderful leading edge stuff an maybe someday it will become settled science. At this point it is exploratory mathematics and astronomy and cosmology.

StardustyPsyche said...

SteveK said.. November 05, 2017 4:15 PM.

" Unchanging matter can never cause other unchanging matter to become changing matter."
--That is very logical indeed.

Material unchanging in the existential respect never causes other material to change in the existential respect. Hence, no material ever changes in the existential respect.

Material changing in the structural respect mutually temporally interacts with other material also changing temporally in a complimentary structural respect. In simple terms, on thing gains what the other thing loses in a temporal transfer process. No new material is created. No material is lost. Material is temporally transferred from one collection to another collection.


" Your argument is not based on observation or the senses"
--My argument is based on the senses and entirely compatible with our sense experience.


" - unchanging matter has not been observed - "
--Material unchanging in the existential respect is always observed. Material temporally changing in the structural respect is always observed.

Pour a cup of water into an empty cup. Now pour it back, and pour it back again. The structural respect of the water is continuously changing. The existential respect of the water never changes, even if you spill some water or some water evaporates the same total amount of water still exists, perhaps in a puddle on the floor, perhaps as gas molecules in the air, but all the water material still exists.

Material never changes in its existential respect. (appologies to the speculative musings of Sean Carroll).

SteveK said...

Existential unicorns don’t change either. Like existential matter these little buggers are everywhere.

What is your point other than you are an armchair philosopher that makes a lot of assertions. How about making an argument that shows A-T is incorrect?

SteveK said...

I find it wonderfully ironic that Dusty started off arguing that science shows that an unchanging changer is both irrational and unnecessary and now Dusty is arguing the opposite. Now we hear from the boy-genius that science shows the unchanging changer exists. It’s existential matter!!!

You cannot make this stuff up.

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

"Carroll is way out on the edge on this one."

Not in the least. The mathematics were worked out in the 1920s. It's a direct result of the (Noether) defintion of the conservation of a quantity as having time translation symmetry and the fact that an expanding universe does not have that symmetry. As Carrol explained here:

"When the space through which particles move is changing, the total energy of those particles is not conserved."

This observation of the redshift of receding galaxies has been observed for a century, so energy conservation simply does not hold in an expanding universe and it has been known since then.

But as I suspected, it was never conservation laws or science that fueled your disbelief in God in the first place. Thanks for showing us again that you would abandon science in a heartbeat if it could possibly lead to belief in God.

bmiller said...

@SteveK,

You can tell from his examples that he confuses form/matter combinations with purely formless matter and that he doesn't understand the objections we've brought forward.

It's a pity he won't read a book, interact with objections or at least ask questions about the objections. Yet he complains about being called a troll.

SteveK said...

@bmiller
As confused as Pa Kettle

bmiller said...

Ha ha. I liked that.

StardustyPsyche said...


Blogger bmiller said.. November 06, 2017 9:45 AM.

@SteveK,

" You can tell from his examples that he confuses form/matter combinations with purely formless matter"
--Those are ancient notions dreamed up with nothing more than naked eye observation and imagination.

I discuss reality in terms of science. To "understand" the fantasies of ancient mythology is to live in a fantasy existence.

Matter/energy never changes in its existential respect. The evidence for this scientific fact is all around us, and is confirmed again and again in physics experiments and nuclear reactions.

Since matter/energy never changes in its existential respect there is no call for a changer to explain persistent existence of matter/energy.

SteveK said...

So after 3000+ comments arguing that the FW is an abject failure, Dusty now changes his mind and sez science shows that the FW is correct. The one exception is that Aquinas gets the last line wrong. God is not the unchanging changer, it's existential matter!

Huzzah!!

StardustyPsyche said...

SteveK said...

" So after 3000+ comments arguing that the FW is an abject failure, Dusty now changes his mind and sez science shows that the FW is correct"
--Science says the opening sentences are correct, that it is manifest and evident to our senses that something moves.

That is a good start, scientifically, to reason from what is manifest and evident to our senses. Unfortunately, Aquinas goes on to make a series of errors in the rest of his argument.

"God is not the unchanging changer, it's existential matter!"
--The unchanging existential respect of material is not an unchanging changer, it is simply unchanging.

The changing structural respect of material is not an unchanging changer, it is a changing changer.

Change does indeed call for a changer. Since all change occurs over time and all changers are themselves changed in the process of changing something else, all change is accounted for by a temporal multibody mutually causal system process. Thus, to raise the question of the origin of change requires a temporal regress analysis, not a hierarchical regress analysis.

To account for observed structure calls for a hierarchical regress that is not a regress of changes and is not a regress of causes, rather, it is a regress of abstractions, of human models. The terminus of that heirarchical regress is what Feser calls "the deepest laws of nature whatever they turn out to be", or simply fundamental physics.

SteveK said...

>> "The unchanging existential respect of material is not an unchanging changer, it is simply unchanging."

If it causes no change then it's irrelevant to anything we are discussing. Why bring up irrelevant topics? Speaking of irrelevant topics, unicorns cause no change and I'm quite certain, like existential matter, they also exist.

StardustyPsyche said...

SteveK said... November 10, 2017 1:13 PM

>> "The unchanging existential respect of material is not an unchanging changer, it is simply unchanging."

" If it causes no change then it's irrelevant to anything we are discussing. Why bring up irrelevant topics? "
--Feser, like Haines and other A-T proponent say that an unchanged changer is called for to account for the persistence of material moment to moment. They are wrong. That error by those who profess A-T is relevant. It is relevant to the OP because the OP makes that error.

SteveK said...

>> "It is relevant to the OP because the OP makes that error."
LOL! Dusty continues to be confused.

The OP does NOT make that error because the FW is not making that argument. I made that clear on November 4, 2017 when I quoted Feser saying this.

Quoting Feser from "Aquinas":
"That is to say, just as the First Way is meant to show that no motion or change would occur here and now unless there were a first unmoved mover operating here and now, the Second Way is meant to show that nothing would even exist here and now unless there were a first uncaused cause sustaining things in being here and now."

StardustyPsyche said...

SteveK said...

>> "It is relevant to the OP because the OP makes that error."
" LOL! Dusty continues to be confused."
--A-T says, according to Feser, that a first changer is required to account for continued existence of material moment to moment. Feser says, that without that first changer material would "blink out" of existence.

That is A-T doctrine, which is utter nonsense. This erroneous principle is also mentioned by David Haines in the OP, making it relevant to the OP.

No changer is called for at all for persistent existence because persistent existence is no change in the existential respect of material.

bmiller said...

@SteveK,

LOL! Dusty continues to be confused.

No fair SteveK! You actually quoted the author to demonstrate your point.
That is Kryptonite to the yarn spinning GNU's.

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

--A-T says, according to Feser, that a first changer is required to account for continued existence of material moment to moment. Feser says, that without that first changer material would "blink out" of existence.

No he did not. Ever. You make stuff up and ignore responses. Then you cry about being called a troll and wonder why. How unreflective.

SteveK quoted Feser twice showing you that the First Way and the Second Way are different arguments and in fact I posted the Second Way November 03, 2017 8:41 AM. But those are only the latest responses to your claims dating back to July.

Can you not understand the points your opponents are making?

SteveK said...

Dusty has earned his reputation as a troll and apparently he’s proud of it.

Unknown said...

I have been away for awhile and I've quickly perused what's transpired. I see, same same.

I'll start with stevek's earlier attempt (by posting an image of a scribbled out letter?) to try to defend this ridiculous claim:

stevek: “I’m a mechanical engineer. Some of your prior statements made me think to ask these questions. I know how this stuff behaves here on earth, but was wondering if space changed anything. Which brings me to my final thoughts.”

Above stevek indicates that he thinks that space has magical properties, (like the firmament and heavens, I suppose), in which physical interactions occur differently than they do on earth.

This isn’t the wondering of someone who has a basic science education, let alone one who has completed a degree in mechanical enginnering.

Still, you are stupid you think you can lie (by posting a scribbled out letter?!?!?!( your way out of your lie.

Is that what you think will fool people into believing you didn’t lie when you said you were a (guffaw) mechanical engineer? That you could write as many silly, confused things as you have (see, above, as a typical example), and that we are supposed to dismiss that and take you at your word that didn’t lie when you (guffaw) blurted out that you are actually a mechanical engineer?

Are you truly that stupid? (Rhetorical, I know, but the bottom is still something we’re trying to find here.)

Some other gems for our “ahem” mechanical engineer:

Stevek (the liar): “If the mechanical properties of steel (titanium, etc) are mostly unchanged in space, then the rod will not compress at all because a human cannot generate the necessary force.”

Mostly unchanged in space? A human can’t generate force in space? You are so stupid you don’t even know how stupid this sounds to anyone who has a basic science education.

Stevek (the liar): “Will the rod move as a whole or just deform like a rope? This gets trickier for me. Space supposedly has little to no friction so very little force should be required to move a huge mass (in theory).”

Of course the rod compresses when it is moved, because that is how we observe the transferral of force. Anyone who has taken basic (high school) physics should know this, let alone someone who has supposedly (guffaw) completed a degree in mechanical engineering. And space doesn’t “supposedly” have little to no friction — it has exactly as much friction to offer as there are surrounding bodies in which it can make contact (which is practically none).

stevek: “If the applied stress is low the rod will not deform.”

Wrong. A mechanical engineer would know this.

stevek: “Since it remains rigid and undeformed both ends will start to move at *approximately* the SAME TIME - just like here on earth.”

Wrong. A mechanical engineer would know this.

You are a liar. Which explains your immense stupidity, which is not only on display in your ignorance of basic science, but in how equally ignorant you imagine others to be.

If you have to lie to defend your beliefs, and others are so ignorant or morally corrupt that they accept or excuse your lie, do you think that makes your beliefs seem more respectable?

StardustyPsyche said...


Blogger bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

--A-T says, according to Feser, that a first changer is required to account for continued existence of material moment to moment. Feser says, that without that first changer material would "blink out" of existence.

" No he did not. Ever"
"blink out" is at 12:15

12:10 "Regress...existence at any moment...water could blink out, it could be annihilated. It could go from existence to non existence.
There must be something actualizing that water, keeping it in being."

46: Can You Prove God Exists? —Dr. Edward Feser
PatrickCoffin.media
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hi9cQHHyjg

bmiller said...

Ah.
Now Little Cal has come back with with his ignorant, irrelevant, libelist claims and ad hominem attacks in a discussion regarding the First Way.

The topic is the First Way, so your personal attacks are irrelevant. An intelligent person would realize this....Oh, I forgot who was posting.

Little Cal, who has never taken "high school physics" is pontificating on what is covered in "high school physics". How delusional and dishonest of him. I know this is not true of all atheists, so it must only be a certain sub-standard set of them that have these defects.

In 11 months of telling people how he knows more about science has he ever supplied a reference to support his claims?

StardustyPsyche said...

OP
"If at any moment this unchanging changer ceased to cause change, then all changing things would cease to exist."

--Here David Haines commits the classical A-T error, conflating change with existence, and assuming change must be continuously imparted hierarchically.

Feser clears up the ambiguity in the David Haines statement by stating clearly that objects require continuous actualization by god to be maintained in existence, and absent that continuous actualization by god they would blink out of existence.

Both assertions are false.
To account for change we need only examine the temporal mutual causation processof a multibody system.

To account for continued existence no actualization is called for, since material is already actualized in its existential sense so that to continue in its existential sense is no change.

These are the subjects of the OP because David Haines wrote on more than the First Way in the OP. These are the subjects of Feser because he has made his absurd claims about the need for a god to sustain material existence moment to moment many times.

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

Feser says, that without that first changer material would "blink out" of existence.

" No he did not. Ever"
"blink out" is at 12:15


I repeat: No, he did not. Ever.

This another example of your inability to read responses or in this case to understand what Feser was saying.

There is an argument from motion, but there is also an argument of (efficient) causes. That distinction is what I pointed as early as July and SteveK pointed out in 2 posts quoting Feser. You have not responded to any of those, but maintained that Feser claims something that he did not.

12:04 is the point in the video you referenced where Feser transitions from the First Way to the Second Way.
"but it not only has to do with the water undergoing a change, but the very existence of the water"

SteveK said...

We have 2 trolls. I almost forgot about dishonest Cal, who just fulfilled my earlier prediction.

>> "Above stevek indicates that he thinks that space has magical properties"

The fact that tests are performed in space to see how the response differs confirms there is a difference in behavior. You are a dishonest person.

Me = +1
Lying Cal = 0

>> "Of course the rod compresses when it is moved, because that is how we observe the transferral of force."

I said "deform like a rope"? You are a dishonest person.

Me = +2
Lying Cal = 0

>> "Wrong. A mechanical engineer would know this"

Since I was referencing what is happening at the macro scale, I'm right. When you rest a feather on a brick does that stress deform the brick on the macro scale? No. When you push a brick, do both ends move at *approximately* the same time? Yes. You are a dishonest person.

Final Score
Me = +3
Lying Cal = 0

StardustyPsyche said...

Stardusty Psyche said...


Blogger bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

--A-T says, according to Feser,

A-T says, according to Feser...

A-T says...

That is what I said, and that is what Feser said, frequently.

SteveK said...

@bmiller
When you listen to the latest podcast that Feser links to on his blog, you cannot help but see the similarities between Richard Dawkins and the 2 trolls here on this blog. They get so much wrong that it's hard to know where to start. That ignorance doesn't inhibit their Trollish behavior, it seems to fuel it. Take a listen

http://pintswithaquinas.com/podcast/ed-feser-responds-to-richard-dawkins-on-thomas-5-ways/

StardustyPsyche said...

The unchanging existential respect of material does not call for an unchanging changer, it is simply unchanging.

Change does indeed call for a changer. Since all change occurs over time and all changers are themselves changed in the process of changing something else, all change is accounted for by a temporal multibody mutually causal system process. Thus, to raise the question of the origin of change requires a temporal regress analysis, not a hierarchical regress analysis.

To account for observed structure calls for a hierarchical regress that is not a regress of changes and is not a regress of causes, rather, it is a regress of abstractions, of human models. The terminus of that hierarchical regress is what Feser calls "the deepest laws of nature whatever they turn out to be", or simply fundamental physics.



Simple folk and medieval writers can be excused for thinking there is some merit to Thomistic views, A-T views. They just don't know or didn't know any better.

For a modern educated person to fail to see the glaring absurdity of A-T is a problem of selective idiocy, an individual who is functional in many respects, but breaks down to the level of abject stupidity with respect to A-T.

SteveK said...

You are a troll

Unknown said...

bmiller: "The topic is the First Way, so your personal attacks are irrelevant. An intelligent person would realize this....Oh, I forgot who was posting."

I have pointed out that stevek and you are dishonest. Since honesty is a sine qua non of discussion, your attempts to pretend that we are discussing the First Way is laughable. You are not participants in a discussion; your evident dishonesty excludes you from discussion.

Your dishonesty means that your thoughts and opinions are irrelevant to others. You could fix this, but you choose to remain dishonest. And so your thoughts remain irrelevant to me, and to others.

bmiller: "Little Cal, who has never taken "high school physics" is pontificating on what is covered in "high school physics". How delusional and dishonest of him. I know this is not true of all atheists, so it must only be a certain sub-standard set of them that have these defects."

Your shabby character makes you so stupid that you now think that I have never taken high school physics. Your dishonesty makes you stupider.

bmiller: "In 11 months of telling people how he knows more about science has he ever supplied a reference to support his claims?"

You are so dishonest that you think that a reference (like a certificate) is a decisive or important component of demonstrating an understanding of physics and basic science. You are so stupid that you don't recognize that my comments represent an understanding of physics and basic science, and that yours and stevek's do not.

Stevek knows that he is not a mechanical engineer, yet he continues to lie that he is. You know that you haven't taken basic science, like at a good high school or university with lab work, and yet you continue to pretend that you have.

The fact that you both know the truth about yourselves, and that others like myself who have this basic background (which you do not) can easily see through your deception, should discourage you from pretending any further.

But your shabby characters (dishonesty, and pride) prevent you from confronting your own dishonesty, and thus condemn you to the stupidity that you choose to wallow in.

Hence, your dishonesty makes you stupider.

Sic.

Unknown said...

Stardusty: “—A-T says, according to Feser, that a first changer is required to account for continued existence of material moment to moment. Feser says, that without that first changer material would "blink out" of existence.”
bmiller: “No he did not. Ever. You make stuff up and ignore responses. Then you cry about being called a troll and wonder why. How unreflective.”

Feser: “In general, on Aristotle and Aquinas’s analysis, change always involves going from potential to actual, the actualization of a potential, to be semi-fancy about it, right? So, the idea is that when we want to explain any change, we have to trace it to what actualized that potential. Typically, that’s something else which is going from potential to actual. So we’ve got to kind of, regress or series of causes and effects [sic], but it not only has to do with the water undergoing a change, but with the very existence of the water at any given moment. The water right now could in principle BLINK OUT, it COULD BE ANNIHILATED, it COULD GO FROM EXISTENCE TO NON-EXISTENCE. And yet it doesn’t. Something you might say, is actualizing that water, keeping it in being. So the idea is that when we trace this series of changes, we trace this series more generally of one thing being actualized by another being actualized by another, the only place the buck can stop, the only place the explanation can stop, is with something that can actualize without itself being actualized. What Aristotle calls an unmoved mover, or unchangeable changer.”

Like stevek, you blurted out something that is not just evidently false, but objectively false. And when you say something that is verifiably false, you still deny it.

bmiller: “I repeat: No, he did not. Ever.”

Feser: “The water right now could in principle BLINK OUT, it COULD BE ANNIHILATED, it COULD GO FROM EXISTENCE TO NON-EXISTENCE.”

You are dishonest. You have no place in a discussion. Your thoughts and opinions are meaningless and irrelevant to others, because you have chosen the path of resolute dishonesty.

You are an apologist.

bmiller said...

@Little Cal,

Your dishonesty means that your thoughts and opinions are irrelevant to others. You could fix this, but you choose to remain dishonest. And so your thoughts remain irrelevant to me, and to others.


The fact of the matter is that you owe SteveK an apology for libeling him. A person with a smidgen of moral character would do that.
You will not. The case of Little Dishonest Cal is closed.

It's amusing to watch you project your own dishonesty on others. It seems that your continued projection may actually be a case of something that doesn't change. 😄

SteveK said...

Dusty: "A-T says, according to Feser, that a first changer (the First Way) is required to account for continued existence of material moment to moment.

Feser: "but it not only has to do with the water undergoing a change (the First Way), but with the very existence of the water at any given moment (the Second Way)."

Quoting Feser from "Aquinas":
"That is to say, just as the First Way is meant to show that no motion or change would occur here and now unless there were a first unmoved mover operating here and now, the Second Way is meant to show that nothing would even exist here and now unless there were a first uncaused cause sustaining things in being here and now."

bmiller: "12:04 is the point in the video you referenced where Feser transitions from the First Way to the Second Way."

Reading comprehension. It's a thing.

A-T does not say a first CHANGER is required for continued existence. Dusty repeatedly argues that is makes no sense that a CHANGER would be necessary for NO CHANGE. Well, duh! Nobody is arguing for this. Not Aquinas. Not Feser.

If Dusty would revise his statements so they accurately reflect what A-T is saying, then this little disagreement would go away. He won't do that because he's a troll - and Cal is his little troll sidekick.

SteveK said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
SteveK said...

There's no evidence that Cal has taken any physics. None.

a) Cal thinks cause/effect are not simultaneous.
b) Cal thinks a cause in the past produces an effect sometime in the future.
c) Cal thinks objects cannot be moved as rigid bodies.
d) Cal thinks a human in space can generate the force to deform a titanium rod simply by causing it to move.
e) Cal thinks a low stress can cause titanium rods to deform 'like a rope'
f) Cal thinks there's no difference in the behavior of objects in space vs. on earth

bmiller said...

@Little Cal,

SteveK beat me to it, but let me go over it yet again.

Like stevek, you blurted out something that is not just evidently false, but objectively false. And when you say something that is verifiably false, you still deny it.

bmiller: “I repeat: No, he did not. Ever.”


For goodness' sake you can't even understand what you quoted. Even after I pointed out the context of the snippet Strawdusty selected demonstrated he was wrong here November 10, 2017 9:45 PM.


Once again, this is the context:
but it not only has to do with the water undergoing a change, but with the very existence of the water at any given moment. The water right now could in principle BLINK OUT, it COULD BE ANNIHILATED, it COULD GO FROM EXISTENCE TO NON-EXISTENCE. .


The bolded words tell you that the topic is no longer about *change*, and now the topic is focused on efficient causes. So, no, he did not say a changer is required for something that is not changing.

Aside from the plain words of Feser, that understanding is supported on this very page by SteveK's quote from "Aquinas" November 10, 2017 3:14 PM. The misunderstanding has been addressed since July without a response.

Troll along now.

StardustyPsyche said...

SteveK said...

" Dusty: "A-T says, according to Feser, that a first changer (the First Way) is required to account for continued existence of material moment to moment."
--Liar.

You added words I did not use, then you put them in quotes and attributed them to me.

Unknown said...

bmiller: "For goodness' sake you can't even understand what you quoted."

You makes yourself appear ridiculous. I'll draw it out, since your persistent dishonesty seem to make you even stupider than I can somehow imagine.

Stardusty said: “—A-T says, according to Feser, that a first changer is required to account for continued existence of material moment to moment. Feser says, that without that first changer material would "blink out" of existence.”

Which caused you to blurt out,

bmiller: “No he did not. Ever."

Not only do you assume to know everything Feser has ever said (ha), but you make a claim that is easily falsified by the record.

Stardusty points out that Feser has argued that a first changer is required to account for continued existence of material moment to moment. Feser says, that without that first changer material would "blink out" of existence", in which he also quotes directly using Feser's term "blink out."
You claim (falsely): “No he did not. Ever."

How can we determine who is right? We don't need to guess. We don't need to falsely claim "context." We can review the tape, in which Feser says,

Feser: "The water right now could in principle BLINK OUT, it COULD BE ANNIHILATED, it COULD GO FROM EXISTENCE TO NON-EXISTENCE. And yet it doesn’t. Something you might say, is actualizing that water, keeping it in being. So the idea is that when we trace this series of changes, we trace this series more generally of one thing being actualized by another being actualized by another, the only place the buck can stop, the only place the explanation can stop, is with something that can actualize without itself being actualized. What Aristotle calls an unmoved mover, or unchangeable changer.”

And that is what dishonesty does to you.

Not only does it make you stupider, but it also requires you to shut your eyes tight, plug your ears, and stamp your feet that your false claim can somehow be redeemed by your silly claim of "context."

It can't. You (falsely) claimed that Feser NEVER said something in which Stardusty represented and quoted Feser's words.

In order for you to be correct, you would need to argue something like the videtape of Feser is not really Feser, or somesuch.

The fact that you are a liar and that this makes you stupid is demonstrated yet again.

The fact that you are apparently so morally reprehensible that you are actually blind is becoming a secondary speculation, one for which we have a growing body of evidence.

Why do I bring this up?

Beause you (falsely) claim that you are trying to discuss the First Way. But since you cannot be honest in this discussion, I am pointing out that you are not actually trying to discuss the First Way as you (falsely) claim. It appears that you are trying to salvage some pride.

All evidence to the contrary.

Unknown said...

stevek: “There's no evidence that Cal has taken any physics. None.
a) Cal thinks cause/effect are not simultaneous.
b) Cal thinks a cause in the past produces an effect sometime in the future.
c) Cal thinks objects cannot be moved as rigid bodies.
d) Cal thinks a human in space can generate the force to deform a titanium rod simply by causing it to move.
e) Cal thinks a low stress can cause titanium rods to deform 'like a rope'
f) Cal thinks there's no difference in the behavior of objects in space vs. on earth”

This is hysterical. As you (falsely) claim that there is no evidence that I have taken any physics course, and continue to try to prop up your laughable claim to be a mechanical engineer, you list your own misunderstandings of basic physics!

When you’re ignorant of a topic in which you try to (falsely) claim authority, it’s generally a bad idea to make pronouncements on that topic. This makes your ignorance clearer to the audience.

stevek: “a) Cal thinks cause/effect are not simultaneous.
b) Cal thinks a cause in the past produces an effect sometime in the future.”

This is manifestly true. It is a bedrock principle of physics. It is why we observe things on a macro level like, for instance, a sound wave from an explosion arriving after seeing the flash. The cause of the light and the shockwave, the explosion that caused them, necessarily occurred prior to our observing them (from the standpoint of the observer). To not understand that events occur in a series over time, and that time is dependent on the observer, is to declare that you do not understand basic physics.

Thus, your claim of being a mechanical engineer is more laughable than a more modest claim that you understand basic physics and basic science (which you manifestly do not).

stevek: “d) Cal thinks a human in space can generate the force to deform a titanium rod simply by causing it to move.
e) Cal thinks a low stress can cause titanium rods to deform 'like a rope'”

This one is even funnier. Yes, if the rod is going to change position, a force must be applied. And that force will, on the micro level, deform the rod. Necessarily. There is no such thing as a rigid body in physics (not at the micro level). If you were actually mechanical engineer, you would know this. If you had taken basic physics, you would know this. Why don’t you know this? All evidence points to the simple and undeniable fact that you are merely a (bad) liar.

stevek: “f) Cal thinks there's no difference in the behavior of objects in space vs. on earth”

Not what I said. The fact that you struggle to understand and represent my simple statement of fact, which was, “ And space doesn’t “supposedly” have little to no friction — it has exactly as much friction to offer as there are surrounding bodies in which it can make contact (which is practically none).” as you have above shows that you are a) dishonest, and b) this dishonesty makes you as stupid as you appear here.

Which is quite an extraordinary level of stupid.

Which reminds me of this bit of housekeeping:

bmiller: “The fact of the matter is that you owe SteveK an apology for libeling him.”

Stevek is manifestly a liar. You are acting as his his dupe. That you would confuse stevek with a mechanical engineer, and my identifying his obvious lie, as a libel just goes to show how stupid your own moral failings make you. Your dishonesty prevents you from recognizing a lie, it turns you into a dupe, and it leads you to making accusations that contradict the evidence. Which is, I suppose, the fate of all apologists.

Sic.

StardustyPsyche said...

stevek:
f) Cal thinks there's no difference in the behavior of objects in space vs. on earth”
--Say there Steve, when you took your engineering courses did they teach you stuff works differently in space? Like, maybe, there are 2 sets of physics equations, space physics equations and Earth physics equations?

Have you ever heard of the cosmological principle?

Newsflash, you are in space, it's just that there is a lot of stuff also in space very near to you.

How do I know these facts? Because I have a Master of Science in Engineering degree, and here is the proof:
https://kek.gg/i/7FDfNb.jpg

bmiller said...

@Little Cal,

How can we determine who is right? We don't need to guess. We don't need to falsely claim "context." We can review the tape, in which Feser says,

Ha ha! What do you not understand about the phrase 1) "but it not only has to do with the water undergoing a change".
What do you not understand about the phrase 2) "but with the very existence of the water at any given moment.

Let me help you. It means that 1) we have stopped talking about change and 2) we have started to talk about existence.

Your following selective quote ignores the 25 words directly preceding it and you've repeatedly ignored us pointing out the fact that Feser does not restrict himself to the First Way in that segment and indeed transistions to the Second Way with those 25 words.

In case anyone is confused by what he meant, we have his writings to inspect, and indeed SteveK provided this quote from Aquinas:

SteveK:
Quoting Feser from "Aquinas":
"That is to say, just as the First Way is meant to show that no motion or change would occur here and now unless there were a first unmoved mover operating here and now, the Second Way is meant to show that nothing would even exist here and now unless there were a first uncaused cause sustaining things in being here and now."


This has been the consistent, unanswered reply to Strawdusty's false claim since July. Repeating nonsense does not make it true.

And that is what dishonesty does to you.

Not only does it make you stupider, but it also requires you to shut your eyes tight, plug your ears, and stamp your feet that your false claim can somehow be redeemed by your silly claim of "context."


This is particularly funny. You dishonestly cut out the precisely the part of the quote that establishes the context and then claim I am dishonest. More trollish projection.

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

How do I know these facts? Because I have a Master of Science in Engineering degree, and here is the proof:

Is that where they taught you that your dead grandfather was actually helping you type your posts :-)

bmiller said...

@Little Cal,

bmiller: “The fact of the matter is that you owe SteveK an apology for libeling him.”

Stevek is manifestly a liar.


Repeating libel does not make it true. But it does reveal your lack of character....again.

SteveK said...

>> “Say there Steve, when you took your engineering courses did they teach you stuff works differently in space?”

Different environments often produce different behaviors. We conduct experiments in space for that reason. So, yeah.

Unknown said...

bmiiler (become even more shrill now): "Let me help you. It means that 1) we have stopped talking about change..."

As speculated, your dishonesty makes you not just stupid, but blind. From the quote in which you (falsely) claimed that Feser did not, EVER, say that without an unchangeable changer (or unmoved mover), things would just "blink out":

Feser: "So the idea is that when we trace this series of CHANGES, we trace this series more generally of one thing being actualized by another being actualized by another, the only place the buck can stop, the only place the explanation can stop, is with something that can actualize without itself being actualized. What Aristotle calls an UNMOVED MOVER, or UNCHANGEABLE CHANGER.”

The full quote yet again:

Feser: "Feser: “In general, on Aristotle and Aquinas’s analysis, change always involves going from potential to actual, the actualization of a potential, to be semi-fancy about it, right? So, the idea is that when we want to explain any change, we have to trace it to what actualized that potential. Typically, that’s something else which is going from potential to actual. So we’ve got to kind of, regress or series of causes and effects [sic], but it not only has to do with the water undergoing a change, but with the very existence of the water at any given moment. The water right now could in principle BLINK OUT, it COULD BE ANNIHILATED, it COULD GO FROM EXISTENCE TO NON-EXISTENCE. And yet it doesn’t. Something you might say, is actualizing that water, keeping it in being. So the idea is that when we trace this series of changes, we trace this series more generally of one thing being actualized by another being actualized by another, the only place the buck can stop, the only place the explanation can stop, is with something that can actualize without itself being actualized. What Aristotle calls an unmoved mover, or unchangeable changer.”

You made a false claim -- that Feser NEVER said something that the tape shows he clearly did.

Because you are dishonest, and proud (of what I cannot, at this point, guess), you are blind to the simple fact that:

a) you made a false claim that Feser never, EVER, said something,
and
b) the tape shows that he clearly said the thing -- that something like water would, indeed, just "blink out" were it not for an unchanged changer (or unmoved mover).

Your cry of context does not change the simple fact above.

And when you are both dishonest and proud, you become so stupid that you not only can't grasp simple concepts, but apparently you also become blind to what is manifestly obvious to the rest of us.

Which is why your claim to be trying to discuss the First Way here is shown to be false.

Which is another reason why discussion with apologists becomes impossible.

Unknown said...

I repeat.

Stevek knows that he is not actually a mechanical engineer.

And yet he persists in pretending that he is one.

This makes him a liar, and betrays a false pride that makes him appear as stupid as he does here.

That should be a life tip for anyone not blinded by the kind of moral failings we see on display among the pair of apologists here.

SteveK said...

I reference deformation at the macro-level and lying dishonest Cal says I’m really referring to the micro-level in order to manufacture a controversy and avoid discussing the FW argument. Cal is a dishonest, repugnant troll.

SteveK said...

Stop lying about what I know, Cal.

SteveK said...

The dishonesty occurs when people put misleading words in people’s mouth, despite being correctly repeatedly. According to Dusty, A-T says a changer is needed for no change. Nope.

Unknown said...

Me: "Stevek knows that he is not actually a mechanical engineer."
Stevek: "Stop lying about what I know, Cal."

Three options:

1. You are actually a mechanical engineer (all evidence to the contrary).
2. You are delusional, and actually think you are a mechanical engineer (despite the fact that you clearly lack an understanding of science, let alone a thorough grasp of mechanical engineering).
3. You know that you are not actually a mechanical engineer, but you persist in lying, because you fear losing face here.

All three are possible. But 3 is WAAAYYYY more likely. It is so much more likely that, as I have indicated, one would have to be dupe to choose 1, and respect you even less in order to choose 2.

Here's what is clear to me, and to Stardusty, and to anyone else with a basic understanding of science. You lied, and you continue to lie to save face, and that you tell yourself that it ultimately doesn't really matter because you're just having fun on the internet, etc.

But the fact is that a lie is still a lie. And that when someone has to resort to lying in an attempt to gain authority for what they're saying, then we have a clear indication that not only is this person dishonest, but their opinions in a discussion can be ignored because they are not only meaningless but counterproductive. And virtually every time, what they are arguing for makes as much sense as lying on the internet.

But, of course, you are too prideful to admit what is obvious to the rest of us -- that are a (bad) liar -- and this is why, as I have said a couple of times now, dishonesty makes you stupider than you would otherwise be.

Ignorance is largely a result of circumstances beyond one's control. But dishonesty is a choice. And so long as you choose to be dishonest, you will deserve to have your persistent stupidity pointed out, every time.


SteveK said...

Stop lying about what I know

StardustyPsyche said...

Cal Metzger said...

" Me: "Stevek knows that he is not actually a mechanical engineer."
Stevek: "Stop lying about what I know, Cal."

Three options:

1. You are actually a mechanical engineer (all evidence to the contrary)."

--Wait up a second there, Cal, Steve provided evidence, so we should give that evidence all the respect it deserves. Although, he only showed us some scrawled up letter from some society that looked a lot like junk mail, but still, it had the name Steve printed on it.

But my evidence is much more credible than his, after all, I have provided an actual picture of a diploma with my name on it.
https://kek.gg/i/7FDfNb.jpg

SteveK said...

Me: "a) Cal thinks cause/effect are not simultaneous.
Me: "b) Cal thinks a cause in the past produces an effect sometime in the future."
Cal: "This is manifestly true. It is a bedrock principle of physics."

Here Cal admits to the world that he knows nothing about the bedrock principles of logic, or physics.

Cal thinks that physics studies contradictory realities where Object A acts upon Object B with Force C, but Object B doesn't simultaneously experience Force C until sometime in the future. In Cal's world of irrational anti-realism, Object A is both acting upon Object B and not acting upon Object B at the same time.

bmiller said...

@Little Cal,

As speculated, your dishonesty makes you not just stupid, but blind.

More projection. You merely select parts of my response and ignore others, starting with ignoring 2).
Feser moves from discussing water changing to water existing and existence as being kept in a state of being. He concludes that not only must there be an ultimate explanation for motion, but also for existence itself. You ignored this even though you quoted it:


"So the idea is that when we trace this series of changes, we trace this series more generally of one thing being actualized by another being actualized by another, the only place the buck can stop, the only place the explanation can stop, is with something that can actualize without itself being actualized."


Now its true that this is "What Aristotle calls an unmoved mover, or unchangeable changer.”,
but that is different from this claim:

--A-T says, according to Feser, that a first changer is required to account for continued existence of material moment to moment. Feser says, that without that first changer material would "blink out" of existence.

No changer is called for at all for persistent existence because persistent existence is no change in the existential respect of material.


Thomism also calls God Pure Act and the Uncaused Cause along with the Unmoved Mover. So the claim that Feser is saying that the Unmoved Mover keeps things in existence in virtue of His attribute of being the source of motion is false as is shown where he distinguishs between change and existence. He is called the Unmoved Mover, Uncaused Cause, Necessary Being, Perfect Being and Ultimate Final Cause per each of the Five Ways. He is at the same time all of these.

What Feser *does in fact* say is that something is ultimately needed to explain keeping everything sustained in existence and later confirms that another name for that being is Pure Act.

But of course this was already pointed out multiple times. Most recently in the post you selectively quoted:

In case anyone is confused by what he meant, we have his writings to inspect, and indeed SteveK provided this quote from Aquinas:

SteveK:
Quoting Feser from "Aquinas":
"That is to say, just as the First Way is meant to show that no motion or change would occur here and now unless there were a first unmoved mover operating here and now, the Second Way is meant to show that nothing would even exist here and now unless there were a first un-caused cause sustaining things in being here and now."


Yeah. I don't consider it honest when someone selectively quotes my responses to avoid interacting with the counterpoints I pose.

bmiller said...

Here's what is clear to me, and to Stardusty, and to anyone else with a basic understanding of science.

Ha Ha Ha! Let me list some just some of the blunders from these 2 that claim they have a basic understanding of science:

1) F=ma is a conservation law (its a definition)
2) Location is not a property of an object (they denied science, oh my)
3) Inability to distinguish Force from Impulse
4) Deceased relatives apply force to sticks in the present
5) Never heard that instantaneous velocity is something actually calculated in physics (this is known at a high school level)
6) Unaware of the use of free body diagrams in physics classes

I could go on. But really these are so basic that there is no need to.
Anyone committing these blunders has no cred when they proclaim judgement on anyone else's competence in science.

And after all this blustering about how they claim to have some sort of superior knowledge of physics, neither one of them have actually claimed that they even took (not to mention passed) high school physics. That is obvious. What a joke.

SteveK said...

Here we learn that Cal has never taken a physics course or knows anything about free body diagrams. If Cal had the requisite knowledge, Cal would know that when the engine starts to pull, it is simultaneously acting on the object being pulled.

According to the explanation below, Cal's free body diagram of the engine starting to pull would show a tension force, but on the other object being pulled Cal would not have a tension force.

Cal believes that Newton's 3rd Law is "NEVER" realized. For that anti-scientific understanding of reality, Cal earns himself a solid 'F minus'.

-----------------------
Cal:
"Things move, yes. We all agree to that because we observe it, and this premise appears sound. But you are denying that the First Way introduces the implications of the past in reference to observed motion, which would make the argument unsound. Even in your example of tension in a train this appears to be a simultaneous event but is not. When the engine starts to pull, the tension travels through the cars not instantly, but at some velocity equal to or less than the speed of light (speed of sound?). In the same instant that the engine stops pulling the first car, there is a similar lag before each subsequent car is released from the force that was being applied by the engine. If you were to arbitrarily pick any point along the train, the force that you would identify that comes from the engine is present only because of a prior force applied — NEVER a concurrent one."

SteveK said...

Here we see dishonest Dusty repeating his lie about what A-T says. This after several people have corrected him. It’s obvious that Dusty is a troll.
- - - - - - - - - -
Dusty:
“Why is a changer called for to account for no change? Isn't it more reasonable to say that no change calls for no changer at all?”

“The Thomist says no, there is an invisible being, and that invisible being is changing stuff all the time in just the right way so it appears to be unchanged.”

StardustyPsyche said...

SteveK said...

" According to the explanation below, Cal's free body diagram of the engine starting to pull would show a tension force, but on the other object being pulled Cal would not have a tension force."
--It's the difference between statics and dynamics. This is why you very much seem to be a liar wrt your supposed ME education. Every ME knows the difference between statics and dynamics. You display your ignorance on this subject again and again, leading to a conclusion that you are probably a liar about being and ME

SteveK said...

Using terms you are unfamiliar with doesn’t make Newton’s 3rd law suddenly go away.

SteveK said...

@bmiller
You can add the denial of Newton's 3rd law to your list of blunders that the anti-science zealots have latched onto. Dusty is frantically waving his hands around shouting "dynamics!" in an attempt to hide his ignorance, but all that does is draw everyone's attention to it. Sad!

bmiller said...

@SteveK,

Dusty is frantically waving his hands around shouting "dynamics!" in an attempt to hide his ignorance, but all that does is draw everyone's attention to it. Sad!

Yep. Seems he thinks dynamics violates the 3rd law. Maybe it's that the deceased relatives come into play in his imaginary dynamics course that cause the violation.

StardustyPsyche said...

bmiller said...

" Seems he thinks dynamics violates the 3rd law. "
--Dynamics means that equal and opposite reactions, or mutual causation, takes time to propagate. Thus, every causal series is a temporal series and the notion of an "essential" series is illusory.

Newton got some things wrong. Later work has shown that forces do not act instantaneously at a distance.

An interpretation of any of Newtons "laws" as acting instantaneously at a distance is wrong.

Dynamics accounts for the propagation delay of every causal series and the fact that there is no such thing as a simultaneous causal series, and thus every causal series is "accidental".

SteveK said...

>> "Dynamics accounts for the propagation delay of every causal series and the fact that there is no such thing as a simultaneous causal series, and thus every causal series is "accidental".

Ohhhhh, I get it now! The tension force from the engine isn't acting on anything at first. That comes later, after the delay. First the tension force develops for no reason whatsoever - because that's how reality works, stuff just happens by magic - then sometime later the tension force acts on some other object to pull it.

You have the physics IQ of a fence post, and I'm being generous.

bmiller said...

--Dynamics means that equal and opposite reactions, or mutual causation, takes time to propagate.

Demonstrating once again he is ignorant of what goes on in statics and dynamics courses for engineering degrees.

Unknown said...

bmiller: "Demonstrating once again he is ignorant of what goes on in statics and dynamics courses for engineering degrees."
stevek: "According to the explanation below, Cal's free body diagram of the engine starting to pull would show a tension force, but on the other object being pulled Cal would not have a tension force."

It's obvious to those of us who have even just a basic background in science that you're both ignorant of what happens in science, physics, and engineering courses.

I suppose that you are correct that your dishonesty can fool other stupid people.

What's funniest to me is that the only two people you seem to be able to fool here is yourselves.

Here's what's true, btw:

Stevek knows that he is not actually a mechanical engineer.

bmiller is so untrained that he is a dupe for stevek's lies.

But so long as you two both agree, you're content with being stupid, together.

We call this apologetics.

SteveK said...

Morons who reject Newtons 3rd law aren't qualified to discuss physics. Move along little doggie.

bmiller said...

@Little Cal,

It's obvious to those of us who have even just a basic background in science that you're both ignorant of what happens in science, physics, and engineering courses.

Why are you including yourself among those with "just a basic background in science"?

The 6 items I listed November 11, 2017 6:28 PM demonstrate that you don't belong in that group. And those are just the first ones that popped into my head.

It's also funny to watch you tell other people they're dishonest while being dishonest. Projection.

bmiller said...

Diligent BS'ers would at least try to look like they knew what they were talking about. What we have here are laaazy BS'ers.

Unknown said...

Here's what's true, btw:

Stevek knows that he is not actually a mechanical engineer.

bmiller is so untrained that he is a dupe for stevek's lies.

But so long as you two both agree, you're content with being stupid, together.

We call this apologetics.

What follows from you two is just a continuation of the above.

The truth will always out.

Only one of us can be lying.

And that is why I am so comfortable with everything I've written, and why Stardusty's writing remains correct and consistent, and why you and stevek must constantly search for new ways to prop up your dishonesty here.

Apologetics!

SteveK said...

>> "And that is why I am so comfortable with everything I've written, and why Stardusty's writing remains correct and consistent..."

Yes, we know. As these 3000+ comments have clearly demonstrated, you and Dusty are comfortable with your dishonest statements, your projections, your denial of the 3rd law, and your misunderstandings of the FW argument.

SteveK said...

>> "And that is why I am so comfortable with everything I've written, and why Stardusty's writing remains correct and consistent..."

Yes, you're comfortable with the magical idea of tension forces acting on train engines but not simultaneously acting on some other object because "there is no such thing as a simultaneous causal series"

You're comfortable rejecting what is taught in the science classroom
You're comfortable in your ignorance.

Unknown said...

stevek: "Yes, we know. As these 3000+ comments have clearly demonstrated, you and Dusty are comfortable with your dishonest statements, your projections, your denial of the 3rd law, and your misunderstandings of the FW argument."

We have not been dishonest, and you have certainly haven't demonstrated where we have.

When I identify you as a liar, because you lied that you are actually a mechanical engineer, that is not projection; that is identification.

We haven't denied the 3rd law (whatever that means).

We are the only ones here who understand that the First Way is a bad argument, because of the many ways (explicated exhaustively) that the First Way violated the rules of good argument.

You are a liar, and discussion is impossible with liars. Bmiller is your dupe, and he is dishonest, and for those reasons discussion with him is impossible.

We are not having a discussion with you; we are pointing out the many, obvious ways that your dishonesty makes you both stupider -- so stupid that you are easily deceived, and make obviously poor determinations.

Sic.

Unknown said...

stevek: "You're comfortable rejecting what is taught in the science classroom"

You believe in the virgin birth, the resurrection, and the absurdity of the trinity.

Also, lying is inherently unscientific. And you have clearly lied here in a pathetic attempt to gain authority for your position, falsely claiming, "I'm a mechanical engineer."

You are not capable of discussion. Because you remain a liar. Still.




SteveK said...

You are dishonest, Cal. I know this for a fact.

SteveK said...

The science classroom explicitly teaches that tension forces are simultaneously acting on train engines and some other object. Cal and Dusty reject that explicit teaching.

Cal and Dusty believe that "there is no such thing as a simultaneous causal series"

Cal and Dusty are therefore unqualified to discuss the science of physics.

Sad!

Unknown said...

stevek: "I'm a mechanical engineer?"

How does a mechanical engineer have so much free time to regularly respond moments after comments pop up?

Hmmmm.

SteveK said...

It says a lot that Cal is more concerned about me and bmiller, than he is about his disagreement with the explicit teachings of science.

#AtheistPriorities

bmiller said...

Also, lying is inherently unscientific.

And Little Cal provides yet another example for why he is inherently unscientific. 😁

But of course what can we expect from an admitted Science™ Denier?

bmiller said...

From Feser's Blog regarding essentially ordered series:

I think if you read George's first comment regarding "simultaneous" and following ones, you will see he is emphasizing that focusing on simultaneity rather than instrumentality could lead the discussion down a rabbit hole (and indeed has with certain people whose name we shall not speak).

[Quote from SCG]
they must constitute by continuity or contiguity a sort of single mobile.

It is due to the reliance of each member on the previous member for it's own particular movement in time that is relevant (whether that duration of movement in time is short or long.) They must all exist at the same time for this to occur, but the motive force does not have to propagate from the first member to all members simultaneously.

The (intentional) confusion/assertion is that an essentially ordered series requires instantenous transmission of motive force otherwise it is an accidentally ordered series.

Some will intentionally take the word in a sense not intended by the author just to pollute a combox. Better to follow the blog owner's wishes and not engage those individuals on this blog.


This is a better example of the train/cars analogy of an essentially ordered series.

Things to notice during this particular movement:
1) All the cars of the train exist simultaneously during the train's movement.
2) All of the cars are moving and comprise the mobile of the train.
3) None of the cars are moving themselves.
4) Each of the cars are being made to move by the tension in the coupler from the previous car, not directly from the engine.(This is obvious since we see different tension in different couplers.)
5) If any of the cars ceased to exist or separated from the series, the following cars would no longer have a motive force.

So the analogy to a true essentially ordered series is this:
The caboose is moved by the car in front. That is moved by the car in front of it and so on. But there cannot be an infinite number of simulataneously existing cars that have no capability of self movement but yet all move unless there is something outside the category of things incapable of moving themselves yet moving.

So, whether the train ride is long or short is beside the point. What *is* relevant is that each member of the series must exist and must actually be the cause for the continued movement of another and that at least one member has to be of a different category of mover than the others. Ultimately that mover must be unmoved.

And yes, each since each member must actually exist, each member must be sustained in existence during the train ride or the series ceases to exist (as pointed out in 5 above).

Cheers.

Unknown said...

stevek: "It says a lot that Cal is more concerned about me and bmiller, than he is about his disagreement with the explicit teachings of science."

I'm not at all concerned about you.

I have pointed out that your opinions are meaningless to me, because you are dishonest, and dishonesty destroys discussion.

You want to pretend that you can have a discussion, but you are dishonest, and thus your pretending makes your contribution meaningless.

Only someone genuinely stupid, or dishonest, or both, would have trouble grasping and acceding to the above.

--------

Me: "Also, lying is inherently unscientific. And you [stevek] have clearly lied here in a pathetic attempt to gain authority for your position, falsely claiming, "I'm a mechanical engineer."
stevek: "You are dishonest, Cal. I know this for a fact."
Me: "Also, lying is inherently unscientific. "
bmiller: "And Little Cal provides yet another example for why he is inherently unscientific. 😁"

You are both so stupid that you confuse the possibility that I could be wrong (that stevek is somehow a mechanical engineer -- guffaw) about stevek being a liar as my either being a liar or honest. Even if I were somehow wrong, I would not be lying, per se -- I'd just be wrong. But stevek, he is either honest, or he is a liar.

And all evidence points to stevek being a liar.




Unknown said...

Housekeeping:

Me: "1. You are actually a mechanical engineer (all evidence to the contrary)."
Stardusty : "--Wait up a second there, Cal, Steve provided evidence, so we should give that evidence all the respect it deserves. Although, he only showed us some scrawled up letter from some society that looked a lot like junk mail, but still, it had the name Steve printed on it."

I am using the term evidence in the sense that explanations compete to explain "all the evidence" (in toto). In this particular case, all the evidence are stevek's comments, and they are best explained as stevek being not very smart, not very well-educated, and dishonest. That is the explanation that ties all the evidence together.

Throughout stevek's comments we can see that he is very slow or incapable of grasping easy concepts, can't apply discipline to his thinking, isn't familiar with scientific concepts or basic physics, and is routinely dishonest. There is a great deal of evidence for this, and that is why, when he provides an image that tries to fob off as demonstrating that he is an engineer, I view that as more evidence that he is not very smart, and dishonest. And if he is not a mechanical engineer (which he is evidently not, based on everything we've seen from him), then that image represents another case of his dishonesty -- not the lone exception that mismatches his prior comments.

SteveK said...

>> "I'm not at all concerned about you. I have pointed out that your opinions are meaningless to me..."

We've learned that you're also not concerned about science. Your comments show that the explicit teachings of science are meaningless to you, otherwise you'd make the necessary corrections.

The science classroom explicitly teaches that tension forces are simultaneously acting on train engines and some other object.

When will you change your false beliefs about cause/effect?

Unknown said...

stevek: "When will you change your false beliefs about cause/effect?"

How many times do I have to tell you? -- discussion with a liar is pointless, because dishonesty destroys discussion.

You are so dishonest here that you (among other things) blurted out, "I'm a mechanical engineer," in a pathetic attempt to find some authority for your opinions.

But no one cares about your opinions (or your questions), because you are a liar. And dishonesty destroys discussions.

Not until you adopt a position of honesty will anyone care about your opinions.

Until then, you're just another apologist.

SteveK said...

>> "How many times do I have to tell you? -- discussion with a liar is pointless, because dishonesty destroys discussion."

You don't have to discuss anything with me, yet you choose to keep doing it.

>> But no one cares about your opinions (or your questions), because you are a liar. And dishonesty destroys discussions.

That you disagree with the explicit teachings of science regarding cause/effect is not an opinion. Whatever it is you think I am, I'm not like you in that regard - thankfully.

Unknown said...

stevek: "You don't have to discuss anything with me, yet you choose to keep doing it."

I am not discussing anything with you.

However, part of being honest is pointing out dishonesty -- it's not enough to abide by honest, one has to actually oppose dishonesty in others. Identifying and opposing dishonest isn't discussion per se, but so long as you persist in lying, I don't mind identifying your participation as necessarily destructive to those discussions in which you pretend to be a participant.







StardustyPsyche said...

Hey Cal, get a load of this:
https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2017/11/dawkins-vs-aquinas-on-pints-with-aquinas.html?showComment=1510629687464#c4718535539392295113

In an attempt to call me a troll and "explain" an "essential" series bmiller allowed for propagation delay between the first member of an "essential" causal series and the last member of an "essential" causal series!!!

He didn't realize this completely destroys the first way as an argument for a hierarchical causal series in the present moment.

Now, he is so stumped by his public error among those he admires he has no response to me here
https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2017/11/dawkins-vs-aquinas-on-pints-with-aquinas.html?showComment=1510667797185#c2489648667058972746

All he can do is come back here and call you names in front of little Stevie.

This is a bit of a new twist to the psychodrama of the mental gymnastics of the apologist.

SteveK said...

Hey look! Dusty still doesn’t get it

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

In an attempt to call me a troll

Gee, I thought I was pretty clear. It wasn't just attempt. ��

Strawdusty:
He didn't realize this completely destroys the first way as an argument for a hierarchical causal series in the present moment.

SteveK:
Hey look! Dusty still doesn’t get it

What a surprise. SteveK and I have only been trying to explain essentially ordered series to you for 11 months but instead of engaging, you merely repeat yourself like a parrot.

Now, he is so stumped by his public error among those he admires he has no response to me here

Wow. How delusional, Especially since I engaged you for a month there before the blog owner asked us to stop feeding the particular troll known as you. But that quote is also very telling. You're not actually interested in discussing the issue at all, but only want to do some sort of lame performance in front of an audience. Sounds like a personality disorder to me.

If you were interested in discussing what an essentially ordered series actually is according to Thomism, you have the opportunity right here, right now where I explicitly addressed your misunderstanding of EOS. You apparently aren't interested.

This is a bit of a new twist to the psychodrama of the mental gymnastics of the apologist.

And where would we be without the obligatory projection of the GNUs.

bmiller said...

@Little Cal,

Even if I were somehow wrong, I would not be lying, per se -- I'd just be wrong

This is yet another example of you being dishonest. Let me count the ways:

You have routinely accused people of lying when they could merely have been wrong. It's dishonest to exempt yourself from the same judgement.


You claim to *know* something that you do not and cannot know. When someone does that, they are lying.
You may suspect something, but that is different from making an unequivocal claim of knowledge. All you have done is presented a list of opinions. Opinions on a topic that you do not disagree that you are uneducated in and indeed have demonstrated that.


You claimed to have read my list of posts, then later said you ignored them. Later still you had to ask SteveK which of the posts I was referring to. This is much clearer evidence of someone lying than anything you've provided (being merely ignorant opinions)

But don't worry, I will keep discussing things with you even though your "dishonesty destroys discussions". If I didn't then I'd never have a discussion with any GNUs.

SteveK said...

So we don't soil Feser's blog with more troll dung, I'll post my comment here.

Dusty:
"This is all allowed because you allow for time to pass between the causal influence of the first member of your series and the last member of your series, making your choice for first and last member arbitrary, because there will always be another member in the series going forward in time, and upon an infinite past there has always been a prior member in the series in a temporal regress, or given a hypothesis of time beginning at the big bang the temporal regress stretches back 13.7 billion years."

The first/last members are not arbitrary. The line of demarcation is existence. In other word, all the essential members exist.

The essential members of Dusty's series don't exist in the present when the motion in question is being argued. Just as grandfathers don't cause their grandchildren to move, exploding singularities don't cause them to move either.

Why? Because objects that DON'T exist cannot cause objects that DO exist to move. Ghosts don't move objects around.

So once again, in genuine troll-like fashion, Dusty PURPOSELY ignores everything that's already been explained to him. Fools rush in...repeatedly

Unknown said...

bmiller: "You have routinely accused people of lying when they could merely have been wrong."

Ha. I identified stevek as liar when he said, "I am a mechanical engineer." If stevek is not a mechanical engineer, then he is not wrong; he is a liar.

You are apparently so routinely dishonest that you don't understand what it means to point out that someone has told an obvious lie.

bmiller: "It's dishonest to exempt yourself from the same judgement."

I explained that I could be wrong about stevek lying when said he was a mechanical engineer. But either way, I cannot be lying about that determination. If I told you that I was the King of Sweden, then I would be telling you a lie.

You are apparently so routinely dishonest that you don't understand what it means to point out that someone has told an obvious lie.

bmiller: "You claim to *know* something that you do not and cannot know. When someone does that, they are lying."

Nope. You are being dishonest, again.

I have repeatedly said that I have identified stevek as a liar (stevek: "I am a mechanical engineer."). I have repeatedly said that I could be wrong having identified him as lying when he said that.

You seem to be arguing that no one could ever call someone a liar, ever, lest the accuser be called a liar for having reached this determination -- in the same way that you could never determine that I am a liar were I to claim that I am the kind of Sweden. But that's not how lying works. Lying occurs when a) someone lies. That is all.

bmiller: "You may suspect something, but that is different from making an unequivocal claim of knowledge. All you have done is presented a list of opinions. Opinions on a topic that you do not disagree that you are uneducated in and indeed have demonstrated that."

Ha. I have identified stevek as a liar, chiefly when he made the laughable claim, stevek: "I am a mechanical engineer." To identify someone as a liar is not to make an unequivocal claim of knowledge; it is to determine that what someone says conflicts so much with the facts that the best explanation is that what the person says is a lie.

This is very, very simple stuff. You are apparently so routinely dishonest that you don't understand what it means to point out that someone has told an obvious lie.

SteveK said...

I know I didn't make a claim.
I know I stated a fact.
I know I'm not wrong or lying.
I know Cal is lying.

Unknown said...

bmiller: "You claimed to have read my list of posts, then later said you ignored them. Later still you had to ask SteveK which of the posts I was referring to. This is much clearer evidence of someone lying than anything you've provided (being merely ignorant opinions)"

It is dishonest (not to mention hypocritical) of you to write this, because I have already pointed out that:
1. I had read the entire thread (along with previous ones) prior to writing that, and
2. Saying that one "ignores" a comment is not equivalent to saying that one has "not read" a comment.

You are now pretending that I did not explain this earlier. This is dishonest of you. (How surprising!)

I will repeat myself and remain consistent in the face of dishonesty, because that is all one can do when addressing someone who is routinely dishonest.

The word "ignore" has two meanings used in standard English -- one meaning is something like, "to not allow something to occupy one's mind", and another means something like, "to take not of but not respond". You see this all the time in common English sentences like, "He heard the insults from the crowd, but he ignored them and continued with his task."

And yet again, we see how your dishonesty keeps you as stupid as you were before. What a caution you and stevek are to those who would aspire to being less stupid than they currently are.

bmiller: "But don't worry, I will keep discussing things with you even though your "dishonesty destroys discussions". If I didn't then I'd never have a discussion with any GNUs."

There is nothing to discuss with you (because you are routinely dishonest, see above, and dishonesty destroys discussion), but so long as you continue to be dishonest, I will continue to point out the many ways in which your dishonesty makes you seem stupider than would otherwise be.


Unknown said...

stevek (earlier): "I am a mechanical engineer."
stevek: "I know I didn't make a claim."

I can think of no more succinct example of how dishonesty makes anyone even stupider than they would otherwise be.

Sic.

SteveK said...

It’s a statement of fact you lying dishonest troll.

bmiller said...

@Little Cal,

LLC:
Even if I were somehow wrong, I would not be lying, per se -- I'd just be wrong

Me:

This is yet another example of you being dishonest. Let me count the ways:

You have routinely accused people of lying when they could merely have been wrong. It's dishonest to exempt yourself from the same judgement.


LLC:
I explained that I could be wrong about stevek lying when said he was a mechanical engineer. But either way, I cannot be lying about that determination. If I told you that I was the King of Sweden, then I would be telling you a lie.

If you told me you've been honest in this thread you would be lying. Oh, you have and so you are.

You either feigned misunderstanding or you really are that dumb.

As I said, you have routinely accused people of lying when, if they were wrong, they would have merely been wrong, not lying. You've done this to SteveK, Legion and me. So it is dishonest hypocrisy to call people liars on the one hand when they could have merely been wrong, and on the other hand tell us you would be merely wrong in the same type of circumstance you called others liars.

You are now pretending that I did not explain this earlier. This is dishonest of you. (How surprising!)

I'm not pretending anything. I explained the reasons I thought you were lying here:September 08, 2017 7:48 PM

But if you had actually read the post, why would you ask this?
LLC:
stevek, quoting Stardusty: ""The great grandfather, the grand father, and the previous heartbeat were all instrumental in that particular man moving that particular stick some particular amount."
stevek: "What does Dusty mean here?"

Can you reference the datestamp for the comment in which Stardusty wrote the quotation you provided above?
September 13, 2017 9:40 AM


So yeah. I could be wrong, but it looks like you didn't read them. Like I said that's waaay more evidence than your feelings.

Too bad that you are not equipped to have an honest discussion ON TOPIC

bmiller said...

Poor Strawdusty:

Now, he is so stumped by his public error among those he admires he has no response to me here

He is stumped. Perhaps now it has dawned on him that the essence (ha!) of an essentially ordered series is the instrumentality of each existent material mover, and not the fact that he motion of a mobile takes place over time.

Small steps.

StardustyPsyche said...

Blogger SteveK said.. November 15, 2017 2:51 PM.

" So we don't soil Feser's blog with more troll dung, I'll post my comment here."
--So, then, you admit you are a coward lacking the balls to post your, ahem, arguments among those you respect and look up to.

Unknown said...

stevek (earlier): "I am a mechanical engineer."
stevek: "I know I didn't make a claim."
Me: "I can think of no more succinct example of how dishonesty makes anyone even stupider than they would otherwise be."
stevek: "It’s a statement of fact you lying dishonest troll."

Saying, "I am a mechanical engineer," is a claim. Claims can be true, or they can be false. This is incredibly elementary stuff, but I see that your dishonesty has made you even stupider, yet again, then I can readily anticipate.

So, I pointed out that you are evidently so stupid that you don't even realize that when you said you were a mechanical engineer, you made a claim. I have pointed out that this claim of being a mechanical engineer contradicts, well, all of your other writings -- in which you regularly demonstrate that you don't think very well, appear ignorant of basic science, are routinely dishonest and undisciplined, post silly pictures, have what seems like each full workday to comment on a blog like this, etc.

So we have all of your writing here, and we have your claim that you are a mechanical engineer (in real life!). That is why I point out that it's obvious that you are lying when you claimed "I am a mechanical engineer" in what seemed like a pathetic attempt to gain authority for your position. In fact, I'd reckon that the more you write, the less likely it is that you're a mechanical engineer, because your writing adds to the body of evidence that contradicts how a mechanical engineer is trained to think, and to display a basic understanding of science, and to be fluid and familiar with the behavior of objects as described in the language of physics. It is obvious that you refrain from venturing into this, because you don't have the wide and deep background necessary to appear as you claim to be -- a mechanical engineer.

In true apologist fashion, you appear consistently dishonest, and trollish, and yet you somehow think that accusing me of the behavior you regularly display could fool anyone not as stupid as you make yourself.

You have embarrassed yourself in front of your fellow apologists, and shown yourself to be a liar. By having duped some of them, but being unable to actually display of the broad and deep knowledge mechanical engineers can employ with ease and precision, you reveal yourself to be not just a liar, but a vile creature who when faced with his own dishonesty accuses others for that which he is to blame.

I would say, "Sad," but it's not sad.

It's vile.

Unknown said...

bmiller: "If you told me you've been honest in this thread you would be lying. Oh, you have and so you are."

False.

bmiller: "You either feigned misunderstanding or you really are that dumb."

Nope. Sometimes other people just write poorly, and don't make sense, and repeat themselves despite being corrected. I'm going to go with that one here.

bmiller: "As I said, you have routinely accused people of lying when, if they were wrong, they would have merely been wrong, not lying."

You are not just wrong here, but egregiously wrong.

Unless you think that stevek is actually delusional, there is NO WAY that he could just be wrong when he claimed, "I am a mechanical engineer." Stevek knows whether or not he actually took the courses, passed them all, and graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. That is what it means to be a mechanical engineer. Stevek knows if he has done these things, and if he said he has done them but hasn't (which is obvious to the rest of us), then he isn't wrong; he's lying.

As I have pointed out, you appears so comfortable with dishonesty that you don't know what a lie is.

bmiller: "You've done this to SteveK, Legion and me."

False.

bmiller: "So it is dishonest hypocrisy..."

Is there "honest hypocrisy?" I ask because, along with your inability to recognize what a lie is, you now seem confused about what hypocrisy means.

bmiller: "...to call people liars on the one hand when they could have merely been wrong..."

False.

bmiller: "... and on the other hand tell us you would be merely wrong in the same type of circumstance you called others liars."

I explained this above. You should reread it, because I'd only be repeating myself.

I think you'd start to understand things better (like the difference between telling a lie and being wrong) if you tried to be less dishonest. But that's up to you.

Unknown said...

Stevek: " So we don't soil Feser's blog with more troll dung, I'll post my comment here."
Stardusty: "--So, then, you admit you are a coward lacking the balls to post your, ahem, arguments among those you respect and look up to."

@Stardusty, an obvious dynamic here is that propping up stevek's lies and attempts to divert are not only in the interest of stevek (who is trying to salvage whatever pride he thinks he has retained), but it is also in the interest of his fellow apologists; if stevek were to ever come clean about his dishonesty, it would make it more obvious that fellow apologists were willing to stomach obvious lies, or that they are so stupid that they don't know when they're being duped. Hence, we will continue to see stevek try and change the subject about his dishonesty in a discussion, and we will see the others try and do the same or mitigate stevek's dishonesty.

In other words, the truth is not in the interest of stevek or his fellow apologists. We could, I suppose, offer them a way to walk back from their lies in a way that they somehow manage to salvage some pride, but when lies are the product of poor moral character I think that offering a way out for them that ignores the root of the problem only serves to enable behaviors that will damage others further down the road.

That is why I remain firm not on stating the truth and pointing out falsehoods, but on identifying the source of much of the apologists' confusion: moral failings, chiefly a lack of discipline (willingness to accept inconsistency in one's thinking and behavior), hypocrisy, dishonesty, and narcissism.

In my opinion, failure to acknowledge this dynamic is a weakness at the heart of modern intellectualism, in much the same way that tolerance of intolerance is a weakness at the heart of modern liberalism (leftism, really).

Cheers. And, as always thanks for your service.

bmiller said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
bmiller said...

@SteveK,

I think it was a mistake to give Cal any information that may lead him to find out where you live.
It's getting creepy that all he can talk about is you. It sounds like he's actually preparing to stalk you if he isn't already.

If I was you, I would make sure that I had adequate protection in case he acts out.

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

He didn't realize this completely destroys the first way as an argument for a hierarchical causal series in the present moment.

That's really funny since you posted that right after I posted this:

This is a better example of the train/cars analogy of an essentially ordered series.

Things to notice during this particular movement:
1) All the cars of the train exist simultaneously during the train's movement.
2) All of the cars are moving and comprise the mobile of the train.
3) None of the cars are moving themselves.
4) Each of the cars are being made to move by the tension in the coupler from the previous car, not directly from the engine.(This is obvious since we see different tension in different couplers.)
5) If any of the cars ceased to exist or separated from the series, the following cars would no longer have a motive force.

So the analogy to a true essentially ordered series is this:
The caboose is moved by the car in front. That is moved by the car in front of it and so on. But there cannot be an infinite number of simultaneously existing cars that have no capability of self movement but yet all move unless there is something outside the category of things incapable of moving themselves yet moving.

So, whether the train ride is long or short is beside the point. What *is* relevant is that each member of the series must exist and must actually be the cause for the continued movement of another and that at least one member has to be of a different category of mover than the others. Ultimately that mover must be unmoved.

And yes, each since each member must actually exist, each member must be sustained in existence during the train ride or the series ceases to exist (as pointed out in 5 above).


It's funny that you think this is a *real* objection at all since SteveK and I have both addressed it here. But it's really funny in a "what the heck is that guy thinking?" weird way to think that people who've read Feser's blog and books would think it's a *real* objection. It's addressed in all the books I've read and here is just a few of the blog posts one can easily find.

For instance here:

But it would similarly miss the point to insist that Aquinas is refuted by the fact that there is a very slight time lag between the motion of a stick and that of a stone it is pushing (as one hostile reader of this blog used to point out obsessively a few years back, as if it were a fatal objection). For nothing in Aquinas’s argument rides on the question of whether the motion of a stick and that of the stone it is pushing are strictly simultaneous, any more than it rides on a hand’s really being a “first” or non-instrumental cause in the relevant sense (which it obviously is not since the hand itself is moved by the arm). The example is intended merely as an illustration to jog the reader’s understanding of abstract concepts like instrumental causality and conserving causality.


And here"

As serious students of the Five Ways know, the sorts of causal series Aquinas traces to God as First Cause are causal series ordered per se, not causal series ordered per accidens. In the former sort of series, every cause other than the first is instrumental, its causal power derived from the first.


You've already been pointed here:

So, it is ultimately their instrumental character, and not their simultaneity, which makes every member of a per se ordered causal series other than the first depend necessarily on the first.


...continued

bmiller said...

But that post was preceded by this:
January 5, 2010 at 10:41 AM

Similarly, the central point in the sorts of examples an argument like the First Way starts with is that the casues in question are instrumental and thus cannot be made sense of apart from appeal to a first cause. The reason for using "simultaneous" was to emphasize that this has nothing to do with tracing a set of independent or accidentally ordered causes back to a temporal beginning point a la the kalam cosmological argument, but rather with tracing dependent and essentially ordered causes "downward" to the most fundamental level of reality, that of a purely actual (and thus eternal) uncaused cause.

And a second example from the same post here:
January 5, 2010 at 10:42 AM

So don't be so glum that no one will respond to you. You have plenty right here :-)

You're welcome.

bmiller said...

Missed link from the first post:

For instance here:

But it would similarly miss the point to insist that Aquinas is refuted by the fact that there is a very slight time lag between the motion of a stick and that of a stone it is pushing (as one hostile reader of this blog used to point out obsessively a few years back, as if it were a fatal objection). For nothing in Aquinas’s argument rides on the question of whether the motion of a stick and that of the stone it is pushing are strictly simultaneous, any more than it rides on a hand’s really being a “first” or non-instrumental cause in the relevant sense (which it obviously is not since the hand itself is moved by the arm). The example is intended merely as an illustration to jog the reader’s understanding of abstract concepts like instrumental causality and conserving causality.

SteveK said...

@bmiller
I don’t think more links will help Dusty. He has to read them to understand and he’s had 3000+ comments to do exactly that. Let’s see if the pattern continues.

StardustyPsyche said...

Feser
"The example is intended merely as an illustration to jog the reader’s understanding of abstract concepts like instrumental causality and conserving causality."
--By admitting the propagation delay from the first member to the last member in an "essential" series the notion of instrumentality as an argument for a hierarchical first mover in the present moment is destroyed.

The stick is an instrument between the hand, and later in time, the rock.
The rock is an instrument between the stick, and later in time, the the dirt near the rock.
The dirt near the rock is an instrument between the rock, and later in time, the dirt farther from the rock.
The dirt farther from the rock is an instrument between the dirt near the rock, and later in time, the dirt still farther from the rock.
And on and on and on, temporally, with each member an instrument between the temporally previous member and the temporally later member.

The same instrumentality is extended back in time and space in a temporal regress of causal members extending back at least as far as out big bang.

The hand, tendon, muscle, blood, heart, lung, air in the lung, air outside the lung, and air going back farther and farther from the lung...each member an instrument between temporally previous and temporally later members.

Thus the causal series, once one allows for propagation delay in so called instruments, becomes a temporal series extending into the deep past and forward into the distant future. Admitting propagation delay destroys A-T as an argument for a hierarchical first mover in the present moment.

As usual, Feser argues incompletely and very badly. Even his fellow theists point this out from time to time. W L Craig calls Feser's arguments "unintelligible"

David Bentley Hart says of Feser and Bessette...
"repeat two tediously persistent exegetical errors

What they have produced instead is relentlessly ill-conceived. Its arguments, philosophical and historical, are feeble. Its treatment of biblical texts is crude, its patristic scholarship careless. And all too often it exhibits a moral insensibility that is truly repellant.

the arguments Feser and Bessette make are mostly blank assertions masquerading as deductions of logic

It is all quite unconvincing.

a shocking subversion of the entire idea.

when Feser and Bessette turn their eyes to the New Testament that their argument goes disastrously awry.

It is painfully obvious that neither of them bothered to read the patristic texts they cite; they merely went searching for anything that looked like a proof text, no matter how tenuous or fragmentary, and without paying even cursory attention to context.

The most appalling aspect of this book is finally not its shoddy reasoning or theological ignorance, but its sheer moral coarseness.

In the end, Feser and Bessette offer a very odd and unsettling picture of Christianity, rather like a familiar and beautiful painting monstrously distorted in a carnival mirror—the lovely rendered hideous, the exquisite grotesque."


bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

You've simply repeated your misunderstanding of an essentially ordered series immediately after being shown at least 4 examples of quotes from Feser that specifically addressed your misunderstanding. I can only show you the facts. You just make stuff up.

But now I'm noticing more weirdness than normal in your posts. You seem to be fixated on the person of Edward Feser rather than the present topic. His book on capital punishment has nothing to do with the First Way so bringing up a reviewer's opinion here makes no sense. Unless of course, you are obsessed with the man and indeed it looks like you're stalking him over at his blog.

SteveK said...

Dusty can’t be bothered with explanations that undermine his criticism - because he’s a troll.

“1) All the cars of the train exist simultaneously during the train's movement.”

StardustyPsyche said...

Blogger SteveK said...

Dusty can’t be bothered with explanations that undermine his criticism - because he’s a troll.

“1) All the cars of the train exist simultaneously during the train's movement.”
--So do the rails and the air molecules to which the energy is transferred. So do the oxygen molecules in the air, and all the other molecules in the air, which are each instruments in a temporal "essential" causal series. All existing material, all separated temporally by propagation delay.

Thus, the causal regress that accounts for the train's motion, just like the causal regress that accounts for the motion of the rock in the dirt, is a temporal causal series, with members stretching back in time, not hierarchically in the present moment.

bmiller said...

No wonder he thinks his deceased relatives are moving sticks at the present moment. He can't distinguish between things that exist now and those that no longer exist.

Maybe his ancestors are secretly applying a "particular amount" of force to the train cars also that no one can measure or figure out how to calculate. How absurd.

But to the point. The example of a locomotive pulling a car, which pulls another car and so on is the type of series that is being discussed in the First Way and is typical of examples taught in physics classes.

This passage from the SCG was presented at Feser's blog and was linked to in the very first comment on this thread:

[13] Furthermore, that it is impossible for the abovementioned infinites to be moved in a finite time Aristotle proves as follows. The mover and the thing moved must exist simultaneously. This Aristotle proves by induction in the various species of motion. But bodies cannot be simultaneous except through continuity or contiguity. Now, since, as has been proved, all the aforementioned movers and. things moved are bodies, they must constitute by continuity or contiguity a sort of single mobile. In this way, one infinite is moved in a finite time. This is impossible, as is proved in the Physics [VII, 1]


"Propagation delay" is simply irrelevant.

StardustyPsyche said...


bmiller said...
"Propagation delay" is simply irrelevant."

Here Feser makes the same assertion, kindly provided by one of the nitwit anons on his blog:
" For nothing in Aquinas’s argument rides on the question of whether the motion of a stick and that of the stone it is pushing are strictly simultaneous, any more than it rides on a hand’s really being a “first” or non-instrumental cause in the relevant sense (which it obviously is not since the hand itself is moved by the arm). "
https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-incompetent-hack.html

Feser is very bad a making rational arguments. Even his fellow theistic apologists recognize the unintelligibility, shoddy reasoning, and blank assertions masquerading as deductions of logic.

Of course the combination of allowing for propagation delay and allowing that supposedly first members are not really first completely destroys the argument from motion.

This *can* go to infinity on propagation delay, previous members, and an infinite past. Even on a big bang as the beginning of time this goes back 13.7 billion years. The argument for a hierarchical first mover in the present moment is completely destroyed by allowing for causal influences that are not in the present moment.

StardustyPsyche said...

Feser continues his nonsense...

"It is worth emphasizing that it is precisely this instrumental nature of second causes, the dependence of whatever causal power they have on the causal activity of the first cause, that is the key to the notion of a causal series per se. That the members of such a series exist simultaneously, and that the series does not regress to infinity, are of secondary importance. As Patterson Brown and John Wippel point out, even if a series of causes ordered per se could somehow be said to regress to infinity, it would remain the case, given that they are merely instrumental causes, that there must then be something outside the entire infinite series that imparts to them their causal power."
https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-incompetent-hack.html

So, the First Way is a Kalam argument after all!!! Ok, that is a genuine riddle. Nobody has solved the riddle of the origins of existence, the origins of motion, the origins of causation. We have vast evidence that we live inside a great expansion, an explosion, a big bang. But what caused the big bang? Nobody knows, it is indeed a profound mystery.

Aquinas did nothing to solve this riddle.

Allowing for causal members to impart their causation in the past, as propagation delay demands, and allowing for ever more previous members in the causal series, as any informed physical analysis demands, the First Way is destroyed as an argument for a hierarchical first mover in the present moment.

SteveK said...

Repeating the same mistakes only makes you look foolish.

SteveK said...

Dusty summarized: “The ghost of some object that existed billions of years ago is *instrumental* in moving that train. Without the ghost the train would stop moving.”

This is the level of supreme idiocy we’re dealing with.

SteveK said...

“Without the ghost the train would stop moving.”

Of course the ghost has no effect at all, yet Dusty keeps pointing to it as an explanation for why the train is now moving. Why does Dusty keep pointing toward an object that is irrelevant to the current motion?

bmiller said...

Me:
"[13] Furthermore, that it is impossible for the abovementioned infinites to be moved in a finite time Aristotle proves as follows. The mover and the thing moved must exist simultaneously. This Aristotle proves by induction in the various species of motion. But bodies cannot be simultaneous except through continuity or contiguity. Now, since, as has been proved, all the aforementioned movers and. things moved are bodies, they must constitute by continuity or contiguity a sort of single mobile. In this way, one infinite is moved in a finite time. This is impossible, as is proved in the Physics [VII, 1]"

"Propagation delay" is simply irrelevant.


Strawdusty:
This *can* go to infinity on propagation delay, previous members, and an infinite past.

Can't find a better example of such a stone cold stupid thing to say. Things that ceased to exist in the ancient past somehow exist simultaneously with bodies in motion in the present. Is he even sober?


So, the First Way is a Kalam argument after all!!!

SteveK:
Repeating the same mistakes only makes you look foolish.

Indeed. He once again demonstrates that he completely lacks reading comprehesion skills even when it has been explicitly pointed out to him that the word *infinite* refers to the number of existing elements in a series of moving movers and not an *infinite* amount of time.

Here's just a quick list from over the last year from this thread where it's been pointed out to him.

Legion
January 30, 2017 11:13 AM
SteveK:
June 18, 2017 7:43 PM
bmiller:
July 02, 2017 5:38 PM
July 06, 2017 12:27 PM
July 09, 2017 5:02 PM

StardustyPsyche said...

*The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion.*
--This is an excellent basis for science. David Bentley Hart has opined that if Aquinas were alive today, being the deep thinker he was, he would have made great use of modern physics, but he did the best he could with the Aristotelian physics of his day.

* Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another,*
--False. An object in uniform linear motion is not being put in motion by another.

* for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion;*
--False. An object in uniform linear motion is already actualized in motion of a particular kinetic energy and is not potentially in motion for that particular kinetic energy.

" whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act."
--True, a thing moves inasmuch as it actually has a particular amount of kinetic energy.

" For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality."
--False. An object in uniform linear motion is already fully actualized in its particular kinetic energy respect. It's only potentiality of motion is to gain or impart kinetic energy in mutually causal temporal interactions with other objects.

bmiller said...

*The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion.*
--This is an excellent basis for science. David Bentley Hart has opined that if Aquinas were alive today, being the deep thinker he was, he would have made great use of modern physics, but he did the best he could with the Aristotelian physics of his day.


Modern physics is based on the same assumptions as the First Way, so both are in harmony.

* Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another,*
--False. An object in uniform linear motion is not being put in motion by another.


It is kept in motion by what we presently call inertia but that is just shorthand for saying that it is it's combination of form and matter that is responsible for the motion. The efficient cause of keeping form and matter together is the Uncaused Cause.

* for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion;*
--False. An object in uniform linear motion is already actualized in motion of a particular kinetic energy and is not potentially in motion for that particular kinetic energy.


An object in motion is presently here on it's way to being over there. So it is actually here and potentially there. That is the sense of the statement.

But the rest of your comments illustrate that you don't understand the definitions of act and potency used by the author. You're substituting your own definitions instead of using the author's and thereby attacking a strawman.

I am unsurprised.

StardustyPsyche said...

bmiller said...

* Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another,*
--False. An object in uniform linear motion is not being put in motion by another.

" It is kept in motion by what we presently call inertia but that is just shorthand for saying that it is it's combination of form and matter that is responsible for the motion. The efficient cause of keeping form and matter together is the Uncaused Cause."
--Idle speculation. There is no "another" that is manifest and evident to the senses.

Your assertion of an unseen changer violates the basis of the First Way, what is manifest and evident to the senses.

You may make that speculation if you wish, but it is unnecessary.

Thus the First Way fails as an argument for the necessity of a hierarchical first mover in the present moment.

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,



I have no idea what you what "another" means in your post.
As for what is evident to the senses, what color is gravity? What is it's shape? How much does inertia weigh? Do you believe those things are real?

If you want to claim that all that exists is what we directly sense, then you need to answer those questions.
You'll also have to explain quantum phenomena which you hold to be *reality* but in no way do we directly sense. They are unseen. Are they *non-existent*?

Your current fallacy is that of special pleading.

StardustyPsyche said...

bmiller said.. November 24, 2017 7:46 PM.

@Strawdusty,
" I have no idea what you what "another" means in your post."
--That's because you are not familiar with the First Way. It's right there in the quote. How obvious is that?


" As for what is evident to the senses, what color is gravity? What is it's shape? How much does inertia weigh? Do you believe those things are real?"
--These things are manifest. They are evident to our senses. No "another" is manifest or evident tot our senses.


" If you want to claim that all that exists is what we directly sense, then you need to answer those questions."
--"Directly" is your word, not mine.

" You'll also have to explain quantum phenomena"
--Quantum phenomena are manifest. They are evident to the senses. No "another" is manifest or evident to the senses.

" which you hold to be *reality* but in no way do we directly sense. They are unseen."
--False. They are seen, but one must look very closely and very carefully. When one looks very closely and very carefully at uniform linear motion no "another" is manifest or evident to our senses.

SteveK said...

Repeating the same mistakes only makes you look foolish.

Knowing about the corrections and yet ignoring them in favor of continuing to repeat the mistakes makes you a dishonest troll.

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,


" As for what is evident to the senses, what color is gravity? What is it's shape? How much does inertia weigh? Do you believe those things are real?"
--These things are manifest. They are evident to our senses. No "another" is manifest or evident tot our senses.


People do not "sense" gravity. They perceive it's effects.


" If you want to claim that all that exists is what we directly sense, then you need to answer those questions."
--"Directly" is your word, not mine.


Fine if you want to say we only *indirectly* sense some things by deducing from what we do sense, then you are affirming the conclusion of the First Way. Although we cannot directly sense the Unmoved Mover, he must exist since materially existent things cannot and do not move themselves.

" which you hold to be *reality* but in no way do we directly sense. They are unseen."
--False. They are seen, but one must look very closely and very carefully. When one looks very closely and very carefully at uniform linear motion no "another" is manifest or evident to our senses.


Wow. You must have extremely good eyesight. Since you've actually seen inertia what shape is it? what color?

StardustyPsyche said...

bmiller said.. November 25, 2017 11:21 AM.


" People do not "sense" gravity. They perceive it's effects."
--That is how all things are manifest and evident to our senses.

" Fine if you want to say we only *indirectly* sense some things by deducing from what we do sense, then you are affirming the conclusion of the First Way. Although we cannot directly sense the Unmoved Mover, he must exist since materially existent things cannot and do not move themselves."
--Manifestly they do move in uniform linear motion with no "another".

Any notion that an object in uniform linear motion is actually tending to stop while an unseen "another" keeps pushing it along is pure fantasy and is in no way manifest or evident to our senses.

You are having an hallucination if you perceive an "another" pushing an object in uniform linear motion.

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

" People do not "sense" gravity. They perceive it's effects."
--That is how all things are manifest and evident to our senses.


Nonsense. I see materially existing objects with my sense of sight. I smell materially existing objects with my sense of smell. etc. We deduce that there is something called *gravity* from the way those existing material objects that we *do* sense behave.

materially existent things cannot and do not move themselves."
--Manifestly they do move in uniform linear motion with no "another".

Any notion that an object in uniform linear motion is actually tending to stop while an unseen "another" keeps pushing it along is pure fantasy and is in no way manifest or evident to our senses.

You are having an hallucination if you perceive an "another" pushing an object in uniform linear motion.


You are "having an hallucination" if you think materially existent things can and do move themselves. If they could move themselves they would be able to start and stop their own motion.

You are also hallucinating if you think anyone ever claimed that there was anything "pushing" an object in inertial motion. It seems you are regressing back to the strawman arguments you made months ago. Should I post Newton's quote on inertia for the umpteenth time?

StardustyPsyche said...

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

" People do not "sense" gravity. They perceive it's effects."
--That is how all things are manifest and evident to our senses.

" Nonsense. I see materially existing objects with my sense of sight."
--You deduce how an object exists and moves by its effects that produce, absorb, or reflect photons in the narrow visible band of electromagnetic radiation.

" I smell materially existing objects with my sense of smell. etc."
--You deduce characteristics of an object by the motions of materials that leave that object, move through the air, and land on nerve cells.

" We deduce that there is something called *gravity* from the way those existing material objects that we *do* sense behave."
--We deduce there is something called gravity by using our senses to observe objects.

Aquinas deduced that objects move by using his senses to observe them. That is what makes motion, and all other deduced aspects of material objects manifest to us, sensory observations of them.




" You are also hallucinating if you think anyone ever claimed that there was anything "pushing" an object in inertial motion."
--Pushing, pulling, changing, or in some way "put in motion by another"

There is no "another" that is manifest and evident to our senses putting an object in uniform linear motion in its motion.

If I push on an object then there is an "another" putting the object in motion, acceleration, which is a change in the kinetic energy of the object, calling for a changer, me.

When I stop pushing on the object it continues in motion without another putting it in motion, because I stopped pushing on it, therefor there is no further change in its kinetic energy so acceleration ceases, and motion continues because uniform linear motion is no change in kinetic energy and therefore calls for no changer.

To stop the object is an acceleration, typically expressed with a negative sign. If an object that is moving is caused to stop moving that is a change in its kinetic energy calling for a changer, say a catcher of a baseball.

Science:
Pitcher accelerates the ball, pitcher is the changer, kinetic energy is transferred to the ball.
The ball flies in uniform linear motion (discounting air and gravity), no changer, no change in kinetic energy.
Catcher accelerates the ball (negatively), catcher is the changer, kinetic energy is transferred from the ball.

A-T:
The ball looks like it is flying in uniform linear motion, but actually the ball is trying to to stop but another is putting it in motion in just the right way to make it look like there is no tendency for the ball to stop and there is no other putting the ball in motion.

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

" Nonsense. I see materially existing objects with my sense of sight."
--You deduce how an object exists and moves by its effects that produce, absorb, or reflect photons in the narrow visible band of electromagnetic radiation.

" I smell materially existing objects with my sense of smell. etc."
--You deduce characteristics of an object by the motions of materials that leave that object, move through the air, and land on nerve cells.

" We deduce that there is something called *gravity* from the way those existing material objects that we *do* sense behave."
--We deduce there is something called gravity by using our senses to observe objects.


Humans have organs that directly sense odor and light. Humans do not have an organ that directly senses *gravity* any more than they have an organ that directly senses inertia, the number 42 or triangularity.


" You are also hallucinating if you think anyone ever claimed that there was anything "pushing" an object in inertial motion."
--Pushing, pulling, changing, or in some way "put in motion by another"

There is no "another" that is manifest and evident to our senses putting an object in uniform linear motion in its motion.


I can sense that there is a existing material object that is a combination of form and matter. The object moves due to it's combination of form and matter. Material objects do not cause themselves to come into existence and do not maintain themselves in existence as a combination of form and matter. So whatever is responsible for maintaining them as that combination of form and matter is responsible for their existence and therefore their motion. Very simple and easily deduced from observation of existing material objects. It is indeed manifest and evident to our senses.

The alternative is that non-existent things cause themselves to exist which is impossible because they would have to exist prior to coming into existence, which is absurd. If they were responsible for keeping themselves in existence or not, then we would see things popping out of existence with no explanation. We don't, so there must be another principle that sustains them in existence.


A-T:
The ball looks like it is flying in uniform linear motion, but actually the ball is trying to to stop but another is putting it in motion in just the right way to make it look like there is no tendency for the ball to stop and there is no other putting the ball in motion.



Nonsense. Just another strawman.

StardustyPsyche said...

miller said...

" I can sense that there is a existing material object that is a combination of form and matter."
--Do you have a form sensing nerve, like a sense of smell? How do you sense form? How do you sense matter?

What is the theory of form? What are the equations of the theory of form?

What is the theory of matter? What are the equations of the theory of matter?

" The object moves due to it's combination of form and matter."
--How? Is it motion = form + matter? If not, what is the mathematical relationship between motion, form, and matter? What are the units of motion, form and matter?

" Material objects do not cause themselves to come into existence"
--The material of objects does not cause itself to come into existence, but material interacts with other material to organize into recognizable objects.

" and do not maintain themselves in existence as a combination of form and matter."
--Why not? What are the equations that describe this suicidal tendency of objects?

" So whatever is responsible for maintaining them as that combination of form and matter is responsible for their existence"
--Why? What are the equations that quantify this maintenance?

" and therefore their motion."
--Why? What is the mathematical relationship between maintenance of existence and motion? In what units?



" Very simple and easily deduced from observation of existing material objects."
You have deduced nothing but arm waving, vague old superstitions. Where is your mathematical model for all of this?



" would see things popping out of existence with no explanation. We don't, so there must be another principle that sustains them in existence."
--Yes, it is called conservation of mass/energy. It is described by E=mcc.

No change in the amount of mass/energy means no changer is needed to explain no change.

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,


What are the equations of the theory of form?
What are the equations of the theory of matter?
what is the mathematical relationship between motion, form, and matter? What are the units of motion, form and matter?


1) What are the equations for theory that only material things exist? Where are the equations for the theory of logical positivism that you are implicitly invoking? Hint....it's as dead as the nehru jacket (and died about the same time).

2) It is of course a category mistake to attempt to use the methods of scientific investigation to examine the philosophy of science on which those very methods are based.



" Material objects do not cause themselves to come into existence"
--The material of objects does not cause itself to come into existence, but material interacts with other material to organize into recognizable objects.


So material objects that do not exist interact with other material objects that do not exist to organize into material objects. Pure gibberish.

--Why not? What are the equations that describe this suicidal tendency of objects?
Yes. Thanks for agreeing with me.


--Why? What are the equations that quantify this maintenance?
--Why? What is the mathematical relationship between maintenance of existence and motion? In what units?


See 1) above.

You have deduced nothing but arm waving, vague old superstitions. Where is your mathematical model for all of this?

See 1) above. I know the difference between physics and metaphysics unlike you....Mr. deceased relatives apply a "particular amount" of force to moving sticks in the present that no one can calculate or measure.

" would see things popping out of existence with no explanation. We don't, so there must be another principle that sustains them in existence."
--Yes, it is called conservation of mass/energy. It is described by E=mcc.


So how exactly does e=mc² describe keeping existing material objects in existence? No hand waving now.

StardustyPsyche said...

bmiller said...


" 1) What are the equations for theory that only material things exist? "
--You assert form and matter exist, yet you have no mathematical description of them.

I assert fields, particles, matter, and energy are valid representations of reality.
Here is and introduction to them
https://physics.info/standard/

I can cite thousands of more sources in great detail. You cite zero.

"2) It is of course a category mistake to attempt to use the methods of scientific investigation to examine the philosophy of science on which those very methods are based."
--Mine is the catagory of reality, yours is the catagory of arm waving fantasy, so I suppose you are correct that your fantasy does not belong in the catagory of reality.

"
So material objects that do not exist interact with other material objects that do not exist to organize into material objects. Pure gibberish."
--Study crystal growth. Material organizes itself by natural forces. To find out how study science.

"So how exactly does e=mc² describe keeping existing material objects in existence? No hand waving now."
--There is no poof term. Material is conserved, not the organization of material objects. For that you will need to learn about atomic structure, chemistry, and molecular structural science.

No arm waving? Fine. Consult any of thousands upon thousands of scientific and engineering papers and experiments that have confirmed these findings again and again and again.

You say the material we observe is made of form and matter. Where are your models, descriptions, and experiments that describe exactly how material and form are structured and how they act?

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

"" 1) What are the equations for theory that only material things exist? "
--You assert form and matter exist, yet you have no mathematical description of them.

I assert fields, particles, matter, and energy are valid representations of reality.
Here is and introduction to them
https://physics.info/standard/

I can cite thousands of more sources in great detail. You cite zero.


Well scientific theories depend on the philosophy of science as it's fundamental basis. And you have provided exactly zero equations that only material things exist. Get back to me when you've found at least one.

"2) It is of course a category mistake to attempt to use the methods of scientific investigation to examine the philosophy of science on which those very methods are based."
--Mine is the catagory of reality, yours is the catagory of arm waving fantasy, so I suppose you are correct that your fantasy does not belong in the catagory of reality.


Your reasoning is based on circular logic. Therefore you have no rational basis for your conclusions. Pretty simple. You assume that the methods of science guide you to truth while ignoring that the methods of science are based on something more fundamental, the philosophy of science. You then end up denying the basis of science have thereby destroyed your rational basis to rely on science.

So material objects that do not exist interact with other material objects that do not exist to organize into material objects. Pure gibberish."
--Study crystal growth. Material organizes itself by natural forces. To find out how study science.


You must mean I should study science fiction rather than science. Because in the study of science non-existent things do not organize themselves into existent things.

"So how exactly does e=mc² describe keeping existing material objects in existence? No hand waving now."
--There is no poof term. Material is conserved, not the organization of material objects. For that you will need to learn about atomic structure, chemistry, and molecular structural science.


Of course there is no "proof term" because you have not even tried to provide a "proof". E=mc² is not a conservation equation any more than F=ma is.

You say the material we observe is made of form and matter. Where are your models, descriptions, and experiments that describe exactly how material and form are structured and how they act?

Follow along now. Science as practiced in Western civilization since the Middle Ages has used the form/matter distinction as an axiom (whether explicitly or implicitly). This is a metaphysical assumption and a very fruitful one for civilization in the West. This was also known to the ancient Greeks, but it took Christianity and it's particular worldview to take this assumption and make *science* as we know it today.

All "models, descriptions, and experiments" validate this. Let me know when you find differently.

StardustyPsyche said...

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

"" 1) What are the equations for theory that only material things exist? "
--You assert form and matter exist, yet you have no mathematical description of them.
" And you have provided exactly zero equations that only material things exist. "

There are no equations to prove invisible unicorns do not exist. So what? Where are your equations that show something other than material does exist?

"E=mc² is not a conservation equation"
--Of course it is. Nothing gets in or out, hence the equal sign.

Where are your equations that describe this magical thing you call "form" and how it relates to so called "prime matter"?

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,


"" 1) What are the equations for theory that only material things exist? "
--You assert form and matter exist, yet you have no mathematical description of them.
" And you have provided exactly zero equations that only material things exist. "

There are no equations to prove invisible unicorns do not exist. So what? Where are your equations that show something other than material does exist?


It's Saturday night and you must be intoxicated again. There are no equations to prove only matter exists. As I said before Get back to me when you've found at least one.

"E=mc² is not a conservation equation"
--Of course it is. Nothing gets in or out, hence the equal sign.


Maybe it is to you. Not to scientists or mathematicians. Who in the world did you get this nonsense from?

StardustyPsyche said...

bmiller said...

" There are no equations to prove only matter exists. "
--There are equations that describe how matter acts, demonstrating matter is real.

There are no equations for your hallucinatory "form" or "prime matter". Those are just in the imagination of people stuck in ancient mythological thinking.

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

" There are no equations to prove only matter exists. As I said before Get back to me when you've found at least one.
"
--There are equations that describe how matter acts, demonstrating matter is real.


This only proves (once again) you can't read. That and now you are demonstrating a new delusion that somehow all metaphysical theories must be mathematically formulated (except for your's of course).

StardustyPsyche said...

What's the matter, nobody had anything to say while I was an vacation?-)

Just dropped by to say hey to SteveK

@SteveK
[b]Things that you failed to address:[/b]

Actually these were all addressed in the post you used as a basis for your last few comments,

Go back and read that post from beginning to end and you will have all your questions answered.

bmiller said...

Been drinking again?

SteveK did made no such post here.

StardustyPsyche said...

Inside joke, bmiller, SteveK knows his own words.

bmiller said...

But as you can tell, he hasn't posted here for quite a while.

Just curious why you decided to respond here to something he posted on a different and much more recent blog.

StardustyPsyche said...

bmiller said...

" But as you can tell, he hasn't posted here for quite a while.

Just curious why you decided to respond here to something he posted on a different and much more recent blog."

Because Jeremy Taylor is a cowardly little twerp, like Edward Feser, both of whom have no demonstrated capacity to engage me on the merits.

Both Jeremy Taylor and Edward Feser have only the skill needed to delete comments that challenge their worldviews on the merits.

They are like children plugging their ears and shouting nah nah nah.

I have answered both you and SteveK with very specific argumentation, but Jeremy Taylor is so immature that he uses his tiny petty power to delete comments, lest a contrary argument invade his little perception.

His loss, and yours. You all could have learned some things from me. Too bad for you.

StardustyPsyche said...

bmiller said...
" Just curious why you decided to respond here to something he posted on a different and much more recent blog."

Oh, but don't worry bmiller, little Jeremy will still invite you over for play dates :-)

Now that he has protected all his little sycophants from the big bad Stardusty Psyche you are safe to join the circle jerk of ancient superstitions without fear that a modern man will show your worldview to be erroneous on the rational merits.

He he he

ROTFLMAO

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

Sounds like you're whining. But why get bent out of shape? For you it's par for the course.

You've been banned on almost every blog site you've posted on for approximately the same reasons, regardless of the admin's worldview. This is not a conspiracy since those admins have little they can agree on. But it seems they all agree that you cannot make sensible arguments, behave badly and plug up the comment section by merely repeating the same assertions and not interacting with counter arguments. Maybe it's an amazing coincidence that they are all twerps, or maybe, just maybe .....it's you. 😵


Now that he has protected all his little sycophants from the big bad Stardusty Psyche you are safe to join the circle jerk of ancient superstitions without fear that a modern man will show your worldview to be erroneous on the rational merits.

He he he

ROTFLMAO


Another drunk post? A little crazy laughter? But incoherence is par for the course for you so, not surprised.

I didn't get you see if you merely repeated your assertions (again) before your reply was deleted, but I see from SteveK's response, that you had contradicted yourself from one sentence to the next. Hard to tell if you only post while drinking or if you really can't keep a thought from one sentence to the next. If you want to repost here, I'll read it. But I'll probably be the only one.

StardustyPsyche said...

"You've been banned on almost every blog site you've posted on for approximately the same reasons, regardless of the admin's worldview. This is not a conspiracy"
Very true. Almost all blog owners have no tolerance for opposing views. Feser particularly so, but feminists and other sorts of social justice warriors are much the same.

"I didn't get you see if you merely repeated your assertions (again) before your reply was deleted"
Of course, Feserites have the capacity to delete, not rationally argue.

Have you listened to the Lennox video Victor linked recently? He has spent a lifetime seeking out engagement with those who disagree. For a Feserite that is a horrid notion. Those who disagree are to be deleted and banned. Most blog owners share that view.



" see from SteveK's response, that you had contradicted yourself from one sentence to the next"
More hilarity. You see from SteveK's post...funny.

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

Very true. Almost all blog owners have no tolerance for opposing views.

From what I've seen, you haven't been banned for promoting opposing views, but for your bad behavior, inability to make sensible arguments, not interacting with with counter arguments and merely repeating your assertions ad infinitum. If you think that counts as rational argument, then that's most likely your problem.

Have you listened to the Lennox video Victor linked recently?

Nope. Do you have the link?

He has spent a lifetime seeking out engagement with those who disagree. For a Feserite that is a horrid notion. Those who disagree are to be deleted and banned. Most blog owners share that view.

I've been reading Feser's blog for a long time and he rarely bans anyone. Most people there are deep into philosophy and are interested in discussing the finer points. So when someone shows up who clearly doesn't have a background and behaves the way you did pretty much everyone gets annoyed. Pretty much the same way people on a math forum would be annoyed with someone claiming that math was wrong because irrational numbers are, well, irrational. That's how you came off.

" see from SteveK's response, that you had contradicted yourself from one sentence to the next"
More hilarity. You see from SteveK's post...funny.


Wow! How could anyone not be impressed with that masterful show of logical prowess?
Are you high again? And you wonder why people can't see your genius. Go figure.

bmiller said...

Nevermind. I assume you mean the Lennox video regarding Christmas.
Listening to it now.

bmiller said...

OK, now that I listened to the video, I doubt that you did. You would find it "a horrid notion"

You really aren't very good at attempting to appear sincere.

But it's just you and me now. No need to pretend.

StardustyPsyche said...

bmiller said...

" OK, now that I listened to the video, I doubt that you did. "
2:42
https://youtu.be/_eUKqrVSrSc


"And so I decided on that day many years ago to get to know people who did not share my background who did not share my worldview, and I've been doing it all my life

He goes on to describe his public debates with atheists and other comments on the subject.

See, Lennox is a real PhD at a major university who is actually seeking out truth. A man of character who welcomes engagement with those of opposing views.

Feser sets the tone for his blog and attracts his ilk. Very much the opposite of Lennox Feser abhors a contrary view, particularly when the person with that contrary view is capable of articulating it, will not adopt the Feser view, and insists it is Feser who has things so very wrong, and can provide extensive logical argumentation to show the errors of Feser.

That infuriates Feser. You can see in his responses how much it bothers him personally and emotionally. He even mentions the "trolls" on his blog as being a problem when being interviewed, and when he addressed me his words were obviously spitting with anger and frustration, even using symbols along the top row of the keyboard to express his feelings.

How pathetic. Truly a tiny worm of a man, nothing much more the a petulant 16 year old emotionally.

Finding it impossible to engage me successfully on the merits he simply deleted my posts and banned me. He attracts that sort, like Jeremy Taylor.

Jeremy has no displayed capacity to engage me on the merits, at least a few folks made some half baked attempts, which of course I easily dismantled because A-T is just ancient mythology and erroneous physics that uses faulty reasoning and is held in high regard only by those with confirmation bias and a lack of logical argumentation skills.

Toward the end Jeremy displayed the same sort of childish emotions as Feser, deleting more and more posts in an attempt to interrupt conversations thereby squelching them. Deleting my posts to him but publicly commenting on them anyhow.

In the end he even deleted my responses to you and SteveK, even though they were long, on-point clear logical refutations of what you both said, or perhaps because of that, so I asked him if my ability to use rational argumentation to prove the errors in A-T frightened him so much that he felt he had to delete them even though they were clearly on point arguments, and that is when his emotions boiled over and he banned me, not being able to resist a parting shot of "major troll" which apparently provides some sort of personal rationalization for his lack of courage to do as Lennox has done all his life.

bmiller said...

@Strawdusty,

Your latest post is one big rant of "childish emotions".

When all the people you interact with all tell you that you are behaving badly, ignoring counter-arguments and merely repeating unsupported assertions either everyone else has a problem, or you do. Don't bother to resond, I know the conclusion you will arrive at.

Just don't expect me to call a Wambulance for your tender feelings getting run over again (and again...and again...)


It's a hoot to see you praise Lennox, when we both know you would telling him you didn't believe he even has a PhD if you ever got to interact with him. Thanks for the laugh.

If you want to reply to my post from Classical Theism, you can do it here.

Kevin said...

Stardusty: "In the end he even deleted my responses to you and SteveK, even though they were long, on-point clear logical refutations of what you both said"

This is an excellent example of why you get banned, and it can't be blamed on bloggers. Reading this and countless other posts with similar sentiment, the reader is left with no other possible impression than you present your opinions and assertions as proven facts, the likes of which others wallow in irrationality in their silly refusal to agree that you are always right. Someone with this attitude will accomplish nothing but creating animosity, which bloggers don't want fouling up the comments. And when you persist anyway, you earn the "troll" label every time. Then you blame everyone else for calling you out, and it's bye bye.

On subjects in which debate continues to this day - whether free will exists, for example - there is shameless hubris in things like "A great many attempts have been made to put forth counter speculations to this clear and rather simple logic"

Or "Another common flaw for those who wish to retain the incoherent notion of free will combined with an omniscient being"

With an approach like this, you would spend less time typing by simply saying "I'm right and you're wrong if you disagree with me", because the message is inherently the same. These posts are not invitations to dialogue - obviously people who believe in free will do not think it logically incoherent, and a great many people more intelligent and knowledgeable than you hold that very position, so asserting its incoherence as a fact will make some people laugh at you and will make others mad at you, both of which will lead to nothing productive. Even those who agree with you in principle are generally left cringing at your approach.

If you can't see the difference between "Another common flaw for those who wish to retain the incoherent notion of free will combined with an omniscient being" and "Another thing I find to be flawed with the notion of free will with an omniscient being is...", then it's no wonder you get banned everywhere and choose to blame the blogger. However, if you see the difference, continue to to assert your opinion as fact anyway, and still blame the blogger? Rather pathetic.

bmiller said...

It seems that Prof Feser does not consider Strawdusty as the worst troll to visit his site.

So why the frowny face?


His main problem, other than being ignorant and conceited, is he is way to prolific.



Well, yes, that's precisely the point. I almost always tolerate even very obnoxious and moronic comments if it's just a matter of one or two here or there. But with this weirdo it's comment after comment after comment, followed by comment after comment by people responding to him, and before you know it it's turned into a pissing match and the thread is completely ruined. So I really have no choice but to ban him.

Also, in fairness to SP, he was never as nasty or psychotic as this guy. And yet I had to ban SP because the sheer volume coupled with the stupidity was destroying threads. Evans is like SP without the charm. A fortiori...

And as it is, this will be perhaps only the sixth or seventh time in almost ten years that I've banned someone. I don't do it that often. Someone really has to be seriously obnoxious to get me to do that. Maybe you didn't see as much of the really nasty crap he was posting as I did.

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