Thursday, December 4, 2014

Dawkins:  "Who made God?"


In response to my previous post, Victor Reppert criticizes Dawkins' answer to the Cosmological Argument this way:
Now, I think there is further discussion which might develop the "Who made God" response to more sophisticated version of the Cosmological Arguments, but a popular kind of response to arguments like Aquinas's and Craig's, sometimes given in intro philosophy classes, makes it seem as if they somehow didn't think to ask the question "Who made God," a question asked by most grade school children.
Now one thing I should point out right away is the fact that Dawkins is not a philosopher, but more importantly, his target audience was not philosophers.  He was addressing real people who may have been brought up in a religious environment, hearing the common arguments for God's existence.

Secondly, this "Who made God" question was not his response to cosmological arguments.  Actually in response to teleological arguments, he said (in part):

The creationist misappropriation of the argument from improbability always takes the same general form, and it doesn't make any difference… [if called] 'intelligent design' (ID). Some observed phenomenon—often a living creature or one of its more complex organs, but it could be anything from a molecule up to the universe itself—is correctly extolled as statistically improbable. Sometimes the language of information theory is used: the Darwinian is challenged to explain the source all the information in living matter, in the technical sense of information content as a measure of improbability or 'surprise value'… However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747.
   
    …The whole argument turns on the familiar question 'Who made God?'… A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right. God presents an infinite regress from which he cannot help us to escape. This argument… demonstrates that God, though not technically disprovable, is very very improbable indeed.
Somehow, this statement doesn't exactly sound like the unlearned school child that Victor makes Dawkins out to be.  It also makes me seriously question whether Victor actually read the book of which he is so critical, given that he doesn't even know which theistic argument Dawkins is responding to.

So how does Dawkins actually address the cosmological argument? 
All three of these arguments rely upon the idea of a regress and invoke God to terminate it. They make the entirely unwarranted assumption that God himself is immune to the regress. Even if we allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name, simply because we need one, there is absolutely no reason to endow that terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to God: omnipotence, omniscience, goodness, creativity of design, to say nothing of such human attributes as listening to prayers, forgiving sins and reading innermost thoughts.
And despite Craig's contention that this is a poor response to the Kalam argument, it is not a response to the Kalam argument at all.  This does, however, address Aquinas' cosmological argument.  And I think this response deserves serious consideration by philosophers, since it gets to one of the biggest flaws in Aquinas' arguments:  given that there is some kind of transcendent entity that is the ultimate cause of the big bang, what reason is there to believe that this entity is God?  Why couldn't it be, for example, a greater natural cosmological entity (such as a multiverse)?  There is absolutely no logical basis to assume that it must be God (or some kind of entity that has godly attributes), other than unwarranted theological assumptions.

Now, I understand that theists reject the idea of a multiverse.  They even try to claim that it is unscientific.
Not to be dismayed by the facts, atheists have invented some metaphysical "science" that attempts to explain away the existence of God. Hence, most atheistic cosmologists believe that we see only the visible part of a much larger "multiverse" that randomly spews out universes with different physical parameters.  Since there is no evidence supporting this idea (nor can there be, according to the laws of the universe), it is really just a substitute "god" for atheists.
Let me just say that this statement reflects a profound ignorance of cosmological science and theoretical physics.  The reality is that mankind has invented God as a substitute for science.  And as our scientific knowledge continues to expand, God fades into the background.

In answer to the school child's question of who made God:  we did.

37 comments:

  1. It may be the case that the Universe is fine tuned and that we may never have a good explanation for how that came about; however, it is certainly the case that anything that you can call a god that is complex enough to create a universe is also fine tuned. But a fine tuned Universe has one major feature that a fine tuned deity doesn't have: we know that the Universe exists. Deities, not so much.

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  2. >it gets to one of the biggest flaws in Aquinas' arguments: given that there is some kind of transcendent entity that is the ultimate cause of the big bang...

    First of all, Aquinas' argument is not that there is some cause of the universe's beginning, or even that the universe had a beginning, but rather that there is some base level of reality IN THE PRESENT MOMENT. The uncaused cause, for Aquinas, is not the first event in the past, but the "floor" holding everything up from moment to moment and each moment anything exists. To emphasize this point, let me quote Richard Taylor:

    From these considerations we can see also what is properly meant by a first cause...It is a common criticism of this notion to say that there need not be any first cause, because the series of causes and effects that constitute the history of the universe might be infinite or beginningless and must, in fact, be infinite in case the universe itself had no beginning in time. This criticism, however, reflects a total misconception of what is meant by a first cause. "First" here does not mean first in time, and when God is spoken of as a first cause, he is not being described as a being which, at some time in the remote past, started everything. To describe God as a first cause is only to say that he is literally a primary rather than a secondary cause, an ultimate rather than a derived cause...Now this, of course, is perfectly consistent with saying that the world is eternal or beginningless...To use a helpful analogy, we can say that the sun is the first cause of daylight and, for that matter, of the moonlight of the night as well, which means only that daylight and moonlight ultimately depend upon the sun for their existence. The moon, on the other hand, is only a secondary or derivative cause of its light. This light would be no less dependent upon the sun if we affirmed that it had no beginning, for an ageless and beginningless light requires a source no less than an ephemeral one. If we supposed that the sun has always existed, and with it its light, then we would have to say that the sun has always been the first -- i.e., the primary or ultimate -- cause of its light. Such is precisely the manner in which God should be thought of, and is by theologians often thought of, as the first cause of heaven and earth.

    Now, as to your second criticism:

    >...what reason is there to believe that this entity is God?

    The uncaused cause, for Aquinas, must be purely actual. If it had any potentials at all, those potentials would have to be caused by something that is already actual. God, as the "ground floor" of reality, so to speak, cannot be caused by anything further, because then he just wouldn't be the "ground floor" in the first place. So he lacks any potentials.

    From this minimal starting point, Aquinas gives all kinds of reasons to believe that a thing of pure actuality has attributes such as infinite power, intelligence, goodness, etc. We could start with chapter 15 of the Summa Contra Gentiles, wherein Aquinas argues that God must be eternal. So now he has two attributes: uncaused (no potentials), and eternal. Then Aquinas continues with immateriality. So now the ground floor of reality is uncaused, eternal, and immaterial. And so on, for 100 chapters, until he has proven that the uncaused cause is all-good, all-powerful, and all the rest.

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  3. Martin,

    "there is some base level of reality IN THE PRESENT MOMENT. The uncaused cause, for Aquinas, is not the first event in the past, but the "floor" holding everything up from moment to moment and each moment anything exists"
    - I've seen many discussions of cosmological arguments, and never have I seen a rebuttal of them dismissed based on Aquinas' concept of the act of creation. Yes , I agree with what you say, but it's kind of beside the point. Aquinas still makes an argument based on chains of efficient causality. Here's what he says in the second way:

    “…Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false….”


    "The uncaused cause, for Aquinas, must be purely actual. If it had any potentials at all, those potentials would have to be caused by something that is already actual."
    - That's great, but it is still an unwarranted theistic assumption. In order for us to believe this, we have to buy into his assumptions about act and potency. But there's no logical reason to do that. We now have a much better understanding of reality than medieval theists did, and there is ample evidence to back up that claim. If you want to assert that Thomistic metaphysics is representative of reality, you need to do more than merely assert that it's true.


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  4. > Yes , I agree with what you say, but it's kind of beside the point. Aquinas still makes an argument based on chains of efficient causality.

    Not only is it not besides, the point, it is the most critical point. Aquinas is not saying:

    * The chain of causality stretches back in time to a first event, which was God

    Aquinas IS saying:

    * The chain of causality stretches concurrently down in the present to the most fundamental layer of reality right now, which is God

    The chain of causes in the Second Way which you quote is a concurrent chain of causes, not stretching back in time to the first event (which Aquinas rejected), but down to more and more fundamental levels of reality in the present. For example, he is NOT saying:

    "Event A was caused by event B, which was caused by event C, which was caused by first event D, which is God."

    He IS saying:

    "Existing state-of-affairs A is kept in existence by concurrent state-of-affairs B, which is kept in existence by concurrent state-of-affairs C, which is kept in existence by concurrent state-of-affairs D, which is not kept in existence by any further states of affairs."

    To hammer this point home, here is the article in the IEP, specifically about the Second Way (although the point applies to all of his arguments): For “when Aquinas talks about an ‘order’ of efficient causes he is not talking of a series stretching back into the past, but of a hierarchy of causes, in which a subordinate member is here and now dependent on the causal activity of a higher member” (Copleston, 1955: 122)....An illustration may help clarify the sort of argument Aquinas wishes to present. The proper growth of, say, plant life depends on the presence of sunlight and water. The presence of sunlight and water depends on ideal atmospheric activities. And those atmospheric activities are themselves governed by more fundamental causes, and so forth. In this example, the events described proceed not sequentially, but concurrently.

    So when you say, "given that there is some kind of transcendent entity that is the ultimate cause of the big bang," you are incorrect, since Aquinas is not talking about what caused the Big Bang, or whether the universe had a beginning, or whether our universe is part of a larger universe. He is not talking about "the universe" at all, much less whether it had a beginning or not. He is talking about what is on the "base" level of reality in the present, regardless of how old our universe is or how many universes exist.

    Since both you and Dawkins are talking about the Big Bang, you are not criticizing Thomas' cosmological argument.

    >That's great, but it is still an unwarranted theistic assumption.

    Ok, you've changed objections now. Your objection was that Aquinas did not support why the original entity must be a God rather than a multiverse. Now you have changed objections to: given that he did support that the unmoved mover has theistic attributes, his arguments for those attributes are circular. This is a different objection. So I'll presume you concede that I successfully answered your first objection, and now I will answer your second objection here. Again, to reiterate, your objection is: it is still an unwarranted theistic assumption.

    The example argument I gave was this:

    1. If something is unchangeable, then it cannot begin to exist or cease to exist
    2. The unmoved mover is immobile
    3. Therefore, the unmoved mover cannot begin to exist or cease to exist

    You don't need to believe in God to accept premise 1, and premise 2 is simply the conclusion of previous arguments, and so does not require belief in God. So not only does it not contain any "theistic assumptions," but it also isn't unwarranted either. There is every reason to believe that if something is unchangeable, then it cannot begin to exist or cease to exist.
    (cont)

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  5. (cont)
    >In order for us to believe this, we have to buy into his assumptions about act and potency.

    Well, yes, that's true.

    >But there's no logical reason to do that.

    Whether there are good reasons to accept Aristotelian metaphysics or not is not the topic of the points I'm making, which are:

    1. Aquinas did not argue that the universe had a beginning, so any criticisms of him that presume that he did are not good criticisms.

    2. Aquinas argued why the unmoved mover must be eternal, immaterial, non-composite, etc, and so it is not a good criticism to say that the unmoved mover may be a "multiverse" or something, since a mulitverse is clearly very composite, complex, and not pure act.

    (NOTE: Whether we should accept the act/potency distinction or not is a different objection, and not part of the current conversation chain, so please try to stay focused.)

    Point #2 needs to be emphasized. Since Aquinas is arguing for the most fundamental aspect of reality in the present, it makes no sense to say that it could be the multiverse, since the multiverse is the least fundamental thing in existence. This type of objection belies your misunderstanding of the argument, since you think his cosmological argument is saying that the universe must have sprung forth from some cause, when what his cosmological argument is arguing is that there must be some fundamental aspect of reality sustaining everything in existence from moment-to-moment in the present. Since that is how his argument is structured, you would be better served by an objection something like this:

    "The unmoved mover may be an as-yet-undiscovered energy field, or strings, or some kind of fundamental particle."

    That objection would at least show that you understand that the argument is arguing for a fundamental aspect of reality in the present, and not some cause of the universe in the past.

    Can you do me a favor? Can you please set aside for the time being whether Aristotelian metaphysics is actually true or not, and instead focus on the structure of the cosmological arguments contained within it? The question of whether its' true or not can be addressed separately, otherwise this splinters into too many fragments.

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  6. "Aquinas IS saying:

    * The chain of causality stretches concurrently down in the present to the most fundamental layer of reality right now, which is God"
    - With due respect, efficient causes are NOT simultaneous. Any force, any effect that one body has upon another, happens over some period of time. No effect is instantaneous. Efficient cause, according to Aquinas, is the source of movement or change. The very notion of 'movement' and 'change' is inherently related to time. Some have argued that there is simultaneous causation, but that is simply wrong. Aquinas says: "There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for then it would be prior to itself". Again, this is necessarily time-ordered causation.

    Nevertheless, despite any belief about the simultaneity of causation, you will note that Dawkins' response does not mention anything about sequential causation, or the big bang. It's about the regress and about the characteristics of whatever it is the might terminate the regress. So you can criticize Victor (and a great many philosophers) for bringing something like Kalam into the discussion.

    "Your objection was that Aquinas did not support why the original entity must be a God rather than a multiverse. Now you have changed objections to: given that he did support that the unmoved mover has theistic attributes, his arguments for those attributes are circular."
    - That's not true. I addressed your claim that "The uncaused cause, for Aquinas, must be purely actual". This claim is based on Thomistic assumptions, and as you may be aware, the majority of scientists and philosophers do not swallow the Thomistic kool-aid. Now you're the one who is changing the argument.

    "1. Aquinas did not argue that the universe had a beginning, so any criticisms of him that presume that he did are not good criticisms."
    - Dawkins did not make such a criticism.

    "2. Aquinas argued why the unmoved mover must be eternal, immaterial, non-composite, etc, and so it is not a good criticism to say that the unmoved mover may be a "multiverse" or something, since a mulitverse is clearly very composite, complex, and not pure act. "
    - Once again, this is an unwarranted theistic assumption. You can argue in favor of this unmoved mover, but it's bullshit. The fact is that anything that causes something else to move is itself moved in the process. That's physical reality. That's what our experience shows. In your argument, I could accept premise 1, but premise 2 simply assumes the existence of such a thing. It doesn't justify or substantiate that such a thing must actually exist. And that's what any decent philosopher would call an unwarranted claim.

    "The unmoved mover may be an as-yet-undiscovered energy field, or strings, or some kind of fundamental particle."
    - No. Such a thing is nothing more than a Thomistic assumption.

    "Can you do me a favor? Can you please set aside for the time being whether Aristotelian metaphysics is actually true or not, and instead focus on the structure of the cosmological arguments contained within it?"
    - Dawkins was not arguing about Thomistic metaphysics, and I wasn't either. You are the one who wants to turn this whole discussion in that direction. Dawkins did address the structure of the argument. You insiste on adding a layer of Thomistic assumptions on top of that.

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  7. It's very frustrating conversing with you, because each point splinters into multiple sub-points, which then splinter again, and again and again, until there are so many threads it is impossible to keep up. For example, now I have to talk about the simultaneity of causation, a HUGE topic in metaphysics. And no doubt each sentence I say about that will then splinter into multiple topics, until we are simultaneously discussing 5,698,265,987,195,576 topics all at the same time. An impossibility.

    >efficient causes are NOT simultaneous. Any force, any effect that one body has upon another, happens over some period of time. No effect is instantaneous.

    There is a distinction to be made here: concurrent causation, vs instantaneous causation, and you are jumping back and forth between the two. Of course I'm not saying that cause and effect are instaneous. But I am saying that cause and effect are simultaneous, even though the event of the cause and effect may happen over time. If I push a chair, the cause and effect are concurrent, but not instaneous as the effect happens over time as I push the chair across the room. If I cut an orange with a knife, my cutting of the orange, and the effect of the orange being cut, are both simultaneous, but not instaneous, as the effect occurs over time.

    And that's it for now. That's all I have time for. Since I know you will splinter this singular topic into 47 new ones: the meaning of the word chair, whether I can push chairs, what chairs are, and on and on and on.

    Incredibly frustrating. Like, head-bashing-against-the-wall frustrating.

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  8. "Incredibly frustrating. Like, head-bashing-against-the-wall frustrating."

    Martin, I am only responding to the points that YOU raise. I didn't bring up any of these "splits". YOU did. Look at my last response. Everything I said was a direct answer to what you said. And yes, I agree that it is frustrating to have a discussion with someone who ignores everything you say because it doesn't fit his Thomistic views.

    I admit that I don't understand all the subtleties and implications of Thomism. But here's something I know. Thomism relies on your acceptance of a set of fundamental principles that are not entirely consistent with a modern understanding of reality. If you choose to drink the kool-aid and believe all those principles, then you make logical conclusions that anyone else would consider to be unjustified. And you believe things that are not consistent with physics. And you are totally blind to the lack of empirical and logical justification for your beliefs.

    https://santitafarella.wordpress.com/2014/10/20/two-arguments-against-thomism/

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  9. See what I mean? Now you've just randomly linked to a blog with two more points. And did not respond to the point I made above.

    It's pointless conversing with you. Really.

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    1. "And did not respond to the point I made above."

      I have addressed this point, and you ignored what I said. The concept of cause in esse is an illusion. It is the idea that a cause sustains an effect, and once the cause is withdrawn, the effect is simultaneously removed. This is simply not true. This document gives the example of a candle that lights a room as the sustaining cause of illumination. The reality is that the candle emits photons, which then bounce off the walls before entering the eye and eventually being perceived as light. This takes time. Remove the candle, and there is still light in the room, at least until those last photons have time to reach the eye. Likewise, everything you might call a cause in esse is really just a (perhaps quick) temporal sequence of events.

      I made this point before, and you ignored it, so I'll say it again. I already addressed your point and you ignored it.

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    2. By the way, Martin, you seem to be hung up over my use of the word 'simultaneous', while you prefer to use the word 'concurrent'. Both words mean 'at the same time'.

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  10. And there you go again. I wasn't talking about essentially ordered vs accidentally ordered series. This is a different topic than the topic of whether cause and effect are simultaneous. So I was attempting to talk about the simultaneity of cause/effect, and your response has been to flail around with:

    * whether Thomistic metaphysics is compatible with modern physics
    * that Thomism is wrong because of sex (per the link you provided)
    * that Thomism is wrong because it is poetry (per the link you provided)
    * that Thomism lacks empirical or logical justification
    * the essentially ordered series involve a time element

    So I count five topics that do not relate to what I was saying about the simultaneity of cause and effect.

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  11. Martin,

    I tried to emphasize that I was specifically addressing your point. You refuse to hear what I say. I WAS addressing cause in esse, or essentially ordered causation. My point is that this concept is an illusion. It is nothing more than a theistic assumption about reality that does not bear skeptical scrutiny. You believe this nonsense because you swallow the kool-aid of Thomism. That makes you at once supremely certain of the truth of your assertions, and blind to the possibility that they are not grounded in reality.

    You think stupid people like me are unable to understand the concepts of your Thomistic faith, but the reality is that I am unable to swallow the concepts of your faith because they run contrary to things that I understand. When we talk about these things, we are coming from two different places - one based in faith, and the other based in evidence. And we often talk past each other. I don't get what you are saying, and you don't get what I am saying.

    Let me try again. There is no essentially ordered cause and effect. That is an illusion. And since the Thomistic argument depends on this mythical medieval concept, the whole thing falls apart.

    Consider the commonly used example of the essentially ordered series: the shoulder, the arm, the hammer, bla bla. I get it. You need one part to move the next. Explain to me, if you will, how this is any different from accidental causality. In a modern view of physical reality, the movement of a hammer is explained in terms of forces and states. Forces are applied by a hand that holds the hammer. The state ant any given moment is the position and velocity/momentum of the hammer. Those are the only determining factors in the state of the hammer in the next subsequent increment of time. How the current state came to be makes no difference. Whatever caused the current state to exist is nothing more than the combination of forces and the state of things at the previous increment of time. The fact that there is an arm and a shoulder involved is accidental, by your parlance. In any case, the arm and shoulder have only an indirect impact on the motion of the hammer. And that impact only affects the hammer's motion after a series of time-sequential events.

    Toss your "essentially ordered series" out the window. It has no bearing in understanding how things really work in our world. There is one and only one reason for believing it, and that is to support your system of theistic beliefs.

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  12. Let's say you are walking through the woods, and you see a hummingbird suspended in mid-air. How do you explain this?

    Next, you are walking through the woods and you see a coffee cup suspended three feet above the ground. How do you explain this?

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  13. The hummingbird presumably flaps his wings to create an upward force that balances the force of gravity. The fact that the bird isn't moving changes nothing about the combination of current state and forces that determine what the state will be in the next moment.

    The suspended coffee cup would be a puzzler. We know that gravity acts on it, and we can conclude that there must be another force that balances against the gravity to keep the cup suspended. I would investigate to find out what that force is.

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  14. Exactly! Since hummingbirds qua hummingbirds are capable of suspending themselves in mid-air, you don't need to seek anything in addition to the hummingbird (assuming it is in its natural enviornment, of course).

    As you note, the coffee cup is different. Coffee cups don't have the capability of suspending themselves in mid-air, unlike the hummingbird, so we have to look for something else, some other force, object, etc. Like strings, or maybe even something more exotic like an anti-gravity device.

    What you've just made use of, without realizing it, is the difference between accidentally and essentially ordered series.

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  15. Since hummingbirds qua hummingbirds are capable of suspending themselves in mid-air, you don't need to seek anything in addition to the hummingbird.

    That's not true. without the air to push against, the bird couldn't hover. Nothing acts in complete isolation. It has an effect on the things around it. In fact, when the bird flies, or stops flying, it even changes the rotational speed of the earth.

    The coffee cup would be no different, except that we are unsure of what force is affecting it. If you could demonstrate conclusively that no external force is affecting the cup, I'd have reason to doubt my understanding of how these things work.

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  16. Yes, of course there are other factors involved in the hummingbird's hovering. But the point is that the hummingbird has a built-in device capable of making it hover, whereas the coffee cup does not have wings (or an antigravity device), so there must be some other source of that effect. This is why you weren't puzzled by the floating hummingbird, but you were puzzled by the coffee cup.

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  17. The puzzlement lasts only until we discover what is suspending the coffee cup.

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  18. Yes. My point exactly. Until we discover what is suspending the coffee cup.

    And that is the reasoning involved in an essentially ordered series.

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  19. Surely you're not trying to tell me that you call something 'essentially ordered' when you can't explain the physics of its motion.

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  20. It isn't a question of physics or motion. It's a question of explanation. The hummingbird contains within it the device that causes it to be able to hover. The coffee cup has no such device, so we must look elsewhere to account for the suspension of the coffee cup. This would apply to whatever effect we were trying to explain, motion or not.

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  21. I suppose I don't really get the point. It matters whether a source of motility is internal or external to an object? How would you characterize a wind-up toy?

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  22. Again: not just motility, but any effect in question.

    Yes, the entire point is whether the source of the effect is external or internal. A wind-up toy is no different than a pushed toy; it just goes a little farther. So it requires someone to wind it up. The wind-up toy requires something in addition to itself in order to account for the effect in question. You see one coming into your room, and you would probably reason that someone must be around the corner who just wound it up and released it.

    Again, to emphasize: the entire point is the distinction between the source of an effect being internal or external.

    Another example: tuba music is coming from a tuba. To explain this effect, you would (I hope) postulate a person (or a machine) blowing air into the tuba, since tuba's can't play themselves.

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  23. Ask yourself where you would look for the explanation. Take any situation. Do you need something external to the thing to account for the effect, or is something internal enough to explain the effect?

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  24. The point that I'm driving at is that it isn't a simple matter to say that is driven from inside or outside. The bird can't hover without interacting with the air around it. Nor can it flap its wings without consuming nectar. The final effect is always the result of the interaction of many different elements, and they are certainly not all internal.

    But I still wonder what you are trying to say. Is it that an essentially ordered series consists of things that are driven from within themselves? I doubt that's what it's really about.

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  25. Of course there are other factors. No one is claiming otherwise. The point is that a hummingbird includes the device capable of making it hover, whereas a coffee cup does not include any such device. So the device that makes it hover must be something in addition to the coffee cup.

    Yes that is all that is involved in an essentially ordered series.

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  26. I think the definition of an essentially ordered series of causes says something like the intention of the first cause is carried through to the final effect. An example given in a philosophy text is:

    My mind and will direct my arm to move a piece of chalk.
    My arm moves a piece of chalk against the blackboard.
    The chalk leaves the effect of an English sentence on the blackboard.

    If we relate this to Aquinas' argument, he's saying that every effect we see in our world is the result of some ultimate first cause in an essentially ordered series. This first cause intends for this effect to happen, and the chain of causality is invoked to achieve the intended outcome.

    Of course, if that is the case, the argument doesn't prove the existence of God. It assumes that things happen by intention, and it presupposes the existence of this intentional agent.

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  27. Nope. That is incorrect. "Intention" is a factor in the Fifth Way, sure. But not in the First, and not in an essentially ordered series.

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  28. So then what concept is that example trying to convey?

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  29. It seems to me that Aquinas' arguments are conceptual Wil' of the Wisps. So, long as you look at them from a distance and not to closely they seem substantial; however, when you try and grab a hold of one of them, it vanishes and you have nothing.

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  30. The core concept is: if there is some effect, insofar as it is an effect, there must be a cause capable of producing it. The device that hummingbirds naturally have, wings, are capable of producing the effect of hovering three feet in the air. A coffee cup has no such device, so we must look outside the coffee cup for the cause capable of producing that effect.

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  31. jdhuey,

    I agree that it's very difficult to pin down. All the examples I've seen seem to involve a cause passing through some series of elements to the final effect. But if you think about it, how is that any different from accidental causation?

    I think the issue of "concurrency" is a red herring, because there is always some time lag between cause and effect, even if it's too small to be noticeable.

    If you think of causality as a matrix, where the current state of everything determines the state of everything in the next increment of time, then you understand that nothing acts on its own, and no effect is the result of any single cause. Any given event is really the result of many influences from all the surroundings. The notion of a chain of causality is a naive view that ignores this fact.

    To illustrate this, consider how weather forecasting is done. They actually create a large 3D matrix that contains initial conditions (temperature, wind speed, etc). The finer resolution, the better. They run this through a process that uses the laws of physics to calculate the matrix in the next time increment. Each element of the matrix is calculated by determining what will happen when the influence of all other elements is taken into consideration. Naturally, some elements have a greater influence than others, but they all contribute to the final result. The calculation is actually done as a matrix calculation - that is, they don't compute each element independently of the rest, but they compute them all together in a matrix operation.

    This represents a more realistic view of causality. Forget about essential or accidental ordering. They don't really describe how things work.

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  32. No one is denying that cause/effect involves a matrix, or a number of causes.

    I just illustrated to you above the difference between accidental and essential ordering, without naming it, and you naturally reasoned your way to them.

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  33. Hey, Martin.

    Your comment at Feser's blog failed to mention that not one single word I explained to you sunk into your thick, theism-addled skull.

    The fact is that it doesn't take a rocket scientist or a rocket philosopher to understand Thomistic philosophy. All it takes is someone to be so blinkered that they can't manage to separate religious fantasy from reality. I explained to you that there is no logical reason to accept the assumptions that Thomistic philosophy is built upon. I explained to you that "chains of causation" are nothing more than illusion, and that there is no such thing as "simultaneous causation".

    This is the modern world, not the middle ages. Thomists need to get with the program, and learn why their ancient philosophical beliefs are bullshit, superseded by modern science.

    And please don't go around thinking that I am too stupid to understand your bullshit. It's just that I am too smart to swallow it.

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