Author Topic: Feser's Aristotelian Proof fails in demonstrating the existence of Pure Act  (Read 475 times)

Valtteri

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I have been scouring the internet for quite some time now searching for an answer to this objection. Looking at the archives of the old CT Forum the objection was brought up there as well, especially by RomanJoe, but never was a satisfactory answer given. The objection is this: from the premises of Feser's Aristotelian Proof (potentialities are actualized, an essentially ordered causal series must have a first member, a potency can be reduced to act only by something that is in act) we cannot deduce the existence of something that is purely actual, only the existence of an unactualized actualizer which exists in an underived way (nothing actualizes its existence).

Whenever this objection is brought up, the answer is usually that if this unactualized actualizer were to have any potencies, it would be a composite, and a composite cannot exist in an underived way, so the unactualized actualizer has to be purely actual. Sometimes the answer given is that if the unactualized actualizer had a distinction between its essence and its existence, it would not exist in an underived way, so its essence and its existence have to be identical, and such a thing has to be purely actual. I would certainly agree with both of these assertions. However, the point is that from the given premises of Feser's Aristotelian Proof, we cannot arrive at that which is Pure Act. Thus the argument fails as a standalone argument for demonstrating the existence of God; to arrive at God, we have to appeal to further premises, premises that are not part of the actual argument.

Am I mistaken? Can we actually arrive at the existence of Pure Act from the three premises of the argument?

Mackie Messer

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You end up needing to argue for the actualization of existence, which is basically the existential proof in De ente et essentia expressed with a focus on the terminology of actualizing potencies.
« Last Edit: July 04, 2020, 11:29:13 pm by Mackie Messer »

RomanJoe

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Boy, I remember wracking my brain over that issue for awhile--it's good to see I've contributed something useful to the age old canons of the elder forum. I'll need to dust off Feser's book again and have a look into how he spells out the argument precisely. I've taken a hiatus from philosophy for the past several months and I'm starting to realize it wasn't a very good choice. I feel like my mind is goop.

ClassicalLiberal.Theist

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I too have in my early days of learning, struggled with such an objection. I think this objection stems from a lack of understanding of the actul argument. When Feser lays out the argument, he starts off with the existence of change; however, such a rhetorical move is only made in order to establish or attempt to establish the metaphysical principles act and potency. But it is not from this which he derives something that is pure act. It is the sustanence of potencys in act rather than the temporal actualization of a potency itself. For example, it is the refrigerators ability to continually actualize waters potential to be ice, rather than its ability to actualize what was once water into ice.

Now having understood this, that it is the continued actualization of potentialities rather than temporal ones, the obejction fails. If, for example, we arrive at the existence of the ontologically absolute (Which is in fact what the argument arrives at), then your objection could be stated: but why must this thing be immaterial, divinely simple, and the like? It could just as well be composed of parts but have no potentialities to actualize. But this is mistaken. Continually actualized potentialities exist in the composed, which is what the argument is seeking to eleminate; the composed wholes potentility to be whole is itself continually actualized by each part, and is therefore not really pure act; there must be something even lower, so to speak, which holds this in existence. If one follows the logic, you will arrive at something which is pure act. Not something which just has no capacity to not exist, but something which has no capacity to not exist and whos capacity is kept in existence in terms of "itself", rather than something else. Your argument would leave you with something logically necessary and of derivative existence, but the argument actually leads you to something deeper: something logically necessary and something which is of underived existence; something truly pure act.