Author Topic: Dealing with an Objection to the Aristotelian Argument  (Read 258 times)

ClassicalLiberal.Theist

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Dealing with an Objection to the Aristotelian Argument
« on: October 30, 2020, 05:55:29 am »
The objection: it is in principle possible that physical things or at least things other than something pure act can lack potentiality. Therefore, you cannot deduce God's existence from the existence of motion.

To illustrate what this means, take any physical object whatsoever. You can imagine a possible world in which a physical object lacks the potentiality for things like local motion or change. This would exhuast the possibility of it having potentiality, all the while not qualifying it as something which is pure act: it may still be susceptible to time, it is composite, it isn't all powerful, etc. Therefore, the argument from change is false (well, at least it isn't deductive).

I would like at the outset, to make some clarifying statements about why the argument from motion proceeds as it does. In many, if not all variations of the argument from motion, it starts with the premise "change occurs", or something synonymous. The reason for this move is soley to establish the reality of the metaphysical categories act and potency. It is not, and I repeat, it is not the premise by which the existence of God is directly derived. To put it in a crude syllogistic form:

P1 Change occurs
P2 So, actuality and potentiality exist
P3 If actuality and potentiality exist, then God exists
C Therefore, God exists.

After the establishment of change, we get act and potency. From this, the argument (I have Edward Feser's argument in mind) then applies and seeks to understand the conclusion when these metaphysical categories are applied to actualization which is of a vertical sort, rather than a horizontal one. Meaning, it is concerned with the continued actualization of a potential, rather then the actualization of a potential throughout points in time. The argument deduces God's existence from the fact that there are objects that exist which are being continually actualizaed, not the actualization of potentialities happens in a temporal manner.

To make even more preliminary statements, however, I would like to make a distinction between the ways in which a thing can lack potentiality. These two I have labeled underivative existence and derivative existence. The first we would call God, and the second would be some sort of being which lacks the capacity to change. Understanding now what the argument's objective is, take any physical object. By virtue of being a physical object, regardless of whether or not "it lacks the capacity for change", it is always physically composite. Cups, spoons, houses, and boeing 747s are the way they are because of the various arrangement of atoms involved. Atoms can be broken down into protons, neutrons, and electrons, and further those things can be logically divided by space (if it is .0000000000000000001cm long, then we can say it is composed of two parts which are .0000000000000000001/2cm in length). Strictly speaking, anything in space is divisible (composite), and everything physical is in space. Knowing this, we can then say that call physical things are dependent on their subsidiary parts for their existence. Meaning, the arrangement of parts actualize the potentiality for there to be a whole. Therefore, in order to appease the causal principle, we must then posit some being which is causally prior to this. You can run this game ad infinitum, but ultimately to satisfy the chain of causality, you must at some point come to the existnece of an "unmoved mover" or "pure actuality". Physical things may very well lack the capacity to change, but it is in the very nature of the things which deems it something of derivative existence. You must therefore appeal to that which is of underived existence.


RomanJoe

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Re: Dealing with an Objection to the Aristotelian Argument
« Reply #1 on: November 16, 2020, 04:41:09 pm »
It doesn't matter if you posit some substance and just say that for purposes of illustration it has no potential to move, heat up, become cold, x, y, z, etc. You're still dealing with a partitioned piece of reality. It's still composite even if it is "unmovable"--it still exists in this locale rather than another, with this color rather than another, with this atomic structure rather than another. Why? There must be a reason for its existence being composed in such a way rather than another. What makes it so that it is actually here rather than there, or with this atomic structure rather than that atomic structure?

Appeal to the substance itself? How? X actualizes the potentials of X to exist in the manner it does. That's impossible. So we must appeal to something outside of the substance. The causal chain then continues on.

You see, potentiality isn't just an existential principle that determines how an already existing being can exercise itself. Rather it's a principle that carves up being. It explains why some beings extend only so far or look a particular way. This is the reason why the AT theist claims God can't be material, can't be spatially limited. Any limitation is due to potentiality.