RE: Official Debate: ChadWooters vs Metis
July 28, 2015 at 3:11 pm
(This post was last modified: July 28, 2015 at 4:52 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
Thank you, Tiberius, for moderating this debate on Aquinas’s Five Ways (5Ws) and creating the forum that makes it possible. And thank you, Metis, for graciously accepting my debate request.
Each of the Five Ways illuminates a specific Divine attribute required for the observable features of the natural world to manifest. Collectively these Divine attributes describe the “God of the Philosophers”. And because believers often refer to God, not by name, but in His Divine capacities as Creator, Sustainer, All-knowing, etc., Aquinas repeatedly employs the refrain, “…and this everyone understands to be God.”
No Infinite Essentially Ordered Series
Aquinas rejects the notion of an infinite essentially ordered series. To understand 1W, 2W, 3W and 5W one must first understand this specific type of infinite regress and why it is impossible.
The members in an essentially order sequence exist because of ontologically dependency. This stands in contrast to a temporal and accidental series. Gavin Kerr illustrates the ontological relationship as (v-->(w-->(x-->y))) and a temporal series as (v-->w)-->(w-->x)-->(x-->y).* Remove the unchanged changer/first cause/necessary being and all dependent members of the essentially ordered series disappear. Thus every essentially ordered series is sustained by a first member.
The First Way (1W): Argument from Change
For any given thing, either the propensity to remain the same rules or the propensity to change rules, but not both at the same time. An oak cannot simultaneously sprout and remain an acorn. Either necessary and sufficient conditions make the oak grow or the acorn remains unchanged. In other words, in order for anything to change something other than itself must actually be present and have the power to make the change happen. Adam cannot borrowed a dollar from Bill, if Bill borrowed it from Calvin, and so on. Every actual pocket has the potential to hold a dollar, but that potential cannot ever be actualized unless there is at some point a potentially empty pocket holding an actual dollar. Likewise, the physical universe, in which all things are subject to change, depends on at least one fully actual thing that was never itself only a potential i.e. that which causes change without being subject to change. Traditionally, this fully actualized thing is called the Unmoved Mover.
The Second Way (2W): The Nature of Efficient Cause
An efficient cause is not temporally prior to its effect; but rather, the cause sustains the effect. For example, water causing the acorn to grow is contingent on the carbon dioxide, oxygen, and hydrogen causing the conversion of electromagnetic energy to stored chemical energy. As such, effects are ontologically dependent on their causes. Since an infinite regress of causes is absurd, intermediate efficient causes causal must terminate at an efficient cause that sustains those intermediate causes i.e. the First Cause.
The Third Way (3W): Necessary Being
Either something is possible, capable of either being or not being, or it must be of necessity. Anyone can see that many things could possibly exist that do not. Meanwhile other things that could possibly exist do. Therefore the existence of any possible thing is contingent on the existence of either something else that is possible or something that is necessary. The chain of contingency linking possible things that do exist is an essentially ordered sequence for which a possible thing cannot serve as the first member. That is because if that thing were possible it might not have been and so now there would be nothing. But there is something. As such those things that are possible to exist and do so rely for their existence on something that is necessary. That something is a Necessary Being.
The Fourth Way (4W): Maximal Greatness
While this is an important argument, I must unfortunately pass it by in the interest of time.
The Fifth Way (5W): Guiding Intelligence
The 5W explains why the laws of nature operate with unerring regularity. For example, an acorn grows into a tree, not a giraffe, and glass does not melt, but shatters, when struck. The relationships between efficient causes and their effects are either necessary or they are not. They must be necessary otherwise the world would be absurd.
This necessity stems from the fact that efficient causes have intrinsic tendencies toward determinate ranges of effects. For example, the tendencies of bricks include resisting compression, transferring mechanical force, absorbing moisture, etc. But Bricks tend not to melt glass, digest yogurt, or bend, among other things. More fundamental bodies like electrons and quarks also tend toward determinate effects.
Whatever relates the tendencies of non-cognizant efficient causes to their tendencies requires something that abstractly understands which tendencies relate all efficient causes harmoniously in law-like ways, such that specific final ends attain. This is the Guiding Intellect, which, as Aquinas says, “…everyone understands to be God.”
Conclusion
More could be written, and for certain already has been, about the Five Ways. I have confined myself to a basic presentation of the Five Ways, repackaged for sensibilities of modern readers. I wish I had more space in which to elaborate but must let these points suffice.
Thank You.
*”Aquinas's Way to God, The Proof in De Ente et Essentia” by Gavin Kerr.
Each of the Five Ways illuminates a specific Divine attribute required for the observable features of the natural world to manifest. Collectively these Divine attributes describe the “God of the Philosophers”. And because believers often refer to God, not by name, but in His Divine capacities as Creator, Sustainer, All-knowing, etc., Aquinas repeatedly employs the refrain, “…and this everyone understands to be God.”
No Infinite Essentially Ordered Series
Aquinas rejects the notion of an infinite essentially ordered series. To understand 1W, 2W, 3W and 5W one must first understand this specific type of infinite regress and why it is impossible.
The members in an essentially order sequence exist because of ontologically dependency. This stands in contrast to a temporal and accidental series. Gavin Kerr illustrates the ontological relationship as (v-->(w-->(x-->y))) and a temporal series as (v-->w)-->(w-->x)-->(x-->y).* Remove the unchanged changer/first cause/necessary being and all dependent members of the essentially ordered series disappear. Thus every essentially ordered series is sustained by a first member.
The First Way (1W): Argument from Change
For any given thing, either the propensity to remain the same rules or the propensity to change rules, but not both at the same time. An oak cannot simultaneously sprout and remain an acorn. Either necessary and sufficient conditions make the oak grow or the acorn remains unchanged. In other words, in order for anything to change something other than itself must actually be present and have the power to make the change happen. Adam cannot borrowed a dollar from Bill, if Bill borrowed it from Calvin, and so on. Every actual pocket has the potential to hold a dollar, but that potential cannot ever be actualized unless there is at some point a potentially empty pocket holding an actual dollar. Likewise, the physical universe, in which all things are subject to change, depends on at least one fully actual thing that was never itself only a potential i.e. that which causes change without being subject to change. Traditionally, this fully actualized thing is called the Unmoved Mover.
The Second Way (2W): The Nature of Efficient Cause
An efficient cause is not temporally prior to its effect; but rather, the cause sustains the effect. For example, water causing the acorn to grow is contingent on the carbon dioxide, oxygen, and hydrogen causing the conversion of electromagnetic energy to stored chemical energy. As such, effects are ontologically dependent on their causes. Since an infinite regress of causes is absurd, intermediate efficient causes causal must terminate at an efficient cause that sustains those intermediate causes i.e. the First Cause.
The Third Way (3W): Necessary Being
Either something is possible, capable of either being or not being, or it must be of necessity. Anyone can see that many things could possibly exist that do not. Meanwhile other things that could possibly exist do. Therefore the existence of any possible thing is contingent on the existence of either something else that is possible or something that is necessary. The chain of contingency linking possible things that do exist is an essentially ordered sequence for which a possible thing cannot serve as the first member. That is because if that thing were possible it might not have been and so now there would be nothing. But there is something. As such those things that are possible to exist and do so rely for their existence on something that is necessary. That something is a Necessary Being.
The Fourth Way (4W): Maximal Greatness
While this is an important argument, I must unfortunately pass it by in the interest of time.
The Fifth Way (5W): Guiding Intelligence
The 5W explains why the laws of nature operate with unerring regularity. For example, an acorn grows into a tree, not a giraffe, and glass does not melt, but shatters, when struck. The relationships between efficient causes and their effects are either necessary or they are not. They must be necessary otherwise the world would be absurd.
This necessity stems from the fact that efficient causes have intrinsic tendencies toward determinate ranges of effects. For example, the tendencies of bricks include resisting compression, transferring mechanical force, absorbing moisture, etc. But Bricks tend not to melt glass, digest yogurt, or bend, among other things. More fundamental bodies like electrons and quarks also tend toward determinate effects.
Whatever relates the tendencies of non-cognizant efficient causes to their tendencies requires something that abstractly understands which tendencies relate all efficient causes harmoniously in law-like ways, such that specific final ends attain. This is the Guiding Intellect, which, as Aquinas says, “…everyone understands to be God.”
Conclusion
More could be written, and for certain already has been, about the Five Ways. I have confined myself to a basic presentation of the Five Ways, repackaged for sensibilities of modern readers. I wish I had more space in which to elaborate but must let these points suffice.
Thank You.
*”Aquinas's Way to God, The Proof in De Ente et Essentia” by Gavin Kerr.
