[Serious] Book reports

[Belacqua]

Feser finally addresses quantum mechanics in the section on efficient causality but does so in a rather unsatisfying way. Feser basically says: so what, nothing in Aquinas's metaphysics necessitates that determinism be true anyway, no biggie. But if things do/can occur in an indeterministic manner, then doesn't this suggest some lack of directionality, and wouldn't this therefore be a problem for Aristotelian causality in general? 

Here's the part where I think he deals with that -- or tries to. This is page 54 in my paper copy of the book:

It is sometimes suggested that quantum mechanics undermines the principle of causality insofar as it implies that the world is not deterministic. But the Aristotelian does not regard the world as deterministic in any case (determinism being a view associated with the mechanical conception of nature Aristotelians reject), and thus does not hold that every cause must be a deterministic cause. As the analytical Thomist John Haldane has noted, if we can appeal to objective, non-deterministic natural propensities in quantum systems to account for the phenomena they exhibit, this will suffice to provide us with the sort of explanation the Aristotelian claims every contingent thing in the world must have.

I think this deals with the issue pretty well, but doesn't unpack the terms in the way that some of his other explanations do. It wouldn't make sense to me if I hadn't read Burtt's book on the metaphysics of science, and some other things on the changes in metaphysics around the time of Galileo and Newton. 

I am of course no expert, but I'll take a stab at it this way: 

The "mechanical conception" of nature which he mentions is sort of like clockwork. Every gear that turns has to be pushed by another gear, and every little cuckoo that sings on the hour has to be triggered by a spring that is released by a latch that is pushed by a gear. These are the type of things he means (I think) when he talks about "deterministic" causes. The gear determines what the latch will do, the latch determines what the spring will do, etc. 

This is probably our normal conversational way of using the word "cause." And as we've seen, people are reluctant to think about uses of words which are different from our modern popular usage. But Aquinas used "cause" in different ways, as you've read.

The non-mechanical, non-deterministic type of cause that we need instead is alluded to when he says "objective, non-deterministic natural propensities in quantum systems to account for the phenomena they exhibit." In such a case, a cause isn't object A pushing object B, but just the natural inherent tendency of A to do a certain thing. 

People who assume all talk of causation is efficient mechanical deterministic causation triumphantly point to radioactive decay of particles as proof that things occur without causation. The decay of the particle appears to happen without anything pushing or triggering it. But this is no problem for a Thomist, who says that a cause may also be the natural propensity of a radioactive particle just to decay. 

The cause of the decay is the natural propensity of the particle; a part of the particle's essence is that it will at some point decay. It need not be mechanically triggered. 

Feser, however, lost me once again with the angel stuff. I don't think he did well enough at distinguishing between angels and Platonic Forms. Pure forms existing concretely yet independently of matter still doesn't feel like it makes sense.

I guess I enjoy the angel talk because it shows cases of how different things could show the various qualities that he talks about. As he says, a thing need not actually exist for us to talk about its essence. So I don't think we have to believe in angels to take them as thought experiments. 

That said, angels are pretty different from Platonic Forms. 

I think Platonic Forms are supposed to be

~ universal
~ uncreated (in the mind of God all along)
~ without location
~ without extension (this is the same for angels -- they have location but not extension)

Angels, on the other hand, would be:

~ individual (There's only one Raphael, one Michael, one Uriel, etc. If Aquinas believed in Platonic Forms, there would be a Platonic Angel Form that exists "above" each particular angel's existence.)
~ created 
~ having location (an angel can be said to be in a certain place and not in another)

Very roughly, maybe an analogy would be that numbers are a little like Forms while particular thoughts are a little bit like angels. The number 2 is universal, uncreated, doesn't exist in any particular place, and has no size. A particular unique thought which is currently in your mind, however, is particular to you, was created by you, and is located in your mind. Neither is made of matter, but the way they exist is different.

And thank you again for working on this with such diligence! It's a real pleasure for me to look at it again with such good motivation!!!

[GrandizerII]

The cause of the decay is the natural propensity of the particle; a part of the particle's essence is that it will at some point decay. It need not be mechanically triggered.

I appreciate your elaboration, and I have no question that ultimately quantum mechanics can fit well within the Aristotelian framework (with some modifications, I'm guessing).

That said, how would you argue for the directedness of a random behavior towards a certain final cause? If, say, in the double-slit experiment, we observe that a particle will either go through one slit or the other, and there's no specific mechanism/attribute (at least according to some interpretations) that directs the particle to go through one slit rather than the other, is this still in line with what Feser said earlier in the book that an efficient cause is directed to act on an object towards a particular final cause? Perhaps Feser would say that directedness need not be so specific as to be in only one direction, but then wouldn't Feser's objection to the Humean way of thinking about causality falter somewhat?

I guess I enjoy the angel talk because it shows cases of how different things could show the various qualities that he talks about. As he says, a thing need not actually exist for us to talk about its essence. So I don't think we have to believe in angels to take them as thought experiments. 

That said, angels are pretty different from Platonic Forms. 

I think Platonic Forms are supposed to be

~ universal
~ uncreated (in the mind of God all along)
~ without location
~ without extension (this is the same for angels -- they have location but not extension)

Angels, on the other hand, would be:

~ individual (There's only one Raphael, one Michael, one Uriel, etc. If Aquinas believed in Platonic Forms, there would be a Platonic Angel Form that exists "above" each particular angel's existence.)
~ created 
~ having location (an angel can be said to be in a certain place and not in another)

Very roughly, maybe an analogy would be that numbers are a little like Forms while particular thoughts are a little bit like angels. The number 2 is universal, uncreated, doesn't exist in any particular place, and has no size. A particular unique thought which is currently in your mind, however, is particular to you, was created by you, and is located in your mind. Neither is made of matter, but the way they exist is different.

You certainly put in more effort here to distinguish between angels and Platonic Forms than Feser did. Feser, if I still remember correctly, only brought up the universal vs. individual distinction.

Still, I guess the issue for me here isn't that there aren't distinctions in accordance with Aquinas's metaphysics, but that I have a hard time understanding how these differences manifest in reality (if somehow angels and other types of pure forms could possibly exist concretely). Your analogy makes sense because I can conceive of numbers and thoughts existing, just not in the concrete sense.

Either way, the next chapter should be fun to read, since it's all about natural theology.

[The Grand Nudger]

The question of whether (and how) angels can exist concretely being the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Granted that numerical quantity is a function of material composition, as St. Tom saw it.

The end of my labors has come. All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.

Looks like he gave up on rational thought, deferring to revealed theology, instead.

So...Feser is in good company in that regard.

[Belacqua]

I have no question that ultimately quantum mechanics can fit well within the Aristotelian framework (with some modifications, I'm guessing).

In the book I'm reading on Plotinus, there's an indirect reference to how the patterns or tendencies in the universe "point" in certain directions. It's put in such poetic language that it doesn't sound sciency, but I think this is about the same thing.

The author takes a long quote from Thoreau:

When the frost comes out in the spring, and even in a thawing day in
the winter, the sand begins to flow down the slopes like lava, sometimes
bursting out through the snow and overwhelming it where no sand was
to be seen before. Innumerable little streams overlap and interlace with
one another, exhibiting a sort of hybrid product, which exhibits halfway
the law of currents, and halfway that of vegetation. As it flows it
takes the form of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a
foot or more in depth, and resembling, as you look down on them, the
laciniated, lobed and imbricated thalluses of some lichens; or you are
reminded of coral, of leopard’s paws or birds’ feet, of brains or lungs or
bowels and excrements of all kinds. . . . You find thus in the very sands
an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth expresses
itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with the idea inwardly. The atoms
have already learned this law, and are pregnant by it.16

Emphasis added. 

The author glosses this:

patterns of the sort that we associate with living forms are also to be found
elsewhere— evidence of a different sort of living, or evidence that the cosmos
is prepared for life.17

Again, the language is poetic, but I think it is philosophically sound. 

We've all seen the extreme close-up photos of minerals or whatever contrasted with satellite photos of the earth, where the patterns seem identical. The way that river deltas or blood vessels branch in similar ways show that there are inherent tendencies in nature, that things don't behave randomly but follow regularities or "laws." In the old-fashioned language that Thomists use, these tendencies are "causes" of the way things work out and evolve. Science, relying on the same idea, seeks to explain and mathematize these tendencies to show what the results will be -- or explain why the results are as they are. Thoreau's trope is more emotionally satisfying, I think -- the world is pregnant with certain things, already determined though not yet visible to us. 

(The history of science shows that it was the commitment to these universal and knowable tendencies by the Thomists that gave early impetus to what later became science. Without mathematizable regularities, scientific knowing is impossible. I don't expect our ideologue religion-haters to acknowledge this fact of history.)

[The Grand Nudger]

Thomism was a derivative ideology, expressly and explicitly modeled after classical pagan accounts. It was his life's work to reconcile christian theology and nascent scientific inquiry snuffed out in the collapse of classical academia.

...so there's that.

[GrandizerII]

I have no question that ultimately quantum mechanics can fit well within the Aristotelian framework (with some modifications, I'm guessing).

In the book I'm reading on Plotinus, there's an indirect reference to how the patterns or tendencies in the universe "point" in certain directions. It's put in such poetic language that it doesn't sound sciency, but I think this is about the same thing.

I agree the regularities are undeniable, and that there strongly appear to be directional asymmetries in nature.

I was reading this earlier:

https://aeon.co/essays/could-we-explain-...and-effect

Reading the conclusion, I'm not really sure if I feel the same way about this whole causality thing, but it seems like a compromise worth considering.

[GrandizerII]

Haven't had the chance yet to read the next chapter, but I want to go back to this bit here:

Angels, on the other hand, would be:

~ individual (There's only one Raphael, one Michael, one Uriel, etc. If Aquinas believed in Platonic Forms, there would be a Platonic Angel Form that exists "above" each particular angel's existence.)
~ created 
~ having location (an angel can be said to be in a certain place and not in another)

Feser argues that each angel is their own species, since otherwise there's no principle of individuation to differentiate between them. But why couldn't location be that principle of individuation?

[Belacqua]

Haven't had the chance yet to read the next chapter, but I want to go back to this bit here:

Angels, on the other hand, would be:

~ individual (There's only one Raphael, one Michael, one Uriel, etc. If Aquinas believed in Platonic Forms, there would be a Platonic Angel Form that exists "above" each particular angel's existence.)
~ created 
~ having location (an angel can be said to be in a certain place and not in another)

Feser argues that each angel is their own species, since otherwise there's no principle of individuation to differentiate between them. But why couldn't location be that principle of individuation?

I think this depends on Aquinas' commitment to hylomorphism. Every physical thing, according to this, is "informed matter" -- matter which is currently held together according to a particular form. Each member of a species has the same (general) form, but differs from other members because its matter is particular to it.

So my cats Rosa and Sylvie both share the Form of "cat." But Rosa is Rosa and Sylvie is Sylvie because each is made of a different bunch of matter. The (naughty, trouble-making) Form of "cat" is imposed on a different glob of matter to create the two different members of the same species.

With angels (and I agree this is hard to believe) there is said to be form without matter. Lacking matter, therefore, there would be nothing to differentiate them. Therefore if we want to preserve the idea that angels are individual, they have to have different Forms. So their relation to one another isn't like that of Rosa and Sylvie, it's more like that between roses and lilies. 

I think that location isn't sufficient to differentiate them because a particular form doesn't change based on where it is. Forms are universal, and -- if they lacked matter -- would be identical no matter where they instantiated. Again, the analogy may be with numbers. The number 2 exists everywhere the same, but instantiates itself differently when there are two particular books or two particular rocks. Unless it is instantiated in a material object, it is the same universal abstract. So to avoid the idea that each angel is just a carbon copy or exact clone, each has to be its own individual Form.

The article from Aeon that you linked to is over my head, like all that quantum physics stuff, but I'm pretty sure they're using the word "cause" in the modern sense, which is solely what Aristotle would call "efficient cause." Only one of the four. It seems to be pretty widely accepted these days that some quantum events happen without an efficient cause -- a push or a trigger to make it happen. Very often when someone is talking about a First Cause argument, and saying that there has to be a chain of causes, someone else will speak up and say that modern physics denies this -- that quantum events can happen without a cause. But since this objection is limited to only what Aristotle would call efficient cause, it doesn't really harm a First Cause argument. If someone claims that quantum events can occur without efficient cause, and that this knocks down the Thomist First Cause argument, he is only showing that he doesn't know what the argument really says.

[The Grand Nudger]

Can you point to any thomist position on cause, of any kind, that isn't explicitly informed by notions of cause derived from those you've segregated as purely efficient? It's a bit of a conundrum, as Saint Tommy was in absolutely no position to know or comment on cause outside of this context (and in fact, he didn't - his notions were built on his 13th century study of change). Not his fault, but that's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

GIGO. Or, to put it into more palatable terms for this cultured discussion....we no longer have any reason to believe that the fundamental propositions to any thomist example of cause are sound. Therefore, we can have no confidence in any thomist argument, however valid it may be. Current notions of causality don't suffer from this handicap, as they're built on provisional certitude of empirical demonstration by tools with much greater ability than a monk wondering about things, locked in time as he..and subsequently, that position was. It could be the case that the current interpretation is inaccurate, and that might rescue some notions of cause, including thomist cause, but it's not certain that any future discovery that points to inaccuracy in the current interpretation would rescue a specific notion of cause, in this case thomist notions of cause.

[GrandizerII]

The article from Aeon that you linked to is over my head, like all that quantum physics stuff, but I'm pretty sure they're using the word "cause" in the modern sense, which is solely what Aristotle would call "efficient cause." Only one of the four. It seems to be pretty widely accepted these days that some quantum events happen without an efficient cause -- a push or a trigger to make it happen. Very often when someone is talking about a First Cause argument, and saying that there has to be a chain of causes, someone else will speak up and say that modern physics denies this -- that quantum events can happen without a cause. But since this objection is limited to only what Aristotle would call efficient cause, it doesn't really harm a First Cause argument. If someone claims that quantum events can occur without efficient cause, and that this knocks down the Thomist First Cause argument, he is only showing that he doesn't know what the argument really says.

I don't think it's about quantum events implying an utter lack of causality here. I think what the article is about is how to make sense of causality from a metaphysical perspective. Is there a non-arbitrary first cause of some sort that we can potentially pinpoint in reality, or is the starting point arbitrary? Something like that. I will confess that some of the stuff in the article also went over my head, though I think I get what the conclusion was saying.