[Serious] Existential Inertia vs. Sustaining First Cause

[GrandizerII]

So, prompted by recent ponderings about Aquinas' arguments (and especially the Second Way), I was thinking for the past few hours about the notion of existential inertia. I think if there's anything that could somewhat be a fair challenge to the idea that all things in existence (aside from first cause) require something else to sustain its existence at any point in time, it would be existential inertia. However, I'm not sure how effective this counter could be. Even if it doesn't demolish the arguments of Aquinas, it seems like an alternative worldview for those who don't find themselves convinced by such arguments as the Second Way.

However, it's not without its challenges. And one of the challenges has to do with the principle of sufficient reason.

Here's a link to a post you may want to refer to to get a better idea of what the topic is:
https://strangenotions.com/existential-i...ighty-god/

I haven't read it in its entirety yet. But will read it properly the next time I'm free and then probably share my thoughts here. You can share yours in the meantime.

In a nutshell, these are the competing positions:

Thomists reckon that, at any point in time, a particular thing like a chair can only exist if it is sustained by something else external to it.

Existential "inertians" reckon that the chair, since it exists, exists unsustained because nothing else "killed" its existence.

Which one sounds more reasonable to you? Is there a third alternative view to ponder that's related to this topic? And how would you address the sufficient reason challenge from an "inertian" perspective?

[Sal]

I honestly don't understand the difference in those two phrasings. It seems to me be entirely semantical. I mean, what is a difference between the view that, e.g., a chair existing as a Thing-in-itself (as envisioned by Kant) and existence itself? Seems like a divorce between what people see (a chair), and the ideal of a chair (internalized model of the chair). At least for Kant, he argued you could (and rightly so, IMO) never differentiate between subjective experience apart from a Thing-in-itself.

I have the same view about the trivial realization inherent in the anthropic principle: you only have human reasoning because there are humans around to think. Take humans away from the equation and only the Thing-in-itself remains (just no one around to say that).

[The Architect Of Fate]

Strange notions ......Oh dear 

[Anomalocaris]

First of all, what percentage of all things have been sampled such that that one, at least one with intellectual honesty, might Say with a straight face That  “based on how many things I’ve sampled, and how clearly I’ve defined the concept of “thing”, the empirical odds that any random thing anywhere in the universe not needing a prior cause or something else To sustain Would seem low”

[Belacqua]

Here's a link to a post you may want to refer to to get a better idea of what the topic is:
https://strangenotions.com/existential-i...ighty-god/

Wow, this might be good! There is a serious danger that one could learn something.

I've just skimmed it so far, but it's a pleasure to see someone present the ideas accurately, without (apparently) assuming a foregone conclusion. 

Looking forward to working on this.

[GrandizerII]

First of all, what percentage of all things have been sampled such that that one, at least one with intellectual honesty, might Say with a straight face That  “based on how many things I’ve sampled, and how clearly I’ve defined the concept of “thing”, the empirical odds that any random thing anywhere in the universe not needing a prior cause or something else To sustain Would seem low”

Well, this is coming at it from a prominently empiricist angle. And fair enough.

So I just got done reading that blog post. I don't fully understand everything that was said but I think I got the gist of it. It's basically saying that for something like a chair to continue existing, "infinite power" is required to keep it going, but that cannot reside within the chair itself since it is finite.

I'm iffy about this because I'm not sure "infinite power" is needed to keep a chair existing once the chair exists. Even if "infinite power" may be needed to get a thing to begin to exist ex nihilo , I'm not seeing why it then continues to be required for the continued existence of this thing.

I guess I don't find sustaining first cause as intuitive as existential inertia, and that may perhaps be due to influences from modern science on the way we think about things and probably also because of insufficient reading on the finer details of Thomism. But I nevertheless feel there's a bit of an "overdefinition" of sufficient reason in this case on the part of the Thomist. It seems the chair existing at time t has a sufficient enough reason in the chair existing right before t. If I'm missing something important here, then that is something I would like to hear.

That's my current thought on this given my limited knowledge and reading. I'll be reading further on this.

[The Grand Nudger]

I doubt that you'll be demolishing an already demolished argument by engaging in the same thing that fouled that argument up to begin with.

OFC there's a third alternative.

[brewer]

Here's a link to a post you may want to refer to to get a better idea of what the topic is:
https://strangenotions.com/existential-i...ighty-god/

Wow, this might be good! There is a serious danger that one could learn something.

I've just skimmed it so far, but it's a pleasure to see someone present the ideas accurately, without (apparently) assuming a foregone conclusion. 

Looking forward to working on this.

The author assumed a conclusion, why can't we?

[GrandizerII]

For anyone interested, a video discussion between two unknown young but bright minds on this topic: