[Serious] Thomism: Then & Now

[The Grand Nudger]

Okay, I just mean, adding confusion in the sense of adding confusion to say a discussion of Aristotlian causes, because that's about explaining things... if you can't even agree at that point on what a thing is, it seems like it completely ruins, or sidetracks the discussion.

MN is subtle in this regard, as it's not about whether or not we can agree  on what a thing is.  It presumes (or correctly observes) that we can and do agree on that - but that many agreed upon "things" don't actually fit the Agreement Of Things™ we ourselves proffer.

[emjay]

Okay, I just mean, adding confusion in the sense of adding confusion to say a discussion of Aristotlian causes, because that's about explaining things... if you can't even agree at that point on what a thing is, it seems like it completely ruins, or sidetracks the discussion.

MN is subtle in this regard, as it's not about whether or not we can agree  on what a thing is.  It presumes (or correctly observes) that we can and do agree on that - but that many "things" don't actually fit the agreement of Things™ we ourselves proffer.

Fair enough... I must admit it felt kind of circular what I wrote there (that might be a non-sequitor, or not, not sure )

[The Grand Nudger]

For example, the form of Being (capital b) entails consciousness - but is consciousness itself a thing with definite borders or is it a range of interactions that can be graded on a scale with no clear distinction between a state of x and not x? We all agree that people are conscious and computers are not (or plants, or fungus, or this or that animal..whatever).

Is this relevant to arguments for or beliefs in necessary, first, or ultimate.....beings? It would seem that any argument which gets (or depends on) the form of being wrong would itself be fundamentally wrong from first principles. Like vulcan, I'm not convinced by MN - but I think it's relevant and it posits questions which any realist conception needs to answer for.

[emjay]

For example, the form of Being (capital b) entails consciousness - but is consciousness itself a thing with definite borders or is it a range of interactions that can be graded on a scale with no clear distinction between a state of x and not x?  We all agree that people are conscious and computers are not (or plants, or fungus, or this or that animal..whatever).

Is this relevant to arguments for or beliefs in necessary, first, or ultimate.....beings?  It would seem that any argument which gets (or depends on) the form of being wrong would itself be fundamentally wrong from first principles.  Like vulcan, I'm not convinced by MN - but I think it's relevant and it posits questions which any realist conception needs to answer for.

Can I ponder that while I go for my nightly walk? As you know, it's hard for me to disengage

[Neo-Scholastic]

I was doing some sticking-up for the plausibility of mereological nihilism there…I tend to think "allness" and "units" are real. I tend to think chairs are real. The form of the chair is intelligible, therefore the intelligible form of the chair is real. I think the same way about human rights, morality, and justice. All real.

Yes, I may have been a little to dismissive of mereological nihilism. Consider it a misguided attempt to steer us back towards the merits and shortcomings of the 5 Ways within the Scholastic framework. That, as opposed to defending the Scholastic framework itself from anti-realism or Pyrrhonian skepticism.

An atheist could say allness and units are simply attributes of a godless reality. I'm not sure what makes God relevant to the claim that allness or units are real.

Then at least as far as the 4th Way is concerned atheists such as yourself believe in God 😊

The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But "more" and "less" are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.

My strike-through because Thomas uses an archaic physical example based on fire and heat. The issue remains the same though. Does recognition of degrees of perfection within the patterns of nature allow us to infer a real standard of perfection. Or at least allows us to concieve various relative perfections, which is what intelligibility is kinda all about, isn't it?

I personally think Plato was on to something as far as numbers and math being real, permanent, immutable, and unchangeable… And I think that's what gets theists all excited about bringing their god into the equation…NOT, therefore "God."

I agree that the 5 Ways don’t get you to the Jehovah God found in scripture. At the same time, whatever numbers are they are NOT part of physical reality. So at the bare minimum, there is a type of reality that transcends the limits of the physical universe. IMHO that makes materialism false.

[emjay]

For example, the form of Being (capital b) entails consciousness - but is consciousness itself a thing with definite borders or is it a range of interactions that can be graded on a scale with no clear distinction between a state of x and not x?  We all agree that people are conscious and computers are not (or plants, or fungus, or this or that animal..whatever).

Is this relevant to arguments for or beliefs in necessary, first, or ultimate.....beings?  It would seem that any argument which gets (or depends on) the form of being wrong would itself be fundamentally wrong from first principles.  Like vulcan, I'm not convinced by MN - but I think it's relevant and it posits questions which any realist conception needs to answer for.

I'm not sure I'm following you, since I'm not sure how helpful all this is to the discussion, ie people will be arguing about the nature of consciousness till the end of time, and if you're just talking about relative levels of consciousness in different 'levels' of life so to speak... or panpsychism-like ideas... then I'd be the first to accept different levels of consciousness in different animals (or even potentially AI etc)... and have no idea how to differentiate between different levels of that, and therefore grant that that is 'fuzzy' and hard to pin down in definitions. But I'm still not sure how that fits in with the Five Ways, because I'm not sure where I'm seeing your use of the word 'Being' in that context; though that could just be because of how I picture the god/entity of the Five Ways, as something very different from consciousness as we'd think of it, if it had that at all... and that would only be if granting all Five Ways accepted... I don't think any of them individually even attempts to prove a conscious Being. For instance part of consciousness is choice, or at least the illusion of it, but a perfect being, in the sense of all these absolutes and 'omnis', looks constrained to one course of action only, with no capacity for mistakes or learning or anything of the sort, so no different really than determinism. Basically it doesn't look like it defines anything like a conscious Being in the sense we'd think of it. Is that your point or part of it? If you're not talking about that, and instead about how the word (b/B)eing is used in the classical philosophy senses of coming into being, changing, or ceasing to be, I have to admit I still find the various uses of the word, as there are indeed many, to be very confusing. I'll get there in the end, but it is confusing.

[Neo-Scholastic]

...part of consciousness is choice, or at least the illusion of it, but a perfect being, in the sense of all these absolutes and 'omnis', looks constrained to one course of action only, with no capacity for mistakes or learning or anything of the sort, so no different really than determinism. Basically it doesn't look like it defines anything like a conscious Being in the sense we'd think of it.

Indeed. God's sovereignty is absolute and His intellect incomprehensible to us. That is why I follow the negative way. I see God in the outlines of the negative space where His absence is most keenly felt. .

[The Grand Nudger]

Mereological nihilism posits that there is no object with proper parts. There are no chairs, no tables, no consciousness and no gods, too. That we like to carve things up, but that's not the way they are in reality.

Consciousness is a good example of that, regardless of whether people will argue it forever. Gods, and beings in general - such as the first, necessary, or ultimate being each of the five ways is powerfully motivated to conclude with, are also examples of proposed objects with proper parts. In fact, it's the overriding thesis of thomistic argument that these are the parts by which we can know of a god.

[emjay]

...part of consciousness is choice, or at least the illusion of it, but a perfect being, in the sense of all these absolutes and 'omnis', looks constrained to one course of action only, with no capacity for mistakes or learning or anything of the sort, so no different really than determinism. Basically it doesn't look like it defines anything like a conscious Being in the sense we'd think of it.

Indeed. God's sovereignty is absolute and His intellect incomprehensible to us. That is why I follow the negative way. I see God in the outlines of the negative space where His absence is most keenly felt. .

Yeah, I saw you talk about that in another thread. I have to say, I've always found your perspective on all this intriguing and refreshing... completely different from the sort of Christianity around me IRL.

---

Mereological nihilism posits that there is no object with proper parts. There are no chairs, no tables, no consciousness and no gods, too. That we like to carve things up, but that's not the way they are in reality.

Consciousness is a good example of that, regardless of whether people will argue it forever. Gods, and beings in general - such as the first, necessary, or ultimate being each of the five ways is powerfully motivated to conclude with, are also examples of proposed objects with proper parts. In fact, it's the overriding thesis of thomistic argument that these are the parts by which we can know of a god.

Okay, I think I see now... that's a bold claim. I'll have to think hard about that to get my head around it, but first impression is that sure there may be these fuzzy edges of definition, but there is something in reality... something for instance qualitatively different between consciousness itself and anything outside of it (ie mind vs matter)... so what I'm saying is, even if you can't put a box around it and say 'this is a thing' in mereological nihilism, in some situations at least, there clearly is some differentiable 'thing' there to explain (ie 'mind' or 'matter' in this example), even if that's not the case at the fuzzier edges when definitions/boundaries get harder to define. IOW some sort of undeniable core, at least for some 'things' especially if they are qualitatively different.

[vulcanlogician]

I was doing some sticking-up for the plausibility of mereological nihilism there…I tend to think "allness" and "units" are real. I tend to think chairs are real. The form of the chair is intelligible, therefore the intelligible form of the chair is real. I think the same way about human rights, morality, and justice. All real.

Yes, I may have been a little to dismissive of mereological nihilism. Consider it a misguided attempt to steer us back towards the merits and shortcomings of the 5 Ways within the Scholastic framework. That, as opposed to defending the Scholastic framework itself from anti-realism or Pyrrhonian skepticism.

An atheist could say allness and units are simply attributes of a godless reality. I'm not sure what makes God relevant to the claim that allness or units are real.

Then at least as far as the 4th Way is concerned atheists such as yourself believe in God 😊

The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But "more" and "less" are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.

My strike-through because Thomas uses an archaic physical example based on fire and heat. The issue remains the same though. Does recognition of degrees of perfection within the patterns of nature allow us to infer a real standard of perfection. Or at least allows us to concieve various relative perfections, which is what intelligibility is kinda all about, isn't it?

I personally think Plato was on to something as far as numbers and math being real, permanent, immutable, and unchangeable… And I think that's what gets theists all excited about bringing their god into the equation…NOT, therefore "God."

I agree that the 5 Ways don’t get you to the Jehovah God found in scripture. At the same time, whatever numbers are they are NOT part of physical reality. So at the bare minimum, there is a type of reality that transcends the limits of the physical universe. IMHO that makes materialism false.

Hmmmm. Okay. That's pretty good, Neo.

I'll tell you this: I like the fourth way better than the first way. But, of course, some objections spring to mind. 

I won't criticize the stricken through things or Aquinas's understanding of physics. But I'm going to invoke Newton to show how erroneous it is to assume that there need be an absolute reference frame in order to have gradations. Newton assumed such a reference frame, and his work was more or less on point. But as it turns out... Einstein. Now, that doesn't mean that assuming an absolute reference frame is futile. Again, we can invoke Newton to see that it's not a fool's errand. It gets us somewhere. But ultimately, it's superfluous. At least in physics. I wanna say in metaphysics too.

Even when I think about ethics and employ concepts such as "good" and "bad" I don't assume an absolute reference frame. There is no "best" or "most ideal" action. There is this action that is "more good" than this other action.

As for math being proof that materialism is false, I think we have to work on ontology. What does it mean to be? I rather like Spinoza's ontology, namely that there is one substance, period. Call it material if you like. Call it God if you want. What determines the reality of a thing is if it relates causally to the one substance. If it does, it exists. If it doesn't, it doesn't exist.

I think numbers are real, but they don't exist in Plato's world of Forms. Neither do they exist in the Spinozian sense that they interact with substance. 

My thinking is this: things like numbers are real metaphysical entities. We can intuit them by reasoning. Once you begin to reason, you can "figure out" numbers, truth, falsity, good, bad, and many other metaphysical realities. But these "forms" (or whatever you want to call them) don't compete ontologically with material. They are simply "there" inasmuch that they are discoverable by one who reasons. They aren't there sort of floating about like a spirit when no reasoning is being done, waiting for someone to start thinking.