(March 17, 2018 at 8:23 am)Mathilda Wrote: It is also possible to use your conclusion as your first premise and 'prove' it using a tautology.
Without an example you are just making a baseless accusation.
(March 17, 2018 at 8:23 am)Mathilda Wrote: First, you can break any causal concept into four parts: material, formal, efficient, and final…Using these words will make you feel more intelligent. And this will be conveyed in your tone and demeanour to make it sound like you know what you are talking about. You will therefore be more likely to either convince your audience if non-sceptical, or get their respect otherwise.
Rather than confront the very precise meanings those terms have in Scholasticism, you impugn the integrity of people using those terms, which is just a blatant ad hominem attack.
(March 17, 2018 at 8:23 am)Mathilda Wrote: If anyone questions you on what exactly you are referring to then respond with ask if they are seriously asking such a question when the answer is obvious and billions of other people use such a word.
Many fields, from architecture to economics to zoology, have highly specific nomenclatures that do not exactly match up with the everyday folk definitions of words. Moreover, the meanings of words change over time such that what a certain word meant in the 12th century will imply something completely different to modern ears.
The Scholastic philosophical tradition is no different. Personally, I have gone to great lengths trying to convey what certain terms meant to the medieval thinkers and how those terms were used often differed from how those words are used today. All you are doing is justifying your own laziness with the belligerent assertion that you cannot be bothered to understand archaic technical terms and how they were used.
(March 19, 2018 at 3:39 am)pocaracas Wrote: He [Feser] goes into triangularity to describe an abstract concept;
People often do not think very much about what the process of abstraction entails. Sensible objects have both form and substance. Yield signs are triangular. Yield signs are metal. And yet, why do some people consider triangular an abstraction and metal something concrete? Neither is alienable from the other without destroying the sign.
(March 19, 2018 at 3:39 am)pocaracas Wrote: a ball breaking a window to account for instantaneous (read timeless) causation…
That is his usual example to show the fallacious thinking of causation in terms of successive accidental events (i.e. Hume). And it is perfectly valid. The
event of a ball striking a glass window and the
event of the window’s glass shattering are not discrete events in succession; but rather, simultaneous actions within a single event. Modern notions of causality retain the term “efficient” cause but not the original meaning of it. In Scholastic philosophy an efficient cause is a thing, a thing whose presence was instrumental to the event. For example, wherever one finds someone bleeding Mack the Knife is found sneaking round a corner. From this we conclude that Mack the Knife was the efficient cause of the bleeding victim.
This is precisely why it is difficult to have a real conversation about something like the 5 Ways. I always confront the insistence that these have been “refuted” when if fact the arguments against them are grounded in misunderstanding the underlying concepts. The critics seem to always ague against claims that were never made or dispute premises that were not actually put forth. I’ve largely given up because the critics generally do not seem interested in knowing how the demonstrations were carefully crafted with very precise nomenclature having underlying assumptions that were taken for granted at the time.
(March 20, 2018 at 5:58 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: I've read a few entries of his blog. I think he's just rather...... combative in general.
He also uses some very unfortunate, and i think inapplicable, examples. As for his tone, I believe he feels that he is primarily responding so so-called "New Atheists".
