How to argue using bullshit abstract terms

[polymath257]

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.

Why? Because being 'triangular' isn't a physical thing: it is how physical things are *arranged*. Being metal, however, *is* a physical thing: it is the properties of the physical materials that are there.

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.

No, the striking of the glass occurs very slightly before the breaking of the glass. The breaking occurs because the force of the ball striking the glass is sufficient to overcome the forces between the atoms in the glass itself. because of that, the glass loses its structural integrity: it breaks. The process is NOT instantaneous. It is just faster than people can typically see because our nervous systems are so slow.

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.

Well, at least part of the problem is that the scholastic concepts are either incredibly vague or circular in definition. For example, the definition you gave above for an efficient cause as being 'instrumental' to the event is simply circular: how do you tell if something is instrumental? because it caused the event!