Kalam

[Nay_Sayer]

Thank you for ruining my day.

In about 500 Myr, life on our World will begin to end due to the brightening of our star, the Sun.  The Earth will slowly slide out of the hability zone.

And even then I still won't be able to find close parking space when I go shopping. [/Grumble]

[Angrboda]

In about 500 Myr, life on our World will begin to end due to the brightening of our star, the Sun.  The Earth will slowly slide out of the hability zone.

And even then I still won't be able to find close parking space when I go shopping. [/Grumble]

True, but Handicap stickers will be a lot easier to come by.

[Neo-Scholastic]

It sounds that way to modern ears, because we tend to think of causal chains as temporal things. Aquinas is concerned with what is essentially prior. His vocabulary is more Aristotelian, so it sounds unfamiliar to modern people.

Yes, because causation is temporal. It's an analytic truth of Aquinas' statement that he's referring to temporal succession as all succession involving causes is temporal. If you want to argue that there can be causal sequences that are not temporal, the burden is on you to show that such is possible. Until you do, your claim that Aquinas was not speaking of a temporal series fails. It has absolutely dick to do with Thomism and Aristotle.

Seems there is a difference of interpretation. 'Spose it cannot be helped given the specialized nomenclature of the Scholastics. That said, I do believe in classical philosophy causality is more about quiddity than temporal arrangements....formal cause, for example, is a cause with no temporal aspect. That said, the common classical examples of efficient cause happen to be temporal in nature but IMHO not necessarily so.

[Belacqua]

'Spose it cannot be helped given the specialized nomenclature of the Scholastics. That said, I do believe in classical philosophy causality is more about quiddity than temporal arrangements....formal cause, for example, is a cause with no temporal aspect. That said, the common classical examples of efficient cause happen to be temporal in nature but IMHO not necessarily so.

This seems to be the main sticking point with talking about causality in Aristotle/Thomas. People are just unwilling to grasp the difference in the way the terms are used.

[Jehanne]

'Spose it cannot be helped given the specialized nomenclature of the Scholastics. That said, I do believe in classical philosophy causality is more about quiddity than temporal arrangements....formal cause, for example, is a cause with no temporal aspect. That said, the common classical examples of efficient cause happen to be temporal in nature but IMHO not necessarily so.

This seems to be the main sticking point with talking about causality in Aristotle/Thomas. People are just unwilling to grasp the difference in the way the terms are used.

Then, let's get practical -- what do both of you think the cause(s) of malignant tumors are?

[Belacqua]

This seems to be the main sticking point with talking about causality in Aristotle/Thomas. People are just unwilling to grasp the difference in the way the terms are used.

Then, let's get practical -- what do both of you think the cause(s) of malignant tumors are?

Using the term "cause" in the Aristotelian/Thomist way, the causes of a malignant tumor are all the things that must be the case for a malignant tumor to exist. 

These include the malignant cells, whatever mechanism made them become malignant, the living body on which the tumor lives, the laws of nature which govern the ways in which the chemical/biological actions take place, the time/space of the universe in which the laws of nature operate, etc. 

Since the tumor is something that appeared after the body of the patient, this is a case where there is a temporal element. (The passage of time is also one of the causes.) However there are also cases in which the temporal element is not a relevant part of the causal chain.

In a per se series, of the kind that Aristotle deals with, "prior" means it is higher up the chain of necessary things. So the laws of nature are prior in the sense that you can imagine a world with laws of nature but no tumor, but you can't imagine a world with a tumor but no laws of nature.

Aristotle wrote in Greek and Thomas in Latin. I agree that the English translation "cause" is misleading to modern people. "Necessary conditions" might be better.

[Jehanne]

Then, let's get practical -- what do both of you think the cause(s) of malignant tumors are?

Using the term "cause" in the Aristotelian/Thomist way, the causes of a malignant tumor are all the things that must be the case for a malignant tumor to exist. 

These include the malignant cells, whatever mechanism made them become malignant, the living body on which the tumor lives, the laws of nature which govern the ways in which the chemical/biological actions take place, the time/space of the universe in which the laws of nature operate, etc. 

Since the tumor is something that appeared after the body of the patient, this is a case where there is a temporal element. (The passage of time is also one of the causes.) However there are also cases in which the temporal element is not a relevant part of the causal chain.

In a per se series, of the kind that Aristotle deals with, "prior" means it is higher up the chain of necessary things. So the laws of nature are prior in the sense that you can imagine a world with laws of nature but no tumor, but you can't imagine a world with a tumor but no laws of nature.

Aristotle wrote in Greek and Thomas in Latin. I agree that the English translation "cause" is misleading to modern people. "Necessary conditions" might be better.

I am okay with everything that you state, as long as it is understood that there are events that just happen (e.g., the radioactive decay of one atom versus the nondecay of another) that are not caused by anything; they just happen.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Using the term "cause" in the Aristotelian/Thomist way, the causes of a malignant tumor are all the things that must be the case for a malignant tumor to exist. 

These include the malignant cells, whatever mechanism made them become malignant, the living body on which the tumor lives, the laws of nature which govern the ways in which the chemical/biological actions take place, the time/space of the universe in which the laws of nature operate, etc. 

Since the tumor is something that appeared after the body of the patient, this is a case where there is a temporal element. (The passage of time is also one of the causes.) However there are also cases in which the temporal element is not a relevant part of the causal chain.

In a per se series, of the kind that Aristotle deals with, "prior" means it is higher up the chain of necessary things. So the laws of nature are prior in the sense that you can imagine a world with laws of nature but no tumor, but you can't imagine a world with a tumor but no laws of nature.

Aristotle wrote in Greek and Thomas in Latin. I agree that the English translation "cause" is misleading to modern people. "Necessary conditions" might be better.

I am okay with everything that you state, as long as it is understood that there are events that just happen (e.g., the radioactive decay of one atom versus the nondecay of another) that are not caused by anything; they just happen.

Sounds like your problem is not with Thomism but rather the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

[Belacqua]

I am okay with everything that you state, as long as it is understood that there are events that just happen (e.g., the radioactive decay of one atom versus the nondecay of another) that are not caused by anything; they just happen.

Yeah, we've been through this before. By "just happen" you are ruling out a temporal efficient cause.

This does not rule out causes as Aristotle uses the term. 

For example, for radioactive decay to occur, there must be several prior conditions (=causes). 

Among these causes: there has to be something to decay. There has to be a universe in which it can decay. There have to be laws of nature such that radioactive decay is possible. There has to be time and space in which it can decay.

The fact that there is no temporal efficient cause doesn't change the per se series of causes of which Aristotle and Thomas write.

[Neo-Scholastic]

As far as I can tell Humme marks the shift from a classical to modern theory of causality.