A question about Thomism

[Belacqua]

As you rightly point out, a suntan cannot have existence independent of a human being (it would be like a grinning cat disappearing and leaving a grin behind) but that is also precisely why one oughtn't make a comparison of the two. They don't fit in the same class of being.

Well, OK, they're not in the same class of being.

But one depends for its existence on the other. Therefore it is ontologically dependent.

And the grinning cat is an excellent example; it is absurd to imagine the existence of the ontologically posterior thing in the absence of its ontologically prior support.

Anselm's Ontological Argument argues that since God is, by definition, the greatest there is, and since the concept of God in fact exists, one is obliged to  assign existence to an actual God, because an actual God is greater than a mere concept of one. Setting aside the absurdity of making existence an attribute, the argument relies on treating an actual God and human thoughts of God in the same ontological class (which to an atheist is true, but for the purpose at hand, they are apples and oranges).

I'm not sure why you're changing the subject here.

[Angrboda]

Mereological considerations will play havoc with many of these ideas.

[Bucky Ball]

So much philosobabble in this thread, so little time.
I did learn one thing. If you use the word "essentially" or "ontologically" AND italicize it, you can say anything is true, as it sounds all philosophical-an-shit.
It reminded me of what Dawkins once said to Cardinal Pell in their "debate". "However you're using that word, it's not the normal use and is not how most people understand it".

I don't think Aquinas ever wrote anything specifically about simultaneity, but because he basically had an ancient worldview, his ideas about motion and time are all wrong.
His nonsense about form and substance are also now totally meaningless.
He had a principle that reason could bring someone to faith in God, by "natural" means, if they also were granted faith by God.
(That's not necessarily the Christian position but it was his). Paul told them "faith was a gift "and not *from yourselves* so that no one can boast".
He also told them their god was "unfathomable", even though they assign their gods all kinds of "properties".
What is interesting, the "unfathomable" thing IS a part of the European Christian Contemplative (Dark Night of the Soul -- John of the Cross) mysticism, the Cloud of the Unknowing, Agnostic Atheism, and Chinese Tao Mysticism,

Aquinas firmly thought that the universe, (as he thought of it) was "intuitive". That is, fundamental reality can be known by what he could observe.
We know from Relativity, Uncertainty, Quantum Mechanics, and some of the math of Dirac, that Reality is hardly "intuitive" and some of it is completely counter-intuitive.
And that includes time. We know of nothing but space-time, that there is no absolute space-time. Your time is relative to your speed and the direction you are going relative to
someone else's speed and direction. He was also wrong about a "Prime Mover" as he assumed the original natural state of everything was "at rest". We know the opposite is true.

I've been re-reading the Summa (about a page a day, is all I can stomach). It's SO bad. He uses the Bible as proof of this and that. Of course he knew nothing about what
Biblical Studies knows today. Every single sentence is objectionable.

The short answer is I think he didn't write about it. If he did, it is no doubt, all wrong.

[LinuxGal]

I don't think Aquinas ever wrote anything specifically about simultaneity, but because he basically had an ancient worldview, his ideas about motion and time are all wrong.

You can use an apparatus with a pair of lasers and timers to find a spot where the reflection of the laser beams from two mirrors arrive back at the apparatus at the same time.  That makes the reflection events simultaneous. 

If your friend is moving at 70% of the speed of light she can do the same thing, but from where you're standing the reflection events are not simultaneous at all, because the beams end up with outbound and inbound legs of different lengths, even though she swears the four legs of the two laser beam have  entirely identical lengths.

Aquinas has nothing to teach us about any of this.

[Bucky Ball]

I don't think Aquinas ever wrote anything specifically about simultaneity, but because he basically had an ancient worldview, his ideas about motion and time are all wrong.

You can use an apparatus with a pair of lasers and timers to find a spot where the reflection of the laser beams from two mirrors arrive back at the apparatus at the same time.  That makes the reflection events simultaneous. 

If your friend is moving at 70% of the speed of light she can do the same thing, but from where you're standing the reflection events are not simultaneous at all, because the beams end up with outbound and inbound legs of different lengths, even though she swears the four legs of the two laser beam have  entirely identical lengths.

Aquinas has nothing to teach us about any of this.

Thanks for reminding me about that. I saw the experiment, (was it on a NOVA ?) you describe. I'll look for it.
I may have been thinking of this, but I'll keep looking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pq75hSLaWSI