Year: 2016

Form and the Goodness of God

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In his commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, St. Thomas says:

Loquendo autem de necessitate quae est ex suppositione divini propositi, quo propter benevolentiam suae bonitatis voluit unicuique eam communicare secundum suam capacitatem, necessarium est quod cuilibet materiae praeparatae forma infundatur. Non tamen eodem modo est in omnibus formis; quia formae quae mediantibus secundis agentibus in materia producuntur, necessario in materia disposita recipiuntur necessitate conditionata in comparatione ad Deum, cujus virtute cetera agentia agunt; sed necessitate absoluta per comparationem ad agentia proxima, quae necessitate naturae agunt propter ordinem divinitus eis impositum, quem praeterire non possunt. Formae autem quae immediate a Deo inducuntur, non habent necessitatem absolutam ex parte agentis, sed quaedam ex parte recipientis, sicut in perfectionibus quae sunt de esse naturae, ut est anima rationalis. Formae autem quae non debentur naturae, sicut gratia et virtutes, immediate a Deo productae, nihil habent de necessitate absoluta, sed solum de necessitate ex suppositione divini ordinis, ut dictum est.

Which is, more or less:

But speaking of the necessity which is on the supposition of the divine intention, by which on account of the benevolence of his [God’s] goodness, he wished to share with each thing according to its capacity, it is necessary that form be infused into every prepared matter. But nevertheless not in the same way in all forms; since forms which are produced in matter through the mediation of secondary agents are necessarily received into matter with a conditional necessity in comparison with God, by the power of whom other agents act, but with an absolute necessity in comparison to the proximate agents, which act by necessity of nature on account of the order divinely imposed on them, which they cannot omit. But forms which are immediately imposed by God, do not have an absolute necessity on the part of the agent, but a certain necessity on the part of the recipient, as in perfections which are of the being of nature, as is the rational soul. And forms which are not owed to nature, like grace and the virtues, produced immediately by God, have nothing of absolute necessity, but only of the necessity on the supposition of the divine order, as was said.

St. Thomas’s overall point is that every disposed matter receives its corresponding form, and that this happens on account of the goodness of God. He asserts that there are three ways in which this happens:

(1) With respect to forms produced through secondary causes, the things involved cannot naturally fail to produce the form in disposed matter, although this is taken to be conditional in comparison with God, presumably in the sense that if God wanted things to happen otherwise, they could happen otherwise, just as St. Thomas asserts that in the Eucharist accidents can exist without substance, by the divine will.

This first case seems intended to cover all natural changes, with one exception (we will get to the exception in a few moments.) So for example, according to St. Thomas, if you dispose matter to be a certain color, it will necessarily be that color; if you dispose matter to be living matter, it will necessarily be living; and so on. Just as we saw with lines and squares, properly disposed matter always has the corresponding form.

(2) Second, there are forms that are “immediately imposed by God,” but which have a certain natural necessity on the part of the recipient. He mentions the rational soul as though it were an example here, but in fact it seems to be the only thing which is meant to fall into this category rather than the third category.

This happens because St. Thomas considers the human soul to be something exceptional and unique in nature, as we can see from his discussion of the human soul as subsistent:

I answer that, It must necessarily be allowed that the principle of intellectual operation which we call the soul, is a principle both incorporeal and subsistent. For it is clear that by means of the intellect man can have knowledge of all corporeal things. Now whatever knows certain things cannot have any of them in its own nature; because that which is in it naturally would impede the knowledge of anything else. Thus we observe that a sick man’s tongue being vitiated by a feverish and bitter humor, is insensible to anything sweet, and everything seems bitter to it. Therefore, if the intellectual principle contained the nature of a body it would be unable to know all bodies. Now every body has its own determinate nature. Therefore it is impossible for the intellectual principle to be a body. It is likewise impossible for it to understand by means of a bodily organ; since the determinate nature of that organ would impede knowledge of all bodies; as when a certain determinate color is not only in the pupil of the eye, but also in a glass vase, the liquid in the vase seems to be of that same color.

Therefore the intellectual principle which we call the mind or the intellect has an operation “per se” apart from the body. Now only that which subsists can have an operation “per se.” For nothing can operate but what is actual: for which reason we do not say that heat imparts heat, but that what is hot gives heat. We must conclude, therefore, that the human soul, which is called the intellect or the mind, is something incorporeal and subsistent.

Elsewhere he says that the human soul alone is special in this way. Thus in the next article he specifically denies subsistence in regard to the souls of other animals:

I answer that, The ancient philosophers made no distinction between sense and intellect, and referred both a corporeal principle, as has been said. Plato, however, drew a distinction between intellect and sense; yet he referred both to an incorporeal principle, maintaining that sensing, just as understanding, belongs to the soul as such. From this it follows that even the souls of brute animals are subsistent. But Aristotle held that of the operations of the soul, understanding alone is performed without a corporeal organ. On the other hand, sensation and the consequent operations of the sensitive soul are evidently accompanied with change in the body; thus in the act of vision, the pupil of the eye is affected by a reflection of color: and so with the other senses. Hence it is clear that the sensitive soul has no “per se” operation of its own, and that every operation of the sensitive soul belongs to the composite. Wherefore we conclude that as the souls of brute animals have no “per se” operations they are not subsistent. For the operation of anything follows the mode of its being.

As a result of this special account of the human soul, St. Thomas asserts that natural agents do not have the capacity, considered in themselves, to produce a human soul. Consequently he says that there is not an absolute necessity on the part of the agents, meaning that there is no necessity because there is not even the possibility, considered on the part of the agents in themselves. But he says there is a necessity on the part of the recipient, meaning that nature would be lacking its appropriate perfection if e.g. the union of human seed and egg did not result in a human soul. And on account of the goodness of God, such a lack will never be permitted. Consequently every matter that is disposed to be human, will actually be human, just as in the case of the forms of the first kind.

(3) Finally, there are forms which are not “owed” to nature in the way that other natural forms are, and in the way in which even the human soul is owed. Here St. Thomas speaks of grace and “the virtues,” by which he means supernatural virtues, not natural virtues.

In order to understand this case, we can imagine a situation where we construct many shapes: squares, circles, triangles and so on. We paint all of them white, with one exception: whenever we have squares, we paint them red. In essence, we have invented a rule: we consider squares, and no other shapes, disposed to be red, and we cause them actually to be so.

In our example, there is nothing about being square that would actually make a thing red. But there is a certain order there, imposed by ourselves, whereby being square is effectively a disposition to be red. In a similar way, St. Thomas asserts that there are dispositions that God considers to be dispositions for grace, even though in themselves they would not be sufficient to make a thing have grace, or even to make a thing need grace. But St. Thomas says that on account of the goodness of God, he considers “doing as well as one can” to be the disposition for grace, and thus God always gives grace to one who does their best, even if they are merely doing their best on a natural level.

While it is not the point of this post, it is because of this account of God’s goodness in relation to form and disposed matter that St. Thomas is fundamentally opposed to any kind of rigid understanding of the doctrine of extra ecclesiam nulla salus. According to St. Thomas, whether there is a natural necessity for it or not, every disposed matter receives its appropriate form, on account of the goodness of God.

 

Matter, Form, and Disposition

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Suppose we have four straight lines, each equal in length to the others, each in contact with one of the others at each of its endpoints, and each at right angles to the lines with which it is in contact.

We can see that these lines form a square. And if we consider the square as the boundary formed of the four lines (it would also be possible, and perhaps more common, to consider the bounded area as a square), then the lines are parts and material causes of the square. And those parts cause the whole by having squareness, the formal cause.

What is squareness? Someone might say it is simply the properties described in the first paragraph above. And this is close to the truth, but it is not exactly right. For a square is one figure, and the properties described are many, and insofar as they are many, they do not sufficiently explain the unity of the square. Squareness is rather the shape that a thing has which has those properties; and that shape is one shape, not many shapes.

The properties described, then, are not squareness itself, but can be called the disposition to squareness. By having these properties, the four lines are disposed to have squareness, and consequently to form a square.

Mixing Water and Wine

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St. Thomas discusses what happens if you mix consecrated wine with another liquid:

I answer that, The truth of this question is evident from what has been said already. For it was said above (3; 5, ad 2) that the species remaining in this sacrament, as they acquire the manner of being of substance in virtue of the consecration, so likewise do they obtain the mode of acting and of being acted upon, so that they can do or receive whatever their substance could do or receive, were it there present. But it is evident that if the substance of wine were there present, then some other liquid could be mingled with it.

Nevertheless there would be a different effect of such mixing both according to the form and according to the quantity of the liquid. For if sufficient liquid were mixed so as to spread itself all through the wine, then the whole would be a mixed substance. Now what is made up of things mixed is neither of them, but each passes into a third resulting from both: hence it would result that the former wine would remain no longer. But if the liquid added were of another species, for instance, if water were mixed, the species of the wine would be dissolved, and there would be a liquid of another species. But if liquid of the same species were added, of instance, wine with wine, the same species would remain, but the wine would not be the same numerically, as the diversity of the accidents shows: for instance, if one wine were white and the other red.

But if the liquid added were of such minute quantity that it could not permeate the whole, the entire wine would not be mixed, but only part of it, which would not remain the same numerically owing to the blending of extraneous matter: still it would remain the same specifically, not only if a little liquid of the same species were mixed with it, but even if it were of another species, since a drop of water blended with much wine passes into the species of wine (De Gener. i).

Now it is evident that the body and blood of Christ abide in this sacrament so long as the species remain numerically the same, as stated above (4; 76, 6, ad 3); because it is this bread and this wine which is consecrated. Hence, if the liquid of any kind whatsoever added be so much in quantity as to permeate the whole of the consecrated wine, and be mixed with it throughout, the result would be something numerically distinct, and the blood of Christ will remain there no longer. But if the quantity of the liquid added be so slight as not to permeate throughout, but to reach only a part of the species, Christ’s blood will cease to be under that part of the consecrated wine, yet will remain under the rest.

Given the doctrine of transubstantiation, at least as St. Thomas understands it, so that it implies the existence of accidents without a subject, it is very difficult to understand how such a mixing would be possible at all. But his general position here is that a process analogous to substantial change necessarily happens if you mix anything into the consecrated wine, either according to a part of the wine, or according to the whole. He explains this kind of change in article five of the same question:

I answer that, Since “the corruption of one thing is the generation of another” (De Gener. i), something must be generated necessarily from the sacramental species if they be corrupted, as stated above (Article 4); for they are not corrupted in such a way that they disappear altogether, as if reduced to nothing; on the contrary, something sensible manifestly succeeds to them.

Nevertheless, it is difficult to see how anything can be generated from them. For it is quite evident that nothing is generated out of the body and blood of Christ which are truly there, because these are incorruptible. But if the substance, or even the matter, of the bread and wine were to remain in this sacrament, then, as some have maintained, it would be easy to account for this sensible object which succeeds to them. But that supposition is false, as was stated above (75, 2,4,8).

Hence it is that others have said that the things generated have not sprung from the sacramental species, but from the surrounding atmosphere. But this can be shown in many ways to be impossible. In the first place, because when a thing is generated from another, the latter at first appears changed and corrupted; whereas no alteration or corruption appeared previously in the adjacent atmosphere; hence the worms or ashes are not generated therefrom. Secondly, because the nature of the atmosphere is not such as to permit of such things being generated by such alterations. Thirdly, because it is possible for many consecrated hosts to be burned or putrefied; nor would it be possible for an earthen body, large enough to be generated from the atmosphere, unless a great and, in fact, exceedingly sensible condensation of the atmosphere took place. Fourthly, because the same thing can happen to the solid bodies surrounding them, such as iron or stone, which remain entire after the generation of the aforesaid things. Hence this opinion cannot stand, because it is opposed to what is manifest to our senses.

And therefore others have said that the substance of the bread and wine returns during the corruption of the species, and so from the returning substance of the bread and wine, ashes or worms or something of the kind are generated. But this explanation seems an impossible one. First of all, because if the substance of the bread and wine be converted into the body and blood of Christ, as was shown above (75, 2,4), the substance of the bread and wine cannot return, except the body and blood of Christ be again changed back into the substance of bread and wine, which is impossible: thus if air be turned into fire, the air cannot return without the fire being again changed into air. But if the substance of bread or wine be annihilated, it cannot return again, because what lapses into nothing does not return numerically the same. Unless perchance it be said that the said substance returns, because God creates anew another new substance to replace the first. Secondly, this seems to be impossible, because no time can be assigned when the substance of the bread returns. For, from what was said above (4; 76, 6, ad 3), it is evident that while the species of the bread and wine remain, there remain also the body and blood of Christ, which are not present together with the substance of the bread and wine in this sacrament, according to what was stated above (Question 75, Article 2). Hence the substance of the bread and wine cannot return while the sacramental species remain; nor, again, when these species pass away; because then the substance of the bread and wine would be without their proper accidents, which is impossible. Unless perchance it be said that in the last instant of the corruption of the species there returns (not, indeed, the substance of bread and wine, because it is in that very instant that they have the being of the substance generated from the species, but) the matter of the bread and wine; which, matter, properly speaking, would be more correctly described as created anew, than as returning. And in this sense the aforesaid position might be held.

However, since it does not seem reasonable to say that anything takes place miraculously in this sacrament, except in virtue of the consecration itself, which does not imply either creation or return of matter, it seems better to say that in the actual consecration it is miraculously bestowed on the dimensive quantity of the bread and wine to be the subject of subsequent forms. Now this is proper to matter; and therefore as a consequence everything which goes with matter is bestowed on dimensive quantity; and therefore everything which could be generated from the matter of bread or wine, if it were present, can be generated from the aforesaid dimensive quantity of the bread or wine, not, indeed, by a new miracle, but by virtue of the miracle which has already taken place.

This is rather strange, because he seems to be saying that the subsequent substantial forms inhere in quantity as in a subject, and that there is no matter there. But if this is possible in any way, and in particular if things remain in this state permanently, as he seems to suggest, then there seems to be little reason not to adopt Descartes’s view of material substance in general, and say that quantity is always the subject of substantial forms, rather than saying that some parts of the world have matter as a subject, and other parts quantity. The account might be more reasonable if he were to accept that when a new substance is generated, matter again comes to be, not by being “created anew,” but because the being of matter in general is from substantial form.

As we can see, this discussion is especially complex on account of the doctrine of transubstantiation and St. Thomas’s account of that doctrine. But if we simply consider the mixing of two liquids in general, various difficulties will remain. Suppose we have a glass of water and a glass of wine, and mix the two together. What exactly will happen?

It is manifest to the senses that when we do this, there is a period of time when parts of the resulting liquid are water, just as it was, and parts are wine, just as it was, without any mixture. But what about the surface where the two are in contact? What is happening there?

According to St. Thomas, there will be a quantitative part which shares in the qualities of each. And this is pretty reasonable. Just as we can see that part is wine and part is water, at a certain point we can see that part is watery wine. But how exactly did that watery part get that way? If it is a certain size, was there a sudden transition of a part which was water into the watery wine? Or the like with the wine becoming watery? Or was there a continuous process with an expanding mixed region? The last possibility seems most consistent with what we see, but it might be difficult to analyze this in terms of substantial change, as St. Thomas does, because such a continuous process would have no first moment when the mixed substance came to be. For if it did, it would come to be with a definite size, and thus the process would not be continuous, but would imply that some part suddenly went from not being watery wine to being watery wine.

Of course, it is one thing to say there are difficulties. It is quite another to say that they mean that the thing cannot happen. So none of this proves that the mixing of liquids is not a substantial change. Nonetheless, many of the ancient naturalists were moved by such considerations to adopt some form of atomic theory. If water and wine are each composed of atoms, the mixing process is easily understood — it is simply the movement in place of these atoms. Each part of the water remains as it was even qualitatively, and likewise each part of the wine, but the resulting mixture has different sensible qualities because one cannot distinguish the diverse qualities of each, just as mixing two very fine sands of different color may appear to result in a third color, even though the grains of sand are not changing qualitatively.

Modern atomic theory, of course, has far stronger arguments for it, but they are in principle, or at least were in the 18th and 19th centuries, of a very similar kind: atomic theory simply does a good job of explaining many of the things that we see happen in the world.

This is closely related to the discussion in the last post. When we construct a bicycle out of parts, it is manifest to the senses that the parts look just like they did before they were parts. And this is necessary, if it is true that those parts are governed by the same natural laws after they become parts that they were before they became parts. For however the parts “look,” they look this way because of how they act on the senses. So if their action does not change, the “way they look” will not change. Similarly, when we mix liquids, if the water parts and the wine parts do not change how they behave, the account one gives of the mixture must be an atomic theory or something very like it. That is, there must remain very small parts that act like water, and very small parts that act like wine. Or, given that wine and water are not in fact elements, at least the basic elemental parts must continue to act like those elemental parts.

Composing Elements

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Suppose we have two elements, as for example water and earth (not that these are really elements.) How do we make something out of the elements? We can consider two different possible ways that this could happen.

Suppose that when we combine one part water and one part earth, we get mud, and when we combine one part water and two parts earth, we get clay. Thus clay and mud are two different composite bodies that can be made from our elements.

How do we expect clay and mud to behave? We saw earlier that the nature of the physical world more or less requires the existence of mathematical laws of nature. Now we could say, “Clay and mud are made of earth and water, and we know the laws governing earth and water. So we can figure out the behavior of clay and mud using the laws governing earth and water.”

But we could also say, “Although clay and mud are made of earth and water, they are also something new. Consequently we can work out the laws governing them by experience, but we cannot expect to work them out just from the laws governing earth and water.”

These two claims are basically opposed to one another, and we should not expect that both would be true, at least in any particular instance. It might be that one is true in some cases and the other is true in some cases, or it might be that one side is always true. But in any case one will be true and not the other, in each particular situation.

Someone might argue that the first claim must be always true in principle. If water behaves one way by itself, and another way when it is combined with earth, then you haven’t sufficiently specified the behavior of water without including how it behaves when it is beside earth, or mixed with earth, or combined in whatever way. So once you have completely specified the behavior of water, you have specified how it behaves when combined with other things.

But this way of thinking is artificial. If water follows an inverse square law of gravity by itself, but an entirely different mathematical law when it is combined with earth, rather than saying that the entirely different law is a special case governing water, we should just admit that the different law is a law governing clay and mud, but not water. On the other hand, it is not unreasonable to include various potential interactions in your laws governing water, rather than only considering how water behaves in perfect isolation. Thus for example one would want to say that water suffers gravitational effects from all other bodies, rather than simply saying that water attracts itself. Nonetheless, even if the distinction is somewhat rough, there is a meaningful distinction between situations where the laws governing the elements also govern the composites, and situations where we need new laws for the composites.

In one way, the second claim is always true. It is always the case that something is true of the composite which is not true of the elements in themselves, since the composite is a whole composed of elements, while the elements in themselves are not. This is true even in artificial compositions; the parts of a bicycle are not a bicycle, but the whole is. And I can ride a bicycle, but  I cannot ride the individual pieces of metal that form it. Likewise, it is evidently true of living things, which are alive, and in some cases have conscious experience, even though the individual elements do not.

In a second way, the second claim is almost always true. If we consider our laws as practical methods for predicting the behavior of a physical system, in practice we will almost always need special laws to predict the behavior of a complex composite, if only because it would be too complex and time consuming to predict the behavior of the composite using laws governing only the parts. Thus people who wish to predict the weather use generalizations based on the experience of weather, rather than trying to predict the weather simply by considering more general laws of physics, despite believing that the weather is in fact a consequence of such general laws.

In a third way, the first claim is true at least frequently, and possibly always. If we consider the behavior of a bicycle or a computer, not with respect to general questions such as “can I ride it?” or “can it calculate the square root of two?”, but with respect to the physical movement of the parts, there are good reasons to think that the behavior of the whole can be determined from the behavior of the parts of which it is composed. For these are human inventions, and although experience is involved in such inventions, people make guesses about new behavior largely from their understanding of how the parts behave which they plan to put together. So if the whole behaved in ways which are significantly unpredictable from the behavior of the parts, we would not expect such inventions to work. Likewise, as said above, there is little reason to doubt that the weather results from general principles of physics that apply to earth, air, water, and so on.

I say “possibly always” above, because there is no case where the second claim is known to be true in this sense, and many instances, as noted, where the first is known or reasonably believed to be the case. Additionally, one can give reasons in principle for expecting the first claim to be true in this way, although this is a matter for later consideration.

An important objection to this possibility is that the fact that the second claim is always true in the first way mentioned above, seems to imply that the first claim cannot be true even in the third way, at least in some cases. In particular, the conscious behavior of living things, and especially human free will, might seem inconsistent with the idea that the physical behavior of living things is in principle predictable from laws governing their elements.

Whole, Part, and Element

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An element is just a certain kind of material part. Consequently an element is related to that of which it is an element in the same way that part and whole are related in general. As was said in the linked post, the whole is simply speaking not the part, but that which is the whole exists as that which is the part; or in other words, that which is the whole is, in a certain respect although not simply speaking, that which is the part.

This is why not all things are water, namely because the whole which is composed of elements is not the elements, simply speaking, but is those elements only in a certain way.

 

Not All Things are Water

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The basic point of the post on Thales was that material things are composed of one or more material elements. The ancient materialists were accustomed not only to maintain this position, but also to assert that it also followed that there was nothing but those elements. Thus Democritus is said to have said,

By convention, sweet; by convention, bitter; by convention, hot; by convention,
cold; by convention, color; but in reality, atoms and void.

One could say that this is an example of the attitude of “this or nothing.” If everything is made of atoms, then either a thing is atoms, or it is nothing.

The correct answer here is not to say “this or that,” but “this and that,” that is, that things made of atoms are in some way atoms, but they are also things made of them, and the things made of them are not merely atoms.

 

This or Nothing

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In his homily on June 9th, Pope Francis spoke against excessively rigid views:

This (is the) healthy realism of the Catholic Church: the Church never teaches us ‘or this or that.’ That is not Catholic. The Church says to us: ‘this and that.’ ‘Strive for perfectionism: reconcile with your brother. Do not insult him. Love him. And if there is a problem, at the very least settle your differences so that war doesn’t break out.’ This (is) the healthy realism of Catholicism. It is not Catholic (to say) ‘or this or nothing:’ This is not Catholic, this is heretical. Jesus always knows how to accompany us, he gives us the ideal, he accompanies us towards the ideal, He frees us from the chains of the laws’ rigidity and tells us: ‘But do that up to the point that you are capable.’ And he understands us very well. He is our Lord and this is what he teaches us.

“Or this or that” and “Or this or nothing” are probably excessively literal translations of the Italian, which would actually mean “either this or that,” and “either this or nothing.”

It is a bit odd to speak of such views as “heretical,” since it would be hard to find a determinate doctrine here that might be true or false. Rather, the Pope speaks of an attitude, and is condemning it as a bad attitude, not only morally, but as leading one into error intellectually as well. We have seen various people with views and attitudes that would likely fit under this categorization: thus for example Fr. Brian Harrison maintains that a person cannot accept both Christianity and evolution. James Larson maintains that disagreement with his theological and philosophical positions amounts to a “war against being,” thus asserting “either this or nothing” in a pretty immediate sense. Alexander Pruss maintains that either there was a particular objective moment when Queen Elizabeth passed from not being old to being old, or logic is false. We have seen a number of other examples.

The attitude is fairly common among Catholic traditionalists (of which Fr. Brian Harrison and James Larson are in fact examples.) Thus it is not surprising that the blog Rorate Caeli, engaging in exactly the “this or nothing” attitude that Pope Francis condemns, condemns Pope Francis’s statements as heretical:

(1) Either John Paul II and all the Popes who came before him are right, by emphasizing the “absoluteness” of the Church’s moral law and by classifying as a “very serious error” that the doctrine of the Church is only an “ideal”…

…or (2) Francis is right, by qualifying as “heretical” a rejection of the “Doctrine of the Ideal” as well as any affirmation of the absoluteness of moral prohibitions (‘or this or nothing’).

Regardless of the accusations of heresy on either side, however, Pope Francis is basically right in rejecting the attitude in question. I have spoken elsewhere about the fact that in discussion, one should try to look for what is true in the other person’s position. The most basic reason for this, of course, is that there is almost always some truth there. The attitude of “this or nothing” is basically a refusal to consider the truth in the other person’s position.

Strangely, as we will see in future posts, this turns out to be relevant to our discussion of elements.

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There is also another reason for this advertisement. If you sign up with Uber using the promo code 6p1nbwapue , you and I will both receive $20 of credit. This only works if you actually use the service at least once, however.]

All Things are Water

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In book I of his Metaphysics, Aristotle comments on earlier opinions about the first causes:

Evidently we have to acquire knowledge of the original causes (for we say we know each thing only when we think we recognize its first cause), and causes are spoken of in four senses. In one of these we mean the substance, i.e. the essence (for the ‘why’ is reducible finally to the definition, and the ultimate ‘why’ is a cause and principle); in another the matter or substratum, in a third the source of the change, and in a fourth the cause opposed to this, the purpose and the good (for this is the end of all generation and change). We have studied these causes sufficiently in our work on nature, but yet let us call to our aid those who have attacked the investigation of being and philosophized about reality before us. For obviously they too speak of certain principles and causes; to go over their views, then, will be of profit to the present inquiry, for we shall either find another kind of cause, or be more convinced of the correctness of those which we now maintain.

Of the first philosophers, then, most thought the principles which were of the nature of matter were the only principles of all things. That of which all things that are consist, the first from which they come to be, the last into which they are resolved (the substance remaining, but changing in its modifications), this they say is the element and this the principle of things, and therefore they think nothing is either generated or destroyed, since this sort of entity is always conserved, as we say Socrates neither comes to be absolutely when he comes to be beautiful or musical, nor ceases to be when loses these characteristics, because the substratum, Socrates himself remains. just so they say nothing else comes to be or ceases to be; for there must be some entity-either one or more than one-from which all other things come to be, it being conserved.

Yet they do not all agree as to the number and the nature of these principles. Thales, the founder of this type of philosophy, says the principle is water (for which reason he declared that the earth rests on water), getting the notion perhaps from seeing that the nutriment of all things is moist, and that heat itself is generated from the moist and kept alive by it (and that from which they come to be is a principle of all things). He got his notion from this fact, and from the fact that the seeds of all things have a moist nature, and that water is the origin of the nature of moist things.

Some think that even the ancients who lived long before the present generation, and first framed accounts of the gods, had a similar view of nature; for they made Ocean and Tethys the parents of creation, and described the oath of the gods as being by water, to which they give the name of Styx; for what is oldest is most honourable, and the most honourable thing is that by which one swears. It may perhaps be uncertain whether this opinion about nature is primitive and ancient, but Thales at any rate is said to have declared himself thus about the first cause.

It is possibly for polemical motives that Aristotle portrays Thales as asserting that water alone is the principle of all things, to the exclusion of other kinds of cause besides the material cause. That is, most materialists, ancient and modern, do not believe that matter is the sole principle of reality. They may think it is the most important principle, but they recognize that other principles are involved, much as Lucretius recognizes that his atoms alone are insufficient to explain the world, but he must add something:

We wish thee also well aware of this:
The atoms, as their own weight bears them down
Plumb through the void, at scarce determined times,
In scarce determined places, from their course
Decline a little- call it, so to speak,
Mere changed trend. For were it not their wont
Thuswise to swerve, down would they fall, each one,
Like drops of rain, through the unbottomed void;
And then collisions ne’er could be nor blows
Among the primal elements; and thus
Nature would never have created aught.

We can understand however that even if Aristotle’s account may not be a completely accurate account of Thales’s opinions, Aristotle likely has a charitable motive for his presentation, namely the education of the reader, as by beginning by discussing the position that matter alone is the first cause, it becomes easier to see the necessity of other principles. And it is also possible that Thales did not mention any other principles simply because his interest was in the material principle, rather than from the wish to deny other principles.

There is some probability to the opinion, mentioned by Aristotle, that Thales’s idea about water had ancient predecessors. For example, there may be something like this in Genesis 1:

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

The text speaks of a number of principles, including God, and formless matter. But the formless matter is virtually identified with water; even when the earth is a “formless void,” there is still a “deep”, and there is still a “face of the waters.” And God makes the world by divisions in the waters, creating first sky and world, and then creating dry land by limiting the lower waters.

We can ask whether Thales was right in several different ways:

First, was he right if he is understood as Aristotle understands him? In this way, his position would involve denying all principles other than material principles. And in this way Thales was wrong, since there are other principles.

Second, was he right if he is understood in contrast with other materialist philosophers such as Anaximenes, who said that all things are made of air? We can see that there is a certain difficulty in such a supposition from the beginning. For if there is only one material principle of all things, why call it “water” or “air” in particular? If water contains nothing but the first material principle, and air contains nothing but the first material principle, why is one of them identified with the principle rather than the other?

Nonetheless, we can understand the claim to be something like, “Water is the most basic and natural form of the first material principle.” In this case, what it means to be the most basic and natural would be a matter of investigation, but there is nothing impossible about it in principle. But if we understand it in this way, Thales’s position (along with that of Anaximenes and others) is refuted by modern science, since water is known to be made of other more basic things, namely oxygen and hydrogen.

But we can ask whether Thales and Anaximenes were both right in a third way, a more generic way. If we break composite material things down into their parts, and their parts into their parts, and so on, will we always arrive at one basic material “stuff” which all other things are made out of?

This would necessarily be different from the prime matter of Aristotle, because this matter is understood to be completely formless. So while it may be part of a substance along with substantial form, it is not a part in the way that an arm is a part of a human being, or in the way that oxygen is part of water. A part in the latter sense already has some actuality; an arm has a certain shape even apart from being a part of a human being, and oxygen has qualities that it has even apart from water, while prime matter has no actuality whatsoever.

Since every order of causes comes to a first cause, the same will be true if we follow the order of material causality found by asking, “What parts is this made out of?” This cannot be refuted even if it turns out that material things are infinitely divisible, because it will not actually be true that anything is made out of an infinite number of parts. If we say, “this is made out of two halves, and the halves out of more halves, and so on,” this is not an explanation at all, as was pointed out in the post linked above, and so it cannot be a true account of why the thing is as it is. It may be that the thing is potentially divisible in those ways; but it is not actually made out of those parts. Instead, we are asking what we will arrive at if we look at the material composition of things, looking only for things with some actuality, and stopping when we find something which is not made up of other things in this way.

We made a strong argument that there only one first efficient cause. But we cannot duplicate that argument to show that there must be only one first material part of things, since the first efficient cause could be an adequate explanation of two or more first material causes. The theory of the four (or five) elements is an explanation like this. The first material parts are thought be four or five, according to this account, and in this way Thales would have been mistaken.

We can see some motivation for holding such a position. If there is fundamentally only one kind of “stuff,” why do we see various things in the world, such as plants and animals, rocks, chairs, and people? An account with a number elements can say that they form various things by being combined in various proportions and ways, while it is not evident how this question can be answered, if there is only one element.

Nonetheless, this does not really refute the position that there is fundamentally a single material element. If that element can exist in various ways, then it would be possible to explain how it could be used to form more complex substances. It is true that this would still leave something to be explained, namely the nature of those various ways that the element can exist, and how and why they come to be.

The position is neither refuted nor established by modern science. The Standard Model of particle physics contains many elementary particles, but in any case it is not thought to be a complete theory of physics.

Considerations of simplicity would favor the position of Thales. Other things being equal, it should be thought that a theory with a single element is more likely than one with ten elements; one with ten more likely than one with a hundred, and so on. Nonetheless, there does not seem to be any proof of Thales’s general position, nor any refutation of it. But one way or another, there will be one or more simplest material parts that everything else is made out of.

The Error of Parmenides

entirelyuseless Metaphysics, Uncategorized , , , , ,

Parmenides entirely identified “what can be” and “what can be thought”:

Come now, I will tell thee—and do thou hearken to my saying and carry it away— the only two ways of search that can be thought of. The first, namely, that It is, and that it is impossible for it not to be, is the way of belief, for truth is its companion. The other, namely, that It is not, and that it must needs not be,— that, I tell thee, is a path that none can learn of at all. For thou canst not know what is not—that is impossible— nor utter it; . . . . . . for it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be.

As I pointed out here, the error here comes from an excessive identification of the way a thing is known and the way a thing is. But he does this only in a certain respect. We evidently think that some things are not other things, and that there are many things. So it would be easy enough to argue, “It is the same thing that can be thought and that can be. But we can think that one thing is not another, and that there are many things. So one thing can fail to be another, and there can be many things.” And this argument would be valid, and pretty reasonable for that matter. But Parmenides does not draw this conclusion and does not accept this argument. So his claim that what can be thought and what can be are the same must be taken in a more particular sense.

His position seems to be that “to be” has one and only one real meaning, in such a way that there is only one way for a thing to be. Either it is, or it isn’t. If it is, it is in the only way a thing can be; and if it is not, it is not in the only way a thing can be. But this means that if it is not, it is not at all, in any way, since there is only one way. And in this case it is not “something” which is not, but nothing. Thus, given this premise, that there is only one way to be, Parmenides’s position would be logical.

In reality, in contrast, there is more than one way to be. Since there is more than one way to be, there can be many things, where one thing is in one way, and another  thing is in another way.

Even granting that there is more than one way to be, Parmenides would object at this point. Suppose there is a first being, existing in a first way, and a second being, existing in a second way. Then the first being does not exist in the second way, and the second being does not exist in the first way. So if we say that “two beings exist,” how do they exist? The two do not exist in the first way, but only the first one does. Nor do the two exist in the second way, but only the second one does. And thus, even if Parmenides grants for the sake of argument that there is more than one way to be, he can still argue that this leads to something impossible.

But this happens only because Parmenides has not sufficiently granted the premise that there is more than one way to be. As I pointed out in the discussion of being and unity, when two things exist, the two are a pair, which is being in some way, and therefore also one in some way; thus the two are “a pair” and not “two pairs.” So the first being is in one way, and the second being is in a second way, but the two exist in still a third way.

The existence of whole and part results from this, along with still more ways of being. “The two” are in a certain respect the first, and in a certain respect the second, since otherwise they would not be the two.

Thus we could summarize the error of Parmenides as the position that being is, and can be thought and said, in only one way, while the truth is that being is, and can be thought and said, in many ways.

A Lesson for us All

entirelyuseless Politics, Uncategorized

Posted on September 12, 2001:

Of course the World Trade Center bombings are a uniquely tragic event, and it is vital that we never lose sight of the human tragedy involved. However, we must also consider if this is not also a lesson to us all; a lesson that my political views are correct. Although what is done can never be undone, the fact remains that if the world were organized according to my political views, this tragedy would never have happened.

Many people will use this terrible tragedy as an excuse to put through a political agenda other than my own. This tawdry abuse of human suffering for political gain sickens me to the core of my being. Those people who have different political views from me ought to be ashamed of themselves for thinking of cheap partisan point-scoring at a time like this. In any case, what this tragedy really shows us is that, so far from putting into practice political views other than my own, it is precisely my political agenda which ought to be advanced.

Not only are my political views vindicated by this terrible tragedy, but also the status of my profession. Furthermore, it is only in the context of a national and international tragedy like this that we are reminded of the very special status of my hobby, and its particular claim to legislative protection. My religious and spiritual views also have much to teach us about the appropriate reaction to these truly terrible events.

Countries which I like seem to never suffer such tragedies, while countries which, for one reason or another, I dislike, suffer them all the time. The one common factor which seems to explain this has to do with my political views, and it suggests that my political views should be implemented as a matter of urgency, even though they are, as a matter of fact, not implemented in the countries which I like.

Of course the World Trade Center attacks are a uniquely tragic event, and it is vital that we never lose sight of the human tragedy involved. But we must also not lose sight of the fact that I am right on every significant moral and political issue, and everybody ought to agree with me. Please, I ask you as fellow human beings, vote for the political party which I support, and ask your legislators to support policies endorsed by me, as a matter of urgency.

It would be a fitting memorial.

The kind of political commentary caricatured here unfortunately remains extremely common, and is utter hypocrisy.