Sep 5, 2018 11:35 PM
Feser begins his chapter 6, entitled "The nature of God and of His Relationship to the World" by writing (p. 116)...
"We have now examined five arguments for the existence of God, which can be summarized briefly as follows. The Aristotelian proof begins with the fact that there are potentialities that are actualized and argues that we cannot make sense of this unless we affirm the existence of something which can actualize the potential existence of things without itself being actualized, a purely actual actualizer. The Neo-platonic proof begins with the fact that the things in our experience are composted of parts and argues that such things could not exist unless they have an absolutely simple or noncomposite cause. The Augustinian proof begins with the fact that there are abstract objects like universals, propositions, numbers and possible worlds, and argues that these must exist as ideas in a divine intellect. The Thomistic proof begins with the real distinction, in each of the things of our experience, between its essence and its existence, and argues that the ultimate cause of such things must be something which is subsistent existence itself The rationalist proof begins with the principle of sufficient reason and argues that the ultimate explanation of things can only like in an absolutely necessary being."
None of these arguments moves me very much. (If Syne believes that they should convert me, he needs to argue for Feser's "proofs" himself, instead of setting everyone up to argue with a video and a book.) Feser seem to me to beg more open metaphysical questions than he answers. His arguments probably do look like slam-dunks, assuming that one accepts all the presuppositions that he embraces upon going into them. These assumptions include the metaphysical status of potentialities (there's a big contemporary literature of that with regard to the sciences), how potentials (whatever they are) are actualized, the relationship of parts and wholes which in Western philosophy is called mereology, the nature of abstract objects and the foundations of mathematics, whether essences exist, and whether Leibniz's 'principle of sufficient reason' has any plausibility.
Those are all problems that remain open questions in philosophical metaphysics and remain profoundly mysterious. One can't just lay out one's preferred answers as Feser appears to do and then refer to them as "principles" from which the rest of his arguments unfold.
Feser does seemingly address my concern about equating metaphysical functions with God on page 181 when he's replying to objections. He writes:
"Even if there were a first cause, there is no reason to think that it would be omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and so forth."
Like "What caused God?", this is commonly put forward as a devastating objection to First Cause arguments. And like "What caused God?", it is in fact embarrassingly inept. Grayling refers matter-of-factly to "the usual big jump" from a first cause to "the god of traditional religion".
Then after taking some shots at Dawkins and Krauss (who aren't philosophers of religion), Feser continues:
"In fact, historically, proponents of each version of the cosmological argument have put forward a great many arguments claiming to show that the cause of the world whose existence they've argued for must have the key divine attributes. Aquinas devotes around a hundred double column pages of dense argumentation in part I of the Summa Theologiae alone - just after presenting the Five Ways -- to showing that to the cause of the world we must attribute simpliity, goodness, infinity, immutability, unity, knowledge, life, will, power and the like. About two hundred pages of argumentation in book I of his Summa Contra Gentiles are devoted to this topic. Much argumentation along these lines can also be found in Aquinas' other works, such as De potentia and De veritate."
So what we get is a subtle bit of misdirection, shifting away from question of whether the problem itself is serious (it is) towards a straw-man of whether natural theologians have ever addressed it (they have), combined with a seeming argument from Aquinas' authority. Of course, if Aquinas himself didn't perceive it as a serious problem, then he wouldn't have devoted so much effort to trying to address it in so many of his works.
"We have now examined five arguments for the existence of God, which can be summarized briefly as follows. The Aristotelian proof begins with the fact that there are potentialities that are actualized and argues that we cannot make sense of this unless we affirm the existence of something which can actualize the potential existence of things without itself being actualized, a purely actual actualizer. The Neo-platonic proof begins with the fact that the things in our experience are composted of parts and argues that such things could not exist unless they have an absolutely simple or noncomposite cause. The Augustinian proof begins with the fact that there are abstract objects like universals, propositions, numbers and possible worlds, and argues that these must exist as ideas in a divine intellect. The Thomistic proof begins with the real distinction, in each of the things of our experience, between its essence and its existence, and argues that the ultimate cause of such things must be something which is subsistent existence itself The rationalist proof begins with the principle of sufficient reason and argues that the ultimate explanation of things can only like in an absolutely necessary being."
None of these arguments moves me very much. (If Syne believes that they should convert me, he needs to argue for Feser's "proofs" himself, instead of setting everyone up to argue with a video and a book.) Feser seem to me to beg more open metaphysical questions than he answers. His arguments probably do look like slam-dunks, assuming that one accepts all the presuppositions that he embraces upon going into them. These assumptions include the metaphysical status of potentialities (there's a big contemporary literature of that with regard to the sciences), how potentials (whatever they are) are actualized, the relationship of parts and wholes which in Western philosophy is called mereology, the nature of abstract objects and the foundations of mathematics, whether essences exist, and whether Leibniz's 'principle of sufficient reason' has any plausibility.
Those are all problems that remain open questions in philosophical metaphysics and remain profoundly mysterious. One can't just lay out one's preferred answers as Feser appears to do and then refer to them as "principles" from which the rest of his arguments unfold.
Feser does seemingly address my concern about equating metaphysical functions with God on page 181 when he's replying to objections. He writes:
"Even if there were a first cause, there is no reason to think that it would be omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and so forth."
Like "What caused God?", this is commonly put forward as a devastating objection to First Cause arguments. And like "What caused God?", it is in fact embarrassingly inept. Grayling refers matter-of-factly to "the usual big jump" from a first cause to "the god of traditional religion".
Then after taking some shots at Dawkins and Krauss (who aren't philosophers of religion), Feser continues:
"In fact, historically, proponents of each version of the cosmological argument have put forward a great many arguments claiming to show that the cause of the world whose existence they've argued for must have the key divine attributes. Aquinas devotes around a hundred double column pages of dense argumentation in part I of the Summa Theologiae alone - just after presenting the Five Ways -- to showing that to the cause of the world we must attribute simpliity, goodness, infinity, immutability, unity, knowledge, life, will, power and the like. About two hundred pages of argumentation in book I of his Summa Contra Gentiles are devoted to this topic. Much argumentation along these lines can also be found in Aquinas' other works, such as De potentia and De veritate."
So what we get is a subtle bit of misdirection, shifting away from question of whether the problem itself is serious (it is) towards a straw-man of whether natural theologians have ever addressed it (they have), combined with a seeming argument from Aquinas' authority. Of course, if Aquinas himself didn't perceive it as a serious problem, then he wouldn't have devoted so much effort to trying to address it in so many of his works.