Friday, June 21, 2013

Two Certainties: 1) There is a God; and 2) I am not God.

As you all know, I'm a Thomist.  However, I see value in Descartes's famous maxim: cogito ergo sum, or "I think, therefore I am."  In order to doubt that I exist, I would first have to exist in order to doubt it. Hence, my own existence is certain.  However, I can also be certain that God exists and that God is distinct from me.  Even if the external world were illusory, I experience change in my mind nonetheless, and hence I exemplify both actuality and potentiality.

As I've argued in the past, it is logically impossible for there to be an infinite regress of potentialities having their actualizations sustained.  Therefore, we must arrive at some Pure Actuality: immutable, eternal, indestructible, unique, and omnipotent.

You can reject my arguments if you'd like, but I'm more certain of these two facts than I am that there exists an external physical world.  What argument, after all, can be used to establish or even make plausible that the external physical world is real?

34 comments:

  1. "I experience change in my mind nonetheless, and hence I exemplify both actuality and potentiality."

    If God is omniscient, then God also experiences that Doug Benscoter experiences change in his mind, hence if the chnage in Doug's mind is not illusory, then God has a real experiience of a changing mind, hence, God exemplifies both actuality and potentiality.
    You could also argue that the experience of change in your mind is illusory, in which case you could be God.
    But don't worry, I am certain that you are not God. Maybe I am, though.

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  2. God's being immutable, something I've argued for again and again, would entail that God's omniscience does not change. Rather, God knows all of my changes as a single whole.

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    1. You obviously do not understand my objection, but never mind, I am not going to discuss it any further here.

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    2. No, I understand your objection perfectly well. If my mental states change, then so do God's. That's your assertion, and it's mistaken. God's knowledge isn't divided up into individual propositional beliefs as ours are. God knows all propositions, including changing states of affairs, as a single whole. Hence, God's omniscience is not in conflict with his immutability. Your refusal to engage with this response only illustrates that you have yet to understand some of the most basic tenets of Thomism.

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    3. Doug, I think Walter is trying to say God must experience change because in his knowledge of our experiencing change he himself must experience that change or at least what it is like.

      The problem is I do not see how this follows. Just because I know what its like for someone to have an experience, it does not follow I am having that experience, and it does not even seem to me you necessarily have to have had that experience at some point. For instance, I know what it is like to experience anger, and I can even know what your experience of anger *right now* is like, yet it doesn't follow I am experiencing anger right now. I also know what it is like to be you and experience anger, yet I have never been you and experienced anger, nor will I ever.

      So I think Walter will have to elaborate or defend his premises more.

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    4. Exactly. My point has been that God needn't change in order to have knowledge of change. Your input, of course, is appreciated, especially because it fleshes out my point even more.

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  3. Awatkins

    I agree that in order to defend my premises I would have to elaborate, but my intention here was merely to express why I think Doug's certainties are, upon closer look, far from certain.
    E.g. the very idea of God knowing all propositions as a single whole has enough problems to fill several books.

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  4. Walter,

    Your objection presuposes that pure actuality exists through time. That it "rides along" with Doug as Doug experiences mental changes. But pure actuality must be timeless, because being in time means having the potential to get older. Therefore, from the perspective of pure actuality, everything is a timeless now.

    Furthermore, let's say you are correct and that God has potentialities after all. OK, so then he isn't the unactualized actualizer after all. But then there still MUST be an unactualized actualizer, because (as I like to put it) a receiver entails a giver.

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  5. You guys are putting this in a much more straightforward way than I am. Thank you! :)

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  6. Martin

    Nice to see so many omniscient people here who know what my objection presupposes. In reality my objection is far more complex than you think. Unfortunately, this blog is not the proper place for an elabortate discussion of this intriguing subjcet.

    Just one final word: your claim that a receiver entails a giver is correct, but it begs the question because it is not because someone possesses something that he has necessarily received it. But that discussion would open a new can of worms

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  7. >it begs the question because it is not because someone possesses something that he has necessarily received it

    Right, but that's what premise 2 does: whatever is changing is being changed by something already actual.

    That is, if something is changing, something actual is changing it. Or even if something is not changing: the frozen lake is actualized by cold air, cold air is actualized by the jet stream, the jet stream is actualized by the sun.

    In this case, everything is a receiver, and it must therefore bottom out in something that can give without having to get from anything further.

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    1. "Right, but that's what premise 2 does: whatever is changing is being changed by something already actual."

      Or something can be changed as a result of internal properties.

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    2. Thomists will be quick to grant that some things can change as a result of internal properties. For example, a body builder has the potential to bench press 400 lbs. However, it's only because he has the actuality of a certain level of strength that he is able to do so. Yet, the body builder is still dependent on external actualities in order to sustain certain changes, such as breathing oxygen. So, while a thing can change as a result of internal properties, the question remains: how are these internal properties actualized?

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    3. Spontaneously or not, that doesn't answer the question. The body builder has an actuality of strength, which has its sustaining cause in properly functioning organs, and so forth. If the strength were only in potentiality, that potentiality would not actualize itself.

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  8. Walter,

    >Or something can be changed as a result of internal properties.

    Right. Internal actual properties. That's exactly what the premise says: whatever is changing is being changed by something actual.

    The premise does not say: "whatever is changing is being changed by something external".

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    1. Admittedly, some of my formulations of the argument do allude to the external cause of change. My favorite formulation of the causal principle, however, is: "No potentiality can actualize itself."

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    2. Martin,

      From one of Doug's arguments:

      "Everything that changes has an external cause. (Premise)"

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    3. I also think that this is the most straightforward, because it can be justified in a simple manner.

      No potency can actualize itself. Why? Because a potency is a possibility that exist within a concrete object. A mere possibility cannot cause or actualize anything, including itself.

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    4. A potency is a possibility that exists within a concrete object. I fully agree with that. But you still haven't shown how any of this is "received" in any way.
      Moreover, I am not sure you are aware of the implications of this, but, taken to its logical consequences, this is a straighforward rejection of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.

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    5. It's "receiving" in this sense:

      A is being actualized by B, but B is being actualized by C, and so on. This can only terminate in an unactualized actualizer, because with an actualized actualizer it just wouldn't BE the termination point.

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    6. The termination point(TP) must have act and potency because, if the other entities are 'receivers', it logically follows that the TP is a 'giver'.
      In order for A to give somethingto B, something from A must go to B. But that is a change, hence the TP cannot be immutable.

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    7. That's not always the case, as I've argued dozens of times before. I'm sure Martin can answer for himself, but this is same objection that's been answered time and again. A man who views a beautiful painting is said to be "moved" (changed) by it because the painting's beauty is an object of desire. Pure Actuality is the supreme object of desire.

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    8. The analogy of the man who views a beautiful painting in no way answers my objection. For starters, in order for the man to be moved by the painting, the man must have act, which, according to Martin, he must have received. So, accirding to you, the reason why the man exists is because he desired to exist.
      To
      Actually the fact that to my knowlegde this very poor analogy is the closest way to an explanation I have ever seen or heard any Thomist attempt is what convinces me that there is not much reason to think the Thomist worldview is any way as complete as Thomists like to assert.

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    9. It's both a sound and effective analogy. The man doesn't need to will to exist. The sole point of the analogy is that X can change Y without X also changing. And, of course the man possesses actuality, but his potentiality of a newfound aesthetic appreciation is not something that actualizes itself, but is something received upon gazing on the painting's beauty.

      Moreover, I see no reason why Pure Actuality cannot timelessly will something. Objections to this hypothesis are dubious at best, and I've never come across an objection that made me lose any sleep.

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    10. I'll wait for Martin's reply, because you are talking about something entirely different, and as a result, completely miss the mark.

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    11. No, Doug has it right. Can X change Y without X itself changing? Of course. The beautiful painting causes a change in the man, even though the painting itself does not change. A lump of gold in a gold mine can cause a riot in the local mining town even though the gold itself does not change.

      There is nothing about "X changing Y" that entails X needing to change itself.

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    12. The process of change in the man is an entirely internal process, which, in this case is partly triggered by an external stimulus. Fine. But firstly, there is no evidence that every chnage needs such extranl stimulus, but secondly, and more importantly, this analogy does not work on a fundamental level, on which X is being actualized by an unchanging termination point because the analogy would entail that X, while non-actual, was moved by a object of desire, which lead X to become actual.
      That's absurd, because in order for X to be moved, X has to be actual, which yoi claipm is the result of X being moved. So, yoi are stuck in a fatal viscious circularity.

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    13. Walter, X exhibits both actuality and potentiality, so your objection doesn't stay true to the illustration. Of course, the man has actuality, but his potentiality of gaining an additional aesthetic appreciation cannot actualize itself. No potentiality can actualize itself because that would entail that it's self-caused, which is impossible. Since you agree that a thing cannot be self-caused, where does the problem lie?

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    14. I was actually replying to Martin's claim, which does not entail an X that already has both A and P. So, my objection is relevant to Martin's concept, and not to yours.

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    15. >But firstly, there is no evidence that every chnage needs such extranl stimulus,

      Did not say there was. We've both already explained that a potential must be actualized by something already actual. This could include something internal.

      >X is being actualized by an unchanging termination point because the analogy would entail that X, while non-actual, was moved by a object of desire, which lead X to become actual.

      The analogy was simply to demonstrate that "X changing Y" does not entail a change in X. Which was your original objection.

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  9. The reason Thomists say that no potentiality can actualize itself is because that would make the actualization something self-caused. In this case, X would exist and not-exist simultaneously in order to cause its own existence, which is absurd.

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