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Existential Inertia: A Thomistic Appraisal
The intuitions that might draw us to existential inertia are tracking something real, but deeper analysis shows that there is an extra dimension that needs to be considered. The argumentation in the De Ente shows that essence is really distinct from esse in all but one thing, so that while substantial form is a principle… →
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Causing the perpetuity of an accidentally ordered series
Does Aquinas’s First Way conclude with an immovable first mover? The answer depends on whether we interpret the First Way as an exercise in natural philosophy or metaphysics. Either could work, and will produce philosophical fruit, but the resulting arguments grow ever different. →
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Indeterminacy, infinity, and participation
My recent “three principles” post arose from a lengthy discussion I had with reader StructureOfTruth in the comments of an earlier post on limitation. Thankfully, StructureOfTruth continues to keep me honest, and has raised the following concern in the comments on my “three principles” post: The greatest difficulty I have with your line of thought in this post →
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Three principles about act and potency
A while ago I wrote a series of blog posts on potentiality, change, and limitation. I am always on the lookout for better ways of articulating the act-potency distinction, since it serves as a foundation for much of the Aristotelian-Thomistic framework that I find so useful in philosophy and theology. The original post, from two years ago, was →
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Potentiality, diversity, and limitation
Over on my post introducing potentiality from first principles, a reader raises some important questions that I thought would be worth answering in a separate post. If you haven’t read that post yet, I would encourage you to before continuing here. This idea of “relative non-being” is the best explanation I have come across of the →
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Potentiality from first principles
In his gigantic post on existential inertia (section 7.13), Joe Schmid gives an argument against the act-potency distinction which can be roughly summarized as follows: the act-potency distinction commits us to pluralism about being, but pluralism about being is false, therefore we should reject the act-potency distinction. I had not heard of pluralism about being before, but →
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God’s act of choosing
Classical theism holds that God is absolutely simple, which is to say that there is no absolute distinction within him, sometimes summarized by the phrase “all that is in God just is God.” For Thomists, this entails that God must be purely actual, which is to say that there is no mixture of potentiality and →
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A simpler argument about essentially ordered series
In the previous post I explained what an essentially ordered series is and gave an argument to the effect that every such series must have a first member. While I still think the argument works, discussions about the post with others have led me to realize that we can give a considerably simpler argument for the same →
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Every essentially ordered series has a first member
A causal series or chain is an ordered collection of members, where earlier members cause or explain later members. Every member other than the first is preceded by one other member, and every member other than the last is succeeded by one other member. We can distinguish between accidentally ordered series and essentially order series. These don’t exhaust all →
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Feser on Koons on relative actuality
In a recent blog post, Edward Feser outlines a problem he sees with Rob Koons’ usage of relative actuality/potentiality to explain how an Aristotelian B-theorist might explain the reality of change. If you want to see Koons’ proposal then take a look at section 6 of his paper or take a look at Feser’s brief summary of it →
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Thinking Thought Out 