Abstract
What explains change? Edward Feser argues in his ‘Aristotelian proof’ that the only adequate answer to these questions is ultimately in terms of an unchangeable, purely actual being. In this paper, I target the cogency of Feser’s reasoning to such an answer. In particular, I present novel paths of criticism—both undercutting and rebutting—against one of Feser’s central premises. I then argue that Feser’s inference that the unactualized actualizer lacks any potentialities contains a number of non-sequiturs.
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Notes
Chains of causes/changes ordered per se are ones wherein the relevant causal power or property is wholly (concurrently) derivative in all secondary (non-first, non-fundamental) members of the chain. Such secondary members have the relevant causal power or property only derivatively and instrumentally; they do not possess it of themselves but merely transmit the causal power or property bestowed to them. To remove the primary member, then, is to simply collapse the causality of the chain.
Note that the relevant sense of justification here attaches to the one who doesn’t already accept the argument/premise/assumption in question. The question is whether the argument—or, more accurately, its premises or what is said on their behalf—gives those who don’t already accept the argument (i.e., who don’t accept its premises or assumptions) sufficient reason or justification to change their mind and accept it.
Note that in saying that something causes a reduction of potency to act, I am intending to refer to efficient causal actualization of the potential for the existence of the whole substance here, since that is precisely the kind of reduction of potency to act that concerns Feser in his Aristotelian proof.
What’s more, we will see later that, plausibly, we need not even appeal to past states to explain present ones. I will provide (what I take to be) a plausible metaphysical account of per se chains on which the absence of a tendency to expire or annihilate, combined with a few other conditions, explains the present existence of the substance.
Feser (2019).
All it tells us is that (i) x is actual, and (ii) x has the potential to be otherwise. But the conjunction of (i) and (ii) neither means nor entails that x’s actuality consists in a present reduction of potentially existent to actually existent.
Or, at least, an account of one necessary condition for such chains.
An intrinsic causal factor or force would be something like a natural tendency, inclination, or disposition inherent to a thing; an extrinsic one would be something like the effect of gravity, friction, etc.
I don’t mean net force in an expressly mechanistic or physical way (although such forces are sub-categories of what I mean). Instead, I just mean a causal factor or group of causal factors whose overall causal contribution is like a vector quantity insofar as it contributes toward a definite end state or outcome and is not counterbalanced by some other causal factor(s).
The same seems, plausibly, to apply to the other examples of per se chains. For instance, the stone has net causal factors operating on it so as to keep it stationary (friction, gravitational and normal forces, and so on). A concurrent sustaining cause of the stone’s motion plausibly seems required precisely because such a cause contravenes the causal activity of the friction, gravity, etc. toward the definite outcome of stationary spatial position.
C would therefore be like a vector quantity that counterbalances in the opposite ‘direction’ of what would otherwise be a net causal factor/force.
This follows provided that we accept a kind of epistemic modus tollens (i.e., a kind of closure principle)—if we know that p entails q, and we know that we are inadequately justified in accepting q, then we know or are at least in a position to know that we are inadequately justified in accepting p.
A ‘tendency’ does not only mean a probabilistic disposition—it could also mean an immediate reversion to another condition (or no condition at all, in the case of non-existence).
Thanks to an anonymous referee for this objection.
The underlying problem seems to be that we only have a single event here: photons’ presently bouncing off the moon. We don’t have two distinct events (which is dissimilar to per se chains of causation, wherein there are distinct events (or, perhaps, objects) subordinated to one another as causes and effects).
Thus, if Feser wishes to locate existence within a per se chain, he must—in a principled, non-question-begging manner—point to some intrinsic or extrinsic fact about act-potency composites in virtue of which they require a counteracting vector in terms of per se causal sustenance. And this is something that—as I argued in the previous section—he has not (yet) done.
Assuming, of course, that m is the present moment. This is in keeping with how Feser presents his argument.
More precisely, this is one prong of the three-pronged criticism of Feser’s inference.
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I am thankful to two anonymous referees for helpful comments.
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Schmid, J.C. Stage One of the Aristotelian Proof: A Critical Appraisal. SOPHIA 60, 781–796 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-021-00835-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-021-00835-7