Galileo replaced concern with the nature of movement with concern with the measurable characteristics of movement (first of all, velocity). But when we say something moved so many miles/Km an hour, we are talking, in a sense about a kind of disposition. Not the sort of disposition to act that exists when something is inactive. But the disposition to continue to act a certain way. It seems to me that Galileo, in focusing on the measurement, took this disposition as a given, whereas Aristotle, in defining motion as the act of a potency as such, is much more interested in the nature of this disposition.
Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson. He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal. My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this. I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true. Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist. In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...
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