The Human Question

One key way in which the prima via can be misunderstood happens when one looks at it as a prescription for a mechanistic universe.  A moves because it is pushed by B.  B, being a bodily being, moves A only because it is moved by C.  D is related to C as C was to B, etc.  This series cannot be infinite, therefore there must be a non-pushed pusher.   But Aristotle's cosmology is full of things that act, not because they are pushed, but because they desire to act as they do, or something analogous thereto occurs in them.  Animals are the perfect example, because there desire in the proper sense does occur (craving would be a better word, come to think of it: desire is more proper to humans, but that's beside the point).  They are the source of their own motion in a way that is far different from how a rock falls when you let it go.  When animals act in a distinctively animalian mode, they determine how they shall act on the basis of forms that the...

If our knowledge of causality has human agency as its primary instance, so that our basic concepts from  physics are derived from reflection on our own engagement in the world... including our acts of pushing and pulling, AND if such engagements are always, as deliberate acts, are fueled by the desire for the infinite (inasmuch as the JUDGMENT that we will act thus is derived from such a desire), then there is no such thing as a system of which a human is a part that could be closed.

Doesn't the fact that the ancients believed in a quintessence prove to be an embarrassment to modern day folks who insist that Medievals and ancients thought of the earth as the most important part of the cosmos?

When we hear of the law of momentum, we think of movement in a straight line.  But perhaps the same movement could be thought of as an extremely small section of elliptical movement.  For if you were to set two very small and dense rocks in movement in relation to each other with nothing else around, one or both would move in an elliptical orbit with respect to the other rather than in a straight line. But in any case, imagine a projectile rock moving toward three rocks that form a perfect triangle and are stationary with respect to each other.  It's heading toward the middle of the triangle and at a right angle to the plain defined by the three non-projectile rocks.  Since there are three rather than one, the path of the projectile rock will be the average of the three elliptical paths that it would have travelled around each of the other three.  The resultant path would look a lot more like a straight line. Perhaps the straight line movement that we imagin...

It seems to me that one cannot simply infer morality from facts about human nature.  But one can use one's imagination to consider different practices and then explore how human actions take on meanings as a result of these practices (while noting that anyone who sees an action as having a certain meaning also possesses a habit that could be considered a virtue or a vice).  Next, call those habits that promote the fulfillment of our desire for truth, friendship and the like "virtues" and the actions consistent with those habits "virtuous." This is pretty foggy... I gotta think about it more.

Another great quote from the Summa contra gentiles : " Now, among the acts pertaining to forms, certain gradations are found. Thus, prime matter is in potency, first of all, to the form of an element. When it is existing under the form of an element it is in potency to the form of a mixed body; that is why the elements are matter for the mixed body. Considered under the form of a mixed body, it is in potency to a vegetative soul, for this sort of soul is the act of a body. In turn, the vegetative soul is in potency to a sensitive soul, and a sensitive one to an intellectual one. This the process of generation shows: at the start of generation there is the embryo living with plant life, later with animal life, and finally with human life. After this last type of form, no later and more noble form is found in the order of generable and corruptible things. Therefore, the ultimate end of the whole process of generation is the human soul, and matter tends toward it as toward an ult...

Aquinas has something to say about the movement of heavenly bodies: "... celestial bodies move because they are moved. Hence, the end of their motion is to attain the divine likeness in both ways. In regard to the way which involves its own perfection, the celestial body comes to be in a certain place actually, to which place it was previously in potency. Nor does it achieve its perfection any less because it now stands in potency to the place in which it was previously. For, in the same way, prime matter tends toward its perfection by actually acquiring a form to which it was previously in. potency, even though it then ceases to have the other form which it actually possessed before, for this is the way that matter may receive in succession all the forms to which it is potential, so that its entire potentiality may be successively reduced to act, which could not be done all at once. Hence, since a celestial body is in potency to place in the same way that prime matter is to for...

Force, mass, velocity, acceleration, momentum, and energy. From Richard Hassing's article titled "Thomas Aquinas on Phys. VII.1..."; note 2, page 111.

(I'm fiddling with the idea of actions as expressive acts, but I think my first version assumed that all expressions are like declarative sentences: they might be more like imperative sentences) When you do something, you are often communicating with others without noticing that you're doing so.  Others may often regard your action as if it were a kind of statement when you hadn't meant it that way.  The communicative nature of actions may be closely connected to the way in which SOME actions deliberately both signify something they intend to achieve and achieve it through the very act of signification (e.g., saying , "I do" at a wedding).  But what happens in the latter case is in some ways the reverse of the former.  In the latter case, you deliberately say X and by saying it, you intend to DO x.  In the former do y but by doing so you say something else.  Still, it's worth considering how one of these two might be a necessary condition for the other. ...

Any activity that, while not being the full realization of the capacity for that activity, nevertheless has that full realization as its final cause. Beautiful!

mention intentionality in anti-mechanistic chapter, or even better, intentionality as found in Fido.

"Species, also, that are new, if any such appear, existed beforehand in various active powers; so that animals, and perhaps even new species of animals, are produced by putrefaction by the power which the stars and elements received at the beginning." Summa theologiae, Part I, Q 73, A 1, Reply 3. Courtesy Michael Flynn's blog.

What a great word!  from Michael Flynn's blog.

The key to a practices-centered natural law /theology of the body, is the notion, central to TOB, that human actions are always bodily, expressive, and at some level achieve what they express.  There is a sense in which this expression is first discovered in a very public way, but later becomes internalized even if it only the doer knows. A man who commits adultery "says" something by that action, even if it is never discovered.  And this "saying" reconstitutes his identity in a way that cuts him off from the common good in which he previously shared. A married but infertile couple says something through coitus... they say the same thing that a fertile couple says.  They share in that common good.  But the good is not a thing being distributed, it's a shared affirmation of the meaning of life as expressed in marital sexual union.

The year is 2200 and almost no one gets married.  Many raise children who are perfect clones of themselves.  While a few conceive children the old-fashioned way, most use IVF and a gestation chamber to incubate and pre-educate and deliver their one or two children.  Sometimes groups of friends get together to form a collective child, whom they attempt to raise together.  Because of legal wrangling that occurs when these groups splinter, this procedure is allowed only after many safeguards been put into place. Almost  no one gets married.  The exception in the United States is a large colony of Amish settlers in central Pennsylvannia and a large community of Catholics in the panhandle of Florida (much of it having been bought up by the Catholic millionaire Thomas Monaghan about 50 years ago). Raising children is a difficult adventure whose short term difficulties are much more apparent than its long term benefits.  Hence there would be a steadily...

One argument linking morality and immortality speaks of punishment and reward: the following argument doesn't.  We discover moral principles by thinking of our actions (and those of others) as belonging to a society that persists: in fact, persistence is integral to that discovery.  When we think globally about morality, we think as if all rational beings do or could belong to a quasi-society that persists.  And persists.  And persists.  And that's a kind of immortality that we seem to assume when talking about morality at the cosmic level.

Before reasoning about the mortality vs. immortality of the human soul, it is important to consider the fact that at each moment, you could go out of existence--the whole universe could go out of existence--and God would not be unjust for letting it pass out of being.  But that hasn't happened because God wills us into existence--at each moment.  Each moment is, therefore, a gift, and we would be wise first to accept the gift of this moment before you beginning to ponder whether the next one will come. By embracing our contingency and divine freedom in the now, we dwell in the eternal now.