I think if you're going to do philosophy, you need to be aware of what you are doing. What is philosophy?, what am I doing, exactly?, what purpose does this serve?, etc. If you read the big thinkers of the past, one of the patterns you'll see is an overarching self-consciousness about philosophy. Meta-philosophy just is part of the normal philosophizing. The very best philosophies are those that can capture and take account of themselves within their systems.

I'm skeptical of the modern "institutionalizing" of philosophy. Philosophy is not "just another discipline" to be put aside biology, psychology and statistics. Nor do I think philosophy should be aiming for its own dissolution (re: Russellian analytic philosophy) or reduced to a "handmaiden" to the sciences (re: "naturalism").

At its core, philosophy is the rational manifestation of humanity's religious nature. We want to know why we're here and where we're going, how we know what we know and the limits of this knowledge, whether there is a God and what happens after we die. Most crucially, we want and need to know how to live, because life is an eternal ambiguity with no simple algorithm. It is this latter observation that leads me to believe that philosophy is born from a certain helplessness, an anxiety in the face of moral ambiguity and spiritual discouragement. Hence why when we approach deep philosophical questions we usually do so in silence or with trepidation. And this is exactly what you see inside temples and churches, cathedrals and mosques, a deafening, breath-taking silence.

I just don't see it. Work for what? Sustaining oneself, to work, to sustain, to work, to sustain. We are tragically too self-aware for this scheme- anarchic, communist, mixed economy, capitalist, what have you. — schopenhauer1

At the most basic level it would seem as though most if not all pleasure (hell, even pain for that matter) is in some way dependent on certain structural illusions, one of which is the apparent requirement that life, or at least our lives, continue for as long as possible.

Given that suicide is not usually a viable option for whatever reason, it shouldn't be controversial to see the practical importance of making an intolerable situation less intolerable. Your form of pessimism, while it certainly does point out real existential issues (such as this instrumentality you keep bringing up), is actually somewhat dangerous in my opinion, because it seems to lead to a sort of defeatist complaining. Capitalism is a bad thing, and making the alternative (socialist-anarchism) seem like an incoherent pipe dream threatens to sustain the very thing that needs to go, the thing that makes life so much worse.

You might as well just say "socialism doesn't work". Well, clearly nothing is going to "cure" us of life but capitalism is making things abhorrent. A person who gets sick in a socialistic system worries about their health and their relationships and projects. A person who gets sick in a capitalistic system, in comparison, ends up also worrying about their debt. It's grotesque how people fear disease, for instance, not simply because it's a disease but because it will induce an economic crisis. And when it comes down to it, when a person gets seriously sick, they care far more about these things than anything like "instrumentality", because their life is on the line and they don't want to die. Nobody really wants to die. They just want to stop suffering.

Creating work for people is much different than making people work. In an ideal socialistic => anarchistic society, work is not "negative", at least not any more negative than anything else. It's not something you're "enslaved" to. You work and enjoy the work, instead of being completely exhausted by it.

A symptom, I think, of the increasing shittiness of capitalistic society is the alarming degradation of aesthetics to something that is merely consumed, "force fed" into us. People don't go to movies, or listen to music, to appreciate the aesthetic qualities of it, they go the theaters or buy the next album as a means of escaping or distracting themselves. Watching movies with a deep or ambiguous messages, and unique cinematography, or spending an hour listening to a classical piece, is too hard for the working class.

Life isn't great but it's made intolerable through capitalism.

What is the most common sexually-transmitted disease?

Birth. — Michael Ossipoff

More like life.

Saying that we were "designed" like a car or an alarm clock sounds strange. Yet, apparently it is a joy for some people to say that about themselves. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

It's a joy only because it offers an alternative to the depressing notion that we exist by accident. It's comfy to think our bodies were made "with us in mind", as if it's all a great gift. It's kind of sad how people will froth at the mouth when they marvel at the cherry-picked beauty of a biological system. :-|

What the hell is going on here, seriously?!

If we value liberty and freedom, and see them as good, is it reasonable to assume that God, if he exists, also values liberty and freedom, and therefore can be expected to remain hidden and allow his creatures to believe what they want to believe and live as they wish to live?

I guess I just don't see the big issue with people believing in things, even if it's ultimately unjustified, if it doesn't hurt anyone. I usually don't really care too much about science (I think most of it is extraordinarily dull) so whether black holes exist or not is not a big concern of mine.

That being said, there is no one single definition of science, and the only method that can be applied to all sciences is "whatever works". Anything goes. And if this includes pie in the sky speculation then so be it. Why do people care so much about being wrong?

There's been rather a lot of what passes for science these days doing the job of just that -- passing as science. — AngleWyrm

Like what?

Isn't what you call awareness of the "there is" really a lack of awareness of anything? — T Clark

Isn't the lack of awareness of anything just unconsciousness?

Interesting. Probably what any human is aware of at the most basic level is the "there is". For Heidegger's Dasein, this would likely be "Being" (Sein), though I personally am a fan of Levinasian phenomenology so I like to reference the il y a (French: "there is"). This is most clearly experienced during the night when there is no light and the objects of experience are hidden. The "night" or the "darkness" is not a thing, it is the presence of absence. Here we have the essence of horror: not the fear of death but the fear of being, the invasion of private subjectivity by an anonymous vigilance or field of forces. It's a silent murmuring, and the dread we feel when looking at corpses (as if they'll come back into being at any second). The il y a is what is left over when we negate everything else; it's the density of the void. I think this is something everyone is aware of at all times, but it is especially evident during the nocturnal hours and exacerbated through insomnia.

Now, I spend much of my attention on what is going on inside me. I often find myself stopping what I’m doing or thinking to figure out what I feel about something. Given where I’ve come from, it’s an incredibly freeing experience. It’s so much fun. — T Clark

Yes, I agree. At times it is an exhilarating experience to read phenomenology and come across a perfect description of an experience that was previously clouded and ambiguous.

4) "It cannot be infinitely long." Is there a way to demonstrate this, other than by Occam's Razor? — Samuel Lacrampe

If you want to put a cup on a table, the table has to be stable and relatively motionless, which requires that it be on the floor, which requires it to be on the ground, etc. Each element in this series has derivative power, but derivative power is just simply power that is derived from something with ultimate power.

"Things can only exist, however, if it has the potential to exist which is actualized." I don't think this is possible. It seems to me that before a thing exists, then neither does its properties, including the property of potential existence. — Samuel Lacrampe

Things come into existence, as we usually see them, from other things that are already existing. And furthermore, it seems to me that, if material things are contingent, then this means they do not have to exist, which means that they have the potential to not exist. If this potential is not "part" of the material thing (since it does not exist), then it still exists as a possibility (perhaps in a mind).

This is interesting. Could you expand on this? I have trouble imagining that a lamb, having the un-actualized potential of being a sheep, must have evil. — Samuel Lacrampe

I'm not very confident about this notion either, I'm more sympathetic to the undefinability of goodness a la Moore and the British moral philosophers. But if we're going to Aristotelian route, it's that goodness has a lot of similarities to that of functioning "as it should". A lamb might not be bad if it's functioning as it should, i.e. to develop into a sheep. But it may be a bad lamb if it fails to develop. I don't really like this way of putting goodness, it doesn't seem very moral in nature.

Even a practising scientist is not in a position to make such a statement, unless they have worked in every scientific field. If you have not studied science at least to tertiary level, and preferably engaged in at least some research, this opinion is simply uninformed.

Science looks for patterns and makes models to describe them. One does not need to postulate a telos to do that, any more than one needs a telos when one looks for interesting shapes in clouds or star constellations. One may overlay a telos on it, if one's philosophical disposition encourages that - and some do. But such an overlay is strictly optional, and plenty don't. — andrewk

To a certain extent I would argue that one of the things allowing "scientism" to run rampant in many scientific circles is the loosening of importance of philosophical reflection in scientific reasoning. As science is taught (at least from my experiences), philosophy is not taken seriously, sometimes to the point of hostility. Many scientists, it would seem, fail to understand the metaphysical assumptions underlying their research, which leads them to assume something is the case (because of their general intellectual environment, probably most often) without actually arguing for it.

It used to be the case that great scientists were also great philosophers, or at least respected the importance of philosophy. They understood that science has limitations and works within a pre-established metaphysical framework. These metaphysical views were not assumed to be true, but they were approached in a more open-ended way. Many 20th century scientists took the views of Hume, Kant or Husserl seriously. Aristotle and Peirce are good examples of scientist-philosophers. etc.

Anyway, most scientists, like most people, believe there exists a real external world, that causality is real, that universals are real (re: natural kinds), that humans stand in a Cartesian relationship to the world, and, yes, that some form of teleology is real (even if most do not realize that teleology extends beyond intelligent-design babble). When you go into a specific field you see much more diversity of opinion in many metaphysical issues; neuroscience, psychology and the cognitive sciences have the representationalist theory of mind, and reductive materialism as paradigm ideas (yet there is a lot of disagreement, and I for one think they are wrong). QM leads us into theories of reality, realism and idealism or panpsychism or whatever. And biology is rife with teleological descriptions that, in most cases, are "reduced away" to mere mechanical laws with varying degrees of success.

So the point here is that science absolutely cannot operate without the use of metaphysical assumptions, whether scientists like it or not. Back in the day this was not controversial, but nowadays anything that threatens the monopoly, or hegemony, of science in our intellectual inquiry is immediately cast into doubt. We can't do science without metaphysical assumptions, but we can do science without metaphysics. But it just ends up cheap and uninteresting.

So stars, rocks, water, etc. aren't natural? This seems to be the same thing Apo said. I don't think that minds are a necessary requirement for some thing to be natural. — Harry Hindu

Well, no, I just said that inanimate objects that haven't been made by humans are usually the most obviously "natural" thing. But these objects don't exist by themselves, they exist within a broader teleological system, which I imagine this is what apo was saying.

To say that the supernatural can do the impossible is to say that it can be random, which you attributed earlier to being natural. — Harry Hindu

Well, supernatural agency would probably be seen as random, but impossibility =/= randomness. But we could see that God's intervention, if he exists, in the natural world is "natural" but that probably isn't what we want to see here, since it threatens to break down the very distinction we were trying to make. Again, remember I said natural-ness makes the most sense when constraining our thought to a certain region. Like how agency is natural when we're talking about human civilization, but is not natural, at least when compared to the bigger cosmos at large.

Did the natural world stem from the supernatural world? Which existed prior? If the supernatural world existed prior to the natural world, then you could say that is existed for a long time and is historic, which then makes it fall under your definition of "natural". You seem to be inconsistent in your descriptions. — Harry Hindu

If a supernatural being exists outside of time, it is eternal and has no "history".

There seems to be a greater magnitude of difference between natural and supernatural, than natural and artificial. But in both cases the difference arises by how we define "natural", and I think a general characteristic of natural-ness is that of being in accord with the way-things-have-been (for a long time). The natural is the historic.

Now we may say that it is natural that there be random events, but this is itself a historical claim: if randomness is natural, then randomness has been the way-things-have-been.

There also seems to be the important element of agency that differentiates the natural from the non-natural (the supernatural or the artificial). By this I mean intentional action, or more generally, teleological systems, which are contentious as they may be only a feature of mental states, or legitimate states of non-mental systems (or perhaps a mix, or an elimination of one, or whatever).

But perhaps "natural", since it is a historical claim, can never be a concrete and unchanging form. If intentional agency is around for a long enough time, it becomes part of the natural. And in fact we see this when we narrow our focus to human civilization. What is natural, anthropologically speaking, is intentional action, the use of tools, language, etc. Compared with the rest of the world, this may be "unnatural", but when we are dealing with human civilization itself, agency becomes the norm.

In a theological sense, the "supernatural" would be something that has qualities or powers that could never be that of the "natural" world around us, which is the collection of "material objects". It can do the impossible - or at least, do what we normally, usually see as impossible. We can then, presumably, specify (if we are inclined) by reference to a metaphysical system, perhaps Aristotle's, in which natural, material objects have potency and actuality, whereas a supernatural entity is pure actuality. But this also might just be a bunch of mumbo jumbo. Someone get Carnap in here. Or maybe Wittgenstein.

What notably distinguishes the first actualizer from other substances is that it necessarily exists. But there is no reason why it can't be material and mutable and have potentials just as other substances do. — Andrew M

This is going in the the neo-Platonic demonstration, but if this material being had both actuality and potentiality, then it would be a complex composite with parts, and a composite necessitates the existence of a simpler entity. This is again meant in the stronger hierarchical sense. It seems that by the nature of composites, they cannot be necessary. The fact that there are contingent composites leads the way to the existence of a non-composite, simple entity.

Though I do agree with you to some extent, I think Feser did not explain this well enough/failed to consider this particular objection.

I'm confused by what you mean. A purely actual being cannot change and thus cannot exist in time, which means it cannot be material. Are you implying it has not been shown that God must be immaterial?

Sure, but that's because your body is a material substance. God is not a material substance.

But it may nonetheless have unactualized potential for, say, causing substance S to exist.

If A subsequently does cause S to exist, then it has actualized a potential and thus has changed per premise 2:

2. But change is the actualization of a potential. — Andrew M

I don't think this is true. Just because change requires the actualization of a potential doesn't mean causing the actualization of a potential requires change. Indeed it would lead to an infinite regress if we tried to explain change by reference to something that, itself, changes.

Feser has a response to exactly this criticism (why does the actualizer have to be purely actual and not simply have unrealized potentials?) on page 66:

Effectively, Feser argues that if the actualizer had parts of itself that were unactualized potentials, then the actualized parts are what are really the purely actualized actualizer.

I mean, I do dream of electric sheep.

Yes a bias that has no respect for logic. — charleton

It's more of an aesthetic bias than an argumentative one. Stop grasping at straws, you fool.

I liked the Neo-Platonic proof the most. Though I've always favored Plato over Aristotle anyway so that might just be a bias of mine.

To be omniscient and omnipotent it would have to be omnipresent too. — charleton

Why? God exists outside of space and time. This isn't an argument for pantheism.

Here's one problem omnipresent and good would mean that no evil can exist. — charleton

Well, according to this argument, evil is a privation of goodness and has no positive existence itself.

Here's another: it cannot be incorporeal AND actual. — charleton

Why?

It cannot be immutable and an omnipresent, since there is such a thing as change. — charleton

But it doesn't have to be omnipresent, it just has to sustain everything that exists.

In fact it cannot be an actualiser and immutable. — charleton

Why?

Well that is one version. Was that so hard to type? — charleton

I put it in the OP, literally copy-pasted it into the previous reply.

To be omniscient and omnipotent it would have to be omnipresent too.
Here's one problem omnipresent and good would mean that no evil can exist.
Here's another: it cannot be incorporeal AND actual.
It cannot be immutable and an omnipresent, since there is such a thing as change.
In fact it cannot be an actualiser and immutable. — charleton

Lots of assertions, no arguments though.

Well, again, I am not a theist, I am presenting an argument in favor of theism so we can discuss it. God is said to be the purely actual actualizer, and is unified, immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, good, omnipotent, and omniscient. That are common characteristics attributed to God. Nobody in their right mind actually believes in the mythological notion of an invisible fairy or whatever bullshit the new atheists manufacture for the masses.

What say you about all this?

Being is Time X-)

I do ethics and phenomenology and screw around in metaphysics a bit.

Yes, that is exactly the point of the cosmological argument. It takes the evidence, that there are contingent material things in existence right now, at the present moment in time, and demonstrates that there must be a cause of this, which is other than the material things themselves. The example of the op appears to be a complex representation of the cosmological argument. — Metaphysician Undercover

But most cosmological arguments take the form of, A causes B, B causes C...etc but what caused A? = God, not A sustains B, B sustains C,...etc but what sustains A? = God. Really, the latter argument is actually implicit in the former arguments, even if proponents of cosmological arguments don't recognize this. For a thing has to exist in order to be the effect of something, and there seems to be the question of what it means to exist, which of course is going to include how a thing exists and continues to exist.

Here's a simpler way of stating the cosmological argument:
In the case of every existing thing, the potential for that thing is prior in time to its actual existence. — Metaphysician Undercover

Actually Feser takes pains to show how a hierarchical dependency is metaphysically more fundamental than a temporal one. The argument presented here is not really a cosmological argument at all, it's an argument based on the sheer existence of contingent material things right now, as in, not really why do things exist but why do they continue to exist, since this argument is meant to demonstrate that God is the supreme and eternal sustainer of existence (and not that he caused the world to begin).

Yadda yadda. Being an atheist doesn't just mean you rebut theistic arguments on the internet, as if dialogue was a competition to be the most right, it means you have to reject theological baggage in how you think. — fdrake

Yeah, idk why charleton is being such a douche then. I'm agnostic by the way, but for some silly reason I'm being associated with theism simply because I'm entertaining a theistic argument...?

Circular set of unjustified and false assumptions. — charleton

Baseless assertion with no argument given.

If this is possible, is there a recipe to take an arbitrary set of entities, say 'my laptop', 'my granny's house's front door' and 'Donald Trump's hair' and organize them into a hierarchy such that every step is done through the same binary relation and has the character of 'derivative causal power'? — fdrake

I guess? I'm not sure where this is going, sorry.

Actuality and potentiality stand in relation to each other. Change occurs when a thing changes qualitatively (coffee cup cools), quantitatively (a puddle increases in size), in location (I walk ten meters over there) or in substance (a living creature dies), and does so only when a potential is actualized (by something already actual - a potential cannot actualize itself).

Now a substance allegedly has a potential to exist or not exist. To be or not to be? Well, perhaps it's our choice whether we want to keep living, but what constitutes our living right now, i.e. our existence, has to do with the fact that other things are keeping us alive. Our bodies are working "properly". The environment is not too hostile. Etc. But these things are also existing. How do they exist? This chain of hierarchical causality does not requires time, but it's more of a logical entailment.

"How things come to exist in hierarchical relationships with each other" seems to be a question for the sciences, particularly historical sciences like cosmology or evolutionary biology. But the fact that they exist in hierarchical relationships, as the argument holds, requires that there be a non-derivative, fundamental source of power in this hierarchical system.

And also what hierarchy means when applied to arbitrary sets of entities? — fdrake

Not sure what you mean here.

But it's still God.

You are making a metaphysical argument with respect to a temporal series, whereas the argument I have presented is with respect to a hierarchical series. Hierarchical dependencies are more fundamental than temporal series, since a thing has to exist (with potentials) in order for a thing to be able to change in time, and to exist (according to this argument) requires that there be a hierarchical dependency relationship that ultimately derives all its power from what we call God.

Well I've diverted the point of this discussion, I'll make a different discussion some time later and we'll joust there instead.

Do formal and material conditions or universal laws exist? How do they maintain their existence?

So in claiming the existence of x is explained by the existence of y, you are only telling the tale of material causality. And you are making a big mistake in presuming that stability is a property simply inherited from baser levels of being rather than it being the property a hierarchical system needs to impose on its "base layers". — apokrisis

If the hierarchical system imposes stability on its base layers, it is only because the base layers are capable of being arranged in some way. The workings of the composite is done through the combined efforts of the parts, but it's still the parts doing the work.

When I turn on a light, it is clear that the lightbulb requires a voltage source to work. The light turns on because is is connected to a live voltage source. The voltage source itself depends on many other things to act as a voltage source. These things require other things, which require other things as well. There's no such thing as a physical entity existing by itself, there is always something more that is "keeping" it in existence. So the demonstration here is that things require other things to keep them hoisted in existence and if there cannot be a physical entity that pulls itself up by its bootstraps, then there must be something non-physical that ultimately keeps everything existing. Which we presumably call God.

It's not atomistic as I mentioned how the environment plays a role in how the body survives. The point is that the existence of x is explained by the existence of y which is explained by the existence of z, just like how a laptop rests on a table, which rests on the floor, which rests on the Earth, etc. An "Aristotelian" (not "the" Aristotelian) demonstration is that this hierarchical explanation ultimately follows back to the prime mover.