First, I will be responding, slowly, to the several responses my efforts at understanding the first three of Thomas Aquinas’s “Five Ways” of demonstrating the existence of God have elicited. They include:

Edward Feser, “Edwards on infinite causal series,” Edward Feser, August 23, 2010.

James Chastek, “For the self-evidence of the impossibility of infinite causal regress,” Just Thomism, August 26, 2010.

Brandon Watson, “Modality and the Third Way, Siris, August 26, 2010; “Modality and the Third Way II, Siris, August 25, 2010.

The “slowly” in the above “I will be responding, slowly” is due to two circumstances. For one thing, I need to think through my responses to those responses; I want to get things right. For another, the fall semester will be underway very shortly and I am already and necessarily devoting myself first and foremost to the courses I am teaching, one an introductory course in Islam and the other a course in Islamic theology. Rest assured, however, that it is my firm intention to keep the “I will be responding” in the above “I will be responding, slowly” operative. I have begun work on my response to the Feser piece.

II. The second thing to be said about the fore-imagined future of Gnosis and Noesis over the coming months is that it will be sometimes competing and sometimes cooperating with another blog I have begun, With Respect to Islam, for my blogging time, energy, and thought.

With Respect to Islam is intended primarily, but by no means exclusively, for this semester’s students. I say, “but by no means exclusively” for two reasons. The one is that I believe that the great majority of the world’s citizens, Muslim as well as non-Muslim, can benefit from having a greater knowledge and understanding of Islam. This is what With Respect to Islam aims to provide. The other is that I believe that the students in my courses can benefit from reading and reflecting on knowledge and opinion other than those that are given expression by their professor or fellow classmates. So, if you are at all interested in the topics of Islam or Islamic theology, please feel free to drop by, read, and even contribute to With Respect to Islam by posting your comments.

A number of the topics that will come up within the two courses will be topics that fall within the purview of Gnosis and Noesis, sometimes in the case of the topics that show up in the introductory course, but often in the case of those that show up in the course in Islamic theology. When this happens, I will let readers of Gnosis and Noesis know, either by a joint posting or by posting a notice that there is a relevant post in With Respect to Islam.

In this post I am turning my attention to his “Third Way.” This attempt at proving the existence of God is, however, quite a bit more complex than the previous two and I do not yet fully understand the core of the argument. So this post is but a first step in my effort at spelling the “Third Way” out in explicit syllogistic format.

2. I begin with the observation that the “Third Way” can be divided into three sections, each of which can be further subdivided into subsections. The first section, dealing with contingent beings, beings which are, as Aquinas puts it, “possible not to be,” concludes that they cannot always exist. It reads as follows:

The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not.
(http://dhspriory.org/thomas/summa/FP/FP002.html#FPQ2A3THEP1)

The second section of the “Third Way,” the core which I do not yet fully understand, concludes that “there must exist something the existence of which is necessary.” It reads as follows:

Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence—which is absurd. Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary.
(Ibid.)

The third section of the “Third Way” concludes that there must exist “a being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity.” It reads as follows:

But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not. Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.
(Ibid.)

3. In today’s post I will only deal with the first section, leaving the other two to be taken up in later posts. I’ll start by noting that the first section can be divided into two subsections, each one a relatively informal expression of an argument. The first subsection reads:

The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and not to be.

The argument the first subsection gives expression to reads, in its explicitly syllogistic format:

All beings which are generated and which corrupt are beings which are possible to be and not to be.

Some beings are beings which are generated and which corrupt.

Therefore, some beings are beings which are possible to be and not to be.

The argument is obviously valid and nearly as obviously sound.

4. Aquinas’s exposition continues:

But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not.

Now, we can see that Aquinas has here distinguished “beings which are possible not to be” from “beings which are possible to be” and left the former alone as the focus of the argument. That is, though he has not explicitly given either formal or informal expression to it, he has implicitly, and rightly, assumed the following argument to be sound:

All beings which are possible to be and not to be are beings which are possible not to be.

Some beings are beings which are possible to be and not to be.

Therefore, some beings are beings which are possible not to be.

5. It is to the beings designated by the “some beings” of that conclusion, the beings “which are possible to be,” that the “these” of “it is impossible for these always to exist” refers. In an explicitly syllogistic format the argument of the last bit of quoted text reads (trying to remain relatively close to the way Aquinas, or at least the translation, puts things):

No beings which are at some time non-existent are beings which are at all times existent.

All beings which are possible not to be are beings which are at some time non-existent.

Therefore, no beings which are possible not to be are beings which are at all times existent.

This argument, of course, is patently valid. Further, the first premise, that “no beings which are at some time non-existent are beings which are at all times existent,” is patently true. It is not, however, at all evident that the second premise, that “all beings which are possible not to be are beings which are at some time non-existent,” i.e., that “that which is possible not to be at some time is not,” is true. It follows that it is not evident that the argument is sound.

6. Aquinas has here, that is, identified modal “logic” with temporal “logic.” More explicitly, he has identified the theory or science of the modal, i.e., of the possible and the necessary, with the theory or science of the temporal, i.e., of the “at some time” and the “at all times.” He has done this by, in effect, postulating alongside the evident proposition that:

All beings which are at some time non-existent are beings which are possible not to be.

the non-equivalent and rather less evident converse proposition that:

All beings which are possible not to be are beings which are at some time non-existent.

Together the two imply that the beings which are possible not to be and the beings which are at some time non-existent coincide completely.

7. I find that Aquinas’s difficulty becomes a little more evident if we vary the argument seen above, that:

All beings which are possible to be and not to be are beings which are possible not to be.

Some beings are beings which are possible to be and not to be.

Therefore, some beings are beings which are possible not to be.

but this time leaving “beings which are possible to be” rather than “beings which are possible not to be” as the focus of the argument, thus:

All beings which are possible to be and not to be are beings which are possible to be.

Some beings are beings which are possible to be and not to be.

Therefore, some beings are beings which are possible to be.

We can next, following a logic parallel to that which Aquinas used when drawing his inference about the “beings which are possible not to be,” draw the following inference about the “beings which are possible to be”:

No beings which are at some time existent are beings which are at all times non-existent.

All beings which are possible to be are beings which are at some time existent.

Therefore, no beings which are possible to be are beings which are at all times non-existent.

Here again the argument is patently valid. Further, the first premise, that “no beings which are at some time existent are beings which are at all times non-existent,” is patently true. It is not, however, at all evident that the second premise, that “all beings which are possible to be are beings which are at some time existent,” i.e., that “that which is possible to be at some time is,” is true. It follows that it is not evident that the argument is sound.

8. Aquinas’s argumentation in the first section of the “Third Way” is, then, though evidently valid, not evidently sound.

Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, a Republican competing in the GOP gubernatorial primary, said on July 14th that he is unsure if Islam is really a religion, suggesting that it could be a “cult.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20011712-503544.html

I was struck by this report because I have recently come to ask myself if the view of Islam that Ramsey’s comment represents might be emerging into some prominence among conservatives opposed to Islam. It was, for example, quite explicitly raised in Bill Vallicella’s blog, The Maverick Philosopher, in a July 20th post, “A Mosque Grows Near Brooklyn.”

Our maverick philosopher offers us therein “something to think about”:

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion. But to apply the Amendment, one must raise and answer the logically prior question, What is a religion? I rather doubt that the Founders had Islam in mind when they ensured the right to the free exercise of religion. So we need to ask the question whether Islam counts as a religion in a sufficiently robust sense of the term to justify affording it full First Amendment protection. To the extent that Muslims work to infiltrate and overturn our institutions and way of life, to the extent that they violate church-state separation, to the extent that they demand special privileges and refuse to assimilate, to that extent they remove themselves from any right to First Amendment protection.
(http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/)

Now in his “Addendum and Corrigendum” of July 22nd, he quickly acknowledged that his “doubt that the Founders had Islam in mind when they ensured the right to the free exercise of religion” was not well-founded.

I made a mistake in the last paragraph that I will now correct. Although the sentence “I rather doubt that the Founders had Islam in mind when they ensured the right to the free exercise of religion” was true when I wrote it, expressing as it did a fact about my mental state, I now see that it is simply false that the Founders did not have Islam in mind. See “The Founding Fathers and Islam.” I thank Mark Whitten for the correction.
(REH note: see http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0205/tolerance.html)

He continued:

But I do not retract my main point, which is that we ought to give careful thought to the question whether, as I put it above, “Islam counts as a religion in a sufficiently robust sense of the term to justify affording it full First Amendment protection. “ I am raising this as a question. So-called liberals, however, being politically correct and therefore opposed to truly open discussion, will no doubt haul out their list of abusive epithets: racist, xenophobe, Islamophobe . . . .

His question of “whether … Islam counts as a religion in a sufficiently robust sense of the term to justify affording it full First Amendment protection,” is of course an exceedingly important one. It is also one that is very difficult to answer, as is quickly revealed by a perusal of, say:

“In Search of a Legal Definition of Religion: Lessons from
U.S. Federal Jurisprudence”
(http://americanaejournal.hu/vol5no1/blutman)

“The Complexity of Religion and the Definition of “Religion” in International Law,”
(http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/hrj/iss16/gunn.shtml)

It strikes me, on the one hand, that the legal definition of “religion” evident in the following passage would have to include Islam, unless it could be shown that the profession of belief in God by Muslims is not sincere.

To determine whether an action of the federal or state government infringes upon a person’s right to freedom of religion, the court must decide what qualifies as religion or religious activities for purposes of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has interpreted religion to mean a sincere and meaningful belief that occupies in the life of its possessor a place parallel to the place held by God in the lives of other persons. The religion or religious concept need not include belief in the existence of God or a supreme being to be within the scope of the First Amendment.
(http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Religion)

I feel bound to ask Bill how, if given this understanding, Islam could fail to legally qualify as a religion. Or, if he does not accept this understanding, I have to ask what alternative understanding he would offer in its place that would include Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, “affording” them “full First Amendment protection,” and not similarly include Islam.

As, however, the Maverick’s brother in philosophy (albeit, I fear, in his eyes also a “scumbag of a liberal,” to use the epithet he used in his July 21st post, “Will Liberals Ever Retire the Race Card?”), I am also interested in the philosophical question that he raised earlier, “What is a religion?”

I have to admit that I’m at a bit of a loss to answer the question in such a way as to include all and only religions. I’m fairly sure that an adequate definition would have to point to a set of ultimate beliefs, a set of values more or less in correlation with those beliefs, and a set of guidelines, enjoining some and forbidding other activities, more or less in correlation with those values and those beliefs. Vague enough, huh?

So I also want to ask Bill what he might offer as a philosophical definition of religion, one that would include, say, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. And then I will want to ask whether that definition does not similarly include Islam.

In that addendum he took note of my critique thusly:

Over at Gnosis and Noesis, Professor Richard Hennessey rather pedantically and uncharitably picks at my “Muslims aren’t very ‘liberal,’ are they?” Do I mean that no Muslim is liberal? Of course not. A universal proposition can be refuted by a single counterexample. (And it is worth noting en passant that a necessary universal proposition can be refuted by a single merely possible counterexample.) Since it is obviously false that no Muslim is liberal, it is uncharitable to take my sentence as expressing that proposition.

In response, let me first confess that I am all too often pedantic, often boring myself; anyone, moreover, who uses the adverb “thusly,” as I did just above, is clearly and insufferably pedantic. And I freely admit that charity is not my most prominent virtue.

At any rate, I consider his statement, “Do I mean that no Muslim is liberal? Of course not.” to partially address my concerns.

If the next two sentences, from “A universal proposition” through to “merely possible counterexample),” were intended to reassure us that Mr. Vallicella knows his logic, they were hardly necessary; as I said in my post, he “has to my mind one of the best philosophical blogs to be found” and “the man understands and appreciates rigorous thinking.” Since, however, the cat is out of the bag about my lack of charity, I might as well allow myself to note en passant that I consider anyone who uses en passant instead of “in passing” to be a fellow pedant.

I will grant him the truth of the paragraph’s last sentence, “Since it is obviously false that no Muslim is liberal, it is uncharitable to take my sentence as expressing that proposition.” I have to say, however, that while Mr. Vallicella may see it to be obviously false that no Muslim is liberal, it is neither obvious that all are able to so see it nor obvious, from his pre-addendum post, that Mr. Vallicella so sees it. This is why I think my concerns have been but partially expressed: when one leaves the quantifier unexpressed he leaves the careful, if uncharitable, reader with the question of whether all or some are being talked about. So, when I read his “Muslims aren’t very ‘liberal,’ are they?” I really did find myself asking, “Does he mean ‘all’ or ‘some’?” And, quite frankly, reading and rereading the blog in its entirety did not go far towards allaying my concerns.

Now, to move from being merely obnoxious to being absolutely obnoxious, the same reasons that led me to my pedantic and uncharitable post leads me now to observe that I would have found myself with similar concerns were I to have read without benefit of his clarification the post he published immediately prior to the one about the mosque. In the opening to Will Liberals Ever Retire the Race Card?, that is, we read:

Why should they? As good leftists, they believe the end justifies the means, and their shameless race-baiting is a means conducive to their ends.

You know enough about me by now to have predicted that I will have already formulated the following categorical syllogism:

All leftists are believe the end justifies the means.
All liberals are leftists.
Therefore, all liberals believe the end justifies the means.

Well, actually, I may still have those concerns. Certainly the paragraph with which he closes the post does not reassure me all that much.

And you should do your bit to push back. The next time some scumbag of a liberal calls you a racist for standing up for fiscal responsibility or the rule of law, say this: You lie about us, we’ll tell the truth about you.

Now, about that question about whether Islam is a religion… nah, not today.

The Maverick Philosopher can be read at: http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/.

Many things are said in the post, but for now I’ll focus on just one paragraph. The paragraph reads:

Muslims aren’t very ‘liberal,’ are they? They are intolerant in their attitudes and their behavior. Now the touchstone of classical liberalism is toleration. Toleration is good, but it has limits. (See the posts in the category Toleration.) So why should we tolerate them when they work to undermine our way of life? The U. S. Constitution is not a suicide pact. We are under no obligation to tolerate the intolerant.

With a full understanding that to point to the utterly obvious is to risk being seen as simply obnoxious, Let me observe that he has made three universal statements about Muslims in the course of that paragraph. First, then, surely the rhetorical question, “Muslims aren’t very ‘liberal,’ are they?” is actually an expression of the proposition:

No Muslims are very liberal.

or even, perhaps, in view of the sentence which immediately follows:

No Muslims are liberal.

There is second, then, that immediately following sentence, “They are intolerant in their attitudes and their behavior.” I am hard-pressed to take it as meaning anything other than:

All Muslims are intolerant in their attitudes and their behavior.

Third, there is the complex question, “So why should we tolerate them when they work to undermine our way of life?” It is a complex question in that it assumes that they, i.e., Muslims, are working to “undermine our way of life,” i.e., that:

All Muslims are working to undermine our way of life.

Now I personally know a number of Muslims. I can assure you that at least one of them is very liberal, at least one of them is tolerant in attitudes and behavior, and at least one of them is not working to “undermine our way of life.” The three universal statements that I see staring out at us from the quoted paragraph are all then false, as even the most rudimentary acquaintance with old Aristotle’s logic and its “square of opposition” would have you see.

On the other hand, of course, I willingly admit, again on the basis of personal experience, that at least one Muslim is not very liberal, at least one is intolerant in attitudes and behavior, and at least is working to “undermine our way of life,” albeit in, yes, legal ways.

Of course, we can’t leave things like that, simply saying that, while at least one Muslim is liberal, tolerant, or supportive of “our way of life,” at least one Muslim is not, for these are serious matters. But serious matters require serious treatment. The matters of the liberality, the toleration, and the support for “our way of life” of Muslims therefore require serious treatment, and first and foremost some serious social science, inquiring into how many Muslims are or are not liberal, tolerant, and supportive of “our way of life,” in what ways, and to what degree.

I agree with what I take to be the sentiment expressed by the last sentence of the paragraph, “We are under no obligation to tolerate the intolerant,” albeit with the proviso that more specification is sorely needed. I’ll put it more strongly: we are under an obligation not to tolerate the intolerant. Now surely one of the first things that someone who likes to think of himself as a philosopher should do in accordance with that obligation is challenge any intolerant position that he encounters, especially if it one held by a philosopher. Thinking, then, that our maverick philosopher has, on the points at hand, at least if I have understood him correctly, become one among the intolerant, I am challenging him to present the evidence that would back up his assertions, implicit or otherwise.

The Maverick Philosopher can be read at: http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/.

(2) The thesis that the two ways are in principle parallel does need some defense, for the initial descriptions Aquinas gives of them in the Summa Theologiae obscure rather than highlight the parallelism. The first lines of his exposition of the “First Way” identify it as an “argument from motion,” from, that is, an effect, that of a mover:

The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another….
(http://dhspriory.org/thomas/summa/FP/FP002.html#FPQ2A3THEP1)

The first lines of his exposition of the “Second Way,” on the other hand, identify it as an “argument from the nature of the efficient cause,” drawing attention to the cause rather than the effect:

The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes.
(Ibid.)

In the post before last, “Gnosis and Noesis Returns: the ‘First Way’ of Aquinas,” in speaking about the critique that Paul Edwards offered of the “Second Way,” I provided a partial justification of the parallelism claim, that of a similarity in focus:

[W]hile the “First Way” has as its focus the change [i.e., in Aquinas’s vocabulary, the motion] that some beings undergo and the causation upon which that change depends, the “Second Way” has as its focus the caused existence of some beings and the causation upon which that existence depends. The causality, however, is in both cases, an “efficient causality.” This is, in the Aristotelian terminology, the activity of an agent, and is thus to be distinguished from, say, “final causality,” the causality of an end or goal. As far as I am aware, the causal series upon which Edwards’ critique bears is, in all relevant respects, exactly similar to Aquinas’s mover/moved series.

(3) Additional justification for the parallelism claim can be found by noting the presence of two sets of two parallel premises. As for the first set of parallel premises, Aquinas, as we have read just above, gives expression to a key premise of his “First Way” in the second sentence of his exposition of the argument. I isolate that premise as:

Some things are in motion.

He does not, in his “Second way,” thus early and explicitly present the analogous premise, i.e.:

Some things are caused.

(For the duration of this post and for the sake of simplicity, I will use “cause” to abbreviate “efficient cause,” “caused” to abbreviate “beings the existence of which depends upon the activity of an efficient cause,” etc. So abbreviating the terms not only makes for easier inspection of the premises and arguments at hand, it also provides the collateral benefit that parallel arguments bearing upon the other modes of causality identified by Aristotle and Aquinas, final, formal, and material causality, are thereby also set forth for logical evaluation in one fell swoop.)

(4) The proposition that some things are caused is, however, hard at work in the argument, as is evident when the argument is fully expressed. This can be seen by rendering explicit the argumentation expressed in a truncated manner in the following sentence, the penultimate of Aquinas’s exposition of the “Second Way”:

But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false.

It quite obviously gives a truncated expression to a sequence of several arguments, one of which is:

If the cause/caused series goes back to infinity, there is no first cause.

If there is no first cause, there is no intermediate cause.

Therefore, if the cause/caused series goes back to infinity, there is no intermediate cause.

The second in the sequence of several arguments is:

If the cause/caused series goes back to infinity, there is no intermediate cause.

If there is no intermediate cause, there is no ultimate cause.

Therefore, if the cause/caused series goes back to infinity, there is no ultimate cause.

The third in the sequence of several arguments is:

If the cause/caused series goes back to infinity, there is no ultimate cause.

If there is no ultimate cause, there is no ultimate effect, i.e., no caused.

Therefore, if the cause/caused series goes back to infinity, there is no ultimate effect, i.e., no caused.

This is the point at which the premise, “Some things are caused,” comes in to play, as the premise in a fourth argument, a double negation argument:

Some things are caused.

Therefore, it is not the case that there is no ultimate effect, i.e., no caused.

That conclusion serves as a premise in a fifth argument, a modus ponendo ponens argument, thus:

If the cause/caused series goes back to infinity, there is no ultimate effect, i.e., no caused.

It is not the case that there is no ultimate effect, i.e., no caused.

Therefore, it is not the case that the cause/caused series goes back to infinity.

Taking stock, we can first see that there is, parallel to the explicitly stated premise of the “First Way,” that:

Some things are in motion.

there is also the implicitly present premise of the “Second Way”:

Some things are caused.

Still taking stock, we can second take note that we have just reviewed Aquinas’s argument that it is not the case that the cause/caused series goes back to infinity.

(5) Now, to turn to the second set of parallel premises: after having presented us, in his exposition of the “First Way,” with the first premise of the argument, Aquinas immediately went on to present us with a second premise of the “First Way,” that:

Whatever is in motion is put in motion by another.

In his exposition of the “Second Way,” however, he does not immediately go on to explicitly state an analogous premise. But it is more than merely plausible that it is implicitly present. First, in his “Third Way,” he denies that anything caused is caused by nothing, telling us that:

Now if this [that at one time there was nothing in existence] were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing.

And, in the “Second Way” itself, he rules out self-causation, saying, “There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself.”

These two theses imply the following proposition, able to serve as a second premise operative in the “Second Way” analogous to the one already seen to be operative in the “First Way”:

Whatever is caused is a caused by another.

(6) Continuing in parallel with the approach I took in “Gnosis and Noesis Returns: the ‘First Way’ of Aquinas,” I will observe here that a proposition like the immediately preceding suggests the question of whether or not, when one thing is the cause of another, the former is itself caused. Given that it either is or is not caused, then:

Either the cause is itself caused by another
or the cause is not itself caused by another.

Now if the latter is the case, then it immediately follows that there is an uncaused cause, in which case Aquinas as would, no doubt too optimistically, go on to say, “this everyone understands to be God.” It seems at least possible, that is, for Aquinas to have had the inference from the latter possibility to the existence of an uncaused cause in mind and thought it to have been sufficiently obvious to not require an explicit exposition. But perhaps not.

(7) At any rate, Aquinas went on to deal with the former, and remaining, possibility, that, again, “the cause is itself caused by another.” And, of course, as it did in the “First Way,” the question arises of whether that cause is itself caused by another. We are thus presented with a cause/caused series that goes back, or regresses, from one cause that is caused by a prior one to that prior one and then to that prior one’s cause, etc. This obviously raises the question of whether or not this series goes back or regresses infinitely.

In “Gnosis and Noesis Returns: the ‘First Way’ of Aquinas,” I noted that the arguments in the “First Way” fell into two, as I called them, movements, the first concluding that the mover/moved series does not go back to infinity and the second that there is an unmoved mover. The parallel series of arguments in the “Second Way” also falls into two such movements, the first concluding that the cause/caused series does not go back to infinity and the second that there is an uncaused cause.

I have, of course, already set forth the series of arguments that constitute the first movement; I did this in making the case, in Section 4 above, that the premise that some things are caused is implicitly present in the “Second Way” and in the process presenting the syllogistically formatted version of Aquinas’s argument that it is not the case that the cause/caused series goes back to infinity. In this section, accordingly, I’ll set forth the second movement.

Now, in presenting the first movement, I introduced and put to use the following premise:

If the cause/caused series goes back to infinity, then there is no first cause.

The reverse can also reasonably be assumed true:

If there is no first cause, then the cause/caused series goes back to infinity.

The sixth argument needed, also a modus ponendo ponens argument, has as it first premise the latter proposition and as its second the last of the conclusions arrived at in the first movement.

If there is no first cause, then the cause/caused series goes back to infinity.

It is not the case that the cause/caused series goes back to infinity.

Therefore, it is not the case that there is no first cause.

The seventh argument is, quite obviously, another case of double negation:

It is not the case that there is no first cause.

Therefore, there is a first cause.

Note that the series of arguments thus far set forth have concluded only that there is a first efficient cause, i.e., there is at least one. They have not ruled out there being many. In what follows, I will use the expression “the first cause under consideration” to refer to the one alone the existence of which the arguments would have, if sound, demonstrated, with no assumption, at least not here, that there is also at most one first efficient cause.

That said, we’re not quite done yet, though the remaining steps are obvious. One, our eighth argument, is:

If the first cause under consideration is caused, then it is posterior to a prior cause.

If the first cause under consideration is posterior to a prior cause, it is not a first cause.

Therefore, if the first cause under consideration is caused, then it is not a first cause.

There is no need to prove that:

The first cause under consideration is a first cause.

The pertinent double negation argument, the tenth, is just as obvious:

The first cause under consideration is a first cause.

Therefore, it is not the case that the first cause under consideration is not a first cause.

Next, eleventh, another modus ponendo ponens:

If the first cause under consideration is caused, then it is not a first cause.

It is not the case that the first cause under consideration is not a first cause.

Therefore, the first cause under consideration is not caused.

Twelfth:

If the first cause under consideration is not caused, then it is an uncaused cause.

The first cause under consideration is not caused.

Therefore, the first cause under consideration is an uncaused cause.

Finally, in setting forth in Gnosis and Noesis Returns: the First Way of Aquinas the “First Way” in syllogistic format, I did not go on to spell out the argument that:

There is a first mover (i.e., the first mover under consideration).

That first mover (the first mover under consideration) is an unmoved mover.

Therefore, there is an unmoved mover.

I probably should have. In this post, however, I will spell out the parallel argument of the “Second Way,” thus:

There is a first cause (i.e., the first cause under consideration).

That first cause (the first cause under consideration) is an uncaused cause.

Therefore, there is an uncaused cause.

(8) It is quite evident that all of the foregoing arguments are perfectly valid. That is, if their premises are true, then their conclusions must also be true. It is not, however, evident that all of the foregoing arguments are perfectly sound. That is, it is not fully evident that all of the premises invoked are true and it is therefore not fully evident that all of the conclusions arrived at are true.

In “A Non-evident and Key Premise of Aquinas’s ‘First Way’”, I recalled Paul Edwards’ critique, by implication of the following premise of Aquinas’s “First Way”:

If there is no first mover, then there are no other, subsequent, movers.

and directly of the parallel premise of his “Second Way”:

If there is no first cause, then there are no intermediate causes.

(The difference between the “other, subsequent” of the former, stemming from Aquinas’s wording in the “First Way,” and the “intermediate” of the latter, stemming from Aquinas’s wording in the “Second Way,” is of no consequence for the current analysis. Subsequent causes, that is, surely include both intermediate and ultimate causes. The exposition I have given of the “First Way” in syllogistic format can easily be revised to make use of the more specific “intermediate causes” and “ultimate causes” instead of the “subsequent” that I in fact used.)

As far as I know Edwards’ critique is still unanswered. In particular, as I pointed out in “A Non-evident and Key Premise of Aquinas’s ‘First Way,’” Edward Feser’s The Last Superstition. A Refutation of the New Atheism (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2008) does not mention it, much less reply to it.

There is a first mover.

And:

The first mover … is an unmoved mover.

(Though I did not, I could have and perhaps should have gone on to take note of the inference that passes from the two propositions just given to the conclusion that:

There is an unmoved mover.)

I promised, at the end of that post, that this post would be devoted to showing that the following absolutely critical premise is not evidently true.

If there is no first mover, then there are no other, subsequent, movers.

That is, on the one hand, the premise is not self-evidently true. On the other, Aquinas did not demonstrate its truth.

(2) I am not, of course, the first person to have seen that this premise is not evidently true. That it was not evidently true was shown decades ago by Paul Edwards in his “A Critique of the Cosmological Argument” (first published in The Rationalist Annual, 1959 (London: Pemberton Publishing Co., Ltd.) and available online, at least as of the time of this writing, at:

http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/02-03/01w/readings/edwards.html.)

Before getting into the heart of the matter, it may well be worth our while to take the time to address one minor point that could lead one to miss the force of Edwards’ argument against Aquinas’s “First Way,” that Edwards was dealing explicitly, not with the “First Way,” but rather, as he himself says, with Aquinas’s “Second Way.” Now it is true that, while the “First Way” has as its focus the change that some beings undergo and the causation upon which that change depends, the “Second Way” has as its focus the caused existence of some beings and the causation upon which that existence depends. The causality, however, is in both cases, an “efficient causality.” This is, in the Aristotelian terminology, the activity of an agent, and is thus to be distinguished from, say, “final causality,” the causality of an end or goal. As far as I am aware, the causal series upon which Edwards’ critique bears is, in all relevant respects, exactly similar to Aquinas’s mover/moved series.

(By the way, I intend in the near future to post a presentation of the second of Aquinas’s “Five Ways,” in an explicitly syllogistic format, with the aim of making the parallelism of the two arguments fully evident. And, to anticipate the obvious questions, I will at some time thereafter take up the third and the fifth of the “Five Ways,” which feature some similarities and some significant differences from the first two; I currently, however, do not know what to make of the fourth.)

(3) Edwards summarizes Aquinas’s argument as follows:

Let us take some causal series and refer to its members by the letters of the alphabet:

A -> … X -> Y -> Z

[6] Z stands here for something presently existing, e.g. Margaret Truman. Y represents the cause or part of the cause of Z, say Harry Truman. X designates the cause or part of the cause of Y, say Harry Truman’s father, etc. Now, Aquinas reasons, whenever we take away the cause, we also take away the effect: if Harry Truman had never lived, Margaret Truman would never have been born. If Harry Truman’s father had never lived, Harry Truman and Margaret Truman would never have been born. If A had never existed, none of the subsequent members of the series would have come into existence. But it is precisely A that the believer in the infinite series is “taking away.” For in maintaining that the series is infinite he is denying that it has a first member; he is denying that there is such a thing as a first cause; he is in other words denying the existence of A. Since without A, Z could not have existed, his position implies that Z does not exist now; and that is plainly false.

Edwards goes on to offer the criticism that:

[7] This argument fails to do justice to the supporter of the infinite series of causes. Aquinas has failed to distinguish between the two statements:

(1) A did not exist, and
(2) A is not uncaused.

[8] To say that the series is infinite implies (2), but it does not imply (1). The following parallel may be helpful here: Suppose Captain Spaulding had said, “I am the greatest explorer who ever lived,” and somebody replied, “No, you are not.” This answer would be denying that the Captain possessed the exalted attribute he had claimed for himself, but it would not be denying his existence. It would not be “taking him away.” Similarly, the believer in the infinite series is not “taking A away.” He is taking away the privileged status of A; he is taking away its “first causiness.” He does not deny the existence of A or of any particular member of the series. He denies that A or anything else is the first member of the series. Since he is not taking A away, he is not taking B away, and thus he is also not taking X, Y, or Z away.

Let me add my own parallel. Suppose I were to say, “I am the first one to have offered this critique of Aquinas’s argument.” Suppose then that someone were to object, “No, you are not; Edwards beat you to it.” The objection would not be a claim that I am not one who has offered this critique of Aquinas’s argument. It would simply be a denial that I am the first one.

(4) Now defenders of Aquinas’s argument have brought in a distinction here, one they evidently believe to be telling, between, as Edward Feser identifies them, “two kinds of series of causes and effects, namely, ‘accidentally ordered’ and ‘essentially ordered’ series (or causal series per accidens and per se, for you fans of Scholastic Latin).” Feser explains:

To take a stock example, consider a father who begets a son, who in turn begets another. If the father dies after begetting his son, the son can still beget a son of his own, for once in existence, the son has the power to do this all by himself. He doesn’t need his father to remain in existence for him to be able to do it. If we were to imagine an ongoing series of fathers begetting sons who in turn beget others – and of course such series really do exist all around us – then we can observe that in every case, each son has the power to beget a son of his own (and thus become a father) even if his own father, or any previous father in the series, goes out of existence. Considered as a “causer” of sons, each member of the series is in this sense independent of the previous members. Hence this series is “accidentally ordered” in the sense that it is not essential to the continuation of the series that any earlier member of it remain in existence. And in the same way, the potter’s curving his hand in making the pot occurs even though the girlfriend’s request [that he make a pot for her] happened a week ago. The causal link between the request and the hand’s curving is also “accidental” insofar as the latter exists in the absence of the former.

(Edward Feser, The Last Superstition. A Refutation of the New Atheism (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2008), p. 92)

In an “essentially ordered” causal series things are different (Ibid.):

But it [the hand’s curving] would not exist in the absence of the firing of the motor neurons [in the arm]. Here we have an “essentially ordered” causal series, and we have one precisely because the cause in this case is (unlike the girlfriend’s request) simultaneous with the effect. The hand is held in the position it is in only because the motor neurons are firing in such-and-such a way; take away the neural activity, and the hand goes limp. Or, once again to make use of a stock example, if we think of a hand which is pushing a stone by means of a stick, the motion of the stone occurs only insofar as the stick is moving it, and the stick is moving only insofar as it is being used by the hand to do so. At every moment in which the last part of the series (viz. the motion of the stone) exists, the earlier parts (the motion of the hand and of the stick) exist as well.

Let’s pause for a moment over the characteristic of an essentially ordered causal series identified here as that which makes it an essentially ordered causal series: it is such a series “precisely because the cause in this case is (unlike the girlfriend’s request) simultaneous with the effect.” Let’s further identify this, for future reference, as the Feser’s first characterization of an essentially ordered causal series.

Now, to pick up where we left off, the importance of the distinction is that the two different kinds of series differ, at least Feser so believes, with respect to the necessity of there being a first member. On the one hand (Ibid., p. 93):

Now, an accidentally ordered series, like the fathers begetting sons who beget more sons (and indeed like the countless other causal series familiar from everyday experience that extend backwards in time), could, in Aquinas’s view, in theory go back forever into the past. He doesn’t think any such series does in fact go back forever, but he also doesn’t think it can be proved through philosophical arguments that they don’t. That is to say, he doesn’t think it can be proved, and doesn’t try to prove, that the universe had a beginning. The reason is that, since in an accidentally ordered series the members of the series have their causal powers independently of the operation or even existence of earlier members, there is nothing about the activity of the members existing here and now that requires that we trace it back to some first member existing in the past.

On the other hand (Ibid.):

But things are very different with essentially ordered causal series. These sorts of series paradigmatically trace, not backwards in time, but rather “downwards” in the present moment, since they are series in which each member depends simultaneously on other members which simultaneously depend on yet others and so on. In this sort of series, the later members have no independent causal power of their own, being mere instruments of a first member.

(5) Though there is, of course, much about causality that demands extended deliberation, we need not get into such deliberation here and now; I will accept, provisionally at least, the distinction Feser has drawn and, moreover, agree with him that it is the essentially ordered kind of causal series that is the one at hand in Aquinas’s argument. Unfortunately, however, that the causal series with which the First Way is concerned is an essentially ordered causal series does not compel the conclusion that Feser thinks it does, that such a series must have a first member.

This was seen by, again, Edwards. Edwards was, first, aware of the distinction under a slightly different guise, though one recognizably similar in all pertinent respects:

[10] Many defenders of the causal argument would contend that at least some of these criticisms rest on a misunderstanding. They would probably go further and contend that the argument was not quite fairly stated in the first place — or at any rate that if it was fair to some of its adherents it was not fair to others. They would in this connection distinguish between two types of causes — what they call “causes in fieri” and what they call “causes in esse.” A cause in fieri is a factor which brought or helped to bring an effect into existence. A cause in esse is a factor which “sustains” or helps to sustain the effect “in being.” The parents of a human being would be an example of a cause in fieri. If somebody puts a book in my hand and I keep holding it up, his putting it there would be the cause in fieri, and my holding it would be the cause in esse of the book’s position.

Edwards goes on to bring out the point, on behalf of the defenders of the argument, of making the distinction:

[11] Using this distinction, the defender of the argument now reasons in the following way. To say that there is an infinite series of causes in fieri does not lead to any absurd conclusions. But Aquinas is concerned only with causes in esse and an infinite series of such causes is impossible.

He next quotes “the contemporary American Thomist, R. P. Phillips,” writing in support of the thesis that an infinite series of causes in fieri is impossible:

Each member of the series of causes possesses being solely by virtue of the actual present operation of a superior cause. . . . That a thing should cause itself is impossible: for in order that it may cause it is necessary for it to exist, which it cannot do, on the hypothesis, until it has been caused. So it must be in order to cause itself. Thus, not being uncaused nor yet its own cause, it must be caused by another, which produces and preserves it. It is plain, then, that as no member of this series possesses being except in virtue of the actual present operation of a superior cause, if there be no first cause actually operating none of the dependent causes could operate either. We are thus irresistibly led to posit a first efficient cause which, while itself uncaused, shall impart causality to a whole series …

The series of cause [sic] which we are considering is not one which stretches back into the past; so that we are not demanding a beginning of the world at some definite moment reckoning back from the present, but an actual cause now operating, to account for the present being of things.

Edwards does grant that the following can be said on behalf of the argument as thus understood:

[15] This formulation of the causal argument unquestionably circumvents one of the objections mentioned previously. If Y is the cause in esse of an effect, Z, then it must exist as long as Z exists. If the argument were valid in this form it would therefore prove the present and not merely the past existence of a first cause.

Yet the fundamental issue remains:

[16] But waiving this and all similar objections, the restatement of the argument in terms of causes in esse in no way avoids the main difficulty which was previously mentioned. A believer in the infinite series would insist that his position was just as much misrepresented now as before. He is no more removing the member of the series which is supposed to be the first cause in esse than he was removing the member which had been declared to be the first cause in fieri. He is again merely denying a privileged status to it. He is not denying the reality of the cause in esse labelled “A.” He is not even necessarily denying that it possesses supernatural attributes. He is again merely taking away its “first causiness.”

(6) It seems, then that Edwards has conclusively shown that neither Aquinas, at least in the Summa Theologiae, nor the twentieth-century followers of Aquinas, at least those quoted in his article, have demonstrated that an essentially ordered causal series must have a first member, an unmoved mover or an efficient cause itself having no causally prior efficient cause. What is to be said about the defenders of the argument writing some five decades after Edwards? If Feser, in his The Last Superstition, can serve as an example, today’s defenders have neither replied to Edwards’ criticism of the argument nor offered a compelling alternative demonstration of their own.

Let us then return to Feser. First, his The Last Superstition does not provide us with any discussion at all of Edwards’ critique. I have to assume, however, that he is fully aware of it, so perhaps this is due to his thinking the argument he offers, for the necessity that that an essentially ordered causal series have a first member, is conclusive and thus that a reply to Edwards is unnecessary. Let us look then at the argument his The Last Superstition offers. It is found in the continuation of the illustration, already read, of the “essentially ordered” causal series; here it is again:

But it [the hand’s curving] would not exist in the absence of the firing of the motor neurons [in the arm]. Here we have an “essentially ordered” causal series, and we have one precisely because the cause in this case is (unlike the girlfriend’s request) simultaneous with the effect. The hand is held in the position it is in only because the motor neurons are firing in such-and-such a way; take away the neural activity, and the hand goes limp. Or, once again to make use of a stock example, if we think of a hand which is pushing a stone by means of a stick, the motion of the stone occurs only insofar as the stick is moving it, and the stick is moving only insofar as it is being used by the hand to do so. At every moment in which the last part of the series (viz. the motion of the stone) exists, the earlier parts (the motion of the hand and of the stick) exist as well.

The continuation reads (Ibid., pp, 92-93):

The stone, and the stick itself, for that matter, only move because, and insofar as, the hand moves them; indeed, strictly speaking, it is the hand alone which is doing the moving of the stone, and the stick is a mere instrument by means of which it accomplishes this. The series is “essentially ordered” because the later members of the series, having no independent power of motion on their own, derive the fact of their motion and their ability to move other things from the first member, in this case the hand. Without the earlier members, and particularly the first one, the series could not continue.

Let’s recall the characterization of an essentially ordered causal series we previously identified as Feser’s first characterization, that such a series is such a series “precisely because the cause in this case is (unlike the girlfriend’s request) simultaneous with the effect.” Now, in the immediately above paragraph, we have been presented with Feser’s second characterization of an essentially ordered causal series, that “the later members of the series, having no independent power of motion on their own, derive the fact of their motion and their ability to move other things from the first member, in this case the hand.”

The two formulations are not equivalent. To focus on but the central difference here: unlike his first, Feser’s second characterization appeals to an entirely new thesis, that an essentially ordered causal series has a first member. Now it does not seem to me that he has introduced this thesis simply “out of the blue.” Rather, it seems to me that the second sentence of the paragraph just quoted presents both the thesis as the conclusion embedded in a truncated argument and the truncated argument itself. I reconstruct the argument as:

All members of an essentially ordered causal series having no power of motion on their own are members having their power of motion derived from the first member of the series.

All later members of an essentially ordered causal series are members of an essentially ordered causal series having no power of motion on their own.

Therefore, all later members of an essentially ordered causal series are members having their power of motion derived from the first member of the series.

Thus construed, it is evident that it is a valid argument. It is not evident that it is a sound argument, however, because it is not evident that the first premise is true. There is an alternative available, that:

All members of an essentially ordered causal series having no power of motion on their own are members having their power of motion derived from the earlier members of the series.

Feser himself gave expression, two pages later (Ibid., p. 95), to an equivalent statement of it:

No [later] member of the series has any independent causal power of its own, but derives what it has from something earlier in the series.

But being dependent upon earlier members of a series is not the same as being dependent upon a first member of the series. The alternative to which Feser himself has just given expression is fully compatible with there being no first member, with every member of the series being dependent upon a prior member of the series.

(7) Notice that we can see a similar argument, also truncated, in the text of Phillips quoted earlier in this post, wherein we read:

It is plain, then, that as no member of this series possesses being except in virtue of the actual present operation of a superior cause, if there be no first cause actually operating none of the dependent causes could operate either.

Spelling it out, we have:

All members of an in esse causal series having their causal power only by virtue of the actual present operation of a superior cause are members having their causal power only by virtue of the actual present operation of the first superior cause.

All inferior members of an in esse causal series are members of an in esse causal series having their causal power only by virtue of the actual present operation of a superior cause.

Therefore, all inferior members of an in esse causal series are members having their causal power only by virtue of the actual present operation of the first superior cause.

Thus construed, it is evident that this too is a valid argument, while it is not evident that it is a sound argument. It is not evident that the first premise is true. There is an alternative available, that:

All members of an in esse causal series having their causal power only by virtue of the actual present operation of a superior cause are members having their causal power only by virtue of the actual present operation of a superior cause.

This is clearly true, but it is equally clear that to be dependent for causal power upon a superior member of the series is not the same as being dependent upon a first superior cause. The alternative which has just been given expression is fully compatible with their being no first superior cause, every member of the series being preceded by another, superior one.

(8) To conclude: I said earlier that it seems that Edwards has conclusively shown that neither Aquinas, at least in the Summa Theologiae, nor the twentieth-century followers of Aquinas, at least those quoted in his article, have demonstrated that an essentially ordered causal series must have a first member, an unmoved mover or an efficient cause itself having no causally prior efficient cause. I asked what was to be said about the defenders of the argument writing some five decades after Edwards, in particular. I then claimed that, if Feser, in his The Last Superstition, can serve as an example, today’s defenders have neither replied to Edwards’ criticism of the argument nor offered an compelling alternative demonstration of their own.

Now it may well be that I have missed some crucial point in Feser’s The Last Superstition; if so, I would most appreciate having it pointed out. Or it may be that he has addressed the concerns raised in the foregoing elsewhere in his rather extensive and burgeoning corpus; again, if so, I would most appreciate being pointed in the right direction. Or it may be that Aquinas or some other defender of the argument, in whatever century, has addressed them, in which case I would also be grateful to have that pointed out.

Postscript: I’d like to add that, while I hesitate over some of the conservative moral and political asides scattered throughout Feser’s The Last Superstition, I have to say that it is as an important expression of contemporary Aristotelian, Thomistic, and Catholic thought. And, though again with the same hesitations, I recommend his blog, “Edward Feser,” as a very useful resource for those interested in contemporary traditional thinking. It can be found at:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/.

If you wish, you can easily purchase The Last Superstition through Amazon.com by clicking on:

The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism

True it is that that thesis has the virtue of making the oneness with God, that Nasr’s version of mysticism understands us, if we are well-advised, to be seeking, be an immediate and evident truth: if both there exists but God and we exist, then we are but God.

But it also has the vice of being false, for it is absolutely evident that there are many real and really distinct things, beings, or existents; you are real and I am real, but I am not you. And, equally obvious, neither are you one with or identical to God nor am I. Being then quite simply false, the theomonist thesis can in no way serve as the foundation for any rationally acceptable gnosticism.

(2) Still I am, with this post and the immediately previous one, resuming my quest for an answer to the question that gave rise to this blog, that of determining whether or not it is possible for a human being to attain, in this life, the immediate knowledge of the divine that “gnosis,” as I with Nasr use the term, refers to. Now, however, I am going to begin much closer to the beginning, with, that is, a question which is logically prior to that of whether gnosis is humanly possible, the question of whether or not God exists.

Most immediately, I am going to begin with a presentation and an analysis of the proof, or attempted proof, of the existence of God offered by Thomas Aquinas and known as the “First Way;” this is, as I’m sure you know, the first of the five ways in which, Thomas tells us in his Summa Theologiae, God can be shown to exist. There is a handy English translation of Thomas’s exposition of his First Way available to you online at (you may have to paste the following URL into your browser):

http://dhspriory.org/thomas/summa/FP/FP002.html#FPQ2A3THEP1.

In today’s post I want to make fully explicit the logic of the Summa’s version of the argument. In the next post I will make fully explicit a major problem in the argument, not only as it is presented by Thomas but also as it is presented by Edward Feser, one of today’s foremost and most publically visible followers of Aquinas, in his The Last Superstition. A Refutation of the New Atheism (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2008).

Thomas begins his exposition of the argument by telling us that “[t]he first and more manifest way [in which the existence of God can be proven] is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion.”

Noting, with Feser (p. 91), that “‘motion’ is the traditional Aristotelian term for what nowadays we’d just call ‘change’,” let us, then, set down the following as a premise of Thomas’s argument:

Some things are in motion.

That absolutely unassailable premise in place, Thomas continues, telling us that “whatever is in motion is put in motion by another.” Let’s set that down as another premise of the argument:

Whatever is in motion is put in motion by another.

This premise is not quite so immune to being assailed as the previous one and Thomas spends the next ten or so sentences attempting to justify it. For our present purposes, however, we can leave consideration of that piece of argumentation to a later post and pick up the main argument where Thomas himself picks it up, when he says, “Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again.”

We can observe that, in raising the possibility that “that by which it [the thing in motion] is put in motion [is] itself put in motion” as but the antecedent in a conditional statement, Thomas may well have had in mind the opposite possibility, that “that by which it [the thing in motion] is put in motion [is] not itself put in motion.” In so doing he may well also have had in mind the following disjunction:

Either that by which the thing in motion is put in motion is itself put in motion by another
or that by which the thing in motion is put in motion is not itself put in motion by another.

Either the former or the latter has to be the case, though not both. Now if the latter is the case, then it is also the case that there is an unmoved mover which, Thomas will eventually and no doubt too optimistically go on to say, “everyone understands to be God.” It seems plausible, that is, that Thomas had the inference from the latter possibility to the existence of an unmoved mover very much in mind and thought it to have been sufficiently obvious to not require an explicit exposition.

At any rate, Thomas went on to deal with the former, and remaining, possibility, that, again, “that by which it [the thing in motion] is put in motion [is] itself put in motion.” He states:

If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again.

This statement presents us with a mover/moved series that goes back, or regresses, from one mover that is moved by a previous one to that previous one and then to that previous one’s mover, etc. This obviously raises the question of whether or not this series goes back or regresses infinitely. Thomas tells us that it cannot, offering the following rather condensed sequence of arguments:

But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.

Let’s start by noting that the argumentation falls into two, let us call them, movements. The first movement, concluding that the mover/moved series does not go back to infinity, is given expression in the first sentence, from “But this…” to “…by the first mover” and illustrated by the moving staff and hand. The second movement, concluding that there is an unmoved mover, is given expression in the second sentence, from “Therefore …” to “…to be God.”

Rendered more fully explicit, the first movement begins with the hypothetical syllogism:

If the mover/moved series goes back to infinity, then there is no first mover.

If there is no first mover, then there are no other, subsequent, movers.

Therefore, if the mover/moved series goes back to infinity, then there are no other, subsequent, movers.

He does not make explicit the next few arguments that are needed to reach the conclusion he has to reach. But what they have to be, or have at least to be equivalent to, to reach the conclusion he is after seems to me to be incontrovertible.

One of the needed arguments takes the form of another hypothetical syllogism:

If the mover/moved series goes back to infinity, then there are no other, subsequent, movers.

If there are no other, subsequent, movers, then no things are in motion.

Therefore, if the mover/moved series goes back to infinity, then no things are in motion.

The consequent of that conclusion, that “no things are in motion,” contradicts the first premise, introduced above, that “some things are in motion.” We have therein the sole premise of the second argument needed, an instance of the argument form known as “double negation”:

Some things are in motion.
Therefore, it is not the case that no things are in motion.

The third argument needed, a modus ponendo ponens argument, has the two conclusions most immediately arrived at as its premises:

If the mover/moved series goes back to infinity, then no things are in motion.
It is not the case that no things are in motion.
Therefore, it is not the case that the mover/moved series goes back to infinity.

Now, to the second movement: we introduced above and made use of the following premise:

If the mover/moved series goes back to infinity, then there is no first mover.

The converse is also true:

If there is no first mover, then the mover/moved series goes back to infinity.

The fourth argument needed, also a modus ponendo ponens argument, has as it first premise the latter statement and as its second the last of the conclusions arrived at.

If there is no first mover, then the mover/moved series goes back to infinity.
It is not the case that the mover/moved series goes back to infinity.
Therefore, it is not the case that there is no first mover.

The fifth argument is, quite obviously, another case of double negation:

It is not the case that there is no first mover.
Therefore, there is a first mover.

Note that the series of arguments thus far set forth have concluded only that there is a first mover, i.e., there is at least one. They have not ruled out there being many. In what follows, I will use the expression “the first mover under consideration” to refer to the one alone the existence of which the arguments have, if sound, demonstrated, with no assumption, at least not yet, that there is also at most one first mover.

That said, we’re not quite done yet, though the remaining steps are obvious. One is:

If the first mover under consideration is a moved mover, then it is posterior to a prior mover.
If the first mover under consideration is posterior to a prior mover, it is not a first mover.
Therefore, if the first mover under consideration is a moved mover, then it is not a first mover.

There is no need to prove that:

The first mover under consideration is a first mover.

The pertinent double negation argument is obvious:

The first mover under consideration is a first mover.
Therefore, it is not the case that the first mover under consideration is not a first mover.

Next, another modus ponendo ponens:

If the first mover under consideration is a moved mover, then it is not a first mover.
It is not the case that the first mover under consideration is not a first mover.
Therefore, the first mover under consideration is not a moved mover.

Finally:

If the first mover under consideration is not a moved mover, then it is an unmoved mover.
The first mover under consideration is not a moved mover.
Therefore, the first mover under consideration is an unmoved mover.

It is quite evident that all of the foregoing arguments are perfectly valid. That is, if their premises are true, then their conclusions must also be true. It is not, however, quite as evident that all of the foregoing arguments are perfectly sound. That is, it is not fully evident that all of the premises invoked are true and it is therefore not fully evident that all of the conclusions arrived at are true.

The next post will be devoted to the way in which the following critical premise is not evidently true.

If there is no first mover, then there are no other, subsequent, movers.

Please note, that in having said that the premise “is not evidently true,” I have not said that it “is evidently not true.”

In an earlier post, the Logic and the Argument from Evil: Logic of September 12th, 2009, I spelled out for those not familiar with the terminology of logic the basics needed to understand the foregoing. In the succeeding post, Logic and the Argument from Evil: The Argument, I used an obviously valid, but not so obviously sound, argument against the existence of God to illustrate the way I think logic should be put to work.

http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2010/05/turretin-on-infinite-regress.html.

Some preliminaries:

First, I am commenting on the Turretin post within my own blog because Siris has a 500 character limit on comments.

Second, the Turretin in question is, according to Wikipedia, one François Turretini (1623–1687), a Swiss-Italian Calvinist theologian.

Third, the argument against the thesis of infinite causal regress is perforce one in favor of the thesis that there is a first cause, i.e., a being which is the cause of everything else while not itself being caused by anything else, i.e., God. You are most likely familiar with the most famous version of the argument, that of Thomas Aquinas.

Preliminaries thus dispensed with:

“Turretin on Infinite Regress” takes the form of a single paragraph. I quote, reformulate, and critique here that only which is found in the first half of the paragraph.

The first half of the paragraph reads:

Neither can an infinite series of producing causes be allowed because in causes there must necessarily be some order as to prior and posterior. But an infinite series of producing causes rejects all order, for then no cause would be first; rather all would be middle, having some preceding cause.

My reformulation, the purpose of which is to more clearly exhibit the formal structure of its argumentation, reads:

1. Only series having a first member are series ordered as to prior and posterior.
Therefore, all series ordered as to prior and posterior are series having a first member.

2. So, all series ordered as to prior and posterior are series having a first member.
But all series of producing causes are series ordered as to prior and posterior.
Therefore, all series of producing causes are series having a first member.

3. But no series having a first member are infinite series.
And all series of producing causes are series having a first member.
Therefore, no series of producing causes are infinite series.

My critique: that the three arguments are perfectly valid is perfectly evident, for there is no way in which their several premises can be true and their conclusions false. That they are not just valid but also sound, however, is not, for the premise of the first argument is, it seems to me, false and all premises of a sound argument must be true. For a series to be ordered as to prior and posterior it is not necessary that it have a first member; it is necessary only that all the members be, well, ordered as to prior and posterior.

We are not, I conclude, forced by Turretin’s argument to accept as true the conclusion that “no series of producing causes are infinite series” or the further conclusion that all series of producing causes are finite, i.e., terminate in a first uncaused cause.

A postliminary: the text of Thomas Aquinas’s best known arguments for the existence of God, the so-called “five ways,” are to be found in the third article of the second question of the first part (prima pars) of his Summa Theologiae. A link to an excellent online translation is:

http://dhspriory.org/thomas/summa/FP/FP002.html#FPQ2A3THEP1.

I will be using Aquinas’s and related arguments, both pro the existence of God and con, as the springboard for an exploration of the question of whether or not there is a God. There being a God, after all, is a necessary condition of there being a positive answer to the question of whether or not it is humanly possible to have a direct knowledge of the divine in this life, the question which motivated the bringing of this blog into existence.

Nasr brought up the “fall” and our resultant “forgetfulness” in the following passage (The Garden of Truth, pp. 5-6):

The answer to the question “who are we?” is related in a principial manner to our ultimate reality in God, a reality that we have now forgotten as a result of the fall from our original and primordial state and the subsequent decay in the human condition caused by the downward flow of time. We have become forgetful beings, no longer knowing who we are and therefore what our purpose is in this life. But our reality in God, who resides at the depths of our being, is still there. We need to awaken to this reality and to realize our true identity, that is, to know who we really are.

Taking up the cause, the “fall,” and for the time being leaving aside the effect, the “forgetfulness,” as a first observation, we need to note that Nasr’s “fall” is not to be identified with the “fall” of orthodox Christian doctrine. The latter, for one thing, is thought of as the result of the disobedience of the first humans, Adam and Eve. As Nasr notes later in The Garden of Truth (p. 54), however:

Islam does not believe in original sin, but it does emphasize our fall from our primordial state, that primordial nature we still bear deep within ourselves.

Rather, the “fall” of which Nasr speaks corresponds, in at least one central respect, to the creation of mainstream orthodox Christian and mainstream orthodox Muslim theology. That is, just as, in the latter understanding, it is with creation that we begin our incarnate or embodied existence, so, in Nasr’s, it is with the “fall” that we begin our incarnate or embodied existence. One point of difference, of course, is that, in the perspective of the mainstream orthodox theologies, we begin our existence tout court when we begin our incarnate or embodied existence. For Nasr’s Sufism, on the other hand, our existence tout court does not begin when we begin our incarnate or embodied existence; our existence tout court is without beginning.

Cutting a bit more deeply, according to the one view, we are created, ultimately, ex nihilo or out of nothing. But according to the other, we need to keep in mind, there is ultimately only one being, God (as was underlined in the June 28th post, “Nasr’s Gnosis and ‘Theomonism’”). Our fall, then, from our “primordial state,” in which state we were in fact identical with God and so existing, must therefore be a fall from a state of existing to one of not existing, ad nihilo.

Cutting a bit more deeply still, for the two mainstream orthodox theologies, creation and its result are good. But this is not so for Nasr’s gnosticism. In the continuation of the passage from The Garden of Truth (p. 54) quoted above, we find Nasr saying:

We are separated from this [primordial] nature by layers of forgetfulness and imperfection, by veils that can only be removed by God’s Help. And it is precisely these veils, or ontological separation from our Source, that result in what theologically is called evil. It is to these veils with which we usually associate ourselves that the Sufi saint of Basra, Rābi‘ah, was referring when she said, “Alas, my son, thine existence is a sin wherewith no other sin can be compared.”
Metaphysically one can explain the reality of evil as separation from the absolute Good.

Now, we can see that in Nasr’s ontology the thesis that there is but one existent entails the thesis that nothing other than the one is existent; in other words, not being identical with the one existent, God, is simply not being. We might well expect that, in his axiology, i.e., in his theory of value or of the good and bad, the parallel thesis that there is but one good would entail with the thesis that nothing other than the one good is good; in other words, not being identical with the one good, God, is simply not being good. Nasr actually goes further: his thesis is that everything other than the one good is, not merely not good, but evil.

As I have said at least once or twice before in the course of examining Nasr’s version of Sufism, questions abound, even if we grant him his extraordinary theomonist ontology. One that I think should be asked is that of by whose decision and agency we are changed from the primordial state to the fallen state, ours or God’s. It seems to me to be inexplicable in either case.

Another question that I think should be asked is that of to what good purpose or end we have become fallen. As the very term “fall” suggests, we are in are in a worse situation as fallen than we were beforehand. In this respect his “fall” contrasts rather unfavorably with the perspective of the mainstream orthodox theologies, for in being created we have at least gained existence.

We need to remember, of course, that the “fall” does not represent the end of the “journey” of which, in the June 30th post, “Where We Are Coming from and Where We Are Going to: 1,” we saw Nasr speak (The Garden of Truth, p. 6):

According to Sufi metaphysics, and in fact other metaphysical traditions in general, all that exists comes from that Reality which is at once Beyond-Being and Being, and ultimately all things return to that Source. In the language of Islamic thought, including both philosophy and Sufism, the first part of this journey of all beings from the Source is called the “arc of descent” and the second part back to the Source the “arc of ascent.” Within this vast cosmic wayfaring we find ourselves here and now on earth as human beings. Moreover, our life here in this world is a journey within that greater cosmic journey of all existents back to the Source of all existence.

This does not help. We are told that “ultimately all things return to that Source.” From this it follows that ultimately all humans return to that Source. After pausing to note that it really follows that all humans return to that Source, we surely have to ask what has been gained from this “journey” “through the “arc of descent,” “our life here in this world,” and the “arc of ascent”? We have simply returned to the starting point.

There must be more.

In future posts we will have occasion to delve more thoroughly into Nasr’s axiology of the good and the bad. A more fundamental inquiry will also need to be made into his monistic or theomonistic ontology. Most readers will have already taken note of the kinship that it has with that of the Parmenides and his rejection of the reality of change and multiplicity. I am beginning to gather my thoughts on the achievements, and the opposite, of that great philosophical pioneer.

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If you wish, you can easily purchase The Garden of Truth through Amazon.com by clicking on:

The Garden of Truth: The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam’s Mystical Tradition