(1) In my last post, “Gnosis and Noesis Returns: the ‘First Way’ of Aquinas,” I laid out in an explicitly syllogistic format the sequence of the several arguments that together constitute the first of the “Five Ways” in which Thomas Aquinas thought we could demonstrate the existence of God. When the several arguments are set out in that format, it becomes evident, as I noted, that they are all valid arguments; that is, if their premises are true, then their conclusions must also be true. As I also noted, however, it is not “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.” This is therefore the case for the key culminating conclusions of the “First Way,” that:
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:
.