Science cannot divide substances into animate and inanimate because it has demonstrated--beyond a shadow of a doubt--that Aristotle was completely wrong about there being a dichotemy between the two. … [W]e know that there isn't any distinction between animate and inanimate things, just a spectrum of complex behavior from crystals to viruses to cells to organisms.
Either all being is animate (and then you're a panpsychist), or inanimate (and then you're a zombie), or there is indeed a distinction between living and nonliving things (as appears to be the correct, Aristotelian view). We know from simple observation that some things exhibit qualities of vital organization and others do not. Humans and nonhuman animals alike are observed to have sensory faculties. Plants and minerals are not. There is no spectrum of complexity between the animate and the inanimate. There's no halfway point between having powers of external sensation and not having said powers, just as there's also no such intermediate point between having the capacity to merely use sign-relations and having the semiotic capacity to know that there are sign-relations (which are invisible to sense and thus outside the scope of nonhuman knowing). You're either sensory or you're not. You're either semiotic or you're not. (You're either pregnant or you're not. You're either aware of your surroundings or you're not.)
That's the main reason the First Mover argument has no relevance today--there is no such thing as a mover because it was an incoherent concept.
No, motion or change as the actualization of potentiality is the most evident thing of which animals—including humans—are aware. You have to adopt a pretty counter-intuitive and static ontology to deny the existence of motion.
The idea of a "mover" makes no sense in the modern world, because … [w]e know that when an object is in motion it remains in motion unless a force acts on it, contrary to Aristotle's false belief that objects can only move when animate "movers" act on them, and will come to rest soon after one of these imaginary movers acts on them.
First of all, Aristotelians since the 6th century (starting with John Philoponus) emended (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philoponus/#2.2) Aristotle's mistake—one which, nota bene, does not present a defeater of any of the premises to Aristotle's First Mover argument in the Physics VIII. (You might as well argue that the First Mover argument is flawed because we now know there are no celestial spheres or that the universe is not eternal; the argument can still proceed with proper cosmological emendations.) Second, Aristotle does not require every mover to be animate, unless you're speaking broadly here.
We have concrete examples of things like robots that act on their own without anything Aristotle could have mistaken for a mover--things which did not exist in his time and which if did, surely would have enlightened him and changed his mind.
These robots themselves had efficient causes that gave them any capacity for "self-movement." These robots did not move themselves into existence. Aristotle's argument also accounts for beings (animals) that have power of locomotion and can thus "move themselves," but not whole qua whole. It is a little disingenuous to assume that Aristotle would have simply "changed his mind" upon "enlightenment" by modern science and observation of modern technology. Modern-day Aristotelians have countered many such objections raised by modern science. The First Mover argument is far from obsolete, as is clear from the Aristotelian arguments championed by such followers of Aristotle and Aquinas as philosophers Benedict Ashley (see The Way toward Wisdom; cf. his Aristotle's Sluggish Earth), Charles De Koninck, James Weisheipl, Ralph McInerny, and many others. (There are also those who see Aristotle's First Mover argument as metaphysical rather than part of natural philosophy, but that is an "in-house debate" amongst different brands of Thomists.)
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timeasmymeasure
(2) Vindicating Aristotle
Date: 2010-12-02 12:11 am (UTC)Either all being is animate (and then you're a panpsychist), or inanimate (and then you're a zombie), or there is indeed a distinction between living and nonliving things (as appears to be the correct, Aristotelian view). We know from simple observation that some things exhibit qualities of vital organization and others do not. Humans and nonhuman animals alike are observed to have sensory faculties. Plants and minerals are not. There is no spectrum of complexity between the animate and the inanimate. There's no halfway point between having powers of external sensation and not having said powers, just as there's also no such intermediate point between having the capacity to merely use sign-relations and having the semiotic capacity to know that there are sign-relations (which are invisible to sense and thus outside the scope of nonhuman knowing). You're either sensory or you're not. You're either semiotic or you're not. (You're either pregnant or you're not. You're either aware of your surroundings or you're not.)
That's the main reason the First Mover argument has no relevance today--there is no such thing as a mover because it was an incoherent concept.
No, motion or change as the actualization of potentiality is the most evident thing of which animals—including humans—are aware. You have to adopt a pretty counter-intuitive and static ontology to deny the existence of motion.
The idea of a "mover" makes no sense in the modern world, because … [w]e know that when an object is in motion it remains in motion unless a force acts on it, contrary to Aristotle's false belief that objects can only move when animate "movers" act on them, and will come to rest soon after one of these imaginary movers acts on them.
First of all, Aristotelians since the 6th century (starting with John Philoponus) emended (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philoponus/#2.2) Aristotle's mistake—one which, nota bene, does not present a defeater of any of the premises to Aristotle's First Mover argument in the Physics VIII. (You might as well argue that the First Mover argument is flawed because we now know there are no celestial spheres or that the universe is not eternal; the argument can still proceed with proper cosmological emendations.) Second, Aristotle does not require every mover to be animate, unless you're speaking broadly here.
We have concrete examples of things like robots that act on their own without anything Aristotle could have mistaken for a mover--things which did not exist in his time and which if did, surely would have enlightened him and changed his mind.
These robots themselves had efficient causes that gave them any capacity for "self-movement." These robots did not move themselves into existence. Aristotle's argument also accounts for beings (animals) that have power of locomotion and can thus "move themselves," but not whole qua whole. It is a little disingenuous to assume that Aristotle would have simply "changed his mind" upon "enlightenment" by modern science and observation of modern technology. Modern-day Aristotelians have countered many such objections raised by modern science. The First Mover argument is far from obsolete, as is clear from the Aristotelian arguments championed by such followers of Aristotle and Aquinas as philosophers Benedict Ashley (see The Way toward Wisdom; cf. his Aristotle's Sluggish Earth), Charles De Koninck, James Weisheipl, Ralph McInerny, and many others. (There are also those who see Aristotle's First Mover argument as metaphysical rather than part of natural philosophy, but that is an "in-house debate" amongst different brands of Thomists.)