>The most important problem Aristotle had with God as a creator is that God for him must be an end, and ends are not efficient causes. The ultimate principle had to be a final cause for him and totally immobile, not something that acts. An efficient cause can't be a first principle because efficient causes are directed toward ends or act by elemental necessity, and neither is possible for a first principle.Which parts of Aristotle's corpus can I go to learn more about the underlying mechanics of why God cannot be an efficient cause? Also, I am generally confused by the problem and have some points to make that I'd like to see refined or dismantled. First, can't the unmoved mover as pure act be engaged in a permanent motion that results in no change? This would be the difference between energeia and kinesis, which are two very important distinctions that Aristotle makes with regards to motion. The latter is unimportant since the action ceases once the end is reached. But the former would result in an act which is its own end, and in the case of the unmoved mover, would be an act that is always the case and thus there is never any change and thus definitive of its what-it-is-to-be. There is also the notion that not all motions result in essential changes, so it seems possible that there can be a motion that is accidental at best. Second, if the unmoved mover is thought thinking itself, then isn't it both an efficient cause and a final cause, at least in the sense that it thinks and it is the object of its thinking? Likewise, even in the most restrictive case, we have an unmoved mover which thinks only for itself, and an unmoved mover which is the end (in a broad sense) of all things in the universe. Is it too much of a jump to think about how this efficient cause "ripples out" or even directly influences other things? Thirdly, I am confused by the requirements for a first principle. To begin, it makes sense that an efficient cause needs an end, and thus the end must be first. But then we have the problem that all these aspects are eternal, from formal to final to efficient cause, and it becomes strange trying to assign any of them some "first" role, since they all exist simultaneously by necessity, and the normal temporal "before-and-after" structures break down with eternity. Finally, building on the third point, how would we situate the unmoved mover vis-a-vis everything else in the universe? If we condense the unmoved mover in all its causes to one point, it can serve as an efficient cause for everything else because there is already an end present, which is itself. This reminds me of the stereotypical religious motifs "alpha and omega", that the Creator creates and all will one day return to the Creator, etc.
>>24929726Also, full disclosure, I am not a Thomist or even a Christian, I think there is no relationship between metaphysics and culture war politics, I uphold the validity of the Third Man Argument with all of my heart, and I disbelieve in the independent existence of all one-many objects. I just want to see if it's possible to make Aristotle's primordial cosmology (but the part that goes beyond the weird 55 planet solar system) a little prettier than what appears to be a budget version of Plato's cosmology in the Timaeus. If we take Aristotle at his word, then we have a God that does nothing except get desired for some reason, perhaps many kinds of Gods for no explicable reason whatsoever, on one side... and then we have an ugly chain of material objects slamming into each other for eternity and occasionally reaching towards something Godlike on the other side. At least in Timaeus, even though there seem to be two eternal things just like with Aristotle (Demiurge and the material world... maybe three if you include ananke), the Demiurge makes things and orders the world actively.
>>24929726>>The most important problem Aristotle had with God as a creatorHe didn't know or give a shit about the judeo-christian god. Crap thread.
>>24929839Aristotle did have some kind of inclination for monotheism though. Like I said before, not Jewish, not Christian, I don't care about these things. But he ends Lambda with a quote from the Iliad about how "the rule of many is not good, let there be one" or something along those lines. What do you make of that?
>>24929726For efficient vs final causality and God as an end Physics 2, Physics 8, and Meta 2 are the main things to read. But in particular P8. Also Post An 2 for that matter, you’ll see how even syllogistically the telos is major. But the gist is simple - if God is a being who *does* something at one time rather than another, there must be some reason for his doing so, but now God is subordinate to that reason which is outside him, and then that end is the cause of *him*, ie this would be God not that. A merely efficient cause is by its very nature for something else, the end. But there is more to this read Physics 8. Even in Catholic Aristotelianism as far as I know God as efficient cause is a sort of wink-wink efficiency, not that God “does” something at some time, but insofar as his endedness is creative, it’s “sort of” efficient, ie you can legitimately speak of God as a creator. “But how does an end create?” ‘Cause it’s desired, like my desire for Chester’s Hot Fries causes me to walk to the corner store. “But then where do the things who desire him come from and perhaps more importantly why are they even there?” Aristotle doesn’t say, this is a big issue in the further development of the tradition. The unmoved mover can’t be engaged in a motion because then he wouldn’t be pure act. These are good questions but they are mostly answered in p8, including the possibility of accidental motion in God. Thought thinking itself is perfectly simple, there is no actual division. It’s not one side acting on another. You’re raising these other sorts of causality “in” God and eternal, but the other three are not there, for reasons he gives in p8. The divine things that move efficiently, that cause changes here, are the spheres/planets as he discusses in DC and Meteorology. Sorry if this is a lazy post or some answers miss the mark but I think your questions will answer themselves over time.
>>24929920There can be many particular Gods as much as there can be one particular God. Aristotle's personal opinions doesn't ultimately matter against his own system.
>>24929744> I just want to see if it's possible to make Aristotle's primordial cosmology (but the part that goes beyond the weird 55 planet solar system) a little prettier than what appears to be a budget version of Plato's cosmology in the Timaeus.Famous last words lol. Every Greek, Arab, Jewish and Latin autist for a thousand years took a crack at this problem. In Avicenna the various unmoved movers become a mystical ladder for example. It’s ugly because of its empiricism and dependence on astronomy of course as you know. I think there is evidence that A was a proto-emanationist, like there’s a passage in DC2 where he explains the variety of planetary motions by this sort of hierarchy. In other words the Good, God, is end for a second-best, this for a third, etc. God is not a marble point sitting there “doing nothing”, he is alive as A says in meta 12, but not in the way an animal is alive. Is the soul of the plant, which is its telos as he says as well as its form, an empty perhaps narcissistic “thing” sitting around somewhere being passively desired? There’s nothing passive about it, but it’s not a mechanistic efficient cause either, it doesn’t do anything in that sense. It’s the principle of the plant, and God is like that but for the whole world.
>>24929920He’s a monotheist in that he thinks there’s one ultimate principle, a henotheist in that he thinks there are other subordinate divine beings. But this language is misleading because it makes it sound like Aristotle was proposing a new religion of some kind. Such a new, Aristotelian astro-relogion did develop in Harran in Syria, with Neoplatonic influences, and those were the niggies who taught the first Arab Aristotelians. But that wasn’t A’s intent. For him, traditional religion isn’t really true but it’s part of the nature of the polis to have such a religion, so a good man honors it. He would have thought it was absurd to pray to the unmoved mover like he/it was Zeus sitting in heaven listening to you. But you see the seed is there for what happens later. And ofc this whole idea of philosophy opposed to religion goes back to the presocratics. It’s even reproduced in scholasticism.
>>24929726The proximate cause of experiential reality is the Mind of God, and the distal cause (telos) is his Heart, the Son of God, the Form of the Good.
>>24930786>>24930820>>24930957I appreciate the robust answer, you've given me a lot to work with. I suppose, however, that if we are comparing the role of the unmoved mover with an axiom in an explanation, however, then we have to think about the various ways in which we can arrange something to be prior/posterior in terms of nature versus "to us". >But the gist is simple - if God is a being who *does* something at one time rather than another, there must be some reason for his doing so, but now God is subordinate to that reason which is outside him, and then that end is the cause of *him*, ie this would be God not that. This is probably where Aquinas would step in and say that there must be a cause which is its own cause, or a being whose essence is to exist (though again now we have a framework that largely rejects the equivalence of essence and existence). >“But how does an end create?” ‘Cause it’s desired, like my desire for Chester’s Hot Fries causes me to walk to the corner store. “But then where do the things who desire him come from and perhaps more importantly why are they even there?”This wouldn't even be a good answer from the Catholic point-of-view desu, and I suspect this is why Thomists try to find a stronger way to turn God into an efficient cause. The explanation as you present it turns reality into a hyperstition and it equivocates on what efficient causality is. Let's take a look at the analogy. With our movement to the store, in what sense does Chester's Hot Fries make us walk to the corner store? It clearly didn't move our legs in a proximate sense. Perhaps in the past, it left an impact on our psyche (which was already primed to enjoy it, so it's a two-way street) which then spurred the desire and the accompanying movement. That would be a remote sense. But in order for it to be an efficient cause, it would have had some sort of efficient cause on the mind to inspire a final cause that would then inspire efficient cause of movement. This is where it would get a little bit dicey for a number of reasons as you could tell. And it gets worse if we try to apply this analogy to all of reality, because as you pointed out before and what I'm pointing out now, final causes affecting efficient causes and thus creating them in a remote sense require some pre-existing "primer" to be affected. But how can we say the final cause both primes and creates-for-the-first-time? That's a contradiction. At the very least, you would need it to be a proximate efficient cause, not a remote/accidental cause via final cause. (1/x)
>>24930786>>24930820>>24930957>The unmoved mover can’t be engaged in a motion because then he wouldn’t be pure act.Aren't the unmoved movers engaged in motion when it comes to pulling the spheres, though? The way I understood how that worked was the idea that there was no essential change, since the movements are perfect circles and never deviate in any sense. Thus, that kind of movement was the energeia that defined the being, and it could not be otherwise, therefore it was pure act. I was starting to read Aristotle as a systems philosopher and a process philosopher instead of a static philosopher in order to make sense of the cosmology lol. A motion that stays the same eternally can be pure act, and I don't know how to make sense of the cosmology in Metaphysics if that's not the case, since then the spheres would not be unmoved movers against what Aristotle claims.To be fair, I have not read Physics nor De Caelo nor Meteorology, only Metaphysics and most of the Organon, so I'm perfectly aware that there are many aspects I may be neglecting so far. But that's what I've noticed so far. I'll be sure to check that out when I get to them. >In other words the Good, God, is end for a second-best, this for a third, etc.Could you briefly spell this out a little bit more? I'm confused by what objects you're rankings into what ends. Is the Good best, God second-best, or what?
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>>24931896>Aren't the unmoved movers engaged in motion when it comes to pulling the spheres, though? The way I understood how that worked was the idea that there was no essential change, since the movements are perfect circles and never deviate in any sense. Thus, that kind of movement was the energeia that defined the being, and it could not be otherwise, therefore it was pure act.The movement of the heavenly spheres IS movement per se. It is not movement on a specific meaning that is, it doesn't change places (which is the CORE of the most primary motion, locomotion), it's just revolving around the center of the universe. How I understand the potentialities that the spheres have based on my reading of De Caelo, is something like: the spheres have different degrees of conceptions or understanding about the Unmoved Mover, because of their distances from it, and their souls strive for this understanding of it, and therefore they move. The first sphere, closest to the Prime Mover, has the best understanding of it (because has the "best" soul) and reaches it with the simplest movement.I am NOT sure if the other spheres reach the Prime Mover, because they move on the reverse direction (I think they don't, need to reread De Caelo 2). But the point is that they have the potentiality to move, because they have matter; but this matter is divine/superior, so (a) they have much less potentials than anything on our sublunary world, and (b) it's the only thing that can perform eternal motion (for it is indestructible), which is the most perfect.(i'm not the anon you were discussing this with)
>>24933467>A motion that stays the same eternally can be pure act, and I don't know how to make sense of the cosmology in Metaphysics if that's not the case, since then the spheres would not be unmoved movers against what Aristotle claims.I think that the solution is something like ths. There are many ways of speaking of an "unmoved mover". On Physics 7 he treats an unmoved mover as something like "something that causes motion but doesn't participate on/realize this motion"; our soul is the best example (although it realizes such motion only in an accidental sense). There is the other sense: something that moves something else but realizes no motion whatsoever (accidental or not). The spheres can't be UM on this sense, cause they move.The spheres's SOULS are unmoved movers on this sense. Their desire for the Unmoved Mover cause their eternal movement that cause the (eternal) movement of the stars that causes the becoming and perishing on our sublunary world. Their souls don't revolve (except accidentally), but cause revolving.But it remains the question of why he says that the SPHERES (and not their souls) are UM. I think that he just sometimes treat the thing (matter + form (soul)) as UM sometimes. I am not 100% certain, but I do think he sometimes calls a particular person as the UM on Physics 7, JUST LIKE (I'm certain) he sometimes calls a particular person as a SELF-MOVER on Physics 8, even though he already rejected the view that such thing exists.
>>24933467Again, I've never read De Caelo. But aren't the spheres seen as unmoved movers, full stop, in Metaphysics Lambda? Or are unmoved movers simply equivalents of Aristotle's "ends in themselves"? I'm also glad you noticed the strange similarity between unmoved mover and self-mover, too.
What is a change?According to guys like Aristotle, change is an actualization of potential.Gd is, by definiton, the perfect being, i.e. his potential is full actualized the entire time. As change is actualization of potenial and in regards to Gd all potential is realized at any given time, we can infere that there is no change in Gd.This is, indeed, incohrend to the teachings of most religion, e.g. Gd changed his mind about destorying earth at Noah's Flood.It also contradicts so called negative theology.Hegel just define change as a kind of interplay between being and nothingness.Modern physics or existenitalists think other about it.
>>24931881>>24931896>>24934249last bump hoping to see if anybody has any good insights to these replies before I let this thread die
