Additional bizarre value to this conversation is gained by me not caring in the least what Aquinas thought or said...
I think attempts to clarify my argument will be fruitless in abstraction from its context: if you take me to be positing a theory of causality, or to be making general claims about the problem of free will, then almost everything I say will sound empty. All I’m saying is that objector #3 has a good point, and Aquinas doesn’t answer him in a satisfying way.
This isn’t a special feature of my argumentation: in general it will be hard to make sense of what people are arguing about if we ignore both the premises to which they initially agreed (i.e. the terms of the objector’s objection, and of Aquinas’s response) and the conclusion they are fighting over (whether or not the response is satisfying). No amount of clarifying, swapping out terms, etc. will be helpful. Rather, you and I should just start over (if you like) with our own question.
I think attempts to clarify my argument will be fruitless in abstraction from its context: if you take me to be positing a theory of causality, or to be making general claims about the problem of free will, then almost everything I say will sound empty. All I’m saying is that objector #3 has a good point, and Aquinas doesn’t answer him in a satisfying way.
This isn’t a special feature of my argumentation: in general it will be hard to make sense of what people are arguing about if we ignore both the premises to which they initially agreed (i.e. the terms of the objector’s objection, and of Aquinas’s response) and the conclusion they are fighting over (whether or not the response is satisfying). No amount of clarifying, swapping out terms, etc. will be helpful. Rather, you and I should just start over (if you like) with our own question.