So there are two levels of movement going on here. God moves the will to self-move, but does not move the rock to self-move, He only moves the rock. The objector claims that being moved precludes self-moving, but Aquinas claims that this is a confusion, because just as moving doesn’t preclude being fluffy, moving doesn’t preclude self-moving. This seems more like a clarification rather than a simple restatement of opposition: Aquinas is saying roughly ‘you seem to see a contradiction here, but when we lay the metaphysics out clearly there’s no a priori reason to see self-moving-ness as different from fluffiness’. It seems plausible that the objector hadn’t realized that being moved to self-moving-ness was metaphysically possible, and thus Aquinas could feel that the objector would be satisfied with his counter. But if the objector had already seen the distinction of levels and still objected, then in that case it seems true that Aquinas’ response doesn’t answer the objection. But in that case it seems that the objector is denying common sense and basic physical intuition rather than simply being confused about abstract metaphysics. I may be wrong about that though, I feel like I missed something.
The objector claims that being moved precludes self-moving, but Aquinas claims that this is a confusion, because just as moving doesn’t preclude being fluffy, moving doesn’t preclude self-moving.
The objector is making what seems to me to be a common sense point: if something moves you, then in that respect you don’t move yourself. I grant that there is nothing incompatible about being fluffy and being moved by some external power, but there’s no obvious (nor argued for, on Aquinas’ part) analogy between this kind of case and the case of the self mover. And there’s an at least apparent contradiction in the idea of a self-mover which is moved by something else in the very sense that it moves itself.
And we’re not concerned with the property of being a self mover, but of whether the idea that a given action is freely caused by me is incompatible with the idea that the very same action is (indirectly) caused by some prior thing. It does us no good to say that we have the property of having free will if every action of ours is caused in the way that a thrown stone causes injury.
Really, Aquinas’ objection seems to turn on the observation (correct, I think) that reasoning to an action means undertaking it freely. This is the point that needs some elaboration.
This kind of argument just seems to be bad philosophy, involving too many unclear words without unpacking them. Specifically, going through your comment: “moves”, “external”, “the very sense”, “property”, “freely caused”, “prior thing”. Since the situation in question doesn’t seem to involve anything that’s too hard to describe, most of the trouble seems to originate from unclear terminology, and could be avoided by discarding the more confused ideas and describing in more detail the more useful ones.
The article you link to makes a fine point about humility, but it doesn’t tell me anything about how to become a good philosopher. Do you think you could point me in the direction of becoming a good philosopher? Or to someone who can?
Specifically, going through your comment: “moves”, “external”, “the very sense”, “property”, “freely caused”, “prior thing”.
It’s important, I think, not to try to over-explain terminology. For example, all I mean by ‘moves’ is some relation that holds (by Will’s premises) between God and a free action indirectly, and ourselves and a free action directly. Further specifying the meaning of this term would be distracting.
I think if you can make a specific case for the claim that some disagreement or argument is turning on an ambiguity, then we should stop and look over our language. Otherwise, I don’t think it’s generally productive to worry about terminology. We should rather focus on being understood, and I’ve got no reason to think Will doesn’t understand me (and I don’t think I misunderstand him).
And there’s an at least apparent contradiction in the idea of a self-mover which is moved by something else in the very sense that it moves itself.
When I think of moving something to move itself I think of building an engine and turning it on such that it moves itself. There seems to be no contradiction here. I interpreted “what is free is cause of itself” as meaning that self-movement is necessary but not necessarily sufficient for free will. If an engine can be moved and yet move itself, just as an engine can be moved and yet be fluffy, then that means our will can be moved and yet move itself, contra the objection. Which part of this argument is incorrect or besides the point? (I apologize if I’m missing something obvious, I’m a little scatterbrained at the moment.)
Well, the objection to which Tom is replying goes like this: if a free cause is a cause of itself, and if our actions are caused by something other then ourselves, and given that God is a cause of our actions ((Proverbs 21:1): “The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord; whithersoever He will He shall turn it” and (Philippians 2:13): “It is God Who worketh in you both to will and to accomplish.”) then we do not have free will.
In other words, the relation being described in the objection isn’t like the maker, the machine, and the machine’s actions. The objection is talking about a case where a given action has two causes: we are the direct cause, and God is the indirect cause by being a direct cause on us. God is a direct cause on us not (just) in the manner of a creator, but as a cause specifically of this action.
So I grant you that there is no incompatibility to be found in the idea that self-movers are created beings. I’m saying that the objection points rather to an incompatibility between a specific action’s being both freely cause by me, and indirectly caused by God. In the case of the machine that you present, you are correctly called a cause of the machine and the machine’s being a self-mover, but I think you wouldn’t say that you’re therefore an indirect cause of any of the machine’s specific actions. If you were, especially knowingly so, this would call into question the machine’s status as a self mover.
I still can’t parse the maze of “direct” and “indirect” causes you’re describing, but note that an event can often be parsed as having multiple different explanations (in particular, “causes”) at the same time, none of which “more direct”, “more real” than the other. See for example the post Evolutionary Psychology and its dependencies.
but note that an event can often be parsed as having multiple different explanations (in particular, “causes”) at the same time, none of which “more direct”, “more real” than the other.
Fair enough, but they can often be parsed in terms of more and less directness. For example, say a mob boss orders that Donny kill Jimmy. Donny is the cause of Jimmy’s death directly: he’s the one that shot him. But if the boss is the indirect cause by ordering Donny: an alternative is that the boss kills Jimmy himself, and then the boss is the cause of Jimmy’s death directly.
The reason we don’t need to get too metaphysical to answer the question ‘Is Aquinas’ reply to objector #3 satisfying?′ is that the nature of the causes at issue isn’t really relevant. The objector is pointing out that God is a cause of my throwing the stone in the same way (it doesn’t much matter what ‘way’ this is) that I am the cause of my arm’s movement. If we refuse to call my arm a free agent, we should refuse to call me a free agent.
Now, of course, we could develop a theory of causality which solves this problem. But I don’t think Aquinas does that in a satisfactory way.
(Additional bizarre value to this conversation is gained by me not caring in the least what Aquinas thought or said...)
The reason we don’t need to get too metaphysical to answer the question ‘Is Aquinas’ reply to objector #3 satisfying?′ is that the nature of the causes at issue isn’t really relevant. The objector is pointing out that God is a cause of my throwing the stone in the same way (it doesn’t much matter what ‘way’ this is) that I am the cause of my arm’s movement. If we refuse to call my arm a free agent, we should refuse to call me a free agent.
What does “the same” mean? What is a “way” for different “ways” to be “same” or not? This remains unclear to me. How does it matter what we agree or refuse to call something?
Perhaps (as a wild guess on my part) you’re thinking in terms of more syntactic pattern-matching: if two things are “same”, they can be interchanged in statements that include their mention? This is rather brittle and unenlightening, this post gives one example of how that breaks down.
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.
So there are two levels of movement going on here. God moves the will to self-move, but does not move the rock to self-move, He only moves the rock. The objector claims that being moved precludes self-moving, but Aquinas claims that this is a confusion, because just as moving doesn’t preclude being fluffy, moving doesn’t preclude self-moving. This seems more like a clarification rather than a simple restatement of opposition: Aquinas is saying roughly ‘you seem to see a contradiction here, but when we lay the metaphysics out clearly there’s no a priori reason to see self-moving-ness as different from fluffiness’. It seems plausible that the objector hadn’t realized that being moved to self-moving-ness was metaphysically possible, and thus Aquinas could feel that the objector would be satisfied with his counter. But if the objector had already seen the distinction of levels and still objected, then in that case it seems true that Aquinas’ response doesn’t answer the objection. But in that case it seems that the objector is denying common sense and basic physical intuition rather than simply being confused about abstract metaphysics. I may be wrong about that though, I feel like I missed something.
The objector is making what seems to me to be a common sense point: if something moves you, then in that respect you don’t move yourself. I grant that there is nothing incompatible about being fluffy and being moved by some external power, but there’s no obvious (nor argued for, on Aquinas’ part) analogy between this kind of case and the case of the self mover. And there’s an at least apparent contradiction in the idea of a self-mover which is moved by something else in the very sense that it moves itself.
And we’re not concerned with the property of being a self mover, but of whether the idea that a given action is freely caused by me is incompatible with the idea that the very same action is (indirectly) caused by some prior thing. It does us no good to say that we have the property of having free will if every action of ours is caused in the way that a thrown stone causes injury.
Really, Aquinas’ objection seems to turn on the observation (correct, I think) that reasoning to an action means undertaking it freely. This is the point that needs some elaboration.
This kind of argument just seems to be bad philosophy, involving too many unclear words without unpacking them. Specifically, going through your comment: “moves”, “external”, “the very sense”, “property”, “freely caused”, “prior thing”. Since the situation in question doesn’t seem to involve anything that’s too hard to describe, most of the trouble seems to originate from unclear terminology, and could be avoided by discarding the more confused ideas and describing in more detail the more useful ones.
Any help would be much appreciated. I would never, ever claim to be a good philosopher.
Just become one, and claim away!
The article you link to makes a fine point about humility, but it doesn’t tell me anything about how to become a good philosopher. Do you think you could point me in the direction of becoming a good philosopher? Or to someone who can?
It’s important, I think, not to try to over-explain terminology. For example, all I mean by ‘moves’ is some relation that holds (by Will’s premises) between God and a free action indirectly, and ourselves and a free action directly. Further specifying the meaning of this term would be distracting.
I think if you can make a specific case for the claim that some disagreement or argument is turning on an ambiguity, then we should stop and look over our language. Otherwise, I don’t think it’s generally productive to worry about terminology. We should rather focus on being understood, and I’ve got no reason to think Will doesn’t understand me (and I don’t think I misunderstand him).
When I think of moving something to move itself I think of building an engine and turning it on such that it moves itself. There seems to be no contradiction here. I interpreted “what is free is cause of itself” as meaning that self-movement is necessary but not necessarily sufficient for free will. If an engine can be moved and yet move itself, just as an engine can be moved and yet be fluffy, then that means our will can be moved and yet move itself, contra the objection. Which part of this argument is incorrect or besides the point? (I apologize if I’m missing something obvious, I’m a little scatterbrained at the moment.)
Well, the objection to which Tom is replying goes like this: if a free cause is a cause of itself, and if our actions are caused by something other then ourselves, and given that God is a cause of our actions ((Proverbs 21:1): “The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord; whithersoever He will He shall turn it” and (Philippians 2:13): “It is God Who worketh in you both to will and to accomplish.”) then we do not have free will.
In other words, the relation being described in the objection isn’t like the maker, the machine, and the machine’s actions. The objection is talking about a case where a given action has two causes: we are the direct cause, and God is the indirect cause by being a direct cause on us. God is a direct cause on us not (just) in the manner of a creator, but as a cause specifically of this action.
So I grant you that there is no incompatibility to be found in the idea that self-movers are created beings. I’m saying that the objection points rather to an incompatibility between a specific action’s being both freely cause by me, and indirectly caused by God. In the case of the machine that you present, you are correctly called a cause of the machine and the machine’s being a self-mover, but I think you wouldn’t say that you’re therefore an indirect cause of any of the machine’s specific actions. If you were, especially knowingly so, this would call into question the machine’s status as a self mover.
I still can’t parse the maze of “direct” and “indirect” causes you’re describing, but note that an event can often be parsed as having multiple different explanations (in particular, “causes”) at the same time, none of which “more direct”, “more real” than the other. See for example the post Evolutionary Psychology and its dependencies.
Fair enough, but they can often be parsed in terms of more and less directness. For example, say a mob boss orders that Donny kill Jimmy. Donny is the cause of Jimmy’s death directly: he’s the one that shot him. But if the boss is the indirect cause by ordering Donny: an alternative is that the boss kills Jimmy himself, and then the boss is the cause of Jimmy’s death directly.
The reason we don’t need to get too metaphysical to answer the question ‘Is Aquinas’ reply to objector #3 satisfying?′ is that the nature of the causes at issue isn’t really relevant. The objector is pointing out that God is a cause of my throwing the stone in the same way (it doesn’t much matter what ‘way’ this is) that I am the cause of my arm’s movement. If we refuse to call my arm a free agent, we should refuse to call me a free agent.
Now, of course, we could develop a theory of causality which solves this problem. But I don’t think Aquinas does that in a satisfactory way.
(Additional bizarre value to this conversation is gained by me not caring in the least what Aquinas thought or said...)
What does “the same” mean? What is a “way” for different “ways” to be “same” or not? This remains unclear to me. How does it matter what we agree or refuse to call something?
Perhaps (as a wild guess on my part) you’re thinking in terms of more syntactic pattern-matching: if two things are “same”, they can be interchanged in statements that include their mention? This is rather brittle and unenlightening, this post gives one example of how that breaks down.
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.