The De Ente Argument - Gaven Kerr & Joe Schmid
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- čas přidán 17. 07. 2020
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The purpose of Intellectual Conservatism is to defend the true, good and beautiful things of life that are jeopardized in mainstream academia and society. On this page, you will find artwork, music, satire, academic papers, lectures and my own projects defending the duty of conserving these true, good and beautiful things.
Why does it seem like what is happening here is Gavin keeps trying to explain that essence and existence are different things, and Joe keeps trying to restate his argument in a way that hides the merging of these two distinct features of reality? Gavin has it right. You can't just have a thing continue in its existence if that existence isn't either sustained, or somehow inherent in that things essence. Gavin can establish why a things essence cannot account for its existence at any point in which it exists. The two are distinct features of reality.
Gavin hit the nail on the head as to the de ente reasoning (habens esse) argument that has primarily nothing to do with motion itself; or better said, that the 5 ways presuppose de ente, if I'm not mistaken.
Great talk! Professor Kerr's explanation of Aquinas' De Ente et Essentia really helped clarify for me what Aquinas was getting at in his treatise. :)
What an absolute legend Gaven Kerr is!
This was super duper fun!!! Thanks for it!!! :)
"Recently a group of Thomists has emerged within the British analytic tradition
of philosophy. On the basis of twentieth-century analytic discussion of
“exists,” they have offered interpretations of esse that either conflict with the
Thomistic Existentialist interpretation or outright reject Aquinas’s doctrine
of esse as bad philosophy. In the first group are Peter Geach and Brian Davies.
In the second is Anthony Kenny. My showcasing of Aquinas’s De Ente
reasoning requires that I critically analyze the reasons for their positions to
defend the view of esse as a sui generis actus of its own."
Thomistic Existentialism & Cosmological Reasoning JOHN KNASAS
I'd love to get Kerr's book, but it's $90 bucks on Amazon!
I mean even as an atheist who doesn't agree with Kerr, I don't blame him. It's such a niche topic and he clealry puts in a lot of hard work. I agree it's pretty high but understandable
gotta check out this FIEAzer guy lol
Thanks for these great videos! I very much enjoy them and I want to see more from these guys!
This was too short, I really wanted to hear them discuss the other accounts of existential inertia! Thanks for this discussion, Suan!
Can't wait to watch this
Very interesting discussion. Thanks
"There is no necessity to act as the cause of the thing". Bingo.
Ooh, I just discovered this channel. Very interesting! I'll have to keep an eye on you lads!
The first account of existential inertia treats existence as a property that is possessed. A thing "has" existence, received from a temporal antecedent. This would reduce existence to a feature of essence. Existence isn't possessed by a subject as in a property.
This neo-theist view that existence and essence are distinct in God but are necessarily conjoined is something to me easily refutable. It's essentially the claim that "X is a being which possesses parts A, B, C, etc, but X possesses them necessarily, and they are instantiated together necessarily" which is a claim I've dealt with before from neo-theists.
The problem is that a composite being depends on the conjoining of its parts for its existence, so God is still a dependent being. Even if His essence and existence are necessarily conjoined, He is dependent upon their conjoining. If we have a necessarily existing ball resting on a necessarily existing pillow, there would be a necessarily existing depression in the pillow. But obviously even though this depression exists necessarily it is still contingent upon the existence of the ball and pillow. God would be the depression in the neo-theists conception, which makes Him dependent, but this obviously cannot be true of God. He must be pure ultimacy. He must be metaphysically simple.
Why couldn't it be that God's essence simply entails existence?
@@carsonwall2400 What kind of entailment are you talking about? Logical entailment? If so, is it a material conditional or a material biconditional? The only conclusion I can see is that God's essence entails His existence because His essence _is_ His existence, which would affirm what I am saying
@@TheBrunarr I mean that necessary existence is an essential property of God.
@@carsonwall2400 Existence isn't a property
@@TheBrunarr *Necessary* existence is a property- it is possessed in virtue of an entity existing in all possible worlds. Necessary existence is able to be predicated of an object- it provides us with information about an existing entity's essence.
I thought both Gavin and Joe did a great job of keeping the conversation not only cordial but comprehesable. Even the objections were well thought out and non adversarial.
8:11 bookmark
I don't understand the nomenclature of "modified classical theist" since, from what I understand, it denies the central doctrines of classical theism (simplicity, impassibility, immutability, and timelessness), so what at all is "classical" about it?
I haven't finished watching yet but I wanted to ask: When the Thomist understands existence as an act, as something which is added to essence...does this entail that existence is a predicate/property?
I'm not a MCT but I think what's makes it "classical" is the affirmation of divine omnipotence and omniscience, as well as exhaustive knowledge of the future. In other words, it's not open theism.
Exactly. MCT is the negation of this 4 conjoined with the negation that God can't know the future.
How could this De Ente argument work if esse is not used univocaly, since it would seem that otherwise this is a fallacy of equivocation at play. This is because the per se causal chain has to have the same meaning of esse in every member of the chain, so that when we come to the first principle, the esse itself, it would have to be the same as in the caused levels. So what would be Aquinas' answer to this Scotistic critique, since he subscribes to the analogical use of esse in the case of creatures and God?
But it's analogical precisely because the esses of creatures differ from the esse of God by being per aliud vs per se, respectively. If I understand analogy correctly (and I likely don't), it's that the _what_ that is predicated is the same in both cases, but it's predicated in different _modes._ So it's partly univocal and partly equivocal. I could be entirely wrong on that though, so take it with a grain of salt!
When Scotus says that we can talk univocally about God and creatures, he uses the example of wisdom. If the formal notion of wisdom differs between God and creatures, then no matter what we can know about wisdom based on our experiences with wise creatures, we will never know anything about the wisdom of God.
But the Thomist, as far as I'm aware, grants that the formal notion is the same; however, the notion is predicated of the two subjects ("God" and "creature") differently, such that the way in which God is wise differs essentially from the way in which a creature is wise.
And there is, of course, the Thomistic critique of Scotus, that univocal predication turns being into a genus, which is impossible. I've heard that Scotus responds to this critique -- and maybe even does so sufficiently -- but I haven't read his response.
@@CatholicismRules wow, this was three years ago 😃
Thanks for your answer. I think that the scotistic (and perhaps more broadly modernist) line of critique is that the Thomist is making a distinction without a difference: what is a 'mode" apart from the 'what' (what being 'being' (esse) in this case)? Even if there is, that is an already made out metaphysical distinction for the purposes of explaining the difference between God and creatures, and it can stand in a given system of theology, but not in an argument such as the one advocated here.
I more or less haven't studied this area of philosophy since this period, so thanks for bringing back old memories 🥲
@@orelazarevic2796 Aw lol, happy to bring back memories of this philosophy 😂
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but it seems like the 'what' simply _can_ be different from the way in which the 'what' can be predicated, or the 'mode' of predication. When we predicate something of God and something of creatures, what we are predicating is the same, but we are predicating the same thing in different ways. To say that a creature "has" existence is true, but it's not true when said of God, even though both the creature and God exist.
"This creature has existence" is an adequate rephrasing of "This creature exists." But "God has existence" is not an adequate rephrasing of "God exists."
If this is from too long ago, or if what I'm saying just doesn't make sense (or perhaps I'm just not saying it in the right way, haha), then definitely feel free to ignore this.
It seems Joe is committed to saying either that persistance isn't possible (x at t is a different thing than x at t-1) or that things cause themselves to exist (x is the same thing at both times). And in the 1st case you really don't have existential inertia, you have constant creation.
Persistence would be possible, since S at t is identical to T at t(-1). It's simply that there are intratemporal causal relations between them (which isn't implausible; most philosophers think that persistence over time requires at least as a necessary condition causal relations intrinsic to the object over time)
Note that this is only one account of existential inertia (and probably not my favorite; my favorite is probably a primitive metaphysical necessity account; but more on this when my paper with Oppy comes out :) )
If S is identical to T then T is causing itself to exist.
@@don7502 S at T isn't causing S at T to exist; *that* is self-causation. It isn't self-causation for something in an earlier part of reality to cause something in a later part of reality
I'm not opposed to all self-causation; just the kind that involves something causing itself to EXIST. Let's call "thing T" M, so not to confuse it with time t. If M is causing S to exist and M is identical to S, then M is causing itself to exist. Whether it's causing itself to exist at the same time or a different time is irrelevant. In both cases it's still causing itself to exist.
@@don7502I’m a bit late to the party but I think you’re right. But suppose Joe bites the bullet and affirms that object persistence isn’t real. Would that have any undesirable consequences for his worldview? If not, he could simply adopt the view to refute the argument from De Ente. I’m just curious of you have any insight on this since I haven’t really considered the metaphysical consequences of (the nonexistence of) object persistence before…
Edit: I guess, regardless of whether or not object persistence is desirable, the series would still bottom out in something which has existence per se, thus achieving Aquinas’s goal.
May I know what blog post they are referring to? Thanks
majestyofreason.wordpress.com/2020/06/30/an-unsuccessful-defense-of-classical-theism-a-systematic-response-to-sonna-kerr-and-tomaszewski/
Joe Schmid > intellectual Lightweight Richard Dawkins.
Joe, you should tutor Dawkins lol.
Dawkins is extremely dedicated to remaining ignorant, so I doubt he'd be open to that.
At least outside of biology
Most mildly educated people > Richard Dawkins