Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 21: First Causes and the Infinity Problem in Causation

Transcript
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Guy comes back from Washington late in the campaigning season. He realizes the inroads that the guy is made, right? And so sometimes they're defeated, right? Even the many times elected guy. So it's kind of a balance of hope and fear, in the same way in the Christian life. You see in Thomas' commentary in the Psalms, where sometimes in some of the Psalms it's mentioned both the hope and the mercy of God, right? And the fear of the divine justice. And Thomas says, well, you need both, right? Because if you have the hope of the divine mercy, but no fear of the divine justice, you'll say, well, no matter what I do, he's a good guy, he's going to see me through, right? But if you only had the fear of the divine justice, then you'd despair if you didn't have the hope, right? So you need kind of a balance of the two. But, you know, if you're a spiritual advisor or something of this sort, right, you may see that the soul you're dealing with at this time needs to be encouraged, maybe another time they need, what? To have a little more fear, you know? You see? And so I assume that if you were counseling a woman and had an abortion, right, she'd be more inclined to despair, right? You'd have to hold out to emphasize the mercy of God, you know, you see? But a lot of times in church nowadays, you know, they emphasize the mercy of God, the love of God, but not that there's justice, huh? You know? So it's hard to strike a balance of these two, right? But now for the philosopher, he needs, that's what you see in Socrates there, in the Phaedo talk, you need the hope of arriving at the truth, but also the fear of failure and mistake, right? And that's why when Aristotle, in the previous reading, when he spoke of the pursuit of truth being in one way difficult, and in another easy, there's something for our hope, right? Because if truth was, oh, oh, it's so difficult, you know, you'd be kind of frozen, right, huh? See? But on the other hand, if you say it wrong, you need caution sometimes, right? You know, when I think of my three teachers there, especially Kusurik and Deconic and Dion, I had them kind of in that order, I mean, they came more and more to dominate my thinking. But Kusurik, I think, did more to encourage me to think about things and to work on them, right? Deconic, probably more so than Dion, but more caution than Deconic, right? And then, one of my friends used to joke about Dion, his principle of passion is fear, you know? You know? And he said, you know, if you presented a new idea to Dion, his first reaction was to reject it, you know, and you really had to really defend it, right? That was good, right? You see? But that's maybe not for the beginner, right? If I had Dion as my first teacher, I would have got too overwhelmed with the difficulty and the dangers of thinking about these things, huh? And so, one example here of Aristotle's balance here is he'll talk about both the difficulty and the easiness of truth, right? Or like going back to that first book there after the premium, there's something discouraging about seeing that all those men before you who tried to know the first causes have failed, right? There's something discouraging that could lead to despair, but there's something positive that he comes away with too, right? That there are four kinds of cause, right? There's something affirmative and not just a negative thing. So something, some hope we've made some progress, right? You see? We haven't simply, you know, seen failure, right? We've seen confirmation that there are four kinds of cause, right? And here now we're going to see in the second book here that we can get reasons, good reasons for there being first causes in these different kinds of cause. And then we're sort of making some progress, right? You see? It's easier for a person to despair or give up, you know, so you can't know the first causes. It's too difficult, right? I remember reading a little autobiographical sketch there in one of Max Born's books. You know who Max Born is? He's a great physicist in the 20th century, famous for many things. And he worked with Einstein in Berlin and so on. And so you can buy the Einstein-Born correspondence, right? But later on Born went along with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, you know, so you have a lot of the controversy between him and Einstein coming back and forth. But, uh, uh, I think Max Born is the guy who suggested the Heisenberg, the math he should use for quantum mechanics, huh? And he's kind of the master of waves, you know, and he's the guy who finally explained what the waves meant in wave mechanics. So, a very great physicist, huh? But his little description, our biographical sketch one time where he talked about, you know, he was a young student at the university, and his impression, uh, in being in the philosophy classes, right, was how great and important were the questions, but how little progress have they made, right? So he turned away from philosophy and so on to science, where he thought you could make, you know? So, if all you saw was the great difficulty of this pursuit of wisdom, and it's one of the attributes of the wise men, they know those things difficult to know, right? And the failure of those before Aristotle increases one's awareness, huh? Of the difficulty of this thing, right? If you think you can't make any progress towards knowing the first causes, you could easily, what? Give up, as clear-minded Max Born did. But here you see, I'm making a little bit of progress here, right? There are four kinds of causes, right? And now that there are, I can see some reason for thinking that there are first causes, right? And then when I study some other things, I'll be able to know those first causes better. So it's beautiful the way Aristotle, he gets that kind of a balance there between, what? Hope and fear. But I think you find that in the great, in the great teachers, you know? In the famous words of Augustine in the Trinity, you know, that nowhere more is it fruitful to discover something, but nowhere is more dangerous to make a mistake, you know? But you've got both sides there, you know? But I told you the time I went into my doctorate with the system on Senior Dion, right? And he asked me a few nice questions, you know? Then he proposed a little change in the order of it. The minute he proposed it, you know, I could see it was better, in fact. It was so good I could write the thesis of my own, by myself then, once he gave me that idea. So I greeted him right away when he proposed a change, and he said, oh, oh, I don't have any evidence he says. I don't have any evidence for a say. That's kind of funny, but anyway. Now, in the second half of the second reading here, he's going to state again what he's going to show in the third and fourth readings, right? Okay? So he's just kind of exemplifying what he's going to show. But it is clear that there is a beginning, and the causes of what is are not unlimited either in a straight line or by kind. They're not unlimited in kind, those four kinds, but not in a straight line. What does that mean? Well, this thing is being moved by my hand. I'd say this thing is being moved by the chalk. The chalk is being moved by my hand. My hand is being moved by something else. Does this go on forever? That would be going on forever in a straight line. And then he applies this to the four kinds of causes, right? For it is not possible that this from that is from matter. It goes on without limit. It's flesh from earth, right? Earth from air, air from fire, and this does not what? Stop, right? People have a passage I saw in one of Heisenberg's books, John the Great Physicist. He said, I never could believe this went on forever, he said. Now, whether we've come to the beginning in matter there is not a question, but he said I never could believe this going on forever. Nor whence the beginning of motion. So he takes the matter first who mentions that, right? And then the mover. Nor whence the beginning of motion as a man to be moved by the air and this by the sun, the sun by strife, he's giving this an example of opinion on pedicles, right? And there'll be no limit of this, huh? Okay? He just did now what he's going to go on to show, right? Now, why has he mentioned matter and mover first, huh? Yeah. and then come to the end and form last. Well, maybe we'll see better when we get into the argument, right? Because we'll see later on, you'll give an argument, which usually stays in terms of the mover, right? But an argument for a first cause, it mutates, mutates, because it applies to all four kinds of causes. And then he does something a little different with matter, shows something other than what he says it's going to show. But you could still apply the argument, you know, that was stated in terms of the mover, but could be applied to it in the four kinds of cause. And then he gets a whole number of arguments for the end and the form. Now, why does he do that? Well, as we'll see maybe better later on, end and form are the main causes for the wise man, and then the mover, least of all matter. That's not really a cause of all things. But also, there may be a special opposition between end and definition, right? And something being endless. Oh, it's in the words themselves, right? In other words, if A is for the sake of B, and B is for the sake of C, and C is for the sake of D, and this goes on forever, so it's endless, then there is no end, is there? Everything's a means. And again, definition comes from the word phinis, meaning end or limit. So, if it's endless or a limit, then there's no definition, right? So maybe there's a special reason why that's elaborated on. Both because of the kind of cause it is, but because of the relevance of those causes, especially for wisdom. Likewise, that for the sake of which, and that's the definition of the cause called in, is not able to go on without limit. Walking for the sake of health, this for the sake of happiness, happiness for the sake of something else. And thus, always one thing is for the sake of another, right? Now, notice, the idea that happiness is something desired for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else, right? That's already developed that particular thought in the first book of Nicomachean Ethics. And Socrates, or Plato, already talks about it in the symposium, that the happiness is not desired for the sake of anything else, right? And if there is a first mover, it's brought out again in the seventh and eighth books of natural hearing, the so-called physics. No, the Greeks thought there was a first madness. That's not too much of a doubtful thing. And likewise, in the what was to be, and that's really brought out in logic. I mention that because what you're going to see here in the third and fourth reading, you're going to see this kind of universally about all the causes, right? But you see it in a particular way about the mover in natural philosophy, about what was to be in logic, right? You talk about those ten highest genera, and about the end in ethics, right? About matter versus in natural philosophy. So, in a way, what you're doing is seeing in a particular way in different sciences something you're going to see here in a completely, what, universal way, huh? When St. Dionne had a course one time where he began with a text of Thomas' teacher, Albert the Great, and Albert was distinguishing the sciences, right? And he was contrasting, say, a science like geometry with natural philosophy and ethics. Some sciences depend upon experience, and some don't require experience, huh? So geometry, I mean, you can construct these things in your imagination, sitting in your bare room, right? By natural philosophy, you've got to go out and observe the world, and for its heroical philosophy, you have to go out and study government and so on in the concrete. So some sciences depend upon experience, and some upon what? Don't, like geometry. What about wisdom? Well, Albert the Great says, wisdom is among those that depend upon experience. And Dionne said, well, now, he doesn't mean an experience of being, that's not what he means. That's what a contemporary Thomist would say, but that's not what Albert would mean, huh? Now, Dionne said, he doesn't mean by experience, they're exactly the same thing that it means in natural philosophy or in political philosophy. In natural philosophy or political philosophy, experience is about to be, we met here in the premium, huh? It's a, what? But many memories of the singular, right? Brought together, right? Many memories of the same sort of thing brought together. That's what experience means, huh? That's a kind of experience that's necessary for a natural philosophy. This cat meow, that cat meow, that cat meow, right? You know? I've never seen a cat barking like a dog, have you? With the all meow. And, you know, this government, you know, gave rise to that government or that government that fell because of this, you know? So, but, the experience required for wisdom is a foundation in the, that's universal sciences. So that multitude of, right? That basis I have in natural philosophy and natural, and ethics and logic and so on, these are more particular than wisdom, right? They're not singular cells, see? So it's not wisdom, not experience in the original sense. A collection of many memories of signatures brought together, but it's what? Many more particular sciences, sciences that are less universal than wisdom, where you see something in a partial way and then a more universal way in wisdom. So it's experience, necessary, right? Okay. So let's look now at the way he starts to show the first reason here. For in middle things, he says, outside of which there is something last and before, it is necessary that the before be a cause of what comes after. Because if it was necessary for us to say which of the three is the cause, we would say the first, not the last. For what comes at the end is the cause of nothing, but neither the middle which is of the one only. Another key thing, and it makes no difference whether they be one or many unlimited or limited. For all the parts of things unlimited in this way and of the unlimited in general are likewise middle things even to the present one. Hence, if nothing is first, there is no cause at all. This is kind of overly simple, but easily missed. Suppose A moves B and B moves C. Well, moving C into parts is being moved by A, right? Now, which is the mover? A, B, or C? No one would say C is the mover because it has to move anything, right? Okay? You might say that B is the mover, right? Because this is moving C, but since it's moving C only so far as it's moved by A, A is really the mover, right? Okay, so this is first and this is last and this is in the middle, right? Okay? Now, the middle here, the term of the mover, would be what we call a move. Now, why do you call it a move? Because there's something before it and something what? after it, right? Now, would a move mover move anything if there wasn't something before it? And so, if there's nothing before the move mover, then nothing moves, right? Okay? Now, suppose someone says that every mover is a move mover. Okay? Then what? It's going to be no motion. And he says it makes no difference whether you have one year or what? Many in that middle position. And if many, whether you have a limited multitude or an infinite multitude. Because that whole series is like one grand moved mover. A moved mover won't move anything. It's nothing before. So, if everything is a moved mover, everything is in that middle position, isn't it? There's nothing before. So it can't move anything. So it must be a what? Unmoved mover, right? Simple enough, isn't it? Sometimes I make a kind of homely comparison to help a little bit. I say, suppose you have a train here, right? Okay? And you've got the engine up here. Okay? And then you've got a wagon here, right? And then I guess they call it the caboose, the end of it, right? Okay? Now, of these three, which is the mover? See? Which is the puller? Well, the caboose is not pulling anybody, right? The caboose is just being pulled. So, no one would say the caboose is the thing, right? But the wagon in between the engine and the caboose, the wagon is a pulled puller, right? I'm being a little more confident. It's a moved mover, right? It's a pulled puller. It's pulling the caboose insofar as it's being pulled itself, right? So, it's by definition what we call a middle, right? A moved mover or a pulled puller in this case, right? Now, would the pulled puller pull anything if there was something before it, right? Now, does it make any difference whether you have one wagon in between the engine and the caboose or two or three or four? No. Because they're just like one grand pulled puller, right? That series is how long it is. So, whether you have one wagon in between here or many, and if many, whether you have a limited multitude or infinite multitude, right? The whole series would still be like one, what? Pulled puller, right? And so, if everything is in that middle position, and there's nothing before it, nothing's going to move. You keep on adding wagons forever. You see? But since everyone knows wagons is a middle, a part of the middle, right? You're never getting beyond the category of pulled puller, no matter how many I am. The caboose is not going to be moved at all, no matter how many wagons you put here. You've got to go outside of, right? There's something before the pull of pullers, and that's the locomotive, the engine, right? And that's, most of all, the mover, right? Like we said before, in that principle we saw that we just, in the beginning of the second reading, right? If this is a mover, but it's, this is a puller, but it's a puller because of this, right? This is more of the puller, right? Okay? So then you've got the beginning, middle, and end, right? You can't have the middle without something before it. Remember that comparison Aristotle makes when he says in the premium that the philomuthos is, in a way, a philosopher? Remember that? And there, the use of his making of that was to bring out that philosophy begins in wonder, right? Right, huh? Okay? So the lover of myths, or the lover of fairy tales, we might say, right? Is someone who's filled with wonder. And therefore, he's like the philosopher, right? And sometimes we say the wonder of the philomuthos is a stepping stone to the wonder of the philosopher. But the word muthos, which means first myth, later on takes on the broader sense of story in Greek. And finally, like in Aristotle's book on the poetic art, it takes on the sense of the plot. And so it occurs to me that you could say also the lover of plots is, in a way, a philosopher. And of course, the plot has, sometimes Aristotle divides plot into two parts, tying the knot and untying the knot, and sends it into three, beginning, middle, and end, right? Well, here you've got beginning, middle, and end, right? The lover of plots are what is beginning, middle, and end, right? In a way of philosopher, right? What Aristotle's seeing here is you can't simply have the end in the middle. You've got to have the beginning of what is first. First, because the middle is a moved mover. If you understand what a moved mover is, it's a mover that doesn't move anything unless there's something before it. And as far as having something before it, it makes no difference whether you have one moved mover or many, he says. And if many, whether it be a limited multitude, right? Or an unlimited multitude, it's still one grand, what? Moved mover, right? You see? But I think it kind of helps the image of the hair a little bit. No matter how many wagons I add here between, you know, before the caboose, you still don't have to get any motion. See? Because whether you have one or many wagons, it's still, by definition, one grand moved mover. And if there's nothing before a moved mover, there's no motion. There has to be a first, what? Oh, yeah. Now, that reason it is here is usually stated here in terms of the mover, but in a way you could generalize that and apply it to any kind of clause, right? You're talking about a, what? Caused clause, huh? Okay? And if you understand what a caused clause is, right, you realize that it has something after it, namely the fact that it is a clause, right? But because it's a clause, cause, it has something before it, right? Okay? Now, someone was to say to you in general, can you have a caused cause without an effect? No. No, it wouldn't be a cause without an effect. But can you have a caused cause that's causing an effect without anything before it? No. That's the very nature of a caused cause, it has something before it. You know, when Aristotle is praising Homer, right, he says Homer is kind of the greatest of the Greek poets, and it comes early, right? And Aristotle praises Homer because Homer taught all the Greeks, he says, how to make a plot. Now, that the unity of a plot, Homer saw, did not consist in being about one man. He didn't, you know, take everything that Odysseus did, right, and try to make one thing out of it, right? Or take the whole life of Achilles, right, and make it out of it. But he chose a, what, course of action that had a beginning, a middle, and an end. And that's what the unity of a plot is. Not because it's about one man. Because there are many things that might happen to a man, or you might do in his life, that don't have any connection with one another. But you need a course of action that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. That's what he taught the Greeks to do, right? But you see something like that here, right, huh? You see? And where it still defines beginning, you know, an end. I said, well, the middle is something that has something before it and something after it. That's what the middle is. And in the old days, you know, when I was young, you know, I could go to the movie theater and you could come in any time. And you could stay as long as you wanted to, you know? So people sometimes, depending upon their schedule, they come in to the middle of a movie, right? And I remember as a child, maybe this is before some of your time. And I'm in the middle of a movie, and some of you, was that before your time? Do you remember that or not? Or was it before your time? I remember. Yeah, yeah. I remember 10 cents at the St. Clair Theater. St. Paul, 10 cents to get in. Yeah. Um, uh. So, somebody would stay, and I'm going to stay and watch the start of the movie to see if he's still a puzzler, because he came in the middle of the movie, right? He didn't know exactly what the situation was. And he had a sense of dissatisfaction, right? And that's the solve what came before, right? In other words, you're kind of thrown in the middle of things in those days, you came in at that wrong time, and you naturally, your reason looks for something before, right? So I'm going to wait until the movie starts over again. But the very nature of the middle, in the middle of a plot, right? Or a move-mover, then it has something, like, before it. But, you know, it's even stronger here than in the case of the plot, right? There has to be something before the cause-cause, or it won't cause anything. When you speak of a cause-cause here, it means something that's causing something else insofar as it's being caused itself. So, if all you have is cause-cause, there's going to be no causes. That could be applied, about stated in terms of the mover here, it could be applied, mitatis mitatis, to each of the kinds of what causes, huh? Okay. Now, in the rest of the third reading, he's going to talk about matter, but he doesn't develop an argument for saying there's a first matter. And, why not? You know? Why not? See? Well, I can give three partial answers to that, right? Okay. One answer is to say that this argument, right, could be applied to matter and to what? Every other kind of cause, huh? Just generalize it, right? See? Argued the same way. So, really, you have a problem about the big first matter. You've got the basis for it here, right? Okay. But a second reason why you may not elaborate on matter in this way is because it's not really a doubtful thing for the big philosophers before. They all thought that there was the cause called matter. That's the kind of cause that's most known. And they all thought there was a first matter. They might disagree if the first matter is water or air or fire or all four of these things, you know? But there's no doubt in their minds that there was a, what? First matter, right? So it's a less doubtful thing, right? Mm-hmm. There's no special difficulty. This suffices. This is generalizing. And perhaps a third reason is that matter cannot be the first cause of all things if there are immaterial things, right? So it's a left concern to the wise man, right? Okay? Would the reason would the reason also be simply the fact that he's already established the fact in a prior work of this in natural hearing? Yeah. But even there, it's more a question of what is the first matter out there? And that there is a first matter, right? Yeah. Okay? And so you could apply this argument to the first matter to use it if you have doubts about that, right? But it's not a matter that was especially doubtful in his time, right? Because all the philosophers before him thought there was a first matter, right? Some of them had not come yet to see that there was a mover even as a cause. But they all saw matter as a cause, huh? And when you get to the third book when Aristotle starts the dialectic about the problems of wisdom as a whole and some of them are questions about causes, huh? One of the first questions will be about causes is there any cause besides matter? You know? It doesn't have a question, you know, is matter a cause? You know? That's not a doubtful thing. Nobody doubts that. The question is is there any cause besides matter? See, everybody had some opinion about the cause called matter and they doubted there was that kind of a cause. But some saw only that cause and some thought there was some other kind of cause besides matter. And so Aristotle will argue, is there any cause besides matter? And then if there is, does it exist only in matter? Or is there a cause other than matter that doesn't even exist in matter? You know? You've got to think what the real difficulties are in this demo. But there's no question that matter is a cause. Thank you. So what does he do then in the rest of the third reading? Well, he goes in the opposite direction, right? Instead of saying, you know, this came to be from that and that came to be from something else and that didn't go on forever, but there was a first matter. He says, no, given that there is a first matter, does something come to be from it, from that something else and that something else and this goes on forever? Okay? And so he calls this going downwards, right? Okay? Now, it's interesting that Aristotle used the word downwards there because I mentioned a little difference here between the Greek and the English, right? The Greeks and perhaps the Latins to some extent, they speak of the cause and that the cause were above the effect, huh? Okay? And so you'll see derived the Latin and they'll see that the cause, effect rather, depends upon the cause, right? And what do they call these things when we're a pendant? It's the part that hangs down, right? Okay? So that's one way of kind of imagining the cause, right? As if it's holding something in existence from above, right? Okay? So the effect of the words, like this lamp, huh? It's hanging from the ceiling, right? Okay? While, and therefore, if you're going from the cause towards effect, you're going downwards. That's where I used the word downwards there. Okay? And that's what used the word depend, huh? Okay? It hangs upon, if you're saying it's all in English, right? But the English word for cause is more the word, what? Ground, right? And then you think of the cause as what? Yeah, yeah. And so in English, besides in Latin too, in other languages, we'll speak of the underlying, what? Cause, huh? The underlying cause, right? Okay? So, and this gets very much in with matter being the cause most known, most undeniable to us, on ground to us, But the Greeks there, you know, a little hard deal of cause. So, he's looking the opposite direction, right? But neither is it possible to go on downwards without end, having a beginning above, right? As they say, people don't doubt that, but if they do, you can go back to the first argument, right? As from fire, water, from this earth, and thus always some other kind comes to be. And he shows us by kind of an either-or argument, right? For this comes to be from that in two ways, huh? Really coming to be from it, not just after it in time, like he thinks. Either as the man comes to be from the boy changed, or as heir from what? Water. Okay? Now, when the man comes to be from the child, that's the perfect from the what? Imperfect, right, huh? Or the tree comes to be from the what? Seed, right, huh? Then you have this other kind of change, like with the weather, where the hot comes to be from the cold, and then all of a sudden, what? Cold comes to be from the hot, and it goes backwards and forth, right? So it's between two contraries, right? For we say a man comes to be from a child as what has come to be from what is becoming, right? And the perfect from what is being perfected, huh? The perfect from the imperfect, being perfected. For his coming to be is always between to be and not to be, right? So the becoming is always between being and unbeing. He is the one learning who is becoming a knower, and this is what is said, that the knower comes to be from the learner. But the other kind of change from one being language language of the Not perfected, but the other being corrupted, right? Hence, the form do not turn back to each other. So now that I've gotten to be just about 70, I turn around now and start growing it up back to 60, 50, 40. It'd be nice for a while, you know, you'd be like the prime of life, but I don't think I'd go all the way back until I'm a baby anymore, right? Why? Why, you only got to go to the movies for 10 seconds, yeah. Hence, the form do not turn back to each other. For the child does not come to be from the, what, man, no? It's metaphorically, second child, what they call it. For what is become does not come to be from becoming, but it is after the becoming. Thus also the day from dawn, because after it. Whence neither does the dawn come to be from the day, but the latter turned back. And then he says, in both ways it is impossible to go on about end. For these being between, huh, there's necessarily an end. While those turn back to each other, for the corruption of one is a generation of the other. So notice, huh? Does the generation of man go on forever? No. And does the change from hot to cold go on forever? No, because you go to one contrary and then you go back again, right? So there are limits, right? Okay. And then he talks about the incorruptibility of the first matter there at the end of that. Okay. That's a little bit outside of what we want to show mainly here in the third and fourth reading. And that is that there are first causes, right? So let's take a little break here now before we look at the fourth reading here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.