Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
New Videos on Philosophy and Other Cool Stuff
I have (as always) a bunch of new philosophy stuff over on my YouTube channel and, increasingly, Rumble. Here are a few new or newish things I don’t think I’ve mentioned much around here yet.
Here’s Thomas’ Aquinas’ Five Ways of proving the existence of God, and the claim that explanations only explain if they start somewhere:
And then there’s William Rowe’s famous article on G-d and suffering. With enemies like atheist philosopher William Rowe, do Christians even need friends? And why would G-d let bad things happen to innocent animals in the forest? Where’s the free will in that? The award for Best Answer goes to the theology that can tell us where!
And sci-fi helps us ask: Just what makes me me?
And a new playlist just started last Friday: Great Plays and Philosophy (YouTube/Rumble). So far all’s we got is Eumenides, but coming up on future Fridays are Oedipus, Hamlet, Macbeth, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Waiting for Godot, and The Bald Soprano.
And another new playlist, five short videos introducing Christianity (YouTube/Rumble). Here are the first two:
.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
Quite some content there.
So far I’ve only been able to watch the first video, and I enjoyed it! With respect to Aquinas and infinite causal series, Ed Feser’s interpretation of Aquinas came to mind. I was wondering what you thought of it:
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/08/edwards-on-infinite-causal-series.html
Feser (following Aquinas, he says) makes the distinction between causal series per se and causal series per accidens. A causal series per accidens is a series in which the subsequent causes remain causes even when the prior causes go out of existence. The example is the series of fathers and sons, where the sons continue to remain causally capable of being fathers even when their own fathers have died. A causal series per se is one in which the subsequent causes no longer have causal power once the prior causes cease. The example is a hand pushing a stick, which itself pushes a stone. Once the hand stops pushing the stick, the stick stops pushing the stone. The causes are hierarchically ordered rather than temporally ordered.
According to Feser, Aquinas is talking about causal series per se in his cosmological arguments, not causal series per accidens. I’ve been thinking about that, and it occurred to me that Aquinas cares about per se causes rather than per accidens causes because the latter ultimately depend on the former for their causal efficacy. So it’s God as first in the series of per se causes that really matters.
Separate from that, I tend to think similarly to you about the problem with an infinite series of causal explanations. Even if such a thing is admitted, it doesn’t necessarily explain what needs to be explained. Take a bank, for example. We withdraw cash from the bank, but where did the bank get the cash? We could suppose it got it from another bank, and that bank from another, etc. Even if we allow an infinite regress here, it doesn’t explain how cash ever got into the system in the first place, infinite series or not, since each bank only passes along the cash, it doesn’t create it.
Feser is great. It looks like he disagrees with some of what I said.
He is probably right. I was probably wrong. I hope I can fix this in future. Thank you!
Feser is perhaps my favorite contemporary philosopher. Insightful and perceptive while also clear and straightforward. His Philosophy of Mind and Aquinas are worth several re-reads.
Here’s a little philosophy nerd talking about Hamlet and philosophy and religion. Little if anything original or clever. But who needs originality or cleverness? I want good thoughts; figuring out what the clever people already figured out is the first step towards finding them.