Aquinas’ Third Way Modalized (original) (raw)
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The Validity of Aquinas' Third Way
This article argues for the formal validity of and the truth of the premises and conclusion of a version of Aquinas' "Third Way" that says: If each of the parts of nature is contingent, the whole of nature is contingent. Each of the parts of nature is contingent. Therefore, the whole of nature is contingent--where "contingent" means having a cause and not existing self-sufficiently.
REVISTA PORTUGUESA DE FILOSOFIA, 2023
According to both Jaakko Hintikka and Simo Knuuttila, Aquinas' third way to demonstrate that God exists presupposes the acceptance of the principle of plenitude, i.e., of the claim that all possibilities are realized at some time. Aquinas, however, maintained elsewhere that not all possibilities are always realized, and the coherence of his philosophical project may be called into question if one were to accept Hintikka's and Knuuttila's reading of the third way. In this paper, I argue that it is difficult to present the third way without invoking the principle of plenitude in Hintikka's formulation. The corollary of this claim is that third way cannot be a demonstration within the philosophical system outlined by Aquinas, despite his claim to the contrary. Against the backdrop of this exegetical discussion, it is possible to rephrase Aquinas' third way as a probabilistic argument that shows that God's existence is highly likely, although not necessarily proven.
Plantinga and Aquinas on the Viability of the ‘Third Way’
Religions
This article deals with Alvin Plantinga’s arguments against St. Thomas Aquinas’s third way to show that God exists. Although attacks on this argument have come from Christians and non-Christians, my contention is that these rebuttals of the third way arise because of a misunderstanding of the argument itself. Thus, the metaphysical background for understanding the third way is first explained, and then the arguments Plantinga raises against it are dealt with. After reading this article it should be clear that the third way to show God’s existence is plausible and that Plantinga’s attacks against it are based on a straw man rather than the substantive argument the third way actually is.
Rethinking Causality Thomas Aquinas Argument from Motion the Kalām Cosmological Argument
2020
Ever since they were formulated in the Middle Ages, St. Thomas Aquinas' famous Five Ways to demonstrate the existence of God have been frequently debated. During this process there have been several misconceptions of what Aquinas actually meant, especially when discussing his cosmological arguments. While previous researchers have managed to tease out Aquinas' four cosmological arguments include those from motion, efficient causality, contingency and necessity, and gradation. However, for the purposes of this analysis, I will only focus on the argument from motion, due to its relative ease to comprehend, in addition to its similarity to a contemporary cosmological argument, which I will expand upon later. When arranged in premise/conclusion form, Aquinas' argument from motion is actually very simple: Premise 1: We see that things in the world move. Premise 2: Everything in motion is moved by another. Premise 3: If this mover is itself moved, it is also moved by another. Premise 4: It is impossible to have an infinite regress of moved movers. Premise 5: Therefore, there has to be a first, unmoved mover to terminate the series. Conclusion: This everyone understands to be God. (ST I, q. 2, a. 3) Aquinas begins with the uncontroversial fact that some things in the world move. He then recognizes that an object in motion can only move when moved by another object, and that by another again. However, this regress of moved movers cannot continue forever, which is why he argues for a first unmoved mover, which he calls God. As such, Aquinas' methodology is to move from the material to the immaterial. He begins from certain phenomena in the material universe, and then he proceeds to demonstrate that these phenomena are grounded in an immaterial first cause. In this specific argument, the phenomena on which Aquinas focuses is
Aquinas on the Eternality and Necessity of the World
In this note, we present a new observation of relevance to Aquinas’s third way. Scholars have noted that Aquinas recognizes the existence of a multiplicity of necessary beings, but it has not been recognized that Aquinas’s views concerning the eternality of the world commit him to the epistemic possibility that the world itself is a necessary being. We explain how Aquinas is committed to this possibility and explore its bearing on the success or failure of the third way as a demonstration of God’s existence.
Aquinas on the Multiverse. An Approach
Scientia et Fides, 2023
Gradually, the multiverse hypothesis has been gaining popularity, not only in the scientific and academic sphere, but also in popular culture. This hypothesis, however, is not recent; Thomas Aquinas himself had to respond to a version of it. Although the problem is broad and must be approached in an interdisciplinary dialogue, the Thomistic approach is very interesting, since he accepts the plurality of worlds as something possible but denies that it is a possibility made real. His answer, which is the subject of this article, is an opportunity to think about our representation of God and his causal activity.
Aquinas' Real Distinction and Its Role in a Causal Proof of God's Existence
A " cosmological argument " is one that argues from the obvious existence of something other than God for the existence of God as its first efficient cause. This sort of reasoning can be vitiated by two main types of objection. The first, which I will refer to as the " self-sufficiency objection " , argues that the obvious existence of the thing the cosmological argument refers to does not need an explanation in terms of an efficient cause: it just exists, and there is no need for an efficient cause for its existence (see for instance the objections to Aquinas' First Way from the Newtonian idea of inertial motion). The second type of objection, which I will refer to as the " infinite regress objection " , argues that even if the obvious existence of the thing in question does need an efficient cause to sustain it, that cause need not be God, but may be an entity other than God, which in turn can also be caused by something other than God, and so on, to infinity, without ever needing a First Cause, which one might plausibly identify with God. In this paper, I will argue that Aquinas' thesis of the real distinction of creatures and the identity thereof in God plausibly takes care of both types of objections, provided we have a proper understanding both of the thesis itself, and its import on the notion of efficient causality. So, I will start the discussion with the thesis of real distinction, in particular, with Aquinas' famous argument for it in his De Ente et Essentia, and then I will consider how this thesis is " cashed out " in the causal proof for the existence of God in the same passage.