I think Dawkins is a little sloppy in explanation here, but his counter-argument, once understood, is devastating.
Firstly, he notes in passing that these arguments assume that there must be a "first cause". This is not readily apparent. We could live in a universe that has existed forever, or a...
Regarding your second point, it's not that Aquinas is making an "unwarranted assumption." It's that the warrant was written about extensively and well-known elsewhere. The reason God would be immune to needing a first cause is that what he's calling God here is not necessarily the Christian God but a "first cause" -- following Aristotle. In other words, it's just common background knowledge for him and his interlocutors -- just as we today would understand that we can make powerful processors from silicon.
Regarding your first point, I agree that it is not at all apparent that things need a first cause. But it seems equally dubious to posit an "eternal equilibrium" to fix that. The basic idea is that our normal (even accounting for QM) understanding of causation yields causal chains. / The terminator point is actually one that Aquinas agrees with and addresses elsewhere.
"God" in, I think, almost all contexts, implies an entity. "Cause" does not. This is the first unwarranted assumption. Aristotle, who as you say Aquinas follows, goes on to make many more.
The problem throughout is the lack of rigour. In the first instance, only one of two possibilities is covered. In the second, Aquinas can hardly be excused a bad argument because he got it from someone else, and both Aristotle and Aquinas make unjustified leaps from the existence of a first cause to the nature of that first cause. The third is merely an intensification of the second. Frequently the ancients display a lack of rigour that would be dismaying in a schoolchild's first mathematical proofs. Criticising Dawkins for lack of context is disingenuous when the context is equally weak.
Heh? The idea that "cause" could be a non-entity is one that appeared in the 20th century. Lacking awareness of it in the 13th century is not surprising. Our naive notion of cause presumes A causes B. And in the case of efficient cause that the A and B are things rather than "actions."
I don't actually know what you mean by "first instance, only one of two possibilities is covered." When you do algebra, do you first do a proof that we should be able to use the same symbol as a variable in two different places or do you like most of us function with an understanding that there are background assumptions to how we do proofs?
Moreover, in the context of this proof, Aquinas makes no assumption about the nature of the first cause. Similarly, you seem ignorant about Aristotle's definition of god -- which would be roughly akin to first proof and has nothing to do with a Christian concept of God and is in fact incompatible with most Christian conceptions of God. You say "Frequently the ancients ..." but I'm only talking about Aristotle not generic "ancients."
Cause as a non-entity surely dates back to the first proto-scientific discussions of impersonal forces rather than gods; in any case, when Dawkins is attacking an argument as invalid in the 21st century, it hardly helps to say it made sense in the 13th.
You appeared to just compare algebraic notation - a matter of the convention in which mathematics are represented - with failing to examine a hard to rule out possibility. Surely you can see something wrong with this?
Aristotle, on whom Aquinas builds, certainly makes assumptions about the first cause, not least with regard to intelligence. Aquinas, in stating it was God, opens a crate of assumptions; he is not applying a neutral label. Aristotle is, funnily enough, one of the first ancients to spring to mind as lacking rigour. His failures in the face of empiricism (such as the old issue of the teeth) are not merely because he is not an empiricist, but because he fails to confine himself to what can be safely stated logically and introduces hidden assumptions. Perhaps we should take this to chat.
The assertion "that 'cause' could be a non-entity is one that appeared in the 20th century" is totally absurd. Fire is a non-entity cause, as is gravity (even prior to Newton's analysis). Although some people may have explained fire, wind, etc. etc. in terms of supernatural entities, to say that includes everyone in pre-modern history is ridiculous.
Fire seems quite an entity to me. Randomness or the law of great numbers can cause things and both are abstract causes that I cannot touch or feel. Evolution is a cause that you won't be able to see as it is an abstraction of a process.
@Quirk - regarding the parallel with algebra, no, that's entirely my point. What you think he's just overlooking entirely is something that is handled by convention. Conventions you and Dawkins are ignorant of.
@Quirk regarding 13th vs 21st century, my point is Dawkins is applying 21st century conventions -- not that we've learned so much which is all in his head. By the same standard, you should call Newton a moron and laugh at him and the same with Darwin and every other scientist who said something incompatible with what we now know.
@Quirk regarding your Aristotle point, no he makes no such assumptions. You keep demonstrating you know nothing about Aristotle. He defines god precisely as a first cause and thought thinking itself (a definition precisely defined to make this god an unaffected first cause). Not sure why you think the teeth point means he lacks rigor. Have you read his biology? Sure, it's wrong, but that doesn't mean it lacks rigor.
@goldilocks regarding cause and entity, you're misunderstanding what I'm referring to pretty badly. Until the 20th century, the primary view is that things cause things. The idea of cause independent of thing is what is new. See plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-metaphysics. Note that all of the articles are 20th and 21st century, because that's when people begin to view an idea of cause that is event based. Gravity is understood as one object pulls another at least according to the universal theory of gravitation (G * m1 * m2 / r^2)?
Actually, this discussion raises an interesting point that we could call "Quirk's dilemma." Viz., if Aristotle's ignorance of # of teeth in men vs. women means he lacks "rigor", then it follows that Dawkins' ignorance of what Aquinas is even trying to prove here [i.e., the precise idea of a terminator first cause rather than the Christian God] means he lacks "rigor" OR that this sort of error of fact is a bad way to judge lack of rigor.
@virmaior I'm defining entity here as willful because that is what is significant in context. The article you're referencing doesn't use the terms entity or independent, and while I do see the point about it being very modern, lol, it seems a total obfuscation, as does your point about gravity: even if we define "entity" as "physically present thing" (I think this is what you are using), gravity pre- the theory was obviously a cause, and yet not because of any physically present thing (that awareness requires the theory).
1. Why is willful significant in this context? The Aristotle argument actual doesn't refer to a being with will god nor does this Aquinas one. ??? It's using the word "god" but the idea that it's a terminus might be closer to how one could understand these arguments. (Aquinas will later make arguments to link that to the account of God he wants -- but this argument isn't for that God) 2. Why would we define entity as physical present for these purposes rather than more simply as existing?
@virmaior The first cause must be a willful because it is what determines what is caused; if it were not willful then there would be nothing to determine what is caused. A "first cause" has no nature (hence it is paradoxical and ridiculous). If it had a nature, it would not be the first cause. It is very hard to see Aristole's "first cause" as anything but willful.
@goldilocks that's a very novel claim regarding will and causality. I think maybe A.N. Whitehead believed that at some point. Why does a cause need a will? Gravity seems to be able to cause things to fall without will. van der waals interactions seem to be causes without wills.
@virmaior A cause doesn't need a will, but will is a cause. Gravity has a nature (its cause), as does fire. Not all incidents involving fire or gravity would be attributed to the same entity in the sense of physically-present-thing, they are causes of a kind in accord with their nature. Note the "first cause" must be singular, and if it caused everything as a course of nature, then that nature would be its cause (which it can't have). Isn't that the significance of the "first cause" philosophy: that there must be one and it as such it must be such-and-such, including willfulness?
I don't think the inclusion of will is a condition for Aristotle's version (in fact Aristotle doesn't even have an idea of will as faculty) or for Aquinas's version. Moreover, [the first cause] doesn't even have a nature for Aristotle.
@virmaior It seems pretty implicit, especially, as Quirk points out, since we move immediately into calling it God. Why bother with that? The first cause must be willful because it has no nature and this is all of what Aristotle and Aquinas are driving at. A first cause without will or nature would not cause anything, and a first cause cannot have a nature or it would not be a first cause, and hence the first cause must be a willful entity.
Not sure what you imagine is implicit. First cause doesn't imply a will to Aristotle which is where this is coming from. It doesn't have "nature" because nature implies something for Aristotle that it doesn't when you read that word. And the first cause for Aristotle most assuredly doesn't have a will. Maybe this is a rude question, but have you ever even read any Aristotle?
@virmaior: You confuse "convention" with "assumption". A convention for communication is arbitrary, agreed by fiat. The labellings are true by definition, and yet in a different way from axioms. An assumption is a statement which has a bearing on the truth values of the system we are thinking in. It is possible to show an assumption contradicts itself. Assuming that there must be a first cause without either examining the other possibility or stating the assumption is sloppy logic, a fundamental error. It is, in other words, not rigorous.
@Quirk, The fragment you and Dawkins are addressing is taken out of a much larger framework which makes this not just some arbitrary assumption pulled out of thin air, but something that makes sense given a few logical considerations that need not be presented in the fragment. Merely, because Dawkins and you don't know what they knew doesn't mean that they are making an assumption. My point is that it's not a "sloppy logic, a fundamental error." It's that you and Dawkins don't bother understanding that those proofs are already made elsewhere and then accuse them of making raw assumptions.
@virmaior: You contradict yourself. Earlier, you said it was handled by convention. This is precisely the opposite of a proof existing elsewhere (which I should love you to produce, by the way; I suspect it is unprovable). To polish off another couple of things: simple counterexamples to your 20th century cause claim would be Laplace's "I have no need of that hypothesis" and electromagnetism. Aristotle was contradicted by empirical evidence; yet the (Newtonian) world remains logically consistent. The fault was not logic but Aristotle, who assumed badly and thus overstepped logical bounds.
I'm left scratching my head as to what the Laplace quote has to do with believing causes are entities. Also, confused as to what you think electromagnetism is not only its conduction and events are not caused by things.
@virmaior: It is contradictory because the set of things proved is disjoint from that of things assumed, and disjoint again from things defined to be true, and "convention" is not a word used to refer to the first set. Your link makes a stronger case for Aquinas that you fail to pick up on: 3.1 cites his attempts to address why the other side should not be possible, though Russell refutes it. (Note the author of the link is fallacious almost at once in disputing Russell, arguing from analogy and doing so badly - consider a tuba player at a Lagrange point).
@virmaior: A force is distinct from an entity. Laplace, making the quote, feels capable of explaining the movement of the heavens through interactions of forces described by physical law and frostily shoots down the king's naive assumption that an entity is responsible.
@virmaior: In any case, there is a repeated issue with your reasoning here. Whether Aquinas' reasoning was valid within his own time period, with that period's assumptions, is not in dispute. Dawkins is not speaking to an audience of the 13th century, but a modern audience, informed by empiricism. People exist who still use Aquinas' arguments, although they do not operate on Aristotlean assumptions. These are his target. It is hardly necessary to refute Aristotle at this juncture.
Sorry, 3.2 not 3.1. Also, that section is utterly filled with unfortunate logical howlers. I can scarcely believe that this passes for philosophical debate; contrasted to the rigour and cleanness of Russell's ideas, the "rebuttals" have all the incoherence of an evangelical debating Dawkins.
@virmaior Just because (to be generous) there might be some kind of superficial internal logic to Aristotle's philosophy (apparently, too arcane to make any sense to a modern reader) does not mean it is therefore sound and rational and worthy of respect. That the teleological argument can be presented as if it were the conclusion of a rational inquiry does not mean it is actually so; both Aristotle and Aquinas are just writing embellishments around a foregone conclusion and that is obvious. The "logic" is sloppy because it is not logic at all, it's rhetoric -- it was then, and it is now.
I'll repeat what to me seems to be the biggest proof that you don't know what you're talking about. Have you read any Aristotle? You seem pretty keen on calling "rhetoric" and imagining a lot of things Aristotle at least would have no motive to do. You call these ideas "too arcane to make any sense to the modern reader" -- but is that a problem with the obscurity of the argument, the complexity of the argument, the assumptions of the author, or the laziness or assumptions of the reader? I say the last. It's like complaining a proof uses differential equations when you can only do algebra.
Discussion on answer by Quirk: What d…
Discussion on answer by Quirk: What d…