I think you should expand this answer. I don't think you have really explained your "simple reason" very well: what do you mean by "transcendental", why is goodness transcendental but not smelliness, and why does it matter to the argument?

@ChrisBurt-Brown I've amended it with a very rough sketch of what transcendentals are and why they are special. If you have further questions, please feel free to ask a new question. I'm not going to footnote the entire history of philosophy just to answer one question.

This is very interesting, but it doesn't invalidate Dawkins's argument - it only shows that it needs to be more specific.

@reinierpost I wouldn't necessarily disagree. But I might qualify it differently -- it shows that an argument can be made that shows problems with this proof; I'm less convinced on the point that Dawkins is making it.

To me the whole Aquinas argument falls flat because the concept of good and bad are human inventions to begin with. Just because something is not measurable in nature does not mean we cannot compare against a theoretical defined maximum. For example, maximum good could be defined as the least amount of suffering for the greatest number of people, going down this path we can being to rationalize what well being is.

@Peter if it's all "to me" or "to you", then it's kind of difficult to get off to any good start or think at all. Imagine saying "to me" gravity is just a man-made invention. We could conventionally act like something pulls us to the earth, etc... Aquinas combines what he thinks with reason. (N.b., I'm not even a Aquinas scholar or thomist and find it all kind of cumbersome and byzantine, but at least he tries to reason). N.b.2, this doesn't mean you must be wrong. It just means it's a weird rejoinder to someone's argument perhaps more honest thank Dawkins's approach

Qualifying something w/ "to me" (or "IMO") is a stylistic shorthand that does not at all make it "kind of difficult to get off to any good start", as you impicitly acknowledge in the end ("this doesn't mean you must be wrong" -> i.e., okay, your argument can still be parsed and countered). It admits (perhaps simply for politeness sake) that this is intended as an opinion and not a statement of fact.

I haven't read Dawkins, but it seems you've read much into the quote by saying he's ignorant of the relevance of transcendentals. One could easily add a couple of paragraphs to Dawkins that would explicitly include that and reject the concept of all such transcendentals in the same way. I.e., the person who wrote that could be aware of this and what he's said is compatible with such an awareness. As an athiest biologist, Dawkins is almost certainly familiar with Anti-Aristotelianism, which could similarly be expanded into a critique of transcendentals, essentialism, etc.

@goldilocks, true the words "to me" can be a way of just saying "this is my opinion" but that's clearly not all that was meant there. What follows is an expanded set of personal opinions then used to dismiss an argument out of hand based on one's own views. In contrast, good philosophy accepts formidable arguments even when they contain unwanted conclusions... Thus why I take issue with the "to me" + stack of opinions = why I can ignore someone else's argument.

Regarding your second comment, why would Dawkins be familiar with any element of the actual content of Aristotelianism merely because contemporary science is largely anti-teleological and anti-vitalist (the latter actually has nothing to do with Aristotle himself except through misunderstand).

I am relatively but not absolutely confident Dawkins does not know nor care to know anything about the idea of transcendentals. I don't think the paragraph in question is the argument anyone who understands the idea would use to dismiss them. Considering that we could look at say Kant's rejection of them and see he doesn't confuse the issue with one of measurement, magnitude, and perception (as Dawkins here does) because he grasps what they would mean and instead attacks the metaphysics.

Assuming this [[american-buddha.com/lit.goddelusiondawkins.3.htm]](american-buddha.com/lit.goddelusiondawkins.3.htm]) is an accurate rendering of the text surrounding the text, there is no further context -- this is the entirety of Dawkins' refutation.

I guess we all have stylistic triggers we use to recognize arguments we might as well ignore, but you're being a hypocritical by using that to formally dismiss them. The "stack of arguments" is there and they are as refutable as if they were not so framed. Again, I think it's just (unnecessary) politeness; it would be better to just state that "Good and bad are human inventions", but the qualification does not change the meaning.

WRT Dawkins, I won't defend him more than I did, except to say his approach seems multi-disciplinary and not purely history or philosophy or science, so not completely thorough with respect to any one discipline. I agree is not much of philosopher. He is doing his own preaching to the choir here, just not as much as Aquinas. There is no doubt an endless regress in both directions that is largely a waste of time if the debate is really about whether there is or is not a God -- which always becomes a dirty fight anyway.

My criticism of your answer is: even if we accept all you've said about transcendentals, this does not invalid Dawkin's substitution of smelliness. Saying "Aquinas's choice of goodness [...] cannot be replaced by say morbidity or fatness or smelliness" demands that we accept Aquinas' acceptance of Aristotle, or else we dismiss the whole debate as culturally relativistic -- what I mean by "good" is not what you mean by good therefore we cannot have any sensible discussion of things which depend upon good, singular. I'd prefer to just dismiss the transcendental definition of good as a bad one.

@goldilocks I think you're misreading my defense in your last comment there. If Dawkins wants to refute Aquinas, he should bother understanding Aquinas otherwise he's just talking to himself with a weird script. Which clearly he means to on some level, but I assume he imagines he's somehow intelligent in what's he's doing. On that point, he's failing flatly here -- like an American piecing together a few words of French and then dismissing what he misheard.

That's at least what I intend to be pointing to say Peter et al. who also seem to want to skip to ridiculing conclusions they disagree with (which seems to be the whole of Dawkins' multidisciplinary approach). In other words, it's that "to me" is shorthand for don't care if I don't understand, I say what I want. That's all fun and what not, but if that's all we do in philosophy, it surely cannot work as stackexchange. Aquinas, unlike Dawkins, did actually have to figure out to work with conclusion he didn't like (Aristotle is not wholly compatible with Christian theology).

But you have not proved that Dawkins is a misinterpretation -- as per my first comment about it, someone could start with that quote and build a more elaborate critique of Aquinas, Aristotle, et. al. The most you've done is demonstrated that in doing so, you'd have to reject a transcendental definition of Good -- or else, posit a transcendental definition of Smelliness (and one of these is clearly not the point).

I've never disagreed that someone could critique it based on this; I've said Dawkins doesn't. That one must reject the transcendental definition of Good would, on a normal reading, require one to grasp that there is such a thing. There's no indication from either the quote -- or the surrounding text that Dawkins does grasp this. And his critique demonstrates no awareness of it. In fact, it seems to miss that Aquinas agrees for all non-transcendentals that their absolutes need not exist...

You say explicitly that Aquinas' concept cannot be replaced with smelliness, which would mean that someone could not elaborate the critique any further because it is wrong. It would be better to say that Dawkin's argument is an implicit refutation of transcendental goodness, whether he knows it or not. The conventional approach in philosophy when someone voices an opinion compatible with a historical/canonical one would be to say, e.g., "Your belief is Anti-Aristotelian", not, "Your belief would be Anti-Aristotelian, but since you don't know that it isn't".

Please take long discussions to chat. If you've got an answer to the question it goes in an answer.

I don't see where you're getting the implication "which would mean that someone could not elaborate the critique any further because it is wrong". The implication is that if you think you can beat what Aquinas is saying because predicates are equivocable, then you've completely missed what Aquinas is saying. Dawkins seems to believe on a naive level that they are equivocal. That doesn't magically became an erudite critique

Moving back to the checkers / chess analogy. Dawkins is saying that Aquinas is making a poor checkers move in saying well this is dumb, because smelliness would require us to talk about the smelliest thing, and that's ludicrous. But the problem is that Aquinas isn't playing checkers, he's playing chess. And in chess, you can't move your rooks diagonally one square

At that point, Dawkins could make the critique that he doesn't like playing chess, because it's a dumb game for reasons A, B, C.

Regarding the question of whether he is "Anti-Aristotelian," yes, we do in philosophy, grant that people with roughly similar theories fit under those categories. Thus, neo-Kantians were also neo-Platonists and many mathematicians are Platonists.

But, the term Aristotelian includes a very large number of features and is generally not used in the same way as terms like Kantian, Platonist, or post-Modernist. It's doubtful Dawkins has sufficiently considered opinions to make him any more "anti-Aristotelian" than he is "anti-Plato" or "anti-Descartes" or "anti-Locke"

With living figures, the usual convention is to ask rather than assume. As far as I'm aware, Dawkins usual response has been he doesn't have time for philosophy, because he thinks its BS

or to re-elaborate what's wrong with your implicit critique claim. An implicit critique is something that demonstrates a flaw in the view without having even known anyone held that view, i.e. it implicitly comprehends in its manner of rejection. Students would often accomplish that in classes I taught.

And if Dawkins wants to take a philosophy class, sure I will tell him he's "anti-Aristotelian" but I will also tell him that he needs to try considering ideas more seriously rather than jumping back to his dogmas -- the same thing I tell every student

who has some sort of strong dogma

@virmaior, when I said "to me", it was purely to be polite, not because my argument is opinion based. Thank you for your criticism though, I do see your point. Nevertheless, my argument is still valid. Aquinas was working on the assumption that "good" is inherently divine.