Talk:Five Ways (Aquinas)

message: Thank you to everyone for not trolling here, however tempting it may be. TimD (talk) 23:25, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

message: Hey I had a really tough time finding a page on the 5 proofs because I was searching in English. Is there a way to make the Title include the English "Five Proofs of Aquinas." Currently wikipedia doesn't even suggest this page if you search in english. Thanks.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Polsky215 (talk • contribs) 23:50, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title change?? 

message: I fear that perhaps this article oversimplifies Thomas' most well-known contribution to philosophy, to the point that ambiguities in the understanding make them quite incomprehensible.  Without an understanding of the Aristotelian idea of motion as the "actuality of potency as such" (Coughlin, Physics) the first way does not signify the proper understanding; furthermore, the second and third ways, moving through a similar context, become too ambiguous; and the fourth and fifth ways should not go without at least some understanding, for example, of how the gradation of being implies that the best is a cause, or how the governance of things implies that the designer must be purely in act.
I believe these issues are important principally because I believe the article misrepresents the author, secondly because the words taken at face value are confusing, poorly worded, and generally difficult from which to derive the understanding which Thomas himself presents, and lastly because these ambiguities the wording presents allow the misapplication of the five ways to more frivolous things than that for which Thomas argues.  This ought not to go uncorrected, as this is the most important article in the Summa (for without God, there is no sacred doctrine) and perhaps the most important philosophical series of proofs (for it argues for a higher science than philosophy through philosophy itself, as Thomas implies in Question 1.)
I hope that this is of some concern.
TonalHarmony (talk) 00:09, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  perhaps an oversimplification 

message: This article, at the very least, needs more of an introduction, exposition of the arguments, an explanation of each, explanations of difficult terms, links to other exiting Wikipedia articles for positions in Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy, and references to sources, especially web-based ones, that have St. Thomas' writings and other useful helps. As TonalHarmony implies, this section of Summa Theologiae is fundamental to the work as a whole; this difficult subject deserves a clearer introduction.
JohnofStThomas (talk) 16:58, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Agreement with TonalHarmony 

message: Thomas is using the Aristotelian definition of motion, a fact which is apparent from the text of Question 2 of the Summa, where he says "For motion is nothing else but the reduction of potentiality {potency} to actuality {act}."  (words in brackets are alternate translations of "potentia" and "actum")  (English courtesy of the referenced external link to newadvent.org)
This definition is very controversial, very difficult to understand, disagreed on by most Modernist philosophers, and absolutely essential to understand the five ways.  The first amendment I would propose to the body is an explanation of Aristotelian motion, or a reference thereto, because otherwise the five ways become so ambiguous as to become nonsensical in view of their conclusion, which expresses specific and logical statements about what we can know about God.  For example:
Aristotle understood motion to be of any sort conceivable: alteration, growth and diminution, and local motion.  Descartes, however, in his Principles of Philosophy, disagrees:
"But motion(i.e. local motion, for I can conceive no other kind, and do not consider that we ought to conceive any other in nature), in the vulgar sense, is nothing more than the action by which any body passes from one place to another."
(Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, II 24 - Available on Google Books)
Here Descartes excludes growth and diminution, as well as alteration.  But an exclusion of these excludes two senses of being a mover, senses which Thomas includes in what it is to be God.  Moreover, insofar as an efficient cause lends the act to the thing having potency, to understand the second way, one needs a true understanding of the first.  The third is also thus referenced to the first, for the first necessary being is required to have no potency as part of the argument, in that if a thing is "necessary", it cannot be otherwise, and if it cannot be otherwise, it must be such, and if it must be such, it cannot have potency to any other end.
The fourth and the fifth, while being more intuitive in form, still require the first, because the argument from the more and less good makes the claim that the highest is the "cause" of the lower, referencing the second way, and the argument from governance also requires motion (as the end is prior to the act), causality (as the thing imposing the order is the cause, as the sculptor to the statue), and necessity, since if the being causing and moving is not first, he must also be moved, which is impossible.)
So the first clarification needed is at least a reference to the different understandings of motion.  Any thoughts?
TonalHarmony (talk) 00:48, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  possible clarifying suggestions 

message: I propose that this whole article be reworked, because right now it is just shabby.  Here's my suggested outline.
Introduction - What the Five Ways are (proofs for God's existence purely from natural reason.)
The Five Ways - (Literal quotes.  Not explanations by Peter Kreeft, because that is not the actual statement, but an interpretation, and a simplified one at that, which causes many difficulties.)
Philosophical Explanation - (how motion works in terms of act and potency and how it is most manifest, how causality is understood separately from motion and is less manifest than motion, how contingency is understood separately from motion and cause and is less manifest than either, in what way the best is a motive, a cause and first in gradation, and in what way the governor is a motive, a cause and first in governance.)
Prior Articles in Relation to the Ways - (understanding of Question 1 as leading to the need for Question 2)
Relation to the Whole of the Summa - (How the rest of the Summa requires the Five Ways as proving certain things presupposed to the articles of faith)
Objections Thomas Cites - (the problem of evil, whether God is needed to explain nature)
Replies and their Basis in the Five Ways - (how Thomas' answer is rooted in gradation and governance, and thereby in motion, cause and contingency.)
With this outline, I think the article will become more helpful, more encyclopedic, and more descriptive of the intent of the author, rather than appearing much like a badly-written Cliff's Note for the most important part of the Summa.
TonalHarmony (talk) 23:44, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  proposed outline for revision 

message: I think there is a confusion here for the teleological argument. The writer, in reference to biological life, says that they look "somewhat designed". I think that this a confusing use of the word design. It's used as meaning a plan, a scheme, or a project; what we do before we make things. The word should really be used in what the OED calls “a weaker sense”, to mean purpose, aim, and intention – as in “My design had been to go at once to London”. 
Aquinas was definitely talking about purpose, and something that guides natural bodies so they do what he wants. 
From this part of Aquinas, the natural bodies might already exist, but something (God) guides them (as it says in the text). He has already argued that God brings things into existence. Myrvin (talk) 10:04, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: This, of course, a mistake in Dawkins Myrvin (talk) 10:07, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism 

message: Coming back to the article, there is a somewhat contentious statement that has been interjected in the beginning.  Someone saw fit to say that the Five Ways will demonstrate the existence of just any monotheistic, Abrahamic conception of God; while it might be the case that many of these religions have a conception of God that is similar to that of Aquinas, many of these have a lot of philosophical and theological baggage tied in with them.  The Baha'i people might deny this on principle but it is what it is.  Would it not be better to just lay out the attributes that the Five Ways immediately prove and leave it at that, rather than making cross-theological assertions?
TonalHarmony (talk) 00:38, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  God according to other Abrahamic faiths 

message: Hello,
I was just reading through this article and I was confused by the first line in the criticism section.  It says that Kant and Hume criticized the "cosmological argument".  This is the first time that term appears in this article and it's not clear what the cosmological argument is.  Someone should change this so it's more clear which of the five arguments Kant and Hume were critical of.  Based on the external link it seems that the cosmological argument is either the argument of the first cause or the argument of the unmoved mover, or a hybrid of the two.
Anyway, some should address that so it's more clear to readers of this article who might not be familiar with the cosmological argument.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.89.89.101 (talk) 21:14, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  The critical section mentions a "cosmological" argument.  It's not clear which of the five arguments is the cosmological one. 

message: This article contain excessive quotations from the first cited resource. What was wrong with the format that was around a few months ago in which it was not block quotes used, but rather a very simplistic layout to explain each of the arguments, with the main points in a numbered list for each? If anyone else prefered the format I am talking about, perhaps the article should be edited to it. Frindro (talk) 05:47, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Excessive quoting 

message: Hi every one, it appears to me that the introductory passage needs some amendment on two points:
first, the passage whereby "they [the quinque viae] are not meant to be self-sufficient proofs of God's existence" seems to me dubious. What textual evidence is there that Thomas Aquinas did not mean the quinque viae to be self-sufficient proofs of the existence of God? I'm aware that many contemporary philosophers hold that the quinque viae are not self-sufficient proofs - but this does not mean that Thomas himself didn't mean them to be self-sufficient proofs.
:I noticed this too. I've put a cn tag on the assertion. I'll remove it if no ref appears. The rest of the text uses 'proof' and 'prove' all the time, and there is nothing to back up the assertions in the lead. Myrvin (talk) 08:28, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Most of the intro seems to be uncited and/or OR. It needs a thorough revision. There is OR in the rest as well. Myrvin (talk) 10:07, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introductory passage 

message: The guy is smart.  I know that.  but when it comes to philosophy, he is about as educated as the average creationist is about evolution.  His criticism is based on the abridged five proofs they teach high school kids and all of his objections were presented and refuted by Aquinas in the Summa itself 1000 years ago.  Surely there is a better person, like an actual philosopher, to be listed as an expert in the criticism section.Farsight001 (talk) 18:22, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should Dawkins be included in this article at all? 

message: The intro states that the arguments are "not necessarily meant to be self-sufficient 'proofs' of God’s existence" then goes on to say "The arguments are designed to prove the existence of a monotheistic God." It looks suspiciously like a theist has edited the article in a sort of "sour grapes" bet-hedging to preemptively inoculate Aquinas' flawed "proofs" from criticism.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.174.24.153 (talk) 22:54, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contradiction in Introduction 

message: (I think this, and most of the other comment sections are now moot, because the article has been substantially edited, headed, re-arranged, linked and expanded since most of the comments in Talk were made.  I looked at the comments in doing these edits, and I hope it is an OK basis for further community edits.Rick Jelliffe (talk) 05:30, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  I'm going to change this entire article 

message: Anybody can go to the Summa and read the arguments themselves. Read Copleston and how he briefly summarizes the arguments in readable form. We should try to emulate that. There is no reason to just copy and paste the entirety of the Latin, which nobody can read anyway, followed by the English. I would like to gradually replace these with summaries. Hammiesink (talk) 04:38, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: In place of the quoting of the entirety of the arguments, we should have brief summaries

message: Now that I've done some major revision of the entire article to address many of the proposals and criticisms above from almost ten years ago (!!!), I also propose we move the page to "Five Ways (Aquinas)" as this is more in line with Wikipedia naming conventions. Specifically, the [title naming convention] which states that Wikipedia "generally prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable English-language sources) as such names will usually best fit the criteria listed above." Almost everyone searching for this is going to call it "the five ways," not "quinque viae." I almost never see references to its Latin title, even in academic works. I'll leave this here for awhile before I move the page to get any additional comments. Hammiesink (talk) 03:34, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: I propose a title change

message: Dawking is mentioned in the Controversy section, inside the Defense sub section, but his criticism is never mentioned in the Criticism section. It's strange to read a rebuttal to an argument that was never made.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.22.212.136 (talk) 14:02, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems a little odd to have a single sentence paragraph mentioning Dawkins' criticisms, followed by two extended paragraphs arguing against them. --tronvillain (talk) 17:06, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mention of Dawkins in Controversy/Defense 

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thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018) 

message: I have renamed the fifth way back to its more common non-jargon name, as "Argument from Final Cause or Ends" because
1) "Teleology" is incomprehensible jargon to most readers. A reader may not know what Aristotles Four Causes are, but they at least know the individual words "final" and "cause".  This kind of over-jargonization is the bane of Wikipedia entries on philosophy and theology.  The references to Teleological are kept in the text in two places as well as in parenthesis.
2) I have removed the parenthetical "argument from design" because it is just incorrect, as indeed this Wiki page already points out.  This is made worse because the current Wiki page on "argument from design" (which is the same page as "teleological argument") does not properly distinguish the different usages in its introduction. It completely conflates the Cosmic Watchmaker argument with the Final Cause argument, rendering the term equivocal and therefore likely to mislead.  Until that page is cleaned up, it is better not misdirect readers to it: I have changed one of the links to point to the Wiki entry on teleology which is more on-topic.
3) In the Summa theologiciae, it does not use "teleology" which was only coined in 1728  Baron Christian von Wolff.  The article is better limiting itself close to the terms Aquinas used. Theologians and philosophers will not be disadvantaged. I note that the Dominicans translate it (they say 'literally') "The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world."  which is so far from "intelligent design" as to be unrecognizable. I think the Dominicans are correct, and I will add that definition and that link. 
I have also added references to the Wiki pages on Aristotle's final causes, and to First Cause for the Second Way, since that is where the arguments come from. 
Muse: Of course, the existance of topics like the Five Ways, where the popular belief of what they are have an independent life to what the original author actually wrote, presents a good opportunity for Wikipedia to point out that both these independent threads exist, and readers need to ascertain which thread (Aquinas or b*st*rdized --which is not a swear word--) any outside material is relating to. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 06:31, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fifth Way renamed from Teleological Argument 

message: I have added a section heading "Background" and put in subheads for material that is probably necessary but somewhat tangential for each particular way. This allows the Five Ways section to be more focussed too.  
As part of this, I created a subsection "Accidental and Essential Causal Chains" and moved the material on this from the Unmoved Mover section. I have added extra references and material to clarify. I have split paragraphs, because the combined paragraphs were misleading about who said what: I have put material about Duns Scotus into a separate paragraph, it is tangential and not quite right. 
(I have similarly moved material about Anselm's Ontological Argument out of the head section, since it is also tangential and perhaps debatable. 
RANT: What use does it do to stick in such tangential there, I don't know!: it just adds noise: I think the problem is that if an article does not have systematic headings to reflect the actual content, all a writer can do is pile paragraphs in whereever they seem least bad: not good enough! I have found in a couple of times now that a horrible page can often be improved just by vanilla editing tasks: figuring out headings that reflect the contents and rearranging paragraphs and notes to cope with tangents and digressions.) 
I also added a paragraph in the Unmoved Mover section, with Aquinas clarificaion on simultaneous cause.  I used the technical term transitive too, without going into it, since [] thinks it is important. That is a very good source for more information, and I recommend it to subsequent editors.
I have added a reference to the Kalam Ontological Argument, since that is more like the popular view of the Five Ways (and, indeed, the view that I had slipped into, though I recall now being taught differently.)
Minor:
To the subheadings for each Way I have added the Latin "Prima Via" etc, since these are the words that start each relevant paragraph in the ST, and because without some numbering it is difficult to track what is meant when the page says "The first way" or whatever. And it gets some Latin in there, without it being intrusive I think.Rick Jelliffe (talk) 11:29, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree with the Latin subheadings. The original article was titled "Quinque Viae" but I never hear anyone refer to it in the Latin. Even academic scholars usually refer to them as the Five Ways, and each individual argument as the First Way, etc. I'd vote to put the English titles back. Hammiesink (talk) 15:12, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Background Section. Accidential and Essential Causal Chains subsection 

message: I came across this article before coming here and noticed that the word "God" is capitalized in his arguments which stood out to me because the article claims that Aquinas a made a distinction between "God" as a proper noun and "god" as a common noun and that his proofs were written to prove the existence of a god rather than God as a specific being. The original latin just uses the word "deus" and, per the article, this often gets translated as "God" since latin lacks the indefinite article "a" that would serve as a disambiguation. It's a small distinction that likely goes unnoticed for most but when viewing the page from a philosophical frame of reference I think it's an important one to make since it could be considered a misrepresentation of what he was trying to say. Like I said I just came across this so I'm not exactly well-learned on the subject, nor am I getting the information from a primary source, so I didn't want to make the change myself without discussing. If no one has any objections I suggest de-capitalizing God and maybe adding a note about the distinction. Aupri (talk) 05:50, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capitalization of God in the proofs 

message: I noticed that Aquinas's last Way resembles Richard Swinburne's cosmological argument, which appeals to the reason why things behave the way they do (particles and etc.) to a basic fact/explanation which would be God. Maybe it would be profitable to put that note in there (I won't do it myself because I think is adequate to see if at least someone else agrees). Momergil (talk) 18:35, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  5th way and Swinburne 

message: “Five ways of St. Thomas Aquinas for the existence of God managed to prove the existence of God through nature.”
I don’t know if I’m reading this wrong but it seems to state that Aquinas succeeded in proving the existence of God through nature. The article needs to state the arguments without opining on their validity. Maybe this can be fixed to:
“Five ways of St. Thomas Aquinas for the existence of God are logical arguments intended to prove the existence of God through nature.” 71.231.199.34 (talk) 18:20, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does second sentence state that Aquinas proves the existence of God? 

message: The article says that Suarez objected to the first proof (the argument from motion) on account of the possibility of self-motion, and then the article goes on to give Suarez's version.  I'm a little confused though.  Suarez's version just looks to be a variant of the second proof (the argument from causality).  If so, it seems out of place (although I do think his objection is worth noting). 2601:49:8400:26B:3170:25FA:2133:DA67 (talk) 15:05, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  First proof and Suarez's version?