Check out the Latest Episode of the "Best of the West Book Club," Chapter 4 of Ed Feser's "The Last Superstition" with Will Knowland of 'Knowland Knows'
Dear Reader,
Check out the latest episode of the "Best of the West Book Club," Chapter 4 of Ed Feser's "The Last Superstition" with Will Knowland of Knowland Knows.
Your interlocutor, Mr. Knowland (who) Knows, is not very good with either Aquinas or Aristotle. That is probably because he is around 35 years of age and studied literature, for which he was apparently "at the top of his class". But grammar is not logic. And you weren't at the top of your game in that video because you apparently don't know the self-evident 1st Principle of Ethics, which was also unknown to the British Empiricists and the entire gang of so-called "Continental" sophists. But it was known to both Aristotle and Aquinas.
See if he posts my replies to some of his points on his YouTube Channel, as pointed out in this post to you, Dr. Robillard. If he puts them up and leaves them up, then he is an honest academic. If he is not honest, then he won't post them. The moral:- Most people have been taught by those with "woke" tendencies long before WOKE came out of the "Platonic Cave" of today. I watched the video, then quoted some short sentences from the video in making 3 comments and 2 replies to his replies to my comments.
COMMENT #1
Quote: "When does the rational soul's presence in the body begin? At conception. For the soul is JUST the form." [Edward Feser?]
MY COMMENT: That first quote is wrong because according to Aristotle, quote:-
ARISTOTLE: "The soul is the cause or source of the living body. The terms cause and source have many senses. But the soul is the cause of its body alike in all 3 senses which we explicitly recognize. It is a) the source of origin or movement, it is b) the end, it is, c) the essence of the whole living body." [On The Soul; Book II, Ch. 4.; 415b lines 8 -11]
(EXPLICATION:-) a) Is the efficient cause which always precedes its effect in time; b) is the final cause which is first in intention, but last in execution and c.) is the formal cause which is always concurrent with its effect. In the case (of; missed that word; my mistake KB) material things, there is always a formal cause concurrent with the matter of a material substance. In sum it is not the case of souls being "IN BODIES" like the proverbial "ghost in the machine". It is the actual case, according to Aristotle, that living bodies are actually "in" the souls which efficiently, formally and finally cause those bodies to exist out of matter which has the potential to become a living body. e.g. the nutrients in the mother's blood stream.
Secondly your second quote is even more aburd (sic; absurd), quote: "Plato's and Aristotle's condemnation of homosexuality was not based on the Bible."
(ARGUMENT): That is absurd because Plato was a homosexual. He was, arguably, a monogamous homosexual whose lover and open consort at Athens, was Dion of Sicily. After Dion was murdered by 2 Athenians, probably at the instigation of his relative (either a nephew or an Uncle named Dionysius of Sicily; who ruled as a tyrant), one doesn't hear about any further homosexual consorts. It was Socrates and Aristotle who were critical of "effeminacy" and sexual license with multiple partners of either sex. The famous Alcibiades who mentioned his attempt to seduce Socrates, when they slept together one night [like brothers --- to Alcibiades' chagrin and disappointment] in The Symposium was a bisexual. So it wasn't a case of the condemnation of whatever sexuality by Plato and Aristotle. It was promiscuity that all three Major Socratics condemned, whether they were gay, like Plato, or straight like Socrates and Aristotle. Quit trying to make the facts fit your preconceptions like any other modern dopes in modern universities.
KNOWLAND REPLIES:
Plato made sodomy illegal in his Laws. Both of your comments are odd.
MY COUNTER-REPLY:
Council1186 KofC
@Knowland Knows Well I guess you think that Aristotle's assertion that the soul is all of the efficient, formal and final cause of the body is "odd" and that Plato's well known gayness is "odd". Describing arguments as "odd" isn't anything close to a refutation. And lots of gay people, especially women, do not practice sodomy. All you imply above is that Plato couldn't have been gay because he made sodomy illegal in a dialogue between 3 elder statesman from 3 different city states. Maybe Plato and his boyfriend Dion, practiced mutual self-gratification in some other way than sodomy --- which would be a good idea in ancient Greece since ancient Greeks lacked both antibiotics and latex condoms. You know it is not only "the woke" who can't competently follow the arguments of Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas.
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COMMENT #2
KNOWLAND: 8:45 So in other words final causality, directedness, can't exist without an intellect.8:56
AQUINAS [5th Way]: We see that things which lack knowledge [i.e. beings which have no intellectual knowledge because they have no intellects; KB], such as NATURAL bodies, act for an END, and this is evident from their acting always in the same way, so as to obtain the best result.
(Argument) Thus Knowland (who) knows, contradicts Aquinas because he can't distinguish the first sentence from the last sentence of a 3 sentence argument. He misses the middle sentence: "Thus they achieve their end not fortuitously, but designedly."
All he sees is the last sentence, while missing the points of both the first and second sentences of a really short argument.
KNOWLAND REPLIES:
What is your point? Aquinas says whatever lacks intelligence can only act for an end if it is directed by something which has intelligence. 'Therefore some intelligent beings exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God'. (ST. I.2.3)
THE POINT by Reply:
Council1186 KofC
@Knowland Knows My point is that you contradicted Aquinas's first sentence of his 5th way which clearly asserts that things, such as natural bodies (which do not have intellects), act for an end. But you said: "Final causality, directedness, can't exist without an intellect." But, on the contrary, according to Aquinas, natural bodies which do not have intellects act "so as to obtain the best result". It is fine that you get Aquinas's conclusion that something intellectual is directing unintellectual things to their ends. But you obviously fail to appreciate the other 2 premises of the argument, because you contradict the first premise and ignore the 2nd premise.
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COMMENT #3
(Quote) 20:55 KNOWLAND: Q. Why should human beings pursue truth?
ROBILLARD: "I'd say Feser answers it a bit somewhat by saying that on the Aristotelian-Thomist view there is not this presumed schism between IS and OUGHT so that the true and the good are in union with one another. So what in seeking truth that is actually uh it is normative, normatively good for me. Uh it is not split in this Humean IS - OUGHT schism that has haunted much of the Western paradigm for several hundred years now. 21:33
[REBUTTAL] Partly right but mostly wrong again fellas! Knowland got it all right, by analogy, when he said that the truth for an intellectual animal is like meat to a tiger. Both Aquinas and Aristotle did make the Humean distinction between IS and OUGHT.
ARISTOTLE: What affirmation and negation are in thinking, pursuit and avoidance are in desire; so that since moral virtue is a state of character concerned with choice, and choice is delibertate (sic; deliberate KB) desire, therefore both the REASONING must be TRUE and the DESIRE RIGHT, if the choice is to be GOOD, and the latter [desire KB] must pursue just what the former [Reasoned or deliberated TRUTH; KB] asserts. Now this kind of intellect and of truth is PRACTICAL [i.e. this kind of intellect is concerned with doing or not doing various actions; KB]; of the intellect which is contemplative, not practical nor productive, the good and bad state are TRUTH and FALSITY respectively (for this is the work of everything intellectual); while of the part which is practical and intellectual the GOOD state is TRUTH in agreement with RIGHT DESIRE. [Nicomachean Ethics; BOOK VI, Ch. 2. 1139a lines 21-31]
So there is a self evident first principle of Ethics or Normative behaviour which is: "Every human OUGHT to desire that which IS truly GOOD for them and nothing else."
Since it is an OUGHT principle, there are no number of IS statements which can refute it. To determine whether/no it is self evident you may assert the contrary position OR, alternatively (and one should do both) contradict either the OUGHT part of the first principle of Ethics or, separately, contradict the IS part of the first principle. All of those contradictory or contrary positions are tantamount to asserting: No human ought to desire anything. OR Every human ought to desire only bad things and nothing else. No sane human being can intellectually assent to any of the opposed positions. Ergo self-evident principle. But because Descartes hated Aristotle on the Continent and the British Empiricists were ignorant of Aristotle in England, all these so-called "philosophers" believed that there was no "rational" principle of Ethics. So Hume invented "kindlier sentiments" as the basis of ethics. Mill Utility and the dumbest, but most obscurantly verbose, "philosopher" (sophist), who ever lived, Kant, invented "deontological" ethics. [The so-called "grounding" of the metaphysics [is statements] of morals [ought statements] is simply Mr. goofy-Kant's way of believing Hume but not believing Hume in one short and obscure effectual contradiction.]
There was no reply, so far, to that comment. I wonder (Ah! Philosophy begins with wonder! Aristotle) if he'll post those comments [But philosophy "ends in the contrary state; Aristotle "For nothing would surprise a geometer so much as if diagonals were commensurate with the sides (of triangles)"] And nothing about internet talkers surprises me when they suppress the speech of their critics!
Kevin James "Joseph" Byrne