> But without a first cause, then (necessarily) there could be no subsequent effects.
This is where there seems to be a somewhat subtle implied premise, as the most one can say about necessity here is that without a first cause, then either there could be no subsequent effects or there is an infinite causal regress.
And regardless of that, this argument tells us nothing about what sort of first cause there might be, so when Aquinas says “to which everyone gives the name God”, he's just winging it, in that just about everyone's notion of God has some specific characteristics.
The use of "manifestly", and appeals to plausibility, intuition or convention such as "to which everyone..." are something of a tell: when philosophers resort to such language, we know they cannot prove that they have a sound argument.
These sort of arguments are quite entertaining to discuss, but Alvin Plantinga, for one, is under no illusion that they actually prove the existence of God.
We do have uncaused causes, but they are not God. They are fundamental processes such as radioactive decay, which occur in any particular interval of time with a certain probability, but have no cause. Sorry, Aquinas.
> In particular, the critic owes us an account of why, since physics cannot in principle capture all there is to physical reality in the first place -- and in particular arguably fails entirely (as Russell held) to capture causality in general -- we should regard it as especially noteworthy if it fails to capture causality in one particular case. If the critic, like the early Russell, denies that there is any causality at all, he owes us an account of how he can coherently take such a position, and in particular how he can account for our knowledge of the world physics tells us about if we have no causal contact with it. If the critic says instead that genuine causality does exist in some parts of nature but not in the particular cases he thinks quantum mechanics casts doubt on, he owes us an account of why we should draw the line where he says we should, and how there could be such a line. […]
> In short, anyone who claims that quantum mechanics undermines Scholastic metaphysical claims about causality owes us an alternative worked-out metaphysical picture before we should take him seriously (just as anyone who would claim that quantum mechanics undermines the law of excluded middle owes us an alternative system of logic if we are to take him seriously). And if he gives us one, it would really be that metaphysical system itself, rather than quantum mechanics per se, that is doing the heavy lifting.
> Recall that in an earlier post Oerter claimed that quantum mechanics casts doubt on the principle of causality insofar as it describes “systems that change from one state to another without any apparent physical ‘trigger.’” Recall also that I pointed out that it is simply a fallacy to infer from the premise that QM describes such-and-such a state without describing its cause to the conclusion that QM shows that such-and-such a state has no cause.
But this introduces at least one more premise before we get to Aquinas' conclusion: the premise that "physics cannot in principle capture all there is to physical reality".
And that is not enough, as even if it could be sustained, Feser is still arguing from a generality to a specific. Physics might fail to capture all there is to physical reality while it also being the case that atomic decay is acausal.
Furthermore, when Feser writes: "In short, anyone who claims that quantum mechanics undermines Scholastic metaphysical claims about causality owes us an alternative worked-out metaphysical picture before we should take him seriously", he is just attempting to shift the burden of proof away from those on whom it properly rests: those who say that they can prove there's a God.
Then there's the straw man "If the critic, like the early Russell, denies that there is any causality at all..." that we need not waste any time on.
- And that's all just from the short quote you have provided!
What Feder is not delivering here is an argument that the decay of an atom had a specific cause that operated at a specific time.
Aquinas at least has the virtue of being straightforward, but there's still the independent issue of the unstated assumption that I raised earlier.
I had read it before, and I skimmed it again just now. I think this is just Feser redefining cause so that its meaning is so broad as to have practically no content, and to make the claim that everything must have a cause trivially correct. The cause for the decay of the atom is now whatever made the atom, or inherent in the atom’s existence or nature.
This does nothing to change my description of the decay event as being an uncaused event, for more interesting notions of “cause”. And I believe that it does throw a wrench into the argument for the necessity of a first cause. In short, what Feser lacks in brevity he fails to make up for in persuasiveness.
This is where there seems to be a somewhat subtle implied premise, as the most one can say about necessity here is that without a first cause, then either there could be no subsequent effects or there is an infinite causal regress.
And regardless of that, this argument tells us nothing about what sort of first cause there might be, so when Aquinas says “to which everyone gives the name God”, he's just winging it, in that just about everyone's notion of God has some specific characteristics.
The use of "manifestly", and appeals to plausibility, intuition or convention such as "to which everyone..." are something of a tell: when philosophers resort to such language, we know they cannot prove that they have a sound argument.
These sort of arguments are quite entertaining to discuss, but Alvin Plantinga, for one, is under no illusion that they actually prove the existence of God.