Uploaded September 2019 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
** Allow me to remove your puzzlement: the clip from 23:37 to 24:21 and the one from 24:21 to 24:40 were supposed to appear in the opposite order.
You'll have to forgive the fan's blowing full blast at the beginning. It was frickin' hot. I just remembered I have access to editing software that I may get around to using to fix this. Still getting used to this new recording setup, too.
For those who would like to see the formal presentation of Stage 1 of Feser's neo-Platonic proof, here it is, taken from p. 80 of Five Proofs of the Existence of God:
"1. The things of our experience are composite.
2. A composite exists at any moment only insofar as its parts are combined at that moment.
3. This composition of parts requires a concurrent cause.
4. So, any composite has a cause of its existence at any moment at which it exists.
5. So, each of the things of our experience has a cause at any moment at which it exists.
6. If the cause of a composite thing’s existence at any moment is itself composite, then it will in turn require a cause of its own existence at that moment.
7. The regress of causes this entails is hierarchical in nature, and such a regress must have a first member.
8. Only something absolutely simple or noncomposite could be the first member of such a series.
9. So, the existence of each of the things of our experience presupposes an absolutely simple or noncomposite cause."
The section on pp. 73-4 regarding the essence-existence explanatory circle:
"Other metaphysical parts too might be identified. For example, Thomist philosophers hold that we can distinguish between the essence of a thing and its existence—that is, between what the thing is and the fact that it is. There is, for example, the essence or nature of a triangle—being a closed plane figure with three straight sides—and the existence of some particular triangle, which differs from the existence of some other particular triangle. Now, a thing exists at all only as a thing of some kind or other, so that there is no such thing as the existence of a triangle (to stick with that example) apart from the essence of the triangle. But the essence of a triangle all by itself and apart from any actual triangle which has that essence is a mere abstraction rather than a concrete object. So, some particular concrete triangle’s essence has no reality apart from the triangle’s existence. As with matter and form, then, the essence and existence of a thing depend on one another in such a way that if there were no cause outside of the thing that accounts for how the essence and existence are conjoined, we would have an explanatory vicious circle."
** Allow me to remove your puzzlement: the clip from 23:37 to 24:21 and the one from 24:21 to 24:40 were supposed to appear in the opposite order.
You'll have to forgive the fan's blowing full blast at the beginning. It was frickin' hot. I just remembered I have access to editing software that I may get around to using to fix this. Still getting used to this new recording setup, too.
For those who would like to see the formal presentation of Stage 1 of Feser's neo-Platonic proof, here it is, taken from p. 80 of Five Proofs of the Existence of God:
"1. The things of our experience are composite.
2. A composite exists at any moment only insofar as its parts are combined at that moment.
3. This composition of parts requires a concurrent cause.
4. So, any composite has a cause of its existence at any moment at which it exists.
5. So, each of the things of our experience has a cause at any moment at which it exists.
6. If the cause of a composite thing’s existence at any moment is itself composite, then it will in turn require a cause of its own existence at that moment.
7. The regress of causes this entails is hierarchical in nature, and such a regress must have a first member.
8. Only something absolutely simple or noncomposite could be the first member of such a series.
9. So, the existence of each of the things of our experience presupposes an absolutely simple or noncomposite cause."
The section on pp. 73-4 regarding the essence-existence explanatory circle:
"Other metaphysical parts too might be identified. For example, Thomist philosophers hold that we can distinguish between the essence of a thing and its existence—that is, between what the thing is and the fact that it is. There is, for example, the essence or nature of a triangle—being a closed plane figure with three straight sides—and the existence of some particular triangle, which differs from the existence of some other particular triangle. Now, a thing exists at all only as a thing of some kind or other, so that there is no such thing as the existence of a triangle (to stick with that example) apart from the essence of the triangle. But the essence of a triangle all by itself and apart from any actual triangle which has that essence is a mere abstraction rather than a concrete object. So, some particular concrete triangle’s essence has no reality apart from the triangle’s existence. As with matter and form, then, the essence and existence of a thing depend on one another in such a way that if there were no cause outside of the thing that accounts for how the essence and existence are conjoined, we would have an explanatory vicious circle."
