Does Aquinas's First Way Commit a Quantification Fallacy?
Joseph Schmid and Daniel Linford claim the Unmoved First Mover argument commits a quantifier shift fallacy, but their explanation seems erratic.
I’m following the Method of Engagement outlined when I began this publication. 1) Present the topic. 2) State the atheist (in this case agnostic) view. 3) State the theist view. 4) Analyze and compare. 5) Ask for feedback.
1. Present the topic.
In Chapter 2 “Aquinas’s First Way” of their book Existential Inertia and Classical Theistic Proofs, Joseph Schmid and Daniel Linford claim that the First Way argument for God’s existence is invalid because it commits a quantifier shift fallacy. This is a type of quantification fallacy in which the number of items in a proposition is shifted erroneously to another statement or conclusion. The example they give is one of counselors assigned to students. It would be false to conclude that there is one single counselor assisting all students from the statement that each student has a counselor. In the same way, Schmid and Linford say we “cannot conclude that there is a first cause of all chains of changes from the fact that each such chain has a first cause” (20).
If this is truly a formal logical fallacy, then the Unmoved First Mover argument is demolished and does not prove that God exists. I am going to challenge their use of the word “chain” in this context and show why there is no such fallacy, only a significant confusion on their part, one that if followed leads to an erratic and incorrect view of reality.
To unpack it, we’ll need to first review the First Way argument for an Unmoved First Mover along with the difference in per accidens and per se efficient causality. If you are already familiar with these, skip to the next section. Note: I read everything as a chemist so my interpretation, while remaining true to Aquinas, comes with a healthy respect for atoms, molecules, and the way it all fits together.
Aquinas’s First Way
The First Way is the argument for an Unmoved First Mover summarized in the Summa theologiae (I.2.3). It depends on the metaphysical commitment of act and potency. This argument from motion begins, just as the scientific method does, with what we can observe in nature. We see that things that move are moved. Aquinas says:
The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act.
By “motion” Aquinas means change. This idea comes from Aristotle’s Physics, “Every moving thing must be moved by something” (VII.1). It is worth noting that modern science agrees with this ancient conception of motion and change. An apple on the table may look motionless, but at the molecular and electronic level, motion is constant. These activities cause, among other things, the apple’s color. There is no absolute cessation of motion in nature at the atomic scale.
For Aquinas following Aristotle, motion is the reduction of a potential to act. A fresh apple has the potential to become a rotten apple. When it actually does become rotten, the potential has been actualized. The apple has been moved. Movers can be external, such as if someone shoves the apple off the table. Motion can also be intrinsic or internal. The motion from fresh to rotten is due to the chemical reactions of enzymes and phenolic compounds in the apple with oxygen in the air. The products of these reactions absorb and emit different wavelengths of light, so we see an apple change from red to brown. Potentiality means the apple had the ability to change. Actuality means it did. The potential to be rotten is actualized by the molecules in motion. They had to have this ability to cause the change. As Aquinas put it, a mover cannot give what it does not have. He continues:
For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality. Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it.
Let’s look deeper at fire. Wood has the potential to burn. Fire, which is actually hot, moves the wood to become hot. The molecules that make up the wood store potential energy in their bonds. The kinetic energy from the rapidly moving gas molecules in the fire causes the water molecules in wood to move faster and evaporate. Then the kinetic energy causes the organic molecules (like cellulose) in the wood to break down, release their potential energy, and produce smaller molecules that react with oxygen in the air, and give off more energy and gas molecules (such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide). The moving electrons in the carbonaceous char left behind emit light and heat energy. Next:
Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e., that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another.
This just means that the individual molecules in the chemical reactions cannot both be reacting and not reacting. There are equilibrium conditions reached, for sure, but even in the equations we write, we acknowledge directionality with arrows. In an active combustion, the arrow mostly goes one way → fire. This idea applies to any motion, even at the macroscale. If I shove the apple off the table, I cannot be shoving and not be shoving simultaneously, even if someone else is waiting to throw it back.
If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand.
The fire that causes the wood to burn is itself caused by some other mover that actualized it. The hand motion that moves the apple is actualized by the muscles. The rotting apple is actualized by molecules which are themselves actualized from other sources. In science, this just means we keep asking about cause and effect. What causes X? Y does. What causes Y? Z does. And so on.
Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.
This last part seems to make a jump, so it needs more examination. The First Way is followed by the rest of the Five Ways, and together they establish not only God’s existence but divine attributes, such as unity, oneness, power, intellect, will, eternity, and so on. Key to understanding the First Way is the correct interpretation of causal chains.
Causal Chains
There is an often-missed distinction that relates to efficient causality (from the four causes, material, formal, efficient, final).
Per accidens: We think of motion and change as happening in time, one event after another. This is called a per accidens chain of efficient causality, also known as accidental change. The mover and the thing moved do not necessarily need to remain in contact. A billiard ball can strike another and cause it to move. That ball can go on and move something else independently of the prior mover. If I push an apple off the table, it could fall, roll, and perhaps hit a champagne glass that someone is holding, causing it to break. The spilt champagne could splash someone, and so on. My hand is no longer involved. Per accidens chain of efficient causality happens in time and can be disconnected events in time.
Per se: In contrast, the per se series of efficient causality is hierarchical in order of existence. Cause and effect are not disconnected but simultaneous and whole, also known as substantial change. Per se series, therefore, do not happen in time but exist in the same moment, upholding the members in the series. If a more fundamental member is not there, the motion ceases to exist. What causes the fresh apple to be red? Anthocyanins are in the vacuoles of the cells do. They are pigment molecules. What causes pigment molecules to reflect light? They absorb some wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation (green light) and reflect others (in this case, red light). The wavelengths of light do not match the natural vibrational energy of electrons and are re-emitted from the atoms in the pigment molecules. What causes electrons to vibrate? Etcetera. We can get much more detailed today than Aristotle or Aquinas could, but the idea is the same. If any of this were not true in the moment, the apple would not be red to your eyes. At some point, we reach the end of what nature explains and look beyond.
The First Way refers only to per se hierarchical causality and not to per accidens linear chains in time. This is why Aquinas insists that reason cannot prove that there is a beginning in time. The linear in time per accidens chain does not need to terminate in a first mover. Why? In Aristotle’s time, the ancient Greeks induced from the regularity in the cycles of nature that the universe is eternally cycling. Imagine one mover moving something else, and the next and the next. This could go in cycles eternally. A beginning is not necessary. He explains in the Summa theologiae (I.46.2)
The articles of faith cannot be proved demonstratively, because faith is of things that appear not (Heb 11:1). But that God is the Creator of the world: hence that the world began, is an article of faith; for we say, I believe in one God.
But whether there is a beginning in time (that we believe in faith from divine revelation) or an eternally cycling universe, there must be a First Mover per se hierarchically in the whole order of existence. An Unmoved First Mover, fully actualized, Pure Act, and having no potency that can be actualized, is needed to explain why anything happens at all. Aristotle discovered the Unmoved First Mover at the end of his Physics, which, recall, began with observation.
There can only be one Unmoved First Mover, not two, not many. Since the Unmoved First Mover has no potentiality, it therefore has no imperfections and is not moving toward any fulfillment of being. Oneness is a divine attribute that can be known by the First Way. Aquinas says in the Summa theologiae (I.11.3):
If then many gods existed, they would necessarily differ from each other. Something therefore would belong to one which did not belong to another. And if this were a privation, one of them would not be absolutely perfect; but if a perfection, one of them would be without it. So it is impossible for many gods to exist.
In a per se hierarchical series, we may identify a first mover arbitrarily for demonstration purposes, and therefore in naming many such series, name many first movers nominally. We do this in modern science all the time to construct theories and models as isolated systems in the universe, but no one assumes those encompass all reality. They are like scaffolding upon which we exercise our intellect. The nominal first movers are moving too, which means they too are moved by something else. There can only be one ultimate Unmoved First Move, the terminus of all hierarchy. From the Five Ways, Aquinas identifies the First Mover, First Cause, First Being, Ultimate Good, and Designer as God the Creator. The unity in the ‘uni’verse comes from the unity of the First Mover.
This is a quick review of the First Way and causality. I find it useful to go through the steps using Aquinas’s words, but as anyone who studies these topics knows, there is much more that could be said. These are the main points though.
2. State the atheist/agnostic view.
At issue for the authors is the interaction of per accidens and per se chains of efficient causality. Schmid and Linford imagine per se causal chains not as parts of a unified whole but as isolated, finite pathways each having its own first mover. They envision that if along the way, a per se chain is knocked onto a different course by a per accidens chain, that per se chain would no longer terminate in the same first member. The chain could, thus, be said to terminate in two different first movers depending on a per accidens mover, one first mover before the per accidens mover and one after. So, they argue, the First Way does not prove a single, unique Unmoved First Mover, and to conclude that it does commits the quantifier shift fallacy. Here is the relevant paragraph from their book (page 20):
Furthermore, even if we could conclude that there’s a first member T for all chains of per se chains, we cannot thereby conclude that T is the single or unique first member for such chains. Indeed, even if a given per se chain cannot be infinite, it doesn’t thereby follow that the chain has a single terminus. The chain may terminate in two things, each of which imparts causal or change-related power to the rest of the chain. In that case, we avoid an infinite per se chain of causes/changes, but there nevertheless wouldn’t be a unique source or terminus of any particular chain. So, even if the quantifier shift problem weren’t present, uniqueness still wouldn’t follow.
Schmid provides a useful graphic for what he has in mind on his Majesty of Reason YouTube channel to show how he links per se and per accidens causes. The video begins at the relevant time stamp.
Schmid has a diagram in this segment of his explanation, and I hope it is okay to share a screenshot from the video. It would be good to watch the five or so minutes of the video here, if not the presentation in its entirety.
Schmid explains that along the horizontal (x) axis, is the per accidens time chain, what he calls a non-essentially ordered chain. Along the vertical (y) axis is ontological fundamentality, the essentially ordered chains. Each arrow is a finite causal chain (horizontal arrows are per accidens, vertical are per se). The dots are causal nodes (an effect or a cause or both). Where the series of chains interact is where a per accidens series could interact with a per se series and change the series itself, thereby changing which first mover the per se chain terminates with (down at the bottom). He shows that (start at the top) there is no per se (essentially ordered chain) that will terminate (at the bottom) in just one first mover if the per accidens (non-essentially ordered) chains change the terminus of the per se chains.
This is the alleged quantifier shift fallacy. Just because each per se chain has a first mover, it does not follow, Schmid and Linford say, that all chains have only one Unmoved First Mover.
3. State the theist view.
Since I covered Aquinas’s view in the first section, I will just summarize the main points again here, repeating Summa theologiae (I.2.3).
The First Way, argument from motion, is the more manifest way to prove God’s existence.
We sense that some things are in motion in the world.
Whatever is in motion is put in motion by another.
Nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion.
A thing moves inasmuch as it is in act.
Motion is the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality.
Nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality.
It is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects.
It is impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e., that it should move itself.
Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another.
If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again.
This (per se hierarchy) cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover.
Subsequent movers move only as they are put in motion by the first mover.
Therefore, it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.
Causal Series
Per accidens chains of efficient causes (accidental change) happens in time and can be disconnected in time.
Per se series of efficient causes (substantial change) are hierarchies in the order of existence whole and simultaneously all together.
Oneness
Since the Unmoved First Mover has no potentiality, it has no imperfections and is not moving toward any fulfillment of being. Oneness is a divine attribute that can be known by the First Way.
4. Analyze and compare.
Like many, my go-to philosopher for the Five Ways is Edward Feser. He wrote a 2021 post to address Schmid’s criticisms and covers this particular issue in the section titled, “Essentially ordered causal series.” Feser explains these ideas in the bigger rebuttal of “Existential Inertia,” which is the title of Schmid and Linford’s book. Feser says Schmid’s attempt is “riddled with confusions, begged questions, and missed points” (last line). I am focusing only on the issue of causal series in the First Way argument, claiming it to be a confusion and missed point.
As I understand Aquinas’s First Way, the essentially ordered (per se) chain of efficient causality should not be visualized like meandering rivulets merging into an ocean. To view these hierarchies in this way is to view them as just another type of per accidens chains, as Schmid does in his diagram.
Whether time is eternally cycling or has a beginning and an end (per faith), the Unmoved First Mover (God, cause of all existence) is outside of time. It is not as if the order of existence changes as time progresses. Imagine if this were the case. Something happening in time could change the hierarchy of existence, which would put us in a new world with a new set of laws.
More fundamental in existence are the more elementary particles such as atoms, and subatomic particles, and their forces, following the laws of nature, including the ones we have yet to discover. All of these hold in existence things in nature, such as rocks, plants, animals, and landscapes. We can describe situations where those things literally hold us up, such as when we stand on a mountain and peer up at the stars. If a guy is standing on a mountain and the mountain stops existing, he isn’t there anymore. If rocks stop existing, there is no mountain. If atoms do not exist, there are no rocks, mountains, or humans standing. If things happen in time to change where the guy is standing or how the mountain is shaped, in each moment, there is still a per se hierarchy going all the way down.
Nothing in time comes along and knocks this hierarchy of being into some other reality. Physics, biology, and chemistry depend on a stable hierarchy of per se cause. If a chain of events in time could somehow cause the hierarchy of being to alter, nature would be unpredictable and, therefore, unintelligible, which would mean scientific discovery is impossible.
Even when something happens in time that moves members in the hierarchy of existence, the members still exist and are upheld in existence by the same underlying members, being actualized all the way down to Pure Act. We can describe innumerable per se chains, but that does not mean they are isolated. They are all part of the unity of the universe, all systems within systems, deriving their motion from the one Unmoved First Mover (God).
The use of the word “chain” is the culprit, I suspect. The image of a “chain” works for linear per accidens series of efficient causation where one thing happens after another, all linked end to end. “Hierarchy” is the more appropriate word for per se series that describe foundations successively upholding all ontological reality.
Hence, plotting essentially ordered (per se) hierarchies with linearly ordered (per accidens) chains depicts an erratic view of reality inconsistent with our daily and scientific experience of nature. There are no paradigmatic shifts in the hierarchy of existence just because something happens in time. A bump from an apple does not jettison us into another world with our glass of champagne. Stone does not spontaneously burst into flame. Elements do not adopt new properties sporadically. You get the picture.
Why are Schmid and Linford beholden to this view? Maybe because they need to show the First Way is false in order to defend existential inertia, the topic of their book. If there is no God upholding everything in existence, then the door is opened to argue that some things remain in existence on their own absent a destructive cause.* It follows from there that theism might be false and atheism true. But the fallacy and misunderstandings are theirs — at the beginning of the book on the validity of the First Way no less.
They commit a simple yet serious material fallacy of equivocation in how they use the word “chain.” More so, the error is their understanding of per se (substantial) change. It is as serious as when opponents ask, “If everything is created, then who created the Creator?” That’s not how the argument goes.
Lawrence Krauss made a similar error in the preface of A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing. He asks who created the Creator and then recalls a story about turtles, one I am reminded of again. Krauss wrote:
These arguments always remind me of the famous story of an expert giving a lecture on the origins of the universe…who is challenged by a woman who believes that the world is held up by a gigantic turtle, who is then held up by another turtle, and then another . . . with further turtles “all the way down!” An infinite regress of some creative force that begets itself, even some imagined force that is greater than turtles, doesn’t get us any closer to what it is that gives rise to the universe. Nonetheless, this metaphor of an infinite regression may actually be closer to the real process by which the universe came to be than a single creator would explain. Defining away the question by arguing that the buck stops with God may seem to obviate the issue of infinite regression, but here I invoke my mantra: The universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not. The existence or nonexistence of a creator is independent of our desires.
Krauss is right about that last part. Objective truth is a core tenet of scientific inquiry. Our job is to discover through the use of reason and, if we accept it, the gift of faith. I find the idea that God upholds all things in existence in an ordered universe much more reasonable than owing my life to infinite turtles or unpredictable realities. That’s all way too erratic for me.
5. Thoughts?
Joseph Schmid and Daniel Linford claim the argument for an Unmoved First Mover commits a quantifier shift fallacy, but this is a misunderstanding of per se efficient causality as isolated chains instead of hierarchical actualization of potentials in the order of existence by an Unmoved First Mover. There cannot be many Unmoved First Movers, only one. This is not a quantifier shift but rather a deduction from the meaning of act and potential. Their description of the per se hierarchy to be many isolated chain events is a meaning Aquinas did not describe nor could have intended given what he says in the summary of the First Way argument regarding potentiality and actuality.
How do these ideas sit with you? Did I get something wrong? Do you have better metaphors to describe your understanding of the concept of per accidens and per se series? Better words? I’d like to hear from you.
*This is a topic of its own for later.
Sources
Joseph C. Schmid and Daniel J. Linford, Existential Inertia and Classical Theistic Proofs (Switzerland: Springer, 2022).
Majesty of Reason on YouTube, “Aquinas’s First Way: An Analysis.”
Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Part I, Questions 2, 11, 46.
Aristotle, Physics, trans. R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye, Book VII.
Edward Feser, “Schmid on the Aristotelian proof.”
Lawrence Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing (New York: Atria, 2012).
Human ingenuity is a real power we possess, and as such, it comes with responsibilities towards other humans and the rest of nature.
The enigma of those who betray responsibility flies in the face of nature it seems. A tree that refuses
to grow branches, natural or internal forces not withstanding, is unnatural Therefore, the FREE WILL to reject a beneficial natural outcome seems an aberration that does not belong in nature. It suggests that a secondary sub-prime mover is at work. Mount St Helen's destruction of nature resulted in nature rebuilding its ecosystem, whereas a ruined soul ( sorry for the segue ) is not able to be redeemed (Thomistic view) at all. Our participation in nature is distinct, though we are embedded in its matrix which affects our composite body, unlike nature, we are not beholden to the laws that governs and defines its purpose. The mind has no place in the natural world and is not part thereof.
The 'motor' in question is the ability of any faith based person to tap into a resource that is completely unavailable to one who has no knowledge of how to turn it (motor) on. Think of it this way, solar power has been available since Neanderthal. I don't mean the ability to heat objects or to stay warm.
I'm talking about the modern application to harness power in such a way as to i.e.: run a motor.
In this instance, solar power - which in most cases has to be instilled, taught, conceptualized and demonstrated by proof positive testimony by someone who has experienced its existence. Those would be ardent theists. That same power is available to atheists; however, even though all the above
actions might have been brought to bear, a critical receptor in the mind is blocked or missing which
does not enable the person to engage the 'motor', Faith is a gift I was taught and any lack thereof is
not necessarily the fault of the subject - though id-ego resistance from a multitude of possibilities may
be the culprit that eschews the very idea of 'solar power', thereby negating any reason to pursue it.
This motor in question must work for the theist too or it would be ABANDONED. So the proof of this
solar power lies in the very minds of those who engage and maintain the connection through ritual,
response and acknowledgement, that that POWER is: real, free and limitless. Ask and ye will receive
is the start button on the motor and that requires a ton of humility which cannot be measured by
conventional means. I do sympathize with an old army friend of the Jewish experience who cut to
the chase after hours of subjective rebuttal - "Either you believe (in that motor) or you don't believe"
,