What is real change?

I am starting to think that it’s rather mysterious what real change—i.e., non-Cambridge change—is. (Cambridge change is illustrated by examples like: Alice became shorter than her son Bob because Bob grew.)

It is tempting to say:

1. x undergoes non-Cambridge change if and only if there is an intrinsic property that x gains or loses.

But it could well turn out that one can undergo non-Cambridge change with respect to relational, and hence non-intrinsic, properties. The radical, but I think quite possibly correct, example is that it could turn out that all creaturely properties are relational because they all involve participation in God. (Thus, to be green is to greenly participate in God.)

However, there could be less radical cases. For instance, plausibly, shape properties are constituted by relations between an object’s parts and regions of space. But an object’s changing shape is a paradigm example of a non-Cambridge change. Or it might be that a Platonism on which we have an “eye of the soul” that changingly gazes at timeless Platonic objects. It seems like the change in the eye of the soul in coming to gaze on Beauty Itself could be entirely relational and fundamental. In particular, the “gaze” might not be constituted by any non-relational features of the eye of the soul. And yet the change is not a Cambridge change.

It seems to me that this worry gives one some reason to accept this Aristotelian account:

2. x undergoes non-Cambridge change if and only if x has a passive potentiality that is actualized.

I would rather not do that—I have long tried to avoid passive potentialities—but I don’t right now know another alternative to (1). I dislike passive potentialities sufficiently that I am actually tempted to deny that there is an account of the difference between Cambridge and non-Cambridge change. But that would come at a serious cost: it would be hard to account for divine immutability.

Change without a plurality of times

Assume presentism. Then Aristotle’s definition of change as the actuality of a potentiality seems to have a serious logical problem. For consider a precise statement of that definition:

1. There is change just in case there is a potentiality P and an actuality A and A is the actuality of P.

Given presentism, quantification has to be over present items. Thus, the potentiality P and the actuality A are both present items (presumably, accidents of some substance). But if the actuality and potentiality can be simultaneous, then Aristotle’s definition of change does not logically require multiple times: one can have a moment t at which there is an actuality A of a potentiality P, and t could be the only time at which the underlying substance exists. But it seems obvious that if something changes, it exists at more than one time.

One way out of this problem is to deny presentism. I would like that, but Aristotle was probably a presentist.

A second way out is to be careful with tensing:

2. There is change just in case there was a potentiality P and there is an actuality A and A is the actuality of P.

This makes being the actuality of a cross-time relation. Cross-time relations are awkward for a presentist, but probably unavoidable anyway, so this isn’t so terrible. However, there are other problems with (2). First, it seems that tense depends on time, and for Aristotle, time depends on change, so (2) becomes circular. Second, if we can help ourselves to tense, we can just define change as being in a state in which one previously was not.

I want to suggest a more radical way out of the problem for (1). This more radical way starts by embracing the idea that a substance can change even if it exists only at one time. One way to motivate that is to think of Newtonian physics. Suppose that the universe consists of a number of particles that come into existence at time t₀. We may further suppose the state of the Newtonian universe at times after t₀ is deterministically caused by the state at t₀ (barring things like Norton’s dome). But this is only true if the state of the universe at t₀ includes the momenta of the particles, some of which we can assume to be initially non-zero. In other words, the fact about what the momenta are has to be a fact about what the universe is like at t₀, in the sense that even if God annihilated the universe right after t₀, it would still be true that the particles had the momenta at t₀ that they do. Thus, having a non-zero momentum at a time does not require existing at other times. But if one has non-zero momentum, then one is in motion. Hence, being in motion does not require existing at more than one time.

This sounds quite paradoxical, but I think it makes sense if we think of motion as that which explains the succession of states rather than as that which arises from the succession of states.

Next, let’s slightly tweak the English translation of Aristotle’s definition of change:

3. Change is the actualizing of potentiality.

One can be actualizing a potentiality without ever being in a state of having actualized it. Imagine a substance that is falling, and thus on Aristotle’s account in the process of actualizing the potentiality for being in the center of the universe, and yet which never reaches the center of the universe. At every moment of its existence, that substance is striving to be in the center. That striving, that actualizing of its potential, is what makes it be in motion. It would be in motion even if it only existed for an instant.

One cannot, I take it, have actualized a potentiality while still having the potentiality. But one can be actualizing it while still having it. One is actualing it until one has actualized it, and once one has actualized it, one is no longer actualizing it.

Granted, on this view, change does not entail a plurality of times. It is possible to have a changing universe that exists only for an instant. This complicates the Aristotelian projects of grounding time in change: change is not sufficient for time. Nor does Aristotle say it is. He says that time is a kind of number for change. But a single change may not be enough for number (Aristotle thought that one is not a number: number, for him, requires plurality). Thus, the single-moment universe may have change, but not enough change to have time on Aristotle’s view.

Two beauties

In a number of cases of beauty, beauty is doubled up: there is the beauty in an abstract state of affairs and there is the beauty in that state of affairs being real, or at least real to an approximation. For instance, the mathematics of Relativity Theory is beautiful in itself. But that it is true (or even approximately true) is also beautiful.

This shows an interesting aspect of superiority that painting and sculpture have over the writing of novels. The novelist discovers a beautiful (in a very broad sense of the word, far broader than the “pretty”) abstract state of affairs, and then conveys it to us. But the painter and sculptor additionally doubles the beauty by making something real an instantiation of it, and it is by making that instantiation real that they convey it to us. The playwright is somewhere in between: the beautiful state of affairs is made approximately real by a play.

The above sounds really Platonic. But we can also read it in an Aristotelian way, if we understand the abstract states of affairs as potentialities. The painter, sculptor and novelist all discover a beautiful potentiality. The painter and sculptor brings that potentiality to actuality. The novelist merely points it out to us.

"In the right way"

When I was in grad school, we were taught that one should abandon all hope of solving “in the right way” problems, such as the problem of how exactly an intention has to result in an action in order for the action to be done from that intention.

I think that with a robust metaphysics of causation, the problem is soluble.

Solution 1: Causal powers have a teleology: to produce a certain effect in a certain way. That teleology is metaphysically written into the causes. The “in the right way” condition may be infinitely complex, but it has a metaphysical home: it is found in the causal power. What makes it be the case that William James’ mountaineer who intended to kill his buddy by dropping the rope, and then dropped the rope because of the nervousness resulting from the intention did not intentionally drop the rope is because the outcome of events is a mismatch to the description in the teleology of the causal powers constituting the intention.

Solution 2: It is a Thomistic maxim that the effect is the actuality of the cause qua cause. This maxim I suspect needs a qualification: the proper effect—the one that happens in the right way—is the actuality of the cause qua cause. So now we have a neat and simple criterion for when a cause C has caused an effect E in the right way: this happens precisely when E is the actuality of C qua cause. (See here for more discussion.)

I think the reason we were taught to eschew the problem of “in the right way” conditions was because of an implicit reductionistic metaphysics. If we think that the cause is just an arrangement of particles, it is hopeless to have a distinction between proper and improper effects.

Simultaneous actualization of potentiality

I will argue, on Aristotelian grounds, for the following thesis:

• There are cases of actualization of potentials that are simultaneous with the possession of the potentials.

In particular, it follows that Aristotelian arguments against eternalism on the grounds that eternalism makes potentials co-real with their actualities fail, because every Aristotelian has to admit that there are potentials that are co-real with their actualities.

Here is the argument for the thesis.

1. All ordinary substances have first moments of existence.

It follows from Causal Finitism that all temporal substances have a first moment of existence. By “ordinary” substances, I mean things like dogs, cats and oak trees. I am excluding weirder candidates like the wavefunction of the universe or the universe itself, as well as extraordinary substances such as angels.

Now we add this premise:

2. Every ordinary substance always actualizes a potential of itself.

For instance, ordinary substances are always emitting electromagnetic radiation, and on Aristotelian grounds such activity had better be the actualization of a potential.

Now, while time travel and backwards causation might turn out to be possible, they are extraordinary. Thus:

3. An ordinary substance never actualizes a future potential.

Moreover, transsubstantiation is also extraordinary and:

4. Every potential that an ordinary substance has is one that it has at a time at which it exists.

From 1-4, it follows that:

5. An ordinary substance in the first moment of its existence actualizes a potential that it has then.

For suppose Alice is an ordinary substance and it’s now the first moment of her existence (she has such a moment by (1)). Alice actaulizes a potential of herself by (2). That potential which she is actualizing must be had by her in the present or the future by (4), since this is the first moment of her existence. She isn’t actualizing a future potential by (3). So she must be actualizing a present one.

And (5) gives us the thesis about potentiality being sometimes simultaneous with its actuality.

Is eternalism compatible with the actualization of potentiality?

Every so often, someone claims to me that there is a difficulty in reconciling the Aristotelian idea of the actualization of potential with eternalism, the view that past, present and future are equally real. I am puzzled by this question, because I can’t see the difficulty. On the contrary, there is a tension between presentism, the view that only present things exist, and this Aristotelian thesis:

1. Some present events are the actualization of a no-longer present potentiality.

2. A non-existent thing is not actualized.

3. Therefore, some no-longer present potentialities exist.

4. Therefore, something that is no longer present exists.

5. Therefore, presentism is false.

One might say: Yes, the potentiality doesn’t exist, but it did exist, and it was actualized. But then:

6. Some present potentialities are actualized in not yet present events.

7. A non-existent thing does not actualize anything.

8. So, there exist some not yet present things.

9. So, presentism is false.

Of course, this is the old problem of transtemporal relations for presentism as applied to the actualization relation.

So, what about the question whether eternalists can have actualization of potentials? Here may be the problem. On eternalism plus Aristotelianism, it seems that the past unactualized potential exists even though it is now actualized. This seems to be a contradiction: how can an unactualized potential be actualized?

A first answer is that a potential is actualized at a time t provided that its actualization exists at t. Thus, the potential is unactualized at t₁ but actualized at a later time t₂, because its actualization exists at t₂ but not at t₁. But, the objector can continue, by eternalism at t₁ isn’t it the case that the actualization exists? Yes: but the eternalist distinguishes:

10. It is true at t₁ that B exists.

11. B exists at t₁.

Claim (11), for spatiotemporal objects, means something like this: the three-dimensional spacetime hypersurface corresponding to t = t₁ intersects B. Claim (10) means that B exists simpliciter, somewhere in spacetime (assuming it’s a spatiotemporal object). There is no contradiction in saying that the actualization doesn’t exist at t₁, even though it is true at t₁ that it exists simpliciter.

The second answer is that Aristotelianism does not need actualizations of unactualized potentials. Causation is the actualization of a potential. But Aristotle and Aquinas both believed in the possibility of simultaneous causation. In simultaneous causation, an event B is the actualization of a simultaneous potential A. At the time of the simultaneous causation, nobody, whether presentist or eternalist, can say that B is the actualization of unactualized potential, since then the potential would be actualized and unactualized at the same time. Thus, one can have causation, and actualization of potential, where the potential and the actualization are simultaneously real, and hence where the actualization is not of an unactualized potential. The eternalist could—but does not have to—say that transtemporal cases are like this, too: they are actualizations of a potential, but not of an unactualized potential.

Four grades of normative actuality

Here are four qualitatively different grades of the normative actuality of a causal power:

0. Normative possession (zeroeth normative actuality): x has a nature according to which it should have causal power F. (An adult human who lacks sight still has normative possession of vision.)
1. First normative actuality: x has a normal (for x’s nature) causal power F. (The human with closed eyes has first actuality of vision.)
2. Second normative actuality: x exercises the normal causal power F. (The human who sees has second actuality of vision.)
3. Full (third) normative actuality: x exercises the normal causal power F and achieves the full telos of the causal power. (The human who gains knowledge through seeing has full actuality of vision.)

What I call normative possession is close to Aristotelian first potentiality, but is not exactly the same. The newborn has first potentiality for speaking Greek—namely, she is such that eventually she can come to have the power of speaking Greek—but she does not have normative possession of speaking Greek, since human nature does not specify that one should be able to speak Greek. However, the newborn does have normative possession of language in general.

I think each of the four grades of normative actuality is non-instrumentally valuable, and that the grades increase in non-instrumental value as one goes from zero to three.

Grade zero can carry great value, even in the absence of higher grades. For instance, normative possession of the causal powers constitutive of rational agency makes one be a person (or so I say, following Mike Gorman). And it is very valuable to be a person. This may, however, be a special case coming from the fact that persons have a dignity that other kinds of things do not; maybe the special case comes from the fact that persons need to have a fundamentally different kind of form from other things. For other causal powers, grade zero doesn’t seem to carry much value. Imagine that you found out that (a) normal Neanderthals have the ability to run five hundred kilometers and (b) you are in fact a Neanderthal. By finding out these things, you’d have found out that you have normative possession of the ability to run 500km—but of course, you have no actual possession of that ability. The normative possession is slightly cool, but so what? Unless one has a higher grade of actuality of this ability, simply being the kind of thing that should have that ability does not seem very valuable. And the same is true for abilities more valuable than the running one: imagine that Neanderthals turn out to have Einstein-level mathematical abilities, but you don’t. It would be a bit cool to be of the same kind as these mathematical geniuses (maybe this is a little similar to how it’s cool for a Greek to be of the same nation as Socrates), but in the end it really doesn’t count for much.

Grade one is also valuable even in the absence of higher grades. It makes for the difference between health and impairment, and health is valuable. But I can’t think of cases where first normative actuality carries much non-instrumental value. Imagine that I know for sure that I am going to spend all my life with my eyes tightly closed (e.g., maybe I am hooked up to machine that will kill me if I attempt to open them). It is objectively healthier that I have sight than that I do not. But it seems rational to sacrifice all of my sight for a slight increase in the acuity of touch or hearing, given that I can actually exercise touch and hearing (second or third actuality) while I can’t exercise sight. Even slight amounts of second or third normative actuality seem to trump first normative actuality.

Grade two seems quite valuable, even absent grade three. Here, examples can be multiplied. Sensory perception that does not lead to knowledge can still be well worth having. Sex is valuable even absent successful reproduction. Running on a treadmill can have a value even if does not achieve locomotion. While it seems to be generally true that a great amount of first actuality can be sacrificed for a small amount of second actuality, this is not as generally true with second and third actuality. One might reasonably prefer to run two kilometers on a treadmill—even for the non-instrumental goods of the exercise of leg muscles—instead of running two meters on the ground.

All of the lower grades of normative actuality derive their value in some way from the value of full normative actuality. But full normative actuality does not always trump grade two. It seems to generally trump grade one. Grade zero is special: most of the time it does not seem to carry much value, but it does in the case where it constitutes personhood. (Maybe, though, the dignity of personhood shouldn’t be thought of in terms of value.)

Two conceptions of matter

The philosophical tradition contains two conceptions of matter. One kind, associated with Descartes, connects matter with space: matter is what is responsible for spatial properties like extension or location. The other, associated with Aristotle, connects matter with passivity: matter is what makes an entity have a propensity to be the patient of causal influences. The spatial conception of matter has been the more popular one in recent times. But here is a reason not to go for the spatial conception of matter. The concept of materiality seems fairly close to the fundamental level. But it may well turn out--string theory is said to push in that direction--that at the fundamental level there is no such thing as space or time or spacetime. If that is a serious epistemic possibility, it would be good to do more work on the Aristotelian option.

Fetal and our potentiality

Consider this standard story:

Whatever value fetuses have derives from their potentiality (and here various distinctions matter) to grow into humans that actually have various valuable features, features that are not simply potentialities. Typical human adults actually have the valuable features that ground their moral status, while fetuses only potentially have these features. The question of the moral status of the fetus, then, is the question of how far their potentiality makes it possible to extend to them the moral status that typical human adults have (and, likewise, to extend the moral status of typical human adults to atypical ones).

I have argued in earlier posts that the kind of potentiality fetuses have does call for the extension of moral status. But I now wonder if this whole line of thought doesn't presuppose a mistaken view, namely that the moral status of typical human adults is grounded in the actual possession of valuable non-potentiality features. Specifically, I worry that this line of thought has too optimistic a view of the human race.

The feature of human beings that matters most centrally seems to be the moral life. But in practice our moral life just isn't all that good. We are full of self-deceit, akrasia and dollops of malice, in different combinations. Is it really the case that typical human beings are morally good in such a way that their actual moral goodness gives them the kind of moral status we are thinking about?

And in any case, even if, say, 70% of adult human beings do have such moral goodness, what about those of us who are in the other 30%? They, too, have moral status. No matter how many crimes one has committed previously, no matter how wicked one is, one has the moral and legal right to a fair trial, to a punishment that does not exceed the gravity of the offense.

What I said about the moral life also goes for the intellectual life: the typical human's intellectual life just isn't much to be proud of. Just think of all the fallacious forms of reasoning we engage in. Plus, I do not know how central the intellectual life is to moral status. Suppose there was a race of super-intelligent mathematicians who had no drive but to prove interesting theorems and no moral life to speak of. Would they have the kind of moral status humans have? I don't know. (It could be that they would have to have the rudiments of a moral life, in that they would have to be attuned at least to the values of truth and beauty to practice mathematics well. So it could be that the thought experiment is impossible.)

Now, it may well be that the above thoughts are too pessimistic. The George MacDonad quote here seems quite significant. But I still think this is worth thinking about, and I think there is something to the idea that the moral status of typical adult humans comes not so much from actual valuable properties, but from their innate potentiality for the good moral life. It is what we should (eventually?) be, not what we are, that is central to our dignity on this suggestion.

Fetuses and capacity

One of the abortion debates is between those, like Mary Anne Warren, who think that personhood requires a "developed" capacity for distinctively personal functioning (including all or many of features like: self-awareness, general communication, freedom, problem-solving, etc.), or at least that such a developed capacity is needed for the prohibition on killing to apply, and those who think an undeveloped capacity is sufficient, either for personhood or the prohibition on killing or both. Of course, normal fetuses have an undeveloped capacity for distinctively personal functioning.

Here is a line of thought. Imagine an alien species that suffers through a boiling hot season every ten earth years ("The Boiling"). Most species on that planet die off at that time, leaving some hardy spores or seeds. But one species, the cysters, evolved intelligence and an ability to gather experience over a period of time longer than ten earth years. A biological cycle triggered by increased temperatures records one's memories and character traits in a hardy storage module that can survive The Boiling, and the body entirely sheds its brain and other soft tissues, becoming a kind of cyst. When The Boiling passes, the brain and other soft tissues regrow based on the genetic code, in the same way that they grew in the first place, and memories and traits from the storage module are written back into the regrown brain.

We would expect the cysters to have strong prohibitions against destroying normal fellow cysters once they have gone into the cyst stage (say, with a time bomb). And it is intuitively very plausible that these prohibitions would be correct: killing normal cysters in the cyst stage is wrong. Furthermore, it is plausible that a cyster in the cyst stage is still a person, though I am not insisting on this.

But notice that in cyst stage, the cysters do not have a developed capacity for distinctively personal activity. They have no brains! Granted, they have a module that holds memories and character traits. But they no more have developed capacities for distinctively personal activity than an embryonic gecko has a developed capacity for eating insects. The embryonic gecko presumably has genetic information sufficient to produce a vertebrate brain that will guide its eating of insects. All the information is there, just as in the cyster's memory module. But the presence of the information is insufficient for a developed capacity.

Moreover, imagine that Sam is a cyster who has acquired a capacity for distinctively personal activity an hour earlier, and has since had an hour of experiences. Moreover, suppose Sam does not remember anything prior to the acquiring of that capacity and Sam's character's non-genetic development only started when Sam acquired that capacity. And now the signs of The Boiling show up, and Sam goes to cyst. Clearly it's wrong to kill Sam. But it would be weird to think that the hour of experience makes the crucial difference here.

So it is false that the prohibition on killing requires developed capacities for distinctively personal functioning. And it is likely also false that such capacities are required for personhood.

1 John, and love of non-Christian neighbor

It is clear from the Parable of the Good Samaritan that Christian love for neighbor must extend beyond the confines of the Church. The First Letter of John says many beautiful things about how our love for one another is necessarily intertwined with our love for God: we love one another in the relevant way if and only if we love God, and this love is the center of the Christian life. But a puzzling feature of the Letter is that the love for one another appears specifically to be a love only within the Christian community: it is love for another Christian.

One way of reading 1 John together with the Parable is hierarchical: yes, we have a duty to love all our neighbors, including non-Christians. But the love for fellow Christians is the apex of this love, and it is only in the love for fellow Christians that the love for God can fully spread its wings, which is why the author of the Letter focuses on it. Furthermore, one might add something about the specific purposes of the Letter tied to disturbances within the community it was addressed to.

That all may be a part of the truth. But I want to propose something that goes a little further. We love our non-Christian neighbor as someone with a potentiality for being a fellow Christian. And not just a mere potentiality, such as my potentiality, which I expect will never be actualized, for tap-dancing outside of St. Stephen's Basilica in Budapest (certainly, I have the capabilities for learning some rudimentary tap-dancing and traveling there—but I don't expect to actually do it), and it is no great loss that it will not be actualized. Rather, it is more like the fetus's potentiality for becoming an adult, in the sense that it is a potentiality that is grave loss to the individual when it is not actualized, a potentiality that is not merely a matter of possibility, but a matter of an impulsion to the end. But there is a difference between the non-Christian's potentiality for becoming a member of the body of Christ, and the fetus's potentiality for becoming an adult. The fetus's potentiality for becoming an adult is a natural power in the fetus that simply needs the right environment. The non-Christian needs grace, which God offers to all.

That we love the non-Christian as a potential Christian does not mean that all our focus is on making the non-Christian into a Christian. After all, the parent's love for the child should typically be focused on the child as a potential adult. At the same time, much of the expression of that love is not focused on making the child into an adult. We feed, clothe and play with the child. Obviously, if we fail to feed the child, she may well die and fail to develop into an adult. But that is typically not what we are thinking: we are fulfilling the child's imminent need. And playing helps form the child, too, but again that is often not what one is thinking—instead, one may well simply be enjoying the game. Nonetheless, the expression of the love as a whole is shaped by the fact that the love is a love of the child as a potential adult.

Nonetheless, that we love the non-Christian as a potential Christian does mean that evangelization is a central aspect of our love for neighbor. This evangelization may or may not be in words, of course, and need not be conscious. The evangelization is an expression of the desire for union with the neighbor: a union as fellow members of Christ's body.

If this is right, then 1 John is describing the normative case where the potentiality for being a fellow member of the body of Christ has been fulfilled, just as when ethicists discuss relationships with others, they often talk of the case of adults, which is in some way the normative case. But the love for the child is in continuity with and directed towards becoming the love for the adult, and the love for a non-Christian is in continuity with and directed towards becoming the love for a Christian.

Is the comparison of the non-Christian to a child offensive? Well, it does fail to capture one aspect of the situation: the Christian's own falling short of being what she is called to. Perhaps a better way, in many cases, is to think of the case of a somewhat older sibling, or maybe of fifteen-year old parents, who in many ways are still children themselves.