PHIL 151 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Unmoved Mover, Logical Truth, Randomness

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHIL 151
• Professor: Mark Smith

Document Summary

Aquinas was born into italian nobility, joined the order of dominican friars. This went against his family"s wishes, so they kidnapped him in order to prevent him from becoming a friar. Aquinas and the five arguments for god"s existence: motion (prime mover, whatever is moved is moved by another. However, there cannot exist what is called an infinite regress: when the chain of moving goes on into infinity as everything is moved by something before and so on and so on. If there were and infinite regress, there would be no movement to begin with. Therefore, there must exist an unmoved mover: this conclusion is a logical necessity, therefore, god is a necessary being, efficient causation (prime cause, nothing is its own efficient cause. Ex: the chicken cannot bring itself into being. Everything that exists could either be or not be: however, if there ever had been nothing, there still would be nothing.