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Thanks for your shared interest in the Rambam Leibniz connection, which I believe is fruitful.  

 

Hi Scott.

Just now I finished your 1:73.

I read and I study it.

Some queries about :

- "The Kalam theory creates absurd results":

It i some kind of irrationalism. Or perhaps, is it possible to say a-rationalism?.

Different Culture,etc.?

- The Kalam reality included only atoms, accidents and God...":

It is as a partial conception of the Man, the World and God.\

Perhaps could  be it possible a non-anachronistic  approach to the Islamism and the islamists with such philosophical background and context?

Occasionalism: literal reading of the Qur'an:

In the sense of Fundamentalism and as consequence, Fanaticism.?

The Modern Science justifies, in some sense, the Aristotelian Potentialism:

Heisenberg, Bohr, Kramers, Slater..

In opposition,the Islamic Science does not exist except for weapons.?

I enjoyed your explanation about the Logical Admissibility, Imagination and Intellect.

Natural law and Natural order has no place in the Kalam System.:  Then:what else could exist?

Your ending commentaries about Leibniz are also very important.

I study Leibniz ( particularly the issues about Logic and Epistemology).

Your Commentary is very useful also to my personal reading of the Rambam

Again toda rava and Shavua tov

avi

 

Hi Scott

Many thanks.

Yes, I agree with your explanation.

For example, the relation between Reason, Intellect and Nature : you hinted it.

Today the Genre Studies ( Judith Butler and many others) affirm that there is no such thing as Nature ( Law, Order).

They do not speak about a Positive Law but to a Construction done through the Culture ( including the Sex and other issues).

Indeed your commentary is eminently philosophical and I enjoyed it.

We need to return to the Rambam ( and no to Crescas, for example)!!

My best wishes

avi  

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Description : In the course of preparing my commentary essay on Guide chapter 1:75, I’ve arrived at a knot of arguments generated from issues involved with the Kalam’s second argument for divine unity. Before getting into a comprehensive account of that second argument I want to first take a moment to make sure that we understand Maimonides’ own arguments for divine unity. To that end I’ve created the following outline of those arguments from Guide 2:1. He has seven arguments, each one of which is fairly involved. He calls the first four philosophic arguments, while the latter three arguments do not seem to rise to the philosophic or demonstrative level.
I probably will not present those arguments in this detailed manner in my essay.
We need to be clear about his own argument in order to that we could contrast it with what he calls the “correct method” used by the Kalam in their second argument. Does Maimonides adopt their second argument as his own? We also want to be able to see what happens to Maimonides’ own method when Crescas assaults its Aristotelian and Avicennan underpinnings. From all this I hope to arrive at a critical assessment of the results of this long debate.
Maimonides’ Arguments for Divine Unity
(Extracted from Guide 2:1)
I. The Cosmological Argument for a Single Unmoved Mover, from the Nature of Motion.
(Summarized by Friedlander, note 3, page 11) “No motion can take place without an agent producing it, and series of causes affecting a certain motion is finite.” It is based on the impossibility of an infinite regress of actual causes, occurring in a Ptolemaic/Aristotelian terracentric cosmos. It would not work if there were more than one such cosmos, or if that cosmos were a Copernican cosmos.
A. All motion is due to the celestial sphere (Fifth Element).
B. That there is a final effect implies a first cause which cannot be an intermediate cause.
C. Such a cause must be incorporeal and apart from the sphere (Maimonides provides a series of three exclusionary arguments, see pages 14 – 16.)
D. It must not itself move, its force must be eternal, unchangeable, and therefore incorporeal.
E. Absolutely incorporeal beings cannot be counted except as cause and effect (Introduction II, Proposition XVI.
F. It follows that there must be an ultimate cause, who must be incorporeal and apart from the sphere, immobile, whose force is eternal, and who is itself not subject to causative forces
G. Because it must be incorporeal, and satisfy the other conditions, it must be a simple non-numerical unity. This is entirely a philosophic argument, as are the following three arguments.


II. The Physical Argument for a Single Incorporeal Unmoved Mover. (2:1, pages 16 through 18)
(From Friedlander, at note 3, page 11) “There are [can only be] things which (a) are set in motion (the motum) by other things, at the same time impart motion to other objects (the motor); there are also (b) things set in motion by other things without imparting motion to any other object; (c) a being must therefore exist that imparts motion without being itself set in motion.” Premise (a) is an intermediate action, (b) is a final action, and so there must be a (c) initial action. This initial action must be, in other words, a motor without being a motum. This is a type of infinite regress argument. On page 17, Maimonides speaking in the voice of “Aristotle” says:
“We notice many objects consisting of a motor and a motum, i.e., objects which set other things in motion, and whilst doing so are themselves set in motion by other things; such is clearly the case as regards all the middle members of a series of things in motion. We also see a thing that is moved, but does not itself move anything, viz., the last member of the series: consequently a motor must exist without being at the same time a motum, and that is the Prime Motor, which, not being subject to motion, is indivisible, incorporeal, and independent of time, as has been shown in the preceding argument.”
This motor must, therefore, not be subject to motion, and, therefore, it must be indivisible, and incorporeal. That is because all things corporeal are subject to motion, while the contrary is never the case.
III. The Metaphysical Argument for Divine Unity from Necessary and Contingent Existences.
(Friedlander, page 11, note 3) “Existing beings are (1) all permanent, or (2) all transient, or (3) partly permanent and partly transient; the first two cases being impossible only the 3rd is admissible, and a permanent being must therefore exist beside the transient things of the universe.”
Premise (1) is true because we see things being destroyed, and so we know that all things are not permanent. Premise (2) is true because if all things were transient then nothing would exist, i.e., if all were transient nothing would preserve them, nothing would produce anything, but some eternal thing must be their preserver or producer. There must be a permanent substance to guarantee and sustain the transient substances. Even in the moment to moment occasionalism of Kalam atomic theory, nothing would persist were it not for the incessant intervention of the permanent substantial divine existence. That is why premise three is possible: some things must be transient and at least one existence must be permanent.
a) If all things fall into the third category, and are partly permanent and partly transient, there must be one being that is permanent, actual and real. From its own necessary existence it can impart existence and preservation to the contingent and possible existences.
b) This necessary existence cannot have plurality whatsoever (Proposition XXI, from the Introduction to Guide:Book 2), nor be due to any cause (XX), and is not a body or a force in a body (XXII).
c) Maimonides, Page 20: “it can easily be proved that absolutely independent existence (AIE) cannot be attributed to two beings,” [because AIE would be a property added to each one’s substance, and, therefore, neither would be absolutely independent on account of their essences, but only through that shared property.]
d) This is all due to the absolute simplicity of the necessary existent, it being the “only member of its species, and does not depend on any cause whatever; this being has nothing in common with other beings.” [And therefore shares AEI with no other.]
e) It goes unsaid that such an absolutely simple necessary existent must be incorporeal; and since incorporeal beings possess no plurality unless they are in relation of cause and effect with each other (Proposition XVI).
IV. The Argument for Divine Unity from Dynamism. (Guide 2:1, page 20)
(From Friedlander, page 11, note 3) “A fourth proof similar to the first is added; the same argument which is employed in the first proof respecting the causes of motion is employed in the fourth proof respecting the transition From potentiality [dunamis] to actuality.” This is also an infinite regress argument.
The argument is brief, so I quote it in full from Guide 2:1, page 20:
“Fourth Argument.--This is likewise a well-known philosophical argument. We constantly see things passing from a state of potentiality to that of actuality, but in every such case there is for that transition of a thing an agent separate from it (Prop. XVIII). It is likewise clear that the agent has also passed from potentiality to actuality. It has at first been potential, because it could not be actual, owing to some obstacle contained in itself, or on account of the absence of a certain relation between itself and the object of its action: it became an actual agent as soon as that relation was present. Whichever cause be assumed, an agent is again necessary to remove the obstacle or to create the relation. The same can be argued respecting this last-mentioned agent that creates the relation or removes the obstacle. This series of causes cannot go on ad infinitum; we must at last arrive at a cause of the transition of an object from the state of potentiality to that of actuality, which is constant, and admits of no potentiality whatever. In the essence of this cause nothing exists potentially, for if its essence included any possibility of existence it would not exist at all (Prop. XXIII.); it cannot be corporeal, but it must be spiritual [incorporeal] (Prop. XXIV.); and the immaterial being that includes no possibility whatever, but exists actually by its own essence, is God. Since He is incorporeal, as has been demonstrated, it follows that He is One (Prop. XVI).”
No entity can be its own agent, but requires another agent to actualize the entity’s potentiality. But this cannot go on forever, and must and at a single simple incorporeal agent, God.
V. Supplemental Arguments for Divine Unity. (Guide 2:1, pages 22 through 24).
This next part is a little tricky, since the foregoing arguments were explicitly described by Maimonides is being philosophical, it’s not entirely clear whether these latter arguments should also be called philosophical. Friedlander introduces the section with his note 3 at the beginning of chapter 2:1 on page 11 by writing “These proofs are followed by several arguments, similar in character to those of the Mutakallimūn (Guide 1:75 and 76), in support of the theory of the Unity and Incorporeality of God.” Nonetheless, as we shall have occasion to see, there remains a question whether their second argument for the unity of God in 1:75 is a philosophical argument.
Introducing the first of these supplemental arguments Friedlander makes the following remark, noting the general problem (note 1, to page 22):
“it is here distinctly expressed that the method of the argument is ‘a correct method’ (literally,’ a demonstrative method’), because it is one of the arguments of the Mutakallimūn, which are in general denounced by Maimonides as unscientific. When the author introduced it in the first part (Guide 1:75, 2nd Argument, page 357) he likewise calls it a ‘philosophic argument.’”
A. The Argument for Divine Unity from Composition. (Guide 1:75, 2nd Argument; 2:1 p. 22)
a. If there were two gods they would share something and be distinguished by something. In other words, since they are both gods, they would share elokut, divinity. But then they would have to be distinguished in some way, by some distinguishing characteristic. Each would therefore be constituted of two elements, one shared and one distinct, and therefore must require a third being to create this composition, and that third being would have to have absolutely independent existence (AEI) or would require a further being to effectuate its own composition. (This last unsaid but assumed part is like the “third man argument” from Plato’s Parmenides, 132a–b).
b. The problem with this argument, which may have forced Maimonides to take it out of the explicitly philosophical group of arguments, is the fact, noted by both Shem Tov and Crescas in their ad loc. commentaries, at page 13a, that it only works if the gods actually do have something in common. However, if their elokut is entirely homonymous (sounding the same, but otherwise having nothing in common) because they really do live in two entirely distinct spheres, this argument would fail. The issue, then, is whether, in debating dualism, we are prepared to take real dualism seriously.
c. Perhaps, as he does in his argument for divine creation ex nihilo, he is prepared to distinguish in his own mind demonstrative from rhetorical proofs, without falling into the sophists’ trap of calling a rhetorical proof “demonstrative.”


B. The Argument for Divine Unity from Organicism.
In Guide 1:72, Maimonides portrayed his view of the world as a single organic unity. In that chapter he detailed what was known and also what was merely believed about the physical nature of the universe. In our account of that chapter we showed the significance of organicism both in philosophy and in the history of science. One important characteristic of a single organic universe was that it could be used as an answer to neo-Platonist critics who denied creation ex nihilo. Those critics denied that complexity could proceed from a being who is one and simple. The Maimonidean counterargument would be that only one thing issues from the One, a single organic being which we call the universe. The very singularity of that organic universe seems to militate against dualism.
a. Maimonides begins by stating that it has been demonstrated by “proof” that the whole existing universe is one organic body, all of whose parts are connected. It would therefore be absurd to presume that one deity formed one part while another deity formed another another part of that universe in which “all parts are closely connected together.”
b. In order to make this sound more philosophic than it is, Maimonides creates a division:
“A duality could only be imagined in this way, either that at one time the one deity is active, the other at another time, or that both act simultaneously, nothing being done except by both together. The first alternative is certainly absurd for many reasons: if at the time the one deity be active the other could also be active, there is no reason why the one deity should then act and the other not; if, on the other hand, it be impossible for the one deity to act when the other is at work, there must be some other cause [besides these deities] which [at a certain time] enables the one to act and disables the other. [Such difference would not be caused by time], since time is without change, and the object of the action likewise remains one and the same organic whole.”
c. Piling on, he adds that if any of the above were true, then the deities would be subject to the relation of time; they would also pass from potentiality to actuality (requiring a third man to constitute them); and their essences would include possibility of existence. Each of those conclusions would be preposterous.
d. His next sub-argument is better, and is again dependent on the premise of an organically unified universe: if both gods were jointly engaged in the production of that universe, they would be subject to the rule that “when a number of forces must be united for a certain result, none of these forces acts of its own accord, and none is by itself the immediate cause of that result, but their union is the immediate cause.” Imagine two billiard balls that hit a third ball causing it to move; in such a case we say that the third ball is moved by a single efficient cause, not by two separate causes.
e. Reverting to his own Propositions from the Introduction to Book 2 of the Guide, Proposition XX, Maimonides notes that the action of a necessary being cannot be due to an external cause. But this is nothing more than his Argument for Divine Unity from Composition detailed above. The point is that if there were two beings they would have to be composed from both a shared and a disparate element, and such a composition would require further external cause.
f. The creation of this organic universe requires “one simple being,” but dualism would unnecessarily proliferate entities. (This is a kind of Occam’s Razor, but never forget “Kant’s Shaving Bowl,” that we must conceive as many entities as are necessary.)


C. The Argument for Divine Unity from Divine Incorporeality. Since all pluralities are corporeal, but God is incorporeal, there can be only one God. Maimonides made this point in many different ways previously. It sounds philosophic and demonstrative. But if we are to take dualism seriously, and we posit a serious dualistic universe featuring two completely separate heavens or substances, we could conceivably have two separate and incorporeal beings.
The problem here really goes back to Aristotle’s argument that there can only be one heaven. Here is the original version of the argument from Aristotle, Metaphysics:
“Evidently there is but one heaven (Gr. ouranos—universe). For if there are many heavens as there are many men, the moving principles, of which each heaven will have one, will be one in form but in number many. But all things that are many in number have matter; for one and the same definition, e.g. that of man, applies to many things [and is therefore incorporeal], while Socrates is one [and therefore an particular instantiation of the universal]. But the primary essence has not matter [and therefore no potentiality]; for it is complete reality [in actu]. So the unmovable first mover is one both in definition and in number; so too, therefore, is that which is moved always and continuously; therefore there is one heaven alone.” (W.D. Ross, trans., 1074a 33-37, my bracketed comments.)
In other words, the “oneness” of the cosmos is due to the incorporeality of its mover. Though Aristotle’s objective was to show that there is only one cosmos, his successors usually took this passage to show that there is only one first unmoved mover. The argument of the passage is that numerosity is always a feature of matter. The necessarily incorporeal first cause must be one, but “one” taken in the sense of a non-numerical unity. Aristotle has several other arguments to show that there can only be but one heaven but they don’t immediately relate to Maimonides’ proofs for unity (although we will look at them in the context of R. Crescas’ counterattack).
R. Crescas, of course, rejects the solidity of the Aristotelian argument.
Scott Alexander 
Crescas’ Critique of Aristotelian Arguments for Divine Unity
Crescas criticizes the concept advanced by Aristotle if there are not any other worlds in his analysis of Maimonides claim that an actual infinite body is impossible in Proposition I of the Introduction to Book 2 of the Guide of the Perplexed.
The arguments are in his Or Adonai, 1:2 (in Harry a Wolfson’s Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle, page 217, and in Wolfson’s notes on pages 472 and following, note 127).
He restates the Aristotelian position, differently than we have above, but based on the notion that if there were no plenum or vacuum outside the world, then, there would be nothing outside the world, and then there could not be many worlds. But Crescas has shown in different ways that an infinite magnitude must exist and that outside the world there must exist an infinite plenum or vacuum. It would follow that many worlds would be possible.
Another Aristotelian argument is that if there were many worlds each element would move from one world to another. However Crescas contends that each element would move within the periphery of its own sphere toward its own suitable place.
Wolfson explains the first Aristotelian argument, quoting it from De Caelo 1:8. If there were multiple worlds it would be inevitable that between those worlds they would have to be either a vacuum or a plenum, both of which were considered to be impossible. There would, therefore, have to be a body between those worlds. Such a body would be either transparent or not, but if it were transparent we should be able to see the stars and astral bodies from that other universe from our own standpoint. If it were not transparent but were opaque it should receive light from those other stars and we would be able to identify that intermediate body by such glow. But this is not the case. There could thus be only one world.
The second argument contends that other worlds would have to possess the same nature as our own, and therefore would have four elements such as our own, with their natural movements to their natural places. But if that were the case all instances of the element of earth existing in those other universes would all tend to the center of our world, which is the proper place of every instance of the element of earth. Similarly all instances of the element of fire in those worlds would move toward the periphery of our world. That would be absurd, since the earth element and fire element would in each case move away from their own natural places in their own worlds. Therefore there is only one world.










PDF version of my Outline of Rambam's Divine Unity Arguments, posted as a PDF because Yahoo messed up my original posting. Thank you for your patience.
Scott Alexander




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