Thompson Arrington

@returntoquality This is more 2002 but whatevs

This was the white boy golden age and we’ve been chasing it ever since

@parhypostates @JosephBenJ2 I think God's having being essentially intrinsically isn't exhaustive of what we want here but it gets at God's having being "from himself" in that it gets right the distinction between creation's dependence on God for being vs God's independence here.

@TLArrington @JosephBenJ2

Funnily I criticized Feser for this but I remembered Cusanus had a very similar idea, since he held that by divine power any given creature can be turned into anything else, and so a given thing has infinite potency indeed.

@parhypostates @JosephBenJ2 Good point. It does seem like being is part of what it is to be each thing. I mean, it's even in the expression "What it *is* to be..." But it also seems that only God has being essentially intrinsically, which helps account for the distinction here b/t God and creation

@TLArrington @JosephBenJ2

@parhypostates @JosephBenJ2 I said God is essentially being *et al* which was a sloppy way of saying God is essentially being along with the other transcendentals. I think God has numerous essential features.

@TLArrington @JosephBenJ2 And you don't want to say God is being itself, so I'm left wondering what can it mean that "God is essentially being" other than that. Only option seems to be that "being" is just a necessary attribute of God in the same way e.g. rationality is of man.

@JosephBenJ2 @parhypostates Yes, I accept that. I don't think God just is his being, but I also don't think his being is the being of creation.

@TLArrington @parhypostates Do either of you concede that God is not the formal being of created things, and that created things have their own being formally such that their being isn't God's being?

@parhypostates @JosephBenJ2 Being etc. doesn't have to already exist in order for God to have it essentially. And one way to flesh out the view I'm pushing is to say that *only* God is essentially being et al. Everything else has being necessarily but not essentially.

@TLArrington @JosephBenJ2 God's essence just is these things (In which case you go back to God as being itself), or God only has those things "in his essence" in the same way we do, as said.

@parhypostates @JosephBenJ2 For things that aren't God, being is extrinsic according to all three of the analyses you posted.

@TLArrington @JosephBenJ2 But to be is to be intelligible, and so, if there is no intelligible content there, then neither is there anything which we can say has the property "is not intelligible" (Absent another thing). So I don't believe there's any meaningful sense in which being is extrinsic here, no.

@parhypostates @JosephBenJ2 The Kantian view here presupposes that predicates must partition off a proper part of the space of qualities. This isn't defensible since a big part of the predicate role is to account for qualities regardless of whether they apply universally.

@TLArrington @JosephBenJ2 I'm not talking about the form-matter topic but about the topic of being as a transcendental. Your argument basically requires being to be a predicate among predicates so that it can "a part" of God's essence. Doesn't work, since being suffuses everything.

@parhypostates @JosephBenJ2 My bad--both lines of convo involved matter and I thought I was in the other thread. One sec...

@parhypostates @JosephBenJ2 That's a claim, but why think it's true? Why couldn't such a being be the source?

@TLArrington @JosephBenJ2 I think the corollary of my argument if anything is that the entity you're describing can't be the source of anything. (Any more than we can).

@parhypostates @JosephBenJ2 No one's denying being enmattered is a state of being. But for the state to obtain, there must be something playing the matter role, otherwise you'd have just one form for each species when in fact we have many instances of each species among other problems.

@TLArrington @JosephBenJ2 Oh, not at all. What I mean is that being enmattered is just a way of being (i.e. of being given to awareness), not really some discrete state apart from and additional to it.

@parhypostates @JosephBenJ2 ...while essential properties are those a thing must have to be the kind of thing it is..."

@parhypostates @JosephBenJ2 In philosophy, intrinsic and essential properties both relate to what defines a thing, but they address different aspects. Intrinsic properties are those a thing possesses independently of its relations to other things...

@parhypostates @JosephBenJ2 There is a form of being enmattered, but being enmattered isn't merely form, as we can see from the fact that being enmattered is what moves the form of being enmattered to the state of being enmattered.

@TLArrington @JosephBenJ2 Being enmattered is just a form of being, so, not really, no.

@parhypostates @JosephBenJ2 No one's saying matter has to be metaphysically separable from form. But it's still different than form, since enmattered things are different than their forms which can exist without being enmattered.

@JosephBenJ2 @TLArrington i.e. A thing acts as matter *to* something else that takes the role of form. Hence 'pure matter itself' isn't anything. Once you strip a thing of all its formal features you're obviously left with nothing, not with invisible metaphysical putty.

@parhypostates @JosephBenJ2 Sure we have. We've repeatedly contrasted e.g. being with being enmattered.

@TLArrington @JosephBenJ2 Not as a predicate among predicates or one thing in a list of traits.

@parhypostates @JosephBenJ2 Everything necessarily has them and maybe has them essentially, but only God has them intrinsically. I.e., we can't have them without God, but God can have them without us.

@TLArrington @JosephBenJ2 Everything intrinsically has those things. Can't be a being without being (i.e. being intelligible), ergo, etc.

@parhypostates @JosephBenJ2 I don't see this at all. God is the source of all of these things. We have them only because God donates them.

@TLArrington @JosephBenJ2 Hence if God is to be just the highest being then ultimately he isn't really that different from us where it counts here. By which I mean: He isn't exactly serving as a locus for all the transcendental facts about reality anymore than anyone else is.

@parhypostates @JosephBenJ2 This conversation is a counterexample, since we've repeatedly singled them out.

@TLArrington @JosephBenJ2 This is perhaps where the usual Kantian "being is not a predicate" captures something true. The most universal characters aren't just "not there" but neither are they bundles of an essence or members of a list of traits. They permeate all the being and can't be singled out.