@jimthescott:disqus @EamusCatuli0771108:disqus
@davidnickol:disqus @vicqruiz:disqus
@ficino:disqus @DennisBonnette:disqus

I have been busy in my life outside the online-world for many months (including dealing with what seemed to be the impending death of a family member but she survived. The problem of impending death is likely to return again.)

I am now back but I would probably be not as active as before.

Nevertheless I like to continue where I left off with Vicq and Ficino.

I start first with only the topic of God having no Real Relation to His Creation. Here is the fuller picture I have painted a few days ago:

God Has No Real Relation To His Creation
================================

The issue involves efficient cause and formal cause. I start with Formal Cause.

Formal Cause is divided into two types:

(1) Intrinsic formal cause

(2) Extrinsic formal cause (or Exemplary Cause)

Consider the case of an artist looking at a flower and painting that flower as a flower-image on a paper.

The flower is the extrinsic formal cause (ie exemplary cause) of the ultimate effect (the painted flower-image).

The artist is, IN ONE SENSE, the agent or efficient cause of the ultimate effect (the painted flower-image).

In this case (ie not true for all cases), the extrinsic formal cause cannot by itself produce the effect. The extrinsic formal cause (exemplary cause) requires an external efficient cause (agent) to produce the effect (painted image of the flower) in this specific case.

In addition, in this case, the extrinsic formal cause is not only external to the ultimate effect (painted flower-image), but also external to the artist (who is the agent/efficient cause IN ONE SENSE).

Impt Note:
========
It is important to note that in this case the efficient cause or agent (the artist) has the FREEDOM to conform or not to conform fully to the extrinsic formal cause in producing the ultimate effect (painted flower-image). In this sense the extrinsic formal cause has no full control of the ultimate effect (the painted image). The artist could have produced a yellow flower-image even if the extrinsic formal cause is a red flower.

Now, let us we take a closer look:
the extrinsic formal cause is not only causing the ultimate effect (painted flower-image) but also an intermediary effect: the perceived image in the mind of the agent/efficient cause (artist).

Let us look closely at how the extrinsic formal cause causes the perceived image in the artist’s mind.

IN ONE SENSE, the “active intellect” in the artist is the efficient cause of the perceived image in the artist’s mind. When viewed IN THIS SENSE, then once again the extrinsic formal cause requires an external efficient cause in order to produce the intermediary effect (the perceived image in the artists’s mind).

But notice that here we have an important difference:
================================
In the case of the artist being the efficient cause of the ultimate effect (painted image), the efficient cause or agent (artist) has the freedom whether to conform fully or partially to the extrinsic formal cause (the flower),

In huge contrast, in the case of the “active intellect” causing the perceived image in the artist’s mind, a healthy “active intellect” has no such freedom to cause a perceived-image that does not conform to the flower.

For a normal/healthy functioning human mind, the “active intellect” is passive when it comes to the issue of whether the perceived image would conform to the external flower. The “active intellect” is only active in the sense of actively “copying” the external flower to produce an perceived image in the artists’s mind. It cannot “decide” whether to make changes such that, for example, to produce a rose in the artist’s mind even though the external flower is a sunflower, in the case of a normal functional mind.

Given that the “active intellect” lacks the freedom to independently “decide” between various ways to modify the received image-data of the external flower before it produces the intermediary effect (the perceived image) in the artist’s mind, we are justified to say that IN ANOTHER SENSE, the external flower is also the efficient cause (ie agent) of the perceived image produced in the artists’s mind.

Again: A healthy normal “active intellect” plays no role in determining whether or not the perceived image in the mind is to conform to the external flower. It has no freedom to change or ignore the received image-data to produce the perceived image of a rose when the external flower is a sunflower.

So the “active intellect” is only an intermediary efficient cause of the perceived image. The “first” or fundamental or originating efficient cause is the flower.

Flower -> “active intellect” -> perceived image

Analogous to:

surgeon’s hand -> scalper -> incision on patient
(borrowed example from Dr Bonnette)

Therefore, there is A VALID SENSE that the external flower is not only the extrinsic formal cause (ie exemplary cause) of the perceived image in the artists’s mind, but that it is also the efficient cause or agent of that perceived image!

In some real sense, the flower is also the efficient cause (agent) of the perceived image in the artist’s mind.

In the above sense, the flower is both the extrinsic formal cause and the efficient cause or agent of the perceived image in the artists’s mind.

Flower Is the Originating (or “First”) Efficient Cause of the perceived image in the artist’s mind.

“Active Intellect” is the Intermediary Efficient Cause of the perceived image in the artist’s mind.

The Flower (Efficient Cause) Has No Real Relation Towards The Perceived Image in Artist’s Mind
================================

The flower does not need to undergo change (ie no need to “do anything”) in order to be truly an efficient cause (in addition to being an exemplary cause) to produce effect of the perceived image in the artists’s mind (via the “active intellect”). The flower (agent) thus has a “relation of reason” or “logical relation” to its effect but it has no “real relation” towards the effect, while the effect has both a “real relation” and a “logical relation” to the flower.

GOD (both as Efficient Cause & Formal Cause) Also Has No Real Relation Towards His Creation
==================================

In the case of God: God is both the extrinsic formal cause (exemplary cause) and efficient cause or agent of Creation. 

To some extent, like the flower, God has no real relation but only a logical relation (relation of reason) towards His creation, while Creation has both a real relation and a relation of reason (ie logical relation) towards God.

Notice also that the flower does not need to undergo changes in order to produce the effect in the artist’s mind. God, when more so, does not need to undergo any change at all in order to produce effects.

God, just by being Himself, is able to produce effects. In some limited way, the flower, just by being itself, is able to produce effects.

The difference is that the flower requires the presence of suitable external conditions (eg the presence of some intermediary cause) in order to do that, while God the Unconditioned One can do that even when nothing else exists. God’s ability to create effects does not depend on, or constrained by, any external conditions.

Cheers!

His name is Mike. He is very dishonest and even pretended to know physics better than Dr. Michio Kaku. He is a classic Dunning-Krueger specimen.

I think you meant Meta and not Mike :-}
And yes some can be a bit tedious when it comes to getting past the illusive shadows of as-if.

Do not waste your time with this pseudo-philosopher Mike. He messaged me before with the same nonsense. When I refuted him, he began to disparage me. I then challenged him to a live broadcast debate and he ran away like a coward. He has no academic credentials and the philosophers and scientists he quotes from, I know personally! This individual is a classic Dunning-Krueger. @AtheismNTheCity:disqus

How many more?

Hello Richard, have you engaged with Dr. Ed Feser on this topic? You seem to be an intelligent fellow. I'm not sure about your background but it would be fun to see if you and Dr. Feser could both be invited on the show Unbelievable? to debate this subject, or perhaps Aquinas's First Way.

You should probably talk to more Christians, it would seem.

Conscious Observer & Outshine The Sun: The law of non-contradiction is a statement that is mind-dependent in many respects. If one's metaphysic demands it, it is agreeable to eliminates that, and mind too, and even to abort, at some ontological seam somewhere, Reason Itself. The necessary transcendentals do not merely "break down" but are in fact revealed as having never been present in the first place. That is to say, they are unmasked as Non-Being. Over at Outshine The Sun the primary complaint seems to be that the A and the Z of, say, the Christian metaphysic is Intuition Full Stop. That is odd because the complaint itself appeals to and employs all of the same content which begins with something along the lines of, "If there is one lesson from the conscious observer's observational reality science over the last 500 years..." Enough said. We loop back to A is not Non-A and the Edge of Reason, as per http://disq.us/p/1o5v88h

Conceptual analysis and linguistics are interesting in that respect. At Ed Feser's blog the titles "Unintuitive metaphysics" and also "On “intuitions"" add layers.